Last Call For Marco Thinks You're A Rube-io

You guys, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio is in fact really, really tired of being a Senator and wants America to hurry up and make him President already.

Marco Rubio is a U.S. senator. And he just can’t stand it anymore. 

“I don’t know that ‘hate’ is the right word,” Rubio said in an interview. “I’m frustrated.” 

This year, as Rubio runs for president, he has cast the Senate — the very place that cemented him as a national politician — as a place he’s given up on, after less than one term. It’s too slow. Too rule-bound. So Rubio, 44, has decided not to run for his seat again. It’s the White House or bust. 

“That’s why I’m missing votes. Because I am leaving the Senate. I am not running for reelection,” Rubio said in the last Republican debate, after Donald Trump had mocked him for his unusual number of absences during Senate votes.

They keep telling me the smart money is on the Republican Savior(tm).

Five years ago, Rubio arrived with a potential that thrilled Republicans. He was young, ambitious, charismatic, fluent in English and Spanish, and beloved by the establishment and the tea party.

But Rubio had arrived at one of the least ambitious moments in Senate history and saw many of his ideas fizzle. Democrats killed his debt-cutting plans. Republicans killed his immigration reform. The two parties actually came together to kill his AGREE Act, a small-bore, hands-across-the-aisle bill that Rubio had designed just to get a win on something. 

Now, he’s done. “He hates it,” a longtime friend from Florida said, speaking anonymously to say what Rubio would not. 

Which makes for an odd campaign message.

Nothing odd about it.  Given the number of times Republicans have described Obama as "petulant" and/or "arrogant" you would think it was a required presidential trait.  Rubio's just getting there early. See, presidential material!

Besides, since when do Florida Tea Party types actually want Rubio to be doing anything in Senate? I thought the whole deal was to make sure nothing got done. He's done a super job of that.

Don't worry, Rubio will just spin his missing huge numbers of votes as  "I gave up on Washington!" and run as an outsider.  It'll fool some of the GOP, too.

The Carson Show, Con't

Of course Ben Carson wants to eliminate abortion nationwide.  What kind of candidate did you think he was going to be?

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson said he would "love" to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, making abortion illegal nationwide, with almost no exemptions.

"I'm a reasonable person and if people can come up with a reasonable explanation of why they would like to kill a baby, I'll listen," Carson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

While the Republican candidate said he opposes abortions for unwanted pregnancies and in cases of rape and incest, the retired neurosurgeon told moderator Chuck Todd he might be open to allowing abortions to preserve the life and health of the mother.

"That's an extraordinarily rare situation," Carson said. "But if in that very rare situation it occurred, I believe there's room to discuss that."

On "Meet the Press," the soft-spoken candidate said his past controversial comments have become flash points because they resonate with "people who aren't really thinking deeply."

Carson was asked how he would respond if he became the GOP nominee and those contentions remarks are used to attack him. His response: "As people get to know me, they know that I'm not a hateful, pathological person like some people try to make me out to be. And that will be self-evident. So I don't really worry about that."

So, we know Carson is anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and his "reasonable" stance on abortion is maybe, maybe allowing discussion of having the procedure if and only if the health of the mother is at risk.  Oh, and if you think that's controversial, it's because you're not a "very deep" thinker.  That's "self-evident".  But at least he "probably" would raise the debt ceiling rather than default!

Of course, there's no difference between him and Clinton/Sanders, say the people who convinced you not to vote in 2014, leaving a ready GOP Congress to eliminate the filibuster and pass laws like this.

And should he end up the candidate, well, he'll get 60 million votes in the general, easily.  Even Romney got that, and the Republicans hated him.  They hated Obama more though, and they will be out to vote.

If we don't, like Tom Hilton said, All dark. Forever.

The Master Debaters, Kentucky Edition

The second-to-last debate before next week's Kentucky gubernatorial election took place Sunday night, and it's very clear that Democratic AG Jack Conway and Republican Matt Bevin really, really hate each other.

The first question the candidates tackled was what to do with the expansion of Medicaid. The candidates were asked what adjustments they would make, and asked specifically how many people would be enrolled next year when they take office. 

