Last Call For Another Rand Paul Flip Flop

Looks like Sen. Rand Paul is back to outlawing all abortion in America if elected President.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) appeared to return to his hardline stance on abortion in a recent interview, after suggesting in April that he had softened his position. 

Earlier this year, Paul upset his social conservative allies by saying he wouldn’t try to outlaw abortion if he became president. 

But in an interview with the American Liberty Association, the potential 2016 presidential candidate said he believes human fetuses deserve personhood rights — a move that would completely outlaw abortion.

“It is a big issue for me. I tell people that really it is all about when life begins,” Paul remarked. “You know, I’m a physician. One of the things I would do in my job is to go into the pediatric nursery and I would examine babies that are one-pound babies, looking in their eyes to try to make sure they didn’t suffer from blindness from being born prematurely.” 

“And the interesting thing is when you’re in the neonatal nursery and you’ve got a one-pound baby, everybody acknowledges that that baby has rights, the Bill of Rights applies to that baby and nobody can hurt that baby,” he continued. “It’s a one-pound baby. But a week before, even a full-term seven-pound baby has no rights, according to the way people are looking at it, and I think that is a big mistake.”

So now the "libertarian" hero is not only fully on the forced birth train, but he's on the ridiculous "personhood" issue as well.

But please, explain to me again how he's not a Tea Party Republican.

The New Koch Tastes Suspiciously Like Old Koch

Just a reminder that Charles Koch has enough money and power to buy an op-ed in USA Today to tell us lesser schlubs that the real problem in America is that poor people have it too easy, and that to fix the economy we're going to have to make some sacrifices.  And by "we", he means "you."

Too many businesses focus on getting subsidies and mandates from government rather than creating value for customers. According to George Mason University's Mercatus Center, such favors cost us more than $11,000 per person in lost GDP every year, a $3.6 trillion economic hit. 

Compounding the problem are destructive regulations affecting whether and how business invests and employees work. Federal rules cost America an estimated $1.86 trillion per year, calculated the Competitive Enterprise Institute. At Koch Industries, we've seen how punitive permitting for large projects creates years of delay, increasing uncertainty and cost. Sometimes projects are canceled and jobs with them. Meanwhile, 30% of U.S. employees need government licenses to work. We need a system that rewards those who create real value, not impedes them.

Now this math only works if you believe that A) government contracts add no value to the country's GDP and B) the $1.86 trillion per year in federal rules has no benefit whatsoever, unless you basically want to get rid of every federal agency in the US: Education, the EPA, the SEC, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, our intelligence agencies, the FDA, and pretty much everything else.  That price tag is the cost of being civilized.

When I was growing up, my father had me spend my free time working at unpleasant jobs. Most Americans understand that taking a job and sticking with it, no matter how unpleasant or low-paying, is a vital step toward the American dream. We are in for more trouble if young people don't find that all-important first job, which is critical to beginning their climb up the ladder. 

Finally, we need greater incentives to work. Costly programs, such as paying able-bodied people not to work, are addictive disincentives. By undermining people's will to work, our government has created a culture of dependency and hopelessness. This is most unfair to vulnerable citizens who suffer even as we say they are receiving "benefits." 

I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King. There are no dead-end jobs. Every job deserves our best. "If a man is called to be a street sweeper," King said, "he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

Don't you love it when a man dedicated to destroying wages, unions, and the dignity of being able to support a family without having to take a second job quotes Dr. King?  Only a truly awful man, a man worth so much money that he has become a sociopath, would look at our safety net and declare it's "paying able-bodied people not to work."

What a great Master of the Universe to serve, eh?

Meat Depressed

Well, just when you thought NBC's Meet The Press couldn't get worse, dismal ratings with host David "Fluffy" Gregory have the peacock network planning to replace him with the even worse Chuck Todd.

