Beyoncé’s Formation Tour stop last night was plagued with rain and lightning, which at one point caused the show to halt and the venue to be temporarily evacuated (Beyoncé eventually made her way back onstage to conclude her set). This is notable because the show took place in none other than the Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina—a state that has become a hotbed of controversy and ill will in the wake of Governor Pat McCrory passing the effectively anti-trans H2 “bathroom bill.” Was the storm a coincidence or pointed act of God?
If we assume that nothing is a coincidence and that God is hanging on every human’s every word and action so that she can craft an appropriate response via the weather, we must then ask ourselves what caused God to stroll through the clouds wielding a baseball bat. Was it that Beyoncé, unlike fellow musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, Demi Lovato, and Nick Jonas, went ahead and performed in North Carolina instead of canceling that date in protest? Or was it because yesterday, a message was posted on Beyoncé’s official site that decried H2 and encouraged fans to support Equality NC’s attempt to overturn the hate bill?
God works in mysterious ways, and so does Beyoncé. (In case you confuse them, there’s a title card in Lemonade that reads “God is God and I am not.”) Some of the whys here are less tangible than the whats, but let’s focus on what we have instead of what we don’t. We got some arm-chair activism. We got some music. We got some extreme weather. Through God and Beyoncé, in particular, all things are possible forever and ever amen.
Recently, a study found that North Carolina’s $90 billion state pension fund was wasting billions of dollars on Wall Street fees for no good reason. Now, there is a new reason to dislike this ineptly managed corruption of the public trust!
Bloomberg reports that North Caroline treasurer Janet Cowell, who administers this pension fund—and whose track record, again, is one of foolishly forgoing billions of dollars that could have gone to average retirees by flinging that money at high-priced ineffective hedge fund managers, instead—has been elected board member of two private companies, with the blessing of the North Carolina State Ethics Commission. A funny thing about that is that Cowell is still the treasurer of North Carolina who runs the state’s $90 billion pension fund for eight more months! And everyone is sure that these board positions with private companies, which will pay her more money than her state job, will not create any conflicts of interest! Hey, it’s only $90 billion in retirement money being ineptly managed by this now-conflicted for-sale bureaucrat, after all!
Corporate America is a meritocracy that is working well!
In what shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone with sense or compassion, North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill” HB2 violates federal law, according to the Justice Department. A letter sent to North Carolina Governor Pat MrCrory on Wednesday from department officials says that HB2 violates the Civil Rights Act, reports The Charlotte Observer. McCrory has until Monday to address the violation “by confirming that the State will not comply with or implement HB2.”
In the letter, Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general, writes:
Access to sex-segregated restrooms and other workplace facilities consistent with gender identity is a term, condition or privilege of employment. Denying such access to transgender individuals, whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth, while affording it to similarly situated non-transgender employees, violates [the Civil Rights Act’s] Title VII …
HB 2...is facially discriminatory against transgender employees on the basis of sex because it treats transgender employees, whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, as defined by HB2, differently from similarly situated non transgender employees…
North Carolina could lose millions in federal school funding if it does not comply with the Justice Department.
In a statement emailed to media, Chinyere Ezie, staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center said: “The Oxford City Council did the right thing by recalling its discriminatory ordinance. We are pleased the council members came to the conclusion that nobody should be criminalized simply for using the restroom.”
Sometimes, at the end of the storm, there is a rainbow.
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One of the only downsides of cast iron pans is that they can be a nightmare to clean, but this 4.7 star-rated chainmail scrubber can scrape away caked-on food without hurting your seasoning, or resorting to soap. No wonder it’s one of the newest members of our bestsellers club. Today’s $11 deal (with code MOMSDY16) is the best price we’ve ever seen.
For a limited time, when you buy one of eight Xbox One bundles, Amazon will throw in a copy of Halo 5 Limited Edition, Forza Horizon 2, and a $50 Amazon gift card that you could use on another game or an extra controller (or, you know, anything else on Amazon).
It’s not unusual to see bonus items included with Xbox One consoles, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a deal that gave you the choice of so many different starting bundles, including 1TB and Elite consoles.
Need an idea for your next movie night? You can rent the shockingly good Mission: Impossible -Rogue Nation for just $1 today on Amazon, Google Play, and iTunes. In both cases, you’ll have 30 days to get around to watching it, so finding the time to get to it should be Mission: Possible.
Want to see firsthand why people love Eneloop rechargeable batteries so much? This 4-pack of AAs includes a charger, and today’s $16 price tag on Amazon is within a few cents of an all-time low price.
If you need a spare cable for your USB-C-powered laptop or smartphone, this 6' braided model is marked down to $7 with code NA77BX6H. And yes, it has a thumbs up from Google’s Benson Leung, the foremost authority on USB-C cable safety.
Wallet styles are obviously a matter of taste, but if you’re a front pocket fan, this RFID-blocking leather wallet is a steal at $8. That gets you three card slots (each of which can hold at least two cards), an ID window, and a zippable currency holder for when you have no choice but to carry cash.
Whether you already have a Quick Charge 3.0-compatible phone, or you just want to be prepared for the future, Aukey’s discounting three compatible chargers for any situation today. And yes, they’re all backwards-compatible with previous versions of Quick Charge as well.
The Nextbit Robin is an Android phone that aims to assuage your storage fears. If it’s 32GB of flash memory fill up, it’ll start uploading your apps and photos to a 100GB cloud account, leaving behind “ghost” icons that can re-download them on demand. It’s a little bit of a gimmick, but if it has you intrigued, you can save $100 on the handset today on Amazon, in either black or mint.
I get it, in the world of tablets, these digital photo frames seem kind of limited. But even if you don’t want one for yourself, this could be a solid mother’s day gift. Both include IPS displays (1080p for the 13" model, 1024x768 for the 8"), VESA mounting compatibility, and Wi-Fi to pull photos from various cloud services.
These prices both match all-time lows, but note that they’re Gold Box deals, meaning they’re only available today, or until sold out.
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.
Most of these things are basically c-shaped inner tubes, which is okay, but this model includes extra cushioning on the sides to help you nod off without straining your neck, even if you’re flying economy.
Whether you’re emulating Nintendo classics or playing modern arcade-style games, you might as well go all the way with this USB-powered NES controller. Today’s $10 deal is a match for the best price Amazon’s ever listed directly.
When you can get a 1080p action cam with a waterproof housing, two batteries, Wi-Fi, and a built-in LCD screen for under $60, it’s not hard to understand why GoPro’s in financial trouble. If you’re on the fence, there are a ton of sample videos on YouTube you can check out. Spoiler alert: It takes really solid video.
Today only, Amazon’s offering big savings on a collection of Easy Spirit womens’ shoes. Inside, you’ll find ballet flats, sneakers, sandals, and more, all for under $40. This is a Gold Box deal though, so run, don’t walk over to Amazon to lock in your order.
Affordable string lights really took off last holiday season, but they’re great for decorating certain rooms and outdoor spaces year-round, and three different options are dirt cheap today on Amazon.
The new DJI Phantom 4 sure looks impressive, but for $1000 less, you can pick up the still-completely-amazing Phantom 3 Standard today. You’ll lose out on features like the (finnicky) accident avoidance, indoor positioning, and 4K video, but the camera still boasts an impressive 2.7K resolution, and it’ll last over 20 minutes on a single charge. At $400, it probably won’t even eat up your entire tax refund.
I can’t think of a better protagonist for a series of childrens’ books than Darth Vader, and you can pick up four different titles today for just $2 each on Kindle.
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.
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Now that we’re just six months away from electing our country’s very first tanned hernia into office, Hillary Clinton has her sights set squarely on taking down our future President Trump. And with that laser focus comes a brand new attack ad that is great—at least as far as attack ads go—but also a futile attempt to stop the inevitable.
The ad, which Hillary tweeted out just a few hours ago, compiles the Grand Old Party establishment’s various condemnations of Trump, presumably to remind current Republicans how their beloved leaders really feel.
