The matter with Kansas is that it's run by a bunch of Republican gun fetishists

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is truly fucked up:

Kansans soon can carry concealed weapons without permits or training under a bill signed by Gov. Sam Brownback on Thursday.

The new law, which kicks in July 1, makes Kansas the sixth state to allow "constitutional carry." It will allow Kansans 21 and older to carry concealed firearms regardless of whether they have obtained a permit.

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Asked why he did not think training should be required if it is valuable, Brownback said carrying a gun is a constitutional right.

"We're saying that if you want to do that in this state, then you don't have to get the permission slip from the government," Brownback said. "It is a constitutional right, and we're removing a barrier to that right."

A more or less unrestricted gun "right" is bad enough. The "right" to carry a concealed weapon just makes it worse. And when you don't even need to get a permit...

Once again, the authors of the Constitution, who enshrined the right to bear arms strictly within the context of the need, at the time, for a well-regulated militia, would be appalled, not least given that these crazy gun fetishists claim to acting in their name.

Failed state: Kansas's experiment with conservative economic policy

By Mustang Bobby 

The state of Kansas was supposed to be the laboratory of the conservative prosperity theory: cut taxes to the bone and the free market will take off: hey presto, Emerald City!

So how's that working out?

In Kansas, Republicans dominate the state government. They have the Governorship (Former Senator Sam Brownback), the State House (92-33 for the GOP), and the State Senate (32-8 for the GOP). Democrats don't have a say in this blood red state that went 60%-37% for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Brownback and his buddies have enacted all manner of conservative economic policy in the state. Cutting taxes, et cetera. What is the result? Guess.

Citing a sluggish recovery from the recession, risk inherent in the governor's tax plan and uncertainty over the Legislature's ability to keep cutting spending, one of the nation's two major debt rating agencies downgraded Kansas' credit rating Thursday.

Moody's Investors Service dropped Kansas from its second-highest bond rating, Aa1, to its third highest, Aa2. The Kansas Department of Transportation also took the same downgrade.

As Businessweek explained, "the immediate effect has been to blow a hole in the state's finances without noticeable economic growth."

I have a soft spot in my heart for Kansas thanks to my annual pilgrimage to the William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence. It's your typical Midwestern small town in the prairie with nice people. They're not hard-core wingnuts... at least the ones who show up to support theater and the legacy of one of their hometown boys even if he was gay. They are conservative, but not so crazy that they couldn't elect a Democrat as governor in 2002 and again in 2006: Kathleen Sebelius, before she was Secretary of Health and Human Services.

So it's really painful to see the results of this failed experiment happen to people I like. But they brought it on themselves; they can't blame this on the liberals and the Democrats.

If it's any consolation, Gov. Brownback is about as popular there as a tornado in a trailer park — he's polling in the low 30s and is trailing his Democratic opponent — and maybe the voters will decide that they've had enough of this right-wing paradise and boot him and his fellow True Believers out.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Abortion, shmabortion: WE'RE AT WAR!

By Edward Copeland

Certifiably loony Pat Robertson, a man who blamed the 9/11 attacks on America's heathen ways, has endorsed a Republican for the 2008 presidential contest. Of course, it's the man he most closely resembles ideologically: the thrice-married, pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-gun control Rudy Giuliani:

It is my pleasure to announce my support for America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans,” Pat Robertson said in a statement issued by the Giuliani campaign. “Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today.”

Meanwhile, former candidate and evolution disbeliever Sen. Sam Brownback sticks closer to his values by passing his endorsement onto John McCain.

Here comes Mitt: An assessment of the GOP presidential race

By Michael J.W. Stickings

"Romney surges ahead in New Hampshire," according to CNN.

