Hugh Hewitt gives Donald Trump 25 percent shot at winning nomination
Hugh Hewitt—who (in)famously challenged Donald Trump’s iffy knowledge of world affairs in a headline-grabbing interview with the front-runnerthinks Trump has just a 25 percent chance of winning the GOP nomination.
He gives Trump about the same odds as cash-rich, poll-poor Jeb Bush.
That leaves a 50 percent chance of a who-the-hell-knows winner . . .
But still leaves Trump top-of-the-heap. Not to get technical about it.
Well the Missus and I trundled downtown yesterday to catch the Centastage world premiere of Andrew Clarke’s Academy Fight Song and say, it was swell.
The production highlights the cutthroat world of academic politics, rendered in vivid detail by the play’s four characters – none of whom, we hasten to add, bears the slightest resemblance to our splendid colleagues at the fine institution of higher learning where the hardworking staff moonlights.
From the Centastage website:
GREED. BETRAYAL. LUST.
ACADEMIA.
A college professor in need of job security agrees to a request from his department chair to appear at an academic conference with a former student, a literary phenom who is currently living with the professor’s ex-wife. The appearance goes catastrophically wrong and the promise of security proves to be nothing more than wind.
Craig Mathers is arresting as the sympathetic/pathetic contract professor, and Richard Snee shines as the cold, calculating chair. Tyler Catanella and Tracy Oliverio also deliver smart performances.
Beyond that, the writing is sharp and funny, the staging is inventive, and the production – which runs through September 26 – is entirely worth seeing.
From yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Review section.
The news analysis (by Sabrina Tavernise) in question:
Why Russians Hate America. Again.
MOSCOW — ON a warm August evening, I found myself sitting with three educated young Russians at the Beverly Hills Diner, a chain restaurant whose gaudy décor includes human-size figures of Porky the Pig and Marilyn Monroe.
They had invited me to join their table, inside a green convertible car, after I had asked a few reporter-type questions about their country. But all talk of Russia kept leading to America.
“America is trying to encircle us,” said Kristina Donets, 29, swabbing a slice of dessert waffle in banana compote. “We have finally risen out of chaos and you don’t like that.”
No we don’t. We also don’t like Porky Pig being misrepresented.
In the interest of full disclosure, the dustupping staff should mention that we lost interest in last night’s CNN Republican Presidential Debate around the time Ben Carson spoke about hizzzzzz . . .
The Bush-Industrial Complex has finally decided to spend some of its hundred-something millions to kick-start the Frère Apparent’s presidential campaign.
Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, is laying down $24 million for an ad buy that begins Tuesday in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to a source familiar with buy.
The major purchase comes as the political arm of the outside group Club for Growth announced ads taking on Donald Trump’s record on fiscal issues. The ads could shift the dynamics in a race where Bush has been sliding as Trump has grown in strength.
“We’re moving beyond the earned media phase into more of an air wave where Bush’s money advantage can now begin to make a difference in the early state contests,” said Republican Strategist Kevin Madden.
Earned media? More like burned media. So far in the presidential campaign, Bush has been buffeted from pillar to Post.
But the ad from Right to Rise is supposed to right all that . . .
Well the Missus and I trundled downtown last night to catch A Little Night Music at the Huntington Theatre Company and say, it was . . . damp.
About ten minutes before curtain a cascade of water (from, as it turned out, a broken pipe in the mezzanine ladies room) started streaming down the wall directly behind the left orchestra seats where we happened to be sitting, and it continued throughout the first half of Act I.
(It Would Have Been Wonderful if it had stopped Soon, but it didn’t dry up until Later.)
Indeed, even our Perpetual Anticipation couldn’t mask the uneven nature of the Huntington’s production, but we’ll leave it to the professional critics to sort that out.
Suffice it to say, we would have done better to spend A Weekend in the Country.
This op-ed by Michael Saltsman ran in the Weekend Wall Street Journal.
Joe Biden and the $15 Question
Vice President Joe Biden joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at a media event in New York City on Thursday. They were there to celebrate the state’s newly minted $15 hourly minimum wage for fast-food restaurants, which will phase in over the next few years. Mr. Biden, who is weighing a run for the White House, seems to be courting organized labor just in case. Taking the stage, he praised the minimum wage as “smart” and “reasonable.”
Unions might cheer, but Mr. Biden may find less enthusiasm among some left-of-center economists. The $15 minimum wage could be too pricey even for them.
Saltsman, identified in the Journal piece as “research director of the Employment Policies Institute,” proceeded to call the roll of “Obama allies feeling uneasy” about the minimum wage bump.
But here’s what leaves the hardworking staff feeling uneasy: The Employment Policies Institute is one of the many front groups orchestrated by Rick Berman (aka Dr. Evil in this 2007 60 Minutes takedown), the lobbyist lackey of untold corporations that have a vested interest in minimizing the minimum wage.
Well the Missus and I trundled down to the South End last night to catch SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate and say, it was . . . disturbing.
After the death of their patriarch, the estranged members of the Lafayette clan gather at their crumbling Arkansas plantation home to mourn his loss and settle his estate. While sifting through a lifetime of memories and junk, they make a gruesome discovery that forces them to confront their family’s dark past. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Neighbors, An Octoroon) offers his own subversive take on a classic American genre for a bold new look at race and identity.
The cast is terrific, the set is hoarderific, and the ending is, well, horrific.
Go see the production if you want more . . . specifics.
As midlife-crisis songs go, Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues” ranks among the most melodic and existential. Recorded for the album “Aja” in 1977, the song details the bored existence of a ground-down suburbanite and his romantic fantasy of life as a jazz saxophonist.
Written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1976, “Deacon Blues” was released in 1977 on Steely Dan’s album “Aja,” which in the fall reached No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart, where it remained for seven consecutive weeks. The song also was a hit single in early 1978.
For starters, here’s the song itself, with lyrics helpfully provided by Unite against WMG (no idea).
WSJ narrative:
Donald Fagen: Walter and I wrote “Deacon Blues” in Malibu, Calif., when we lived out there. Walter would come over to my place and we’d sit at the piano. I had an idea for a chorus: If a college football team like the University of Alabama could have a grandiose name like the “Crimson Tide,” the nerds and losers should be entitled to a grandiose name as well.
Walter Becker: Donald had a house that sat on top of a sand dune with a small room with a piano. From the window, you could see the Pacific in between the other houses. “Crimson Tide” didn’t mean anything to us except the exaggerated grandiosity that’s bestowed on winners. “Deacon Blues” was the equivalent for the loser in our song.
And whence the name “Deacon Blues”? According to conventional wisdom (and Unite against WMG, misspellings and all), it’s this:
Actually, not so much.
Mr. Fagen: When Walter came over, we started on the music, then started filling in more lyrics to fit the story. At that time, there had been a lineman with the Los Angeles Rams and the San Diego Chargers, Deacon Jones. We weren’t serious football fans, but Deacon Jones’s name was in the news a lot in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and we liked how it sounded. It also had two syllables, which was convenient, like “Crimson.” The name had nothing to do with Wake Forest’s Demon Deacons or any other team with a losing record. The only Deacon I was familiar with in football at the time was Deacon Jones.
“I like his viewpoint on a lot of issues,” declared Flutie on the Talk of Fame radio program. “I really do.”
“I think he’d be scary as a president,” continued Flutie. “When it comes to political office, you want someone that is able to be a little diplomatic. I think in certain areas he’d do extremely well. In other areas, he’d scare the living daylights out of all of us.”
Extra point: “The USFL notoriously went bust in 1985. ESPN has written, ‘it was Trump’s strategy for the league that is widely considered to have led to its demise.'”
Campaign Outsider 