Blue Bluegrass

Of course, the big headline was David Williams having dinner with Richie Farmer in Louisville. But that ticket has been discounted by Republicans who point Farmer as running for secretary of state.

Jake points out indications that Phil Moffett may be running for governor. And another Farmer, Lexington State Representative Bill Farmer, is also considering the race.

As Jack Brammer further notes,

If (Richie) Farmer does not run with Williams, potential mates for Williams include Cathy Bailey of Louisville, who is a former ambassador to Latvia, and state Sen. Damon Thayer of Georgetown.
Other Republicans mentioned as possible candidates for governor next year are Stanford banker Jesse T. Correll; Todd County businessman Bill Johnson, who dropped out earlier this year as candidate for the U.S. Senate; Inez banker Mike Duncan; Paducah businessman Billy Harper, who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Ernie Fletcher in 2007; and Shelby County Judge-Executive Rob Rothenburger.

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All of which leads Republicans back to the same question poised months earlier:

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Things were firing on all cylinders yesterday. Even before yesterday, Jack Conway made a good move by appearing at Netroots. And yesterday once again Jack Conway hit the right points, at a rally in Frankfort supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act anniversary, in a press release criticizing Republican Rand Paul for opposing the ADA and the rights of the disabled, the KDP put out a good coordinated press release, and the disabled community protested outside the uber-rich Louisville fundraiser of Jeb Bush and Rand Paul.

If this sort of message discipline and consistent message continues through the agricultural issues and the drug prevention program issues, it will be a miserable and long fall for Rand Paul.

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Bill Clinton will be here the weekend after Fancy Farm. That much is certain, based on his previously scheduled commitment set forth below. What is much less clear is whether he will hold a fundraiser and/or rally for Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway during the trip.

From Bizlex:

Former President Bill Clinton will attend an August fundraiser to benefit the Lexington Hearing and Speech Center (LHSC) at 162 North Ashland Avenue, it was announced Thursday.
The event, to be held in the RJ Corman Hangar in Jessamine County on Friday, Aug. 13, is expected to draw a crowd of 500 and serve as a kickoff for a capital campaign to build a new school for the Center, according to Associate Executive Director Lori Shephard.
The former president, who has long struggled with his own hearing issues and worn hearing aids for many years, is expected to address the struggles of hearing loss and the importance of strong communication skills during his time at the lectern.
Jerry Lundergan, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party who has a daughter on the board of LHSC and another daughter who was a student, said he approached the former president about a month ago about speaking.
“The school is a very valuable asset not only to Lexingtonians but to people especially in Eastern Kentucky and all over Central Kentucky who have hearing and speech difficulties. We wanted to be a part of trying to help it and the success of their capital drive and basically I asked the president if he would do me a real favor and come to Lexington and speak,” Lundergan said.
Cost for the event is $500 per person and VIP tables and event sponsorships are available. Tickets are available by calling the Center at 859-268-4545 and asking for Shepherd or by visiting their website at www.lhscky.org. VIP and sponsorship packages are also available by contacting Shepherd.
“It’ll be a great night for Lexington Hearing and Speech because he was an outstanding president and he travels the world trying to help other people through his foundation efforts,” said Lundergan who described himself and his wife as friends of the Clintons.

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Photo of the stage and crowd at Shrinefest shortly after Rand Paul unexpectedly bailed out of speaking at the event.

Saturday in Lexington the Oleika Shriner’s Temple had their annual Shrinefest. The increasingly camera-shy Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul was sort of there for a little while, and was supposed to be one of the featured scheduled speakers for the event. Of course, Rand Paul may suddenly have had an awkward realization—that he was going to be speaking at an event that raised funds for the very same disabled children who he believes are unfairly holding back private businesses by requiring them to let the disabled have access to those businesses.

Paul’s entourage also busily questioned anyone who was carrying a camera at the event, apparently alarmed by the understandably frightening prospect that Rand Paul’s crazy words would be recorded and require further explanation and scandal to explain away.

Or perhaps Rand Paul just decided that there weren’t enough people there for him to bother staying and speaking to. There is no doubt that Paul was scowling and visibly upset during the event. Despite Rand Paul having been scheduled to speak, he stormed out of the event without any explanation to the public. Which led to the askwardness and embarrassment created by the increasingly erratic Rand Paul when the announcer called Rand Paul’s name in front of the crowd, only to learn that Rand Paul had abruptly left the event.

Is the pressure getting to Rand Paul? Is Rand Paul cracking up even before the rigors of Fancy Farm?

