Restoring America PAC HITS Steve Beshear With An "Are We There Yet?" Campaign Ad, Featuring Jefferson County Public School Children Chugging "Red Bull" To Stay Awake While Being Bused To Out Of District Schools. HILARIOUS! Watch Video.

Some Of The Jobs Governor Steve Beshear Boasts Of Creating Don't Exist!

Some of the jobs Gov. Beshear boasts about creating don't exist
By John Cheves

Gov. Steve Beshear frequently credits himself with creating or retaining more than 19,500 Kentucky jobs, but some of those jobs don't exist.

Hundreds of specific jobs that the Democratic governor identifies on his campaign Web site actually have not been created since the initial press releases went out, or they were partially offset by subsequent layoffs at the same companies, or they were announced under Ernie Fletcher, Beshear's Republican predecessor.

For example, the Web site says "Steve Beshear worked with Worldcolor to create 135 new jobs" in Simpson County. It cites a 2010 state press release as its source. But the jobs never came to Worldcolor, a printer later bought by Quad/Graphics.

"The jobs pretty much have been put on hold," plant manager Todd Ramsey said in a recent interview.

The Beshear Web site proclaims Lockheed Martin's plan to create 224 jobs in Lexington, tied to $15 million in tax credits that Beshear announced. It does not mention at least 77 layoffs now underway at that defense contracting plant.

In Nelson County, the Web site says, "Steve Beshear worked with Flowers Food Bakery to bring 145 new jobs and $52 million investment." But the company said in 2007, during the Fletcher administration, that it would build its next bakery in Harrodsburg and create those jobs. Beshear arrived two years later for the ribbon cutting.

Overall, nearly 86,000 more Kentuckians are jobless now than when Beshear took office, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state's unemployment rate stood at 9.5 percent in August, up from 5.6 percent in December 2007.

The Beshear campaign defended its claims on Thursday.

"The numbers are accurate and we stand by them," Beshear spokesman Matt Erwin said. "Companies have been approved for incentives to create 19,000 jobs and save 7,000 jobs. If they decide against creating or saving those jobs, or don't live up to their commitment, they will not receive any incentive from the state."

As for the jobless numbers, Erwin said the Beshear campaign uses employment numbers rather than unemployment numbers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Kentucky now has 13,531 fewer employed people than it did when Beshear took office. The bureau drops people from the labor pool count if they stop looking for work for 12 months.

Economists say worsening unemployment is not Beshear's fault; it's due to a struggling national economy. Most states have lost jobs. However, Beshear can't take credit for jobs created on his watch anymore than he should accept blame for jobs lost, they said.

Employers add jobs when the economy is strong, not because of special tricks by the government, said Ken Troske, a University of Kentucky economist who studies the state's economic development efforts.

"When you look at the data carefully, the government's efforts at job creation are rather small in terms of success and rather expensive, whether it's the federal stimulus package or state tax incentives," Troske said.

In his campaign commercials, Beshear touts the state's retooled tax-inventive system, which he and the legislature accomplished in 2009. More tax breaks now go to smaller, homegrown companies, compared to the previous model, which focused on wooing large factories away from other states — with mixed results.

"Beshear's economic incentives are helping to keep people working in large and small businesses across Kentucky," the narrator says in one of the governor's campaign commercials.

It's too early to know what impact the new tax incentives will have. Construction and expansion can take years. Kentucky approved $73.5 million in incentives in 2010, barely more than the $72.5 million it approved in 2008.

Troske said the tax incentive changes were "useful," but companies still are more drawn to an educated workforce and good infrastructure, such as highways, ports and airports. Those are amenities that require decades to develop, not a single four-year term, he said. Others agreed with that assessment.

"It is the role of government to take the long view. Investing in schools, in educated communities, is a part of that. Tax incentives are not," said Justin Maxson, president of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, a Berea nonprofit that assists small businesses in Appalachia.

In the meantime, Beshear's shaky jobs claims are providing fodder for his opponents as he seeks re-election on Nov. 8. He faces Republican David Williams, the state Senate president, and independent Gatewood Gailbraith, a lawyer.

"Governor Beshear's entire campaign is designed to cover up his abysmal record on job creation, and today's news confirms that he will say anything to get elected," Williams said Thursday. "As governor, Kentuckians will always get the truth from me about our economy."

"His defense for the declining economic and job growth is that he was the victim of the national economic crisis," said Dea Riley, Galbraith's running mate. "Yet he did nothing to prepare, nor take appropriate steps to stabilize Kentucky's economy."

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/29/1902350/some-of-the-jobs-gov-beshear-boasts.html#ixzz1ZOjJhSDI

Breaking News: U. S. Yemeni Raid Kills American Al Qaeda Leader, Anwar Al Awlaki. Great News. Watch Video.

Nick Anderson "Exposes" Rick Perry.

Cal Thomas: [POTUS Barack] Obama Is Rapidly Losing His Black Base, But He Is Right That They Need To Do More.

Obama is rapidly losing his black base, but he is right that they need to do more
By CAL THOMAS

You know President Obama thinks he is in trouble with his liberal base when he lapses into what used to be called “jive talk” before an audience of Congressional Black Caucus members. Dropping his “g’s”, the president admonished the group to “stop complainin’.”

“Who’s he talking about?” Rep. Maxine Waters, California Democrat, asked, puzzled, keeping the “g.”

Some African Americans have reason to complain. For decades they have given Democrats their votes, while receiving little in return, except government checks and a welfare system that has become as addictive as cocaine.

In fact, the programs themselves are a kind of drug, which has doomed generations of poor blacks to a shoddy education, single motherhood, absent fathers, crime and incarceration.

This summer, the unemployment rate among blacks increased to 16.7 percent, the highest level in 27 years, almost twice the national rate. In 1984, black leaders blamed joblessness on Ronald Reagan. They are reluctant to blame America’s first black president (if you don’t count Bill Clinton), and instead have launched a jobs tour to focus on the problem.

Obama’s approval rating among blacks has declined 25 percent in the last five months, from 83 percent to 58 percent, according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

This isn’t the first time Obama has lectured his base. Exactly one year ago, the president said, “Buck up. Stop whining. And get to work.” He didn’t tell them where or how to find work if they were unemployed.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy, an African American, wrote, “It’s hard to see how the plight of black people could get any worse, even under a President (Herman) Cain.”

The tone of Milloy’s column suggests Obama only pays attention to black people when he wants their votes.

Before the Congressional Black Caucus, Obama said, “I expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes.”

Instead of blindly marching to the polls to again vote for Obama and other Democrats, African Americans should march out of the schools that are failing their children. They should demand from politicians who can afford to send their children to expensive private schools - like the Obamas - the same choice those “evil” rich people enjoy.

A bright future begins with a good education.

Too many African Americans are being deprived of an education by their Democratic bosses who doom them to a future of welfare dependency and despair because they will not let them flee failing schools.

I would be willing to wager several mortgage payments on an experiment. Take one dozen poor minority children and allow them to attend private schools where they are loved, encouraged and motivated to do well. Take another dozen and let them remain in failing schools where drugs and guns proliferate and they live in despair without being able to spell the word.

