The Spreading Unrest of Red State Teachers

Red states have two main pillars of Republican Party governance: (i) slash taxes and governmental funding and (ii) prostitute yourself and the civil law to right wing Christian extremists. One area where these agendas merged was in slashing public school funding which satisfied the Christofascist party base's hatred of public education because - the horror! - it might educate students to the point where they might walk away from the brain dead, anti-knowledge worldview of the charlatans preaching from pulpits and/or television scamvagelists.  With the revolt that began in West Virginia - a state that is always the butt of jokes told by Virginians - seemingly now taking hold in other states, Republicans may find that they have awakened what may become a nightmare.  Just in time for the 2018 midterms and all of the state and local elections that piggy back with them.  The reality is that, if you value quality public schools - which are a key to maintaining property values and attracting new business and industry - you simply do not vote Republican. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the growing teacher unrest.  Here are highlights:

Eight Kentucky school districts — including those in Louisville and Lexington — are closed today as teachers stay home to protest the GOP legislature’s destructive “reforms” of their pension system. Oklahoma teachers are planning to strike on Monday despite winning a $6,100 pay raise. And Arizona teachers rallied at the state capital on Wednesday and are threatening to strike if their demands for major pay raises and restoration of education funding cuts are not met.

As this wave of unrest among teachers spreads nationally, it’s clear it has been inspired by the nine-day strike that won West Virginia teachers (and other state employees) a pay raise earlier this month. But there’s something more fundamental going on than copycat protests. We’re seeing a teacher-led backlash against years, and even decades, of Republican efforts at the state level to cut taxes and starve public investments. This is very clear in Oklahoma, where a quick pay raise the legislature passed this week is deemed by teachers to have missed the larger point: this investment alone will not undo a decade of neglect. There is still work to do to get this legislature to invest more in our classrooms. And that work will continue Monday, when educators descend on the capitol,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said in a Facebook video

The pay-raise bill signed by Governor Mary Fallin yesterday brought in $447 million in new revenues from higher taxes on cigarettes and oil-production facilities. But the teachers are demanding $3.3 billion “to restore millions of dollars in school funding that have been cut in the past decade. . . .

Similarly, in Arizona the teacher protests are not just about teacher pay, though they are among the lowest paid in the country. Their demands are much broader . . . . Teachers, who organized a grassroots campaign on social media, are demanding a 20 percent raise and restoration of school funding to 2008 levels, before the Great Recession struck, according to the Arizona Republic. They are also asking state lawmakers to stop cutting taxes until Arizona’s per-student spending reaches the national average.

[T]his collision is a reminder that GOP claims that tax cuts at the state as well as the federal level would pay for themselves by generating sustained economic growth have once again proved faulty, with public education being the primary victim of chronic budget shortfalls.

While Republican pols in Arizona and Oklahoma, like their counterparts in West Virginia, are backpedaling furiously and trying to prevent or resolve strikes, the conflict may go too deep for an easy resolution.

In Kentucky, teacher grievances are mostly focused on the pursuit by Republican governor Matt Bevin and the GOP legislature of another big conservative cause: public pension “reform,” which in this case meant serious reductions in benefits and a complete revocation of teacher pension security. That the “reform” was whipped through the legislature suddenly after being attached to a sewer regulation bill did not improve its aroma.

Perhaps the current wave of teacher protests and strikes will subside as the school year ends. But more likely, it will spill over into the election season this fall, when 36 governorships and most of the national state legislatures are up for grabs.

Come November, vote a straight Democrat ticket at every governmental level and send the GOP a strong message.

How Trump Will Betray the Coal Industry and Miners

Perhaps no one well for Der Trumpenführer's lies more completely than those dependent on the coal industry, especially in areas like Kentucky, West Virginia and parts of Southwest Virginia.  Between appeals to racism, white nationalism and toxic right wing religion, voters in these areas voted for Trump and Republicans that now push budget cuts that will hit these regions harder than many others.  Meanwhile, promises to bring the coal industry back to its glory days - which in truth, were not all that good for average coal industry workers - will likely turn out to be nothing more than promises of a carnival barker.  Between Trump's broken promises (assuming he meant anything he said) and a reactionary culture that makes these regions unattractive for modern progressive businesses, the economic future remains bleak with further pain to come from the policies of politicians that these regions put into office.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the coming betrayal of those who voted out of hatred and an unwillingness to move toward the future and who continue to look backwards.  Here are highlights:

[T]he prognosis for Big Coal remains dim. . . . . President Trump has vowed to roll back environmental regulations that the industry says are part of a “war on coal.”

