Betrayed by Republican Religion

The merger of supposedly conservative Christianity and the Republican Party is truly resulted in a toxic brew.  Hate and division are the main aspects of the merger and the hypocrisy that goes hand in hand with it is off the charts.  Sadly, things are not likely to get better any time soon as the aging GOP base becomes more susceptible to the snake oil and fake religiosity of Republican candidates.  Here are highlights from a piece in Salon that looks at the toxic brew: 

It is one of the great ironies of of contemporary American politics that, while The New Testament is further to the left than “The Communist Manifesto,” somehow the book and much of the religion it created have been subsumed by the cruelest, most selfish conservative politics I’ve seen in my lifetime, replete with outright hatred toward poor people, immigrants and every other unwashed commoner for which Jesus professed his most intimate love.

[T]he religious right has nothing whatsoever to do with faith, dogma, Jesus, or the afterlife. Instead, large sections of American Christendom exist solely to support reductive conservative politics as a hedge against progress. They are tools used by cynical politicians and bloviating television pundits to transform rage and tribalism into viewers and a compliant voting public. There’s no reason to think those who benefit will abandon such a calculated and successful effort just because gay people can now (thankfully) get married. If anything, the rhetoric on “religious freedom” and attacks on issues like women’s health has only gotten more outlandish over time.

Like many self-identified American Christians, I grew up calling myself such while adhering to few of the precepts and never going to church. I consider my secular upbringing the greatest gift my parents ever gave me, and it also made me understand how it feels to call oneself a Christian out of laziness. I was always far more defensive of the faith when I didn’t practice or understand it. I was insecure and perhaps a little embarrassed. These kinds of nominal “Easter Christians” are the easiest pickings for a GOP playing the worst kind of identity politics.

 After my failed attempt at “real” Christianity, the religious right bothered me much more than when I was ignorant of the Bible.

The political version of Christianity is first and foremost a media construct, like so much of our lives these days. It’s championed by Fox News, the 700 Club and a parade of has-beens and never weres, selling the “prosperity gospel” like so much snake oil. It’s a powerful and toxic stew that is as relevant to Jesus as professional wrestling or a discarded Playboy. Conservative Christianity in America is less a religion and more of a secret handshake, a group signifier of exclusion and moral superiority.

The people most injured by the Fox News version of Christianity are those authentic, compassionate people of faith. There are many churches with a sense of sacrifice and love. I’ve seen them. They are Lutheran or Catholic, Buddhist and even Mormon. They are filled with nice people doing wonderful things from a sense community, but these groups are in grave danger. They are now being sold a bag of lies about threats to “religious liberty.” They’re being made into political puppets, manipulated into violating the precepts of their own faith in the voting booth and in their own, incendiary, hate-filled rhetoric.

There is no better example of disconnect between faith and deeds (James 2:14) than one of the hottest topics driving GOP politics at the moment: immigration. There’s a cottage industry of people building careers off hating immigrants and the Latino community in general, starting with Trump but also Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingram and Todd Starnes . . .

No matter what the politicians and pundits claim to believe, they are only using faith to exploit an angry and ignorant populace with a collective Bible literacy that wouldn’t fill a shot glass.

As the Republican base becomes both grayer and whiter, more homogenous and religious, fake Christianity will become an even more important wedge for conservatives to drive between people and their self-interest. We don’t care if a Republican politician throws grandma out of the nursing home or takes food stamps from poor people, so long as he weeps during Sunday service.

The Fox News/GOP version of Christianity has already betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, and would do so again, just to get the matching set of spinning rims. Even though it’s a 21st century fabrication, it still has power and danger. Liberal Christians and anyone who values a secular republic need to stop pretending it’s been defeated.

