November 8, 2018 6:00 AM
Morning Reads — Thursday, November 8, 2018
On this date in 1889, Montana became the 41st U.S.. Chances are, not too many people noticed.
Peaches
- Finally, a worthwhile course
- New York Times analysis of Georgia…and others
- “Voter suppression” despite high turnouts
- The cities that passed the brunch bill
- About those unused voting machines on Election Day…
Jimmy Carter
- 113 million voted, 33 flips, 110 female winners, $5.2 billino spent…
- Drama with the press and President Trump worsens
- Trump goes after GOPers who defied him
- Who is next in line to get canned?
- How Republicans failed to sell their tax law
Sweet Tea
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Jessica Szilagyi
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40,000 yo cave art is exciting but it’s not the 400,000 advertised.
Georgia Southern is filling a need in making a personal finance course available to HS students. I’ve met kids in their mid-20s with college degrees who think revenue = income, who don’t have a clue about compound interest, who think borrowing is OK and repaying debt optional. The earlier that ignorance can be addressed the better.
This is a great program.
My only criticism is the schools listed getting the program are either located in areas of Chatham and Effingham Counties with higher then average income families, or in specialized schools that have higher then normal math scores. (One is an all boys school, why is the all girls school not on the list?) Why not have at least one of the programs at Savannah High School, Beach or Effingham County High School? The last 2 women I mentored had no clue how to set up a budget or do basic banking – because their parents did not know.
High income schools get more opportunity. High math scores get the finance intro. That’s the way the world works.
Generally speaking I’d say boys are much less practical than girls, not that girls shouldn’t have a shot at the course work. There’s probably some of the ‘girls don’t do numbers well’ thinking going on too.
I wonder when Jim “Accost-Her” get his press pass back? How long until he apologizes to the young intern?
https://deadline.com/2018/11/jim-acosta-press-credential-pulled-donald-trump-white-house-1202498131/
Why should he apologize to her, when she tried to grab the mic from him, unprovoked?
Acosta was gesticulating, and accidentally hit her arm and even apologized in the moment.
Then the Press Secretary released a video that had been edited by Infowars that mis-characterized (“fake news”) the contact.
shakes head sadlyWhy anyone defends Acosta is beyond me. It looks like there are 100 people in the press conference and everyone of them is respectful and this guy acts like an arrogant ass with no respect whatsoever for the presidency.
Could you imagine this idiot doing this to Obama? He wouldn’t have a job anywhere today.
This is no attack on the press that he liars at CNN are trying to gin up. It’s a rebuke to a rude SOB.
One need not defend Acosta to point out the cavalcade of lies coming from the administration, and that the justification for their actions is fraudulent.
So you don’t like your press being aggressive in tone, but you are ok with your President being aggressive in tone?
Show us a clip where Acosta was this rude to Obama. CNN’s fawning coverage of Obama was sickening.
You do know your new favorite DoJ heart-throb Michael Whitaker drew a CNN paycheck as late as last year. Don’t you? How do you fit that in your black and white world?
Placeholder, X, placeholder…
President Trump’s unprecedented media access reveals just how important transparency is to this Administration’s success.
During today’s press conference, President Trump took 68 questions—from 35 different reporters. By contrast, former President Obama took 22 questions from 10 reporters during his press conference following the 2010 midterm elections.
CBS’ Major Garrett put it crisply: “There is more access to this president than Obama . . . We see him and interact with him and punch in questions with far more frequency.” ABC News Political Director Rick Klein agrees, saying President Trump is “above and beyond, far and away more accessible” than our previous two presidents.
If Acosta had only body-slammed that WH intern instead of merely brushing her hand away and holding onto the microphone, Trump would have praised him as “my kind of guy,” and “a great guy, tough cookie.”
All is not lost for CNN. Trump can fax over a news summary at the end of the day.
Or Noway, one of the other CNN WH correspondents who still has is secret service hard pass for the grounds can take his place in the assigned CNN rotation. Most new services major services have 3-4 reporter in their coverage pool.
You know you can just post under it “This is not real” and get on with your life, right? Were you the kid in school that tattled on everyone?
I’ll bet Ossoff is wishing he’d jumped in!
Uh oh, Ginsberg fell in court and broke some ribs…I certainly wish her no ill will at all in all seriousness… But it might be fun to watch the meltdown if Trump gets another Supreme Court pick soon!
