Blue in the Bluegrass

• Is a pale imitation of health care reform worth saving?

  I was all set to write a fire-and-brimstone post condemning everyone involved in the Great Betrayal on health care reform and calling for liberal Democrats in the Senate to kill the piece of shit masquerading as a bill.
  
  We have finally reached the point at which what we [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 4:00pm EST
  

• Public Defenders to Jack Conway: Fuck You

  So Jack "an invisible sky wizard does too run the Department of Homeland Security!" Conway, sucking wind in the U.S Senate primary, runs up to the podium waving his arms and yelling "oooh, oooh, I've got it - let's kill these guys!"
  
  About a minute and a half' [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 7:47pm EST
  

• GAO: Kentucky Nursing Homes Among Worst in Nation

  And the worst of the worst? For-profit, chain-affiliated homes.
  
  Ten nursing homes in Kentucky, including one in Lexington, are among the most poorly performing in the United States, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
  
  And, according to the GAO, which provides oversight of [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 6:21am EST
  

• Abdicating Personal Responsibility

  Don't let the celebrity bullshit and the can-she-be-any-stupider shadenfreude hide the most frightening, yet neglected, revelation in the latest political "biography."
  
  "My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”
  
  This is'" [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 7:26pm EST
  

• To Stop the Secret Bailouts

  From Crooks and Liars:
  
  MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 10:00am EST
  

• Dominionists Out of the Closet

  The Dominionists are out to show the teabaggers who's really calling the shots in the republican party.
  
  Tristero at Hullabaloo reads the Christianist Manifesto so you don't have to.
  
  Led by an admitted felon,* a bunch of extreme, but influential, christianists have released a rambling statement' [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 7:00am EST
  

• "Ordinary Injustice"

  While wingnuts froth at the mouth at the prospect of murderers of Americans getting tried in American courtrooms, a new book documents the many small but devastating injustices perpetrated by the system throughout the country every day.
  
  In Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (Metropolitan; $27), legal [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 8:00pm EST
  

• The Failure of Post-Partisanship

  As we get closer to the short strokes on health care reform, Digby points to a sharp analysis of the conservative opposition and President Obama's ability to beat it.
  
  If you want to understand Palin and the teabaggers etc, you have to understand the conservative movement. Nobody [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 5:00pm EST
  

• Because Together We Are Stronger

  If you're not unemployed, or underemployed, or likely to become unemployed soon, you know somebody who is. Probably several somebodies.
  
  So don't just sit there - Help yourself, your friends, your neighbors and your community by forming a common security club.
  
  Chuck Collins, co-founder of United [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 2:00pm EST
  

• Kentucky Home for the Holidays

  UPDATED, Tuesday, Nov. 24
  
  The leaves are off the trees, which means Kentucky's fall festivals make room for great winter events.
  
  The Kentucky State Parks are hosting many holiday events this time of year, including open houses, children’s activities and tours of historic homes. State parks are' [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 12:30pm EST
  

• Timing is Everything

  The U.S. Senate is beginning its debate of the health care reform bill today.
  
  One of the many "compromise" provisions that are making liberals swallow hard but that still won't satisfy Mitch McConnell's repugs and their Blue Dog fellators is the one delaying the best parts of the' [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 11:00am EST
  

• Thanksgiving Rescue Script

  From Digby, Turkey Day Talking Points for liberals breaking bread with wingnut freakazoid relatives:
  
  Campaign For America's Future does yeoman's work on many important issues, most recently their campaign to bring back America's manufacturing base. They are committed progressives who put their time and effort into making [...]
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  Posted: November 21, 2009, 7:17am EST
  

• How to Save the Economy and Wrap Up 2010 Elections, in One Easy Step

  As Digby has repeatedly shown, people blame Obama for the financial crisis, even though he didn't cause it or approve the initial Wall Street bailout. This is accurate and fair for two overwhelming reasons: Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
  
  Hiring those two Wall Street shills to oversee the' [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• "Torture for Tantrums"

  Juvenile program officials can lose millions in federal funding by failing to use carefully-taught passive restraints on children. But cops can tase them with impunity.
  
