Rising seas are 500 miles east and 700 feet down, but Global Warming will destroy Kentucky, too

Everywhere on the planet, humanity's days are numbered and the number is few.  Kentucky's distance and elevation from the ocean is not going to save us.

It's all here in Chapter 19 of the official U.S. Government report the Pumpkin Traitor tried to hide on Friday. 


Regarding the Southeast, including Kentucky, the report reads:

While all regional residents and communities are potentially at risk for some impacts, some communities or populations are at greater risk due to their locations, services available, and economic situations. In fact, a recent economic study using a higher scenario (RCP8.5)¹¹ suggests that the southern and midwestern populations are likely to suffer the largest losses from projected climate changes in the United States.

Yep, Governor I Got Mine Fuck You, by stripping Kentucky's treasury, education system and support programs thus keeping us poor, sick and stupid, is making our suffering from global warming even worse than the coasts.

Blood On Their Hands: Bevin and Trump Order 95,000 Kentuckians to Death By Neglect

Even their lies are pathetically obvious. They're not even trying to hide that their goal is to eliminate everyone who is not white, male, straight, rich and republican.


From the Herald:

The Trump administration has again approved new rules for some of Kentucky’s Medicaid population, requiring them to either get a job, volunteer in the community or go to school to keep their government-funded health coverage.

The Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services announced the approval on Tuesday, nearly five months after a federal judge blocked the state’s first attempt. State officials say the new rules can begin as soon as April 1 and will be phased in regionally over several months. They will require adults ages 19 to 64, with some exceptions, to complete at least 80 hours per month of “community engagement” to keep their health benefits. That includes getting a job, looking for a job, going to school, volunteering for community service or taking a job training course.

What's the catch?  Working people on Medicaid will have to verify their working hours every month. So, you're struggling with three jobs and taking care of your kids but you have to drop everything and drive to the nearest Medicaid office - oh, you don't have a car?  Well you can call the Medicaid office - oh, you aren't allowed to make personal calls at work so you can't call during business hours? Well, you can go online ... oh, you live in the 95 percent of Kentucky that has no reliable wi-fi?  Well, guess you're shit out of luck.  And the Bevin-Trump plan is working like a charm.

Kentucky is one of 37 states that has expanded its government-funded health insurance program to include low-income adults with no children and no disabilities. More than 400,000 people signed up for the program, dramatically dropping the state’s uninsured rate and propping up some rural hospitals who depend on the revenue.

But Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has criticized the program, saying it is too expensive and does not make Kentucky’s citizens healthier as the state is still behind most of the country in some key health indicators.

Because the best way to make people healthier is to .... wait for it .... take away their health insurance.

Kentucky Voices for Health, an advocacy group, said they were “deeply disappointed” with the decision. Executive Director Emily Beauregard said during the public comment process, thousands of Kentuckians said access to health care was vital to their ability to be productive and successful.

“Reapproving a waiver that makes hardworking Kentuckians jump through hoops to keep their coverage will no doubt have the opposite effect,” she said.

It's perfectly clear.  If you are not white, male, straight, rich, xian and republican, the people who are those things want you dead.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article222012570.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article222012570.html#storylink=cpy

Repugs/ Freakazoids Employ Lies, Mythology in Latest Abortion Case

There has never, in the millenia-long history of abortion, been a baby killed. Not a child, not an infant, not an "innocent life."  All of those things - babies, children, infants, "innocent life" have the same characteristic in common: they breathe air.  Tissue that is removed from a woman's body does not breathe air.  It is not "alive." It is not a human being.  It is tissue rejected by its biological host, also known as a "woman," an adult human being who does breathe air.

But those scientific facts get in the way of freakazoids and conservatards exercising control over women's bodies, denying them bodily autonomy and the humanity of sexual freedom.

So they lie, and make up stories, and cite fiction composed by bronze-age desert goatfuckers, and appeal to the myth of an invisible wizard in the sky.

From the Herald:

Attorneys for Kentucky's socially conservative governor and the state's only abortion clinic opened their latest legal fight Tuesday, this time over a lawsuit challenging a new state law aimed at a common second-trimester procedure to end pregnancies.

Anti-abortion activists gathered outside the federal courthouse and inside the courtroom as the trial began over the law that its critics, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, say would amount to an impediment for women seeking abortions in their second trimester.