Oh wait. That is already being done in an increasing number of charter schools around the country and through groups like the Children’s Scholarship Fund in New York City, which underwrites the cost of a low-income child’s private, often parochial, education. The academic and social results in these schools are astounding.

If children learn to value themselves, they are more likely to be motivated to do well in school and as adults and less likely to have babies while still in their own childhood.

The keys to a successful life are known: stay in school and receive a good education; get married before you have children and then stay married; develop character qualities such as virtue and honesty; have a purpose for living beyond yourself; refrain from taking drugs; avoid the company of criminals and other bad influences.

Disillusionment with this president has set in with many of the young people who viewed him as a messianic figure four years ago.

According to an AP-GfK poll, 27 percent of young Democrats under age 45 say the president is not a strong leader.

They are already marching, but it’s away from the president.

Are You Watching The Murder Trial Of Micheal Jackson's "Smooth Criminal", Conrad Murray? You Should be. Watch It LIVE Here.

First watch this:



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Tim Shaughnessy's Allegation Suggests Jack Conway WINKS, While University Of Louisville Doctors Use Millions Of Dollars In Medicaid Indigent Care Money To Give Themselves Bonuses. Tsk! Tsk!!

Medicaid funds allegedly misused: U of L doctors used $4.8 million in Medicaid money for bonuses, Shaughnessy says
Shaughnessy claims U of L doctors paid selves $4.8 million
Written by Deborah Yetter

Doctors at the University of Louisville medical school used about $4.8 million in state Medicaid funds to pay themselves “financial bonuses” — money that was supposed to be used for indigent care, state Sen. Tim Shaughnessy says.

And they used another $5.2 million for an electronic records system that would make U of L doctors eligible for additional bonuses from the federal government, according to new details of a controversial transaction that Shaughnessy said he recently obtained from Attorney General Jack Conway’s office.

A spokeswoman for Conway said Wednesday that the office determined only that the $4.8 million was compensation for U of L doctors. But Shaughnessy insisted that Conway’s staff described the money as “bonuses” at a recent meeting.

“I was shocked,’’ said Shaughnessy, a Louisville Democrat who was the first to publicly question a transfer of about $30 million in surplus health funds in 2008 and 2009 from Passport Health Plan to U of L, University Physicians Associates, or UPA, and others represented on Passport’s board.

Although those groups have agreed to repay most of the money to settle an inquiry by Conway — who determined the transfer of funds was illegal — Shaughnessy said he believes U of L’s board needs to exercise more oversight to prevent a recurrence of what he calls the “Passport scandal.”

Shaughnessy said he plans to file legislation for the 2012 session of the General Assembly that would require public university boards to exercise more oversight over affiliated entities such as Passport.

“We need to know how this happened, and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said in an interview.

Conway’s office investigated Passport after it was the subject of a scathing report last year by state Auditor Crit Luallen that blasted travel, entertainment and other spending by former executives but also questioned the $30 million transfer.

Passport is a nonprofit Medicaid managed-care organization that provides health care to about 170,000 low-income and disabled Medicaid recipients in Jefferson and 15 surrounding counties.

UPA declined to comment on Shaughnessy’s concerns, which he also outlined in a Sept. 14 letter to the organization’s chairman, Dr. Gerard Rabalais, said spokeswoman Diane Partridge.

“We have just gotten our hands on it, and we think it’s inappropriate to comment until we respond to Sen. Shaughnessy directly,” Partridge said.

She also declined to say whether any of the 600 physicians who make up UPA received bonuses, as Shaughnessy’s letter claims.

“We haven’t looked through the letter enough to even comment,” Partridge said.

In its investigation of the transfer of about $10 million from Passport to UPA, the attorney general’s office determined that about $4.8 million was used to “compensate” physicians and another $5.2 million was used for an electronic medical records system, according to spokeswoman Shelley Johnson.

She said in an email that Conway’s office did not determine whether the physician compensation was for bonuses or salaries.

“UPA was forthcoming with us that $4.8 million went to the clinic practice group and was used to compensate physicians,” she said.

But Shaughnessy said members of the attorney general’s staff told him at a Sept. 8 meeting that the funds were used for bonuses.

Further, he said, he was surprised to learn that the electronic medical records system, launched earlier this year with the help of $5.2 million in Passport money, makes UPA physicians eligible for bonuses of up to $44,000 over five years under the federal government’s Electronic Health Records Incentive Program.

Under a settlement Conway announced in July, UPA will repay the state $9 million over five years. Other groups that received funds from Passport’s $30 million transfer agreed to repay the funds according to various schedules. They include U of L, University Medical Center and local hospitals that provided capital to start Passport.

But Shaughnessy said the repayment doesn’t address his basic concern — that U of L’s board wasn’t involved in major financial transactions involving groups with which it is affiliated, including Passport, UPA and the U of L medical center.

“There was no involvement of the U of L Board of Trustees,” Shaughnessy said. “How did these millions of dollars get allocated without any involvement of the board?”

Shaughnessy said his legislation would try to consolidate and clarify existing laws that apply to public universities and the role of their boards with respect to organizations they are affiliated with but do not directly control. He said he also has outlined his concerns in a letter to U of L President James Ramsey.

University spokesman Mark Hebert said U of L has received Shaughnessy’s letter and is working on a response but has no immediate comment on the proposed legislation.

Saudi Arabia Extends Women's Rights.

Breaking News: Federal Judge, Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, Sentences Whitley County, Kentucky, To A DESERVED 15 And Half Years For Felonies Committed While In Office. Good Riddance!

Ex-Whitley sheriff given 15½ years in prison for theft, money laundering
By Bill Estep

LONDON — Former Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge was sentenced Wednesday to 15½ years in federal prison for crimes he committed while in office.

U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove also ordered Hodge to pay $64,897 in restitution to Whitley County and to forfeit $50,000 to the federal government.

Hodge pleaded guilty to stealing money and laundering money while he was sheriff from early 2003 through 2010. He was accused of committing a wide range of crimes while in office, including using drugs, taking payoffs from drug dealers and stealing more than $300,000.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/28/1900686/ex-whitley-sheriff-sentenced-to.html#ixzz1ZHABqYKK

Louisville Courier Journal Editorial Chastises Steve Beshear For Serial No Shows At Debates, Likens His Disappearance To Amelia Earhart. But We Know More HITS On David Williams And Richie Farmer Are Coming. WINK!

Editorial | Steve Beshear a no-show, again

Kentuckians have more hope of spotting Amelia Earhart in this year’s gubernatorial race than Democratic incumbent Steve Beshear.

Once again, Mr. Beshear went missing from an opportunity to discuss issues and current events with his opponents — Republican David Williams and independent Gatewood Galbraith — in a Monday night debate aired on Kentucky Educational Television.

A few weeks ago, the Governor stiffed a Louisville Yearlings gathering after having confirmed a rare appearance, which was bad enough.

Monday’s KET no-show had an extra egregiousness factor because the subject of discussion was education, an issue about which Mr. Beshear has expressed great passion and commitment. Kentucky’s chief executive also wears the crown of the nation’s top education governor, bestowed this year by the National Education Association. Still “the education governor” didn’t show.

