Sports metaphor & politics, and much else besides, 2, post-Flake
[ by Charles Cameron — after Sen Jeff Flake’s elevator epiphany and meet-up with his friend Chris Coons ]
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What the nation got in the Flake-Coons accord is, at long last, a rare example of principle, empathy, bipartisan comity, seriousness, and leadership that holds at least a chance of preserving fairness and a shred of the Senate’s reputation. Pray that it’s not just a moment. https://t.co/fgA6ue89EQ
— john mclaughlin (@jmclaughlinSAIS) September 29, 2018
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Jeff Flake’s Deal With Democrats Puts Kavanaugh’s Nomination in Limbo
A deeply divided Senate Judiciary Committee advanced President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, but final confirmation will depend on a reopened FBI inquiry.
Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was all set to move unimpeded through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday morning.
Then Jeff Flake had a sudden change of heart.
Hours after declaring his support for Kavanaugh, the Arizona Republican simultaneously voted to advance the nomination in committee while warning party leadership that he would oppose President Trump’s nominee in a crucial floor vote unless and until the FBI conducts a further investigation into Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high-school party in 1982.
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MTP Daily, 9/28/2018:
This is a Republican who’s retiring, this is a Republican who’s more free of the political calculus ..
In the political calculus of the moment ..
“We respect her” is the new “thoughts and prayers” ..
**
The Beat, with Ari Melber:
Within hours of that confrontation, Senator Flake did something we rarely see in this choreographed, partisanship era ..
Barbara Boxer:
Time is a friend of Justice ..
Margaret Judson:
How Do You Play a Porn Star in the #MeToo Era? With Help from an ‘Intimacy Director’
In this moment, we are watching Hollywood take the high ground over the United States government. That’s a huge red flag. That’s not how this should work.The government should be holding the higher moral standard, and Hollywood it.
This guy shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car.
Ari:
That was the Twilight Zone A Few Good Men. It’s like, he thought he had the closing speech in A Few Good Men, but for a lot of the country he was in a different movie ..
Hardball:
Tell me how the sequence worked that led to this overtime in the game, so to speak ..
It does seem they’ve got the fire power, the candle power ..
what kind of pandora’s box ..
You get two supreme court nominees in the ideology of your liking, that’s sort of like a pitcher in the major leagues winning over 20 games, i mean that’as a hell of a season, and now that season’s in real jeopardy ..
the tip box is big, and it’s open ..
next up, a hairline fracture in the partisanship that has come to define American politics ..
he’s not intimidated by the 9 out of 10 republicans who back trump in every single thing; the others are hog-tied ..
i was struck by a profile in democracy — here was a guy who held an elevator door. senators have their own elevators in order to keep those people out..
battle of the genders looks like a draw ..
sen klobuchar: the constitution does not say, We the ruling party, she constitution says, We the people..
All In with Chris Hayes 9/28/2018:
Sen Hirono: the FBI investigation has to be complete. It can’t be some cursory kind of investigation that gives cover to some wavering senators. It’s got to be real ..
a lot of people felt like something was wrong and breaking, i mean, wrong in that it felt like there was a kind of torture being imposed on dr blasey ford .. profound legitimacy crisis that we’re watching happen in slow motion ..
it does feel as though something is fundamentally breaking, and I almost appreciate the fact that in the end the republicans took the mask off, and stopped allowing their prosecutor to ask questions, they decided to turn it into a big political show you saw what their endgame was, not really getting to the truth, but doing whatever was necessary to try to jam him through ..
**
Maya Wiley:
like inside baseball with no fans ..
A bit obvious, but the title is worth noting:
They should have started with hide & seek, which is the topic of the Krishna Lila, love in separation & union..
Elon Musk vs. the SEC: The Tesla billionaire gears up for the fight of his career
He has fought back viciously by calling his opponents names like “saboteur,” “idiot” and “pedophile.” Now, Tesla chief Elon Musk is embracing the same kind of combative approach to wage the fight of his career against the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk is as close to sainthood as one can get in Silicon Valley, a sci-fi virtuoso who has captured imaginations with gambles on soaring rockets, electric supercars and brain-computer links. A critical element of his cult of personality: He rarely backs down from a fight.
That last paragraph has an interesting four-part evaluation of Musk: close to sainthood .. sci-f- virtuoso .. cult of personality — fight. If I was setting that para to music, it would definitely be on a descending arpeggio..
hit man .. sabotage
History doesn’t rhyme, it DoubleQuotes?
Shady Watergate Reporters Target Trump
Imagine a replay of Watergate –only worse.
In both the original and the replay, the same Washington D.C. reporter, whose parents were Communist Party members connected to Soviet atomic spies and who were under FBI surveillance for decades, teamed up with the same second D.C. reporter, who was outed as an “FBI asset,” to take down a sitting Republican President of the United States.
In both instances the “unnamed source” leaking information to these two reporters turned out to be the Deputy Director of the FBI.
This is a remake.
Some of the players have even reprised their old roles.
[ .. ]
This is stunning – decades apart in time two separate FBI Deputy Directors leaked information about the then-sitting President of the United States to a pair of reporters, one of whom hails from a family intertwined with the Soviet spy ring that handed America’s nuclear secrets to Joseph Stalin and the other of whom was an “FBI asset.”
Both of these FBI Deputy Directors had to know with whom they were dealing.
**
A brace of interesting articles, both by John Seabrook:
New Yorker, Don’t Shoot: A radical approach to the problem of gang violence [2009] New Yorker, Operation Ceasefire and the Unlikely Advent of Precision Policing [2018]
Some high spots from the former:
Captain Daniel Gerard, who took over Vortex in the fall of 2007, didn’t put much stock in their ideas. As he said, “Academia and law enforcement are at opposite ends of the spectrum. They like theories, we like results.”
Kennedy was tall and slim, and in the dark clothes he favored there was something about him of the High Plains Drifter -— the mysterious stranger who blows into town one day and makes the bad guys go away. He wore a grizzled beard and had thick, unbound hair that cascaded halfway down his back. “What’s some guy who looks like Jesus got to tell us about crime in Cincinnati?” was the line around police headquarters.
Kennedy had been approached by Dr. Victor Garcia, the head of the trauma unit at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who was seeing almost daily the effects of the city’s violent gangs: the stabbings, shootings, and beatings, and the injuries to innocent children caught in the crossfire. “Children with their eyes shot out, children paralyzed,” Garcia told me. “I started to wonder, instead of treating injuries, how can we prevent them from happening in the first place?”
Often, much of the violence is caused by gang dynamics: score settling, vendettas, and turf issues, all played out according to the law of the streets.
Whalen explained to me the C.P.D.’s distinction between social workers and cops: “Social people hug thugs. We kick their butts.”
I particularly appreciate the echo of ““Academia and law enforcement are at opposite ends of the spectrum. They like theories, we like results” in “Whalen explained to me the C.P.D.’s distinction between social workers and cops: “Social people hug thugs. We kick their butts.””
**
Movie correlates:
High Plains Drifter – A Shave and a Shootout:
You Can’t Handle the Truth! – A Few Good Men:
October 1st, 2018 at 5:42 pm
From Designated Survivor s1 e7:
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And an example of enantiodromia:
And to connect with my various posts [1, 2, eg] on three-player games, there’s this from the same episode:
The details of the trade are complex enough that I won’t attempt to spell them out here, but that phrase from the transcript is enough to make the connection.
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Also:
Hint: insurgency, asymmetric warfare, David & Goliath (not that it always works that way, but..)
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In series 2:
October 1st, 2018 at 5:42 pm
Memorial to a parallelism:
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A Kavanaugh doublet:
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From an Atlantic newsletter:
October 1st, 2018 at 5:43 pm
Game on, from With an ambitious decentralized platform, the father of the web hopes it’s game on for corporate tech giants like Facebook and Google.
October 2nd, 2018 at 3:19 am
Hardball, 10/1/2018:
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All in, Chris Hayes:
..
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October 3rd, 2018 at 5:51 am
Name (Boies) wielded like a weapon, from The Bad, Good Lawyer: Was David Boies just doing right by Harvey Weinstein? Or did he cross an ethical line?:
More of interest, from the same piece:
MTP 10/3/2018: K
the Kavanaugh probe hits the home stretch ..
October 4th, 2018 at 4:42 pm
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. Nathan Hale ..
noted here as parallel to the hadith. ..
you were on the ropes ..
why not dunk him in water and see if he floats .. lindsey graham ..
ari 10/3/2018 there’s not a lot of expectation that it’s going to change the bottom line calculus ..
what mark is describing is the mask falling to some degree with Judge Kavanaugh in that dramatic hearing ..
you got a whole window into Judge Brett Kavanaugh now, how he deals with pressure, how he deals with being evaluated or judged, being not the judge in this particular proceeding, and then his basic squirreliness.. [ourob?]
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10/5/2018
.. get this [vote] over the finishing line ..
if he says no, he’s in for a knife fight with the white house
he’s a made man .. [kavanaugh, acc chris of all in]
chris matthews battlefield
October 6th, 2018 at 3:26 am
Andrea Mitchell:
There’s the political calculus, and there’s the human calculus ..
Meachum: We get better by degrees ..
Meachum: This is really a 51% country ..
Meachum: The sou of the country has room for both Dr King, but has also been home to the Ku Klux Klan ..
Meachum: Politicians are far more mirrors of people than molders.
Meachum: What I always say to people in office if I have the chance to speak to them is, What do you want us to think, when we look at your oil portrait? And it tends to work, because none of them can imagine a world where we wouldn’t be gazing at their oil portrait ..
Chris Matthews: The Federalist Society. They’ve got a whole Farm team where they get the right people coming out of law school, and they develop them, and they watch them, and they make sue there’s no surprises — you pick a conservative, you get one ..
unsourced / undated:
you zig when you should zag ..
it’s dirty pool Mrs Kirkman, and you don’t want to play [designated survivor series 2]
[ad: cancer centers, unintended consequences] no cure is typical. you should not expect these results ..
10/5/2018
chuck todd on MTP: i like to remind people on the right that what bork means to you, ken starr means to them ..
for every action there’s usually an opposite reaction [sen kennedy]
i hope i’m wrong ..
they think this whole place is just dysfunction junction ..
what planet did you just parachute in from? ..
it turned into an intergalactic freak show ..
we hit bottom and started to dig ..
you mean it doesn’t go past eleven? ..
the beat:
dealer’s choice, i could start anywhere ..
she went to bat for team b .. ever in doubt .. gamesmanship ..
they have short circuited and straitjacketed an investigation by blocking the FBI from interviewing more than 40 witnesses ..
as a participant on the field as team blue ..
she want to bat for team gop ..
the idea that she was ever in doubt was gamesmanship ..
independent women have been bleeding from the republican party because of this foght ..
justice and progress is not a straight line ..
fall back:
he really was mcconnell’s wingman and that may have something to do with his going off the rails ..
the city was too busy too late ..
hardball
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[cm] what did you make of that setup today, we saw three republican senators, all of them women, all of them together in a phalanx, a political phalanx ..
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some of this stuff at the end is sort of plastic surgery on this guy .. pr — he needed to fix his image ..
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if simon says, trump says, they’ll do it [c matthews] ..
keep their eyes on the prize ..
playing the victim card and the winning card at the same time ..
this is just a petty arguing fight club .. the judiciary cttee ..
for the love of the game ..
min 59 see no evil should hardly be the .. evil ..
All In:
Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter ..
i thought he was a talk show host ..
play fast and loose with the truth ..
October 7th, 2018 at 5:50 pm
A brawl within a fight? “after”, yet “within the context of”?
And those consequences — unintended!
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I’m posting this here not as a metaphorical matter — it isn’t — but because it has qualities of the matrioshka pattern, and is yet another example of unintended consequences — in this case, consequences that may lead to other, legal “fights”, still within that context..
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Nurmagomedov-McGregor brawl leaves UFC world reeling, wondering what’s next
October 8th, 2018 at 11:09 am
What’s Next: Ted Leonsis on the future of sports gambling
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October 8th, 2018 at 2:43 pm
Best game changer quote:
Religious notes: (ah, Israel!)
October 9th, 2018 at 7:12 am
Beirut:
The Beat Ari Melber 10/8/2018
the culture war that the republicans have loved to wage..
it’s a potemkin village of finance, and donald dwells in this place as a financial vamire ..
Hardball:
he wants to have two tribes in the country.
what’s the democrat’s game plan? ..
All In:
democracy can’t be a spectator sport any more ..
blindside — ? a sports ref?
Kavanaugh was confirmed in a razor-thin vote.
designated survivor series 2:
in the end, nothing is simple.
you’ll be as marketable as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest ..
i might pull out (off?) an inside stretch ..
don’t worry, it’s just politics. you’re pushing an advantage, that’s how the game works. // problem is, i don’t play the game .. [s2 ep19 33.00]
time for playing games is over ..
October 11th, 2018 at 6:03 am
hurricane coverage &c msnbc 10/10/2018
bowling ball (narrow, straight, devastating path, brian wms 3.??pm) ..
hardball
it spun through here like a .. blowtorch ..
this was the real deal that .. through here today ..
12 he can’t win a battle with a hurricane ..
i always say he shoots the moon like in hearts ..
rule that doesn’t matter ..
how does he get them to act like trained seals? ..
how can he ignore his own hypocrisy here? .. ourob ..
lemmings ..
it’s like going to a high school pep rally, it doesn’t matter who the team is ..
at some point he starts to sound like the old high school quarterback who keeps talking about that game he won in 1978. it’s over now. ..
so far out of left field, no pun intended ..
everyone knows, you don’t have to fear a quiet group of people sitting in a room talking about politics, you fear an angry crowd .. and the democrats are now the angry crowd. the republicans haven’t see the likes of this in 25 years, and they don’t know what to do about it ..
that’s the loud crowd against another loud crowd ..
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Turkish officials: Saudi assassins flew in to kill Jamal Khashoggi and dismembered him with a bone saw
October 12th, 2018 at 5:57 pm
all in chris hayes 10/10/2018
it was out of the park ..
searing images .. president throwing paper towels like nit was a football ..
…
it doesn’t matter what name he puts on, they are all just pieces and players in the script, and everyone in that room has seen the script and heard it, and they love it.. well, it’s a game show .. it might as well be pee wee hermann ..
home field advantage, you get to go first..
…
morning joe
this is a bowling ball of a hurricane that has come on shore ..
movie?
jimmy, omit caution, report the facts — remember, this isn’t a football match ..
the diplomat:
i’m an old testament man myself. i smite my enemies — an eye for an eye..
mtp 10/12/2018
44 the ad wars .. representative ..
October 13th, 2018 at 4:26 pm
GOP Gov candidate Wagner:
Cook report, battlefield:
The NBC Road Warriors
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The Beat, Ari Melber:
it’s unfortunate we’re turning this into a gender war ..
the republicans were waging war on women ..
wikileaks is a hostile foreign national ..
Hardball:
book recommend. Beschloss, Presidents of War
she’s not quite the cudgel she used to be ..
these morality plays [trump rallies] ..
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All In:
a president of the united states is in play ..
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Midterms likely to change calculus for post-2020 Census redistricting
October 16th, 2018 at 5:15 am
MTP 10/15/2018:
nick kristof: he (mbs) snookered us. he snookered the trump administration, he snookered a whole lot of americans ..
jared kirshner put all of his chips on Mohammed bin Salman ..
he’s changing the rules in the middle of the game .. that’s not what he said on the campaign trail .. and she cn play his game with him .. or should you play his game just the way he plays it? ..
the beat, ari melber:
they’re already spinning a blame game for why they’ll lose the house ..
sometimes the things we most revile in others remind us of something we’re not at peace with in ourselves ..
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katy tur:
**
hardball:
throughout the interview, the president showcased that sma streetfighter attitude ..
i’m taking my bat and going home ..
she knew trump’s counters, and she countered back ..
like pacman eating smaller pacperson there ..
it’s an eight-year-old playing monopoly ..
to get the president to actually put his dukes up, get his dukes up and say all this crazy stuff for the record ..
**
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‘I wouldn’t go to your work and flip you off’: CNN’s Jim Acosta engages Trump Nation‘CNN sucks’:
doris kearns goodwin: fate had dealt an unkind hand ..
if that’s [kavanaugh win] given him hubris, there may be two edges to that sword..
it seems to me that the process was rigged, that mitch mcconnell had in some ways set the stage, that grassley and the committee had somehow set the stage, the process was broken from the beginning ..
i think trump is doubling down on the red states and he’s also, whether he wants to or not, doubling down against himself in the blue states ..
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he’s the blocking back for .. [??]
the saudis ahve already used the game plan .. yemen ..
rachel: steeple chase .. tilt the playing field ..
October 18th, 2018 at 2:23 pm
Ari Melber 10/17/2018
does donald trump in your view have any method for reassessing this bet? i mean, you’re saying they put a big bet down on saudi arabia instead of iran ..
evelyn farkas: he doesn’t understand the value of value ..
he’s actually gamed it out a little bit ..
may have messed with people and thrown them off their game ..
[fox person] keep the political commentary to yourself, or as someone once said, shut up and dribble ..
hardball:
it was just a moment where you put your head down and fight through the tape ..
does that knife cut both ways? you bet it does ..
hardall:
ignatius: americans have wanted so badly for the arab world, the muslim world, to move into modern western space, and sometimes we let those hopes blind us ..
chris m: i don’t know why trump feels he has to exonerate them, give them this space, this new term, space to come up with an alibi ..
these last space quotes are for David Ronfeldt — space, like tribalism, seems to be moving quite rapidly from his circle of special research interests into far wider and no doubt less well defined popular usage..
i’m not sure where the next quotes come from, but they’re of interest, and can be located once MSNBC’s recent programs are all transcribed on the open web:
John Kelly squared off with Jared Kushner and reportedly got into a heated fight — chyron ..
trump praised rep gianforte who body-slammed a reporter — chyron ..
this is one of those rare occasions where fighting works. you can’t win if you don’t play ..
if you do choose to fight once in a while, you might win ..
unless the miracle of all miracles happens, i would acknowledge he’s dead ..
October 19th, 2018 at 4:04 pm
Trump praises Montana congressman who body-slammed reporter
October 20th, 2018 at 2:02 pm
Ari Melber, the Beat 10/19/2018
[mueller] a puppet of the establishment ..
6-8
ted liu: i am glad that saudi arabia has finally realized that when you cut up a human being into pieces, they will in fact be dead ..
with foreign crimesyou always have the gavel, which is what our justice system can do, and the hammer which is the full foreign policy power of the United States ..
i have a really good source who knows the royal family very well, and says of MBS that he’s a jekyll and hyde character ..
hardball:
our president has tried to read from their script and suggest that there were rogue actors who did this ..
they [repubs] are not singing from the same sheet of music as the president ..
and i think it’s a bit of the intelligence community and the law enforcement communitythrowing a punch back at the russian government ..
nance:
trump
and leave the fisticuffs and the rough stuff to the trump people ..
then they want to chop him up because he lost a fist fight ..
[natasha] why bring a bone saw?
the wait and see game ..
will no-one rid me of this meddlesome journalist? ..
[10/18] calling on the sought dis to spend a few more days investigating when this would essentially involve the crown prince investigating himself – ourob
10/19 contd:
a heated, profanity, f-word-laced, shouting match outside the oval office .. [kelly / bolton]
we are not angry with one another ..
All in hayes, not available for verification:
4/6 saudi foreign ministry .. rendition ..
11/12 jack the ripper ..
23 three plays ..
25 to tip the playing field in your favor ..
10/20/2018:
he likes to find enemies, he likes to go on the attack ..
you don’t bring a bone-saw to an interview ..
Nikki Haley:
either prez is capable of laughing at himself (ourob, and a highly positive trait), or ms haley is an acomplished diplomat. ..
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chyron / dq: