When Will People Learn

Even when it isn't his money, he doesn't pay.

If it’s not one thing at the Kennedy Center these days, it’s another. Even before Democrats opened an investigation into alleged “cronyism and self-dealing,” the Trump-era leadership was already fending off reports of plummeting ticket sales and internal dysfunction. Now add a fresh headache: Several artists say the center has been stiffing them on their fees.

Representatives for three performers tell THR they’re still waiting on checks months after their shows. Veteran booking agent Wayne Forte — whose roster includes the Tedeschi Trucks Band and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett — says two of his developing acts, Ashes & Arrows and Brazilian guitarist Lari Basilio, played the Millennium Stage back in September and have yet to see a dime. The Kennedy Center staffer who handled their bookings was let go in October, Forte says, and efforts to reach a replacement apparently have gone nowhere.

In Politico

Notable because it's there.

The answer is that Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.

Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.

But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.

Bari's World

I regularly think about how a bunch of older/retired Times guys would assemble into Bari Defense Voltron whenever she was criticized.

CBS News staffers are less than thrilled with the idea of Bari Weiss, the network’s new editor-in-chief, booking herself as the moderator for a televised town hall that will feature Charlie Kirk’s widow.

“How embarrassing,” one network staffer told The Independent. “Bari’s been Editor-in-Chief for five seconds and has revealed that all she really wants is to be on TV herself.”

Seems Bad

 Though I admit I don't quite understand why this crosses the line that just blowing up the boats didn't.

The Job Market

I don’t think everything about The Economy has been good over this time period, and I am not going to argue that The Kids who entered the labor force in this period had it great, but for 10 years, unemployment has been <5% (except for covid).

Economists, like Larry Summers, used to assert 6% was the minimum it could go before out of control inflation would hit. This governed policy choices for decades.

A weak job market, which seems to be likely, will be a "new" problem for some.  Zoomers don't believe millennials when they say they couldn’t get fast food jobs during the Great Recession.

Is It Hillary Clinton

They have arrested a suspect for the "Jan. 6 pipe bomber." Should be interesting!

Morning

Go

Happy Hour

Every day

Who Amongst Us

A reasonable - if not necessarily correct - inference from the House Minority Leader's applause of the pardon of his colleague is that it is a precedent he thinks is desirable to support for many more colleagues.

Your Opposition Party

Jeffries has praised Trump's pardon of Cuellar and said the border is secure thanks to Trump.  

Just today!

About That Safety Thing

I've never seen a Waymo in action, but people who have describe them as being annoying, even if they're working "perfectly," in that they hesitate a bit more than normal drivers.  That's how you keep them driving safely, of course, but it isn't surprising that they have a new idea.

For years while training on the streets of San Francisco and eventually transporting passengers, Waymos were the most polite drivers on the road. Pull up to a stop sign at the same time as a Waymo and it would wait, as if to say, “No, please, after you.” If you were trying to go around another car making a left, a Waymo was sure to let you in. In short, they were drivers you wouldn’t want to get stuck behind while in a hurry.     

The training wheels are off. Like the rule-following nice guy who’s tired of being taken advantage of, Waymos are putting their own needs first. They’re bending traffic laws, getting impatient with pedestrians and embracing the idea that when it comes to city driving, politeness doesn’t pay: It’s every car for itself.

Has It Been 5 Years Already?

 About every 5 years, George Will says something reasonable.

The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.

You don't have to hand it to him, but it is notable. 

Shrinkage

Absent some sort of stock/financial crash or a global pandemic, the real economy is unlikely to implode very quickly, though the inevitable consequences of Trump's policies have taken a little bit longer than I expected. 

The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.

 

With worries intensifying over the domestic jobs picture, ADP indicated the issues were worse than anticipated. The payrolls decline marked a sharp step down from October, which saw an upwardly revised gain of 47,000 positions, and was well below the Dow Jones consensus estimate from economists for an increase of 40,000.

Morning

Wasted Wednesday.

Happy Hour

 Get happy

Sleepy Don

Trump's inability to stay awake isn't actually just normal old guy stuff.  Grandpas might nod off in the la-z-boy, but not in these situations.

...I make typos for lots of reasons, but one that isn't my fault is google putting a hovering "AI" button covering the blogger CMS so I can't see what I am typing.

Exploding Conference

No idea what will happen in this Tennessee special election, but if a Dem upset does happen, will this prediction come true?

“If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged,” one senior House Republican said. A loss would be catastrophic and the conference would “explode,” the Republican added.

Elite On Elite Violence

I had missed Larry Lessig going after Summers/Harvard in the Crimson. Doesn't Lessig understand that Summers is a member of the club?

From 2003 through 2019, Summers had been a central figure in Epstein’s relationship to Harvard. He had attended events hosted by Epstein and planned private meetings. Besides Epstein’s lawyer, and now-professor emeritus, Alan M. Dershowitz, he was by far the most prominent of the Harvard elite at the center of Harvard’s Epstein relationship.

Yet Summers is essentially invisible in the official accounts. A gift to support the work of Summers’s wife was mentioned in a footnote to the 2020 report, though obscurely, since she does not share Summers’s name. And never subsequently has Harvard disclosed anything more about his ongoing relationship with Epstein, which continued, as we’ve now learned through the published Epstein emails, until Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

...and the hits keep coming.

The American Economic Association (AEA) has accepted Lawrence H. Summers' voluntary resignation from membership and, pursuant to the AEA's Policies, Procedures, and Code of Professional Conduct, has imposed a lifetime ban on his membership. In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr. Summers' attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals. The AEA condemns Mr. Summers' conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession. Consistent with longstanding AEA practices and to protect the integrity and confidentiality of AEA processes, the AEA will not comment further on individual matters or the specific considerations underlying this determination.

I'm In Charge

It is amusing that Pete Hegseth thought he could take control of the fucking military, which is, mostly, a giant civilian corporation, and just yell things at it and have it behave. One doesn't have to imagine the DoD - civilian or military bits of it - are "good" in any sense to understand that it existed before Pete and it will exist after him.

Modern "Masculinity"

Hegseth and Trump do epitomize it. Do horrible things you refuse to take responsibility for.

Officials in Congress and the Pentagon said Monday they are increasingly concerned that the Trump administration intends to scapegoat the military officer who directed U.S. forces to kill two survivors of a targeted strike on suspected drug smugglers in Latin America, as lawmakers made initial moves to investigate whether the attack constituted a war crime.

Not that the admiral is innocent.