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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

Lighten up, Francis.

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

What fresh hell is this?

Han shot first.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Verified, but limited!

I personally stopped the public option…

No one could have predicted…

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

This blog will pay for itself.

Also, too.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

We Survived Breitbartpocalypse!

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Wetsuit optional.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

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Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know…

by WaterGirl|  December 9, 20196:01 pm| 65 Comments

This post is in: Dear WaterGirl

Dear WaterGirl,

I just travelled around the world in my hot air balloon, and now that I am back, I’m wondering if you guys made any changes to the new site while I was gone.

Dear Wow, That’s Amazing!

And here I thought we had accomplished a lot this week!  Let’s see… We switched from the lovely blue-green-gray background on block quotes to a possibly-more lovely blue outline with a shadow.  People seem to like that a lot; hopefully you will, too.

We increased the size of the space you get when you press RETURN, so we think people won’t feel the need to press RETURN twice between their paragraphs.  That should go a long way toward decreasing extra white space we’ve been seeing.

We also made a change to the comment numbers; they are a bit smaller and should size better on all devices.  (Bye-bye tiny little numbers on phones!)  Oh, and we changed the pie filter font that you see when you select quotes instead of images.

Dear WaterGirl,

What about the loyal On the Road people?  What have you done for us lately??  Writing not just for myself, you understand, but for all of us.

Dear On the Road Peeps,

Well, let’s see.  We moved On the Road from Featuring in the sidebar to the category bar at the top.  We hope that was a nice surprise! But we took away something, too; we hope you won’t mind.  You won’t see duplicate images anymore when the most recent post on Balloon Juice happens to be an On the Road post.  Going forward, you’ll just have to be satisfied with a single copy of all those gorgeous images.

Dear WaterGirl,

Have there been any changes that would specifically affect front pagers?  We love change!

Dear Front Pagers,

At long last, we added a plugin for filtering Categories and Snark to the Classic Editor, so those of you who don’t typically use the Block Editor won’t have to go to the Dark Side for ease of adding categories and snark to posts.

Dear WaterGirl,

Are there any little things we might want to know, that we may not know already?

Dear Inquiring Minds…

Yes!  That’s an excellent question!

Did you know you can make the comment box longer, so you can see your entire comment, even if it’s long?  Just drag the little thingie (technical term) that’s at the bottom of the comment box until it’s the size you want.  The little thingie is to the right of the little P that people ask about, and it works in the Reply box as well as in the comment box at the bottom.

Speaking of the little P, what does it do?  P stands for Paragraph, so it’s saying you are in Paragraph mode.  If you put your cursor inside a blockquote, it will say P and Blockquote.  If something is in color, it will say P and Span (which indicates color).

Speaking of white space… the block quote feature automatically adds space around the outline of the quote, so now if you add an extra line manually, either above the quote or after it, you get a boatload of extra white space.

The RSS feed now includes the name of the BJ author, but that won’t show up in your old feed; in order to see it, you have to subscribe again.

Sometimes we refer to a location for something on the site as if that location is true for everybody.  (I am definitely guilty of this!)  For instance, the Pet Calendar Info is located at top right on the site, but only for computers and for tablets that are in landscape mode.  Tablets in portrait mode, and phones, will show that under the hamburger. (aka the 3 lines located top right on a phone)  The same is true when we talk about the sidebar – that’s only true on computers and tablets in landscape – on a phone, or a tablet in portrait mode, that’s all located after the comment window at the bottom.

THAT’S ALL THE LETTERS FOR TODAY.  I’LL CONTINUE TO DO THIS FOR A BIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS UP TO SPEED.

 

Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know…Post + Comments (65)

57 Million Down the Toilet

by 15 flush mistermix|  December 9, 20195:01 pm| 89 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Bloomberg’s campaign spent $57 million on advertising in his first week in the campaign. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen a single Bloomberg ad.

I probably don’t need to tell a politically sophisticated audience how stupid this is, but I’ll just hit the high points. First, he’s running in a primary, and the early primaries especially are won on organization and field work, not ads. Second, we’re in an environment where free media and social media sharing is just as important – if not more important – than paid ads. That kind of organic media has more credibility with the sophisticated primary voter audience it’s trying to reach.

Here’s an open thread.

57 Million Down the ToiletPost + Comments (89)

The DOJ Inspector General’s Report on the Origin of the DOJ’s & FBI’s Investigation of the President’s 2016 Campaign Has Been Released

by Adam L Silverman|  December 9, 20191:46 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security

Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, has released his long awaited report into the origins of the DOJ’s and FBI’s investigation into the President’s 2016 campaign. The report can be found here and I’m uploading it below.

DOJ_IG_Investigation_DEC_2019

The bottom line up front: the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the four related investigations, including those into Carter Page and George Papadapolous, were properly predicated and there was no political bias. So no bias and no corruption. No coup, no deep state conspiracy. Nothing, nada, bupkis.

