The Turtle Gets Shelled

Looks like Sen. Mitch McConnell is going to draw a primary challenger from the right after all.

Louisville businessman, Matt Bevin, plans to enter the Kentucky U.S. Senate race against Mitch McConnell, WHAS11 has learned.

Sources say, Bevin plans to air television commercials next week. An announcement is also planed as early as next week.

Bevin is a partner at Waycross Partners, a Louisville hedge fund.  He is the founder and former CEO of Integrity Asset Management in Louisville (the investment management firm was sold to a Michigan firm in 2010). A  former U.S. Army officer, Bevin also owns Bevin Brothers Mfg. Co. in East Hampton, Connecticut.  The bell making company was founded by Bevin's great-great-great-grandfather in 1832.

So Bevin has some pretty deep pockets. And the interesting thing is the actual Tea Party here in Kentucky is furious with the guy.

"Would this business owner taking taxpayer money to rebuild his business after a fire be considered to support limited government, free-markets, fiscal responsibility? What happen to his business insurance coverage?" asked John T. Kemper of the United Kentucky Tea Party.

Kemper has pledged to secure a well-funded tea party candidate to challenge McConnell in the 2014 race.

“I’ve never heard of this new guy but what would I know about the Kentucky Tea Party, right?" wrote Christopher Hightower a one-time statehouse candidate and volunteer for Rand Paul's 2010 U.S. Senate campaign.  "Of course the media will anoint anyone as a Tea Party candidate, as long as they take on Sen. McConnell.”

The Louisville Tea Party President, meanwhile, said Tuesday she was angry with The Hill reporter Alexandra Jaffe who interviewed her concerning the Bevin story.

"I just wanted to set the record straight that the reporter from The Hill twisted my words around like no other reporter I've ever talked to," said Sarah Durand, Louisville Tea Party President.  " Everything I said was taken out of context to present a story that is extremely inaccurate."

Durand said the story gave the impression that Bevin was courting tea party support.  In reality, she asserted, some Republicans have courted Bevin.

Bevin is talking to a variety of people about the senate race, including McConnell supporters, Durand said.   She added that she would never encourage anyone to run for political office.

Now things get interesting.  Post Rand Paul,  the Tea Party here has basically been shut out and shut up.  Nobody wants to hear from them anyway.  And it looks like they're being brushed aside again to make way from another clown from the country club business wing of the party, who saw how McConnell made tens of millions of dollars as a US Senator and wants in on the action.

Imagine that.

Stupidinews, Morning Edition!

• A Michigan judge has rejected Detroit's bid for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, citing the plan violates the state's constitution by cutting promised payments to city retirees and pensioners.
• San Diego County Clerk Ernest Dronenberg has filed an emergency petition with state AG Kamala Harris to suspend same-sex marriage licenses in the state.
• House Republicans have passed a version of No Child Left Behind renewal legislation that freezes federal school funding and eliminates the 2002 bill's federal oversight of school districts.
• Honda could get approval for its HondaJet project from US aviation officials as soon as 2014 as the automaker plans to take to the skies to challenge Cessna and Bombardier.
• Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jets are again under federal safety scrutiny as the FAA has ordered checks into the plane's emergency locator beacon systems, suspected in this week's Heathrow airport fire.

Last Call For One Hell Of A Presidential Briefing

This afternoon, President Obama made an unannounced appearance at the daily White House press briefing to make some heartfelt and thoughtful remarks on the George Zimmerman verdict and race in America.

But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.

And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.

And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.

The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.

Context. It's a hell of a thing, and the piece of the national conversation on race we've been missing.  As President, Barack Obama today stepped up and delivered a speech with the necessary context that we've been sorely needing on having a real discussion about what the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman means to people.

Do read the entire transcript, or watch the briefing above.  It's the most honest starting point on this issue I've seen or heard all week. The NY Times editorial board summed it up thusly:

Mr. Obama said Americans needed to give African-American boys “the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them.” 

He said he was not talking about “some grand, new federal program” or even a national “conversation on race,” which he said often ends up being “stilted and politicized” and reaffirm pre-existing positions. 

In a way, Mr. Obama began that conversation today, while he spoke directly to African Americans who have longed to hear him identify with their frustrations and their anger. 

