Robert Bentley, the most powerful breast man in Alabama, once had a state law enforcement helicopter deliver his wallet to him at his beach house after he accidentally left it at home, about 250 miles away. And why was the governor leaving the house in such a hurry in the first place? His wife, whom he was probably cheating on, was mad at him. The old ball and chain, am I right boys!!
Bentley himself confirmed the story, saying that although the helicopter delivery “looks bad,” it was not illegal. He added that he needed his wallet for security reasons, and because “I had to buy something to eat.”
State legislators recently began moving to impeach Bentley, and an ethics commission is investigating the affair allegations to determine whether Bentley committed any breaches—which you have to assume would include things like, say, using taxpayer-funded airmail to get his wallet after fleeing from his wife.
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If you aren’t familiar, these genius little gadgets use lasers to project red and green lights onto the front of your house, giving the appearance of holiday spirit without the hassle of actually hanging up outdoor lights. Last year was the first time they were widely available, but they were almost impossible to find, and consistently cost $40-$50. So yes, this deal is about half a year ahead of schedule, but it never hurts to plan ahead.
If you use a Keurig machine to make your morning coffee (not judging!), Amazon will sell you a K-cup sample box for $10, and give you that $10 back as a credit to purchase more coffee products later on. Assuming you use the credit, that’s like getting a dozen K-cups for free.
Unfortunately, the PS4 and Xbox One versions aren’t included in this Gold Box deal, but they’re priced at $39 and $40 respectively, which is pretty solid.
Like the idea of a Belkin WeMo Switch, but not willing to spend $40-$50 to try one out. This TP-Link alternative has a nearly identical feature set for half the price.
Just like a WeMo switch, TP-Link’s Smart Plug will let you turn appliances on and off from your smartphone, and set schedules to toggle them automatically. The only major feature it’s lacking is IFTTT support, but it will integrate with an Amazon Echo for voice control.
A few months ago, I bought the 480GB model of this drive in order to build a my own DIY external SSD, and it’s worked incredibly well so far. Seeing this price though, I wish I’d waited.
If any furniture or rugs in your home could use replacing, Target’s taking an extra 10% off select products with promo code HOME10 today. Browse the furniture and rug selection here, and keep an eye out for products marked “10% off with code” to find eligible items.
Update: Sold out
If you have any use for a desktop computer, this tiny HP is on sale for just $330 on Amazon today, and it includes shockingly great specs.
AMD A8-7600B 2.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
8GB RAM
256GB SSD
AMD Radeon R7 Graphics
It’s not a powerhouse or anything, but that looks like a really solid little computer! You could use it as a home theater PC, a low-end Steambox, or just as your main computer. Just note that this is a Gold Box deal, meaning this price is only available today, or until sold out.
If you hurry, Amazon’s selling your undisputed favorite travel mug, the Contigo Autoseal West Loop, for as little as $13, one of the best prices we’ve ever seen, and a solid discount from its usual $18-$20. Just be sure to grab one before the deal cools off.
The Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Elite is one of the most popular mechanical gaming keyboards out there, and you can pick one up for $80 today, which is one of the best deals we’ve seen an all-time low. For that price, you’re getting individually backlit keys, give macro keys with on-the-fly recording, and Razer’s new proprietary key switches.
GoPro’s official eBay store is currently blowing out refurbs of last generation’s GoPro Hero3+ Silver for just $150. As long as you don’t mind that it’s “old,” that’s a really fantastic action cam for the price.
Let’s compare specs to the $200 GoPro Hero+ (Hero3+ Silver bolded).
Up to 1080p/60 or 720p/120 video vs. 1080p/60 and 720p/60
10 MP stills vs. 8 MP
Removable battery and case vs. built-in case and non-removable battery
So basically, you’re saving $50 vs. the newer Hero+, getting slightly better image quality, and a lot more shooting flexibility. That’s what they call a no-brainer.
In case you missed out last week, you can once again snag an extra year of PlayStation Plus for $40. I know it seems like we’re seeing this deal every week right now, but these gift card deals tend to be feast or famine; it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the deal disappeared for three months.
After a longer-than-usual layoff, PayPal’s eBay storefront is once again offering a solid discount on a $100 iTunes gift card. This time around, it’s a 15% discount, compared to the more frequent 20% deal, but if your balance is empty or running low, it’s still worth stocking up.