Here’s the key findings from the Executive Summary (emphasis mine):

In Full Investigations such as Crossfire Hurricane, all lawful investigative methods are allowed. In Preliminary Investigations, all lawful investigative methods (including the use of CHSs and UCEs) are permitted except for mail opening, physical searches requiring a search warrant, electronic surveillance requiring a judicial order or warrant (Title III wiretap or a FISA order), or requests under Title VII of FISA. An investigation opened as a Preliminary Investigation may be converted subsequently to a Full Investigation if information becomes available that meets the predication standard. As we describe in the report, all of the investigative actions taken by the Crossfire Hurricane team, from the date the case was opened on July 31 until October 21 (the date of the first FISA order) would have been permitted whether the case was opened as a Preliminary or Full Investigation.

The AG Guidelines and the DIOG do not provide heightened predication standards for sensitive matters, or allegations potentially impacting constitutionally protected activity, such as First Amendment rights. Rather, the approval and notification requirements contained in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG are, in part, intended to provide the means by which such concerns can be considered by senior officials. However, we were concerned to find that neither the AG Guidelines nor the DIOG contain a provision requiring Department consultation before opening an investigation such as the one here involving the alleged conduct of individuals associated with a major party presidential campaign.

Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a Full Investigation and all of the senior FBI officials who participated in discussions about whether to open acase told us the information warranted opening it. For example, then Counterintelligence Division (CD) Assistant Director (AD) E.W. “Bill” Priestap, who approved the case opening, told us that the combination of the FFG information and the FBI’s ongoing cyber intrusion investigation of the July 2016 hacks of the Democratic Nat ional Committee’s (DNC) emails, created a count erintelligence concern that the FBI was “obligated” to investigate. Priestap stated that he considered whether the FBI should conduct defensive briefings for the Trump campaign but ultimately decided that providing such briefings created the risk that “if someone on the campaign was engaged with the Russians, he/she would very likely changehis/her tactics and/or otherwise seek to cover-up his/her activities, thereby preventing us from finding the truth.” We did not identify any Department or FBI policy that applied to this decision and therefore determined that the decision was a judgment call that Department and FBI policy leaves to the discretion of FBI officials. We also concluded that, under the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, the FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime, even though the investigation also had the potential to impact constitutionally protected activity.

Additionally, given the low threshold for predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the FFG information, provided by agovernment the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation.This information provided the FBI with an articulable factual basis that, if true, reasonably indicated activity constituting either a federal crime or a threat to national security, or both, may have occurred or may be occurring. For similar reasons, as we detail in Chapter Three, we concluded that the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open the individual investigations on Papadopoulos, Page, Flynn, and Manafort in August 2016 was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the Department and the FBI.

As part of our review, we also sought to determine whether there was evidence that political bias or other improper considerations affected decision making in Crossfire Hurricane,including the decision to open the investigation. We discussed the issue of political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we described text and instant messages between then Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases. We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD Priestap, Strzok’s supervisor, was the official who ultimately made the decision to open the investigation, and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap was reached by consensus after multiple days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel. We concluded that Priestap’s exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire “Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations.

IG Horowitz did, as is the case in almost every IG investigation, found some low level wrongdoing and other minor errors. There are always decisions made or actions taken that, in hindsight, should have been made differently or not taken at all. Had IG Horowitz found nothing at all, then things would have looked as hinky as if he’d found the whole thing to be unpredicated and biased.

Attorney General Barr, however, is not happy with these conclusions. And he is once again, as he did with the Mueller Report, trying to place both hands on the scale to justify his ideologically driven priors.

Barr again in statement defending Trump: “It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.”

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) December 9, 2019

Given that AG Barr isn’t going to let this go, because it interferes in his career long mission to establish the presidency as an unelected king who is free from all constitutional and statutory constraints, despite Inspector General Horowitz’s findings, AG Barr and his surrogates, as well as the President and his, will continue to try to undermine the findings, as well as the actual reasons for the investigation into the President’s 2016 campaign. It is important to remember that during AG Barr’s first appointment as the Attorney General he created a factually dubious predicate that was used to create the inquiry that would eventually become the Whitewater investigation into the Clintons. This was done while then Governor Clinton was running for president against President Bush (41), who was Barr’s boss and shortly after he advised President Bush (41) to pardon all of the Iran-Contra conspirators, which would make it impossible to actually ascertain how much or how little President Bush (41) was involved in that criminal conspiracy to subvert American foreign and national security policy. Barr is an old hand at fixing investigations as attorney general. Either to make them go away or to create them. And both for political benefit. Despite IG Horowitz’s findings, this is not over. And it is not over because Attorney General Barr doesn’t want it to be over. And he will only want it to be over when he is able to arrange the conclusions in line with his preferences.

Open thread!

The DOJ Inspector General’s Report on the Origin of the DOJ’s & FBI’s Investigation of the President’s 2016 Campaign Has Been ReleasedPost + Comments (170)

Health insurance buys health

by David Anderson|  December 9, 201911:06 am| 6 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

At NBER, there is a working paper with very strong results that shows health insurance buys health.  