The stocks of coal companies have enjoyed a “Trump bump,” thanks to the president’s pledges to “bring the coal industry back” and “put our great miners and steelworkers back to work.” Half a dozen big companies have seized the moment to issue stock or sell bonds to raise money from investors willing to wager on the effects of a friendlier Trump administration. Peabody Energy, the nation’s biggest coal behemoth, hopes to win court approval to come out of bankruptcy in April.

But the obstacles on the other side of the ledger remain daunting: Coal-fired power plants continue to shut their doors. Bountiful supplies of U.S. shale gas are keeping natural gas prices low and competitive, and renewable sources of power generation are growing rapidly. Though most experts expect U.S. coal sales and output to top last year’s levels, they also expect the decline to resume in 2018.

“The coal industry is saying it’s back. It’s not back,” said Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis. “This is a fool’s errand.” . . . . . Some coal companies will survive, and some could thrive. Metallurgical coal will be needed to make steel in India and China and in the United States, especially if there is a boost in infrastructure spending. And thermal coal will still be used to generate electricity for years, even if at lower rates.

But to show profits, coal operators will have to trim output from the oldest, least-efficient mines in Appalachia (where Trump garnered crucial votes in the election) and shift their focus to the Illinois Basin and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming.

“A lot of people conflate two primary things: the coal industry and coal jobs,” said Chiza B. Vitta, a coal analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “Even if the coal industry were to do better, that doesn’t translate into coal jobs. Over time the process has become more and more efficient, and they’re able to mine with fewer and fewer people working.”  Some analysts don’t even expect the industry to do better.

“The regulatory environment for coal should improve under Trump’s presidency,” the bank [CitiBank] said. But, it added, “comparative economics for coal, renewables and gas place clean coal firmly at the bottom of the stack in the U.S.”

[I]t will be hard for Trump to deliver. “To bring jobs back in Kentucky is a tough proposition unless there’s a subsidy, because it doesn’t make economic sense,” Vitta said.  That’s been true for years, notwithstanding some of the political rhetoric.

In Arizona, the Navajo Generating Station could also provide an early test for the president. Its owners have decided to close the massive coal plant. . . . . . the Navajo station produces electricity at rates about 50 percent higher than market rates.

“There’s no good economic reason to keep NGS on life support, and indeed the time for closure has come,” Sanzillo’s group said in a blog post. “The plant is emblematic of a core challenge facing the traditionally hidebound U.S. electricity-generation industry, as the market for coal-fired electricity is shrinking.”  And, he added, “that’s regardless of recent political events.”

 The take away?  Coal jobs will not return in these regions and the Trump/GOP budget will be savage to the residents of these areas who were basically played for fools and stupidly aided their own long term economic destruction.  Meanwhile, do not expect any progressive changes that will bring new, forward thinking businesses ot that will stop the flight of the most able younger generations to places that are the opposite of their home regions. The embrace of ignorance - think conservative Christianity - and bigotry carry a high price.

Rural America Voted Trump, Now Worries Over Medicaid Cutbacks and Broken Promises

The idiocy of much of the GOP's rural base is at times stunning.  Year after year, GOP appeals to racism, right wing Christian fanaticism, and a ever present message of the dangers posed by those who are "other" is used to induce rural voters to vote against their own economic best interest.  Now, it seems that some in Kentucky may be belatedly figuring out that they were played for fools and may have cut their own throats.  Other rural regions that voted for Trump will likely also end up empty handed.  Perhaps I am cruel, but I really have no sympathy for these people (except their young children) if they voted for Trump/Pence and Republicans in general.  A piece at NPR looks at the angst now being experienced by many who may now lose their health coverage through Medicaid expansion that would be lost if Trump and the GOP keep their promise to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare. A similar piece in Salon looks at how Trump supporters were played for fools and have screwed themselves.  First these excerpts from NPR:

For Freida Lockaby, an unemployed 56-year-old woman who lives with her dog in an aging mobile home in Manchester, Ky., one of America's poorest places, the Affordable Care Act was life altering.

The law allowed Kentucky to expand Medicaid in 2014 and made Lockaby – along with 440,000 other low-income state residents – newly eligible for free health care under the state-federal insurance program. Enrollment gave Lockaby her first insurance in 11 years. But Lockaby is worried her good fortune could soon end. Her future access to health care now hinges on a controversial proposal to revamp the program that her state's Republican governor has submitted to the Obama administration.

Next year will likely bring more uncertainty when a Trump administration and a GOP-controlled Congress promise to consider Obamacare's repeal, including a potential reduction in the associated Medicaid expansion in 31 states and the District of Columbia that has led to health coverage for an estimated 10 million people. Kentucky's enrollment has doubled since late 2013 and today almost a third of its residents are in the program. The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in Kentucky has led to one of the sharpest drops in any state's uninsured rate, to 7.5 percent in 2015 from 20 percent two years earlier.

