Mediaboss Marketing

Today we answer questions and comments from readers and others wondering who thought it was a good idea to let this guy write a column?

You recently claimed the California exodus is a bunch of hooey.

True.

Then the state lost a congressional seat and it was announced that California is losing population for the first time in history.

Also true.

How do you feel now?

Like the state has a little bit more elbow room.

Seriously.

The column explored why so many folks are so eager to write Californias obituary.

The decades-old phenomenon is a product of jealousy and, more recently, the competition between the blue-America capital of California and the red-America capital of Texas. If California and its progressive policies are seen as failing by driving hordes of residents to head for the exits some consider that proof that Texas and its conservative approach offers a better way.

In short, the narrative is driven more by politics than reality.

But what about the population decline?

Demographers said deaths related to COVID-19, a falling birth rate and federal immigration restrictions were key drivers of the states population loss. And while Californias crazy-high cost of housing and comparatively steep tax rate have doubtless caused some to leave the state, those were not the primary reasons that California lost population.

More significantly, experts dont see the falling numbers as the start of a long-term pattern. They expect the state to resume its growth, albeit not at the booming levels of old, as early as this year.

But you flat-out called the exodus a myth.

And it is.

To read some of the apocalyptic coverage, you would think Californians were kicking and gouging each others eyes out as they overran the border with Nevada, Oregon and Arizona. Youd think the states population had fallen in half. Actually, California gained residents over the last decade, though the states population dipped by 0.46% in the last 12 months.

If you think 0.46% is a huge number, youd best not consider a career as a financial advisor.

You recently compared California in 2003, the last time there was a gubernatorial recall, to 2021.

Yes. A number of statistics, including the states dramatic political and cultural shift toward the Democratic Party, suggest Gov. Gavin Newsom is well-positioned to survive this current attempt.

So youre predicting Newsom prevails.

I make no predictions. Im smart enough to know what Im not smart enough to know.

You failed to include a comparison of the states homeless population then and now.

Its a big issue and definitely a political weight on Newsom.

According to the most recent data from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Developments point-in-time count, there were roughly 162,000 homeless residents living in California in 2020. Comparisons are inexact because HUD records go back only to 2005; at that time, the number was about 188,000.

In a recent column about sore losers you failed to mention Democrats Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams.

The old Oh, yeah? Well, what about ...

Excuse me, Im asking the questions.

OK.

Well, what about Clinton and Abrams?

Clinton has harshly criticized former President Trump on a number of occasions and even referred to him more than once as an illegitimate president who stole the election. But theres a world of difference between a private citizen even one as famous as Clinton venting on a book tour and Trumps actions before and after leaving the White House.

She didnt vigorously seek to overturn the outcome of the 2016 contest, conceding to Trump hours after the polls closed. Clinton attended his inauguration, as is customary.

Trump skipped President Bidens swearing-in, an event that has long highlighted and celebrated the nations traditionally peaceful transfer of power, and continues almost daily to publicly press the falsehood that he beat Biden and the election was rigged.

More importantly, Clinton didnt help incite a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol by supporters seeking to reverse the results of a demonstrably free and fair election.

What about Abrams?

After accusing Republican Brian Kemp of using his position as the states chief election officer to interfere with the 2018 gubernatorial contest, Abrams issued a carefully worded statement acknowledging that Kemp would be certified as the victor. But she was not, Abrams said, delivering a speech of concession. From a practical standpoint, it was a distinction without any difference.

Kemp vehemently denied the allegation of misconduct and a USA Today analysis found not much empirical evidence supporting the assertion that Kemp either suppressed the vote or stole the election from Abrams.

While some may find Abrams behavior ungracious, she didnt then set out as Republicans legislators across the country have to pass laws making it harder for people to vote or, more crucially, empowering lawmakers to overturn elections results they dont like.

Thats a big difference.

What about the Russia hoax and widespread 2020 election fraud?

No one from Trumps campaign was charged with conspiring with Russians during the 2016 election, and theres no proof that Moscow tipped the election away from Clinton. However, theres incontrovertible evidence that Trump and his campaign aides welcomed and even invited Russias support, which involved the release of hacked emails from Clintons campaign and spreading disinformation on social media.

