Your First 2020 Election Meme

Via wonkette commenter Bill D. Burger

KY Repugs Turn on Bevin; Demand Investigation

Could just be bullshit, given that the new Attorney General is a repug and might just decline to investigate.

Could be they're just piling on a loser they never liked anyway.

But it could be a sign that some repug legislators are willing to turn on a trump wannabe once he stops being useful.

From the Courier:

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers is calling on the U.S. Attorney's Office to investigate the pardons issued by former Gov. Matt Bevin.

The Courier Journal first reported Wednesday that Bevin issued hundreds of pardons during his last days in office. Those pardoned included a man who was convicted of raping a 9-year-old in Kenton County and other convicted killers.

"From what we know of former Governor Bevin's extreme pardons and commutations, the Senate Republican Majority condemns his actions as a travesty and perversion of justice," Stivers said. "Our citizens, and especially the crime victims and their families, deserve better."

Stivers' statement came hours after two Democratic legislators, Senate Democratic Floor Leader Morgan McGarvey and state Rep. Chris Harris called on Attorney General-elect Daniel Cameron to appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate potential criminal wrongdoing involving Bevin's pardon of Patrick Brian Baker.

The brother and sister-in-law of Baker, who was convicted of a homicide and other crimes in a 2014 Knox County home invasion, raised $21,500 at a political fundraiser last year to help retire debt from Bevin’s 2015 gubernatorial campaign. That money could go straight to Bevin since he had loaned his campaign money.

Yeah.  Bevin pardoned a motherfucker who committed a vicious murder by beheading because the motherfucker's family gave him money.

Tell me again how evil and corrupt Democratic officials are.

Mitch Really Is Running Scared: He's Dumping Bevin

Apparently Moscow Mitch doesn't think all those repug voters who split their ballot to elect every repug except Bevin are going to look any more kindly on his traitor ass next year.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday it appears that Gov. Matt Bevin has lost the election for Kentucky governor, but he declined to say whether he thinks the Republican governor should concede.

“I’m sorry Matt came up short, but he had a good four years and all indications are, barring some dramatic reversal on the recanvass, we’ll have a different governor in three weeks,” McConnell said.

Gov.-elect Andy Beshear collected 5,189 votes more than Bevin, which was less than 0.5% of the 1.45 million votes cast Nov. 5. Bevin has requested a recanvass of vote totals, which will take place Thursday.

McConnell, speaking after a news conference at North American Stainless, said he wouldn’t “give the governor advice,” but noted that he won by a similarly close margin when he first ran for U.S. Senate in 1984. He beat U.S. Sen. Walter “Dee” Huddleston by 5,269 votes.

“We had a recanvass, they added it up and it didn’t change and we all moved on,” McConnell said.

Bevin sparked concern that he wouldn’t accept the election results when he cited “irregularities” in last week’s election without providing any evidence to support his claim. Among other things, he alleged that “thousands” of illegally cast absentee ballots were counted inappropriately. Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes has said her office has seen no evidence of irregularities.

McConnell, the patriarch of the Kentucky Republican Party, is the latest to distance himself from Bevin’s claims of irregularities. Republican lawmakers, spurred on by speculation that Bevin might try to contest the election in a complaint to the General Assembly, have said there is no need to seek legislative review of the election unless Bevin can produce significant evidence that voter fraud has occurred.
... 

Bevin’s loss made some in Washington D.C. question whether McConnell is vulnerable in his 2020 reelection bid, despite Bevin’s significant unpopularity and the fact that Republicans won all other races on the ballot. 

When McConnell was asked if Bevin’s loss has implications for his reelection bid, he said “we’ll find out.”

re here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article237242199.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article237242199.html#storylink=c

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article237242199.html#storylink=cpy

KY Repugs Throw Bevin Under the Bus

He disdained them, ignored them, disrespected them, turned his Yankee elitist nose up at them, and then expected them to overturn an election he probably lost by a lot more than 5,000 votes.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are urging Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, a fellow Republican, to either provide evidence of the voting “irregularities” he has alleged or concede Tuesday’s election to Gov.-elect Andy Beshear, who defeated him by 5,189 votes.

“The best thing to do, the right thing to do, is for Governor Bevin to concede the election today so we can move on,” said Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, first raised the possibility of the tight election being decided by the Republican-led legislature Tuesday night when he explained the process that would occur if Bevin decided to challenge the results of the race. Bevin bolstered that speculation Wednesday by claiming that thousands of absentee ballots were counted illegally without presenting any proof to back up his claim.

Republicans in the legislature aren’t buying it.

Why aren't they buying it?  Not because repugs wouldn't burn down the state to gain and keep power (with their supermajorities in both houses of the General Assembly, they are confident they can stop Governor-elect Beshear from doing anything.)

But because, as Joe Gerth puts it, Bevin is a jerk.

Vote to Kick Out KY's Trump TOMORROW

Every day, you see someone Bevin has fucked over, if not completely destroyed their lives.

