Van Jones, you say? Have you gone stark raving mad, neo?
Please watch. The back-and-forth here is with the excellent Scott Jennings on CNN:
Can we take a moment to applaud and appreciate @ScottJenningsKY and his appearances on CNN! Enjoy this clip of Scott just destroying Van Jones to the point he asks to leave…TWICE. Can’t believe CNN didn’t stop bringing you on Months ago ? pic.twitter.com/yL13xjX3oe
“…we’re just sitting here with the dunce cap on. This time last week we thought we were the smartest people in the world, we thought Donald Trump was an idiot, we thought his campaign made no sense. And it turned out they were smarter than us. And we don’t have anything to say. I can sit here and pretend I know something. Here’s what I know: everybody I know is miserable. Everybody’s on these Zoom calls. Nobody’s got any good ideas and it’s gonna take us a while to figure this out.”
Take your time, Democrats. Take your time.
But bravo, Van Jones, for honesty and humor. And bravo Scott Jennings, who’s got just the right touch.
The new Senate Majority Leader is John Thune of South Dakota. The conservative wing of the party is very upset. I consider myself a conservative, and I’m not upset at all. Please bear with me while I explain.
Republicans have a majority in the new Senate, which is great. But it’s not a huge majority, which is typical of GOP Senate majorities of the last eighty years or so. And – as is also typical – that majority contains quite a few members who are not conservative, and some who are really not conservative such as Collins and Murkowski. And although Alaska certainly could and might someday elect a more conservative senator than Murkowski, for the moment she’s a senator. Collins, on the other hand, is different. Once she retires I doubt she’ll be replaced by a Republican at all. They’re not the only ones, either, although they may be the most visible and extreme. And the election of Thune isn’t some sort of secret betrayal; it’s a logical outcome of the makeup of the current Senate.
Thune is kind of middle-of-the-road as current GOP senators go. But he’s someone who’s been around long enough to know who’s who and how to pressure them, and he’s been the GOP whip since 2019.
A Senate Leader needs to be willing to push for the president’s agenda. But how is that accomplished, and what are the impediments to success? One of the most important requirements for the job – and one a lot of people ignore when they only look at where the leader falls on the political spectrum – is how well the person knows his or her fellow GOP members of the Senate.
I’m going to post a discussion of this issue by four savvy guys who’ve worked in politics for many years, are conservative, and also very knowledgeable IMHO. The podcast they have is called Ruthless, and I highly recommend it (they’re funny and entertaining, too). I discovered Ruthless during this election cycle, and they provided the best coverage of anyone I’ve seen.
Here is what they said on this issue before Thune was elected. I’ve cued it up just for that part, which is a bit less than seven minutes. I consider it an extremely insightful discussion on the question of who to elect as Majority Leader and why, and I strongly urge you to listen to it. If you have time I think you might enjoy the whole thing, but if not, then these seven minutes are well worth it (and if you speed it up it goes even more quickly):
So that’s why I look at Thune’s election quite calmly. He might just have been the best one for this particular job.
(1) The FEMA plot thickens. The woman who was fired for discriminating against homes with Trump signs in FEMA relief efforts says she’s the fall guy for a more comprehensive policy. The gist of her claim is this:
"I'm Innocent!" Marn’i Washington, the former FEMA supervisor fired after accusations of directing staff to skip Trump-supporting hurricane-ravaged homes, breaks her silence in a bombshell first interview. Washington claims FEMA “threw her under the bus” to appease Trump, fearing… pic.twitter.com/6CZznEZD1t
However, this doesn’t make total sense, since the text on which the accusations against her were based specifically said to avoid homes with Trump signs.
(2) Word is that Marco Rubio will be Secretary of State. That would mean that DeSantis would get to name his replacement in the Senate, and there would be a special election in 2026 for that person’s successor. The person appointed could be in the running in 2026, as well.
(3) Kristi Noem is Trump’s pick for head of Homeland Security.
Former acting ICE Director Tom Homan is “honored” to be tapped as the “border czar” for the incoming second Trump administration, and he’s prepared to do what it takes to get the crisis under control.
“I’ve been on this network for years complaining about what this administration did to this border. I’ve been yelling and screaming about it and what they need to do to fix it. So when the president asked me, ‘Would you come back and fix it?’ Of course. I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t. I’m honored the president asked me to come back and help solve this national security crisis, so I’m looking forward to it,” he told “Fox & Friends” Monday in his first interview since being tapped for the role.
“I think the calling is clear,” he continued, “I’ve got to go back and help because every morning… I’m pissed off with what this [Biden] administration did to the most secure border in my lifetime, so I’m going to go back and do what I can to fix it.”
(5) A bigger cast of characters:
(6) Casey of Pennsylvania still hasn’t conceded his Senate race.
The new leader of the UK Conservatives started her speech by demanding that the Labour Prime Minister & his Secretary apologize to Trump for calling him a "profound threat to the international order."
Statuesque Alvin Ailey dancer Judith Jamison has died at the age of 81. She was a towering figure in the dance world – pun intended, because she was very tall – and there are plenty of tributes. This is mine.
I first saw Jamison perform relatively early in her career, when I was in college some time in the late 1960s. I’d never even heard of the Alvin Ailey company, much less Jamison. But she was instantly noticeable and memorable because she was so unique. She didn’t have a conventional dancer’s body; she was taller and not especially turned-out, with extremely long arms and legs and a slightly thicker (but just slightly thicker) torso. But that wasn’t really it, although her height helped. The reason she was memorable was her stage presence, something you can’t define. Between her height and her ability to project that presence, she was a star from the very first moment.
I saw her dance many times. Most memorably, she had a prominent role in Ailey’s signature piece “Revelations.” I may have seen her dance that something like seven times, and then when she retired I saw some of her replacments. They were usually more beautiful, they were often quite tall (although not as tall as Jamison), and they were probably better dancers technically. But none could even begin to compare with her. The moment of Jamison’s running entrance in the “Wade In the Water” sequence, carrying a ruffled white parasol held impossibly high, was one of the most arresting theater experiences I can recall.
Unfortunately – and I mean very unfortunately – I cannot locate a single video of her in the role, which is odd because it certainly wouldn’t have been impossible to record it at the height of her fame in the 1970s. No one else compares, but here is the moment. Strangely enough, it’s the only video I could find of the piece that has the entrance, and it’s rather blurry. Nor, of course, is Jamison the person holding the parasol here. The entrance is at around 0:24. When Jamison did it, the audience used to let out a gasp:
The other moment that stands out in my mind is also in “Revelations,” when Jamison made her entrance in the “Rocka My Soul” (“The Day Is Past and Gone”) finale. The moment she stepped on the stage she established the character – a bossy but lovable lady with whom you didn’t mess. Her height once again gave her that commanding quality, and the large floppy hat completed the picture. Again, there is no footage of Jamison in the role. But here is a short clip of the dance; her entrance is at 23:04, but the person in the role here just doesn’t convey anything like the same authority and humor:
It’s interesting to me that the two moments of Jamison’s I recall best were entrances and not even really dance moves. But take it from me, they were absolutely wonderful and she was magnificent.
Jamison’s signature piece was her solo “Cry.” I never much cared for its choreography, but most people love it and at least it has been filmed. So here’s a little bit of footage of Jamison herself dancing the part; I couldn’t find any record of the whole thing, although it may exist:
I had a version of this on a record long ago, and I often would do my barre to it at home in a little room I had set up for dancing. And by the way, does he look a bit Trumpish to you?:
Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Amanda Calhoun is advising that it may be necessary to cut off your family and friends this holiday. In that way, you can avoid being "triggered" by opposing political views — much like Yale itself. https://t.co/4YiaOZPwNy
I know little about this guy, and in fact hadn’t heard of him till last night, when YouTube decided this video might be something I’d like. Good old YouTube, always making with the helpful suggestions.
I clicked on it and was immediately taken with his accent. Love it! But I kept listening because he was describing the process of political change and especially how it feels, emotionally, to be on the other side of that Rubicon. So I’m posting it here:
The first one was his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who had helped him make this year’s presidential campaign more effective.
Then there’s Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. Personally, I’d rather we leave the UN, but until then, she’s a good choice – although it’s important to make sure that appointments coming from Congress not threaten the GOP’s majorities there. In Stefanik’s case there will be a special election. Her district’s election history can be found here, and from the look of it it seems that beginning in 2016 it became strongly Republican after having been Democrat. Interesting. I hope that holds.
Trump has also announced that he won’t be appointing either Pompeo or Haley to posts in his administration.
Stephen Miller, one of [Trump’s] longest-serving top immigration advisers, [will be] deputy chief of staff for policy in the incoming White House. …
Tom Homan, the former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will become a “border czar” overseeing deportation policy.
This time Trump knows a lot more about DC and about who his friends and enemies are, compared to 2016. He doesn’t know everything, of course. But he’s a great deal more aware of the depth of the swamp.
And then there’s the race to replace McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, which is between Thune, Cornyn, and Scott. There’s a ton of scuttlebutt about it (see this sort of thing, for example). Who knows what’s really going on and more importantly what will be the result, but I think it’s safe to say that at the moment it’s Byzantine. I prefer Scott, but I have a hunch it will be Thune. I’d be happy to be proven wrong about that.
These are happy dilemmas, though, compared to the alternative, an election loss. Then we’d be facing many disastrous prospects, such as the end of the filibuster, and the passage of HR1 and DC statehood and court-packing.
