Last Call For Kentucky Fried Turtle

Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell apparently tastes like Mitch "The Chicken" McConnell according to his Senate primary challenger, Matt Bevin, and his growing list of Tea Party backers and donors.

As he battles a conservative primary challenger for his 2014 re-election bid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been getting hammered by the right for resisting the quixotic strategy to defund Obamacare or shut down the government.

The Brent Bozell-run conservative activist group ForAmerica and its allies in the movement are this week pushing a video comparing the Republican leader to a chicken, “or gallus gallus domesticus, a common domestic fowl.”

“The chicken is also representative of a new breed of Republicans in Washington,” the video says, showing footage of chickens. “They tend to say one thing … But when confronted with an opportunity to act, they often run, far away, without a sense of direction. … Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. On the issue of Obamacare, he says, ‘This law is a disaster. And I want you to know we’re not backing down from this fight.’ But when he has the chance to defund Obamacare, some say he’s chickening out.”

“Senator McConnell,” the video continues, “conservatives don’t need a chicken when it comes to Obamacare. Leaders lead. But if you fund it, you own it.”

Now, Bozell and his clowns may be, well, clowns, but they understand that Mitch the Turtle Chicken is an inherently political creature, and he'll do and say whatever is necessary in order to get elected.  Bozell is trying to make that level of necessary "stopping any Senate budget resolution that funds Obamacare" or even "refusing to raise the debt ceiling without full repeal".  The former is bad enough, but the latter would trigger a financial meltdown for sure.

And yet, these guys are literally calling McConnell chicken because they don't think he has the guts to follow through on these threats.

We'll see if he does or not.  But I guarantee you, if the GOP does go down this road, it won't be Mitch who is the only one getting Kentucky Fried in 2014.

The Ballot Of North Colorado, Or It's All Away From Boulder Dash

And the overwhelmingly conservative, rural, and (ahem) white population of Colorado's northern counties apparently have had enough of this "being attached to this Mork & Mindy driving a Subaru state crap" and are proceeding with Operation We're Leaving, Suckers.

To secede or not to secede from Colorado? That is the question that residents in Weld County will face in November after county commissioners voted unanimously Monday in favor of putting a 51st state initiative on the ballot, the Greeley Tribune reports.

The initiative, which calls for the creation of the state of North Colorado, has already made it onto the ballot in Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma Counties. Logan, Phillips, Washington and Kit Carson Counties have also set dates to vote on the initiative.

“Si se puede -- yes, we can,” said Weld County Commission Chairman Bill Garcia, echoing one of President Barack Obama's campaign slogans, before commissioners voted on the initiative.

Several rural, predominantly Republican counties of north and and northeastern Colorado announced their plan to create a 51st state back in June. Supporters have cited a number of laws -- including gun control measures, an increase in renewable energy standards in rural areas, the curbing of perceived cruel treatment of livestock and expanded regulation of oil and gas production -- that the Democratically-controlled state legislature passed this year, as the impetus for the secession movement.

"Rural residents are now a disenfranchised minority of Colorado," Phillips County Administrator Randy Schafer told The Denver Post last month. "National and urban values and needs are trumping rural values and needs."

The argument is these counties, home to Colorado's fracking boom, are where all the money is, and if they leave, the rest of those people are just screwed.

Only one problem:  the same Colorado state legislature, Gov. John Hickenlooper, and the Congress these morons despise would all have to approve this little divorce beforehand.  And gosh, I don't see this happening.

But it sure is cool to vote petulantly to leave the government you're a part of just because you lost in a representative democracy, huh?  Nice to know that instead of working with Colorado, or working to even expand your party's power base, you guys are just going to cut and run in a symbolic waste of taxpayer money.

Clowns.

The Fetid Tang Of Desperation

Greg Sargent recaps the latest "grassroots" effort to go after "vulnerable Obamacare Democrats" during the congressional summer recess and finds it sorely lacking in both effectiveness and relevance:

Today Heritage Action for America is launching a nine-city tour designed to drum up support for the push for defunding. The White House-allied Americans United for Change is vowing to match Heritage’s events with its own, in an effort to demonstrate at least as much or more energy on the pro-Obamacare side. We’re already seeing little evidence to suggest that the great and fearsome conservative backlash to immigration reform is materializing. Will the same happen on the great defund-Obamacare crusade?

Those who want a shutdown confrontation are themselves framing the battle in these terms, arguing that the recess is the time for the grassroots to speak up and demand that the squishy GOP establishment stiffen its spine and do what it takes to halt Obamacare before it’s too late. Indeed, National Journal reports that the movement to defund Obamacare is falling “on hard times,” and even defund-Obamacare ringleader Ted Cruz seems uneasy.

Indeed, the big Republican plan is to somehow terrify Dems who voted for Obamacare to run away from the plan.  If there's any Dem who should be vulnerable to that tactic, it's Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas.  But Pryor isn't biting:

“It has been a success,” Pryor says of Obamacare, citing a number of health insurance reforms and other benefits taking effect. “Probably we did get 80 percent [right], we have to go in and work on the 20 percent.”

Seems somebody has learned the lessons of Blanche Lincoln's complete meltdown in 2010.

StupidiNews!

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• Tesla Motors says its Model S electric sedan has received the highest NHTSA crash-test scores in US history, with unprecedented across-the-board five star ratings in every category.
• Gamemaker Electronic Arts is offering a seven-day refund policy from its Origin online game purchase platform in an effort to compete with rival online game service Steam.