Last Call For Bevin's Break

Over at the Lexington Herald-Leader, Sam Youngman argues that the Summer of Trump could very well turn into the Winter of Jack Conway's Discontent here in Kentucky's governor's race.

There are reams of opposition research that McConnell's team unearthed but didn't need on their way to crushing Bevin in last year's primary. 

And none of that might matter one bit. 

It might not matter because Bevin, the man Trump said he would've fired, could well be holding a trump card of his own if a summer of social change becomes an autumn of angry conservative defiance. 

That card covers several issues — gay marriage, the Confederate flag and Planned Parenthood — but it's easier to just lump it into one category: The Obama card. 

If the Democratic strategy of continuing McConnell's attacks on Bevin is crystal clear, then so is the Republican strategy of tying Conway and every other Democrat running for office to a president who has never been well-liked by the vast majority of Kentuckians. 

This summer, that disdain has become a frenetic and vocal war cry as conservatives, believing their president is out to get them and that the country they love is becoming a permissive, socialist haven, are screaming at the top of their lungs for someone to push back. 

That's how Trump jumped to the top of most polls measuring the 2016 Republican presidential contest despite a history of supporting liberal causes and politicians and outlandish, controversial statements that could kill the Republican Party on the national level. 

But Kentucky isn't a national electorate. It's a conservative electorate and has only grown more so in the last 15 years. While the Trump school of politics is music to the ears of national Democrats, it's certainly not disqualifying in the commonwealth. 

Conway has been around state government for a very long time, gathering a deep knowledge of the state's laws, interests and needs, but he also has a scarlet D behind his name. 

It's an increasingly detrimental designation for a politician in Kentucky. 

As Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes found out last year, the liberal Democratic bases in Louisville and Lexington are not willing to sit idly by and watch as a Democrat tries to appeal to conservative members of their party.

And as Jack Conway increasingly goes down Grimes's losing path of "I will stand up to Obama" we're coming closer and closer to putting our own Trump in Frankfort.  It's a disaster waiting to happen and I don't think Conway has any clue that he's going to end up losing by double digits unless he gives Democrats in Kentucky a reason to show up at the polls.

R

Andead more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/07/26/3960840_political-paddock-jack-conway.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

The one good thing going is that Bevin is going to be a nightmare and a national joke by the time the 2019 race rolls around.  Too bad the only thing standing between him and turning Kentucky into the next Kansas is Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo, who on a good day is still one of the most conservative Dems in the country.

I honestly see the next four years as "limiting the damage Bevin will do to our state" but after all, we elected Rand Paul rather easily.

Post-Racial America Update

Remember folks, overt, deliberate racism is a barbaric relic of the past present.

Witnesses at a birthday party in Douglasville, Georgia over the weekend said that festivities were interrupted when men waving Confederate flags threatened them and used racial slurs. 

Cell phone video obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows police officers holding back people attending a birthday party as white men in trucks with Confederate flags and other flags drive by yelling at them. 

“This is a child’s birthday party!” one woman shouts back. 

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the woman who posted the video on Facebook said that the men were armed and were on her property. She said that they threatened to “kill y’all n****rs.” 

“I don’t mind them riding with their flags but I don’t want them going around threaten[ing] people in their yard like they did mine or harassing folks either,” the woman explained in her Facebook post.

Kid's birthday party, mind you.

I'm sure they did something to deserve that.  You know, like being black.

This is 2015 and this is still happening, but it's probably Obama's fault or something, right?

Iran Out Of Excuses

WaPo's Paul Waldman asks the question everyone in the press should be asking of Republicans on the Iran deal: if the GOP gets its way, Congress rejects the Iran deal, and then overrides a veto by President Obama, what happens next?

You can argue that this deal should have been different, but when it comes time to vote on whether it should go forward, members of Congress will be choosing between two options, neither of them hypothetical. A yes vote means all the parties — not only Iran and the United States, but also the United Nations, China, Russia, and the European Union — implement this deal. A no vote, in contrast, doesn’t mean that some fantasy deal will fall from the sky. It means that the U.S. walks away from this deal, and it collapses. 

That also could mean that the existing sanctions regime collapses. We can keep our sanctions on Iran, but the reason sanctions have been so devastating to the country’s economy is that they haven’t just come from the U.S., but also from the United Nations, the European Union, and elsewhere. If those other sanctions were to disappear, Iran would get most of what it wanted without having to fulfill any obligations at all. And if they want to pursue a nuclear weapon, they could then go right ahead. 

So now that the deal is on the table and congressional votes are on their way, what Republicans really need to explain is not what sort of deal they might have preferred. We know their answer to that question — they’ll say they would have rather had a deal where Iran gives us everything we want, and we give up nothing. But that’s irrelevant at this point. What they need to explain now is why the U.S. pulling out of this deal — and what happens afterward — will be preferable to implementing it, imperfections and all. Do they think the Iranians will come crawling back and make further concessions? Do they think the rest of the world’s powers, which support the deal they helped negotiate, will just follow us and impose new sanctions in the hope that eventually that might lead to more negotiations (which, like these, would take years) and ultimately the fantasy deal where Iran capitulates? What precisely is the chain of events Republicans think will occur if we pull out? 

If they’ve given that question even a moment’s consideration, you wouldn’t know it to listen to them. But it’s what they ought to be asked now.

The chain of events inside Fantasy Iran Deal is actually pretty simple: Brave Republicans talk enough Democrats into abandoning the deal, it goes under, and Iran shows its "true colors" and the American people demand war and regime change.  And in 2017, under a Republican president and Congress, they get that war against God's enemies, because Onward Christian Soldiers.  That war is magically won in six weeks and the US, having disposed of a terror state, suddenly has everyone falling in line to appease our might.

It's total lunacy, of course.  They can't say it because of precisely that reason.  But we know exactly what will happen should Republicans win the White House and keep Congress: war, plain and simple.

StupidiNews!

• Boston Mayor Marty Walsh confirmed Monday that the city was withdrawing its bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, leaving the door open for another US city like Los Angeles.
• Oklahoma's state Supreme Court has ordered a monument to the Ten Commandments removed from the State Capitol grounds, prompting calls for impeachment from angry Republicans.
• The Boy Scouts of America has voted to lift a blanket ban on gay scoutmasters, but will continue to allow individual scout troops to maintain the bans individually.
• Analysts expect China's Shanghai stock market to continue to plummet in a "1929-style crash" as the index could lose another 15% in value by the middle of August.
• Scientific leaders including Dr. Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have signed a letter calling for the world's governments to ban "offensive autonomous weapons" and military AI robots.