But then, those aren’t the people Hillary really needs to worry about. Because if anything, the not-at-all-silent majority of Trump supporters will feel invigorated by a reminder of thefailed steak merchant’s outsider appeal. Meaning, no, this probably won’t change any minds. That said (and for everyone else), it is still fun as hell to watch.
Unless of course your name is Reince Priebus. Reince, buddy, maybe skip this one.
The Romanian hacker who first inadvertently revealed the existence of Hillary Clinton’s secret, off-the-books email account back in 2014 now says he directly breached her home server, contradicting claims to the contrary by the Clinton campaign.
In a prison interview with Fox News, Guccifer—whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar—claims it was “easy” to breach Clinton’s server after compromising an email account belonging to her friend and adviser, Sydney Blumenthal:
The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time.
“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff,” Guccifer said.
Guccifer’s technical explanation is light on details—essentially he traced the server’s IP address from emails Hillary sent to Blumenthal’s account—but plausible:
Lazar emphasized that he used readily available web programs to see if the server was “alive” and which ports were open. Lazar identified programs like netscan, Netmap, Wireshark and Angry IP, though it was not possible to confirm independently which, if any, he used.
This completely contradicts statements from Hillary Clinton and her campaign about the integrity of her email server, which has boiled over into a scandal of national scope. On a portion of her website dedicated to answering questions about the server, Clinton’s campaign says the following:
Was the server ever hacked?
No, there is no evidence there was ever a breach.
Was there ever an unauthorized intrusion into her email or did anyone else have access to it?
No.
Of course, at this point there’s no way to verify any of Guccifer’s claims, nor has he provided a single piece of evidence to support them. It’s also worth keeping in mind that Guccifer’s fate is currently resting upon his continued cooperation with the FBI, and of course, the more important they think Guccifer may be, the better for Guccifer—he’s told Fox that he still has “two gigabytes” of unreleased, hacked material.
In addition to being a moral cataclysm of horrific proportions, Donald Trump’s plan to round up and deport all undocumented immigrants in the United States could reduce annual output from the private sector anywhere from 2.9 percent to 4.7 percent, a study has found.
According to government statistics, there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., and approximately 6.8 million of them are employed. The study, conducted by the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, found that deporting them would reduce private sector output by anywhere from $381.5 billion to $623.2 billion. From Reuters:
The American Action Forum analysis used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate the value of the output from undocumented immigrants. It also concluded that there would not likely be enough legal employees in these sectors to fill the vacancies that would result from mass deportations.
The study did not factor in potential impacts of mass deportations on consumption, investment and other economic factors, the group said.
The U.S. economy is projected to produce some $18.7 trillion worth of goods and services in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund. A loss of $400 billion in output would amount to about 2 percent of that figure.
The hospitality industry would be particularly impacted, Politico notes, as undocumented workers make up 9 percent of its labor force.
The demises of Ted Cruz and John Kasich’s primary campaigns almost certainly assure, in the absence of some intervening event or act of God, that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for President. More importantly, they present the opportunity to recall which political commentators insisted that Trump could never, ever be the nominee. Dozens and dozens (and dozens) of people got Trump’s chances wrong, but if you were to identify the wrongest commentator,you would be hard-pressed to find a better candidate than New York Times’columnist and National Review film critic Ross Douthat.
To commemorate Douthat’s awesome predictive power and belief that saying the same thing over and over again will make it true, we’ve collected and celebrate the following Douthat predictions that Trump would not go on to be the Republican nominee.
We’ve reached out to Douthat for comment on his Trump predictions, and will update this post if we hear back. In the meantime, we’re curious: What were the worst Bad Trump Predictions? Hop into the comments to tell us, or drop us a line.
One thing that is too boring for anyone to pay attention to and also will potentially destroy your life is the rise of “forced arbitration” rules that make it extremely hard to sue corporations. But the tide may be turning.
A while back, huge corporations figured out that nobody reads the contracts that you have to sign anyhow, so they might as well stick in clauses that say, in essence, “if you fuck me over I will not sue you in the courts, which could be bad for you—instead I agree to take our dispute to a private arbitrator, who is much more prone to favor corporations over consumers.” Why did you sign that contract??? Well, there is no one to blame for your newfound inability to sue except for you, the millions of unwary consumers.
It has been clear for some time that the wild rise of forced arbitration problems is a systemic problem. Now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has unveiled proposals that would place restrictions on arbitration clauses and once again allow consumers to sue banks, credit card companies, and others who offer financial ripoffs/ products. Here is the extent of the problem, via the Wall Street Journal:
A 2015 agency study showed such clauses were used by 53% of credit-card issuers, 86% of the largest private student loan lenders, and 44% of banks taking insured deposits. The clauses also were included in 92% of prepaid card agreements and 99% of payday loan contracts in some states...
The CFPB’s March 2015 study showed that more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed in the credit-card market didn’t know whether there was an arbitration clause in their contracts.
If you would like to ensure that consumer protections like this never become reality, please vote Republican in this fall’s elections.
Today, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough took a break from his regularly scheduled morning adulations to suggest he might not support Donald Trump anymore because of Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. Turns out he does have a sense of humor!
That Scarborough stans for Trump is indisputable. Which makes it all the more hilarious that he’d posture now like he’d withdraw his support over Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims.
“I’m disappointed Willy that yesterday, he stuck by the Muslim ban. That’s a loser, it’s a loser with the majority of Americans, and you’ve got Republicans like me, I just am not going to vote for a guy—I’m not going to vote,” Scarborough said.
A reasoned response from Joe Scarborough—incredible. Inspiring even—truly, anything can happen. But then he kept talking: “He’s got to make the turn and say, ‘Ok, this is a system we can put in place, where we can allow Muslims to come in America, but maybe not from Syria...’”
Just an hour later, Scarborough took legitimate offense when director Rob Reiner suggested some of Trump’s supporters might be racist.
On Wednesday, U.S. Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith sued President Obama, alleging that he does not have the legal authority to wage war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Smith asks the court to tell the president that “he must get proper authority from Congress, under the War Powers Resolution, to wage the war against ISIS.”
The Obama administration maintains that its authorization to fight the terrorist group comes from the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted by Congress after September 11, 2001, to fight Al Qaeda. The Islamic State began as an Al Qaeda splinter group.
In his lawsuit, Smith argues that this interpretation of the 2001 A.U.M.F. is unconstitutional and reckless. Moreover, he argues, the Obama administration has never made public any legal opinions written by the Office of Legal Counsel or the White House Counsel—“the institutional arbiters of executive legality”—justifying the military’s involvement in the fight against ISIS past the 60-day limit set by the War Powers Resolution, which ostensibly requires Congressional authorization.
In fact, the suit suggests, it is possible that OLC and the White House Counsel were never consulted at all. The White House deflected the McClatchy news service’s efforts last year to determine whether the president sought any written legal analysis from his counsel.
When it comes to Syria and Iraq, the administration “has clearly articulated our legal authorities in numerous public venues including White House press briefings, congressional testimonies and other forums,” said a White House official who is knowledgeable of the issue but wasn’t authorized to speak publicly as a matter of practice.
The president’s legal team “engaged with lawyers from key departments and agencies in discussions about the underlying authorities for those actions,” said the White House official.
But which lawyers, and from which departments and agencies, has not been made public, McClatchy reported.
“We’re in a terrible equilibrium where Congress doesn’t want to step up and play its part in this military campaign and so the president has basically gone forward and done what he thinks he needs to do,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor critical of Obama’s interpretation of the 2001 A.U.M.F., told the New York Times. “It would be a lot better for everyone, including the president, if Congress got more involved.”
At the Defense Media Activity, a little-known and oddly named office in Ft. Meade, Maryland, that provides “news and information to U.S. forces worldwide,” there are thousands of classified“educational” films about the American military—including a huge trove of secret home movies from Gitmo.
This week the public records clearinghouse Government Attic published a newly declassified, 102-page list of the DMA’s vast, secret media library. The declassified inventory contains some intriguingly titled entries like “HERE THERE ARE TIGERS (EVASION AND ESCAPE SOUTHEAST ASIA)” and “NUCLEAR WARFARE AT SEA.” It also contains roughly 30 pages of descriptions of videos, still images, and audio recordings taken at the terrorist prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, constituting hundreds of recordings that the public has never before seen, and, so long as they remain classified for reasons of national security, likely never will see. Among them appear to be recordings of detainee interrogations that military officials have previously claimed were never filmed.