No, he didn’t say he was washing his hair that evening, but a spokesman issued an all-purpose “unable to attend the debate” statement that served as an equivalent brush-off.

The Governor’s opponents ought not to be the only ones steamed by his sudden aversion to cameras and lights.

He has a record in office. Presumably, he has a vision for the future. The purpose of a campaign is to make a case for votes. So far, the best case Mr. Beshear has made is that he is a champion hide-and-seek player.

His spokesman said the Governor will show up for two debates in October. Pinch us — we must be dreaming. Maybe we will see him before we find Amelia Earhart.

POTUS Barack Obama Is STILL Peddling His "Have Dinner With The President" Scam, And Now FLOTUS Michelle Has Joined The Charade.

Friend --

Not everyone knows how to prepare for a dinner like this. As someone who's eaten countless meals with my husband, I want to tell you the one thing to do if you're selected to join him...

Just relax. Barack wants this dinner to be fun, and he really loves getting to know supporters like you.

I hope you'll take him up on it before Friday's deadline.

Will you donate $15 or more today and be entered to have dinner with Barack?

These dinners mean a lot to Barack. They're a chance for him to talk with a few of the people who are driving the campaign -- and a chance for him to say thank you.

So come prepared to tell your story, and say whatever's on your mind.

Don't miss the opportunity to be there. Donate $15 today, before the September 30th deadline:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Dinner

Thanks,

Michelle

Editor's comment: FOOL me once ... .

Listen To "Doped Up" Micheal Jackson On Tape, Recorded By His QUACK Doctor Conrad Murray, The "Smooth Criminal". Watch And Listen.

Federal Judge Thomas B. Russell Rules Bowling Green, Kentucky, Iraqi Al-Qaeda Suspect, Waad Ramadan Alwan, Can Be Tried In Civilian Court.

Iraqi can be tried in civilian court: Judge issues ruling in bombing case
Written by Andrew Wolfson

An Iraqi national charged in Kentucky with planting roadside bombs in Iraq can be tried in civilian court, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Thomas B. Russell rejected Waad Ramadan Alwan’s claims that, under the Geneva Convention, he could only be prosecuted in Iraq.

Alwan was indicted in Bowling Green on charges that he engaged in conspiracy to commit the murder of U.S. nationals in Iraq during the insurgency there between 2003 and 2006.

He and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were arrested in Kentucky in May and also charged with conspiring to send weapons and cash to al-Qaida in Iraq. Both have pleaded not guilty and are being detained pending trial, which has not been set.

Alwan’s lawyer, chief federal public defender Scott Wendelsdorf, sought dismissal of the murder charges on the grounds that the international treaty signed by the United States says that civilians in Iraq were subject to prosecution only under local law or through military tribunals.

Wendelsdorf also claimed that the federal statute that Alwan was charged with violating was intended only to protect diplomatic personnel overseas, not troops in nations under military occupation.

But Russell agreed with the prosecution that the law applies in areas under military control and covers the murder of any American abroad.

He also said that the Geneva Civilian Convention does not bar concurrent jurisdiction by foreign and U.S. courts, and that the federal law “may be extended to criminalize insurgent and terrorist activities in other countries even though those same acts may be punishable in Iraqi courts as well.”

The Justice Department and Wendelsdorf both declined to comment on the ruling.

Alwan is one of only a handful of foreign nationals to be prosecuted in the United States for alleged terrorism offenses in a U.S.-occupied territory such as Iraq or Afghanistan during wartime, the Justice Department has said.

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and others also have objected to the trial of Alwan and Hammadi in federal court, but they have cited security concerns and said they should be prosecuted before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.

McConnell and others also have said the defendants don’t deserve the full protection of the Bill of Rights accorded to civilian defendants.

Alwan and Hammadi entered the United States after receiving refugee status.

POTUS Barack Obama's Campaign Strategist David Axelrod Likens The Re-election Campaign To A "Titanic Struggle," And We Know What Happened To That Ship! Watch Video.

Go here to watch video.

This Mike Luckovich Cartoon Speaks For Itself. LOL.

POTUS Barack Obama Wants You To Send Some Campaign Cash.

Friend --

I enjoy talking about fundraising deadlines as much as I imagine you enjoy hearing about them.

But this Friday's deadline is important.

It's a chance for us to prove how we're different from any campaign in politics: We rely on ordinary Americans giving what they can -- one grassroots donation at a time.

This is not just a campaign. It's a chance for each of us as citizens to organize and change the course of history.

And before we close the books this Friday at midnight, I hope you'll become a part of it.

Please donate $15 or more today.

I'll be calling some grassroots donors like you by phone this week, so I can say thank you.

And if I don't call you, there's a chance I'll see you at dinner with three other supporters sometime soon.

Even if I don't get to thank you personally, every single donation counts:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Friday-Deadline

Thanks for doing your part,

Barack

Feeling Dissed When For-Profit Schools Gave Campaign Money To His Opponent Todd P'Pool, Jack Conway Declares War On Them.

Jack Conway files suit against another for-profit college
Written by Tom Loftus

Conway anyone with concerns or questions may call his Consumer Protection Hotline at (888) 432-9257 or e-mail him at studentcomplaints@ag.gov

FRANKFORT, KY. — Attorney General Jack Conway filed suit Tuesday against another for-profit college, charging that it lied about its success in placing graduates in jobs and thus put its bottom line before the interests of its students.

The lawsuit was filed in Fayette Circuit Court against National College of Kentucky Inc., which has about 5,000 students at campuses in Louisville, Lexington, Danville, Florence, Richmond and Pikeville.

It is the third suit Conway has filed as part of a continuing investigation of for-profit colleges.

“This type of deception must stop,” he said at a Capitol news conference. “National College is putting its bottom line before the hopes and dreams of students who are trying to better their lives. The reality is that more and more students are leaving for-profit schools with high debt loads and without the high-paying jobs they were promised.”

The college issue a statement saying that it’s proud of its “long history of providing career-focused education” but added that it could not comment on the suit because it had not been served.

“Each individual student’s success is our main focus and we remain committed to that,” it said.

Conway’s suit alleges that National College represented on its Website that its students achieved “success” in obtaining employment at rates far higher than it reported to its accrediting agency, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.

For instance, Conway said, National College posted information last December saying that 96 percent of graduates from its Louisville campus were successful in finding employment. However, Conway said, in 2010 the college reported to the accrediting agency that its job-placement number was 60 percent.

“It’s just this type of misrepresentation that leads students to sign up for an education that oftentimes costs too much and doesn’t put them in their chosen field of study,” Conway said.

The suit seeks an order enjoining National College from violating the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act’s ban against false advertising and asks civil penalties of $2,000 per violation of that law.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110927/NEWS01/309270045/Jack-Conway-files-suit-against-another-profit-college?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Home

Heckler Calls POTUS Barack Obama "The Anti-Christ", But How Can POTUS Be That When He Affirmed His Belief That "Jesus Christ Is The Lord". Amen To That, POTUS. Watch Video.

