Last Call For Anti-Social Turtles

Greg Sargent notes that Alison Grimes is on the attack in the final week of the Kentucky Senate campaign, hitting Mitch McConnell hard on supporting Dubya's Social Security privatization scheme in 2005.

The other day, the Dem-aligned Senate Majority PAC made a splash by going up in Kentucky with a very harsh ad hitting Mitch McConnell over his previous support for Social Security privatization. The ad linked that stance to an assertion that McConnell had “rearranged his portfolio” after private calls with a top Treasury Department official, implicitly suggesting McConnell had milked inside connections to bolster his own retirement security while gambling with that of others. 

The ad ticked off the McConnell campaign, which circulated a fact check that said it had oversimplified the claims in the original article on which it was based and overlooked the fact that it had alleged no wrongdoing. 

The McConnell campaign is trying to get TV stations to stop running the ad. I’ve checked in with Kentucky stations, and most declined to reveal their plans for the spot, though an official at one — Fox affiliate WDRB — told me: “We reinstated the spot, finding the assertions factual.” 

A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC told me the ad is still airing “on every station we bought on.” 

The dust-up shows that Democrats are pushing hard to make Social Security privatization a sleeper issue in the last days of the Kentucky Senate race. And they were handed an unexpected opening in this regard, when McConnell himself made an offhand reference to his own involvement with George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization efforts in 2005. “He wanted us to try to fix Social Security,” McConnell said during a recent speech. “I spent a year trying to get any Democrat in the Senate…to help us.”

You know, now that I think about it, that's part of the reason why Republicans hate Obamacare so much.  Obama was able to get his major domestic policy program passed into law, whereas both of Dubya's major pushes to privatize Social Security and to reform immigration ended up so unpopular among Republicans that they couldn't pass either even with control of Congress.

I have no idea why Mitch is bringing this up again, especially here in a state like Kentucky, but hey, he's Mitch.  Between lying about no wanting to kill Medicaid expansion by repealing Obamacare "root and branch" and now this Social Security scam, I think he might have done critical damage to his own campaign here in the final days.

Also, whining about taking a tough ad off the air?  Please.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

John Hinderaker reads ex-CBS reporter Sharyl Atkisson's tell-all book on how CBS wouldn't let her run crazy bullshit stories on the Obama administration and of course takes every word as gospel truth. Atkisson's book has some pretty nutty allegations to boot.  Assrocket then asks:

If the Obama administration hacked into a reporter’s computers, used them to spy on her, and even prepared to frame her for a potential criminal prosecution by planting classified documents, aren’t we looking at the biggest scandal in American history?

Short answer, no.

Long answer, This is a country that perpetrated the Trail of Tears and killed thousands of Native Americans, knowingly infected dozens of black men with syphilis and allowed hundreds more to suffer the disease for decades, rounded up Japanese-American citizens and put them in internment camps, grew an economy on slavery for centuries and then continued that slavery with Jim Crow laws, oh yeah and decided to go to war with itself to defend that slavery, killing hundreds of thousands, and I'm supposed to believe the biggest scandal in American history is a reporter who's watched Enemy of the State too many times and is grifting on paranoia over Obama?

Get the hell out.

Turn Out For What, NKY?

County clerks here in Northern Kentucky aren't expecting heavy turnout next week.  Despite 2010 numbers that showed turnout of 41% in Boone and Kenton Counties, and 48% in Campbell County (with a statewide turnout of 49%) the numbers are expected to be lower here in 2014.

Boone County Clerk Kenny Brown said turnout in the county will range from 35 to 40 percent. 

"The majority of people only vote every four years," Brown said in a reference to presidential voting.

That's not good.

Campbell County Clerk Jack Snodgrass said turnout in Campbell County could be between 35 and 38 percent. 

"The reason I think it's going to be strong is we have so many city races that are hotly contested," Snodgrass said. 

Bellevue, Dayton, Fort Thomas, Highland Heights, Cold Spring and Alexandria – especially for the mayor – will bring out voters, he said. 

Competition for a U.S. Senate seat between Republican Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes will likely bring out many people who haven't voted much in the past, Snodgrass said.

Wait, how is that strong when it's down from the 2010 numbers?  I would have to think Grimes would have a real shot if statewide turnout was 49% or higher, but if clerks are expecting worse number than 2010, then it really is going to come down to who shows up on November 4.

I'll be there for sure.

StupidiNews!

• Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has won a seat on City Council, but his brother Doug was defeated for Mayor by John Tory.
• Police in Washington State say the teen gunman last week who killed two and wounded three before taking his own life  texted his victims to meet in the school cafeteria to ambush them.
• Loretta Lynch, current US Attorney for Brooklyn, has emerged as the lead choice to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder after midterm elections.
• Harvard tops the new US News ranking of global universities, followed by MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Oxford.
• Google's newest search algorithm changes have bottomed out free TV and torrent sites in the last week, restricting traffic by up to 96%.