Terri Whitehouse October 17th, 2008
We have a race, folks:
Lunsford argues that pork projects don’t make up for the economic policies McConnell has shepherded through the Senate. “Kentuckians don’t have a chance to vote out George Bush,” he says, “but they do have a chance to turn out his henchman.” Election Day will determine whether voters are angry enough to do just that. (more)
(h/t: Page One)
Terri Whitehouse August 7th, 2008
Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford has also hired a new media consultant. I look forward to things heating up in the coming weeks.
Terri Whitehouse July 24th, 2008
Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao is pushing to loosen occupational health and safety regulations. Quoth Adam Finkel, a former health standards director OSHA:
It’s an insult to America’s workers for the Department of Labor to be spending its time in the last year of this administration allegedly fine-tuning the details of how to do these regulations when, other than the one ordered by a court, they have issued no major worker-health regulations…there’s a great need to light a fire under this moribund agency to do something — anything — to protect workers.
U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford has unveiled a plan, and it involves more than beating on his chest and saying, “DRILL!”
Terri Whitehouse July 15th, 2008
Check it out here. Supposedly some Q&A to happen, per Page One.
Terri Whitehouse June 19th, 2008
I guess some people think that if you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes magically true. Click here to learn why the Bush/McCain/McConnell energy “plan” is a great big FAIL!
UPDATE: And Krugman for the TKO:
Mr. McCain has now aligned himself with an administration that, even aside from its blame-the-environmental-movement tendencies, has established an extensive track record as the gang that couldn’t think straight about energy policy.
Remember, they didn’t just insist that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators; on the eve of the Iraq war, administration officials were also adamant that regime change in Iraq would add millions of barrels a day to the world oil supply, driving oil prices way down. (In fact, Iraq’s oil output took five years just to recover to preinvasion levels.)
So why would Mr. McCain associate himself with these characters? The answer, presumably, is that it’s a cynical political calculation.
How can anyone really delude themselves into trusting Bush/McCain/McConnell/and the ever-desperate Northup on energy policy? All the sugar in the world wouldn’t make that snake oil go down!
Terri Whitehouse June 17th, 2008
Page One and some other self-aggrandizing bloggers have noted Sen. Mitch McConnell’s shaky poll numbers, and I wanted to expound on that a little.
Career beltway-ist McConnell has done his best to paint incumbent candidate Bruce Lunsford as an incompetent status-seeking businessman. Funny, then, that Lunsford is leading among low-to-middle-income Kentuckians without college educations. Now, I hold nothing against people who make more than I do, and I certainly wouldn’t go hurling “college-educated” around as an insult, but given that Kentucky ranks near the bottom in terms of education and income, McConnell is going to have a heck of a time positioning himself as someone who is really in touch with the “average” Kentucky voter.
Being that McConnell’s campaign site has been redesigned to showcase his ability to roll up the sleeves on his tastefully casual shirt rather than sit around pushing papers in a suit and tie, I’d guess that he’s more than a little worried. Over half of Mitch’s twenty most-recent blog posts urge readers to sign a petition for a bill designed to do exactly nothing about our petroleum dependence, so I’d urge you to try something different instead. Why, it seems like it was only yesterday when McConnell thought it’d be enough that he brought home the pork-barrel projects. I guess he’s getting wise that Kentuckians need someone with a little more substance than that.
Terri Whitehouse June 5th, 2008
Reading more national coverage about the posts below, it is clear that it’s not just us Kentuckians that are sick and tired of Sen. Mitch McConnell and his shenanigans. So I’d like to issue a little challenge for those of us who truly want to Ditch Mitch this November.
For every minute (~ 510) that it took a clerk to read the bipartisan climate change bill aloud, I’d like to urge you to to donate to campaign of Bruce Lunsford. At a rate of penny per minute, that would total a mere $5.10 donation. A nickel per minute would total $25.50. You get the picture. I know it’s not a great deal of money. But I think it would be a powerful gesture, regardless.
