Shimkus
My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has announced that he will not seek reelection. Good riddance.
The present King of Greenland
This reality-television show, now in its third season, is going off the rails.
Imaginary Bedminster
“I’ve given him something that will help him sleep.”
A debate review
Hank Stuever, television critic.
Crossover candidate
“Hey, you’re that guy!” ”The thousand-dollar-a-month guy!”
Debate
It ain’t over till it’s over, but I’m pretty confident that Elizabeth Warren has already won tonight’s debate.
At the table
“We should continue to focus on kitchen-table pocketbook issues.” That’s boilerplate language.
Represent
“He can’t look a child in the face and justify why this country is throwing them in cages, so instead he tells us I should go back to the great borough of the Bronx and make it better, and that’s what I’m here to do.”
No evens to can’t
Lindsey Graham encourages Donald Trump to refrain from personal attacks and to “aim higher.”
Genius at work
The “true Stable Genius” tagged a retired teacher and coach whose tweets are decidedly not in favor of the president.
“Patently deficient”
A book title of the future?
C-SPAN reveals all
As with two-person political debates, the best place to see the Trump Fourth speech was C-SPAN, which cut away again and again for shots of the crowd.
2020
Harris-Buttigieg.
Brief debate thoughts
As for Bill de Blasio's self-presentation as an advocate for working people: LOL, LOL.
WWRCS
A Trump administration official who carries a whip. What would Richard Cohen say?
#WithImmigrantChildren
There are many ways to help.
“Political Teamsmanship”
A dispiriting story from WGBH’s Innovation Hub.
Imaginary call
“Yes, they call that a dangling participle. Not many people know that. The Norwegians called me about it.”
The situation
“I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orbán has, but he doesn’t.”
Hillary Clinton on how to proceed
The idealist in me says Impeach! Because if not Trump, then whom? But pragmatism might make better sense.
Toilet trouble
From WBEZ, Chicago: “Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, his wife and his brother-in-law are under federal criminal investigation for a dubious residential property tax appeal that dogged him during his gubernatorial campaign last year.”
“Others say”
NPR does its listeners no service by presenting “Others say it didn’t happen” as a legitimate point of view.
George Conway on fiduciary obligations
“Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiary’s best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime. So too with a president.”
“No matches were found”
Leave it to Mr. Barr to make the redacted report available as non-searchable PDF. But someone’s already made a searchable version.
Another Cabinet change
The New Yorker reports that Donald Trump has named Lori Loughlin as his new secretary of education, replacing Betsy DeVos.
Pete Buttigieg on being gay and being married
“And speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Kirstjen Nielsen and Dante
I imagine an endless cage, one whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
Oswald
A lying narcissist with a big tie. But any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.
TrumpHotels.org
A must-see.
Four years
A New Yorker cartoon.