Last Call For Conversion Formula

American Jewish voters side with Democrats for the most part, while there are definitely some hard-liners who side with the GOP and claim they have both common cause with evangelical Christians and the mandate of Israeli Jews.  Kinda weird then when Republicans come to Israel and announce that they want to convert as many Jews to Christianity as possible.

Former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann called for an intensified effort to convert Jews to Christianity.

Bachmann, a former congresswoman from Minnesota who ran for the Republican presidential nod in 2012, was in Israel last week on a tour organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.

Toward the end of the week, she spoke on FRC President Tony Perkins’ radio program, Washington Watch, and discussed the meaning of the recent intensification of violence in Israel and the West Bank. She cast the violence as a signal of the return of Jesus, which would necessitate mass conversions.

“We recognize the shortness of the hour,” Bachmann said, “and that’s why we as a remnant want to be faithful in these days and do what it is that the Holy Spirit is speaking to each one of us, to be faithful in the Kingdom and to help bring in as many as we can — even among the Jews — share Jesus Christ with everyone that we possibly can because, again, He’s coming soon.”

I mean I knew Bachmann was a zealot, but I didn't think she was "Go to Israel to bring Christ to Israeli Jews" bonkers.

But there you are.  Your Republican allies certainly seem to respect you, Likud Israel.

In Which I Disagree With BooMan

Martin Longman takes a look at white, working class America and what Democrats need to do in order to win them back.

Now, it's been frustrating to watch white and black progressives argue about priorities in this election, and both sides need to learn. White progressives need to better understand that these class issues are so ingrained in our minority communities that they simply don't seem all that pressing. It's like complaining that there are too many alien invaders on Level 12 of your video game. It's like complaining about potholes or bad schools or things that never change. Those things are always a concern, but they're different in type from being denied the right to vote or getting gunned down by the police. Basic civil rights are what's on the minds of minority voters, and white progressives need to respect that.

Black progressives, however, need to understand that something is changing. Where once they had few natural allies on class issues and structural biases in the system, they now have a cohort of working class whites who should be welcomed into the tent.

That's not easy when a lot of those working class whites are still kicking and screaming and acting out their frustration with racist acts and statements. But, with your eyes open, you can see that whites are having their own crack epidemic with heroin and oxycontins. They're beginning to support sentencing and prison reform. They're as fed up with the post-Citizen's United campaign finance system as anyone. They're pissed off at Wall Street.

I don't don't know if Hillary can bring these whites into the fold and I don't know if Bernie can bring blacks into his fold, but between them they have the basic idea right.

Perhaps what's needed here is for blacks and whites to give permission to their politicians to go after each other's votes. And this is just a suggestion, but I'm guessing that the folks who've been playing the game of life on the harder difficulty setting will need to be the folks who offer the first olive branch.

It should surprise no one if the minority community figures this out first.

No.

I categorically reject the notion that once again, black America has to make the first move when we're the ones being goddamn murdered in the streets by police for the crime of being goddamn black.

And secondly, when Democrats reached out in Kentucky to help working class white voters in a 92% white state get insurance for 400,000, those same voters told Democrats to go to hell.

The only thing the minority community has figured out is that racism still runs the show.  And changing that is not on us.

A New Level Of Terror

Egyptian investigators of the crash of a Russian flight out of Sharm al-Sheikh are very confident that it was a bomb on board that brought the plane down, and for that to happen in this day and age signifies just how compromised Egypt is, whether the culprit is ISIS or some other group looking to cause chaos.

The Airbus A321 crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Sharm al-Sheikh tourist resort eight days ago, killing all 224 passengers and crew. Islamic State militants fighting Egyptian security forces in Sinai said they brought it down.

"The indications and analysis so far of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb," said the Egyptian investigation team member, who asked not to be named due to sensitivities. "We are 90 percent sure it was a bomb."

His comments reflect a higher degree of certainty about the cause of the crash than the investigation committee has so far declared in public.

Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam announced on Saturday that the plane appeared to have broken up in mid-air while it was being flown on auto-pilot, and that a noise had been heard in the last second of the cockpit recording. But he said it was too soon to draw conclusions about why the plane crashed.

Confirmation that militants brought down the airliner could have a devastating impact on Egypt's lucrative tourist industry, which has suffered from years of political turmoil and was hit last week when Russia, Turkey and several European countries suspended flights to Sharm al-Sheikh and other destinations.