The people of Kentucky and of America are not pawns in Mitch McConnell’s political power games, and before we hit him at the polls, we must hit him where it *really* hurts - his pockets. The government’s business should never be political strategy. Not on my dollar. Not on my penny.
If you agree with me, please repost this blog entry wherever you think it may be welcome, and urge like-minded people to do the same. When a person such as Mitch McConnell makes it so crystal-clear that he has zero interest in representing the people of the Commonwealth, then we have no choice but to elect a person who does. And that person is Bruce Lunsford.
UPDATE: You can also sign up to volunteer for Lunsford’s campaign here. DO IT!
Terri Whitehouse June 4th, 2008
Well, actually, Sen. Mitch McConnell is holding a senate clerk’s breath until he gets his way. So says Politico:
McConnell has essentially shut down the Senate floor this afternoon by forcing the Senate clerk to read aloud the entire 500 page global warming bill. So if legislative language is your thing, turn on C-SPAN and watch the Senate at its best, or worst, depending on your perspective.
The Politico bit mentions judges and such, but we know this is all about his desperate need to help oil profiteers. DITCH MITCH!
(h/t: Page One)
UPDATE: This just in from the League of Conservation Voters:
Senators McConnell, Cornyn, Allard and Inhofe: the Exxon Delegation Stalls the United States Senate
Washington, DC – Senators Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Wayne Allard, and Jim Inhofe and their friends in the oil industry don’t want to talk about the Climate Security Act. Not only did McConnell, Allard and Inhofe vote against the Cloture motion to open debate on the bill, at this moment, the four Senators are forcing the Clerk of the Senate to read all 491 pages of the bill aloud. The bitter irony of wasting hours reading the bill aloud is that this bill addresses the urgent need for action on global warming and for viable alternatives to skyrocketing gas prices.
“Doing Big Oil’s bidding does nothing to address global warming or America’s energy crisis.” LCV President Gene Karpinski said. “McConnell, Cornyn, and Inhofe are running for reelection and American voters want action, not political stall tactics from the Exxon delegation.”
Senator McConnell has accepted $580,311 from oil and gas interests. Senator Allard has accepted $405,156; Senator Inhofe has accepted $999,023; and Senator Cornyn has accepted $1,197,305. (opensecrets.org)
Terri Whitehouse April 21st, 2008
So says the New York Times:
The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.
And I think it’s pretty clear what is at the heart of the matter:
The letter told states what steps they needed to take to be sure the children’s health program would not displace or “crowd out” private coverage under group health plans. The White House cited the policy as a justification for rejecting a proposal by New York State to cover 70,000 additional youngsters.
Remember back when Sen. Mitch McConnell pretended to give a flip about middle income families? That dog don’t hunt. Aren’t you ready to DITCH MITCH?!?!
(h/t: Feministe)
Terri Whitehouse April 10th, 2008
Just thought I’d share this blast issued by the League of Conservation Voters about Sen. Mitch McConnell, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Green“:
LCV Members Elect Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell the new Don of the “Dirty Dozen”
Self-proclaimed “Godfather of Green” Continues to Stand for Polluters while Standing in the Way of Clean Air, Clean Water, and Clean Energy
Louisville, KY – The members of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the independent political voice for the environment, today added Senate MinorityLeader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to its 2008 “Dirty Dozen” list.
LCV members voted online to decide which 2008 candidate had committed the most egregious offenses against the environment. 25,000 concerned citizens voted for the next member of the “Dirty Dozen,” and chose Sen. McConnell by an overwhelming margin.
“Our members know that Mitch McConnell has voted against our health and safety since he came to Washington. They know that he stands as an impassable roadblock in the way of a clean energy future for this country,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “They know that it is time to tear down this roadblock. That’s why Mitch McConnell, this ‘Godfather of Green,’ is the new ‘Don’ of the Dirty Dozen.”
