“Aaa, the CIA report is out! Laughter of the year! Intro to my show from 6 years ago is the main evidence of Russia’s influence at US elections. This is not a joke!”
Anthony Weiner, former U.S. Representative for New York's 9th congressional district and candidate for Mayor in 2005 and 2013Yes! What could go wrong? There's no further depth of humiliation. Anthony, anything you do will feel like redemption. Say yes!
Donald Trump Jr, businessman and son of President-elect of the United States Donald J. TrumpOh, yes! The time is ripe. Building a dynasty is not something you drag your heels on. And what if the Democratic nominee is Hillary? The Trump vs. Hillary show was a big hit last fall. I want to watch another season. Make it happen, people. It's a slow year for election action. The spotlight is on you. Bill de Blasio richly deserves a big challenge. Come on, New York City. We political spectators need some variety. The Washington show is worth watching: President Trump, Trump's Congress, the Democratic Party in Trumpland. But all that governing can get tiresome. A nice active NYC mayoral campaign would be great.
On Thursday, Nomani filed a formal complaint with the university, alleging discrimination and harassment after comments made by Christine Fair, an associate professor in Georgetown’s School for Foreign Service....Who's the bully here? The bully may be the one who's crying "bully."
“I’ve written you off as a human being,” Fair wrote in one message detailed in the complaint. “Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don’t you understand, you clueless dolt?” Fair wrote, later adding: “YOU publicly voted for a sex assailant.” She went on to say that Nomani “pimped herself out to all media outlets because she was a ‘Muslim woman who voted for Trump.’ ”
Fair called Nomani’s appeal to her employer a “very dangerous trend.” She said Nomani, a former professor at Georgetown, has no standing at the university to complain.
“I am most concerned about the increasing appeal to employers to silence the criticism of citizens made in their private capacity as citizens,” [Fair] wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “Because most of us need our jobs, as few of us are financially independent, this is the most pernicious form of bullying of critics.”
“I am writing to share with you that, as a result of my column, Prof. Fair has directed hateful, vulgar and disrespectful messages to me, including the allegations that I am: a ‘fraud'; ‘fame-mongering clown show'; and a ‘bevkuf,’ or ‘idiot,’ in my native Urdu, who has ‘pimped herself out,’ ” Nomani wrote in a Dec. 2 email included in the complaint to Bruce Hoffman, director of Georgetown’s Center for Security Studies. “This last allegation amounts to ‘slut-shaming.’ ”...Well, Fair has gone pretty far, but I side with her free speech rights and interests. Nomani had her say and Fair reacted to it, with vivid speech. Fair could be fancily articulate, but sometimes what you have to say really is "Fuck you. Go to hell." Form is part of the expression, as Justice Harlan fancily articulated in Cohen v. California (the "Fuck the Draft" case)(and, yes, I know Georgetown is a private institution):
“She has no right to decry criticism . . . even criticism that is in language that offends her fragile sensibilities,” Fair wrote in a Facebook post. “ ‘F–k off’ and ‘go to hell’ and ‘pimping yourself out’ for media coverage offended her . . . but not ‘I can grab their p—–s’ or the various misogynist, racist, xeonophobic [sic] race-baiting bulls–t espoused by her candidate of choice.” Fair concluded: “So again, Ms. Nomani, ‘F–K YOU. GO TO HELL.’ ”
To many, the immediate consequence of [freedom of speech] may often appear to be only verbal tumult, discord, and even offensive utterance. These are, however, within established limits, in truth necessary side effects of the broader enduring values which the process of open debate permits us to achieve. That the air may at times seem filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense not a sign of weakness but of strength. We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise might seem a trifling and annoying instance of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these fundamental societal values are truly implicated. That is why "[w]holly neutral futilities . . . come under the protection of free speech as fully as do Keats' poems or Donne's sermons," Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 333 U. S. 528 (1948) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting), and why, "so long as the means are peaceful, the communication need not meet standards of acceptability," Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 402 U. S. 419 (1971).And let me just focus on Nomani's charge that Fair committed "slut-shaming" when she said that Nomani "pimped [her]self out." That's Nomani engaging in some vivid, hostile speech, leveraging the liberal meme "slut-shaming." Is the metaphorical use of "pimped yourself out" really so bad? Writing for personal gain is often analogized to sexual prostitution, and we know that calling someone a whore for selling out his or her intellectual work product is not sexual. It's no more sexual than "fuck you" to express anger. It's no more literal than "Go to hell." It's just coarse, hyperbolic speech.