It is a great thing for this country to have a president who could do what Mr. Obama did today. It is sad that we still need him to do it.

PS, not bad for a guy with no teleprompter, huh.

I Think I've ID'ed The Problem, NC GOP

And because North Carolina Republicans aren't already crashing in popularity, they're now making the state's voter ID law even tougher with the intent of discouraging those damn hipster college students from voting at all.

The new measure would require voters to show one of seven types of photo identification issued by the government, such as driver’s licenses, passports, non-driver IDs and military or veteran cards.

It eliminates about half the types of photo identification allowed under the House version, including cards from UNC system colleges, state community colleges, local governments, private employers and law enforcement agencies. The bill would take full effect in the 2016 elections.

“We want a state-issued ID or a federal-issued ID,” said Sen. Tom Apodaca, the bill’s chief supporter, expressing concern that college IDs “could be manipulated” and allow out-of-state students to vote in two states.

“We want it succinct, and we are willing to pay for it,” he added, noting that the bill would provide free photo IDs to people without them.

To pay for the ID's, sure.  To keep the DMV offices open long enough to issue them all, well, that's another problem, given the steep budget cuts to state employee services in the last 3 years.  The state is only now experimenting with some Saturday DMV hours at a few offices...all without any extra funding or staffing, meaning how workers get paid to do it, well, umm...FREEDOM.

Good luck with that, guys.  PS, if you're planning on being a North Carolina college student in 2016 and voting for Hillary or whomever, you might want to reconsider going to school in a state that actually gives a damn about wanting you to vote.

By the way, the Charlotte Observer is so sick of the state GOP and NC House Speaker Thom Tillis (who is ironically not as responsible for this awful legislation as he should be because he keeps skipping out on votes to go fundraise for his bid against Sen. Kay Hagan in 2014) that they're calling for Tillis to step down as Speaker.

When Tillis announced his Senate bid, he said he would “raise money at the appropriate time.” “I don’t intend to campaign heavily and actively until after we get out of session,” he said.

It’s fine that Tillis is interested in higher office, and we don’t fault him for recognizing the need to raise millions. But the fiscal year started three weeks ago and the legislature still has not agreed on a budget. Tillis is missing sessions. His actions are raising questions of conflict of interest.

He has shown he can’t give his undivided attention to the N.C. House and the U.S. Senate at the same time. He should give up his Speaker’s gavel, resign from his House seat and give his full energy to his Senate bid, unencumbered by such distractions as running the state.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/07/18/4173663/tillis-tries-but-cant-serve-two.html#comments#storylink=cpy

Less-intrusive, small government for the win!

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/07/18/4173935/senate-republicans-unveil-stricter.html#storylink=cpy

Glad To Know Racism Is Over

Especially in Florida.

Walter Henry Butler, 59, was arrested by Gulf County Sheriffs deputies after shooting Everett Gant, who is black. Gant was shot in the face after he confronted Butler about using racial slurs to address children living in the apartment complex where the two men reside.

Deputies said Butler admitted to shooting the victim, and even called 911 himself to report it, after which he reportedly went back to cooking his dinner. According to reports, officers on the scene said Butler seemed annoyed by the arrest and told officers, “I only shot a ni—r.

Butler was charged with attempted murder and a hate crime. He is being held at the Gulf County Jail. Gant is said to be in stable condition and is expected to survive.

Not even a human.  Not even an animal, because old white guys love animals.  Nope, he shoots a person in the face because somebody came up to him and said "Hey, stop being a racist jerk to these kids" in which case BLAM because he's just one of those, you know.

Tell me again how there's no racism, and how the real problem is that Gant shouldn't have said anything about Butler's racial slurs to kids, and that Gant was treading on Butler's right to be a racist jackass, so that I can ignore you for the rest of my life.

StupidiNews!

• Detroit's Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr, forced the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy Thursday, citing "unacceptable" pension and maintenance costs, earning a vowed fight from city unions.
• Not content to ban abortions after 20 weeks, Texas Republicans are using the rest of the state's special legislative session to ban abortions after as little as six weeks.
• German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Freidrich is now walking back claims that NSA surveillance helped stop five terror attacks in Germany since 9/11.
• Finance ministers from the G-20 countries are meeting in Moscow this weekend to discuss plans to crack down on international corporate tax cheats.
• A big legal fight is brewing among a number of Jewish organizations over the future of the .kosher internet domain.

