Monday News: “Trump, Chieftain of Spite”; “Hey, Virginia! You’ve got a governor to elect in three weeks!”

by Lowell

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

• Iraqis Begin Assault Near Kurdish-Held City of Kirkuk (“Tensions over a Kurdish independence vote have escalated into a military standoff between forces that are otherwise allies in the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.”)
• Five Climate Truths Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand (“Trump can’t save coal. He only claims he can.”)
• Austria turns sharply to the right in an election shaped by immigration (“Austria became the latest European country to take a sharp turn right on Sunday, with the conservative People’s Party riding a hard-line position on immigration to victory in national elections and likely to form a government with a nationalist party that has long advocated for an even tougher stance.” Not good.)
• Blow: Trump, Chieftain of Spite (“Trump can’t hold a candle to Obama, so he’s taking a tiki torch to Obama’s legacy. Trump can’t get his bad ideas through Congress, but he can use the power of the presidency to sabotage or even sink Obama’s signature deeds.”)
• Deficit hawks trampled in GOP tax cut stampede (“But Republicans are still squabbling over the rising red ink, potentially jeopardizing Trump’s tax plan.”)
• Inside Russia’s alliance with white nationalists across the globe (“I truly believe that within these more extreme neo-Nazi circles, their education is quite low, and they simply don’t understand what Russia is.”)
• The Danger of President Pence (“Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own risks.”)
• Trump tests his base by jacking up their premiums (“Trump’s health care executive order hits his own voters in the wallet. Will they finally turn against him?”)
• Trump Given A Subpoena For All Documents Relating To Assault Allegations (“A woman who said Donald Trump groped her has subpoenaed his campaign for documents about ‘any woman alleging that Donald J. Trump touched her inappropriately.’ Trump has denied her accusations and is fighting the subpoena.”)
• Conservative “thought leaders” like Bill Kristol paved the way for Trump (“Many leading conservatives are disgusted with Trump; a few have even said so. When will they face their own guilt?”)
• Does Charlie Sykes Understand How the Right Lost Its Mind? (“Sykes seems so oblivious to the connection between Trump and the pathologies of conservatism that he is at a loss for how anybody on the right could have supported him at all. His book recounts a potted history of American conservatism that lionizes the movement’s rise from the margins — where it opposed mainstream Republicans like President Eisenhower and his ‘dime store New Deal’ — to take the party over.”)
• Juan Williams: Trump is becoming a failed president
• Colin Kaepernick Files Grievance Against NFL For Collusion (“The quarterback, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012, filed a grievance claiming that NFL owners colluded to keep him off the field because of his kneeling protests.”)
• Dem lawmaker: One Republican is considering articles of impeachment against Trump
• ‘Everyone is upset’: John Kelly’s push to fill vacant administration jobs rankles White House staff
• How Trump’s Obamacare Sabotage Sets Him Up For His Own Political Misery
• CBS’ Bob Schieffer: Trump’s attacks on the media are “undermining the foundations of our democracy”
• Tillerson: Diplomacy With North Korea Will Continue ‘Until The First Bomb Drops’ (Is that supposed to be reassuring?)
• McConnell and Trump meet for lunch after Bannon calls for Republican ‘war’
• Editorial: Undoing the Clean Power Plan (“… these episodes, one after another, show the importance of having strong, thoughtful environmental voices in Richmond and in communities across Hampton Roads, where sea-level rise is an existential threat. Using this crisis as a moment of opportunity can put Virginia on firm footing for the future. And, in light of the White House’s destructive tendencies, it’s the only way forward.”)
• FEMA haggled with Virginia governments after disasters, analysis shows
• In the Virginia’s governor’s race, four-Pinocchio attack ads on both sides (Here we go again with the “both sides” crap. Fact is, Gillespie has spent his entire career fighting for corporations, the rich and powerful. As for Gillespie’s MS-13 ad, it’s a disgrace in every way. And yes, I agree, people should NOT be making decisions about who/who not to vote for based on TV ads.)
• Vice Presidents Enter Fray In Final Weeks Of Virginia’s Governor Race
• Not on the Ballot, but Dominating the Virginia Governor’s Race: Trump (“’It’s definitely a change in tone from the primary,’ said Lowell Feld, a well-read liberal Virginia blogger, while conceding that ‘firing up your base while not turning off others is tricky.’ But, Mr. Feld added, ‘Trump doesn’t make anything easy.’”
• Hey, Virginia! You’ve got a governor to elect in three weeks! (“Exhausted by national politics, voters are unusually disengaged from the race.”)
• Analysis of hotly contested races in the House of Delegate Races (Part one) (Written by a conservative Republican: “It’s time to be blunt as Republicans. Things are beginning to fall apart in Northern Virginia….What can someone like Lingamfelter, Greason, or LeMunyon do when Congress fails to repeal Obamacare or enact any of the sweeping reforms promised by Republicans who were elected in 2016?” Hopefully, they’ll all lose in 22 days. Make sure you show up and vote – no excuses!)
• Gillespie Applauds FERC Approval of Atlantic Coast, Mountain Valley Pipelines (Uhhhh….no.)
• CBF, Dominion respond to attempt to repeal Clean Power Plan (“Dominion Energy, which backs the Clean Power Plan and even filed an amicus brief last year against a national lawsuit challenging it, said in a statement Friday that a rollback would change nothing as far as the power company is concerned.”)
• Editorial: Report raises troubling questions about dual enrollment programs
• Race in Chesterfield-majority district pits Republican incumbent against Democrat (“In her second bid for the 62nd District seat, Sheila Bynum-Coleman (left) hopes to unseat Del. Riley E. Ingram, who was first elected in 1991”)
• Alexandria weighing whether to renew lease on popular Great Waves Waterpark
• Cooler air spills into the region, and then there’s nothing but sunshine (“Fall-like weather is setting up shop for the workweek, with highs in the mid-60s today. Temperatures will fall overnight to the mid- to upper 30s in some spots and to the mid-40s downtown.”)