Last Call For I'd Rather Die Than...

Again, if you're still wondering why and how thousands of Kentuckians voted to take their own Medicaid away from themselves and their neighbors by electing Matt Bevin, the story of Borden County, Texas will be very illuminating.

In rural Borden County, 12 people signed up for Obamacare this year. 

Livid over the government telling them they must buy something and loath to take anything that looks like a “handout,” the uninsured here are likely to stay that way. As Obamacare’s third open enrollment season began Sunday, this rock-solid conservative community of about 650 people offers a window into the challenges health law advocates face to expand coverage around the country.

“Health care is fine, if you can afford it,” said Brenda Copeland, a middle-aged woman who works at the Coyote Country Store and café, along with her two grown daughters, all of whom are uninsured. Copeland has had health insurance only once in her life, and opted to pay Obamacare’s tax penalty earlier this year rather than buy a plan. 

“I hope Obamacare goes down the toilet,” she added. 

Turning around that kind of entrenched hostility — and convincing people they can afford Obamacare plans — are among the biggest challenges facing the administration as it rolls out the health law’s third enrollment period against the backdrop of a presidential campaign whose winner could determine the law’s fate. Winning new converts like Copeland is key — not just to boost the law’s political standing but to enable its online insurance markets to flourish. But by now most people have heard about the law — even if they have limited or even erroneous understandings about what it might mean for their own pocketbooks. And despite the law’s success in bringing about a historic drop in the uninsured, many don’t like what they’ve heard. 

This is Texas, after all, one of the most anti-Obamacare states in the country, and people here have heard plenty from politicians about why they should demand the repeal of President Barack Obama’s health law.

Understand that there are millions of Americans who would rather suffer drastic health insurance consequences, up to and including dire economic and health consequences than take a "handout" from a black President.

Matt Bevin turned Kynect back into Obamacare.

He will be governor a month from now as a direct result.

Those Black Lives Actually Do Matter

There goes FOX's Shepard Smith, inconveniently reminding his viewers that the death of Illinois cop Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz was an elaborate suicide ploy used to cover up his years of criminal corruption, and not "assassination by Black Lives Matter terrorists" as the right wanted you to believe.

“Think of the narrative that came out of that from so many, many places, about, ‘It’s the fault of the Black Lives Matter movement,'” Smith told guest Dan Schorr. “All of this stuff that was just, it really turned up the rhetoric and it really was factually wrong.”

Several conservatives quickly declared Gliniewicz a victim in the so-called “war on cops” when his body was found in a remote area of the small community in September.

But authorities in Fox Lake confirmed this week that Gliniewicz actually committed suicide after reporting a false pursuit of three “suspicious men” — prompting a huge manhunt that turned up empty. The 30-year veteran also reportedly tried to hire a gang member to kill a local administrator who was on the verge of revealing that he had embezzled thousands of dollars from a youth program in order to pay for his mortgage and gym membership, among other personal expenses.

“Today it got disgusting,” Smith said of Gliniewicz’s apparent attempt to have the official killed.

Schorr, a former prosecutor, said one of the lessons of this case is for observers to “not jump to big conclusions.”

“You have to find out all the facts first,” he said.

“Don’t get ahead of the news,” Smith responded, adding, “It will run you over.”

Don't get me wrong, police officers are killed in the line of duty.  But the effort to suggest that Black Lives Matter is leading a race war to assassinate white police officers, and that the rates of police being killed somehow constitutes a "new and deadly War on Cops" that justifies racist harassment of BLM is insane...and as Shep reminds us, "disgusting".

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Governor-elect Matt Bevin wasted little time Thursday morning letting Kentucky know exactly what will happen to hundreds of thousands of us when he's sworn in next month.   Here he is speaking with Elizabeth Hasselbeck on FOX and Friends (check the 1:48 mark):

HASSELBECK: Let me ask you this, for the locals watching. Ah, are you going to follow through with your plan to dismantle Kynect, that's the state's health insurance plan?

BEVIN: Absolutely.  Oh my goodness, I...Yeah, if those have not followed me closely to figure out, I made very very few promises...

HASSLEBECK: Right.

BEVIN: ...I made very few claims, those things I said I would do, I am going to do, no question about it, yes.

Let's keep in mind Bevin's also said he would reverse Medicaid expansion too.

Now, lately he's made noises about submitting a federal waiver and shifting 400,000 plus people to a private insurance Medicaid alternative like Indiana has, but that's going to be real hard without, you know, something to administrate Medicare alternative plans for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families statewide like, I dunno, say something along the lines of a GODDAMN STATE INSURANCE EXCHANGE LIKE KYNECT *breathes heavily*

Sigh.