 

In the winter of 2017, the IRS engaged in a massive randomized control experiment.  4.5 million people had to pay the individual mandate.  The IRS randomly selected 3.9 million people to send letters to remind people to enroll.  The researchers found two major things:

 

Beginning with the effect on coverage, we and that among individuals who were uninsured for some portion of the prior year, those in the treatment group were 1.3 percentage points more likely to enroll in coverage in the year following the intervention than those in the control group, a 2.8% relative increase. On average, each letter increased coverage among this group by 0.14 months during 2017, or one additional year of coverage per 87 letters sent. We document larger effects among individuals who lacked any coverage during the prior year and among older nonelderly adults. The effect appears to operate through new enrollments in the individual marketplace as well as through Medicaid take-up. Although there is some attenuation, coverage rates remains higher in the treatment group than in the control group in the two years following the intervention.

finding #1. The letters were a cheap and effective outreach effort. 87 letters to generate one enrollment is inexpensive. There is also enrollment inertia as once people sign up once, they are more likely to sign up and maintain coverage in the future. Coverage could be in either the individual market or Medicaid.

 

The more important finding is that health insurance buys health as well as financial insurance:

 

We present evidence that it did. In the two years following the intervention, the rate of mortality among previously uninsured 45-64 year-olds was lower in the treatment group than in the control by approximately 0.06 percentage points, or one fewer death for every 1,648 individuals in this population who were sent a letter…

 

Exploiting treatment group assignment as an instrument for coverage, we estimate that the average per-month effect of the coverage induced by the intervention on two-year mortality was approximately -0.17 percentage points… With these caveats, our results provide the first experimental evidence that health insurance reduces mortality

That is an incredibly important finding. In some ways it is intuitive. Being able to pay for health care leads to better health. But there has been no good randomized control work to show that is the case. And there has been a cottage industry arguing that the public paying for health care is buying no health. This won’t stop that argument but it renders it incoherent.

Health insurance buys healthPost + Comments (6)

Monday Impeachment Hearings

by 15 flush mistermix|  December 9, 20199:02 am| 151 Comments

This post is in: Impeachment Hearings

Monday Impeachment HearingsPost + Comments (151)

Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ Greetings

by Anne Laurie|  December 9, 20195:22 am| 126 Comments

This post is in: Election Year, Immigration, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, The Brown Enemy Within, All Too Normal, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

I chatted today with the pastor of a Claremont church which erected a nativity scene depicting Jesus, Mary and Joseph as refugees separated in cages https://t.co/MGl82HTZ3n

— James Queally (@JamesQueallyLAT) December 9, 2019

… Ristine, who has served as the church’s lead pastor only since July, said the church often uses its Nativity scene to tackle a societal issue. Southern California’s homelessness crisis has been invoked in past depictions, she said. A more traditional Nativity scene, showing the Holy Family reunited, can be found inside the church, which serves a congregation of about 300 people, Ristine said.

“We don’t see it as political; we see it as theological. I’m getting responses from people I don’t know … I am having people tell me that it moved them to tears,” she said. “So if the Holy Family and the imagery of the Holy Family and the imagery of a Nativity is something you hold dear, and you see them separated, then that’s going to spark compassion in many people.”…

Rep Cicilline "all of the potential articles of impeachment are on the table." pic.twitter.com/t3E0PJ2M7J

— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) December 8, 2019


Dug out my copy of The Friends of Richard Nixon, written by former Assistant U.S. Attorney George V. Higgins, and found this in the introduction:

… Thinking ahead, in criminal business, is of surpassing importance, even more so than in legitimate commerce and in politics, where it certainly does no harm. The professional outlaw seldom loses sight of the possibility that he, or someone working for him, may make a mistake, or suffer some bad luck, or succumb to overconfidence and get hooked for something big because he bungled something small. He is on guard from the instant he begins to make his operational plans (he does not cause his conferences to be tape-recorded, and he invites to those discussions only those with a pressing need to know, and he does not confide this agenda to the uninvited). If something goes wrong, and the cops come, he is not reduced to frantic, random foraging in the early morning hours, for a willing though sleepy attorney, and a bail bondsman. Nor does he negligently permit his operatives to carry his phone number in their belongings, helpfully annotated to show that, yes, it is his number. The practical crook is a man of provident humility, who sees to it, in advance, that investigation will be arduous, protracted, dispiritingly unproductive, and, in the long run, unsuccessful. By that foresight in frustrating the orderly procedures of American criminal justice (by leaving nothing to chance, and very little to be found), he exonerates himself from the alternative, more difficult, and vastly more dangerous obligation to obstruct the processes of American criminal justice. There is no substitute for knowing what you’re doing…

It looks to be Rudy Giuliani’s week for going under the Trump bus. Mr. Giuliani, during his long career flirting with the romance of Big Crime, might’ve done himself better if his reading (okay, viewing) had included more narratives from the side of the prosecution, IMO.