After Shuster made the remark on "Tucker," Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines contacted him and said the reference was offensive. Shuster e-mailed back that he was referring to the fact that Chelsea Clinton is making calls to convention superdelegates but refusing to talk to the press. After Shuster continued to defend himself, Phil Griffin, MSNBC's top executive, called Reines yesterday to apologize.That was back when Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC and it was possible to argue that MSNBC had a plan to use sexism to thwart Hillary Clinton. Times change.
[Clinton campaign communications director Howard] Wolfson noted that MSNBC's Chris Matthews expressed regret last month for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's political success can be traced to sympathy stemming from her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "At some point you have to question whether there is a pattern at this particular network," Wolfson said.
Really, how bad is it to say "pimped out"? Is it "nappy-headed hos" bad? Did anyone think Shuster was literally calling Chelsea a whore or even making any reference to her womanly virtue? "Pimped out" is a common colloquialism these days. According to the Urban Dictionary, which gives a good read on how young people use words, the connotations having to do with exaggerated fashion and style predominate.Ha! I've got exactly the same video embedded.
Even if the clear associations with prostitution remain, we often make figurative references to prostitution in speech, and the cause of feminism is not served by requiring special limitations when we're talking about women. We ought to be able to call a female publicity hound a "media whore."
I've never watched "Tucker," the show Shuster was guest-hosting when he made the supposedly offensive remark, but if the conversation there is casual and slang is the norm, then saying "pimped out" about Chelsea should be taken in stride. Otherwise it looks as though NBC caved to the Clintons.
ADDED: Ugh! Here's Shuster groveling...
"All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton"? Why? Because, sublimely privileged, she went to work for a hedge fund? And, generally, why should anyone be "proud of" someone else's children? Plus, Chelsea isn't a kid anymore! I think saying "All Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton" is offensive. Please fire David Shuster.4 years. It's 16 years now. I've been staunch!
AND: Out in the real world today, I had an encounter with the word "pimp." Plus, the dominant meaning of the word today — relating to style — may be the original meaning, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary:
pimp 1607, perhaps from M.Fr. pimper "to dress elegantly" (16c.), prp. of pimpant "alluring in dress, seductive." Weekley suggests M.Fr. pimpreneau, defined in Cotgrave (1611) as "a knave, rascall, varlet, scoundrell." The word also means "informer, stool pigeon" in Australia and New Zealand and in S.Africa, where by early 1960s it existed in Swahili form impimpsi. The verb is attested from 1636. Pimpmobile first recorded 1973.MORE: The Moderate Voice has a big roundup of the commentary, which does not just break down along partisan lines. For example, Jane Hamsher said:
It may surprise everyone but I actually wasn't bothered by [what Shuster said]. The phrase is ubiquitous, I use it all the time and although it is a loaded term my initial impression was that in the wake of all the truly awful sexist stuff that's come down the pipeline from MSNBC over the course of this campaign, much of which I have personally railed about, this just didn't fall into that category. At first I thought it might be because I know Shuster and don't think he has the women's issues that many on MSNBC seem to have, and maybe that was affecting my assessment of the situation. But I wrote a post recently about Ben Affleck appearing at a press conference for the SEIU in Boston, and shortly after it went live someone involved in helping me put together the story sent me an email wondering what the hell I was thinking linking to a headline that said something on the order of "Boston Mayor Pimps For Healthcare Workers." I wasn't sure what they were upset about either at the time, but after a moment I realized that the term probably didn't strike others as being as inert as it did me so I changed the link. I understand that this situation is different, we're talking about a young woman and Hillary Clinton has been on the receiving end of a lot of really misogynistic and disrespectful shit from MSNBC and that on the heels of that, a comment which overtly compared her daughter to a prostitute probably did not sit too well. Still, if you asked me, I'd say that while I certainly understand that others might feel differently, for me this was a minor infraction.And if anyone thinks my comment here is partisan, remember that I just defended Randi Rhodes (and I've been arguing the free speech side of nearly every dispute over the 4-year life of this blog).