The teachers going into debt to buy school supplies for their students because Bevin gave school funding to charter school con artists and tax cuts for his rich buddies.

The single father taking care of his disabled child getting kicked off Medicaid because Bevin's new rules demand he get a job.

The mother of three children in Knox County who can't afford the three days off work and the 150-mile drive to Louisville for an abortion.

The farmers going bankrupt because of the idiotic and destructive trade war Bevin supports.

The laid-off workers still waiting for the jobs Bevin lied about providing, and unable to qualify for the Medicaid health insurance Bevin make impossible to get.

The non-christian children in public school intimidated and terrified by the unconstitutional Jeebus signs and classes.

Vote Bevin mini-trump out and show the world that Kentucky Democrats have had enough and Mitch McConnell is next.

Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 6 p.m.  Find your polling place here.

VOTE!  Or shut the fuck up forever.

This Might Not Be Radical Enough

Via PZ Myers at Pharyngula:




Ramen

Crush Them

Kevin Drum:

Republicans believe that wrecking the fabric of the country is their only hope of staying in power, and they’re right. If working-class whites abandon them even a little bit, they’re toast.

So all we can do is try to crush them. What other options are there? Reactionary American whites, as always, won’t give up their power unless it’s taken from them by either a literal or figurative war.

Liberals need to be as Lincolnesque as possible¹ in this endeavor—we don’t have to win the votes of unrepentent bigots, just the fretful fence-sitters—but we also need to be Lincolnesque in our commitment to winning America’s latest race war.²

¹That is, with malice toward none and charity for all.

²That is, with an iron determination to win.

Both Sides

From Wonkette commenter Rocky:

Matt Bevin: Women Are Sub-Human Incubators

Because that's what you really mean when you deny women bodily autonomy.  When you insist that they endure forced birth.  When you mandate that their doctors rape them with foreign objects.  Not Missouri: Kentucky.

From the Propaganda Office (corrections in italics):

Gov. Matt Bevin's legal team this week fuiled a response opposing EMW Women's Surgical Center's petition for rehearing in a recent federal court case that resulted in a major pro-life anti-woman victory for the Commonwealth woman-hating freakazoids.

In contrast, Attorney General Andy Beshear refused to say anything in defense of the law, arguing simply that he should not have to be involved refused to defend a blatantly un-constitutional law that violates women's 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law, and women's human rights to bodily autonomy.

In April, the anti-woman freakazoids on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of House Bill 2 (2017). HB 2 requires an abortion provider to provide mothers with an ultrasound and a description of what it depicts, as well as the opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat, before she chooses to terminate her pregnancy. force a hard plastic untrasound wand into a woman's body against her will.


The Louisville abortion clinic is asking the Court to rehear the case en banc (before the entire bench) in a desperate attempt to undermine the Kentucky law, which passed with the support of more than 87 percent of state legislators. courageous move to protect the last place in the entire Commonwealth where women can receive health care that respects them as women and as human beings.

The Americans who respect a woman's bodily autonomy - consistently 60 to 80 percent of the population - are going to have to stop pretending that there is some kind of compromise or middle ground with the wingnut freakazoids on the issue of female bodily autonomy.

To do that, we are going to have to stop mealy-mouthing on abortion and start saying - no, screaming - flat out that:

• The multi-celled object that grows inside a uterus is not a baby, a child, a precious or unborn anything.  Until it can breathe air outside the uterus, it most closely resembles a tumor.
  
• Until it does breathe air outside the uterus, it is, indeed, a part of the woman's body.
   
• Like a tumor, it steals food and energy from the woman's body, weakening and debilitating her, and subjecting her to high risk of injury and death if she undergoes forced birth.
  
• Only the woman is qualified to decide whether to take that risk or quickly,  easily and safely remove the tumor.
  
• Therefore, abortion is nobody's fucking business.
  
• Women will not have civil or human rights in this country until we have Abortion on Demand.
  
• That means no restrictions, no bullshit requirements, no questions asked.
  
• That means federally-funded abortion clinics on every fucking street corner in America and fuck you if you don't like it, it's none of your fucking business.

They're not coming for just Roe vs. Wade.  Griswold vs. Connecticut (right to contraception) is just a stepping stone.  They're gonna steamroll over Brown vs. Board (unsegretated schools.) They won't be satisfied until they've repealed the Equal Protection of the 14th Amendment.

Because only then will only rich, white, straight, conservative, christian, republican men have any rights in the country that won't be America any more.

Everybody Who Thinks McConnell Is Going to Help These Coal Miners, Stand On Your Head

I sincerely hope they are trolling Senator Motherfucker, because they are morons if they think he gives a flying fuck about them.

From the Herald:

Because a pension fund for thousands of coal miners faces insolvency within three years, a contingent of retired coal workers will descend on the Capitol Wednesday, hoping to convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to back a fix.

It’s the ninth consecutive year the group has pressed Congress to act — but McConnell wants a broader fix to ensure the health of the federally chartered Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures millions of Americans in defined benefits pension plans but is facing its own fiscal challenges.

