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For Jeb, Quitting Would Be the Only Thing More Pointless Than Staying In

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For Jeb, Quitting Would Be the Only Thing More Pointless Than Staying In

You didn’t forget Jeb Bush was still running for president, did you? I did, on Monday, for a moment, when the Iowa results were coming in. The New York Times website featured a leaderboard with Ted Cruz on top, followed by Donald Trump, followed by Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and Rand Paul. Oh, that’s how everyone did.

Finally I noticed that Bush wasn’t even on it. He was down on the expanded leaderboard, with Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Santorum and Huckabee saw the Iowa results and quit. Rand Paul finished 1.7 percentage points ahead of Bush and quit.

Jeb Bush did not quit. Jeb Bush is in New Hampshire, campaigning. After that he plans to move on to South Carolina, with his family in support, to turn 63 with a program the Times describes as “birthday campaign fun.” Please clap for him. What he is going through at the moment seems to be mortifying, but it’s not, really. Or if it is, it’s mortifying for everyone.

The sad truth is that Jeb Bush is looking at the Republican campaign the way a great many political observers are, only he doesn’t have to click through to the “others” tab to see where he is. He is in the Republican race. And the Republican race is, if you approach it from a certain set of reasonable-sounding premises, trapped in a logical loop:

1. Donald Trump can’t really be the nominee, because his candidacy is a bizarre and unsustainable media phenomenon.

2. Ted Cruz can’t really be the nominee, because he is incredibly loathsome to the normal human beings who vote for president.

3. Everyone else who could be the nominee is currently being beaten by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

This is the Escher staircase that Jeb Bush is trudging up. He has to believe he can’t lose to Trump. He has to believe he can’t lose to Cruz. So he can’t believe that he can’t win.

What about Marco Rubio? Marco Rubio is, to be sure, several steps ahead of Bush on the staircase. This is why he declared victory in Iowa after finishing third. Rubio believes that the logic of not-Trump and not-Cruz points inexorably to Marco Rubio.

Rubio is less lonesome than Bush in his line of thinking, but is he necessarily right? There is an idea that the Republican establishment, such as it is, is prepared to rally around Rubio when the time comes. But, like most of the rest of the case for Rubio, that conclusion is an indirect one. Barack Obama, the Republican theory goes, was a lightweight mediocrity who only became president because people liked the idea of a youthful, minority president. So if “youthful” and “ethnic” is the political brand that will succeed, then Marco Rubio is the person who represents that brand in the Republican field. It’s one step up from nominating Clint Eastwood’s empty chair.

Assuming that Rubio is next in line would also require that, after Cruz and Trump were to flame out, he would capture the anti-immigrant faction they’ve stirred up, despite his earlier dalliance with sponsoring immigration reform.

But the more straightforward flaw with Rubio as a strong candidate-in-waiting is, again, that Rubio himself is also losing to Trump and Cruz. From Bush’s point of view, since he is competing in the not-Trump, not-Cruz branch of the race, if he were to drop out now, he would be conceding to Rubio—his own child-apprentice in Florida politics. Jeb Bush has seen his seniority trampled on by one of his inferiors before, but he was obligated to put up with it then.

Rand Paul had the freedom to drop out of the race, because Rand Paul’s ambition was to be an alternative kind of Republican candidate, and alternative-minded Republican voters had clearly settled on Trump or Cruz. Bush wants to be the normal Republican candidate. How can he quit with that position still unclaimed?

It’s the same reason Chris Christie and John Kasich are still in the race, albeit at lower burn rates than Bush. It’s the reason Michael Bloomberg is leaking and polling about a third-party candidacy. As long as the reality makes no sense, keep holding on to the dream. Clap your hands if you believe.



Hillary Clinton Has a Henry Kissinger Problem

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At last night’s Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton invoked an unexpected figure: Henry Kissinger. “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time,” she said, in an off-hand aside. It wasn’t an endorsement of Kissinger, or really much of anything. It was just a little brag that would have played well in a different room.

The sort of room it would have played well in, really, is the sort of room in which the worst people in the country congregate. The fact that Clinton lapsed into speaking as if she were in that room is more or less why she’s having trouble, once again, convincing the Democratic electorate to nominate her for the presidency.

Henry Kissinger, for the record, is a bad man, who waged a terrible and illegal war in Cambodia, supported a horrific right-wing strongman in Chile, and generally ran America’s foreign policy apparatus in the most amoral way possible, as a point of pride. However, in the bubble of elite American society, the bipartisan consensus, shared by politicians and members of the media alike, is that he’s simply a respected elder statesman.

The point I’m making here is not, [Glenn Greenwald voice] HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTS A WAR CRIMINAL. (Trust me, I know Kissinger isn’t moving many votes in New Hampshire.) It’s that Hillary Clinton exists in a world where “Henry Kissinger is a war criminal” is a silly opinion held by unserious people. Her problem? Lots of those silly and unserious people want to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from its current leadership, which is exemplified by people like Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders’ critique of Clinton is not that she’s cartoonishly corrupt in the Tammany Hall style, capable of being fully bought with a couple well-compensated speeches, but that she’s a creature of a fundamentally corrupt system, who comfortably operates within that system and accepts it as legitimate. Clinton has had trouble countering that critique because, well, it’s true. It’s not that she’s been bought, it’s that she bought in.

This isn’t some damning revelation of the secret “true” Clinton beneath the surface. Hillary Clinton is a liberal. (One problem afflicting our online discourse is that many of her dimmer fellow liberals in the press keep being baffled at Clinton opposition from leftists who extensively criticize the institutions of American liberalism. This is also why the Sanders-started semantic argument over the term “progressive” was so deeply stupid.) But she’s also plainly a member of a Democratic Party establishment that a large—and, I think, growing—number of would-be Democratic voters reject as unrepresentative of the principles and interests of non-wealthy Americans.

These people may indeed be “unserious,” in the sense that Clinton’s theory of “progressive change” is more realistic—that it, it has a better chance of leading to policy changes that have tangible positive outcomes for large groups of people—than Sanders’ theory of bottom-up “revolution,” at least in our current political climate. But no one is satisfied with the current political climate, and lots of people are looking for leaders who seek to fundamentally reshape it, not work within it.

Here's an Intriguing Fan Theory About What Time the Super Bowl Is

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Here's an Intriguing Fan Theory About What Time the Super Bowl Is

This February, as every February, the football fandom community is awhirl with speculation about the timing of the Super Bowl. The NFL has dropped a breadcrumb trail of clues in the promotional campaign leading up to Sunday’s big game, and plenty of football fans think they know exactly when kickoff will happen.

But one potential answer, from a Redditor and pigskin fanatic using the handle JaguarGator9, really stands out. You can check out JaguarGator’s heavily upvoted post and the lengthy discussion it inspired here, but the title of the thread speaks for itself.

