Ky. Republicans should know food stamps feed their young and elderly constituents

A good editorial from the Herald-Leader:

It has been a month since the U.S. House, including all of Kentucky's Republicans, abandoned a 40-year practice by dropping food stamps from the farm bill.

...While House Republicans created more uncertainty for the poor, they fattened agriculture subsidies, the vast majority of which go to the largest operations. House Republicans even did away with a limit approved by the Senate on federal farm aid to people making more than $750,000 a year.

All five of Kentucky's Republicans — Reps. Ed Whitfield, Brett Guthrie, Thomas Massie, Andy Barr and Rogers — put lucrative subsidies for Big Agriculture above feeding their needy constituents. Kentucky's lone Democrat, John Yarmuth of Louisville, opposed the bill.

Seeking a senator

An editorial in today's Courier-Journal:

(Mitch) McConnell, who brags about his “Whac-a-Mole” tactics, already has come out swinging.

His campaign spokesman derided Mr. Bevin, who is a New Hampshire native and moved to Louisville in 1999, as “an East Coast con man.” He has ridiculed Ms. Grimes as the liberal candidate of President Barack Obama.

...In the coming months (Mr. McConnell), instead of just tearing down opponents why not talk about who you are, what you believe and what you have done for Kentucky?

McConnell risks negativity backlash

An editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

(Mitch) McConnell is being so petty and dismissive toward his challengers — "nuisance" was Team Mitch's word for Republican Matt Bevin who entered the race this week — that voters might wonder: Does McConnell think that, just because he's been there 30 years, he owns a seat in the U.S. Senate?

Kentuckians own that Senate seat.

...Voters are left to wonder why McConnell has had 30 years in the Senate, the last four as the No. 1 Republican, but isn't highlighting his accomplishments.

Rand Paul's ditching the 'Southern Avenger' is too little, too late

From today's Courier-Journal:

Kentucky’s junior U.S. Sen. Rand Paul finally has shed himself of the “Southern Avenger.”

The Avenger, Sen. Paul explained, had become a “distraction.”

A “distraction?” Either Sen. Paul has developed new skills at understatement or he is stunningly clueless about what’s wrong with hiring Confederate sympathizer and former radio shock jock Jack Hunter as social media director.

McConnell Obstructing Bipartisan Plan To Reduce Veterans Backlog

Today the DSCC issued a press release on Mitch's latest hypocritical statement:

Mitch McConnell, the self-proclaimed "proud guardian of gridlock," is now lying to Kentucky veterans. In a speech this morning, McConnell called the VA backlog a "national disgrace," but failed to mention that he actually voted against a bipartisan ten point plan to reduce the backlog problem. A majority of Republicans on the Appropriations Committee opposed McConnell and supported the proposal.

"Mitch McConnell's insatiable thirst for gridlock and obstruction has hurt Kentucky veterans, and now McConnell is blatantly lying about it," said Justin Barasky, National Press Secretary at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "The fact is Mitch McConnell voted against a bipartisan '10 point plan' that would reduce the backlog. Instead of fighting for veterans Mitch McConnell is pushing partisan political gridlock in Washington."

Click here to read the entire press release.

Senator Mitch McConnell is MIA

A superb editorial in today's Courier-Journal:

It takes a lot of brass to obstruct a deal, get left out of it, vote against it, yet bask in shared credit for it.

But that is exactly what Kentucky’s senior Sen. Mitch McConnell did this week after some of his more rational Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate pushed him aside to broker an agreement with Democrats to finally begin approving stalled executive branch appointees of President Barack Obama.

Mr. McConnell, minority leader of Senate Republicans, became even too obstructive for his own colleagues this week as they sought to end the endless GOP filibusters that have ground Washington to a halt.

Mitch McConnell Is Hurting Kentucky Workers With Unprecedented Levels Of Obstruction

Today the DSCC issued a press release on Mitch McConnell's obstructionism:

During his time as minority leader, McConnell has voted to block efforts to create jobs, provide incentives for businesses who don’t offshore, extend unemployment insurance, and pass a minimum wage increase. This week McConnell once again took aim at Kentucky’s middle class, refusing to join 17 other Republican Senators to end the filibuster of Richard Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mitch McConnell voted to block the American Jobs Act which would have meant hundreds of billions in tax incentives and infrastructure investments. Worse, when the U.S. Senate took up legislation to help companies cover the cost of moving workers back to the U.S. from overseas and provide incentives to businesses replacing overseas workers with jobs here at home, McConnell blocked that as well.

During the height of the economic crisis Mitch McConnell repeatedly voted to block efforts to help unemployed workers and raise the minimum wage. On legislation extending unemployment insurance, making unemployment benefits retroactive, and extending the homebuyer tax credit, McConnell chose gridlock and obstruction instead of Kentucky families.

Click here to read the entire release.