The Libs better go out and try to find more fake victims and dream up more crap… They’ve worn out about every possible deviancy so far after borking Bork, borking Clarence Thomas and borking Kavanaugh…
Andrew that is your sick mind not mine!!
But listening to libs snivel is pretty fun and it’s an almost nonstop spectacle! Those historic wins in the Senate may come in handy after all.
A justice can step down, they don’t have to die to leave. Drop it, both of you.
DD, do making up fake quotes that are then attributed to one of your site’s posters ok?
No. You and ACP need to cool it.
ACP, that’s not what DTM said, and you know it. What good does it do to the discussion posting something like that?
…and continues with your poking of DTM when you could just let it go.
If you don’t like it, ignore it. Your job isn’t to respond to everything you find wrong/offensive/whatever. You aren’t tied to each other, and you don’t have to interact with each other.
If It’s something I need to take care of, I will.
Gee, DTM, that was a relevant and insightful response to the comment that Ossoff is wishing he’d ran in CD-6.
Recent election – check
Campaign – check
Branch of government – check
Fake victims – check
Deviancy – check
If he had run again, in this political climate, in my opinion, he would now be the Congressman-Elect. And I’ll bet, like any human being who realizes a Chance-Missed, he is swearing a little bit under his breath.
Your comment, Noway, was on subject. McBath’s campaign was much more direct in advocating gun control and in opposing Trump. Tough to say how having lost, and either keeping the campaign style he previously employed or changing it from what he had used would have fared.
Also, DTM… this has nothing to do with the thread. It should be its own thread.
Either this was a mistake and you posted it in the wrong place, or you were being an ass. Which is it?
I am pleading ignorance here! What was posted in the wrong place? The Ginsberg story? Where should I post something like that?
If there is news item right now, where should anyone post it?
If I heard that there is a potential new AG… is that a new thread? If so, where do you start a new thread?.
Go waaaaayyyy back to the top of the comment section. It has a nice new shiny comment box just waiting for you…
You posted it as a reply to Rep. Karen Handel conceding. You should have started another comment thread.
You create a comment to main article, not someone’s comment…
I actually think McBath’s low key approach was better suited than all the attention Ossoff would have drawn to the race. I think the GOP got lulled into thinking this was a safe race.
In my opinion this race was not about Handel or McBath. This race was about Trump. The republicans in this district are not the MAGA crowd. I think McBath is ripe for the pickin in 2020.
Two years is a lifetime. Prediction: Trump won’t run again,
On Trump’s tax returns….”Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives…the secretary of the Treasury shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” 26 USC 6103(f)(1), or as Noway and DTM will crow after the Committee receives Trump’s returns, another Trump promise kept.
Trump’s tax return…okay waste 2 years going over that…then what? How does that help the average American? Why do you think he has hired a battery of top tax attorneys and CPAs ?
Why don’t they find out why a fake dossier paid for by Hillary was used to spy on the opposition, lie to FISA courts and have multiple levels of government COLLUDE to spread lies, try to frame and ruin the opposition?
That’s exactly what Trump’s new AG will do on Day One after he/she is confirmed. And them +3 new Senators (including Rick Scott once Nelson’s tantrum is over) will help greatly!!!! Thanks, Diane! LMAO!
Because we need to know if his decisions are colored by his financial entanglements. Why would anyone be against transparent, open government?
Antifa Mob at Tucker’s house…”We know where you live…” Wow!!! Pure, unadulterated trash.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/08/they-were-threatening-me-my-family-tucker-carlsons-home-targeted-by-protesters/?utm_term=.c5f79670617d
This is part of the promise the democrats made to return to civility after the elections were over.
They stepped off the public right of way and started breaking up the front of the building. All actual crimes. Tucker will have camera’s. They will be arresting them.
“They were paid protestors to make Democrats look bad!” (laughs hysterically, because we have to hear stupid things like this everyday). Humor. ‘kay?
Shouldn’t Rosenstein have been the go-to guy since Sessions resigned? How is it that the Sessions’ Chief of Staff now has the reigns? Where is that individual in the Chain of Command?
A great question, with a long answer. Please read it all the way through.
The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 allows the following people to be chosen as an Acting Officer:
Whitaker falls under (c).
HOWEVER. 28 USC 508 reads:
So this would seem to be in conflict – because the DAG is supposed to immediately assume the Duties of the AG if the AG is Unable.
HOWEVER HOWEVER.