And finally, a happy dream to start the week…

AP Interview: Elizabeth Warren says she believes Americans are ready for a presidential ticket with two women at the top, rejecting concerns from some Democrats that a woman can't beat President Trump. https://t.co/8wHcarzJTj

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 8, 2019

My dream ticket. pic.twitter.com/Jz4dtJIbQF

— Khashoggi’s Ghost (@UROCKlive1) December 9, 2019

Monday Morning Open Thread: Seasons’ GreetingsPost + Comments (126)

On The Road – Wag – The Wilson Group, Part 1

by Alain|  December 9, 20195:00 am| 28 Comments

This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging

Good Morning, everyone!

 

I’m so happy to share this contribution this morning, though I’m biased by a deep love of Colorado.  Should any have the chance, the drive from Durango to Telluride via Delores, etc. is just amazing, especially if you’re a trout fisher or amateur/professional geologist.

 

 

Over our anniversary, my wife and I went on our annual climbing trip, climbing another three 14,000 foot tall peaks over three days. This year we were in the San Juan Range outside of Telluride, climbing Wilson Peak, Mount Wilson, and El Diente. The Wilson group is a collection of some of the tougher peaks in Colorado. All in all, a great adventure.

This first post will concentrate on our climb of Wilson Peak. WP is a classic triangular peak, and probably very familiar to most of you. From Telluride ski area it is the peak that forms the western skyline. It is also the peak featured in caricature on the label of Coors Light beer.

 

Both Wilson Peak and Mt Wilson were named for AJ Wilson, the chief cartographer for the Hayden Survey. I’m not sure what AJ did to rate having two 14er’s located within a mile of each other named after him, but it was an honor to climb the peaks.

Visually, the Wilson group is overwhelming. The peaks are rugged and the climbing position is spectacular. I have decided to break our trip into a couple of posts in order to share more photos of my home state.

On to the first climb!

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 6
Silver Pick BasinAugust 29, 2019

For our first climb, we climbed Wilson Peak.  We camped at the trailhead, and we were to only people in the parking lot.  We got up at an ungodly hour to eat breakfast and begin the climb.  By 4:45 we were on the trail, hiking by headlamp through the forest for a couple of mile.  As we broke out of the trees at about 11,200 feet, we were greeted by a spectacular sunrise.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 5
Rock of Ages saddleAugust 29, 2019

We climbed through the Silver Pick Basin, past several Ould mines, and worked our way up to Rock of Ages saddle, near the RoA mine.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 4
Wilson Peak-Southwest RidgeAugust 29, 2019

From the RoA saddle, our route headed up the southwest ridge, aiming for the false summit above.  I felt like we were Frodo and Samwise climbing into Mordor, hiking across steep, sometimes loose rock.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 3
Wilson Peak- SummitAugust 29, 2019

Views from the summit were amazing.  This view looks to the east.  The prominent peak that is just to the right of the middle of the photo the Lizard Head Peak, one of the most dangerous climbs in Colorado.  The risk of rockfall climbing that peak is very high.  I was glad to have the solid rock of the Wilson Group for our climbs on this trip.  Maybe someday I’ll get up the nerve to climb Lizard Head, but not this trip.  Beyond Lizard Head are the four Chicago Basin 14er’s, a trip for next summer.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 2
Wilson Peak- SummitAugust 29, 2019

Another view, looking north from the summit.  On the right side you can see the ski slopes of Telluride.  On the skyline is another set of 14er’s, including Umcompahgre and Wetterhorn.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1 1
Descending Wilson PeakAugust 29, 2019

After lunch at the summit, we still had to descend the peak.  Our route took us over the false summit, visible on the right side of the phono, and then down the long ridge the low point on the left of the photo.

On The Road - Wag - The Wilson Group, Part 1
Silver Pick BasinAugust 29, 2019

Columbines in the basin.  We missed seeing them in the dark on our way up.

 

I will submit Part 2 soon.

On The Road – Wag – The Wilson Group, Part 1Post + Comments (28)

Greetings From the Middle of Nowhere, Virginia

by John Cole|  December 8, 201910:05 pm| 168 Comments

This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"

So this morning I popped up, drove from Charlotte to Charleston, SC, and got my car and my parents care unloaded and the folks settled in. They went off to a bar to watch the Steelers game, and I hopped back in the family truckster and headed north so I only have half the drive to do tomorrow.

I know it takes a lot of balls for someone from WV to say they are in the middle of nowhere, but right now I am in the middle of fucking nowhere and the only dining option was a Snickers bar in the vending machine or a waffle house. I have never been to a Waffle House, so I went. I got the chili with extra raw onions because I hate myself, and an omelet and some hash browns. It was precisely what I expected- hot and greasy and salty, I am full, and I will probably have the shits tomorrow.

In other news, we are slowly getting some ads installed and in the right places. Bear with us. This god damned blog will pay for itself.