Here's an Intriguing Fan Theory About What Time the Super Bowl Is

Wow! This crazy Reddit fan theory might actually make sense. It’s definitely something to think about, but remember, it’s only speculation—only time will tell whether the 2016 Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers starts at 6:30 p.m. EST this Sunday (on CBS).

Image via Getty. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

Are Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Ties "Perceived?" Or Might There Be a Better Word?

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Are Hillary Clinton's Wall Street Ties "Perceived?" Or Might There Be a Better Word?

“Hillary Clinton Is Again Put on the Defensive Over Perceived Ties to Wall Street,” the New York Times frets today. Whatever could be going on here?

What is the deal, Democratic voters?

Dozens of prominent economists and academic experts have endorsed her plans to regulate the financial sector. Her policies would “try to prevent the problems of the future,” she explained in Thursday’s debate, in addition to reining in “the excesses of Wall Street.”

So why do so many voters not believe it?

As we all know, the ways of American voters are often dark and inexplicable. But is this a case of that? For a New York Times political analysis, this story is... what’s the word... dense?

In an election year fueled by the anger over the growing gap between rich and poor, Mrs. Clinton, who is widely viewed as too close to the financial sector, seems an imperfect messenger for change. She has developed sophisticated policy proposals that many economists agree would aggressively regulate the financial sector, but they have collided with the image that Sanders supporters and other political rivals have painted of her: Wall Street’s friend and defender.

For those of you who have not taken Pseudo Impartial News Writing 101, “perceived” and “widely viewed” in this context are code words for “wrongly perceived” and “wrongly viewed.” So, what exactly could be driving the view of all of these dense voters that Hillary Clinton has “Perceived Ties to Wall Street?”

  • “The super PAC backing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton drew $15 million of the $25 million it raised in the second half of the year from Wall Street sources.”
  • Hillary Clinton accepted $675,00 from Goldman Sachs for three speeches.
  • Wall Street firms have donated millions of dollars to the Clinton family foundation.
  • Hillary Clinton’s daughter lives in a $10 million apartment with her husband, a hedge fund manager.
  • Hillary Clinton recently served two terms as the U.S. Senator from New York, a job with a constituency that includes Wall Street. During that time she called for moderate tightening of financial rules but generally took a “hands-off approach to Wall Street regulation.”
  • “Since Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton entered national politics in the early 1990s, Wall Street has contributed more than $100 million to their political campaigns, charitable foundation and personal finances, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal.”

I am not one to rush to defend the critical thinking skills of the average American voter, but based upon these facts you would have to be fairly stupid not to perceive Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street.

Does this mean that Hillary Clinton will be weaker on Wall Street regulation than the Republican candidates? No.

Does this mean that Hillary Clinton is a paid shill wholly in Wall Street’s pocket who will do nothing but their bidding? No.

Do Wall Street firms donate tens of millions of dollars to political candidates without expecting that these donations will buy them some degree of political influence? No.

Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street ties are very real and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

[Photo: AP]

People Really Stopped Naming Their Babies Hillary After Bill Took Office

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People Really Stopped Naming Their Babies Hillary After Bill Took Office

“Hillary” was, once upon a time, a popular name. Until 1993—the year after Bill Clinton took office. Interesting.

Here’s the data, culled from the Social Security website. According to their records, the name has never again reached even close to its pre-Clinton status.

People Really Stopped Naming Their Babies Hillary After Bill Took Office

Hillary. Hilary. Hilaria. Hill-a-ree. It’s perky. It’s singsong. It’s deeply unpopular. And the timing begs the question: Is our nation’s swift rejection of Mrs. Clinton’s first name a case of causation or correlation? I’m no statistician so I think it’s suffice to say—who knows? Still, the Baby Name Wizards, who are far more qualified than I, offer us two insights on the matter:

  • “I really like the name Hillary for a girl, however I would never use it because I hate Hillary Clinton!”
  • “This name sounds too thick, like the person saying it is gurgling.”

Here’s what I say—you could find a name worse than Hillary for your baby.

http://defamer.gawker.com/tag/baby-name-...


God Hates Trump

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God Hates Trump

Last night, failed mail-order meat salesman Donald Trump decided that, tonight, he’d like to sleep in his own bed. Spotting an opportunity to strike, our great Lord above—the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the original mail-order meat salesman in a way, if you think about it—decided to pull some pranks. And now, Trump is fucked.

Trump, whose stock is steadily dropping, had to move today’s town hall to Monday pending any unforeseen natural disasters. And considering this is the second time travel plans have gotten in Trump’s way, that doesn’t seem at all unlikely.

Hopefully those Trump-brand sheets were worth it.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com. Image via Getty.

Is DeRay's Run For Mayor The Next Step For Black Lives Matter?

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Is DeRay's Run For Mayor The Next Step For Black Lives Matter?

Wednesday night, just minutes before the deadline, the 30-year-old civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson filed to run for mayor of his hometown of Baltimore, and, in coordination with the The Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, and The New York Times, announced his campaign on Medium. The announcement, which had been rumored for a few months, comes at a vital time for the broader Black Lives Matter movement of which McKesson has become the most visible face.

While it started as a Facebook hashtag that gained currency after neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman was acquitted for shooting unarmed teen Trayvon Martin to death in Sanford, Fla. in Feb. 2013, Black Lives Matter—a plea not that only black lives matter, or that black lives matter more, but simply that black lives matter, too—has become a rallying cry to protest near-daily fatal police interactions with African-Americans. It exploded when unarmed teen Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, Mo. a year and a half later. Brown’s death led to protests in Ferguson; those protests were met with stunning force from police; and the televised police response compelled Mckesson to drive to the St. Louis suburb before quitting his school administration job in Minneapolis, Mn. and fully committing to protesting himself. With every publicized instance of a black life taken by a police officer around the country, Black Lives Matter’s popularity and influence grew, and as one of its most prolific chroniclers and then its biggest media star, Mckesson’s popularity and influence grew alongside. In the last two weeks alone, he has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to talk about Black Lives Matter and in Stephen Colbert’s chair on The Late Show to talk about white privilege.

Even as Mckesson’s star rises, though, there are fewer protests than before, fewer Black Lives Matter protesters at those protests, and fewer media outlets covering them. A year and a half after Brown’s death and following winter weather, media saturation, fatigue, and the public becoming increasingly desensitized to watching people being shot to death by cops on video, there’s been a decline in Black Lives Matter’s influence. In November 2014, two Cleveland police officers drove up to a 12-year-old black boy named Tamir Rice playing in a park with a toy gun, and shot him dead at close range. The execution was captured on video, but in Dec. 2015, a grand jury did not indict the officers. Protests in response were subdued. Last month, Flint, Mich. made news when the nation caught wind that the state had been poisoning its impoverished, majority black population with contaminated water for over a year and a half. There were a couple of sparse protests in Lansing, but not much else.

The momentum Black Lives Matter was able to gather and harness has dissipated, and it certainly feels like the movement is dying. One person with close ties to Black Lives Matter and Mckesson recently took it even further, telling me simply, “Movement is dead.”