Conway said he would continue Kentucky's expanded Medicaid program. He said the more than 400,000 people who "are enrolled now, will be enrolled in the future." 

He said we can actually make it work, adding that Kynect, which has received praise on the national level, is a "a shinning example" for others. Conway also said that people will get off medicaid when they have better jobs and he won’t "kick people off" like Bevin.
“To kick them off now would be callus,” Conway said. 

Bevin immediately defended his campaign's position and said "these things are lies."
"I’ve never said I’d kick people off," he said. 

Bevin said there is a need for healthcare, but it was "faulty" to make a promise to somebody when "we we don’t have the ability to pay for it." 

Bevin said he would scale back the expansion of the state's Medicaid program because the state cannot afford to continue paying for the health insurance of a quarter of the state's population. 

Conway said Bevin was caught on camera saying he would reverse Governor Steve Beshear's actions to expand Medicaid. 

"That videocamera caught you at the start of your campaign," he said. "When asked about Steve Beshear's executive order to expand Medicaid. You said 'absolutely, no question about it, I would reverse that immediately.' Now you owe the people an explanation how's that not going to kick nearly half a million people off their healthcare?"

Bevin of course didn't have an answer, which is why he's losing.  Kentucky is one of the few states where, with a 92% white population and Bevin complaining about "a quarter" of the state on Medicaid, blaming those people doesn't exactly work very well.  Bevin really did say he wanted to reverse the Medicaid expansion flat-out, and just about everyone here in Kentucky knows somebody who has been helped by Kynect.

If he had began his argument with the usual "well, some people who are on Medicaid don't deserve it" fraud/drug testing dog whistle he would have been in much better shape, frankly.  But speaking of drugs, Bevin turned around and said he'd leagalize medical marijuana, where Jack Conway said he wouldn't because gateway drug (sigh, 1984's DARE program called Jack, they want their jargon back.)

But where both candidates had little difference?  King Coal.

Bevin said he would fight for coal. He said Kentucky needs to be more involved in efforts everywhere to mine coal. As governor, he said, that he would be a champion for coal. 

Conway noted that he worked under Kentucky Governor Paul E. Patton, who operated coal mines for decades, and also noted that he was among those who sued the EPA, vowing to "continue fighting against EPA rulemaking that harms Kentucky coal production and electricity rates." 

"Of the two candidates standing on stage tonight, I am the only one who has ever done anything for coal," Conway said.

Indeed, as Attorney General, Jack Conway is helping Mitch the Turtle by suing the EPA along with 23 other states to stop the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.  He's real proud of that, and you'd better believe neither candidate will cooperate with the EPA directives on coal for any reason: it's immediate political suicide here.

Still voting for Conway, however.  Either way it's going to be a close race, and a lot of it depends on who independent candidate and Fark creator Drew Curtis can hurt more.  Curtis is hovering around 6-8% in the polls and his support seems to be coming from Bevin.  If that holds true next week, Conway can pull out a narrow victory.

Somebody's going to win 48-44% with Curtis getting 7% or so, I just couldn't tell you if it's going to be Conway or Bevin on top.

The final debate is on KET's Kentucky Tonight program at 8, so if you get a chance, watch it.  I'll be live-tweeting it tonight and I'll have a wrap-up tomorrow.

StupidiNews!

• A major magnitude 7.7 earthquake has rocked northeastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, shaking the capital Kabul and felt as far away as northern India.
• Democrat John Bel Edwards will face off against GOP Sen. David Vitter November 21 as this weekend's open primary Louisiana Governor's election did not produce a majority winner.
• In Guatemala, former TV comedian Jimmy Morales picked up more than two-thirds of the vote to be elected president amid a corruption scandal that sunk former president Otto Perez/
• Poland's conservative Law & Justice party has won a slim parliamentary majority, defeating the current Civic Platform coalition on promises to sharply reduce incoming Muslim refugees.
• Kentucky and West Virginia are leading a group of 22 other states suing the EPA to block the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan reducing power plant emissions.

Just Do What The Officer Says

The NY Times takes a look at traffic stops in North Carolina and finds -- surprise! -- police pull over black drivers far more often even when the rates of finding something illegal are higher with white drivers.

