Bevin Just Chopping Poor People Into Hamburger Now

Congratulations, motherfucker.  You have exceeded any AynRandian wet dream Paul Ryan could come up with.  You've got a plan that will turn Kentucky into a fourth-world hellhole that will make Haiti look like Denmark. You've out-Brownbacked Kansas' own Destroyer.

Bevin's plan to "reform Medicaid" is so off the Outrage Meter that only Wonkette can deal with it properly:

How will they do this, you ask? WELL. First they’re going to tell everyone that employment leads to good health, which is as true as saying that marriage gets you out of poverty! Then they’re going to give everyone jobs (they’re not going to give anyone jobs) and when everyone is working they can all buy employer-based health insurance! That is actually their plan to fix the public health crisis in their state! It’s kind of like listening to Jeb! talk about 4.5% GDP growth year over year, or Donald Trump explain who’s paying for the #FuckingWall.

Anyway, that’s not the bit that’s outrageous, that’s just the wet dreams of Sam Brownback. Here’s the really innovative and start-uppy and consumer-driven part! See, if you want something swanky like glasses or God forbid dental care, then you can do various Character-Building activities like community service or rehab! And accrue points in an account! Which will be taken away if you misbehave!


God bless the free markets, I tell you what. This state is faced with what even they admit is close to epidemic level rates of HIV and hepatitis, and how many times do you have to have to fall asleep to an audio version of Atlas Shrugged before the following actual sentence isn’t dystopian as all fuck: “The cornerstone of the Kentucky HEALTH program is the introduction of a community engagement and employment initiative aimed at increasing workforce participation rates in Kentucky, which is critical to improving the health status of Kentuckians.”

THEIR BEST TACTIC FOR STOPPING A HEALTH EPIDEMIC IS JOBS AND GROWTH. Anyway, poor people of Kentucky: We hope you enjoy your new Medicaid plan, in which you can have all the fun of a prison work-release program and if you do earn enough points in side quests, you’ll get to have a root canal achievement!

The state has not yet commented on how it plans to pay for the ridiculous amount of administration and at least one new agency it will take to get caseworkers to follow up on all this new bullshit, nor on how much extra staff they plan to take on to keep up with demand. When reached for comment, the spokesmonkey just yelled at us about how well Kansas is doing then called us fake news.

Here's my plan for fixing Kentucky's real problem, which is that we are ruled by a bunch of rich motherfuckers who have never worked a day in their privileged fucking lives.

Take them out of their fancy houses and take away their fancy cars and cancel their health insurance and freeze all their accounts and give them a job mopping up puke in the filthy restrooms of some fast-food joint for minimum wage.  Part time.  Then make them find a place to live on $200 a week that is not a slum or a shack.

Then when they are coughing their lungs out with pneumonia or screaming from the agony of back pain tell them that they haven't earned enough good behavior points to get health care.

Candy Barr Clings to Trump In Face of Constituent Protests

Really, Candy?  More than half of congressional repugs are running away from the Orange Clusterfuck as fast as they can, but you're going to be the last rat on the sinking ship?

 

From the Herald:

U.S. Rep. Andy Barr was met with a sea of red at his town hall in Lexington Monday night, but the glow wasn’t from Make America Great Again hats.

The overwhelmingly Democratic audience had red and green signs to hold up when the Republican congressman made a comment they either liked or didn’t like — green for agree and red for disagree.

As Barr stood and adamantly defended the Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act, he saw a whole lot of red.

“I believe that we can do better than what we have now,” Barr said, going through a slideshow on healthcare. “Why? Because the ACA is in a death spiral.”

He was then booed for 12 seconds.

SNIP

Throughout the night Barr was booed, shouted at, heckled and occasionally cheered over the Republican replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act, a bill that was pulled from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in March because it did not have enough Republican support.

Each time, Barr defended the bill, highlighting some aspects of the bill he values. It saves the government money, he said. It adds work requirements to become eligible for care, it gives leeway to the states to set their own agendas and, he said, it would increase competition.

But most members of the audience didn’t like what they heard.

In the 6th Congressional District, a study by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy found that 69,724 people would lose coverage under the new health care proposal.

Candy's an ass, even by the standard of trumpian repugs. If the Sixth District conservadems can't come up with a candidate who can beat Candy in 2018, the losers should just give up and let real liberal progressives lead the party.

The Resistance: Fuck You, It's Science!

