Former Tina Turner Impersonator for Mayor(!)

hoooooo boy, readers: I knew the Louisville mayoral race (which, 7 months away from election day, has already begun to heat up) was going to get interesting, but I had not dared to hope for this interesting, this early. Lest you think the title of this post is in jest, let me first assure you that, yes, indeed we do have a candidate seriously contending to be our city's next mayor who, in a past career, was a Tina Turner impersonator (although it is currently unknown if she held any formal accreditation). Connie Marshall, a currently unemployed western Louisville resident (although some sources refer to her as a "community activist"...) is running as a Democrat along with Tyler Allen, Greg Fischer, David Tandy, Shannon White, Burrel Farnsley and, of course, the reviled Jim King.

You may be wondering what else Ms. Marshall has to offer besides her accomplished (we assume) knowledge and mastery of Tina Turner mannerisms and performance. Well, according to a recent article in the Courier-Journal, she is also quite the prolifically litigious nut bag: she's sued the Louisville Gas & Electric Company, the U.S. attorney, the governor, the sheriff, the chief of police, various police officers, FBI agents, the U.S. Department of Justice and a few federal judges--19 law suits in all, along with a handful of suits in Jefferson District Court. Marshall acknowledges that this is kind of a lot: "I've sued the whole town, because the whole town is corrupt. If I'm leaving anybody out, I just haven't gotten to it yet." So, residents of Louisville who are not currently being sued by Connie Marshall, don't worry: it'll be your turn sooner or later--it's just that Connie has not yet been made aware of your vile corruption.

The suits claim harassment, intimidation, waste, fraud, racism, physical and mental assault, illegal incarceration and surveillance. But the coup de grace? Brace yourself: she says she is the victim of electromagnetic attacks from the government(!) They manifest themselves, she explains, through a "piercing and humming electronic sound that come into her home through telephones or other electronic devices." These attacks, she says, are apparently coming from satellites or drones that "often hover above her western Louisville home, causing her pain and sometimes paralyzing her for minutes." She claims that she is also being watched through her television: "You can tell when it's happening because the TV (screen) gets real bright." Apparently Marshall's platform for mayor will be based on wild-eyed anti-government conspiracy theory and, as Louisville's alt-weekly, LEO, remarked "other tinfoil-hat stuff." According to the C-J article: "...as mayor, she would help people who are suffering from similar attacks and anyone else who needs assistance from metro government." Yes, excuse me mayor: my neighbor's garbage cans are not in accordance with the city's ordinance...oh, and, uh, their dog has been illegally transmitting some disturbing messages to me through my toaster oven.

So, yeah--elect Crazy McGee for Louisville mayor and you can expect her to: a) wage war on the government (destroy it from within, I guess), b) say so many insane things on a daily basis that it'll make Jim Bunning seem mentally stable, and, probably: c) sue your ass. Realistically I know Connie doesn't stand a chance of getting her party's nomination (anybody else smell a future lawsuit?), but you know what? If she was smart enough to run as a Republican she could probably give em a run for their money by riding the wave of tea-baggin' anti-government angst. All she has to do is switch parties and start referring to her plight as the "elite big government socialist mind control agenda" and she's golden.

Filibustin' a Move with Crazy Jimmy B

Well, readers, you may have noticed that one of KY's original good ole boys has been in the news rather prominently (again) as of late--and you know that's never a good thing for KY. Well, this time it's really not a good thing for the huge numbers of unemployed: everyone's "favorite" cantankerous governmental nap-taker, Jim Bunning, has been a lot more active than usual in his job this past week: he's been the lone Senator holding up the legislation that would extend jobless benefits (i.e. unemployment and health insurance) to roughly one million currently out-of-work Americans. Way to take a stand, there, Jimmy boy--right onto the backs of your constituents (KY's unemployment rate is currently one of the nation's highest--10.7%), and during the worst economic crises since the Great Depression, no less.