Documenting racial profiling in police work is devilishly difficult, because a multitude of factors — including elevated violent crime rates in many black neighborhoods — makes it hard to tease out evidence of bias from other influences. But an analysis by The New York Times of tens of thousands of traffic stops and years of arrest data in this racially mixed city of 280,000 uncovered wide racial differences in measure after measure of police conduct.

Those same disparities were found across North Carolina, the state that collects the most detailed data on traffic stops. And at least some of them showed up in the six other states that collect comprehensive traffic-stop statistics.

Here in North Carolina’s third-largest city, officers pulled over African-American drivers for traffic violations at a rate far out of proportion with their share of the local driving population. They used their discretion to search black drivers or their cars more than twice as often as white motorists — even though they found drugs and weapons significantly more often when the driver was white.

Officers were more likely to stop black drivers for no discernible reason. And they were more likely to use force if the driver was black, even when they did not encounter physical resistance.

We know this happens, but finding evidence of this time and time again, in city after city, county after county, state after state, just makes it clear that this is systemic, national racism that will require a national fix to resolve.

In Greensboro, which is 41 percent black, traffic stops help feed the stream of minor charges that draw a mostly African-American crowd of defendants to the county courthouse on weekday mornings. National surveys show that blacks and whites use marijuana at virtually the same rate, but black residents here are charged with the sole offense of possession of minor amounts of marijuana five times as often as white residents are.

And more than four times as many blacks as whites are arrested on the sole charge of resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer, an offense so borderline that some North Carolina police chiefs discourage its use unless more serious crimes are also involved.

This has been a problem for years now, but now that it has national attention, it's starting to get noticed.  That's a start, and some cities and states are making changes, but again this is nationwide, any real solutions must also be national.

Failing The Test

In what has to be considered a staggering about-face, the Obama administration now admits the testing uber alles regime of Common Core has gone too far, and that schools need to take a step back and start to limit tests.

Faced with mounting and bipartisan opposition to increased and often high-stakes testing in the nation’s public schools, the Obama administration declared Saturday that the push had gone too far, acknowledged its own role in the proliferation of tests, and urged schools to step back and make exams less onerous and more purposeful.

Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, who has announced that he will leave office in December. “But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”

“It’s important that we’re all honest with ourselves,” he continued. “At the federal, state and local level, we have all supported policies that have contributed to the problem in implementation. We can and will work with states, districts and educators to help solve it.”

Teachers’ unions, which had led the opposition on the left to the amount of testing, declared the reversal of sorts a victory. “Parents, students, educators, your voice matters and was heard,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

And even some proponents of newer, tougher tests said they appreciated the administration’s acknowledgment that it had helped create the problem, saying it did particular damage by encouraging states to evaluate teachers in part on test scores.

But the administration’s so-called “testing action plan” — which guides school districts but does not have the force of law — also risks creating new uncertainty on the role of tests in America’s schools. Many teachers have felt whiplash as they rushed to rewrite curriculum based on new standards and new assessments, only to have politicians in many states pull back because of political pressure.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has for years promised that Common Core standards and rigorous testing were the keys to making American public schools more accountable and students more prepared to face the 21st century, and more importantly close the gap between successful exurban white schools and crumbling inner city black and Hispanic schools.

The admission that testing needs to be dialed back is all but indicating that the 20-year effort to fix our schools has all but failed completely.  Common Core has been the worst of both worlds: declaring that teachers and schools should be commercialized and profitized, and then purposefully abandoning the students who needed the most help in the poorest schools in the country.

We've decided over the last two decades that an education only goes to those who deserve it by dint of class, to lavishly fund those schools for the rich and leave the rest to fight over the scraps, to create winners and losers in school almost from birth.

Only now have we realized that we created a monster instead.

Sunday Long Read: Bad Romance

Very little good ever comes from a doctor-patient relationship that turns into something far more unethical.  But when the doctor is a renowned ethics professor at Rutgers and the patient is severely mentally disabled, the fallout can be catastrophic. The line between being the guiding light to help a man trapped by cerebral palsy and taking advantage to the point of sexual assault didn't just get crossed here, but shattered.