Chuck Todd, a political obsessive and rabid sports fan, is the likely successor to David Gregory as moderator of “Meet the Press,” with the change expected to be announced in coming weeks, according to top political sources. The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert. Although Todd is not a classic television performer guaranteed to wow focus groups, his NBC bosses have been impressed by his love of the game, which brings with it authenticity, sources, and a loyal following among newsmakers and political junkies.

Because NBC really needed more insider baseball Villager crap on MTP, and not someone intelligent enough like any number of MSNBC hosts.  Maddow has the gravitas to do the job, but she's also smart enough not to take it because it's the political equivalent of masturbation.  If I had to listen to Sen. John McCain, RNC chair Reince Priebus, and columnist David Broder discussing Iraq and I was unable to hit any of them in the face with an engine block, I'd pass on being considered too.

Oh, and Tim Russert wasn't that great, guys.  He still helped the Bushies sell Iraq.

StupidiNews!

• Legendary comedian and Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams is dead from an apparent suicide at age 63, as he was found in his home in California.
• A Texas court has ruled against a family of homeschoolers who expected the Biblical Rapture to occur and thus stopped teaching children.
• NATO is warning that Russia, with some 45,000 troops massed on the border with Ukraine, could invade the country at any time.
• California Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers have reached a tentative agreement on a $7.2 billion water bond issue to battle the state's worst drought in decades.
• California also has passed the nation's first smartphone "kill-switch" legislation to require a way to disable phones in case of theft, now headed for Gov. Brown's desk for signature.

Last Call For The Keys To The Kingdom

As an IT professional I can attest to the conclusions in this Wired article on passwords.  They're not very secure for two big reasons: one, they're not random enough (and cracking software has gotten very good at guessing) and two, it's a lot easier to just steal all the passwords at once from the server because they're not encrypted.

Here’s an example: some systems force you to chose an eight-character password, using capital letters, numbers and at least one number. That sounds pretty secure, but it’s not. The word P@ssw0rd fits these criteria and password cracking tools such as JohntheRipper or hashcat will guess it in minutes. That’s because they use something called “mangling rules” which take dictionary words and substitute letters such as a for @ or s for $. 

“The cracking software that’s out there has known about all of these tricks for more than a decade,” says Herley. “A lot of the password completion policies don’t push people toward randomness and things that will pass 10^14 guesses, they push people toward predictable strategies that will not.” 

Try out enough password-strength checkers, and you’ll get the impression that more is always better when it comes to password. But that’s not really the case, Herley says. Randomness is the key. But the problem—and it’s a near-fatal one—is that humans are really, really bad at generating random passwords. So maybe we should just expect our passwords to suck, and concentrate on protecting accounts in other ways–like with two-factor authentication, where you have to use a password in tandem with something like a fingerprint, a text message, or a random number generated on a device you lug around.

Two-factor authentication should really be standard by now, but it's not.  It's too inconvenient and costly to implement it for all users across an entire system about 99% of the time.  That's not going to change until the costs of not having enforced two-factor authentication for all users (like hackers stealing account info and the lost business it causes) exceed the costs of implementing it.

It's getting to that point for Apple and Google now.  They offer it and really should make it standard.  You'll see more and more companies going to two-factor authentication and soon as losses from password hacking and "social engineering" mount into the billions.

The counter-argument is that no system can ever be 100% secure as long as people have to access it and it has access to the internet, so there does have to be a limit on it.  But I'm betting sometime soon your IT department will be rolling out two-factor authentication, and not just for remote users.

When Liberals Don't Vote In Midterms...

...Democrats run like Republicans to capture the conservative voters that do show up.  That's the lesson of 2010 that Democrats are putting into play in 2014. 

Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama. 

The Republican-flavored ads provide an early glimpse of how Democrats will wage their 2014 campaign. Democrats, hampered by Obama’s rising unpopularity and the tendency for conservatives to turn out at higher levels than liberals in midterm years, face the reality that swing congressional districts favorable to them in 2012 will be far less so in 2014.