  The 10-year-old girl throwing a temper tantrum her mother was too lazy to deal with didn't actually die from the tasering, but that's [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 7:00pm EST
  

• Showing the Jihadis What We're Made Of

  Glenn Greenwald finds definitive proof for the torturing-people-hurts-our-cause argument he's been making for five years now.
  
  The British journalist Johann Hari has written an absolutely vital article for The Independent, examining a growing movement of former hardened Islamic militants who are now devoted to teaching a [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 4:29pm EST
  

• Just Bury the Fucking Lines Already

  Three times in six years, not-that-unusual storms shut the entire state down.
  
  Not for hours, not for days, but for weeks.
  
  Hundreds of thousands of people - a fifth of the entire state - without heat, without electricity, without even water in the depths of winter. Trapped in [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 6:00am EST
  

• Repugs Block Dem Effort to Freeze Credit Card Interest Rates

  Just when you think repugs can't possibly find another way to fuck over working Americans, or get any more shamelessly blatant about it, they do.
  
  Digby gets to the heart of it:
  
  If Democrats can't make something out of this they deserve to lose their [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Cat is Out of the Bag: ACORN is SMERSH

  We have to admit it now, my dusky, urban comrades in evil. 52 percent of republicans have figured out that ACORN stole the election for Obama last year.
  
  Yes, 9,500,000 votes for McCain/Palin were ripped from the trusting hands of loyal Americans and given to a muslin socialist [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 7:00pm EST
  

• Worse Than We Hoped; Better Than We Expected

  The public option survived - that's good. But so did opt-out - that's bad. The bill saves so much money it shuts down the fiscal opposition - that's good. But to get there it had to postpone implementation to 2014 - that's bad. It raises taxes on the rich - [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 5:28pm EST
  

• Study: Kentucky's Poor Pay Highest Taxes

  Print out this story, stick it in your wallet, and the next time some tax-break-sucking, McMansion-dwelling, SUV-driving repug starts whining about entitlements, pull it out and whip her to death with it.
  
  Linda Blackford at the Herald:
  
  Low and middle-income Kentuckians pay a larger share of their [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 6:01am EST
  

• We Knew Henry Clay: Henry Clay Was a Senator of Ours, and You, Mitch McConnell, Are No Henry Clay

  Via Jake, a long-lost painting of the great U.S. Senator and Speaker of the House from Kentucky Henry Clay has been restored and hung in a place of honor in the U.S. Capitol.
  
  Unfortunately, the usually impeccable Smithsonian Magazine falls victim to Villager cowardice and allows Mitch [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 6:09am EST
  

• The Bushies' Sexual Torture Fetish

  I've said it all along:Only Perverts Torture.
  
  Now Marcy Wheeler identifies the perversion at the heart of the Bushies' hysterical opposition to civilian trials for the criminals they tortured.
  
  I’m not amused that the Wall Street Journal solicited an op-ed attacking the decision to [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 10:00pm EST
  

• "An insult to women ... that we're even talking about her"

  Everybody and his grandmother has something to say about Caribou Barbie's 400-page whine-fest, but the one who really nails it is the Rude Pundit:
  
  Now imagine Hillary Clinton in that situation. Do you think for a second that she would have allowed herself to be forced away if [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 8:00pm EST
  

• The Kids Are All Right

  The next time you're tempted to despair over the younger generation's ignorance of history, or the refusal of southerners to acknowledge the existence of the Bill of Rights, click here to watch the video, and remember that the Constitution is stronger and more inspiring than any of us imagine.[...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 6:15pm EST
  

• Senior Kentuckians: DON'T Cut Budget

  We still don't have any actual evidence that Kentuckians who are not politicians or big media give a flying fuck about budget deficits, but we have definitive proof that some Kentuckians care very much about stopping Governor Beshear from gutting state spending.
  