As for allegations of widespread voter fraud, maybe theyll find millions of uncounted Trump ballots when they drain the Loch Ness and find the monster that lives there. Or up in the trees where unicorns fly.

But I wouldnt count on it.

So youre always right about everything?

Ask my wife. Shell certainly disabuse you of that notion. Or if youd rather, search for barabak, presidential and long shots to see just how badly I can flub things.

Meantime, keep the cards and letters coming.

Link:
Debunking Russia hoax, California exodus and other myths - Los Angeles Times

Oh Lord, Biden replied.

They talked for a moment about why Biden hadnt run. Duggan was regretful. Biden was emotional.

I want to be the first person to sign up for the 2020 campaign, Duggan told him, because this never would have happened if you were the candidate.

Biden, quiet, deflected.

Michigan wound up going to Trump by 10,704 votes.

Biden walked into the next room to call Obama. That conversation didnt last long. There wasnt much to say.

Later, Obama phoned Clinton. He was just as level with her as hed been with everyone else: Democrats couldnt fight the results. She resisted. He then called John Podesta, Clintons campaign chair and his own former senior adviser, catching him after he gave a speech at the Javits Center, trying to buy time. Now Podesta was riding back to Clintons hotel in a van full of depressed campaign staffers. Youve got to make her concede, Obama told him.

The president was looking at the numbers as he spoke. She cant come back. Dont fight it anymore. Podesta listened, finally agreeing.

I feel like I really let you down, Mr. President, he said. I feel like I really let her down.

Read: Hillary Clinton says she was right all along

While they were speaking, Clintons closest aide, Huma Abedin, called another aide, Jennifer Palmieri, who was sitting in the van next to Podesta. Well, Abedin said. She did it. Clinton had called Trump to concede. She didnt call Obama back that night to tell him she had done so.

After Obama himself phoned Trump to congratulate him, he called two of his closest aides, his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and his speechwriter Cody Keenan, well into a bottle of whiskey at Keenans apartment, to talk through what he was going to say in the Rose Garden in the morning. I have to do this the right way, he insisted. He dictated most of the text. Do you want to put any reassurance in there for our allies around the world? Rhodes asked. I cant give it to them, Obama answered. They left that part out.

The next few days were full of tears and West Wing moments: Obama saying how proud he was of everyone and urging people to run through the tape and stay focused on their work. No one really could. Aides who used to spend their days being snarky and tough had tears streaming down their faces. On the morning after the election, they waited for Clinton to finally give her concession speech up in New York. Then Obama came out into the Rose Garden, Biden at his side, saying something about how the sun would rise tomorrow. Thered never been so many staff gathered there. They did not look as if they believed the sun would rise tomorrow. They could barely see it then.

Im not running, Biden was insisting to people in the spring of 2017.

But then to others hed say, If Im walking, Im running.

Read this article:
How Joe Biden Really Decided to Run for President - The Atlantic

A former aide to failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for packing the Supreme Court and said President Bidens commission to explore that possibility is "doomed from the start."

Bidens Supreme Court commission, which has its first meeting Wednesday, will eventually produce a report on possible changes to the court, including expanding the number of seats.

But Brian Fallon, the executive director of liberal dark money group Demand Justice, says he isn't holding his breath about what the commission will say.

LIBERALS RAMP UP CALLS FOR SUPREME COURT JUSTICE BREYER TO RETIRE

"It's not even on my calendar, because I don't care," Fallon, a former Clinton aide, told Politico on Monday.

Fallon, who also served in the Obama administration as a spokesman at the Department of Justice, added that there wasnt a thing the commission would do that was "going to impress" him and added that he believes the "whole thing is doomed from the start."

"We oughta have a Black woman on the damn court to hear a case like this," Fallon also said, in reference to the Mississippi abortion case taken up by the Supreme Court on Monday.

BIDEN'S SUPREME COURT COMMISSION TO MEET WITH KEY ABORTION CASE LOOMING

Demand Justice is a liberal advocacy group that is pushing to add four new justices to the Supreme Court, claiming on their website the court "has been hijacked" and that the justices appointed under former President Trump have "fought to restrict womens access to reproductive health services and deny equal treatment to LGBTQ Americans."