Speaking from his bed at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital, which has been treating him free of charge, [Abul] Bajandar said the pain of his condition had been "unbearable".Because of his disease, Bajandar became a celebrity and — we are told — "probably the most loved and longest-staying patient" at the hospital.
"I never thought I would ever be able to hold my kid with my hands," he said, showing a bandaged hand. "Now I feel so much better, I can hold my daughter in my lap and play with her. I can't wait to go back home."...
He met his wife Halima Khatun before he contracted the disease, but it had taken hold by the time they married, against her parents' wishes.
Freshman Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) also tried to raise objections, but Biden cut them off. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) attempted to voice protests as well.ADDED: Video:
As Jayapal tried to make her case, Biden cut in: "There is no debate, and if it's not signed by a senator the objection cannot be entertained."
The conclusions were part of a declassified intelligence report, ordered by President Obama, that was released Friday afternoon. Its main conclusions were described to Donald J. Trump by intelligence officials earlier in the day, and he responded by acknowledging that Russia sought to hack into the Democratic National Committee, but said nothing about the conclusion that Mr. Putin had sought to aid his candidacy, other than that it had no effect on the outcome.You can read the report PDF here.
Although she's an American, the album was released only in the UK at first; the US version was delayed until late February. Apparently the thinking was that she might not be as appealing to Americans. The concern was unnecessary.More — with videos — at the link.
It's hard to express what a brilliant artist Tori Amos is. She does three things and is stellar at each one: songwriting (alternating between frankly confessional and slyly cryptic), singing (at its most mellifluous on this album but capable of being much more raw) and piano playing (classically trained but with pop and jazz sensibilities).
The suspect in custody was identified as Esteban Santiago...ADDED: "In Nov. 2016, Santiago-Ruiz walked into an FBI office in Anchorage and claimed he was being forced to fight for ISIS, law enforcement sources told CBS News. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital after police were called, sources said."
"The shooter was a passenger on a Canadian flight with a checked gun," Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca wrote on Facebook. "He claimed his bag and took the gun from baggage and went into the bathroom to load it. Came out shooting people in baggage claim."...
"It was very surreal," John Schlicher, a witness, told Fox News. "He did not say a word." He described the shooter as a slender man with dark hair, likely in his 30s, wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.
'So much for being a movie star - and that was season 1 compared to season 14,' Trump tweeted.The President-elect is taunting a movie star on Twitter. That's something new.
'Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported [Ohio Governor John] Kasich & [Democratic nominee] Hillary Clinton.'
“A lot of my friends are really, really upset but I reminded them a that they were still them. You’re always you and you bring the same to the party that you did always,” singer Boy George told Billboard... on Nov. 17. “For a lot of gay people, mainstream politics really isn’t where we find the answer. We find the answer in our own community by joining together. There’s an amazing kind of spirit in the LGBTQ community and you saw that through the AIDS epidemic and you see it so much every day. I’m not sure how much it relates to mainstream politics.”I wish more celebrities would take that distanced approach. Ah, but there's this tweet (from just before the election):
I saw a list of celebrity Trump supporters, some quite surprising ones but I blocked them all. My timeline feels sanitised!Were there any celebrity Trump supporters? And Boy George had been following them? Hard to believe.
“The dishonest media is not reporting that any money spent, for the sake if [sic] speed, on building the Great Wall, will be paid back by Mexico,” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning.Is that a shift? I expect another "dishonest media" tweet from Trump. How is "sending a bill" different from "forcing Mexico to pay"? The only difference is in how people hearing the talking point pictured the sequence of construction and financing events. Or perhaps the difference is that those who'd like to stop the wall are disappointed to learn that the building process won't be stalled by difficult interaction with Mexico.
The president-elect appeared to be responding to reports out Thursday that his team and Republican lawmakers have considered relying on a 2006 law signed by then-President George W. Bush that provided for the construction of 700 miles-worth of a “physical barrier” along the southern border. That barrier was never constructed, but the law did not include a sunset provision, allowing Republicans to seek funding for a program already on the books.