“There is momentum to fix the entire system, but that’s going to move slowly,” said Phil Smith, director of government affairs for the United Mine Workers of America. “Our plan is separate because we can’t wait for a global pension fix.”

Smith said the slump in the coal industry and company bankruptcies have hurt the pension fund, which now has just one major company, Murray Energy, contributing to the fund.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, who is sponsoring legislation to address the coal miners’ pensions and will appear Wednesday at a press conference to push his legislation, said Tuesday he wants a more sweeping fix, but worries about the immediate risk for the retired coal workers and their families.

“I don’t know how he can just turn his back on the miners in Kentucky and West Virginia,” Manchin said of McConnell in an interview Tuesday. “He just can’t continue to stonewall them and leave them with nothing.”

As if The Treason Turtle has ever done anything BUT stonewall working Kentuckians and leave them with nothing.

Of course he will stonewall them.  And of course every single one of them who is still alive after their pensions are taken away is going to vote for Bevin this fall and McConnell and Trump next year.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article230129654.html#storylink=cpy

Both Sides

From Wonkette commenter Rocky:

Mad Dogs

Charlie Pierce:

If a Democrat is elected in 2020, that person should use all the powers of the office to demonstrate once and for all that the prion disease afflicting the Republicans now has reached terminal stage and that the GOP is a mad dog, snapping at phantoms in midair, and endangering the public health and welfare. Mitch McConnell should be made an object of anger and ridicule, and that work should come from the top. The mad dog is at the door.

Vote Supid Home

From divegirl at Wonkette:

They Must Be Crushed

Charlie Pierce, on the deplorables who cheer the Pumpkin Traitor:

I don't have to "understand" the people who cheer this maniacal prattle—even though that's not particularly hard. For the good of the country, their political power has to be crushed, repeatedly, election after election, until we are sure this mockery of democracy never happens again.

The Misunderstood

Down with Tyranny:

by Noah

A Trifecta of Truth, presented in a simple meme. Perspective matters even when based on bullshit.

Plus, I would add that Trump is lunatic man's idea of a sane man, or, more specifically and accurately, a Republican man's idea of a sane man, and, a traitor's idea of a great president.

Tonight's meme is adaptable to all genders of course.

Protecting Babies

Via Juanita Jean:

How have your Repug state legislators ruined your life today?

We were warned.  The late, great, lamented Molly Ivins warned us. When it comes to daily life, it's our state legislators who have the most control over what we can do and whether we can do it safely.

Take Kentucky's General Assembly.  Please.

Since repugs took over the state house in 2016 for full control of the legislative and executive branches, they have been systematically dismantling the structures of civilization Kentucky progressives have managed to erect.

• slashing already minimal benefits for the poor, sick and disabled.

• denying the humanity of vagina-havers and condemning them to a slow, painful death of sepsis after an illegal abortion or a lifetime of forced birth. 

• canceling all state incentives for renewable energy and slapping a giant annual tax on the owners of electric cars.

• eliminating all background checks, training and permit fees for concealed carry.  Now you can get shot and killed for failing to genuflect to the Pumpkin Traitor anytime, anywhere in the Commonwealth. 

• exempting the governor and legislators from being subject to the courts, in case any dogooding libs try to sue their motherfucking asses for all of that unconstitutional bullshit.

and, of course, the coup de grace:

• hiding from the public all records of how and why legislators are fucking us over.

Kentucky repugs did this.  But Kentucky Democrats are letting them do it.  All of this and much, much worse.

Of Course the Freakazoids Love Trump More Than Jesus

Steve M:

Many people think it's odd that evangelical Christians love a president who's a thug. But it was clear long before Trump entered politics that right-wing Christianity isn't about living by the moral code of Christ. It's about declaring that your and your allies have a monopoly on morality -- and, more important, declaring that people you don't like are immoral and despised by God, and therefore should have no influence on how we run society.
When your ethic already divides the world into good people and mortal enemies who must be destroyed because they can't be reasoned with or accommodated, of course you're going to be attracted to a leader who shares your political goals and conducts his life like a Corleone ordering a hit. To evangelicals, there's a clear line dividing the saved and the damned, the fit and the unfit -- just as, to Trump, the world is divided into loyalists who should be rewarded and traitors who must be crushed. So of course the evangelicals love Trump. He has a pure sense of right and wrong.

One Answer to Why

From TPM commenter Maximus:

Caught Showing Your Racist Ass? White Privilege to the Rescue!

Fuckhead's parents wasted money on a repug PR firm; the White Male Supremacy cavalry was already on the way with free excuses.

A corrective from Stephen Robinson at Wonkette:

No white guy's life is ever going to end because he was cruel to women or minorities. The sneering Nick Sandmann will probably be on the Supreme Court shortlist in a few decades. During the Trump era, the "cruelty is the point," and a disturbing number will rush to protect those who are cruel in Trump's image.

And this, from the Root.