Sounds like a typical attack on an Asian population.
Hopefully, we learned from the 1st Korea and Viet Nam and WW2 for that matter.
It might be better to just assassinate the crazy dude.

I'm not just referring to showing up twice as a problem in the runoff. I don't think he's going to lose by 14 pts in the runoff like Jim Martin did in the runoff as there's definitely more enthusiasm to keep it close. I'm more worried about the coalescing of votes and enthusiasm for the GOP once one emerges as the runoff contender. I saw one poll that said Ossoff was only the second choice of 1% of voters, which would be very problematic.

I sure hope you're right and I'm wrong.

That's my vote ... but make it look at an accident.

I’m not sure assassinating the current Kim is going to achieve a whole lot, to be honest – outside of start a war. From what I’ve read over the years he sounds like he leans closer to figurehead than he does unilateral dictator

Do we need to hire Seth Rogen and James Franco to do it?

I'm pretty sure they would screw it up!

Right I acknowledge and get all of that. It still comes down to turning out your vote in the run off. In the last 20 years, turn out drops by about 40% between a main and a run off election. Historically it is even larger. My only point is that if Ossoff can turn out his voters in similar form in both the main and the run off then he could be the 18th choice of those who vote against him in the run off and he's going to have a pretty good shot at winning.

Presumably there's just more crazy on the bench tho.

Ossoff looking good in early vote counting, but its going to be close.

Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) | Twitter

Unfortunately he could not hold on to early momentum, and now looks like a runoff with Karen Handel :(

So it ends up being uber liberal vs liberal.

I think Ossoff will end up with about 48%... not enough.

AJC.com is showing Ossoff with 54%, updated as of 9:29pm.

(Oh, 32% reported in)

Your ideal candidates I know Jon :)

Hey, I've lived in the state with such stellar elected officials as McKinney, Lewis, and "Guam-Is-Tipping" Johson. I'll survive Asshat.

edit to add: even survived the barely tenable situation of having Cynnnnnnnthiuh as my actual rep for a year or so.

Yeah, based on where the reported vote is coming from versus left to count, this seems to be the number.

Color me shocked?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-s...ons-1492620677

So anyone know what the true story is behind the (mis)communication re: the armada?

I can't believe we would deliberately lie about it and the Chinese/Russian/ROK satellites surely would have known (but nothing came out).

...you don't? If it's being used as a muscle-flexing show not for the benefit of NK, but to convince the American people that Trump is strong?

I haven't followed the story much, but Trump has been very clear during the election and after that he does not want to let potential/real enemies know where American forces are via the media. So I think it was partly that, and probably partly inexperience/being on the same page with the various people who commented on the armada.

Not telling the media is one thing, but I'm not sure major foreign powers need news reports to tell them where another nation's naval fleet is.

But then we're still left with Pence...

No probably not but I'm also sure major foreign powers use our media as one of their sources of information.

Had my Econ students interview family on healthcare. Here are my 2 favorite quotes:

What do you see as the main problems with the current system?

"I'm having to pay for some no-good sick person with my money, thanks to Obama!"

"Donald Trump is the big fucking problem!"

Overall it was pretty even: 1/3 Liberal/Universal, 1/3 Conservative/Privatization, 1/3 Don't know/Don't care. Definitely shows the need for educators to provide information and context to such emotional and personal experiences.

Chaffetz is not running for reelection in 2018, may be resigning his seat as soon as tomorrow.

That was the case more during the first golf war era through the early war on terror years than now. At that time it was the best way to get news on our troop movements and developments. Now with level of information technology out there it's not needed or relied on as heavily.

I don't feel like they understand the basic concept of insurance.

Yesterday I thought this was just about cashing in on a government career, but his resignation implies that there's something else going on. I wonder if the real story will still break?

He's just wanting to spend more time with Семьи. Err, family.

Ahhh, cartman has been a spam bot the whole time.

(shh)

That's so yesterday news (when I posted that here :) ) Pretty big thorn out of the Dems hair if he does.

Everything is a con.

maybe Sessions needs to go sit on an island somewhere...

Jeff Sessions doesn’t think a judge in Hawaii — a.k.a. ‘an island in the Pacific’ — should overrule Trump - The Washington Post

So WTF is going on over there. May just be wishful thinking from the 'US defense official' and it may be a reaction to the recent aggressive US tone?

If Donald did actually get the Chinese totally on our side and they are now going to do something about NK ...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politi...ina/index.html

I know there are more sexy things to fret over, but at some point, doesn't the horrifying lack of actual leadership in government matter? We've seen this in bits and pieces... of the top jobs at the State Department, they have filled something like one of 100... of all these senior US Attorneys fired for being Obama holdovers simply have not been replaced... and so forth. It's pretty clear (regardless of what side you're on, I'd think) that this President and Administration have less interest than usual in the actual day-to-day conduct of government business, and I guess we knew we were getting that. But doesn't this actually matter at some point? Or is this just yet another left/right talking point where the true believers will tell us that since the sun continue to rise in the East, that's evidence that we don't actually need a true State Department, and can get by with an occasional official visit somewhere from Ivanka instead? (and so on and so forth)

According to Trump, next week the ACHA will be passed through the House, a tax reform plan will be introduced and an increase to the debt limit will be passed and signed.

We should all plan on a government shutdown, I guess.

I don't think it'll matter to many people unless if affects their daily lives. There's a good portion of people, especially on the right, that see these jobs as do-nothing crony jobs anyways.

Nothing better than being forced to go to work and waiting for the backpay to be approved and processed.

It seems to be a combination of ideology, control, incompetence and a lack of people willing to serve. There's probably also some degree of laziness or at least an unwillingness to do the hard work of staffing the lower level appointees.

It will certainly matter at some point. When Pence went to SK we had no ambassador to SK or Japan and no Far East deputy at State. My guess is everything, or almost everything is being run by DoD, which while competently staffed, has an obvious bias towards escalation.

It also is at least partially to blame for the lack of legislation signed by Trump. There just aren't enough skilled, experienced folks to write and/or negotiate legislative language. The WH is entirely dependent on Congress to create and negotiate legislation, but they don't trust them, so failure gets repeated.

But, yes, the average voter doesn't care about staffing. We pay a guy to do that, so most just assume that whatever happens is the "right" answer. They won't care about staffing per se, but they will care when nothing gets done or disasters arise without competent people in place to deal with them. Trump's been relatively lucky so far, but that won't hold for four years.

http://fortune.com/2017/04/19/trump-...-canada-trade/

The Trumpster is going to bat for me. Long story short, Canada protects their milk production with tariffs and producton quotas. The processor I currently sell my own milk to had found a loophole and now the Canadians have moved to close that loophole (or make it less desirable to buy said product from the US).

My current milk processor let 75 farms know on April 1st that they would no longer be purchasing their milk on May 1st. Right now it is next to impossible to find a new home for milk so many of these farms will go out of business.

I may be next. I'm hearing rumors that my processor is going to cut more farms, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my farm may be among the next cuts which would be all the more brutal for me as I could be left standing in this game of musical chairs. If this happens, it will be the end of my farming career.

Trump's gonna put a man on Mars this term. Good for him.

I think that removing the pre-tax benefit for retirement is one of the most short sighted things that congress has ever considered. I mean, it's meant as a cash pull to cover for a budget short fall and it will succeed in that, but it's most harmful directly to the middle class, once again, and directly impacts how people behave in regard to saving for retirement.

It wouldn't be so bad if SS was solvent and running like a top, but they've stolen from that well too. As people shift to Roth401k's that money will start to dwindle too, then they'll come for your Roth.

The government already allowed companies to eject pensions and screw people, now essentially getting rid of 401k pretax breaks for saving is just de-incentivizing savings all that much more.

Didn't know about the 401k so googled on it and the only article I found was

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...eak/100837046/

I suspect this is a non-starter. Too much political backlash, probably easier finding money somewhere else.

The wsj had a blog post about it the other day too that went into greater detail. From the sounds of it, it's something that is strongly being considered. The article is behind the paywall for anyone who has that sub, here's the link.

https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2017...from-congress/

Corporate tax breaks at the expense of the middle class. Make America great again. Brilliant.

Under the Trump plan as being leaked, why wouldn't we all form LLCs and insist on being independent contractors?

Trumps always been a trickle down fan.

If they are actually going to do that, they might as well go ahead and just do a total re-do of the tax code. Having to pay taxes on gains on income you put into a 401(k)... you should be able to withdraw money from the 401(k) to make those payments. If you do that, then you should just be able to treat it like any other taxable investment account and withdraw at will. If you do that, people will start withdrawing money left and right from these accounts. If you do that, we will have a major retirement income problem in another 10-20 years that could create a whole new underclass of elderly.

Sounds great.