Saturday, November 30, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt six)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

Kathleen Charlton had roomed with Robin Pogrebin at Yale and graduated in 1987. By Monday, September 17, Charlton had learned that news outlets were pursuing the Ramirez story. The following Thursday, September 20, she called her friend and classmate David Todd, who told her that The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow had contacted him.

“Todd also shared the surprising news that Brett had called him,” Charlton said in a statement she ultimately submitted to the FBI. “He said that Brett was giving him a heads-up that press would likely make contact and wanted to make sure Dave would share ‘no bad.’ It seemed Dave understood this to mean he was not to speak ill of Brett’s history.”

Todd also told Charlton that he had responded to Farrow’s questions about the assault details by saying, “I definitely don’t remember that.”



Friday, November 29, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt five)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

Kavanaugh also selected his four annual law clerks from across the political spectrum and made a point of hiring women, having been alarmed at reading a 2006 New York Times story about the “sudden drop” in female law clerks on the Supreme Court. During Kavanaugh’s dozen years on the D.C. Circuit, more than half of his clerks—twenty-five out of forty-eight—were women, and he later testified that more of his clerks went on to Supreme Court clerkships than did those of any other federal judge.

“After hiring us, Judge Kavanaugh goes to bat for us,” Taibleson said in her Senate testimony. “Studies have shown that women are often at a disadvantage on those fronts, but Judge Kavanaugh is a force of nature.”

She added, “I know of no federal judge who has more effectively supported women in this profession.”



Thursday, November 28, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt four)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

“Kavanaugh knew,” said Brian Lehman, who quit his clerkship after confronting Kozinski about his inappropriate conduct in 2000. (Among other things, Lehman reported that Kozinski had shown him a video of naked women skydiving, thinking it was funny to watch their breasts flapping in the wind.)

“He put up with it for a reason,” Lehman added of Kavanaugh. “You put up with that for a year and after that Kozinski would use that power to promote you.”

Heidi Bond, one of Kozinski’s former clerks, wrote in Slate that Kavanaugh’s assertion under oath that he did “not remember” any sexual comments made by Judge Kozinski strained credulity. “This last response leaves me wondering whether Kavanaugh and I clerked for the same man,” Bone wrote. “Kozinski’s sexual comments—to both me and women—were legendary.”



Wednesday, November 27, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt three)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

So Kavanaugh did what he always did: his homework. The judge pored over opinions from his tenure on the District Court, focusing on the more controversial ones he was likely to be grilled about, such as the case on Obamacare and the one involving a pregnant undocumented teenager. Perhaps he would be asked in more detail about his accumulated debt of between $60,000 and $200,000, which Kavanaugh had explained was due to home improvements and having bought Washington Nationals tickets for himself and friends.

In preparing for the hearings, Kavanaugh drew on his carefully cultivated social graces as he made the customary rounds of senators’ offices—brandishing his hail-fellow-well-met demeanor and a pocket copy of the Constitution.



Tuesday, November 26, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt two)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

As a junior, Judge, hoping to host a smallish party, unintentionally held one of these ragers. Before the festivities began in earnest, he and a few friends moved the family china and the best furniture into sealed-off rooms.

“Despite our precautions,” he later wrote, “I had a feeling I was in for an apocalyptic evening.”

The party went well until a friend climbed into Judge’s attic, looking for a stash of booze, and got trapped in the dark, resulting in his kicking a large hole through the second-story ceiling below. Judge writes that he was both drunk and furious, almost starting two fistfights in anger over the damage before he cut off the keg and sent everybody home.



Monday, November 25, 2019

the last book I ever read (The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, excerpt one)

from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly:

McGahn immediately sprang into action, calling Kavanaugh just a few hours after the Kennedy news broke and meeting with him in person two days later. McGahn was present on July 2, when Kavanaugh was interviewed by Trump, and two days later when the judge met with Vice President Mike Pence. On the morning of Sunday, July 8, Kavanaugh spoke again with Trump, this time by phone, and that evening he sat down with the president and his wife, Melania, at the White House. During that meeting, Trump offered Kavanaugh the nomination and he accepted, speaking later that evening with McGahn.

