According to The Washington Post, American children three years old or younger have shot at least 23 people in 2016, five more than they did over the same period in 2015.
In 18 of the 23 cases reporter Christopher Ingraham reviewed, the children themselves were the victims. In half of those cases, the children died. From the Post:
Georgia is home to the highest number of toddler shootings, with at least eight incidents since January 2015. Texas and Missouri are tied for second place with seven shootings each, while Florida and Michigan are tied for fourth, with six shootings apiece.
Ingraham found that toddler-involved shootings disproportionately occurred in the states for reasons that could not be attributed to population or gun laws alone.
“Sussing out cause and effect in these cases, in other words, is still largely a guessing game,” writes Ingraham. “And it’s a game made much more difficult by Congress’s efforts to restrict the type of gun research that agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are allowed to conduct.”
“Despite the Sheriff’s Department’s many recent efforts to fortify public trust and enhance internal and external accountability and transparency, this incident reminds us that we and other law enforcement agencies still have work to do,” the statement read.
McDonnell said he planned to treat the incident as a “learning opportunity.”
The emails published by the Times were heavily fixated on Islam, supporting profiling tactics, criticizing “political correctness,” and listing 20 reasons “Muslim Terrorists are so quick to commit suicide” (e.g. “Towels for hats,” “Constant wailing from some idiot in a tower,” and “You can’t wash off the smell of donkey”).
The emails were sent in 2012 and 2013, when Angel was deputy chief in Burbank. He’d been hired to reform the department, which had been accused of brutality, racism, and sexual harassment.
After his emails were made public as a result of a public records request, Angel, a public official, lamented that his emails should be subject to such requests. “Anybody in the workplace unfortunately forwards emails from time to time that they probably shouldn’t have forwarded,” he said. “I apologize if I offended anybody, but the intent was not for the public to have seen these jokes.”
“The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through ‘safe spaces,’ ‘code words’ and ‘trigger warnings’ is, in my view, a terrible mistake,” Bloomberg, who travels everywhere with armed ex-police officers and conceals his private plane routes from aviation web sites, said.
“The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations—not run away from them,” he continued. “A microaggression is exactly that: micro. And one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is a safe space, because it creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views,” the billionaire media mogul, who lives in a compound in a gated community in Bermuda, said.
“As durable as the American system of government has been, democracy is fragile—and demagogues are always lurking,” he said, before alluding to the candidacies of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. “Stopping them starts with placing a premium on open minds, voting, and demanding that politicians offer practical solutions, not scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.”
Earlier this year, Bloomberg considered running for president, but ultimately decided against it.
Marco Rubio advisors say the junior senator from Florida would happily endorse Ted Cruz, but only if Ted Cruz was going to win anyway and there was no one else to endorse and it helped Rubio in some way.
Rubio is apparently waiting until the convention to make a final decision, but his advisors tell The Politico he is unlikely to endorse Cruz the way the race currently stands—and who can blame him.
“Marco wants Donald to lose. If he thought his endorsement would help in California or in Indiana, which it won’t, then he would probably do it,” an unnamed Rubio source tells The Politico. “But what Marco isn’t going to do is just endorse Ted, watch Trump win anyway and then, in four years, watch Cruz use Marco’s endorsement against him if they both run for president again.”
“Trust me, for us, the best scenario is for Ted Cruz to be the nominee this year,” another “top supporter” tells the paper. “It would knock Trump out. Then Cruz would run against Hillary and get slaughtered and he won’t be our problem in four years if Marco runs again. And I think he’ll run again.”
A fair point, in that Rubio’s endorsement probably wouldn’t make a real difference, regardless of whether he has a shot in 2020 or not (he doesn’t). Plus, as his own children can attest, literally no one wants to be part of the Ted Cruz camp.
“I don’t have any comment on it except I don’t think Ted Cruz is Lucifer,” Rubio, who perhaps knows something we don’t, recently told the Palm Beach Post.
America’s bloated higher education industry is supported by the work of an immense pool of well-educated and very poorly paid workers: the adjunct professors. They are telling us all about it. And they have a few ideas.
Hundreds of adjuncts have written us with their stories. Last week, we told you about their general themes: low pay, no job security, overstuffed and overpaid college administrations, and an unsustainable system that pumps out more Ph.D.’s than the market can handle. This week, adjuncts explain why their jobs suck, who is to blame, and who has the power to change things. (Read them, they were all written by very literate people!)
