Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Quick Hits: Volume CLXIII

- There were three GOP senate primary elections which took place Tuesday, all three in states currently occupied by Democrats but in which Donald Trump prevailed eighteen months ago.

If Republicans flip just one U.S. Senate seat in November, that would all but seal their hold on the upper chamber. While West Virginia seems most likely among last night's three primary states (the others being Indiana and Ohio) to flip, GOP voters in that state were teetering on the brink of nominating their own version of Roy Moore by considering the nutty Don Blankenship. Yes, this was the same kook who denigrated Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's family as well as referred to McConnell himself as "Cocaine Mitch."

Thankfully the WV Republican voters averted kicking away a winnable seat by nominating Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to oppose incumbent Dem Joe Manchin in November.

National Review's David French adequately summed up that result in one tweet:




Indeed.


- Between 2002-2004, three different young ladies disappeared in the Cleveland area via kidnapping. All three were eventually presumed dead.

But this week five years ago, a decade after the three went missing, they were rescued from a life of torture and sexual assault thanks to a man named Charles Ramsey, who lived down the street from the veritable house of horrors.





So how is Charles doing five years after his heroism? Cleveland news station WKYC caught up with him. Check out the interview here


- When a President of the United States takes unilateral action, it's only binding until the next president assumes office.

Other than the disastrous "Affordable" Care Act, there were very few substantive legislative items passed under then President Barack Obama's watch. So frustrated with the fact there are three co-equal branches of government, Obama made the famous declaration in early 2014 that if Congress didn't act, he would via executive fiat, regardless of his executive orders being deemed legally dubious.

Since President Trump assumed office 18 months ago, he has taken the proverbial sledgehammer to many Obama era unilateral decrees, most notably the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation and the Obamacare subsidies.

On Tuesday, it was the Iran nuclear accord, an agreement which was held in such high esteem by the Obama foreign policy team that former Secretary of State (and now private citizen) John Kerry was rumored to have been working to save it. Ah, but to no avail.

So with much of Obama's legacy now scuttled, one has to wonder how history will view his administration.




That's seems to be the most logical choice.

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