It could also mark a new strategy by the hardline Islamic State group which holds large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Asked to explain the remaining 10 percent margin of doubt, the investigator declined to elaborate, but Muqaddam cited other possibilities on Saturday including a fuel explosion, metal fatigue in the plane or lithium batteries overheating.

He said debris was scattered over a 13-km (8-mile) area "which is consistent with an in-flight break-up".

The Russians got involved in Syria and now a Russian plane has been destroyed.  Odds are pretty good now that Putin will step up military action in the region and may even expand into Egypt. Vlad's not the kind of guy to let 224 dead go.

All I'm sure of is more blood will be spilled.

Sunday Long Read: Rushing To Iowa

Rush Limbaugh isn't as powerful as he once was, but all that means is that a new, hungrier generation of talk radio ringmasters are ready to adapt to the new, younger Pretty Hate Machine in the age of social media and lightning fast responses, and given the outsized power of the Hawkeye State in presidential primary politics, nobody's better positioned at running the "outsider outrage" game right now than Iowa's Steve Deace.

Such is the mood on the far right these days, where a two- or three-hour radio show can leave Democrats virtually unscathed in favor of attacking Republicans — the damned party ‘‘establishment,’’ in particular. The relationship between the party and much of conservative media has been flipped since the ’90s, when House Republican leaders, including the future speaker, John Boehner, made Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of their caucus. Over time, conservatism has veered rightward, and Deace — capitalizing on his place in Iowa, with its first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest — has emerged as one of the top voices of the political moment. Deace and others like him boast of being more conservative than Limbaugh or Fox News; like much of their audience, they consider themselves conservatives first and Republicans second (if only because being a Democrat is unthinkable). This strain of conservative media, and its take-no-prisoners ideology, have proliferated on websites, podcasts and video outlets, greatly complicating the Republican Party’s ability to govern and to pick presidential candidates with broad appeal.

Like his peers, Deace has nudged himself continuously to the right just to keep up with his audience. He once supported George W. Bush’s plans for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, before being persuaded otherwise by his listeners; ‘‘Steve has grown,’’ says Maxwell, his producer. Bob Vander Plaats, a regular on Deace’s show and one of Iowa’s most politically influential conservatives as head of the evangelical group the Family Leader, says Deace has told him more than once, ‘‘You know, we’re at a point today where my listeners are more upset than I am.’’ Maxwell echoes that: ‘‘It’s like nobody’s conservative enough!’’ Deace and his audience have lately been gripped by a single issue: demanding that the Republican-controlled Congress shut down the government rather than fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest network of abortion providers. Boehner’s refusal to lead that fight, knowing Republicans would lose to President Obama’s veto and in the general public’s opinion, was the proximate cause of his surprise announcement in September that he would resign as speaker, the third-highest office in the nation. Rather than be fired by militant Republicans, Boehner quit.

Presidential candidates are trying to manage this anger and rebelliousness, in part by courting the messengers. By Deace’s own accounting, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul and Bobby Jindal have been on his show ‘‘a ton’’ in the past year. Ben Carson, another repeat guest, sent a photo in which he is reading Deace’s 2014 book, ‘‘Rules for Patriots,’’ on a flight. ‘‘I know Donald Trump on a first-name basis, which is crazy for a kid from Iowa,’’ Deace says. He and Cruz also were ‘‘on a first-name basis’’ long before Deace endorsed Cruz this summer.

For many longtime Republicans, this bottom-up tumult from the party base in both the presidential and the legislative arenas is deeply unnerving. How can it be, they ask, that Republicans, traditionally so hierarchical and relatively disciplined — relative, that is, to Democrats — have become so divided and dysfunctional that serious people speculate about the collapse of a 161-year-old political party? Yet whether evolution or revolution, the rise of anti-establishment conservatives is in fact easy to understand when listening to the ‘‘Steve Deace Show.’’

Deace is surfing the same wave that is propelling Trump and Carson, and to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz, to influence in the GOP.  Remember, it's not just Republican politicians that have failed to "stop" President Obama, but FOX News and Rush Limbaugh too.

The GOP establishment includes the Right Wing Noise Machine, and it's falling out of favor.  The GOP has lost control of the monster it has unleashed, and Steve Deace is riding this bronco from hell over everyone in his path. Virulently racist, nationalist, and theocratic, Deace is downright dangerous, a Father Coughlin for the Twitter and Snapchat age.

