I must say, watching a small government conservative who’s spent his entire life sucking on the government teat argue for John Kasich can get tedious.  But this level of hypocrisy, to the point of personally embodying every level of fiction that Republicanism has become, does have its good days.

Like today, as Jon Keeling goes catatonic over John Kasich’s claiming that, unlike Ted Strickland, he’d know the names of everyone he met with, while not knowing the names of anyone he was meeting with at the moment he claimed it.  That, in itself, is sublime.  Keeling’s response?

For those unclear of what I mean when I say “false equivalence”, equivalence is defined as such: the state or fact of being equivalent; equality in value, force, significance, etc. Falsely equivocating something encourages the perception that two situations are “equal in significance”, when in reality, they aren’t.

Yes, Jon Keeling, whose ideology if he lived by it would make Keeling unemployed, is lecturing on something that he claims is “false”.  Not even by reading Alice in Wonderland on acid can you disappear this far into cosmic folds in the time space continuum. Maybe I should try it sometime!  Wait….never mind, I have Jon Keeling for that.

In the world of mainstream journalism, these kind of petty gotcha games based on false equivalence are what continues to push readers away.

Someone pass the bong.

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[I stopped working for the Brunner campaign, so this is just my unpaid position.  I only mention it before a bunch of idiots thought this was paid for by the Brunner campaign.]

Premise 1:  Lee Fisher has been hounding ODP Chairman Chris Redfern and the members of the ODP Executive Committee individually for over a year to get them to endorse him over Jennifer Brunner.

Premise 2:  These folks have surely gotten tired of hearing about this.

Premise 3:  Lee surely wouldn’t ask for an ODP endorsement unless he believed he obtained the necessary commitments that he’d likely get the endorsement.

Premise 4:  In past ODP Chair races, ODP Committee Members are legendary for privately committing to more than one candidate.

Premise 5: The predominant assumption has been that ODP’s Executive Committee would only endorse if it’s perceived that Brunner’s candidacy is a lost cause but causing Fisher lasting damage that would complicate his chances in the general election.

There’s so many thoughts I don’t even know where to begin…

Let’s start with the last premise.  I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that if the status quo had been maintained and Fisher defeated Brunner, things were shaping up that there’d likely be very little bad blood caused by the race.

I can’t imagine how Jennifer Brunner could do anything to cause more lasting damage among the Democratic base in the next six weeks to Lee Fisher than Lee Fisher did by provoking this endorsement issue now.

From an objective rational standpoint, I simply fail to see the political calculus for the Fisher campaign’s move.  Where in the cost-benefit analysis of this decision result in a net upside for Fisher?

By provoking this endorsement process, Fisher now has creating a rally point for Brunner supporters who have been desperately looking for … a rally point.

With less than two weeks to early voting and less than six weeks to the primary, I question whether the Executive Committee is really going to be able to: 1) appoint a screening committee, 2) have that committee evaluate the candidates, and 3) have a second Executive Committee meeting to approve the screening committee’s recommendation before votes start being cast.  What’s the point of getting an ODP endorsement after the voting has started?

And that’s if they’re motivated to lift heaven and earth to make this happen.  The Executive Committee next week could agree to consider an endorsement, but not appoint a screening committee to meet until… well, how’s June look for you, Lee?

Beyond a cheaper stamp, what would an ODP endorsement at this point give Fisher’s campaign that outweighs the obvious and palpable resentment such a heavy-handed approach engenders?

And why would the Executive Committee go along with it?  After all, after blissfully sitting on the sidelines and actively seeking to keep the county parties out of the game, too, why would ODP want to weigh in in the fourth quarter?  What has happened since December that would suddenly give Fisher the votes to make this endorsement happen?

It’s not like Jennifer Brunner’s lighting up the airways with savage attack ads on Lee Fisher that’s going to cause lasting damage (or ever will be able to).

Ordinarily, these endorsements were used PRE-FILING deadline to discourage an opponent out of a race.  I cannot remember ODP issuing an endorsement in a contested primary this late in the game.   And given the timing, I question what positive impact an ODP endorsement would give the Fisher campaign.

Which leads me to the third and fourth premise, what if Fisher is wrong and he doesn’t get the endorsement?  What’s the potential downside there?

And this all occurs under this backdrop: it’s widely believed that the recently touted DSCC poll in the race also polled the head-to-head primary matchup… but the results of those numbers are not being released by either the DSCC, which has thrown its weight solidly behind Fisher, or the Fisher campaign.  (Brunner’s campaign does not have access to the full and raw DSCC poll data.)

And what great pro-Fisher data did the DSCC release?  That Lee polls below 40% with an insignificant one-point lead against Rob Portman in the general election.  That’s the data they did choose to make public.  The Titanic looked more unsinkable.

So, this all leaves me with two questions:

  • After all this time, why would the ODP Executive Committee now decide to go with an endorsement?
  • And, conversely, why would Lee suddenly be forcing the issue after all this time?

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Lee Fisher proves once again he is all about himself.  I’ve got good sourcing telling me that Fisher sent a letter to ODP chair Chris Redfern requesting the ODP endorsement.  Twelve days before early voting starts, and about 6 weeks before the primary.  If that’s not a sign of a pathetic campaign in big trouble, I don’t know what is.

If ODP knows what’s good for it, the executive committee which meets on March 24 to decide this issue will refuse that request.  If not on principle, then there are plenty of reasons to avoid what would be a blood letting for the next 6 weeks.  It is way too late in the game for a statewide candidate who hasn’t even gotten the endorsement of his own county party to come begging for help.  This party was cruising to a quiet primary allowing the voters to decide who our US Senate candidate would be, united for a tough general election against a Republican Party well on its way toward its own collapse.

Now Lee Fisher wants to have a blood bath.  Well, he’s gonna get it.  I will refer you to Jennifer Garrison, Lee.  We are in the process of getting the lists of every member of the executive committee, and if that committee votes on March 24 to create a screening committee, we’ll get that list too.

Big mistake, Lee.  Big one.

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In a meeting yesterday with the Dayton Daily News yesterday John Kasich attacked Governor Strickland, blaming him for not doing enough to bring NCR to our state. “If they weren’t answering my calls I’d be starting to call boards of directors. I’d know the people’s names that I was meeting with. I’d show up on time for a meeting”, Kasich said.

John’s friends at Fox News would have let this comment slide by. The small town paper reporters that John normally talks to just let him ramble on about the evils of the Strickland Administration and the terrible state of our State under Ted. But not the news staff at the Dayton Daily News. Nope. They responded to John Kasich EXACTLY how a reporter should: with a relevant follow up question…

… when asked if he knew the names of all five people sitting at the Dayton Daily News meeting — including editorial page editor Ellen Belcher — Kasich admitted that he did not. And, Kasich called one writer by the wrong name three times.

Kasich also blamed a doctor’s appointment for his late arrival to the March 18 meeting.

And now we know why Kasich’s staff keeps him away from the press.

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John Boccieri announced today that he will support the reconciliation Health Care reform bill this weekend, after voting against the House bill just a few months ago.

With Kucinich also switching, Ohio’s congressional delegation will support Health Care Reform with more votes than it did in the House bill (even if Driehaus switches to No.)

Driehaus is still not a certain no, but the New York Times wrote that part of the angling to get Democrats in safe districts like Kucinich to vote yes was to permit a number of defections in marginal or Republican leading district like– Driehaus.

The reason the anti-Health Care forces lost Boccieri is that he realized what we all said at the time– his opponents are going to attack him regardless of what he did, and they did absolutely nothing to “reward” him for his prior “No” vote.

So, why vote for your enemy when you can vote to win back your friends?

Right now, Boccieri needs as many friends as he can get.

Help him out. (I just made a modest donation myself.)

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Yesterday was a bad day for the Lee Fisher campaign.  Their first mailer hilariously hit mailboxes including Jennifer Brunner’s Rosie the Riveter logo.  But that wasn’t the big news.  I attended and voted in the Cleveland Stonewall Democrats May 4 primary endorsement meeting for Jennifer Brunner last night.  At least 60% (the threshold for endorsements) of the rest of the Stonewall Democrats present did too.  Which means Jennifer gets a major endorsement in Lee’s home county.

The US Senate race last night was the most hotly debated race on the May 4 ballot, but in the end, there was a real sentiment that Lee Fisher can’t win in the fall against Rob Portman, among the people who know Lee best.  In Lee Fisher’s home county, the largest bloc of Democratic primary voters in the state, there is at least one significant constituency willing to put its credibility behind that sentiment, and fight to get Democrats a winning candidate.

Jennifer was there, and Peggy Zone Fisher attended for Lee, which I think made a difference, particularly given something that Peggy noted about Lee’s record.  Strangely, Peggy touted a hate crimes bill which Lee claims to have helped pass back in the early 90’s in response to a cross burning incident in Collinwood.  Peggy said that back then, LGBT rights weren’t in the bill, but if it were introduced today, LGBT rights would be in it.  The confusion in the room was palpable – it was as if Peggy wanted to point out that no one has ever heard Lee Fisher utter a single word about gay rights until he got into this primary.

It’s one thing to show up at gay events your whole career and tell people what they want to hear, quite another to put gay rights on your public agenda, draw a line, and defend that line against all comers.    Tellingly, despite Don’t Ask Don’t Tell being debated at the federal level in public hearings in the Senate in which Lee Fisher wants to sit as I write this, not one word on DADT is in Lee Fisher’s first mailer.  Should there be?  Um….yeah.  Or at least his surrogate could have mentioned it while asking for Stonewall’s endorsement last night.

This endorsement was not taken lightly by the voting members present, or the board.  The best news for me from this meeting is that the LGBT community in Ohio is really beginning to flex its muscle in the Ohio Democratic Party, and locally in Cuyahoga County, where gay votes really matter on election day.  We can thank Jennifer Garrison for that.  There is a sense of confidence which I have not seen before, a recognition of the power LGBT unity can bring to bear on major decisions about our party’s ticket and direction, and a weighty understanding of the responsibility that comes with it. Rob Rivera, president of Cleveland Stonewall Democrats, noted that CSD will be putting this influence to work as the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party begins to pick up the pieces and rebuild.  Good.

Jennifer Brunner has that endorsement behind her.  Now go make us proud, Jennifer, and win this primary.  We got your back.

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Anthony got the first piece of what I suspect will be a flood of stock photo filled, cookie cutter, demographic box checking, mind numbingly vapid mail from the Lee Fisher campaign.  Not only was it all of the above – Anthony noticed this, which I must apologize to Anthony for saving and posting here, it’s just too good a photoshop.  And I thought the funniest thing was Lee holding a welding mask like he’s in a Devo video….silly me.  Can these people do a single thing right?

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At what point does the Dispatch lose all journalistic credibility?

The entire “bust” at the Governor’s Mansion started by a letter intercepted by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections written by an inmate to his wife.  Nobody disputes this.

According to my sources familiar with the letter (i.e. people who actually have SEEN the document), the letter refers to the contraband as a “six pack” and even discussed the price he obtain for getting the item in the prison.

At the time, officials at the DRC informed the Highway Patrol investigating the matter that the term “six pack” is commonly used code word by inmates for… tobacco cigarettes.  I’ve been told that no less than the then DIRECTOR of the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections told the Patrol that the term and the price mentioned indicated that the item could only be tobacco cigarettes, and not drugs.

Nonetheless, some mid-level managers in the Patrol insisted that the item might be drugs even though there was no evidence to support the conclusion.

So pervasive was the perception that the contraband in question was likely tobacco and not drugs, that even the mid-level Patrol managers who were pushing to do the “bust” detailed in their plan that the first priority upon seeing the inmate’s wife making the planned drop (even though those same officers conceded that there was also a strong likelihood that the intercepted communication never even made it to the inmate’s wife) was to first determine if the item was, in fact, criminally illegal contraband.  A fact that neither the Dispatch or WBNS has reported in their news stories despite the fact that the Dispatch published e-mails on their website that they’ve received pursuant to a public records request that confirms this (see pg. 9).

Even worse, a WBNS reporter actually used an image of the inmate’s letter in a news story last night, but never mentioned that the terms used in it led almost every investigator involved to conclude that there was a strong probability that any stop of the woman would be illegal as there was no criminal conspiracy as the suspected “contraband” was likely tobacco cigarettes.

In fact, the WBNS reporter did not even ACKNOWLEDGE what even the Dispatch has admitted– that the item was likely tobacco and a big reason the “raid” was scrubbed was that it was more likely than the raid itself was illegal than the suspected contraband.

Furthermore, neither the Dispatch, nor WBNS has reported that the organization representing the rank-and-file of the Ohio Highway Patrol has been decrying the politicization of this “bust” by the very mid-level Highway Patrol managers involved who are upset over the Governor’s most recent appointment to Superintendent of the Patrol–something that the Dispatch’s editors have also attempted to castigate at the time.

I’m awaiting further documentation, but I’ve been told that instead of being reassigned for political retribution (as the Dispatch’s media empire has reported) over the thwarted cigarette raid at the Governor’s Mansion, one of the officers involved was being reassigned due to disciplinary misconduct entirely unrelated to the situation at the Governor’s Mansion.  Again, a fact easily ascertainable by a public records request (mine is pending) that the Dispatch organizations would ordinarily examine if they were interested in reporting the full facts of this story.

And what’s worse, here’s an actual quote from the Senate Republican seeking to use his Committee gavel to politicize the issue further as reported by… you guess it, WBNS:

“Here’s what I believe is part of a cover-up to an unwarranted and unnecessary criminal investigation that should have been allowed to have been completed.”  State Sen. Tim Grendell.

Not even Chairman Grendell can blast the Strickland Administration without admitting that “bust” was an unwarranted and unnecessary criminal investigation!

So ridiculous has the situation has gotten than no less than the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer– a frequent critic of Governor Strickland (more so than even the Dispatch)– has decried the politicization by Republicans and former Patrol managers as being more about settling political scores than anything dealing with genuine law enforcement concerns:

On the evidence to date, however, what’s in play isn’t criminality, but the latest chapter in a settling of Statehouse scores.

It’s one thing for a news organizations to simply get a story wrong, but it’s quite another when two news organizations that share common ownership continue to report a news story in a manner directly contrary to numerous documents in their possession which completely discredit the politically charged inferences and allegations that the organization seems to be on a concerted and systematic campaign to make in the hopes of affecting an upcoming election.

If the Dispatch wishes to be taken seriously as anything other than a Republican propaganda machine, it will end this deliberate and irresponsible cherry picking of the facts and just report the news, the whole news, and nothing but the news. Something the Dispatch has demonstrated a systematic allergic reaction to doing in this instance.

If they won’t do it, I, or someone who actually gets paid to do this for a living, will.

As they say, DEVELOPING…

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Keeling on Twitter yesterday:

Wow. RT @allahpundit: Joe Barton says CBO score is over … $1 trillion http://is.gd/aMler

I assume Barton was talking about the cost of the bill over ten years, and not how much it reduce the deficit during that period.

Regardless, he’s wrong on both aspects.

According to the Washington Post, the CBO scoring shows the reconciliation version of health care bill:

will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period.

This bill is not only fully paid for, but it actually reduces the overall federal deficit more than any single budget by John Kasich ever did.

In the second ten years, the CBO scores that the health care reform bill will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion dollars.

This health care bill is a bigger deficit reducing than John Kasich’s entire congressional career.

But why should we trust the CBO?  Well, according to John Kasich’s former House Budget Committee Staff Director, the CBO traditionally gives more reasonable and conservative budget and economic assumptions.

Health care reform is slated to outdo everything John Kasich has even proposed doing to reduce the federal deficit.

Oh, and as for reconciliation (a process used to change legislation to help reduce the deficit) being abused by the Democrats in passing health care reform?

To put this in context, that’s more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

In other words, the reconciliation process isn’t being abused, just used as intended.

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You know, I used to think that “Scoop” Keeling was just a Kasich hack, but I’m starting to wonder if he’s just an idiot.

Today, Keeling joined Matt Naugle in pushing the latest Josh Mandel press release against State Treasurer Kevin Boyce.  In this latest installment of “I really don’t know anything about the office I seek”, Mandel alleges that Boyce is holding up state banking contracts as a way to raise more money for his campaign.

Except that both Mandel, Naugle, and Keeling ignore the fact that the decision to delay the awarding the contracts was not Boyce’s alone… keep that in mind when you see Keeling make statements like:

It seems that while there is leeway for Boyce to make the decision he made, there is very little logical motivation for the delay, besides the accusation made by Mandel.

Mandel actually made the entirely laughable demand that his general election opponent REFUSE to accept any campaign donations until the Board awards these contracts (a restriction that Mandel, (amazingly!,) doesn’t place on himself or even suggested he’d do if elected.)

Well, the Carpetblogger need not go far to find out the answer as to why the State Board of Deposit decided to make the decision, which was unanimous.

Why not ask one of the other members of the Board of Deposit… But who could “Scoop” ask?

Well, he could ask this guy…

Attorney General Richard Cordray

But he’s a Democrat, so he’d probably just cover for Boyce. 

Gee, if only there was a Republican member on the Board of Deposit…. oh wait, there’s is…. now who is that person?

Where have I seen her before?

John Kasich for Governor - A New Way. A New Day

Oh, yeah….

So, there are only three possibilities.  Either:

1)  Kasich running mate/State Auditor Mary Taylor (R) is a willful participant in a grand conspiracy to assist Democratic State Treasurer Kevin Boyce raise money to defeat Republican Treasurer candidate Josh Mandel;

2) Mary Taylor is a clueless dolt who unknowingly aided State Treasurer Kevin Boyce in a Democratic conspiracy to raise more money to defeat the Republican candidate; or

3) Jon Keeling, Matt Naugle, and Josh Mandel are full of shit… again.

Because, and I’m going to say this sllllllooooooowwwwllly so the Virginia Carpetblogger can understand this since he’s apparently not up on what occurs in Ohio’s government:

Mary

Taylor

Voted

To

Delay

Awarding

Those

Contracts,

Too.

So, of course, I look forward to Naugle and Keeling both publicly calling on the Kasich campaign to refuse and return any money from any PAC associated with any bank looking to be awarded a contract by Mary Taylor’s vote on the State Board of Deposit until these contracts are awarded.

And I can’t wait to hear someone in the media finally bother to ask Josh Mandel whether the Kasich campaign should refuse any campaign donations until May as well since Taylor herself has a vote in awarding these contracts.

I can’t wait for any of this stuff because I know it’ll never happen.

It’s all just election-year bullshit being paraded around as some scandal du jour  with no hint of the complete and utter ridiculousness of the charge.

Surprise, surprise, Jon Keeling gets yet another story completely wrong.  What is this, his fourth one in the past week?

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This man is doing a fine job of ruining his legacy in what used to be his own hometown.

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Help wanted

by Tim Russo on March 18, 2010 · Comments

At timrusso.org.

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So I’ve had a lot of people lately ask why I keep going back to DailyKos, and why I keep getting banned, and still going back for more.  Well, here’s the back story – super meta alert, but there’s some hilarity if you click through. [click to continue…]

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