The GOP could tie money for Trump’s wall into a must-pass spending bill that would put Democrats in the position of having to shut down the government if they choose to oppose it.
The shift, from forcing Mexico to pay to sending the Mexican government a bill once the wall is built, alters one of Trump’s most powerful campaign trail talking points....
Maybe the artists were still under the spell of Hillary's campaign signage posted all over the WaPo offices.
They got it right the first time.That called to mind the famous frontispiece for "Leviathan":
A mass of women, drawn together by the force of One Man.
He gives them their Shape as a whole: the Shape to put in all their fears and narcissism and self-congratulation, all within the context of Him.
A herd, they have been corralled...
I am Laslo.
“We have the statements of the four of them,” Chicago Area North Detectives Commander Kevin Duffin said at the briefing Thursday afternoon. “They admit that they were beating him, kicking him, they made him drink toilet water, and then obviously the video where they’re cutting a piece of his scalp.”2 of the 4 accused are female. 3 of the 4 are 18 years old, and one — a female — is 24.
Duffin said that hate crime charges were warranted because of the victim’s “diminished mental capacity, the fact that they tied him up, the obvious racial quotes that they post live on Facebook.”
When asked whether the hate crime charges stemmed from the 18-year-old’s mental health or his race — both of which are factors listed in the state’s hate crime statute — Duffin said: “It’s half a dozen of one, six of the other.”
“At heart, I am a man,” said the petite-framed Mr. Sasaki, whose wardrobe of slim-fit tank tops, baggy jackets and skinny jeans evokes the fashion of a preadolescent girl. The concept of gender, he said, “isn’t really necessary.”...
“It’s just that you use makeup and dress how you want,” said Takuya Kitajima, 18. Mr. Kitajima, who goes by the name Takubo, said he believed men and women were fundamentally different in spite of any blurring of style distinctions. “I think men should protect women, and that principle won’t change,” he said. “Men are stronger than women, and a man should work because the women are weaker.”...
“In my generation, women were jealous of men because they could work and do whatever they wanted,” said Junko Mitsuhashi, 61, a professor of gender studies at Chuo University and a transgender woman. “But in the younger generation, men are jealous of women because they can express themselves through fashion.”
TUCKER NEW CABLE KING/GETS 9 PM FOXNEWS...Carlson totally deserves this. They gave him an early slot and he knocked himself out making it as exciting as he could. He replaced Brit Hume who was just filling in after Greta Van Susteren left suddenly. Hume coasted amiably, doing his grumpy but mellow old man routine. Here's how he acted on election night. That's peak excitement from Hume.
The dramatic move caps Carlson's rapid rise at the nation's top-rated cable channel.
"Tucker has already proven to be an audience powerhouse at 7 PM, now sky is the limit!" an insider explains. ... In recent weeks, the Carlson show hit #1 audience and demo with a mix of explosive interviews and hard-hitting topics.
Chicago police say they don't believe a man beaten in an assault broadcast live on Facebook was targeted because he was white.But the attackers are saying "Fuck white people" as they torture the white man! How did the police arrive at this strange belief?
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday morning that charges are expected soon against four black suspects. Guglielmi says the suspects made "terrible racist statements" during the attack, but that investigators believe the victim was targeted because he has special needs, not because of his race.I didn't watch the video. I don't intend to. Do the attackers make statements about the young man's disability? Does the fact that attackers choose a weak victim mean that no other factors were involved? Would they have selected a mentally disabled black victim if they'd found one first?
Guglielmi says it's possible the suspects were trying to extort something from the victim's family. Video from Chicago media outlets appears to show someone off-camera using profanities about "white people" and President-elect Donald Trump. Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said Wednesday that the victim has mental health challenges, and he called the video "sickening."I guess one way to build "the strongest case" is to forget about the hate crime element. It's just one more thing the government has to prove. But why then ever prosecute hate crimes? If you already have a physical attack, why make proving the case more difficult? Answering that question, the government must avoid viewpoint discrimination. It must not be that you go the extra distance and charge a hate crime when the hate goes in the way that you want to highlight for public consumption and you forget about it when it doesn't serve your agenda.
Guglielmi said police are working with prosecutors "to build the strongest case."