Miss Bill "BUBBA" Clinton Yet? LOL.

Peggy Noona: "Amateur Hour At The White House." I *SIGH* At What Might Have Been!

Amateur Hour at the White House
But at the U.N., Obama rises to the occasion, while Perry makes himself small.

A small secret. In writing about the White House or Congress, I always feel completely free to attempt to see things clearly, to consider the evidence, to sift it through experience and knowledge, and then to make a judgment. It may be highly critical, or caustic, even damning. But deep down I always hope I’m wrong—that it isn’t as bad as I say it is, that there is information unknown to me that would explain such and such an act, that there were factors I didn’t know of that make bad decisions suddenly explicable. Or even justifiable.

I note this to make clear the particular importance, for me, of Ron Suskind’s book on the creation of President Obama’s economic policy, “Confidence Men.” If Mr. Suskind is right, I have been wrong in my critiques of the president’s economic policy. None of it was as bad as I said. It was much worse.

The most famous part of the book is the Larry Summers quote that he saw it as a “Home Alone” administration, with no grown-ups in charge. But there’s more than that. Most of us remember the president as in a difficult position from day one: two wars and an economic crash, good luck with that. But Mr. Suskind recasts the picture.

Like FDR, Mr. Obama had big advantages: “overwhelming popular support, Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, and the latitude afforded by crisis.” But things were weird from the beginning. Some of his aides became convinced that his “lack of . . . managerial experience” would do him in. He ran meetings as if they were afternoon talk shows. An unnamed adviser says the 2009 stimulus legislation was the result of “poor conceptualizing.” Another: “We should have spent more time thinking about where the money was being spent, rather than simply that there was this hole of a certain size in the economy that needed to be filled, so fill it.” Well, yes.

The decision to focus on health care was the president’s own. It could have been even worse. Some staffers advised him—this was just after the American economy lost almost 600,000 jobs in one month—that he should focus on global warming.

Mr. Suskind’s book is controversial, and some of his sources have accused him of misquoting them. The White House says Mr. Suskind talked to too many disgruntled former staffers. But he seems to have talked to a lot of gruntled ones, too. The overarching portrait of chaos, lack of intellectual depth and absence of political wisdom, from a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter at this paper, rings true.

Let me say here clearly what I’ve been more or less saying in this column for a while. It is that Mr. Obama cannot win in 2012, but the Republicans can lose. They can hand the incumbent a victory the majority of American voters show themselves not at all disposed to give him. (No column is complete without his latest polling disasters. A Quinnipiac poll this week shows Florida voters disapprove of the job the president is doing by 57% to 39%.)

Republicans only six months ago thought the president was unbeatable. Now they see the election as a bright red apple waiting to fall into their hands. It’s not. They’ll have to earn it.

Mr. Obama isn’t as resilient as a Bill Clinton, with his broad spectrum of political gifts and a Rasputin-like ability to emerge undead in spite of the best efforts of his foes. His spectrum of political gifts is more limited. That’s a nice way to put it, isn’t it?

But consider what happened this week in New York.

Mr. Obama’s speech Wednesday at the United Nations was good. It was strong because it was clear, and it was clear because he didn’t rely on the thumping clichés and vapidities he’s lately embraced. When the camera turned to the professionally impassive diplomats in the audience, they seemed to be actually listening.

“It has been a remarkable year,” he said: Moammar Gadhafi on the run, Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deposed, Osama bin Laden dead. “Something is happening in our world. The way things have been is not the way they will be.” Technology is putting power in the hands of the people, history is tending toward the overthrow of entrenched powers. But “peace is hard. Progress can be reversed. Prosperity comes slowly. Societies can split apart.”

On the Mideast conflict: “The people of Palestine deserve a state of their own.” But the proposed U.N. statehood resolution is a “shortcut” that won’t work: “If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.” Peace can be realized only when both parties acknowledge each other’s legitimate needs: “Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.” Friends of the Palestinians “do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

“I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress,” the president said. “So am I.” All in all, it was a measured statement at a tense moment. It was meant to defuse tensions, to cool things down.
Contrast it with the words of Rick Perry, who zoomed into New York to make his own Mideast statement the day before the president’s speech. The Obama administration’s policy, the Texas governor said, amounts to “appeasement.” It has encouraged “an ominous act of bad faith.” We are “at the precipice of such a dangerous move” because the Obama administration is “arrogant, misguided and dangerous.” “Moral equivalency” is “a dangerous insult.”

This was meant not to defuse but to inflame. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Perry that when you are running for president you have to be big, you have to act as if you’re a broad fellow who understands that when the American president is in a tight spot in the U.N., America is in a tight spot in the U.N. You don’t exploit it for political gain.

Perry competitor Rick Santorum responded: “I’ve forgotten more about Israel than Rick Perry knows about Israel,” he told Politico. Mr. Perry “has never taken a position on any of this stuff before, and [the media is] taking this guy seriously.”

The Israeli newspaper Ha’artez likened Mr. Perry’s remarks to “a pep rally for one of Israel’s right-wing politicians, and a hard-liner at that,” adding that the governor “adopted the rhetoric of Israel’s radical right lock, stock and barrel.”

I’d add only that in his first foreign-policy foray, the GOP front-runner looked like a cheap, base-playing buffoon.

As I said, Mr. Obama can’t win this election, but the Republicans can lose it by being small, by being extreme, by being—are we going to have to start using this word again?—unnuanced.

Al Cross On "Why Steve Beshear Hasn't Let Up In Race For Re-election."

Why Steve Beshear hasn't let up in race for re-election
Written by Al Cross

If Steve Beshear is such a shoo-in for a second term as governor, why is he acting as if it’s a close race and running a television commercial that says nothing about him or real issues but attacks Republican challenger David Williams?

Let’s allow our minds to wander.

Perhaps the Democratic governor has run out of worthwhile things to say about himself. His record is mainly one of caretaking in the worst economy since the Great Depression, not one of achievements that could push Kentucky out of mediocrity. TV ads about budget savings and tax incentives for new jobs can only go so far, especially when unemployment remains high.

And maybe Beshear is implementing a lesson learned. Two weeks ago, when he started an ad that purported to compare his and Williams’ records, C-J political writer Joe Gerth said Beshear was following the example set by Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell in the pair’s 1996 race, when the senator had a relatively comfortable lead but ran ads attacking Beshear and making fun of his name.

On Election Day, as GOP ticket-leader Bob Dole was narrowly losing the state to Bill Clinton, McConnell ran up the score on Beshear and scored Kentucky Republicans’ greatest statewide victory up to that time. It helped discourage major opposition to him in 2002, when he again set a record for his party’s success in Kentucky.

A re-elected Beshear could not run again in 2015, but he clearly wants his running mate for lieutenant governor, former Louisville mayor Jerry Abramson, to succeed him. That’s probably why he’s had Abramson spend so much time in Western Kentucky, so the urbanite and that politically pivotal region can get better acquainted — and Abramson can learn to like, or at least tolerate, talking about roads and coal.

