If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Barack Obama received 679,364 votes in Kentucky in 2012. Jack Conway received 426,964 votes yesterday. #kygov— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015
Ben Carson’s campaign is suggesting that future Republican presidential debates only be broadcast over the Internet, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The suggestion that the future debates not be televised is one of several calls for reforms from one of the frontrunners for the GOP nomination after a debate last week on CNBC that was widely criticized by the candidates.
“We also think there are too many debates,” Carson spokesman Doug Watts told the Wall St. Journal on Saturday. “They’re all bunched up and they really do take a lot of time away from the campaign and they take a lot of financial resources for us to be able to work on them.”
Carson is leading polls in Iowa, which hosts the first contest in the GOP primary in February. He also has surpassed Donald Trump in some national polls, giving him leverage in the loud debate over changing the debate process.
Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, is holding a meeting with GOP campaign representatives on Sunday night to discuss changes to the remaining debates.
The retired neurosurgeon’s campaign says future debates could be carried on Facebook and YouTube, unnamed sources familiar with the situation told the Journal. They believe doing so will strip television networks of their power to control the formats of the debates.
The campaign also says the forums should prioritize lengthy statements from candidates rather than frequent moderator intervention.
@ZandarVTS no. he lost because he is unlikable -- left thought he was meh and conservative Dems thought he was NOBAMA.— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015
@ZandarVTS and NOBAMA is of course in large part the creation of the state Democratic Party that helped make him toxic for short term gain
— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015
“People in this town are nervous on both sides, but they ought to be,” Bevin said. “If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous.
“If the taxpayer is not getting a good return on their tax investment, then we should reevaluate it. I’m agnostic to what that means. I don’t have predetermined notion as to what this means for merit versus non-merit, Democrat versus Republican.
“I’m agnostic. I will come with a blank sheet of paper and I think that is healthy. Somebody who truly is not beholden to anybody. Somebody that doesn’t owe anyone any favors — that’s what makes people nervous about Jenean (running mate Jenean Hampton) and I. We are not beholden to anybody.”
Voters in Kentucky elected Republican Matt Bevin as governor Tuesday.
Bevin beat Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway. Unofficial results from the Kentucky State Board of Elections had Bevin beating Conway 52.11 percent to 44.19 percent with 110 of 120 counties reporting Tuesday night.
Conway conceded defeat in an election night speech, saying "tonight was not the result that we had hoped for, but it is a result that we accept." Conway said he called Bevin and wished him well.
Bevin, a tea party favorite, has opposed the expansion of Medicaid in the state under the Affordable Care Act. Conway supports expansion of the program.
Bevin said he would replace the Medicaid expansion with another program by using a federal waiver. "Nobody's losing anything," Bevin told NBC News in an interview Monday.
I NEVER THOUGHT I’d run for public office.
Of course I never thought I’d found an irreverent news site called Fark.com, run it for 16 years and counting, write a book, fight off a patent troll, go to business school at age 38, and do dozens of other things. But even two years ago I would have considered myself the furthest thing from a politician.
Nevertheless [on Tuesday], when Kentucky voters head to the polls, they will see my name on the ballot, as an Independent candidate for governor.
My friends thought I was insane to do this—why take on a year’s worth of tedious work to fight for a job taking on problems that likely can’t be fixed? Well, like pretty much all of us, I feel like the political process isn’t representing our interests. A couple of parties dominate the process, limiting choice and grappling for power instead of trying to solve real problems. But at Fark, I have seen how effective the Internet can be at taking down entrenched gatekeepers and empowering regular people. So this year, I decided to see if I could harness that power toward changing politics.
I based my run on a theory: that the Internet and social media have finally made it possible for a third party candidate to win. Regardless of how things turn out, I’m convinced I was absolutely correct. And I’m also convinced you’ll see more candidates like me in the near future. As a matter of fact you should consider being one of them. To help you in your run, here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way.
But the problem is, the Democrats in particular really hate the other party’s candidate. Democrats may dislike their own candidate but they are downright terrified of the Republican. They are primarily voting to keep him out of office, and that makes them unlikely to take a flier on a third-party candidate; they’d rather pick the second-best candidate than vote for me. Meanwhile, I’ve been picking up GOP support no problem because they don’t seem as afraid. That tells me that if the GOP candidate had been more adequate, I’d have pulled this off.
Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway continued their sprint to the finish line in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election as they campaigned in different parts of the state Saturday in an effort to get voters to the polls in a race that appears so close it will be decided by turnout.
Campaigning in Northern Kentucky, Bevin told groups of 30 to 50 people in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties that his latest poll shows that he has grabbed a slim point advantage despite most public polls showing Conway with a 5 percentage point lead.
"The momentum has shifted. The gap has been closed," Bevin told his core backers at the Boone County Republican Party headquarters. "We're actually up a point as of yesterday."