Kentucky's achievement owed much to the success of its state-run exchange, Kynect, in promoting new coverage options under the health law. Kynect was launched under Bevin's Democratic predecessor, Steve Beshear, and dismantled by Bevin this year.

Bevin has threatened to roll back the expansion if the Obama administration doesn't allow him to make major changes, such as requiring Kentucky's beneficiaries to pay monthly premiums of $1 to $37.50 and require nondisabled recipients to work or do community service for free dental and vision care.

Trump's unexpected victory may help Bevin's chances of winning approval. Before the election, many analysts expected federal officials to reject the governor's plan by the end of the year on the grounds that it would roll back gains in expected coverage.

"I think it's much more likely that a waiver could be approved under the Trump administration," she said. "On the other hand, I wonder if the waiver will be a moot point under a Trump administration, assuming that major pieces of the [Affordable Care Act] are repealed."

Lockaby is watching with alarm: "I am worried to death about it."

About 60 percent of Clay County's 21,000 residents are covered by Medicaid, up from about a third before the expansion. The counties uninsured rate for non-elderly adults has fallen from 29 percent to 10 percent.

The piece in Salon also looks at the self-inflicted harm that may becoming to those who allowed themselves to be wooed by appeals to their racism and religious extremism.  Here are highlights:

You aren’t going to make any extra money under Donald Trump, so I hope your racism, or your attempt to ignore it, keeps you warm at night.

OK, we have all gotten the memo that it’s not cool or politically correct to yell “I hate the blacks, I hate the Mexicans and I hate the Jews!” But seriously, when was the last time the KKK celebrated a presidential election?

The real question is this: What’s the point? What do these white working-class people we’ve heard so much about really expect? Having a race-baiting president will not — I repeat, will not — transform into any opportunities for hard-working whites in America, just like the Obama candidacy didn’t deliver any black person from the issues that African-Americans have been facing since long before I was born.

A common theme that’s being tossed around is that Trump’s election was the white working class’ chance way to say “F**k you!” to the political elites who forgot about them, sucked up their factory jobs and left them out to dry. I take issue with this for a number of reasons.

The first and most obvious reason is this: How do you buck a system ruled by elites by electing a billionaire who was born rich, employed the Mexicans he blamed for taking jobs away and could never possibly understand someone else’s struggle?

What’s sad is that these angry, hard-working white people don’t understand that they saw more economic gains under President Obama than they did under George W. Bush. Unemployment went down across the board except among African-Americans ­­— the rate actually doubled for us — so those folks should be praising Obama, not championing Trump or subscribing to all this alt-right B.S.

Then there’s the myth of returning factory jobs. It’s not a real thing! And trust me, I used to subscribe to the same ideas, all caught up in the nostalgia of the old dudes from my neighborhood. My friend Al’s grandpa used to park his Cadillac on Ashland Avenue, hop out and roll up on us nine-year-olds like, “Finish high school, get a job at Bethlehem Steel and your future is set!”

Those jobs were long gone by the time we came of age, at Bethlehem Steel and almost every place like it across the country. They weren’t taken by Mexicans or sent overseas­­ — industries changed, new products were made and robots were invented that could do the job of 10 men and work all night without complaining. Those beautiful factory positions for uneducated hard-working whites (or anybody else) aren’t coming back, and I don’t care what Trump says.

We should be asking ourselves what’s going to happen when the forgotten Trump supporters are ignored by him­­. I challenge the Klansmen, the closet racists and the rest of his supporters to look deeper into Trump’s life and his business. Unlike you, he’s not committed to white, he’s committed to green, and your financial situation will not change.

 As noted above, I feel sorry for the children and youths fated to live in the declining regions.  As for the adults who supported Trump, they truly deserve the worse things that life can throw at them.   

Do We Face a Threat of Armed Sedition?

As noted in prior posts, Donald trump and his surrogates have been planting seeds for a claim that the election was stolen or "rigged" if Trump goes down to defeat.  Combine this with the manner in which Trumps supporters seem to buy into every possible conspiracy theory - e.g., Benghazi - and it could make for a dangerous and toxic mix.  Adding to the toxic brew is Matt Bevin, the Republican Governor of Kentucky (pictured above),  who has suggested that "Patriots" might have to shed blood if Hillary Clinton is elected in November.  Bevin made his remarks - which were vague on whose blood would be shed but certainly suggested that "tyrants" would die - at a closed session at the hate fest known as the Value Voters Summit, a gathering sponsored by a group of certified hate groups.  Right Wing Watch captured Bevin's inflammatory batshirty.  Here are excerpts:

Numerous speakers at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit suggested that the American republic might not survive a Hillary Clinton presidency. During the Obama administration it has become almost routine to hear far-right leaders talk about the possibility of armed revolution against the federal government. But it was still jarring to hear a sitting governor suggest that America might only survive the election of Hillary Clinton through bloodshed.  Speaking on Saturday, he told VVS attendees that the country is facing a fork in the road: “We don’t have multiple options; we’re going one way or we’re going the other way, politically, spiritually, morally, economically, from a liberty standpoint. We’re going one way or we’re going the other way.” American freedom, Bevin said, was “purchased at an extraordinary price,” saying that one and a half million Americans have given their lives in uniform. “America is worth fighting for. America is worth fighting for, ideologically.”