But what is surely more important to Beshear right now is the political landscape of a second term. He is not so much following McConnell’s strategy as the maxim of another GOP senator from Louisville, the late Thruston Morton, who said when he was Republican national chairman that “The purpose of politics is to form a government.”

...

Williams has vexed Beshear, so the governor may have personal reasons for wanting to run up the score, but a more likely reason is that he believes the bigger his victory, the stronger his influence will be during next winter’s legislative session and beyond. He is known to have told supporters that he wants a mandate to be strong in a second term.

Beshear has yet to prove that he would know what do to with a mandate, the best example being his failure to deliver on his main campaign promise in 2007, expanded gambling at the state’s racetracks — unless you count the “instant racing” slot machines now at the one on the Tennessee border, more an accomplishment of legal fiction and compliant courts than executive leadership. ...

Beshear probably has several reasons for keeping his foot on Williams’ neck and avoiding candidate forums, but one could be that he still considers Williams a threat — if not to his re-election, to his wish for a mandate and the expectations game he has created for himself.

Beshear has said he will support President Obama for re-election, and voters are very unhappy with the president and lots of other things right now. It’s hard to say just how volatile the electorate is, but we might take a lesson from West Virginia, where the Democratic acting governor has lost most of the lead he once enjoyed against the Republican nominee for a special election a week from Tuesday. If the Republican wins a come-from-way-behind victory there, with the help of ads from the Republican Governors Association, it will be a warning to Beshear.

7H: A Trip That May Kill You! Be WARNED!

A bad trip: Herbal potpourri 7H can deliver disastrous results
By DEBORAH HIGHLAND

If Joshua Walkup wants to say the Pledge of Allegiance, he will have to put his hand under his armpit. That’s where his heart sits, barely beneath the surface.

When Walkup, 26, lifts his shirt, his heartbeat is visible through his skin.

The patchwork of scars all over Walkup’s torso looks like a railroad map to nowhere. But the scars tell the story of a man who journeyed to hell and is making his way back to redemption.

Walkup is another casualty of 7H, a product that is marketed and sold as herbal potpourri in hookah lounges and convenience markets. However, many people such as Walkup are smoking the product as a cheap, legal alternative to marijuana, but with disastrous results.

Users have reported hallucinations, paranoia, anxiety, extreme chest pain, nausea, vomiting and other side effects that linger in some cases for many days. They land in emergency rooms, where doctors treat their symptoms but are at a loss to do much else, because no one really knows what chemicals users have ingested. One package marked 7H may not contain the same chemicals as another package that looks identical.

Walkup quit using methamphetamine about three years ago. He exchanged meth use for a daily dose of “Mad Dog 20/20” and an occasional marijuana joint. But when he couldn’t get his hands on marijuana, he’d cruise into Bowling Green from his home in Richardsville to score a $25 package of 7H at the local hookah lounge.

One man’s hit alters another man’s life

Walkup smoked his last hand-rolled 7H cigarette on Aug. 10 with a man he had recently befriended. While Walkup had never experienced the 7H “bad trips” other users describe, his new friend took a hit and came out swinging.

Walkup quickly realized his friend was experiencing a vastly different reaction to 7H. He talked his friend out of the driver’s seat and took the wheel as the two men headed north on Ky. 185 at about 10:45 a.m. Aug. 10.

The story of what happened next varies. Walkup says his friend fell into his lap and jerked the steering wheel of the truck he was driving, causing the vehicle to flip. The official version contained in a Kentucky State Police accident report says Walkup became distracted by his friend, who was attempting to climb out of the passenger window while the truck was moving. Walkup was attempting to pull the man into the truck and lost control of the vehicle, according to state police records.

Either way, the end result is indisputable.

Walkup was thrown from the vehicle. His body slid several feet across a metal guardrail, which “filleted him like an old catfish,” Walkup said. At the scene, he opened his eyes just long enough to see that he was lying in a pool of blood. His internal organs were fully exposed, and his intestines partially spilled out onto the pavement.

Walkup was taken by a medical helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, where his family was given a grim prognosis for his survival. He underwent 13 surgeries in 15 days. His formerly strong frame dropped from 210 pounds to 150. His newly formed scar tissue now outweighs his muscle mass, and he uses a cane to stabilize him as he walks, slumped over.

He is missing half of one lung and performs breathing exercises to strengthen the other lung that was punctured in the wreck. His heart isn’t located in the same spot where it once was. A stint runs from his kidneys to his bladder to help him urinate. In all likelihood, his doctors have told him that he will not be able to do the manual labor that he once enjoyed for at least another two years, if even then.

But Walkup is still alive, and for that he is grateful.

He has a newfound faith in God. The divine wasn’t something he believed in before the wreck. He has also sworn off drugs.

A new beginning

“I can’t believe I’m still here,” he said as he watched an old video clip of Johnny Cash performing the song “Ring of Fire.”

“I love Johnny Cash,” he said. He also lives stripping tobacco, hauling junk for some extra cash and working construction jobs.

He was a working man.

For now he has to settle for music about the working man from the comfort of his couch.

“I never did picture myself disabled,” Walkup said. “Now here I am, I can’t even turn up on my side to snuggle up next to my wife.”

“It’s not worth it,” Walkup said about 7H. “It may not hurt you now, but it will hurt you in the long run.”

Legal does not mean safe

The Kentucky State Police Crime Lab recently analyzed a package of 7H that the Bowling Green-Warren County Drug Task Force sent for testing, task force Director Tommy Loving said. The material contained 1-(5-fluoropentyl)-3-(naphthalen-1-oyl)indole, also called AM-2201. This particular chemical combination is sold legally here.

These chemicals are not meant for human consumption and will over time cause organ failure and mental retardation, Western Kentucky University biochemist Dr. Rajalingam Dakshinamurthy said.

It’s the immediate effects that are gaining the attention of frightened parents, drug investigators and medical care providers.

Western Kentucky University freshman Ashley Stillwell, 18, thought that legal meant safe when she decided to try 7H for the first time Aug. 21 with a group of people that she once considered her friends.

“We had this little red bong,” Stillwell said. “I inhaled it. Probably five minutes later my head starts spinning. My body feels heavy like I can’t move. The only thing I can remember thinking is, ‘Don’t forget to breathe.’ ”

Stillwell checked out. She was not unconscious, but she was trapped like a prisoner inside her own body. She could hear everything being said but was unable to move or respond. She remembers her “friends” talking back and forth about what to do with her if she dies. They discussed throwing her into Barren River. Had her friends acted on that thought, Stillwell, in the condition she was in, would have drowned.

Eventually that night, Stillwell regained some sense of consciousness, realized she needed help and called her parents to come get her. Hours after that first and only hit of 7H, Stillwell was receiving emergency treatment at The Medical Center, where she was given fluids and medication to help her stop vomiting.

Users warn others

Stillwell runs with a new set of friends now, friends who would not think of discarding her into the water like an empty soda can, and she wants to tell anyone who will listen to her to stay away from herbal incense.

“If I can keep people from trying it, that’s what I want to do,” she said. “I know people are going to hate me because people are selling it as pot.”

