June 05, 2019 11:31 AM UTC
Get More Smarter on Wednesday (June 5)
1 Comments- by: Colorado Pols
The Brits just love President Trump. They absolutely adore him, really. It’s time to “Get More Smarter.” If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.
TOP OF MIND TODAY…
► Denver finally wrapped up its interminable election season on Tuesday. Incumbent Denver Mayor Michael Hancock won a third (and final) term in office with a 12-point victory over inept challenger Jamie Giellis, but the bigger story might be an unprecedented shift on the City Council. As the Denver Post explains, three incumbent Council members were ousted for apparently the first time in Denver’s history; Mary Beth Susman (District 5), Albus Brooks (District 9), and Wayne New (District 10) will all be looking for new jobs this summer.
The closest race of the night was for Clerk and Recorder, where Paul Lopez appears to have defeated Peg Perl by a few hundred votes out of a total of more than 143,000 cast.
► Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Lafayette) played an important role as the House of Representatives passed a bill intended to give relief to so-called “DREAMERs.” As the Washington Post reports:
The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would offer a path to citizenship to more than 2 million undocumented immigrants, including “dreamers” who were brought to the United States as children.
The vote was 237 to 187 for the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019, which would grant dreamers 10 years of legal residence status if they meet certain requirements. They would then receive permanent green cards after completing at least two years of higher education or military service, or after working for three years…
…Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), a freshman congressman and the son of Eritrean refugees, prompted cheers and a standing ovation from Democrats as he quoted President Ronald Reagan to defend immigration as integral to the fabric of the country. He also described dreamers as “young people all across our country who know no other home but the United States.”
“We can’t allow these young people to continue to live in fear, to be at risk,” Neguse said.
The Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to move the House bill forward, but as Jennifer Rubin writes for the Washington Post, that doesn’t change the significance of Tuesday’s vote:
With each bill on a popular item, the House moves one step closer to locking in its majority as it turns up the heat on vulnerable Senate Republicans who have to show what they’ve done to get reelected in 2020. What exactly are Sens. Joni Ernst (Iowa), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Susan Collins (Maine) and the rest going to point to? They cannot exactly brag about an unpopular tax cut (wiped out by Trump’s trade tax, otherwise known as tariffs). They had better not boast that they almost obliterated the popular Affordable Care Act and tried to wipe it off the books in court.
This isn’t rocket science. Pass popular bills. Tell voters you’ve passed popular bills. Remind them again. Point to the do-nothing Senate and chaos-creating and incompetent president. It’s a pretty effective way to keep the House majority, win the White House and maybe even win back the Senate.
► Senate Republicans are warning President Trump against imposing new tariffs on Mexico, suggesting that they have enough votes to override a potential veto of a measure that would prevent the tariffs from being implemented. The flip-floppety past of Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) makes it difficult to determine whether he would stand with Senate leaders or President Trump on Mexico tariffs.
Meanwhile, a new report suggests that tariffs on Mexico could cost the United States 400,000 jobs.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…
► The Chair of the Colorado Republican Party voted in Congress against a major disaster relief bill supported by both the Senate and President Trump.
► YouTube is starting to get more active in removing hateful content from the site. As the Washington Post reports:
YouTube said Wednesday it will remove false videos alleging that major events like the Holocaust didn’t happen, as well as a broad array of content by white supremacists and others in a move to more aggressively crack down on hate speech.
The Google-owned video site, along with its Silicon Valley peers, is starting to take a broader view of hate speech in the face of criticism that it has failed to prevent the spread of harmful videos that distort world events, hurt children, or promote discriminatory ideologies. On Tuesday, for instance, Vox Media called out YouTube for failing to remove homophobic and racist videos attacking one of its reporters.
