Just as an exercise in discipline, I’m going to force myself to do a VFP despite this being a light news day. Hey, real newspapers have to, so it’s good to keep my hand in. To make it even harder, I’ll stick to the old 1980s-era rule of having six stories. No copping out:
- Iraqi troops ‘ahead of schedule’ in Mosul battle against IS (BBC) — Yep, I’m leading with something actually important enough to be the lede, rather than something that merely entertains you. And I’m not sorry.
- SC Chamber’s political arm backs Democrat McLeod (The State) — This surprise you? It certainly surprised me, since Mia isn’t even the first choice of all the Democrats in her district. This is a real coup for her, and a blow to Susan Brill. I wanted to read more, but it doesn’t seem to be on the group’s website yet.
- NPR Poll: Are Parents Overrating The Quality Of Child Care? (NPR) — The answer, by the way, is yes. This is similar to what we found at ADCO doing focus groups for a group working with Child Care Services division of DSS a few years back: People tend to rationalize that their childcare provider is just fine.
- NFL ratings plunge could spell doom for traditional TV (WashPost) — This story’s actually a couple of three days old, but I just enjoyed it on so many levels that I thought I’d share it. Meanwhile, Netflix just had a huge jump in its stock.
- Ecuador cut off Julian Assange’s internet access, WikiLeaks says (The Guardian) — Good for Ecuador, my childhood home! And I thought they didn’t love us anymore…
- Nobel panel gives up knockin’ on Dylan’s door (The Guardian) — The folks in Stockholm can’t get a response from him. This is so Dylan. They shouldn’t worry, though, until he changes his voicemail recording to “Positively 4th Street.”
How about that? Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of hard news out there, I came up with a pretty interesting, diverse set of topics for you. And nothing about Donald Trump! You can thank me later.
And no, I’m not deliberately ignoring the situation with the Iranian-backed rebels shooting at a U.S. warship. But we had a good discussion about that earlier, and I’m not seeing any new developments on it today. I looked…
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Oh, by the way… as I said, there were no presidential-politics stories as good as the stories I picked, IMHO. But I wanted to make sure you saw this from the main page of The Washington Post: “Clinton’s email problems just came roaring back.”
There goes the Press, burying Hillary’s problems again — right?
This story at least tells about something that would really be explosive — if it had happened…
Watch this: My Republican friends will say, “WHAT? You don’t think that’s HUGE?!?!?!”
And my Democratic friends will say, “There you go with the false equivalence, as though the problems with Hillary were in the same universe as Trump’s.”
And I will say, “Meh…”
Hillary’s campaign motto should have been “Quid Pro Quo”. Made her a millionaire.
So a Kennedy was involved in trying to barter a deal with the FBI on Hillary’s emails? I hope Democrats don’t say it’s just water under the bridge.
#oldschoolburn
“water under the bridge”. That’s Chris Christie’s slogan. 🙂
That’s exactly what I thought. (SNL made a similar joke recently, although maybe it was “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”) The Kennedy reference was a bit dated…
Meanwhile, this just in: The rec commission has accepted Brown’s “retirement:” http://wach.com/news/local/richland-co-recreation-commission-accepts-james-brown-retirement
Does he get his full pension and benefits if he is convicted? Isn’t the pension something like 80% of the last three years average salary? That would be over $100K. I hope I’m wrong.
If it is I’m going to work for Richland County. For State employees it’s closer to 1.875% x Average of highest 12 quarters x # of years worked. That’s if he has 28 years of service or over 65. At28 years that comes to a little over 56%.
It appears there is no quid. Let’s see where this goes.
Hope his retirement involves a stay in the pokey and some fines. Maybe he will get to do some community service as well.
Hey, can someone tell me if the first Richland 2 school board candidate forum will be recorded and available for viewing after the fact (I’m hoping Lynn sees my question in time).
Also, same question about the second Richland 2 school board candidate forum.
My question about the Richland district 2 school board candidates’ forum is awaiting moderation, I assume because I included links. So I’ll ask again, hoping Lynn sees. Will the forum tonight be recorded and available for viewing online later?
Thanks!
Thanks, Brad. You may remove my second inquiry if you’d like.
Sorry about that, Jeff. It was the links.
I’ll mail Lynn…
I see there’s a James Mobley as one of the candidates. Any relation?
If it’s the same James Mobley that ran for school board last time, then I don’t believe so.
He has run every time at least since 2002 when I ran. Back then he was a school bus driver and his major platform issue was about buses.
As far as I know it will not. The League doesn’t routinely record forums. If a participant wanted to record and post and others agreed I don’t think there would be any objection, but this hasn’t happened locally as far as I know.
Thanks, Lynn.
If it probably won’t be available to watch later, then I’ll see what I can do about making it there tonight.
From an RSD2 internal email we received a few days ago:
“If you can’t make it to the forum, you can watch a rebroadcast on R2TV, cable channel 12 on Time Warner. Air times and dates will be announced on the district’s website: http://www.richland2.org.”
Every time I see RSD2, my brain tries to read “R2-D2”. You know, this guy?
This is not the droid you are looking for.
Thanks, Norm,
Do you know if that email was referring to tonight’s forum, or next week’s forum, or both?
Tonight’s. It didn’t mention next week’s, but running them n the district channel on a loop has been SOP the few elections.
Thanks again, Norm. I decided to attend in person. I’m glad I went, because I got to talk to a few of the candidates.
Anybody else as struck by this as I was:
I don’t usually think of the Chamber getting involved with legislative races, unless there’s somebody they’re out to get — like Lee Bright.
But maybe they’re going to be doing this going forward. If so, this is an interesting one to pick — a Democrat who isn’t all that popular with all Democrats in the district.
At the same time, Susan Brill hasn’t really distinguished herself in this campaign. And I thought she REALLY fell down on the opportunity to distance herself from Trump.
In a news story that, for all she knows, may be the last free ink she gets in the election, she took the position of the standard Republican who lives in fear of his base — the “I am not endorsing anyone” copout.
Perhaps her neutrality is sincere, although I wonder at it. Actually, it has to be. If it’s a calculation, it’s a singularly weird one: Here she is in a majority-Democratic district, with nothing to gain from being shy about dumping Trump. Saying she’ll vote reluctantly (like a lot of Dems) for Hillary could only help her, it would seem. She has the nomination, what does she need the angry white-man base for now?
So she must be sincere. But I still marvel at it…
Brad, for down-ballot Republicans in districts that are anything less than rock-solid, there’s fear at every turn. Embrace Trump, and you lose almost any chance of getting votes from folks who lean Democrat. Denounce Trump, and you run a real risk of losing a chunk of Republicans and other Trump voters.
For Susan Brill, she basically needs all the Republicans in the district, plus a reasonably large proportion of the Democrats. My guess is that her calculation is that she doesn’t want to throw any Republican votes away, and she hopes that any Democrats who might be inclined to vote for her will let her slide on that.
I don’t necessarily endorse or condemn this decision, but as an observer, this is what I suspect is going on.
Yeah, right after I read that, I thought, “She’s thinking she can’t afford to lose a single Republican vote.”
This why I don’t run for office, and if I did, wouldn’t get elected. Facing this kind of unprecedented threat to our country, I would consider denouncing Trump, and urging people to vote for the only person with a chance of stopping him, to be FAR more important than whether I was elected or not…
I do think it’s fair and appropriate for local candidates, when asked about national elections, to redirect the conversation to the local election and the local issues. People always need to be reminded to pay more attention to the local races.
Agree. The national stuff always grabs the headlines, but the local stuff is what affects us day-to-day.