Morning Reads for October 29, 2018

We enter the final stretch of the 2018 mid-term elections after an unbelievably horrific series of events from last week.

The lunatic who was mailing bombs to prominent Democrats was captured. Apparently he had “mommy issues.”

A wacko white supremacist killed two African Americans at a Kroger in Louisville, Kentucky “...before an armed bystander reportedly fired back, prompting him to flee. Police were unable to confirm accounts that Bush encountered a second armed man, who engaged him in a brief standoff where no shots were fired… Police apprehended Bush minutes later.”

A vile anti-semite carried out “…the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, killing 11 people inside a Pittsburgh synagogue.” There’s no circle of hell hot enough for that bastard. Or either of the others.

Let’s make this week better, ok?

Peggy Noonan wrote a thought-provoking piece about the need for civility and understanding. Among the better sentences: “…Neither side appreciates—neither side credits—the anxiety the other side legitimately feels. They have no sensitivity to it. They had better get some. …There is too much blindness to how the other side is experiencing the situation. It’s in the news media, too. Politicians should have a greater awareness of their own role in the drama. …Politicians, don’t lecture us. Clean up your own side of the street.”  Worth reading the whole thing.

Here’s a story about a group actively trying to bridge the partisan divide not by winning the argument, but by seeking a goal of “…curiosity and an open heart.

The nation’s eyes are on Georgia, where all polls point to a statistical dead heat between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams, as Don McKee points out in the Marietta Daily Journal. In a base-vs.-base election, with turnout at the national level on track to break the records set in 1966 and 1974, all polls and election models should be taken with a very large of grain of salt.

Celebre-tics: On Friday, comedian Will Ferrell was live and in person, encouraging KSU students to vote for, you guessed it, Stacey Abrams.

It’s Halloween and vampires and zombies are everywhere, but John Barrow promises he “..won’t bite ya.” Huh? Barrow, who usually makes good ads, has opted for one of the strangest closing arguments to voters that has ever been made.

More of this please: “Georgia public-school students improved their performance on the SAT in 2018 and outperformed their counterparts in the nation’s public schools, recording a mean score of 1054 compared to the national mean of 1049.

Sadly, More of this too, please: “State Labor Commissioner Mark Butler said this week that workers in seven more Georgia counties may now be eligible for federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) to compensate for income lost as a direct result of Hurricane Michael. The additional affected counties are Calhoun, Clay, Laurens, Randolph, Sumter, Tift, and Turner.”

The Gulch Deal in Atlanta has promise. Details about the complicated development at this link.
Will President Trump Visit South Georgia?  Greg Bluestein seems to think so. “National media outlets reported Trump is set to stump for Kemp in Macon on Sunday, just two days before the Nov. 6 election.”

 

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