BRITAIN: Half Of 18-24 Year-Olds Say They’re Not 100% Heterosexual

Click image to enlarge

A new survey in Great Britain has yielded results that will no doubt have the Christofascists foaming at the mouth and hysterically claiming that the "gay agenda" is turning youth gay.  The study found that 49% among 18-24 year olds classified them selves as not 100% heterosexual.  Interestingly, only 72% of the adults surveyed said they were 100% heterosexuals.  Tony Perkins, Victoria Cobb, Albert Mohler and Maggie Gallagher will be having the vapors!  Here are some of the findings from the YouGov survey:

Invented by Alfred Kinsey in the 1940s, the Kinsey scale plots individuals on a range of sexual dispositions from exclusively heterosexual at 0 through to exclusively homosexual at 6. Where the original study had a large number of methods for placing people, YouGov simply asked people to place themselves on the sexuality scale.

Taken as a whole, 72% of the British public place themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% put themselves at the completely homosexual end and 19% say they are somewhere in between . . .

With each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed in stone. The results for 18-24 year-olds are particularly striking, as 43% place themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and 52% place themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual.

More than anything, it indicates an increasingly open minded approach to sexuality. In a further set of questions asking if respondents could conceivably be attracted to, have sex with or have a relationship with someone of the same sex (if the right person came along at the right time), level 1s were at least 35% more likely to say they could than level 0s.

Given the Millennials seeming growing indifference toward religion and more open acceptance of gays, one has to wonder if similar findings would occur in America. 

Republicans Against Retirement

In addition to the tremendous wealth of families like the Astors and Vanderbilts, the  Gilded Age saw something else:  a society where most of the population had no social safety net and where there was little prospect for retirement.  Eighty years ago, Social Security was launched and that dark prospect was lessened.  Today's GOP, however, would like to see that change as it strives to bring about a new Gilded Age with all of the problems of the old one.  Through plays to religious extremists, nativists and racists, the GOP dupes these idiots into supporting a party that is the economic enemy of the average American.   Sadly, the ignorance embracing GOP base is unable to see that it is being cynically played.  A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's sinister plans for Social Security.  Here are excerpts: 

Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why.

The issue in question is the future of Social Security, which turned 80 last week. The retirement program is, of course, both extremely popular and a long-term target of conservatives, who want to kill it precisely because its popularity helps legitimize government action in general. As the right-wing activist Stephen Moore (now chief economist of the Heritage Foundation) once declared, Social Security is “the soft underbelly of the welfare state”; “jab your spear through that” and you can undermine the whole thing.

But that was a decade ago, during former President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize the program — and what Mr. Bush learned was that the underbelly wasn’t that soft after all. . . . . the assault on Social Security quickly crashed and burned. Voters, it turns out, like Social Security as it is, and don’t want it cut.

It’s remarkable, then, that most of the Republicans who would be president seem to be lining up for another round of punishment. In particular, they’ve been declaring that the retirement age — which has already been pushed up from 65 to 66, and is scheduled to rise to 67 — should go up even further.

[T]hese proposals would be really bad public policy — a harsh blow to Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution, who depend on Social Security, often have jobs that involve manual labor, and have not, in fact, seen a big rise in life expectancy. Meanwhile, the decline of private pensions has left working Americans more reliant on Social Security than ever.

What’s puzzling about the renewed Republican assault on Social Security is that it looks like bad politics as well as bad policy. Americans love Social Security, so why aren’t the candidates at least pretending to share that sentiment?

Wealthy individuals have long played a disproportionate role in politics, but we’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now: domination of campaign finance, especially on the Republican side, by a tiny group of immensely wealthy donors. Indeed, more than half the funds raised by Republican candidates through June came from just 130 families.

And while most Americans love Social Security, the wealthy don’t. Two years ago a pioneering study of the policy preferences of the very wealthy found many contrasts with the views of the general public; as you might expect, the rich are politically different from you and me. But nowhere are they as different as they are on the matter of Social Security. By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates. 

[W]hat the new attack on Social Security tells us is that the rules have changed. Nowadays, at least on the Republican side, the invisible primary has been reduced to a stark competition for the affections and, of course, the money of a few dozen plutocrats.