Fallon and fellow critics have blasted Bidens court-packing commission for including members opposed to expanding the Supreme Court and producing a report rather than recommendations on whether to pack the court.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Bidens commission is set to meet on Wednesday after the Supreme Court took up the major abortion case on Monday. The commissions report will be due by mid-November, likely when the case is heard.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, concerns a Mississippi law that bans abortion procedures after 15 weeks. Lower courts blocked the law but Mississippi, like other right-leaning states in recent years, appealed the rulings to the Supreme Court in hopes that the new 6-3 Republican-appointed majority might expand the scope of allowable state regulations or bans on abortion.

Fox News Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

Read more here:
Ex-Clinton aide says Biden's Supreme Court commission is 'doomed from the start,' calls for court packing - Fox News

What is going on?

President Joe Biden is on primetime television almost every day.

He looks into the camera directly, seriously and calmly explaining the countrys challenges and possible solutions. He has a near monopoly on network news coverage and the non-Fox cable news/opinion channels.

The free news coverage is priceless.

Ask former President Donald Trump. He could tell you how coverage of his rallies and his use of social media gave him a unique edge in his two runs for the presidency.

Democrats and progressives are loading up paid TV message ads that promote Bidens programs and portray him as calm, cool, collected, competent and healthy.

D.G. Martin

Certainly, this media campaign is designed to secure and sustain public support for Biden and his proposed economic recovery legislation.

Also, it is certainly designed to bolster Democratic chances in the 2022 mid-term congressional elections.

Still, with Biden everywhere, you could believe that the 2024 presidential campaign has begun.

And Biden is running hard.

I remember thinking during the 2020 Trump-Biden contest that Biden, at 78 years old when he took office, would only be a bridge president. After beating Trump, he would, at age 82 in 2024, step aside for a younger Democratic candidate who would secure his legacy.

It might be Vice President Kamala Harris or another popular senator, governor or other high office holder.

The problem with this scenario is illustrated by the losing campaigns of Al Gore, Bill Clintons vice president, in 2000 and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obamas first term secretary of state, in 2016.

Neither Gore nor Hillary Clinton could win an Electoral College victory, even though Bill Clinton and Obama, arguably, would have won reelection had they been permitted to run.

Will Biden really run again? Here is what he said at his first news conference as president, My plan is to run for reelection. Thats my expectation.

But he also said, Im a great respecter of fate. Ive never been able to plan four and half, three and a half years ahead for certain.

Biden asserts an intent to run again so he is not perceived as a lame duck who loses the influence, authority and sway that belong to a president who could be elected to another term. But he seems to be preserving the option to change his mind.

Whether or not he runs again, Biden has been running for president most of his life.

Some remember a North Carolina connection to his decades-long series of presidential candidacies.

As I reported earlier, in 1986 I was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress in a district that had been represented by Republicans for many years. The race was close. Lots of senators and members of Congress came to campaign with me. I loved hobnobbing with famous political personages like Jim Wright, Claude Pepper and Charles Rangel and future presidential candidates Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt and Gary Hart. But these visits often drove our campaign volunteers crazy trying to figure out how to readjust our campaign schedule, develop an appropriate program for them and gather respectable crowds to greet them.

One of these visitors was Sen. Joe Biden, then in his mid-40s. His staff gave our campaign scheduler Marcia Webster only a day or two to prepare. She called some of the loyal supporters who never said no even to the most challenging requests.

One of these, Brenda Barger, remembers that she and her husband Hugh hosted a small group at their farm near Davidson. Mayor Russell Knox and College Union director Shaw Smith came to meet Biden and hear him talk about a run for president some day.

I lost that congressional election, but we learned that Biden was energetic and focused, traits that will serve him again if he runs in 2024.

D.G. Martin hosts North Carolina Bookwatch at 3:30 p.m. Sunday and 5 p.m. Tuesday on PBS North Carolina (formerly UNC-TV).

See the original post here:
DG MARTIN COLUMN: Biden's reelection campaign - The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press - Stanly News & Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, May 17, the 137th day of 2021. There are 228 days left in the year.

Todays Highlight in History:

On May 17, 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision which held that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.