He's the perfect representative of the GOP of Trump, Carson and hate.

Last Call For Diaper Dave's Downfall

Louisiana Democrat John Bel Edwards is going for the jugular against GOP Sen. David Vitter for the governor's runoff on the 21st to replace term-limited (and reality-limited) Bobby Jindal.

“The choice for governor couldn’t be more clear,” the ad states. “John Bel Edwards, who answered his country’s call and served as a ranger in the 82nd Airborne Division, or David Vitter, who answered a prostitute’s call minutes after he skipped a vote honoring 28 soldiers who gave their lives in defense of our freedom. David Vitter chose prostitutes over patriots. Now, the choice is yours.”

According to the Monroe Daily Star, the commercial references a February 2001 vote the senator missed honoring US troops killed during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991. Vitter has admitted to being a patron of the “D.C. madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2007.

Edwards’ campaign also released a list of phone calls allegedly made by Palfrey, including one to Vitter on the day of the vote — though not during the vote.

The ad is slated to debut around the state on Saturday.

That is a hell of a broadside, and even Republicans in Louisiana are endorsing Edwards here.  The polls also show Edwards with a hefty lead.

Of course, the same was true in Kentucky earlier this week too, wasn't it?

And Yes, This Boy's Life Mattered Too

Maybe the notion of police being held responsible for unwarranted deadly violence isn't so insane a theory after all.

Two Louisiana police officers were arrested on Friday on charges of killing a 6-year-old boy and critically wounding his father during a car chase that ended in a volley of bullets, state police said.

The officers were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on the boy’s father in the central Louisiana community of Marksville, authorities said.

State police were still piecing together what led to Tuesday’s shooting and had reviewed footage captured on the officers’ body cameras, Colonel Michael Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, said during a Friday press conference announcing the arrests.

“As I told you, we took some of the body camera’s footage,” Edmonson said. “I’m not going to talk about it, but I’m going to tell you this: It is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen. And I’ll leave it at that.”

The officers, Lieutenant Derrick Stafford and Officer Norris Greenhouse, were facing charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder, he said.

They were working for the Marksville City Marshal when they tried to serve an arrest warrant on a man identified as Chris Few, authorities have said. Few fled in his vehicle, with his young son, Jeremy Mardis, in the car, authorities said.

A preliminary investigation showed the marshals chased the vehicle and fired at it multiple times when the pursuit ended.

It was unclear if the arrested officers had obtained attorneys or how they would plead to the charges.

Two other officers were also under investigation in connection with the shooting, local media reported.

And you know what?  Jeremy Few, the young boy murdered, was white.  The two deputies in this case?  Black.  These men were arrested and charged with murder within 72 hours of the incident, and this incident seems to be completely blatant.

The race of the people involved in this absolute travesty shouldn't matter, but it does, because there's no doubt in my mind if they were reversed, if it was two white cops killing a black boy, well...we know how that turns out, don't we?

Ohio prosecutor Timothy McGinty accused the family of 12-year-old police shooting victim Tamir Rice of being “economically motivated” in their pursuit to bring the officer responsible to trial.

“They waited until they didn’t like the reports they received. They’re very interesting people… let me just leave it at that… and they have their own economic motives,” McGinty said during a community meeting Thursday, Cleveland’s WKYC reported.

McGinty’s remarks Thursday were his first public comments on the grand jury process regarding Rice’s death, raising questions about his objectivity in the case and its ongoing investigation.

The prosecutor’s office uncustomarily released expert reports in October, ahead of convening a grand jury, stating that Cleveland police officer Timothy Lehmann was justified in fatally shooting Rice only seconds after pulling up beside him in a public park in November 2014.

I'm so tired of this.  I'm tired of cops killing kids, people, Americans.  But I'm also tired of finding out just how little those deaths matter when the victims are of color, and I'm tired of prosecutors deciding that mothers of dead kids are the problem.

A Supreme Loss Brewing

I'm still not a professional lawyer, but I have to admit I don't see how the Obama Administration wins this Obamacare contraception mandate case heading for SCOTUS next spring.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take up a challenge from religious non-profit groups -- including the Little Sisters of the Poor-- to the Affordable Care Act and the requirement that group health plans provide a full range of contraceptive coverage to women at no cost.

It will be the fourth time the Supreme Court has heard a challenge to the signature legislative achievement of the Obama administration, and the second case challenging the contraception mandate. In 2014, the court ruled in favor of closely held for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby that objected to providing certain contraceptives.