What this means, in turn, is that the eventual Republican nominee — assuming that it’s not Mr. Trump —will be committed not just to a renewed attack on Social Security but to a broader plutocratic agenda. Whatever the rhetoric, the GOP is on track to nominate someone who has won over the big money by promising government by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Julian Bond: 1940-2015

At the National Equality March in 2009 I had the please of hearing Julian Bond speak.   After the event, I got to speak with him one on one (we had a new camera and the husband accidentally deleted the photo of us together - yes, there was a fight!).   Being of a certain age, I remember Julian Bond well.  I also have the privilege of being friends with one of his cousins who lives locally.  I was very saddened to learn of his passing. The New York Times looks at Julian Bond's life and achievements. Here are highlights:

Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. He was 75.

He died after a brief illness, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement Sunday morning. His wife, Pamela Sue Horowitz, said Mr. Bond suffered from vascular disease, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Bond was one of the original leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He was the committee’s communications director for five years and deftly guided the national news media toward stories of violence and discrimination as the committee challenged legal segregation in the South’s public facilities.

He gradually moved from the militancy of the student group to the leadership of the establishmentarian N.A.A.C.P. Along the way, Mr. Bond was a writer, poet, television commentator, lecturer and college teacher, and persistent opponent of the stubborn remnants of white supremacy.

He also served for 20 years in the Georgia General Assembly, mostly in conspicuous isolation from white colleagues who saw him as an interloper and a rabble-rouser.

Mr. Bond’s wit, cool personality and youthful face — he was often called dashing, handsome and urbane — became familiar to millions of television viewers in the 1960s and 1970s. On the strength of his personality and quick intellect, he moved to the center of the civil rights action in Atlanta, the unofficial capital of the movement, at the height of the struggle for racial equality in the early 1960s.

Moving beyond demonstrations, Mr. Bond became a founder, with Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization in Montgomery, Ala. Mr. Bond was its president from 1971 to 1979 and remained on its board for the rest of his life.

When he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965, along with seven other black members, furious white members of the House refused to let him take his seat, accusing him of disloyalty. He was already well known because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s stand against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

That touched off a national drama that ended in 1966 when the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ordered the State Assembly to seat him, saying it had denied him freedom of speech.

As a lawmaker, he sponsored bills to establish a sickle cell anemia testing program and to provide low-interest home loans to low-income Georgians. He also helped create a majority-black congressional district in Atlanta.

Horace Julian Bond was born on Jan. 14, 1940, in Nashville, to Horace Mann Bond and the former Julia Washington. The family moved to Pennsylvania five years later, when Mr. Bond’s father became the first African-American president of his alma mater, Lincoln University.

Julian Bond’s great-grandmother Jane Bond was the slave mistress of a Kentucky farmer. Julian’s grandfather James Bond, one of Jane Bond’s sons, was educated at Berea and Oberlin Colleges and became a clergyman. His son Horace Mann Bond expected his own son Julian to follow in his footsteps as an educator, but the young man was attracted instead to journalism and political activism.

Mr. Bond devoted most of the 1960s to the protest movement and activist politics, including campaigns to register black voters. Both he and Mr. Lewis left the student committee after its leadership was taken over by black power advocates who forced whites out of the organization.

He prospered on the lecture circuit the rest of his life. He became a regular commentator in print and on television, including as host of “America’s Black Forum,” then the oldest black-owned television program in syndication. His most unusual television appearance was in April 1977, when he hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

In later years, he taught at Harvard, Williams, Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania. He was a distinguished scholar in residence at American University in Washington and a professor of history at the University of Virginia, where he was co-director of the oral history project Explorations in Black Leadership.

Read the full piece.  Bond spoke out forcefully for LBGT equality  and, unlike black pastors who act as water carries for former segregationist, Bond never let the smoke screen of religion distract his focus from civil rights for all.  I am saddened by his passing.