But despite being placed under lock and key at an obscure agency by the highest levels of the Pentagon, the titles of the films seem almost mundane—portraits of ordinary life amid extraordinary rendition.
The recordings are undated, though a recording of the construction of Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Delta installation shows that the collection stretches back to at least 2002. Many of the recordings are generically titled, with descriptions like “DETAINEE TRANSFER” and “CAMP DELTA ACTIVITIES”:
Others are more detailed, with references to a “detainee barbecue” and a “mass casualty exercise”:
There appear to be videos of ribbon cutting ceremonies, detainees being transferred between cells, being released, and praying. Some references aren’t immediately clear, such as a video titled “AMBULANCE TRANSPORTS JUVENILE DETAINEES FROM DETAINEE HOSPITAL TO THE IGUANA HOUSE.”
Some videos appear to chronicle the mental and physical health of detainees—material that would be crucial and illuminating at a place that’s become synonymous with abuse, both mental and physical:
One film is titled “US NAVY DOCTOR - REMOVES STITCHES FROM DETAINEE’S KNEE.” Of course, so long as the film is classified, it’s impossible to know why the detainee needed stitches in their knee to begin with.
This is the sort of material human rights watchdogs like Naureen Shah, Director of National Security and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA, would love to view.
“I didn’t previously know of these films and it is incredibly interesting,” Shah told me in an interview. “We know Gitmo was considered a ‘battle lab’ for experimental, unproven techniques to control he behavior of the detainees, so every aspect of the detention site and handling of detainees warrants a really close review.”
Based on this film index, Shah believe “clearly they themselves were evaluating these tactics because they were interested in human experimentation.” The films themselves “could be a smattering of a much larger set of documents that show an overall environment where torture flourished,” Shah said.
Portraits of detainee life and wellbeing at Guantanamo have been choreographed by the military as much as possible, with journalist access carefully controlled and obstructed in order to prevent unflattering (or illegal) practices making it past the fences of Camp Delta. The Department of Defense has been especially careful about images and videos.
In 2004, the Washington Post reported on detainee interrogations conducted by so-called “Tiger Teams” comprised of agents from the FBI and CIA, in which “captives can be shackled and chained to steel rings fastened to the floor.” In that article, U.S. Army Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller stated on the record that Tiger Team sessions were never recorded:
The sessions are not videotaped or tape recorded, Miller said. The interrogations are designed primarily to yield intelligence, not evidence for a court, he said, adding that taping “causes us legal problems.” Detainees might gain access to tapes through court proceedings. “Then, it becomes exculpatory,” Miller said.
And yet the Defense Media Activity appears to possess a video titled “TIGER TEAM INTERROGATES DETAINEES,” with an identifying barcode of 55580090. General Miller retired in 2006.
There are many other interrogation recordings, including repeated references to so-called “psyops,” short for psychological operations. Some of the previously reported psyops at Gitmo included the use of music in a manner that could certainly be considered torture: “Metallica’s Enter Sandman has been played at cacophonous levels for hours on end,” the Guardian reported in 2008. Involuntary subjection to Rage Against the Machine was another favorite psyop. The DMA possesses a variety of classified psyop recordings, including “SAUDI’S IN CAMP FOUR FOR PSYOPS,” “PSYOP PRODUCTS,” “PSYOPS POSTERS HANGING IN CAMP DELTA,” and “PSYOPS AWARDS.”
The references to interrogations and psychological warfare stand in contrast to apparent recordings of moments that sound almost pleasant, including meals, games of soccer, and even perverse “farewell dinners” for detainees being released to other countries:
All of the above recordings are classified Secret or higher. Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, told me he was not previously aware of the recordings, adding that “classified films are among the last things to be declassified because they are hard to review and cumbersome to process for release.” We can only imagine what they might show.
Gawker is currently pursuing the declassification and release of some of these films, a process that is sure to be long and very possibly fruitless.
When the faceless editors of Wikipedia decide an article is not fit for public consumption, it’s gone, only accessible to the site’s top editors—at least, it was. But now we’re keeping track of all the articles Wikipedia doesn’t see fit to print, to present you with very best of the site’s weirdest and worst. Please, enjoy.
Ralph Kenneth Uptegraft, who was born in either July of 1958 or never, lived the sort of life we should all strive for—one of full of accomplishment, sexual promiscuity, and getting shot “in the immune system.”
Best line:
Going into the Marine Corps at the age of 17 under order to rescue POW’s he was shot in the immune system 3 years later severely injuring him. After having 3 daughters all with different women, Ralph spent his time exploring new locations to him, anaylizing [sic] Native culture.
Why it got deleted:
The incredibly jealous virgin editors of Wikipedia decided to delete this American hero’s page because he is a) not real and b) they “find it hard to understand how one can be shot in the immune system.”
Sonichu, as you might have guessed from his name and appearance, is a Sonic the Hedgehog and Pikachu hybrid created by vlogger/amateur cartoonist Chris-chan.
Best line:
The most notable line here exists not in the article itself, but in the deletion discussion between Wikipedia’s editors. User 0xF8E8 says (emphasis added), “The sources that can be found on the comic are generally unreliable Internet media, e.g. blogs, Youtube, wikis—the comic has never been mentioned in any reliable online or print media.”
Sounds like someone has been burned by blogs before. Classic case of blog burn. Ted Cruz knows how much that can hurt, and would probably be sympathetic.
Why it got deleted:
Because Sonichu is not “notable” and because Ted Cruz is apparently going on Wikipedia vendetta against “unreliable Internet” blogs. Additionally, Sonichu is almost certainly a copyright violation.
Why it shouldn’t have been:
If you head over to Sonichu’s own personal wiki-site, you will see the most phenomenal illustrations (for instance, the one’s above). Who needs Seedfeeder? Let Chris-chan bring Wikipedia to life.
The Excitable Ones is the general term for fans of the still objectively very good band 311.
Best line:
The page lists several alleged 311 song lyrics that reference its “Excitable” fans, for instance:
A B-side from the production of the self titled album, 311, and featured on their recent release dubbed “Archive” the reference can be found in the lyric “Teenage dream to work with Ron SaintHome he ain’t, we layin’ tracks in Cali The dude is excitable like a pep rally.”
That is one hell of a stretch.
Why it got deleted:
Mostly for not being notable, but one editor decided to jump in with “because this kind of stuff is like fashion, the lowest form of philosophy.” Why those words are in that order, however, remains a mystery.
White House projectionist Paul Fischer’s log book (1963, anonymous source)
I’ve never been one for JFK assassination conspiracy theories. But I do love studying what movies the presidents watched. So while compiling the list of films that President Kennedy viewed while in the White House I was surprised to stumble on what seems like fuel for a new conspiracy theory. How did President Kennedy watch a home movie of his son’s birthday a week after he was killed?
For the past few years I’ve been obsessed with compiling a list of every movie that the United States presidents have watched, from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. And so far I’ve compiled what I believe to be nearly comprehensive lists for President Jimmy Carter and President Bill Clinton, along with partial lists for everyone else. But while working on President Kennedy’s list this past weekend, with the help of my wife, we found something strange. It would appear that President Kennedy watched a home movie on November 29, 1963. Which is weird, because he was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
I recently acquired copies of the log books for the former White House projectionist Paul Fischer from an anonymous source. Fischer recorded every single movie that he projected, from the Eisenhower administration to the middle of the Reagan administration. And the Kennedy log book is a fascinating artifact, giving insight into not only what movies the First Family watched, but who they had as guests and how many people were in attendance.
White House projectionist Paul Fischer’s log book for movies he projected (1963, anonymous source)
As you can see from the log book above, a film was screened at the White House on November 29, 1963 for twenty people. Fischer wrote it down as “Little John Birthday Party,” presumably referring to John F. Kennedy Jr., born on November 25, 1960.
