May 11, 2018 6:20 AM
HomeMorning ReadsMorning Reads for Friday, May 11, 2018

Morning Reads for Friday, May 11, 2018

By  Morning Reads  39 Comments

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Ginny

Get off my lawn.

39 Comments
  1. John Vestal

    And, by next year’s Mother’s Day, your mama shouldn’t have to wait until 12:30p to have a mimosa, bloody mary, or a shot of brown liquor (make it a double…you weren’t always the angel you are now) with her brunch. Local referendums to come.

    And, if you’re putting together any list of brunches in the ATL and *not* including Local Three, you’re not doing it right.

    Still waiting for ‘superasymetry’ to start trending.

    • Lea Thrace

      The ShAmy is permanent now!

  2. Dave Bearse

    “A White House official mocked Sen. John McCain’s brain cancer diagnosis at an internal meeting on Thursday, a day after the Arizona Republican announced his opposition to President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel. Special assistant Kelly Sadler made the derisive comments during a closed-door White House meeting of about two-dozen communications staffers on Thursday morning. “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” Sadler said, according to a source familiar with the remarks at the meeting.”

    http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387182-white-house-official-mocked-dying-mccain-at-internal-meeting

    The sources in “The Hill” column said that Sadler’s remark was a joke though. That WH correspondent’s dinner comedian can’t hold a candle to WH humor. Keep it classy, GOP!

  3. Benevolus

    Not too impressed with that story about Amazon.
    The cost of living has apparently risen pretty dramatically in Seattle and they are trying to address that by having the companies that most contribute to the problem help solve it. Now I’m not sure how collaborative the city council there has been, but the solution probably needs to look a lot like what they are doing, they just need to negotiate.
    I am impressed that they have a socialist on their council!

    • Benevolus

      I just want to clarify in case it’s not obvious: Raising the “standard of living” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but in a capitalist economy it pretty much automatically is accompanied by an increase in the “cost of living”, which leaves some people behind, especially when it comes to affordable housing. This is a responsibility that must be addressed by government. People being forced to choose between moving to places where there aren’t jobs or living in a homeless shelter in a city doesn’t help anyone.

    • Dave Bearse

      “[Seattle’s head tax on jobs in the city is] also a heavy handed threat that should remind Georgia and other states yearning for Amazon’s HQ2 project what they’d be dealing with.”

      The point of the column actually seems a bit turned around to me. The GaGOP would never allow Atlanta to impose such a tax. Atlanta would simply have to suck it up at its own expense. We’ve seen how the GaGOP revoked a $40M a year tax break for the state’s largest and arguably best private employer over a few thousand dollars in airfare discounts to NRA convention attendees, many or most of which weren’t even Georgia residents.

    • alpha male

      Yep. I heartily endorse this tax in Seattle.Because if it passes it will eventually mean that Amazon HQ2, whether in Atlanta or elsewhere, will become HQonly.

      • Benevolus

        So how do you think an increasing homeless population should be dealt with? There are still going to be jobs that only pay near minimum wage and those people need to live somewhere too.

  4. Dave Bearse

    Nothing like Dems and McCain not promptly approving the nomination to run the CIA of someone in charge of a foreign location where secret torture occurred, arranged for the destruction of documentation of it, and can’t bring herself to state torture is immoral, to get the GOP in a huff.

    Fox News Military Analyst Thomas McInerney: “Well she can’t use [torture] anymore because we have determined in Congress that it’s not legal. The fact is, is John McCain — it worked on John. That’s why they call him ‘Songbird John.’

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/387132-fox-military-analyst-says-torture-worked-on-mccain-they-call

    The tone and talk flow from the top. Trump said “[McCain’s] not a war hero.” And that he likes guys that don’t get captured.

    It’s been clear since last year that a plurality of Trump supporters voted for Trump because of his racism, crassness and low character, not in spite of it. Pride in that is a feature, not a bug, of Trump supporters. Tolerance of it is a feature, not a bug, of the GOP establishment.

  5. Dave Bearse

    “Days after the US president walked away from a three-year-old deal that mandated rigorous inspections, senior administration officials said monitoring should continue regardless.

    Known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal between Tehran and major world powers forces Iran to open any site to inspectors within 24 days and introduced 24-hour remote surveillance at some sites. […]

    Making his withdrawal announcement on Tuesday, Trump pilloried the accord for lacking mechanisms to “prevent, detect, and punish cheating” or provide immediate access to suspicious military sites.

    Still, the White House is demanding those inspections, however imperfect, continue under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.

    “We expect Iran will continue to implement the Additional Protocol and cooperate with the IAEA whether or not the JCPOA remains in place,” one senior administration official said.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-says-iran-nuclear-inspections-must-continue-officials-181314952.html

    Inspections in accordance with the terms an agreement being discarded because its inspections can’t prevent or detect cheating are a waste of time and money. Trump is a moron. Rex Tillerson couldn’t help but privately call him one.

    The negotiations with North Korea are fore-ordained to be a smashing success by the constellation of sycophants surrounding Trump.

    • Benevolus

      I don’t understand how this is supposed to play out.
      We back out of the Iran deal and impose sanctions, presumably to coerce them to make a different deal. But the rest of the world doesn’t go along with us on the sanctions, so we either have to sanction them too or our sanctions have minimal effect.

      Are we really going to sanction Europe? I can’t imagine. So Europe and China and Russia will continue to try to keep Iran non-nuclear and trade with them, and it will be up to them to intervene if Iran screws up. But we would probably intervene too just because MAGA.