  Several hundred elderly people rallied in' [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 7:30am EST
  

• Gary Wills Gets it Completely Backwards

  Is this Backwards Week? What in the name of Fuck-All is Garry Wills thinking?
  
  I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 6:00am EST
  

• The Wages of Compromise: Defeat

  If the White House and Senate Democrats still think, despite all evidence to the contrary, that compromising with the anti-healthcare forces is going to lead to a better reform bill - or any bill at all - they would do well to study the fresh, still warm and bloody lesson [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Is Camp Lejeune Next?

  "... in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I've never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness -- literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience ... inadequate treatment ... callous indifference ... This'" [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 7:06pm EST
  

• The Last Man of Conscience

  Rest in peace, Assemblyman Michaels.
  
  Digby:
  
  When's the last time a person was willing to lose his or her seat in order to keep a women's right to choose from being restricted much less advancing it.
  
  This man did it a long time ago:
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 16, 2009, 6:45am EST
  

• Domestic violence

  The Courier-Journal has a 10-piece package on fighting domestic violence in Kentucky:
  
  In the past three years, 49 Kentuckians have been killed by their husbands, boyfriends or former mates — victims of the ultimate form of domestic violence, according to a state advocacy group and news accounts.
  
  [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 3:00pm EST
  

• "Fiscal Conservatism" is Neither

  Via Digby, a great piece on deficit stupidity by Chris Hayes:
  
  The discussion about deficits and debt in Washington is so colossally stupid and disingenuous that even engaging it makes me despair. But today's Politico so expertly packages together every conceivable Beltway Establishment inanity about "spending" and' [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 12:00pm EST
  

• Because Kentucky Needs More Democratic Cowards in Congress

  So you're one of the top two candidates for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, and what you really need is a way to separate yourself from your primary competition. Hey, how about using a statewide conference of Democratic women to condem the Stupak "wire hanger" Amendment and announce your' [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 7:11am EST
  

• To the Catholic Conference: Pay Up Or Shut Up

  Ever get the impression the Catholic Church has never gotten over Martin Luther getting away with telling it to fuck off and die? For 1,000 years it tortures and burns to death anybody who so much as looks at it cross-eyed, then along comes this little shit with the 95 [...]
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  Posted: November 15, 2009, 6:00am EST
  

• Only Repugs Get Abortions

  Anyone who's worked in reproductive health will tell you that women who get abortions represent a pretty fair cross-section of their communities: age, race, religion, wealth, politics. It's why the more wingnut/freakazoid a community is, the higher the percentage of wingnut/freakazoids among those getting abortions.
  
  And it's why' [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 1:00pm EST
  

• Straight Talk on Jobs

  As the Cowardly Democrats in Washington prepare to cut the budget, thus smothering what little economic recovery the too-small spring stimulus provided, one of the few sensible voices on economics in D.C. explains what's really going on with the lack of jobs:
  
  What exactly is going on with' [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 12:00pm EST
  

• Send Coathangers to Wire Hanger and His Friends

  Via Media Czech, Ben Chandler Is A Lying Woman-Hater, Day Eight.
  
  Click here to send a message they can't misinterpret.
  
  Did 20 pro-choice Democrats forget what happens when women are denied access to abortion?
  
  Why did pro-choice Democrats vote to approve the Stupak Amendment, the' [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 10:25am EST
  

• Commies Trying to Take Over in Nicholasville

  This is how the Commies controlled people in Russia and China and North Korea: government employees deciding what people could and could not read, even overruling parents' decisions about their own children.
  