You may remember the salad days of Jim Bunning insanity fun--back in the years and months before he "decided to retire" (read: before he was pressured by the entire GOP to bail on reelection due to a torrent of gaffes and truly offensive outbursts). You could pretty much count on Jimmy to make the news bi-weekly--whether it was dissing Mitch McConnell or publicly celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg's cancer diagnosis or cussing out reporters during a conference call, you knew that if Jimmy had shown up somewhere and said something, whatever it was would be derogatory, petulant, sexist, rude, profane, and/or outlandish. The local newspaper had even suggested (bluntly, and not in jest) that he was getting dementia--they ran an interview last summer with a mental health specialist who used Jimmy's behavior to diagnose a possible loss of brain function(!).

So anyway--here we are, every single one of the other Senators voting to extend unemployment except Jim. Jim who, suddenly, feels like taking a stand rather than his usual MO: i.e. stare in jaded silence, perhaps blurt some shitty remark and then, later, a nap. Or maybe just stay home and skip the whole ordeal. But now we meet principled Jimmy, Mr. Fiscal Responsibility. But don't be fooled, it's still the same old Crazy Jimmy B: while his fellow Senators tried to change his mind he complained about missing a UofK basketball game; when Sen. Jeff Merkely (D-OR) asked him to stand down Jimmy replied "tough shit!"; and when reporters asked him for an interview he casually flipped the bird to one of the producers (according to ABC News)(!).

Of course, these days Jimmy can afford to be a self righteous finger-wagger at our expense: he's not running for reelection next year, so he doesn't really need to worry about the fallout (although, I'm not sure he ever really worried about it before, either). So maybe he figures that by using his final months in office to be an anti-middle class obstructionist A-hole he can cash-in on a little of that tea bagging fever. Maybe Fox News will even make him their newest correspondent...he would fit right in, maybe even make some of their other sideshow attractions seem sane and well-balanced in comparison (note to Glenn Beck: it's gonna take a mighty river of tears to compete with the cluster bomb of crazy that is Jim Bunning, so start hydrating now).

And it's not just unemployment benefits that will be affected: 2,000 federal workers will be furloughed, reimbursements to states for transportation projects will be halted (including two bridge replacement projects in Kentucky), a provision expired that would have stopped a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements to doctors, and loan programs for small businesses are now on hold. Whew! That's a whole lotta work for an old guy like Jimmy--I'm sure it was enough to really tucker the poor guy out. Let's hope all the angry phone calls and bomb threats that his Kentucky office has been receiving this week hasn't kept him from catching his z's.

Surrender!

Well, I can't say I'm surprised at the outcome: Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning--once known for his killer curveball as a hall of fame pitcher in the 1960's, then developing more of a mean screwball in his later political career--has officially announced today that he will retire rather than seek reelection in 2010. For at least six months now he's invoked the moniker of "embattled Ky Senator" whenever his name was discussed in the media, and seen the bulk of his largest campaign contributors jump ship, giving their cold hard GOP cash to Trey Grayson, a guy who hasn't even filed the necessary paperwork to run yet.

This after months of defiant chest-thumping, trash talk and public disses. What finally made him bow out of a race he bullishly insisted he was in-to-win, no question about it, yessiree? Well, Jim has called shenanigans on his Republican peers, specifically minority leader Mitch McConnell, who supposedly (according to Bunning, that is) told him he was "too old to get reelected" back in January. Ever since that little rumor was floated, Jim has been rebranded by his own party as the Most Vulnerable Republican Incumbent in the Senate, with some shrewdly questioning his mental state (the word "Alzheimer's" has come up a few times, as has "dementia" and "loony-tunes"). Of course, Bunning himself hasn't exactly helped his situation, electing not to curtail his usual verbal barrage of partisan insanity. He's also cited the state of his "pathetic" (Jim's own words) fundraising as another main reason he'll not be running, but it seems like he knows that his paltry campaign bank account is just a symptom of the larger problem: his state of pariah-hood among his own party.

I have to say, I have a bit of a ghoulish motive for being sad about this (inevitable) outcome. I expected this plot to play out to a much more climactic end game scenario, involving no less than a perfect shit storm of blustery proselytizing, fire, brimstone, and slanderous, reputation-soiling bi-partisan mudslinging. I was virtually--okay, actually--smacking my lips in anticipation of the kind of wack-job things Bunning would say next about which scandal-mongering high-profile GOP insider. The way he has been throwing out jumped-to paranoid conclusions was inspiring in the same way I imagine his pitching must have been in that game in 1964 (against the New York Mets), when he threw a perfect game.

