Cheap Shots: Schadenfreude

This Inflation Is Enough to Drive a Man to Drink

As I wrote at Bluesky,

We wanted to understand why so many are beset by economic anxiety in spite of ample evidence that the economy is just fine. So we spoke to some professional Republican business travelers quietly stewing themselves at a barbecue joint at Newark Liberty.

I love the fact that Oates herself did this almost as much as the fact that it got done. Readers adding context confirm her estimates are about right.

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Block That Chain

Cheap Shots

 

Ioffe's Russian-themed title is the best part of her blog. I guess the martini is OK too, at least it seems to be a real one, with an olive. I haven't found out how to navigate it, the blog I mean, but she emails me the installments one at a time, which must be why I spend so much time talking about her. I think she's just toying with me, though, and I'm getting fed up.

There are actually some signs that tomorrow might be marginally better, but don't get too excited.

There are now an unprecedented almost nine million stories in the Naked City, according to the 2020 Census, 8.8 million residents, up 629,000 from 2010. Making nonsense out of pundits' belief that New York was getting emptied as folks fled the taxes and viruses. New York State is losing a congressional seat, but it's going to be a Republican one in the western part of the state.

“The city’s growth actually outpaced the growth of the nation,” said [chief demographer Peter] Lobo. “That is unusual for a mature city like New York.”

The great thing is the city managed to make what appears to be the most accurate count in its history in the face not only of a pandemic but also the determination of the Republican federal administration to make it fail:

For the Record: With Cheap Shots

To be clear the ICE rule has existed for a while, and it had a legit purpose, to stop exploitation of foreign students by fraudulent online diploma mills like University of Phoenix (though why administered by ICE and deporting students instead of DOE to regulate schools?) https://t.co/JOcKWq9ihO

— 🔻Cookin With Yas🔻 (@Yastreblyansky) July 8, 2020

But it clearly should have been suspended for this year's emergency when schools are being punished for doing whatever they can to ensure student safety. Goes along with Trump trying to discourage masking, and it's evil.

— 🔻Cookin With Yas🔻 (@Yastreblyansky) July 8, 2020

Not to mention the administration's ongoing effort (not likely to succeed, because he doesn't have the power under our "federal" system which seems like a good thing for a change) to force public schools to open ahead of time, which just seems ridiculously dangerous, for teachers and other staff, for kids (and the horrible danger of the Kawasaki-like syndrome that has afflicted some when "normal" Covid-19 left them apparently unscathed) and the parents and grandparents to whom they could bring the disease home. I have my own theory of what his "plan" is—

Cheap shots

pic.twitter.com/zfocHrdlRH

— Ｃｒｕｓ (@Kreuzader) December 1, 2018

Trump shakes hands in photo op with Argentine President Macri, forgets why he's there, and wanders away. The second one with appropriate soundtrack.

Whoever wrote his eulogy tweet for Old Bush was singularly inventive: "Whenever I was with him," as if there was some historical moment when they used to hang together all the time:

Scavino? When was Donald ever "with" GHWB, actually? Did they meet face to face? https://t.co/keEgzuEw4d

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 1, 2018

"I don't know much about him," Bush said, among other things. pic.twitter.com/zeAai7ikW2

— Yasterisk (@Yastreblyansky) December 1, 2018

Cheap shot

Come on, how else is she supposed to make it through the thing?

Wednesday Stupid

Jon McNaughton's new lithograph, "Crossing the Swamp", modeled on Emanuel Leutze's "Crossing the Delaware", 1851. After setting the Capitol on fire (you can see the flames illuminating the building's interior clear up into the Rotunda dome), the Emperor and his comrades make their escape across an unexpected bog surrounded by dead hemlocks. Mattis, Carson (face turned to the burning halls of Congress), Huckabee-Sanders, and Kelly in the stern ply the oars, while Conway, Bolton (looking as if he wandered in from a duck hunt) and Two-Gun Sessions in the foreground keep their guns at the ready in case Kelly tries to make a break; Pompeo lower his binoculars, slowly, as if he'd just spotted something truly alarming. The Emperor, possibly drugged to keep him calm, stares at the haunting though ineffectual fire of his hurricane lamp, Mrs. Trump grasps Pence around the loins while he performs an unspeakable act with a flag, and Ivanka Trump looks on in horror. In the bow, Ambassador Haley tries to prod an intruding alligator out of the way (or is she spearing it?), thrusting her leg out as if making ready to leap out and wrestle the beast. Jared and Junior have perhaps already been locked up. The moon is a ghostly galleon, but aren't they all?

Lede From Behind

When he decided on the Syria airstrike in April 2017 he was watching Rogue One on the presidential plane. Via metro.co.uk.

Mr. President, the Wolf is at the door.

Wolf Blitzer, that is. Mrs. Trump prefers CNN:

WASHINGTON — On the first couple’s recent trip overseas, Melania Trump’s television aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN. President Trump was not pleased.

He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox — his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN — and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.

From Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman, reporting from the Inner Courtyard of the Imperial Bedchambers. I think it's funny that he screamed at the staff for failing to prevent Mrs. T. from indulging in this strange predilection for watching news programs where they say stuff that's more or less true, instead of at her for not controlling herself. Apparently that's not the issue; he doesn't hope to stop her, he just doesn't want her to do it in his plane, or his bedroom. What she does in her own bedroom is her own business.

For the Record: Fart Act and Other Disasters

Trump had to double down, of course, and say it was done on purpose, a message to the Fake Media, though he obviously couldn't say clearly what the message was ("Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares"), or explain why her communications director had said there was no message and her stylist was completely unfamiliar with the jacket. He's really trying to convince us that he was in control of whatever it was. I believe Trump would rather be accused of almost anything, no matter how gross, than admit that a woman got out ahead of him. 

Trump is about to blow up the global trading regime with an unsettling FART Act. https://t.co/tgDZxQSE2V

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) July 1, 2018

When I was first working in Singapore, the National University moved from the ancient hill of Bukit Timah to a new campus in the south of the island, everything very shiny and new, and in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences every office door was equipped with a bright brass plaque displaying the room number, ASS 1, ASS 2, etc. As a representative American, I quietly let the Dean know he had a problem, and the faulty acronym was replaced with something else, with Singaporean efficiency, basically overnight, before we moved in.

This kind of thing can happen in a densely multilingual society, where people up and down the hierarchy share enough languages to give and receive orders but not necessarily the ones they need to get the job done. In my later career as a magazine editor I found that the art direction staff were always graduates of Chinese-language schools, while the editorial were inevitably from English-language ones, and crucial miscommunications could take place, though none quite that funny.

Surprise: Brooks Does It Both Sides

Startling news. I may not be able to bring myself to read the Haaretz article, but I do have a comment:

I feel more secure with Jews but Christians give better head @edroso @EllisWeiner https://t.co/79aNEnFtES

— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 14, 2018

Contribution from Driftglass:

Cheap shots

I got nothing but this junk going on. There's a slightly new Dinesh angle at the bottom.

If it's secret, what's your source for the numbers?

— Per Aspera Ad YAStra (@Yastreblyansky) April 24, 2018

Also somebody who was supposed to destroy the earth by fire, like God promised, but that guy was aborted too. You can't count on people any more.

— Per Aspera Ad YAStra (@Yastreblyansky) April 24, 2018

Cheap shots: Naked Came the Sock Puppet

In reality, he was just quoting some praise from a real tweet by @TheOfficialABCD, but forgot to put in quotation marks. But it's just as funny, and infra dig, as if he really were revealed using a sock puppet, and Trumpian, this trick of inserting a bit of praise under your own name—why not just retweet the guy like a normal person, for goodness' sake?

Thanksgiving Cheap Shots: And Farewell to Mark Halperin

Reconstruction Thanksgiving, Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, 1869. Uncle Sam carving the turkey, self-government and universal suffrage on the menu, and everybody, a Native with a feather in his hair, Germans, French, Spanish, African Americans, Chinese (the Chinese woman looks more Japanese, but the child she's admonishing is wearing a Qing-dynasty queue), even a disreputable but hopeful-faced Irishman at far right, among the guests. Identity politics used to be a thing Republicans approved of! Image via Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm grateful Trump's too busy watching TV to do all the harm he might otherwise be doing, glad to have a voice and wonderful readers, happy to have a big extended family to go have dinner with, and schadenfreudig that the exodus of famous but bad men from social respectability includes Charlie Rose, Leon Wieseltier, and Mark Halperin.

Following Dylan Byers awful tweet (since deleted) about the catastrophic loss of talent in the media industry because all these sexual assault victims keep telling their stories, Jeet Heer:

What Could Go Wrong! department

White House source, via.

I'm told by two WH sources that Pres. Trump does not plan to put down Twitter on Thursday. May live tweet if he feels the need to respond.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 6, 2017

"Dishonest James Comey says I begged him to stop investigation. WRONG! I ORDERED him! #MTGA" https://t.co/isgcNylAxK

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) June 6, 2017

Cheap shot

.@mitchellvii Why don't you try bonafying them and see?

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) March 14, 2017

Cheap shots: Daily Caller trying to terrorize us

This movie exists! Though it was a pretty pathetic flop. I bet it's great. It's an adaptation originally by Arthur Miller of Henrik Ibsen's great play, in which McQueen's character is a scientist who exposes the bourgeoisie of a Norwegian town profiting from water pollution. making him the enemy of the title. Let's all be #EnemiesOfThePeople.

Almost as many as the Republicans being checked out for collusion with Russian agents https://t.co/UuH9MpmCnu via @dailycaller

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) March 6, 2017

Seriously, .@DailyCaller, did your anonymous source explain discrepancy with official DHS report 2 weeks ago saying refugees are no threat? pic.twitter.com/pDrDrIFJmn

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) March 6, 2017

The citation is from AP story in USA Today.

.@DailyCaller Also, I thought Mr. Trump told you not to use anonymous sources. Are you the enemy of the people now?

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) March 6, 2017

Cheap shot: If at first you don't succeed

So I followed this guy under the impression that he must be a dadaist:

Conservatism is the new punk rock. Deal with it. 🤗

SHARE: https://t.co/SUPPWXY5gZ pic.twitter.com/8wTH1v7vLb

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 10, 2017

Apparently not, he's just another 4chan creep who does this kind of thing not because he has a sense of humor but because he doesn't have one.

Anyway later on, rushing to the defense of our president's opinion that something terrible involving Muslim migrants had happened in Sweden last night, or at any rate some time...

Earlier, I tweeted some photos that were not from Malmo. This was a mistake. As you can see, multicultural Malmo is actually very peaceful. pic.twitter.com/f6UToBDVEN

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 20, 2017

Sadly, no. A little research revealed that this video depicts a quaint native Malmö custom where the indigens get a little drunk on the evening of December 31. And some of the guys end up shooting fireworks at each other, which would be rowdy and crude and something you would not see in, say, Stockholm or Uppsala. But I don't think you'll find any immigrants in that video. They feel it's too dangerous.

.@PrisonPlanet Nice footage of New Year's Eve in very Swedish tradition of many years standing. Nobody gets hurt. https://t.co/RbIiXHmvNc pic.twitter.com/PsSgbvudtb

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) February 20, 2017

Cheap shots: If Adele is Trump, who's Beyoncé?

"markets in everything," they say, but this is really pushing it pic.twitter.com/XjLKj3zhOG

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 15, 2017

.@edroso On the Adele moment, I look forward to when Trump tearfully admits he should have lost and asks @HillaryClinton to be his mummy.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) February 15, 2017

Cheap shot: Out like Flynn

General Mike Flynn confronting Chuck Todd, with some bewilderment, in November. Screen capture via Raw Story.

Flynn:

I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way.

Maybe "distinguished" isn't quite the mot juste, General.

Lede, buried

Drawing by xpapajus at drawception.

Paragraph 23 of the Thrush-Haberman Times story on the White House atmosphere: Emperor Trump is really pissed off with Bannon—"You took too long to tell me what I think!"

Namely, when Trump ordered that Bannon replace the two top national security advisers at meetings of the National Security Council, nobody informed him what he was ordering.

for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

Though not enough to demote the grisly eminence from his current spot in the minuet lineup. And it's not that Trump thinks this is an ill-advised plan—he's sticking with it (though he's decided it's OK for the CIA director to come to the meetings too; there is also some hope that Democrats will be able to stop the plan by insisting Bannon's presence on NSC must be subject to Senate confirmation). He just wants "to be looped in earlier" as the teaser copy puts it.

Why didn't you say so in the first place?

.@realDonaldTrump You and Bannon fucked up big league. Order should have read "NOBODY WITH BAD INTENTIONS ALLOWED"

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) February 4, 2017

Instead they let themselves get carried away by some of those establishment-elite types like Rudolph Giuliani and their subtle and sophisticated machinations. SAD!

Photo by Reuters via The Independent.