“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” said Bevin. “But that may in fact be the case.” He explained that it might take the shedding of the blood of tyrants and patriots for America to survive a Hillary Clinton presidency:
 “Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, ‘Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation?’ And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.” – Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, addressing the closing session of the Values Voter Summit yesterday.

A sitting governor urging violence against elected officials and others.  It is both frightening and disgusting, but that is what the Christofascist and white supremacist dominated Republican Party has fallen to.  These people are downright dangerous. 

The Closed Minded View from "Trump Country"

After World War I Great Britain learned the consequences of not changing with the time economically and clinging to dying industries while often rejecting new ways of thinking.  While Great Britain had lead the industrial revolution and reaped huge profits for a considerable period, but World War I and its aftermath made it painfully clear that not modernizing and shifting from industries rapidly growing in other nations carried sever economic consequences.  The same held for not preparing for the shift from coal fired industries to those using petroleum.  The lessons of Great Britain were lost on much of America's so-called rust belt and Appalachia where reliance on dying industries and refusing to embrace modernity are yielding horrific economic consequences.  Donald Trump is now preying on these regions and promising that things can return to they way they were once were, disregarding the winds of globalization and industrial change.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the mindset of many in these reasons who say they are desperate for change, but sadly not if it requires new ways of thinking on their own part. Christianity, thankfully, is declining in America, acceptance of diversity is becoming an economic requirement, and changes in the global demand for coal make promises of a return to "the good old days" of the coal industry are never going to return.   Here are article excerpts:

Paris, Ky. — After Bill Bissett, the president of the Kentucky Coal Association, told me that “President Obama cares more about Paris, France, than he does about Paris, Kentucky” — a sentiment that seems broadly shared around here — I decided to check out this little town with a big name set amid the verdant undulations of picket-fenced Kentucky horse country.

St Soon enough I ran into Cindy Hedges . . . . straight talk, the way the people of this particular Paris like it, is the kind of talk they recognize in Donald J. Trump.

For her, that somebody is Trump. She voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and says her political choices are gut-driven rather than party-driven. “I have never been this political,” she tells me. “This is the most fired-up I’ve ever been for a candidate.” She believes Trump will get business going, revoke trade deals she sees as draining domestic jobs, and “clean up the mess Obama has left us.” But what, I ask, of Trump’s evident character flaws? “Sure, he’s kind of a loose cannon, but he tells it the way it is and, if elected, people will be there to calm him down a bit, tweak a word or two in his speeches. And I just don’t trust Hillary Clinton.”

Obama is blamed for the collapse of coal, particularly in eastern Kentucky, and the ever more stringent standards of the Environmental Protection Agency. Beyond that, the blame is aimed at airy-fairy liberals more concerned about climate change — often contested or derided — than about Americans trying to make their house payments.

The number of Kentucky coal jobs has plunged to fewer than 6,500 from about 18,000 when Obama took office; the number fell 6.9 percent between this April and June alone. Hillary Clinton’s words in Ohio — “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” — echo on Republican radio ads, plucked out of context from her pledge to replace those jobs with opportunities in clean, renewable energy. By contrast, Trump declared in West Virginia in May that miners should “get ready, because you are going to be working your asses off!”

“Trump’s appeal is nationalistic, the authoritarian shepherd of the flock,” Al Cross, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky, told me. “That’s why evangelical Christians are willing to vote for this twice-divorced man who brags about the size of his penis. There’s a strong belief here still in America as special and exceptional, and Obama is seen as having played that down.”

There’s a sense, crystallized in coal’s steady demise, that, as the political scientist Norman Ornstein put it to me, “Somebody is taking everything you are used to and you had” — your steady middle-class existence, your values, your security. It’s not that the economy is bad in all of Kentucky; the arrival of the auto industry has been a boon, and the unemployment rate is just 4.9 percent. It’s that all the old certainties have vanished.

Far from the metropolitan hubs inhabited by the main beneficiaries of globalization’s churn, many people feel disenfranchised from both main political parties, angry at stagnant wages and growing inequality, and estranged from a prevailing liberal urban ethos.

For anyone used to New York chatter, or for that matter London or Paris chatter, Kentucky is a through-the-looking-glass experience. There are just as many certainties; they are simply the opposite ones, whether on immigration, police violence toward African-Americans, or guns. America is now tribal, with each tribe imbibing its own social-media-fed ranting.