That is, he inspired me to get in the game myself and come up with a conspiracy theory of my own: that no matter how insistent he was about really running for reelection, he was simply keeping up his lazy brand of fundraising with the intention of keeping whatever he raised for himself--as a kind of consolation "F-you" prize to his political "freinemies." And maybe I was right, but he had to bailout now for some shadowy, unspoken reason--conspiracy theories are always richer when dark, unknown elements are thrown into the murky stew of political intrigue: sauce for the goose! But I was sure that he would hang in there at least until the next quarter, squeezing the basest of his base for their last "anybody-but-the-other-guy" dime. Ah, well--in his own mind, I'm sure he's going out a winner.

The Jim Bunning Guide to Campaign Finance

Well, the moment we've all been waiting for has finally come and gone, and here we are still wondering what the hell our boy Jim Bunning--KY GOP Senator-cum-crazyman (or is it "crazyman-cum-Senator"?) extraordinaire--was talking about last week when he bragged that his campaign finance report would "show him with more cash on hand for his 2010 race than any other Kentucky Republican candidates or potential candidates." (As reported in KY's Courier-Journal on July 8th by reporter James R. Carroll) Well, that report was due out on July 15th...so do you suppose our boy Jimbo was right about his predictions of PAC champagne wishes and caviar dreams?

As you may have supposed, it actually has gone quite the other way for our Man in the Trenches. Beleaguered by the usual crowd of political enemies on the Democratic side, he's also had a very entertaining feud with the leaders of his own party, engaging in a beef with minority leader Mitch McConnell so epic it borders on Fiddy Cent-esque (although I suppose you could also make the usual degrading Hatfield V McCoy comments so popular when describing catty Kentucky political bickering. Hint: when choosing between hillbilly and gangsta rapper analogies, the savvier Kentuckian will usually go the gangsta route). So basically this was Jim's way of trying to say "F you" to everybody, but of course everyone knew he was making an impossible bluff--there's no way he could've had more money than anyone else, especially since most of the big money types have been scared well clear of Mr. Bunning by all the petulant GOP infighting and wackier-than-usual Bunning crazy talk.

So let's take a look at the official numbers:

So far, from April through June of this year, Jimbo has on hand $302,466. Republican Trey Grayson has about twice that: $603,164. Ky's attorney general and resident pretty boy, Dem Jack Conway, has outdone both by raising $1.3 million in the same amount of time.

Nowadays it seems that elections are getting pretty expensive in KY. Mitch raised a staggering 20.9 MILLION DOLLARS for his 2008 reelection campagn (compare that with the paltry $5.7 million he raised and spent on his 2002 campaign), but get this: he SPENT $21.3 million (for that kinda dough I was expecting his tv spots to be produced by Lucasfilm, Ltd.). Mitch is still paying off that million dollar debt, from what I hear, and he only narrowly defeated opponent Bruce Lunsford, who rose and spent only half what McConnell did. If Republicans are going to have the same kind of trouble in 2010 over Bunning's Senate seat, then I'd say things don't look good, especially considering Conway's numbers. In light of that, it may be time for Jimbo to really up the crazy ante if he truly wants to keep his job.

So, in the spirit of pushing our hip hop analogy to its inevitable conclusion, I'd like to offer my own suggestion for Bunning's next shrewd political move: since he already seems to be channeling the afore-mentioned gangsta rappers and their own lyrical rivalries (in certain hip hop circles McConnell would surely be called out for the "sucker MC" he is), I think Bunning should consider non-chalantly--yet conspicuously, and in front of a pack of hungry-eyed Courier-Journal reporters--openning his briefcase and flashing a wad of Euros. Hey, it worked for Jay-Z.