Meanwhile, in Frankfort, it looks like a lot of people currently employed by the Commonwealth and getting insurance through their employer are suddenly going to be needing to shop individual insurance plans in 2016, Kynect or no Kynect.

Among those hopeful about the transition is Martin Cothran, senior policy adviser for the Family Foundation of Kentucky. “It’s going to be a big change in policy in this state, I think … to have the governor’s office in the hands of somebody who really wants to make some conservative change is heartening.”

Cothran said, “We’ve elected a governor who has expressed strong support for religious freedom, who is also in favor of charter schools. So we are hopeful some of the policy statements he made during the campaign are realized.”

But David Smith, executive director of the Kentucky Association of State Employees, is worried about Bevin's promises as a candidate to “shrink the size of government.”

Bevin said in an interview with The Courier-Journal last month, “Every department, every cabinet, every single area of government will have to tighten their budgets to the absolute degree possible.”

Smith said he fears Bevin will cut too deeply in areas the new governor does not consider priorities.

“We’re expecting cuts to personnel right off the bat, we anticipate the possibility of privatization of parks service,” Smith said. “I hope what he said in his acceptance speech about trying to bring everybody in Kentucky together for the best solutions is true. … But for now, I would say 99 percent of state workers feel concerned about what’s coming next: Where are we going to be cut? Is there a possibility I won’t even have a job come July?”

 Guess you have to ruin a few hundred thousand lives in order to run Kentucky like a business.

StupidiNews!

• NASA has announced that data from the MAVEN spacecraft reveals that Mars lost its water over billions of years as solar winds stripped oxygen and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• A global chemical weapons watchdog NGO confirms that mustard gas was used in an August attack in Syria, but it's not at all clear by whom.
• Doctors Without Borders says that a US airstrike on its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan last month was deliberate, citing witness reports of the US plane targeting people fleeing.
• Art by Van Gogh and Picasso led a $726 million art auction in New York this week, but Sotheby's semi-annual art auction is fetching far smaller totals than 2013's record haul.
• Dozens of cities, towns, and counties in Colorado passed local referendums Tuesday to allow municipal broadband networks, something state law bans without ballot measures.

Last Call For Ryan's Line Drive

Over in Washington, it's good to see the House getting back to business with Speaker Paul Ryan, and by "business" I mean whining a lot and then quietly giving President Obama what he wants, just like Orange Julius.

The House passed a long-term U.S. highway funding plan Thursday, handing new Speaker Paul Ryan a legislative victory and paving the way for the first multi-year transportation law since 2012.

Lawmakers voted 363-64 for the bill that would revive the U.S. Export-Import Bank, whose charter expired June 30. Bankers also won a last-minute change that will use Federal Reserve surplus funds to pay for highway improvements, instead of reducing a payout they receive from the central bank.

“It cuts waste, it prioritizes good infrastructure, it will help create good-paying jobs. And it is the result of a more open process,” Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said at a news conference after the vote. "It’s a good start. It’s a glimpse of how we should be doing the people’s business."

The Senate has passed its own version of the legislation, and a conference committee will try to resolve the differences before current highway funding ends Nov. 20.

The House measure would provide a six-year blueprint for spending on roads, bridges and mass transit projects and provide funding for three of those years. Companies that may get a boost include Caterpillar Inc., one of the top Ex-Im beneficiaries and the world’s biggest maker of mining and construction equipment. Contractors may feel secure enough to purchase new equipment after renting in recent years.

So when all's said and done, the Highway Bill will most likely pass, the Export-Import Bank will be back, and 80% plus of the House passed what President Obama set out to do with the Highway Bill anyway, that is secure a long-term, multi year infrastructure investment.  It doesn't raise additional funding, but it doesn't cut it either.

It's the best we can hope for, that is "basic functionality that doesn't end in flames" from this Republican-led Congress.

The Carson Show, Con't

Over at TPM, Ed Kilgore argues that Ben Carson may be even more dangerous an ideologue than Donald Trump is, and unlike Herman Cain, he's not going anywhere.

Cain was not a revered figure before running in 2012, beyond those who listened when he sat in for an Atlanta-based radio host. He also was not exactly a non-politician, having run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. But the most important reason to stop identifying Carson with Cain is simple: Cain’s loss of his once-high poll ratings were not caused by a voters getting tired with a “flavor of the month” or realizing his slim qualifications; he was brought down by a series of sexual allegations that escalated from multiple claims of sexual harassment to a long-term extramarital affair. Cain never admitted any wrong-doing, but he also never convincingly rebutted the allegations, and all the smoke convinced many observers there might be fire. He left the race on his own terms, but after losing most of his altitude.

