Daily Archives
20 posts · Monday
Donald Trump “has sold his penthouse unit in New York’s Trump Park Avenue building for $21 million,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Trump was the first and only owner of the unit, located on the 24th floor of the 32-story tower, though he never lived there. It has 10-foot ceilings, five bedrooms, seven bathrooms and one powder room. The 6,200-square-foot unit was listed for $35 million in 2013; it was last offered at $24.995 million, according to public records.”
Bob Dixon (R) announced his run for Missouri governor saying he had “spent almost 23 years as a strong supporter of traditional marriage” but neglected to mention that he “once lived as a gay man until a spiritual epiphany turned him straight,” the Riverfront Times reports.
“Bob Dixon would soon go on to marry a woman, have three kids and serve fifteen years as a Missouri lawmaker, first in the House and then the Senate. On Monday, Dixon announced his intention to join an already crowded field of Republican Gubernatorial hopefuls.”
Justice Court Judge Bill Weisenberger (R) “isn’t just facing an upcoming legal battle. He’s also facing five challengers in the Aug. 4 Republican primary,” the Jackson Clarion Ledger reports.
“Weisenberger, the Republican incumbent, was indicted in February for felony simple assault on a vulnerable adult. The indictments stem from a May 2014 incident at the Canton flea market where Weisenberger allegedly struck 20-year-old Eric Rivers, an African-American man, and yelled, ‘Run, n—–, run.'”
The New York Times public editor admits the newspaper story last week about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email for classified information “was, to put it mildly, a mess.”
“But you can’t put stories like this back in the bottle – they ripple through the entire news system.”
“I’ll summarize my prescription in four words: Less speed. More transparency. After all, readers come to The Times not for a scoop, though those can be great, but for fair, authoritative and accurate information. And when things do go wrong, readers deserve a thorough, immediate explanation from the top. None of that happened here.”
“There are already at least five major Democratic candidates of color running for U.S. Senate in 2016, a significant boost in diversity to a group that has traditionally been overwhelmingly white,” the Huffington Post reports.
“These numbers are likely to change before the general election. People are still jumping into races, and some of the candidates have to go through tough primaries that could knock them out the race. But a win by any of these women would be significant — it would double the number of women of color in the Senate.”
Mark Halperin: “Let’s all please stop asserting that Bernie Sanders can’t beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination race. Pundits and journalists galore have been declaring (alleged margin of error: zero) that the Vermont senator will lose to his party’s front-runner. Sure, his odds are long, but so far he’s shown substance, grit, and surprising appeal…. Sanders’ surprising success has already influenced Clinton’s conduct and fortunes, and there is every reason to believe that he will continue to challenge her, influence her, and create significant problems for her as the race continues.”
“There are plenty of recent examples of underdog candidates in both parties who ‘couldn’t’ win the nomination in the estimation of the chattering class but who nonetheless had an outsized influence on the contours and, indeed, outcome of the race. These include Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich in 2012 against Mitt Romney; Pat Buchanan in 1992 against George H.W. Bush; and Jesse Jackson in 1988 against Michael Dukakis. Based on how things are shaping up so far, Sanders has the potential to adversely affect Clinton in numerous ways, echoing the underdogs who ran before. “
“The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are I think part of just a general pattern we’ve seen… that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad. Maybe this is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines but it’s not the kind of leadership that’s needed for America right now.”
— President Obama, quoted by ABC News, on Mike Huckabee’s inflammatory comments on the Iran deal.
Rick Perry (R) told CNN that if people could bring their guns to the movies, they could prevent the movie theater shootings.
Said Perry: “These concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea. I think that you allow the citizens of this country — who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms — to carry them. I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.”
Wonk Wire: States with gun control have fewer gun deaths
Allan Sloan: “I’ve spent more than 40 years making my living by writing about numbers, and I’ve never run across anyone who uses them the way that Trump does. He just spews numbers forth, based on heaven knows what, and people are supposed to take them on faith.”
“That FEC document has tons and tons of numbers. But it’s hard to figure out what—if anything—they tell you about Trump, other than that he’s got fingers in several hundred pies.”
“Potential Iowa caucus-goers got their first look at Chris Christie’s fiery side Saturday, when he defended his record on gun control and scolded a gun rights activist who challenged him during a town hall,” the Des Moines Register reports.
Said Christie: “I’m still waiting for one fact from you, one fact about me being anti-gun. Give me one. One fact. Got one?”
“I think our candidates should pledge not to run as a third-party candidate.”
— RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, quoted by Politico.
The deputy speaker of Britain’s House of Lords, John Sewel, “has resigned his position after publication of photos and a video allegedly showing him using cocaine with prostitutes,” the AP reports.
“The race is on for the final spots on stage for the first Republican debate. With the highly-anticipated showdown less than two weeks away, candidates with low polling numbers are in a high-stakes scramble to qualify for an event that represents their best shot at breaking out,” The Hill reports.
“Based on five polls used by RealClearPolitics, eight candidates look like locks to make the stage, while the race for the final two slots is headed for a controversial photo finish. For the candidates currently ranked between 9th place and 14th place, the polling differential is negligible.”
Rick Klein: “The demise of the Iowa straw poll robbed us of the main midsummer winnowing contest in the Republican race. But another has emerged – setting up what could be the most exciting and chaotic 10-day stretch of the campaign this calendar year. The scramble to secure one of the 10 invitations to the first GOP presidential debate has Rand Paul torching the federal tax code, Lindsey Graham pulverizing flip phones, Rick Perry identifying a certain ‘cancer’ in his party, and Chris Christie spending a quarter-million dollars in July. Getting noticed matters; it may even explain why Mike Huckabee is doubling down with his comment that the Iran deal is marching Israelis ‘to the door of the oven.’ Never before has registering in the top X in polling mattered as much as it will during this stretch.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) “called for tougher gun laws in other states on Sunday, breaking his silence on the issue three days after a gunman with a history of mental illness and violence opened fire in a movie theater in the state’s fourth-largest city,” the New York Times reports.
“Jindal called for states to adopt laws similar to Louisiana’s that feed information about mental illness into a federal background check system for potential gun buyers.”
“Two low-profile Texas brothers have donated $15 million to support Sen. Ted Cruz, a record-setting contribution that amounts to the largest known donation so far in the 2016 presidential campaign,” CNN reports.
“Christie has remained especially close to his high school friends. He checks in by phone and attends reunions. But he’s also made a habit of appointing and nominating his former classmates to plum state positions, including judgeships. An Associated Press review of his senior class yearbook, state payroll records, agency websites and state press releases found that a handful of Christie’s former high school classmates have ended up in state positions since he took office. That number increases to nearly a dozen if Christie’s former classmates from Seton Hall law school are counted.”
New York Times: “With help from a well-funded, well-researched and invigorated anti-abortion movement, Republican politicians have refined how they are talking about pregnancy and abortion rights, choosing their words in a way they hope puts Democrats on the defensive.”
“The goal, social conservatives say, is to shift the debate away from the ‘war on women’ paradigm that has proved so harmful to their party’s image.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.