That's from my favorite sign among these from Digby:

There was yet another big national march today, this one the March for Science. Here's a report from Los Angeles:

Ryan Erickson, 28, of Crenshaw, held a sign that read, “I like big brains and I cannot lie.” He said he was marching because he believes facts and science should dictate policy, and he’s worried the Trump administration doesn’t agree.
Asked why she was marching, Claudia Kries of San Pedro said, “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been at every march since Trump got elected. It’s how I stay sane.”
Saturday’s event fell within the first 100 days of the Trump administration, which has proposed drastic budget cuts for the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency. Top administration officials are openly skeptical of the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity.

Saturday's march drew a diverse crowd of scientists, researchers and teachers, many of whom said they are new to activism.
Andrew and Chelsie Lee took the Gold Line from Pasadena for Saturday's protest. The couple said that beyond voting they aren't particularly politically active. He is an energy efficiency engineer and she is a customer service executive at a food company.
Since Trump's election they have been taking to the streets.
"With all of the things that are happening right now, it is exciting to be a part of something," she said. "Science is such a important underlying part of why we are successful as a nation.'
"As humankind," he chimed in.
Julianne Cuellar, 34, took a break from the march to sit under a tree in Grand Park. Cuellar, who works at an e-commerce company, had never been to a march before the November election. She described herself as being a casual observer of politics.
Trump changed that.
Since his inauguration, Cuellar has been to the Women's March in downtown, a Tax Day march last weekend demanding Trump release his tax returns, and a protest at Los Angeles International Airport against Trump's executive order limiting travel from several Muslim-majority countries.
"I just wanted to be part of a group standing up for facts and truth," she said. "I wanted to demonstrate resistance."
Allison Santos, a 31-year-old marine biologist and research assistant at Cal State Fullerton, said she had been so busy earning her master's degree that she only just voted for this first time last November. She said President Trump's victory shook her.
"I've never been a part of any type of march," she said in front of City Hall while holding a sign with a drawing of Earth that read, "I'm with her."
Daniel Blackburn, a software engineer from Irvine, held up a neon green sign that summed up how many scientists turned activists feel under the new administration: “We are so mad that even the introverts are outside with people.”
Blackburn said he is worried that the U.S. under Trump will fall behind on combating climate change through research or policy.
“We are losing out on valuable time we need to actually take action,” he said.
Blackburn is channeling his newfound activism into local politics.
He said he has been calling his congresswoman, Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine), repeatedly but said he hasn’t gotten past interns or voicemail.
Walters is one of seven congressional Republicans in California who represent districts that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and that Democrats are targeting for defeat in 2018. Blackburn is keeping a close eye on that race.
“There is a lot of anger at her,” he said.
Jeniffer Hernandez, a professor and immunologist at the Keck Graduate Institute School of Pharmacy in Claremont, had never been to a protest before Saturday.
But she said she felt attacked by Trump: because her parents are immigrants from Mexico, because of Trump’s comments about assaulting women and because her research lab is funded in part by federal grants.
“I’m outraged. I’m upset,” she said. “We need to be out here.”
She carried a sign, written partially in the colors of the Mexican flag, that read: “I’m a 1st generation Mexican-American scientist not a murderer, rapist or drug dealer.”
But while Saturday's marches made a political point — calling on elected officials and policymakers to fund science that enhances the common good and to rely on scientific evidence when making decisions on behalf of the country — they were intended to be nonpartisan.
“Science is not just for us in ivory towers, or for the liberal elite, and it’s not opinion,” said Alex Bradley, a PhD student at UCLA and one of the organizers of Saturday’s event. “We want to make it known that there are Republicans and Democrats doing science, and we all recognize its value.”

There were a lot of those Mexican criminal scientists in this crowd.
Some pictures from LA and around the country:

SNIP

There's a lot of energy out there and as far as I can tell, it's not dissipating. The Resistance is for real.

You Want Public Funding? Then Pay Public Taxes, You Motherfucking Freakazoids.

They're not satisfied with the constitutional right to spew lies and indoctrinate stupidity into children and let those children die of treatable conditions in the name of their invisible sky wizard.

They're not satisfied with piling up tax-free fortunes from tax-free donations and then using that money to put themselves into public office where they attack science and reason and facts in their name of their invisible sky wizard.

 

They're not satisfied with making the United States of America into an international laughingstock for letting freakazoids dictate our national policies.

No, now they want the public dollars to which they do not contribute a single dime.

