Berry Craig Posts

The new Bluegrass Poll seems to prove Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s contention that the last Bluegrass Poll wasn’t an “outlier,” pollster-speak for a survey that’s the exception, not the rule. Released Monday, the survey had Sen. Mitch McConnell up 43-42 over Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. The previous Bluegrass Poll put Grimes out front, 46-44. Both surveys were well within the margin of error.

Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican Party know all too well that a union vote tends to be a vote for the Dems. There's a reason why they use divisive issues like guns and religion to pry precious union votes from the other side of the aisle (66 percent of union members voted for Obama in 2012). It would also be fine if union members just stayed home on election day. However, if they do, this may be the last election that there's even a union for them to identify with.

“Do you repudiate Richard Fink’s remarks at the Koch retreat this summer?” a reporter asked Mitch McConnell the other day. His chattiness was caught on tape at the now famous Father’s Day fund-raising conclave hosted by Charles and David Koch. But when the scribe aimed a mike at McConnell, mum was the word from the senate majority leader-wannabe. Off the record, McConnell has heaped high praise on the Koch siblings.

If the new NBC/Marist poll is right, most Kentuckians evidently don’t care how cozy Sen. Mitch McConnell is with the Koch brothers or that his ex-campaign manager quit because it looks like he might be involved in a seamy political bribery scandal in Iowa. Among likely voters, the survey has the senate majority leader wannabe up 47-39 over Alison Lundergan Grimes, his Democratic challenger. While the national media attributes this to his support of coal in a coal-driven state, most everyone is ignoring one key element: Race.

Sen. Mitch McConnell knows he probably won’t get a lot of union votes on Nov. 4. Oh, he’ll keep trying to grab as many as he can by pandering to so-called “social issues” like guns. Neal Knox, a former NRA head, once bragged that the gun issue “is the one thing that will spin the blue-collar union member away from his union." But if McConnell has his way, there won't be any unions to turn away from.

You’ve got to wonder how many Kentucky Republicans are like Barbara Knott. She just quit the Daviess County GOP executive committee because she’s not for Sen. Mitch McConnell. Knott heads the Tea Party in Owensboro, seat of Daviess County in conservative western Kentucky, heretofore mostly McConnell country.

Lawyers for Kentucky's governor Steve Beshear have appealed a federal judge's ruling that said the state much recognize same-sex marriages from other states. In their appeal, the attorneys argue that the state’s gay marriage ban should be kept because only “man-woman" couples can procreate naturally and that Kentucky has an economic interest to make sure that they do.

The country's only nationally-syndicated labor radio program, "The Union Edge" is growing its reach and its listeners, all in an effort to prove that unions aren't yet dead. As long as there are workers and those who wish to take away their rights, host Charles Showalter will strive to be the "voice of working men and women."

A committee in the Democratic-majority Kentucky House of Representatives voted down Republican proposals to make Kentucky a right-to-work state and to exempt school construction projects from the state’s prevailing wage laws.

The headline grabber in the recent non-partisan Bluegrass Poll was Alison Grimes’ four percentage point lead over the Senate minority leader and five-term incumbent. Even so, the story had what we old reporters called a “hidden lead” buried in it: Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state, has a 12 point edge over McConnell, among women surveyed. And women make up 53 percent of registered voters in the state.

“Ride for Respect,” the demonstration at Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, will be modeled on civil rights volunteers who rode buses into the South in the 1960s to protest Jim Crow racial injustice.

Berry CraigI have a flashback just about every time I see Paul Ryan on TV. It’s not that Paul-Ryan-looks-like-Eddie-Munster thing, though he does resemble the apple of Herman and Lily’s eye, all grown up.Ryan reminds me of the...

Berry CraigWhat’s more productive than turning off Rush Limbaugh on the radio?Tuning in “The Union Edge—Labor’s Talk Radio,” Charles Showalter said.Okay, the 50-year-old Pittsburgh union man might be a tad biased. It’s his show....

Berry Craig
Berry Craig: Suddenly, it's 1858 and gaffe-a-minute Mitt is Abe Lincoln and President Obama is Sen. Stephen A. Douglas. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the MSNBC TV talking heads show up for work tonight in sack cloth and ashes.
LA Progressive

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