Arguments are expected to occur during the March sitting. A decision would likely come in June of next year, right in the middle of the presidential campaign.

The groups argue that the contraceptive mandate forces them to either violate their religious beliefs by providing "abortifacients and contraceptives" or pay ruinous fines. They say that a so-called "accommodation" offered by the Obama administration meant to respect their religious objections is not good enough because it still makes them complicit in providing the coverage.

It's the Kim Davis "but my name is still on the marriage certificate" argument, and given the ridiculous logic of Hobby Lobby last year, not only do I think Little Sisters will win a complete exemption, but it's entirely possible that five men on the Supreme Court will rule that the contraception mandate itself is a violation of employer rights, and has to be struck down for everyone.

I just don't have anything close to a good feeling about this case.  I'm not a law professor, but I know people, and people will find a way to do whatever they want to with laws.  This case was never about the law anyway, it's about people imposing their will on other people.

Pipe Down Up There

Despite constant warnings ranging from snide eyerolling to outright panic attacks from the usual suspects on the Manic Progressive Left, the Keystone XL pipeline is officially dead.

President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Mr. Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”

The move was made ahead of a major United Nations summit meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December, when Mr. Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. While the rejection of the pipeline is largely symbolic, Mr. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change. 

And yeah, it was always symbolic, because Canada was always going to build another pipeline across to the Maritimes anyway if this didn't happen. Besides, the left will just take credit for it, and panic again when they think Obama's betrayed them.  It's only been seven years now, guys.

It's getting kind of old.

Last Call For I'd Rather Die Than...

Again, if you're still wondering why and how thousands of Kentuckians voted to take their own Medicaid away from themselves and their neighbors by electing Matt Bevin, the story of Borden County, Texas will be very illuminating.

In rural Borden County, 12 people signed up for Obamacare this year. 

Livid over the government telling them they must buy something and loath to take anything that looks like a “handout,” the uninsured here are likely to stay that way. As Obamacare’s third open enrollment season began Sunday, this rock-solid conservative community of about 650 people offers a window into the challenges health law advocates face to expand coverage around the country.

“Health care is fine, if you can afford it,” said Brenda Copeland, a middle-aged woman who works at the Coyote Country Store and café, along with her two grown daughters, all of whom are uninsured. Copeland has had health insurance only once in her life, and opted to pay Obamacare’s tax penalty earlier this year rather than buy a plan. 

“I hope Obamacare goes down the toilet,” she added. 

Turning around that kind of entrenched hostility — and convincing people they can afford Obamacare plans — are among the biggest challenges facing the administration as it rolls out the health law’s third enrollment period against the backdrop of a presidential campaign whose winner could determine the law’s fate. Winning new converts like Copeland is key — not just to boost the law’s political standing but to enable its online insurance markets to flourish. But by now most people have heard about the law — even if they have limited or even erroneous understandings about what it might mean for their own pocketbooks. And despite the law’s success in bringing about a historic drop in the uninsured, many don’t like what they’ve heard. 

This is Texas, after all, one of the most anti-Obamacare states in the country, and people here have heard plenty from politicians about why they should demand the repeal of President Barack Obama’s health law.

Understand that there are millions of Americans who would rather suffer drastic health insurance consequences, up to and including dire economic and health consequences than take a "handout" from a black President.

Matt Bevin turned Kynect back into Obamacare.

He will be governor a month from now as a direct result.

Those Black Lives Actually Do Matter

There goes FOX's Shepard Smith, inconveniently reminding his viewers that the death of Illinois cop Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz was an elaborate suicide ploy used to cover up his years of criminal corruption, and not "assassination by Black Lives Matter terrorists" as the right wanted you to believe.

“Think of the narrative that came out of that from so many, many places, about, ‘It’s the fault of the Black Lives Matter movement,'” Smith told guest Dan Schorr. “All of this stuff that was just, it really turned up the rhetoric and it really was factually wrong.”

Several conservatives quickly declared Gliniewicz a victim in the so-called “war on cops” when his body was found in a remote area of the small community in September.

But authorities in Fox Lake confirmed this week that Gliniewicz actually committed suicide after reporting a false pursuit of three “suspicious men” — prompting a huge manhunt that turned up empty. The 30-year veteran also reportedly tried to hire a gang member to kill a local administrator who was on the verge of revealing that he had embezzled thousands of dollars from a youth program in order to pay for his mortgage and gym membership, among other personal expenses.