  And it's happening again. Not, as you might think, in some Obama-worshipping socialist hell-hole like San Francisco, [...]
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  Posted: November 14, 2009, 7:13am EST
  

• Why KSM Really Terrifies the Repugs

  The Rude Pundit nails it:
  
  It's not that Barack Obama is going to put us in danger. It's that he's showing how justice is supposed to be done. Just doing that simple thing, abiding by the laws of the land, demonstrates the failures of the last administration. The' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 9:00pm EST
  

• Keep Talking, Wire Hanger. You're Just Digging Your Grave Deeper.

  Media Czech has Wire Hanger by the balls and ain't lettin' go.
  
  Ben Chandler Lies About His Vote on Stupak Amendment.
  
  Blatantly.
  
  “I don’t think it affects private plans,” he said. “I think there are those who think that it does.”
  That is a [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 7:31pm EST
  

• Dean: Wire Hanger has "a lot of explaining to do"

  The man who orchestrated the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006-2008 by rejecting Blue Dogs in favor of the 50-State Strategy took aim yesterday at Kentucky's own Blue Dog Extraordinaire, Wire Hanger.
  
  Former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday that he was “deeply disappointed” in U.S. Rep.' [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 6:39am EST
  

• An Unexpected Encounter in Section 60

  Via Talking Points Memo, a must-read about an unplanned meeting at Arlington on Veterans Day.
  
  Click here for the video. [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 8:35pm EST
  

• They Spoke to Him at Arlington, and He Listened

  This one decision will put Barack Obama's presidency back on track to success.
  
  President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility' [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 6:18am EST
  

• The Purge That Strengthens

  Ben Chandler's effective defection to the teabaggers has opened a rift among Kentucky Democrats, with progressives condemning him and vowing never to vote for him again.
  
  But even before the new anti-DINOs can coalesce behind a progressive challenger, any minute now the concern trolls are going' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 4:51pm EST
  

• Ben "Wire Hanger" Chandler, Whining Worm

  Media Czech takes on the spin from the traitor to be known from now on as Wire Hanger.
  
  Actually Ben, that's far from the case. The Republicans are going to hammer you either way, because that's what they do.
  
  If you voted for... I don't know, what' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 10:28am EST
  

• Who Needs One Big Lie When Everything Is A Lie?

  
  Click for larger image.
  
  KeninNY at Down with Tyranny on having an entire political movement divorced from reality:
  
  ... the Modern Right-Wing Republican-slash-Conservative Movement now conisders that it has blanket permission to lie.
  
  This is something I've been saying since' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 9:44am EST
  

• Broke, Sick and Stupid, Kentucky Bets its Last Dime on Coal

  You've seen 'em. At the track, the casino, the lottery machine. The haggard face, the ragged clothes, the tattered singles clutched in a shaking hand. They know they're going to lose because they've always lost before, but they still can't help themselves.
  
  And so Kentucky, facing another billion-dollar-plus deficit' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 7:57am EST
  

• Could Not Ask For More

  Blue Girl nails it.
  
  Wow. This one will go down in history as one of the best speeches ever by any President. Ever.
  
  What a tribute he gave to the thirteen dead in last weeks terrible attack at the processing center at Fort Hood. He pulled [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 5:33pm EST
  

• Icewater Mansions

  Today is the 34th anniversary of the most famous of the Great Lakes' thousands of shipwrecks: The Edmund Fitzgerald.
  
  ' [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 5:28pm EST
  

• The Speech Repugs Don't Want You to Hear

  From Down with Tyranny:
  
  
  
  Then read Digby on how and why President Obama and Congressional Democrats are betraying half the population:
  
  Instead they went in with the tried and true "don't make trouble" strategy assuring everyone who would listen that they had no intention' [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 6:44am EST
  

• For Cowardly Dems Who Have Considered Betrayal

  It's too late for traitors like Ben Chandler who have already voted against the most important legislation of the 21st century; they've already lost re-election in 2010.
  
  But for Senate Blue Dogs like Blanche Lincoln, there's still a chance to save themselves. Not by running away from health care' [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 8:25pm EST