Rand Paul stands by his man at own peril

A good editorial in today's Courier-Journal:

Last week came the latest embarrassment, astonishing news that Sen. Paul employs a former radio shock jock and Confederate sympathizer Jack Hunter, who calls himself the “Southern Avenger,” has appeared in public in a Confederate flag mask, boasted of secessionist views and venerates John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

...Mr. Hunter, who claimed to toast John Wilkes Booth every year on his birthday, also seemed OK with killing a president who holds objectionable views — such as saving the Union while abolishing slavery. Sen. Paul, with well-known presidential aspirations, might be a little nervous about having a guy like that on staff.

But the much larger issue is Sen. Paul’s shocking lapse of judgment in hiring Mr. Hunter, then insisting on keeping him on staff after reports surfaced about his extremist views.

Paul's aide raises questions for him; 'Southern Avenger' tarnishes image

A great editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

This week, a conservative website broke the story that Jack Hunter, the director of new media on (Rand Paul's) staff who also co-authored a book with him, has a history that is decidedly at odds with most notions of inclusivity.

..."John Wilkes Booth's heart was in the right place. The Southern Avenger does regret that Lincoln's murder automatically turned him into a martyr," Hunter said in 2004. He also has written that he raises a toast to Booth annually on the assassin's birthday.

...It's time for Paul to decide whether he'll retain among his closest advisers a man who was willing to fan racial conflict and celebrate a presidential assassin just to make a buck, or if he wants to convince the public that his professed inclusivity is something more than political posturing.

McConnell Mum on Violence Against Women

Today the DSCC issued a press release about Mitch McConnell's record on women's issues:

Mitch McConnell made it clear last week that he has no interest in fighting for Kentucky women. While bragging about a $38 million earmark he secured for a project led by a campaign donor, McConnell refused to even answer a question from one of the leading Kentucky political reporters about how he could oppose the Violence Against Women Act.

Watch as McConnell offers Kentucky women nothing but a blank stare when asked about the Violence Against Women Act and women’s issues:

WHAS’s Joe Arnold: Given the demographic difference between you and Ms. Grimes, in terms of her age versus yours, as well as the fact that she’s already highlighted that she’s a woman... brought up like the Violence Against Women Act... How will you counter that?

McConnell: Well as Ronald Reagan famously said once, I won’t use my opponent’s youth and inexperience as an issue in this campaign.

Arnold: What about women’s issues?

McConnell: (silence)

Click here to read the entire press release.

Rand Paul aide has history of neo-Confederate sympathies, inflammatory statements

An interesting article in the Washington Free Beacon:

A close aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) who co-wrote the senator’s 2011 book spent years working as a pro-secessionist radio pundit and neo-Confederate activist, raising questions about whether Paul will be able to transcend the same fringe-figure associations that dogged his father’s political career.

Paul hired Jack Hunter, 39, to help write his book The Tea Party Goes to Washington during his 2010 Senate run. Hunter joined Paul’s office as his social media director in August 2012.

...while in his 20s, Hunter was a chairman in the League of the South, which “advocates the secession and subsequent independence of the Southern States from this forced union and the formation of a Southern republic.”

Filibustering our democracy

A good editorial from today's Herald-Leader:

"Matters of this level of controversy always require 60 votes," (Mitch McConnell) nonchalantly noted one dreary December day, blocking a bill that would have ended last year's debt ceiling crisis by yielding authority to the president.

But the bill that McConnell had just filibustered should have been utterly uncontroversial to him — it was his own.

McConnell's unprecedented self-filibuster — the senatorial equivalent of punching oneself in the face — was just the most glaringly disingenuous maneuver in the recent, Republican-led spate of obstructionism in the Senate.

Kentucky's busy senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul

A good editorial in today's Courier-Journal:

Mr. McConnell wasn’t too busy (last) week to send a bizarre letter to commissioners of the nation’s major sports leagues, bullying them to stay out of promoting health care reform, which became law in 2010 and will be more widely accessible Oct. 1 through state health insurance exchanges.

...Mr. Paul found time last week to comment on last week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down the federal law against same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, his comments included wondering whether the ruling could lead to marriage between humans and, well, non-humans.

We’d all be better off if Kentucky’s senators could stick to business — the business of working on behalf of Kentucky voters who elected them.

Yet more hypocrisy from Mitch McConnell

An update on yesterday's post about Mitch's hypocrisy...

On Monday, after Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her intention to run against Mitch McConnell in 2014's Senate race, Mitch McConnell had this to say:

"I look forward to a respectful exchange of ideas."

The very next day, Mitch released a bizarre attack ad against Alison on his YouTube channel.

Such a "respectful exchange of ideas," right?

Well, today brings us yet another bizarre attack ad from Mitch McConnell -- this time attacking Alison for not having air-conditioning in the room in which she announced her Senate bid.

If this is what Mitch McConnell thinks real Kentuckians care about, then he's obviously been in Washington DC too long.

More hypocrisy from Mitch McConnell

Yesterday, after Alison Lundergan Grimes announced her intention to run against Mitch McConnell in 2014's Senate race, Mitch McConnell had this to say:

"I look forward to a respectful exchange of ideas."

Today, just one day later, Mitch McConnell released a bizarre attack ad against Alison on his YouTube channel.

So much for that "respectful exchange of ideas," eh Mitch?