Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

This paragraph from Sam Stein is either amusing or unsettling, depending on how one’s sense of humor is feeling today:

The Huffington Post asked the McConnell campaign that very question the day after the debate. We asked the campaign the same question twice more that day. Then, we posed the question to them seven more times over the subsequent nine days. We also called the campaign twice. The campaign never responded.

The story here is simple; a bit over two weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faced his Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes in the only debate of the Kentucky race for U.S. Senate. During the debate, Mr. McConnell called for the end of the PPACA. Except Kynect, the Kentucky health care exchange, has been quite successful, so the question arose whether the senior Kentucky senator would destroy that, too. “The website can continue,” McConnell explained.

Questions arose immediately as to what that statement actually meant in terms of practical function; without the rest of the ACA, Kynect would be generally useless, an advertising portal for a private market sector infamous for finding ways to renege on its contracts in order to increase its bottom line by refusing to fulfill its obligations. Without some detail to the other, this is what Sen. McConnell seems to have told Kentucky: You can have the damn website, but you’re screwed, anyway. Vote for me!

One might be tempted to think persistent questions from press and public pushed Team Mitch to find an answer. Split the difference; they found a punch line.

Your Burden

While it is quite easy to grow weary of the sickness we might perceive permeating this modern world around us, the truth is this is the only world we have. We’re stuck with it, at least until we decide to do something about the problem. Life goes on. Well, for the living. That part is important to note.

Not Surprising

Sometimes, well, it just isn’t surprising. To wit, we are not surprised …

• … that a small-time Republican state legislator in New Hampshire plagiarized a speech against marriage equality two years ago.

• … that a small-time Republican state legislator now running for Secretary of State is a Birther, and now she doesn’t want to talk about it.

• … Jennifer Rubin will take the word of the Iranian government if it means she can criticize President Obama by doing so.

• … the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer was “leaked”.

• … that more people are dead after another shooting.

• … or that Seattle has nothing on Chicago when it comes to deadly violence.

And we might also mention that we are not in the least surprised at the amount of unrelated various video websites want us to watch when we click in to read a news story. What’s that? An important news story? Here, we’ll autoplay “Chris Spencer’s Top 5”. Obviously, we’re out of the loop: Who is Chris Spencer? (Wait, wait, don’t tell me. Please.) Why do I care? (Again, I don’t.) And you’re seriously telling me there’s a show called Real Husbands of Hollywood? (Just stop already.) And, no, we’re not really singling out BET; this just happened to be the stark contrast at hand.

To the other, neither will we be surprised if we don’t try a “Not Surprising” list again in the future. These things just should not be thrown together on a moment’s notice.

A Drop-Dead Cool Endorsement

Because it’s New Hampshire. That’s why.

Or because it’s Scott Brown against Jeanne Shaheen. Oh, wait, that actually explains more than you might think, but only if your sense of humor is picking up a shift for your rational thought.

The op-ed begins on a discordant note. “As is usual with poll-driven politicians,” writes Marshall Cobleigh in New Hampshire’s Foster’s Daily Democrat, “Jeanne Shaheen is running television commercials and writing op-ed pieces addressing the dominant problem facing America — skyrocketing gasoline prices — but providing no real solutions.”

Gas prices? Shaheen, New Hampshire’s Democratic senior senator and still narrowly a favorite for re-election next week, has not been saying much about gas prices. The toll at the pump has not been “skyrocketing” this year — around the country, it’s actually down an average of $0.40 per gallon since the November 2012 election.

The op-ed continues with no more strangeness. Cobleigh cites numbers on congressional votes to expand energy exploration from “Rep. Roy Blunt,” but Blunt has been a senator from Missouri since 2011. There’s a reference to offshore drilling moratoriums, but nothing about the reversals to those policies since 2010.

What’s the matter with the column? Probably that Marshall Cobleigh has been dead for five years. In February 2009, the former speaker of New Hampshire’s often-Republican state House was felled by congestive heart failure. This op-ed is a reprint of a column Cobleigh wrote in July 2008, when Shaheen was running her first successful Senate campaign. Buzz Dietterle, the FDD’s opinion page editor, says that the New Hampshire GOP submitted the column (which originally ran in the conservative Union Leader) ....

(Weigel)

You know what? Never mind. It’s not Scott Brown. It’s not the New Hampshire GOP. And it’s not even New Hampshire itself.

It’s America.

Welcome to it.

____________________

Weigel, David. “Politician Who Has Been Dead Since 2009 Just Weighed In on New Hampshire Senate Race”. Bloomberg. 27 October 2014.