In Case You Missed It (v9)

Here's a recap of this week's posts, in case you were too busy to read 'em when they came out.

Our Sunday School classroom visit brought us another chat with Minnesota's Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who's running to be the Democratic presidential nominee. She spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. One of the topics? Whether or not the whistleblower should talk with the impeachment investigators. She could go either way on that, but noted

That Ambassador Taylor testimony was devastating. It showed that this was not just one phone call, that this had been a plan for a long time, for the president to put the interests of America behind his own personal interests to get dirt on an opponent. It's a pattern. He does it for his business. He does it for his partisan interests. He does it every single day.

You will deserve Extra Credit for this one.  Because the president delivered some 8,000 words on the raid that led to the suicide of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, he got himself his own post. It would have been impossible for me to have commented on the the entire thing; it was hard enough to pull together this loose conglomeration of his truly bizarre comments, like this one about the Kurds.

They’re going to have to make their own decision. The Kurds have worked along incredibly with us, but in all fairness, it was much easier dealing with the Kurds after they went through three days of fighting, because that was a brutal three days... 

That's right:  the American president just bald-faced mocked the Kurds. You literally can't make this stuff up, nor can you make up the rest of his comments.

Our first Update of the week was a look at the outside income limits on New York's legislators, which have been quashed by the courts. Good government groups are looking for the Leg and the governor to try again in January. They reminded Albany leaders of  "too many instances of corruptions and conflicts of interest" stemming from legislators seeking personal gain related to their other jobs or jobs held by family members.

This is why the Commission concluded that restricting outside income “will eliminate both the perception of and any actual conflicts of interest” and “eliminates the possibility for the public to question whether the citizens of this State are being properly served.” 

Wondering on Wednesday took a look at issues that the NRA is facing, with excerpts from documents in a lawsuit the group is fighting with its former ad agency, and what that might mean for efforts to improve gun safety laws.

...with the messy lawsuits, and if things in this August Mother Jones article are still true, and we continue to see polling showing  the majority of Americans  - including Republicans - favor universal background checks, red flag laws, and more, I'm wondering how long politicians will continue to fear the NRA at election time, and if they stop being afraid, will we be able to get these very popular measures passed and signed into law?

Thursday's update was our weekly feature on the Democratic presidential candidates and their emails. Here's just a small part of a thing I made up, using (bolded) subject lines from one candidate's emails. 

I'm so vulnerably asking, I really am vulnerably asking.  It can't end like this. I don't say this lightly, but we could be on the verge of a TRAGIC mistake!!! This could be the end. It might be time to pack up. go home. it's dire.

Surprisingly, the candidate that sent me those emails is NOT the one who just dropped out of the race.

In Friday's Poll Watch, I took a look at new data from a Washington Post/ABC News poll, showing (among other things) that

49% of us (44% strongly) believe Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 47% (37% strongly) think he shouldn't. This is reflective of results from an October WaPo/Schar School poll, where the same percentage believed he should be impeached and removed. For comparison, only 33% thought Bill Clinton should suffer the same fate. 

And, earlier today, we had a Quick Take on the candidate that did drop out of the Democratic race -- Beto O'Rourke.

He had issues getting traction in the 'moderate' lane of the race, running along with Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar in that space. Biden came in with an advantage there, and both Mayor Pete and Klobuchar had done much better in the debates, significantly overshadowing O'Rourke (and in some respects, overshadowing Biden as well). And it seems, his shift to the left may hurt him going forward.

Dive in -- comment freely -- and come back for more next week!