The CRS issued a report this year in which they acknowledge that statutes concerning vacancies exist, and courts have tried to harmonize this in a way that both statutes provide options, not requirements. Please see p. 14 of the report. This would give credence to the idea that both 28 USC 508 and the FVRA are options, and Trump needs only say he’s invoking the FVRA to make the appointment pass muster.
HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER.
The CRS report also says that it’s up to Congress to make this reconciliation explicit, and calls out the DAG role in specific: (ibid, p. 17)
So, in summary, as a non-lawyer:
It’s not fully resolved, but the FVRA and court history seem to give Trump the power to choose which option to take, and he has taken one available to him, bypassing the natural successor in favor of one more to his personal liking.
(self-reply, because edit timed out:)
The above is my analysis. Here is an even longer analysis (not mine):
See my response as well; my guess is that he chose Whitaker for solely political reasons, he doesn’t like Rosenstein, and that Steven Miller put Whitaker’s name in front of Trump’s pen.
So I take that to mean that Trump thinks the Mueller thing will be resolved within 210 days.
Actually if you read the President’s most hated rag they pointed out a month ago that the President had already approached Whitaker while Sessions’ body was still warm. No doubt because of his exhibitions in the press to see justice served in the Russia probe: [/sarc]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-talked-with-jeff-sessionss-own-chief-of-staff-about-replacing-him-as-attorney-general/2018/10/10/e010211c-ccc5-11e8-a3e6-44daa3d35ede_story.html
Obstruction, would a turd by any other name smell as bad?
“How is it that the Sessions’ Chief of Staff now has the reigns?”
If you believe the NYT opinion piece linked by Ellynn and written by Mr. Kellyanne and another lawyer he can’t constitutionally:
Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional
The president is evading the requirement to seek the Senate’s advice and consent for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and the person who will oversee the Mueller investigation.
By Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III
We cannot tolerate such an evasion of the Constitution’s very explicit, textually precise design. Senate confirmation exists for a simple, and good, reason. Constitutionally, Matthew Whitaker is a nobody. His job as Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff did not require Senate confirmation. (Yes, he was confirmed as a federal prosecutor in Iowa, in 2004, but Mr. Trump can’t cut and paste that old, lapsed confirmation to today.) For the president to install Mr. Whitaker as our chief law enforcement officer is to betray the entire structure of our charter document.
Tuesday was a decent night, but as happy as it could have been because of disappointment in the bigotry and proud ignorance of so many Americans. Yeah Kobach lost, but not by much. You’re kidding yourself if you think the views of hardly any Trumpers can be influenced by conversation, fact-checks, or charismatic young Democratic candidates. They’re reactionary, ignorant, vindictive and revel in it, and will vote for horrible candidates to prove it.
That Tuesday night feeling now comes to mind every time someone tells me that the key to moving forward is decorum and reaching across the aisle. I’m too old, and with the GOP leading the lowering of the bar for 25 years now, that I’ve given up on trying to uphold it. The only way to beat ‘em is to outwork, outfight, and out-organize ‘em. That means taking out moderates, nearly all of whom are complicit, if that’s all that can be achieved. Trumpers are not going to be won over and they will continue to prove that every chance they get.
Dave, it sounds like you are describing liberals today. Reactionary, vindictive…sound about right? Everyone they disagree with is a bad name…there is a ton of calling the kettle black don’t you think?
I hope you watch the Kavanaugh hearings…. Just walk down the street with a Kanye hat….
Yep. I think we have passed the tipping point. No one is going to be the first to back down now. Both sides feel like they are fighting for their very lives. It’s going to be a street fight for years to come.
I having been telling people for years now that as long as we have elections we have a chance to make corrections. But the electoral process is so obviously messed up now that even that is not a fail safe. That was the last hope. Fascism is here.
“Democrats won roughly 50 percent of the vote in North Carolina, their best performance in almost a decade. But despite an extraordinary year, they netted just three of the state’s 13 congressional seats .”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/08/how-gerrymandering-kept-democrats-winning-even-more-seats-tuesday/?utm_term=.75985d7332ea
“in Ohio: While Democrats won 48 percent of the popular vote there, up from 43 percent in 2016, they collected only 25 percent of the state’s House seats – the same four seats they have held since 2012.”
(Wisconsin:) “.Democrats swept all of the statewide offices there, but did not make any gains in the assembly or the state senate, which remain overwhelmingly Republican.”