Police in West Allis, Wis., say some attacks by black teenagers on white people outside the gates of the Wisconsin State Fair on Aug. 4 were racially motivated and should be prosecuted as hate crimes.
One African-American teenager arrested Wednesday confirmed witness statements suggesting that the large group of black teens, who had originally fought among themselves, specifically targeted white people as they spilled out of the large fairgrounds on the outskirts of Milwaukee at closing time. According to the West Allis Police, he said he personally picked out white people because they were "easy targets."
One of the unintended consequences of the Golden Age of Restaurants was unreasonable customer expectations for virtually every eating experience....
"It's self-flagellating chef martyrdom at its best," says [chef James Cullen ]. "Chefs all want to make their own charcuterie and bake their own breads. And if you're wildly talented and you're making exceptional stuff, great. But most chefs know in their heart they can buy it from a local butcher or baker and it'll be at least just as good, but they're too proud. And so you've got these kitchens putting in just as much labor as fine-dining spots, but not charging nearly enough to make it worth their while."
Those elevated expectations now even extend to delivery. And the rising food delivery apps promising local, higher-quality foods at cheap prices (Munchery, Blue Apron, UberEATS, DoorDash, Postmates, etc.) are starting to seriously position themselves as, at best, major nuisances and, at worst, that annoying word everyone in the tech industry throws around: disrupters.
"I think they're the ones pricing out fine-casual dining restaurants," says Anjan Mitra, owner of the DOSA restaurants in SF. "These apps are all backed by hundreds of millions from the VCs (venture capitalists) -- so it doesn't even matter that they're all losing money. They can afford to pay chefs and line cooks and prep cooks more than any restaurant, and though many of them work with restaurants now, the bigger, ambitious ones are figuring out ways to completely cut restaurants out of the picture. And if that happens to take 10% of the revenue from a local sit-down restaurant, that's a massive hit. That could be the difference between staying open or shutting down."
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, school children could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government.”But was it Kennedy's speed that doomed Bork or the fact that the Democrats had a majority in the Senate? More importantly, Bork's opponents in the Senate Judiciary Committee — led by Joe Biden — outsmarted him politically. As Richard Ben Cramer put it in his great book "What It Takes":
Bork kept talking about originalist jurisprudence, neutral principles of Constitutional Reasoning, the bankruptcy of the theory of penumbral emanations... while Biden talked about cops in our bedrooms!It wasn't the speed of Kennedy's initial attack as much as it was the slow dance of luring Bork into talking too much, revealing too much. He said he wanted to be on the Court because he's the kind of guy who views it as "an intellectual feast." The borking of Bork taught a lesson that I have seen reflected in the committee testimony of every Supreme Court nominee who has followed him. They never say too much, never reveal specific opinions about issues that will come before the Court, and always speak in terms of their dutiful adherence to precedent.
Smug liberalism is a problem: unfortunately, smug liberals will be the last identity group to admit it. In the meantime, Trump will be happy to continue profiting from the resentment said smugness inspires.
There is something to be said for going out on a high note, and 2016 was a great year for this column. We don’t claim to have gotten the election right—we were surprised, if only mildly, by Donald Trump’s victory—but most journalists were so spectacularly wrong that simply taking Trump and his supporters seriously was enough to put us at least in the top decile, maybe the 98th percentile, of journalistic sagacity. (In the 99th percentile we’d place cartoonist Scott Adams, reporter Salena Zito and, oddly enough, left-wing propagandist Michael Moore.)How will we know which direction is up — or down — without Taranto's reading the web for us?
As 2017 begins, the general mood in the so-called mainstream media is a bewildered despond, captured well in the opening of a year-end New York Times editorial:
Let’s pretend we’re in some cosmic therapist’s office, in a counseling session with the year 2016. We are asked to face the year and say something nice about it. Just one or two things.We said captured well, not written well. A cascade moves downward, not upward. Here’s an example of the correct usage: The tears of unfathomable sadness welled up in the editorialist’s eyes. She clutched a Kleenex as she prepared for them to cascade down her face....
The mind balks. Fingers tighten around the Kleenex as a cascade of horribles wells up in memory: You were a terrible year. We hate you. We’ll be so glad never to see you again. The silence echoes as we grope for a reply.
