February, 2016 archive

Chris Christie augments his stimulus package for the New Jersey legal industry.

A computer forensics firm retained on behalf of Gov. Christie’s office after the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal has billed the state $2.3 million, according to invoices released Friday evening.

(snip)

The costs are separate from the $8 million billed to taxpayers as of last year by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm retained by the governor’s office to conduct an internal investigation and respond to subpoenas after the bridge scandal in January 2014.

At least, it sounds like paradise to me.

Austria’s governing coalition parties have cancelled a parliamentary session planned for next week because they say they have “nothing to discuss”.

An announcement on the Austrian parliament’s website says that a session which 183 members of parliament planned to attend on Thursday has now been cancelled.

In a long and thoughtful article in The Guardian, Adam Haslett posits that, despite their superficial gentility, the Bushes helped pave the way for Trump. He argues that the difference between them is simple:

Trump doesn’t have henchmen; he is his own henchman.

The Bush campaign and its patronage network would have us believe that a divisive, foul-mouthed conman is duping the media into ignoring the one sober candidate who is ready to lead the United States in troubled times. Jeb’s father is said to be confounded by the “rude” Mr Trump, while his mother cut a remarkably tone-deaf ad, in which, bedizened with pearls, she raises her slender nose at those who talk about “how popular they are, or how great they are”, as if no member of her clan has ever engaged in the unseemly business of self-promotion.

But the Bushes have long been aristocrats with knives in their pockets. In politics since the 1950s and in the White House for 16 of the last 28 years, this dynastic family embodies more than any other the transformation of the Republican Party from a coalition of northeastern social liberals and economic elites to one of southern, religious conservatives and free-market extremists.

(snip)

The names of the Bush family’s henchmen – South Carolina native Lee Atwater and his protégée Karl Rove – are well known, as are most of their exploits.

The article is worth your while.

Contemporary political media, always valuing the horse race, false equivalences, and theatre over facts and issues, has been repeatedly conflating Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, trying to say that Trump is to the right as Sanders is to the left. If you are one of my two or three regular readers, you’ve no doubt seen this.

Regardless of your opinion of Sanders as a politician and potential nominee, I think one must concede that that’s like conflating Luciano Pavorotti and Tiny Tim because both of them had fans.

Pap and Thom take a look at the two candidates and the coverage.

In view of this, I just had to ask.