While YouTube, which has over 1.8 billion daily users, has long prohibited videos that promote violence or hatred against people based on their age, religious beliefs, gender, religion, immigration status, sexual orientation, and other protected categories, the new hate speech policy will go further. The policies will specifically ban videos “alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion,” based on those categories. That would include groups that “glorify Nazi ideology,” the company said in its announcement, because such beliefs were “inherently discriminatory.”
► President Trump is already preparing his excuses in case he fails to win re-election in 2020. As CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains:
If there is any thread of consistency in Trump’s messaging to the American people over these last four years, it’s this: The media is corrupt, they didn’t want me to win, they don’t want me to succeed and they will do anything in their power to ensure that outcome.
It follows, then, that Trump is already planting the seeds to blame the media if he loses in 2020. He would have won easily if he had received positive press coverage! His loss isn’t actually a loss because he won by proving that the media is so corrupt! Etc., etc…
…Trump hates to lose, which is why he will refuse to do it. Or, at least, accept it if it happens.
► General John W. “Jay” Raymond has been nominated by President Trump to serve as the first commander of a new United States Space Command. Raymond is the current Air Force Space Command commander at Peterson Air Force Base, which is among the potential locations for USSPACECOM headquarters.
► Democrats seeking to unseat Republican Sen. Cory Gardner will gather this weekend for a candidate forum in Denver.
► Governor Jared Polis talks about his first legislative session and the many pieces of important legislation that were advanced. The Grand Junction Sentinel has more on the final bills that received a Polis signature.
► Democrat Katie Barrett will mount a 2020 challenge to unseat House Minority Leader Patrick Neville.
► Brian Eason of the Colorado Sun previews the coming battle to reshape TABOR.
► If you can’t move it, name it. As Blair Miller explains for Denver7:
The 8.5 million-pound boulder that fell onto Highway 145between Cortez and Telluride late last month will stay where it is and the road will be rebuilt around it, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday.
The boulder was one of two massive pieces of rock that fell around 2,000 feetonto the highway late last month. The larger one cut out an eight-foot-deep trench on the highway. The smaller rock, which weighed around 2.3 million pounds, was blasted.
The larger boulder will be called “Memorial Rock,” Polis said. He said the road would be built around the boulder so the “geological masterpiece” can be permanently preserved.
Polis says leaving the giant rock where it is will save taxpayers upwards of $200,000 that would be required for blasting and removal.
► Go SLAPP someone else.
► The Trump administration is pushing ahead with new restrictions on fetal tissue research.
► Former Congressman Tom Tancredo says that Republicans in Colorado support his personal border wall project. Just like they supported all of his campaigns for Governor.
Your Daily Dose Of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
► President Trump says Climate Change “goes both ways,” whatever the hell that means.
► President Trump is in France to commemorate the anniversary of D-Day. As CNN reports, Trump is all over the place:
Earlier in the morning, Trump’s mind was in a less reverent place. He tweeted barbs directed at former Vice President Joe Biden, the news media and the actress Bette Midler — all before 8 a.m. local time in London — where he was spending a second night in the US ambassador’s residence.
In Britain, an interview Trump had conducted a day earlier with ITV host Piers Morgan was airing on breakfast television.
Asked about his own avoidance of war service — Trump received a draft determent from Vietnam due to bone spurs in his foot — the President criticized that American effort, even as he was preparing to commemorate an earlier one.
“Well, I was never a fan of that war I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was a terrible war, I thought it was very far away,” he said.
Click here for more on Trump’s astounding interview with Piers Morgan.
ICYMI
► The grift keeps growing. Fundraising efforts tied to a silly effort at recalling Gov. Jared Polis are nevertheless managing to convince people to donate welfare checks to the cause.
Check out the latest episode of The Get More Smarter Show, featuring an in-depth interview with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. You can also Get More Smarter by liking Colorado Pols on Facebook!
► YouTube is starting to get more active in removing hateful content from the site.
Apparently, not all of it: https://www.advocate.com/media/2019/6/05/youtube-refuses-punish-antigay-youtuber-steven-crowder