Orange Julius Enjoys His Retirement

So what's former GOP House Speaker John Boehner up to these days? Jeremy Fugelberg of the Cincinnati Enquirer catches up to him and finds out that ol' Orange Julius can't stay away from the game he's played nearly all of his adult life.

West Chester's own John Boehner may be out of the House, but he's certainly staying out of the house (It's a joke, folks!). 

The former House speaker plans to barnstorm across the country in late July and early August, campaigning and raising money for House Republicans, Politico reported this morning. 

He'll travel the country on his bus, Freedom One – an annual practice while he was in office.

That's right, he'll be hitting the Midwest on bus tours to help Republicans.

I wonder if that will include Don Man the Con Man?

He still has a small war chest to power his work. Our USA Today Network reporter Deirdre Shesgreen reported earlier this month that Boehner has more than $1.6 million in his House re-election account and just shy of $1 million in a leadership PAC account at the end of March, according to campaign finance disclosures. 

The bus tour news is the latest showing Boehner has no intention of staying out of the limelight. Boehner made a cameo in a skit video featuring President Barack Obama, aired at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on April 30.

This should be fun.  Considering Boehner was basically the second major casualty of the Trump GOP (the first being GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor, remember him? Even I missed the call that he would get primaried out in 2014, and it's one of the reasons I kept saying Trump was for real back last year!) I can't see how he's going to be of much help to Trump.

But hey, if he wants to wreck his credibility backing The Donald, let his juice get squeezed.

Can Hillary Win In Bevinstan?

As Joe Sonka points out ahead of today's Kentucky Democratic primary:

Looks like the Bluegrass Poll calamity scared off anyone from doing a public poll in Kentucky this primary season.

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) May 16, 2016

Of course he's talking about the now infamous Bluegrass Polls showing Jack Conway with a five-point lead heading into last November, only for him to end up losing by 8.

So we don't have very much polling at all heading into today. A Public Policy Polling survey from early March had Clinton up 5.  That's it.  Nobody else has bothered to touch the state since November's catastrophe.  So I have no idea who's going to win.

Clinton, for her part, is going hard here.

Hillary Clinton, looking to stem a string of late-in-the-calendar wins by rival Bernie Sanders, is investing heavily in Kentucky ahead of its Tuesday primary. 

The former secretary of state's campaign has launched both television and radio ads in the state's major markets and dispatched more than a dozen surrogates to turn out voters in the days before the primary. Clinton has also personally invested time: She will have headlined 11 campaign stops over three trips in the last two weeks by the time Kentucky Democrats go to the polls. 

"It is a great honor to be here with you and I hope to earn your support in the primary on Tuesday," Clinton said at St. Stephens Baptist Church in Southwest Louisville on Sunday. "I hope to have the opportunity to serve you as your president." 

This investment marks a notable change from her efforts ahead of a narrow-loss in Indiana's primary two weeks ago, where Clinton spent little time campaigning and was outspent $2 million to $0 in advertising. 

After the loss some aides suggested with a little investment the former secretary of state could have won the primary and come closer to putting away Sanders, the Vermont senator who has pledged to campaign into June. Clinton and her aides don't want to make that mistake again, especially given they already anticipate a loss in Oregon, the other state voting Tuesday. 

Clinton visited Paducah, Kentucky, on Monday, stopping in at the Little Castle diner. The meeting was meant to be an off-the-record stop, but excited local Democrats told reporters and the place was filled when Clinton walked in. 

"Everybody's ready to go vote," Clinton said. "I'll tell you this: I'm not going to give up on Kentucky in November."

So she very well might win.  I don't know.  She's trying to win the state over and might have a serious chance if the Republicans really do put a third-party bid into play like Big Dog did in 1992 and 1996, but outside of that, Trump is going to win here by 15-20 points.

It's good that she's not giving up on the state.  We have too many "progressives" giving up on Kentucky as it is. And yes, this means I'm voting for her.

We'll see what happens later tonight.

StupidiNews!

• Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich says he still will not endorse presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump nor consider being his VP, saying he remains undecided at this time.
• A federal jury in California has found two LA County Sheriff's deputies guilty of beating a mentally ill inmate and then lying on reports to cover up the incident.
• The highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Hong Kong in nearly two years says he promises to listen to Hong Kong activists looking for more autonomy or even independence.
• The Port Authority of New York is leading the way on a $4 billion project to expand NYC's LaGuardia airport with a new 35-gate terminal due in 2021.
• Twitter is considering removing links and photos from counting against a tweet's 140-character limit, with CEO Jack Dorsey saying "we're going to explore" what users want.