Greetings From the Middle of Nowhere, VirginiaPost + Comments (168)

R.I.P. (Rove in Perpetuity), D.C. Fontana

by Anne Laurie|  December 8, 20197:10 pm| 55 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, Popular Culture

“She was a very, very tough lady,” Mr. Skotak said. “She carried a phaser with her right up to the end.” https://t.co/jH3MxZQyHi

— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) December 4, 2019

I’ve always thought of Fontana as the Mother of All Trekkies — she showed us it was possible. Yes, of course, that women could succeed at writing ‘action shows’ for television (which was no small thing). But also that women — we — could play with the two-dimensional sci-fi Wagon-Train-to-the-Stars characters (mysterious dark alien, stalwart trickster captain, hard-bitten hard-drinking medical man) and make something worth sharing. She certainly wasn’t the first to turn fanfic into a living (I can’t be the only one who wanted, back in the day, to see Nimoy and Shatner do a turn as Sherlock and Watson) but she gave a STEM-curious generation the key to a particular door…

D.C. Fontana, who helped craft the lore of the 1960s television series “Star Trek” and developed one of its signature characters, Spock, as the show’s first female writer, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Burbank, Calif. She was 80.

Her husband and only immediate survivor, Dennis Skotak, said the cause was cancer.

Ms. Fontana was part of the “Star Trek” universe from its early days, working alongside the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, as a story editor and writer…

In a 2013 interview with StarTrek.com, the franchise’s official website, Ms. Fontana said she thought her greatest contribution to the franchise had been “primarily the development of Spock as a character and Vulcan as a history/background/culture from which he sprang.”

She fleshed out the character’s back story as the child of a human mother and a Vulcan father while she was a story editor and associate producer for “Star Trek: The Animated Series” in the 1970s. She later wrote, with Mr. Roddenberry, the pilot that launched “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in 1987.

Dorothy Catherine Fontana was born on March 25, 1939, in Sussex, N.J. She was raised by a single mother in Totowa, N.J., and dreamed of becoming a novelist, she said in an interview with the Writers Guild Foundation in 2014.

After high school, she studied to become a secretary at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. She told the foundation that she had thought that clerical work would be a good day job for an aspiring novelist, but that her goals had changed when she became a secretary at Columbia Pictures’ television arm, which was based in New York.

When her boss died of a heart attack, leaving her jobless after just two months, she decided to move to California, in December 1959, to see if she could break into television writing. She achieved early success selling scripts to western series, which were popular in the early 1960s, including “The Tall Man,” “Shotgun Slade” and “Frontier Circus.” …

Ms. Fontana wrote for all three seasons of the original series. She later wrote for other science fiction shows, including “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “Babylon 5,” as well as influential series outside that genre like “Bonanza,” “Dallas” and “The Waltons.” …

Speaking to StarTrek.com in 2013, Ms. Fontana reflected on what it was like to be a female writer in Hollywood in the 1960s. While working on “Star Trek,” she said, she did not realize that she had gone where no woman had gone before.

“At the time, I wasn’t especially aware there were so few female writers doing action adventure scripts,” she said. “There were plenty doing soaps, comedies, or on variety shows. By choosing to do action adventure, I was in an elite, very talented and very different group of women writers.”

From the blog The Objective Standard:

… [W]hat truly set Fontana apart was the artistic integrity of her own work. Consider, for example, “This Side of Paradise,” which tells the story of the “logical” Mr. Spock discovering emotions, falling in love, and being tempted to abandon his lifelong mission of discovery in order to remain in a seeming paradise forever. With its elegant dialogue and sympathetic tone, the episode evokes the viewer’s emotions but takes a firm stand against utopian fantasies and in favor of embracing the more rewarding challenges of real life. Reducing such a complex plot, profound ideas, and compelling character developments to a single hour-long episode was a remarkable achievement.

It was par for the course for Fontana, however, who earned a reputation for hard work and intense focus. “The first draft [a producer] gets is really my third or fourth draft, because I’m always refining,” she said. Conscious of the practical limitations of producing a series within money and time constraints, she was nevertheless committed to her artistic vision. “I just work at it so hard that I feel, this is what I want to say.”…

Asked once how she would like to be remembered, her answer was simple—and characteristically straightforward. “I would like to be remembered most just for being a damn good writer.”

R.I.P. (Rove in Perpetuity), D.C. FontanaPost + Comments (55)

Bad Faith Open Thread: … “But the CHILDRUN!!!”…

by Anne Laurie|  December 8, 20194:49 pm| 124 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality

Alternate headline: Conservatives launch war on Christmas. https://t.co/WcukOmB6kn

— Donald G. Carder (@theangrymick) December 6, 2019


The first resort of the modern American “patriot”…

Grant only made Christmas a federal holiday as an overture to Southern Baptists. And this is how they pay it back. https://t.co/2rCF1G421u

— Malarksist Revolutionary (@agraybee) December 8, 2019


Per the Washington Post, “‘I feel so bad for the children’: N.C. towns cancel Christmas parades after demands to remove Confederate groups”:

… In a Wednesday night video message, Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones announced that the town’s downtown board of directors voted to cancel the Dec. 14 Christmas parade out of concern that “outside agitators” would show up to protest or defend the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who planned to march in the event.