McConnell’s lifetime LCV score of 7% is among the worst in Washington. In 24 years in the Senate, he earned an annual score of 0% twelve times, and in the last fourteen years, McConnell has cast only two pro-conservation votes. Since becoming his party’s Leader in the Senate, McConnell has served as the chief enforcer for Big Oil and other corporate polluters, leading efforts to derail and weaken legislation that would protect our families and keep America’s land, air, and water clean.
LCV’s trademark “Dirty Dozen” program targets current and former members of Congress – regardless of party affiliation – who consistently vote against the environment and are running in races where LCV has a serious chance of affecting the outcome.“In 2006, our members brought down nine members of the Dirty Dozen, nine of the worst politicians in Washington. With that kind of record, this Dirty Dozen election may be the last vote that Senator McConnell ever wins,” Karpinski said.
McConnell joins Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), and former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R-CO) on the 2008 Dirty Dozen. LCV will name the rest of the 2008 Dirty Dozen members in the coming months.
For information on LCV’s “Dirty Dozen” program, visit www.lcv.org/campaigns/dirty-dozen.
For more on McConnell’s voting record, visit www.lcv.org/mcconnell
In case you forgot, Sen. McConnell’s “Godfather of Green” claim stems from the fact that he secured pork-barrel spending for Louisville’s oustanding park system. And while I am a fan of parks, I’m also a fan of math. Louisville’s park system, great as it is, only occupies about one-half of one percent of all of the land in Kentucky, and is only about 3.5% of the size of our state park system, which of course doesn’t include national parks, municipal parks, private hunting and fishing areas, farmland, mines, land developments, etc. Parks are great places to spend time and are of real value to our communities, but as wonderful and important as they are, they are NOT the sole indicators of land, air, and water conservation.
One-half of one percent, folks. I’d say that’s probably a good number when measuring just how much Sen. McConnell really cares about Kentucky’s citizens. It is time to DITCH MITCH!
Terri Whitehouse March 14th, 2008
Listen, folks. I know you probably think I’m a big mouth who would never dream of censoring myself, but, really, I do. All the time. Usually, when I write my posts, I have a lot more words under my hat, about half of which are expletives. And it’s hard to reign them in sometimes.
So when President Silver Spoon says this kind of shit, know that I’m biting my tongue so damn hard, it’s a wonder how I’m not tasting blood. Because while President Coke Sniffer was getting drunk and skipping out on his guard duty, some people of his generation were actually “confronting danger.” And while President Dry Drunk was granting permission for Junior Silver Spoon to marry his daughter, some people of my generation were actually “confronting danger.”
And speaking of cowards, well, my opinion of Sen. Mitch McConnell isn’t much different. I’m aghast that some people are so out of touch with reality, living the bourgie life inside the beltway, that they’d have the audacity to udder “war is peace”, without so much as a hint of irony.
These are the assholes that are running this country. Can you even believe it? All that, and only three cuss words. Amazing.
Terri Whitehouse March 13th, 2008
Sen. Mitch McConnell, 2008:
I doubt that couples with children who make $63,000 a year think that they’re rich.
Why, it seems like only yesterday that Sen. Mitch McConnell and his BFF, Pres. George W. Bush were arguing that such families were rich!
Of course, we all know that when it comes to giving a flying you-know-what about the middle class, Sen. Mitch McConnell gets a big fat F. For all the huffing and puffing he does, for all the scraps he tosses our way every once in a while, ultimately, Sen. Mitch McConnell has failed this state.
Does anyone really believe we are better off with this man as our senator? I don’t know about ya’ll, but this gal has had just about enough. DITCH MITCH!
Terri Whitehouse February 2nd, 2008
There is an excellent editorial in today’s Courier-Journal about Sen. Mitch McConnell titled, appropriately enough, “The Back Of His Hand“:
Millions of Americans are in economic trouble, while the Big Energy friends of George W. Bush and Mitch McConnell wallow in historic profits. Yesterday, Exxon Mobil Corp. posted the largest annual gain ever by a U.S. company — $40.6 billion. The rest of us are left to cower at the gasoline pumps.
