7. Amazon goes big, liberals and conservatives complain about the way the world works now
— Arlington, Virginia, and Long Island City in New York will each get $2.5 billion in investment and 25,000 jobs. Both will offer massive incentives to get the new split headquarters.
— A total of 238 cities competed for these sites, including non-qualifying Birmingham and Huntsville. Now, Amazon knows what all of these cities are offering and will probably use that information later.
6. Recount in Florida will continue on until November 20
— In what appears to be a never-ending midterm election, Palm Beach County will continue to get more time to count their ballots. This will affect who Floridians elect as their next senator, governor and agriculture commissioner.
— Both Palm Beach County and Broward County continue to be flashpoints, but Bay County is getting in on this issue because they allowed 120 people to vote via email and fax.
5. Speaker Mac McCutcheon will be speaker of the Alabama State House
— The 77 members of the Alabama House Republican Caucus on Tuesday unanimously nominated Speaker Mac McCutcheon (R-Monrovia) for another term leading the chamber in Montgomery.
— Speaker McCutcheon will oversee what many expect to be a controversial session of the Alabama legislature that will include lottery, Medicaid expansion, sports betting, gas taxes and other issues brought to the table for discussion.
4. The White House is preparing their answers in the Mueller probe as some Trump allies prepare for indictments
— President Donald Trump and his legal team are reportedly almost done with written answers to questions posed by special counsel Robert Mueller about Russian interference, but they are not expected to be answering obstruction of justice questions.
— Meanwhile, father of the birther conspiracy Jerome Corsi, believes he will be indicted in a perjury trap, and many believe Mueller is also closing in on Trump confidant Roger Stone for his ties with WikiLeaks. Stone has denied having any prior knowledge of the email dump other than what was publicly available.
3. CNN foolishly sues the White House because Jim Acosta lost his permanent press pass
— The argument CNN is making is based on the First and Fifth Amendment, saying that CNN “demands the return of the White House credentials of CNN’s Chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta. The wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acosta’s First Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their Fifth Amendment rights to due process. We have asked this court for an immediate restraining order requiring the pass be returned to Jim, and will seek permanent relief as part of this process.”
— Legal experts are split on the matter, with the Washington Post reporting that Stuart Karle, former general counsel for the Wall Street Journal, pointed out that no reporter has an absolute right to attend these briefings. But Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University says CNN is “entirely justified” and has a case.
2. The Alabama Democratic Party’s biggest backers, hacks in the media, have turned on them
— When Alabama Political Reporter’s Josh Moon isn’t calling everyone in Alabama “racist,” he spends his time shilling for whatever is the liberal cause of the day or pretending Democrats have a legitimate chance to win statewide elections, but now he is joining other Democrats in calling out the state party for their failures and saying lacks everything need to lead, saying, “Not the plan. Not the voice. Not the leadership.”
— Moon isn’t the only Democratic backer in the press that is voicing his frustration. Last week, AL.com’s John Archibald lamented the ineffectiveness of the Alabama Democratic Party. He said, “It’s that Democrats in Alabama face all that and their own inept, corrupt, corrosive party structure.”
1. If demographics are destiny, Republicans are screwed
— Republican strategists are starting to lick their wounds over the midterm losses where they lost 30+ House seats and made small gains in the Senate (losing two red states and finally flipping a few others). They don’t think the trends are good, but all is not lost.
— With Trump the face of the Republican Party, white men (a shrinking portion of the electorate) are the focus, while the focus for the Democrats is shifting to female, minority and suburban areas — where Trump’s brand of smashmouth doesn’t play well. Now we will see the fruits of the Russian investigations, Congressional investigations and two more years of non-stop media/Trump noise.