10. Yes, the dumb guy in the audience, impressed by the precision, readers have been laughing at him for as long as I've been alive. But the show still pulls in money, and it still gives long-legged young ladies a dancing job. Management instructed the dancers in branding: "This is a great national event... It's a huge moment in the country's history... The fact that we get to participate in it... we are an American brand, and I think it's very appropriate that the Rockettes dance in the inaugural and 4th of July and our country's great historical moments." That's the brand: Old-fashioned, uncritical Americana.
Judge Garland’s nomination languished for 293 days until it expired with the formal adjournment of the 114th Congress. Republicans said their inaction on the nomination was a way to permit voters to weigh in on the Supreme Court’s direction by electing the next president. Democrats accused Republicans of “stealing” a nomination that voters entrusted to President Barack Obama in his 2012 re-election.No funny business of the type discussed here and here happened.
While preachers preach of evil fatesI'm not sure exactly where Bob Dylan was picturing the President of the United States standing naked — literally or metaphorically — but the President at the time was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He had to stand naked to take a shower, and there's something I want to tell you about that shower, and it connects to Barack Obama, but first I have to tell you about the time LBJ didn't have to stand naked but chose to:
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
On a hot, sunny day in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson had just delivered a stump speech during his campaign for the presidency. According to white House reporter Frank Cormier’s book “LBJ: the Way He Was,” once on board Air Force One, the President started taking questions about the economy from the press. In the middle of the Q&A session, Johnson took off his pants and shirt, then “shucked off his underwear… standing buck naked and waving his towel for emphasis” as he continued talking.Now, about that shower. According to Robert A. Caro's "The Passage of Power," 2 days after he moved into the White House, LBJ told the White House Chief Usher J. B. West, "Mr. West, if you can’t get that shower of mine fixed, I’m going to have to move back to The Elms."
Yesterday, upon the stair,That poem was cited by Justice David Souter in the Supreme Court case about voter I.D. laws:
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...
Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...
The State responds to the want of evidence [of the kind of fraud that the law would remedy] with the assertion that in-person voter impersonation fraud is hard to detect. But this is like saying the “man who wasn’t there” is hard to spot....The Man Who Wasn't There should not be confused with The Man Who Never Was, an invented persona assigned to a real human corpse and used to trick the Nazis in WWII — otherwise known as Operation Mincement:
To reinforce the impression of Martin being a real person, Montagu and Cholmondeley provided collaborative details to be carried on his person – known in espionage circles as wallet or pocket litter. This included a photograph from an invented fiancée named Pam; the image was of an MI5 clerk, Jean Leslie. Two love letters from Pam were included in the pocket litter, as was a receipt for a diamond engagement ring costing £53, 10s 6d from a Bond Street jewellery shop. Additional personal correspondence was included, consisting of a letter from fictitious Martin's father – described by Macintyre as "pompous and pedantic as only an Edwardian father could be" – which included a note from the family solicitor, and a message from Lloyds Bank, demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d.Here's the delightful "Pam":
Holy Fumagalli Batman! #CottonBowl pic.twitter.com/XBXWmMvNDT
— Andy McDonnell (@Andy_McDonnell) January 2, 2017
[T]here will be a nanosecond gap between when the outgoing senators leave office, and the new ones are sworn in. During that gap, there will be more Democrats left than Republicans. So the idea is to call that smaller body into session, vote on the nomination, and voila! -- a new Supreme Court justice. Alternatively, President Obama could use that gap to make a recess appointment....But Democrats will say that Republicans stole the nomination from Obama who was legitimately elected President and still President when the vacancy occurred.
The idea behind the nanosecond nomination seems to be that there are two discrete Senates, the old and the new, with a definite gap between them; yet that somehow, though neither the old nor the new Senate exists, there are senators, who can hold a vote on something -- a sort of quantum Senate that pops into and out of existence depending on the needs of the Democratic Party....
Even if these moves could work, they wouldn’t work... When procedural hacks work, it’s because they’re too boring for readers to understand, or care, and therefore take place well outside of the media spotlight. This, by contrast, is pretty easy to understand, and what most voters will understand is that Democrats are trying to do an end run around the results of a legitimate election...