Anna didn’t want to keep her feelings secret. As far as she knew, neither did D.J. In recent weeks, their relationship had changed, and it wasn’t clear when or how to share the news. ‘‘It’s your call,’’ she said to him in the lead-up to a meeting with his mother and older brother. ‘‘It’s your family. It’s up to you.’’

When she arrived at the house on Memorial Day in 2011, Anna didn’t know what D.J. planned to do. His brother, Wesley, was working in the garden, so she went straight inside to speak with D.J. and his mother, P. They chatted for a while at the dining table about D.J.’s plans for school and for getting his own apartment. Then there was a lull in the conversation after Wesley came back in, and Anna took hold of D.J.’s hand. ‘‘We have something to tell you,’’ they announced at last. ‘‘We’re in love.’’

‘‘What do you mean, in love?’’ P. asked, the color draining from her face.

To Wesley, she looked pale and weak, like ‘‘Caesar when he found out that Brutus betrayed him.’’ He felt sick to his stomach. What made them so uncomfortable was not that Anna was 41 and D.J. was 30, or that Anna is white and D.J. is black, or even that Anna was married with two children while D.J. had never dated anyone. What made them so upset — what led to all the arguing that followed, and the criminal trial and million-­dollar civil suit — was the fact that Anna can speak and D.J. can’t; that she was a tenured professor of ethics at Rutgers University in Newark and D.J. has been declared by the state to have the mental capacity of a toddler.

Anna does not agree with this assessment. She does not deny (as no one could) that D.J. is impaired: His cerebral palsy leaves him prone to muscle spasms in his face, his neck, his torso and his arms and hands. She acknowledges that it’s hard for him to stay in one position, that muscle contractions sometimes twist his spine and clench his fingers in a useless ball. It’s clear to her, as it is to everyone, that he has trouble making eye contact and keeping objects fixed in view. She knows that he wears diapers and cannot dress himself; that he can walk only if someone steadies him; and that otherwise he gets around by scooting on the floor. She knows that D.J. screams when he’s unhappy and chirps when he’s excited, but that he can’t control his vocal cords. Anna understands that even now, at 35, D.J. has never said a word.

But she takes issue with the other half of D.J.’s diagnosis: that he’s not just spastic but has a very low I.Q. In 2004, five years before Anna met him, a clinical psychologist named Wayne Tillman, who consults for New Jersey’s Bureau of Guardianship Services, assessed D.J. and found that his impairments precluded any formal testing of intelligence, but that certain facts could be inferred: ‘‘His comprehension seemed to be quite limited,’’ ‘‘his attention span was very short’’ and he ‘‘lacks the cognitive capacity to understand and participate in decisions.’’ D.J. could not even carry out basic, preschool-­level tasks. A few months later, a court made P. and Wesley his legal guardians.

From the time she met D.J., Anna thought Tillman had it wrong. D.J. might be unable to speak or hold a pencil, but those are motor skills, not mental ones, and their absence didn’t mean his mind was blank. What if D.J. had a private chamber in his head, a place where grown-up thoughts were trapped behind his palsy? Then, of course, he would fail the standard tests of his I.Q. — tests made for people who can answer questions verbally or read and write. What D.J. needed was another way to share his deep intelligence.

At the request of D.J.’s family, Anna began to work with him, using a controversial method known as ‘‘facilitated communication.’’ Starting with her hand beneath his elbow, she helped him point at pictures, and then at letters, and eventually at the buttons of a Neo, a hand-held keyboard with a built-in screen. With his hand in hers, she helped him type out words after 30 years of silence.

Wesley and his mother had been thrilled with D.J.’s progress, but now, suddenly, they recoiled. (Neither D.J.’s family nor Anna agreed to be interviewed for this article; all their quotes and recollections are drawn from court records and testimony. P. and Wesley are referred to by a middle initial and a middle name to shield D.J.’s identity, which has not been publicly revealed.) When Wesley told Anna he thought she had taken advantage of his brother, she could not muster a response. At last, with her help, D.J. began typing: ‘‘No one’s been taken advantage of. I’ve been trying to seduce Anna for years, and she resisted valiantly.’’ Then he typed another message, meant for Anna: ‘‘Kiss me.’’ Wesley walked out.