Mitch McConnell feels he deserves re-election because he “does so much for Kentucky.” Never mind what he and his friend have done to America.
For real, though! Go read the whole shebang.
Terri Whitehouse January 29th, 2008
Ron Lewis won’t be running for reelection in KY-2. Reid Haire will join David Boswell in the Democratic primary for the seat.
Bruce Lunsford is in, joining a ton of Democrats who want to DITCH MITCH!
(h/t: PolWatchers, who will continue to have coverage on today’s filings.)
Terri Whitehouse January 23rd, 2008
The AP is reporting that the Bush administration issued nearly 1,000 false statements about national security in the two years after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001:
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another statement of the bleeding obvious. But still, it gives me a massive headache this morning. Doesn’t Sen. Mitch McConnell know that ignoring something doesn’t make it go away? Time to send him packing so he and his BFF George W. Bush can have more free time together next year.
Terri Whitehouse January 17th, 2008
As had been speculated, Louisville businessman Greg Fischer has officially announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate:
“Senator McConnell just doesn’t represent us anymore,” Fischer said. “He could have done more to stop the assault on the pocketbooks of working Americans, more for education, more for health care. … But he has chosen a different course.”
…
“The founders of our nation warned against career politicians and we now understand why,” he said. “I am not a career politician obsessed with power. I’m a problem-solver, a lifelong Kentuckian, just sick and tired of a political process that is broken.”
Echoing what Matt said previously, I look forward to the messages of Kentucky democratic candidates getting out during the primary season, making it that much easier to DITCH MITCH this fall!
Terri Whitehouse January 5th, 2008
Gov. Steve Beshear appointed Eleanor Jordan as executive director of the Commission on Women. Bill Stone, former Jefferson County GOP chairman, opined:
Stone said he does believe that a separate commission for women is part of “government silliness.”
“I personally, and I think conservatives think, the Commission on Women is another wasteful government department,” he said.
Stone, however, said that he knows Jordan and that if there has to be a commission she is a “probably a perfect fit for that job.”
I guess being in the bottom third in just about every indicator of stability, health, and well-being, is A-OK with some bourgie city folk.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has shitloads of money. I know our readers must find this absolutely shocking. The Public Campaign Action Fund gets it right:
No one in Kentucky ought to see McConnell’s fundraising as anything but his mastery of a corrupt political system that places the interests of donors ahead of all Kentuckians.
Finally, Rep. John Yarmuth puts his money where his mouth is, donating his whole first-year congressional salary to the Louisville community as he promised. MediaCzech provides the Republican response.
What other interesting things have you read in the last few days?
Terri Whitehouse December 11th, 2007
Well, actually Sen. Mitch McConnell is a beltway careerist, so he mainly eats in D.C., but commenter Judy pointed out that there are several letters to the editor in today’s C-J that express a great deal of contempt for Mitch’s recent statement about troop deaths, in which Sen. McConnell belittled the sacrifices of these men, women, and their families.
There’s this:
It is beyond the pale to minimize the value of the lives of American soldiers because they are full-time soldiers and aren’t draftees, especially when it is McConnell’s dogged loyalty to the vastly unpopular policies of George W. Bush that have led to indefinitely leaving our soldiers in Iraq to die.
And this:
Actually, many of those killed have been members of various national guards, who enlisted for part-time service to aid their home states in such efforts as tornado and flood relief. Most of these men and women never envisioned that their altruism would lead to full-time service and possible dismemberment or death halfway around the world, policing a civil war where over 75 percent of that population wants the U.S. out of their country immediately.
And finally this:
Does this mean that he thinks that the lives of professional soldiers are somehow worth less than the lives of draftees? We Kentuckians have a big problem in Washington: His name is Mitch McConnell. Ditch Mitch in ‘08!
