What’s coming up on Sunday Kos…
- Remembering the horrors of the Jonestown massacre 40 years later, by Sher Watts Spooner
- Has America reached peak hate under Trump, and where do we go next? by Frank Vyan Walton
- Democrats and progressives won Midterm 2018: Here is how we keep the win, by Egberto Willies
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Donald Trump is not a smart man—and his latest voter fraud statement proves it, by Mark E Andersen
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The Obama economic expansion keeps rolling on, by Jon Perr
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Republicans need to decide if protecting Trump is worth the price of destroying their party, by Laurence Lewis
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Beyond deplorable: Trump threatens and attacks U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico and on the mainland, by Denise Oliver Velez
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International Elections Digest: Brazil elects fascist president who adores military dictatorship, by Daily Kos Elections
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House Democrats are right to push for stronger labor protections in Trump's revised NAFTA, by Ian Reifowitz
• Trump is in California to visit firefighters and survivors of the Camp Fire that killed at least 71 and the survivors of the Thousand Oaks bar shooting in which 12 people were murdered:
“I think that the biggest message and the biggest takeover will be the president saying, ‘We’re here,’ and thankfully the president’s got big shoulders, and I think he’s going to go there to offer them up to people that need somebody to lean on,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday on the Fox News Channel. [...]
But when he was asked by Fox News in an interview set to air Sunday whether climate change played a role in the number of serious fires, he said “maybe it contributes a little bit. The big problem we have is management.” He added that he was surprised to see images of firefighters removing dried brush near a fire. “This should have been all raked out.”
At first, it seemed Trump might bring a planeload of paper towels to hand out as he did in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria struck. Now it seems maybe Air Force 1 is brimful of rakes, although we have yet to see them. Perhaps he’s arranging for the military to bring them after they’re done confronting the scareavan on the Mexican border.
• Check out these giant puppet robots roaming the streets of Toulouse, France, earlier this month.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Here is The Washington Post’s whip count on Democratic support for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House: 81 who give a definite “yes”; 20 who give a definite “no”; 68 who “dodged questions”; and 62 whose stances are “unknown/unclear.”
• Centers for Disease Control issue alarming report on increase in suicides by U.S. workers. The study scrutinized the occupations of 22,053 people who committed suicide in 17 states in 2012 and 2015:
From 2000 to 2016, the suicide rate among American workers has increased 34 percent, up 12.9 per 100,000 working persons to 17.3, according to a worrisome new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Workers with the highest suicide rates have construction, mining and drilling jobs, the U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
The CDC study does not explain why more U.S. workers appear to be taking their own lives. But by breaking down suicide rates by occupation, this can help doctors and lawmakers support the workers who may be most at risk of suicide.
• Fart roils darts championship. Contestants deny it was theirs:
The world of professional darts has been rocked by two players accusing each other of repeatedly breaking wind during a match.
Gary Anderson of Scotland and the Dutchman Wesley Harms blamed each other for “rotten” farts during their clash in the Gland Slam of Darts.
• Household debt soared to $13.5 trillion last quarter. That’s $837 million more than the last high point, which occurred in 2008 just before the Great Recession really got rolling. Among the worst—student debt:
Flows of student debt into serious delinquency — of 90 or more days — rose to 9.1 percent in the third quarter from 8.6 percent in the previous quarter, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
It was a reversal after a period of improvement for student debt, which totaled $1.4 trillion. Such delinquency flows have been rising on auto debt since 2012 and on credit card debt since last year, which could raise a red flag for economists.