“Today it got disgusting,” Smith said of Gliniewicz’s apparent attempt to have the official killed.

Schorr, a former prosecutor, said one of the lessons of this case is for observers to “not jump to big conclusions.”

“You have to find out all the facts first,” he said.

“Don’t get ahead of the news,” Smith responded, adding, “It will run you over.”

Don't get me wrong, police officers are killed in the line of duty.  But the effort to suggest that Black Lives Matter is leading a race war to assassinate white police officers, and that the rates of police being killed somehow constitutes a "new and deadly War on Cops" that justifies racist harassment of BLM is insane...and as Shep reminds us, "disgusting".

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Governor-elect Matt Bevin wasted little time Thursday morning letting Kentucky know exactly what will happen to hundreds of thousands of us when he's sworn in next month.   Here he is speaking with Elizabeth Hasselbeck on FOX and Friends (check the 1:48 mark):

HASSELBECK: Let me ask you this, for the locals watching. Ah, are you going to follow through with your plan to dismantle Kynect, that's the state's health insurance plan?

BEVIN: Absolutely.  Oh my goodness, I...Yeah, if those have not followed me closely to figure out, I made very very few promises...

HASSLEBECK: Right.

BEVIN: ...I made very few claims, those things I said I would do, I am going to do, no question about it, yes.

Let's keep in mind Bevin's also said he would reverse Medicaid expansion too.

Now, lately he's made noises about submitting a federal waiver and shifting 400,000 plus people to a private insurance Medicaid alternative like Indiana has, but that's going to be real hard without, you know, something to administrate Medicare alternative plans for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families statewide like, I dunno, say something along the lines of a GODDAMN STATE INSURANCE EXCHANGE LIKE KYNECT *breathes heavily*

Sigh.

Meanwhile, in Frankfort, it looks like a lot of people currently employed by the Commonwealth and getting insurance through their employer are suddenly going to be needing to shop individual insurance plans in 2016, Kynect or no Kynect.

Among those hopeful about the transition is Martin Cothran, senior policy adviser for the Family Foundation of Kentucky. “It’s going to be a big change in policy in this state, I think … to have the governor’s office in the hands of somebody who really wants to make some conservative change is heartening.”

Cothran said, “We’ve elected a governor who has expressed strong support for religious freedom, who is also in favor of charter schools. So we are hopeful some of the policy statements he made during the campaign are realized.”

But David Smith, executive director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees, is worried about Bevin's promises as a candidate to “shrink the size of government.”

Bevin said in an interview with The Courier-Journal last month, “Every department, every cabinet, every single area of government will have to tighten their budgets to the absolute degree possible.”

Smith said he fears Bevin will cut too deeply in areas the new governor does not consider priorities.

“We’re expecting cuts to personnel right off the bat, we anticipate the possibility of privatization of parks service,” Smith said. “I hope what he said in his acceptance speech about trying to bring everybody in Kentucky together for the best solutions is true. … But for now, I would say 99 percent of state workers feel concerned about what’s coming next: Where are we going to be cut? Is there a possibility I won’t even have a job come July?”

 Guess you have to ruin a few hundred thousand lives in order to run Kentucky like a business.

StupidiNews!

• NASA has announced that data from the MAVEN spacecraft reveals that Mars lost its water over billions of years as solar winds stripped oxygen and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• A global chemical weapons watchdog NGO confirms that mustard gas was used in an August attack in Syria, but it's not at all clear by whom.
• Doctors Without Borders says that a US airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last month was deliberate, citing witness reports of the US plane targeting people fleeing.
• Art by Van Gogh and Picasso led a $726 million art auction in New York this week, but Sotheby's semi-annual art auction is fetching far smaller totals than 2013's record haul.
• Dozens of cities, towns, and counties in Colorado passed local referendums Tuesday to allow municipal broadband networks, something state law bans without ballot measures.

Last Call For Ryan's Line Drive

Over in Washington, it's good to see the House getting back to business with Speaker Paul Ryan, and by "business" I mean whining a lot and then quietly giving President Obama what he wants, just like Orange Julius.

The House passed a long-term U.S. highway funding plan Thursday, handing new Speaker Paul Ryan a legislative victory and paving the way for the first multi-year transportation law since 2012.

Lawmakers voted 363-64 for the bill that would revive the U.S. Export-Import Bank, whose charter expired June 30. Bankers also won a last-minute change that will use Federal Reserve surplus funds to pay for highway improvements, instead of reducing a payout they receive from the central bank.

