Mother Found Guilty Of Murder Of Son

Lacey Spears, a Kentucky woman whom authorities say force-fed her 5-year-old son salt through a stomach tube for the attention that a sickly child brought her, has been found guilty of murder in the child’s 2014 death at a hospital in New York state.

A White Plains jury handed down the second-degree murder verdict in 5-year-old Garnett-Paul Spears’ death Monday after three days of deliberations.

Spears will be sentenced in early April, and she can reportedly expect no sympathy from the district attorney.

Spears, 27, had blogged for years about her son’s constant health woes, and prosecutors said she killed the boy because she feared he would start telling people she was the one making him sick.

Video showed Spears twice taking the boy into a hospital bathroom with a connector tube and the boy suffering afterward.

“The motive is bizarre, the notion is scary, but it exists … She apparently craved the attention of her family, her friends, her co-workers and most particularly the medical profession,” Assistant District Attorney Patricia Murphy said in closing arguments Thursday.

Murphy called Spears’ actions “nothing short of torture.”

Updated post

Lundergan Grimes Concession Speech

Video by Kentucky.com

Chuck Todd In Mitch McConnell Commercial

The fact that some of journalist Chuck Todd’s statements seemed biased enough to appear in a Mitch McConnell campaign ad might cause some to question his objectivity. It also causes one to wonder about copyright laws and whether Todd allowed the advertisement.

More Ebola Hysteria: Teacher Who Visited Kenya Quits

A teacher at St. Margaret Mary Catholic School in Louisville, KY, who had recently returned from a mission trip to Kenya has resigned amid swirling frustration and fears about Ebola.

The school had asked Susan Sherman to take a paid “precautionary leave” of absence of 21 days upon her return from her trip after “strong parent concerns” about Ebola. It also asked Sherman, who is a registered nurse, to provide a doctor’s note stating she was in good health.

There have been no reported cases of Ebola in Kenya. Indeed, the archdiocese, in a statement released last month regarding Sherman’s trip, noted that the Kenyan village where Sherman was working — the remote village of Migori — is “in Eastern Africa, thousands of miles from West Africa, where the main outbreak of the virus is located.”

Mitch McConnell’s Strange Stance On Obamacare

In a debate last week, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell was asked about his stance on The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). His answer was fairly vague.  He says it’s fine to “have a website.”

It is unclear what he meant. The website is part of The Affordable Care Act, as well as the subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and the mandates for insurance companies to be on the exchange.

Many patient-protection laws are part of the act, such as the law that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until age 26.  Laws outlawing pre-existing conditions are also part of The Affordable Care Act.

Was it an attempt to dodge the question?

Sam Seder of Majority Report discusses it.

Hillary Stumps For Alison Lundergan Grimes: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over?

It seemed as though some Democrats nationally were starting to back away from Alison Lundergan Grimes due to her movement to the right and her refusal to answer the question of who she voted for in 2012.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also cut its TV advertising for Lundergan Grimes on Tuesday, saying they had to focus on incumbent Democrats.

That decision effectively leaves Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes on her own and is read by some as a sign that national Democrats believe her race is effectively over.

But Hillary was there on Wednesday, campaigning in Louisville, Kentucky.

She defended the president’s health care law as she campaigned on Wednesday for Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes in her fight against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“Kynect is about more than a website,” Clinton said of the Kentucky exchange, the state health care marketplace created as part of the Affordable Care Act. “It has helped more than half a million Kentuckians get good, quality affordable health care.”

In a Monday debate between McConnell and Lundergan Grimes, McConnell told voters that he wants to repeal the health care law “root and branch,” but said that the state’s health care website is “fine.”

“You cannot have it both ways. It’s simple math,” Clinton said. “If you repeal the federal law, there is no more federal money for subsidies for Kentucky families. There is no more money for Medicaid expansion, and think about … the forty eight thousand young people in Kentucky who will be thrown off their parents’ insurance plans.”

Grimes has largely avoided defending the health care law on the campaign trail, focusing instead on bread-and-butter issues like the minimum wage and equal pay.

Is Lundergan Grimes Alienating The National Democrats?

Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is running for U.S. Senator, has been distancing herself from the president in order to appeal to the coal industry, gun owners, and other interests in the state of Kentucky.

Her concern for the coal industry is necessary, with 15,000 jobs on the line.  However, some feel she has moved too far to the right on too many issues, and she has been distancing herself from the president.  It seems that  some Democrats on the national level may be getting alienated.

Recently she dodged a question about whether or not she voted for President Obama.

TYT video.

Mitch McConnell Gets More Out-Of-State Money Than Lundergan Grimes

Money is pouring into the Kentucky Senate race from across the country in what some experts predict will be the most expensive election in U.S. history for a U.S. Senate seat.

The Courier-Journal of Louisville, KY, states that $37 million, or 85% of identified contributions has come from out of state.

McConnell, who started raising money shortly after his last re-election six years ago, is getting big money from the Washington network of PACs and lobbyists, Texas and New York.

A new McConnell ad tells the story of a Kentucky woman whose daughter was abducted in 2011 by her ex-husband and taken to Mali.

Grimes, who entered the campaign in July of last year, gets support from the California film industry, but also New York and Washington.

But the Courier-Journal analysis also showed some basic differences in the makeup of contributions supporting the two candidates:

• Grimes gets a higher percentage of her contributions — 24.5 percent — from inside Kentucky. Only about 12.2 percent of contributions for McConnell have come from people and PACs listing Kentucky addresses.

• Grimes gets much more in small contributions than McConnell. Her campaign has reported raising $3.6 million — more than 31 percent of her total — in contributions of $200 or less. McConnell has reported raising about $940,000 — or just 3 percent of his total — in contributions of $200 or less.

• McConnell gets much more from political action committees. Pro-McConnell political committees have reported $9 million in contributions this election cycle — nearly 30 percent of his total — from PACs.  Pro-Grimes committees have gotten $1 million, or about 9 percent of their contributions from PACs.

Jonathan Hurst, manager of the Grimes campaign, said, “The contrast between the two campaigns couldn’t be clearer. Alison is running a strong grassroots campaign. Based on the numbers, you can see Sen. McConnell relies on millionaires and billionaires to fund his campaign.”

However, three major election models give McConnell a major edge – with his probability of winning ranging between 85 to 99 percent.

Alison Lundergan Grimes TV Ad: “Skeet Shooting”

Some sources claim that coal is still the source of 92 percent of Kentucky’s electricity and brings in $3.5 billion in export revenue, and it provides 15,000 jobs.

This is not going away overnight.

Alison Lundergan Grimes came out with a new (and by most accounts expensive) television advertisement where she tries to separate herself from Barack Obama.  The ad may have raised eyebrows because of how far to the right she seems to move to distance herself from the president.

Lundergan Grimes seems to be between a rock and a hard place. If she – for environmental reasons – is somehow against the coal industry, she does not have a chance of getting elected. However, if she moves too far to the right on multiple issues, she could alienate Democrats at the national level.

It is the opinion of OK, Fine that she only needs to bend on one issue – coal industry jobs.

Democrats on the national level – instead of blocking it or being callous towards coal jobs – need to understand how important these jobs are to Kentucky. They also need have a better grasp of the importance of beating Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader of the Senate.

Is it possible to keep coal alive and help those companies meet their pollution requirements? Could loans or grants be made available to help them do it?

Isn’t it better to bend a little on the environment to have a Democrat win that important seat? What can Democrats do to help her win the position?