During opening statements, an attorney for the clinic told the judge that the law is unconstitutional because it would "all but eliminate" abortions for women past the 14th week of pregnancy. ACLU attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said the procedure targeted by the state law is "safe and medically proven," and she accused the state's lawyers of "demonizing" the method with inflammatory rhetoric.

Steve Pitt, lead attorney for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's legal team, described the procedure as "brutal, gruesome and inhumane" that results in a fetus being torn apart "limb by limb." He stressed the need to protect the weak, adding: "There are none so weak as an unborn child."

Nope.  There is no such thing as an "unborn child."  If it is a child, it is already born and breathing oxygen.  If it is not born, it is not breathing oxygen and is therefore not a child.

Late-term abortions are not brutal, not gruesome and not inhumane.  They do not tear a fetus limb from limb.  They extract dying, non-viable tissue that will never, under any circumstances, live to breathe oxygen, much less become a human being. 


Second-trimester abortions alleviate the tragedy of a desired pregnancy turned toxic because of birth defects. Forcing a woman to carry a dead or dying fetus for months simply to please the fetus-fetishists is what is cruel, brutal, gruesome and inhumane.

These vicious motherfuckers must be defeated, sent back to their medieval madrassas with their tails between their legs.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article221578385.html#storylink=cpy

 

KY Repugs Cheating to Get Court Wins

Never occurs to them that Judge Shepherd rules against them all the time because they are always wrong. They never consider maybe they should stop passing unconstitutional legislation, and stop breaking laws to get that legislation passed.

No, their solution is to take state cases away from that mean old liberal judge.

From Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd’s order striking down the new Republican-backed pension law led to a lot of criticism from majority-party leaders, including from the governor himself.

Now, some of those leaders are looking at ways to keep all the important state government cases from going to Franklin Circuit Court.

“You basically have a super circuit judge, or judges, because the venue for so many cases are exclusively here. And that shouldn’t be,” Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said in an interview.

Stivers made the point on Friday as part of a panel discussion at the Health Care Leadership Conference of the Kentucky Hospital Association.

House Speaker Pro Tem David Osborne, R-Prospect, said during the discussion he sees support for the idea. “You’ll see some continued discussion and talk about this…But there are a lot of details that have to be worked out that haven’t been, so it’s a little bit tough to say where it’s going.”

State Sen. Morgan McGarvey, a Louisville Democrat who – like Stivers – is an attorney, said he believes any such move “would be blatantly political and an abuse of legislative power.”

Shepherd, who has served as a Franklin circuit judge since 2006, declined to comment on the matter.

 That's because whiny-ass titty babies are beneath his contempt.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article221607280.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article221607280.html#storylink=cpy

Simple Answers to Simple Questions: Because Bevin Is A Stone-Cold Racist

And don't be stupid by pointing to his adopted non-white kids.  That is a classic racist move: adopt black kids to prove both that White Supremacy is best for everyone, and that you can't possibly be a racist - you have black kids!

Joe Gerth in the Courier asks "Why didn't Bevin order state flags lowered for the two black victims of the Kroger shooting."

On Thursday, Gov. Matt Bevin ordered the state’s flags to half-staff to honor the 12 people who were killed in last week’s shooting at a California bar.

He did the same thing in the days after a gunman walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire, killing 11 worshipers.

SNIP

But the question is, why didn’t Bevin order the state’s flags to half-staff to honor the two people who were shot and killed at the Jeffersontown Kroger grocery store just a couple of days before the synagogue shooting?

SNIP

This was more troubling than even the shooting two years ago on Thanksgiving weekend at the Juice Bowl at Shawnee Park. That's because the Kroger shooter appeared to have chosen his victims purely because they were African-American.

“Whites don’t shoot whites,” the shooter allegedly told one white man he encountered during his spree.

And before he went and killed black people at the Kroger, Gregory Bush apparently tried to get into a predominately African-American church — where he would have found more potential victims — but couldn't get beyond the locked doors.

You want a racist governor? Go on, keep voting for the motherfucker.  But don't pretend that you can vote repug and claim to not be a racist.  You are.

Bevin Admin to Give Tax Dollars to For-Profit Charter Scam-Schools

Because  all charter "schools" are scams.  Whether White Supremacy Apartheid charters, christian Dominionism Madrassa charters, Skimming Top Students Away From Public Schools charters, Killing Public Education For Fun and Profit charters or just plain old-fashioned Sucking Tax Dollars Into Private Pockets charters, they are all scams.

