Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

The Matt Bevin Screw The Ni-CLANG! President tour continues, as Bevin tells Glenn Beck that the government agencies like the EPA have no authority here because of the Tenth Amendment.

Bevin, a Tea Party favorite who became only the second Republican in four decades to win Kentucky’s governorship Tuesday, vowed to stand against the EPA when it comes to protecting his state’s large coal industry.

“Why it is that we in Kentucky — that sit on two extraordinary basins, the Illinois basin and the Central basin, an abundance of this — how are we not participating in something that the world wants more of than they ever have?” Bevin asked. “And so, from my way of thinking, we will tell the EPA and other unelected officials who have no legal authority over us as a state, to pound sand.”

Bevin, a self-described “staunch conservative,” told Beck he believes the 10th Amendment is “one of the most powerful tools” and that power not expressly given to the federal government is the responsibility of the states.

The incoming Kentucky governor said the EPA has “no authority” and that its only recourse would be to “take us to court.” Bevin said that, in the past, the agency has “bribed us with our own money,” but he insisted that will not happen anymore under his leadership.

“The EPA, for example, they don’t have an enforcement arm,” Bevin said. “They use federal dollars. They use our own money. They bribe us with our own money to stick it to ourselves. And we will not do that anymore in the state of Kentucky.”

Hey, serious Southern nullification had to start somewhere, and it looks like in 2016 Bevin will be leading that charge.  I wonder how much of my state taxpayer dollars he'll give to mining companies and power companies that violate EPA regs here, since the feds will happily fine them millions.

It's the people of Kentucky who are going to lose this battle, and Bevin knows it.  And he can blame Obama for another year at least.

University Of Hard Knocks

A rash of racist incidents has plagued the University of Missouri campus so far this year, and University President Tom Wolfe's response to the incidents has not been enough to satisfy students on campus.  Things have gotten so bad that the unheard of has happened: the school's black college football players have gone on strike until Wolfe is removed.

More than 30 football players at the University of Missouri will not participate in any practices or games until Missouri System president Tim Wolfe resigns or is terminated. Several black team members announced their decision to strike on social media Saturday night and Missouri's Legion of Black Collegians posted a statement on behalf of the team with a picture of players unified in support of the boycott.

Wolfe's response to a series of racist incidents has been considered inadequate by many students who believe racism has poisoned the campus. A graduate student, Jonathan Butler, announced earlier in the week he was going on a hunger strike until Wolfe was removed. The most recent racist incident came Oct. 24 when a swastika was drawn with human feces on a college dorm's white wall. 

Sophomore defensive back Anthony Sherrils tweeted: "The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe "Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere" We will no longer participate in any football related activities until president Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students' experiences. WE ARE UNITED!!!!!!"

Several more African-American players, including senior running back and team captain Russell Hansbrough, followed with a series of passionate tweets. Missouri’s student body is 77% white and 7% black, while 58 of the school’s 84 scholarship football players are African-American.

The students have the support of their coaches and fellow white players, and it's powerful to see this happen in the middle of the season like this., but let's be honest about what's going on here:

In the 15 months since African-American teenager Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., universities around the country have become home to protests. Missouri's campus in Columbia sits about two hours west of Ferguson.

And considering that we have problems with black church burnings in the area, it's good that these students are taking the incidents and drawing attention to the University of Missouri.

Good for them.

StupidiNews!

• A pair of new reports on the impact of climate change suggests it could impoverish 100 million people worldwide by 2030 and leave half a billion homeless through coastal flooding.
• Despite protests and boycotts by Latino activists, Donald Trump's appearance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend received the best ratings in years as millions tuned in.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Barack Obama at the White House today, the first meeting between the two since the Iranian nuclear deal was passed by Congress.
• At least five are dead after two female suicide-bombers attacked a village in western Chad, officials suspect Boko Haram as Chad withdraws 5,000 troops from neighboring Cameroon.
• A new Senate bill would provide financial incentive for federal agencies to give up unused frequency spectrum space to the mobile industry, hungry for more capacity for smartphones.

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.