Last Call For The Insurance Hack

And of course with the news that Obamacare is significantly dropping individual insurance rates in New York, one-man hack army Avik Roy takes to his usual perch at Forbes to make up more ridiculous statistical games to "prove" Obamacare is really a failure for America.

Yesterday, fans of Obamacare were cheering. A front-page story in the New York Times announced that individuals shopping for health insurance in New York would see their premiums halved, based on figures released by the Cuomo administration. It was an “extraordinary decline” that “demonstrates the profound promise” of Obamacare, said one supporter of the law. But the cheerleaders are wrong. New York’s premiums will remain among the costliest in the nation, after Obamacare becomes fully operational. And the unique history of how the Empire State destroyed its individual health-insurance market—using policies quite similar to Obamacare’s—will translate, at best, to only a handful of other states.

And Roy knows this how?  Through the power of lies, damn lies, and Avik Roy Obamacare statistics.

In the vast majority of states, Obamacare has the net effect of raising premiums by a lot, which has given rise to the term “rate shock.” In California, for example, a healthy 40-year-old today can pay $94 per month in the individual market; that rises to $234 a month under Obamacare: an increase of 149 percent.

Obamacare even drives up costs in heavily regulated states. In 1993, Washington instituted progressive reforms similar to those of New York, though Washington’s were somewhat less punitive. This led me to expect that Washington, along with New York and a handful of other states, could see individual-market rate decreases under Obamacare. Much to my surprise, it turns out that even in Washington state, Obamacare will drive premiums upward by 34 to 80 percent. The average of the five lowest premiums for a 40-year-old in Washington today is $162; Obamacare will drive that up to $243.

How many times do we have to go through this?  Roy is comparing cheap catastrophic coverage that has a super-high deductible and doesn't meet minimum coverage standards with Obamacare bronze plans, which are completely different in what they offer, AND on top of that there are subsidies for people in order to help them pay for it.   It's like comparing the car payment on a cardboard box with wheels to an actual car.   He admits he's doing it:

To conduct the above analysis, I and my Manhattan Institute colleagues, Yevgeniy Feyman and Paul Chung, compiled data from the five least-expensive plans on the traditional individual insurance market in the most populous ZIP code of each New York county, via healthcare.gov, the federal government’s health insurance web site. By taking the average of those five plans, while adjusting for the impact of the individual-market component of the Healthy New York exchange, we established a “current rate” baseline for each New York county. We then compared those rates to the average rate of the five least-costly Bronze plans in each ACA rating region. No adjustment was needed for denials, surcharges, or age, because New York prohibits charging different rates based on health status, gender, and age.

Congrats Avik, you're comparing plastic apples to orchards laden with fruit and complaining that the apples aren't as cheap and as tasty as the plastic stuff.

Douchebag.

Did Mitch The Turtle Sell Out His Crew?

We're all aware that Sen. Mitch McConnell is a jerk, but it turns out he's a coward and a wimp too as he desperately searches for someone to take the blame for Harry Reid getting the better of him yet again.  Now it looks like Mitch is trying to dump the increasingly unpopular deal on the backs of Republican moderates who somehow forced him to take such an awful deal...and he's claiming he knew nothing about it.  But here's the money quote:

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., got so frustrated with McConnell’s presentation of events, that he called “bullshit” loud enough for the room to hear, nearly a half-dozen sources said. The heated exchange underscored the “buyer’s remorse” among some Republicans, especially leaders, one senior Republican said on background.

Senate minority leader McConnell has no control over his own caucus?  Gosh,  there's a shocker.  And it seems like nobody's happy with it.

As CQ Roll Call reported Tuesday, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, for example, felt like his effort to reform the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were undercut by the deal forged by McCain and others. Portman and others had been holding up the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB in an attempt to get concessions from the Obama administration. When asked whether McCain or Corker were in the position to defend their deal in front of the rest of the caucus, Graham did not choose to characterize it quite that way.