 

Wonkette:

Missouri’s Scrap Tire Grant Program recycles tires and subsidizes non-profits to upgrade their playgrounds with recycled rubber surfacing. Under the previous Democratic governor, religious institutions were barred from the program. This meant that Trinity Lutheran Church’s preschool could not receive a grant, but a Montessori school would be eligible.

SNIP

Trinity Lutheran argues that jungle gyms aren’t religious, and that excluding parochial schools from public funding illegally penalizes them for their religion. Their Christian kids are just as entitled to protection from skinned knees as your heathen brats, right?

Opponents argue that States have always had the right to exclude religious institutions from public funding, and 39 states expressly outlaw it in their Constitutions. For instance, Missouri’s Constitution says:

Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation or pay from any public fund whatever, anything in aid of any religious creed, church or sectarian purpose, or to help to support or sustain any private or public school, academy, seminary, college, university, or other institution of learning controlled by any religious creed, church or sectarian denomination whatever; (Art. IX, § 8)

Which seems pretty unambiguous, right?

There is also a PLOT TWIST. The former Democratic governor of Missouri Jay Nixon was replaced by Republican Eric Greitens, who is happy to disburse state funds to religious institutions like it says in the Bible. Under normal circumstances, that would mean that the case was moot — Trinity would get its rubber playground, and the case would disappear. But the Republican Attorney General has hired outside counsel to defend the old law, on the theory that maybe one day a future Democratic governor could reenact it. And if you think this reeks to high heaven, YOU ARE RIGHT. Missouri has propped up a fake opponent so that Trinity Lutheran and its adorable, skinned-knee toddlers can give us the magical gift of public funding for religious schools forever. Hosanna!

Sanders Leader Named Leader of Kentucky Democratic Party

So, the Kentucky Democratic (Republican) Party thinks it can fool the restive liberals in its ranks by naming a Sanders leader as executive director.

I sincerely hope that she knows better.  I sincerely hope she understands that party apparatchiks throughout the state are already sabotaging any effort to build a movement and organize members to elect real Democratic candidates. I sincerely hope she rallies the awakened and enraged progressives in the Commonwealth to take back the party that has betrayed us for decades.

But I doubt it.

From the AP:

The party announced Mary Nishimuta (Nish-ah-moo-tah) of Frankfort as the new executive director on Friday. She will serve under state party chairwoman Sannie Overly, a state representative from Paris.

Nishimuta was a national team leader for Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign and was a delegate for him to the Democratic National Convention.

SNIP

A graduate of Georgia Tech, Nishimuta has worked for various Fortune 500 companies and is the co-owner of the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe in Frankfort. She said her goal is to build a strong party in all of Kentucky's 120 counties.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article145953894.html#storylink=cpy

Newsflash: Poor People Can't Afford Drugs. Test the Motherfucking Rich Instead. Start With Bevin.

Not that any waste of money bothers repug legislators as long as they get to humiliate poor people.

Josh Israel and Bryce Covert at Think Progress:

Low-income Americans who need to enroll in the country’s only cash assistance program—the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—face an onerous process. It typically requires extensive paperwork, visits to welfare offices, and sometimes even upfront job searches. Despite these hurdles, the chances of success are slim: out of every 100 families living in poverty, less than a quarter are enrolled in the TANF welfare program.

But some states have made the process of getting help even more difficult.

At least 15 state legislatures have enacted laws that require drug testing TANF applicants or beneficiaries. Last year, 13 of those testing programs were up and running. That means poor people who try to get assistance in these 13 states have to be screened for potential drug use and, if they are deemed suspicious, must come back to pee in a cup in order to receive benefits. While some states offer treatment programs to those who test positive, in essence, if you can’t prove you’re drug-free, you lose all benefits.

Some states test applicants, some just test beneficiaries. All states use some sort of screening to determine who has a reasonable suspicion of abusing drugs. Some states pay a lot for this screening, some pay next to nothing. Those different methodologies and rules lead to wide disparity in how many people were tested and how much they cost.

For the third straight year, ThinkProgress reached out to each of these states to ask how many applied for their TANF programs and how many were approved; how many of those were given drug tests; how many tested positive and negative; how many were rejected because they refused or did not show up for a required drug test; and the total cost of the program for 2016.

The states’ own data shows the costs were high, yet the positive tests were few.

All told, these 13 states tested 2,826 people out of about 250,000 applicants and recipients in 2016. Of those tested, just 369 came back positive. In four states, drug testing uncovered exactly zero positive tests for the whole year. The positive drug test rate out of all applicants, in states where people tested positive, ranged from 0.07 percent in Arkansas to 2.14 percent in Utah; none of them came anywhere close to the national drug use rate of 9.4 percent for the general population.

40 Years Late, Solar Finally Comes to Eastern Kentucky

By 1977, strip mining in the Appalachians was turning hundreds of miles of spectacular mountain panoramas into bare, dead, empty moonscapes as far as the eye could see.

Two groups were speaking past each other on the subject.

The coal operators were shrugging off the destruction, one of them actually recorded on video saying "These mountains ain't no good for nuthin' anyway." Nothing except supporting families with the bounty of mature, diverse forests.

The environmentalists and local activists were jumping up and down with their hair on fire, accurately predicting the devastation of mountain communities to come over the next decades and demanding a solution.

You see, when you strip mine for coal, you are literally stripping everything from trees and leaf mold right down to bedrock.  Mining laws required that operators "restore" the original slope after the coal is gone, but that is just exactly as impossible as you imagine.

Then people looked at those new expanses of horizontal land and saw development that hadn't been possible on Appalachia's vertical slopes.  But bedrock is unwelcoming to water lines and septic tanks. Turns out bedrock was really not good for nuthin'. 

But even back then, some crazy hippies were shouting "Solar! Put solar panels on that bedrock!"

Silly hippies. Everybody knows solar power is a myth. Or at least not something that could bring good jobs and cheap, clean energy to the mountains.

Think Progress:

A Kentucky coal company announced Tuesday that it is planning to build a solar farm on a reclaimed mountaintop removal coal mine and that the project would bring both jobs and energy to the area.

Berkeley Energy Group, the coal company behind the project, billed it as the first large-scale solar farm in the Appalachian region, which has been hit hard by the decades-long decline in the U.S. coal industry. The company, in partnership with EDF Renewable Energy, is currently conducting feasibility studies for the project on two reclaimed strip mines, both located in the eastern part of the state. Berkeley Energy Group estimates that the solar farm could produce as much as 50 or 100 megawatts of electricity, which would be five to ten times the size of Kentucky’s largest solar farm.

Berkeley Energy Group’s project development executive told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the company did not intend to replace its coal production with the solar farm, but instead viewed the project as a chance to reclaim used land while creating job growth in the area.

“I grew up with coal,” said Ryan Johns, BEG project development executive. “Our company has been in the coal business for 30 years. We are not looking at this as trying to replace coal, but we have already extracted the coal from this area.”

Coal, which for decades has been the primary source of electricity production in the United States, has suffered from competition with cheaper sources of energy like natural gas, as well as solar and wind. Increased automation and stronger environmental regulations have also pushed the industry into decline. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, coal extraction in Eastern Kentucky fell from 23 million tons in 2008 to about 5 million tons last year. Over the same period of time, mining employment dropped from 14,373 to 3,833.

Note the power of the stinking, decomposing corpse of coal that even now renewable energy can't get a break in Kentucky without denying any intended insult to coal.

When Only Blue Lives Matter

I guess Jay-Walking While Black is not yet an offense rating summary execution.  But I'm sure Jeffy Beau's Department of Injustice is working round the clock to make it so.

Think Progress:

On April 8, Officer Zachary Rosen of the Columbus Police Department in Ohio stomped the head of a young black man into a sidewalk, according to video footage of the event that was uploaded last week.

The video was filmed just two weeks after Rosen eluded criminal charges for fatally shooting a 23-year-old black man.

As seen in the video, DeMarco Anderson is lying flat on the ground and in the process of having his hands cuffed behind his back when Rosen runs up and kicks him in the head. Seconds before the blow, Anderson can be heard asking, “Why are you being aggressive, sir?” as an officer kneels on top of him. After his head hits the pavement, Anderson says, “Are you serious? I got cuffs on, sir,” as three additional officers surround him. Moments later, he is escorted to a police vehicle.

Yes, Trump Is Still Putin's Pawn

This "getting tough on Russia" bullshit is a fake to make it seem that Trump would never have colluded with Putin to win the election.

I think that Putin is holding his promissory notes.  About $10 billion worth.

The Resistance: E. KY Wins First Round Against Nazis

So the vicious motherfuckers won't be staining our beautiful Jenny Wiley State Park. But they're still planning rallies and protests.  Eastern Kentucky is ready for them.


Bill Estep at the Herald:

White nationalist groups no longer plan to use a Kentucky State Park in Floyd County for a meeting and training event on April 28, easing concerns about potential confrontations there.

However, the chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party, Matthew Heimbach, said the groups would instead hold the event on private property in the area.

The groups also still plan to showcase their ideas at a rally for “white working families” in downtown Pikeville on April 29.

Residents opposed to the groups’ ideology have planned a rally at the same time, a few blocks away, for people to “stand up for peace, diversity, and love and to stand AGAINST neo-Nazis,” according to the Facebook page for the event.

On another front, the advocacy group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth is providing education about the groups, including how to counter their message with a positive vision for the state.

SNIP

Floyd County Judge-Executive Ben Hale said he was glad the white nationalist groups won’t be meeting at the state park.

“These types of groups are not welcome by anybody in Floyd County,” Hale said. “I hope they don’t come east of the Mississippi.”

xians stole "easter," too

Really, all of christianity is stolen from earlier myths.

The Guardian:

Easter is a pagan festival. If Easter isn't really about Jesus, then what is it about? Today, we see a secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates the resurrection. However, early Christianity made a pragmatic acceptance of ancient pagan practises, most of which we enjoy today at Easter. The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too.

The Sumerian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake, and was subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld. One of the oldest resurrection myths is Egyptian Horus. Born on 25 December, Horus and his damaged eye became symbols of life and rebirth. Mithras was born on what we now call Christmas day, and his followers celebrated the spring equinox. Even as late as the 4th century AD, the sol invictus, associated with Mithras, was the last great pagan cult the church had to overcome. Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother. Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life.

In ironic twist, the Cybele cult flourished on today's Vatican Hill. Cybele's lover Attis, was born of a virgin, died and was reborn annually. This spring festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday, rising to a crescendo after three days, in rejoicing over the resurrection. There was violent conflict on Vatican Hill in the early days of Christianity between the Jesus worshippers and pagans who quarrelled over whose God was the true, and whose the imitation. What is interesting to note here is that in the ancient world, wherever you had popular resurrected god myths, Christianity found lots of converts. So, eventually Christianity came to an accommodation with the pagan Spring festival. Although we see no celebration of Easter in the New Testament, early church fathers celebrated it, and today many churches are offering "sunrise services" at Easter – an obvious pagan solar celebration. The date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon – how pagan is that?

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All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and blessed the cake instead.

Easter is essentially a pagan festival which is celebrated with cards, gifts and novelty Easter products, because it's fun and the ancient symbolism still works. It's always struck me that the power of nature and the longer days are often most felt in modern towns and cities, where we set off to work without putting on our car headlights and when our alarm clock goes off in the mornings, the streetlights outside are not still on because of the darkness.

What better way to celebrate, than to bite the head off the bunny goddess, go to a "sunrise service", get yourself a sticky-footed fluffy chick and stick it on your TV, whilst helping yourself to a hefty slice of pagan simnel cake? Happy Easter everyone!

The Resistance: Openly Mocking

Yes, he can do this only because he's safely retired.  But he's speaking for many still on the job.

 

Think Progress: 

Mike Cox retired after three decades at the Environmental Protection Agency on March 31 with a scathing letter for EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.

Team Trump is apparently an open joke to their staff — something even the Reagan and Bush administrations never experienced. Morale has collapsed, Cox notes.

“I have worked under six administrations with political appointees leading EPA from both parties,” Cox wrote on his last day on the job. “This is the first time I remember staff openly dismissing and mocking the environmental policies of an administration and by extension you.”

The 60-year-old Cox, who worked on climate change for EPA’s Region 10, which covers Alaska and the northwest, was especially harsh on Pruitt’s science denial.

Cox called Pruitt’s claim on national TV that CO2 is not a primary contributor to recent global warming “shocking” — and directly compared it to the congressional hearing with the CEOs of the major tobacco companies where “all of the CEOs categorically denied that smoking causes lung cancer.”

What’s the result of this denial? “You will continue to undermine your credibility and integrity with EPA staff, and the majority of the public,” Cox wrote, “if you continue to question this basic science of climate change.”

In the five-page letter, Cox slams the president for the “false and misleading” claim that killing EPA carbon pollution standards will bring back coal jobs.

Easter

Divine Irony:

↵ Reblogged from religionisbs

Darker Than a Paper Bag? Top Justice Official Thinks You're "Filth"

I honestly don't know why any repug these days is shying away from just screaming "NIGGER!" non-stop.

Charlie Pierce:

We're going to have to make a semi-regular daily feature on the doings of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, presently the Attorney General and the only man in America who thinks Birth of a Nation was a documentary. On Tuesday, he visited the border and, by way of encouraging the law-enforcement types gathered there, according to Tiger Beat On The Potomac, these were his prepared remarks:

"Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings," he said. "It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth."

Nobody I know is in favor of depravity and violence—at least outside the studios of Fox News, anyway—nor is anyone I know in favor of machete attacks and/or beheadings, although some of our staunch allies elsewhere are rather high on the latter. But when you've got the attorney general of the United States planning to refer to other human beings, no matter how criminal they are, as "filth," you've got the Department of Justice descending into the status of a Breitbart comment thread, and that is never good for anyone. When it came time for the speech, Sessions ultimately did not say "filth" out loud, but the Department of Justice doubled down on the word in a statement.

SNIP

What matters to Sessions is putting lots of "brown people" in cells. He doesn't care how many or where. Maybe it's through his idiotic revival of the "war" on drugs. Maybe it's through these E-Z-Bake cook'em-and-eat'em immigration courts he's establishing at the border. Doesn't matter. To Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, America means locking up "brown people." Period.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal points out that Sessions has escalated the racist rhetoric from "illegal immigrants" to "criminal aliens" and writes:

What Sessions doesn’t want the American public to know is that the link between undocumented immigrants and violent crime is a myth. His lies are meant to fear-monger and provide cover for his racist policies.

SNIP

It would be disgraceful coming from any American — much less the Attorney General. Personally, I take this kind of thing as seriously as Sessions lying to Congress during his confirmation hearing. In a world that acknowledged equal justice for all, he would be out of a job for this speech alone.

The New War on Drugs is the Old Terror: Legal Lynching

Jeff Sessions doesn't give a flying fuck how many drugs people do; all he cares about is how the War on (Some Classes of People Who Use Some Classes of) Drugs (tm LGM) gives him an excuse to throw millions of ni**ers in prison for life. Or just mow them down in the streets. The latter saves money, while the former puts money in the pockets of his private prison corporate friends.

The world he intends to re-create is the one depicted in the movie Rosewood: successful blacks lynched and burned out by drunk, stupid, violent whites.

Charlie Pierce:

It is now conventional wisdom that one of the worst mistakes the country ever made was launching its idiotic, wasteful "war"on drugs. In the three decades in which this "war" has been waged, we have lost two generations of African-Americans to the prison system, shaved the Bill of Rights down to a nub, tied the hands of the judiciary, and, finally, made not an appreciable dent in the problem of drug use and drug addiction. We have blessed ourselves with private prisons and militarized police forces, so there is that.

Prior to the ascension of President* Trump, there was a strong, evolving, and bipartisan consensus that it was time to call a truce on the "war" we were making on our own citizens. The country was getting sensible about marijuana and mandatory minimum sentences at the same time; conservatives abandoned simplistic law 'n order coding and hopped on the bandwagon of criminal justice reform; in many cases, they took the wheel on it. And, at least rhetorically, the response to the opioid crisis was more reasoned and measured than the response to the crisis of crack cocaine was—and the reasons for that are worth exploring. But nobody wants to, least of all JeffBo. Over the weekend, we learned that this brief, fragile truce had ended.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal:

I’d like to remind you of that day when Trump’s OMB Director Mike Mulvaney told us that the reason this administration’s budget cut funding to programs like Meals on Wheels and after-school initiatives for kids was because they could no longer defend spending tax dollars on programs that don’t work.

Let’s put aside the fact that feeding seniors and children is a self-defined success: hungry people are no longer hungry. It’s really that simple.

My reaction to Mulvaney was that if we’re going to defund programs that don’t work, then the best place to start is by ending the so-called “war on drugs.”

But of course if your goal is to kill and imprison as many ni**ers as possible, then the failed War on Drugs is a brilliant success.

Apparently AG Sessions and his top lieutenant Steven Cook think that we can arrest and incarcerate our way out of the drug problem, even though both science and recent history tell us that is nonsense. It is worth asking why this administration would cling to one failed federal initiative while proposing to eliminate so many others. Ava DuVernay answered that question with a documentary titled simply: “13th.”

Whether it is Sessions’ move to pull away from police reform, his history of opposition to voting rights, or his plans to ramp up the war on drugs, there is one key element that binds his approach on all of these issues: racism. While we’re in the business of breaking taboos, let’s get rid of the one that keeps us from naming exactly what’s going on here.

What's going on here is what's been going on in this country for 400 years. Vicious, cowardly whites terrified of having to compete on a level field enslaving and killing with impunity.

More Proof That Coal Is Even More Dead Than Before

Via Political Animal:

Here is your daily dose of irony:

The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum will always commemorate the past, but now it’s also looking to the future by switching to solar power.

The museum, owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, is located in Benham, a once thriving coal town portrayed in the 1976 Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County, USA…

“We believe that this project will help save at least eight to ten thousand dollars off the energy costs on this building alone, so it’s a very worthy effort and it’s going to save the college money in the long run.

Solar and wind power are now producing more energy at lower cost than any fossil fuel while employing hundreds of thousands of people at good pay.

If Kentucky's coal miners had jumped on that renewable energy train 10 years ago when it started to take off, Eastern Kentucky would be the new Silicon Valley.  But the repugs they keep voting for prefer Appalachians to stay stubbornly poor and stupid so they'll keep oting repug.

Go ahead, Mock

Divine Irony:

(Source: yourbeliefiscrazy)

↵ ORIGINALLY FROM YOURBELIEFISCRAZY
 
↵ REBLOGGED FROM SAGANSENSE

Fuck You Very Much, Matt Bevin

HA!  Motherfucker backed down. 

From the Herald:

Lawyers for Kentucky's governor have halted efforts to shut down the state's last abortion clinic pending the outcome of a lawsuit aimed at preventing the closure.

The latest development came as lawyers for Gov. Matt Bevin and the Louisville clinic submitted an agreement to U.S. District Judge Greg Stivers, who had not yet signed it. In it, Bevin's administration agreed to renew the license for EMW Women's Surgical Center until the lawsuit is resolved.

"We are open providing the service, and people won't have to leave their community to get the rights the Supreme Court has determined they have," Donald L. Cox, an EMW lawyer, said Friday.

The ACLU of Kentucky is defending We The People on this one.  Donate to them here.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article143308484.html#storylink=cpy

Welcome to Kentucky, Mahmoud.

Because of Centre College, Boyle County is relatively liberal.  I expect people there will put down any attempt to treat you with anything less than legendary Kentucky friendliness.

From the Danville Advocate-Messenger:

Her husband, Mahmoud Al Saloum, arrived safely at the Lexington airport after close to two years of attempting to get his visa. 

“Gosh, what didn’t happen since we last spoke,” Morris said the day before she was to pick up “Ma.” Her voice was light and lively; so much different from when we first spoke in January in order to get their story out. 

Her husband, whom she married in Ghana in 2014, had been attempting to get an immigrant visa since June 3, 2015, in order to move to Junction City to be with Morris and their son, Aiden. Just when they thought his time would come, an executive order was signed banning travel from certain Muslim countries. Although Saloum wasn’t living in any of those countries, because he’s Syrian, there was an even greater chance he may have never been approved. 

Morris says she’s been told to get an immigrant visa, the average wait-time is roughly 60 days.

“We’ve been back and forth, back and forth — so many times. They kept telling him to come back in a week, come back in another week, then another week …” Morris says. “We buckled down and just did all we could. Then, last week, they called him on Wednesday afternoon and said to be there Friday.”

 Click here for a photo of Mahmoud meeting his son.

From the Danville Advocate-Messenger:
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/article143330564.html#storylink=cpy

The Resistance: Step Away From the Recycling Bin and Pick Up Pitchforks

And stop wearing pink on Breast Cancer Awareness Day, brought to you by the very companies whose toxic chemicals actually cause breast cancer.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

When consumer movements stop caring about pesticide exposure once new chemicals are created that don’t persist on the vegetables but hit hard and fast and thus poison farmworkers, which was one of the stories I discussed in Out of Sight, that’s a neoliberal aim. When parents move to the suburbs or put their kids in private school to save their children instead of fighting for better public schools where they live, that’s also a neoliberal aim. All of these things–including the Alar campaign, third party campaigns, pointless boycotts to make yourself feel righteous and good, claiming you are the problem because you take long showers even though 90% of water use is from industry and agriculture–prioritize the individual as hyper consumer with the power to change the world through consumption instead of doing the hard work of organizing for change. At best, these campaigns have the power to make small changes if enough of them care, but none of this actually challenges the power structures of oppression. And thus they all reinforce the power of capitalism to set the agenda in our society, more so ever day as the state is seen as a negative and business glorified.

How Did KY Repugs Fuck You Over This Year?

 Every anti-worker, pro-rich, corporatist, freakazoid, homophobic, misogynistic, unconstitutional way they could.