But as Republicans plan to reserve the first 100 days of Congress for their more partisan goals, Democrats are preparing roadblocks. The party’s brutal election-year wounds have been salted by evidence of Russian election interference, Mr. Trump’s hard-line cabinet picks and his taunting Twitter posts. (On Saturday, he offered New Year’s wishes “to all,” including “those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.”)So... they do know what to do? The idea is to put up "roadblocks."
The Senate may be narrowly divided, but among the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus* are 10 who will stand for re-election in two years in states that voted for Mr. Trump. Republicans are counting on their support, at least some of the time.You know the stages of grief: 1. Denial, 2. Carping, 3. Thwarting....
But on many issues, Senate Democrats — including their new leader, Chuck Schumer of New York — are expected to pivot from postelection carping to active thwarting, using complex Senate procedures and political messaging to slow or perhaps block elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
CHUCK TODD: This presents a very difficult situation. I face it myself personally from him sometimes, we face it as a network, where he personalizes coverage and disagreements about coverage with the organization and sometimes with individual reporters. You're a human being, I'm a human being. It's not easy sometimes doing that.Is Todd play-acting, trying to drum up sympathy? It makes no sense. Consumers of journalism don't worry about how the reporters feel. But Todd could be mistaken and think acting wounded will cause viewers to want to defend him against mean old Trump. I doubt it. So maybe Todd really is hurting. But that seems ridiculous. Cover the news! If someone in the news is a gigantic bastard, so much the better for the news provider. Tell the story. What's this "I'm a human being" business?
Were you concerned that the personal attacks were going to make some of your reporters react? They're human. We're all human beings. And when you personally get attacked, it's hard to sort of set that aside.There's that human business again.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, the story is-- there’s one overarchingly huge story. A very big league story, as Michele might say. The-- the-- the story is-- the-- the story is the upending of American politics. The story is of the outs coming in and the ins going out. --The story is trying to explain to the American people what’s happened to their two main parties. And-- and the deeper story, also, I don’t want to forget this -- the deeper story is globalization, and technological disruption, and anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions. All of that is-- is there undergirding the larger, more immediate story, which is how did Donald Trump become president of the United States....Bzzz. Goldberg mentioned Donald Trump. He had a great run going — the outs coming in and the ins going out... anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions... Great stuff. There's overarching and undergirding — construction to go along with the destruction. It was mindbending. I was ready to give him the prize, but then he said the name. Wipe out.
He was always in a sharp suit or tux. Regularly at the Met Gala or the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards to support his wife [the model, Iman]. Never caught stumbling out of the hot club at 4 a.m. He’d already been to a lifetime’s worth of parties.I wonder what he read. And he wasn't always in a sharp suit or tux. He was also like this...
Iman once described Mr. Bowie as a “homebody”; The Onion imagined him as a “pansexual alien” staying in to “do lasagna for dinner.” He led a pretty normal-seeming life. He shopped for groceries once a week at Dean & DeLuca. He loved the chicken sandwich with watercress and tomatoes at Olive’s on Prince Street. He liked to rise at 6 a.m. and get his “buzz” by walking the still-empty streets of Chinatown.
He read a lot. He collected art. He painted. He and Iman socialized with the parents of their daughter’s friends at school. He spent his remaining time meaningfully and productively, and largely here.
Forever my favourite latter-day Bowie pic. pic.twitter.com/M8uM6eVExo— frozen reeds (@frozenreeds) January 13, 2016
I started to cry watching Sanders' ad.
And then I started to get angry. Angry at the Times for never showing the enormous crowds gathered at his rallies. For always having some kind of put down in stories on him. For framing stories about him in terms of what it meant to Clinton, eg, if Clinton was up in a state, it said, "Clinton winning." If Sanders was winning, it would say "Clinton within 2 points of Sanders."
I'm angry at the Clinton supporters who trashed Sanders supporters, while demanding they vote for Clinton.
I'm angry at all the media who took the unpledged delegates--not supposed to be counted until the nomination--as part of the running total of delegates for Clinton during the primaries.
Mostly I'm angry because if it hadn't been for the DNC having its thumb on the scale; for media obsessed with getting a woman, Clinton in particular, into the White House; for journalists who thought it clever to ignore voters in favor of their own bias…
We might not be looking at Trump being the president-elect.
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