One Tupac too many
Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, the same man who told residents of his state not to go into Tennessee and catch the COVID-19 virus, recently had to pull his foot out of his mouth after blasting people using false names to defraud the state's unemployment benefits system.
"We had somebody apply for unemployment for Tupac Shakur here in Kentucky," he said last week, "and that person may have thought they were being funny; they probably did. Except for the fact that because of them, we had to go through so many other claims."
Tupac Malik Shakur, the Kentucky resident who shares a name with the late U.S. rapper and was laid off from his job as a cook in Lexington, didn't think it was at all funny.
"I've been struggling for like the last month trying to figure out how to pay the bills," he said. "I'm hurt. I'm really embarrassed and I'm shocked. He needs to apologize. That's just my name."
Beshear, to his credit, called the unemployed cook to apologize. We're not sure he's apologized to Tennesseans yet.
It'll cost you
The black vote is not going to be free for Democrats in this year's presidential election, says rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs. Some kind of quid pro quo will be necessary, he suggested while speaking with model Naomi Campbell on a video made public last week.
"We're going to have to see some promises," he said. "What are we getting in return for our vote? Nothing has changed for black America. In order for us to vote for [Joe Biden], we can't be taken for granted like we always are because we're supposed to be Democrats or because people are afraid of Trump."
For at least 60 years, Democrats have been able to start their presidential campaigns knowing they can count on more than 90% of the black American vote. But then-candidate Donald Trump peeled off some of that vote in 2016 and, until the COVID-19 virus, had presided over an economy that gave blacks record employment.
Nevertheless, said Combs, "it's business at this point. We can't trick politicians. So we want to know very clearly - just like Trump made it clear that he wanted to build a wall - Biden needs to make it clear that he wants to change the lives and quality of life for black and brown people or he won't get the vote. I will hold the vote hostage if I have to."
It should be interesting to hear both the rapper's terms and Biden's response.
'All-in' but the first lady
J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, chose to shoot the messenger rather than face his own Marie Antoinette moment like Democratic U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did recently when she taped footage about her collection of ice cream while millions of people lost their jobs with the COVID-19 virus.
Though the governor has in place a strict stay-at-home order until May 30 and is promoting an "All-in Illinois" initiative, his billionaire wife, M.K. Pritzker, apparently fled the state for their $12.1 million equestrian estate in South Florida.
Asked about the first lady, instead of being honest, the governor called the question "inappropriate" and said it was "reprehensible" that a story was written suggesting her whereabouts in the first place.
Pritzker lamely tried to say "in politics it used to be that we kept our families out of it," but the first lady reportedly has an office in the Illinois capitol building and in the James R. Thompson Center, has a taxpayer-funded staff and has been involved in public political efforts such as raising money for the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund.
"What's inappropriate," said Kayleen Carlson, executive director of Illinois Rising Action, "is the Pritzker family's track record of abiding by the rules only when it suits them."
This is why
Why did former President Jimmy Carter, as part of a bipartisan panel during the George W. Bush administration, say mail-in ballots have the most potential for fraud?
In April, research by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that 28.4 million mail-in ballots have gone missing in the last four election cycles, including a combined 16.4 million in 2016 and 2018.
Democrats are pushing - through their billionaire bankroller George Soros - for mail balloting in the November presidential election, a debacle that experts say could deliver ballots to an estimated 24 million ineligible voters.
Emblematic of the problem are the estimated 11,600 dead people on the Virginia voter rolls, according to a court brief filed by PILF last week in connection to an ongoing lawsuit about balloting during the COVID-19 virus in United States District Court. All of the dead have corresponding published obituaries, according to the brief.
In addition, another 1,772 registered voters have commercial addresses listed as their primary residence, and nearly 600 voters were found who have duplicated registrations.