Whether the Democrats running in those districts can survive what party strategists acknowledge is a deteriorating national political environment will largely hinge on how well they can appeal to more conservative voters. 

“It’s a different kind of electorate,” said Ben Tulchin, a San Francisco-based Democratic pollster. “If you’re running in a competitive district as a Democrat in a nonpresidential year, you want to strike a more moderate tone.”

Moderate tone my ass.  Democrats are running Tea Party campaigns because Tea Partiers are the only people who regularly vote in midterms.  The rest of voters, especially liberals, stay home and complain about why there are no liberals in Congress.

Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who’s running in a district that Obama won in 2012 and 2008, has started airing a commercial that strikes a tea party theme. It highlights his record as speaker of the state House of Representatives when, he says, he helped balance the state’s budget. 

“It’s really pretty simple. You don’t buy things you can’t pay for,” Romanoff states. 

As Romanoff narrates, a graph of the nation’s soaring debt pops up on the screen. The image looks strikingly similar to one that appears in a Web video Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released in 2011 to sell his controversial budget plan, though a Romanoff spokeswoman insisted that the campaign hadn’t borrowed from the former GOP vice presidential contender. 

New Hampshire Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, whose district broke for Obama by a yawning 11-percentage-point margin in 2012, is running an ad that touts her support for small-business tax cuts while showing her touring a local microbrewery. Separately, former Iowa state Sen. Staci Appel, in a district Obama won by 4 percentage points two years ago, underscores her record of fighting overspending in state government, a populist theme often heard from tea party-aligned conservatives.

So yes, because liberals stay home and don't vote, the electorate is conservative.  Democrats run as conservatives to get their votes, because conservatives are the ones voting.  We're not.

If liberals don't give a damn about voting in midterms,why should Democrats give a damn about liberals who don't vote?

State Of Destruction

The real political prize for Republicans in 2014 isn't Harry Reid's Senate majority leader chair, but dozens of state legislatures and several governor's mansions that could flip into the hands of the GOP in November, which could give them total control of a number of purple states in 2015.  If you thought things were bad at the state level before in places like Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina is total GOP control of the state, wait until places like Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada fall.

At a time when Democrats and Republicans in control of statehouses are using their authority to push through ambitious policies that by contrast highlight the paralysis in Washington, the potential for further Republican gains has raised the possibility of deepening the policy divide between red and blue states. Republicans now control 59 of the 99 partisan legislative chambers, and have complete political control — both legislative houses and the governor’s mansion — in 23 states, while Democrats control 13. The total number of states ruled by a single political party, 36, is the highest in six decades.

Officials from both parties say there are two states that the Republicans might be able to add to the list of places where they enjoy complete control — Iowa and Arkansas. (There are no similar opportunities for Democrats.) Given that, Republicans this year are also looking to pick off individual chambers as a way of increasing their negotiating ability with Democratic governors and statehouses, or to block Democrats from passing legislation.

Republicans are looking to take over senates in Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, Maine and Nevada, and houses in Kentucky, New Hampshire and West Virginia. Republicans could emerge with complete control of the legislatures in New Hampshire and Kentucky, though both of those states have Democratic governors.

That would mean that the only thing keeping Obamacare alive through Kynect in Kentucky would be Dinosaur Steve.  And if Democrats are unable to win next year when Beshear steps down, you can kiss Kynect goodbye, as Republicans here have vowed to dismantle the program if they take over.

They hope these victories will help them push through legislation that has been stymied by Democrats until now, such as pressing the kind of restrictions on labor organizing the party passed in Wisconsin, or rolling back gun laws in Colorado. In Iowa, Republicans are looking to eliminate a tax on manufacturing and enact a ban there on telemedicine abortions, where women in rural areas obtain abortion pills after videoconference consultations with faraway doctors.

Matt Walter, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which is spearheading the statehouse efforts, said, “The pattern is crystal-clear at this point, and Wisconsin is the best example of it: That ability to drive your agenda when you are completely in control of state government will absolutely continue to play out.”

If Republicans end up controlling two-thirds of state legislative chambers, the country is going to suffer greatly.  No matter how you feel about voting for Democrats in the Senate, you'd better get to the polls for your state legislature elections, and push that lever for the D side.

StupidiNews!

• The latest complication in Iraq is PM Nuri al-Malaki's refusal to step down as a new government is being formed after elections and military forces loyal to him are in Baghdad's streets.
• Israel and Hamas have agreed to another 72-hour cease fire for now, but both sides are very far apart on any sort of lasting peace.
• Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline is ready to begin clinical trials of a vaccine for the Ebola virus, the company announced over the weekend, as the virus advances in West Africa.
• Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won the country's first direct presidential election, allowing him to combine the powers of both offices to build "a new Turkey".
• Scientists say a new process to create ammonia for fertilizer using just water and air could lead to lower carbon emissions.

Last Call For Another Lost Soul

Another week, another police murder of an unarmed black youth, this time in the St. Louis neighborhood of Ferguson, where 18-year old Mike Brown was due to start college on Monday before cops put ten bullets in him and left him dead in the middle of a city street.  The police story:  Brown was shot as he reached for a police firearm in the back of a police car.

Brown was found dead 35 feet from the cruiser at the scene.

The killing drew criticism from some civil rights leaders, and they referred to the 2012 racially charged shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a Florida neighborhood watch organizer who was acquitted of murder charges, as well as the New York City man who died from a police chokehold.

"We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement," said John Gaskin, who serves on both the St. Louis County and national boards of directors for the NAACP.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the shooting death "very disturbing" and the New York-based civil rights leader said he planned to go to Ferguson to meet with the family Monday night or Tuesday.

A few hundred protesters gathered outside Ferguson Police headquarters about the time the news conference was to begin. At one point, many of them marched into an adjacent police building, some chanting "Don't shoot me" while holding their hands in the air. Officers stood at the top of a staircase, but didn't use force; the crowd eventually left.

Protesters outside chanted slogans — "No justice, no peace" and "We want answers" — and some carried signs that read "Stop police terrorism" and "Disarm the police."

Critics have contended that police in the St. Louis area too often target young black men. Statistics on police-involved shootings in the region were not immediately available.

St. Louis County Police Department is in charge of the investigation. County Executive Charlie Dooley, who showed up at the protest Sunday to urge calm, said he will request an FBI investigation. U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said Sunday that Attorney General Eric Holder had instructed attorneys in the department's civil rights division to monitor developments.

My father had "The Talk" with me when I was ten, growing up in North Carolina.  "You can't lose your temper being who you are.  You have to remain calm and always be yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full sir."  It's advice I've taken to heart since then.  It's advice I'd give my own children, should I ever become a father.

But Mike Brown is dead, and a weary country shrugs its shoulders and moves on.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/08/10/4062851/naacp-feds-should-investigate.html?sp=/99/102/111/#storylink=cpy

Abercrombie & Finished

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie is done, getting crushed in the Democratic primary by State Sen. David Ige by 35 points.

In the governor's race, Ige, 57, begins the general election as the frontrunner, given Hawaii's long tradition of electing Democrats. But he faces a potentially challenging race.

In addition to Republican nominee and former lieutenant governor Duke Aiona, Ige also faces former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann, a well-known former Democrat who is running as the Hawaii Independent Party candidate. Because of his appeal to some Democrats, Hannemann could attract voters who would otherwise vote for the Democratic nominee.

Ige celebrated his victory by reminding supporters how much of an underdog he once appeared to be.

“People told me I was crazy for giving up my seat in the state Senate, but I knew we needed change. They reminded me that no incumbent governor had ever lost a primary election. That changed tonight," Ige told supporters.

The loss by Abercrombie, 76, likely marks the end of a political career spanning more than two decades.