I like the brevity and punch of that last letter. Ditch Mitch indeed!
Matt Gunterman September 13th, 2007
Bob Moser’s excellent analysis of the development of the movement to support the troops, end the war, and ditch Senator Mitch McConnell (R) has hit the stands.
The piece is too long to block quote here, but I’ll include excerpts particularly relevant to the Kentucky progressive blogosphere. You can read the entire article here.
Kentucky at War
Bob Moser[...]
As summer–and McConnell’s recess vacation–approached, two new sets of nontraditional allies materialized to help LPAC bird-dog the senator, who makes his home in Louisville with his wife, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. Matt Gunterman, a 30-year-old rural Kentucky native and Yale University graduate student, launched the DitchMitch blog earlier in the year, bringing together a varied band of bloggers from around the state on a composite site with a common goal. And in June, two young native Kentuckians and a Navy veteran opened an Iraq Summer headquarters in Louisville, part of a national campaign by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI) to target key members of Congress with a homegrown antiwar message before they returned to Washington to resume the war debate.
By mid-August McConnell was sending out fundraising letters complaining about being harassed by “the ’60s antiwar movement on steroids.” But as the Republican kingmaker well knew, the reality was something altogether different from that old stereotype–and considerably more formidable.
Jim Pence is a 68-year-old, Salem-smoking, pickup-driving, self-proclaimed hillbilly from economically devastated Hardin County, retired after thirty-five years in the factory at the American Synthetic Rubber Corporation. Politically inactive until 2004, when Bush’s re-election and the war in Iraq spurred him to “vow to fight with every ounce of my strength from then on,” Pence now makes some of the freshest, funniest antiwar and political videos anywhere–and as a result, he’s become the unlikely heart and soul of Kentucky’s DitchMitch campaign.
Linking from his own Hillbilly Report website to DitchMitch and YouTube, Pence puts up snappy vignettes on subjects ranging from Kentucky’s annual bipartisan political hoedown at Fancy Farm–where McConnell made a hasty exit this year after being jeered by protesters carrying signs showing him as Bush’s hand puppet–to a fanciful take on Bush and Condoleezza Rice’s relationship, set to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” to a hard-hitting series of exposés of liquor-industry fundraising by Ron Lewis, the holy-rolling Congressman from Pence’s district. “I don’t know, I just disappear into them,” Pence says on a dog-day August morning, navigating Louisville traffic en route to the Iraq Summer office. “I stay up some nights till 4 and 5, editing these things.”
DitchMitch creator Gunterman, whose postgraduate goal is to fire up an Internet-based “Ruralution,” connecting grassroots progressives from rural America to spur political action, sees Pence as a prime example of the passion and wit that generally go untapped by Democrats and urban progressives. “There’s no one like Jim in the entire United States,” says Gunterman. “Not with his age and his ornery attitude. He is very much a hillbilly, and he’s reinvigorated the term.”
In his three years of crisscrossing Kentucky to publicize its antiwar and progressive insurgencies, Pence has also stirred up the state’s traditionally timid left-wingers. “When I first went out with my camcorder, I’d go up to people at peace rallies and ask them, ‘Would you like to say something to Mitch?’ and they’d just go, ‘Uhhh…’ Or even if they would say anything, they’d say, ‘But I don’t want my picture taken.’ I just kept saying, ‘The newspaper’s not even going to cover this, and if TV does, it’ll be for ten seconds. Whereas this video’s going up on YouTube tomorrow.’” As Pence kept filming and posting his increasingly popular videos, the activists opened up and embraced this new mechanism for showing that, yes, the military stronghold of Kentucky has a vigorous antiwar effort. “People are stepping out more than they would a few years ago,” Pence says. “Now I can’t get them to stop talking when they see that camera. People know me now, and for the most part they trust me–whether or not they should!”
While Pence and DitchMitch have inspirited Kentucky activists, they’ve also pushed the state’s more established media to take notice of the progressive groundswell. “DitchMitch gives us the power to hold the media accountable in Kentucky for the first time,” says 24-year-old Shawn Dixon, a native of rural western Kentucky who’s just started his first year at NYU law school. In 2004, when Dixon was working as deputy policy and communications director for Democrat Daniel Mongiardo’s uphill Senate challenge to Republican Jim Bunning, he spent much of the campaign in a state of frustration over Kentucky newspapers’ assumption that the incumbent would cruise to victory. “There was no recognition that this would be a competitive election and that this guy was beatable until about a month before the election, when it became impossible to ignore.” Bunning wobbled back to Washington with a slender 23,000-vote victory, but this time around, with LPAC continually raising eyebrows and DitchMitch helping to popularize the anti-McConnell movement, “the media don’t have a choice,” Dixon says. On the same day in late July that Louisville’s Courier-Journal ran a column about McConnell’s dip in popularity (below 50 percent approval), the Herald-Leader in Lexington ran a story, sixteen months before the election, titled “McConnell Vulnerable.”
That’s music to Pence’s ears. “It’s not just what he’s done to perpetuate this war,” says the high-tech hillbilly. “It’s what he hasn’t done for Kentuckians, with all his power, on healthcare and so many other issues that really matter to folks at their kitchen tables. We’re trying to cut through the kind of moral-values crap that McConnell’s been using for twenty-five years to get himself elected. We’re doing what we can to show the emperors without their clothes. And show that the folks who don’t like Mitch, and can’t stand this war, are just regular people like me who finally woke up and spoke up.”
[...]
Matt Gunterman September 12th, 2007
Coming to a newsstand near you: The Nation with Bob Moser’s cover story entitled “Kentucky at War,” which examines Kentucky’s progressive grassroots community and how it’s reshaping the political and ideological landscapes of that state — and doing so outside the rigid, tepid, and unresponsive party structures.
It’s gonna be a hell of a read!
Terri Whitehouse September 10th, 2007
In today’s New York Times, Pal Krugman sheds some light on the true impact of the Bush economy:
It’s true, as the Bushies never tire of reminding us, that the U.S. economy has added eight million jobs since that 2003 tax cut. That sounds impressive, unless you happen to know that a good part of that gain was simply a recovery from large job losses earlier in the administration’s tenure — and that the United States added no fewer than 21 million jobs after Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich, a move that had conservative pundits predicting economic disaster.
What’s really remarkable, however, is that four years of economic growth have produced essentially no gains for ordinary American workers.
Wages, adjusted for inflation, have stagnated: the real hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, the most widely used measure of how typical workers are faring, were no higher in July 2007 than they were in July 2003.
Meanwhile, benefits have deteriorated: the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance through employers, which plunged along with employment during the early years of the Bush administration, continued to decline even as the economy finally began creating some jobs.
And one of the few seeming bright spots of the Bush-era economy, rising homeownership, is now revealed as the result of a bubble inflated in part by financial flim-flam, which deceived both borrowers and investors.
Now you know why 66 percent of Americans rate economic conditions in this country as only fair or poor, and why Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy almost as strongly as they disapprove of the job he is doing in general.
Yet the overall economy has grown at a reasonable pace over the past four years. Where did the economic growth go? The answer is that it went to the same economic elite that received the lion’s share of those tax cuts.
Is anyone surprised at all by this? Here at DM-KY, we’ve highlighted several items which illustrate the hostility with which regular working Americans are treated by the GOP. McConnell and Co: we’re on to you and you should be very afraid.
Joe Sonka September 6th, 2007
Daniel Solzman of The Kentucky Democrat has a great interview with Lt. Col. Andrew Horne, who has been quite active this summer with Vote Vets, assisting the Iraq Summer Campaign, and continuing to pressure Mitch McConnell on his rubber stamping of Bush’s failed Iraq policy.