If the Black Lives Matter public protest movement is dying or dead, that doesn’t mean it had no successes, but to identify them, you have to identify its goals. This is difficult, because Black Lives Matter is a broad rallying cry but also the name of a discrete movement created and led by three women—Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza—in Oakland after Martin’s death. Shortly thereafter, they created an organization with the same name and chapters all over the country. Mckesson, an avatar of the broader movement, works independently of the organization and operates as the face of a smaller faction called We The Protesters. This has led to lots of infighting, largely built around clashing egos as well as disagreements on goals and how to best accomplish them.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-fight-for-...

The organization stated its purpose on its website ...

Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.

... while Johnetta Elzie, a woman Mckesson met in St. Louis who became one of his best friends, protesting partners, and now closest advisors, succinctly stated their goal when the two were profiled in The New York Times Magazine.

“Our demand is simple,” she said. “Stop killing us.”

This demand has not been met. According to the Guardian, police killed 303 black people—about one every 29 hours—last year, at twice the rate of Hispanics and two and half times as often as whites. Per the Washington Post, police shot 990 people to death total last year and 83 people so far this year, which puts law enforcement right on pace with 2015. They’re killing Americans at the same rates, same as always. In the starkest sense, measuring success by lives lost, Black Lives Matter has largely failed. But if the purpose of Black Lives Matter was to bring awareness to ongoing police brutality, it’s been successful. Just before Thanksgiving last year, Chicago’s police department became the target of national attention and outrage after footage was released of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times and killed by officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. That attention and outrage led to the firing of the Chicago’s police superintendent and promises of reform—the kind of thing that hasn’t always happened in that city. Through its focus on police brutality, Black Lives Matter has also brought awareness on broader state violence against black communities and the mechanisms that enact this violence.

A month ago, my colleague Hamilton Nolan wrote a piece about how the tax code is the main force driving a wedge between the richest and poorest Americans, and how the Republican Party exists to allow the richest Americans to manipulate it to their advantage. Another such force is the student loan system. Another such force is the national minimum wage. They are all in different ways expressions of a free-market ideology that argues that the best way to help the poor is to help the rich get richer, sweeping money to the wealthy at the expense of the impoverished, a disproportionate number of them minorities and immigrants. This ideology is expressed as law; the law functions to abet theft.

This theft is, at it has always been in the United States, a function of white supremacy, a political system within which those who fit the ever-shifting definition of white enjoy more recognized human and Constitutional rights than those who don’t, thriving at the expense of others. The United States was built not just on the right of whites to land and to black-created wealth but to black bodies, which functioned as capital. Even after abolition, Jim Crow laws were designed to give the sanction of the state to violence against black citizens for the purpose of upholding white supremacy and the existing economic order. Here’s Isabel Wilkerson describing their effects in her book The Warmth of Other Suns:

Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching, for such alleged crimes as “stealing hogs, horse-stealing, poisoning mules, jumping labor contract, suspected of killing cattle, boastful remarks” or “trying to act like a white person.” Sixty-six were killed after being accused of “insult to a white person.” One was killed for stealing seventy-five cents.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Warmth-Oth...

Laws that made things like quitting on the job, “acting white,” or insulting white people punishable by death were designed to enforce the divide between whites and the blacks who once occupied a servant undercaste and to deny those blacks rights granted to them under the Constitution after the abolition of slavery. And even after the Voting Rights Act ended this form of de jure white supremacy, the thing itself endured. A direct line follows from slavery to our present system of racially targeted law enforcement and mass incarceration, along all points of which the law has been used as a tool to defend the prerogatives of a racially-defined caste, governing the distribution of power and wealth. Where the law abets theft, those who enforce the law do as well.

In enforcing the law—in serving on the front lines of an ongoing if undeclared war the United States wages on its own citizens—the police enforce the status quo. Police officers brutalize and shoot people unjustly, destroying their future prospects and those of their families; they also arrest people unjustly, and in service of unjust laws, with the same effect. It’s unsurprising that those tasked with carrying out a kind of economic violence turn to physical violence as well.

One measure of Black Lives Matter’s success is the increasing access to information the public is enjoying. Before it, there were few major databases dedicated to tracking police brutality, which left the public without a vital index of how communities are policed. The Justice Department’s investigation into Brown’s death wouldn’t have happened without Black Lives Matters protests, and that investigation showed how Ferguson’s police officers, as a matter of policy, acted as pirates who exclusively targeted minorities to pillage, funding further pillaging. It was a spectacular and arresting example of what is happening in minority communities all over the country. Here’s another example, from The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates:

When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park) had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate (Clearing). “This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons,” Sampson writes. “A difference of kind, not degree.”

Today, white households have 16 times the wealth as black ones. There are many reasons for this; one is the racially targeted enforcement of racially targeted laws, which provide a figurative and literal barrier to the middle class. The poverty and high incarceration rates of West Garfield Park are the product of mutually reinforcing policies. Policing is not separate from widening economic inequality; it is integral to widening economic inequality.

Those policies are now an issue in presidential politics. Just as Occupy Wall Street forced wealth inequality onto the national agenda, so has Black Lives Matter forced police reform there. Barack Obama has addressed police brutality. Black Lives Matter protesters have interrupted presidential candidates as different from each other as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. DeRay Mckesson and other activists have met with Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Attention is being paid.

Of the remaining viable candidates, only Sanders seems sincerely interested in police reform, but his plan lacks real specifics, and anyway, it doesn’t matter. If Black Lives Matter has a fatal flaw, this is it. The movement has successfully captured international headlines, gotten the attention of nation’s first black president, and made its issue a national one. But no one working from the White House can enact or introduce police reform, even if they wanted to. It’s a local issue.

There are over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, between the local, state, and federal governments. There is no overarching central organization or structure to which they’re beholden; almost all work autonomously. There is no mechanism in place with which to implement top-down change even if the public demands it, and it’s not clear it will. (The white supremacist police state as it exists now, after all, is best understood as an expression of the greater public will.)

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-police-are...

Black Lives Matter is a cultural movement, even an awakening, but it holds little power without local legislative support and the actual control over budgets and bureaucracy that translates abstraction into policy. A run for the Baltimore mayoralty represents the next step for the Black Lives Matter movement, when activists and those sympathetic to it run for and win office at the local and state levels. Only then will there be any change. As Buzzfeed’s Adam Serwer recently wrote on politicians preying upon the country’s least powerful constituents, “There is no progress that cannot be rolled back if those who benefit from it lack the power to maintain it.”

In an early effort to present himself as more than a single-issue candidate, perhaps, Mckesson only mentions police once in his campaign announcement, and doesn’t speak about Freddie Gray or police reform at all. But he’ll be judged chiefly on his vision for righting Baltimore policing practices, much of which he and his group of protesters outlined last summer in a project called Campaign Zero. Not much is known about the motivation or seriousness of his run, but whether he’s running for office or attention or something else doesn’t much matter. His presence will make Black Lives Matter and police reform a more urgent issue in a major American city than before. Candidates will have to suggest visions either in line with or defined against his, which they’ll then be judged on and for which they’ll be held accountable should they hold office. This is the model, and the number of people who eventually follow it is the metric by which the success of Black Lives Matter will ultimately be judged.