A longtime liberal congressman who was elected to the state's top job in 2010, Abercrombie's approval rating has been very low during the past couple of years.

He pushed an unpopular pension reform program and clashed with organized labor leaders. He also faced heat for appointing Schatz to the Senate in late 2012 instead of Hanabusa, following the death of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D), a political icon. Inouye wanted Hanabusa to succeed him.

Ige overcame Abercrombie's heavy cash advantage. The governor outspent him by about 10-1.

A rare win for the little guy here, as Abercrombie is a career politician and trashed Hawaii's liberal base whenever possible.  The result?  He got his ass soundly and deservedly kicked.   Picking Brian Schatz to fill Daneil Inouye's Senate seat made him among the least popular governors in the country, and despite raising the state's minimum wage and signing into law same-sex marriage, Abercrombie was doomed from the start when he picked Schatz, his own Lt. Governor, to succeed Inouye in the least white state in the nation.

Not sorry to see him go.

Wrecker-tary Of State

Hillary Clinton has officially gotten to the "I would have done a better job than President Obama" part of her triangulation phase of her "I'm not actually running for president" campaign, just in time to remind Democrats why she lost to Obama in 2008.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.

As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.

So yes, President Hillary Clinton would have gotten us into Syria's civil war.  Awesome.  Just what we needed!

Of course, Clinton had many kind words for the “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful” Obama, and she expressed sympathy and understanding for the devilishly complicated challenges he faces. But she also suggested that she finds his approach to foreign policy overly cautious, and she made the case that America needs a leader who believes that the country, despite its various missteps, is an indispensable force for good. At one point, I mentioned the slogan President Obama recently coined to describe his foreign-policy doctrine: “Don’t do stupid shit” (an expression often rendered as “Don’t do stupid stuff” in less-than-private encounters).

This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

Of course.  This is why I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries.  "Don't do stupid stuff" is very much an organizing principle, and if Hillary can't see that, and if she's going to spend the next 27 months running on how she would have done a better job than President Obama and expecting those Democrats who disagree with her to just shut up and fall in line, she's got another thing coming.

Scare Tactless

Every now and again I'm reminded that Democrats do stupid things on occasion too, and Dianne Feinstein is pretty terrible for at times turning into a Republican.

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein warned Friday of the risk that the insurgent group ISIL could be preparing fighters to attack American and European targets.

“It has become clear that ISIL is recruiting fighters in Western countries, training them to fight its battles in the Middle East and possibly returning them to European and American cities to attack us in our backyard,” the California Democrat said in a statement backing military action authorized by President Barack Obama. “We simply cannot allow this to happen.”

Feinstein called for a broader military campaign against ISIL, not just the targeted missions authorized by the president.

“It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future. Inaction is no longer an option. I support actions by the administration to coordinate efforts with Iraq and other allies to use our military strength and targeting expertise to the fullest extent possible,” Feinstein said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned of a similar possibility in an opinion piece for Time.com.

If your stance on military authorizations ever sounds "similar to Ted Cruz", you need to stop talking immediately.  DiFi really, really needs to be replaced by a better Democrat one of these days.

Silicon Valley's Race To The Bottom

What is it with Silicon Valley and apps that allow you avoid "ethnic" neighborhoods, and why does anyone think this is a good enough idea to throw actual money at?

SketchFactor, the brainchild of co-founders Allison McGuire and Daniel Herrington, is a Manhattan-based navigation app that crowdsources user experiences along with publicly available data to rate the relative "sketchiness" of certain areas in major cities. The app will launch on the iTunes on Friday, capping off a big week for the startup, which was named as a finalist in the NYC BigApps competition. 

According to Ms. McGuire, a Los Angeles native who lives in the West Village, the impetus behind SketchFactor was her experience as a young woman navigating the streets of Washington, D.C., where she worked at a nonprofit.