Bernie Sanders is Kicking into Overdrive

 

As I have noted before, I like much of what Bernie Sanders has to say.  In many ways he is the Koch brother's worse nightmare - which is a very good thing.  Now, he seems to be picking up stream and threatens to give Hillary Clinton more of a run for her money than she and her advisers ever contemplated.  Can he keep up the momentum?  That's the big question.  A piece in Politico looks at Sanders' effort to kick into overdrive to continue to confound the naysayers.  Here are excerpts:

After a poll this week showed the previously unthinkable — the 73-year-old Independent senator from Vermont surging past Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire — there’s a feeling that the Bernie Sanders operation is maturing from a quixotic pursuit for the White House into the real deal.

Sanders’ campaign is calling the Franklin Pierce University and the Boston Herald poll, which found Sanders beating Clinton 44 percent to 37 percent in the Granite State, an “astonishing” feat. It gives even more fuel to a momentum that the Sanders team is riding to significantly expand its ground game, especially in New Hampshire.

The campaign has already outgrown its modest office on Manchester Road in Concord, and will be moving the state headquarters to Manchester in the coming days. The campaign currently has 10 staffers, with six or seven more staffers to begin Monday. A week after that, another new crew is starting. Aides also will be scouting out more real estate to add to the two field offices.

Barnes estimated the campaign had received over 500 resumes in recent weeks, and spoke animatedly about the aggressive expansion in the coming weeks.

Barnes didn’t want to call the poll findings a game changer, saying it’s not going to cause an operational shift. But she said the numbers help cultivate enthusiasm for the campaign’s volunteers. She said “for the network of people supporting Bernie, it’s astonishing.”

The picture is a far cry from Sanders’ soft announcement of his presidential bid in late April, shifted to the Senate Swamp near the Capitol, after questions arose about the ethics of staging it in the Senate Radio/TV gallery. While he made headlines for busting records for drawing 10,000 supporters to a rally in Wisconsin in July, last weekend he managed to attract 28,000 people to a sports arena in Portland.

After spending Saturday at the Iowa State Fair, and hosting a fundraiser in Chicago on Monday, Sanders heads to the University of Nevada on Tuesday for another rally.

While the New Hampshire poll this week was just one set of numbers, and Clinton still enjoys a comfortable lead, the Democratic front-runner’s campaign was concerned enough to reach out to supporters.

As Clinton’s aides were beating back fresh headlines about the scandal over her use of private email server while secretary of state, the campaign sent out a “friends and allies” memo, offering talking points to minimize the poll, according to the New York Times.

Surdukowski also delivered a takedown of both Sanders and Clinton, saying the Vermont senator’s currently popularity is also about distaste with Clinton.

“I think that the Bernie crowds and him at least in this one poll rocketing ahead is it’s both about Bernie. But I also think it’s about Secretary Clinton in some ways. I think there are large swaths of folks who are seeing a trust gap with Clinton. At the end of the day there is a character and a trust issue. There’s a lot of deja vu in the Nineties,” Surdukowski said. “I am as surprised as anybody at these remarkable crowds.”

“I think the panic that folks are trying to assign to it is off the mark. I would need to see more,” Sean Downey, a Democratic operative working for Hilltop Public Solutions’ New England office said. Downey is a Clinton supporter. “When you look at what the Clinton campaign is doing is they’re organizing at the neighborhood level at a pretty impressive rate, and her crowds aren’t exactly small.”

The Clinton campaign’s presence in the state is tangible, too. Harrell Kirstein, the communications director for the Clinton campaign in the state, noted that there are already six offices for Clinton throughout the state and a seventh to be opened in Lebanon soon.

“New Hampshire has always been a competitive race and that is something that we prepared for from the beginning,” Kirstein said. He also noted that Clinton “said from the outset that she’s going to take nothing for granted.”