But there are two weird aspects to this entry. The first is that the studio is listed as MGM, and I doubt that a major Hollywood studio produced Little John’s birthday film. The second, and obviously most important, is that both President Kennedy and the First Lady are listed as being in attendance. See those little X’s? Those are for JFK and Jackie O.
As I said, I’m not really a Kennedy assassination conspiracy buff. There are all kinds of theories about who “actually” killed Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone? Was the CIA involved? Was Lyndon B. Johnson on the grassy knoll with a raygun? I have no idea. But I do know that this log book is strange.
Young children gather in the Family Theater of the White House, during a joint birthday party for Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr. (November 27, 1962, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)
We might be able to chalk it up as Fischer being exhausted and confused or maybe it was written in advance—though that seems unlikely given the meticulous nature of his record keeping.
Maybe Lyndon B. Johnson, the president that would succeed Kennedy, attended the home movie screening, and Fischer ticked the box for him. I really don’t know, and unfortunately we can’t ask the projectionist. Fischer died in 2007, his wife died in 2013, and his son died in 2011. To my knowledge, his daughter is still living, but she hasn’t returned a letter to what I believe is her house.
If you have a theory, please let me know. Did JFK somehow survive and live out his life under an assumed name in Cuba? That seems unlikely, given the autopsy photos. But it probably wouldn’t be the weirdest conspiracy theory out there.
And don’t worry, more presidential movie lists are coming soon.
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So you want to try a standing desk, but you’re not ready to commit to it for eight hours a day...what do you do? You buy this Lorell monitor riser for $186, an all-time low.
This riser arrives fully assembled, and just sits on top of your existing desk. Put your monitor(s) on the top shelf, your keyboard and mouse on the bottom, and use its integrated spring system to raise the entire setup from a sitting to standing position within seconds. I own a very similar product from Varidesk (which was much more expensive, by the way), and I absolutely love it.
I can tell you from experience that you’ll definitely want a good anti-fatigue mat for standing. This one has great reviews, but whatever you choose, make sure it’s at least 3/4" thick.
Continuing its quest to produce (and perfect) every conceivable battery-operated product, Anker now sells a freaking robotic vacuum, and you can get one for just $200 (down from $260) for a limited time as part of a Mother’s Day promotion.
Unfortunately, the RoboVac doesn’t have a ton of reviews yet, but early feedback is very positive, even though it’s only a fraction of the price of a Roomba. Like a Roomba, the RoboVac can maneuver around obstacles, run automatically on a schedule, and even dock itself on a charger once it’s finished cleaning. The main difference is that it doesn’t include a virtual wall system, but that shouldn’t be a huge deal for most buyers.
I got a Roomba a few months ago, and haven’t had to manually vacuum my floors ever since. If that’s not worth a few hundred bucks, I don’t know what is.
If you’re worried that you won’t get a ton of use out of this thing, note that in addition to standard pressure cooking, you can also use the Instant Pot as a slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, and more. Like all Gold Box deals though, this price is only available today, or until sold out.
You know when you ask someone to take a picture of you and your family on vacation, and you quickly learn that almost nobody understands how to take a decent photo? With a mini tripod, you can be in total control of those long range selfies, and this $10 model works with everything from DSLRs to smartphones.
The new DJI Phantom 4 sure looks impressive, but for over $600 less, you can pick up the still-completely-amazing Phantom 3 Professional today. You’ll lose out on features like the (finnicky) accident avoidance, but the camera is still 4K, and it’ll last over 20 minutes on a single charge. [DJI Phantom 3 Professional, $779]
You likely won’t need this deal until next winter, but this is about as cheap as Zippo’s A-Frame hand warmer ever gets. Unlike disposable chemical hand warmers, this Zippo lasts for up to 12hours at a time, and can be reused by filling it with a splash of lighter fluid. Plus, it just looks really cool hot.
Star Wars Battlefront isn’t a perfect game, but it’s pretty tempting at $30 on consoles, and $24 on PC, the lowest prices we’ve seen. It makes you wonder though why we didn’t get this deal on May the Fourth.
If your movie theater of choice is operated by Regal, this discounted gift card essentially amounts to ten free dollars. That’s like a free large popcorn (hopefully)!
This 800 watt juicer from Hamilton Beach boasts a 4.2 star rating, and an all-time low $41 price tag today on Amazon. The best part? The mouth is so big that you can stuff an entire apple in there at once.
If you’re still using any of your TVs’ built-in speakers, this $100 VIZIO sound bar system will be a huge upgrade. In addition to the 38" speaker bar, you also get a wireless subwoofer that you can place anywhere in the room for extra bass. The best part? No receiver required.
Everyone likes a little candlelight every now and then, but if you don’t want to keep buying new candles (or houses after you burn yours down), this 12-pack of flameless votives is just $18 today. Each one runs on an included CR2032 battery for up to 400 hours, and you can find replacement batteries for less than $1 each, which is a lot less than an actual replacement candle.
Steaming your clothes might not get them as crisp as ironing, but it does a decent enough job in a fraction of the time, and for $18, why not? It even includes a half-power mode for steaming your face.
Death, taxes, and never having enough power outlets. These are the immutable truths of our existence, but you can actually do something about that third one. Note that the $19 RAVPower also includes three USB charging ports.
Need to catch up on the adventures of Rory, Lorelai, and Luke’s mediocre coffee before Netflix’s Gilmore Girls reboot comes out? The entire DVD box set is marked down to $44 on Amazon today, an all-time low.
If you’ve spent any time in fancy cocktail bars, you’ve probably noticed that many of them serve drinks with a single, huge sphere of ice. Why do they do this? Well, mostly because it looks really cool, but it also dilutes your drink less quickly, which is important when you paid $14 plus tip.
Luckily, you can make these ice balls at home yourself, and a set of eight molds that will last for years costs less than a Old Fashioned at a nice bar.
For a few years now, Antec’s USB-powered HDTV bias light has been one of our most reliably popular deals whenever it went on sale. The problem: It only got a significant discount once every few months. Luckily, a copycat has emerged to fill in the gap.
Just like the Antec model, these Vansky LED light strips plug directly into your TV’s USB port for power, and sticks to the back of the set via built-in adhesive. Once you turn your TV on, the light strip will cast a soft glow on the wall behind it, which can reduce eyestrain when watching in the dark, and improve your TV’s perceived black levels.
Whenever we post a deal on the Antec light, it sells out within hours. I’m not sure if that’ll be the case today, but I wouldn’t take any chances.
The problem with reusable water bottles is that once you’ve finished the water inside, they become a massive waste of space in your bag. Not so for this foldable silicone alternative. Genius.
One of the only downsides of cast iron pans is that they can be a nightmare to clean, but this 4.7 star-rated chainmail scrubber can scrape away caked-on food without hurting your seasoning, or resorting to soap. No wonder it’s one of the newest members of our bestsellers club. Today’s $11 deal (with code MOMSDY16) is the best price we’ve ever seen.
For a limited time, when you buy one of eight Xbox One bundles, Amazon will throw in a copy of Halo 5 Limited Edition, Forza Horizon 2, and a $50 Amazon gift card that you could use on another game or an extra controller (or, you know, anything else on Amazon).
It’s not unusual to see bonus items included with Xbox One consoles, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a deal that gave you the choice of so many different starting bundles, including 1TB and Elite consoles.
Need an idea for your next movie night? You can rent the shockingly good Mission: Impossible -Rogue Nation for just $1 today on Amazon, Google Play, and iTunes. In both cases, you’ll have 30 days to get around to watching it, so finding the time to get to it should be Mission: Possible.
Wallet styles are obviously a matter of taste, but if you’re a front pocket fan, this RFID-blocking leather wallet is a steal at $8. That gets you three card slots (each of which can hold at least two cards), an ID window, and a zippable currency holder for when you have no choice but to carry cash.
The Nextbit Robin is an Android phone that aims to assuage your storage fears. If it’s 32GB of flash memory fill up, it’ll start uploading your apps and photos to a 100GB cloud account, leaving behind “ghost” icons that can re-download them on demand. It’s a little bit of a gimmick, but if it has you intrigued, you can save $100 on the handset today on Amazon, in either black or mint.
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.
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As the “Empire State of Mind” beat filled the packed CenturyLink Arena in Omaha, the chorus slid in: “At Berkshire, financial strength is what dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t dooooo….” The white, middle-aged crowd of investors jammed. Is this is the humble setting from which champions arise?
In this current age of populist unrest, anti-Wall Street fervor, and mainstream flirtations with socialism, the American system of capitalism needs a hero. Not a plastic hero or a public relations sop designed to distract us long enough to forget about what’s wrong; a real hero. A man who eschews the typical Wall Street practice of soaking customers for fees and offering little but wild guesses in return. A man who views investing as a solemn commitment in a strong, productive business, not just a chance for a quick buck. A man who gains wealth only as fast as all the rest of his investors do. A man who worked hard, didn’t look for handouts, started small, and built a fortune using only his wits, intelligence, and commitment to intellectual principles. A man who plays by the rules, who pays his taxes, and who pledges to give his fortune to charity. A man who could build a skyscraper but who instead lives in the same house that he bought in 1958 for $31,500.
That man is Warren Buffett. His company is Berkshire Hathaway. Together, they are the single greatest argument for capitalism. Is that argument good enough?
In the excellent biography Buffett, Roger Lowenstein notes that Warren Buffett gained control of Berkshire—then little more than a fading textile company—for around $32 per share. That company grew in a direct line into Berkshire Hathaway, which today is valued at about $220,000 per share. The entire company is worth more than $360 billion. For the past 50 years, Berkshire has averaged an annual growth of nearly 20%, almost double that of the stock market as a whole. As you can imagine, for many decades now, investing in Berkshire Hathaway has made many people very, very rich.
The virtually unparalleled success of Buffett as an investor, along with his unparalleled lack of pretense and penchant for folksy sayings, has made him a cult figure among Berkshire Hathaway investors. Every public company has an annual meeting which is nominally open to all shareholders; usually, almost none attend, except for the big shots representing the huge money managers. At Berkshire, though, the annual meeting is an event. Buffett loves to spout wisdom in public, and his eager investors love to lap it up. Berkshire’s annual meeting is often called “the Woodstock of capitalism,” but it is more akin to the Hajj of capitalism: acolytes from around the world trek to Omaha, Nebraska to pay homage to the prophet of investing. Like all religious ceremonies, it is an extremely weird experience if you come to it from outside the faith.
Berkshire Hathaway is distinguished from most huge conglomerates in that its collection of companies have nothing in common except the fact that they have been deemed good investments by Warren Buffett. They are not clustered in any single industry or geographic area; the only coherent theme is that they produce a decent cash flow and are managed efficiently and were available for purchase at an attractive price. Though we may think it foolish, it is at least possible to see how people can become active fans of certain large corporations: they think that Nike is cool, or they like Ford’s cars, or they are in love with airplanes and follow Boeing. What makes the acolytes of Berkshire so bizarre is that they possess the scary enthusiasm of, say, a biker who worships Harley-Davidson, but direct it at a company with absolutely no brand identity other than raw, efficient cash flow. It is balance sheet as celebrity.
Normal companies might treat shareholders who had traveled across the country to a few free gifts. T-shirts. Water bottles. That sort of thing. At Berkshire Hathaway it is the opposite: its fans are given only the right to spend more money. This is in keeping with Warren Buffett’s reputation as a world-class miser, so they can’t really get mad about it. Thousands upon thousands of these wide-eyed true believers crowded into Omaha’s convention center last Friday not to receive, but to give more money to Berkshire at its big shopping day. Inside the huge space, dozens of Berkshire-owned companies had set up display areas, and most of them were offering crap for sale. It was like the world’s most random Costco, lacking all order or theme. Applied Underwriters and Geico would write you insurance policies on the spot. HH Brown shoes set up a shoe store, as did Justin Brands boots, complete with green alligator Berkshire Hathaway 2016 Shareholder Meeting Commemorative Boots in a revolving glass display case, available for $750. There were Fruit of the Loom “Berky Bras” and $775 white old “BRK” pendants from Borsheims Jewelry. (“People are buying them,” said the peppy attendant. “I’d buy one!”) There were Forest River RVs, and Brooks running shoes, and those little white stuffed bears from Coca-Cola. You could buy floors from Shaw Flooring and work gloves from Wells Lamont and bamboo spoon sets from The Pampered Chef and Garanimals from Garanimals. Dozens of people lined up to purchase packs of Starburst from Wrigley, or Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen, or baskets of fudge and peanut brittle from See’s Candy.
There was no free candy.
Even more baffling were the displays from Berkshire companies that could make no claim to producing anything of interest to any consumer wandering the hall. A man dressed as a giant foam brick wandered around representing Acme Brick Co. A model train chugged along on behalf of BNSF railroad. Precision Castparts showed off a jet engine. You could look through sample books of Benjamin Moore paint. At the Johns Manville booth, you could “See the benefits of continuous insulation”; Marmon Engineered Components boasted of “Tubing, Fitting, and Wire Products”; Precision Brand assured passersby that it is “Much More Than Shim Stock.”
One effect of a company built to embody only financial value is the total eradication of taste. Aesthetic taste is not financial value, and it therefore is not represented within the Berkshire Hathaway universe. To do so would be antithetical to the philosophy of Warren Buffett, a man who famously sees wasting money on the outward accoutrements of beauty as a sin—a man whose only real art is producing profits. Likewise, Berskhire shareholders as a group are almost totally devoid of flash, tending towards khakis and fleeces rather than designer suits. It is definitely a crowd heavy on “Mr. Money Mustache” fans. There is no better tangible embodiment of the ideology of the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder than the Berkshire Hathaway-branded tote bags for sale from Russell Athletic, the most cut-rate manufacturer of crappy athletic gear in the world. It is an item that says, “I have money, and I am not spending a dime of it.”
In the center of the display floor was the store of Verus Art, “a new dimension in fine art recreations”—a company that sells exact painted replicas of Van Goghs and Monets and whatnot. Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Van Gogh’s “Irises” when you can own the Verus Art version for only $3,500? Next to that, a company sold framed artworks that were strictly priced by size: “Large Art,” $200, “Medium Art,” $125. This was the Buffett aesthetic at work. Decorate cheap and invest the balance in stocks. Money is the prettiest good of all.
The most controversial Berkshire company of late has been Clayton Homes, America’s largest manufactured-home company and a Buffett favorite. Late last year, a series of investigative stories alleged that Clayton used a systematic “pattern of deception” to prey on low-income and mostly minority customers by selling them homes financed with loans they couldn’t afford. One of the few black faces in the Berkshire Hathaway display hall last week was a Clayton Homes salesman. He was smiling and talking to customers outside of a full Clayton Homes house that was erected in the convention center. It had two bedrooms, a granite kitchen countertop, and siding that clicked when you drummed your fingers on it, because it was made of plastic. As were the front steps and the back deck. Painted boldly on the outside in white block letters was the price: “$78,900.” By New York City standards, it was a palace.
At five A.M. on Saturday morning, I awoke to the sound of every shower in my shareholder-filled hotel going on simultaneously. At six A.M. on Saturday morning, in a downpour, thousands of people wearing rain ponchos stood in line outside the CenturyLink Center, waiting for the doors to open. When they did, the first people in ran towards the front floor seats with the stiff-legged gait of those trying to maintain the fiction that they are not actually running. The thousands of chairs on the raw cement floor of the arena filled up in a matter of minutes. By 7:30, people were filing into the top rows of the upper deck. All of the Berkshire-branded fleece wearers were in the house. It was an unpretentious yet prosperous crowd, like the Rotary Club with the rowdies filtered out. These were not the carousers; these were the people who would awaken at five A.M. to attend a shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
At 8:30, I am sad to say, came the introductory “funny” Berkshire-themed film, full of celebrities like Stephen Colbert and Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Geico Gecko performing not-funny comedy sketches with Warren Buffett and his dour sidekick and managing partner, Charlie Munger. I am sorry to report that this period also included the excruciating “Empire State of Mind” knockoff (with lyrics shouting out “Charlie Munger at a Huskers Game,” along with an endless, rhyming roll call of Berkshire businesses) as well as, quite unfortunately, an elaborate video for “Sergeant Pepper’s Berkshire Hathaway Band,” which featured a parade of headshots of suited white guys as the singer crooned, “We’re Berkshire Hathaway’s All Star Managers, we hope you visit our trade show!”
Ann unpleasant scene, but perfectly in keeping with the “taste is overpriced” dictate.
Warren Buffett is not just a good money manager. He is the best money manager of the past 50 years. But even that does not account for the cult of personality filling this auditorium in Omaha on a Saturday morning, applauding wildly as Buffett (85 years old) and Munger (92 years old) took their seats on the stage. Cans of Coke and a box of See’s Peanut Brittle sat on the table before them. They looked like two unprepossessing old men. Their combined net worth is more than $63 billion. People flock to Warren Buffett because they see him as living proof that vast sums of money can be made without cheating or ripping off your customers or engaging in the frantic and impenetrable financial chicanery that makes “Wall Street” as a whole a dirty word. Beyond even that, however: Warren Buffett is funny.
“My great grandchild is here today,” Buffett said as the meeting began. “If he breaks out crying, don’t let it bother you. It’s just his mother explaining my views on inherited wealth.”
At another point, a questioner from the audience began, “This meeting reminds me of the magical world of Hogwarts,” and launched into a minutes-long disquisition on the parallels between Berkshire and the Harry Potter universe, before concluding with the non-sequitur, “How should children view stocks?” Buffett paused a beat and then said, “Would you mind repeating the whole thing?”
Another questioner asked if it was wise to invest in cattle. “I know some people who’ve done well in it,” Buffett mused, “but usually they own a bank on the side or something. We wish you luck!”
Warren Buffett is consistent. For decades, he has preached the virtues of investing in solid businesses, staying with them, and not trying to predict the unpredictable short-term moves of the financial markets. And when an analyst asked him if Berkshire was betting on the direction of the oil market, he responded, “No.” After he finished answering each question, he’d turn to Munger and say, “Charlie?” They were a tag team of consistent wisdom.
“I’m even more ignorant than you are,” Munger said.
“You don’t need [high] IQ in the investment business… but you do need emotional control,” Buffett said.
“There are a lot of people making a lot of money and everybody hates them,” Munger said.
“I’ve got all the money I could possibly need and much more. And I’m gonna give it all away so I know my final position will be zero,” Buffett said.
“We want people to think of us as having won fairly and used wisely,” Munger said.
Warren Buffett, whose father was an ultra-right wing Congressman who railed against government expenditures, has ended up as a liberal, at least by billionaire standards. Even as he praised American capitalism for the feat of multiplying per capita GDP six times over in his lifetime—meaning the average American today has six times more wealth than one did at the time he was born, which certainly is a credible feat of prosperity—he added, “in terms of distributing that output it can fall well short, in my view.” In Berkshire’s annual report this year, Buffett advocated a strong social safety net to take care of those whose jobs are displaced by shifts in the global economy: “The solution… is a variety of safety nets aimed at providing a decent life for those who are willing to work but find their specific talents judged of small value because of market forces… The price of achieving ever-increasing prosperity for the great majority of Americans should not be penury for the unfortunate.”
Buffett’s lifelong commitment to the wonders of capitalist growth is leavened, unlike many of his peers, by a streak of personal humility. He has lived in the same expansive, but not gaudy, brown home in central Omaha neighborhood for more than half a century. (When I drove by the weekend of the shareholder meeting, it was ringed by a few strands of yellow “Caution” tape to ward off intruders, but there was no evidence of snipers.) Even as he became America’s second wealthiest man, he has pursued relatively few of the trappings of luxury. When he finally bought himself a nice private jet in 1989, he named it the Indefensible.
Of course, Warren Buffett is not perfect. He is a wealthy 85-year-old white man from Omaha, Nebraska, and he can be a bit set in his ways. Besides the excruciating Jay-Z knockoff corporate intro song, one way to gauge Buffett’s insularity is to turn to page 31 in his annual report, which shows Christmas photos of the Berkshire Hathaway home office staff from last year and this year. The photos show the exact same 25 white people. They were inserted in order to display both the bare-bones nature of the company’s staffing and its continuity, but it is impossible (if you are not an 85 year-old man from Nebraska) to miss the racial subtext. The company’s board, which was seated up front, is also all white. And in fact, an audience member asked Buffett and Munger about the topic of diversity at the meeting. “We’ve got the best board we could have,” Buffett replied while extolling their virtues. “I’m hoping when we take the Christmas picture this year they’ll be exactly the same 25 people,” he added. He did not sound defensive so much as he sounded like he failed to grasp the import of the issue even a tiny bit. Charlie Munger followed up with a joke with the punchline, “I didn’t look around for the leading Catholic surgeon!”—the implied message of which was that seeking out diversity for diversity’s sake would be absurd. This drew claps from the audience.
Buffett’s belief in the greatness of great companies can blinker him to broader social context. Early in the meeting, he received a question about Berkshire’s $18 billion stake in Coca-Cola: with the growing scientific evidence of sugar’s detrimental health effects and the widespread knowledge that soda companies contribute greatly to the world’s obesity crisis, “Why should we be proud to own Coke?” The questioner, Andrew Ross Sorkin, begged Buffett not to answer by referring to his own well-documented lifelong cola habit. Buffett proceeded to answer by referring to his own well-documented lifelong cola habit. “I’m about one quarter Coca-Cola!” he said brightly, a Coke can on the table in front of him. He averred that happiness was the key to a long life, and drinking Coke has made him happy, and he is alive. It was a total evasion of a legitimate question, which is not supposed to be Buffett’s style. Munger, the more combative of the two, went even further, asserting that the question was “immature and stupid” because it ignored the positive effects of Coke—namely, the fact that people need water to survive, and Coke is tasty water, so it helps people to survive.
Well then!
In 1983, Warren Buffett bought an Omaha furniture store called Nebraska Furniture Mart for $55 million. It was the biggest furniture store in the United States, and his biggest purchase at the time. Today, NFM’s Dallas location is the largest furniture store in the United States, and the Omaha location is second. Nebraska Furniture Mart has taken on totemic status among Berkshire shareholders as a classic, definitive Buffett investment, one that embodies not just his financial savvy, but his soul. Each year, shareholders flock to the Omaha store over the weekend of the annual meeting to use their discounts and to bask in the sheer, overwhelming sense of value-mania, in the same way that evangelical Christians flock to Holy sites.
The Omaha Nebraska Furniture Mart is the size of an entire shopping mall. Its white warehouse-style building bends around a gargantuan parking lot in an L shape, next to a separate “Flooring Warehouse” that stretches past the horizon. NFM is what you would get if you combined a Best Buy, a Sears, a Wal-Mart, and an Ikea that was suburban rather than Swedish-themed. Here, Warren Buffett’s feverish belief in sales and value and cash flow wrapped up in a bow of Americana reaches its apogee.
Inside, men in Titleist caps and women in Under Armour sweatshirts and crew-cut kids in camo mill about, squeezing the arms of overstuffed recliners. There are living room sets and dining room sets, many topped with faux-antique ceramic chickens of one sort or another, a nod to the farmland; there is a forest of lamps, and home safes, and massage chairs; acres of rug samples and flooring samples and oriental area rugs at $3500 a pop; a whole section of glassware and knick-knacks and table toppings of questionable utility; a vast appliance section, with washing machines and dryers and combination washer-dryers; refrigerators and upright freezers; microwaves and fitness trackers; pool tables and treadmills; cookware and cell phones; dish sets and corkscrews; pots and pans; razors and hair dryers; computers and headphones; toys and dart boards; video cameras and binoculars; backpacks and Bluetooth speakers; CDs and DVDs; and a long wall of flatscreen TVs of all sizes and price points and resolutions. There was a See’s Candy outlet on one side, and a Subway sandwich location on the other. One could eat lunch, furnish a house, and have dessert, all without leaving the Mart. The Mart was all.
For the pilgrims who had come to the shareholder meeting from around the world, the final event of the weekend was… they shut down a mall. Berkshire Hathaway had security fencing erected around an entire shopping mall, with guards and metal detectors at the entrance and a shareholder credential necessary to enter. It was a rather unremarkable shopping mall, but it was home to Borsheims, the discount jeweler owned by Warren Buffett and, like NFM, legendary for its Buffett symbolism. “Even diamonds should be bought as cheaply as possible,” I guess is the symbolism. Inside the mall, an irrationally long line of shareholders formed to get at some free cantaloupe and roast beef. In the spacious interior area, framed by Borsheims, Pottery Barn, and Williams-Sonoma, a ping-pong table was set up, with risers around it on three sides. Hundreds of people crowded around for the main event: a young table tennis Olympian was there to play ping-pong with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. As many as a few dozen spectators could see the action, and several hundred more could see the backs of the heads of those in front of them. As the stars of the show filed in, I struggled to divine the significance of the moment. The best I could come up with was that if there were 500 of us in the room right then, we had an average net worth of nearly $300 million each. It also occurred me that if the roof above us collapsed, it would wipe out more net worth than any previous roof collapse in history. At least I would go out in noteworthy fashion. When I glanced up, though, there was nothing but a steady roof and the click of ping-pong balls.
The worshipful devotees of Berkshire Hathaway did not require a lot of freebies. If they owned a single class A share, they were worth at least $220,000 and rising. That was gift enough for them to make their annual pilgrimage to Omaha, which is not America’s most popular tourist destination. While other titans of finance have used dirty means to build grand civic institutions and monuments of marble, Warren Buffett has used honest means to build Nebraska Furniture Mart, cut-rate jewelry stores, and Dairy Queen outlets. To each his own.
What if everyone practiced capitalism like Warren Buffett? It would certainly eliminate the top layer of problems that capitalism seems to produce. The hedge funders taking billion-dollar fees and the investment banks gambling public money on exotic derivatives in search of big bonuses and the CEOs raping their companies for huge salaries even as their stock price plunges would all go away. So, for that matter, would vacation-home mega-mansions and $150,000 Bulgari wristwatches and $1.7 million Bugatti Veyrons. The Warren Buffett model of capitalism has no need for hustles, ripoffs, or outrageous conspicuous consumption. In this sense, it would be a meaningful improvement on the American model of capitalism.
The reason that Berkshire Hathaway attracts believers rather than mere investors is that it offers the tantalizing promise of guilt-free financial success. Not the usual mitigation of cutthroat greed via desperate acts of public charity, but a true chance to win by playing by the rules. Warren Buffett’s life work is to pull off that Holy Grail of capitalist morality: the alignment of profits with what is deserved. In his world, wealth flows not from rent-seeking or ripoffs, but from intelligent decision making and wise management. The profits represent productivity gains that ultimately benefit us all. As long as you accept the legitimacy of the overall economic framework, the wealth of investors is their fair due. This is the promise of the free market that we hear so much about yet rarely see in the wild.
Unfortunately, everyone in capitalism cannot be Warren Buffett. For every savvy trade that he pulls off, there must always be a sucker on the other side. These losers are just as much a part of the system as the winners at Berkshire Hathaway are.
Even as the very best argument for capitalism—even with the probity, and the honesty, and the scrupulous care for shareholder dollars, and the relentless increase of productivity and earning power—the Warren Buffett model does not produce a world of brothers and sisters living in equality, drinking milk and honey and contemplating universal beauty. It produces one man with a $66 billion fortune, drinking Coca-Cola, shopping in Nebraska Furniture Mart, and buying reproduced art by the square foot.
Now that Donald Trump really is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, it has become necessary to contemplate who might be part of a Trump administration—people such as his son-in-law, New York City real estate’s golden boy, Jared Kushner.
A profile in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek suggests that Kushner should be seen as a “contemporary Jack Kennedy, the attractive son of a rich family with the resources to become a force behind the scenes in Washington and even a potential candidate for national office.” The comparison to a Democrat, at least, is apt: Analysis of campaign finance data by The Real Deal found that 40 of the 44 donations of $1,000 or more made in Kushner’s name between 1992 and 2004 went to Democrats; in 2000 and 2003, he donated $6,000 to Hillary Clinton; and in 2008, his paper endorsed Obama. From Bloomberg:
It’s not clear if Kushner supports Trump’s more outlandish ideas, such as banning Muslim immigrants from entering the country to prevent terrorism. He’s said virtually nothing publicly about his father-in-law’s presidential aspirations other than telling the New York Times last year that he thinks Trump would “be great.” But Kushner has been laboring behind the scenes to get him elected. He helped set up a meeting in January with Trump and about a dozen Republican leaders to try to build a relationship with the party’s establishment. Earlier this year, Kushner also attempted to smooth things over between the Trump campaign and his friend Rupert Murdoch, who was unhappy with the candidate’s attacks on Fox News.
“He has a beautiful, brilliant wife,” Myers Mermel, a friend of Kushner’s and a real-estate executive himself, said to Bloomberg. “He is clearly a man of faith. These are all values that contradict the negative image put forth by the Republican Party as New York values. He has the values that the Republican Party espouses.”
Kushner’s father-in-law has sung his praises on the campaign trail, as well. “Jared is a great young man, went to Harvard, very smart, doing a fantastic job in business, he’s in the real estate business and has done an amazing job,” Trump said at a campaign rally in January, describing him as a “very, very successful real estate entrepreneur in Manhattan.”
Kushner has also been accused of tenant harassment—trying to force tenants in rent-regulated units out of buildings he owns, so he can renovate them and list them at higher monthly rates. More often than not, however, he buys buildings that have already gone through this process from a man named Ben “Sledgehammer” Shaoul, president of Magnum Real Estate Group, who local blogger EV Grieve calls “the face of the hyper-luxurification of the East Village.”
Shaoul, who had acquired the buildings in 2010 and 2011 for about $25 million, “really preyed on the infirm,” says Hengen, who recalls a property manager screaming at her when there was an electrical fire in her ceiling the night she got out of the hospital. He changed the front-door lock code during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 without informing tenants, says David Dupuis, who has lived in the building since 1983. “I was coming home and couldn’t get in.”
“His people were psychotic, screaming on the phone,” says another Fourth Street resident who asked to remain anonymous. “Dust, noise, unprotected workers. It was two years of hell,” adds another, who had his phone service cut off for four months when renovation work damaged the cables. “People left in droves.”
By the time Shaoul was through, only five of the 24 apartments at 118 East 4th still had rent-stabilized tenants. In the 45-unit building next door, less than 10 remained. Shaoul told The Real Deal in 2013 that he was “redeveloping a portfolio of under-managed assets” and planned to sell them to a long-term investor—a sophisticated way of saying “emptying them and flipping them.
Anyway, whether Kushner is really as “great” as his father-in-law says he is remains up for debate; if anything, his behavior as a New York City landlord seems average.
Deep within the extremely regular bowels of the vegan internet, there is an Australian YouTube personality by the name of Freelee the Banana Girl. Freelee eats 51 bananas a day, and she does not fuck around. Freelee is causing so much drama, you would not even believe!
On Wednesday, Elizabeth Ribar of XOJane.com, who describes herself as “a Millennial living in the digital age (who also happens to be vegan),” published a deeply personal account of this controversy. “As a vegan, I feel sick seeing so much hate being promoted in my community,” Ribar writes.
Immediately, I have questions: Why is a person named Freelee? What has Freelee done? What does it “mean” to be vegan, and why are Freelee and her crew the “antithesis” of whatever that thing is? Wouldn’t the antithesis of being vegan involve meat and dairy? Why does any of this matter, at all, to anyone?
Regardless of the answer to that last question, I explored. Elizabeth Ribar became aware of Freelee’s activities when she saw one of Freelee’s videos criticizing one of her favorite YouTubers, Cassie Ho of Blogilates. Freelee has evidently been talking smack about Cassie for a strong 8 months, ever since posting a video about Cassie and others called “YouTubers who promote eating disorders.” Starting shit is apparently something of a hobby for Freelee—a large chunk of her videos parody, rib, or otherwise call out other vloggers, igniting a literally never-ending cascade of angry response videos and response-to-response videos, which then contribute many clicks to everyone’s respective YouTube channels. Early last year, according to Ribar, Freelee also accused Australian Instagram trainer Kayla Itsines of promoting eating disorders; Itsines and her boyfriend sued Freelee, who was forced to take down the disparaging videos. Yikes!
Freelee is also currently beefing ;) with 17-year-old YouTube star Tana Mongeau (Freelee is in her mid-thirties). The hostility evidently began when Freelee posted a critical video about Tana’s video “How I Stay Skinny”; Tana had spoken about “bored eating,” or eating when you aren’t hungry, which Freelee said was not a thing. This argument between two vloggers about the correct way to stay skinny snowballed into an all-out feud that has expanded to include other vegans, such as an individual by the name of Sorsha, who was extremely offended by Tana’s critique of Freelee. Tana, for her part, has recently started the hashtag #tanachallengesfreelee.
Like you, I am just barely, barely following this, but let’s continue anyway.
Freelee, as we have established, is a vlogger who loves drama. The video of hers that XOJane points to appears to begin mid-sentence, which did not prevent it from acquiring over 300,000 views. In it, Freelee, from behind some kind of giant pillow, says that Cassie “refuses to retract her legal claims” against Freelee, which Cassie hinted on Twitter were never made. Freelee thanks her supporters, calls Cassie “a big bully,” and watches a supportive YouTube video from within her own YouTube video:
The video she’s watching, called “The Vegan Community’s Message to Freelee,” involves various YouTubers in the vegan community rallying together in support of Freelee in an attempt to unite the vegan community, protect free speech, and promote bananas.
“Freelee, you’ve helped change the lives of so many people,” says an intense young man called The Vegan Activist in the video, over the soft strains of a mournful piano ballad. “And you’ve helped save so many animals. It’s so sad that there are people out there who want to stop you from speaking the truth. But there’s always some good to take out of every bad situation. Over the last week, there have been thousands and thousands of people sharing bananas all over social media.”
Freelee, whose real name is Leanne Ratcliffe, was featured on Gawker several years ago when she posted a video blaming obese people for 9/11 deaths (by getting stuck on the stairs and preventing “fit people from getting through and surviving”); in a 2014 interview with The Daily Beast about her “30 bananas a day” diet, she admitted to coming from an eating disorder background and yet claimed that the biggest risk of eating 30 bananas a day “is you will become a superhero and suddenly find it very hard to fit in with mainstream society.” Freelee has also come out against chemotherapy. Her latest video is titled “SERIOUS Pedophilia allegations against my boyfriend.”
Trust me when I say that I am just barely brushing the surface of this. The vegan vlogosphere is apparently a hotbed of indirect confrontation—if you’ll recall, back in November our good friends Nina and Randa had many choice words for fellow YouTube influencer Essena O’Neill after the latter criticized social media. Relatedly, I have been unable to discern why so many vegan YouTubers are from Australia.
In her XOJane post, Ribar helpfully defines bullying, which is evidently something that happens to vegans and non-vegans alike:
Merriam-Webster defines the verb bullying “to frighten, hurt, or threaten” and “to cause (someone) to do something by making threats or insults or by using force.” Not only is Freelee is a dictionary-defined bully, she also has a history of bullying non-vegans.
The article ends with an absolute bang: “If we engage with a hater, we can potentially make things worse. So how do we deal with online harassment? Unfortunately, for now, there’s no clear answer.”
Donald Trump almost certainly cheats at golf. He denies this vehemently, just as he denies that there is violence at his campaign rallies. (There is definitely violence at his campaign rallies.) And while we may not have video of Donald secretly moving his ball into the fairway, the way we do of his supporters punching people, there are plenty of people who have come out and said they saw the cheating firsthand.
“Donald, what he does is he tees off first so we go off to our balls and what do we see but Donald Trump right in the middle of the fairway,” De La Hoya said. “He said, ‘Hey look, I found my first ball.’”
On the next hole, a par-3, De La Hoya said Trump hit into some bushes and again went ahead of the other players in his cart. When the rest of the group got to the green, he said Trump’s ball was 3 feet from the hole.
“And by the way I’m picking it up,” De La Hoya quoted Trump as saying. “It’s a gimme.”
The former boxing champ is far from the first person to be baffled by the Donald’s golf game. In January, Samuel L. Jackson was asked about the differences between the presumptive Republican nominee’s style of play and his own. His answer was devastatingly simple: “I don’t cheat.”
Trump was having none of it:
Trump would never cheat, because Trump abhors cheaters. Just ask, uh, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.
Anyway, about a month after the Jackson dustup, Anthony Anderson backed his fellow actor up, saying he’d played in a game with both Jackson and Trump and witnessed some shenanigans himself. From The Hollywood Reporter:
“Trump is a great golfer. I’m not going to say Trump cheats,” Anderson told Meyers. “His caddy cheats for him.”
Meyers asked if Anderson actually saw the cheating happening.
“Oh yes, several times. Several times,” said Anderson. “I mis-hit a ball — it hooked a little left about 20 yards. Trump hit the exact same shot but went 20 yards further left than mine. I could not find my ball in this trash. Trump’s ball had the fluffiest lie in the middle of the fairway. Like I say, I didn’t see Trump cheat because he was on the t-box with me, but his ball was right there in the middle of the fairway.”
That specific mode of cheating—hitting a bad hook or slice, then having a caddy surreptitiously put the ball in the fairway—sounds suspiciously similar to an apparent rumor among employees at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey about the club’s sputtering, tangerine-faced owner.
The Washington Post’s Ben Terris did a thorough investigation into the cheating accusations against Trump last year, and heard this tidbit from a former caddy at Trump National:
Jonathan Carr spent the 2007 and 2008 golf seasons caddying at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J. He remembers a gregarious club owner who treated the caddies with the utmost respect, a man who, despite lacking a “pristine” golf swing, played with a high level of skill and an even higher level of confidence. Carr never saw Trump come close to bending the rules, although he said everyone who caddied there had heard of that reputation.
“The caddies would say, ‘If I get on his bag, I’m going to make sure he always has a good lie,’ ” Carr said, meaning that even if Trump shanked a ball, the caddies would do what they could to place it on the fairway.
There was a Sports Illustrated editor who said Trump’s ball would mysteriously appear on the green after he’d been “hacking in the weeds.” There was Rick Reilly, who said Trump is an “11 on a scale of one to 10" when it came to golf cheating. There was the aging rocker Alice Cooper, who once answered a question about the “worst celebrity golf cheat” by saying “I played with Donald Trump one time. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Numerous sources tell us The Donald shanked his shot from the tee out of bounds into the weeds. He then proceeded to drive his golf cart - alone- down to find his ball. When he noticed his ball went into the natural preserve area, he turned his golf cart to block him as he took a ball out of his pocket, looked over at his partners to make sure they weren’t watching, and rolled the new ball into the rough.
The rule in golf is when you hit your ball into the natural preserve, it’s played as a lateral hazard. This means you drop your ball 2 club lengths from point of entry. Donald’s ball was dropped much further than 2 club lengths from point of entry - more like 4 or 5.
When the new roll sunk too deep into the rough grass, Trump picked up the ball and placed it higher in the grass to improve the lie of his ball. The Donald then got into his golf cart to drive back to his partners to tell them he found his ball.
Mr. Trump is abundantly proud of his ability to drive a golf ball, once asking rhetorically during a news conference: “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?”
Mr. Senecal suggested that Mr. Trump was perhaps not quite as strong as he imagined, remembering times they would hit balls together from the Mar-a-Lago property into the Intracoastal Waterway.
“Tony, how far is that?” Mr. Trump would ask.
“It’s like 275 yards,” Mr. Senecal would respond, though he said the actual distance was 225 yards.
What could it be that’s holding Trump back, keeping him from meeting his full Tiger Woods potential (golf-wise)? Maybe it’s those tiny hands of his.