Later, after he told Anna that she wasn’t to see his brother anymore, she tried to plead her case by phone: ‘‘I will put in writing, prick my finger and sign with blood — whatever makes you reassured that this is for real,’’ she promised in a voice mail message. ‘‘I will leave my husband, and I will make a permanent life and home with [D.J.].’’

This one is pretty long, and worth the read.  It's the most human of dramas to boot.  How far does someone go in order to try to heal someone that society has given up on, and when does that turn into shocking levels of abuse and manipulation?

When does love cause farm more harm than good?

Last Call For The Nothing

Over at Steve's place, Tom Hilton wonder aloud if the breakdown in GOP "governance" was the plan all along.

Less than two weeks before we hit the debt ceiling, there's no clear pathto raising it. And as hilarious as Paul Ryan's fail may be, it just makes things that much more difficult, since he'll be as much a hostage to the Freedom Caucus as Boehner was. Maybe someone can see how this plays out without a default, but I can't.

And if there is a default, it won't be the Republicans who get punished. Sure, they'll get some bad press for a while. There'll be scolding editorials, maybe even calls from constituents. And...not much more.

But the longer-term economic consequences--we know who'll pay for that. If default throws us into a recession, if we're in a recession a year from now, the weakest Republican will beat the strongest Democrat. The GOP will strengthen their hold on Congress, and finally take the White House. At which point it's game over. All Dark. Forever.

And the Republicans incompetence or deliberate sabotage (likely both) will end up achieving what a billion dollars of Koch money couldn't.

That's my recurring nightmare. Someone, anyone, tell me I'm wrong about this. Please.

I wish I could Tom, but right now the health of our economy is 100% dependent on Paul Ryan and the notion that not even the Republicans are willing to destroy the economy to win in 2016. And Tom's right: Obama is president, and the Democrats will be blamed for an economic meltdown next year brought on by a debt default the way Bush was in 2008.  I'm still convinced that Obama would have lost handily in 2008 if the economy had held on for McCain for just two more months rather than coming unraveled in September, six weeks before the election.  In 48 hours, McCain had lost the election he should have easily won.

So no Tom, I can't talk you down. I'd ask "Are you willing to be America on that?"  But that's a pointless question.

We already have.  Better hope Paul Ryan can control the lunatics, or America is done.

Jeb Comes To Jesus

It looks like Bush, Inc. is making some frank decisions about the candidacy of Jeb, and the big guns are coming out to try to save him.

Jeb Bush will attend a finance meeting this weekend in Houston convened by former President George H. W. Bush and attended by Bush's brother, former President George W. Bush, CBS News has learned.

The session, designed to assess where Bush's candidacy stands in the face of large-scale staff cutbacks and underwhelming poll numbers, will also be attended by Bush's mother, Barbara Bush. The governor's campaign confirmed the meeting will be held Sunday and Monday.

CBS News has also learned George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser for Jeb Bush in Georgetown (Washington, DC) on Oct. 29. The fundraising email, which went out earlier this week, was sent by George W. Bush's two former chiefs of staff, Andy Card and Josh Bolten. Jeb Bush will not attend the fund-raiser.

The email, sent to Bush-Cheney alumni, praised Bush's "extraordinary record of accomplishment and conservative innovation" and said that George W. Bush "looks forward to seeing his old friends at this event and to sharing his enthusiasm for Jeb's candidacy." Bolten and Card suggested that for those who can't make the event, there would be "other opportunities around the country," and the email closed, "Your help today will help position Jeb for a successful outcome."

The event underscores the need for the former Florida governor to lean on his brother's fund-raising prowess to aid his struggling campaign.

Don Poppy, Barbara and Dubya are making it clear that playtime is over and the "real adults" are in charge of Jeb's campaign now.  He's blowing it, and the operatives are now taking over the reins. Their first act is getting the rabble back in line and that line is "Jeb will be the nominee and next President" and all the weight of the Bush network is being brought to bear.

We'll see just how much power the Bush crime family has left these days.  It's still considerable, but enough to counter the rage of the Tea Party and the rise of Trump/Carson as clear front-runners?

I don't know about that one.  But I'm still not convinced Jeb's done.  There's still tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and that will keep him in the race through at least the early primary states.