Somewhere on the winding road from whites-only bathrooms to choose-your-gender bathrooms, many white, blue-collar Kentucky workers — and the state is 85.1 percent white — feel their country got lost.

Hazard, set in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, is a once bustling town with its guts wrenched out. On Main Street, the skeleton of a mall that burned down last year presents its charred remains for dismal contemplation. Young people with drugged eyes lean against boarded-up walls on desolate streets. The whistle of trains hauling coal, once as regular as the chiming of the hours, has all but vanished. So have the coal trucks spewing splinters of rock that shattered windshields. In the age of cheap natural gas and mountaintop removal mining, a coal town is not where you want to be.

“Trump’s going to get us killed, probably!” he told me. “But I’ll vote for him anyway over Hillary. If you vote for Hillary you vote for Obama, and he’s made it impossible to ship coal. This place is about dried up. A job at Wendy’s is the only thing left. We may have to move.”

Jenny Williams, an English teacher at Hazard Community and Technical College, told me it’s past time to get over divisions between “Friends of Coal” — a popular movement and bumper sticker — and anti-coal environmentalists to forge a creative economy around agriculture, ecotourism, education and small-scale manufacture. Coal, she observed, was never going to last forever. “How could any idiot support Trump?” she said. “But when you’ve been on $70,000 a year in coal mines, and your life’s pulled out from under you, who else can you be mad at but the government?”

The frustration of these people, whether they are in Kentucky, or Texas, or throughout the Midwest, is acute. They are looking for “someone who will articulate the truth of their disenfranchisement,” as Webb put it. Trump, for all his bullying petulance, has come closest to being that politician, which is why millions of Americans support him.

There are many places, here and abroad, where people feel shoved aside by technology and cheap global labor, leading them to seek radical political answers. Trump is one of those answers; Brexit, the surprise British vote to leave the European Union, was another; the fall of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany next year could be a third, after she trailed an anti-immigrant party in a local election this month.

Trump can’t reverse globalization. Nor is he likely to save coal in an era of cheap natural gas. His gratuitous insults, evident racism, hair-trigger temper and lack of preparation suggest he would be a reckless, even perilous, choice for the Oval Office. I don’t think he is a danger to the Republic because American institutions are stronger than Trump’s ego, but that the question even arises is troubling.

Back in Paris — the Kentucky one — I sit down in a coffee shop with Cindy Hedges and her husband, Mitch. . . . . “Look, there’s nobody to vote for,” he says. “Trump is an idiot, he pisses everyone off, he’s scary, he’ll pump his mouth off to some foreign country and we’ll be at war. He’s a billionaire on a power trip with as much reason to be president as I have. If Trump had shut up, he’d win the election. So do you vote for the one who’s going to lie, or the one who takes you to war? I’m leaning Hillary.”
“Oh, come on, Mitch!” says Cindy.

Virginia represents this closed mindset in microcosmism.   You have the modernity embracing urban crescent in the the east and the equivalent of the parts of Kentucky looked at in the Times article in the southwest part of the state.  Through their embrace of ignorance and bigotry, the majority in Southwest Virginia retard their own chances for economic improvement.  Worse yet, through their Republican representatives in the General Assembly, they hold the state as a whole from needed changes.  The mythical past that these people either never existed or were times when minorities and gays were stigmatized and often terrorized.  If these Trump supporters want change, the first thing they need to do is look in the mirror and admit that they themselves need to change.  Sadly, I doubt that will ever happen. .  

Salt Lake City Elects Lesbian Mayor and Gay City Councilman

(Tribune file photo) Salt Lake City mayoral candidate Jackie Biskupski.

While the election results in Houston and Kentucky are very disappointing - the finger pointing on the Houston loss has already begun - two total surprises have come out of Salt Lake City, home base of the anti-gay Mormon Church: if the unofficial results hold up, the city will have a lesbian mayor and a gay city council member.  Making it all the sweeter, the new city council man is Derek Kitchen who, with his now-husband Moudi Sbeity, was one half of one of three couples that won their challenge to Utah's gay marriage ban before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.  Here's what Kitchen posted on Facebook:

Thank you! Thank you to my family for standing next to me through this campaign, for my volunteers for putting in countless hours knocking on doors, making calls, and talking to their friends. Thank you to all my supporters, your enthusiasm, donations, and moral cheers really kept me going. This has been such a positive experience for me as a first time candidate for public office. I’m happy to say that we ran a clean campaign focused on the issues and the residents of this great city.

I feel honored that the residents of District 4 have put their faith in me to represent them and make important decisions on their behalf. I’m energized and excited to get to work on the Salt Lake City council as your next representative!