The decision in Wake Forest, located less than 20 miles outside Raleigh, comes almost a week after another nearby town, Garner, N.C., announced it was canceling its Christmas parade over possible protests of a float sponsored by a local Confederate group, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

By the end of her video announcement, Jones was fighting tears…

Wake Forest Police Chief Jeff Leonard said in a statement that one group had notified the town of its plans to protest, but that the police department was worried that more agitators would “show up, wreak havoc then leave.” The town had received “credible information” about a “growing number of outside groups” planning to attend to either defend or oppose the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, according to a statement. The town had not received any threats, officials clarified, but Leonard and Jones said they still believed safety could be put at risk.

“We aren’t happy telling kids they can’t attend or participate in this year’s parade, but it’s better than trying to explain to a parent whose child was injured why we chose to proceed despite so many warning signs,” Leonard said. “No matter what side of this issue you are on, our focus is public safety and at this point, the risk of moving forward with the parade simply outweighs any possible reward.”…

Blaming the ‘outside agitators’ — another proud Suthrun tradition, of course.

Fun-fact: the actual All-American Christmas tradition of the Puritans was to spend the day working and then return home to houses with no Christmas tree.

Christmas trees are a European tradition we didn’t import until the mid-1800s. https://t.co/aydUt4EBSK

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) December 5, 2019


Our proud Puritan forebears actually banned the celebration of Christmas — it was considered ‘pagan’, i.e., Papist (Catholic). Christmas trees became an aspirational holiday accessory when hordes of desperate German refugees started producing tchotchkes cheaply enough for the American middle class to imitate Queen Victoria’s annual tribute to her German husband. (Which, of course, didn’t stop those good, patriotic Heartland Americans from vilifying the Germans as filthy disease-carrying criminals who couldn’t be bothered to learn English or teach their hordes of subnormal offspring decent behavior.)

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Americans during the period around the Civil War were desperate for “unifying” Kinder, Küche, Kirche “traditions” to plaster over the ugly realities of widespread social dissent. (Lots of us remember the sentimental Little Women Christmas scenes, but when you actually read Alcott’s bestselling children’s books, the backgrounds — even in New England — are of war widows desperate to feed their children, wandering ‘tramp’ veterans with PTSD, and 14-year-old orphans turned out to support themselves or starve.) Just in case you thought Fox News was the first to weaponize The War on Xmas.

"It is really a sad day for America. It is, I think, going to hurt people's Christmas experience because this is going to be playing in the background. Instead of Bing Crosby's Christmas album, we're going to have impeachment," Whitaker said.

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) December 5, 2019

I mean, that’s my only Christmas wish.

— Kerri "I'm tired" Ann (@misskerriann) December 6, 2019

Bad Faith Open Thread: <em>… “But the CHILDRUN!!!”… </em>Post + Comments (124)

Boiled Nuts

by John Cole|  December 8, 201912:15 pm| 153 Comments

This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"

Made to the island, and am now sitting outside at a cafe waiting for lunch and waiting on my parents to get to the rental so I can unpack their car and then head back north to home crap home. Stopped at a gas station this morning, and they proudly offered boiled peanuts with multiple seasonings.

WTF people, why are you boiling your peanuts?

Speaking of boiled nuts, this is the first campaign billboard I have seen this election cycle:

tulsi gabbard billboard

Apparently either Tulsi has a following outside of Columbia, SC, or the Republicans are trying to ratfuck the primary. Either is equally possible, because South Carolina.

Boiled NutsPost + Comments (153)

Seasonal Open Thread: Simple Gifts

by Anne Laurie|  December 8, 201911:36 am| 34 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture, Trumpery

No pushing. No shouting. No assembly required. Just real news that matters.

With a digital subscription, you gain unlimited reading access to 2020 election analysis, in-depth investigative reporting, and coverage you need to stay informed.

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 26, 2019


Local news subs (assuming you have a local paper) make good gifts, too.

The Warren campaign has made cross-stitch patterns available featuring the slogan “Capitalism without rules is theft” and, of course, Bailey based on popular merch designs https://t.co/tKkdw4Xiwc pic.twitter.com/0FvcRhkXJx

— laura olin (@lauraolin) December 5, 2019


Free for downloading, at the link. The motto patterns are pretty simple — they could be worked up in a couple of hours, even by a beginner. You could even use waste canvas to cross-stitch them onto a sweatshirt or the back of a denim jacket…

(If I can ever find my cross-stitch pattern books, I may work up ‘Capitalism without rules is theft’ in a florid pseudo-Victorian script. Which is not the Warren style, but the concept pleases me.)

Anybody want to share gift suggestions?