The Jim Bunning Guide to Politics

Reading the local newspaper here in Louisville, Kentucky has never taken a whole lot of time, even before last winter when the Courier-Journal dramatically scaled back its already anemic little rag (for "cost reduction reasons"). It's a thin offering of local goings-on, and most of the features are syndicated from the larger papers from larger, more important cities. With so many aggregate news sites on the internet offering free, constantly updated content you have to really scratch to come up with some sort of extra reason to plunk down your 75 cents--it's what we in the library and information science business call "added value." Well, nothing ratchets up the added value of our local AP cannibalizer for me more than our own illustrious GOP nutball senator: Jim Bunning. Old Jim (and I do mean OLD: at 77, he's one of the oldest in the Senate) is quite entertaining, if not acutely embarrassing for the state of Kentucky. If there happens to be a story about him in the paper on any given day, you can count on it being worth your time & your dime.

Bunning has a deep history of defiant foot-in-mouth syndrome, and he is bullishly unrepentant about the most outrageously inflammatory verbal diahrea. During his 2004 reelection campaign he was quoted saying his opponent (a child of Italian immigrants) looked like one of Saddam Hussein's sons(!), and he also made a comment that an opponent's campaign worker beat his wife (based on no actual evidence, mind you). Just this year, back in February, he predicted (quite gleefully) in front of a roomfull of Republican supporters, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be dead inside 9 months from pancreatic cancer. Yep, Jim's quite a guy, alright. And he even managed to insult her further when he was coerced into appologizing, saying he was sorry "if I offended her." Um, not sorry that he ghoulishly indulged in wishing for the death of a political enemy for the idle enjoyment of other ghoulishly-minded sorts, only sorry if it made her feel bad...or whatever. Sheesh! Women! Who can figure 'em--am I right, fellas?

Jim Bunning has taken blustery partisan trash talk to new heights, but he isn't the type of guy to limit his art to only his political opponents--he's busy dishing it out to his own party people as well. Worried that he'll lose another reelection bid in 2010, GOPers have been none-too-subtle about their insinuations that Bunning can't win and that he should bow out of the race--a stance that has only pissed our boy off, giving him a reason (as if he needed one) to shoot off his spectacularly crazy mouth at everybody from GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell to Kentucky Senate President David Williams. He even publicly called Texas senator John Cornyn (the NRSC chairman) a liar. He's threatened to sue the GOP--and maybe even more incredibly, threatened to resign and let the Democratic governor name his replacement--if the Republican leaders refuse to help him get reelected. It just gets better and better with each new verbal bitch-slap he hands out.

Probably my favorite little Bunning gem this year was when he decided to hire a private agency to do a poll in order to project his odds of reelection (probably so he could use the information to insult McConnell's grandmother), but then, suspiciously, failed to release the results. And when I say "failed to release the results," I mean that he told a reporter that it was none of his "goddamned business" (*actual quote*), and that the reporter could get the information when HE payed someone $20,000 to do a study. Hmm, do you think Jim got good news in those poll projections, or not?

This week Bunning has come out publicly to say he thinks he'll raise more money than anyone else in the race. But of course, he refused to disclose how much money he actually does have on hand right now. I guess us jerks will just have to wait until next week, when by law he'll have to disclose his second-quarter fundraising report. When asked what he thought of the amount reported by potential rival Trey Grayson ($602,699 since May, more than twice Bunning's first-quarter raised funds of $262,980), Bunning used the opportunity to give one of his signature backhanded compliments:

"I congratulate (him). It's nice to be able to work everyday on just raising money...I don't have the luxury of going around the state and knocking on doors and making phone calls to everybody that is available to raise money from. This job keeps me a little busy." Yeah, afterall, he's only Secretary of State--basically he just hangs around the pool all day and eats bon-bons, I'm sure. Not like you, Jimbo: you get things done, right? busy, busy.

Weeell...actually: in 2006 Time magazine chose Bunning as one of the top five worst senators, calling him The Underperformer. According to the article: "When asked [other Senators] struggle to recall any legislation Bunning has worked on," and that "he has the smarts to be an effective Senator but doesn't put in the effort." Ouch. No wonder Jimmy's taking indiscriminate swings at anybody who comes near. With friends like these, who needs friends?

The meltdown of Jim Bunning seems like it's been fermenting and unfolding for ages, but we still have a long time to go before the 2010 election. I'm rubbing my expectant little hands together in anticipation of reading all about the approaching political trainwreck. I'll be keeping a close eye on the Jim Bunning implosion story, readers, so be ready for more updates on inept backwoods politicking from my home state...