There’s zero reason to think Carson has any such skeletons in his closet. The one thing we know about his background that is politically dangerous is his testimonial work for a subsequently fined nutritional supplement company. But unless it turns out he was paid a lot more than seems to be the case, he’s only in hot water if he cannot soon keep his story straight. Being a straight shooter is extremely important to his image.

He seems to have successfully back-pedaled on his one easy-to-understand policy heresy, a proposal to replace Medicare and Medicaid with heavily subsidized health savings accounts, which he now describes as an “option” for beneficiaries (that, too, is problematic, but not as much as his original “idea”).

So there remains what should actually disqualify Carson: his extremist, paranoid “world-view” which treats regular boring old center-left liberals as conscious and systematically deceitful would-be destroyers of this country bent on imposing a Marxist tyranny via “politically correct” suppression of free speech and confiscation of guns.

There’s unquestionably a constituency for this point of view, but we may never know whether it would outnumber the Republicans baffled or horrified by it until such time as one of his rivals or the heretofore clueless media start talking about it. If they don’t pretty soon, then one theory of the 2016 GOP nominating process could come true: conservatives want to rerun the 1964 elections, and they’ve finally found their Barry Goldwater.

And that's some relatively scary stuff.  Carson may be soft-spoken and somewhat obsessed with weird stuff like grain-storing pyramids, but the man's worldview is pretty clear: liberals aren't just politically opposed to Carson and the GOP, liberals are Communist enemies of the state that must be purged from the country. As Ed points out in his piece, MoJo's David Corn has documented Carson's hero, Bircher nutbag Cleon Skousen, pretty well.

Carson swears by Skousen, who died in 2006. In a July 2014 interview, Carson contended that Marxist forces had been using liberals and the mainstream media to undermine the United States. His source: Skousen. "There is a book called The Naked Communist," he said. "It was written in 1958. Cleon Skousen lays out the whole agenda, including the importance of getting people into important positions in the mainstream media so they can help drive the agenda. Well, that's what's going on now." Four months later, while being interviewed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Carson denounced unnamed Marxists who were presently seeking to destroy American society: "There was a guy who was a former CIA agent by the name of Cleon Skousen who wrote a book in 1958 called The Naked Communist, and it laid out the whole agenda. You would think by reading it that it was written last year—showing what they're trying to do to American families, what they're trying to do to our Judeo-Christian faith, what they're doing to morality." (Skousen had been an FBI employee—not a CIA officer—and mainly engaged in administrative and clerical duties; later he was a professor at Brigham Young University and police chief of Salt Lake City.) And the most recent edition of this Skousen book boasts Carson's endorsement on the front cover: "The Naked Communist lays out the whole progressive plan. It is unbelievable how fast it has been achieved."

Skousen's book was a hyperbolic, far-from-sophisticated Cold War denouncement of communism and the Soviet Union. Marx, Skousen claimed, had set out "to create a race of human beings conditioned to think like criminals." And in McCarthyesque fashion, Skousen contended that "agents of communism" had "penetrated every echelon of American society—including some of the highest offices of the United States Government." He insisted that many "loyal Americans" had been duped by Communists into doing the Reds' dirty work because "they are not aware that these objectives are designed to destroy us." Thus, these fellow travelers and naive citizens were part of a "campaign to soften America for the final takeover."

Skousen listed dozens of the goals of the commies and their useful idiots, including pushing free trade, promoting coexistence with the Soviet bloc, capturing "one or both of the political parties in the United States," winning control of schools ("use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda"), and infiltrating the press ("get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, and policy making positions"). He said they wanted to control "key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures," weaken American culture by degrading artistic expression (and substituting "good sculpture from parks and building" with "shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms"), and present homosexuality as "normal, natural, and healthy." What's more, he claimed, they wanted to discredit the Bible, eliminate prayer in schools, demean the American Founding Fathers as "selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the 'common man,'" and support "any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc." He said they also wanted to encourage divorce and promiscuity, incite "special-interest groups" to "rise up…to solve economic, political or social problems," and seize control of unions and big business.

If this all sounds like Glenn Beck-level "blackboard full of plans for fluoride to become the next caliphate" insanity, that's because it is. It's quite easy to laugh this garbage off as funny, but it's not.

This guy is leading the polls now among the GOP.

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Joe Sonka goes through the after-action report of the Dem bloodbath and points out that next month, things will immediately get worse for Kentuckians as Matt Bevin takes control.

Even before next year’s session of the Kentucky General Assembly convenes, many of Gov. Steve Beshear’s executive orders are now at risk of being immediately rescinded by Matt Bevin once is sworn in on Dec. 8. 

Beshear’s executive orders at risk include prevailing wage on construction projects; a $10.10 per hour minimum wage for state employees and contractors; protection of state employees from discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation and gender identity; and – most significantly – his creation of Kynect and the expansion of Medicaid to those up to 138 percent of the federal poverty rate. Bevin appears likely to rescind most of these, though he at times backtracked during his campaign on a pledge to do away with Medicaid expansion “on day one.” 

The hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians who have coverage through Medicaid due to this expansion will be watching Bevin closely to see whether their eligibility will be rescinded with the stroke of a pen – assuming that is legally possible, which is up for debate – or if he will attempt to push for this through the legislative process.

When the General Assmebly does convene, the Dems left in control of the KY House are the only thing standing between Bevin and his agenda, but there's a very real possibility that it won't even last more than a few months.

While Bevin becoming governor is a major victory for Republicans and their policy agenda, the big remaining hurdle is the Democrats’ slim majority in the state House. Republicans have long called for so-called “right to work” legislation, tort reform, charter schools, abortion restrictions, fuller privatization of public pensions, and a more regressive consumption-based tax reform in the General Assembly – only to be stymied by Democrats in the House. Though Bevin will now have the bully pulpit of the governor’s mansion, his favored legislation still will face the hurdle of Democrats and House Speaker Greg Stumbo. 

Or will he? A serious threat for Democrats over the next two months will be rural conservative House Democrats flipping to the Republican Party, seeing the writing on the wall of their electoral future by having a D next to their name in a region of voters trending solidly Republican. Another threat is Bevin appointing any of these Democratic House members to a position in his administration or a judgeship, which would come along with a hefty boost in their public pension and open up the seat for a Republican to win in a special election. Gov. Beshear tried the same strategy with Republican members of the Senate in order to flip the majority of that chamber, though ultimately failing in that task. 

If this happens and the Republicans take over the House, the entire Republican policy agenda likely will pass by this spring. If not, Bevin and his party still have the opportunity to pick up enough seats in next year’s state House elections, delaying their long sought after wish list of policy goals until 2017. Until then, the House remains the Democrats’ only firewall.

And I just don't see it happening that the Dems will still be in charge of the KY House come 2017.

StupidiNews!

• While UK officials say that an ISIS bomb brought down Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 over the Sinai last weekend, Egyptian officials are vehemently denying involvement in the disaster.
• Former President George HW Bush's new biography takes aim at fellow Republicans Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney for damaging America's reputation under his son's administration.
• A factory collapse in Lahore, Pakistan has killed at least 18 as rescue workers struggle to free scores trapped under the rubble.
• Global bond investors are betting big on a Fed interest rate hike by Janet Yellen in December as yields are rising across world markets in anticipation.
• A new set of studies finds both teenagers and toddlers are using mobile devices so much that they are an integral part of their lives for kids as young as six months.

Last Call For Turned Out

I know I said this morning that turnout wasn't the reason why Conway lost because it's an off-year election with low turnout that Dems have won with less. but as Joe Sonka reminds me:

Barack Obama received 679,364 votes in Kentucky in 2012. Jack Conway received 426,964 votes yesterday. #kygov

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015

Why do we consider 30% turnout a valid election in any state?

How is that democracy?

Why do we accept this?

The Carson (No) Show, Con't

You know guys, it's totally weird now that Ben Carson is leading, he wants no more televised debates.

Ben Carson’s campaign is suggesting that future Republican presidential debates only be broadcast over the Internet, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The suggestion that the future debates not be televised is one of several calls for reforms from one of the frontrunners for the GOP nomination after a debate last week on CNBC that was widely criticized by the candidates.

“We also think there are too many debates,” Carson spokesman Doug Watts told the Wall St. Journal on Saturday. “They’re all bunched up and they really do take a lot of time away from the campaign and they take a lot of financial resources for us to be able to work on them.”

Carson is leading polls in Iowa, which hosts the first contest in the GOP primary in February. He also has surpassed Donald Trump in some national polls, giving him leverage in the loud debate over changing the debate process.

Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, is holding a meeting with GOP campaign representatives on Sunday night to discuss changes to the remaining debates.

The retired neurosurgeon’s campaign says future debates could be carried on Facebook and YouTube, unnamed sources familiar with the situation told the Journal. They believe doing so will strip television networks of their power to control the formats of the debates.

The campaign also says the forums should prioritize lengthy statements from candidates rather than frequent moderator intervention.

So Internet-popular Carson wants internet-only debates, a limited number of them, and ones that are more infomercial than debate.  In other words, now that he's ahead, suddenly people asking him questions are a bad thing.  In fact it's such a bad thing, the Carson campaign is publicly saying so.

Now, you tell me why that is.

Welcome To Bevinstan

So what the hell happened last night?  How did Matt Bevin win so easily?  Turnout was higher this year than in 2011 by a big number of raw votes and by percentages.

Here's what I have so far:

Democratic turnout in Lexington and Louisville wasn't the issue.  In 2011, Steve Beshear won easily with 26% turnout.  In Fayette County in 2011, Beshear got 32k, Conway got 38k last night.  In Jefferson County, Beshear got 107k in 2011, Conway got 112k last night.

But, in Jefferson, Bevin got 30k more votes than David Williams did in 2011, and in Fayette, Bevin got 27k to Williams' 14k, a 13k difference.  Some of that came from Drew Curtis getting 10k votes in those 2 counties as an Independent when Gatewood Galbraith got 22k in 2011, but what this means is a healthy chunk of Republicans showed up in Louisville that didn't vote in 2011.

In total, 975k Kentuckians voted last night for governor, as opposed to 833k in 2011.

To put it simply, what happened is this: In 2011, Steve Beshear won 93 of 120 counties.

In 2015, Jack Conway won just 14 counties.  In Pulaski County, where the percentage of uninsured dropped from more than 17% to under 5%, Beshear won 51-40%.

Last night Matt Bevin won it by 47 points.

Conway lost county after county that Beshear won. 79 of them, to be exact.  In every case, turnout in these rural counties was higher and they turned out for Bevin.

Tens of thousands of people who voted for Steve Beshear in 2011 in fact turned around and voted for Matt Bevin last night.

Next door in Kenton County, in 2011 Beshear won comfortably, 51-45%.  Conway lost 57-40% last night.  And turnout was higher by 5,000 votes.

Conway just got smoked in coal country and everywhere else.  The pollsters were badly, badly wrong, all of them.  Beshear voters turned on him in droves.

@ZandarVTS no. he lost because he is unlikable -- left thought he was meh and conservative Dems thought he was NOBAMA.

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015

@ZandarVTS and NOBAMA is of course in large part the creation of the state Democratic Party that helped make him toxic for short term gain

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015

He lost.  And now, we pay for it.

And we know what Bevin's theory of government is.  He told us months ago.

“People in this town are nervous on both sides, but they ought to be,” Bevin said. “If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous. 

“If the taxpayer is not getting a good return on their tax investment, then we should reevaluate it. I’m agnostic to what that means. I don’t have predetermined notion as to what this means for merit versus non-merit, Democrat versus Republican. 

“I’m agnostic. I will come with a blank sheet of paper and I think that is healthy. Somebody who truly is not beholden to anybody. Somebody that doesn’t owe anyone any favors — that’s what makes people nervous about Jenean (running mate Jenean Hampton) and I. We are not beholden to anybody.”

Government run like a business.  We've gone from "Taxes are the cost of civilization" to "If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous."

Guess who determines who and what is productive, valuable, and justified in Kentucky now?

In the end, this state voted to stick it to the ni-CLANG! president and his "War on Coal".  And when things only get exponentially worse in rural KY, it'll still be Obama's fault.

Welcome to Bevinstan.

StupidiNews, Election Central Edition!

Well, it's official, Matt Bevin is our new governor here.

Over the river in Ohio, legalized marijuana lost by more than 30 points as voters soundly rejected the plan for ten approved growing sites, as opponents call the measure an illegal monopoly.  However, a ballot issue to allow a non-partisan committee to redraw Ohio House districts won handily.

In Houston, Texas, the city's HERO non-discrimination ordnance lost by 25 points after the Texas Supreme Court invalidated the law and forced a ballot vote of the measure passed 11-6 last year by the City Council and outgoing Mayor Annise Parker.

San Francisco voters failed to ban short-term housing rentals, which would have put hometown startup Airbnb out of business in the city, and Washington State passed a measure banning the sale of endangered animal parts in the state.

In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant easily won re-election by more than 30 points over an unknown Democratic challenger, while a ballot measure to force the state to fully fund educational spending levels established nearly 20 years ago failed by 4 points.

Last Call For...Oh, What's The Use

Matt Bevin is your new governor of Kentucky, folks.

Voters in Kentucky elected Republican Matt Bevin as governor Tuesday.

Bevin beat Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway. Unofficial results from the Kentucky State Board of Elections had Bevin beating Conway 52.11 percent to 44.19 percent with 110 of 120 counties reporting Tuesday night.

Conway conceded defeat in an election night speech, saying "tonight was not the result that we had hoped for, but it is a result that we accept." Conway said he called Bevin and wished him well.

Bevin, a tea party favorite, has opposed the expansion of Medicaid in the state under the Affordable Care Act. Conway supports expansion of the program.

Bevin said he would replace the Medicaid expansion with another program by using a federal waiver. "Nobody's losing anything," Bevin told NBC News in an interview Monday.

He's lying, of course.  "Another program" means the end of Kynect, the end of Medicaid expansion, and 400,000 people now having to get a federal exchange plan from healthcare.gov next year.

And once the GOP finishes off the Dems in the KY House next year, Medicaid goes the way of Texas and Kansas here and becomes a block grant program, and even more people will be kicked off because they will no longer qualify.

These are the people that voted to wreck the state.  Maybe 14% of voters, because turnout was maybe 27%.

These are the counties that benefited from Medicaid expansion the most.  Some of them had 20% plus uninsured rates.  After Kynect, some of those same counties dropped to under 5% uninsured.

Most of these counties voted for Bevin, some of them, by 40-50%.  A few voted for Conway, and Louisville and Lexington.

Welcome to Bevinstan.

The Kentucky Horse Race, Con't

Fark.com founder Drew Curtis is running as an independent in today's gubernatorial race, and in a real sense I'm glad he is, because he's probably taking enough support from Matt Bevin to actually give Jack Conway the win.  Curtis's platform is pretty simple, he's running to prove that someday, America won't be a two-party system anymore.

I NEVER THOUGHT I’d run for public office. 

Of course I never thought I’d found an irreverent news site called Fark.com, run it for 16 years and counting, write a book, fight off a patent troll, go to business school at age 38, and do dozens of other things. But even two years ago I would have considered myself the furthest thing from a politician. 

Nevertheless [on Tuesday], when Kentucky voters head to the polls, they will see my name on the ballot, as an Independent candidate for governor.

My friends thought I was insane to do this—why take on a year’s worth of tedious work to fight for a job taking on problems that likely can’t be fixed? Well, like pretty much all of us, I feel like the political process isn’t representing our interests. A couple of parties dominate the process, limiting choice and grappling for power instead of trying to solve real problems. But at Fark, I have seen how effective the Internet can be at taking down entrenched gatekeepers and empowering regular people. So this year, I decided to see if I could harness that power toward changing politics. 

I based my run on a theory: that the Internet and social media have finally made it possible for a third party candidate to win. Regardless of how things turn out, I’m convinced I was absolutely correct. And I’m also convinced you’ll see more candidates like me in the near future. As a matter of fact you should consider being one of them. To help you in your run, here are some lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Curtis's theory only works if you assume that there's a large pool of voters out there that want to be given a reason to vote and will vote if you give them that reason.  The reality is voters do not give a damn, don't really care about either party, and hate having to miss work on a Tuesday in order to cast a ballot.

If you really want tech to change America's two-party system, make online voting available nationally.

But where Curtis is right is here:

But the problem is, the Democrats in particular really hate the other party’s candidate. Democrats may dislike their own candidate but they are downright terrified of the Republican. They are primarily voting to keep him out of office, and that makes them unlikely to take a flier on a third-party candidate; they’d rather pick the second-best candidate than vote for me. Meanwhile, I’ve been picking up GOP support no problem because they don’t seem as afraid. That tells me that if the GOP candidate had been more adequate, I’d have pulled this off.

And he's right.  If Matt Bevin hadn't won the primary, Curtis would have had a chance.  He would have been pulling 15, 20 in June, which would have put him in the debates. and would have had a non-trivial shot in a three way race between two meh candidates.

As it is Kentucky just wants to keep Matt Bevin out of Frankfort before he torches the joint.  If the GOP had nominated somebody close to Conway rather than a nutjob like Bevin, yeah, I probably would have strongly considered voting for Curtis.

I remember when Jesse Ventura won the governor's race in Minnesota. It can happen.

The Kentucky Horse Race

Time to head out to the polls, Kentucky.  We've got a governor to elect, as well as multiple state offices, and your choices for chief executive in Frankfort boil down to AG Jack Conway, and Matt Bevin, who has an interesting relationship with reality.

Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway continued their sprint to the finish line in Tuesday’s gubernatorial election as they campaigned in different parts of the state Saturday in an effort to get voters to the polls in a race that appears so close it will be decided by turnout.

Campaigning in Northern Kentucky, Bevin told groups of 30 to 50 people in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties that his latest poll shows that he has grabbed a slim point advantage despite most public polls showing Conway with a 5 percentage point lead. 

"The momentum has shifted. The gap has been closed," Bevin told his core backers at the Boone County Republican Party headquarters. "We're actually up a point as of yesterday." 

Bevin, who declined to release details of his tracking polls, traveled the region with 4th District Congressman Thomas Massie in an effort to rally Republican troops. 

Conway, showing similar confidence as he campaigned east of Lexington, told crowds that their vote is a choice between the “mainstream and the extreme” and he, too, predicted a win on Tuesday. 

Told of Bevin’s claim that he had taken the lead, Conway said his internal polls show him up by more than five points and then added, “It wouldn’t be the first time (Bevin) didn’t tell the truth.”

Bevin has lied the entire campaign about wanting to get rid of Medicaid expansion.  It's right here in his "Bevin Blueprint" for Kentucky. right there at the top of page 10.

I mean, I don't know what else you can say about it.  He flat out says it "should be repealed".  There's nothing in there about any transition, any help for the 450,000 added to Medicaid under the expansion and the thousands more getting insurance through Kynect, he just closes Kynect and puts Kentucky on the federal health insurance exchange.  That's his plan.

Nearly half a million people would lose their health insurance, point blank.  It's in Bevin's own position paper, guys.  It's his stated policy, right there, verbatim.

Oh, and the rest of the Bevin Blueprint is a disaster: ending unions in the state, cutting thousands of state employee jobs, ending state pensions, shifting education dollars to private, charter and home schools and ending state education standards, and massive tax cuts for the rich and for businesses and expecting Laffer Curve unicorns to make up the lost revenue, just like in Kansas.

Oh, and he ends with refusing to enforce federal laws and regulations he doesn't agree with. Nullification uber alles!

Time to vote, Kentuckians.  You've got a choice to make: Conway, or this recipe for economic and austerity disaster that will burn the state to the ground.

John Oliver explains today's election, with the help of a pangolin.

StupidiNews, Election Day Edition!

Voters take to the polls today to elect governors in Kentucky and Mississippi, and Ohio will vote on two ballot measures, one legalizing recreational marijuana and establishing 10 growing sites to produce it commercially, and a second ballot measure that would nullify the first and declare the growing site plan an illegal monopoly.

If you're in Ohio or Kentucky, get out there and vote.

Remember, there are most likely local measures on the ballot where you live too.  Go vote!

Last Call For The Austerity Death Star

The practical upshot from the chaos in the House GOP with Orange Julius now gone and Paul Ryan now Speaker of the House is that the Austerity Death Star will soon be fully operational.

The Wisconsin Republican who claimed the gavel last week is one of Congress’ preeminent tax experts, an ardent advocate of rewriting the code with lots of ideas on how to do it. Over the years, he’s gone further than most lawmakers in pushing politically fraught changes that have gone nowhere, such as wiping out a major tax break for employer-provided health plans and making it harder for the wealthy to claim the hugely popular mortgage-interest deduction.

But now Ryan has far more power to put the issue on Washington’s agenda— and the latest budget deal between congressional leaders and the White House should give him ample room to launch his speakership without being distracted by constant battles over funding the government and raising the debt limit. So some advocates are recalibrating the odds of a long-elusive tax overhaul that they say could spur new jobs and bring corporate money back from overseas.

Sweeping tax change won’t happen this year, supporters say, with lawmakers still staring at a stack of unfinished business — or next year, when the 2016 election will loom even larger. But they say it’s suddenly a lot more likely in the early years of the next presidency, especially if the Republicans win the White House.

“It certainly comes as close to guaranteeing it as possible,” said a top Republican staffer. “It’s his No. 1 priority — it’s what he cares about most.”

The sort of ambitious reform Ryan has in mind, which would be the first since 1986, promises to cut both individual and corporate tax rates in exchange for junking scores of credits, deductions and other special provisions. Any rewrite would be hugely controversial, with an array of powerful interest groups sure to line up to defend their favorite provisions, not to mention many Democrats who’ve long complained that Ryan’s plans amount to a giveaway to the rich. 

In a speech to the House just before his swearing-in Thursday, Ryan named tax reform as one of his top priorities.

It was bad enough when the Ryan Austerity Budget was a club used to get sequestration into play in 2013. But as Speaker, Ryan now has significant power as far as bringing his austerity monster to life. If you still had questions as to what’s at stake a year from now, better hope the GOP doesn’t have the keys to both Congress and the White House when Congress gets called into session in January 2017.

Otherwise, the Austerity Death Star is going to do a pretty good job of blowing America up.

That'll Learn 'Em, Texas-Style

The Texas state Supreme Court takes up a case today on homeschooling and religious liberties, and asks if parents who homeschool under Texas law are required to actually teach their children anything practical at all if they claim there's no point, as the Rapture is coming.

Laura McIntyre began educating her nine children more than a decade ago inside a vacant office at an El Paso motorcycle dealership she ran with her husband and other relatives. 

Now the family is embroiled in a legal battle the Texas Supreme Court hears next week that could have broad implications on the nation's booming home-school ranks. The McIntyres are accused of failing to teach their children educational basics because they were waiting to be transported to heaven with the second coming of Jesus Christ. 

At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one's own children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin? 

"Parents should be allowed to decide how to educate their children, not whether to educate their children," said Rachel Coleman, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Coalition for Responsible Home Education. 

Like other Texas home-school families, Laura and her husband Michael McIntyre weren't required to register with state or local educational officials. They also didn't have to teach state-approved curriculums or give standardized tests. 

But problems began when the dealership's co-owner and Michael's twin brother, Tracy, reported never seeing the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing much of anything educational except singing and playing instruments. He said he heard one of them say learning was unnecessary since "they were going to be raptured." 

Then, the family's eldest daughter, 17-year-old Tori, ran away from home saying she wanted to return to school. She was placed in ninth grade, since officials weren't sure she could handle higher-level work. 

The El Paso school district eventually asked the McIntyres to provide proof that their children were being properly educated and even filed truancy charges that were later dropped. The family sued and had an appeals court rule against them, but now the case goes Monday to the all-Republican state Supreme Court. 

In court filings, the McIntyres say the district is biased against Christians and accuse its officials of mounting a "startling assertion of sweeping governmental power."

This is a pretty big case if only for the fact that one in six homeschooled children in the US live in Texas, mainly because Texas's homeschooling regulations are extraordinarily lenient. Given where Texas is on homeschooling and where SCOTUS is on religious liberties in a post-Hobby Lobby decision America, I'm not only betting this case goes to SCOTUS, but becomes a major precedent in a few years.

Keep an eye on this one, folks.

Boot To The Head (Of State)

Yeah, reality is a bitch sometimes when you're leader of the free world, huh.

Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.

But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops to Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These forces do not have a combat mission."

Earnest said the promises of "no boots on the ground" first came in the context of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad because of his use of chemical weapons. Since then, Syria has become a haven for Islamic State fighters.

USA Today's  Gregory Korte goes on to list 16 times that President Obama said there wouldn't be "boots on the ground" and yet, here we are with at least SOCOM forces in Syria. The right will say we need another 199,950 troops or so, and the left, zero.  There's no distinction here,  "Obama lied!" is what both sides will claim.

To this I say "you were idiotic not to think we'd have special ops troops on the ground in Syria, because that's what they are there for."  Whether or not Josh Ernest should have admitted as such is definitely arguable, but let the screaming about "That Nobel Peace Prize-winning war criminal" continue long enough and just maybe we can elect someone who really will put hundreds of thousands of troops in Syria, Iran, and Yemen while we're at it.

Meanwhile, Russian airliners are mysteriously breaking up over the Sinai. Things are getting weird out there and it's not a good thing. Maybe having a couple of guys out there keeping tabs on Syria isn't a wholly bad idea.

StupidiNews

• Russian Metrojet airline officials believe that Flight 9268 broke up in mid-air Saturday over the southern Sinai peninsula with "an external influence" being responsible. 
• Three people are dead after a car crashed into the front yard of a Bronx home where trick-or-treaters were enjoying Halloween night.
• A few months after losing a majority, Turkey's ruling AKP has regained it in parliamentary elections, giving President Tayyip Erdogan total control of Turkey's government once again.
• After eight years as separate companies, Visa is buying Visa Europe for $23.4 billion in order to unify in the face of competition of MasterCard.
• In a 3-1 vote, the SEC has voted to allow small investors to buy startup company stock online via crowdfunding, putting rules in place called for in the passage of the 2012 JOBS Act.