******
Or if you’re looking for a *gag* gift… emphasis on the gag…

The undocumented housekeepers told us they had to check @realdonaldtrump's supply of orange face makeup. Now, the company that makes that makeup — @bronxcolors — is running a sale where you can get a discount on Trump's exact shade. ("BHC06").https://t.co/bGJfQs7Z8N

— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) December 5, 2019


(Not a big makeup consumer, but as I understand it, concealer is properly used for small areas, to disguise dark undereye circles or hide blemishes. Normal users would cover the patch with a dusting of foundation, like blending paint over spackle. If the Occupant is too lazy or too ignorant not to slather it on like street-mime slap, that would help explain why it looks so extraordinarily unnatural.)

Seasonal Open Thread: Simple GiftsPost + Comments (34)

IDA Toxicity

by 15 flush mistermix|  December 8, 201910:53 am| 53 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything

I want to follow up on this post about Amazon announcing that they’re bringing jobs to New York. There were two major critiques of AOC’s victory lap:

Amazon promised 25,000 jobs, this announcement is 1,500, so this is not a win. This one is easy for anyone who knows the history of these IDA (Industrial Development Authority) deals. The job promises are over a period of time (in this case, apparently, 10 years), and the promises don’t have to be kept. Amazon apparently promised 700 jobs the first year, so 1,500 is arguably better than what the original deal would have yielded.

The most important point is that whatever Amazon promised in return for $3 billion in tax breaks, these deals don’t have any penalty for companies that don’t create the promised number of jobs, so Amazon could have promised 100K jobs, delivered a small fraction of those, and paid no New York taxes for years.

Amazon is taking office space in a complex that is the recipient of tax breaks so it’s not as big a win as it could be. This one seems to be reaching, since these IDA deals are almost ubiquitous for large projects, so it would be hard for Amazon to find space that wasn’t the beneficiary of some deal or other. And, at least an IDA didn’t shell out $3 billion more in tax breaks to get Amazon to come to town.

There’s something more important than the details of the Amazon deal itself – there’s the toxic environment surrounding these IDA tax breaks and the Hunger Games lotteries that they engender. When Amazon announced the deal, all of the well-paid development marketers for our area (the Chamber of Commerce and other booster entities), fell all over themselves to show that they were competing for Amazon’s HQ2. The local paper dutifully wrote stories taking the bait, showing how, if you look at the Amazon deal in just the right way, Rochester could qualify. When Amazon chose NYC, these stories took on a tone of self-flagellation about our inadequacy and failure.

What’s taken for granted in all of the publicity around HQ2 is that this is the way business is done. Business isn’t a large corporation choosing to site a facility somewhere that has a good pool of technical employees, good housing and good transit. Rather, its a contest to see which locales can cough up the most tax breaks and other goodies to entice the corporation to come to their town. I can’t hate the player here–Amazon just took the usual IDA game and brought it to another level. But let’s give the politicians and activists who opposed the Amazon deal in NYC their due, because it would have been pretty easy to sit on the sidelines and treat IDA-style development as just part of doing business.

By the way, I’m writing from the perspective of Rochester, which is awash in IDA deals, and there’s been a pretty significant backlash against them here. Some of that backlash is driven by examples of IDA deals that yielded almost no new jobs, or money that was supposed to go to new, risky businesses that instead go to fund expansion of existing businesses like the nicest health club in town. After those deals were exposed, some of the relatively timid local politicians here are opposing them, or at least calling for reform. That’s huge in an environment where these deals used to be announced with big fanfare for the politicians involved, after which they failed in obvilion.

In short, these deals are generally bad for taxpayers, and they don’t generate many new jobs. As voters become more educated about them, they will become politically unpopular. It’s good to see some Democrats leading on these issues, despite the flack they received.

IDA ToxicityPost + Comments (53)

Thou Shalt Not Criticize The Dear Leader

by Cheryl Rofer|  December 8, 20199:16 am| 76 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Rofer on International Relations, Trumpery

To celebrate NATO’s 70th birthday, the Danish Atlantic Council, a thinktank, arranged a conference to be held on December 10. The American Ambassador to Denmark was invited to be an organizer. The lineup of speakers was pretty much as one might expect.

The Ambassador insisted that one of the speakers be removed from the program: Stanley Sloan, a visiting professor at Middlebury College, fellow at the Atlantic Council and former CIA analyst. Sloan has been critical of President Donald Trump. The Danish Atlantic Council has now canceled the entire conference.

After serious consideration, we have decided not to proceed with the Conference. The progress of the process has become too problematic; and therefore, we cannot participate in the Conference, let alone ask our Speakers to participate. @AtlantDK @srs2_ https://t.co/HvogtkOJJO

— Lars Bangert Struwe (@LarsBStruwe) December 8, 2019

The paper Sloan intended to present can be found here. In it, he talks about internal and external threats to NATO. The internal threats are largely, but not entirely, Donald Trump, which is what the news has been telling us through last week’s NATO meeting. Others of his papers can be found here.

