Comedian Steve Martin's political message for Nebraska

This approach will not surprise Nebraskans familiar with Bob Kerrey's dark, absurdist sense of humor, much in evidence when he was governor back in the 80s and dating Debra Winger, in Lincoln to film Terms of Endearment.
     At the time, Kerrey, who lost part of a leg in Vietnam, was asked what made him fall for Winger. His deadpan response: "She swept me off my foot."
     Kerry supports marriage equality. His opponent, Deb Fischer, believes marriage should be owned by heterosexuals.


(Kerry Campaign via New Nebraska Network)

Third, final Nebraska senate race debate between Deb Fischer and Bob Kerrey: 'Robot' vs. 'Angry old coot'

That's how Nebraska Educational Television summarized social media commentary on the debate it hosted in Lincoln. AKSARBENT was astonished at Kerrey's rapid-fire command of facts, figures and legislative knowledge in the second debate and dismayed at Deb Fischer's empty platitudes and unsupported bullet points. The difference was stark. We were not impressed by Kerrey's insistence that he could change Senate procedures for the better. Good luck with that, however well-intended and defensible.

Retiring Senator Ben Nelson's expectedly-tilted review of Kerry-Fischer jousting for his seat:



Here's the second debate, in its entirety.

Kerrey Senate campaign: Deb Fischer's lead cut from 28 points to 10

Here's the press release:

The Omaha World Herald survey is clear evidence that momentum is on our side. In mid-June the Fischer campaign released their own survey claiming to be 28 points ahead. Now that lead has been cut to 10.
     Deb Fischer is playing dodge ball with Nebraskans offering nothing but empty slogans and an indefensible budget plan that would be an economic disaster for our state. The more people learn about Deb Fischer, the less they like.

Supporter Sarah Palin (left) and Nebraska senate candidate
Fischer, who had nothing to say to a Lincoln radio station
about Mitt Romney's "47%" remarks during a fund raiser at
the lavish Florida estate of a private equity manager whose
Long Island sex parties are notorious in the Empire State.

Here's how the Kerrey campaign reacted to Fischer's no-show at the Nebraska Rural Health Association’s annual conference on rural health:

The NRHA invited, “those who share the common bond of an interest in rural health” to attend. State Senator Deb Fischer was invited and had confirmed her participation; however, she did not show up to the event.
     “Fischer’s snub to the NRHA is no surprise,” offered Paul Johnson, Senator Bob Kerrey’s Campaign Manager. “She is playing dodge ball with Nebraskans.  She knows that her budget would require a 29% cut out of Medicare. She knows that means a rural economic loss of over $170 million in Nebraska and over 3,500 jobs lost due to the impact on rural hospitals. Hospitals would close. Rural healthcare would end as we know it and the lives of Nebraskans across the state would be harmed.  Clearly, Fischer decided today was not the day to be honest with the voters of Nebraska.”
   ...Senator Kerrey also addressed the League of Nebraska Municipalities at its conference in Kearney, Nebraska. Senator Fischer was also invited to that event but refused to attend.  “Another example of Fischer playing dodge ball with the public,” Johnson noted.

Attempts by billionaire Koch Brothers to defeat Bob Kerrey (and others) get some pushback

Below: Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Brothers Astroturf front group, is supporting Deb Fischer in Nebraska by running attack ads against her opponent, Bob Kerrey like this one, which preposterously implies that Kerrey, who grew up in Nebraska, has businesses here, and served the state as governor and senator, is somehow a carpetbagger — as opposed to the out-of-state Koch Brothers. "Our" state, indeed.

NE Primary: major homophobe, frontrunner AG Jon Bruning, demolished by GOP dark horse, a billionaire's SuperPac — and a Sara Palin endorsement

County-by-county: Jon Bruning's stunning defeat. Deb Fisher-carried counties are dark red, Bruning counties are light red.