As for the mayoral race, here are highlights from  the Salt Lake Tribune (let's hope the uncounted ballots confirm Biskupski's win):

There remain several thousand uncounted provisional and mail-in ballots in Salt Lake City's mayor's race, leaving the door open for Mayor Ralph Becker to pull off a come-from-behind win — although such a scenario appears unlikely.

Tuesday's unofficial and incomplete results gave Jackie Biskupski a 52.1 percent to 47.8 percent lead over Becker. They are separated by 1,450 votes out of 33,717 counted — 46.8 percent of registered voters in Salt Lake City.

According to Utah law, the new total will be sealed until the Nov. 17 canvass.

Tuesday night Biskupski said that Becker's 4.3-point deficit was statistically "insurmountable." When she announced at her campaign celebration that Becker would not concede, her crowd of supporters groaned and booed. 

Until Nov. 17, the discussion of Biskupski's possible election as the first openly gay big-city mayor in the deeply conservative, Mormon state are on hold. 

"In a couple weeks," she said, "I'm confident we will have a chance to talk about how historic this is."

Biskupski said she recognized from the beginning that she would lose votes for a number of reasons, not limited to her gender. "There are people who would not vote for me because I'm openly gay," she said. "There are people who would not vote for me because I'm a single mom."

Nonetheless, it's possible to get elected in a conservative state based on your merits, Biskupski told reporters Tuesday night.

"Not my gender, not my sexual orientation," she said. "It matters that we embrace people for their ability to lead and affect change."

Her likely victory says something about Utah, Biskupski said.  "We have a reputation here, right? But ... this community continues to move forward in strides that are mind-blowing," she said. "I'm so proud of our community."

In some ways I am not surprised by Utah.  Jon Huntsman  is one of the few sane Republicans left and he was a popular governor in Utah.  The fact that he is sane is why he failed to gain traction in 2012. That said, what could be more delicious than a lesbian mayor in the Mormon Church's home town. :)

Hate and Ignorance Triumph in Houston and Kentucky

The election results in Houston and Kentucky yesterday demonstrate once again that religious based hate and the embrace of ignorance are stronger motivations to vote than equality and concern for one's neighbors.  The same holds true in Loudoun County, Virginia where Bob Marshall, arguably the most hateful and insane member of the Virginia General Assembly won reelection.  Leading the way in these unfortunate outcomes were so-called "conservative" voters who in fact are religious extremists who hold ISIS like contempt for others who do not embrace their Bronze Age beliefs.   First, the New York Times looks at the results in the defeat of Houston's non-discrimination ordinance which ought to send a message to big businesses that Texas is not a place in which to base any major operations.  Here are excerpts:

A yearlong battle over gay and transgender rights that turned into a costly, ugly war of words between this city’s lesbian mayor and social conservatives ended Tuesday as voters repealed an anti-discrimination ordinance that had attracted attention from the White House, sports figures and Hollywood celebrities.

Opponents said the measure would allow men claiming to be women to enter women’s bathrooms and inflict harm, and that simple message — “No Men in Women’s Bathrooms” — was plastered on signs and emphasized in television and radio ads, turning the debate from one about equal rights to one about protecting women and girls from sexual predators.

“It was about protecting our grandmoms, and our mothers and our wives and our sisters and our daughters and our granddaughters,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, told cheering opponents who gathered at an election night party at a Houston hotel. “I’m glad Houston led tonight to end this constant political-correctness attack on what we know in our heart and our gut as Americans is not right.”

Opponents of the measure — including Mr. Patrick, pastors of conservative megachurches and the former Houston Astros baseball star Lance Berkman — said the ordinance had nothing to do with discrimination and was about the mayor’s gay agenda being forced on the city. They denied that they had any bias against gay people, and said the ordinance was so vague that it would make anyone who tried to keep any man from entering a women’s bathroom the subject of a city investigation and fine.

Ms. Parker and her supporters said Houston would lose tourism and convention business if the city had to repeal the ordinance and became known for intolerance, just as a backlash in Indiana over a religious-objections law led to convention cancellations and boycotts before that law was changed. Supporters worried that a repeal of the Houston ordinance could also jeopardize its selection as host city for the Super Bowl in 2017.

I hope the NFL decides to boycott Houston - perhaps a petition addressed to the NFL needs be started.  I for one will not be visiting Houston or Texas anytime soon.  

In Kentucky, similar batshitery and misogyny prevailed as Republican Matt Bevin, who backed Kim Davis to rally haters evangelicals, was elected Governor of Kentucky thereby putting health care coverage for several hundred thousand state residents at risk.  Here are excerpts from the New York Times on this disturbing election outcome:

Matt Bevin, a Republican political novice, wealthy Louisville businessman and Tea Party favorite, was elected Kentucky’s next governor on Tuesday and swept fellow Republicans into statewide office with him. The stunning victory heralds a new era in a state where Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four of the last 44 years.