It isn’t a national candidate vowing to end inequality and, with it, racism. It’s better than that. It might even work.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Politician Gets Big Surprise at Press Conference (Dildo in the Face)

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Politician Gets Big Surprise at Press Conference (Dildo in the Face)

Yep—that’s a big pink dildo hitting the face of New Zealand’s Economic Development Minister Stephen Joyce at a press conference today. The dildo tosser, identified by the Huffington Post as Josie Butler, was mad about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

After throwing the dildo—with excellent aim and force, I might add—Butler yelled, “That’s for raping our sovereignty!” You can watch her get escorted away in the video below:

According to the Huffington Post, police in Waitangi, New Zealand, detained Butler for several hours but didn’t charge her with any crime.

The New Zealand Herald reports that Butler showed up to an anti-TPP protest in Auckland yesterday, where she told reporters, “I’m here as a nurse because I’m worried about the patient rights and how many people will essentially die if this goes through because the price of medication’s going up, so yeah, it’s something I feel really strongly about.”

The multinational trade deal was signed in Auckland yesterday.

For his part, Joyce didn’t seem to upset about getting a dildo in the face. He told reporters after the blow, “We actually thought it was a little bit humorous at the end of it all. New experiences in politics every day; it’s the privilege of serving.”


Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.


Life at the world’s largest hedge fund: “In an iPad app called ‘Dot Collector,’ employees weigh in o

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Life at the world’s largest hedge fund: “In an iPad app called ‘Dot Collector,’ employees weigh in on the direction of conversations while they are happening. Employees also are quizzed about the outcome of meetings. Any meeting of at least three people is expected to hold at least one poll.”

A Visit to a House of Pedophile Former Priests: Pablo Larraín's The Club

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A Visit to a House of Pedophile Former Priests: Pablo Larraín's The Club

Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s new movie The Club makes last year’s Spotlight look like kids’ stuff. It depicts a house of former priests (and their caretaker, a former nun), who live in exile in a small house on the Chilean coast. Soon after the arrival of a new housemate, a man accusing the new arrival of molesting him years ago shows up outside, threatening the former priests’ clandestine existence. In an attempt to shut down the house, the Catholic Church sends a much younger priest, Father Garcia (Marcelo Alonso), to interview its inhabitants in an attempt to get them to confess their past sins.

Using tight shots of its characters’ oblique recollections and sometimes nearly poetic descriptions of abuse, The Club confronts what the Church seems desperate to avoid. Its resolve chips away at the Church’s infrastructure by vividly illustrating how people with very different agendas can work together for the common cause of secrecy.

I spoke to Larraín yesterday about his audacious and frequently shocking film. Below is an edited condensed transcript of our conversation.

I read that you did quite a bit of research leading up to The Club. I wonder how extensive that research was?

It was not just me, it was a team of people. Maybe what you want to know, I guess, the most important thing, which is we were able to talk to former priests—people that were members of the Church and aren’t anymore. Those were our key sources. That’s how we got to understand this. But that’s also very public. You can go and Google stuff. There’s something called the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete, which is an organization that used to do this in the United States and it’s open.

How forthcoming were the priests? When Father Garcia is conducting the interviews in the movie, the other priests are rather tight-lipped. I wonder if he was your avatar.

I realized that at least in my country, and I might be wrong, but I would say that after a lot of research, we did not find one single case where a priest would absolutely admit what he did. When you have that information and you know that certainty does not exist, something you’ll have to deal with at some point is the fact that those people are always manipulating the truth. At some point, you don’t know when you say “the truth,” what you mean by that. We’re not talking about journalism, you know? We’re not talking about facts. We’re talking about obstructions from a religion, like regret. Everything is a theological sort of manipulation that gets to be confusing and thereafter, to me, very interesting. It gives you tools to create a script, which we did with [co-writers Guillermo Calderón and Daniel Villalobos], which is to set up something that you never know who’s telling something that is potentially truth. You never know whether something is material or spiritual. Finally, you never ever really know if what they think is right or not.

You felt this way when talking to them?

Yeah, and it’s also what you read. There are cases everywhere every week about new scandals like this. There’s always an explanation. There’s always something if you want to hear. There’s always something that’s confusing. That’s interesting. I think cinema needs that. It needs a humanity in conflict. Somehow, like it or not, those guys are part of a social world that we all belong to. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m saying those guys exist because there’s something called religion, there’s something called justice, and there’s something called desire. That’s the cocktail.

Watching the movie made me wonder if priesthood attracts a disproportionate amount of pedophiles or if there are just a ton of pedophiles in the world since these stories are common and we don’t even hear the half of them.

I have no idea. But this is something important: I’m not a journalist. I don’t want to change anything. I don’t want to educate anybody about anything. I just think there’s interesting material. There are dangers and they are awkward and violent and spiritual, and all that comes from a humanity that is in danger. It’s just interesting to deal with those materials as a filmmaker. That’s the limit of cinema and religion and politics: Where are you stepping? I don’t feel the responsibility of trying to do something. I don’t think art is necessarily connected to responsibility.

But at the same time, this is based on true stories.

Some of them are, some of the cases are real. I was never able to get into any of those houses. So to just create a fiction, you imagine what would be potentially happening inside of them.

It’s interesting that you say that you don’t want to educate. I felt educated watching this because the subject matter is so secretive that any shred of information feels enlightening.

But it’s not something that came out of testimonies. We don’t know how those houses are in reality. We wanted to see what happened inside of that house if someone, after all this time, a victim would go and face the guy. What happens? And then we start to create all this and realized we had a great task to deliver the story that you saw with that ending. It has a conclusion, it has a perspective, it has something that is interesting, to me.

Stacking your story with characters who are unreliable by nature builds a mystery right into your story.

Yes, that’s what happens with the audience, but what I try to do is look at them with compassion. I try to humanize them. Otherwise it would be a super judgmental movie that’s just telling how wrong these people are. I just set up a situation where you need an active audience.

A lot of people have a hard time watching this movie. When you were making it, how cognizant were you that this would repel people, especially the graphic descriptions of abuse?

I think people have a hard time with it because we’re not showing [abuse]. If I had shot a flashback, for example, or whatever, and I would recreate that situation, it wouldn’t be as violent as it is now. People create their own elements of what he’s describing in their head, and that is a lot more violent. There’s nothing more violent and perverse than the human mind. There’s no single image in the movie that would be as violent as the elements the audience is creating in its mind. When people say what you just did at Q&As, I say, “Yeah, sure, but how about you, man? What’s in your head?”

The movie, at times, plays like a dark comedy, which is surprising given the subject matter.

I think when there’s something [in the movie] that could be considered humor, it’s the kind of humor that makes you feel weird. It triggers the sensation that you don’t know if you should be laughing or not. That’s interesting. I believe the humor is a tool that lets you say things that would otherwise sound very preachy. The humor in the movie is the humor of excess, humor of the absurd. It’s the humor of a humanity that is completely out of control.

The movie wasn’t—or at least its characters weren’t—too interested in separating pedophilia and homosexuality. Whereas other conversations about this material are careful to draw the lines, The Club blurs them.

I was raised Catholic and was never abused, but I thought it was interesting that this was out of focus. If you talk to the the church members, it’s very hard to have a very clear answer to how they should behave. That’s another issue: The confusion that creates these kinds of secrets. I know that homosexuality and pedophilia are two different things: One is a sexual orientation and another is an illness. We thought it would become preachy if you start saying those things. I just tried to understand, even though it could be horrible, why someone would have desire for children. I’m a father. It’s terrifying to me. You don’t even have to judge it. It’s so horrible that the judgment’s already made. You just have to put it in front of the camera and wait for a reaction from the audience.

Have you heard from the Vatican or from anyone higher up about this movie?

Of course not. The Vatican is expert at communication. They know if they talk about the movie, they would bring more exposure to it. They avoid it. If there’s anything that the Church respects and fears it’s media. More than Hell. And that is contemporary, that is new. Media is doing a strange kind of justice. It looks like the only way.

The Club is in select theaters now.

[Image via Music Box Films/Fabula]

LA Mayor Sings a Sexy Lullaby to Comfort Angelenos About Closing the Freeway

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LA Mayor Sings a Sexy Lullaby to Comfort Angelenos About Closing the Freeway

When LA closes a major freeway for construction, the city usually comes up with scary names for it to keep people off the roads. Carmageddon. Jamzilla. This weekend, the city is taking a different approach. The “101 Slow Jam” not only has a cute name, it has a video starring LA Mayor Eric Garcetti doing his best-worst Barry White.

What is the mayor of the second-largest city in America doing crooning under a downtown LA overpass? The Sixth Street Viaduct, known for its many cinematic appearances, has been diagnosed with concrete cancer and deemed structurally unsafe. So it’s being demolished this weekend, which requires the closing of the 101 Freeway and several other freeways nearby. For 40 hours, traffic will be routed around the construction site while the bridge is demolished from overhead and slowly transformed into this beautiful new bridge over the next few years.

LA Mayor Sings a Sexy Lullaby to Comfort Angelenos About Closing the Freeway

The new multimodal Sixth Street Viaduct designed by Michael Maltzan Associates

Garcetti is well-known for his Instagram account, and not so much for his singing. (Although he is a much, much better singer than New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.) But hey, it got your attention didn’t it? Don’t you consider yourself to be informed?

Personally, though, I think he would have earned a lot more street cred if he had breakdanced the news.

Dude, he’s pretty good.

[Sixth Street Viaduct]

Follow the author at @awalkerinLA

Kanye West Says Robert Kardashian Is "Still Doing Deals for Controversial Black People" in Heaven

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Kanye West Says Robert Kardashian Is "Still Doing Deals for Controversial Black People" in Heaven

Between FX’s new series The People vs. O.J. Simpson and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Marcus Allen storyline this season, the O.J. trial has once again become American obsession. Kanye West even seemed to compare himself to the now-incarcerated former football player in a radio interview with Big Boy on real 92.3 today.

http://gawker.com/the-real-house...

When discussing his upcoming album, West joked that the late Robert Kardashian—lawyer to O.J. and dad to Kim—is helping him from heaven.

“God is doing the...work,” he said. “My mom had [producer] Teddy Riley change his flight and come back to the studio. Robert Kardashian is making sure that all the deals is getting done. He’s still doing deals for controversial black people from up in heaven.”

Amen.

H/t Us Weekly


Photos via Getty. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.

Emails: Top Clinton Aide Secretly Wrote Item for Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook Newsletter

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Emails: Top Clinton Aide Secretly Wrote Item for Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook Newsletter

Most people in Washington attribute the success of Politico’s marquee morning newsletter, Playbook, to the superhuman work ethic of its main author and Politico’s Chief White House correspondent, Mike Allen. According to several 2010 emails recently obtained by Gawker, however, Allen has employed one unusual productivity trick: letting someone he covers ghostwrite an item for him.

Gawker has received the latest round of emails between reporters and Philippe Reines, the longtime Hillary Clinton confidante, former State Department spokesperson, and frequent pen pal of Mike Allen. This month’s batch contains yet another friendly email exchange between Reines and Allen whose contents belie Allen’s claim as an adversarial journalist. We have previously reported that Allen once promised to only ask pre-approved questions in an interview with Chelsea Clinton and assured staff members of a senior Democratic lawmaker on Capitol Hill that he would conduct a “no-surprises” interview with their boss. The following email exchange demonstrates the same tendency. In it, Allen permits Reines, then serving under Clinton at State, to actually ghost-write a Politico Playbook item about the State Department.


Emails: Top Clinton Aide Secretly Wrote Item for Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook Newsletter


The exchange, which you can read in full here, begins with Reines sending Allen a promotional blurb about a National Geographic documentary on the inner workings of the State Department:

From: Philippe Reines
Sent: Mon 11/8/2010 12·37 AM
To: Mike Allen
Subject: Playbook

Viewer Alert

Premiering tonight at 9pm on the National Geographic Channel (both regular and HD!): “Inside the State Department” For over a year the Secretary of State’s soft-media savvy team gave the documentarians unprecedented access to every corner of the Department, including to HRC herself both here in Washington, DC and abroad.

The movie, a serious behind-the-scenes look at the work of State’s 60,000 workforce globally, was screened to rave reviews last month before a standing room only crowd at NGC’s headquarters on 17th Street, and feature many faces familiar to Playbookers.

From the release: “In a planet full of conflict, America faces challenges like never before. Inside the Department of State follows US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her team of top advisors into some of the most embattled regions of the planet. Travel behind the scenes on some of Clinton most crucial overseas missions to date: including trips to Pakistan, Israel, Egypt and Afghanistan. Each missions sheds new light on the machinery & strategy of American diplomacy.”

* WARNING: allowing your Cabinet-level boss to watch may be detrimental to your professional health and result in the ultimate annoying question: Why can’t I get something like this done about ME?!

If you do get that question, blame Caroline & Philippe.

Allen’s first response came about an hour and a half later, at 1:59 a.m.:

sweet — thanks and congrats

His second respond, at 2:12 a.m., consists of Reines’ press release, condensed and slightly rewritten:

From: Mike Allen
Sent: Monday, November 8, 2010 2:12 AM
To: Philippe Reines
Subject: RE: Playbook

VIEWER ALERT - Premiering tonight at 9 on the National Geographic Channel (regular and HD!), “Inside the State Department”: For over a year the Secretary of State’s soft-media-savvy team gave the documentarians unprecedented access to the Department, including to HRC herself, in D.C. and abroad. The behind-the-scenes look at the work of State’s global workforce of 60,000 was screened to rave reviews last month before a standing-room-only crowd at NatGeo, and features many faces familiar to Playbookers. If your Cabinet-level boss wonder why they “can’t get something like this done,” blame Caroline and Philippe.

In his first response, Reines, a vocal critic of Politico staffers who are not Mike Allen, thanked Allen for rewriting the press release (“ty” means “thank you”):

Tytyty

Slightly thereafter, in an email timestamped 1:56 a.m. (perhaps due to a timezone glitch in his email client), Reines followed up to request a slight edit:

From: [Philippe Reines]
Sent: Mon 11/8/2010 1:56 AM
To: Mike Allen
Subject: Re: Playbook

On second thought, can you pull this line: “If your Cabinet-level boss wonder why they ‘can’t get something like this done,’ blame Caroline and Philippe.”

My bad, sorry

To which Allen responded:

gotcha

According to the November 8, 2010 edition of Playbook, Allen indeed complied with Reines’ request. Here’s the item as it appeared that day:

VIEWER ALERT — Premiering tonight at 9 on the National Geographic Channel (regular and HD!), “Inside the State Department”: For over a year the Secretary of State’s soft-media-savvy team gave the documentarians unprecedented access to the Department, including to HRC herself, in D.C. and abroad. The behind-the-scenes look at the work of State’s global workforce of 60,000 was screened to rave reviews last month before a standing-room-only crowd at NatGeo, and features many faces familiar to Playbookers.

Playbook has previously come under scrutiny for its often-murky division between sponsored items and editorial content, as spelled out in a series of posts by Erik Wemple of The Washington Post. But the exchange reproduced above suggests a much larger problem with the newsletter’s daily output: That otherwise normal-looking, non-sponsored Playbook items can be fashioned, and even directly written, by the people those items are about. Even more troublingly, Allen appears to be actively complicit in obscuring their original authorship.

Then again, it’s possible that Allen considers this process to be part of his service to his elite Washington readers. After Wemple’s series came out in 2013, Allen told Michael Calderone of The Huffington Post, “I have based my career on honesty and trust ... I write Playbook 365 days a year because I enjoy it, and greatly respect the readership it has attracted. I make my decisions based on a single consideration: whether the item would serve the audience.” Indeed, it would be hard to argue that Reines, or any other member of the D.C. establishment, isn’t served by Mike Allen’s Playbook.

Reines did not respond to a request for comment. Allen referred our questions a Politico spokesperson, who told Gawker in an email:

This National Geographic television special was worth flagging for Playbook readers and as such the information was condensed into our signature, bite-sized format with a link to the outside source.

We’ll have more from the latest round of emails next week.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credits: Getty Images (left), Associated Press (right)

Looks Like Bernie Sanders Will Give His Own Speech For Rich White People This Weekend (On SNL) 

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Looks Like Bernie Sanders Will Give His Own Speech For Rich White People This Weekend (On SNL) 

In a surprise twist, Bernie Sanders is reportedly set this weekend to deliver a speech of his own before a wealthy, mostly-white New York City organization: Saturday Night Live, with host Larry David.

Sanders is the last potential presidential holdout on the show (Sort of—this season Hillary made an appearance and Donald Trump was allowed to host but Ted Cruz is, frankly, too unsettling for live TV.) If anyone asks how I died, tell them it was suffocating under all the “pretty pretty pretty good” jokes I’m going to have to read on Sunday.


The Iowa Democratic Caucus Was Such a Godforsaken Mess

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The Iowa Democratic Caucus Was Such a Godforsaken Mess

A simple fact about this year’s Democratic caucus in Iowa is that we will probably never know who really won the Democratic caucus in Iowa.

This afternoon, The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs highlights just one example of what a complete shitshow the caucus turned out to be:

In Grinnell Ward 1, the precinct where elite liberal arts college Grinnell College is located, 19 delegates were awarded to Bernie Sanders and seven were awarded to Hillary Clinton on caucus night. However, the Iowa Democratic party decided to shift one delegate from Sanders to Clinton on the night and did not notify precinct chair J Pablo Silva that they had done so. Silva only discovered that this happened the next day, when checking the precinct results in other parts of the county.

The reason for this delegate shift—which refers to Iowa’s lowest level of delegates (“county convention”) and not one of the 44 projected delegates actually awarded to the candidates—was relayed by Silva to Jacobs:

The precinct, which is the largest in the state had 925 caucus-goers and the Iowa Democratic party’s formula for apportioning delegates was not capable of fully dealing with circumstances in such a large precinct, he said. This meant that when people left the course of the caucus process, the algorithm wasn’t capable of dealing with the shift in delegates.

As Silva explained it, the Iowa Democratic party’s formula for apportioning delegates left no method of dealing with one delegate in the precinct. Silva had anticipated this and sought clarification from a party staffer and laid out what seemed to be the correct method. When results were reported to the central reporting center in Des Moines, party staffers, who were able to adjust numbers reported in the much vaunted Microsoft app used by the Iowa Democratic party before they were released to the public, unilaterally made changes. And, as Silva noted: “They did it indirectly in my opinion.”

This is pretty hard to parse, but basically the Iowa caucus system involves a series of estimates, which requires an algorithm, which couldn’t handle a sudden small change in a given precinct’s number of caucus goers, despite the fact that an algorithm really should be able to handle such a thing. The algorithm being overloaded meant that party staffers then had to go back and correct the math by hand, which resulted in one (rather meaningless) county convention delegate being moved to Hillary Clinton.

As Jacobs notes, what happened at Silva’s precinct did not significantly alter the caucus results. But it does highlight the absurdity of the caucus system, and a failure by the Democratic party to be prepared for a crucial night in the party’s future, even after a caucus in 2008 that featured the highest turnout in history.

The editorial board of the Des Moines Register excoriated the party in an editorial published yesterday under the headline “Something smells in the Democratic party,” essentially calling for a recount of the caucus results:

What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.

The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

There has to be a better way to do this.


Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com / image via Getty


Las Vegas Review-Journal Endorses Marco Rubio (BUT NOT BECAUSE OF SHELDON ADELSON)

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Las Vegas Review-Journal Endorses Marco Rubio (BUT NOT BECAUSE OF SHELDON ADELSON)

Today the editorial board of Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Review-Journal endorsed Florida Senator and third-place Iowa caucuses loser Marco Rubio for Nevada’s upcoming Republican caucuses. The board writes:

Our reasons for endorsing Sen. Rubio are many. Notably, the Florida senator has deep personal connections to the state. He lived in the Las Vegas Valley from age 8 to age 14, the son of immigrants employed by the hotel industry. The driving force behind the 44-year-old’s compelling story is his family’s pursuit of better opportunities and a better life. The policies he champions on his campaign are intended to provide all Americans as much.

The paper enumerates the reasons underlying their endorsement, including Rubio’s stance on immigration, federalism, social welfare programs, as well as his “electability.” They also mention one factor that did not influence their decision: Their new activist owner, the Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

It’s widely known that Rubio, like many of his GOP competitors, has actively courted the money and attention of Adelson, who is singularly focused on American foreign policy as it relates to the State of Israel. But the Review-Journal insists that Adelson’s political ideology, which happens to closely match Rubio’s political ideology, did not directly or indirectly affect their endorsement:

The RJ met with Sen. Rubio on Oct. 9, two months before the announcement of the newspaper’s sale to the family of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson. The Adelsons have detached themselves from our endorsement process, and our endorsement of Sen. Rubio does not represent the support of the family.

Ah, well then. Considering everything else that’s happening at the Review-Journal, this seems like a welcome development (at least in terms of editorial independence—Marco Rubio is, after all, still Marco Rubio). Still, it’s hard to imagine Adelson “detaching” himself from his own paper’s political influence for much longer.

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Getty Images

500 Days of Kristin, Day 377: Kristin's Latest Ad Really "Put Everything in Perspective"

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500 Days of Kristin, Day 377: Kristin's Latest Ad Really "Put Everything in Perspective"

On Tuesday, Kristin Cavallari visited a chapter of the Boys & Girls Club in New York City as part of a campaign to get the children to eat mandarin oranges—Wonderful Halos, specifically. Directly thereafter, we received a PR email from Wonderful Halos about Kristin’s experience promoting Wonderful Halos, which you can read here. Kristin then posted #ads for Wonderful Halos on Twitter and Instagram.

Today, Us Weekly published a video interview with Kristin that was apparently conducted sometime during Kristin’s appearance at the Boys & Girls Club. She sits in front of a large Wonderful Halos banner and does not mention the children of the Boys & Girls Club once.

What did Kristin gain from this experience? Money, presumably—but also something else. After taking two days to think about it, Kristin posted this on Twitter last night:

It sure did.


This has been 500 Days of Kristin.

[Photo via Getty]

What Time Is North Korea's Missile Launch?

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What Time Is North Korea's Missile Launch?

Reports Reuters:

U.S. intelligence agencies believe North Korea could be ready for its next rocket launch by the time of the U.S. Super Bowl on Sunday, a U.S. government source said on Friday.

Reuters helpfully adds:

The Super Bowl between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos football teams is scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (2330 GMT).

To be clear: The Super Bowl, between the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos, starts at 6:30 p.m ET. At this point, North Korea may or may not launch a nuclear missile.


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

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Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Your favorite trash cans, refurbished PowerBeats headphones, and the most popular SSD lead off today’s best deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.

http://deals.kinja.com/todays-best-ap...


Top Deals


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

I know, I know, Beats headphones are all marketing, they’re too bass heavy, yada yada yada. The fact is, many people like them, and that’s okay! Amazon’s selling refurbished Powerbeats wired headphones today for $60, which is the best price we’ve ever seen. Even if they aren’t your thing, they could make a great gift. [Refurb Beats Powerbeats In-Ear Wired Headphones, $60]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ARCCF26/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Just over a month ago, Anker finally released a water-resistant Bluetooth speaker, and you can take it for a spin for just $26.

Anker’s SoundCore Sport features 10 hours of battery life, IPX7 water resistance, ad a built-in microphone for handsfree calls. To be fair, we do see slightly cheaper water-resistant speakers from time to time, but we’ve heard nothing but good things about Anker products, so this might be worth a few extra bucks. [Anker SoundCore Sport Bluetooth Speaker, $26 with code NKJTGELK]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017JY0UTU/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Assuming you aren’t already in an XCOM 2 coma, EA’s selling a ton of their most popular titles for up to 75% off on Origin this weekend. Highlights include Star Wars Battlefront for $30, and Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare for $5, but be sure to check out the full list. [EA Publisher Sale]


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Minecraft and LEGO go together like peanut butter and jam, or Jeb Bush and his mom, and you can score an all-time low price on the free-form Minecraft Crafting Box today, courtesy of Amazon. Granted, it’s only a couple bucks less than usual, but licensed LEGO sets rarely see huge price drops. [LEGO Minecraft Crafting Box, $39]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MJYDHHS


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Whether you’re leaving your cat alone for a few days, or just want to keep your pets satisfied and quiet on mornings when you’re sleeping in, this $31 electronic pet feeder can dispense up to five meals on the schedule of your choosing. [PetSafe Electronic Pet Feeder, $31]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Simplehuman dominated the nominations in our recent kitchen trash cans Kinja Co-Op, and Amazon’s running rare discounts on several models of all shapes and sizes today.

http://co-op.kinja.com/your-favorite-...

Update: Most of the trash cans have returned to their usual prices. The ones below should still be active, at least for now.

We’ve occasionally seen better prices on these, but rarely are so many discounted together, so browse the collection and lock in your order before prices return to normal.

Trash Cans

Other


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

128GB in your pocket for $25. What a world we live in. [SanDisk Ultra 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, $25]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SanDisk-Ul...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

New Groupon members (i.e.: just make a new account) can get a year of Xbox Live today for just $35 with promo code TENOFF. That’s the best price we’ve ever seen.

Update: Groupon’s sold out, but keep reading for a $38 option.

Don’t feel like going through the rigmarole of creating a new account? You can get it on eBay as well for $3 more.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1720791514...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

The 43" model of the most popular 4K TV we’ve ever posted is all the way down to $350 today at Walmart, if you don’t mind buying a refurb. I don’t expect this to last long. [Refurb VIZIO M43-C1 4K Smart TV, $350]

http://www.walmart.com/ip/47904771

And if you want it brand new, Amazon’s it marked down to $488 for Prime members as well ($10 discount shown at checkout).

http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-M43-C1-4...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

If you use a desktop computer, a good UPS battery backup will keep it running without any interruption in the event of a power outage, which means you won’t lose any unsaved work. But even if you’re a laptop user, this could still run lamps, your router and modem, or anything else until the power comes back on. This particular model even includes some USB ports for charging your mobile devices. [APC Back-UPS Connect 84VA Battery Back-Up System for USB Devices, $90]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/APC-Back-U...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

It’s a law of nature that no matter how many power outlets you have in your home, you will never have enough. Luckily, this six-outlet surge protector is just $21 right now, and it includes six USB ports for charging your mobile devices as well. [DBPOWER 6-Outlet Surge Protector With 6 USB Ports, $21 with code NKOSXO2J]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0156DT79A


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Samsung’s 850 EVO is far and away the most popular mass market SSD out there, and you can save on two different capacities today.

SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 250GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal SSD ($76) | eBay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3014339977...

SAMSUNG 850 EVO 2.5" 500GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal SSD ($150) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-In...

You could pop one of these into this refurbished non-Retina MacBook Pro, and have yourself a very decent Apple laptop for not that much money. [Refurb Apple MacBook Pro 13.3" Core i5 2.3GHz, 4GB, 320GB, $515]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1214600041...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

I admit that I was a little skeptical about the idea of a countertop compost bin, but reviewers indicate that its airtight design and replaceable filter really do keep odors contained, so this could be a great little purchase for anyone who likes to garden. [X-Chef Premium Stainless Steel Kitchen Waste Compost Collector 1.2 Gallon, $16]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B014R3WPJY


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

If you’re keeping tabs on your blood pressure, this 4.3 star rated digital monitor is on sale for just $25 on Amazon. The screen even changes colors to indicate hypertension or prehypertension. [Ozeri BP2M CardioTech Premium Series Digital Blood Pressure Monitor, $25. Clip 25% Off Coupon]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005FTK7F4/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Jaybird makes some of the best Bluetooth earbuds on the market, and their X2 sport model is down to $128 on Amazon today, within a few bucks of an all-time low. Obviously, you can get a pair of Bluetooth earbuds these days for $20 or less, but this is a great deal if sound quality is a big concern. [Jaybird X2 Wireless Sweat-Proof Micro-Sized Bluetooth Sport Headphones, $128]

http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Sweat...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Every modem rental fee you pay to your ISP is padding for their bottom line, and a total rip-off for you. Fortunately, you can buy your own modem for a relatively small upfront cost, and knock a few bucks off your monthly bill.

http://gizmodo.com/5948616/how-to...

There’s a general consensus that Motorola’s SB6141 is the best modem for most cable internet subscribers, but it usually runs in the $80-$90 range. Today only though, you can score a refurb from Woot for $45 shipped We’ve seen plenty of similar deals on the same model in the past, but never for less than $50. [Refurb Arris SB6141 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem, $45]

http://computers.woot.com/offers/arris-s...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

If you have a tax refund on the way, and want to spend it on an Xbox One, you’ve got two great deals to choose from today.

Xbox One 1TB 3-Game Holiday Bundle ($315) | eBay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2915977001...

Refurb Microsoft Xbox One 500GB Console System With Kinect ($299) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P2XYRDQ/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Pyrex bakeware is up there with knives and skillets on the totem pole of essential kitchen gear, and this three-pan set can be yours for just $12 today. [Pyrex 6-Piece Bake N’ Storage Value Pack, $12]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2813397635...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

Eneloops are your favorite rechargeable batteries (by a long shot), and this discounted 4-pack of AAs comes with a charger, making it perfect for testing the waters. The charger will work with AAA Eneloops as well, if you need some for your rotation. [4-Pack Eneloop AA Batteries With Charger, $16]

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Adva...

http://co-op.kinja.com/the-best-recha...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

If you missed out on Monday’s Mohu Leaf HDTV antenna deal, Amazon’s custom-branded alternative is marked down to $20 right now, an all-time low. Order quickly, and you may get it in time for the Super Bowl. [AmazonBasics HDTV Antenna, $20]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

Not sure if this is right for you? Lifehacker has a great guide to get you started.

http://lifehacker.com/how-to-choose-...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

You guys have bought a ton of these mounts from various manufacturers, but having tried a few of them, TechMatte’s is the one I keep in my own car. [TechMatted Smartphone Car Mount, $5 with code T89L8XQ6]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...

If you don’t want to block a vent, there’s also a CD slot model available for $9. [Nekteck CD Slot Magnetic Phone Mount, $9 with code MKMAMIYV]


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

$15 Bluetooth keyboard aren’t particularly uncommon, but this iClever model is unique in offering a 7-color customizable backlight. In addition to just looking cool, that could come in handy if you’re trying to get some work done on a dark airplane, or while sitting in bed. [iClever 7-Color Backlit Bluetooth Keyboard, $15 with code LIWBC8VI]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

While I definitely recommend owning a large USB battery pack for long trips and power outages, at $5, it wouldn’t hurt to own this pocket-sized model as well to use as a daily carry. [Poweradd Pilot X1 5200mAh Portable Charger Power Bank, $5 code E879NFK8]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGJJNVO/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

We don’t frequently highlight individual articles of clothing, but this deal is too good to pass up. Tumi’s T-Tech Softshell jacket is simple, practical, and has great reviews around the web. Most stores sell it for $80 or more, but you can get one on eBay today in a few different colors for just $33 shipped. [T-Tech by Tumi Softshell Jacket, $33]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3317649190...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

We’ve seen more Bluetooth car kits than we could possibly count, but this one is unique in featuring a built-in headset. You can still take a call over your car’s speakers (assuming you have an AUX jack), but if you need to be more discrete, you can pop out the headset and transfer the call in seconds. [Omaker Hands-free Car Kit Bluetooth 4.0 Music Receiver Audio Adapter with Headset and Dual Port USB Car Charger & Magnetic Mount, $20 with code HL3LZWIO]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017UASGDA


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

If you can’t afford an Oculus Rift and a computer to run it, this Google Cardboard-compatible View-Master headset only requires your phone, and can be yours for just $18 (if you’re a Prime member, that is). That’s only about two dollars less than its previous low price, but this is still one of the best “premium” Google Cardboard viewers out there. [Viewmaster VR With Google Cardboard Support, $18]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

You can never have too many Lightning cables.

2-Pack RAVPower Lightning Cables ($8) | Amazon | Promo code 4BXRUCZZ

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

$20 is a very good price for any 20,000mAh USB battery pack, and this one actually includes a built-in solar panel to recharge itself. While that’s going to be much slower than recharging over microUSB, it can still top off the battery if you leave it out in the sun for a few hours, so it’s a nice little bonus. [ZeroLemon SolarJuice 20000mAh Fast Portable Charger with Solar Charging Technology, $20 with code Z36GZOGN]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NIOGKL8/...


Today's Best Deals: Simplehuman Trash Cans, Cheap Flash Storage, and More

This Bluetooth speaker might cost a bit more than others that we list, but having owned it for about a month now, I can tell you the the sound quality absolutely blows away my trusty Jawbone Jambox, and Anker isn’t exaggerating when it boasts about 24 hour battery life. [Anker SoundCore Dual-Driver Portable Bluetooth Speaker, $36 with code NKJTGELK]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B016XTADG2/...


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Marco Rubio Earns Coveted Endorsement From Notorious Exorcist

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If there’s one endorsement that will surely tip the scales on the Republican presidential candidacy, it’s surely that of an exorcist who failed at the race himself.

“Marco can unify our party,” said former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Fox News on Friday. “I think he’s a principled conservative. I think he’s the right guy.”

Jindal, whose candidacy finally petered out into a small pile of wet embers last November, also said that Rubio is “consistent about strengthening America’s foreign policy,” and has “stood up to the threat of ISIS, radical Islam.”

It’s unclear why Rubio, who is currently closing in on Donald Trump in the polls in New Hampshire, would use the adjective “smart” to describe Bobby Jindal. Perhaps it’s Jindal’s history as an anti-science advocate of teaching creationism, his suggestion that his own party is stupid, and his incoherent, fume-induced rants about the dangers of homosexuality and tornadoes—but it seems to me that “smart” just isn’t the right word to use here.


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