Sunday News: “Trump hysteria is obstacle for Va. Republicans;” Go Josh King!

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, October 18. As for the photo (by Mike Beaty), it’s of Rep. Gerry Connolly, AG Mark Herring and Josh King, the outstanding Democratic nominee for House of Delegates in the 2nd district (an Obama/Kaine/McAuliffe/Warner district) against right winger Mark Dudenhefer. We very much can and should win this one, and I urge everyone to volunteer for Josh King in the final 2+ weeks of this election!

• Tory leader Stephen Harper poses with Ford families during Etobicoke rally (Canada has important elections tomorrow, and for a wide variety of reasons, the abysmal Tories and their horrible leader Stephen Harper needs to go.)
• Was George W. Bush President On 9/11? An Investigation Into The Controversy Tearing The GOP Apart (According to “JEB,” apparently Dubya’s term of office didn’t begin until September 12, 2001 as opposed to back in January 2001, when “Dubya” was actually inaugurated, and AFTER he was warned about Osama bin Laden’s determination to attack the United States. But somehow, in “JEB”s delusional world, Dubya “kept us safe.” Uh huh…)
• Abortion Rights Group Says Clinic Vandalism Should Be Investigated As Domestic Terrorism
• Ted Cruz wants to be king: Make no mistake, the GOP extremists’ real goal is absolute control (“Right-wingers pretend to pledge fealty to the Constitution. Their real goal is to cut out the part about democracy”)
• Inside the GOP’s hallucinatory dogma: How the politics of paranoia & disorientation conquered the Republican mind
• Rathergate and the dark magic of 2004: When the GOP learned how to subvert truth and alter political reality (“Long before Benghazi and Planned Parenthood, Karl Rove toppled Dan Rather, gutted CBS and proclaimed lies as truth” And the media mostly has caved instead of fighting for the truth. Pathetic.)
• Paul Krugman: Monetary Conspiracy Theories (“But why don’t GOP voters realize that these are crazy people? Maybe because the things they say aren’t all that different from what supposedly reasonable Republicans say.”)
• Schapiro: Trump hysteria is obstacle for Va. Republicans (“Trump’s views, particularly his build-a-wall nativism, are driving to the Democratic fold Hispanics and Asians for whom immigration is a defining issue.”)
• Editorial: McAuliffe’s moves on guns (Here we go again with the brain-dead “both sides” crap from the corporate media, but I do with the Republican Times-Disgrace that “The right to keep and bear arms…does not include the right to take a gun with you absolutely anywhere.”)
• Use of license plate readers in Virginia faces privacy challenges (“Shortly before Vester Lee Flanagan shot himself on Interstate 66, state police Trooper Pamela Neff’s license plate reader blared an alarm.”)
• Lynwood Lewis for Virginia Senate (“Ottinger, a Norfolk resident and maritime lawyer, is a first-time nominee who faces a steep learning curve for the job he seeks.”)
• Will Fairfax police be reformed? (“Fairfax’s police department, with 1,400 sworn officers, is, after the state police, the biggest law enforcement agency in Virginia…Whether the Board of Supervisors stands up to the department or succumbs to it will be a test of elected officials’ backbone and resolve to clean up the police.”)
• HOT lanes plan banks on moving more people without more lanes (“It’s a tough sell with commuters, but the concept has support at the national level.” Not sure there’s any other option short term.)
• Noncompetitive tunnel proposal was not supposed to cost Virginia a single dollar. It will cost taxpayers $580 million.
• Region’s allure to millennials is in jeopardy, study says (“The District has a higher share of millennials than any other major U.S. city, but the region’s desirability to young workers — and its economic competitiveness — is considered at risk because of housing costs, transit-system troubles and fading job openings.”)
• In Norment-Reyes race, it’s the old versus the new (It’s also the utterly corrupt Norment vs. “a former active duty Army Aviation Officer and Gulf War veteran who also served in Egypt, Israel, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He previously served as a hospital Medical Specialist in the US Army Reserve and as an infantry field medic in the Army National Guard.”)
• Metrobus to Dulles tangled in Metro board politics could be discontinued (“Officials disagree over who should pay for the 5A, a popular route for airport workers.” Stupid.)
• Alexandria approves waterfront project in Old Town
  
• D.C. area forecast: Chilly today and frosty again tonight, then steadily warming through midweek