On this date:

In 1792, the New York Stock Exchange had its beginnings as a group of brokers met under a tree on Wall Street and signed the Buttonwood Agreement.

In 1875, the first Kentucky Derby was run; the winner was Aristides, ridden by Oliver Lewis.

In 1946, President Harry S. Truman seized control of the nations railroads, delaying but not preventing a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen.

In 1973, a special committee convened by the U.S. Senate began its televised hearings into the Watergate scandal.

In 1980, rioting that claimed 18 lives erupted in Miamis Liberty City after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating Black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.

In 1987, 37 American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf. (Iraq apologized for the attack, calling it a mistake, and paid more than $27 million in compensation.)

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in. (Megans Law, as its known, was named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and murdered in 1994.)

In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter ended a historic visit to Cuba sharply at odds with the Bush administration over how to deal with Fidel Castro, saying limits on tourism and trade often hurt Americans more than Cubans.

In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex marriages.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that young people serving life prison terms should have a meaningful opportunity to obtain release provided they didnt kill their victims.

In 2015, a shootout erupted between bikers and police outside a restaurant in Waco, Texas, leaving nine of the bikers dead and 20 people injured.

In 2017, the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee a federal investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the 2016 Donald Trump campaign.

Ten years ago: Queen Elizabeth II began the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, a four-day trip to highlight strong Anglo-Irish relations and the success of Northern Ireland peacemaking. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed a Los Angeles Times report that he had fathered a child with a woman on his household staff more than a decade earlier. (Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, had announced their separation on May 9, 2011.) Baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew, 74, died in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Five years ago: Bernie Sanders won Oregons Democratic presidential primary while Hillary Clinton eked out a razor-thin victory in Kentucky. Federal investigators concluded that a speeding Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight people, most likely ran off the rails because the engineer was distracted by word of a nearby commuter train getting hit by a rock. Guy Clark, the Grammy-winning musician who mentored a generation of songwriters, died in Nashville at age 74.

One year ago: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was tested for the coronavirus on live TV as he announced that all people in the state who were experiencing flu-like symptoms were eligible for tests. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell expressed optimism that the U.S. economy could begin to recover in the second half of the year, assuming that there would not be a second wave, but he suggested in a CBS 60 Minutes interview that a full recovery would likely not be possible before the arrival of a vaccine. A spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said Ghani and his political rival Abdullah Abdullah had signed a power-sharing agreement, two months after both men declared themselves the winner of the countrys presidential election.

Todays Birthdays: Actor Peter Gerety is 81. Singer Taj Mahal is 79. Rock musician Bill Bruford is 72. TV personality Kathleen Sullivan is 68. Boxing Hall of Famer Sugar Ray Leonard is 65. Actor-comedian Bob Saget is 65. Sports announcer Jim Nantz is 62. Producer Simon Fuller (TV: American Idol) is 61. Singer Enya is 60. Actor-comedian Craig Ferguson is 59. Rock singer-musician Page McConnell is 58. Actor David Eigenberg is 57. Singer-musician Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) is 56. Actor Paige Turco is 56. R&B musician ODell (Mint Condition) is 56. Actor Hill Harper is 55. TV personality/interior designer Thom Filicia is 52. Singer Jordan Knight is 51. R&B singer Darnell Van Rensalier (Shai) is 51. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is 50. Actor Sasha Alexander is 48. Rock singer-musician Josh Homme (HAHM-ee) is 48. Rock singer Andrea Corr (The Corrs) is 47. Actor Sendhil Ramamurthy (SEN-dul rah-mah-MURTH-ee) is 47. Actor Rochelle Aytes is 45. Singer Kandi Burruss is 45. Actor Kat Foster is 43. Actor Ayda Field is 42. Actor Ginger Gonzaga is 38. Folk-rock singer/songwriter Passenger is 37. Dancer-choreographer Derek Hough (huhf) is 36. Actor Tahj Mowry is 35. Actor Nikki Reed is 33. Singer Kree Harrison (TV: American Idol) is 31. Actor Leven Rambin is 31. Actor Samantha Browne-Walters is 30. Actor Justin Martin is 27.

See the original post here:
Today in History - Associated Press