It’s a scientific fact that a magnetic strip is the coolest looking way to store your knives. It’s also less likely to blunt them than dropping them into a knife block day after day.
These also make for great magnetic spice racks, if you need more storage space. Just mount a few strips underneath your cabinets, store your spices in small mason jars, and attach them from below.
Everyone who owns a car should also own an OBD-II scanner to diagnose check engine lights, and at $14, there’s no reason not to. There are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth models out there that sync with your phone for a little more money, but this is a great option if you don’t want to futz with apps.
The Worx AeroCart could best be described as the lovechild of a dolly and a wheelbarrow, so if you ever need to move heavy loads, this is one of the most flexible tools you can buy. $100 today gets you a cart and a bonus water hauler. That’s the best deal we’ve ever seen.[Worx AeroCart + Free Water Hauler, $100]
Mpow’s FreeBang Bluetooth speaker features dual 5W drivers, IPX7 water resistance, and most impressively, a 4400mAh battery that can charge your phone in a pinch. It’s a little bigger and a little more expensive than most speaker deals we post, but it looks perfect for a trip to the beach.
The standard Lumos lamp includes four different lighting temperatures for different times of the day, as well as five dimming modes, and even a USB charging port for your phone. We see a lot of deals on desk lamps, and $34 is a fantastic price for that feature set.
If only the best will do, the Lumos E1 is also on sale for an all-time low $59. Compared to the standard Lumos, the E1 includes brighter bulbs, an extra color temperature, an extra dimming level, and an extra charging port.
Jackery, despite the silly name, makes many popular and well-reviewed USB battery packs, and their newest model just got a solid launch discount.
The Jackery Bolt (pictured above) is a little expensive at $20 for 6,000mAh, but it includes a built-in Lightning and microUSB cable, so you won’t have to worry about carrying a spare. If you’re the forgetful type, that’s well worth the price premium.
Newegg’s back at it again with the special PS4 eBay bundles, and this time around you can get a PS4 Battlefront bundle along with copies of Dark Souls III and Fallout 4 for $389. True, that’s $39 more than you’d pay for the Battlefront bundle alone, but you’d probably expect to pay about $100 for the two extra games, so if you want them both, it’s a very solid discount.
Whether you’re starting your Philips Hue collection, or just need some extra bulbs, you won’t find a better deal today than this three-bulb starter kit for $135 on Amazon. Even if you already have a Bridge, this would represent a solid discount on the bulbs, which normally sell for $60 each.
Note: This is the first generation starter kit, which features dimmer bulbs compared to the current model, and a bridge that isn’t compatible with Apple HomeKit.
The compact Ninja Master Prep is one of the more versatile kitchen gadgets you can own, and it’s down to $30 today on Amazon, within $3 of its all-time low.
Want to mix up a frozen smoothie? Chop some onions? Puree a few tomatoes? The Ninja is designed for all of that, and includes two different-sized jars and blade sets to handle your disparate kitchen duties. You can’t say that about most blenders.
Despite the low price, the Ninja has a stellar 4.5 star review average on Amazon, which would be impressive for any inexpensive blender, let alone one as versatile as this.
If the power at your house can be a little spotty, this $20 APC backup UPS is designed specifically to keep your modem and router running for up to three hours on battery power, so you won’t have to lose touch with the world.
If you have any old SSDs or hard drives lying around, you can plug them into this docking station to access the contents over USB. If this is going to be a permanent fixture on your desk, it might even be worth buying an SSD just for it, to create an ultra-fast external drive.
If you don’t already have a multi-port USB charger plugged in everywhere you spend a significant amount of time, there’s nothing stopping you today. Just use promo code VXMOQ74S at checkout to knock this 6-port model down to $12.
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We are currently in the 21st century. We are in the second decade of the 21st century and there are not one, not two, but three Jungle Book movies on the horizon. And that means that it’s time to remind everyone that Rudyard Kipling was a piece of racist, imperialist trash.
In 1967, French literary critic Roland Barthes published “The Death of the Author,” an essay whose title has become synonymous with judging works on their own merits and ignoring any biographical details about their creators. I expect a lot of people to bring this up when talking about the modern movie incarnations of The Jungle Book.