Bevin, who declined to release details of his tracking polls, traveled the region with 4th District Congressman Thomas Massie in an effort to rally Republican troops.
Conway, showing similar confidence as he campaigned east of Lexington, told crowds that their vote is a choice between the “mainstream and the extreme” and he, too, predicted a win on Tuesday.
Told of Bevin’s claim that he had taken the lead, Conway said his internal polls show him up by more than five points and then added, “It wouldn’t be the first time (Bevin) didn’t tell the truth.”
The Wisconsin Republican who claimed the gavel last week is one of Congress’ preeminent tax experts, an ardent advocate of rewriting the code with lots of ideas on how to do it. Over the years, he’s gone further than most lawmakers in pushing politically fraught changes that have gone nowhere, such as wiping out a major tax break for employer-provided health plans and making it harder for the wealthy to claim the hugely popular mortgage-interest deduction.
But now Ryan has far more power to put the issue on Washington’s agenda— and the latest budget deal between congressional leaders and the White House should give him ample room to launch his speakership without being distracted by constant battles over funding the government and raising the debt limit. So some advocates are recalibrating the odds of a long-elusive tax overhaul that they say could spur new jobs and bring corporate money back from overseas.
Sweeping tax change won’t happen this year, supporters say, with lawmakers still staring at a stack of unfinished business — or next year, when the 2016 election will loom even larger. But they say it’s suddenly a lot more likely in the early years of the next presidency, especially if the Republicans win the White House.
“It certainly comes as close to guaranteeing it as possible,” said a top Republican staffer. “It’s his No. 1 priority — it’s what he cares about most.”
The sort of ambitious reform Ryan has in mind, which would be the first since 1986, promises to cut both individual and corporate tax rates in exchange for junking scores of credits, deductions and other special provisions. Any rewrite would be hugely controversial, with an array of powerful interest groups sure to line up to defend their favorite provisions, not to mention many Democrats who’ve long complained that Ryan’s plans amount to a giveaway to the rich.
In a speech to the House just before his swearing-in Thursday, Ryan named tax reform as one of his top priorities.
Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives.
Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears next week that could have broad implications on the nation's booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ.
At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one's own children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin?
"Parents should be allowed to decide how to educate their children, not whether to educate their children," said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
Like other Texas home-school families, Laura and her husband Michael McIntyre weren't required to register with state or local educational officials. They also didn't have to teach state-approved curriculums or give standardized tests.
But problems began when the dealership's co-owner and Michael's twin brother, Tracy, reported never seeing the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing much of anything educational except singing and playing instruments. He said he heard one of them say learning was unnecessary since "they were going to be raptured."
Then, the family's eldest daughter, 17-year-old Tori, ran away from home saying she wanted to return to school. She was placed in ninth grade, since officials weren't sure she could handle higher-level work.
The El Paso school district eventually asked the McIntyres to provide proof that their children were being properly educated and even filed truancy charges that were later dropped. The family sued and had an appeals court rule against them, but now the case goes Monday to the all-Republican state Supreme Court.
In court filings, the McIntyres say the district is biased against Christians and accuse its officials of mounting a "startling assertion of sweeping governmental power."
Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.
But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops to Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These forces do not have a combat mission."
Earnest said the promises of "no boots on the ground" first came in the context of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad because of his use of chemical weapons. Since then, Syria has become a haven for Islamic State fighters.
The way Joe McCoy sees it, the last time America was great was when Ronald Reagan was president, when people played by the rules. No, it was in the ’70s, Holly Martin says, when you could depend on Americans to work hard. No, to find true American greatness, Steve Trivett contends, you need to go back to before the Vietnam War, “when you could still own a home and have a good job even if you didn’t have a college education.”
Even if they don’t have “Make America Great Again” campaign caps, Donald Trump’s supporters easily recite the signature slogan of the real estate developer’s insurgent presidential bid. And even if they don’t agree on exactly why the country lost its way, they do accept — give or take a few degrees of hyperbole — Trump’s contention that the United States has become, as he has put it, “an economic wasteland” that is “committing cultural suicide.”
The premise behind “Make America Great Again” is that the country is no longer great. It can be great again, and the campaign has a certain can-do billionaire in mind as the guy to make that happen, but at the moment, the leading contender for the nomination of the party that regularly touts the notion of American exceptionalism is arguing that the country ain’t what it used to be.
For some supporters, especially those in the second half of life, Trump’s slogan is a tribute to a simpler time. “He could have said, ‘Make America what it was before’ and I would have voted for him,” said Jane Cimbal, 69, who lives in Winchester and signed up to collect signatures to get Trump on the Virginia ballot. “The last time we had good jobs and respect for the military and law enforcement was, oh, probably during Eisenhower.”
Cimbal doesn’t view Trump as an optimist of the Reagan stripe, but she’s okay with voting for a harsh critic. “He speaks his mind,” she said. “So many of the others are wishy-washy. Mr. Trump isn’t a provocateur to annoy people but to get them thinking.”