Tom Loftus at the Courier:

Charter schools
House Bill 520 will allow publicly funded charter schools to operate in Kentucky beginning next school year, although none are expected to begin operation until 2018-19. (All students who need extra help because of disability or poverty will be shunted into unfunded public schools.)

Education reform
Senate Bill 1 is a sweeping measure streamlining how students are taught and tested and how teachers are evaluated. It will give local schools more control over teacher evaluations and create a new way for intervening in low-performing schools that gives more authority to local school districts. (There is no end to the mischief this law allows: creationism, bibble inerrancy, forcing trans students to piss and shit themselves in class, encouraging students to harass and attack non-straight, muslim and/or immigrant students ... the horrors are endless.)

Right-to-work
House Bill 1 prohibits membership in a labor union or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. (No, this law takes away the last protections workers have from wage-stealing employers.)

Prevailing wage repeal: House Bill 3 repeals a law that requires a regional prevailing wage rate be paid as a minimum for workers building public schools and other state or local public buildings. (Back to minimum wage, you workers!  Thanks to the above, your union is dead.)

Abortion: House Bill 2 requires doctors to display and describe the details of an ultrasound to a woman prior to an abortion procedure. Women can decline to look at the ultrasound image or listen to the fetal heartbeat if they choose. (This law mandates doctors commit object rape on their own patients.)

Abortion: Senate Bill 5 bans abortion beginning with the 20th week of a pregnancy. The prohibition does not apply when an abortion is needed to save the life or prevent serious risk of permanent bodily harm to the mother.

Planned Parenthood funding: Senate Bill 8 puts Planned Parenthood at the end of the line behind other health care providers for getting any federal family planning funds. (Are you a minimum-wage worker who needs a mammogram or a pap smear? Tough shit. Get back to work before your cancer metastasizes.)

Medical malpractice:  Senate Bill 4 will require that a panel of doctors review malpractice complaints before the complaint goes to court.  (Did your stoned-on-oxy surgeon cut off the wrong let?  Tough shit.  His doctor buddies will protect him from your lawsuit.)

And more.

Patriots

Divine Irony:

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Bertrand Russell (via philosophybits)

↵ REBLOGGED FROM PHILOSOPHYBITS
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Last KY Abortion Clinic Fighting for Life

Yes, Life.  The lives of women suffering from malignant unwanted pregnancies.  Scratch that redundancy: all unwanted pregnancies are malignant.

Yes, Malignant, as in Tumor.  Until it takes a breath outside the womb, it's a tumor.  Dictionary definition: a collection of rapidly growing cells endangering the health and life of the host.  That's what a fetus, an embryo, a blastocyst, a sperm-penetrated egg is:  a tumor.

Yes, Clump of Cells.  Not a baby.  Not a child.  Not a "preborn" anything. Not a human being of any description.

Which is why anyone attempting to deny the bodily autonomy of a woman by restricting abortions is a sex-terrified, woman-hating, freakazoid piece of shit who should have been drowned at birth.  Which would be murder. Unlike abortion, which is simple removal of a malignant tumor.

Deborah Yetter at the Courier:

Gov. Matt Bevin's administration is seeking to shut down Kentucky's only abortion provider, prompting a federal lawsuit by the clinic to block the move it says would have “a devastating impact on women.”

Bevin’s administration has ordered the EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville to stop providing abortions starting Monday, claiming it lacks proper agreements for patient care in the event of a medical emergency.

EMW's lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, calls the order "blatantly unconstitutional" and asks a federal judge to bar the Bevin administration from revoking the EMW clinic's license.

"They've made it clear they won't stop until no woman can get an abortion in Kentucky," said Donald L. Cox, a lawyer for EMW. "It's just an attempt to ban abortion in Kentucky."

A Bevin spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

SNIP

But EMW, joined in its lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, said the clinic already complies with the law and says that if the state succeeds in forcing it to close, “abortion will be effectively banned in the commonwealth.”

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to temporarily block state efforts to stop abortions at EMW. It says the clinic has patients scheduled and an abrupt shutdown would deprive them of their right to the procedure.

SNIP

The state's new finding that the agreements are deficient amounts to a "bureaucratic sleight of hand," said Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "This is an attempt to ban abortion in Kentucky, plain and simple. We are fighting to keep this from happening."

SNIP

The dispute comes amid EMW's legal challenge to a new state law requiring doctors providing abortions to first perform an ultrasound and attempt to show and describe the image of the fetus to the patient. EMW and the ACLU argue the law passed in January by the General Assembly is unconstitutional.