“I don’t know that it was defending the deal. You know, they spoke up as to why we needed the deal. Quite frankly, I feel good about what happened. And senators are not bound by anything I did,” Graham said. “I think that for many of us, that was like — we probably went too far on Cordray. [And] you can’t just not have a National Labor Relations Board. But the president went too far and nominated somebody in December and then made a recess appointment and not allow the Senate to act.

“I really haven’t heard any concerns other than suggestions we could have done better,” Graham continued.

So let's take stock here.  Mitch has basically lost the respect of his team, the way Orange Julius long ago lost his.  They're openly angry at him, and they should be:  he's walking away from the deal he's responsible for agreeing to, after it became clear that the Tea Party wing considers this deal to be garbage. 

McConnell really wasn't facing a primary challenge before.  I'm betting that changes, and soon.

Here In My Car, I Feel Safest Of All

"If only," FOX News said to itself.  "If ONLY there were a way to make our viewers hate the American auto industry again so the Democrats would stop trumpeting its success...you guys have any ideas?"

"What's that, you said?"

"OK, let's run with that."

In a segment titled “Al Qaeda Behind the Wheel: How Terrorists Could Crash Your Car,” cyberterrorism analyst Morgan Wright said that it was a “fact” that “you can take control of a car” through systems like General Motor’s OnStar.

“My concern is when they not only just hack the car, they hack the systems that control these cars or have access to them,” Wright noted. “A lot of people say that’s far fetched, but one of my examples, you know, on Sept. 10th, 2001, we thought it was far fetched to fly four airplanes into a building, never thought it could happen. So, never say never.”

“So, what do we do has consumers?” Fox News host Jenna Lee wondered.

“Go back to the horse and buggy,” Wright laughed. “As these things come more connected, your car is loaded with maybe 70, 80 computers at a time, monitoring your emissions, your telemetry, your tire pressure, things like that. So again, maybe it’s a short-range thing, maybe it’s somebody controlling it from afar. But the point about it is the more connected we become as a society, the more vulnerabilities we have, because, guys, that’s just the Internet.”

Lee then wondered how concerned — on a scale of one to ten — should people be about terrorists hacking cars.

“Right now, I’d say on a scale of one to ten, it’s a one and a half,” Wright admitted. “There’s only one car out there right now, the Infinity Q50 that has a true steering-by-wire system that you could actually — if you could access to it — could actually control the vehicle.”

But boy you tech companies and you green energy companies and you automobile makers get together with your unholy trinity and TERR'ISTS GONNA TURN MAMMAW'S VAN INTO A DEATH CAR and you know what, FOX News is just effing stupid beyond belief.

So, FOX is advocating bikes and public transportation now?  Seems kinda weird for them.  I don't think they've thought this through...

StupidiNews!

• The ACLU is claiming police departments nationwide store license plate information of drivers passing officers, protected buildings and bridges, and security cameras for years.
• House Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to give the Justice Department the authority to keep suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms and explosives.
• Some 8.5 million Americans will share half a billion dollars in insurance rebates as Obamacare rules force insurance companies to repay policyholders over wasteful spending.
• Michael Dell's $24 billion plan to repurchase Dell Computer stock and take the company private has run into a number of problems on the eve of a critical shareholder vote.
• Texas-based firearms maker TrackingPoint is reportedly working on a computer-assisted hunting rifle that can hit a target up to 3000 yards away.

Last Call For Obamacare Rate Shock

2014 is the end of the Democrats!  Doom!  Total GOP domination!  Obamacare is a miserable failure!  Just look at New York, where individual premiums are being cut in half!

Wait, that's...what Obamacare is supposed to do.

State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.

Yep, that Obamacare law sure is a complete disaster, huh.
 

Supporters of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, credited the drop in rates to the online purchasing exchanges the law created, which they say are spurring competition among insurers that are anticipating an influx of new customers. The law requires that an exchange be started in every state.

“Health insurance has suddenly become affordable in New York,” said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president for health initiatives with the Community Service Society of New York. “It’s not bargain-basement prices, but we’re going from Bergdorf’s to Filene’s here.”

“The extraordinary decline in New York’s insurance rates for individual consumers demonstrates the profound promise of the Affordable Care Act,” she added.

Administration officials, long confronted by Republicans and other critics of President Obama’s signature law, were quick to add New York to the list of states that appear to be successfully carrying out the law and setting up exchanges.

“We’re seeing in New York what we’ve seen in other states like California and Oregon — that competition and transparency in the marketplaces are leading to affordable and new choices for families,” said Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

And let's remember that competition in the free market has long, long been a Republican screaming point.  When President Obama actually put that into effect, they went bonkers.

The larger point here is that New York is a state that wants to make its state health insurance exchange work and doesn't have Republicans sabotaging it because Black President Is Tyrant or something.  It's amazing how, when given the opportunity to work, the program works as intended.

Once again, if Obamacare is such a failure, explain to me how New York has significantly more insurers coming into the state, wanting to offer more products, at far, far better prices.  The best part is rates for small businesses are going down too, AND people are going to get subsidies.

It's like the damn thing works when you want to make it work.

The Most Honest A Cheney's Ever Been

So in the great state of Wyoming, Liz Cheney has upset the apple cart, set it on fire, crushed the apples into flaming, dirty paste and then declared a scorched earth campaign versus all apple orchards with her decision to primary Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for no particular reason other than she really wants to be in the Senate.

If you were wondering why Liz Cheney feels the need to take out Sen. Mike Enzi (who is a remarkable senator inasmuch he's pretty much famous for just kind of being there) there's two reasons. First, Enzi is the ranking Republican on the Senate Health committee and didn't stop Obamacare or something, so that makes him MAXIMUM RINO. Second, and more importantly:  

What should GOP do in face of radical Obama agenda? Everything possible to resist/block. That's not obstructionism. That's patriotism.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 23, 2013

To recap, Liz Cheney is trying to take Mike Enzi out because there's not enough GOP obstruction of President Obama among Senate Republicans. She's not running to represent the interests of the people of the Cowboy State in the United States Senate, she's not running to be an agent of change in what amounts to an ossified gentlemen's club, she's not running because the GOP needs more women in the Senate (and that's actually true) and she's certainly not running to see if Wyoming can earn its other long-forgotten state moniker, Equality State (and if she does because of her sister Mary, that won't last long the second President Obama agrees with her.)

She's running to stop the last two years of Barack Obama's second term. That's really the whole thing. That is her big reason for putting Enzi out to Wyoming's green pastures, because total obstruction is all that matters. You want to talk about sense of entitlement? Cheney decides the seat should be hers because of the purity of her rancor towards the President the GOP has been unable to stop, time and time again. Look, this is a person whose sole qualification for anything is "her dad was Vice-President". Based on that, she thinks Enzi should step aside so that she can scream at the President. Where does she even get off doing this in the first place?

But this is Liz Cheney we're talking about here, who burst onto the scene in 2009 playing footsie with the Birther movement, who has a serious problem telling the truth, and of course she has her backers among the "progressive left" who see her as a strong enough woman to end up in the White House someday. You know, like Sarah Palin.

Me, I'm going to enjoy the Republicans taking sides on Cheney versus Enzi and hoping Enzi decides to pull an Angus King just big enough to open the door for a Democratic opponent to squeak through. It's a lot to hope for, but it would be awesome if it happened. After all, Cheney has already dismissed Enzi as a factor in her race and is going straight for the Oval Office (in more ways than one.) That kind of hubris tends to get attention even from the most absent of fate-directing powers.

Meanwhile, I bet President Obama is having a pretty good laugh at the news that Republicans are still willing to eat their own in order to try to stop him.

Let the battle commence.

The Return Of The Honey Badger

Dem Senate majority leader Harry Reid actually pulled his filibuster move off, and broke the GOP's back on filibustering cabinet nominations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office confirms to ThinkProgress that a deal has been reached to avert the so-called “nuclear option” on what appear to be very favorable terms to Democrats. In a nearly unconditional surrender to Senate Democrats, a core group of Senate Republicans agreed to a deal that will confirm most of the nominees currently subject to Republican filibusters, and replace two nominees to a key labor agency. While the identity of those new nominees are, as yet, unknown, two Democratic Senate sources tell ThinkProgress that the new nominees to the National Labor Relations Board can be “any two we want,” so long as it is not the two people currently serving on the NLRB via recess appointments.

In return for a virtually complete capitulation to Democratic demands, Republicans get to postpone the question of whether filibusters can still exist for executive branch nominees. Last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) rejected an offer from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to confirm the pending nominees if Reid agreed to take the nuclear option off the table, so Reid retains the option of changing the Senate Rules in the future if Republicans obstruct future nominees. Senate Republicans will also get to make the rhetorical point that they prevented two NLRB nominees whose recess appointments were called into question by a pair of court decisions handed down by five Republican judges from being confirmed to their seats on that agency.

Indeed, one of those seven nominees, acting Consumer Financial Protection Board head Richard Cordray, has been cleared through cloture with 71 votes and will be the first to get an up-or-down vote from the full Senate.

This is a full fold on the part of Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP.

Welcome back, Harry "Honey Badger" Reid.  We've missed you.

StupidiNews!

• In India 22 children are dead and another 25 hospitalized after free school lunches were found to be poisoned by an agricultural chemical.
• Britain's House of Commons approved same-sex marriage legislation Tuesday, paving the way for gay marriage in Britain in 2014.
• House Republicans are expected to vote on a measure that would indefinitely delay many key parts of Obamacare, including the individual mandate.
• After two years of GOP obstruction, Richard Cordray has been confirmed by a 66-34 vote to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• Google may be the next tech giant to move into streaming live tv, video and movies with a rumored new service.

Last Call For McCrory's Honeymoon

If GOP NC Gov. Pat McCrory ever had a honeymoon, it died this month with the NC GOP.  The latest numbers from Public Policy Polling:

For the first time since taking office we find that McCrory has a negative approval rating this month. Only 40% of voters are happy with the job he's doing to 49% who disapprove. That's down a net 15 points from June when he was at a 45/39 spread. While McCrory's numbers are pretty steady with Republicans, he continues to lose ground with Democrats (down a net 17 points from -36 at 24/60 last month to now -53 at 17/70) and independents (down a net 20 points from +12 at 46/34 last month to -8 at 41/49 now). Only 68% of people who voted for McCrory last fall continue to approve of his job performance.

That's quite a drop, and it gets worse for McCrory when you throw the Republican-dominated state legislature into the mix.

Unhappiness over the abortion bill seems to be driving a lot of the increased unhappiness with the Republicans in state government this month. Only 34% of voters support the proposal to 47% who are opposed. They're even more unhappy with the process- 80% think it's inappropriate to combine abortion legislation with bills about motorcycle safety or Sharia Law.

This speaks to a greater issue voters have with the General Assembly's transparency- only 19% think the body is transparent in how it conducts its business to 51% who believe it is not. As a result North Carolinians think by a 48/33 margin that McCrory should veto the abortion law, including a 51/37 margin with independents.

The problem of course is that there are enough Republican votes in both the NC House and Senate to override a McCrory veto, meaning he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.  And the awful, draconian laws that McCrory has already signed into law are hurting him, too.

-55% of voters are unhappy with the legislation that resulted in 70,000 North Carolinians losing their unemployment benefits earlier this month to only 29% who are supportive of it. There's strong opposition to this development by both independents (32/55) and Democrats (10/78).

-76% of voters think that companies engaged in fracking in North Carolina should have to disclose all the chemicals they inject into the ground with only 13% opposed. Republicans in the State Senate have been trying to exempt them from having to do so. There's a strong bipartisan consensus (81/13 among independents, 80/9 among Democrats, 68/18 among Republicans) that disclosure should be required.

Even a majority of NC Republicans are worried about fracking chemicals, and with good reason.  And the nation's worst unemployment benefits?  Not exactly a selling point.  All of this could mean one hell of a backlash in November 2014:

All of this could come back to bite Republicans in next year's election. The GOP has an overall 35% approval rating for how it's running state government with 55% of voters disapproving. Democrats now lead the generic legislative ballot 51/42, the largest lead we've ever found for them since we started tracking this statistic.

North Carolinians have serious buyer's remorse for the GOP state they bought into.  Payback is going to be spectacular...but how much damage will the state's people take in the meantime from these GOP clowns?

We'll see.  If anything, Sen. Kay Hagan has a clear platform to run on in 2014 to keep her seat.