I also expect people to defend The Jungle Book from the other side. To say that it can’t be read with modern ideas in mind. It was written in 1894 by a white British man who was born in India. That’s just how they thought back then.
Both arguments only work up to a point. The death of the author doesn’t excuse the inherent racism and imperialism baked into The Jungle Book. And the argument about when the book was written and by whom doesn’t excuse either Disney or Warner Bros. from making adaptations of it in the 21st century. Unless these movies are loaded with historical context, or are subversive critiques of Kipling, they’re still adapting, for entertainment, a story that has fundamental issues.
It is impossible to separate The Jungle Book from Kipling’s most famous imperialist work: “The White Man’s Burden.” “The White Man’s Burden” is seven stanzas long and is a glimpse into the way Europeans justified their colonial ambitions. The poor white man, said Kipling, is doomed to the hard work of going to foreign places and raising up the local savages into civilized society. It was originally written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and then altered to serve as a British man’s advice for how America should treat the newly acquired Philippines. It begins like this:
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half child.
And it continues in that vein for another six verses. “The White Man’s Burden,” from title to execution, is so over the top in its exhortations of white superiority that it could be mistaken for parody. But it isn’t. We have everything else that Kipling’s written to prove that.
We have Kim, a book where a white boy, born and orphaned in India, is the best spy and Buddhist there is. In part, he’s a great spy because of how well he apes Indian people, so that’s fun. We have the poem that he used for the Diamond Jubilee instead of “White Man’s Burden,” “Recessional” which contains these lines:
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
My god, don’t forget that you are British and not a “lesser breed.”
And, of course, we have The Jungle Book itself. The Jungle Book is just as drenched with racism and colonialism as anything else Kipling wrote on the subject. The thread running throughout the stories is that Mowgli is superior to the animals that raised him by virtue of being man, not beast. That’s a neat parallel to Britain and India. There’s a fun little story in The Second Jungle Book about a superstitious Indian village that worships a horrible old crocodile, only for a British man to blow it to pieces. Because they are more rational, you see.
I’m not saying that Kipling should be censored, but I am saying that he cannot be presented without context. There are messages in The Jungle Book that are very hard to remove. Hell, Disney managed to add to the problems in the 1960s when it added a character called King Louie, who is widely seen as a racist caricature of black people. (Kipling’s book has monkeys, which are the worst of the animal lot, being incapable of having government and only able to mimic others without a decent culture of their own.)
And, at the end of the day, we’re still left with a story where a white person exoticizes a country and its people. How does this idea pass muster in 2016?
Because The Jungle Book is in the public domain, so Disney and Warner Bros. don’t have to pay anyone to use it. Honestly, exploiting the work of someone else for your own advancement is a sentiment that matches Kipling pretty well.
Late Thursday afternoon, USA Today laid bare some uncomfortable truths about our nation’s youth: “Teens love Snapchat. Also Instagram.”
Previously, Instagram had been the number one app according to research firm Piper Jeffray. Now, Snapchat reigns king. America’s third-largest newspaper also writes:
Video is increasingly popular on Snapchat, too.
Incredible—go on.
Meanwhile, Apple remains a hot tech brand among teens. The survey found 69% of teens already own an iPhone.
Leslie Van Houten, a former member of the notorious “Manson family” murderers, has officially been approved for parole by the state of California. Van Houten was convicted in 1971 for the murders of Leno La Bianca and his wife Rosemary—events she recounted detail during a hearing this Thursday.
“The only violent thing she has ever done in her entire life was this crime and that was under the control of Charles Manson,” Van Houten’s lawyer, Rich Pfiffer, said in a previous interview arguing for her release. “She is just not a public safety risk, and when you are not a public safety risk, the law says you shall be released.”
The families of Manson’s victims seem to disagree. Two weeks ago, Debra Tate—the sister of Manson victim Sharon Tate—launched an online campaign protesting Van Hoten’s parole, referring to Van Houten as “remorseless,” with regards to the horrible events of August 10th, 1969:
Ms. Van Houten broke into the home of Leno & Rosemary LaBianca on August 10, 1969- after Charles Manson had gone into their home & tied the couple up. She placed a pillowcase over Mrs. LaBianca’s head & tied it with a lamp chord. She held Mrs. LaBianca down so Patricia Krenwinkel could stab her to death. When the knife bent stabbing Mrs. LaBianca in the collar bone, Ms. Van Houten held Mrs. LaBianca down so Tex Watson could come in & stab her. She stabbed Mrs. LaBianca in the lower back several times. Mrs. LaBianca was stabbed a total of 41 times. Words were written in blood on two walls & a refrigerator door. Ms. Van Houten then took a shower, stole one of her dresses to wear, & ate food from the refrigerator before leaving.
Van Houten, who was 20 at the time of her conviction and is now 66, was originally sentenced to death, along with Manson and two other members of the “family”—making her the youngest woman in the state of California to get sent to death row. The ruling was eventually thrown out, and Van Houten has spent her life since then on the receiving end of more than 20 failed parole hearings.
Charles Manson, now 81 years old, remains imprisoned in the Corcoran State Prison in Central California. He has been denied parole 12 times as of 2012, and hasn’t shown up to a hearing since 1997.
Donald Trump’s children aren’t the only ones who’ll miss the opportunity to vote for the Republican frontrunner on Tuesday: Michael Cohen, his adviser and special counsel, can’t vote either—and not because he forgot to register, but because he’s registered as a Democrat.
The revelation came as Cohen was knocking Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee for trying to undermine Trump. “Well, I think Reince Priebus has an obligation not just to the RNC but really to the American people,” Cohen said. “He’s supposed to keep the Republican Party unified. That’s what his job really is.”
“And he’s not doing that, and he’s doing a terrible job at it. Do I personally, as a voter, as a supporter of Mr. Trump, believe that the process is rigged? I do. I think that the...establishment does not want Mr. Trump to be the nominee.”
“Me, personally, I’m actually a registered Democrat. So I don’t really care about Reince Priebus,” he said. Come again?
“You can’t vote?” CNN’s John Berman asked. “So, his kids can’t vote, and you can’t vote in the primary tomorrow?”
“I’d like to be one of his children. I’d like to be one of them, but no, I’m not voting in the primary. I’m a registered Democrat,” Cohen said. “Don’t worry about Mr. Trump. He’s around 50-plus percent in New York. This is his hometown.”
Tonight, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participate in the final debate before of the most important primary of all time, on Tuesday. The debate will be broadcast from the crown jewel of New York City: the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Gawker and Jezebel are here, and we’re blogging.
Well, sort of—we’re in a big warehouse full of press people, and the Spin Room. (The Debate Hall is...somewhere else.) A correspondent for The Economist, sitting behind us, told his neighbor, “I’m not really covering this live. It’s a magazine, you see.” Bully for him.
Thus far, Gawker has received the following free items: a small bar of Mast Brothers’s allegedly fraudulent chocolate; an aluminum can of Brooklyn Roasting Company coffee beans; a large cup of Brooklyn Roasting Company cold-brewed coffee.
Also, we have been given a brochure for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a former federal shipyard decommissioned and sold to the city in 1966. “Today, products made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard include components of the Mars Rover, prototypes of next-generation motorcycles, and highly advanced protective gear for the military.” We bet Gizmodo wishes they were here.
In an act of political cowardice, the campaign of Bernie Sanders has suspended a young staffer named Simone Zimmerman, who was recently hired to coordinate the campaign’s outreach to Jewish communities, for criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Prime Minister of Israel, in a year-old post on Facebook. The New York Times has the details:
“She has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Senator Bernie Sanders, wrote in an email. Ms. Zimmerman’s suspension comes after a report on Wednesday in The Washington Free Beacon, which found a Facebook post in which she used a vulgarity and described Mr. Netanyahu as “arrogant, deceptive, cynical” and “manipulative.” She then used more aggressive language and continued that he had “sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer.”
The linked report, written by Noah Pollak of The Emergency Committee for Israel, contains screenshots of Zimmerman’s Facebook account, where she published a note critical of Netanyahu and his administration’s decision to prolong the State of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. The “vulgarity” referenced by the Times appears to be this part of the note: “Fuck you, Bibi, for daring to insist that you legitimately represent even a fraction of the Jews in this world[.]” Zimmerman later substituted “Shame on you” for “Fuck you.” The entire original note, which Zimmerman authored in March 2015, reads:
Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole. He is the embodiment of the ugliest national hubris and the tone-deafness toward the international community. Fuck you, Bibi, for daring to insist that you legitimately represent even a fraction of the Jews in this world, for your consistent fear-mongering, for pushing Israel, in word and deed, farther and farther away from the international community, and most importantly, for trying to derail the potentially historic diplomatic deal with Iran and thus trying to distract the world from the fact that you sanctioned the murder of over 2,000 people this summer, that a brutal military occupation of millions more continues under your watch, and that you are spending time and money on ridiculous campaign opportunities like this instead of actually working to address the real needs of your own people.
Netanyahu insulted our President but also much worse. He does not speak for me as a Jew, an American, and as a thinking person. #BibiDoesntSpeakForMe
It was no secret, when Sanders appointed her three days ago, that Zimmerman, who is Jewish and has served in a number of anti-occupation organizations, is highly critical of Israel and its elected leaders over the country’s treatment of the Palestinians—a position held by an increasingly large and vocal portion of her demographic cohort. As Slate’s Michelle Goldberg explained earlier this week, “A zealous activist against Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Zimmerman represents many social justice–minded young Jews whose views have been largely excluded from mainstream politics.”
Zimmerman’s suspension comes five days before New York State’s Democratic primary on April 19, and just one day after Sanders appeared at a large rally held in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park. According to recent polls, Jewish New Yorkers favor Hillary Clinton, who is Methodist, over Sanders, who is Jewish, by double-digit margins. According to the Times, several leaders in New York’s Jewish community have called upon the Sanders campaign to fire Zimmerman.
Reached by email, Zimmerman declined to comment. The Sanders campaign did not immediately return a request to clarify the status of the investigation into her Facebook post. If you know any more about this, please get in touch.
We’ve reached out to the Giants for comment, and we’ll update this post when we hear back.
Update (10:10 p.m.): What follows is a mostly fruitless exchange with Giants flak Pat Conlan:
Patrick Redford <patrick.redford@deadspin.com> 9:03 PM (1 hour ago)
to: hanlon. re: Schedule
Hi Pat, I’m curious, was the decision not to use “Redskins” in your tweet announcing the 2015-16 schedule while you used every other team’s nickname deliberate? Thanks.
Hanlon, Pat <Pat.Hanlon@giants.nfl.net> 9:21 PM (44 minutes ago)
to: me. re: Schedule
Patrick, no. We have different formats of schedule and use “Washington” and “Redskins” interchangeably... Will send the Redskins version separately
Patrick Redford <patrick.redford@deadspin.com> 9:26 PM (40 minutes ago)
to: Pat. re: Schedule
Okay, but why are there two versions? Do you have other versions of the schedule where a single different team is identified by their city instead of their nickname?
Hanlon, Pat <Pat.Hanlon@giants.nfl.net> 9:47 PM (19 minutes ago)
to:me. re: Schedule
In response to your last question, no, on our graphics, no other team is referred to by both city and nickname.
Patrick Redford <patrick.redford@deadspin.com> 9:52 PM (15 minutes ago)
to: Pat. re: Schedule
Got it. So why did the team only do one alternate one for Washington?
Hanlon, Pat <Pat.Hanlon@giants.nfl.net> 9:54 PM (12 minutes ago)
Over the past few months, much reporting has come out about Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s combative campaign manager. Turns out, he was an asshole long before he started working for Trump.
Lewandowski’s origin story has always been a bit muddled. But according to Steve Eder and Jess Bidgood at the New York Times, Lewandowski has an interesting relationship with the suburb of Windham, N.H., where he continues to maintain a residence.
Eder and Bidgood recount the goings-on of a man rather like New England’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes was a giant shithead who antagonized his neighbors and couldn’t even play the violin.
Upon discovering that Windham’s local selectman and prosecutor Ross McLeod sometimes used his office email to coordinate an annual fantasy football league with friends, Lewandowski took it upon himself to report McLeod’s “gambling ring” to the head prosecutor. McLeod wasn’t convicted, but he was eventually fired thanks to the allegations.
Lewandowski also doxed a bunch of people in the town over a $5,409 bill he wanted the town to send to Obama’s re-election campaign to cover the cost of the president’s visit to the town. To prove a point, probably, Lewandowski proceeded to read aloud the tax bills of several families in attendance to see if any of their expenses were comparable, shrugging off dissenters by insisting that he was speaking in a public forum.
A telling portrait of a man determined to demand justice wherever he sees fit, no matter how loudly his peers might protest.
The New York Post, essentially the Donald J. Trump of newspapers, is endorsing Donald J. Trump for president in the most underwhelming way possible.
In fact the only interesting thing about the endorsement is how transparent the paper is in its opinion that Trump will have to change significantly to be a worthwhile candidate. “Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot — not just on the issues, but in his manner,” the post reads. “The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned.”
So he needs to become someone who isn’t Trump.
The post goes on to laud Trump as “an imperfect messenger carrying a vital message,” an unclear compliment that could be an indication of any number of things, including:
The Post supports temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country.
The Post agrees that women who have abortions should be punished.
The Post supports building a wall to deter illegal immigrants from entering the country.
The Post supports lusting after one’s own daughter.
I could go on, but I won’t, because truly, nothing matters.
At one point during last night’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton tried to use Bernie Sanders’s anti-Wall Street message against him. “I’m the only one on this stage who did not vote to deregulate swaps and derivatives, as Senator Sanders did,” she said. “That contributed to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and started the cascade.”
Clinton was referring to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which Sanders voted for as a member of the House of Representatives—and which President Bill Clinton signed into law. In fact, there were significant differences between the bill Sanders signed, which passed the House by 377 to 4 (with 51 abstentions) in October 2000, and the one that became law. The bill was introduced into the Senate in December, but thanks to its chief architect, Texas Senator Phil Gramm, that body never voted on it. From The Huffington Post:
In December, Gramm — after coordinating with top Clinton administration officials — added much harder-edged deregulatory language to the bill, then attached the entire package to a must-pass 11,000-page bill funding the entire federal government. After Gramm’s workshopping, the legislation included new language saying the federal government “shall not exercise regulatory authority with respect to, a covered swap agreement offered, entered into, or provided by a bank.” That ended all government oversight of derivatives purchased or traded by banks. He also created the so-called “Enron Loophole,” which barred federal oversight of energy trading on electronic platforms.
Those “top Clinton administration officials,” according to the Sunlight Foundation, were members of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets: Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, CFTC Chairman William Rainer, and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt.
Also, while it is true that Clinton didn’t vote for CFMA, that is a meaningless claim to make, as she wasn’t in the Senate at the time any of the relevant legislation was being considered.
Like an acoustic guitarist doing shaky Jack Johnson covers at a crowded happy hour, Ted Cruz prattled on about his ideas for America or some bullshit at the back of the room, while attendees at last night’s New York City GOP gala—who can barely hear each other in here, Jesus—just tried to have a good time with their friends.
Cruz was the closing speaker at the Republican fete, following speeches from Donald Trump and John Kasich, who were received much more attentively than he was, according to reporters.
Cruz then pivoted straight into his stump speech around the themes of “jobs, freedom, and security,” making few deviations from his standard remarks that he makes on the trail. Like most stump speeches, this one includes applause lines sprinkled throughout — but the audience barely applauded, and sometimes not at all.
Instead, they grew increasingly loud, with many people talking amongst themselves, milling about, and eating and drinking, their cutlery making audible sounds as Cruz soldiered on through his speech. The din grew louder and louder as the speech progressed.
While Cruz spoke over the chatter of an audience just wrapping up its meal, Trump — who was the first of the three contenders to speak — seemed right at home.
A stunningly distracted crowd of hundreds of Republicans almost entirely ignored Ted Cruz’s speech at the New York City GOP gala on Thursday night, instead chattering at their dinner tables, standing and taking selfies. Several casually left the dinner altogether.
Attendees who spoke with NBC said the crowd was likely turned off by Cruz’s disparaging remark about Donald Trump’s “New York values” in January.
Poor Ted Cruz. The audience may not have enjoyed Cruz’s performance, if they bothered to listen at all, but I hope they were at least gracious enough to tip the entertainment on the way out.
Silver’s lawyers have been fighting to keep the documents under seal for a little over a year. “In the context of this case, given all the allegations that are out there, there is nothing here,” one of his attorneys, Steven Molo, said Thursday. “We ought to take three steps backward and not look at this under some sort of microscope. I can’t see how the government could credibly argue that [the documents] would.”
Caproni ordered the materials unsealed after the New York Times and NBCUniversal filed documents arguing they should be made public. “The public has a right to know the factors that this court is considering going into sentencing,” she said Thursday. “I’m not sure that if it’s ancient history that it means it has no relevance.”
“My view is, I have been running afoul of the First Amendment,” Caproni said Friday. Referring to reporters in the court room, she continued. “These people have a right to know and the public has a right to know.”
In one of the recently unsealed filings, the government outlines the evidence it has acquired indicating that Silver carried out the two affairs:
The evidence was initially filed under seal after lawyers for the women implicated in the alleged affairs consented on the condition that their clients’ names and any identifying information be redacted.
“In light of the defendant’s misuse of his official position as set forth above, and his active concealment of his personal relationships while employing his Assembly staff and other to provide official benefits and access to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], such evidence is particularly relevant to rebut efforts by the defendant to introduce evidence of his purported good moral character,” one government filing reads. (Silver’s sentencing is scheduled for May 3.)
Prosecutors argue that the lobbyist with whom Silver allegedly was having an affair “obtained certain clients in part because of her access to the defendant.” Investigators learned of their affair, filings state, after stumbling across an inadvertently recorded conversation:
This isn’t the first time Silver has been accused of carrying on an extramarital affair, although earlier evidence was far more tenuous. In 2013, the New York Daily News obtained an email from State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who retired in 2013 amidst accusations of sexual harassment, which claims that Lopez “repeatedly” told a female staffer “that he wanted their relationship to be the same as Mr. Silver’s to his Chief of Staff and was explicit in what that meant.”
Two women who had accused Lopez of groping them later sued Silver for being an “aider and abettor” of his behavior.
As to the woman prosecutors now allege Silver helped get a job:
We’ll continue to update this post as we review the documents.
An op-ed appeared as if by magic in The Wall Street Journal this morning. And though the article bore Donald Trump’s name and espoused Donald Trump’s beliefs, few sets of words have sounded less like Donald J. Trump.
The editorial, which is likely a push to convince any on-the-fence New Yorkers to make the jump to Trump, hits on all the candidate’s usual talking points (political outsider, self-funded, the Colorado primary was rigged, etc) and appeared in one of Trump’s very favorite sections.
But unlike Donald Trump’s books, press releases, and alleged doctors’ notes, the Wall Street Journal article doesn’t sound like it came from five minutes of Donald Trump screaming into a voice recorder. Instead, it contains phrases like this...
Why should we trust the people who have made every wrong decision to substitute their will for America’s will in this presidential election?
So I’m self-funding I told you. But if I took hundreds of millions, I tell you what, I could have $200 million so fast. If I took that, would you people object if I promise not to do anything from the people I took it from? No? I had a group in Iowa, actually, they were much more vocal about this one issue. And they stood up, no, no, the place—I mean, I realize how important it is, putting your own money in because I’m telling people that Jeb, nice guy, really a nice guy. Jeb...
Or phrases like this...
I, for one, am not interested in defending a system that for decades has served the interest of political parties at the expense of the people. Members of the club—the consultants, the pollsters, the politicians, the pundits and the special interests—grow rich and powerful while the American people grow poorer and more isolated.
He took on Trump, he took on Trump. I’m standing here, he’s over here. Took on Trump, he made a statement that was written by his pollster. You know? So, he would remember it.
He said, “Mr. Trump, why don’t you this?” I said, OK. Then I gave him an answer. I said, “Jeb, I’m at 42, you are at 2.” Right? It is a simple answer. You started off here, right next to me, and then you were there, then you were there, by the next time, you are going to be off the stage. Right?
Most notably, the article does not include any of the following words: Winning, Donald Trump, sad, winner, loser, hater, Donald Trump, Mexico, China, or even Donald Trump.
To be fair, though, speeches and newspaper editorials are two very different sets of writing. What’s more, ghostwritten work is common and even to be expected from a presidential candidate at this point in the race. Still, the fact that Donald Trump’s campaign didn’t even attempt to approximate his voice is incredible.
Even his press releases, which don’t claim to have been written by Trump at all, keep a consistent voice. For instance, this line from his official statement on the Fox News debate in January is unquestionably Trump:
Unlike the very stupid, highly incompetent people running our country into the ground, Mr. Trump knows when to walk away.
Mr. Trump has had a recent complete medical examination that showed only positive results. Actually, his blood pressure... and laboratory test results were astonishingly excellent.
...If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.
So you’d think that after saying something like“the only antidote to decades of ruinous rule by a small handful of elites is a bold infusion of popular will,” the least they could do is toss in a “sad.”
Sin taxes, which states levy on things like cigarettes and booze and gambling, are popular with just about everyone. So why the fuck haven’t we established the single smartest sin tax of all?
Sin taxes do two good things: they raise money that can be used to fund useful things, and they discourage things that society wants to discourage. They are the platonic ideal of taxes! The Wall Street Journal today has a story on how states across the country are worried because their revenue from sin taxes on tobacco or gambling is declining—but in the grand scheme of things, they should be happy that their citizens are smoking less or drinking less or blowing less money at casinos. The great thing about sin taxes is you win (money) if your people are doing things that are bad for them, and you win (public health, welfare, and happiness) if they stop doing things that are bad for them, too.
Taxing smoking to reduce it is good. Taxing drinking to reduce it is good. Taxing gambling to reduce it is good. These sin taxes have both paid for a lot of useful things across America and made us all healthier. But as the revenue from these taxes declines, do you know what would be another great, great idea for a sin tax to bring revenue in once again?
Corey Lewandowski may no longer be facing criminal prosecution for his March 10 encounter with Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, but charges that he is a real asshole are still pending.
Lewandowski appeared last night on CNN to explain that he only manhandled Fields, bruised her arm, and called her a liar on national television because she made him do it.
When asked why he didn’t just apologize, which Fields said would have been enough for her to drop the charges, Lewandowski claims he tried to reach out but Fields wasn’t interested.
“I made a phone call to Michelle and I never heard back, and to this day I’ve never heard back from Michelle,” he said. “So, it’s not that we didn’t try and reach out to get to the bottom of it, it seems to be that she wanted to inject herself into making it a story, and now I’m glad the story’s over.”
Did he actually call her? Who knows. Tweets he sent the same night seem to indicate he wasn’t exactly in an apologetic mood:
Corey Lewandowski has a lot of things—among them, the ire of his neighbors, the ire of his co-workers, and the tepid support of Donald Trump—but credibility is not one of them.
Climate-change denier and Trump surrogate Sarah Palin, promoting her new film, Climate Hustle, inexplicably challenged just how much of a Science Guy Bill Nye really is: “Bill Nye is as much a scientist as I am,” she said during a Congressional event Thursday. “He’s a kids’ show actor. He’s not a scientist.”
Palin lumped Nye in with those she perceives as spreading untruths about the environment: “There is a predetermined agenda definitely of those who I think are controlling the narrative right now on changes in the weather.”
“There is definitely a political agenda behind all of this and as you suggested people who are involved in this issue they are not stupid. They have studied this stuff. They have studied the data that they are erroneously delivering to the public to make us think that we can somehow change the weather and how they do that is to grow government and allow the government to have more control over us, our homes, our businesses, our families, our lives, and it’s quite unfortunate because these people must be purposely doing this, right? Because they are smart enough to know better,” the former vice-presidential candidate said.
Whatever. Neither Sarah Palin nor Bill Nye are scientists, but Bill Nye—a mechanical engineer who does not call himself a scientist, but the “Science Guy”—is certainly more of a scientist than Sarah Palin. He is also better at what he does than she is at what she does.
Nye has been a visiting professor at Cornell, and is an executive at the Planetary Society. Palin, meanwhile, said on Thursday, “We need to keep in mind how important it is for parents to understand this issue and to understand the political agenda behind global warming. It is being used as a fundraiser, it is being used as a partisan issue unfortunately so that parents can be first and foremost in their child’s life and influence them to trust science and believe in science and not leave it to the teachers.”