“It cuts waste, it prioritizes good infrastructure, it will help create good-paying jobs. And it is the result of a more open process,” Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said at a news conference after the vote. "It’s a good start. It’s a glimpse of how we should be doing the people’s business."

The Senate has passed its own version of the legislation, and a conference committee will try to resolve the differences before current highway funding ends Nov. 20.

The House measure would provide a six-year blueprint for spending on roads, bridges and mass transit projects and provide funding for three of those years. Companies that may get a boost include Caterpillar Inc., one of the top Ex-Im beneficiaries and the world’s biggest maker of mining and construction equipment. Contractors may feel secure enough to purchase new equipment after renting in recent years.

So when all's said and done, the Highway Bill will most likely pass, the Export-Import Bank will be back, and 80% plus of the House passed what President Obama set out to do with the Highway Bill anyway, that is secure a long-term, multi year infrastructure investment.  It doesn't raise additional funding, but it doesn't cut it either.

It's the best we can hope for, that is "basic functionality that doesn't end in flames" from this Republican-led Congress.

The Carson Show, Con't

Over at TPM, Ed Kilgore argues that Ben Carson may be even more dangerous an ideologue than Donald Trump is, and unlike Herman Cain, he's not going anywhere.

Cain was not a revered figure before running in 2012, beyond those who listened when he sat in for an Atlanta-based radio host. He also was not exactly a non-politician, having run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. But the most important reason to stop identifying Carson with Cain is simple: Cain’s loss of his once-high poll ratings were not caused by a voters getting tired with a “flavor of the month” or realizing his slim qualifications; he was brought down by a series of sexual allegations that escalated from multiple claims of sexual harassment to a long-term extramarital affair. Cain never admitted any wrong-doing, but he also never convincingly rebutted the allegations, and all the smoke convinced many observers there might be fire. He left the race on his own terms, but after losing most of his altitude.

There’s zero reason to think Carson has any such skeletons in his closet. The one thing we know about his background that is politically dangerous is his testimonial work for a subsequently fined nutritional supplement company. But unless it turns out he was paid a lot more than seems to be the case, he’s only in hot water if he cannot soon keep his story straight. Being a straight shooter is extremely important to his image.

He seems to have successfully back-pedaled on his one easy-to-understand policy heresy, a proposal to replace Medicare and Medicaid with heavily subsidized health savings accounts, which he now describes as an “option” for beneficiaries (that, too, is problematic, but not as much as his original “idea”).

So there remains what should actually disqualify Carson: his extremist, paranoid “world-view” which treats regular boring old center-left liberals as conscious and systematically deceitful would-be destroyers of this country bent on imposing a Marxist tyranny via “politically correct” suppression of free speech and confiscation of guns.

There’s unquestionably a constituency for this point of view, but we may never know whether it would outnumber the Republicans baffled or horrified by it until such time as one of his rivals or the heretofore clueless media start talking about it. If they don’t pretty soon, then one theory of the 2016 GOP nominating process could come true: conservatives want to rerun the 1964 elections, and they’ve finally found their Barry Goldwater.

And that's some relatively scary stuff.  Carson may be soft-spoken and somewhat obsessed with weird stuff like grain-storing pyramids, but the man's worldview is pretty clear: liberals aren't just politically opposed to Carson and the GOP, liberals are Communist enemies of the state that must be purged from the country. As Ed points out in his piece, MoJo's David Corn has documented Carson's hero, Bircher nutbag Cleon Skousen, pretty well.

Carson swears by Skousen, who died in 2006. In a July 2014 interview, Carson contended that Marxist forces had been using liberals and the mainstream media to undermine the United States. His source: Skousen. "There is a book called The Naked Communist," he said. "It was written in 1958. Cleon Skousen lays out the whole agenda, including the importance of getting people into important positions in the mainstream media so they can help drive the agenda. Well, that's what's going on now." Four months later, while being interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Carson denounced unnamed Marxists who were presently seeking to destroy American society: "There was a guy who was a former CIA agent by the name of Cleon Skousen who wrote a book in 1958 called The Naked Communist, and it laid out the whole agenda. You would think by reading it that it was written last year—showing what they're trying to do to American families, what they're trying to do to our Judeo-Christian faith, what they're doing to morality." (Skousen had been an FBI employee—not a CIA officer—and mainly engaged in administrative and clerical duties; later he was a professor at Brigham Young University and police chief of Salt Lake City.) And the most recent edition of this Skousen book boasts Carson's endorsement on the front cover: "The Naked Communist lays out the whole progressive plan. It is unbelievable how fast it has been achieved."

