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brooklynite's JournalJames Carville Warns Trump: Your 'Grifter' Campaign Aides Are Lying To You
Huffington PostDemocratic political consultant James Carville said President Donald Trump is getting fleeced by members of his own campaign who know he’s going to lose reelection but won’t tell him for one simple reason: they’re trying to make money off the campaign.
“It don’t matter if the Dow is 35,000, he’s not going to win,” Carville said on MSNBC on Wednesday. “He wasn’t going to win when unemployment was 3.5 percent, he’s certainly not going to win now.”
Carville dismissed Trump’s top campaign aides as a “pack of grifters.”
“HIs campaign manager’s got two condos, a Ferrari, a yacht, a Range Rover,” he said.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and his companies collected $38.9 million from the president’s reelection committees between January 2017 and the end of March. Parscale has also amassed all of the properties and vehicles Carville described.
“They’re all just fleecing the campaign,” Carville said, adding that the aides were also lying to Trump about his chances to keep the gravy train rolling.
Karen Handel backs Doug Collins' bid for US Senate
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republican Doug Collins picked up another key GOP supporter for his U.S. Senate bid on Thursday as former U.S. Rep. Karen Handel endorsed the congressman’s challenge to incumbent Kelly Loeffler.
Handel, who is aiming for a November rematch against Democrat Lucy McBath, called Collins the “best person to represent our values” in the Senate and emphasized his support for anti-abortion legislation. “He stood with me when others would not in my own fight against Planned Parenthood, and I worked side-by-side with Doug to pass important pro-life legislation,” said Handel. “Most importantly, I trust Doug — to stand up for life, to stand with our president and to stand for our Georgia values."
She is among a handful of Republicans to recently break ranks with Gov. Brian Kemp, who appointed Loeffler to the seat in December over Collins and other applicants in part because he hoped she could appeal to suburban women who have fled the party.
Read more: https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/karen-handel-backs-doug-collins-bid-for-senate/XhiU6kCpi8cwpAiMQDKboK/
When your opponents form a circular firing squad, hand them more ammo...
Helping local leaders reach the most vulnerable
Gates FoundationIt is popular these days to boil our vast universe of policy choices down into a single, binary choice: either you’re for public health, or you’re for economic recovery. Obviously, this is a false choice. Not only should we do both, we literally have to, since physically sick people don’t form the basis of a healthy economy and an unhealthy economy makes people physically sick.
In planning for the future, it may be more helpful to think in terms of a spectrum. When it comes to public health and the economy, policymakers face a dizzying number of decisions. The better the data and evidence available to them, the better those decisions will be for tens of millions of Americans who need help.
On the public health side, we see every day how experts can use high-res, real-time data to determine who’s at risk and how to protect them. On the economic recovery side, though, this kind of information simply doesn’t exist. The data in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent “employment situation,” for example, was three weeks old when it came out (and it’s been out for five weeks), and the smallest possible subdivision of analysis was into the 50 states.
One of our grantees, Opportunity Insights, is stepping into this breach by building a fully anonymized data hub called the OI Economic Tracker. This easy-to-use, publicly accessible web platform launches today. The data hub is already able to answer important questions about employment, income, and consumer spending at the county level with just a few days’ lag time. By mid-summer, we hope it will provide data about an even wider range of issues that is disaggregated by race and gender and as granular as the more than 40,000 zip codes in the United States.
Polar vortex to unleash winterlike cold across eastern half of nation, with snow in the Northeast
Source: Washington Post
After remaining well-behaved all winter, the mischievous polar vortex is set to thrust a lobe of frigid, wintry air south over the eastern United States, bringing snow to places in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and chilly temperatures from the Upper Midwest to New England.
Frost could even visit places such as northern Georgia and the western Carolinas late this weekend as the expansive cold air mass settles south and challenges records. Temperatures in many places will feel more like early March than early May.
A dollop of wintry mischief, including the potential for a few areas of accumulating snow, is also on tap along the Appalachians from North Carolina through Maine. In some areas, a coating or more of snow is possible — especially across central and northern New England late Friday and early Saturday.
Even where the flakes don’t fly, temperatures will still sit some 20 degrees or more below average as a strong cold front slides all the way down near the Gulf Coast, with temperatures falling into the 30s and 40s in its wake. Mother’s Day could feel more like St. Patrick’s Day in some areas before a gradual recovery occurs next week.
https://twitter.com/NWS/status/1257799038797336577
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/05/06/polar-vortex-unleash-winterlike-cold-across-eastern-half-nation-with-snow-northeast/
One of Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus
Source: CNN
A member of the US Navy who serves as one of President Donald Trump's personal valets has tested positive for coronavirus, CNN has learned Thursday, raising concerns about the President's possible exposure to the virus.
The valets are members of an elite military unit dedicated to the White House and often work very close to the President and first family. Trump was upset when he was informed Wednesday that the valet had tested positive, a source told CNN, and he was subsequently tested again by the White House physician.
In a statement, the White House confirmed CNN's reporting that one of the President's valets had tested positive.
"We were recently notified by the White House Medical Unit that a member of the United States Military, who works on the White House campus, has tested positive for Coronavirus," deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement. "The President and the Vice President have since tested negative for the virus and they remain in great health."
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/trump-valet-tests-positive-covid-19/index.html
Coronavirus survivors banned from joining the military
Military TimesAs the Defense Department negotiates its way through the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout, military entrance processing stations are working with new guidance when it comes to bringing COVID-19 survivors into the services.
A past COVID-19 diagnosis is a no-go for processing, according to a recently released MEPCOM memo circulating on Twitter.
“During the medical history interview or examination, a history of COVID-19, confirmed by either a laboratory test or a clinician diagnosis, is permanently disqualifying ...” the memo reads.
https://twitter.com/Nathaniel_Free/status/1257380066343956486
Supreme Court overturns 'Bridgegate' convictions
Source: Politico
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed the federal government’s case in the infamous “Bridgegate” scandal, clearing the convictions of two allies of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
In the unanimous ruling, which further chips away at the nation’s public corruption case law, the justices concluded that the two defendants — Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni — did not defraud the government of its “property” by closing off two local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge over three days in September 2013.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/07/supreme-court-bridgegate-decision-242344
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em...
The EconomistA quarter of French adults smoke. Many people were surprised, therefore, when researchers reported late in April that only 5% of 482 covid-19 patients who came to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris between February 28th and April 9th were daily smokers. The ratios of smokers to non-smokers in earlier tallies at hospitals in America, China and elsewhere in France varied. But all revealed habitual smokers to be significantly underrepresented among those requiring hospital treatment for the illness. Smokers, the authors of the report wrote, “are much less likely” to suffer severely from sars-cov-2, the virus that causes covid-19. Rarely, they added, is such a result seen in medicine.
Face masks make a political statement in era of coronavirus
Source: AP News
The notable exception is among older people, a group particularly vulnerable to serious illness from the virus. Some 79% of those age 60 and over were doing so compared with 63% of those younger.
Moreover, Trump, who is known to be especially cognizant of his appearance on television, has also told confidants that he fears he would look ridiculous in a mask and the image would appear in negative ads, according to one of the officials.
Read more: https://apnews.com/7dce310db6e85b31d735e81d0af6769c
The State of the States: The Legislatures
UVA Center for Politics (Larry Sabato)There’s a lot at stake on the federal level this year: the presidency, the Senate, and the House are all up for grabs. While there has (rightfully) been considerable attention and speculation dedicated to these larger races, the upcoming state legislature elections have not received the same level of consideration.
With more than 5,000 districts at stake this year, there are many opportunities at the state level for either party to maintain or improve their advantage. We at CNalysis acknowledge the importance of these elections; we are currently casting ratings for most of these districts — 5,233 to be exact — as well as their respective state legislative chambers.
Before getting into the specific ratings, let’s take a look at where things stand right now. Map 1 shows the current party control of state legislative chambers. Notice that there are only two states where party control of chambers is divided: In Minnesota, Democrats control the state House and Republicans hold the state Senate, while in Alaska, Republicans hold the state Senate while Democrats nominally control the state House thanks to a coalition of Democrats, Republicans and Independents (Republicans actually hold more seats in the chamber). Also, Nebraska’s unicameral state legislature is technically nonpartisan, although functionally it’s GOP-controlled. Overall, control of state legislatures aligns with 2016 presidential partisanship: Democrats control all the chambers in states won by Hillary Clinton except for the Minnesota Senate, while Republicans control all the chambers in states won by Donald Trump except for the Alaska House.
Overall, Republicans control 58 chambers, and Democrats control 40. Again, this tally excludes Nebraska.
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