Can’t survive off crumbs forever
I’m an adjunct in California. I teach at a community college which actually has one of the better reputations for how they treat adjuncts, but it’s still a fairly abysmal situation. We have a part-timers union, which has gotten raises for us over the last two semesters, with another due this fall. They’ve also ensured that we have some amount of time for office hours (45 minutes/week/class; part-timers get up to two classes/semester).
That said, I don’t have an office for these office hours. Students meet with me at the campus coffee shop, where they tell me about medical issues (so much f’ing cancer!), personal problems, or occasionally class work in a completely public area. We have mailboxes and shared work space with computers; I believe we share this space with at least three other departments. There are no quiet places for adjunct faculty to grade, plan lessons, nor meet with students.
Once the ACA really came into play, HR decided that no part-timer could work more than 70% of a full load. This means that I’ve been offered hours in labs that HR wouldn’t allow me to take; no money in the budget for health care (or other benefits) for a part-timer. A quick aside: this is the same HR department where most are gone by 3 pm. You can send them an email, but you can’t find them on campus most afternoons.
I make about $4000 per class per semester. Two classes over Fall and Spring provide about $16,000/year. I work another job, but if not for family providing extremely affordable housing, we’d be living in an extremely impoverished fashion. We live closer to the poverty line than I’d prefer, and it’s extremely difficult (if not impossible) to save when rent, food, gas, etc. are always increasing.
I teach only about 6-7 hours/week, but there is a LOT of prep and grading time for which I am not compensated. Also, my campus is nearly an hour from my home, so that’s another almost 4 hours/week spent commuting.
The full-timers on our campus aren’t really assholes; they’re just oblivious. They don’t recognize the opportunities that they had are no longer available to us. They are also obligated to teach a certain number of classes each semester, and if they like, they can bump us from previously assigned classes. I just spent a week worrying about a lack of employment next semester because a full-timer took my class; it was at a better time for that person. Had someone not given up a different class, perhaps that would have been the semester I finally left due to finances. I think about it all the time; there have to be better jobs out there with more security...right?...
I worked one semester at another community college. They gave me a night class which was held at a high school campus. The wages were lower; there was NO work space for part-time faculty, nor computers, nor office hours, nor a decent way to get materials printed for classes. Part of this was due to it being a satellite campus, but most of my wages went to printing materials and transportation costs. I commuted, paid for auto upkeep, and supplied my own computer and paper. I couldn’t use an overhead projector (they didn’t have anything compatible with my technology, but suggested I provide something, as I could easily get something compatible online. Ha)...
Our wages aren’t livable. Every part-timer I know has at least one additional job. I work online for another company based on the East Coast, which allows me flexible hours — this is important because I’m also a single mom. When I don’t go to campus, I work from home, often starting at 5 am and finishing around 2. My child has a lot of afternoon activities, so at least I can chauffeur her around and take the papers I’m grading for my classes with me. Her father is a vet with PTSD, so he’s not working, but he does provide her with health insurance — as do I...
My kid will prepare for college in less than a decade, and I have no idea how I could help pay for that. I’m priced out of the housing market. Every winter and summer break, I apply for Unemployment Benefits. Thanks to the Cervisi decision in CA, we adjuncts are allowed to do that. Even so, every time I reapply, I have to jump through various hoops and wait excessively long to access my benefits. We are allowed to do this because our employment is contingent upon enrollment. I could have two classes this semester, and get none next semester.
My campus has several deans, all of whom make FAR more than I do. I know we need admin, but we have to distribute the pay in a much more logical, rational way. Instructors can’t survive off crumbs forever — though it often seems like the overcrowded grad school classes are trying to do just that, supply lots of new workers for the higher ed field. We need more full-time, tenure-track jobs with wages that will allow us to live decently and pay off our student debt.
Not a meritocracy
I liked most of the people I taught with and worked for, although I find the false care most tenure track faculty show towards adjuncts infuriating. They will all say how terrible the situation is, but will never do a single thing to address it. When they bring it up I now ask them when the last time it was discussed in a faculty meeting….blank stares…... “That’s just the way it is.” If you have tenure and aren’t actively trying to fight for those with no job security, those who make your research schedule possible, then you just suck. A key problem is that this reality is relatively new. The dominantly older white guys running Academia never had job markets like this. Professor after professor will tell stories about how they got their first job, and their CV’s when they landed those jobs wouldn’t get them to the interview stage nowadays. They like to think it is a meritocracy, and entirely forget how different their experiences were, let alone how much they benefit from the free labor adjuncts (and graduate students as well, who also get hosed). I had one colleague who got his first job in the 1970’s, he published no papers as a student, was offered a job that wasn’t even advertised internationally, and earned tenure at an R1 school with no funded grants. He now believes that newly minted PhD’s with fewer than 3 papers are “risky hires”, and expects everyone to have a well-developed “finding portfolio” when they apply. People who land jobs easily are just as bad, often thinking that it is all a meritocracy, or assuming that their experiences and opportunities are universal...
So what can be done? I think it is key that students faced with rising tuition learn where their money goes, and how little is spent on their education. Realistically I think the only solution will be unionization. A strike planned on the days prospective students and their parents all sit in on classes, well that is the only path forward I see. Administrators and trustees are now dominated not by educators interested in higher education, but by business people who see universities are places to make money. Appealing to ethics is pointless with these people, they want schools to be nothing but machines that train future employees, and I have no hope of changing their minds. Adjuncts and tenured faculty need to unionize and strike.
I also think that academic disciplines need to be serious about helping community members find non-academic employment. Despite the reality that most graduates don’t end up in academia, most advisors and departments refuse to incorporate any alternative career development ideas. I’m in academia, but still get crap for not being tenure track. This is idiotic. I think if non-academic jobs were treated as respectable alternatives, perhaps the pool of us hoping for adjuncting scraps would dry up, and salaries would have to rise. It’s not that different than a high school football coach treating all of his players as if the only good option for them is to play D1 college sports. Those people suck.
Students have the power
After a couple of years of adjuncting, I realized how exploitative this system was and transitioned to other full-time work.
What I am writing in to say— and which is something I NEVER hear articulated in articles about how awful adjuncts have it— is that one group has the power to change this instantly and forever, and that group is the students. If students began staging protests demanding exclusively full time faculty, the problem would resolve itself. If prospective students began asking admissions officers the percentage of classes taught by adjuncts, and then not applying to schools where that number was high, the problem would resolve itself.
People in their 20's and 30's are now, by and large, very aware of the adjunct gulag and its dangers. But high school kids and undergraduates do not know and/or do not care. THAT’S what has to change.
It’s easy to think of political causes and social justice issues for which students are willing to enthusiastically agitate. The day that that same intransigence and passion are applied to eliminating the use of adjuncts (or seeing that they receive fair pay and acceptable benefits) the system will instantly change. But not before.
Money is the dictator
I’ve been an adjunct for 13 years. I work at a community college in California’s Central Valley. I have two Master’s Degrees, one of them from Cal. I’ve also been a “freeway flyer,” but gave up because of the wear and tear on my car, time spent traveling literally hundreds of miles to and from three different college campuses, and time away from my family. I make anywhere from 16K to 20K a year, based upon factors including whether or not I teach summer school and whether I’m teaching “classroom” hours or “lab” hours. I am contracted to spend 10 hours a week in the classroom. I do not have paid office hours, so if I need to meet with a student outside of class (which I often do) I do not get paid for it. I also do not have an office, so I have to meet with students in the cafeteria, library, or my department’s conference room. Students and I are often “kicked out” of our conference room because two or three colleagues want to have a “meeting” in there when they could go elsewhere. The only campus computer I’m “allowed” to use is also in the conference room, so I have no privacy to either “work” outside of class or to meet with students. I just got an email from my current dean saying the conference room will be “offline” next week because the College is using it for high school outreach, so I have nowhere on campus to work next week. I also don’t get paid for “prep” time, which, for a new lesson plan, can be lengthy. I have been tracking my actual work hours recently, and I “work” 40 to 50 hours per week based upon that week’s grading load, although I’m only paid for the 10 I spend in class...
My College, and especially my department, has a high turnover rate for instructors. We also burn through administrators. I’ve had 7 “bosses” (deans or managers; they change the administrative structure every decade or so) in 13 years. Most of the full-timers in my department are younger than me (I’m 43), less educated than me, and have significantly less experience than I do. Several of my colleagues dropped out of the Literature graduate program I attended at a CSU campus because it was “too hard,” and switched to a Rhet/Comp program there or elsewhere. I will never be hired full-time at my campus because as a full-timer, based on education and experience, I would start at $68K per year. The College can hire “kids” straight out of grad school for $48K because most of them only have one graduate degree and little to no experience. Adjunct here (and at every other community college I know of in the state of California) are treated, quite simply, like shit. I have never met an adjunct who has not felt at one time, or does not pretty much always feel, that they are second-class citizens on campus...
Many of us (and some of our ft colleagues) feel that the lack of paid office hours and lack of office space is a serious student equity issue, because students can’t just walk in and see us like they can full-timers. Pity our poor Child Development instructors; they don’t even have a computer or room to use on campus.
I have no idea what the solution is, other than creating more full-time, tenure track positions, and ensuring that community colleges practice ethical hiring (like that could ever be enforced). I worked for corporations before I started teaching, and I really thought Academia would be different. It’s not. People complain about the way the “business world” has crept into higher education. In my experience, it’s always been here. Money is the dictator, not student needs. In my experience, the focus, at least in the California community college, UC, and CSU systems, is not on quality teaching, but on getting the cheapest, most minimally qualified body to push the most students through the fastest. High quality teaching should be a priority, not a side-effect.
Final thoughts
The day I crossed over from adjunct to full-time gave me four things: -Health benefits like a normal human being has -A lack of self-loathing -Four times the pay -Half the work
Thanks to all the adjunct professors who have written in. We will share more stories in the coming weeks.
“In July of 2002, two years before Donald Trump became engaged to the Slovenian model Melania Knauss, he visited her native country for three hours,” writes Lauren Collins at the New Yorker, as the lede of an essay on the parallels between the Trump brand of marriage and the Trump brand of politics—which puts Collins’ facility with deft, gracefully devastating burns to tremendous use.
They’re deserved here more than ever, during the continued ascension of an insanely unqualified presidential candidate whose core platform is anti-immigration, while his wife is an immigrant, his mother was an immigrant (Scotland), and his first wife (Czechoslovakia), too. Writes Collins:
If he’s as concerned as he says he is by all the “people that are from all over and they’re killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country,” he might consider building a wall around his pants.
But Trump of course justifies his wife’s immigration process as lawful and special, as it took place through a lawful and special program. Never mind that he once said he wanted to shut that program down completely.
He stresses that his family members were legal immigrants. Melania came to New York to work as a model. Through a quirk in immigration law, models, nearly half of them without high-school diplomas, are admitted on H-1B visas, as highly skilled workers, along with scientists and computer programmers, who are required to show proof of a college degree. “The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay,” Trump said, in March, railing against “rampant, widespread H-1B abuse.”
If Melania became First Lady, she’d be the first foreign-born first lady since Louisa Adams. (It’s a rich prospect in context; Collins quotes Melania during her period as a racist birther mouthpiece, saying, “It would be very easy if President Obama just show it. It’s not only Donald who wants to see it. It’s American people, who voted for him, and who didn’t voted for him, they want to see that!” in 2011.) But Louisa Adams was born to a colonist family that “forcefully impressed” Americanness on her and her siblings: “Her father named one of her sisters, born in 1776, Carolina Virginia Marylanda,” Collins writes. Plus the comparisons between the two women end there:
Louisa Adams played the harp, wrote satirical dramas, and raised silkworms. (She also survived fourteen pregnancies, including nine miscarriages and a stillbirth.) Melania Trump’s hobbies, she told People, include Pilates and reading magazines.
Though Melania Trump brought her parents to America and speaks Slovenian to her son, she’s a “foreigner with seemingly no affinity for her homeland.” She hasn’t tried to use her immigration story to soften her husband’s image, likely because the thing most befitting to her husband’s image is for her to seem so special that she’s above talking, above trying to seem relatable, above the rules. Collins writes, “Running parallel to Trump’s belief in American exceptionalism is a sort of personal exceptionalism: the rules, even if he makes them, don’t apply to him.” And Melania’s immigration story is more of an immigration to Trump Country, anyway, which is where the gold’s at; she was given a new life not by America but by the angry man himself.
Trump put his name on Melania. For the scores of Americans who thrill to his eponymous high-rises and video games and steaks, that makes her a winner. They can’t marry him, so, in order for them to become Trumps, he would have to be their father. The infatuation with Trump is essentially a mass adoption fantasy. He is Daddy Warbucks without the New Deal vibe.
And anyway, why make your wife stump for you when you can make your daughter a surrogate for your wife?
Ivanka, an executive vice-president at the Trump Organization, has served as her father’s stand-in spouse for most of the campaign. She escorted him onstage when he announced his candidacy, in June, as Melania looked on; advises him on policy; and has travelled with him around the country.
Collins quotes Kati Marton, an author who argues that the Presidency is a “two-person job,” and says that a first lady like Melania would bring more of a minefield than we think.
“If the President has got a smart, plugged-in partner who can get his attention and tell him what’s going on in the land, and when he’s being an idiot, as the best ones have been able to do, that is in our interest. Everybody else serves at his pleasure.” A passive First Spouse, Marton said, can hurt not only her husband but the nation. Melania Trump, she added, would be “the least experienced and the least prepared First Lady in history.”
This is the piece I’ve been waiting to read on Melania, who is so studiously proud, vapid and absent that she resists close analysis, particularly in a time when we are loath to deeply criticize women for being superficial, or “fake,” or subservient to an arrangement they chose for themselves—as is, of course, their right. But Melania is meaningful, not as a symbol, not as a joke, but as the actual result when Trump makes his politics personal.
Very few people in the United States understand how the byzantine delegate party system works, and according to Politico, New Hampshire Republicans are hoping to use this fact to their advantage to freeze out Donald Trump.
Despite winning the state, New Hampshire’s GOP honchos are planning to give away the delegates that would’ve normally been allotted to Trump—handing them straight to his rivals:
The coveted convention slots would go entirely to delegates assigned to Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Ted Cruz, even though Trump won 35 percent of the vote, more than double his closest competitor.
Among the Trump delegates who would be denied potential committees assignments are campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who cut his teeth as a New Hampshire operative, and New Hampshire co-chairman Stephen Stepanek.
The hope here is to prevent Trump’s nomination come convention-time, exploiting the fact that the delegate system is extremely complex and doesn’t even really have much of a connection to the popular vote. The Trump camp is of course saying this amounts to stealing the election:
A Trump campaign official with knowledge of the situation called it “shameful” and said the state party was “playing games.” The person accused party leaders of cutting a deal in a “smoke-filled back room” that epitomized the “rigged” system that Trump has railed against on the stump.
On the other hand, it’s the GOP’s system with which to play games, and surely they see delegate trickery as one of the few viable ways to avoid the thermonuclear self-destruction of the entire party, nationwide.
Just before launching the rather specifically-named Hillary Victory Fund, ostensibly formed to help “rebuild” the Democratic Party “from the ground up,” Hillary Clinton declared, “When our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.” According to Politico, however, less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by the fund has remained with the state parties.
A “joint fundraising committee,” the Hillary Victory Fund, includes the Democratic National Committee and a record 32 state party committees. Thanks to a 2014 Supreme Court ruling, individuals can give donations to the fund 130 times greater than what they could give directly to the Clinton campaign for the primaries—$350,000 or more.
State party committees have received $3.8 million from the victory fund; however, 88 percent of that money ($3.3 million) was transferred shortly thereafter to the DNC. (How funds are allocated is up to the committee’s treasurer, Elizabeth Jones. She is also the COO of the Clinton campaign.) As Politico reports:
By contrast, the victory fund has transferred $15.4 million to Clinton’s campaign and $5.7 million to the DNC, which will work closely with Clinton’s campaign if and when she becomes the party’s nominee. And most of the $23.3 million spent directly by the victory fund has gone towards expenses that appear to have directly benefited Clinton’s campaign, including $2.8 million for “salary and overhead” and $8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads and that has helped Clinton build a network of small donors who will be critical in a general election expected to cost each side well in excess of $1 billion.
A seat at the head table at a Victory Fund party last month, hosted by “Uber for Planes” investor Sherwin Pishevar and George and Amal Clooney, cost $353,400. Days later, Bernie Sanders campaign lawyer sent an open letter to the DNC, arguing that the victory fund “skirts legal limits on federal campaign donations.” (The Sanders campaign has also signed a joint fundraising agreement, but has not leaned so heavily on it as the Clinton campaign.)
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook called the accusation “shameful.” Maybe, but then again calling a joint fundraising committee the “Hillary Victory Fund” is pretty shameless, so let’s call it a wash.
Sandy Rios, Director of Government Affairs at the American Family Association, just revealed to anti-LGBT quasi-hate group Breitbart that her own anti-LGBT quasi-hate group is planting adult men in women’s bathrooms at Targets.
The alarming admission comes right in the thick of a national stir in the bigot community about the hypothetical non-threat of transgendered Target customers peeing in one room instead of peeing in the other room. Right Wing Watch provided a transcript of Rios’ interview, in which she states, without even so much as a SMIDGEN of concern for our nation’s young girls, that she’s sending penis-toting men into extremely close proximity with women:
“I think there’s no question that when you say that there are no barriers in the bathroom,” Rios said, “and that if men or women feel like they are men or women, the opposition of however they are equipped, and you have no restrictions, the net effect will be that people will not be stopped. We’ve already had people testing this, going into Targets and men trying to go into bathrooms. There is absolutely no barrier.”
Holy cow: The potential threat this poses to little kids making wee-wee is unprecedented, and should cause every American parent to pause as soon as they hear this news and immediately scream and flip a shit. We simply can’t rule out the possibility that these male plants from the American Family Association will not touch underage children and whisper weird words into their ears while going potty.
I’ve asked the American Family Association if the AFA is sure that these men are not perverts and/or molesters who might molest and/or pervert young girls who are using the bathroom. I will update this post should I hear back. In the meantime, I would advise EXTREME CAUTION in all women’s bathrooms at Target locations nationwide—we simply can’t be sure which ones will not be invaded by men (who may or may not be perverts/deviants/creeps/peepers/scammers/molestoids) from the American Family Association.
Carly Fiorina hasn’t been able to claim very many “wins” in her life. HP was a disaster. Her run for the Senate was a disaster. And most recently, her bid for the presidency was a disaster. But now, Carly Fiorina has made her gravest mistake of all: Accepting a position in which she’s forced to touch Ted Cruz constantly.
Though Berger’s clip is repeated a few times for comic effect, the reality of the situation is, somehow, much worse.
There’s the initial struggle. Carly’s dead eyes. Ted ferociously grasping at her hand like so many cans of Campbell’s Chunky™ soup. Carly’s dead eyes. That final, triumphant clasp. And of course, Carly’s dead eyes.
Heidi Cruz engaged in some stellar verbal gymnastics on the campaign trail this morning, presumably to avoid implicating herself when the truth finally does come out. All of which is to say, Heidi Cruz declined to deny that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.
Speaking to Yahoo News, Heidi was prompted to respond to the persistent internet murmurings of her husband’s (real) secret identity as the (real) Zodiac Killer. Instead of telling the cameras that, no, her husband is not the same cryptogram-loving mass murderer once chased by Jake Gyllnehaal—she said this:
Well, I’ve been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all. There’s a lot of garbage out there.
I know pretty well who he is... It doesn’t bother me at all.
So how does Heidi feel about the fact that her husband is constantly accused of being the Zodiac Killer?
Ted Cruz may never be president, but there is one thing the American public can’t withhold from him—a debate forum. Today, he tested his skills on a random Trump supporter, who answered each of Cruz’s arguments with a salient counterpoint: Who cares?
It’s almost charming how much Cruz clearly enjoys this protestor insulting him, an unsettling pleasure for which I believe there is a dedicated German word. Point Cruz.
According to the New York Post, longtime Wall Streeter Thomas Gilbert Sr. lost most of his money when he tried and failed to start his own hedge fund, Wainscott Capital Management:
The elder Gilbert — who was allegedly gunned down by his son last year in the allowance spat — had less than $10,000 in stocks and bonds, under $20,000 in cash and retirement accounts, and some $500,000 in “miscellaneous” assets, according to the court papers, which were filed last month in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court by an attorney for Gilbert Sr.’s widow, Shelley Rea Gilbert. Gilbert Sr., 70, also had no life insurance.
Rea, Thomas Gilbert’s mother, is paying her son’s legal fees. She petitioned the courts for immediate access to her late husband’s will immediately after his death. The will says that Gilbert Jr. should receive quarterly payments from a trust in his name for the next five years, the Post reports, after which point he receives the remainder in a lump sum.
At a rally in La Porte, Indiana on Sunday, Carly Fiorina introduced the Cruz family before immediately falling off a low stage.
In the video above, first shared by Infowars, Heidi Cruz appears to notice that Fiorina has disappeared and makes an attempt to reach out to her (at least with her words). Ted Cruz, a sweaty boot, can be seen noticing that Fiorina has disappeared and then rapidly returning to hand-shaking.
From this clip we can glean a lot about Cruz’s stance on women: he will not help one even if she falls off a platform in front of his face.
Thanks to weekly four-day weekends and a general inclination to do anything other than legislate, The Politico reports this year’s Senate will likely spend the least amount of time in the Senate in more than 60 years.
This year, the Senate is set to spend just 124 days in session—a 2.9 day workweek. Must be nice.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Sen. Mitch McConnell became Majority Leader in 2014, he promised the Senate would start working more. I don’t think we’ve had any votes on Friday in anybody’s memory,” he said at the time.
But as Politico points out, the Senate has not held a single Friday vote this year, resulting in a series of four-day weekends for legislators who would rather do anything but.
Vulnerable senators want to be back home campaigning for reelection and raising money, not in session from Monday morning until Friday evening on spending bills the House probably can’t even pass.
Few up for reelection are asking for McConnell to schedule more time in.
“The measure should be what we get done, not how much time here,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who is up for reelection. “Members of the Senate and House don’t go home to relax.”
Senate Republicans, who refuse to consider Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and declined to pass a budget this year, say it’s the quality of their sessions, not the quantity, that should matter. Which they’re working on, as soon as they get back from vacation.
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, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter.
In addition to solid sound quality and impressive Bluetooth range, the standout feature here is the SoundCore’s 24 hour battery life. I’ve owned one for several months now, and while I’ll occasionally remember to plug it in when I pass by a spare microUSB cord, it’s never once given me a low battery warning, and I use it a lot.
Today’s price is a match for the lowest ever, and it includes the brand new blue and red models as well. Just note that like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, or until sold out.
The phrase “tri-ply” comes from the pans’ three-tier design, which incorporates an aluminum core between two layers of stainless steel. Update: Sorry, this particular line features an aluminum exterior. They’re still great pans, but they won’t work with induction cooktops. This arrangement combines the durability and beauty of steel with the fast and even-heating characteristics of aluminum, creating a superior overall cooking experience.
Today only, $300 gets you a seven-piece set, $400 gets you ten pieces, and $700 gets you 14 pieces. Even with these discounts, that’s still a lot of money, but if you take good care of them, they’ll last your entire life, and make cooking a more enjoyable experience every time you use them. Just note that like all Gold Box deals, these prices are only available today, or until sold out.
If you just want to dip your toes into the All-Clad ecosystem, their essential 12" and 10" skillets are still on sale, in case you missed out last week.
J.Crew Factory’s clearance section already had some great deals, but today only, you can take an extra 40% off your order, plus free shipping, with promo code SNEEZY. I got myself a t-shirt for $9 shipped.
TP-Link’s highly rated Archer C9 router is a solid value at its current $130 price level, but for just $10 extra today, you’ll get a DOCSIS 3.0 modem as well. We’d normally expect that kind of modem to sell for about $50, so if you’re still paying a monthly rental fee to your ISP, it should pay for itself quickly.
I recently got this exact model, and I absolutely love it. While it does require a bit of babysitting from time to time, I haven’t vacuumed my house manually in over a month, and yet the floors always feel clean, even with two pets.
I can’t say I understand the trend, but adult coloring books are so hot right now, and Amazon has a couple of kits marked down to $15 today, matching the lowest prices ever.
I probably make fresh waffles in my waffle iron every month or so, but in between, I’ve used it to make hash browns, pressed sandwiches, and even churros. Lifehacker has a ton of other suggestions too, including mozzarella sticks, 90-second cookies, pre-packaged cinnamon rolls, and even crispy bacon. So you see, calling this thing a waffle iron is practically a misnomer.
In addition to being a pretty solid Bluetooth speaker, the Echo can check the weather, turn on your lights, read you the news, trigger custom IFTTT recipes, and even order food. Amazon ran a one-day sale a few weeks ago for $6 less, but if you missed out, or you’ve become so hooked that you want to order another, this is still a solid deal.
Amazon’s top-selling outdoor deck light requires absolutely zero wiring, and includes an ambient light and motion sensor to illuminate your porch or deck when it’s needed most. If you’ve ever struggled to unlock your door at night, this is absolutely worth $12.
You might not want to wear it all the time, but the Microsoft Band 2 is one of the best fitness trackers you can buy, and Amazon’s taking $75 off all three sizes right now. It’s been down to this price a few times before, but it bears mentioning if you’re in the market.
If you’ve been waiting for a deal on Huawei’s excellent-but-expensive Android Wear smart watch, several models are on sale today, starting at $25o for the the stainless steel model with black leather strap.
Even if you live in an Apple-powered household, you probably have a few miscellaneous gadgets lying around that charge over MicroUSB, instead of Lightning. Rather than maintaining two different charging cable collections, this $7 option from Foxnovo can act as both.
Looking to graduate from smartphone photography? Amazon will sell you a Canon EOS T5 with two lenses, a 16GB SD card, and a pair of extra batteries for $429 today. The camera and lenses alone usually sell for $500, so this would be a solid deal even without the bonus items.
Treadmill desks are great for your health, but bad for your wallet. If you’ve been waiting for a good price, the LifeSpan Treadmill Desk is about $150 off its usual price. It doesn’t dip this low very often, so run, don’t walk, to get the deal.
Most measuring cups are bundled together with a chain or metal ring to keep them organized, but that means when you want to use one, the rest will dangle there like an unwanted appendage. These ingenious OXO measuring cups though use magnets in the handles to stay together while stored, while remaining easily separable while you’re cooking.
Full disclosure, I don’t know if TENS (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) massagers actually do anything useful. I use one occasionally after exercising, and I think it helps reduce muscle pain. At the very least, it feels cool.
In any event, this is not a medical endorsement, simply a deal post, and this is about as cheap as you’ll ever see one of these things.
It’s not unusual on any given day for Amazon to be discounting one of their hardware products, but the sheer number of deals today is reminiscent of Black Friday. The standout is a $10 discount on the already-absurdly-affordable (and top-selling) Fire tablet, but you’ll also find deals on bigger tablets, the Fire TV, and Kindle e-readers.
If you don’t already own a salad spinner to wash and dry your salad greens, fruits, and vegetables, you won’t find many for less than $17, let alone models with five year warranties.
Blacklight flashlights are great if you want to spot hidden stains on train seats, hotel sheets, or (gasp) even in your own house...if that’s something you want to do.
It may seem silly, but if you find even one stain in a hotel room and complain to management, I guarantee that this thing will pay for itself several times over.
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.
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, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter. We want your feedback.
A polite guy like Bernie Sanders won’t tell America’s ultra rich to fuck off, but he won’t tell you not to tell them to fuck off, either.
Advocating an alternative to rampant inequality at a campaign rally on Monday, Sanders said, “That choice is to tell the billionaire class,” when a supporter finished, “Fuck off!”
“Well, that is one way to phrase it,” acknowledged Sanders. “I myself am constrained. I can’t quite phrase it like that, but that’s not bad.”
And sure, “fuck off” might not be the nicest thing to tell a billionaire class, but honestly there are far dumber things you could say.
In an attempt to reinstate bail for 21-year-old sex offender Owen Labrie, his attorneys presented a letter from an unnamed professor who compares Labrie to 15th century canonized military heroine Joan of Arc. Wow, so creative!
According to Boston.com, Labrie’s lawyers argue that “just because [he] repeatedly violated his court-ordered curfew doesn’t mean he should have had his bail on statutory rape charges revoked in March.”
Defense attorney Jaye Rancourt supports this claim with “a lengthy letter from a professor Labrie was studying with in which the professor talks about the ‘extreme affliction’ God has put the now-21-year-old through, and compares his future to that of Joan of Arc.”
Via Boston.com, here are some excerpts from the professor’s letter, addressing Labrie’s legal troubles and God’s perception of them:
“‘So, Owen, here you are now, twenty years old and having been put through (because of the extraordinary and generous providence of God) extreme affliction and malheur,’ the professor wrote. ‘And this is why you must continuously seek to understand why God has done this to you, and ask what His judgement is upon your past thoughts and behavior and His intentions for your future vocation.’
...
‘It’s amazing to me how much God loves you—because God doesn’t usually bother to wizen up ordinary kids who get involved in teen-age sex play. He just lets them gradually outgrow it,’ the professor wrote. ‘But, obviously, God intends something more from you than a ‘staged normal life.’ God intends that you (like Joan of Arc and Simone Weil) take on a higher task. So God has afflicted you with the enormous suffering that you have had to bear (and that you will always have to bear). This suffering is your condemnation (better, your consecration!) to a higher calling.’ [Emphasis included by the professor.]”
The letter bewilders on a number of fronts, but perhaps what is most disturbing is the reference to Labrie as an “ordinary [kid] who [got] involved in teen-age sex play.” Labrie was charged with the sexual assault of a 15-year-old classmate, allegedly drawing her into a vacant room on school grounds and having sex with her there. The crime was committed in the spirit of the “senior salute” at St. Paul’s School, where the boys compete to seduce and wheedle sexual favors out of as many female students as possible. Brushing off symptoms of rape culture as childish tomfoolery is disturbing to say the least.
Labrie’s contact with this professor seems to be at least partially inspired by his interest in French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil. The professor “urged to to write a 150,000 to 200,000-word masters thesis on her life and thought, which could then be published as a scholarly book. The thesis would be used to help Labrie gain entry to a PhD program at Oxford, according to the letter.”
But Labrie has a few matters to clear up before he can turn his attention to the ivory tower or, perhaps, to studying the deeds of his new mentor, Saint Joan. Having violated the terms of his bail a number of times, Labrie’s attorneys must convince the judge that he will abide by future conditions — and that his previous probation was unusually harsh:
“‘ While Mr. Labrie admittedly violated conditions of his bail by traveling outside the timeframe of his curfew on three occasions, the record does not support a finding that he is unlikely to abide by any condition or combination of conditions of release,’ his attorneys wrote in the brief arguing for the bail to be reinstated.
Labrie’s attorneys also argued that his bail was more restrictive than others in Merrimack County. It ‘had set Mr. Labrie up for failure’ with the 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. curfew, they wrote.”
A curfew? Geez, this kid is really riding the struggle bus. I bet Joan of Arc could relate deeply, don’t you?
