Monday News: “When Was America Great, Again?”; “Trump’s Asymmetric Warfare”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, May 16.

• Obama casts Trump philosophy as one of ignorance, isolation (Add anger, bigotry and authoritarianism to the mix, and you’ve just about got it.)
• The Benghazi farce deepens: The GOP’s conspiracy hunt is undermined from within (“The Benghazi committee searches for evidence of a conspiracy that a former top committee staffer believes is untrue”)
• Obama didn’t birth Trump’s movement (“In fact, the president has consistently stood for the things conservatives say they want liberals to stand for.”)
• Even supporters agree: Clinton has weaknesses as a candidate. What can she do? (“For the most part, it is her qualities as a candidate that keep her allies up at night, not her fitness to be president, which they categorically do not question.”)
• Here’s How Hillary Clinton Should Attack Donald Trump (“It might be the thin end of the wedge that opens up a powerful theme against the self-professed billionaire: that Trump is a total fraud.”)
• Can the Christian Left Be a Real Political Force? (“Trump’s rise has thrown the religious right into turmoil. How Democrats could become the party of God.”)
• Krugman: It Takes A Policy (“The state of child care in America is cruel and shameful — and even more shameful because we could make things much better without radical change or huge spending. And one candidate has a reasonable, feasible plan to do something about this shame, while the other couldn’t care less.”)
• When Was America Great, Again? (“Donald Trump promises to make the country great again — for those who already had it so.”)
• Blow: Trump’s Asymmetric Warfare (“Supporting Trump is a Hail Mary pass of a hail-the-demagogue assemblage. Trump’s triumph as the presumptive Republican Party nominee is not necessarily a sign of his strategic genius as much as it’s a sign of some people’s mental, psychological and spiritual deficiencies. It’s hard to use the truth as an instrument of enlightenment on people who prefer to luxuriate in a lie.”)
• A Song Of Fire And No Ice: We Just Had Our Fourth Record-Breaking Hottest Month In A Row This Year
• Virginian-Pilot editorial: Legal, moral authority to restore rights
• As ash pond closures progress, concern mounts over well water
• Editorial: More disturbing details emerge from Portsmouth (“The allegations set out in a recently filed lawsuit over the death of Jamycheal Mitchell are hideous.”)
• McAuliffe to Reynolds grads: ‘Think big, take chances, don’t be afraid to fail’
• Pr. William supervisors vote to maintain current real estate tax rate (“Average homeowner’s bill to go up by 1.8 percent. School funding still an issue for some.”)
• Editorial: Unified region wins big on road funding
• Nice days this week: Today, Thursday and Friday; The other four? Rainy (“A sorry state of affairs when three dry days out of seven is considered improvement”)