The Ambassador, Carla Sands,

is a former actress, chiropractor, and board member of major California institutions who was confirmed to her post in 2017 after making contributions to Trump’s campaign and inauguration and, according to ProPublica, being recommended by Eliott Broidy. Her official Twitter account looks much like any other ambassador’s, while her personal account is often retweets of articles from far-right outlets like Breitbart and Prager University.

David Frum (yes, I know, but he’s got this right) checked out her Twitter account, with screenshots because he figures the account will be deleted or cleaned up. There’s a lot more to the thread; this is just a sample.

https://t.co/m57p5xzjCp

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2019

The Trump administration keeps pushing the boundaries. Earlier in that thread, Frum points out that his participation in conferences was never censored by the government. That’s been the policy until this Dear Leader and his far-right minions.

Thou Shalt Not Criticize The Dear LeaderPost + Comments (76)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

by Anne Laurie|  December 8, 20194:43 am| 54 Comments

This post is in: Garden Chats

Momsense - Peony blossoms

Sincere thanks to staunch commentor MomSense:

Finally getting around to sending some photos from my garden.

Momsense Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

The photos are of peonies, irises, nepeta, salvia, and a montauk daisy.
Momsense - Montauk daisies

I probably have 5 or 6 different varieties of peony.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of Summer

***********
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Yes, gardeners, now that you’ve got some indoor time, please send some of those pics you collected during more clement weather!

(And if you’re currently enjoying such halcyon weather… don’t worry, we may be envious but we’ll still be happy if you share your photos…)

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Memories of SummerPost + Comments (54)

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
55m 1204581563440259074

cool do the White House next

Trump to Sign Order Targeting Anti-Semitism on College Campuses

President Trump at the Israeli American Council National Summit last week in Hollywood, Fla.

Trump to Sign Order Targeting Anti-Semitism on College Campuses

The president’s action will protect Judaism under civil rights law and empower the Education Department to withhold money from institutions that...

nyti.ms

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
59m 1204580635068837888

New Post added at Balloon Juice - Must Be The Season of the Witch -

Balloon Juice | Must Be The Season of the Witch

I’ve noticed in the last few weeks a real uptick in the attacks on the Democratic nominees, and I don’t know if it is just the usual mania...

www.balloon-juice.com

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
1h 1204573471726096384

right on

Someone Is Putting Cowboy Hats on Pigeons in Las Vegas

“They look like happy pigeons to me,” said Charles Walcott, a Cornell University ornithologist. “It is hard to know, of course, because they will not talk to us.”

Someone Is Putting Cowboy Hats on Pigeons in Las Vegas

No one knows why. A rodeo was in town but denied any connection. The Las Vegas police said it “does not appear to be a police matter at this tim...

nyti.ms

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
3h 1204549160340512769

the climate crisis is now

The Arctic may have crossed key threshold, emitting billions of tons of carbon into the air, in a long-dreaded climate feedback

The Arctic may have crossed key threshold, emitting billions of tons of carbon into the air, in a long-dreaded climate feedback

A new federal report on the Arctic finds the region is in the midst of drastic and sudden changes as a result of human-caused warming.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
4h 1204542391547518976

New Post added at Balloon Juice - Impeachment Open Thread: Our Failed Republican Party -

Balloon Juice | Impeachment Open Thread: Our Failed Republican Party

A picture is worth a thousand words: 3 liberals from California, 3 from New York, and 1 from Massachusetts. The Democrats pushing impeachment couldn&#...

www.balloon-juice.com

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
4h 1204527750889037824

I had Mexican for lunch, got a pedicure, and now I am going to take a nap with Lily and Steve. Today was a good day.

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
5h 1204527511343915010

Twitter feed video.
View on Twitter
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Retweet on TwitterJohn Cole Retweeted
Popehat avatarTwoArticleHat@Popehat·
11h 1204434755200045058

Trump must feel besieged and wronged by the articles of impeachment so it’s nice he’s meeting with the Russian foreign minister this morning to get some moral support.

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Johngcole avatarJohn Cole@Johngcole·
5h 1204525754983337986

straight out of the elves playbook, ehh @gtconway3d Your people representing her?

Hunter Biden's baby mama demands he admit how much Burisma paid him via @MailOnline

Hunter Biden's baby mama demands he admit how much Burisma paid him

The mother of Hunter Biden's baby has demanded that he admit he was employed as a board member for Burisma in the Ukraine in court papers obtained by ...

mol.im

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Retweet on TwitterJohn Cole Retweeted
spekulation avatarSpek@spekulation·
9 Dec 1203921232128700416

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. Just 20 minutes before that, Seattle Police officers were recorded running into pedestrians with their bikes, and then violently arresting the victims for what they claimed was assault. Even for SPD, yesterday was a vicious escalation. (🎥: Jerry Savage)

Twitter feed video.
Image for the Tweet beginning: BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. Just
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