The Talibantastic Xianist Theocracy of Kentucky

There is no end to the illegality, no bottom to the stupidity, no limit to the hypocrisy and deceit.

In a school system that teaches teenagers that condoms cause AIDS and bars science teachers from even mentioning evolution, our only legislature has decided that the most critical educational need in Kentucky is a fable imagined by a bunch of Bronze Age desert nomads.

Jake nails it:

What the hell is wrong with Kentucky these days?

What’s in the water?

Check out SB 142:

AN ACT relating to Bible literacy courses in the public schools.
Create a new section of KRS Chapter 156 to require the Kentucky Board of Education to promulgate administrative regulations to establish an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible; require that the course provide students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy; permit students to use various translations of the Bible for the course; amend KRS 158.197 to permit a school council to offer an elective social studies course on the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament of the Bible, the New Testament, or a combination of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament of the Bible.

Introduced in the State Senate late Friday by David Boswell, Julian Carroll and Ed Worley.

When you dig in? Check this:

(2) The purpose of a course under this section is to:

(a) Teach students knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy;

They’ve added language to say all laws will be followed. But if that’s the case, they need to legislate classes from the Koran and other religious texts right away.

What a waste of time and money.

I'll just add that David Boswell is the freakazoid wingnut DINO loser who handed the open Second District Congressional seat to repug Brent Guthrie in 2008, during the biggest Democratic landslide in 64 years.

The Case For Literacy/Civic Tests

When I read that Tom Tancredo had recommended literacy and civics tests that people must pass before being allowed to vote, I thought YES! Finally, a way to ensure that repugs never, ever, EVER win another election. I was going to draft a sample test, but Eli at FireDogLake beat me to it:

Tom Tancredo has put his sweaty nativist finger squarely on The Problem With Democracy Today:

And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word “vote,” or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.

Granted, everything after that first sentence is insane racist gibberish, but aside from that, perhaps he has a point. Would it really be such a terrible idea to administer some sort of test to ensure that only people with at least a passing acquaintance with reality can vote for the government officials who have such a huge impact on our lives?

Here, I’ll throw out some possible sample questions to get the ball rolling:

1) Was Saddam Hussein responsible for 9/11?

SNIP

5) Was Barack Obama born in the United States?

SNIP

11) Do tax cuts increase or decrease government revenue?
12) Is Medicare a government program?
13) Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice? Is it contagious?

SNIP

16) Is the Earth thousands of years old, or billions of years old?

SNIP

19) Do scientists and academics contribute anything useful to society?
20) Is individual voter fraud a widespread epidemic that is distorting our electoral process?

It’s true that many of these questions would have the entirely incidental and unintended effect of disproportionately disenfranchising conservative and Republican voters, but doesn’t that seem like a small price to pay for an electorate that makes rational and well-informed decisions about who should run the country?

Read the whole thing.

Then watch Rachel Maddow remind us what this issue is really all about:

Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?

There's so much that's wrong, stupid and hilarious about this it's hard to know where to start.

Harold Ford is supposedly running for a U.S. Senate seat from New York. Trying to unseat an incumbent in the primary. In the 3rd-largest state in the union. In the next six months, he's got to raise a zillion dollars and attempt to shake hands with 20 million people, half of whom hate him because he's a homophobic DINO asshole and the other half of whom hate him because he's black. He's got a huge, monster, near-impossible campaign ahead of him, and he's already at least a year behind.

So what is he doing to raise big money/meet many residents of New York state/impress major national power brokers?

Speaking at the Governor's Prayer Breakfast. In Kentucky.

"Governor Steve Beshear and First Lady Jane Beshear invite you to celebrate this special time of year at the 45th Annual Governor’s Prayer Breakfast, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2010, beginning at 8 a.m. in the Bell Gym at Kentucky State University.

The Governor’s Prayer Breakfast is a long-standing tradition in Kentucky dating back to 1965 and includes representatives of all three branches of government. Each year it provides Kentuckians with an opportunity to give thanks for their blessings and ask for strength to lead the Commonwealth toward a brighter tomorrow.

SNIP - (trust me - Beshear's sacharine and deceitful quote will make you puke.)

The theme of this year’s breakfast is “A Call to Serve.” Harkening to the pioneer spirit that has shaped the Commonwealth, the theme illustrates the call many Kentuckians have taken to help their neighbors during these tough times.

Keynoting the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast this year is former United States Representative Harold Ford Jr., of Tennessee. Described by former President Bill Clinton as “the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century,” Ford’s commitment to service and community action are reflected in his well-known dedication to creating a government that is working for the betterment of all. Musical entertainment will be provided by the award-winning Kentucky Regional Men’s Chorus.

I wrote last year about this unconstitutional idiocy, and noted that new President Obama had found a way to use the occasion for something more rational and important than making demands of an invisible sky wizard.

He extended that tradition at this year's national prayer breakfast, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity to attack the viciously homophobic Ugandan government proposals to execute people for their sexual orientation.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Harold Ford to do anything remotely so American, non-sectarian and Democratic.

You can't surf the blogosphere without tripping over posts about how horrifically bad Ford really is and always has been, but here's a recent good one from Down With Tyranny.

It's typically incompetent of Beshear to give the keynote address spot to Ford, who is one of the few "Democrats" more republican than Ben Chandler.

The hilarious part is that the only people in Kentucky liberal enough to not hate Ford for his race hate him for being a corporate-owned, repug-cock-sucking DINO.

The Ad You Should - But Won't - See During the Super Bowl

Here's what they're talking about.

LATE UPDATE, 6:30 a.m.:

Go here right now and just wallow in what is, this morning, as it was 4 and a half years ago, the GREATEST FUCKING NEWSPAPER ON THE PLANT.

Making a Farce of Criminal Justice

Print out this article, keep it in your wallet, and read it aloud to anyone who so much as implies that if you're arrested for something, you're probably guilty.

During the past two years, a Louisville Metro police detective has accused at least a dozen defendants — many of them juveniles — of crimes they did not commit.

Detective Crystal Marlowe has pursued charges against some defendants for crimes they could not have committed because they were already in jail. And in other cases, she charged people based on identifications that the victims later said they never made.

Some of those Marlowe accused spent days or even months in jail before they were exonerated, The Courier-Journal found in a review of cases handled by Marlowe.

In addition, dozens of Marlowe’s cases fell apart once they got to court. The newspaper’s review of the roughly 130 felony cases in which Marlowe made arrests during 2008 and 2009 found that 40 percent ultimately were dismissed, often at prosecutors’ request.

Read the whole thing.

Oh, and C-J? This is the kind of journalism that makes people line up to buy your paper. Kudos for it, but shame on you that I have to explain that it's far too rare in your still-a-rag excuse for a newspaper.

Redirecting TARP Funds to Small Business

In his weekly address, President Obama proposes one small step away from enriching Wall Street and toward helping Main Street.



Read the full transcript here.

Here's Your Change And Hope

Courtesy Zandar.



As Zandar says:

Republican president, job losses increase. Democratic president, job losses decrease.

Yes, correlation does not equal causation, unless you say, passed a stimulus bill at that February '09 low point there with the intent of decreasing job losses.

Any questions?

If you're still unemployed, nothing's changed. But the fact it has changed for the better for others should give you hope.

Kids Are Kids, and Parents Are Parents, Even in Kentucky

My apologies for missing this story when it happened two weeks ago.

A one-time lesbian couple will be allowed to have shared custody of the child they raised before splitting up, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The high court approved the couple's joint custody agreement and ruled that one of the women, Arminta Jane Mullins, acted as a “de facto parent” with her partner, Phyllis Dianne Picklesimer.

The decision, which Justices Bill Cunningham, John Minton and Will T. Scott partially dissented from, reverses a Kentucky Court of Appeals ruling saying Mullins lacked standing to pursue joint custody of the child, now 5, because she was not a parent.

Picklesimer was artificially inseminated and gave birth to the boy in 2005. The couple filed a joint custody agreement in February 2006 in Garrard County and split up two months later.

Picklesimer denied Mullins to have contact with the boy that September, prompting Mullins to go to court to see the child.

Justice Wil Schroeder wrote for the court's majority that the women made multiple decisions about the child before and after he was born, with Mullins caring for him while the couple was together and for five months after they split.

As bills to use tax dollars to promote idiotic mythology on license plates and to force women seeking abortions to suffer rape-by-camera, along with other antediluvian measures, work their way through our pathetic excuse for a legislature, keep this ruling in mind.

Kentucky is not yet hopelessly, irredeemably backward.

Number 86

Lawrence is a small county deep in the heart of Kentucky's coal country. I wonder if the mountains of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border reminded First Sergeant Matthew Sluss-Tiller of home.

A soldier from Lawrence County was among the casualties in a roadside bomb in Pakistan on Wednesday.

Matthew Sluss-Tiller, a 1993 graduate of Lawrence County High School, was one of three American troops who died in the blast, which occurred outside a girls’ school near in northwestern Pakistan. Three students also died in the blast.

Various news organizations reported that Sluss-Tiller and his fellow soldiers were part of a small unit that trains Pakistani Frontier Troops responsible for security near the country’s border with Afghanistan. Their deaths were the first known U.S. military fatalities in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border.

Journalists traveling with the American convoy said the blast hit the vehicle in which the soldiers were riding, an indication that the soldiers were targeted.

The 35-year-old was married to his high-school sweetheart, and had a three-year-old daughter.

Rally for Sex Education

Secular blessings and sincere thanks to the people who braved the Wrath of the Freakazoids to rally yesterday in favor of teaching facts about sex to children in school.

Advocates for sex education in the public schools rallied in the Capitol Thursday in support of legislation that would require schools teaching the subject to use a science-based curriculum.

Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, a Louisville Democrat who is sponsoring House Bill 119, said the measure is needed to protect teens not only from teenage pregnancies but also from sexually transmitted diseases.

“We're in the 21st century,” Marzian said in expressing outrage that sex education standards are not in place in the schools. “You would think teaching sex education was teaching voodoo or whatever.”

She said she decided to sponsor the legislation after her daughter, a public school teacher, told her of questions her students asked during health class that were based on wrong assumptions.

“It terrified me,” she said.

Sex education isn't currently required in public schools. Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, said a 1980s law requiring it was repealed by the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.

You will be shocked to hear that since abadoning facts and science in favor of abstinence-only and other myths, Kentucky's already inexcusably high rates of teen pregnancy and teen STDs have risen.

Read the whole thing.

Then tell your state representative and senator to support Marzian's bill.

Find toll-free numbers to call your legislators here.

Email your legislators here.

Find out who represents you in the house and senate here.

Have You Secretly Videotaped Your State Senator Today?

With all the record-breaking corruption, obvious lying and general sliminess displayed by national repugs lately, you might be concerned that our local goopers are falling behind in the sleazy tactics department.

Have no fear:

When State Sen. Robin Webb met in her Capitol Annex office last week with the Republican candidate who wants to replace her and a representative of the Kentucky Medical Association, she was secretly videotaped, she said Thursday.

Webb, D-Grayson, said she resented the secret video recording during a meeting with GOP rival Dr. Jack Ditty, and Dr. Henry Goodman, an Ashland neurologist.

Ditty is a Greenup County dermatologist who lost a special state Senate election to Webb last year by 282 votes and has filed to run against her this year. Neither has an opponent in the May 18 party primary elections.

Goodman said Thursday he taped the meeting without Ditty’s knowledge “to make sure Sen. Webb’s comments about one of her bills were consistent with what she had been saying.”

"Doctor" Goodman? If your goal is to catch on tape elected officials contradicting themselves, you're starting with the wrong political party.

Goodman and Ditty deny doing anything wrong, even after getting caught red-handed.

Senate Minority Leader Ed Worley, D-Richmond, said he does not believe Ditty and Goodman.

“They went to Sen. Webb’s office under the guise that they were on legislative business to talk about a bill and she, as Dr. Ditty’s senator, showed him the professional courtesy to meet with him and that wasn’t at all why they were here.”

Worley said the two men “secretly tried to record her to see if they could get her to make an awkward statement or pick her nose or do something inappropriate that they could use in a campaign commercial.

“That is how low they have stooped.”

Worley said the two men should apologize to Webb and that the event “speaks to Dr. Ditty’s character.”

Ditty called Worley’s comments “preposterous” and accused him of “playing politics.”

Um, "Doctor" Ditty? Ed Worley is the Senate Minority Leader. Playing politics is his job.

As yours, apparently, is providing yet more evidence to voters that you are grossly unqualified for public office.

Nothing New Under the Corporate Sun

Shamelessly stolen from Blue Girl at They Gave Us A Republic ....

More Proof You Can Fool Most of the People Most of the Time

New rule: surveys can't count positive opinions of failed politicians from anyone who can't name a single factually true accomplishment of said failed politician.

Just past the midpoint of Gov. Steve Beshear's term, Kentucky residents are evenly split in their opinions of the job he has done, according to the latest Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll.

The poll, conducted Jan. 28-31 by SurveyUSA, found that 44 percent of Kentuckians approve of the job Beshear has done, while 44 percent disapprove. Twelve percent said they are undecided.

Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Beshear, said the governor doesn't pay much attention to poll numbers and understands that factors such as the state's current budget problems cause them to go up and down.

“It is gratifying to see a large percentage of Kentuckians appreciate the hard work the governor is doing to get us through this crisis,” she said.
Related

Richardson said the poll numbers showing Beshear significantly below 50 percent “are indicative of a larger national mood regarding the national economy. … It is very difficult to navigate this bleak economic environment.”

The governor's latest approval rating is better than it was in November, when a SurveyUSA poll done for WHAS11 found that just 39 percent approved of the job he was doing and 55 percent disapproved. But it has dropped since last December, when 47 percent viewed his job performance favorably.

Read the whole thing.

Or read the full poll results here.

Davos Exploiters Exposed

You won't read about it in all the masturbatory articles about the crumbs thrown to 99.9 percent of the world by the rich, fat countries at luxury resort Davos, but somebody there actually called the fuckers on their hypocrisy.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars has it:

The Yes Men have done it again. They infiltrated the World Economic Forum at Davos and announced a united strategy to end world poverty. (As if!) They issued this press release and set up a fake website, featuring carefully-dubbed fake interviews with various leaders (including Bill Clinton, shown above) admitting past exploitative economic policies and pledging to change them.

But the press corps attending the event largely ignored them, more's the pity:

In a series of diabolically stupid video manipulations, a cabal of anti-poverty filmmakers have performed an elaborate slander of the World Economic Forum, showing its "leading lights" taking a dramatic departure from the litany of meaningless pledges they usually make at the annual gathering in the Swiss resort town.

In response, WEF spokesperson Adrian Monck could barely contain himself. "The only defense to satire is common sense!" he sputtered, before racing back into the WEF war room to deal with the burgeoning crisis.

Fortunately for the WEF, few media outlets picked up on the WEF's fantastic but fictional approach to world poverty ("World Leaders Pledge Strategy to End Poverty Now").

Instead, the media was dominated by coverage of a real WEF press release warning of "Over Regulation of the Financial Sector" (sic).

The forged videos showed eight of "leading lights of Davos" outlining a few clear strategies to end poverty.

Read the whole thing and watch the video here.

Speaking Coal to Power

Ya know, Stevie, Barack Obama understands that the Magic Buggy Whip industry owns Kentucky politicians. He knows the importance of pleasing the people who bankroll your campaign. He even realizes that breaking the coal habit in Kentucky is going to be harder than getting an addict off oxycontin.

But when you waste your precious few minutes with our very intelligent, very well-informed President of the United States to tell him obvious and blatant lies, he just thinks you're fucking stupid.

In a meeting with President Barack Obama today, Governor Steve Beshear told the President that coal is a critical component in the nation’s energy policy, and warned that abrupt changes in coal regulations would balloon energy costs and cripple manufacturing industries. Gov. Beshear joined other governors in Washington, D.C. to discuss energy policy with the President.

“The current focus on coal is not just a Kentucky issue, it’s not just a coal-state issue, it is a national issue,” said Gov. Beshear. “The future of our nation’s energy security and economic development depends on our ability to continue using our coal resources, our most abundant, reliable, and low-cost energy source.”

Obama met with the governors three days after presenting his budget proposal to Congress, which includes $6 billion for clean energy technology research and development.

Gov. Beshear submitted a letter to the President, outlining Kentucky’s significant contribution to the nation’s energy supply and its unique position to grow and develop new energy sources.

“We have to be realistic about our baseload energy needs, and therefore, the importance of coal production and electricity generation must not be unduly hampered,” Gov. Beshear wrote. “At the same time, we have to strategically plan for meeting the nation’s energy needs through a newer, cleaner energy paradigm. I intend to make Kentucky a leader in this area.”

Thank you, you cowardly waste of oxygen, for once again embarassing the entire state on a national stage, and ensuring that mention of the name "Kentucky" engenders nothing from the White House but hysterical laughter.

Outsmarting Ourselves

Tom Tomorrow, as always explaining the unexplainable:

Despair and Die, National Repugs - KY Dem wins local special election!

Two months ago, a repug won a special election for the state senate and the political world exploded with national projections. A local repug won a senate seat previously held by a repug, changing precisely nothing politically in the state, much less nationally. But wingnut blogs everywhere crowed that it was a galactic victory for goopers because Higdon won by lying about health care reform, thus proving that Real Americans Everywhere Hate Everything Democratic and Therefore Barack Obama Should Resign and Kill Himself.

Except that Higdon won in a repug district by running as a strong, unapologetic repug against a weak, pathetic dem who ran away from health care reform, President Obama and real Democratic values.

Now a Democrat has won Higdon's repug state house seat in a strong repug district.

It's the end of the world for the national GOP! Tea partiers stole the Massachusetts Senate race from Martha Coakley - impeach Scott Brown! Mitch McConnell and John Boehner must resign and hand their campaign war chests over to the DNC! Any republican anywhere in the country who votes against Democratic proposals must be tried for treason and shipped to Guantanamo! Outlaw the GOP!

It's nine months to the November election, people. Politics can change on a dime, but only if everybody works their fucking tails off and never, never, never gives up.