After that though, who knows.

Like A Kansas Tornado, Con't

The Great Brownback Austerity Regime rolls on in Kansas, crushing everyone in its path, and state Republicans are starting to get nervous about all the cuts.  After all, they'll still have to face voters in 2016, unlike Brownback.

A Republican state senator in Kansas has blasted a memo from a spokeswoman for Gov. Sam Brownback that claimed expanding Medicaid in the state would be “morally reprehensible.” 

The newsletter, from GOP state Sen. Jeff King, provides further evidence that at least some Kansas Republicans are stepping away from the governor’s office, on issues from tax reform to Medicaid expansion. 

King — the vice president of the state Senate — represents the district that includes the now-closed hospital in Independence, Kan. His release takes aim at a memo from Melika Willoughby, the governor’s deputy communications director, that sharply criticized the idea of expanding Medicaid in the state. 

Willoughby called that expansion “morally reprehensible.” 

King denounced her claim. “I refuse to make moral judgments based on a person’s view of Medicaid expansion,” he writes in the newsletter. “I wish Ms. Willoughby would have done the same. 

“Maybe if her hospital were closing. Maybe if her parents were wondering where to go for emergency care. Maybe if she faced uncertainty in her health care future, she would view those looking for health care answers in a little less judgmental light. I leave that for her to sleep on at night,” he added.

Don't feel too bad for state Sen. King here, because he doesn't actually want Medicaid expansion either. Rather, his solution of course is to replace Medicaid with a "private insurance" program, where Kansas takes the Feds' money and then does everything but provide health insurance with it.

King says he supports expanding Medicaid, but through a private insurer.

“Our health care system failed Independence and it is failing tens of thousands of hardworking Kansans,” the letter says. “I don’t have all of the answers, but saying no to everything isn’t an option. I look forward to exploring the benefits of a conservative, Kansas-focused Medicaid expansion based on private insurance.

“Maybe, after we weigh our options and the costs of doing nothing, Ms. Willoughby will be less hasty to morally condemn those trying to solve our state’s toughest problems.”

But then again, Brownback is so hated that this fake Medicaid expansion looks great in comparison. That's how the game works, kids.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article41200734.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article41200734.html#storylink=cpy

The Great Texas Uterus Roundup Of '15

Meanwhile, in "Republicans champion smaller, unobtrusive government that respects privacy rights" news, Texas Republicans are actually happy to use political power to target and destroy people who don't agree with them as the GOP War on Women becomes literal.

Texas sent agents to Planned Parenthood facilities on Thursday seeking documents, the group said, calling it a "politically motivated" move that comes on the heels of the state's Republican leaders barring it from receiving Medicaid money. 

Members of the Texas Office of the Inspector General made unannounced visits at Planned Parenthood health centers in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, staying in some cases for several hours and giving Planned Parenthood 24 hours to deliver thousands of pages of documents stored at its facilities across the state, the organization said. 

The Inspector General Office declined to comment, as did health officials. Inspector General agents were seen on local news reports entering a Planned Parenthood facility in San Antonio.

Texas, the most populous Republican-controlled U.S. state, said it would launch a probe of Planned Parenthood after the release of videos in July by anti-abortion activist group Center for Medical Progress in which a Planned Parenthood official is seen talking about transactions involving fetal tissue. 

“We believe this is a fishing expedition," Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region Chief Executive Officer Ken Lambrecht told a news conference in Austin, calling the request "politically motivated." 

Lambrecht said Texas had requested what Planned Parenthood sees as unnecessary information such as the home addresses of all its employees as well as their salaries and bonuses.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said this week: "The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed." But the state has so far released no evidence of illegal activity by the group.

If this had been a raid by California or New York state agencies on an NRA office, Republicans would be announcing congressional hearings and subpoenas before the end of the month.  But Texas going after Planned Parenthood and raiding their offices, taking personal information of employees to use against them later, to scare them out of business?  Those abuses of power are exactly why Republicans want to be in office.

They are exactly who we know they are to be.

Last Call For The Carson Show, Con't

I wonder how long Ben Carson will be leading in Iowa when the elderly FOX News crowd gets wind of the fact he wants to abolish their Medicare.