Now, I can totally understand why you would want an application that would allow women to avoid street harassment.  That is a noble goal.  This app doesn't do that.  What SketchFactor does is just say "Hey, this whole neighborhood is scary, don't go there."

 It's less racism as it is classism, but there's still a pretty awful component to it.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• US jets have leveled airstrikes against ISIS positions near Irbil, Iraq as they try to stop ISIS convoys and artillery heading for the Kurdish regional capital.
• A judge has ruled against the NCAA in a lawsuit and injunction that directs schools to offer student athletes a limited share of college sports revenue.
• Israel has resumed airstrikes on Hamas in the Gaza strip as Egyptian mediators are calling for cease fire talks to resume in Cairo.
• Ukraine is threatening to cut off Russian access to oil and gas pipelines to the EU as the next step in sanctions against Moscow.
• Sci-fi series Babylon 5 could be heading for the big screen as creator J. Michael Straczynski is in talks to write and finance the film.

Last Call For A Post Hobby Lobby America

Just a reminder that with Republican bigots blocking ENDA and the Supreme Court leaving a hole in religious freedoms big enough to drive a tank through, if you're LGBTQ in America, you still can be legally discriminated against in dozens of states, like Pennsylvania.

Two women who hoped to buy gowns to wear to their wedding were turned away from a bridal shop in Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania, prompting a torrent of criticism for the store online and by word-of-mouth. 

According to PAHomepage.com, the brides-to-be were informed that the W. W. Bridal Boutique “does not service same-sex couples” because to do so would be a violation of their “religious beliefs.” 

One of the two women — who wish to remain anonymous — posted on Facebook that she called the store to schedule a fitting for herself and her partner. She was reportedly placed on hold for several minutes, then told, “Unfortunately she would not be able to schedule an appointment for us because they currently do not service same-sex couples — it’s just not something they do.”

The bridal shop’s Facebook page has been deluged with angry criticism from people who believe that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to pick and choose who they serve based on sexual orientation. 

“As a fellow Christian, I’m ashamed of people like you,” wrote one commenter. “We are taught to love our neighbor regardless. Did you skip that part?” 

Channel 7 Eyewitness News contacted a local civil rights attorney who confirmed, however, that the bridal store’s actions are legal. Pennsylvania currently has no laws against discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And why do I care about this?  Because there's no moral difference in saying "We won't serve you because you're lesbians" and "We won't serve you because you're black."  There is however a legal difference:  one's patently illegal, the other is fine and dandy.

That must change, and it will in my lifetime.  I think it will happen in the next decade, actually.

Big Dog Loose In Coal Country

As I've been saying, Bill Clinton was always going to end up stumping for Alison Lundergan Grimes as her ace in the hole.  Her daddy Jerry and Big Dog go way back.  The former president's appearance Wednesday with Grimes in Perry County, the heart of Kentucky coal country, was there to remind everyone why the last Democrat to win a presidential election in the state was Clinton himself.

As former President Bill Clinton stepped to the podium following Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes' emphatic introduction, a coal miner whispered something to him. 

The miner's advice, the former president told the audience packed inside the Hal Rogers Center, was "don't forget to remind people she's much prettier than Mitch McConnell is." 

"You got that right!" a man in the audience shouted. 

That was one of many contrasts Clinton tried to draw between McConnell, the U.S. Senate minority leader, and Grimes, the Democrat hoping to unseat him, as he traveled to a part of the state that has seen coal jobs evaporate and laid much of the blame on President Barack Obama. 

"I am a Clinton Democrat," Grimes shouted to the approving audience. 

For Grimes to win in Eastern Kentucky, she'll need voters to believe that declaration and not that she is "Obama's Kentucky candidate," as McConnell and his allies have asserted repeatedly. 

Grimes has endeavored from the start of her campaign to prove herself as a pro-coal Democrat. 

On Wednesday, as Grimes and Clinton spoke, members of the United Mine Workers of America sat onstage behind them, serving as flesh-and-blood proof that Grimes had won the group's endorsement. 

"Let's get the record straight, senator: I am the pro-coal candidate in this race," Grimes said, arguing that McConnell "hasn't saved or created one coal job" in his 30 years in office.

You may not like Big Dog that much, and you may not like the fact that Grimes is running as a Clinton Democrat when Obama is president.  Tough titties, kids.  This is how Kentucky politics rolls, and King Coal still calls the shots.  That means Grimes is going to have to stump with Bill here and not Barack.  She's going to remind voters in the mountains that the last time things were good there is when Bill was in charge, and that since then Mitch the Turtle has given the store away from hard working miners to nasty energy companies who don't give a damn about safety and wages and the people who live here, because they don't.

So yeah, that means playing the Clinton card with gusto, and doing it several times between now and November.  Bill Clinton's still real big here, and you play to win.

GOP Minority Outreach, Brimful Of Assholes And A .45 Edition

Our latest edition of GOP Minority Outreach Theater goes like this: Yadda yadda, freedom of religion, something something Second Amendment remedies, blah blah blah You're The Real Racist(tm) and then we all threaten Muslims with large caliber handguns.

Gavin Ellzey, the vice chairman of the Kansas Republican 3rd Congressional District Committee, advised on Twitter in early July that “offending Muslims is the duty of any civilized person.” 

Ellzey added, “Especially with a .45.” 

In an interview with The Star, the Overland Park resident acknowledged writing the tweet in response to television news reports about Christians being “crucified” overseas. 

“Sometimes you overreact,” Ellzey said.

Hey, at least he didn't shoot anyone.  Yet.

Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said the state party has “no responsibility for or connection to the public statements of private citizens who perform volunteer work for the party.” 

He added that the “party in no way shares Ellzey’s sentiments on Muslims.”

The "party" doesn't.  The large majority of the people who compose the party, well, that's a different story.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article1160420.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article1160420.html#storylink=cpy

StupidiNews!

• President Obama has authorized limited airstrikes in Iraq to stop Islamic State fighters from attacking US interests in the region, including helping religious minorities in northern Iraq.
• Tropical Storm Iselle is dumping several inches of rain on the Big Island of Hawaii, with Category 3 Julio now close behind.
• As the 72-hour cease fire in Gaza has expired, Hamas rockets were fired into Israel, followed by another night of IDF airstrikes and artillery as talks have now completely broken down.
• West African leaders and the World Health Organization have now declared the deadly Ebola outbreak there to be a public health emergency as the death toll reaches 932.
• Netflix has now surpassed HBO in revenue in the second quarter of 2014 as the internet streaming service continues to add subscribers.

Last Call For A Final Walsh-Out

Montana Dem Sen. John Walsh, dogged by a plagiarism scandal that broke last month, languishing with low poll numbers, and under heavy pressure from the state's newspapers to forego his campaigning, has decided to drop out of the November election.

"I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. senator," Walsh said in a statement, according to The Billings Gazette. "You deserve someone who will always fight for Montana, and I will." 

Walsh's decision follows a report in The New York Times in July which said that Walsh plagiarized significant parts of his master's thesis. 

Since then Walsh had reportedly been trying to decide whether to continue running in the race or not. Even before the plagiarism story broke Walsh had an uphill battle to victory and faced a formidable challenge in Rep. Steve Daines, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

"Uphill battle" is being friendly.  Walsh was down by double digits before the scandal broke.  Now that his career is over, Montana Democrats have only a few days to find a replacement, and by replacement I mean "Getting Brian Schweitzer to run for Senate."

Of course, Schweitzer has his own problems, which pretty much ended his dark horse 2016 presidential aspirations before they could aspirate.

Is there anything else that Montana Dems can do?  There's rules for this all, apparently.

The first stop is at the Secretary of State's office. Linda McCulloch, who holds that position, will first authorize the state Democratic Party to replace Walsh. 

At that point, the party's Rule 15 kicks in. That rule articulates the replacement process: a special nominating convention held by the party at which a new nominee is selected. The party would send out written notices of the time and date of the special convention -- or, if time is running short, simply call the party delegates who are allowed to vote for a replacement candidate. 

Those delegates represent a broad swath of party leadership from across the state: voting members of the executive committee, the chair and vice chair of the central committees for each of Montana's 56 counties, the state committeeman and committeewoman from each county, presidents of charter organizations, and so on. In total, the party estimates, it's about 175 people -- which is actually about 0.2 percent of all of the voters in the Democratic primary election. That number is an estimate. Many counties might not have assigned committeewomen, for example, and not every county has a central committee. 

The convention will likely be held in Helena, with the goal of making it "as open as possible," according to party spokesman Bryan Watt. The first priority will be voting delegates, of course, but Watt would also like to accommodate press and "as many people as possible," should such a convention become necessary. 

Once the convention begins, the process gets a bit murkier. (Again: Uncharted territory.) Delegates will be able to nominate candidates from the floor, and those candidates will have a chance to speak. Then others could speak for or against the nominees. Finally, voting will begin. If none of the candidates got more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the lowest vote-getter drops from the ballot, and voting continues until there's a nominee.

So is anyone left to run other than the already damaged Schweitzer?

The names that have been floating around: 

John Bohlinger. Bohlinger was lieutenant governor of the state under Gov. Brian Schweitzer -- and was a Republican at the time. When Baucus left his seat, Bohlinger ran in the primary to replace him, losing to Walsh in June by over 40 percentage points. 

Nancy Keenan. Keenan is the former superintendent of public instruction in the state and former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion access advocacy group. She spoke at both the 2008 and 2012 Democratic presidential conventions. 

David Wanzenried. Wanzenreid currently sits in the Montana State Senate, representing the area around Missoula.

And I'm pretty sure all three of those folks are going to have an even tougher time.  So yeah, unless a minor miracle happens, kiss this seat goodbye for the Dems due to several self-inflicted wounds.

GOP Minority Outreach, Operation Mo-Mentum Con't

Mississippi GOP Rep. Mo Brooks is the new hero of the bigoted right for his comments earlier this week on the "War on Whites" that the Democrats are supposedly waging.  And every time Brooks opens his mouth, the Republican party proves it's the party of casual racism, this time calling the GOP's outreach efforts to court Latino voters "race-bating".

The Huffington Post reported that the comments came in response to a passage from the Republican National Committee's Growth and Opportunity Book 2013, that was read aloud by the National Journal's Ron Fournier, who was also a guest on the show.

"If Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence. It doesn't matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies," Fournier quoted from the report, while appearing on "The Dale Jackson Show" on WAPI.

Brooks responded by saying "Americans shouldn't be divided by race" and that targeting Hispanic voters would be "race-baiting."

"That argument, is playing hand in glove with the Democratic race-baiting strategy, and it has to come to a stop," he said. "I'm one of those who thinks that it doesn't make any difference if you're Hispanic, or you're white, or you're Asian, or you're black, people throughout America want to do what's in the best interest of America."

Nothing like an old white guy telling black, Latino, and Asian people that race doesn't matter, and if you think it does, You're The Real Racist(tm). Why can't you people be like us awesome white people and not worry about your race at all because it's meaningless or something?

This argument is as old as race in America.  "Why is there a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and not one for all Americans?  That's racist!"  It's a favorite tactic of the right and has been for decades.  The answer of course is "I look forward to the day when the NAACP is no longer needed", meanwhile, Republicans like Brooks are happily helping to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, civil rights, and everything in between.

Just because white America is "tired" of civil rights and wants people to "get over race already" doesn't mean the need for civil rights is obviated, kids.  Today's bigots in the GOP are proof of that.

PS, keep doing those interviews, Mo.  I really hope you get to the point where you're eventually talking about the "need for more organizations to help white people".  You know, like the KKK.