Maybe Tucker and Hunter are still friends? Maybe it's all kayfabe?
I don't know about Tucker and Hunter specifically but the congressional leadership, super court, etc. are generally friendly across party lines. The Clintons famously went to Trump's wedding to Melania.
3: Trump has always had weird anti-immigrant views, but he was never really a Republican until he figured out it was the best way for him to get adulation.
1: "Buckley" was also the name of Jane Krakowski's character's kid on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I believe the writers chose it as a parody of an obnoxious rich kid's name.
Somewhere out there, the most horrible couple in the world has named their child "Rand Buckley." I know it.
He's a commercial lawyer. First google hit.
One of my cousin's has a grandchild named "Reagan". I just assume his daughter married someone who is a fan of Shakespeare but missed the point of King Lear and is bad at spelling.
7: In British Columbia? That seems to disqualify him.
The wee kid in the Exorcist was called Regan, so maybe they missed the point of that film instead.
Carter , Truman and Clinton seem to be about the only recent presidents who are also reasonably common first names.
What about Biden and Trump and Bush?
Certainly Biden. I may not know as many "Donald"s as I know "Jim"s, but "Joe" is really common.
I think he means there are guys named Carter and so on. I remember a colleague 20 years ago, looking up from her People magazine to ask the break room: "Hey, who's Carter Blanchett?" I looked at the text and it said carte blanche.
I knew a baby named Lincoln, and there are a fair number of famous people with that as their first name (Linc Chafee, the retired senator from Rhode Island; the cartoonist Lincoln Pierce;
I think it was Clarence Williams' character's name on The Mod Squad).
Lincoln isn't really recent though, except in the sense that the Confederacy is trying to re-fight his battles.
Madison has been quite popular ever since the famed 1984 box office hit, "Splash."
Is that the reason? I didn't know and wondered if my cousin was a big fan of Wisconsin.
It seems odd to me for a girl's name to end with "son". But I guess I'm not really interested in joining the name police.
Interestingly, both "Truman" and "Clinton" seem to have been mid-common names from the start of the 20th century until the tenures of their respective presidents, when they fell off and never recovered.
"Carter", by contrast, dropped very briefly in 1980 and 1981, then started soaring to new heights, peaking as #24 in the mid-teens.
26 is interesting!
"Carter" presumably began to recover in the mid 80s because of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. Or maybe it was a Madison-in-Splash effect from millions of parents wanting to emulate capable go-getting junior executive Carter Burke.
The habit of repurposing surnames as first names goes way back. The first Sir Winston Churchill (1620-1688) was lumbered with his mother's maiden name. Names of the rich and famous have a long history too: Howard (family name of the Dukes of Norfolk), Perry (ditto, Earls of Northumberland), Clive (unprincipled 18th century imperialist), etc.
I've no idea who the older Trumans and Clintons were named after, but no doubt there was somebody in the early 20th century who was famous for 15 minutes.
29: Rodney, both Mortimer and Morton, etc. If it sounds like the given name of a '60s insult comic, it was probably someone in the British peerage.
Although "Perry" and "Clive" sound like cricketers to me.
Notable enough I'm going to break 40: Brittney Griner was released and is coming home!!
Looks like we dropped our ask to get anyone else back in the swap.
Whoa, really?? That is good news and I was not expecting that for another decade!
I have an ancestor, born in the 1780s, first name "Truman." From Williamstown. I have his clock.
Supposedly, Napoleon's is in New Jersey.
I told my granddaughter (then 4.5) that the clock would be hers and she said 'no granddad, I'll get my own.'
Well, now they know hostage taking works.
39 is, unfortunately, correct. Although spy swaps have a long history.
I'm slightly surprised they wanted Bout.
40 The Post speculates that it's because Bout kept his mouth shut while in prison. Mobsters want to reward people who are loyal like that.
That's probably it. There's always the chance that they want him to fall out of a window too.
39: it's hardly the first prisoner exchange btwn us & russia/ussrhttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/world/europe/prisoner-swaps-exchanges-us.html
unfucked link https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/world/europe/prisoner-swaps-exchanges-us.html
Might not want a nytimes link today.
29: And today every living Winston is a no longer middle-aged Chinese guy living in Honolulu. Or at least the only Winstons I know are.
good point, hadn't realized much going on here in general these days so somewhat out of it if you have a moment heebie please delete my comments above or get rid of links thx.
I think it is kinda rich that the United States would imprison someone else for selling arms that fuel conflict around the world.
At least I stopped Wordle months ago.
I didn't know about the walkout either.
Well, I still play Wordle every day, and I didn't today out of Solidarity! Where is my medal?
I've been looking. Please let me stop. I have a job.
I did the xword last night right at 10pm and hadn't seen any news about the walkout and now I feel guilty.
52: It's OK, Moby. I got to boast about my moral superiority and that's all the medal that I need.
48: Looks like they specifically singled out him selling weapons to OUR enemies. DEA sting operatives pretending to be buying for FARC said on tape they would be used against USAF pilots, and he responded they had "the same enemy", so they convicted him on "conspiracy to kill US nationals."
Some of my best friends are U.S. nationals.
46: stereotypically, every Winston is an elderly Jamaican guy living in South London.
30/31. Exactly so. There are still Montagues in the peerage.
The great thing about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is much to be said
For being dead.
(Edmund Clerihew Bentley)
It's not clear to me Russia got the better of the deal if you consider that Bout has been inactive for a long time and Russia is still stuck in a shitty war. It's never been clear if they were holding Griner in an attempt to get leverage to help them in the war, but if they were it sure doesn't look like they got that.
What is the NY Times issue? Other than their terrible grasp of the English language and the fact that posting paywall links is deprecated, I mean.
62 is, I think, the wrong way to look at it. They arrested Griner before the war started, for one thing.
58. Probably true since Winston O'Boogie was killed.
66: ha! I was thinking about a joke that she loves the camera so much she should change her name to Cinema and then I spelled it that way unintentionally.
Jokes on you. I never knew how she spelled her name.
I had this other idea for a joke that she's only doing this because she heard that Schumer was going to give her a committee assignment that might involve having to do some work.
66: Independent though, not a Republican. So we're back down to 50 seats officially. Any chance we can get a Democratic Senator when she's up for re-election?
She's still caucusing with Democrats, it's no different from King or Sanders and won't change the majority.
She's still a fucking asshole.
It's wild that Sinema has $11m in wealth and no one knows where it came from.
72: Other than not being funny, that's the reason why my joke doesn't work. Presumably she'll caucus with the Dems and have the same committee assignments. The only significance of this is for her own political future. Maybe she angling for the VP slot if Trump or Kanye run as independents.
72: but the Dems don't run against Sanders anymore or King. Would they put up a Democratic nominee in Arizona?
Trump is going to run as Kanye's VP. It was on the news.
Gallego is running. The party couldn't stop him if he tried, and I don't think they'll try. He's just a better candidate and he'll be way ahead of Sinema in 3-way polls.
A three-way race where Sinema plays spoiler would be so lovely, but I assume she's not delusional enough to make the attempt and once her term's up will go find some other form of grift.
I wonder if she wants to run for president? She's a very natural candidate for Bloomberg to back. (Of course, she won't actually get votes much as Bloomberg wouldn't.)
Right, I should have said "either not delusional enough or harbors some more grandiose delusion."
Bloomberg's problem is that we can't have a president named "Michael". They're just too unreliable.
73: Insider trading is still legal for members of Congress, right?
I feel like Sinema has burned so many bridges for now she may have difficulty making quite as beaucoup bucks as other ex-Senators do. She won't have the connections to do particularly effective lobbying, although I don't know, some firms might still milk the prestige for clients who don't get that.
And I guess if lobbying doesn't work she can fall back on speaking gigs. Same poor benighted souls who (I presume) pay for David Brooks to come speak.
66: just noticed I spelled her first name wrong too!
83:2: She's literally single-handedly responsible for the survival of the carried-interest loophole. I think she'll have no trouble cashing in on that in some way.
The real treasure is the $11 million she earned along the way.
Political calculus for Dems as I see it:
Before, there were three ways 2024 could go before:
A: Sinema does not run, Gallego has a fighting chance to hold the seat
B: Sinema runs as an independent, can't win but could be a spoiler (maybe)
C: Sinema and Gallego have a heated primary which Gallego wins but comes out weaker
Now, C is no longer an option - I don't know if the party allows independents in its Senate primary but even if it does, her switch seems a fairly clear signal she won't try. So while spoiling is still on the table, it's overall a plus for Dems. She would probably do very poorly as an independent, and hopefully she will see that before trying.
Even more likely: a vanity presidential campaign. Hi, No Labels!
Even more likely: a vanity presidential campaign. Hi, No Labels!
Not according to the reporting I've seen:
"I keep my eye focused on what I'm doing right now. And registering as an independent is what I believe is right for my state. It's right for me. I think it's right for the country," she said, adding that "politics and elections will come later."
Still, she did dismiss one possibility that her new independent status may raise for some: "I am not running for president."
Eh, people lie about that all the time. She may well not do it but I wouldn't be surprised if she did.
Even technically correct in that she is not, at this moment, running for president.
Much like Elon Musk saying that DMs "should be encrypted" when asked if he let Bari Weiss read them.
88 That Croatian goalkeeper was amazing.
Is there code that could block comments like 96?
Seconding 97. The most annoying spam ever
Like block all comments with more than 5 URLs
Maybe after whitelisting herpy.net.