SHOT: Omarosa Says I wouldn’t vote for Trump again ‘in a million years, never.’
CHASER: Omarosa Says We’d be “begging for Trump back” if Mike Pence were president.
Never is a mighty long time, the wise man once said. Or for Omarosa, a weekend.
Archive for 2018
February 13, 2018
BLUE WAVE? Corker weighs his options as GOP frets about losing Tennessee. “The two-term senator is being urged to reconsider his retirement amid concerns Republicans could lose his seat in November.”
The two-term Tennessee GOP senator decided to call it quits in September amid an on-again, off-again dispute with President Donald Trump that has eroded his standing with the party’s base. But now a faction of Republicans in Tennessee and Washington are worried that the favorite for the Republican Senate nomination, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), could lose the general election — and with it the Senate majority.
They want Corker to get back in to hold the seat and preserve waning foreign policy experience in the GOP. And there are signs that he is open to it, despite the steep climb a Republican primary might entail.
“While Corker is listening to the concerns that have been raised, he hasn’t made any commitments,” said the person close to Corker. Corker himself said on Monday he had no comment on the race.
You could also read this as another sign that the GOP Civil War ain’t over yet.
YOU GO, GIRL! The Washington Post announced today that the inestimable Megan McArdle will now be writing an OpEd column there. More like this, please. It’s about time they had a conservatarian columnist (my characterization) who, unlike Jennifer Rubin, is not a token conservative cum incoherent strawman.
IN THE MAIL: Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too.
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
ROGER SIMON ON RUSSIAGATE: The Second Time as Farce…or Tragedy?
TONI AIRAKSINEN: Professors Condemn ‘Victim-Centered’ Title IX Investigations in Open Letter. “Though Betsy DeVos rescinded the guidance, it could take years to undo.”
BARACK OBAMA ACCEPTING HIS NOMINATION, 2008: “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.”
LET’S GIVE HIM CREDIT ON THAT ONE, SHALL WE? Venice without water: Gondolas helplessly abandoned on dried-up canals after water levels are the lowest since records began – and it has not stopped sinking.
RAMESH PONNURU: How Trump Moved the Needle on Immigration Limits.
CUT UNTIL THEY SCREAM AND THEN CUT SOME MORE: Public broadcasting chief decries proposed Trump budget cuts.
WHEN D.C. REAL ESTATE PLUMMETS, WE’LL KNOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE: Robust D.C. Home Prices All About Federal Power, Power, Power.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Artist Give Obama an Extra Finger to Go with His Freakishly Large Hands?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Diversity efforts cost NC universities nearly $17M per year.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: BY THE BOOK, Flynn Didn’t Lie to the Feds and Much, Much More. “A letter from Senate Judiciary Chair Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to notorious liar and former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice is raising some eyebrows. The letter asks liar Rice about a freakish email she wrote to herself mere minutes after President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. The email to herself memorializes, whitewashes or fabricates, you pick which one, a conversation that took place two weeks before and was previously unknown to the public. Oh yeah, this seems totally kosher.”
THE OLD BUFFS KEEP GOING AND GOING: Cold War-era B-52 to outlive younger, sleeker rival Air Force bombers.
ICO INVESTOR TV is a friend’s project and worth a look/subscription.
GOOD: Yes, Trump Is Embracing Criminal Justice Reform.
Throughout the last election cycle, there came fevered predictions from many commentators on the Left that, given candidate Donald Trump’s frank messaging about returning to “law and order” and confronting violent crime in American cities, criminal justice reform efforts were officially dead in the water. Criminal justice reform appears “bleak in the age of Trump,” stated one article. “How Criminal Justice Reform Died,” intoned another.
Such fatalism was both misplaced and inaccurate. Misplaced, because the lion’s share of successful criminal justice reforms over the last ten years have advanced at the state and local levels, not in D.C.— mainly by southern red states. With oversight over roughly 90 percent of the country’s incarcerated population, the states will always be the primary mover of criminal justice policies, not the federal government.
But such predictions have now been proven inaccurate as well, given recent remarks made by now-President Trump about the need for federal prison reform.
Generally, you’ll form a better picture of President Trump if you focus on what he does, as opposed to what people say about him.
ABOUT THAT BLUE WAVE… The collapse of Democrats’ popularity on the much-ballyhooed generic ballot foreshadows tough midterm elections for them in November.
New polling shows that Democrats have lost their recent 15-point lead over Republicans, dropping to only a two-point lead for a critical election they had hoped to paint as a referendum on President Trump and writ large, Republicans.
However, historically speaking, the news is more daunting for Democrats. Compared to where they stood in the 2014 midterm elections, Democrats are actually faring worse at this point than they were then.
In the 2014 midterms, Democrats were ahead on the generic ballot by an impressive eight points most of the year. However their lead eventually vanished, and Republicans ultimately trounced them at the ballot box, retook the U.S. Senate and won a big majority of seats in the House of Representatives.
By comparison, Democrats’ current poll numbers also rate worse than their generic ballot ranking in the 2010 midterms.
If you want to make a difference, as Glenn as been urging lately, step away from the keyboard and volunteer for a local campaign.
2018 RADICAL MAN: Harvard’s New President Could Extend Diversity To Encompass Ideology.
From Ira Stoll’s open letter to new Harvard President Lawrence Bacow:
The boldest response might be actually to make some adjustments to the university. That doesn’t mean surrendering principles. But it could mean doing some things differently. As you told a University of California audience last year, “if you’re not managing change, you’re not leading, you’re presiding.”
What might that mean in Harvard’s case? It could mean redefining the emphasis on diversity beyond race and gender also to encompass ideology. It could mean reaching even more students via online courses and the extension school, so that the university shifts its measurement of success away from how many tens of thousands of applicants it rejects, and toward how many it educates.
It could mean expanding geographically beyond relatively prosperous, and politically liberal, Cambridge and Boston, toward more economically challenged and politically diverse parts of the state. Tufts has a veterinary school in Grafton, Mass. and its medical school founded a rural community health center in the Mississippi Delta. Harvard has a forest in Petersham.
With NYU operating in Abu Dhabi, Cornell in Qatar, and Yale collaborating on a college in Singapore, it’s harder to make the case that Petersham, in Central Mass., or even, say, Pittsfield, in Western Mass., are so remote from Cambridge that ramping up activity there would prevent effective control or definitely dilute the brand.
A similar case has been made for moving Federal agencies far beyond Washington.
CNBC: A nightmare for Democrats: Trump is getting more credit for the economy. “President Donald Trump’s overall approval rating in most polls is creeping up lately, yet it remains at historically weak levels for a president at this stage in his first term. But at the same time, voters are starting to become more positive about the economy and more willing to give Trump the credit for it.”
Related: Trump budget aims to jump-start construction, cut red tape.
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Well, Trump’s budget cuts $3 Trillion in spending over 10 years. So that’s something. But yeah, there’s no political pressure to bring the debt under control, and when there was, in the form of the Tea Party, both parties in DC cooperated to kill it.