Sam Brownback
The title of this post is a take-off on a book that was published in 1935 by George Dangerfield, “The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910-1914.”
A classic of political history, it describes how the Liberal Party in Great Britain self-destructed over the four critical issues of that era; Irish Home Rule, women’s suffrage, reform of the House of Lords, and the rise of trade unionism.
It’s a book which Tom Frank (author of, ‘What’s The Matter with Kansas?”) and I both really enjoyed.
By the same token, we feel that traditional American Liberalism (or neo-liberalism as ‘progressives,’ i.e. radicals, call it) has exhausted itself and may well have run its course as a dynamic, substantive movement.
Just look at the political situation we find ourselves in here locally. Kansas governor Laura Kelly is running against the GOP candidate Derek Schmidt as the attorney general who worked with Sam (Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistopheles) Brownback when the latter was governor. I fully expect to see a 666 placed on Brownback’s forehead by computer graphics in Kelly’s media spots.
Those who are past readers of my blogs know that I’m no fan of Sam B. Nonetheless, Kelly’s ads are masterpieces in mendacity. She rails against Brownback for cutting school funding, but the actual record is very different.
The 2008 financial meltdown began in earnest on September 15th of that year when Lehman Brothers failed. By early 2009, the national economy was in a free fall and with it state tax collections. Governor Kathleen Sebelius had no choice but to cut educational spending by almost 20 percent across the board. Moreover, these were real cuts, not just a lower increase of spending than Democrats would like, which is the usual definition of “cuts.”
I doubt any governor would have done anything different. The problem with Kelly’s ads is that Brownback did not become governor until January 2011, two full years after the spending cuts occurred.
Upon becoming governor, Brownback picked up where Sebelius and her successor, Mark Parkinson, left off; working to restore educational spending. One can argue that he made his job difficult by his tax cuts. Fair enough, but you also have to concede that there was a collapse in oil and gas prices, the loss of 50,000 aviation manufacturing jobs in Wichita and a slump in beef and crop prices, all of which hit Kansas very hard but none of which had anything to do with Brownback and his actions as governor.
The irony is that state tax revenues have rebounded nicely after the pandemic, so apparently Sam the Sham did not permanently destroy Kansas finances, as his critics insisted at the time.
Kelly is also flailing on her handling of the pandemic itself.
She broke with the Biden administration on the mask mandate for that most noble of principles, self-preservation. However she also gave in to the KNEA, the most powerful force in the Democratic party. The school shutdowns backed by Kelly had little to do with protecting children and a lot to do with the teacher’s union wanting its members to get paid without having to go to work.
Now we know the true cost of the school closures, test scores plummeting at every level and 20 years of educational progress wiped out. Kelly recently reaffirmed her decision to keep schools closed as long as possible and was awarded with renewed access to the KNEA’s political war chest. A real profile in courage!
Sharice Davids is also invoking Sam Brownback as the arch fiend, also based on his supposed cuts in school spending, which (again) occurred two years before he took office.
Kansas school funding is not a federal issue, so I’m not sure what it has to do with a race in the US House of Representatives. I realized, however, that this was keeping with liberals love of personalized politics. Your opponent is not just wrong or misguided but, to use a favorite trope of the Trump era, “is literally Hitler.”
First it was Phill Kline, Kansas state rep and attorney general, then it was the Koch Brothers. Then it was Vince Snowbarger, Third District Congressman. Then it was Kris Kobach, former secretary of state, gubernatorial candidate, and now running for Kansas attorney general.
Even poor Bob Dole was a hate figure to local liberals!
I remember seeing bumper stickers in Prairie (Perfect) Village 20 years ago that said, “Not Everyone in Kansas Likes Bob Dole.” (Always paired with Mainstream Coalition bumper stickers, the local left wing hate group.)
Most Democrats can be whipped into a frenzy of hatred when any of these names are mentioned but this is a Pavlovian response. None can give you a cogent explanation why these people are the spawn of Satan.
A case in point is a prominent local professional, a resident of Mission Hills and a graduate of an Ivy League college. He constantly denigrated 3rd District Congressman Snowbarger so I asked him 1) if he had a bad experience with Vince professionally, 2) if he was upset by Vince’s role as majority leader in the Kansas House of Representatives, 3) if Vince had taken a position politically that offended him. When he said no to each, I asked him if it was anything specific. His response was, “No, it’s just kind of a generalized dislike.”
For people who typically reject “organized religion’-as opposed to “disorganized religion”?-they have a strange tendency to place people in categories of perfect virtue (e.g. gays, transexuals, persons of color) or absolute depravity (e.g. Trump, Brownback and Tucker Carlson).
Now Sharice Davids’s ads say she wants to build a border wall to keep us safe and will even “stand up to Biden” to get it. What happened to the ideas that “we should build bridges, not walls” or that “walls are racist”?
In other words, Davids is now taking positions which would have gotten her kicked out of the Democratic Caucus a year ago.
The one issue that Democrats like Kelly and Davids have tried to dodge is inflation, but they can’t even muster the will to try to lie their way out of blame for it.
The Biden administration has already passed into law $4 trillion of unnecessary spending. Closer examination of the bills-the second Covid stimulus package a.k.a.the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure bill, and the Orwellian “Inflation Reduction Act”’- show that they are about patronage spending to reward Democratic constituencies and large donors.
The net result is the money supply has increased by 50 percent in two years, and the Federal Reserve is pumping cash into the system by buying government bonds.
When even Democratic loyalists like Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Steve Rattner, Obama economic advisor, warned about the inflationary risk of so much deficit spending they were told to shut up and get with the program.
The irony is that the true believers insist the real failure of the Biden administration is that they didn’t spend enough! The Elizabeth Warren‘s and the AOC‘s would have you believe that salvation can only be attained if the US adds $10 trillion to the deficit by enacting the full Build Back Better bill ($4 trillion) and the Green New Deal ($6 trillion). If these had passed , we would, in fact have been looking at an inflation rate that resembled Venezuela’s or Zimbabwe’s.
The problem for Democrats is they got their wishes- e.g. spending increases, a war on the petroleum industry and open borders -but the results have been disastrous.
You cannot print $4 trillion in new money and not expect inflation to soar. You cannot declare war on half the country as fascist, racist, transphobic, etc. and not expect anger and resentment. You cannot turn the FBI, DOJ and CIA into secret police like the East German Stasi, acting on behalf of the Democratic Party ,without reaping the usual rewards of repression, i.e. resistance. You cannot release violent criminals and open the borders and not expect people to notice.
The only answers I get to these arguments are 1) “Trump is an asshole!” and 2) “You’re a racist” and 3) “Where did you hear that, Fox News?”
Even the most articulate of Democrats seldom stray beyond some variation on these stock answers. When your domestic program has failed so utterly, when your foreign policy is in shambles, you really can’t say anything else, can you?
With any luck we will be able to say to Democratic office holders what Oliver Cromwell said to a notoriously corrupt and incompetent Parliament in 1653.
“It is not fit that you should sit any longer. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing lately. In the name of God, go!”
Lot of good points here that are not being made where they count.
Yes, Davids is an idiot who got elected for who she is and not what she is capable of doing. Look at her record, she has failed at everything she has stuck her nose into but always seems to find fools willing to back her.
Thanks for the heads up, Ed
Super dave…what b.s. you spew. They cut out wyandotte county and lawrence from district 3 and she still beat the cerner hack! You better be apologizing cause Davids can knock your a$$ with one punch! hahahaha. And chuckles…he still around…thought he got lost in one of the ditches!!! hahahahah!@
Welcome home, Mr. H…
On behalf of the ghost of Scribe’s past, I salute you!
And yet in the voting district I live in she lost big time. Davids is powerless, look at how the house is shaping up. Now since you like to make no facts when you speak here is your chance to prove me wrong and not your usual BS.
List all the things that Sharice Davids has done while in office that improved life in the 3rd district? I’m not talking about all the PR stuff she parades in front of the cameras doing I’m talking legislation she has taken a part in as introducing laws (bills). She was nothing but a puppet for Pelosi.
Thanks for the information. I always think I am a pretty well informed news junkie. Not so much. I drank the MSM kool-aide and believed that Brownback had cut school funding too much with disastrous effects. D’oh!!!!!
” A case in point is a prominent local professional, a resident of Mission Hills and a graduate of an Ivy League college.”
“Ivy League Schools” at this point, are the intellectual equivalant of inbred European dynasties from centuries past. Throughout the middle ages and into the 20th Century, European Royalty intermarried and produced heirs to various and sundry thrones who were bleeders, mentally deficient and physically impaired on a regular basis. The Hapsburgs, produced, at the end, a poor, miserable, afflicted heir, Charles the II, with genitourinary afflictions and, of course, the famous “Hapsburg Chin”. He was the last Hillbilly Habsburg barely standing.
Our D.C. and bi-coastal elites, with few exceptions, pecuniarily insouciant by way of birth and blood as opposed to sweat and effort, cosseted, cloistered in the warmth of an ideology that has benefited them so well, are loath to countenance any wails and gnashing of teeth from the tennis court.
Throughout the centuries, Europeans (And now, we Americans.) were subjected to the whim, caprice and very bad decisions, coming from these inbred Royal Hillbillies whose view of the world, was filtered through the support of the church for “Divine Rights” familial intermarriage, political connections and primogeniture. This elite, protected and cosseted group were orders of magnitude away from previous enlightened leaders, like Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, Constantine etc. whose martial exploits, in combination with their exceptional IQ’s elevated their subjects into a better, safer life through policies and wars fought from necessity and consolidation with an eye towards future stability, e.g. Pax Romana (Historical context noted.)
The arrogant self regard, myopia and blinkered policies that emanate from these intellectual hillbillies has never been more apparent than it is now, with the execrable Biden Crime Family in charge. Elevated to high station by way of election fraud, corruption and malfeasance, the doddering, drooling, senile, superannuated sock puppet who now sits the throne, is the existential example of the most significant “Peter Principal” in American history.
Tomorrow is election day, it should be a barn burner. Let’s hope, we can stop “Slouching Towards Gommorrah”, burn the Augean Stables to the ground, and sow salt in the earth where it stood.
Yesterday’s election was the coup de gras to Trump and the populists, from the “One Ring To Rule Them All”, American Mullah/DNC that, from the Radix Malorum, Washington D.C. control the predetermined outcomes of (snicker) “free and fair” elections. Unctuous rationalizations re: election irregularities from our bi coastal betters to follow.
The forces aligned against the middle class, read: Domestic Terrorists, are legion. Mao’s power, that he famously said, “stems from the end of a gun barrel” (DOJ-FBI-Capital Police gun barrels in this case.) is the in-your-face power of the DNC to humiliate and control you in spite of the so called Rule Of Law and the Constitution, that now, is not even a “Living Document” but a musty, unused, arcane manuscript which should probably be placed in a cave outside of Qumran. The Constitution itself has been weaponized as a source of humiliation, a metaphorical cudgel used to remind us, that the absolute dirigiste DNC power of the goose stepping Gramscian grunts who control the Deep State, the 4th Estate, Big Tech, Wall Street “Captains Of Industry/Corruption” and Academe laugh up their sleeves on election day as we proles dutifully stand in line, hoping to “elect” the person we think will represent our views.
Last nights “election” in Arizona, was a palimpsest that covered the corruption of the 2020 “election” we were all forced to pretend was “free and fair”. Voting irregularities in Republican Maricopa county? Not again! The Regime, as they have, over the last several weeks, assured us, that the inability to count votes on election day is “normal”. I expect that later today, for a few laughs, they will put the paddles on Shoeless Joe Jackson and have him comment on how “free and fair” the Maricopa count is.
For those of you, who actually voted for $7.00 a gallon for gas and milk, 8% interest rates and real inflation of around 15%, maybe this explains it.
https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/06/america-dumber-experts-lockdowns-only-cause-student-declines/
Maybe the Seroconversion of so many Americans with tedious leftist cant by way of the incessant jeremiad “journalism” provided by the Chattering Class warped so many mediocrities into Hale Bop, purple tennis shoe wearing, “waiting for the comet”, crazies, that in a Fetterman fugue state, they thought the elevation to high station of a guy who thinks “Fire Bad” would be a good idea.
When we invaded Iraq, the people/idiots in the State Department, literally did NOT know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia. While that may not be as important today as it was then, we should remember this. Sunnis only made up 20% of the population, but they had the guns and they controlled the nation.
Hear the thunder?
DR. OZ….BOEBERT….MCCARTHY…HEY OLD MAN SOUTHY YOUR PREDICTIONS ALONG WITH OLD DITCH DIGGER WERE WRONG. AND IT’S GOING TO GET WORSE AS BLACKS AND HISPANIC ADD ANOTHER 4 MILLION VOTERS IN 2024. GET READY FOR THE BIG BLUE WAVES COMING WHEN GUYS LIKE YOU ARE PUSHING UP DAISIES.
OLD WHITE MEN ARE OUT!!!!!!! WE’RE TAKING OVER THIS COUNTRY AND DOING IT RIGHT. INVESTIGATE BIDEN ETC. MAKES NO DIFFERENCE…A NEW BREED OF DEMOCRAT IS COMING ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Harley,you can be counted on for the gracious gesture. The only actual prediction I made about the election was last spring,when I pointed out that the stir over redistricting in the Kansas 3rd Congressional District was a waste of breath. I said that it didn’t matter whether any or all of Wyandotte County was take out since Johnson County had turned so Democratic.I was right.By the way,a strongly expressed desire that something will happen is not the same thing as a brash prediction that something is necessarily going to happen because I want it to. That is yours specialty,gloating before you win.Speaking of which,if you were so supremely confident this year why did you wait until after the election to sound off? Maybe you’d learned your lesson the hard way a few years back,which is why you’ve hidden since.
Wonderful retort!
Harley sounds like he has his eyes propped open, ala “A Clockwork Orange” listening to Don Lemon & Joy Reid on loop.
She and Don Lemon are the most hard core black racists in the media for the last 2 years with special mention to the late great Tiffany Cross and that buffoon looking dude with the white buckwheat hair.
Louis Farrakhan has nothing on her. I admire Farrakhan for just coming out and telling everyone how he feels. He hates whitey. Ok. That’s cool.
Lemon, Reid and the progressive phalanx of white liberals in the media, cover their hatred in the thin patina of chattering class, poseur “journalism”. It’s, once again, “Jeremiad Journalism” from racial grievance rogues and mountebanks which provides a faulty premise, disguised as facts, which are actually op-eds, approved by the OWNERS of said “News Organizations” intended to promote hatred in order to achieve a political outcome.
Don Lemon pretends he is a non partisan journalist who just calls balls and strikes. We all know, that Harley and Lemon are only interested in the balls.
The only way America is going to be safe,sovereign,and wealthy again is to eliminate every worthless traitor democrat from government starting with the leftist fraud marxist at the top and I don’t mean kill them all simply round them up and ship them off to Cuba where they belong. See in Cuba they don’t bother with trials for traitors they simply line them up and shoot them all saving the taxpayers time and money. As far as I’m concerned every dimocrat at every level is a saboteur and a communist traitor and should be dealt with as such
Yikes
I think the term liberal will become extinct in the upcoming decades, maybe the same for conservative. Today’s America is run by the Alphabet Mafia, how long I have no idea. Politics is supposed to be about the important issues, but this isn’t happening. The important issues are obesity, wage theft, climate change, competing in a global economy, govt. spending etc. Instead, American’s fight among themselves over gender, race, pronouns, etc. causing the country to become weaker and weaker every day. All this while the rest of the world shakes their head in disgust. Heck, the first word in our countries name is UNITED, and just like the screw-ups we are we can’t even get that right.
A DIVIDED country(D.S.A.) of morbidly obese “people” tearing a once proud country apart. America has become an embarrassment.
These comments are a petri dish of bloviating white dudes of a certain age–I find it a very useful window into the parallel universe that they inhabit. 2022 was the third straight electoral disaster for Republicans (2018 midterms, 2020 presidential election, and this week’s disastrous underperformance). It might be time to ditch Trump as the party standard-bearer–the dude and his whining alienates independents. Not one of the commenters have mentioned abortion access as a motivating factor for voters, and the polls underestimated it, to the detriment of Republicans. All this pearl-clutching about the supposed DNC control of middle Americans (like, wut?) ignores that half the population has a real threat to their bodily autonomy now that Roe has been overturned. And that half of the population voted in force. Standing by for the replies that will ensue, no doubt calling me triple-vaxxed, as though that’s an insult. Hehe. I truly do appreciate reading these comments. It’s eye-opening.
Did you have Kamal Harris pen this for you?
Never mind. However, if you really are triple vaxxed and think you have something important to contribute, by all means, do sally forth with alacrity!
Your autoimmune system is crashing and we are all waiting for your deathbed comments.
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/this-one-graph-tells-you-everything
Why do you think it is acceptable public discourse to attack people because of their race or ethnicity? ‘Old white dudes’? You are only stating the obvious when you point out that a huge number of Democrats are single issue voters when it comes to abortion. This has been the case for many years,long before Trump emerged on the national scene. The more interesting question is why this is so,i.e. why does a party that has trashed the economy, led us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon over what started as a border dispute in Eastern Europe,intentionally opened our own border to five million illegal immigrants and a flood of deadly drugs get a free pass because of ‘bodily autonomy’? It’s clear this is a pretext on your part. Otherwise you wouldn’t be bragging about your triple vaxxed status,i.e. your lemming like fealty to government mandates that have not only failed miserably to stop the pandemic but could have put a whole generation of young people at risk unnecessarily. The real reason that you and others like you have seized on unrestricted,government paid for abortion(remember the call for mobile abortion clinics to be deployed to military bases in red states?),trans rights,BLM,is that you are symbolically affirming your identity in the group of enlightened,evolved, sophisticated people by blindly embracing these issues. Joe Biden has dementia,John Fetterman has brain damage,etc. none of this matters because they are part of my tribe and my tribe can do no wrong.
The day after the Kansas abortion vote in August I had breakfast with a group of men I know. One, who I will call ‘John’ to protect the guilty, told me that abortion was no big deal,i.e.,he’d impregnated several women over the years and just wrote them checks. He concluded this charming tale by saying,’”I suppose that makes me a naughty boy!”Sitting next to him was another friend who I will call Mike. Mike didn’t say anything but I know that Mike’s sister had been diagnosed with cancer when she was four months pregnant. The doctors warned her that her best chance for survival was if she aborted her child and undertook an aggressive form of treatment. She instead opted for a riskier course of treatment that would allow her to carry the child to term. She gave birth to a healthy baby but died a month later. Who do you think acted more honorably?John, by affirming his support for” bodily autonomy”? Or Mike’s sister, who risked her own life rather than abort her unborn child? Your comment was very revealing,but not in a way that helps your position.
Abortion rights are the least of our problems.
Bodily autonomy? Mandates were a continuation of criminal intent murder.
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1590083864558727170
JoCo Crank, if ya got something that we can actually read, hurry up!
You’re on your way out.
Republicans post-Dobbs are the dog who caught the car. That decision is going to be an albatross around every election going forward. The notion that most Americans want government-provided abortion on demand up until the due date is ridiculous. Most Americans want abortion available with some restrictions, e.g., the ones already in place in Kansas. Draconian restrictions, such as the current ones in Missouri or Texas, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, will cause demonstrable harm. Your anecdotes are interesting, Dwight, but they are only that, anecdotes. That’s a great story about Mike’s sister and I’m glad that she had the choice to take the path she chose. CHOICE is the operative word. Not every woman would make the same choice and that should be allowed. Again, underestimate the importance of abortion rights at your, and the Republican party’s, peril. Gotta go now, I think I’m due for another booster, lol. Y’all sure are triggered!
You are being disingenuous. No one is calling for tax payer funded abortion? What about the Democrats’ decades long fight to repeal the Hyde amendment and more recently to expand Medicaid to include abortion? (I noticed you ignored my example-sorry,it’s just an “anecdote”-about the charming call to send mobile abortion clinics to red states post Dobbs!) Most Americans want abortion with some restrictions? I one hundred percent agree but post Dobbs NO Democratic candidate would say what kind of restrictions or limitations they could accept. The pro abortion forces are just as dogmatic and extreme as the most fervent right-to-lifer. That’s how we ended up with the situation we’re faced with in Missouri and Kansas,in the former an absolute ban and the latter an absolute,unrestricted right to an abortion. Sex selection abortions? No problem! Aborting babies with birth defects? Why not? Babies born alive during the course of partial birth abortions and then killed? As Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph(“The Klansman”)Northam said,”First,we make the baby comfortable,then we decide what to do.” Selling infant body parts? Why not combine it with the online sports betting legislation, with the resulting sales tax revenues going to a fund to lure business from Kansas City, Missouri? With an expected ten fold increase expected in business for Kansas abortion clinics this could be a real bonanza for the state! The Sunflower State is beginning to resemble the dystopian town of Pottersville in It’s A Wonderful Life.
Will the Dobbs decision be an albatross around our neck going forward? Perhaps, but I recall all kinds of other issues that were going to destroy the GOP but are now all but forgotten. Remember Citizens United, the campaign finance case that was so grave “a threat to our democracy” (sound familiar?)that it required a constitutional amendment to overturn it? Gone with the snows of yesteryear! Concealed carry,so grevious a wrong that the Star ran front pages editorials against it for weeks before the vote? All but forgotten. The beauty of Dobbs is that it recognized that we are a federal republic. You may not like the outcome in Missouri and I might not like the outcome in Kansas but the issue is moot for the foreseeable future in both states. Let the people decide.
Mr. Sutherland,
You are being disingenuous. Kansas does indeed have restrictions on abortion which were unaffected by the referendum held this past August. To wit:
RESTRICTIONS ON ABORTION
In Kansas, the following restrictions on abortion were in effect as of June 28, 2022:
A patient must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion, and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided.
Private insurance policies cover abortion only in cases of life endangerment, unless individuals purchase an optional rider at an additional cost.
Health plans offered in the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act can only cover abortion in cases of life endangerment.
Abortion is covered in insurance policies for public employees only in cases of life endangerment.
The use of telemedicine to administer medication abortion is prohibited.
The parents of a minor must consent before an abortion is provided.
Public funding is available for abortion only in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest.
A patient must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion; the provider must offer the patient the option to view the image.
An abortion may be performed at 20 or more weeks postfertilization (22 weeks after the last menstrual period) only in cases of life or severely compromised physical health. This law is based on the assertion, which is inconsistent with scientific evidence and has been rejected by the medical community, that a fetus can feel pain at that point in pregnancy.
The state prohibits abortions performed for the purpose of sex selection.
Best.
That was indeed the law in Kansas as of June 28th. Was it still the law after August 2nd,when the absolute (“inalienable”) right to an abortion was enshrined in the state constitution? A constitutional provision supersedes any statute passed by the legislature. In fact,some pro choice voices like the KC Star warned against their allies using this vote to go into court to challenge existing statutory law. All it takes is some Democratic federal judge to use Casey v. Planned Parenthood to strike down any regulation as “an undue burden” on a pregnant woman,even if it is consistent with Roe or Dobbs. That has already happened elsewhere, where sone state legislatures unwisely assumed they had the authority to legislate in this area. It’s like the South after Brown v. Board of Education. “Massive resistance!” What if the Mississippi Supreme Court,anticipating Brown,had read into the Mississippi State Consitution a right to segregation(Seperate but Equal)? This is what our beloved Kansas Supreme Court did, right up there with their decision in the Carr brothers case where they were reversed(for the sixth time) in a stinging decision by the entire US Supreme Court. Judge Scalia said,in effect, “Can’t you idiots in Kansas read?” You don’t think they wouldn’t strike the statutory provision you cited,especially after they feel emboldened politically by what’s happened since this summer?
Given the solid Republican majority in both houses of the KS legislature, no, I don’t.
You missed the whole point of my comment. By purporting to find a constitutional right to an abortion in the Kansas Constitution-no specific authority is cited-the Kansas Supreme Court circumvented the expected ruling in Dobbs. By making it a constitutional right,determined by themselves as the interpreters of the Kansas Constituion ,they intentionally took it away from the legislature. As I said, it woild be as if a southern state like Mississippi had found a basis for segregation in the Mississippi Constitution,thus thumbing its nose at the US Supreme Court ruling in Brown v.Board of Education.
You obviously would like to void this statute since you say it is based on bad science.By the way,what is the medical science that says that the Legislature was wrong as to the point in time in a pregnancy when the baby feels pain? Are you the expert that says the statute was wrong as to the science? Maybe you’re not a board certified OBGYN doctor but just play one on kcconfidential! Don’t worry,you can always find a judge,state or federal,to help you. You don’t have to persuade the legislature as the elected representatives of the state’s people and thus can get around the clear cut intent of the nation’s highest court as expressed in Dobbs. George Wallace would be proud! By the way, I love the way you pretended to be giving an objective summary of the state law on point but slipped in the little editorial aside about it being contrary to unspecified ‘medical science’ and unidentified ‘experts’. Your boy Fauci would also be proud of you!” “When you attack me you are attacking SCIENCE !!!!Science is Real!!!!”(except when it isn’t!)
The problems with the GOP are deep and multi-faceted and have existed for a very long time. Collectively they are the keystone cops. Perhaps it has its roots in the urban vs. rural divide (which really saddens me), but the party is devoid of a cohesive vision and strategies for the state that could excite and attract voters. Instead, year after year they basically put forth “vote for us because were not democrats”.
Anyone rooted in reality knows that, outside of JOCO and a few other bright spots, the state is dying economically. Did Schmidt and/or the GOP acknowledge this reality and put forth a meaningful economic plan for people to get behind? Short answer is no. And by the way, opening up sports betting is not going to fix this negative trajectory.
The Brownback meme is beyond frustrating and it is pure republican cowardice and/or ineptitude that the republicans haven’t figured out how to put forth an effective counter narrative (they don’t even seem to try). In addition to the factual data you already provided, how about hammering home that Kansas is near the top of per capita spending on K-12 education? Also why are we not hammering home that that despite all this education spending our outcomes suck and are trending worse (including BV, SM and other JOCO schools)? How about shining the light on the negative impact of teachers unions on learning and their extremely close ties to all things democrat? And most importantly, how about proposing meaningful, structural change…..like putting the funding in the hands of parents vs. school districts?
Lastly, the Republican Party itself is in serious need of reform. Earlier in the year, I tried to figure out how the Kansas GOP actually runs itself. Out of utter frustration I contact Dan Schultz of Precinct Strategy and he told me that the Kansas GOP is one of the absolute worse state parties in terms of transparency, sound by-laws for governance, etc. I live in central Kansas (after moving from JOCO). The party here is little more than a secretive club that is run for by and for the benefit of club members. They are generally well meaning but do a very poor job with organizing, messaging, grooming strong candidates, etc. Democrats on the other hand are a much smaller demographic, but are way more organized and effect on all fronts. I suspect it is the same story elsewhere.
Dead,solid,perfect.
I love this blog, it has been the voice of reason for so many, yet when I recently logged on, I see terrible horrible hate, spam, & vitriol…in the comments section, why are these evil trolls here? why does admin. print his comments? people like them are ruinning our country, our future and our America….if people like this idiot are rewarded for bad behavior, we are doomed as a human race…Admin, Please take out the trash…
Thank you for your kind words. Over the years trolls like Harley,Joco Crank,and Kansas Karl, have attacked my race,my family,my personal life,my profession,etc. One particularly charming commenter claimed he’d spoken with my 95 year old mother, who told him that she wished she had aborted me. All this done anonymously of course,hiding behind a pseudonym.I actually welcome these attacks because they usually are driven by a combination of hatred and ignorance and thus are easily refuted.This most recent thread is a case in point.’Joco Crank’ claims that existing state abortion regulations were unaffected by the August vote yet just this week we heard of a ruling out of Shawnee County District Court which struck down part of the state statute governing abortion.Yet another example that the Vote No campaign was sold under false pretenses by advocates like the aptly named Mr. Crank,who is caught out again in a knowing misrepresentation.Of course,what do you expect of someone who begins his comment with a racial taunt?
Dwight your support of the orange one has given the U.S. this:
“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!
Your boy wrote it, your support helped put him in a place where he has a voice. NO EVIDENCE OF FRAUD ANYWHERE, except by magaheads. YOU and the rest of the power hungry Republicans are unable to win on the issues, so like petulent children you and your type resort to a goal of destroying democracy at any cost so you can have your power.
Feeling a bit persecuted? You should given your support for a twice impeached, 3 time loser,insurrectionist, bankrupt casino owner, I can go on with his “gigantic” wins.
You and the rest of the republicans chose wrong and you have to live with the results of your power hungry attitudes.
Let’s see- the First Amendment is”not absolute”i.e.it can be disregarded if necessary to defeat a Republican in an election. Due process,equal protection under the law,the prohibition against unreasonable search and seizures;all these costitutional rights can and should be ignored if it will help frame a Republican president on criminal charges.i went to great length explaining to you why I thought the 2020 election was rigged in the sense that the rules were changed in the middle of the game for the partisan advantage of the Democratic Party. I also set out the six leading indicators of voting fraud noted by international election observers,all of which were present in the US election that year.YOU DID NOT ADDRESS ANY OF THEM.
Trump is in the position not a few of my legal clients have been in over the years. They see the law and its safeguards being twisted by their enemies to destroy them . They ask;”Why should I respect and uphold the law when I see it being used like this?” As a lawyer I have to advise them against that attitude. As a human being I understand all too well what it is like to be an outlaw in the original sense of the word,i.e. a person from whom the law’s protection is withdrawn. I agree that Trump’s rage and frustration leads him to say things that are inappropriate in a candidate for president. But where you lose me you is your complete incomprehension of how he could feel this way. How was he supposed to react to Matt Taibbi’s disclosures? A shrug? “Boys will be boys”?
Star Update – Booze hound Fannin has finally fallen