Cimbal, a loyal Republican, wants people to think about how to curb illegal immigration and protect Second Amendment gun ownership rights, but she’s mainly drawn to Trump because she thinks his plain talk can get things done. Her goal is to restore a time “when there wasn’t as much animosity toward each other, when everything wasn’t about race and people just got along.”
The crowds at Trump events tend to be older and whiter than the national population, but so is the party whose nomination he seeks, and so are frequent voters generally. If younger supporters don’t have firsthand experience of the Eisenhower, Kennedy or Reagan years, they nonetheless share the older generation’s sense of loss.
Joe McCoy, who is 31, says he started out this campaign season “laughing at this Trump guy like everyone else.”
Still, the more he heard Trump, the more the greatness slogan resonated. “He boasts a lot, he’s got trophy wives, he’s not exactly Mr. Clean, so I was skeptical,” said McCoy, who lives in Norwich, Conn., where he does tech support from home for a multinational company.
“Mitt Romney was more my kind of guy: practical, a nice guy. But you know, people don’t like a nice guy. They like this guy because he’s right about us losing our country. I really don’t think we should be letting kids go into whichever bathroom they want to in school. The Democrats are really reaching too far on the social issues. And there’s no retirement anymore, no pensions.”
McCoy laments the pervasive sense that it no longer pays to play by the rules. That’s where immigration enters the equation: “When my wife came here from the Philippines, she had to go through a health assessment, background checks and interviews to become a citizen. Now, these people come in from Mexico and Central America through some mule, just whoever comes.”
“I’m not a rigid tea partyer,” he continued. “I’m in favor of government paying for roads and the fire department. Social Security is a great thing. But I don’t think Trump is really much of a conservative; he’s definitely more moderate than the others.”
McCoy recognizes that his sense of lost greatness is probably different from that of others who are drawn to Trump, but he says that’s all right. When Trump talks about losing the country, “it’s about whatever you want it to be,” McCoy said. “He lets you fill in the blanks.”
The wealthy Los Angeles area municipality was fined $61,000 on Thursday, making it the only community not located in a desert to be assessed penalties, the California State Water Resources Board said.
"Some urban water suppliers simply have not met the requirements laid before them," said Cris Carrigan, director of the water board's Office of Enforcement. “For these four suppliers, it’s been too little too late."
"For those who aren't (conserving) and who are wasting water, you should be ashamed of yourselves," Carrigan said.
Californians are under orders from the water board and Democratic Governor Jerry Brown to cut usage by 25 percent over the levels used in 2013. As a whole, the state has met that goal for four months running, regulators said on Friday.
From June through August, California residents and businesses have saved 253 billion gallons of water, board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus told reporters.
But the cities of Beverly Hills, Indio and Redlands and the Coachella Valley Water District have not met the standard, and each were fined $61,000, the board said.
Beverly Hills, where some wealthy property owners continue to maintain lush green lawns despite orders to conserve, residents used about 169 gallons of water per person during September, compared with 68 gallons used by residents of Los Angeles.
Beverly Hills residents have wasted 175 million gallons of water since June, Carrigan said on the conference call.
One former Beverly Hills resident, Richard Greene, said the fine was far too small for what he said was possibly the richest city in the country, if not the world.
"Wow, ouch ... It actually seems to minimize the importance of water conservation when you're fining the wealthiest municipality $61,000, which is pocket change for most of the people you see walking up and down this street," Greene said.
Beverly Hills spokeswoman Cheryl Friedling said in a statement that the city is very concerned about not meeting the conservation mandate, and that it has been working aggressively toward that goal, even setting up a program to impose financial penalties on customers who waste water.
But she said the program did not start until this month. The city also plans to hire additional staff to investigate violations of conservation rules and put individual customers on personalized conservation programs if necessary.
South by Southwest (SXSW), the popular Austin, Texas–based annual event for music, film and digital culture and technology, has reinstated the two panels on harassment in the gaming industry originally canceled over safety concerns.
The cancellation of the panels—titled “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”—prompted a backlash against SXSW, with digital media outlets BuzzFeed and Vox Media threatening to pull out of the conference for its giving in to cyberbullying.
SXSW Director Hugh Forrest wrote in a blog post on October 26 that, since announcing the panels, SXSW has received “multiple threats” of on-site violence.
Four days later, Forrest apologized for the decision in a different post, calling it a “mistake.”
“By canceling two sessions we sent an unintended message that SXSW not only tolerates online harassment but condones it, and for that we are truly sorry,” wrote Forrest in the company blog post.
In addition to the reinstatement of the panels, SXSW will host a daylong summit on March 12 to examine harassment. SXSW will live-stream the summit for free.
The backtracking by SXSW is the culmination of another chapter in the controversy-laden movement called Gamergate. Gamergate started last August as a movement against feminists and so-called social justice warriors, who adherents believe have undue influence on the video game industry.
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