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Does the Catholic Church Stand a Chance with Millenials

Even as Pope Francis makes comments that hint at coming change in the Roman Catholic Church reactionary bishops around the world make statements and take actions that show that in truth, NOTHING has changed - e.g., the bishop of Richmond , Virginia, will not allow divorced and remarried Catholics to teach in Catholic schools, and a bishop in Europe just "apologized" for advocating the death penalty for gays after the sharp public outcry his statement ignited.  s a result, many Catholics find themselves questioning how much longer they can tolerate the hate and hypocrisy.  This is especially true of Millennials, 34% of whom have already walked away from institutional religion.  A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at the Church's growing problem with Millennials.  Here are excerpts:

[W]ill a hashtag or two be enough to engage my generation?   Like many Latinos in the U.S., I grew up Catholic. Unlike many Latinos, this was my choice rather than my parents’. They wanted me to decide how I expressed my spirituality, so after taking religious studies (I actually did!), I came to the conclusion that I would be Catholic because Jesus was a progressive political figure who helped others in need. . . . . So I have made a deliberate attempt to accept the Catholic Church for what it can be—a compassionate and welcoming sanctuary,  especially for the marginalized.

But as a Latina millennial who supports sexual and reproductive rights, I find that the Church’s restrictive attitudes make it very difficult for me to remain a committed Catholic.

My generation cherishes autonomy and individualism and rejects rigid identities and roles. Not surprisingly, a recent study from Pew Research confirmed that millennials are less likely to attend church than those in other generations.  More than a third of millennials  say they are unaffiliated with any church.  . . . . Only 16% of millennials consider themselves Catholic, compared to nearly a quarter of other generations.
A second study  . . . concluded that young women are the demographic segment driving this shift. The drop among 12th-grade girls who never attend church surged by 125% in the past thirty years, in contrast to the 83% increase among their male peers.

I believe that the Catholic hierarchy’s narrow view on gender and sexuality is a big factor in my generation’s difficulty with the Church. Whereas the Church has taken steps to address other important issues like economic justice and climate change, it still falls short of acknowledging that a broader, more inclusive view of gender roles, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual expression is crucial to the millennial generation.

What Pope Francis and his Church fail to understand is that reproductive health and rights are very much an issue of justice for the poor and women of color.  . . . access to reproductive care is as much of an issue of social justice as economic disparity or climate change.

Millennials are delaying marriage and finding alternative ways to form families. With a church that establishes rigid limits on how one should create a family, its impositions collide against a major cultural shift that has no signs of slowing down.

The Search for the Republican Soul

Once upon a time the Republican Party honored knowledge, learning, science and intellect.  Then the Christofascists and their foul Tea Party cousins hijacked the party base and in a 180 degree turn, the GOP came to embrace ignorance and the ugliest elements of religious extremists and white supremacists.  Now, the party finds itself with the inmates in charge of the asylum and those who closed their eyes to the Frankenstein monster that they were creating in the quest for short term advantage can no longer control the crazies and angry white voters.  With the appearance of Donald Trump on the scene, even GOP obstructionists who fan the flames of resentment like Ted Cruz find themselves being pushed aside by the unwashed lunatics they nurtured.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the state of the GOP:

Imagine for a moment that you are Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas and proud voice of the Tea Party. You have built your career by stoking the rage of conservatives, much of it against the very Republican Party to which you, and they, belong.

If you are Ted Cruz, you have spent years honing this message, telling  members of the right wing to be suspicious of their elected leaders, to purge and cast out the perfidious incumbents who grease the system and make the deals. You have fed their anger and their fear. You have taken all the right positions. And all you’ve got to show for it, at this early stage of the presidential primary, is seventh place out of the 17 candidates.

What on earth do Republican voters want? The candidates, at this stage, are as clueless as the pundits, and the pundits have no idea. They certainly never foresaw Donald Trump . . . Trump has inspired horrified bouts of introspection within the GOP, as shocked party stalwarts try to figure out where the tycoon’s momentum is coming from—and how it can be stopped.

RedState’s editor, Erick Erickson, may be the most powerful conservative in America. If there’s anyone who ought to have his finger on the pulse of conservative America, it’s him.

I asked Erickson what it said about the Republican Party that Trump was doing so well. Did it prove the party’s base consisted of racists and haters? “The Republican Party created Donald Trump,” Erickson told me, “because they made a lot of promises to their base and never kept them.” Voters are drawn to Trump, he said, because “he’s burning down the Republican Party that never listened to them to begin with.”

This is true enough. But surely some of the blame also lies with figures like Erickson, who encouraged activists to demand ever-more extreme tactics from their leaders and branded anyone who didn’t agree a RINO, or Republican In Name Only. At this year’s Gathering, Erickson pushed the candidates to support shutting down the government if Democrats wouldn’t agree to pull funding from Planned Parenthood in the wake of the gory recent fetal-tissue-harvesting videos. Cruz was one of several who agreed; Huckabee went further by saying he would refuse to raise the debt ceiling, threatening default.

Trump, ironically, actually is a Republican in name only. But he’s also a professional entertainer, and he has proven better than any of the actual candidates at the performative outrageousness that the GOP base has been encouraged to demand. When and if he finally stalls out or quits, the deep Republican divisions that he has successfully exploited will remain, bedeveling whichever candidate ends up with the booby prize of the nomination.

Erickson considers himself a good barometer of the conservative temperament. He told reporters on Saturday that he thought this might be “the beginning of the end” for Trump. So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case: In post-debate polls, Trump is holding steady in first place, and Fox News has bent over backward to make amends.

Lexington Herald-Leader Slams Renegade Clerk and Liberty Counsel

Kim Davis - Face of Hypocrisy

It seems that finally some in the media are belatedly catching on to the hypocrisy of the "godly folk" who wear religion on their sleeve as justification for bigotry against others, particularly LGBT individuals.  Likewise, some are now seeing through the agenda of "Christian" organizations whose real agenda is to make money by marketing homophobia and fanning the myth of Christian persecution.  That's the take away for a main editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader that slams both the four times married Rowan County Clerk, Kim Davis, and the parasites at Liberty Counsel.  Davis is on her fourth marriage and seemingly has not read the Bible passage that condemns divorce, yet she can cling to a passage in Leviticus.  Davis symbolizes the rank hypocrisy of conservative Christians (something the Millennials are recognizing more and more).  Here are editorial highlights:  

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has chosen to prolong her moment in the limelight by defying a federal judge's order to issue marriage licenses to legally qualifed people who apply for them. 

U.S. District Judge David Bunning kindly but firmly told Davis Wednesday that in our system her religious beliefs don't trump the rights of the taxpayers who pay her almost $80,000 annual salary.

Sharing Davis' glow is Liberty Counsel, which describes itself as a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal representation related to "religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family," funded by tax-deductible donations and grants. In 2012 those gifts reached just over $3.5 million and in 2013 topped $4.1 million, according to IRS filings. 

The husband and wife team who founded and run Liberty Counsel, Anita and Matthew Staver, were paid $137,758 and $153,591, respectively, in 2013. The staff of five ran up $184,479 in travel expenses that year and spent $429,584 on conferences, conventions and meetings. Liberty Counsel paid one independent contractor over $600,000 for "email alert services," and another almost $500,000 for printing and mail services. "Case costs," were reported at $105,487. 

Liberty's attorneys know they can't win the case in Rowan County. . . . .  So, why is Liberty Counsel marching alongside Davis in this losing cause? It takes a lot to keep that marketing machine humming and those executives paid, and the only way to keep those donations coming is to stay in the news. For that purpose a losing cause is just as good as, perhaps better than, a winning one.

[W]e've never heard of a clerk denying a license to a divorced person, a philanderer, someone who's abused a partner or neglected children. It's easy to imagine the outrage and chaos that would ensue if clerks began morality-testing prospective opposite-gender spouses. But that's exactly the right that Davis is demanding. She wants to pick and choose, based on her beliefs, which legally qualified couples will get marriage licenses.

Davis can resign if she's morally unable to issue the marriage licenses while the appeal is pending. Law-abiding, taxpaying Rowan County citizens have been denied their constitutional rights for almost two months while Davis has kept her job and Liberty has ginned up its marketing machine.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/08/13/3987637_time-for-davis-to-do-her-job-or.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy