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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This was necessary to jump on. Modern’s post earlier missed the real story here, maybe. I would have led with 70% and followed up with local taxes. So let me do just that.
I just got off the phone with Jeff Bell (nice guy) who wrote the article for Columbus Business First where Kasich is quoted as saying he and his team hope to have 70% of his government reform agenda figured out by November. You know. That month on the second day of which we’ll re-elect a governor or elect someone who has 70% of his plan figured out.
I wanted to be sure John Kasich actually said this out loud. It sounded like one of those inside words that accidentally popped out. Jeff confirmed to me that indeed John Kasich said this. Out loud. Let’s review:
Kasich said he and his team hope to have about 70 percent of their state government reform agenda figured out by November.
This is either the most brilliant piece of under-promising so as to over-deliver or it’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard a politician say this cycle. Seriously? You hope to unseat a Governor who has in your mind fucked the state up beyond all repair…buuuut…you only hope to be 70% sure of how to fix it if – and even when – you get elected?
Has anyone ever offered up a 70% plan? Much less a “Soon to be disclosed (we hope by the election) 70% plan”?
This guy is a piece of work! I bet they’re banking on nobody paying attention. Yeah, that must be it. Meantime we frame the debate that Kasich and his staff don’t expect to even have a complete plan until just before the election.
My guess is somewhere in an apartment in Virginia Jon Keeling (aka MC Tablescraps), carpetblogger extraordinaire is banging away working on getting to 50%! Go Jon go! Maybe he can make himself one of these:
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Earlier today, the Ohio Democratic Party shrewed called on self-declared “Tea Party” Republican John Kasich to declare who he supported in the GOP primary for State Auditor: 1) ORP hand-picked candidate Delaware County Prosecutor David Yost, or 2) Tea Party favorite freshman Ohio House Rep. Seth Morgan.
After all, Kasich created the primary by selecting State Auditor Mary Taylor as his running mate.
According to the Dayton Daily News, Kasich’s spokeman claimed, “Kasich “hasn’t endorsed candidates in the primaries,” Rob Nichols, Kasich’s spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Um, liar?
First, there was this anti-endorsement in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 2006:
Kasich has told political allies he won’t run against Petro or Montgomery, whom he considers friends. He would, however, take on Blackwell, whose fiscal proposals Kasich views as irresponsible, sources said.
[Source: Columbus Dispatch, (Jul. 15, 2005)]
That was almost a year before the primary was held.
Then there’s this famous picture:
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Again, that was July 13, 1999, some six months before the first caucus or primary in the 2000 GOP Presidential contest. John Kasich would rather be remembered for endorsing his “soul brother” George W. Bush, than actually stand with the Tea Party on their candidate for choice.
Rob Nichols told a bold-face lie.
Kasich has a history of getting involved in contested GOP primaries. Hell, he’s weighed in on primaries before most people even knew there was a contested primary.
John Kasich just doesn’t want to say anything further after pissing the Tea Party folks after he admitted that as Governor, of course, he’d take all the stimulus money he could get for the State.
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I’ve been thinking this for a while, having conversations about it, but what got me to blog it? Listening today to Morning Joe’s circle of clamorous glitterati repeat every single thing the GOP wants them to repeat. Karl Rove must have jizzed his pants if he was watching – There’s not just a conservative resurgence, not just an anti-big government insurgence, but as Joe Scarborough just said, an “anti-Obama feeling that will be with us for a very long time!”
When this crowd of money chasing, narrative parroting, celebrity gossiping ratings obsessed navel gazers are talking like some giant hatred of Barack Obama is their next gravy train, the shit’s played out, bitches.
The electorate is just about done with their teabagging one night stand. Guilty pleasures have a funny way of losing staying power. Again, see Ross Perot. Eric comments that even he voted for Perot – hell, I was intrigued by the guy for a hot minute in early 1992, until it became clear Perot was bat shit crazy, his proposals were little more than talking point catnip, and the vast majority of his supporters were early stage, pre-evolutionary teabaggers in utero. When that bubble burst, it burst pretty quickly.
The Republican bubble is ripe for that pin prick. Just watch living hypocritical self-contradictory suckling of the government teat, Homeland Security consultant Jon Keeling, who is so obsessed with getting John Kasich to hire him again to another taxpayer funded existence, that he’s written post after post in total freak out mode over one poll showing Kasich fading like the memory of a bad night of embarrassing teabagging.
Republicans know they’ve made yet one more deal with yet one more devil via their full lipped, slurpy teabagging. They know this is fleeting. They know how fickle is this meager, generously estimated at 20%, loud and freakishly crazed minority. Hence the acceleration of their lips on the teabag. Do it faster, harder, yeah, that’s it, faster faster. But soon, they will beg it to slow down….they know that if they climax too soon, the rest of the night is basically over. Cue the walk of shame.
Well, they’ve climaxed. Yeah, Dems will lose some seats this fall. But like all schizophrenic weirdos, the teabaggers will move on to the next thing that outrages them once they realize they’ve been used, again. And Republicans will be left to clean up a sticky, frothy mess of Santorum, who happens to be running for president.
Sublime.
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I’ve been saying this to people for a while, but I haven’t blogged it in a while. Time to fix that!
Democrats will be able to defeat Republicans by running against George W. Bush for decades to come.
Repeat.
DECADES.
And if Democrats don’t do precisely that in 2010, they will be committing political malpractice. Some dude running for some random office 20 years from now in Anytown, USA, will have taken a picture with George W. Bush at his college Republican shindig and will whine about that picture’s use against him, and he’ll still lose because of that picture.
The best current evidence of this? Watch how fast Republicans whine about it. Watch that knee jerk crybaby thing happen, like clockwork. “All Barack Obama does is blame George W. Bush WAHAHHHHHH!” You know you have Republicans by the nuts when they squeal like stuck pigs so quickly.
The reason they squeal so loud, so fast? Because it works, and will work, FOR DECADES. Every time. Why does it work? BECAUSE IT’S TRUE, and it will remain true for a very, very long time.
Every day, Americans walk by the wreckage of George W. Bush’s Republican dogma. We pay for George W. Bush’s policies at the doctor’s office, if we can even afford to go to one. We pay for George W. Bush’s policies at the gas pump, every single time we fill up our gas tank. We pay in airports abroad when foreigners laugh at us and in veterans’ halls where parents pay tribute to their fallen children. Almost a quarter of us pay for George W. Bush’s policies with our jobs. If we even have a job, we pay for George W. Bush’s policies with our lower wages and our vulnerability in our own workplace.
WE will pay for George W. Bush’s policies as a country for DECADES.
That means there will be hell to pay on the ballot, FOR DECADES, until voters can no longer find anyone on a ballot who IS responsible for George W. Bush’s policies.
John Kasich and Rob Portman are the perfect Republicans to be first in line. Portman is responsible for George W. Bush’s trade policies, and Kasich for Bush’s budget policies. That makes them both road kill – the first at the head of a long line of Republicans who will pay with their political careers for the policies of George W. Bush under the wheels of a freight train of payback bearing down on them with the heavy momentum of history.
This Democrat intends to make them pay. Every Democrat running for every office up and down the ballot FOR DECADES had better make Republicans pay, too.
Watching Republicans squeal themselves sick about it is just makes collecting that price a bit more enjoyable. There is no other pill to take, folks. Make them sleep in the fire.
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Jon Keeling, former John Kasich staffer, and current consultant for the Department of Homeland Security, notices all the traffic he’s getting regarding his lumping of all Muslims into a terrorist stereotype. First, Jon Keeling backtracks.
I think it’s fairly obvious to anyone with a brain in their head that all Muslims are not terrorists.
Why yes, Jon, that’s why when you post an image implying that all Muslims are terrorists, people with brains in their heads do, in fact, notice. Apparently, though, those people with brains in their heads do not include Jon Keeling, because Jon Keeling goes straight back into Holy War mode.
With that said, that same person should know the reality of the world we live in – where a large portion of the Islamic world started a Holy War against many parts of the free world.
No, the reality is that a tiny group of fanatics has hijacked one of the great faiths of humanity to engage in terrorism. That’s the reality, Jon Keeling.
This guy is working for the Department of Homeland Security? Did he write this, and post this image, using a Homeland Security funded computer?
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Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate, John Kasich, has a preferred mouthpiece in the Ohio blogosphere, Jon Keeling. Jon Keeling blogs as DJ Tablesauce, is a former John Kasich staffer, and is also a Homeland Security funded consultant. Keeling today posts an image labeling all Muslims as bomb-wearing terrorists, using an edited image of the “Coexist” image commonly seen on bumper stickers.
Jon Kasich and Homeland Security consultant Jon Keeling have some explaining to do.
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Sounds like some supporters want him to do just that:
If John Kasich succeeds in abolishing the state income tax, maybe we could just shut down the whole Ohio state government. That way the Democrats wouldn’t have anything to take over, and they’d be out of our lives forever.
No word from the Kasich camp whether such a “burn it down so you can’t have it” plan exists.
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This post actually makes me happy. It tells me that Kasich’s campaign realizes that the Kasich-Taylor launch didn’t exactly go as planned and now they’re trying to muddy the waters to make Strickland’s campaign look like an equal disaster.
The only problem is that it’s entirely untrue.
Jon Keeling honestly expects people to believe that there’s someone who would actually have personal, first-hand knowledge of this and the first person they’d think to tell is a blogger in VIRGINIA – and nobody else. Jon Keeling expects you to believe that he (ex-Kasich staffer) is more connected to the inner workings of the Strickland campaign than I am (ex-Strickland staffer). Nonsense.
Look to the immediate right of this website. See that webad? Do you honestly think the Strickland campaign would buy a webad to collect addresses and donations to announce their running mate if they believed that they couldn’t find a running mate? It’s already in the bag, and Keeling knows better.
Yes, technically, the campaign’s spokewoman said that “no pick has been made,” but that’s what you say when you want to build up curiosity as to the pick instead of having it leak out like it did with Taylor. Nobody but Jon Keeling honestly heard that statement and believed it means what Keeling thinks it does.
But if you somehow still are not convinced that Jon Keeling isn’t full of crap, look what he actually wrote:
If Strickland picks someone on Monday or Tuesday, within the “days” as defined by the Governor’s campaign, then we’ll know that while he didn’t get his first choice, he still was able to get things figured out.
Yep, you read that right. Even if the campaign announces on Monday the pick, in Keeling’s Imagination Land world of reasoning, that actually proves it. In the Land of the Sane, it would actually disprove it.
Anyways. Unlike Keeling, I actually DO have connections to the Strickland campaign and they’ve flatly denied Keeling’s story.
First, the campaign spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith told me, on the record:
“The lieutenant governor position has not yet been offered to anyone. As we have said all along, when the governor makes his decision, we will announce it.”
Furthermore, the campaign folks I talked to, all of whom would know, said Keeling is just nuts. Everyone I talked to in the campaign specifically said nobody has declined to run on the Governor’s ticket. His entire story is nonsense.
[UPDATE]: I just got a phone call from Jeff Ortega, the Assistant Director of Communication for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. He had inquired into the matter with key personnel in the Secretary’s Legal Department and says they are “unaware” of anything like what Keeling reported about “someone from ODP” asking the Secretary of State if Strickland could file and name a running mate later. Expecting the Keeling would try to change his story, I asked Mr. Ortega if anyone from the Governor’s office or the Governor’s campaign contacted the office asking for such a legal opinion. Again, Mr. Ortega said that his office is unaware of any such request.
Beyond that, Mr. Ortega said that it’s highly unlikely anyone would ask for such an opinion in the first place as both the petitions and the statute unambiguously state that a running mate must be named on the petition. And that’s yet another reason I knew Keeling was lying from the get-go. There’s no ambiguity in the statute and everyone understands that a running mate has to be named. There’d be no point in asking a legal opinion on such a clearly established issue. I’ve given Keeling the benefit of the doubt, but everyone, whether they’re on the record, on background, and even off the record says the same thing: Jon Keeling is simply making this up.
Keeling. I’ve actually got sources and they’re willing to go on the record. Better luck next time!
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I was shocked to find this claim by Republican John Kasich in a recent article at CNN:
“I think I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.”
Yes. You read that right. John Kasich invented the Tea Party. Not just the recent tea party phenomenon. You know, the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging wingnut sychophant party that descended upon us this summer. No. John Kasich invented THE “Tea Party™”. The original one.
I was very doubtful until I found this archival footage of the actual Boston Tea Party:
It is tough to tell at first, so we had our crime lab digitally enhance it. I think this show pretty clearly that John Kasich did indeed invent the Tea Party™:
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Here’s yet another story registered Republican Joe Hallett has based on his own prior reporting about John Kasich that he’s, so far, failed to mention.
In the July 15, 2005 edition of the Columbus Dispatch, Joe Hallet reported that Republicans were trying to draft John Kasich to run for Governor. Kasich said he wouldn’t challenge Betty Montgomery or Jim Petro… basically, he’d only run to stop Ken Blackwell to get the nomination:
Kasich has told political allies he won’t run against Petro or Montgomery, whom he considers friends. He would, however, take on Blackwell, whose fiscal proposals Kasich views as irresponsible, sources said.
So in 2005, Joe Hallett reported that John Kasich was considering challenging Ken Blackwell because Ken Blackwell’s fiscal proposals were “irresponsible.” At the time, the only policy of Ken Blackwell’s that John Kasich could have possibly be referring to was Blackwell’s TEL amendment which would have limited the growth of state and local spending by constitutional fiat.
Now John Kasich is talking about a tax plan that will, under any timetable, call for the elimination of 40% of the State’s revenues and cannot even bring himself to say that he’s any different from Ken Blackwell on policy. And Joe Hallet doesn’t even bring it up.
I’m starting to understand why Matt Naugle was curiously absent from the Kasich-Taylor presser and has been silent lately. If I were the Kasich-Taylor folks, I’d be worried about Naugle.
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File under “Duh” of course, but here’s more confirmation that Kasich’s main campaign platform of eliminating the state income tax is dangerous:
COLUMBUS — Legislative analysts have determined that a proposal to phase out Ohio’s income tax — a key issue in the 2010 governor’s race — would cost state and local governments and libraries more than $800 million next year.
Losses would rise from $814 million to more than $12 billion by 2020, according to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission analysis obtained by the Associated Press. The commission reviewed the proposal because it’s been introduced as a bill in the Ohio House.
Former U.S. Rep. John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor, has made a gradual phase-out of the income tax central to his campaign platform.
Again, the question is simple. Which programs will you cut? Which prisons will you close and what law enforcement will you lay off? What social services will you end, John? At some point these questions will need to be answered. $800 million next year opens up the gap that Strickland closed. $12 billion by 2020?
Damn…
So I get back from a week in the Dominican Republic to find Modern absolutely whacking the Kasich camp, right-wing tax foundations, and wingnut bloggers alike. Safe to say he’s had a good week. I’ve enjoyed catching up on everything. Anytime you post a “Many Levels of FAIL” graphic something good is going down. Getting off the island a day before the big quake and finding Modern on this big of a roll were both epic wins. Epic.
I also hear that John Kasich is a new media ninja. LOL
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