Mr. Obama’s health care law was an especially contentious issue in the race, and some see the Bevin victory as a rebuke to Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, who expanded Medicaid under the measure. An estimated 420,000 Kentuckians, nearly 10 percent of the state’s population, now have coverage as a result. Mr. Bevin, a fierce opponent of the health care law, at first said he would reverse it, but has since softened his position and said he would stop enrolling new people but would not take coverage from those who had it.

He [Bevin] held strong appeal to both fiscal and Christian conservatives; when Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, was jailed, Mr. Bevin made a show of visiting her. 

Mr. Conway hews mostly to traditional Democratic positions. He favors increasing the minimum wage (Mr. Bevin is opposed); is a strong backer of unions (Mr. Bevin favored “right-to-work” laws that would limit union organizing); and made early childhood education a centerpiece of his election campaign. (Mr. Bevin emphasized school vouchers.) 

I try to be optimistic about the future of America, but in these off year elections - i.e., non-presidential elections - the hatred and greed of the Christofascists and those seeking a new Gilded Age outweigh those who oppose their agenda.  The irony is that many of those who stayed home and failed to vote will be the ones most targeted by the foul policies of today's GOP.

Bad News For Those Who Want Special Rights fro Christofascists

While the far right, especially evangelical Christians, continue to demand special rights for religious (only if they claim they are Christians, of course), a majority of Americans reject their demands and say that equality under the law trumps religious belief, whether feigned or genuine, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found here:

Most Americans say equality under the law trumps individual religious beliefs – a view that leads to broad support for requiring recalcitrant County Clerk Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

In general, 74 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say that when a conflict arises, the need to treat everyone equally under the law is more important than someone’s religious beliefs.

In the specific case at hand, 63 percent say Davis , of Rowan County, Kentucky, should be required to issue marriage licenses despite her religious objections.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected yet another frivolous appeal by Davis and her  in my view disbarment worthy attorney, Mat Staver of the parasitic Liberty Counsel.  Talking Points Memo looks at this development.  Here are excerpts:

A motion by Kim Davis -- the anti-gay marriage clerk in Kentucky -- to halt a requirement that she issue marriage licenses to gay couples was denied by a federal appeals court Tuesday.

Davis is suing Kentucky Gov. Steven Beshear (D) and state librarian Wayne Onkst for enforcing a requirement that Kentucky clerks grant same-sex marriage licenses, which she objects to on religious grounds. She had ask the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to temporarily halt the requirement while the lawsuit proceeds.

"Davis has not demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on her federal constitutional claims," the panel of judges said in their order denying the request.

While the professional Christian crowd and Republican political whores continue to laud Davis, the irony is that her hypocrisy and the ridiculousness of her claims after four marriages, serial adultery and giving birth to bastard children may well be undermining the Christofascist effort to have license to discriminate laws enacted across America.  Hopefully, the Davis spectacle is bringing home the truth that conservative Christians are selfish, ignorance embracing individuals who need to be viewed with scorn, not respect or the award of special rights. 

Religious Extremist Rally for Davis

click image to enlarge

UPDATED: As blogger friend Joe Jervis reports, the group rallying in support of Kim Davis not surprisingly included a rabid white supremacist.  Highlights from Joe's post:

Yesterday notorious white supremacist Michael Peroutka spoke at the rally outside the jail holding Kim Davis. Peroutka is a former leader of the League Of The South, which recently “celebrated” the 150th anniversary of the assassination of “tyrant” Abraham Lincoln. 
 
The SPLC calls Peroutka “an avid Southern secessionist and radical Christian Reconstructionist.” According to Wikipedia, Christian Reconstructionists call for overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a “biblical theocracy.” The new Christian theocracy would then reinstate Mosaic penal laws under which “the list of crimes which carried a death sentence would include homosexuality, adultery [KIM DAVIS!], incest, lying about one’s virginity, bestiality, witchcraft, idolatry or apostasy, public blasphemy, false prophesying, kidnapping, rape, and bearing false witness in a capital case.”

As I have said, this folk are pushing treason.

ORIGINAL POST: The image above pretty sums up the mindset of the extreme Christofascists who rallied in support for jailed law breaker Kim Davis.  To say that they hold the religious freedom of others in contempt is an understatement.  Even more frightening is that at least half of the Republican presidential nominee candidates are actively prostituting themselves to these people.  The Lexington Courier-Journal has more on the gathering of those who ultimately seek to subvert the U.S. Constitution - which once upon a time was called treason .  Here are highlights:

Hundreds of people gathered outside the Carter County Detention Center on Saturday and prayed for jailed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who was locked up just a few hundred feet away.

