Bevin The Bulldozer

Earlier this week Kentucky Democratic AG Jack Conway and Republican Matt Bevin squared off at the Kentucky Farm Bureau forum, the first time the two gubernatorial candidates faced each other in debate.  Al Cross has more on the fact the forum's conversation quickly went to Bevin's promise to dismantle the state's successful Kynect health exchange and Medicaid expansion.

At a Kentucky Farm Bureau forum in Louisville, Bevin and Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway were asked how they would pay for the expansion of the federal-state program once the state starts paying 5 percent of the bill in 2017, rising to the federal health-reform law’s cap of 10 percent in 2020. 

Conway cited a study for the Beshear administration predicting that the expansion would pay for itself through 2020, by creating health-care jobs and tax revenue. It says there would be a net loss in 2021, the last year of the study. 

Conway said there are too many people on Medicaid, but said the solution for that is a better economy. “What I am not going to do is what my opponent will do on day one, which is by executive order kick half a million people off health insurance based on whether we can or can’t afford it in 2021. To me, that’s not courageous, that’s callous. . . . If we can’t afford something, we can potentially scale back.” 

Bevin said the “day one” line was “an absolute lie,” but when he was asked in February about the expansion, he said “No question about it, I would reverse that immediately.” 

As he has done before, Bevin conflated the Medicaid expansion with Kynect, the state health-insurance exchange where Kentuckians can get subsidized health insurance or, if their household income isn’t more than 138 percent of the federal poverty line, sign up for free Medicaid.

“With respect to the Kynect program, we cannot afford to have 25 percent and fast growing toward 30 percent on Medicaid, period, whether you like it or not, whether you think it’s fair or not, whether there’s supposedly a need or not, truth be told, we can’t afford it.”

He said later, “We’re gonna dismantle the Kynect program. We’re not gonna have 25 percent of Kentuckians on Medicaid."

To recap, Conway will address the costs of Medicaid expansion, and there will be costs.  Bevin on the other hand doesn't give a damn, and will just scrap arguably the country's most successful state exchange in Kynect and throw 430,000 people off Medicaid and say "Good luck with healthcare.gov."

Money shot in the last paragraph, though:

As the questioning continued, Bevin said he had explained what would happen to the 430,000 new Medicaid beneficiaries. Told that he hadn’t, he replied, “They’re Kentuckians. They will continue to live in Kentucky if they choose to.”

What a nice guy.

As I've repeatedly said, the entire point of Republicans killing Medicaid expansion is simple: you either die or move to another state.  Either way, you're no longer that state's problem.

Bevin absolutely is running for governor of the Commonwealth on that platform, and right now he's ahead in the polls because of it.  Meanwhile, Jack Conway is going to learn that as with Alison Lundergan Grimes, if you run away from Obama, you're going to lose.

Planned Out In Advance

It's almost like Republicans have been gearing up to destroy Planned Parenthood well before the doctored videos showed up.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell started a fast-track process Friday on legislation to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding in the wake of two controversial videos showing officials discussing delivery of fetal parts.

The Republican leader began "Rule 14," which will let the legislation skip the committee process and be placed on the Senate calendar so it can be brought up for a floor vote.

The move comes after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed McConnell during a blistering floor speech earlier Friday, suggesting the Kentucky Republican wanted to dodge a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood.

It's not that is matter unless the bill can get 67 votes.  But the pressure on what few Red State Democrats are left will be pretty strong.  We'll see how it goes, but let's remember that this is a snow job from the beginning, and that Republicans have been in on this the whole time.

Racing To Conclusions

A new NY Times poll shows that most Americans believe race relations have gotten worse.

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week reveals that nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad, and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.

America found out the hard way that the backlash against a black President brought out the racism long ignored by most of us.  It was a rude (and in some cases, deadly) awakening.

The swings in attitude have been particularly striking among African-Americans. During Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, nearly 60 percent of blacks said race relations were generally bad, but that number was cut in half shortly after he won. It has now soared to 68 percent, the highest level of discontent among blacks during the Obama years and close to the numbers recorded in the aftermath of the riots that followed the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King.

A big part of this is the rise of social media.  Where shootings involving black victims don't make the news, they do make Twitter and Facebook.  We're more aware of these killings, and they're happening more often.

The divide, seen in the answers to virtually every question in the poll, was stark when respondents were asked whether they thought most Americans had judged Mr. Obama more harshly because of his race. Eighty percent of blacks said yes, while only 37 percent of whites agreed.

“I’m not surprised it’s gotten worse under President Obama,” said Elizabeth Gamble, 33, an African-American cook from Albany, Ga., “because he’s black, and so he already had that strike against him once he got into office.” 

Deep racial schisms were also evident in responses about law enforcement and the criminal justice system. About three-fourths of blacks said they thought that the system was biased against African-Americans, and that the police were more likely to use deadly force against a black person than a white person. Only 44 percent of whites felt that the system was biased against blacks. 

Clearly, views of the police are informed by personal experience. Four in 10 blacks, and nearly two-thirds of black men, said they felt they had been stopped by the police just because of their race or ethnicity, compared with only one in 20 whites. Fully 72 percent of blacks said they had suffered what they perceived as racial discrimination, compared with 31 percent of whites. 

At a time when the unemployment rate for blacks is double that for whites and black households earn 40 percent less, blacks continue to assert they do not enjoy an equal shot at attaining financial success. The share of blacks who said whites have a better chance to get ahead rose by 14 percentage points in about a year’s time, to 60 percent. More than half of whites said blacks have equal opportunities, compared with about a third of blacks who said so.

The problem isn't race relations.  The problem is the reality of black America in the era of social media is coming into the homes, the TVs, the PCs, and the tablets of white America, and frankly white America doesn't know what the hell to do about it other than to lash out.

We're seeing the results of that now.

I'm sorry that existing as a black man in America in 2015 upsets you so.

Naah, I'm not sorry.  You needed your bubble popped a long damn time ago.

Last Call For Just A Phase For Jeb

And while everyone's got their eyes on Trump's antics, Jeb Bush is quietly telling us exactly what his plans for Millennials and younger Gen Xers like myself are as far as "entitlement reform".

"The left needs to join the conversation, but they haven’t. I mean, when [Rep. Paul Ryan] came up with, one of his proposals as it relates to Medicare, the first thing I saw was a TV ad of a guy that looked just like Paul Ryan … that was pushing an elderly person off the cliff in a wheelchair. That’s their response. 

“And I think we need to be vigilant about this and persuade people that our, when your volunteers go door to door, and they talk to people, people understand this. They know, and I think a lot of people recognize that we need to make sure we fulfill the commitment to people that have already received the benefits, that are receiving the benefits. But that we need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others and move to a new system that allows them to have something – because they’re not going to have anything.”

Tie to phase out Medicare and move to a new system, huh?  Of course Boomers will get theirs, but me and anyone younger?  Hope you don't plan on ever being able to retire or afford health care when you're in your 70s, because that's not happening after a GOP government takes over in 2017, folks.

I'll tell you what, if Democrats can't find a way to bury Jeb here after saying he wants to phase out Medicare, I don't know if anything can save anyone under 40 from a lifetime of crippling austerity. Steve Benen:

Obviously, all of these projections come with caveats because no one can say with certainty what will happen in the future, but the projections are encouraging – and far more heartening than they were before the ACA passed. 

But Jeb Bush is under the impression that Medicare is, without a doubt, doomed, so we might as well get rid of the program now and see what Paul Ryan has in store for seniors in his far-right bag of tricks. 

There’s a better way. Medicare’s future is looking brighter, it’s as popular as ever, and its fiscal challenges can be addressed without tearing down the entire system. It’s a matter of political will – either elected policymakers will fight to protect Medicare or they’ll push to eliminate it.

Guess we better get off our asses and vote, huh?

Em Ess En Be Seeing Ya, Ed

MSNBC’s entire late afternoon lineup is apparently getting the axe.

A well-placed source tells me MSNBC will announce today major changes to its afternoon lineup…arguably the most significant revamp the network has made at one time in its 19-year history. 

Out: The Cycle at 3:00 PM. Now with Alex Wagner at 4:00 PM. The Ed Show with Ed Schultz at 5:00 PM (all times eastern).

Guess who’s baaaaaaack?

In: Chuck Todd at 5:00 PM. Similar to Jake Tapper at CNN doing both weekday afternoons (hosting The Lead) and anchoring Sunday morning’s State of the Union, Todd will also continue to work weekends as moderator of Sunday’s Meet the Press. Todd’s MSNBC show will likely take on its old name The Daily Rundown, but that is not a guarantee. 

More interesting: Andrea Mitchell will keep her program at noon (Andrea Mitchell Reports). Thomas Roberts will continue to anchor his midday news program from 1:00-3:00 PM. The programs being cancelled at 3:00 PM (The Cycle) and 4:00 PM (Now with Alex Wagner) will be replaced by a straight news program (similar to Roberts’ two-hour newscast preceding it). Whether that 3:00-5:00 PM slot goes to Brian Williams is not known at this time, but it would certainly make the most sense to put Williams directly up against Fox’s Shepard Smith (Shepard Smith Reporting) and CNN’s Brooke Baldwin (CNN Newsroom) for the first hour in a similar format.

Yeah, because MSNBC’s problem is that it needs more Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, and Brian Williams.

Jeebus wept. They actually found the one person I’m willing to watch less than Ed “boycott the midterms” Schultz.

And yes, the bullseye is now squarely on the backs of Al Sharpton and Chris Hayes. Maybe you guys can bring in three hours of Tweety while you’re at it. That’ll get the kids running in from miles around.

Trumpenstein's Monster

The ultimate 2016 nightmare scenario for the GOP involving Donald Trump isn't him staying in the GOP hunt, but coming in as a third party candidate with his own billions to spend.

Donald Trump says the chances that he will launch a third-party White House run will “absolutely” increase if the Republican National Committee is unfair to him during the 2016 primary season. 

“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” the business mogul told The Hill in a 40-minute interview from his Manhattan office at Trump Tower on Wednesday. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”

Pressed on whether he would run as a third-party candidate if he fails to clinch the GOP nomination, Trump said that “so many people want me to, if I don’t win.” 

“I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans,” Trump said. “Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.” 

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called Trump earlier this month asking him to tone down his controversial rhetoric. More recently, the RNC rebuked him for saying that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not a war hero. Trump didn’t apologize but has since said that the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is a war hero. 

Trump told The Hill that the GOP establishment in Washington dislikes him because he’s not part of the political class. 

“I’m not in the gang. I’m not in the group where the group does whatever it’s supposed to do,” he said. “I want to do what’s right for the country — not what’s good for special interest groups that contribute, not what’s good for the lobbyists and the donors.”

Voter anger at the government, especially among Republicans, is so high right now that Trump as a third party candidate would be a nuclear meltdown a 2000 Nader run raised to the power of Trump's fortune.  So yes, I fully expect the GOP and the RNC to suddenly start being a whole hell of a lot nicer to the guy in the coming months.

Trump's not going anywhere.  That suits me just fine.

StupidiNews!

• Police say a "58-year-old white man with a criminal record" opened fire in a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana last night, killing 2 and wounding 7 before turning the gun on himself.
• The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that pharmacy owners in Washington State cannot cite religious reasons as justification to refuse to dispense medicine or provide services.
• Health insurance giant Anthem says it will purchase Cigna Corp. for $54.2 billion creating the country's largest health insurance company, in response to rival Aetna purchasing Humana.
• President Obama arrives in Nairobi, Kenya today to meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, his first trip to the country since being elected president.
• NASA scientists have discovered Kepler-452b some 1,400 light-years away, the most similar exoplanet yet to an Earth-like orbit around a G2-class star like our own sun.

Last Call For Full Court Depressed

Meanwhile, Republicans are continuing to openly talk about destroying the federal judiciary in response to rulings on Obamacare and marriage equality.  A Senate GOP hearing Wednesday had all kinds of nutjobs espousing a "solution" to the "problem" of having a Supreme Court at all.

Wednesday’s hearing -- titled “With Prejudice: Supreme Court Activism and Possible Solutions” and convened by the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts, which Cruz chairs -- presented the latest wave of efforts to attack the Supreme Court for straying from the high hopes conservatives had after Bush nominated Samuel Alito to the seat vacated by the more moderate Sandra Day O'Connor. 

“When I see what’s happened at the Supreme Court level, it strikes me as a foreign, unhistorical approach to law. It’s just breathtaking, some of the things that have happened,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said during the hearing. 

One witness, John Eastman -- a Chapman University law professor who also serves as the chair of the board for National Organization for Marriage -- suggested constitutional amendments allowing states by a majority vote to override “truly egregious” decisions by the court and a supermajority of Congress to do the same.

Another witness, Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, threw out an assortment of ideas, including changes to the constitutional amendment process itself, opportunities to override decisions, more avenues to remove bad judges, and term limits. 

"The Court’s extraordinary abuses also call for consideration of extraordinary
responses," he said.

So please tell me again how Republicans are no different from Democrats, when Republicans are holding Senate hearings about how to destroy the Supreme Court as revenge.  Please, entertain me.

By the way, these people are insane.  And unless we decide to show up at the polls and stop them, they will control the whole ball of wax in 2017.

Red, White, Black And Blue

Greg Sargent notes that a new Washington Post poll is not exactly good news for the idea that Hillary Clinton (or any other Democrat) will magically do better with working class white voters than President Obama.

The new Washington Post/ABC News poll starkly illustrates the challenge Democrats face in this regard. It turns out that an overwhelming majority of non-college whites believes the U.S. economic system is stacked in favor of the rich — but far more of those voters also think Republicans, not Democrats, have better ideas to address that problem. 

The Post/ABC poll finds that 68 percent of Americans think the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy rather than being fair to most Americans (only 27 percent believe the latter). Some 69 percent of white non-college voters believe it favors the wealthy, somewhat higher than the 61 percent of white college-educated voters who believe the same. 

But look how non-college whites break down on the question of which party has the better ideas to make the economic system fairer: 

Non-college whites overwhelmingly believe the economic system is not fair to most Americans, but substantially more of them prefer GOP ideas on what to do about it. By contrast, other groups are much more evenly divided on this question. Among college-educated whites, Republicans lead by a much smaller 46-38. Independents are almost exactly split. And in a bit of good news for Dems, moderates favor their ideas by 45-34. But among non-college whites, GOP ideas enjoy a 21 point advantage.

If only 29% of non-college white voters think the Democrats are better for them economically after seven years of a Democratic president actually putting in policies that help them. then the Democrats need to kiss working class white voters goodbye.

Chasing these folks, especially at the expense of black and Latino voters (I'm talking to you, Jim Webb) is a guaranteed disaster.

The reality is that Republicans have succeeded in framing Obamacare, executive action on immigration, and international trade deals as benefiting those people at the direct expense of "good ol' boys".  White resentment is the driving force behind the Republican party right now (see Donald Trump). Putting Hillary or Bernie in isn't going to change that.  The GOP austerity regime is being sold as "We'll take away health care and jobs and entitlements away from them and never you.  Trust us."  It's working, unfortunately.

As a result, Democrats need to remember who voted them into the White House, and who ran from them in 2010 and 2014 in midterms.

Luckily, President Obama seems to be well aware of that distinction.

Jobapalooza Mini-Update

More good news on the employment front (not that anyone seems to still care about the Obama economy these days).

The fewest Americans in four decades filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, continuing to unwind an early-July surge that was probably tied to mid-year factory shutdowns and school vacations. 

Jobless claims plunged by 26,000 to 255,000 in the week ended July 18, the fewest since November 1973, a report from the Labor Department showed on Thursday in Washington. The median forecast of 47 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 278,000. Volatility is typical for this time of year as auto plants retool for the new model year and school staff varies with summer holidays, a department spokesman said as the data was released to the press. 

Claims continue to hover near historically low levels as employers are retaining workers to cater to a pickup in demand following a slump in early 2015. Combined with steady hiring across states, the improvement will help sustain household spending, the biggest part of the economy.

“Claims will remain low for the foreseeable future,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, said before the report. “Businesses are having a tough time finding the workers they need. They expect sales to grow.”

The lowest weekly jobless claims number in my lifetime, but somehow the problem is Obama is terrible for the economy or something.

Yes, finally, we're seeing the shoe on the other foot after 2008: employers are scrambling to find workers, which means more workers entering the job market, which means more money in the pockets of households and hopefully higher wages across the board, which means more people buying products, creating more demand for workers.

Positive feedback loops can be wonderful things.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon is denying increased drone strikes in Somalia are for suppressing Al-Shabaab militants ahead of President Obama's visit this week to neighboring Kenya.
• New York's state wage board unanimously voted to recommend raising the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour for fast-food workers by 2018.
• US Defense Secretary Ash Carter made a surprise visit to Iraq while on a Middle East trip, meeting with US commanders and Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi.
• A federal appeals court in Kentucky has ruled that accidentally calling somebody else is not protected by right to privacy, and that whoever hears you when you do is not liable.
• The Obama administration is backing off accusing China of the massive OPM database hack earlier this year because proving it would reveal information the US doesn't want public.

Last Call For Murder In His Eyes

Next time you ask yourself thinking "Why would a woman still not report sexual assault in 2015" please recall the awful case of Maine's Brittany Irish, who reported assault and most likely ended up kidnapped and wounded because she did.

The parents of a woman police say was kidnapped during a shooting rampage that left two people dead believe the gunman was furious at her when he found out she went to police saying he abducted and sexually assaulted her days earlier.

Rick and Kim Irish told The Associated Press that Anthony Lord had become obsessed with their 21-year-old daughter, Brittany Irish, before abducting her and attacking her on July 15, two days before the shooting rampage. 

Because of his lengthy criminal record, Lord knew he would be going back to prison and didn't care about the consequences, the parents said. 

"He knows he was going to jail for life for what he did to Brittany ... so he was just going to go out with a bang," Rick Irish said Monday at the family's home in Benedicta, where police say Lord fatally shot Brittany Irish's boyfriend, Kyle Hewitt, and shot and wounded her mother before kidnapping her early Friday. 

Afterward, police say, Lord fled from the Irishes' home and shot three other people, setting off a manhunt that shut down roads in parts of northern Maine and sent panic through several small rural towns where violence is so rare that residents usually leave their homes unlocked. 

Police have not publicly said what they believe motivated the shootings, which they say killed the 22-year-old Hewitt and 58-year-old Kevin Tozier, whom Lord happened upon during his crime rampage, and wounded three others. The Irishes said Brittany Irish also was wounded in the arm during the shootings. 

Lord, 35, is charged with kidnapping and murder. He remained in the Aroostook County Jail after making a brief court appearance via video link Monday. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a message from the AP on Tuesday seeking comment on the sexual-assault allegations.

So again, she reported the assault to the police, and the cops did...nothing.  Then when Lord found out about it, he kidnapped her and killed two people when things seriously went off the rails. If you want to know why women don't report sexual assault 100% of the time when it happens, it's because police don't protect victims 100% of the time.

It's a heartbreaking and all too common story in America.

Her New Favorite Crush

So if there are any remaining questions about the goal of the Wingnut Perpetual Outrage Machine and the kinds of things they want to accomplish with fake videos, this USA Today op-ed should answer them rather neatly.

This is stomach-turning stuff. But the problem here is not one of tone. It’s the crushing. It’s the organ harvesting of fetuses that abortion-rights activists want us to believe have no more moral value than a fingernail. It’s the lie that these are not human beings worthy of protection. There is no nice way to talk about this. As my friend and former Obama White House staffer Michael Wear tweeted, “It should bother us as a society that we have use for aborted human organs, but not the baby that provides them.” 

Richards worked to discredit the video by complaining it was “heavily edited.” But the nearly three-hour unedited video — a nauseating journey through the inner workings of the abortion industry — was posted at the same time as the edited video. Richards intoned menacingly that the video was “secretly recorded.” So what? When Mitt Romney was caught by “secret video” making his 47% remarks, the means of attaining the information was not the focus of the story.

By the way, the Kirsten Powers piece is entitled "Crush Planned Parenthood". Her new book is called "The Silencing: How The Left Is Killing Free Speech" which is odd, because she has a regular weekly column in the nation's largest daily newspaper in which to espouse her views.

As a matter of fact, the right wing regularly gets to say whatever the hell they want to, as evidenced by Powers and a wide array of GOP presidential candidates all screaming about how they are being "silenced" to anyone within earshot.

But the women who want and need these clinic services that Planned Parenthood provides? We don't get to hear their side of the story so much over the noise from the right, now do we?

Buried Under Bigotry, Con't

Well, the story of how nutjobs in Farmersville, Texas are calling on town leaders to reject a Muslim cemetery is bad enough, especially since the town's Baptist minister is the one leading the charge. But right on cue, the story just got a whole lot more awful.

“When somebody dies they bury them at that time. They don’t know whether they were shot, diseased or anything else. All they do is wrap them in a sheet from the grave and bury them,” Troy Gosnell told the local CBS station. 

Patricia Munroe voiced fears that local drinking water could be polluted. 

“We used to grow onions here. We sure enough don’t want to be growing bodies,” said another resident, Mont Hendrick. 

Feelings ran high at a town meeting earlier this week, where direct action was proposed to prevent the Muslims pressing ahead with the project. 

Take and dump pig’s blood and put pig’s heads on a post so they won’t buy the land,” one resident said.

Why no, 14 years after 9/11, America is still as Islamophobic as ever, and the real shame is thinking that this ridiculousness is limited to a podunk town in Texas and not the people you know.

Alia Salem with the Council on American Islamic Relations of Dallas, tried to dispel locals’ concerns. 

“They are fearful of what they don’t understand and hopefully it’s an opportunity for us to come together and learn a little bit more about each other and hopefully dispel some of those misconceptions.

Americans don't learn squat.  Good luck with that.

StupidiNews!

• Cincinnati police are investigating the death of Samuel Dubose, an unarmed black man shot and killed in the head by a white Cincinnati police officer on Sunday.
• President Obama made his final appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night, with Stewart leaving the show in less than three weeks.
• Greece's parliament faces another tough vote on EU bailout provisions as lawmakers will vote on banking and justice system reforms.
• Contract workers at both of New York City's major airports will walk off the job tonight, demanding higher wages as airlines rake in record profits.
• FCC head Tom Wheeler is signing off on AT&T's $48.5 billion buyout of satellite service DirecTV, with a number of conditions set for internet and cable TV competition.