Carson, who now leads the GOP field in Iowa according to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, would eliminate the program that provides health care to 49 million senior citizens, as well as Medicaid, and replace it with a system of cradle-to-grave savings accounts which would be funded with $2,000 a year in government contributions. While rivals have been pummeled for proposing less radical changes, Carson hasn't faced the same scrutiny -- and his continued traction in polls has left GOP strategists and conservative health care wonks scratching their heads.

"This isn’t a borderline issue. The politics of this are horrific," said Doug Holtz-Eakin, head of the American Action Forum and health care adviser to Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Carson's stance on the third-rail issue of Medicare is especially risky given his strength among elderly voters. In Iowa, Carson draws a quarter of the senior vote -- more than double any other candidate except Donald Trump, with whom he’s statistically tied among seniors. Carson’s support is even higher among voters between the ages of 55 and 64, who are on the verge of Medicare eligibility. He draws 34 percent of that age group, double Trump’s level of support, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

Carson's GOP rivals are largely holding their fire so far. Trump's campaign declined to comment, as did the campaigns of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio. A spokeswoman for Bobby Jindal noted the Louisiana governor's support for reforming -- but preserving -- Medicare and Medicaid.

“Without change, they will go bankrupt,” said the spokeswoman, Shannon Dirmann. “Abolishing them is bad policy.”

The answer of course is a combination of our Village betters have been letting Carson get away with it, and that nobody took him seriously enough to read the fine print.  Carson doesn't call it Medicare or Medicaid, he calls it "traditional health care".  He's had this plan for more than a year now, but he's gotten very, very good at selling it while not talking about it.

Now that he's a serious threat in the GOP race, the Village has suddenly re-discovered his plan to replace Medicare and Medicaid with medical savings accounts that wouldn't cover the cost of a hospital visit and wouldn't keep up with medical cost inflation.

We'll see how much traction this gets, but I'm betting it's not going to hurt him as much as people think.  He's had this position for over a year now, folks.  Hasn't hurt him so far.

And if it's because "people didn't know" then maybe we should ask why that is.

It Could Lead To Dancing

It's funny how Republicans are always for "small government" and "less government intrusion" unless it's telling other people that their daughters are probably sluts.

An Omaha Public Schools parent meeting devolved into shouting and violence when abstinence-only advocates accused district officials of not being upfront about a new sex education curriculum. 

According to Jay Irwin, a University of Nebraska at Omaha professor in attendance who wrote a detailed description of what happened, there were about 1,000 people in attendance at the Tuesday night meeting and people opposed to the optional curriculum known as comprehensive sex education, or CSE, wore red stickers. Video from the meeting shows total chaos as parents stand and shout about purity. 

“Planned Parenthood has came in. There is a big ring here. We are fighting this on the state level as well,” Amber Parker told local WDAM. 

One woman, who some have dubbed “#puritymom,” can be seen standing and screaming, “It’s my daughter! My daughter! Who’s going to keep her pure? Nobody! I am! Not OPS! Not OPS!”

Keep in mind, this is a completely optional class.  Parents have long had the right to yank their kids out of sex-ed classes if they didn't agree with what was being taught.  But no, the lunatics will stop anything from being taught.

Parent Bernie Garcia stood outside waving a sign that read, “Say No to Comprehensive Sex Ed.” He was upset over a rumor he’d heard that the course will teach children different sex positions and how to masturbate. 

“That’s disgusting,” he told LiveWellNebraska. “That’s not right. Children should learn about sex when they become adults.” 

The heightened interest is relatively new, LiveWell reports. An April meeting drew only 150 attendees, but the large, vocal crowd was spurred by social media posts, churches and other community organizations, including Nebraskans for Founders’ Values, a conservative Christian group. OPS officials told LiveWell some of the people in attendance Tuesday weren’t necessarily even OPS parents or students.

And there are so many examples of these local groups starting trouble like this in places all across the country, and it leads to dangerous confrontations like this and kids not being taught the facts about things.

But that was the plan all along, you know.  The fact that kids in Omaha might be learning about sex education is enough to enrage these idiots to make sure that children other than their own are kept just as ignorant as they are.