Below: TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts' SuperPac ad trashing Jon Bruning:


In November 2003, Jon Bruning said Massachusetts' Supreme Court ruling against that state's ban on gay marriages was ridiculous. "Does that mean you have to allow a man to marry his pet, or a man to marry his chair?" Bruning said. "I mean, at some point, it needs to stop." [Associated Press, 11/18/03]
     In 2011, Jon Bruning had Nebraska State Senator Mike Gloor introduce legislation punishing HIV+ Nebraskans who sneezed in the direction of a cop with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine — despite the fact that saliva doesn't transmit HIV.
     In 2012, after state Senator Beau McCoy's bill to kill looming gay rights ordinances in Omaha and Lincoln died in committee, Bruning issued an opinion that LGBT rights ordinances were illegal anyway despite contrary opinions by city attorneys in both Lincoln and Omaha.
     Now Bruning's US Senate ambitions are in ruins, courtesy of a dark horse Unicameral representative from rural Nebraska, Deb Fischer, a last minute SuperPac expenditure of $200,000 paid for by the billionaire Omaha founder of TD Ameritrade, Joe Ricketts and an endorsement of Fischer by Sara Palin. (Paterfamilias Rickets' out gay daughter is an attorney who supports Lambda Legal; his son supported the candidacy of state senator Beau McCoy, who will kill gay rights in Nebraska if it's the last thing he does. The Ricketts family must have some interesting Thanksgiving dinners.)



     Bruning had other problems, notably the candidacy of former AG Don Stenberg (almost as antigay as Bruning himself) and a string of articles in both the Lincoln Journal-Star and the Omaha World-Herald which chronicled Bruning's swift rise to millionaire status while attorney general.
     Deb Fisher will face former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey in the general election.
     Kerrey won in a landslide, as expected, though he didn't get AKSARBENT's vote because he arrogantly refused to answer any of the questions in the League of Women Voter's questionnaire.
     We'll vote for him in the general election because he came out for gay marriage recently. (While doing so, Kerrey instructed a reporter to be sure to mention that Dick Cheney does too.)

Below: Joe Jordan of nebraskawatchdog.org talks to Democratic victor Bob Kerrey about Fischer's win:



     Kerrey is quite funny. Here's how he answered a question from Omaha World-Herald columnist Brad Dickson, a former gag writer for Jay Leno:

Q: If elected, will you be favoring us with “Waltzing Matilda” again? Feel free to respond no comment.
A: Yes, but you'll have to be in the shower to hear it, and there's no chance I'll invite you.

(Actually, Kerrey sang And The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda, a 70s antiwar song, after first being elected to the US Senate in 1988.)

While governor, Kerry, who lost a limb in Vietnam, dated actress Debra Winger when she was filming Terms of Endearment in Lincoln. When a reporter asked him about the romance, Kerrey deadpanned: "She swept me off my foot."

Bob Kerrey hit by more attack ads by astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, funded by billionaire right-wing Koch Brothers

"Not in my house" ad: Alexander Burns at Politico has the details of the Billiionaire right-wing Koch Brothers attack on Bob Kerrey through the astroturf group they fund, Americans for Prosperity:

The national conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which has spent several hundred thousand dollars pummeling the former senator on the air over the last few weeks, is up with a new spot this weekend. The commercial, produced by the GOP admakers at the Strategy Group for Media, is a twist on Kerrey's own advertising -- which features ordinary Nebraskans welcoming the Democrat back to his home state.

Americans for Prosperity has already engaged in election fraud in Wisconsin that was so blatant even English language Russian TV reported on it...

NE senate race: antigay Nebraska AG Jon Bruning vs. gay-friendly Bob Kerrey: Bruning now using 'Willie Horton' political consultant

Right-wing Nebraska AG Jon Bruning will has retained D.C.-based McCarthy-Hennings Media, as the website Nebraska Watchdog first reported.
     The "McCarthy" in that corporate name refers to adman Larry McCarthy, whose resume includes the 1988 Willie Horton attack ad against Michael Dukakis during George H.W. Bush's campaign for president.
     McCarthy played xenophobia and religious divisions in the electorate like a violin in more recent political spots like "Chinese Professor" and "Mosque."
     Bruning, for his part, has compared welfare recipients to raccoons scavenging for food.

"The raccoons, they're not stupid, they're going to do the easy way if we make it easy for them -- just like welfare recipients all across America," he said in a video recorded by American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic independent expenditure group. "If we don't send them to work, they're going to take the easy way out."

     ..."What better way to reform your image as a politician who makes racially insensitive comments than to hire the ad firm that makes racially insensitive ads?" said Rodell Mollineau, president of American Bridge 21st Century. 

     In November 2003, Bruning said Massachusetts' Supreme Court ruling against that state's ban on gay marriages was ridiculous. "Does that mean you have to allow a man to marry his pet, or a man to marry his chair?" Bruning said. "I mean, at some point, it needs to stop." [Associated Press, 11/18/03]

     In 1982, Bob Kerrey, then on the Human Rights Commission in Lincoln, supported an equal employment measure for gay citizens before voters overturned it amid a rumor campaign fueled by a subsequently discredited NU psychologist Paul Cameron.
     From 2007 to 2011, a period in which many Americans lost their life savings, Bruning tripled the value of his personal non-publicly traded assets, from a range of $4.3 to $17.8 million to $12.6 to $61.3 million while in office as Nebraska Attorney General and has held positions while AG on 24 different banks, private businesses and LLCs.
     Below, Joe Jordon, of Nebraska Watchdog, talks to AG Bruning about his ties to David Sokol, who abruptly left Berkshire Hathaway amid charges of insider trading and is the target of an ongoing SEC investigation.



Below: then-senator Bob Kerrey took on Charleton Heston and the NRA in an ad for his successful reelection to the US Senate.

Billionaire Koch Bros. astroturf group launches new assault on Kerrey-for-Senator candidacy

Radical right-wing billionaire David Koch began attacking Bob Kerrey in Nebraska even before he announced his candidacy. Now his puppet group, Americans for Prosperity, is spending another $105,000  to trash Kerrey educate Nebraskans about his position on Obama's health care initiative, among other things. The yellow ad at left ran on KETV Sunday night just before Kerrey's own "Step Up" ad. You can find it on YouTube but we're not going to embed it here. AKSARBENT won't give free publicity to billionaires unless their ad is unusually stupid. This one is just one dull, uninventive quarter-truth after another.

In his PR release linked to above, Brad Stevens said he wants to get emails at bstevens@afphq.org or calls at 402-310-7897 from people who want more information about the group. AKSARBENT would love to know why Americans for Prosperity is against a health care initiative which would cover millions of people who aren't now covered and save the government billions of dollars. But we won't be calling or emailing Brad about that anytime soon. Call us crazy, but we just don't think he would be that into us.

Below are Kerrey's first two ads. The New York Times said they were at Kerrey2012.com, but when AKSARBENT went there, we were shown the digital door by Kerrey's website when we declined to surrender personal information, so we got the ads another way. Politicians.






Below is some of what is bothering the Billionaire Koch brothers and Brad Stevens (bstevens@afphq.org):

David Koch joins Karl Rove in tag team attack ads on Bob Kerrey even before he decides to run for Ben Nelson's senate seat

Last week AKSARBENT noted the Karl Rove radio assault on former governor and senator Bob Kerrey, who is merely back in Nebraska to sound out acquaintances on a possible bid to replace Democrat Ben Nelson following his retirement.

Now it seems that just as Rove's American Crossroads attack ends, David Koch's Astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity, has picked up the trash-talk baton with a $105,000 radio and TV ad campaign against the gay-friendly Kerrey, who, as yet, hasn't made any announcement.

The ad ends with an invitation to sign a "petition" (which would involve giving personal information to the Koch organization) to "remind" Bob Kerrey that Nebraskans are against big government, intoned by a voiceover artist in a generic Hollywood Westerner accent that no one in Nebraska speaks.

Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal-Star writes:

The anti-Kerrey ad campaigns drew a quick response from Paul Johnson, the man who will manage Kerrey's campaign if he decides to become a candidate.

     "It's pretty obvious that Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and their national organizations are terrified of someone like Bob Kerrey running for the Senate," Johnson said.

     "What they fear most are independent leaders willing to do what's right for the country instead of serving as a lap dog for their self-serving agenda."

Karl Rove runs attack ads to scare Bob Kerrey away from NE senate race; former governor/senator/Navy Seal calls ads 'funny;' slyly implies overweight Rove should work out more

Senators Bob Kerrey and John
Kerry in NYC 10/22/11

Robynn Tysver of the Omaha World-Herald reports that Karl Rove has spent $30,000 on radio advertising to intimidate Bob Kerrey during his current Nebraska visit to sound out friends and acquaintances about running for the senate seat Democrat Ben Nelson is leaving.
     Kerrey has lived in New York City for the last 11 years, much of that time as president of the New School, but retains partial ownership of family-owned restaurants and health clubs in Nebraska.
     Kerrey's written response [link added] to Rove said, in part:

     I heard your very funny radio ad and would like to invite you to come to Nebraska and have a burger with my family at one of my restaurants. Or better: let's work out at one of my health clubs. I am certain you'll be glad you did.

     Sincerely, Bob Kerrey