I’m buying extra lottery tickets so I can move to Portugal hopefully sooner rather than later. Y’all can have it.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Trump was the backlash against America’s first black president. There will be an equal and opposite reaction to Trump’s extreme governance.
It’s not as bad as you make it out to be, America survived a very bloody civil war accompanied by the assasination of a sitting president. Hamilton and Burr fought a duel to the death. The sixties saw several political assasinations, a war and civil up heaval. But….we survived!
Gregs, Trump was not the reaction to the first BLACK president. It was a reaction to the country’s most radical liberal president in history. Remember Herman Cain was leading the republican polls before he was taken out by the press. I had a sticker on my car that said Honkees for Herman! Herman LOVED those stickers. Ask him!
That may be true in physics, but not in politics, or ethics, or sociology.
If that were the case, there would be no hope for justice or equality ever advancing.
Mandela said no man is born hating another person, they must be taught. But in this country, the hate has taken root and I think it will be a long time before it is unlearned.
edit: Just to add- It’s been 150 years since the Civil War and some aren’t over it yet. But now we have a whole ‘nother realm of hate that has been sanctioned, and apparently is pretty widely accepted.
The things you’re complaining about have always been true. People have hated since the beginning of time and they’re not going to stop until (depending on what you believe) the end of the world as we know it. My point is that we can lament or even run away from hate but you really can’t get away from it unless you’re going into isolation and then you’d be there.
History ebbs and flows. This time is bad but if you review history its been worse lots of times. This country doesn’t have a “golden age” when everybody loved everybody else. What has happened now it that we’ve elected a president who appeals to the lowest, most base instinct in everyone. His default is to attack and insult anyone he deems different from his target demo (white men over 50)
He is the alpha white man whose main theme is white nationalism. He wants an America that is whiter and more male dominated. There will be a strong backlash against this. You’re already seeing more women running and winning and more “others” running and winning. More people are rejecting his brand. His followers are a small group who are amplified by a loud echo chamber.
Re-read this post in 2020 and see if I’m not right.
The disturbing thing, though, is how many people respond to that. You would think that after Hitler, after Mussolini, after Stalin, after Joseph McCarthy, after MLK and JFK and RFK, that more people would realize what is happening.
Yeah, but most of the people alive today didn’t live through those atrocities and they get their news from social media or in the case of Trumps supporters , Fox News, Breitbart, Inforwars, Rush, Ann, Mark and Randy.
His small support group is a lot like ISIS. They say and do outrageous things to prove how big and bad they are but the truth is they feel marginalized by progress and are nostalgic for a day when they ruled and everybody else just went along.
Let’s say I’m close to the premise of this article. Remember how republicans were so upset because Obama wouldn’t say Islamic Radicals? Well I asign no virtue to democrats at all, they’re just the only game in town. I do feel we have to call Trump and the trumpets what he says they are “white nationalist” who are nostalagic for Archie Bunker. “Those were the days” by Archie and Edith.
https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/archie-and-edith-bunker/those-were-the-days-theme-to-all-in-the-family
These days aren’t coming back because we won’t let them. We have to learn to live together or die apart.
Guys, don’t fall into the same Democrat and media racial agitprop trap as so many other Americans have. Trump was NOT “backlash against America’s first black president.” All that fallacy does is create animosity among people of color against anybody with white skin. It’s divisive rhetoric at a time when we need unity.
Trump was the result of decades of far-leftist people of all colors, including white, running our government into the ground with the help of big-money lobbying groups and wealthy globalists who didn’t put American society first in their actions. Millions of people woke up and realized the political class was giving our country away by destroying jobs here and shipping them overseas. They realized we’d been lied to about the millions of illegal aliens (legally correct term) that had been brought into our neighborhoods, towns and states without even checking to see whether they had communicable diseases or could even communicate in public discourse. People realized they were being bled dry financially with taxes to pay for more and more government programs of all sorts and bureaucracies created to administer. They realized that public education had been dumbed down to primarily social studies, very little math and science. And on. And on. With American society crumbling into many divisive groups, instead of e pluribus unum.
Voting for Trump was all about political philosophy for the millions of conservative and centrist Americans who put him into office. They didn’t and don’t care about his skin color or his private life — they care about meaningful change to bring America back in sync with what the founding fathers created. He was brave enough to stand up for common sense things that liberals had decreed verboten in the public square, and they had intimidated conservatives and moderates from even discussing.
Liberal fascism had taken control of our nation. Trump gave people hope that yoke could be removed from America. But the liberal fascists have proven they will not let go without a mean and dirty fight. Not only via their wholly-operated media that contorts the 1st amendment into being unrecognizable, but also mob violence in the streets and on campuses. They are rabid that President Trump or anyone had the courage to stand up to them on behalf of ordinary Americans, who mostly abhor both the left and right extremes.
Sally, I agree with some of your point from a perception basis, but have “they” figured out they’ve been scammed and will never get what “they” want?
I’m not sure, but I guess they figured it was worth giving a try to maybe get some improvement. Or at least shake up the establishment. After decades of downward spiral, it was pretty clear that what we were doing wasn’t working.
ACP, it is abundantly clear that you and I will rarely, if ever, agree on anything other than how great surfing is in Hawaii.
About the caravans — now the Mexican government says there are 3 of them heading for the US Border, the biggest one now in Mexico City and two others of a few thousand each taking other routes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/caravan-migrants-trump-1.4897562
Here’s another article from Time magazine a week or so ago:
http://time.com/5430436/migrant-caravan-mexico-guatemala-border/
And I’m sure you can find more coverage if you look for it. I believe it’s conservatively about 10,000 cumulatively now, unknown and unvetted people determined to crash the southern border of our country. Are you comfortable with that?
And you really need to stop with the agitprop, wrongly calling POTUS antisemitic. His daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren are Jewish. He’s the only president to my knowledge who has been to the Wall and prayed. He’s the president who has now moved the US Embassy to the capitol city, Jerusalem. Your hatred of the man doesn’t make falsehoods into truth. Just let it go.
About the violence you referenced, you do know that the Charlottesville was organized by Obama operative Jason Kessler, of Occupy Wallstreet fame. Definitely not a right-winger. I can’t speak for the Canadian lunatic, but the guy in Florida who mailed all that crud has been certified crazy, according to all the law enforcement spokesmen I’ve seen in the news about that. And the despicable shooter in Pittsburgh is a lunatic Democrat who publicly spewed hatred of Trump.
Peace out, bro. I’m headed to dinner.
voting a dead pimp into office speaks volumes.
Handel will probably be given an ambassadorship by Trump. Probably a NATO position. Clinton gave the one-term congressman, Don Johnson, who Norwood initially beat, a similar post.
I don’t see it. She’s not a diplomat or a big contributor or a heavy Trump booster or Mrs Newt Gingrich.
The current ambassador to NATO is former Senator-from-Revlon Kay Bailey Hutchinson.
Understand but there are several “ambassador” level positions at NATO. Not just the top-level one. Sub-designated ambassadors. Hey, it’s a title.
Point taken. Just thinking out loud. The Senate 2020 thing, hmmmm, unsure for Handel. Stacey on the other hand, good Lord. She’s just run a massive statewide effort. Perdue should be literally quaking in his boots at that specter. If she runs against him…she wins. Period.
Here is a life lesson this UGA democratic ethic employee is teaching the kids. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11494
We’re talking about gerrymandering, mass shootings, AG firings, and freedom of the press, and what trips your trigger is a website editor in the philosophy department at UGA picking up litter.
::shakes head::
I personally pulled down a sign on Monday morning in a public right of way. It was over 3 feet tall and blocked the line of sight looking from my driver side to the roadway for on coming traffic.
I didn’t pick it up. I laid it down flat next to posts. It was 3 foot high, maybe over 5 feet long. Didn’t fit in my car. Left the posts up. Sign was gone by Wednesday morning. Posts still there. Whoever put it up made sure you could read it from the road, but completely miss judged the line of sight for left turning traffic.
Here is a blog post about the voter suppression trope. It is based on a GeorgiaPol comment. https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/we-were-lied-to/
A rating of hospitals is out.
Piedmont, Emory, Kennestone look good. Grady, not so much.
http://www.hospitalsafetygrade.org/search?findBy=state&zip_code=&city=&state_prov=GA&hospital=
Kellyanne’s hubby is not down with her boss’s AG placeholder…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opinion/trump-attorney-general-sessions-unconstitutional.html
This administration has proven over and again that the Constitution is an obstacle to their governance, not a guide.
Thanks for the link.
Sinema has taken the lead in AZ-Sen.
Combined with a FL recount, Republicans might only net one Senate seat.
Deleted.