A GOOD OLE FASHIONED LOUISVILLE WELCOME FOR BUSH AND HIS BITCH MITCH

With Bush's approval in Kentucky sinking towards a mere one-third, it isn't surprising that patriotic citizens in Louisville are planning a significant demonstration of that disdain for his Regime when he arrives Friday for a Big Money dinner to raise campaign funds for his faithful servant, Mitch McConnell. It is significant how quickly folks in the Blue Grass State have identified McConnell with a raft of Bush Regime policies he has supported in the Senate. A few days ago we reported that McConnell had a dangerous 52% approval rating. (Generally, incumbent senators with approval ratings under 55% have a very tough time on polling day. ) The newest SUSA poll shows that McConnell's approval rating is plummeting down towards Bush's and Cheney's. He's slipped since last month from that 52% to an alarming 49%. His disapprovals have climbed by 4%.


With McConnell's closet door slowly being pried open for his constituents' viewing horror, the real horror is how he has abused his office to thwart any debate on the issue most important to Kentucky voters: Iraq. McConnell is now clearly identified as nothing but an obstructionist shill for the hated Bush Regime.

He should have known better than to schedule and event with the Regime's front man in Louisville, a city that just dumped a rubber stamp congresswoman in favor of a progressive, anti-war activist. The folks in Louisville are more than aware of McConnell's long time cash-and-carry agenda towards his job as senator. Now, highlighted by his role in the Bush Regime tactics to escalate the unpopular war in Iraq, all that it coming back to bite him in the ass.

Our friends in Louisville tell us that tomorrow evening's protest at the Seelback (5:30 PM, 500 South 4th Street) is more about McConnell as they are about Bush. "Everyone knows what Bush is and he's not running for anything again. McConnell needs to be stopped. What's he's doing in the Senate is a disgrace and a blackeye for Kentucky," a former Republican entrepreneur who will be participating in his first political demonstration ever told us.


UPDATE: McCONNELL-- EVEN WORSE THAN BIDEN WHEN IT COMES TO TONGUING THE CREDIT CARD COMPANIES

The Public Campaign Action Fund, a nonpartisan watchdog and campaign finance reform organization, issued the first of its "Big Money Mitch" issue briefings today, profiling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) role in the passage of the bankruptcy bill of 2005. McConnell and his odious political action committee have received more than $535,000 in campaign contributions from credit card and commercial banking interests and he repaid them in spades by helping ram through a bill that completely screws ordinary Americans struggling with the Bush economy tailormade for the wealthy at the expense of working and middle class families. Ninety percent of bankruptcy filings come from job loss, health-related issues, or divorce and McConnell's law makes it harder for Americans to get out of debt.
 
"The bankruptcy bill is the worst example of pay-to-play politics in recent memory, as politicians from both parties paid back their debt to campaign contributors from the commercial banking and credit card industries," said David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund. "Mitch McConnell was the master of that game, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and rewarding these donors by shepherding to passage a bill that their lobbyists wrote. Meanwhile, the public lost out."


UPDATE: THE HOMETOWN PAPER MIGHT NOT LIKE MICTH MUCH BUT THEY'RE STILL GOING ALONG WITH THE WHOLE IN- THE-CLOSET ROUTINE

Today's Louisville Courier-Journal castigates McConnell with a hard-hitting editorial called Cash Over Conscience. They ask who McConnell really is-- and never mention a thing about him being a homophobic closet queen (although they know he is). Instead they opt for what a corporate whore he's always been. [He's] "not just a Republican leader dutifully standing with his party's president, but an embracing partisan ally of Mr. Bush, willing to accept, excuse or deny all of this administration's substantial failings in order to trade on its fealty to the moneyed interests and swell his own re-election campaign stash. Since Mr. McConnell's political career has been based on the primacy of money, and the desires of those who give it, this makes a certain kind of sense."

From there they go on to remind their readers that he is "out of touch," the embodiment of "arrogance of entrenched power," "one of the legendary money grubbers in modern American politics" and that "he sees no risk in raking in the cash while joined at the hip with the man responsible for stubbornly leading the country into ever-more-polarized politics, unsustainable debt, regulatory collapse, energy folly, environmental calamity and, of course, deepening international crisis and loss of international standing." Welcome home, Senator.