Since Rand Paul left before his public speech, as a public service, below is another image of the Paul family which was caught at the event:

Also, in one of the greater ironies in booth placement, the bridge booth located in between the booth of Gatewood and the booth of Rand Paul? None other than that of the Free America Society. Liberty toking teabaggers unite! They may just conquer the world!

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For a chilling account of what our country is facing, read last night’s transcript from Dateline NBC reporting from the foothills of Appalachia. One in four Americans today live below the poverty line. And in Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District, that number is far higher. That district is represented by Republican Hal Rogers, who knows how to take care of his friends and family, even if his district is starving.

Jim Holbert is challenging Rogers this year. Hillbilly Report put a nice post up on his candidacy. And on his web site, Holbert states:

It’s a fact: For the last thirty years, America’s economic, energy, and foreign policies have been systematically rigged to benefit a privileged few, at the expense of working people.

Those words were posted long before yesterday’s article on Rogers’ latest public payday for friends and family by John Cheves in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Turns out that people starving or running out of unemployment must be paid for by other cuts in the budget. But $5 million for a grant that is administered by his daughter to save cheetahs? Those rules just don’t apply:

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, is sponsoring a bill to give $5 million a year to conservation groups that work overseas on behalf of endangered “great cats and rare canids,” such as cheetahs, lions and Ethiopian wolves.
One group interested in applying, should Rogers’ bill become law, is the Namibia-based Cheetah Conservation Fund.
Its grants administrator, Allison Rogers, is the congressman’s daughter.
“Obviously, I’m waiting with bated breath,” said Allison Rogers, who lives in Versailles. “It would help us a lot because the Cheetah Conservation Fund does not have a very big budget.”
She and her father say there is no conflict of interest. The congressman from Southeast Kentucky long has been a champion of wildlife, she said.
“Dad is, I think, very involved in the environment, both in his district and on a global level,” Allison Rogers said. “Neither his or my involvement in this is cheating the public or taking advantage of my dad’s position.”
In a prepared statement, a spokeswoman for Hal Rogers listed more than two dozen conservation groups other than the Cheetah Conservation Fund that could ask for the money, including the Jane Goodall Institute, the Humane Society of the United States and the Sierra Club.
“A wealth of organizations would benefit from these grants, and all would be able to apply without any congressional influence over the selection process,” spokeswoman Stefani Zimmerman said.
“While the congressman’s daughter is equally passionate about conservation, her recent work on behalf of the Cheetah Conservation Fund would never be a factor in the allocation of this funding,” Zimmerman said. “To suggest otherwise is unfounded and completely false.”
But a conservative budget watchdog said Hal Rogers should be more prudent.
“Who’s against helping cheetahs? Nobody. But c’mon, this reeks of nepotism,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste in Washington. “This is the kind of thing that gets taxpayers so frustrated with Congress.”
This isn’t the first time Hal Rogers has steered money in the direction of his family.
In 2004, Senture, a call-services center in London, hired one of Rogers’ sons as a computer systems administrator just after the lawmaker helped it win a $4 million homeland security contract. Father and son said there was no connection between the contract and the job.
“There needs to be much more of a fire wall with things like this,” Williams said. “It isn’t difficult. You just don’t allocate money to projects where your children are employed. The problem with Congressman Rogers is, he thinks there’s nothing wrong with it.”

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69.8 % of Kentuckians either strongly or somewhat approve of the job being done by Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, according to cn|2’s recent poll.

That’s much higher than Beshear’s Rasmussen numbers of 54 % strongly or somewhat approve.

Former Republican Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher’s approval numbers, by comparison, were in the mid to upper 30s when he faced the electorate for re-election after the job hiring scandal had played out. Approval ratings in the lower 40s or below usually indicate a vulnerable incumbent.

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Does anybody here think Kentucky farmers will be impressed with a U.S. senate campaign whose manager doesn’t know what a co-op is?

Very few things make someone sitting at a laptop laugh out loud again and again over a period of several minutes.

But by God, Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, Rand Paul and his band of merry elves can do it, and are doing it. It is difficult to type when the laptop is actually moving back and forth from the laughter.

Rand Paul did his level best to educate these simple Kentucky folk about why they need to accept less income, and realize that hundreds of thousands of Kentucky farmers just need to get chewed up and spit out by the demands of libertarian doctrine. Never mind that other countries stabilize their food production as a matter of national security. Paul remains convinced that all he has to do is explain it in terms that these simple country bumpkins can understand, and they’ll see how much better they’ll feel if many of the farmers have to go out of business, if Oxycontin and meth-heads take over Eastern Kentucky, and if a half-million Kentucky children go hungry because school lunches are cut. Over the top? Hyperbole? Actually, no. Rand Paul actually did renew his attack on Kentucky farmers. Incredibly, he did it before a forum of … Kentucky farmers!

Paul this time tried to claim that his opposition to farmers was aimed at three big corporations getting billions in subsidies. But his basis for that was identifying three co-ops, which served tens of thousands of farmers with an average federal subsidy of $4,100. Seems Rand Paul’s campaign manager doesn’t even know what a co-op is! Marion County Line has a great take on it all. (h/t to Joe).

That means the Farm Bureau debate happened yesterday, and indications are that the bi-weekly spontaneous combustions of Rand Paul seem to be accelerating.

Renewing his attack on federal farm subsidies, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul told a Kentucky Farm Bureau audience Thursday that three agriculture companies have received a total of more than $1 billion in aid.
“It is really galling to people that three companies in the U.S. got a billion dollars,” he said in an appearance with his opponent, Democratic nominee Jack Conway, at Farm Bureau headquarters in Louisville.
But, in fact, the “companies” are all cooperatives that are owned by thousands of farmers. And the federal payments have gone to the farmers who own them over the past 15 years — as the Paul campaign later acknowledged in an interview.
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In a Kentucky Educational Television debate during the GOP primary, Paul first broached the subject of farm subsidies, saying, “I don’t think federal subsidies of agriculture are a good idea,” and, “I’m not in favor of giving welfare to business.”
Since then he has criticized giving subsidies to “dead farmers” and millions of dollars to huge companies.
Paul has stopped talking about “dead farmers” since it was reported that the basis of his comments came from an article in Reader’s Digest that the USDA has disputed.
He has now turned his attention to corporate farmers.
The three entities he referred to Thursday are Riceland Foods Inc. of Stuttgart, Ark.; Producers Rice Mill Inc. of Wynne, Ark.; and Farmers Rice Coop of Sacramento, Calif.
All three are cooperatives that are owned by thousands of farmers. In the case of Riceland foods, for example, more than $500 million federal subsidies during the past 15 years went to 9,000 farmers in five states. That’s an average of about $4,100 a year for each farmer.
Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign manager, said the campaign stands by his statements during the forum.
“I don’t know what a co-op is,” Benton said. “But it certainly doesn’t change the point that farm subsidies are often full of waste, fraud and abuse by corporations at the expense of the farmer.”
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The farm bureau represents some 483,000 farming families in the state and has a presence in all 120 counties.
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Paul, a Bowling Green eye doctor, told the group that farm programs may have to be cut in an effort to reduce the federal debt.
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Conway, on the other hand, called for the preservation of farm programs, which he said allow American food prices to stay low. He said he favors free trade agreements but only if they require other countries to meet minimum environmental and wage standards.
Conway also defended USDA programs that pay for school lunch and breakfast programs for low-income children.
“About 75 percent of the Farm Bill of 2008 goes to nutritional programs,” he said, noting that 500,000 Kentucky children are enrolled in the federal school lunch program. “Are we going to do away that in these difficult economic times?”

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“Ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? MORONS!” Never go against in a Sicilian when Death is on the line!

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Last September, John Calipari said he was going to send a University of Kentucky basketball jersey to President Barack Obama. When some drooling dittoheads exploded with obscenity laced comments that a Kentucky coach would commit the crime of sending the President of the United States of America a Kentucky jersey, Calipari apologized and withdrew the idea.

Yesterday, Calipari blew it again. It’s not that Calipari is required to support any political candidate—but once he’s made a decision, he needs to take that stand, instead of turning whichever way the wind blows. Bad move.

Within hours after the Herald-Leader published a story Wednesday that University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach John Calipari and his wife, Ellen, were to host a fund-raiser for Gov. Steve Beshear’s re-election campaign, Calipari announced that he was cancelling the event.
“I hope by now you all realize that I don’t take my position as your basketball coach lightly,” Calipari said on his Facebook page. “I know how politically charged this state is and I recognize that the Big Blue Nation comes from both sides of the aisle. I appreciate every elected official who supports the University of Kentucky, regardless of party
“That said the Governor’s event planned for August 11—along with other charitable functions scheduled for our home—have been canceled after realizing the full plate of both professional and pressing, personal matters I will be tending to in the next couple of months. Ellen and I do hope this discussion will lead you to exercise your right to vote in the upcoming elections.”

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Recall that last winter U.K. President Lee Todd expended multiple public resources on behalf Republican state representative candidate Ryan Quarles, including putting up a 15-foot tall photo of Quarles on one of the heaviest traveled roads in Kentucky. Given Todd’s endorsements and expenditures on behalf of Republicans, did Todd have a hand in forcing Calipari to cancel the fundraiser?

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