Monday News: “Trump’s Boogeymen? Women!”; Khizr Khan on Trump, Kelly, Soldiers’ Deaths in Niger

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, October 23.

• Catalonia Spain: Officials ‘won’t follow orders from Madrid’(How is this going to end?)
• The Yahoo with the Microphone (“Ranting in the rust belt with Donald Trump’s perpetual-validation machine.”)
• Charles Blow: Trump’s Boogeymen? Women!
• Lawmakers question Trump’s dealmaking skills, consider him an unreliable negotiator
• Let’s not staff a White House with generals ever again
• Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News (In the DC metro area, that would be WJLA-7: do not watch the “news” there, unless you want a heaping helping of Sinclair’s right-wing propaganda along with your car crashes, fires, etc.)
• EPA yanks scientists’ conference presentations, which included climate change (The rapid decline of America under Trump and the Republicans continues. Ugh.)
• What Trump did to Kelly shows how far we have fallen (“To see a patriot humiliated in the Frederica Wilson spat is a reminder of our increasing political squalor.”)
• Trump Is Still Treating the Federal Government Like He Owns It (“Maybe Republicans ought to consider the possibility that a president who acts this way is bad, and they should stop him.” Yeah, if only!)
• Two Wounded Warriors (“Senator John McCain and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly offered starkly different visions of service—and of America.”)
• Cable news almost silent on neo-Nazis allegedly attempting to murder counterprotesters at Richard Spencer rally (Now, imagine if this had been a person of color or a Muslim attempting to murder white supremacists?)
• We can’t let afford to let this guy control the national narrative (“Donald Trump’s only true goals are control and attention. Stop giving him what he craves, and he’ll be powerless” Yeah, well that’s not going to happen, sad to say…)
• Democrats’ early money haul stuns GOP (“A historic number of well-funded candidates have flooded Republican House districts ahead of 2018.”)
• Juan Williams: Trump’s cynical sabotage of ObamaCare
• McCain appears to take swipe at Trump’s ‘bone spur’ Vietnam deferment
• The GOP’s 20-Week Abortion Ban Is About Politics, Not Science
• Virginians face two different energy futures (I’m posting this link only to show what the media should NOT be doing: a) publishing lies by far-right-funded shills; b) not clearly explaining to readers who those far-right forces,
  in this case the Kochs “Americans for Prosperity,” are – and what they’re all about, including climate science denial, etc. Massive #FAIL by the Bristol Herald Courier.)
• Virginia’s Representatives Weigh In on Tax Reform (First of all, it’s not “tax reform,” it’s a massive tax CUT for the wealthy. Why does the corporate media insist on perpetuating right-wing lies, disinformation, etc?)
• Kaine, Democrats link Gillespie’s MS-13 ad to ‘divisive’ Trump style
• Group spends $1M turning out Democratic-leaning groups in Virginia (“The Voter Participation Center, which aims to register and turn out members of underrepresented populations in elections, is on pace to send out 2.2 million pieces of mail from September to Election Day. From Oct. 25 to Nov. 1, the group will send out four waves of get-out-the-vote mailers to unmarried women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and young people — a potential boost to Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam’s campaign for governor.”)
• National Democrats grow jittery about Va. governor’s race
• Editorial: The state of the governor’s race
• Swaying between hope and practicality as Congress remains inactive, Virginia begins dismantling children’s health insurance program (Great job, Republicans…not!)
• Why is Va. treating its students — especially its black students — like criminals?
• In Virginia’s Trump country, low enthusiasm for Republican
  (“People in Virginia’s coal country still love President Donald Trump, but not his pick to be their next governor…Gillespie has largely tried to avoid talking about Trump on the campaign trail and declined to say whether he would invite Trump to campaign with him”)
• As renaming of J.E.B. Stuart High nears, divisions remain
• Del. Lamont Bagby faces challenge from independent Preston Brown in 74th District race
• Virginia Tech is letting a neo-Nazi teach English composition (“His views were discovered in September but he remains a teaching instructor.” Why hasn’t Virginia Tech acted yet???)
• After pledging an aggressive race against GOP Del. Jackson Miller, state Democratic Party abandons populist challenger (More like we’re coming down the home stretch and the House Democratic Caucus has to make tough choices – based on which candidates have the best shots at winning – on how to allocate limited resources. Standard operating procedure before an election.)
• Warm today, stormy early Tuesday, then sunny and brisk by midweek