I once thought that Sam Brownback, social conservative extraordinaire, was the dark-horse candidate in the GOP race. He may still be, given his rightist bona fides on the issues that matter most to evangelicals and others on the religious extreme -- issues like abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights, and the imposition of theocracy -- but, for now, social conservatives seem content with the authoritarianism of Rudy They seem to need a father figure with a penchant for violence and retribution, an eye-for-a-biblical-eye, and Rudy seems to fill the bill. So does Fred Thompson, of course, or at least he's playing it that way, which is how he plays it on TV and in the movies, and that may be all that matters, such is the interplay of fact and fiction, politics and entertainment. So perhaps social conservatives -- the notorious base -- will switch to Thompson once he enters, stage (far) right, leaving Giuliani in the dust and Brownback pretty much where he is now, which is well off the radar.

John McCain is done and gone, and his old buddy Thompson, once a maverick of sorts, could eat into his warmongering support. He peaked back in '00, sold his soul, or whatever was left of it, to the establishmentarian devil, embraced Bush, literally, and is following Bush's rapid descent into political oblivion. But that wasn't all. McCain also embraced the now-disgraced neocon fantasy of democracy-by-force, American hegemony for all, and has similarly been discredited. The American people, waking up to reality, have at long last turned on the Iraq War (see elections, 2006), but McCain and the neocons lowlifes want more war, more bloody war, for ever and ever, amen. Poor Bill Kristol, Krazy Kristol, who fell in love with McCain way back when, risking excommunication back in '00, and who would likely have angled for a top spot in a McCain administration, which is now never to be. He and his warmongering ilk will eventually have to find some other horse to back, perhaps some actor masquerading as a neo-Reaganite tough guy.

Which brings us back to Romney, who's running well behind Giuliani, Thompson, and McCain, and just ahead of Gingrich, who remains on the sidelines, stroking his own ego, in all the latest polls. It hardly means a thing that he's pulled ahead in a state so close to his home state of Massachusetts, but the importance of New Hampshire gives him an advantage and just being mentioned in this way could bring money and support. He's too prominent a candidate to be a genuine dark horse, but maybe he's just that. With all the attention on the frontrunner (Giuliani), the former frontrunner (McCain), and the soon-to-be frontrunner (Thompson -- maybe?), not to mention the leader of the Revolutionaries of '94 (Gingrich), Romney could be left in the shadows, struggling for attention. But he has a lot of money, much of it his own, he's a polished candidate, if too polished, and, flipping and flopping aside, he may just be more solid a bet than the liberal Giuliani, the crackpot McCain, and the hyped-up celebrity Thompson. And don't even get me started on the rest of the cast of this atrocious spectacle: the foot-in-mouther Tommy Thompson, the more-extreme-than-you Mike Huckabee, and the renegade-radical Ron Paul. They add "colour," so to speak, but that's about it.

And so Romney's surge in New Hampshire, along with his strong standing in Iowa, must be put in context. They are both BT: Before Thompson. But what if Thompson fails to live up to expectations, as he very well might? What then? Are Republicans really prepared to go with Giuliani and his open closet? One suspects not, ardent, blood-thirsty authoritarianism notwithstanding. The base would settle for Giuliani if he proved to be, as he has thus far proven to be, the most fatherly of these faulty figures, that is, if he promised to torture the most evildoers and spy on the most (un-)Americans, but it would be foolish not to give Romney at least a shot at the nomination.

Even AT, he could surge.

Brownback fumbles

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This was like going into the Bronx and trash-talking the Yanks (if less dangerous physically):

Note to Sen. Sam Brownback: In Packerland, it's not cool to diss Brett Favre.

The GOP presidential hopeful drew boos and groans Friday at the Wisconsin Republican Party convention when he used a football analogy to talk about the need to focus on families.

"This is fundamental blocking and tackling," he said. "This is your line in football. If you don't have a line, how many passes can Peyton Manning complete? Greatest quarterback, maybe, in NFL history."

Actually, he may be right, to a point. A good case can be made that Manning is better than Favre -- although, of course, the former's career still has quite a few years left while the latter has struggled in recent years after some incredible seasons in his prime. I just wouldn't go so far as to say that Manning is the best ever. Not yet.

But it was a rather stupid thing to say in Wisconsin, where Favre is a god and the Packers are about as important a socio-cultural institution as there is.

The cheeseheads aren't about to forget this anytime soon.

(For more on the dangers of using sports analogies, see Ed Morrissey.)