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July 2018

Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott is challenging Democrat Bill Nelson for the U.S. Senate this fall. Nelson has been in office since 2001. The GOP believes this is one of the seats they can pick up and they have good reasons to think so.

I watched the Trump-Putin press conference on Monday morning, then spent almost 8 hours in the car with only terrestrial news radio, when available. When I finally arrived and had a chance to catch up on Twitter and replays of cable news, it was obvious that I re-entered a world divorced from the reality that most people hear, which is short news bites while going about their lives.

A new analysis from the June 2018 BP Statistical Review of Global Energy has some intriguing details on the annual emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) in 201. The global CO2 emissions from energy in 2017 grew by 1.6%, rebounding from the stagnant volumes during 2014-2016, and faster than the 10-year average of 1.3%. However, despite the dire predictions of extinction-causing climate change after President Donald Trump nixed the American participation in the Paris Climate Accord, the nation's C02 emissions plunged.
...Declines in CO2 emissions in 2017 were led by the US (-0.5% and 42 million tons, see chart above). This is the ninth time in this century that the US has had the largest decline in emissions in the world. This also was the third consecutive year that emissions in the US declined, though the fall was the smallest over the last three years.

Our economy continues to grow. Excellent jobs reports mean there's a lot more expendable income. Stimulating the economy is best accomplished not through government intervention, but by putting money back into the market, which is exactly what we're seeing. Consumer spending rose by 0.5% in June and the Commerce Department revised May's spending report, upgrading spending increases from 0.8% to 1.3%. Overall, retail sales are up 6.6% from a year ago.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the hottest commodity in the progressive movement, and arguably in the Democratic Party. The New York Democratic Socialist stunned the Democrat elite by defeating Joe Crowley, the number 4 Democrat in the House and a likely future Speaker of the House if Democrats regained control, in a primary.

Elizabeth Warren repeatedly has said that she is not running for president. Warren makes that statement, with the most earnest of faces, because she still has a November 2018 reelection to win, and her opponents are hitting her over the presidential plans. Republican candidate Geoff Diehl has made "Where's Warren?" one of his main campaign themes.

Last year, we covered Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court, including their misguided insistence on using the filibuster in an attempt to stop the nomination.  At that point, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had eliminated the filibuster on lower court nominations but since there was no Supreme Court vacancy during his tenure as majority leader, Reid preserved the filibuster for the Supreme Court.