Some interesting comments in the interview, such as his discussion on how KY blogs have been able to coordinate with activists, using the wildly successful protests at Bellarmine, Mitch’s apartment and Berea as examples. He also discusses the 2008 race against McConnell, and what it would take to get him to join Stumbo in the Democratic primary next Spring.
Some excerpts:
DS: Did you ever outreach to bloggers on Kos or MyDD during your campaign? Also, do you have any thoughts on the way that blogs have revolutionized politics altogether?
AH: During the campaign I never personally initiated contact directly with any bloggers. I had some contact me and I know my supporters were very active in that regard.I was and still am impressed with the way the blogs can disseminate information in a way that mobilizes people. However, there are blogs where the participants are simply talking but not getting involved. The important synergy is between the blogs and grass roots that can turn words into passion and then into action. A good example is the Iraq Summer Campaign. The blogs disseminated information across the state and the nation so that a small group of people in Berea, KY knew they were not alone in opposing the war and challenging McConnell to bring a responsible end to it. I have no doubt that some of those 100 people in Berea were there because they heard about 800 people in Louisville, KY or 400 in Boise, Idaho, or one of the other 40+ locations across the nation. That would not have happened without the blogs. The people in Berea did not hear about other events through the traditional media and would not have heard or seen the passion without YouTube and the blogs. I believe this trend will only continue as people who participated in the Iraq Summer Campaign and other similar causes adapt these tactics to their own agenda. I would call it non-linear activism.
…..
AH: If the right race comes around I am not done in politics. Regarding 2008 against McConnell, the encouragement I am getting is humbling but that is a race that should not be taken on lightly. Because of the amount and breadth of support I am getting I will take a very serious look at it, but in the end I will base my decision on what is best for my family and whether my candidacy will be in the interests of the people.
The entire interview is at The Kentucky Democrat.
Joe Sonka August 16th, 2007
Well, it looks like we’ve really gotten under someone’s skin.
Mitch McConnell is sending out fundraising letters to supporters in which he whines about the "liberals, radicals, far-left, unions, Hillary, Schumer, etc…" who are hounding him about his pathetic record and his obedience to corporate contributers and George W. Bush rather than his constituents in Kentucky. In fact, we are "the 60’s anti-war movement on steroids!". That’s probably the greatest unintentional complement I’ve ever received. I think I’ll have that put on my gravestone/obituary: "one of the leaders of the 60’s anti-war movement on steroids".
Anyway, Mitchy even gives a big shout out to the good folks at Ditch Mitch!
"Liberals on the internet have already created a website called "Ditch Mitch," and 6,000 radicals from across the nation have already signed up."
Hey, Mitchy, glad to see you’re reading the site! We feel humbled by your presence.
And as far as being a "radical", I wish. I don’t think you can have an 8-5 Mon-Fri non-political office job and be defined as "radical". But I aspire to prove you right someday, Mitchy. And we’re FAR more than 6,000, I can guarantee you that.
On second thought, maybe I’ll have "the leader of 6,000 liberal radicals" on my gravestone/obituary, that’s even better. (Though that honor technically should go to Matt Gunterman or Aniello, amongst a few others.)
And look what we have here. Why it’s Mitchy’s full faundraising letter, in all of its paranoid glory. It’s funny, you can almost smell the desperation in here. For Christ’s sake, have a little more dignity Mitchy.
(crossposted at BlueGrassRoots)
Jim Pence August 9th, 2007
The Louisville Metro Democratic Club invited us to show video of the Democratic Fancy Farm speakers and gave Ditch Mitch Kentucky the opportunity to show some Ditch Mitch video and talk about our efforts to unseat Senator Mitch McConnell.
Shawn Dixon gave one hell of a presentation. The video of Shawn is below. I am so proud of Shawn I’m going to ask him if he would consider me being his unofficial Grandfather. This is the young man that that spearheaded the effort to get John Edwards to come to Columbus, Kentucky.
Ditch Mitch KY