And Bevin will strip the public treasury bare to make all his billionaire buddies rich.

From the Herald:

Kentucky Education Commissioner Wayne Lewis said Friday that he will ask the 2019 General Assembly to create a funding mechanism or process for charter schools, but that doesn’t mean that he is asking for extra money.

Of course not.  He'll take the money away from public schools, then use the resulting failure of unfunded public schools to justify making all schools charters.

“It’s simply a mechanism that shows how dollars — already appropriated public schools dollars — would follow a kid to a public charter school if their parents decide to enroll them in a public charter school,” he said.

At a meeting in Frankfort of the newly configured Kentucky Charter Schools Advisory Council, Lewis said he would advocate for anything else the state could do to raise achievement and close achievement gaps.

“It’s my job as Commissioner of Education to do everything that I can to move achievement ... to close achievement gaps ... and high quality public charter schools are one of the tools ... particularly with low income kids, kids of color, that’s what the research shows us.”

That is a blatant lie.  Many studies have shown that the handful of exceptional charter schools - non-religious and non-profit - at best do no worse educating students than do public schools.  Far more commonly, religious charters teach nothing but religion and for-profit charters teach nothing at all because all the funding goes to make the rich owners richer.

The General Assembly passed a law in 2017 to allow public charter schools in Kentucky for the first time. But none have opened.

Those who want to open charters in Northern Kentucky, Louisville and Richmond have said they are hesitant to file applications with their local school board as the law requires because there’s no current funding process for dollars to flow into charter schools, in state law. 

Northern Kentucky, home of Catholic freakazoids and John-Bircher-style conservatives.  I wouldn't put a dog I hated into the kind of charters NKY is likely to come up with.

And it turns out that charter schools make all schools worse because they fail to address the real root of poor schools:  poverty and racism.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

You don’t say! You mean the problem with American education is poverty? Kids living through domestic violence? Kids lacking nutrition? Who fucking knew! Glad Gates spent $700 million discovering that the only way to fix education is to fix poverty and racism. It’s not like he could have discovered that before he spent the money by just asking people. Or, I don’t know, watching Season 4 of The Wire. Speaking of which, I love how David Simon went after charter schools scammers long before it was cool to do so, back when they were supported by internet liberals, not only in The Wire, but in Treme, even as it was a relatively minor theme in Season 2.

But then those solutions don’t fit the profiteers behind charter schools or the privatizers who hate public goods. No money to be made fighting poverty!

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article221407295.html#storylink=cpy

A Meme For Your Repug ... Aquaintences

From Down with Tyranny:

Violence is Repugs' Only Response

They won. Rapey McLiarFace is on the Supreme Court, where he can force the nation into a Lords-n-Serfs economy and an only-rich-straight-white-men-are-human-and-have-rights society.

But constant attacks, death threats and violence is all they know. And domestic terrorism to prevent anyone from ever challenging any rich, white, straight, repug man again is what they do.



From NPR:

Christine Blasey Ford is still being harassed after leveling sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, her lawyers say.

"Justice Kavanaugh ascended to the Supreme Court, but the threats to Dr. Ford continue," said Ford's lawyers, Debra Katz, Lisa Banks and Michael Bromwich, in a statement to NPR.

Kavanaugh stridently denied the allegations about the assault and went on to win confirmation in the Senate. Ford is still working to get her life back on track, her lawyers say.

She has had to move four times, she wrote last month. She has had to pay for a private security detail. She hasn't been able to return to her job as a professor at Palo Alto University. A spokeswoman for the school did not respond to a question about whether there was a timeline for Ford to return.

Ford's accusation that Kavanaugh had assaulted her when the two were in high school — and Kavanaugh's emotional response — took place before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27. Ford detailed the intimidation she was receiving then.

"My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats," she told the committee.

"People have posted my personal information on the Internet. This has resulted in additional emails, calls, and threats. My family and I were forced to move out of our home. ... My family and I have been living in various secure locales, with guards."

Although the spotlight has receded, the danger has not, Ford's lawyers say, but she is not interested in trying to turn her story into something that could make the experience lucrative.

Never Forget: Repugs Win Only By Cheating

Whether by the subtle cheat of voter suppression through denying voting rights to felons, as here in Kentucky (how many McGrath supporters could not vote because of a long-ago one-ounce pot possession?), or poll taxes by another name (demanding street addresses from Native Americans in North Dakota) or the blatant daylight theft of votes we're seeing in Georgia and Florida, the story is the same:

Repugs cannot win a fair election.  They have to cheat. If they don't, they lose.

Every single repug "victory" is stolen.  Every single elected repug is illegitimate.

Remember, and pass it on.  They cheated.  They always cheat.

Because they know that when everybody votes, Democrats win.

Vote Against Fascism

Paul Campos at LGM:

(1) Donald Trump is a fascist.  Whatever the “fascist minimum” may be, he’s now exceeded it as surely as Mike Trout has already exceeded the Hall of Fame performance minimum (Trump and Trout have both constructed first ballot resumes in record time.)

(2) The Republican party is now controlled in every relevant respect by Donald Trump, who is a fascist.  This makes the Republican party Donald Trump’s party, which makes it the party of fascism.

(3) Voting for a Republican candidate for anything is voting for fascism. It’s not “arguably analogous to voting for fascism,” or “uncomfortably close to giving support to fascism,” or “potentially helping the advancement of American fascism.” It’s voting for fascism.

(4) Voting for Democrats is voting against fascism.  You don’t have to like your local Democrat, or even any Democrats.  You just have to hate them less than you hate fascism. Vote against fascism by voting for Democrats.

(5) If you’re even thinking about voting for a third party candidate you need to think again.  A vote for a third party candidate is, objectively, a vote that is not against fascism. A vote not against fascism is, functionally, a vote for fascism.  Don’t vote for fascism.

Your Angry Sarcasm of the Year

From Digby:

There's nothing to see here folks, nothing at all. The fact that members of the Democratic coalition are being violently threatened and killed by people with motivations that echo the grievances stoked by Trump and his cult is purely coincidence.

Anybody else hearing joking-not-joking recommendations that we just lock up all the white men now, as a precautionary measure? 

If four black men had murdered 15 white people, injured a dozen others including three cops and sent pipe bombs to 10 people, including two former presidents, in the space of two weeks, there would be massive nationwide roundups underway.

Maybe lock up just the trump-supporting white men.

3 days

McGrath finally fights back against Candy Barr, and the Herald has it, but can't resist opening with a mendacious slap at the girl in the race.

Democratic congressional candidate Amy McGrath has spent the past few months talking about how she plans to run a different kind of campaign, one without negative attack ads to help restore civility in politics.

But from the opening question of the only debate between U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and McGrath on Kentucky Educational Television, the two candidates went on the attack.

In fact, McGrath has been running a high-road campaign all year, while Candy has run nothing but vicious, lying attacks on McGrath.  Shame on you, Herald.  Bothsiderism is not journalism, it's cowardice and incompetence.

Though the candidates talked about tax reform, the national debt and election security, the majority of the debate centered around the one issue McGrath has made the centerpiece of her campaign, health care. Not mentioned were immigration and abortion, two issues Barr has featured prominently in his attack ads.

At one point, as McGrath was accusing Barr of lying about her stance on health care, the congressman interrupted her.

“Is this a positive campaign?” Barr said. “Calling me a liar?”

McGrath paused.

“Are you done?” she said before continuing.

Across the country, House Republicans have had to defend their votes for an unpopular bill to replace the Affordable Care Act that ultimately failed in the Senate.

Barr defended the bill, saying it was one of the best opportunities Congress had to reform entitlement programs, while emphasizing that he supported replacing the Affordable Care Act in a way that wouldn’t eliminate protections for people with preexisting conditions.

McGrath said she wants to make the Affordable Care Act better and emphasized her support of a Medicaid buy-in plan for people over the age of 55 and a public option for health insurance.

SNIP

McGrath pushed back, calling Barr a liar for continuing to say she supported a single-payer system.

“Look, I came from an institution where if you lie, cheat or steal you get kicked out,” McGrath said.

And Candy belongs to a party that has to lie about everything, because its real agenda of stripping the middle class and giving everything to the idle rich wouldn't get five votes anywhere.

Tuesday.  THIS Tuesday.  6 a.m. to 6 p.m.  If you don't know your polling place, go here.