"She won't bow, I promise you," her husband, Joe Davis, told the crowd while dressed in overalls and a camouflage ball cap. He said he talked to her the morning she was put in jail and the two of them decided not to give in.  "I'm just an old, dumb, country hillbilly, but I know God," he said.

People came from as far as Wisconsin and North Carolina to attend.  "This is as grass roots as it gets," he said.

Some speakers took a more prayerful tone while others got political — one ordained minister and insurance agent from Morehead told the crowd that it needs to send Gov. Steve Beshear, who he blames for Davis' jailing, by voting against his son, Andy, who is running for attorney general.

"Make sure we hold Beshear responsible for his inaction," Randy Smith exhorted the crowd.

Smith also attacked Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway, who is running for governor, accusing him of violating the law when he did not appeal the original judicial ruling striking down the state's gay marriage ban — and Beshear for letting him.

The crowd and the speakers didn't have kind words for Bunning, either.   One man held a sign that said "Judge Bunning is an abomination."

Flip Benham, an evangelist from North Carolina, praised Bunning's father, former U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, as a staunch conservative but ended his kind words there.  "His son is working against the will of God," said Benham, who carried a white cap with the name "Jesus" on it. "He's being used by the devil to park Kim here."

These people are clearly crazy.  The only question is that of when some will resort to violence as they fight against modernity itself and anything that threatens the fantasy world in which they live.  

Kim Davis and Robert Bentley - Poster Children for Chistofascist Hypocrisy

Time and time again the Christofascists who campaign against LGBT equality and same sex marriage in particular prove that it is they, not gays, who are the real threat to the "sanctity of marriage."  As the four times married Rowan County clerk faces a contempt of court hearing tomorrow, new bomb shells are underscoring her rank hypocrisy on the issue of "Biblical marriage."  U.S. News & World Reports has some of the salacious details.  Here are highlights:

The Kentucky county clerk facing potentially stiff penalties for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses has been married four times, raising questions of hypocrisy and selective application of the Bible to her life. 

The marriages are documented in court records obtained by U.S. News, which show that Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis divorced three times, first in 1994, then 2006 and again in 2008. 

She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second. Davis worked at the clerk's office at the time of each divorce and has since remarried.

Davis has described her desire to strictly adhere to the Bible in stark terms and thus far has shown no sign of bending to court orders on same-sex marriage. She said Tuesday she fears going to hell for violating "a central teaching" of the Bible if she complies with the orders.

Staver says “it’s not really relevant, it’s something that happened in her past” and that her conversion to Christianity about four years ago wiped her slate clean. “It’s something that’s not relevant to the issue at hand,” he says. “She was 180 degrees changed.”

Davis' selective application of the Bible is akin to that of Maggie Gallagher who seems to have never gotten over her unwed mother status in college.  As blogger friend Bob Felton notes:

It doesn’t need much imagination to understand how that string of bad marriages and relationships, and the complicated paternity of her children, might have had a debilitating effect upon her judgment, her self-esteem, her sense of self and worth.

And then she encounters a predatory cult that targets the insecure and the damaged, and fastens on to it like a lamprey — because her ‘church family’ and the love of an Invisible Friend are all that she has.

Maybe that’s how it happened, and maybe not; obviously, I speculate. It’s a familiar progression, however.

Gov. Robert Bentley and
Rebekah Caldwell Mason
(From HBTV.us)

Davis, however, isn't the only hypocrite when it comes to marriage.  The wife of anti-gay Robert Bentley, Governor of Alabama, has filed for divorce?  Why?  Because of her husband's affair with a staffer.  Like Davis, Bentley is a complete hypocrite.  Here are details from Legal Schnauzer:

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley engaged in an extramarital affair with his former communications director, leading First Lady Dianne Bentley to file for divorce last Friday after 50 years of marriage, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Rebekah Caldwell Mason, a married mother of three from Bentley's home base of Tuscaloosa, was the governor's mistress in an affair that sources say raises a number of possible legal issues--including use of the state jet and a state trooper's services for personal reasons that had nothing to do with Bentley's official role.

According to Dianne Bentley's divorce complaint, the couple separated in January 2015 because of a "complete incompatibility of temperament" and a "conflict of personalities which destroys the legitimate aims of matrimony." In fact, sources say, Gov. Bentley's affair with Mason destroyed the matrimonial bonds.

The 72-year-old Bentley, a Republican serving in his second term, repeatedly has touted his Christian faith and conservative "family values" to attract voters. He long has served as a deacon at First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa. Bentley made national headlines in 2011 when, shortly after his inauguration, he said, ""Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister. And I want to be your brother."

Rebekah Caldwell Mason, sources say, quickly became more than just a communications director to Bentley. Their affair became so widely known that it diluted any moral authority the governor might have had.