Atkins Stays On Offense With New Ad

From Bill Atkins' campaign:

Congressman Geoff Davis on Tom Massie: 

"What was done, using my name in vain, was inappropriate. I think it shows immaturity... it spoke for itself in terms of the lack of character to do something like that.

"There was a voice mail message left for me, and in there were the words 'I'm not asking for permission.'

"I think it's more a statement of what kind of a Member of Congress the person would be."

Interviewer: 

"What's your expectation for what kind of Congressman Thomas Massie would be?"

Congressman Geoff Davis:

"Past is prelude in terms of behavior. I think that you can just examine his record and his biography in the campaign that he ran and draw your own conclusions." 

 Watch this video and more at MassieNoWay.com. 

The Criminal Non-feasance of Red-State Democratic Parties

I doubt Fourth District teabagger candidate Thomas Massie is stupid enough to say shit like this in front of anyone who might have palmed a camera, but I'm sure his teabagger-approved, billionaire-supported personal beliefs are just as ridiculous.

Charlie Pierce:

The Democratic Party in his home district couldn't find a single person to stand up and offer the voters in that district a chance not to be represented in Congress by an obvious crackpot. No local assistant DA. No ambitious college professor; the University of Georgia is in this district. Nobody wants to stand up and make the argument that it is better for all concerned that your congresscritter not be a nut. Nobody?

"You're the third person to ask me this question over the last few days," said Joe Wisenbaker, the Democratic Party chairman in Clarke County, a piece of which also is part of Broun's district, when I spoke to him just now. "The last one was a Republican woman who was very, very angry that we don't have a candidate. So here's what I tell everyone who asks: We do everything we can to encourage people to engage politically and to run as Democrats. Last time, we had a good candidate, a lawyer named Russell Edwards, and he went to work full-time to run against Paul Broun, and he got a third of the vote."

Since then, the district's gotten sliced and diced good and proper, but, if we're ever going to get out of the god-enfeebled fever swamp into which the radicalized Republican Party is pushing the nation, sooner or later, there has to be organized, relentless push back at the ballot boxes everywhere in every election, whether that turns out to be ultimately futile or not. (Of all the things about which Howard Dean was right, this is the most important.) To his everlasting credit, an Army veteran named Stephen Simpson primaried Broun last August, and that was a good thing, even though Simpson got beaten pretty badly. If the Republicans could come up with a candidate to a least raise the question of why we should have frothing loons in our national legislature, the Democrats should do their part as well.

"I've got a great number of people telling me that they don't want to be represented in Congress by a nut," says Wisenbaker. "I mean, we're all embarrassed here."

Dammit, do something about it, then. Find an unemployed UGA grad who can give a speech. At the very least, voters should hear somebody on a platform calling Paul Broun out instead of leaving it at a distance to impotent media snark.

Steve M:

Seriously, Democrats? This is the best you can do? A crook's son who won't campaign and who has a mockable past? There was nobody other Democrat in the entire freaking district who looked like more credible as a candidate?

Pathetic. One more House seat the GOP shouldn't hold, but will. 

Kentucky's Democratic Party is just as bad if not worse - usually. Amazingly, this year, we in Kentucky's Fourth District have a strong, sane, Democratic candidate to vote for.

New Atkins Commercial: "Tom Massie in His Own Words"

From Bill Atkins' campaign:

What Tom Massie says in this commercial is unbelievably scary and completely undeniable.

Massie is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He claims to support the Brent Spence bridge project, but watch how he brags about turning down federal money for a bridge in economically devastated Lewis County.

Watch Massie declare war on coal, condescend to women, spread paranoid conspiracy theories about his neighbors, and arrogantly boast of his Texas SuperPac funding. Best of all, watch him ask "You aren't taping me, are you?"

The Courier-Journal was right yesterday when it said "Washington doesn't need any more tea party freshmen".

Watch this video and more Massie nonsense at MassieNoWay.com. Please share and forward this video and help make sure voters learn the truth about Tom Massie before it's too late.

700,000 Kentuckians Disenfranchised

Everyone in Kentucky's Fourth Congressional District as of today has no representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Does this mean we don't have to pay federal taxes for the next five months? 

Beth Campbell, AP:

Republican U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis of Kentucky resigned Tuesday, citing a family health issue. [nky.com story (best coverage), Politico story, TheHill.com story]

Davis had previously announced he would retire this year from Congress. He said in a statement issued Tuesday that a family health issue had developed recently that needs more of his time.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/07/31/2279043/davis-resigns-from-congress-5.html#storylink=cpy

SNIP

Lynn Sowards Zellen, spokeswoman for the Kentucky secretary of state’s office, said the U.S. Constitution requires a special election be held to determine who will fill the seat.

Oh, goody. A special election between now and the general election in November. We already have our Democratic and repug nominees for that race - are they automatically the candidates for the special?

If so, would this be a bigger gift to repug Thomas Massie who has a big money advantage already, or to Dermocratic nominee Bill Atkins, who would be running in racist Northern Kentucky on a special-election ballot without Barack Obama at the top. If not, then how the fuck does Kentucky SOS Allison Lundergan Grimes plan to hold both a primary and two general elections in the next three months? 

NKY.com finds someone who makes sense:

Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Bill Adkins are on the November ballot to succeed Davis. The U.S. Constitution requires a special election to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Because the special election must be at least five weeks from now, Beshear might opt to put the special election on the November ballot, said Trey Grayson, who is a former Kentucky Secretary of State and now heads Harvard’s Institute of Politics. The political parties would likely nominate Massie and Adkins, who would then appear on the ballot twice. That would allow the winner of the general election and the special election to take office in November, Grayson said.

“Presumably, the winner will take office earlier,” Grayson said. “The special election results get certified quicker than regular election results. The person would have more seniority. Given that they already have an election that day for the Fourth District, that probably makes the most sense, rather than have another election.”

Will Grimes and Governor Steve Beshear do the logical and vastly cheaper thing? Stay tuned.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/07/31/2279043/davis-resigns-from-congress-5.html#storylink=cpy