      So if Iran reinstates it’s nuclear program everybody else will probably sanction them too and then it would be a race to see if the sanctions hurt them enough to make them renegotiate before they get a nuke. But I don’t see why you couldn’t just renegotiate with the existing agreement in place. Why throw it out? How does that improve our position? And it is no certain thing that Russia and China would sanction them anyway.

      If Iran continues to follow the agreement then we have effectively merely taken ourselves out of the game, with no leverage and no say-so, except the possibility that we will really antagonize our allies with possible sanctions, which is really unthinkable, isn’t it? But if we don’t force them to impose sanctions too then the whole thing is less than worthless.

      What is Trump betting on here? Is he really expecting Europe to just follow us even if they think it is stupid? And even if they do, what about Russia and China? Iran could probably do OK with just them as allies. And how does going through all this put us in a better position than just negotiating new agreements with the existing one in place? That was always going to be the case anyway.

      I don’t get it.

  6. Ellynn

    I think I mentioned China becoming the oer layer in the Middle East earlier this week…

    https://www.axios.com/china-middle-east-influence-iran-deal-crude-oil-e8198eda-a1dc-4062-8ee1-0fff1e0392bb.html

  7. Noway2016

    Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the heart and soul of the Democrat Party!!
    http://www.theamericanmirror.com/rep-waters-offended-by-call-for-unity-i-resent-making-america-great-again/

    • bethebalance

      And this quote that she was reacting against captures the ignorance of some Repubs:
      “We are trying to make sure we are making America great every day in every way and the best way to do that is to stop talking about discrimination and start talking about the nation.”
      As if discrimination doesn’t exist in the nation. Or you can just move past it without addressing it.
      I know it’s tough for some folks to get- it requires setting aside your own experiences ( Like – you may not be racist, but this isn’t about you), and listening, and believing and empathizing with other folks when they relate of their experiences. And then it requires a moral compass to address it as necessary- until it is actually addressed so that folks can actually move on.
      But pretending you can just move on- that’s ignorant.

      • bethebalance

        And it was all in an attempt to roll back some anti-discrimination rules. The Repub Congressman couldn’t say: Let’s just roll back antidiscrimination laws; it will make lenders more money.
        Because that sounds bad. And is bad. But that was the real point.
        The rest was the veneer of spin.

      • Noway2016

        Let’s see…Will it be Sanders/Waters or Warren/Waters 2020?

        • bethebalance

          I am guessing Kamala Harris is in the mix.

          • alpha male

            And some of you wonder why Trump is president. SMDH

          • bethebalance

            Backlash against principles of socioeconomic fairness was certainly part of it.
            Also a preference for confrontation?

          • Noway2016

            We can only pray that is the case…

        • downthemiddle

          I thought the ticket was Stormy-Hogg….I guess Warren/ Sanders is at least socialist enough…Hillary’s latest excuse was she was not socialist enough and was penalized for it.
          Should be a scintillating platform of tax increases, gun grabbing and misery.

  8. chamblee54

    https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/killed-by-police-the-end/
    The chamblee54 series about police killings is winding down. It is interesting little feedback this series has generated, considering the amount of hysteria about certain well publicized cases.

    • Gregs

      “Killed by police” might not generate comments unless people feel the killing was unjust. The series seems to confirm that most shootings are just. No one would comment on a series documenting successful take off and landings at Hartsfield, but would comment on a series showing an unusual number of crashes.

    • Benevolus

      Well I have appreciated it 54. I just didn’t want to comment as I thought our host might not appreciate the regular link to your own space. But I may be wrong about that. If you had picked a particular event and commented on that as well as providing the link it might have generated more interest.
      I think that is valuable information your are reporting. I hope someone picks up the ball.

      • Noway2016

        But isn’t it you, Mewler, who gives money to fund abortions of innocent minority children? Maybe think before you post. I know it’s a stretch but…

    • Will Durant

      Trolling, trolling, trolling… but what the hell, I’ve already caught a 16″ brown today.

      I don’t know that he is the smartest, but I will give the devil his due. Anyone who could pull off an invasion of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and use it as the provocation is certainly not a dummy. Also getting away with selecting himself as the VP, spending the 1st term as the de facto President… He’s right up there with Machiavelli, Goebbels, or even Ted Kaczynski in the evil genius category. Or if you prefer fictional he personally took delight in being compared to Palpatine, AKA Darth Sidious.

  10. Noway2016

    No need to thank me!
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb5fxqRWyLQ

    • Will Durant

      You are certainly correct that there is no reason to thank you for providing a link with no context.

      • Noway2016

        Did you watch that video? Did you hear that crowd? Just as in 2016, everyone of them will vote in November. Every one. Now imagine TGM holding a rally like that once a week until Labor Day! After Labor Day, twice a week – minimum!!! I actually expect to see T-shirts that say Trump/Pence 2018 before too long. Great political gimmick! Folks will love it!!! Tell me, do you use Tums or Mylanta?

        • Will Durant

          “You must be standing in a hole boy. Everything I say goes Zoom, right over your head.”

          As I’ve stated before and as it was once forbidden here or maybe just at PP; I don’t click on links without proper context being given. Or Infowars in any context.

  12. Noway2016

    More honors for – The Great Man!
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/top-israeli-football-team-adds-12529965

  13. Noway2016

    This just in: French high school student David Porc is on a crusade to rid France of all forms of cutlery. Socialists swoon!

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