Last Call For The Queen City, Uncrowned

The 2016 Republican National Convention will not be here in Cincinnati after all.

Cincinnati officials withdrew the city's bid to host the 2016 GOP convention because the U.S. Bank Arena does not meet the necessary specifications, the city's host committee announced on Thursday.

John Barrett, president and CEO of Western & Southern Financial Group and a leader of the effort to bring the convention to Cincinnati, said the Queen City was at a disadvantage in the GOP competition because of the arena.

"The site selection committee really liked what they saw here, but our arena is 40 years old," he told The Enquirer.

He said RNC officials gave Cincinnati leaders a 10-point list of items that would have to be improved or fixed at the arena for the city to remaining in the running—including doubling the number of box suites at the arena.

"We were able to do some of it but not all of it," Barrett said. "We're at a great disadvantage to these brand new modern arenas that have everything."

It's one thing to have a billionaire basketball or hockey team owner complain about the size of your arena, entirely another to have the GOP complain about it.  Maybe the problem is, oh, I dunno, Cincinnati doesn't have a major league hockey team like Columbus or NBA team like Cleveland. 

Considering no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, scrapping one of the two remaining Ohio cities made some sense.  I just figured it would be Cleveland out.

Oh well.  It's not like I was looking forward to even more GOP jackasses around the city than normal.

Even More Republican Sneak Attacks

The long, strange story of winger blogger Clayton Kelly, his scheme to try to damage Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran in June's primary in order to support Tea Party primary challenger state Sen Chris McDaniel, and the Cochran camp's bizarre two-week delay sitting on the story just got a whole lot more weird as more arrests have been made, including a top state Tea Party official.

Two more arrests have been made in connection with the photographing of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) wife, Rose, who is patient in a Madison County nursing home.

Mark Mayfield, a member of the board of directors for the Central Mississippi Tea Party, was arrested Thursday, according to the Clarion Ledger of Mississippi. The second suspect arrested has not been identified. 

Clayton Kelly was arrested Friday and faces felony charges of photographing or filming another without permission where there is expectation of privacy and exploitation of a vulnerable adult, which carries up to a 10-year sentence. Kelly wanted to use the photograph of Cochran's wife in an anti-Cochran video.

Kelly supports state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Cochran's tea party primary challenger. Mayfield appears to be a McDaniel supporter as well and, according to the Clarion Ledger's Sam Hall, contributed $500 to McDaniel and served as an active volunteer on his campaign. 

Authorities claim Kelly photographed Rose Cochran at St. Catherine's nursing home in Madison, where she is bedridden and suffering from progressive dementia. Kelly, a political blogger and McDaniel supporter, allegedly used the photo in a video he posted online.

Since of course McDaniel is a freedom-loving responsible adult and a stalwart conservative Republican, he's dumping the blame for all this on Cochran and the liberal media "victimizing" him.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) is pushing an open letter he sent to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) vowing not to engage either his campaign or the "liberal media in their absurd witch hunt." 

"No matter how many press releases your campaign puts out, I will simply not stoop to your level. Win or lose, I’d like to be able to wake up on June 4th and be proud of the primary campaign I ran on behalf of Mississippi," McDaniel wrote in the open letter to the incumbent senator, who McDaniel is challenging.

The letter, which the McDaniel campaign first released on Wednesday and has been sending out to supporters on Thursday, refers to criticism by the Cochran campaign toward McDaniel in response to pro-McDaniel blogger Clayton Thomas Kelly being arrested for photographing Cochran's bedridden wife at her nursing home for an anti-Cochran video. 

"Over the past several weeks, your campaign has resorted to shameful slander, even going so far as to call me a 'criminal' without a shred of evidence to back up these accusations," McDaniel also said in the open letter. 

"No doubt, many political campaigns resort to juvenile behavior when they are down in the polls, but this kind of slander goes beyond childish pranks. It is, frankly, an embarrassment to our great state. Mississippi deserves better than this."

It's all a plot by Thad Cochran working with Obama to smear me because ARGLE BARGLE CONSPIRACY TINFOIL I EAT MY OWN POO.

But odds are one of these clowns is going to end up a US senator in January.  Awesome.

Grimes Goes Goofy

Alison Lundergan Grimes remains infinitely preferable to Mitch The Turtle, but she's not acquitting herslef well when it comes to political moves.  Given Kentucky's healthcare exchange, Kynect, is arguably the best in the nation right now and easy to defend for that reason, she's ducking on the Affordable Care Act.

Asked two times whether she'd have voted for the 2010 overhaul, the Kentucky Democrat who is challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told The Associated Press: "I, when we are in the United States Senate, will work to fix the Affordable Care Act." 

Grimes added: "I believe the politically motivated response you continue to see from Mitch McConnell in terms of repeal, root and branch, is not in reality or keeping ... with what the facts are here in Kentucky." 

The law Republicans call "Obamacare" presents a delicate issue for Grimes, who won the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday. Kynect, Kentucky's state-run health insurance exchange made possible by the law, is wildly popular. More than 400,000 people have either signed up for an expanded Medicaid program or purchased private insurance plans with the help of government subsidies. But Obamacare remains unpopular in the state, mostly because President Barack Obama himself is unpopular here.

Real simple:  "Yes, because Kynect proves that the parts of the law that are working can make a difference in improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians.  We need to make sure every state has as good of an exchance as Kentucky does.  We're leading the way and we need to make the ACA better."

And then given the fact that her opponent filibustered a bill to fix the VA, she should have a fat, juicy fastball over the plate to smash past the fences.  Instead she fouls one off by going after VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Kentucky's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes on Thursday called on Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign over the growing scandal involving the deaths of dozens of veterans while waiting for treatment.

Her campaign put out a brief statement titled, "Grimes Calls For Veterans Affairs Secretary Resignation" in which she says: "We owe a solemn obligation to our veterans, and our government defaulted on that contract. I don't see how that breach of trust with our veterans can be repaired if the current leadership stays in place."

Also real simple:  "Mitch McConnell and 40 other Republicans blocked a Senate bill in February that would have addressed the very problems we've seen for years in the VA system.  Instead, Mitch McConnell gladly authorized trillions to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he then told our veterans that we suddenly had no money to keep America's promises to them.  The real problem here is the GOP Senate caucus that Mitch McConnell leads and they should be ashamed.  When they had the opportunity to help fix this problem, they did nothing instead."

This is the Alison Grimes we need more of.



The brilliant person who gave this speech Tuesday night after she won?  This is the person I want as my next Senator.  The person who less than 24 hours later called on Shinseki to resign? 

Not so much.

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