Skousen's book was a hyperbolic, far-from-sophisticated Cold War denouncement of communism and the Soviet Union. Marx, Skousen claimed, had set out "to create a race of human beings conditioned to think like criminals." And in McCarthyesque fashion, Skousen contended that "agents of communism" had "penetrated every echelon of American society—including some of the highest offices of the United States Government." He insisted that many "loyal Americans" had been duped by Communists into doing the Reds' dirty work because "they are not aware that these objectives are designed to destroy us." Thus, these fellow travelers and naive citizens were part of a "campaign to soften America for the final takeover."

Skousen listed dozens of the goals of the commies and their useful idiots, including pushing free trade, promoting coexistence with the Soviet bloc, capturing "one or both of the political parties in the United States," winning control of schools ("use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda"), and infiltrating the press ("get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy making positions"). He said they wanted to control "key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures," weaken American culture by degrading artistic expression (and substituting "good sculpture from parks and building" with "shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms"), and present homosexuality as "normal, natural, and healthy." What's more, he claimed, they wanted to discredit the Bible, eliminate prayer in schools, demean the American Founding Fathers as "selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the 'common man,'" and support "any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc." He said they also wanted to encourage divorce and promiscuity, incite "special-interest groups" to "rise up…to solve economic, political or social problems," and seize control of unions and big business.

If this all sounds like Glenn Beck-level "blackboard full of plans for fluoride to become the next caliphate" insanity, that's because it is. It's quite easy to laugh this garbage off as funny, but it's not.

This guy is leading the polls now among the GOP.

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Joe Sonka goes through the after-action report of the Dem bloodbath and points out that next month, things will immediately get worse for Kentuckians as Matt Bevin takes control.

Even before next year’s session of the Kentucky General Assembly convenes, many of Gov. Steve Beshear’s executive orders are now at risk of being immediately rescinded by Matt Bevin once is sworn in on Dec. 8. 

Beshear’s executive orders at risk include prevailing wage on construction projects; a $10.10 per hour minimum wage for state employees and contractors; protection of state employees from discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation and gender identity; and – most significantly – his creation of Kynect and the expansion of Medicaid to those up to 138 percent of the federal poverty rate. Bevin appears likely to rescind most of these, though he at times backtracked during his campaign on a pledge to do away with Medicaid expansion “on day one.” 

The hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians who have coverage through Medicaid due to this expansion will be watching Bevin closely to see whether their eligibility will be rescinded with the stroke of a pen – assuming that is legally possible, which is up for debate – or if he will attempt to push for this through the legislative process.

When the General Assmebly does convene, the Dems left in control of the KY House are the only thing standing between Bevin and his agenda, but there's a very real possibility that it won't even last more than a few months.

While Bevin becoming governor is a major victory for Republicans and their policy agenda, the big remaining hurdle is the Democrats’ slim majority in the state House. Republicans have long called for so-called “right to work” legislation, tort reform, charter schools, abortion restrictions, fuller privatization of public pensions, and a more regressive consumption-based tax reform in the General Assembly – only to be stymied by Democrats in the House. Though Bevin will now have the bully pulpit of the governor’s mansion, his favored legislation still will face the hurdle of Democrats and House Speaker Greg Stumbo. 

Or will he? A serious threat for Democrats over the next two months will be rural conservative House Democrats flipping to the Republican Party, seeing the writing on the wall of their electoral future by having a D next to their name in a region of voters trending solidly Republican. Another threat is Bevin appointing any of these Democratic House members to a position in his administration or a judgeship, which would come along with a hefty boost in their public pension and open up the seat for a Republican to win in a special election. Gov. Beshear tried the same strategy with Republican members of the Senate in order to flip the majority of that chamber, though ultimately failing in that task. 

If this happens and the Republicans take over the House, the entire Republican policy agenda likely will pass by this spring. If not, Bevin and his party still have the opportunity to pick up enough seats in next year’s state House elections, delaying their long sought after wish list of policy goals until 2017. Until then, the House remains the Democrats’ only firewall.

And I just don't see it happening that the Dems will still be in charge of the KY House come 2017.