29 thoughts on “RED WHITE (and blue)”

  1. the guardian’s take on FL and AZ election results:
    A liberal Florida Democrat has pulled off an upset in the state’s primary for governor, while President Donald Trump’s favoured candidate cruised to victory for the Republicans, setting up a polarising Midterms showdown in the nation’s fiercest political battleground.
     
    The mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum, who would be the state’s first black governor if elected on the Democratic ticket, and Republican Ron DeSantis, a US House representative for Florida’s 6th district, both defeated more moderate opponents aligned with their parties’ establishment.
     
    Gillum is his party’s third black gubernatorial nominee this campaign season, after Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Ben Jealous in Maryland. His victory comes as Democrats have elevated an increasingly diverse field, of female, black and Muslim candidates. The slate of candidates heading into the fall campaign is seen as a manifestation of the party’s resistance in the racially charged atmosphere of the Trump era.
     
    In Arizona, Rep Martha McSally fended off a pair of conservative challengers to carry the Republican Senate primary to fill the seat vacated by retiring Sen Jeff Flake. That race was shadowed by the death of John McCain, a towering figure who represented Arizona in the Senate for six terms. The state governor, Doug Ducey, will name McCain’s replacement after the senator’s funeral.
    […continues…]

  2. excerpt from wapo on FL race:

    […]
    Gillum seems happy to play up the contrast.

     
    “When people see my face and hear our story, there’s a different level of passion and drive to go out and vote,” he said in a recent interview. “And it’s not just the color of my skin, it’s my lived experience, coming from a working-class family. Voters have an appetite for a candidate who is going to reflect them.”
     
    Gillum was born in a working-class neighborhood near Miami, the fifth of seven children. His mother drove a school bus and his father was a construction worker, and on days when he didn’t get on with a crew, he would sell fruits and vegetables on street corners.
    […]
    He went to Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, stayed after graduation and in 2003, at the age of 23, became the youngest person elected to the city commission. In 2014, he was elected mayor.
     
    Gillum, who is married with three children, said that Trump’s election pushed him to run for governor this year.
     
    He said the Democratic Party, which has not won a gubernatorial race in Florida since 1994, had repeatedly failed to win because it put up “Republican-lite” candidates who failed to excite the state’s growing population of minorities and young people.

     
    “We can’t do any worse than they’ve done and the stakes are too high to try their way again,” he said.
     
    Gillum now will top the ticket for a state party that has long looked to more centrist candidates in the tradition of the late Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.
    […]

    On Tuesday night, Gillum presented himself as an unusual Democrat with the ability to bring together various factions of his party because he had received Sanders’s support even after he had backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
    Asked about the chance to be Florida’s first black governor, Gillum said, “I’m trying to be the next governor of Florida. I just happen to be black.”
     
    Yet Gillum has also drawn parallels between his candidacy and that of Abrams, noting that the two could make a statement in the South.
     
    “The same part of this country that was built by people of color may soon be led by people of color,” he told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “That, in the shadow of Donald Trump in Washington, would be poetic justice in this country.”

  3. While in Florida past six weeks I saw Gillum’s excellent TV ad showing up more and more, definitely got the sense he had the closing momentum.

    DeSantis certainly made himself the Trumpiest of all.

     

  4. Trump warns evangelicals of ‘violence’ if GOP loses in the midterms https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/28/politics/trump-evangelicals-midterms/index.html

    Oh, brother.   Notice he refers to Christianity as “your religion.”   What he really wants is to have fools bow to the alter of Trump.   Anyone who actually follows Christ will not become an adherent of the personality-based religion of Trump.

    Let’s hope their hearts and minds are open to the truth about this snake.

    Somebody draw a comic with Trump as the snake promising folks stuff/threatening them.   He is lower than a snake’s belly.

  6.  

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) remembers his friend Sen. John McCain on the floor of the Senate

     

  7. memorable part of Lindsey’s eulogy to his friend starts at 7:33 minutes in when he speaks of
    ” john taught us how to lose”

  8. and Hillary’s recollection starting at 4:48 also underscores his character, unique and almost non-existent now in critterville

    Hillary Clinton sits down with CNN’s Dana Bash to share her favorite memories of Sen. John McCain.

  9. another day another twit scandal

    usatoday:
    WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump met twice with government officials who decided to build a new FBI headquarters across Pennsylvania Avenue from Trump International Hotel, according to a watchdog report Monday.
    But the General Services Administration’s inspector general said officials refused to disclose what Trump said in the meetings before and after the decision to keep the FBI offices located near the hotel.
    GSA revised its plans Feb. 12 to recommend razing the existing building and erecting a new facility at the site. The agency’s previous plan, which had been debated for years, had been to create a new campus in the Washington suburbs.
    The agency’s inspector general, Carol Ochoa, reported that GSA Administrator Emily Murphy met with Trump and others in the Oval Office on Jan. 24 to discuss the project. The “free flow discussion” was about demolishing the J. Edgar Hoover Building and rebuilding at the site, Murphy told the inspector general.
    Murphy held a second meeting with Trump and others about the project June 15. The topics for discussion included congressional pressure for a new campus and funding challenges for the project estimated at $3.3 billion, the inspector general said.
    But GSA officials refused to disclose what Trump said at the meetings, on advice of White House counsel, and could only disclose who attended, the topics of discussion and the outcomes of meetings with the president, according to the inspector general.
    The report said the refusal was based on a claim of executive privilege. But Robert Borden, GSA’s chief of staff, denied any claim of executive privilege in a written reply Aug. 10. The refusal was based on instructions not to disclose information about confidential meetings between the president and his senior advisors, Borden wrote.

    Trump’s business dealings have long raised concerns among government watchdogs because he didn’t divest his holdings in the Trump Organization when he took office.
    Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said he requested the inspector-general report as the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee because of concerns that changing plans would cost more.
    The FBI projected for the inspector general that it would cost $516 million more than estimated to build on the existing site because of non-construction costs, according to the 36-pagereport. The costs include relocating 2,300 of 10,600 workers to other offices in Huntsville, Alabama; Pocatello, Idaho; Quantico, Virginia; and Clarksburg, Virginia.
    “Unfortunately, this report substantiates my concerns on all counts,” Connolly said.

    […continues…]

  11. Well, speaking of red…

    SIESTA KEY, Fla. — Even as she sat under the brilliant Florida sun, her toes covered in sugar-white sand, Alex McShane wasn’t exactly enjoying her summer vacation. Florida’s worst red tide in more than a decade had turned the aqua-blue surf to a rusty dull brown.

    And then there were the lifeguards. They were wearing gas masks.

    With no mask of her own, McShane, 24, wore a frown. Her eyes itched, she coughed, and the stench was giving her a headache — all telltale symptoms of the monster algal bloom spanning the southern Gulf Coast. It is killing untold numbers of marine animals from Bradenton to Naples, where rotting fish still lay scattered on a beach behind Gov. Rick Scott’s seaside mansion, even after a cleanup.

    As the outbreak nears the year mark, with no sign of easing, it’s no longer a threat to just marine life. Business owners in the hardest-hit counties report they have lost nearly $90 million and have laid off about 300 workers because of the red tide and a separate freshwater algal bloom in the state’s largest lake. Together, the two blooms have caused a sharp drop in tourism.

    So Poobah, has the red tide decimated the local seafood and shellfish industry in FL?

  12. I listened to an expert on the Everglades in a panel at the Mississippi Book Festival. He said the red tide algae bloom in the Everglades is bullshit. Literally. It is the runoff of the burgeoning Florida cattle industry, so when you bite into your next steak, consider that manatees are dying in the Everglades because of that industry, but more than that, consider all of the GMO feed corn sprayed with lakes of poisonous chemicals that are killing off insects and small animals across the planet, and quite possibly us. I quit eating meat 20 years ago, but that won’t change anything, but if I could convince two people to eat fewer animals and they in turn do the same, there’s a possible difference on the horizon.

    –Charles Branson, Douglasville, Ga.

  15. Patd, according to a FL Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission report there are 6 counties in SW FL that are affected presently.  The Everglades bloom Sturg mentioned is of particular concern because of the lack of turn over of the water in the ‘glades – It will prolly be around much longer than the blooms in the Gulf.  I’m just glad to hear that it hasn’t made it’s way to the panhandle and fucked up the fish and oyster industry there – I loves my Gulf oysters.

  16. If Lindsay Graham wants to honor his friend John McCain he could start by acting like something other than a carpet salesman

  17. The military lets IMPOTUS use them and doesn’t have the guts to stand up to him when he cuts benefits to vets and cuts programs for at risk vets.    And the disrespect to McCain –vets who spoke out  not that lame ass Kelley or any of the other assholes sitting around waiting for the military coup

  20. Has anybody been following McSally’s career? She was a trailblazer during her military service; I can’t see her breaking faith with the human aspects of her life as an Air Force leader. If she is not keeping the faith, I will actively support her opponent, otherwise I’ll be passive unless she turns on Trump. Then I’ll support her example.

  22. pogo, bet after he finds out what mcgahn really told and provided to mueller during the 30 hour interrogation, twit’s tune will change from this quote from the story you linked:

    Trump appointed McGahn in November 2016, calling him a “brilliant legal mind” and a man with “excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law.”

     

    wasn’t that how he also described sessions upon appointment?

  24. Oh, I don’t know, sturg, I think he’ll desperately need a lawyer.  Kavanaugh wouldn’t have a hand in any criminal charges against SFB until after he is out of office, and then it would be as a result of his appeal of the conviction(s) for obstruction of justice or whatever, and Kavanaugh would probably have to recuse himself, leaving a 4-4 Court rendering a 4-4 ruling, so the conviction would stand.

    patd, I suspect you’re right about SFB’s opinion of McGahn – if SFB holds a high opinion of him after he leaves that would be the exception.  After all, after anyone leaves the WH SFB either says they were in his orbit for only a short period, that they were crappy “employees” or he really can hardly remember them.

  25. Well, due to meetings and other things at work I missed all the of news.  When arriving home I put on the rerun of today’s bicycle race 2018 Vuelta a España .  I have no idea what SFB has done today.  I expect a lot of stupid output, as is normal for an abnormal thing.  I have no idea what today’s news is anyway as I did not listen to it on the radio or read it online.  I am starting charcoal briquettes which were underwater for a while, thereby making them less happy to burn.

  26. Well, we’ll see hard RW nut v. hard left candidate in the FL governor’s race in November. If I lived there I’d vote for Gillum (obviously) but I’m not convinced he’ll win. He won’t have the Cuban vote or theretiree vote. Tough hill to climb.

  27. pogo, but he will have the Hillary, Puerto Rican, non-Cuban Hispanic, eco-greens AND Bernie voters in addition to most if not entire black vote.  I bet bill nelson is delighted to ride Gillum’s coat tails election day.  hopefully Gillum will persuade rep. gwen graham (sen. bob’s daughter) to be his running mate.

  28. wonder if this request by the prosecutors and the earlier one by the defense aren’t really for more time to negotiate a cooperation plea.

     

    (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday asked a judge for more time to decide whether to retry former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on 10 criminal charges that a jury deadlocked on last week.

    Wednesday was Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deadline to decide but the government said that Manafort lawyers’ request for a 30-day extension to file their post-trial motions made it difficult to meet that deadline.
    The prosecutors said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, that they would like the deadline extended to one week after the court has ruled on Manafort’s motions. Manafort’s lawyers do not object to a delay, the prosecutors said.
    The charges include seven counts of bank fraud and three counts of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.
    “The government does not at this time have sufficient information to make an informed decision on whether it will seek retrial of the remaining counts,” prosecutors wrote.
    [….continues…]

  29. Patd, you make good points. As a terrible predictor of the future and a reasonably decent predictor of the past I will wait until November to stick my neck too far out on this one.

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