That’s funny, considering the article did not ask me to pay for any content but hey, maybe it just has especially intelligent AI, in that it knows you have a proBlankenship POV and wants to make things especially difficult for you, Yep…that must be it.

In the meantime, here is the article, copy/pasted, for you to overlook at your convenience.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) _ A former maid assigned to Massey Energy chief Don Blankenship says she deserves unemployment benefits after her workload expanded to include four homes, a customized tour bus and a German Shepherd while her hourly wages grew by 30 cents.

A lawyer for Deborah May also told the state Supreme Court on Tuesday that occasional tantrums and physical abuse by Blankenship added to the stress that forced her to quit in November 2005.

Kathryn Bayless said Blankenship threw food and grabbed May’s wrist after delivering the wrong McDonald’s order, trashed a closet over an incorrectly hung jacket and demanded a written explanation regarding how she stocked food in one of his houses.

“The ice cream he wanted was not in the freezer where he thought it ought to be,” Bayless told the justices.

But a lawyer for the company that employed May urged them to heed lower court rulings that denied her benefits by concluding she left her job voluntarily.

With their ruling expected later this year, Erik Kinder also asked the justices to “pull out the politics of personality.”

“Having a dispute over what groceries are going to go into a refrigerator, I think, is an extraordinarily minor issue over the course of four and a half years of employment,” he said.

May’s duties began when Blankenship lived in a three-story house in Mingo County. Over time, they grew to include a two-cabin complex in Kentucky, a four-story house in West Virginia and the tour bus. The tipping point came when Blankenship announced she was soon to care for his German Shepherd police dog.

“When you look at the overall circumstances of what occurred … most of us would have done the very same thing,” Bayless said.

Kinder said Mate Creek Security Inc. treated May consistently.

“Our argument is that Ms. May’s duties all along were those of a personal maid,” said Kinder, who noted that Mate Creek is not part of Massey. “She is going to be paid no matter where she is performing her duties.”

That stance prompted questions from all three justices at the hearing.

“The law talks about unilateral change in job duties,” Justice Robin Davis told Kinder. “I can’t believe you can stand there with a straight face and tell us her job duties did not change.”

“They absolutely did not change,” Kinder replied.

Justice Larry Starcher commented at one point that “I bet you most women would disagree with that.” Justice Joe Albright cited Blankenship’s alleged behavior.

“That’s all part of just cleaning a house, isn’t it?” Albright said.

Justice Brent Benjamin did not attend the hearing, but plans to participate. Chief Justice Elliott “Spike” Maynard recused himself from this and at least two other cases, after headline-grabbing photos surfaced showing him in Monaco with Blankenship while appeals involving Massey were pending.

Blankenship is president, chairman and chief executive officer of the Richmond, Va.-based coal producer. Neither it nor he are parties in the case."

David-

Glad to see you finally acknowledging i provided a “single URL” and not “media hit pieces” as you laughably did earlier. Thanks for that overdue correction, although what you should be apologizing for is your careless disregard for actual facts and your penchant for hyperbole.

Oh and you might want to look up the definition of “referencing” so you can make yourself slightly less ignorant on it than you are now.

And coming from someone who actually misread my statement regarding the actual nature of Blankenship’s (non sexual) harassment of female employees, your remark referring to something that i “missed” is laughable indeed. It’s nice to know you will now take steps to research information on a subject that you should have already researched before you began this futile exchange with me. Pat on the hat for you.

I didn’t come here to become an expert on you, hence me not being obligated to “read your blog” such as it is. I came to share informed commentary on Blankenship, while you came to fruitlessly defend him and made the mistake of mentioning my name in the process. You picked the wrong one buddy. Next time leave your shilling at home or keep it restricted to your piddling blog…thanks.

Your attempt to downplay the poor choice of wording by Blankenship is due to either an arrogant display of self styled superiority and thematic expertise (are you a “Blankenship whisperer?”) or laughably tries to take Blankenship’s backpedaling as fact, despite his mendacious antics elsewhere, which ironically end up providing justification that his remarks should be taken at face value. In either case, your argument wouldn’t hold up in court and to wit, doesn’t even hold up on this open court of opposing thought.

Your sardonic advice is duly noted and derisively dismissed. I have no intention of completely abandoning the CP, I simply choose to have no political dealings with them due to the poor Trumpian choice they made, which is eerily similar to the devilish dealings the GOP made when it backed Trump as POTUS. You had better believe, i am not the only one. There are others at the grassroots level planning on running their own candidates because they think the same way. Here’s an example of one: the Virginia CP.

http://www.american3rdpartyreport.com/2020/05/virginia-constitution-party-rejects.html

And here’s a citation from an article that perfectly illustrates the facts here.
Quote: “For conservatives who thought the Constitution Party might produce a credible alternative for either this election or long-term, this nomination slams the door on both possibilities. If I wanted to support someone like Trump, I’d just back Trump. After a quarter of a century trying to differentiate itself from the Republicans, the Constitution Party has instead settled for “just like the Republicans only more so.””

Here is the link. Feel free to dismiss its validity as nothing more than a “media hit piece.”

https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2020/05/graham-constitution-party-tries-to-out-trump-trump-with-blankenship-nomination/

You can and should vote for whomever you want, but the irony is you are unwilling or unable to see the sheer incongruity between a guy like Blankenship and the Constitution Party, just as the sellout/fraud conservatives did back when they first backed Trump. You’re using the same mitigating responses they did albeit from a different perspective, in order to come to terms with a candidate whom you know deep down is fundamentally flawed. You’re desperately trying to convince yourself otherwise. Have fun with that. Have fun watching the CP implode and tarnish its legacy through a cheap bit of national infamy.

Correction: I will not be reading the Herald-Dispatch article because the URL (accessed 27 May 2020) provides no content, just an invitation to pay for a subscription.

@ Wright Ryder. Re your statement “For the record wading through a nearly 2 hour and a half interview is not nearly as time consuming as researching the information i referenced”: Up to that point, you’d provided a single NPR URL. Vaguely summarizing what you’ve read on your own doesn’t count as “referencing.” You’ve now provided a second URL for the Herald-Dispatch, bringing your total references to two. (My apologies if I missed a URL somehow. I’ve scanned your posts for references repeatedly and can only find these two.) As you would have seen if you’d actually read my response rather than just gotten the gist of it and posted again yourself, I continue to read materials and view interviews related to this story, hence my allowance that “new evidence [might] come to light” or “old evidence I don’t yet know about [might] come to my attention.” This continued reading and reflection will include your voluminous collection of two references, rest assured, though I will not comment on them here but on my blog. I don’t see anything useful to be gained from interacting with you on this Nation Builder page any further.

Had you bothered to follow the link to my blog, you would have found that I’d read another news site’s summary of the “Trumpier than Trump” story. You’d also have noted that I changed my mind about the story after hearing Blankenship’s side of it. To quote from the blog post I’m preparing on this unproductive interaction, “To my way of thinking, the only fair-minded way to interpret what people say is in terms of what they explain to be their meaning. Taking people’s words and reading into them whatever one likes, or what the mainstream news media asserts they must mean, is neither fair nor moral.” Blankenship has explained the sense of his “Trumpier than Trump” to have to do with policy preferences. Are you saying I should conclude from an NPR story that he’s lying about what he means when he says something and assume he means something else? Sorry, I’m not willing to do that.

Do feel free to vote for whomever you like or to vote for no one at all. I’ve shared my reasons for how I currently plan to vote, which you needn’t take into account when choosing how you will vote. Since you clearly believe you have greater knowledge and sounder judgment than both me and those at the party convention who nominated Blankenship, your best course of action would be to just stop wasting your time talking to me and other people inferior to you. You would also do well to leave the Constitution Party altogether, if you’re even a member, since those most committed to it, those who attend its conventions and select its candidates, are clearly too far below your high intelligence level, research skills, and moral insight to deserve your allegiance.

Farewell.

Here’s another link you can ignore and continue to stay ignorant on, David. Feel free to write it off as a “media hit piece.”

https://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/justices-hear-unemployment-appeal-from-ex-maid-to-blankenship/article_c784c684-15eb-5fe1-83a9-dc476b8f2b0c.html

David:

That’s mighty hypocritical, considering you did not even bother researching the publicly available information on Blankenship before you chose fit to grace us with your sophistry and calcified banality.

For the record wading through a nearly 2 hour and a half interview is not nearly as time consuming as researching the information i referenced, so please spare me the feigned righteous indignation and concomitant hypocrisy.

“None of your four points addresses a single thing Blankenship said in his interview,” EXCEPT perhaps for the part where Blankenship HIMSELF considers himself as capable of outTrumping Trump, as i indicated, through the link i provided and which you obviously ignored. Forgot that, did you? It is abundantly obvious that you are operating on feelings and not facts, as well as projection and hyperbole.

But of course, you cite for me as “objective” evidence from Blankenship’s own website, as if that would truly stand up to critical scrutiny. Insert laughing emoji here.

Your pseudo-response to my remark about Blankenship’s harassment of female employees and inserted red herring about Trump perfectly illustrates your profound ignorance and penchant for projection since i DID NOT INDICATE it was of a sexual nature, dear boy. Reading comprehension obviously isn’t your forte, even if Trumpian-style ad hom is.

And What “hit pieces” did I cite, specifically? The one where i cited Blankenship’s self declared Trumpian declaration of outTrumping Trump? Is this another thing you’ve conjured up in your pro-Blankenship imagination in order to pathetically try and invalidate the FACTS that i shared? So what part do you specifically dispute? His lies over Mitch McConnell? His lies over the facts pertaining to his case? Time to show some evidence to back up that ipse dixit, David. You may have free time (or paid time) to watch a 2 hour and a 1/f Blankenship self promotion video, but I do not. How about you quote some truly objective articles if you want to at least give the impression of an actual intelligent debate?

Speaking of Trumpian, did you even bother to research ANY of what i said about Blankenship, or are you just going to keep pretending that doesn’t matter? I do love how you manage to insert yourself in Blankenship’s mind, in order to mitigate his “outdo Trump” remark, as if you were there to discuss it with him. Are you a paid Blankenship hack or maybe Don B in disguise? That would certainly explain things.

Your remarks reek of partisanship and hypocrisy, and are nothing more than empty ad hom used to provide an argument when facts are otherwise unavailable. You are clearly a liar just like Trump, just like Blankenship, and clearly as unethical as them both, for continuing to engage in this sophistry and smear of others and now myself, and continuing to ignore the actual FACTS i provided. It’s clear you’re not interested in real debate, since you’re only responding back with Trumpian rhetoric . There was no underlying emotion within my response, try as you might to emotionally confirm otherwise.

Give your Blankenship a rest. You’re not fooling anybody.

Typo correction: “with which I was already familiar and of which I made note of in my post” should read “with which I was already familiar and of which I made note in my post.”

@ Wright Ryder: Your tired recitation of the mainstream media’s arguments without addressing the actual content of the Blankenship interview I referenced suggests to me that you did not watch the interview or review objectively anything else to which I linked. None of your four points addresses a single thing Blankenship said in his interview, for instance; each just “refutes” my conclusions based on what the mainstream media has said, with which I was already familiar and of which I made note of in my post. So I won’t waste time trying to debate you since you have attempted a refutation of opinions arrived at based on materials of which you are ignorant or which you have chosen to ignore. The process I’ve gone through, the final decision of which your sharing of your emotions has left intact, is described @ https://bit.ly/Blankenship2020 .

On your allegation of Blankenship having engaged in “sexual harassment of female employees,” I have to admit that I’ve not even counted mere allegations against Trump (and there are some wild ones). Since Trump has bragged about adultery (as an example of his deal-making skills), and about getting away with what amounts to sexual assault (the if-you’re-famous-women-let-you-do-anything clandestine recording), my disregard of mere allegations hasn’t made me more willing to support him. I did count his executive experience in his favor, though I don’t think it is as good as Blankenship’s (Blankenship wasn’t just a debt king and eminent-domain expropriator of others’ property; he was a CPA who rose to CEO over a long period of solid work that began with youthful work in coal mines), but I did not judge this sufficient to overcome Trump’s immoral, non-conservative background.

I have to say, complaining that links to videos where Blankenship has an opportunity to give his side of the story in detail are not as good as the mainstream-media hit-pieces you draw upon strikes me as a little rich. Had you bothered to review the videos, you would have come to realize as I have that when Blankenship calls himself “Trumpier than Trump” he has certain policies in mind (some of which I definitely don’t endorse; but they aren’t what make me wholly unable to consider voting for Trump), not Trump’s morals, personal style, or campaign practices.

If you don’t have time to review lengthy videos, or if you just don’t care to give Blankenship a fair hearing since you’ve already made up your mind, that’s your prerogative. But don’t think to “correct” or “refute” someone if you’re not going to bother reviewing and understanding the bases of his current opinion. That’s just sounding off without data. Very Trumpian, if you ask me.

Though Blankenship is not the candidate I would have chosen, I’ve decided to support him. Since you’ve not provided me with any new facts; since you haven’t shown why you think Blankenship’s explanation of the mine disaster as caused by government regulators doesn’t hold water, nor even shown that you’re aware of his counter-argument; since you’ve not refuted or even addressed Blankenship’s explanation of the “cocaine Mitch” ad; and since you’ve otherwise just made vague claims about alleged Blankenship misbehavior, neither specifically identifying alleged instances or providing supporting evidence that they really occurred, I don’t see anything in your post that should make me change my mind about Blankenship.

I’ve listened to the mainstream media and to the man accused, and I’ve found in favor of the man accused. So far as I can tell from your remarks, you’ve listened to the mainstream media only, found the man they accuse guilty, then ended your investigation of the issue. This is opinion formation a la Donald J. Trump, and not something I care to imitate.

Thank you, though, for sharing your strong emotions on this issue. Some of them are the same emotions I had when I knew only one side of the story. Should new evidence come to light, or should old evidence I don’t yet know about come to my attention, some of those emotions may return to me (at which point I suppose I’ll have to simply leave my ballot blank in November).

To Mr David M Hodges: While i can respect your opinion over recent CP-related presidential developments, i consider it necessary to correct you on a few points or otherwise elucidate them as needed.

1: It can hardly be considered “objective” to cite a Youtube interview of Blankenship, in which the former states his arguments per his subjective perspective, nor can it be overlooked that the fellow in question referred to himself as being able to “outTrump Trump” (paraphrased) here, elsewhere.
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/08/609133392/coal-ceo-turned-senate-hopeful-don-blankenship-says-hes-trumpier-than-trump

2: Your mitigating response over a support for Blankenship “extensive executive experience” can just as easily apply to Trump- and look where that got us. This is a far cry from someone who has ethical/moral natural talents as a political selling point, such as with Darrell Castle.

3: Blankenship being “victimized” is abject hyperbole and a complete disconnect from actual facts. At best, his criminal negligence was mitigated by some technical errors that do absolutely nothing to invalidate the independent investigations and sheer evidence leading to his culpability under law. His history reads as a Donald Trump playbook, right down to the harassment of female employees and other unsavory antics. Tell that to the 29 miners who died under his watch.

4: As further proof of his corrupt nature, he ran outrageously mendacious ads against Mitch McConnell, describing him as “Cocaine Mitch” regarding a seizure of cocaine discovered on a ship owned by his wife and her family, using the flimsiest of evidence which was itself based on a gross embellishment (if not actual slander) of the facts pertaining to the incident. It bears mentioning i hold no particular love for McConnell, since i consider him corrupt as well. I just don’t consider him guilty of that particular Blankenship-fueled corruption.

These four points and many more left unsaid make it crystal clear that your “Blankenship differs significantly from Trump in personal style, overall demeanor, and longstanding morals” remark is entirely without merit. If you truly believe that a guy who prides himself on trying to outdo a president who has become infamous for his bombast and unethical proclivities, then you miss the entire point of the Constitution Party, specifically the “Constitution” part. People like Trump and Blankenship do not respect our rule of law, nor the people tasked to follow it, and neither deserves to be in charge of this nation, and the latter is not worthy to lead the CP in any respect. The cynical nature in me believes the CP hierarchy chose him in order to gain some cheap national publicity, and in that much at least they have succeeded. Whether this is for current/ultimate good or none remains to be seen, but considering the disgust from grassroots members/supporters of the CP, the answer to the first at least is a capitalized NO. The CP needs every last vote in order to grow to national recognition as the LP has, and this stunt will do nothing to help that. I wouldn’t be surprised if overall the CP receives less votes than they did in 2016.

God help the CO for nominating this level of Trumpian turpitude to represent a party that professes to be representative of God-given rights and values. I would have gone with Dan Cummings this year. Oh well.

Having supported Charles Kraut https://bit.ly/votedKraut , and having absorbed some of the mainstream media’s (mis)characterization of Blankenship, my initial response to news of Blankenship’s nomination was quite similar to Wright Ryder’s comments dated 18 May (“What a disgrace….”). Even as recently as 22 May, I complained @ https://bit.ly/ipr20200522comm that “my party of registration, the Constitution Party [CP], chose to nominate the candidate I most hoped it wouldn’t nominate.”

As I’ve reviewed some more objective coverage, particularly the lengthy and detailed Blankenship interview @ https://bit.ly/WPBlankenship , I’ve become considerably less upset about the nomination. A CPA with extensive executive experience who has himself been victimized by our corrupt government (rather than being someone who long took advantage of corrupt government and laws to enrich himself) does make some sense as a candidate.

While Blankenship does indeed agree with many of Trump’s (professed) policy objectives, some of which I might not endorse, it is very clear from the interview I’ve linked to above, as well as from such Blankenship speeches to the CP as the one @ https://bit.ly/DBStory2CP , that Blankenship differs significantly from Trump in personal style, overall demeanor, and longstanding morals.

What a disgrace that the CP chose to go with someone who enjoys the same kind of despicable tactics and rhetoric as Trump. Good luck with that. DB is a far cry from someone like Darrell Castle and is a lot closer to Trump than you all would care to admit. You can forget my vote this year!