The Batlle Over Ohio

Ohio Republicans are putting the finishing touches on legislation that would end public funding for Planned Parenthood in the state, legislation that "moderate Republican" Gov. John Kasich is expected to sign.

Anti-abortion advocates in Ohio have already banned Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds for family planning; the latest bill is a way to get at federal funds administered by the state government. The ultimate goal is to shut down Planned Parenthood entirely by cutting off public money,following Texas’s lead in gutting access to reproductive health care. In Ohio, Franklin says, “We’re trying to pursue a different kind of incremental approach."

Anti-abortion groups had been making the case for the bill since the beginning of the year, but the legislative push began in earnest in July, after anti-abortion activists first released undercover videos accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. The measure is now going through hearings in both the state Senate and House of Representatives. Supporters and opponents alike expect it to be voted out of committee, pass the General Assembly, and hit Governor John Kasich's desk by Thanksgiving. A Kasich spokesman said the governor would not comment on pending legislation, but he’s widely expected to sign the bill if it passes. Despite pitching himself as a moderate in his presidential campaign, and slamming House Republicans for threatnening the shut down the government over Planned Parenthood, Kasich has green-lit every significant restriction on abortion and family planning since he took office in 2011.

Even Democratic opponents admit that the bill has been cannily packaged and presented. “The Republican Party did a good job with this," says state Representative Greta Johnson. "They came out strong with these horribly edited videos and scared even moderate Democrats into thinking, ‘I can’t be affiliated with them.' " Anti-abortion advocates have touted the bill as bipartisan, having scored the support of Democratic state Representative Bill Patmon, who is co-sponsoring the measure in the House. But the vast majority of Democrats are vocally opposing it.

The Ohio strategy is more piecemeal than what we're seeing in states like Arkansas and Louisiana, whose governors have tried to go big by cutting the organization’s contracts with Medicaid, which provides roughly 75 percent of its funding. Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week announced that his state was dropping Planned Parenthood from Medicaid (court challenges will follow), and Ohio anti-abortion groups have clamored for Kasich to do the same. But Ohio’s current legislative strategy could ultimately prove more lasting, as federal courts have temporarily halted Arkansas andLouisiana's attempts to cut Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid funding. “In Ohio we’ve been careful to enshrine as much as we can in law," says Franklin. "It would stand longer and it would hold regardless of who is our state’s executive. That’s important to us for making long-term change."

Other states are taking a similarly incremental approach. North Carolina’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed a budget last month that bans Planned Parenthood from receiving state money for family planning and pregnancy prevention. Also last month, Wisconsin’s state Assembly passed a measure that aims to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal Title X funds by having the state's health department apply for the federal grant instead.

Supporters of the Ohio bill say that the funds will simply be redirected to other clinics, community health centers, and local health departments, without interrupting health services. But the state's community health centers are already under strain, and might not have the capacity to take on the additional clients. “You’re going to take a proven, effective program that’s making a difference—you’re going to disrupt that and try to find someone else to replicate it,” says Copeland, who points out that Planned Parenthood clinics were awarded the federal grants through a competitive process.

This is another battle that Republicans are winning easily.  Ohio's state government is 100% controlled by the GOP and has been since 2011.  Midterm elections in 2014 only gave Republicans more power (and re-elected Kasich in a landslide). Now Ohioans are reaping that particular whirlwind.

Ending abortion and making contraception available to only the few was always the goal, and Kasich is leading the charge.

StupidiNews!

• Hurricane Patricia, now a record-breaking Category 5 storm with winds topping 200 MPH, is set to make a "catastrophic" landfall on Mexico's Pacific coast Friday.
• Victims of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle have received $100,000 a piece in restitution as part of his plea deal on child pornography and sexual assault charges.
• At least 42 people are dead in a bus crash near Bordeaux in western France as a head-on collision with a truck caused the bus to catch on fire.
• One American soldier was killed in a raid assisting Kurdish Peshmerga forces in rescuing more than 70 hostages from an Islamic State prison in Iraq on Thursday.
• A federal judge has struck down Indiana's law barring "ballot selfies", ruling that taking pictures of marked ballots and sharing them online is constitutionally protected free speech.