Stillwell’s mother, Amy Stillwell, has written local, state and federal elected officials in an attempt to get 7H banned.

Van Ingram, director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, has fielded calls from parents such as Amy Stillwell from all over the state. The stories are all the same.

“I haven’t heard any good stories,” Ingram said. “They’ve all been related to sicknesses. Usually it ends up a lot of fear on the part of the young person as well as the parent. They don’t realize something sold as incense ... will effect them the way that it does.”

The Office of Drug Control Policy is in the process of gathering information about herbal incense products to make a presentation to the 2012 session of the Kentucky General Assembly in an attempt to ban the products in Kentucky.

But in the meantime, people such as Walkup and Stillwell are trying to tell their stories to convince others not to try 7H.

Amy Stillwell has created a Facebook page called “The Face of 7H” to try to educate people about the dangers involved in using the herbal incense as a drug.

How to help

If you would like to get involved in the fight against herbal incense being sold legally in Kentucky or you would like Ashley Stillwell to speak to your school or church group, contact Stillwell at Ban7HNOW@hotmail.com or leave her a message on “The Face of 7H” Facebook page.

The Cartoons Say It All. LMAO!

Words To Live By, Words Of Wisdom, And Words To Ponder.

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 1816

After Listening To POTUS Barack Obama's DESPERATE "Civil Rights Movement" Style PANDERING Speech To The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Last Night, I Felt Like Taking A Shower. Watch And Listen.

Click here to watch and listen.

I'll embed it on this page later.

Louisville Courier Journal Editorial Continues With Richie Farmer, Making Us Wait A Spell For Another "HIT" On David Williams.

Editorial | Ag commissioner Richie Farmer living high on the hog

The purchase of two big-screen televisions for the state Agriculture Department offices in Frankfort may not warrant tremendous concern, on its own. Americans love their HD sets, and these days the bigger the better.

The trouble is, this is only the latest example of how Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer seems to spend the taxpayers’ money like water. In this case, the analogy is especially appealing, since the justification for purchasing the TVs, which cost $4,000, was water damage from burst pipes in the offices the department formerly occupied in Frankfort. Moving into new offices, the commissioner, who’s running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket this fall, had the sets installed in his office and in a conference room across the hall.

Just last month, the Democrats alleged that Mr. Farmer, a former University of Kentucky basketball star, broke the law with the purchase of two mini-refrigerators (one of which he took home for 16 months) and by failing to report his personal miles driven in a state-owned vehicle, which is a new SUV purchased last year, along with 26 other new vehicles for his department.

While other state workers were being furloughed, Mr. Farmer took his pay (but after being criticized said he gave it to charity). During the state boys’ basketball tournament, he charged the state for a costly hotel suite (but later said it was worth it; he was doing Ag Department business).

Observers differ about what kind of job Mr. Farmer has done in Frankfort. But no one can deny that he’s great at taking the taxpayers for a ride.

Mike Luckovich Is Still Seething Over Troy Davis' Execution.

Watch The Latest GOP Presidential "Debate".

Mixed Martial Arts Comes To The Childrens' Playground. Watch A Sign Of the Times. Where Is Childrens' Protective Services?

For Many Of Their Rabid Fans, It Must Feel Like "The End Of The World As We Know It", But For The Rest Of Us It Feels Like "Losing Our Religion" On the News Of The Breakup Of The Band, R.E.M. . Watch News Video.

U. S. Department Of Justice Spends $16 For Muffin, Etc. ... .Watch Video And Weap!

Smiths Grove, Kentucky, Man Indicted For Repeated Rapes Of Relative. SCUM!

Smiths Grove man charged with interstate sex crimes
Federal indictment accuses man of having sex with young relative, threatening to kill her
By JUSTIN STORY

A man faces federal charges and the possibility of life in prison after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a young female relative in Barren County and threatening to kill her.

Tony Glenn Harvey, 56, was charged in an indictment returned Wednesday by a federal grand jury with transporting a minor across a state line to engage in illegal sexual activity and brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

Harvey maintains residences in Smiths Grove and Sidney, Ohio, court documents show.

According to an affidavit signed Sept. 2 by Special Agent Adam Keown of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Harvey transported his juvenile relative from Sidney, Ohio, to a mobile home on Blaine Evans Road in Smiths Grove some time in late July, where he forced her to engage in sexual intercourse and oral sex with him.

For about 18 months before the alleged encounter, Harvey had talked to the girl about another person joining them for sex.

“Harvey had been engaging in sexual activity with (the girl) since she was approximately 10 years old,” the affidavit states.

That claim was made by a man who was invited to the trailer and allegedly witnessed Harvey and the girl having sex, and who would later allegedly engage in sexual intercourse and oral sex with the girl.

The second man is not identified in court records.

“The adult male claimed that the inside of the trailer was dark, that the girl kept her shirt on and he believed she was in her 20s,” the affidavit reads.

Authorities claim that Harvey brought the relative from Ohio to Barren County again on Aug. 22, and encouraged her to have sex with him on Aug. 24.

When the girl refused, Harvey brandished a .22-caliber pistol in the truck in which they traveled and told her she deserved to die, Keown claimed.

“Harvey told her he would kill himself” and another relative, the affidavit states.

On Aug. 28, the Barren County Sheriff’s Office served an emergency protective order against Harvey at the residence on Blaine Evans Road, during which Harvey admitted to having weapons on the premises and stated repeatedly he was going to lose everything, according to court documents.

Deputies asked Harvey to come to the sheriff’s office for an interview that day, but he did not show up, the affidavit said.

Deputy Ann Phelps of the sheriff’s office interviewed the girl, who described the mobile home where the sexual activity occurred and told Phelps that she had been to Kentucky about 10 times over the past year with Harvey, court documents state.

“Every trip to Kentucky would last approximately one to two weeks during which he would rape her every other day,” the affidavit claims.

Harvey is scheduled for arraignment on Oct. 5 in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Goebel.

Harvey was in court Sept. 9 for a preliminary hearing and detention hearing, where he was represented by Ronald Hampton on behalf of attorney Johnny Bell of Glasgow.

A woman at Bell’s office said Thursday that neither Bell nor Hampton currently represents Harvey.

Bell filed a motion Thursday to withdraw as Harvey’s attorney, saying that Harvey has not contacted another attorney to represent him.

If convicted, Harvey faces a minimum sentence of 17 years in prison and could spend the rest of his life behind bars and be subject to a $500,000 fine. Harvey is in Warren County Regional Jail.

The Daily News does not identify victims of alleged sexual crimes.

Quick Breaking News: U. S. Senate Rejects House Stop Gap Funding Bill. I Guess The Playground Is Open Again For CONgress.

POLITICO Breaking News
-------------------------------------------------
The Democratic Senate on Friday blocked the House Republican funding bill on a 59-36 vote, intensifying a fight between the two bodies ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to keep the government operating. The fight centers around disaster relief funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose coffers will dry up by early next week without additional aid. Republicans want that money to be partially offset with spending cuts to programs considered Democratic priorities. The bill - passed by the House early this morning on a 219-203 vote -- would keep the government funded through Nov. 18.

My Thoughts On The Troy Davis Execution In Georgia.

I do not know whether or not Troy Davis murdered that cop, but those who claim he didn't because he maintained his innocence to the end have never talked to those who commit crimes.

As a criminal defense Attorney, I have met more than my share of them, but I still defend them.

You've heard the joke that prisons are full f innocent convicts. Well, it is true.

Having said that, let me say this: cops are humans. Some make mistakes; and some lie (yes, they do!); and, some make it an honor to intimidate and coerce people, in order to "solve" a case.

As for what happened to Troy Davis: ONLY him and God know!!

I Know You Want To Hear POTUS Barack Obama At The Bruce Spense Bridge, Well Watch And Listen.

Giving David Williams A Break, Courier Journal Does Its Next "HIT" Over Television Sets On His Running Mate, Richie Farmer. David Williams Is Next, I Guarantee It!

Agriculture Department's purchase of two TVs for $4,068 questioned

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Government watchdog groups are questioning the Agriculture Department’s purchase of two widescreen televisions for $4,068 last year after a burst water pipe drenched the agency’s executive offices.

One of the Sony 60-inch TVs hangs over a conference table in Commissioner Richie Farmer’s office, the other is across the hall in a conference room.

Bill Clary, spokesman for the department, said TVs were bought to do PowerPoint presentations at meetings and to replace a ceiling-mounted projector ruined by the water damage in the old offices.

The department received a price quote for a new projector of $1,000 — about half the cost of one of the TVs. It decided to purchase the two TVs instead.

“Basically we now have two audio-visual systems in two different conference areas,” Clary said. “We now have more functionality. A projector can be used for one thing, the screens can be used for two.”

But Jim Waters of the Bowling Green-based Bluegrass Institute questioned whether two TVs are one too many.

“How many Kentucky business owners would have two 60-inch TVs in their offices and claim that they need those to show PowerPoints in their conference rooms?” Waters said. “PowerPoint is fine, but why two 60-inch screens? And I think most Kentuckians would have a hard time buying these are both for PowerPoint presentations.”

Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause Kentucky, said “that they bought two of these seems to show a sort of casualness of spending on taxpayer-owned property.”

Clary said it was decided to get two TVs “because we have meetings in both rooms. In fact we have meetings in both rooms quite often.”

“I have never seen the one in the commissioner’s office used as a television set, and I have meetings there all the time,” Clary said. “The other screen I’ve seen, maybe twice, somebody watching the news on it.”

Records obtained by The Courier-Journal under the Kentucky Open Records Act show that Farmer’s former offices on Fountain Place near downtown Frankfort were damaged when a water pipe in the ceiling burst on Jan. 15, 2010.

State government is self-insured, and the department eventually received a $12,856.15 settlement from a claim it filed with the state Finance and Administration Cabinet.

Clary said the department used the accident as an opportunity to get out of an expensive lease at Fountain Place and move the commissioner’s offices to space within buildings the department already leased east of Frankfort.

“Over the long run we’re saving $14,000 a year in rent,” he said.

Department records show that in addition to the $4,068 cost of the two TVs, the department spent $2,616 in the spring of 2010 for to extend an underground cable TV line and for electrical upgrades in the building where Farmer’s new offices are located.

Clary said the expenses for the electrical upgrades and the cable TV line would have been necessary to make the new offices functional, even without the purchase of the two TVs.

Farmer is running in November for lieutenant governor on the Republican slate headed by Senate president David Williams. They are opposed by incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear and his running mate Jerry Abramson, and the independent slate of Gatewood Galbraith and Dea Riley.

And The Taliban Also Repeals DADT -- Don't Ask, Don't Tell! LMAO At Joel Pett!!

We Have Met The Enemy, And It Is Us! LMAO!

And Steve Beshear Has A New Ad. Watch It.

CLARENCE PAGE: "Politics Has Always Been About Class Warfare". YEP!

Politics has always been about class warfare
By CLARENCE PAGE

Class warfare seems to be popping up everywhere these days. It must be campaign season.

Check out this sound bite: “I’m not for tax cuts for the rich. The rich can take care of themselves. I want to get America working again. And so I want to make sure that whatever we do in the tax code, we’re not giving a windfall to the very wealthy.”

No, that was not President Barack Obama, whose latest “fair share” tax and deficit reduction plan has received a predictable pummeling from Republicans charging him with “class warfare.” It is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaking last month to voters in Portsmouth, N.H., about his own plans for tax fairness.

A day earlier, Romney’s fellow Republican presidential candidate front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said this about corporate giant General Electric’s use of loopholes to reduce their federal taxes last year to zero: “I can’t explain that,” Perry said. “The idea because you have a good relationship with the political world in Washington, D.C., ... is not a good enough reason for you not to pay your fair share of taxes.”

“Fair share?” Whenever Democrats speak of “fair share,” conservatives reflexively hear “class warfare.” Such was the Republican response to the $3.6 trillion “fair share” deficit reduction plan that the president unveiled last week.

Yet, conservatives have long understood a populist reality that Obama has been reluctant to face: Class warfare works, but call it something else - like fairness.

Voters have a keen sense of fairness, especially when they detect somebody is being unfair to them. “The rich get the gold mine and the middle class gets the shaft,” said candidate Bill Clinton to great effect in his successful 1992 presidential campaign. “It’s wrong and it’s going to ruin the country.”

He was picking up on a fairness theme that began to turn the nation’s political tide a year earlier. After a decade of Ronald Reagan-era conservative dominance, Pennsylvania Democrat Harris Wofford won an upset senatorial election victory in 1991 with populist appeals like this: “If every criminal deserves to have a lawyer, why can’t every working person deserve to have a doctor?”

That’s fair. A simple straightforward appeal like that might have saved Obama a lot of headaches in his own health care push. And a continued sell job by the president on behalf of the nation’s uninsured and under-insured might have reassured the public against the relentless drumbeat of the anti-“Obamacare” crowd.

Until now, fighting for his ideas and promoting his presidential achievements have not been high on Obama’s agenda, much to the consternation of his supporters. But with employment, public morale and his approval ratings hitting new lows, No-Drama Obama is starting to talk tough, pushing with new vigor his “balanced approach” that includes ending the Bush-era tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires.”

In response comes the charge of “class warfare,” as if the fairness of our nation’s progressive tax system - a central element of the Democratic agenda - were some sort of a Marxist clash of the classes against one another.

Yet, neither party lacks class cards or shyness about playing them. Ask Perry, a master of the poverty-snob card in his battle against “elites,” including some of his fellow Republicans.

“As a son of tenant farmers, I can tell you: I wasn’t born with four aces in my hand,” he told Iowa voters, playing off a line that Romney used in their debates. Romney attributed Texas’ economic successes to trends that preceded Perry’s governorship. “If you’re dealt four aces,” said Romney, “that doesn’t make you necessarily a great poker player.”

Perry raised the umbrage and resentment cards. “There’s some folks back in Texas who are real offended by that,” he said in Iowa, despite Romney’s repeated praise for the greatness of the Lone Star State and its people. “We work hard in Texas.” Perry couldn’t resist the implication that his biggest GOP rival is some sort of elitist.

And as Republicans charge Obama’s “fair share” plan with class warfare, they might take note of this Perry appeal for a new business tax in 2005, quoted in the Texas Tribune in 2005 and retrieved by the Atlantic Wire website’s Elspeth Reeve: “The goal is to create greater tax fairness, not a greater tax burden on the people of Texas.”

That’s right. “Tax fairness” isn’t just for Democrats.

Texas partially explained. YEP, My Wife Is A Native Texan. Don't You Feel Sorry For Me? LOL.

Texas partially explained
Media, West and East Coast elites unfairly stereotype Texas, those who run for office from there
By CAL THOMAS

The cultural and media snobs are trying to explain Texas to those who don’t know the difference between a steer and a bull. If you fall into this category, a steer has been castrated - a bull has not. I’ll leave any analogy to East and West Coast elites for you to sort out.

People who are from Texas, or have lived there, are devoted to it and I never truly understood why until I lived there ... twice. Texans speak of their state with an affection one doesn’t often hear from Oregonians or Michiganians. No matter what city they are from, Texans almost always add “Texas” when they introduce themselves, apparently to avoid confusion, as though there were another Nacodoches or Cut and Shoot anywhere else in the world.

The media elites are revisiting Texas in an attempt to define Rick Perry, the three-term governor and Republican presidential candidate. There were similar Texas stories about George W. Bush and even Lyndon B. Johnson, but liberal media types treated Johnson’s Texas roots as quaint, not “dangerous,” because his policies (with the exception of the Vietnam War) fit those in the chattering classes. For Perry (and Bush), every stereotype is applied. “Dumb” is one of the nicer ones.

Texans do talk funny. They are always “fixin” to go someplace. Someone once published a book for non-Texans that translated their accented English. “All,” for example, is a black petroleum substance that comes out of the ground.

Southern Baptist is the unofficial state religion, though atheists, agnostics and critics of America are well-represented at many Texas universities. Texas Baptists go to church on Sunday mornings (and Sunday and Wednesday nights). They can recite the menu at a church supper, right down to the Jell-O squares with imbedded carrot shavings. Sweet tea is the preferred drink at such functions. Texans love their college football and the Dallas Cowboys.

Texans share a connection not found in any other state. Last week, I took my daughter’s car to have her tires checked. She recently moved back to Washington from San Antonio and her car still has Texas plates. A man wearing a University of Texas cap yelled to me, “Go Texas!” That doesn’t happen with Vermonters.

The Republic of Texas was once an independent country (from 1836 to 1845) before it became part of the United States on Dec. 29, 1845. It even had its own coinage, which you can buy through numismatic channels. Perhaps this explains Texas’ independent streak.

Texas is a place where you can put down roots. The friends one makes there are often friends for life. Again, it’s difficult to explain this to people who have not been baptized into Texas. A brief visit won’t do it.

When I first moved to Texas to work at a Houston TV station, one of my colleagues had fun asking me to pronounce the names of various streets and towns. I got most of them wrong, because Texans don’t pronounce a lot of names and words the way they are “supposed” to be pronounced.

Oh, and anyone who thinks chicken-fried steak has anything to do with chicken (except for chicken broth in the gravy) is clearly a “foreigner.”

Texans enjoy laughing at themselves, but they don’t take kindly to other people laughing at them. Aggie jokes have been popular for a long time and students or alumni from other Texas schools mostly tell them. The jokes are supposed to highlight the alleged intellectual deficiencies at Texas A&M University. Of course, students and graduates of A&M are not stupid, but the jokes are funny. For example: Did you hear about the Aggie who won a gold medal at the Olympics? He liked it so much that he decided to get it bronzed.

If the elites want to understand Texas, they have to do more than engage in drive-by writing assignments. They should live there, as I did. I still miss much of what Texas offered my family. Rick Perry revives the warm feelings I have for the state. Maybe that’s because I finally understand the language.

Kentucky Supreme Court Disbars Fen-Phen Lawyer David Helmers Of Lexington For "Serious Ethical Violations". Stan Chesley Awaits His Turn.

Ky. attorney who worked on fen-phen case disbarred
By BRETT BARROUQUERE

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A Kentucky attorney who worked on the class-action lawsuit over the diet-drug fen-phen was permanently disbarred Thursday for his role in a scheme that cost clients more than $65 million from the settlement and landed two other lawyers in federal prison.

The Kentucky Supreme Court revoked the law license of David Helmers of Lexington, citing "serious ethical violations."

Helmers is the fourth attorney involved with the case to be disbarred.

The fen-phen settlement has also jeopardized the Kentucky law license of Cincinnati attorney Stanley Chesley, known as the "Master of Disaster" for his work on large class-action cases around the country. The Kentucky Supreme Court is weighing a request from the Kentucky Bar Association to disbar Chesley for his role in the proceedings. That case is pending.

The high court, in an order signed by Chief Justice John Minton, also ordered Helmers to pay nearly $40,000 to cover the cost of the disciplinary proceedings against him.

The court found that Helmers wasn't the mastermind of the scheme, but rather acted at the direction of several more experienced attorneys.

But, Minton wrote, "it takes no technical expertise" to know that deceiving clients, some of whom were "egregiously injured" by the drug, was wrong.

"That he did so at the direction of his employer does not permit us to overlook the serious deficiency in character revealed by the facts before us," Minton wrote for the court.

Helmers worked as an associate in William Gallion's law firm during the 2001 settlement negotiations, which netted $200 million. The fen-phen case involved 440 clients who said they suffered heart and lung damage as a result of taking the drug.

Gallion, 60, and Shirley Cunningham Jr., one-time owners of champion racehorse Curlin, are serving federal sentences after being convicted of bilking their clients out of millions from the settlement. Both have been disbarred. A third attorney, Melbourne Mills of Lexington, was acquitted at a federal criminal trial, but he was disbarred for his role in the scheme.

Gallion is not scheduled to be released from federal prison until 2029; Cunningham, 57, won't get out until 2025. The two men are appealing their convictions. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has not scheduled oral arguments in the case.

Helmers went to work for Gallion, then a respected attorney, while still in law school in Lexington. After being admitted to the bar, Helmers handled client meetings about the fen-phen settlement for Gallion.

The court found that Helmers failed to disclose to clients details of the settlement or that the attorneys had decided beforehand how much each client would receive from the settlement.

"Additionally, (Helmers) told many of the clients that if they spoke to others about their settlement award, they could face a penalty assessment of $100,000," Minton wrote.

Minton said Helmers was "inexperienced, impressionable" and may have been influenced by Gallion, Cunningham and Mills.

A state court awarded former clients of Gallion and Cunningham $42 million in a civil case, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals overturned that award. That case is being appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

Click it.

Today Is The Last Day Of Summer, So I'll Leave You Swaying Your Hips To One Of My Favorite Songs. Do You Believe In Miracles? Do You? Enjoy.

So do you? Believe in miracles?:



Encore?:



You want lyrics? Check them out: