And now, boys and girls, a story about Missing Links in the Republican Party:
There came a time -- just once, so far -- when the Big Red Republican Bus made room for everyone inside, even the people usually considered too nasty or looney or strange to ride with all the nice people who rode the Big Red Bus for years and years and years.
These new-ish, and very different people, were called the BS-ers, which was short for the Bus-Stoppers and Bus-Toppers. These were nicknames for people who would try to stop the Big Red Bus as it sped down the highway, and try to make the driver at least let them ride up on top, outside, in the open air -- because they wanted to be part of the Big Red Bus Ride so very, very much.
Alex Baer: Robert and the Big Red Bus
Alex Baer: Doomsday Rebate Coupons! Vote Your Fears Free!
(EPONYMOUS NEWSNET NEWS NET, Aug. 26) Republic Party Officials today announced a new national program that would be launched on Inauguration Day, 2017, should Donald J. Trump, the party's current presidential nominee, be elected President of the United States.
"We were looking at this all wrong," according to Republic National Committee Co-Chair, Rinze Endrei, "marketing Trump as a legitimate product. Obviously, the public was not ready to come out of the relative safety of their bunkers, after the primaries, and push the big red 'Go' button on Trump right off," he joked.
What Donald Trump Knew About Undocumented Workers at His Signature Tower
In the summer of 1980, Donald Trump faced a big problem. For six months, undocumented Polish laborers had been clearing the future site of Trump Tower, his signature real estate project on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, where he now lives, maintains his private offices and hosts his presidential campaign.
The men were putting in 12-hour shifts with inadequate safety equipment at subpar wages that their contractor paid sporadically, if at all. A lawyer for many of the Poles demanded that the workers be paid or else he would serve Trump with a lien on the property. One Polish worker even went to Trump’s office to ask him for money in person, according to sworn testimony and a deposition filed under oath in a court case.
Alex Baer: Wherefore Thy Sting, Sweet November?
Those firm rubber mallets come closest, so far -- the ones over there, with the wooden handles and the black, hard rubber heads. The bamboo cutting boards aren't bad, but they're brittle and splinter too easily under heavy loads.
Pounds per square inch of pressure, deflection energies, angles of attack -- all these have to be taken into consideration, and a lot more.
See, like many Americans, and an increasing number of observers eyeing our system from other countries, I'm looking for something -- anything -- to make the political pain in my head stop. However, I would like to leave something like a smoldering tree stump inside my shirt collar, where my old head used to be -- you know, something that might yet grow back in the transformative Spring, after the numbing kindness of Fall, after the hibernation and healing of Winter. It has been a simmering, killing cruelty, this inflamed, and inflammatory, Summer political season.
EpiPen maker offers patients $300 savings cards
Mylan N.V., makers of the anti-allergic reaction EpiPen, announced programs Thursday to lower the device's cost after U.S. senators expressed outrage at the price increase.
The single-use auto-injection pens, used as dispensers of the medicine epinephrine in emergencies resulting from food allergies, were created by Merck Group in the 1970s, and were acquired by Mylan in 2007. A price increase, from $57 per pen in 2007 to about $500 per pen today, drew the anger, earlier this week, of four U.S. senators who asked Mylan for an explanation.
Alex Baer: Pray for Change - R'amen!
This space is usually filled, I know, with a torrent of disgust and effluvia based on the disgusting torrent of effluvia erupting daily in the U.S. and in the world at large.
However, today we will focus on something less than our usual 12-million-calorie bounty of an engorged, buffet-table cornucopia with strap-on bib. We will instead take a light meal, and a little water. And an electric hot pot, or some Sterno. (Think Ramen. More on that in a sec.)
Alex Baer: Home of the Knave, Brand of the Tweet
It's taken us all longer that it should have to arrive at the obvious: Trump was never running, Trump never wanted the job, and we've all been conned in a fashion no one ever thought possible.
It would be like learning the whole point of NASA's moon missions was to test out if the place really was made of cheese, and, if so, to keep it from the Russians, at least until we had global dairy prices locked down.
The (likely) real story behind Colin Powell’s email advice to Hillary Clinton
What was almost certainly in the email Powell sent Clinton was the story of his successful efforts to drag the State Department into the modern age. I worked for State during that period of time, and watched it happen.
When the rest of the world was working on PCs and using then-modern software in their offices, State clung to an old, clunky mainframe system made by the now-defunct company WANG. WANG's version of a word processor was only a basic text editor with no font or formatting tools. Spell check was an option many locations did not have installed. IBM had bid on a contract to move State to PCs in 1990, but was rejected in favor of a renewal of the WANG mainframes.
New bio 'Trump Revealed' offers troubling portrait
For Donald Trump, real estate magnate, casino mogul and reality TV star, it's clear there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Even so, it's hard to imagine he will embrace Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power (Scribner, 347 pp., ***½ out of four stars), The Washington Post's dive into the Republican presidential nominee's life and business record.
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