McGahn was on his way out of the White House, having clashed with Trump and cooperated with the investigation of the president by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would be McGahn’s last push—for Trump’s legacy as well as his own. He planned to leave the job as soon as his friend’s place on the bench was assured. “He wanted to steer that process in a good and principled direction—he was Kavanaugh’s Sherpa,” said Akhil Reed Amar, a prominent constitutional law professor at Yale Law School. “He persuaded Trump to go with Kavanaugh, and he persuaded Trump to stick with Kavanaugh after Ford. Kavanaugh is McGahn’s greatest accomplishment.”



Sunday, November 24, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt sixteen)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

On Saturday morning, as they prepared for their meeting with Trump, some of the Republican leaders and agency heads were alerted by their aides to a barrage of sunrise tweets from the president. At 7:19 a.m., he began: “Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence . . . Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star . . . to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius . . . and a very stable genius at that!”

The tweets were the elephant in the room when everyone gathered a short while later around a colossal conference table. Trump seemed his typical self, no more or less animated than usual. He was relatively engaged during remarks from several of the cabinet secretaries and seemed exceptionally interested by a classified briefing from Mattis on clashes with ISIS fighters. As the Pentagon chief spoke, the president scribbled wildly on a sheet of paper in front of him, all the while nodding and looking up to make eye contact. The others in the room took this as an encouraging sign: The Pentagon had released a report just weeks earlier claiming that ISIS had lost 98 percent of its territory.

When Mattis finished, the president lifted the piece of paper while gesturing, just high enough for several people to see it. He had drawn a flight of bullet points on the page, all of them underneath an all-caps header that was clearly visible: “SLOPPY STEVE.”



Saturday, November 23, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt fifteen)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Reached on his cellphone by the new press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the senator agreed to sit down with the president and explain his displeasure. What ensued inside the Oval Office a few days later was a lengthy, Scott-led seminar on America’s history of institutional racism and systemic discrimination. He talked of the socioeconomic hurdles facing young black me in his native streets of North Charleston. He described the hopelessness, the lack of opportunity, that had long suffocated the potential of minority youths in America. He told the story of his grandfather, Artis Ware, who left a segregated school in the third grade to pick cotton for fifty ccnts a day. Scott remembered his role model scouring the newspaper each morning, impressing upon his grandsons the importance of reading; it wasn’t until years later that Scott realized his grandfather was illiterate.

The White House, for its part, released a photo of Trump listening intently to a senator identified as “Tom Scott.”



Friday, November 22, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt fourteen)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Trump sacked Comey on May 9, publicly citing Rosenstein's reasoning for doing so. Senior White House officials, including Pence himself, insisted to reporters that Trump had acted on the recommendation of Sessions and Rosenstein. They swore up and down that the president's decision had nothing to do with the Russia probe. Trump, however, would quickly undermine those claims--and sabotage his own stated rationale for dismissing the FBI director.

In the Oval Office a day later, Trump hosted two top Russian officials, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The president called Comey "a real nut job," according to the New York Times, and told them of the FBI probe, "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off." (Trump also disclosed highly classified information about an operation targeting the Islamic State, according to the Washington Post. The only photos of the meeting were shared by a Russian state photographer; no American media were permitted.)



Thursday, November 21, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt thirteen)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Finally, on the fourth day of his presidency, Trump used his first meeting with congressional leaders to complain that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for some three to five million ballots being cast illegally. The baseless claim drew a fresh round of harsh media coverage; election officials around the country, both Republican and Democratic, said there had been no indications of meaningful voter fraud, much less on a massive scale.

By any metric, this was a baneful start for the new administration.



Wednesday, November 20, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt twelve)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Some of the president-elect's appointments were products of patronage. Back in January 2016, South Carolina's lieutenant governor, Henry McMaster, became the first statewide official in any of the three early-nominating states to endorse Trump. McMaster went all in, traveling with the campaign and becoming close to the future president, never wavering in his support. A few days after the election, Trump called McMaster and said, "Henry, what do you want? Name it."

McMaster told him he wanted to be governor.

"That's it?" Trump replied. "Well, that should be easy. You're already the lieutenant governor!"

McMaster explained that it wasn't that simple. Elections were uncertain things. The only way to ensure his promotion would be for Nikki Haley to go away. Within days, seemingly out of left field, Trump announced Haley as his pick for ambassador to the United Nations. McMaster was sworn in on January 24.



Tuesday, November 19, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt eleven)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

The third and most significant reason for Trump's survival: the unflinching support of the Christian right. Where many evangelical leaders had once expressed an open contempt for the primary candidate, they became his staunchest, most faithful allies during the general election campaign--including in the aftermath of Access Hollywood. There were notable exceptions. On the evening of the tape's release, Russell Moore, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's political arm, tweeted in response to his high-profile peers, "What a disgrace. What a scandal to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the integrity of our witness . . . The political Religious Right Establishment wonders why the evangelical next generation rejects their way. Today illustrates why." The next day, after Trump defended his transgression as "just words," Moore tweeted: "No contrition. 'Just words.' How any Christian leader is still standing behind this is just genuinely beyond my comprehension."

But Moore was an outlier. In case after case, over the final five weeks of the election, prominent Christian leaders rallied around the Republican nominee. "The crude comments made by Donald J. Trump more than eleven years ago cannot be defended," Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelist Billy Graham, wrote on his Facebook page. "But the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended." Added Jerry Falwell Jr., the other spiritual dynasty scion, "We're never going to have a perfect candidate until Jesus Christ reigns forever on the throne."

Their principal rationale in standing by Trump: the Supreme Court.



Monday, November 18, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt ten)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

In August 2015, two months after Trump announced his bid for the presidency, they came to an understanding. In a meeting first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Pecker offered to protect Trump from women who came forward alleging sexual escapades. He would use AMI and its biggest brand, the National Enquirer, to "catch and kill" on behalf of the candidate: purchasing testimonies that could be damaging to Trump, having the women sign exclusivity and nondisclosure agreements, and then burying the stories for good. Trump loved the idea, and instructed Michael Cohen, his lawyer and fixer, to work in concert with Pecker.

The arrangement would prove extraordinarily beneficial--at least, in the short run. Over the ensuing year, Pecker and Cohen defused to bombshells that might have blown up Trump's campaign. The first deal was with a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, who approached AMI with details of her extramarital romance with Trump. Pecker bought the rights to her story for $150,000. Cohen, meanwhile, brokered an agreement with adult-film star Stormy Daniels, paying $130,000 in hush money to conceal her past sexual relationship with Trump.



Sunday, November 17, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt nine)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

By early March, with Trump clearing 40 percent in multiple nominating contests, it was clear that something radical needed to happen, and quickly, to prevent him from running away with the nomination. That's when an idea took root among Cruz's staff: a ticket with Rubio. The Florida senator was treading water and heading for a certain exit after losing Florida; what would happen if he teamed up with Cruz, running as his vice-presidential-pick-in-waiting?

Cruz was lukewarm to the idea. The two senators had a strained relationship, and the last several months, including Rubio's jab about not speaking Spanish, had been especially spiteful. But his outlook brightened upon seeing the polling. According to number compiled by Cruz's gold-standard data analytics team, a Cruz-Rubio ticket would demolish Trump in head-to-head competition in the remaining primaries, often winning more than 60 percent of the vote.

Cruz's pollster, Chris Wilson, called Utah senator Mike Lee to share the campaign's findings. Lee had not endorsed in the primary; he was close friends with both Cruz and Rubio. Reviewing the data, Lee sprang into action. He called dozens of hotels in the Miami area, needing one with an underground parking garage and an elevator that could ferry guests directly up to a private suite. Upon securing such an arrangement, at the Hilton Miami Downtown, Lee called Rubio to set up a meeting for March 9, one day before the Republican debate in nearby Coral Gables. He then informed Cruz that Rubio had agreed to a secretive sit-down at five o'clock that afternoon. Cruz cleared his campaign schedule and held his breath.



Saturday, November 16, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt eight)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Mark Meadows had never quite fit the mold of a Freedom Caucus radical. Unfailingly polite and winsome, with the faintest trace of a sweet-tea accent and his hand always on someone’s shoulder, the North Carolina congressman was as threatening as a sweater-clad kitten.

He was conservative, sure, but nobody’s idea of a firebrand. When word leaked to the GOP leadership that Meadows had been involved in the plotting against Boehner in 2013—even though he ultimately did not oppose him—the brand-new lawmaker requested a meeting with the Speaker. “He’s on the couch, sitting across from me in my chair, and suddenly he slides off the couch, down onto his knees, and puts his hands together in front of his chest,” Boehner recalls. He says, ‘Mr. Speaker, will you please forgive me?’”

Boehner’s chief of staff, Mike Sommers, who witnessed the encounter, said it was “the strangest behavior I had ever seen in Congress.”



Friday, November 15, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt seven)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

He was a latecomer to the birther movement. In fact, he had first commented publicly on Obama’s citizenship just a month earlier, during an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America. Trump called the circumstances surrounding Obama’s birthplace “very strange,” adding, “The reason I have a little doubt—just a little—is because he grew up and nobody knew him.”

This was not true. Obama’s upbringing on the big island was thoroughly documented by friends and family members, not to mention verified by journalists and academics. But that didn’t stop Trump from peddling falsehoods, with increasing certainty, in the days that followed. On ABC’s The View, he asked “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.” On Fox News, he said Obama “spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue.” On Laura Ingraham’s radio show, he said of the certificate, “Somebody told me . . . that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’” And on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump announced that Obama’s “grandmother in Kenya said, ‘Oh, no, he was born in Kenya, and I was there, and I witnessed the birth.’ Now, she’s on tape. I think that tape’s going to be produced fairly soon.”

In fact, the tape features Obama’s grandmother stating repeatedly that she did not witness the future president’s birth because it occurred in Hawaii and she lived in Kenya. But facts had never stood in the way of conservatives’ theorizing about Obama’s shadowy past: How he was raised by his radical father (who actually had abandoned the family when his son was two years old); how he inherited an anticolonial bias from living in Kenya (he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia after his mother remarried); how he was a Muslim (despite being baptized in 1998 and writing extensively about accepting Christ after being raised by his nonbelieving grandparents).

Trump would later claim that he never truly believed that Obama was born outside the United States. But Boehner, a frequent golfing buddy, says Trump absolutely did. “Oh yes. Oh yes. He wouldn’t have sent people to Hawaii and do the investigation if he didn’t believe it.”



Thursday, November 14, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt six)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Suddenly high-strung and wary of his surroundings, Ailes proceeded to unpack for Boehner the outlines of an elaborate, interconnected plot to take him down. It started with Ailes’s belief that Obama really was a Muslim who really had been born outside the United States. He described how the White House was monitoring him around the clock because of these views. He concluded by assuring Boehner that his house had been fortified with combat-trained security personnel and “safe rooms” where he couldn’t be observed.

“It was the most bizarre meeting I’d ever had in my life. He had black helicopters flying all around his head that morning,” Boehner recalls. “It was every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard, and I’m throwing cold water on all this bullshit. Ratings were ratings to Murdoch, but I began to realize that Ailes believed in all this crazy stuff.”

The Speaker had come with hopes of quieting the furor on Fox News. He left more concerned than ever about the threat it posed to the country.



Wednesday, November 13, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt five)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Looking back, Boehner says that not solving immigration is his second-biggest regret after the failed Grand Bargain. He blames Obama for “setting the field on fire.” But it was the inaction of the House of Representatives—not voting on the Senate bill, not bringing up any conservative alternative, not doing anything substance to address the issue—that enabled the continued demagoguing of immigration and of immigrants. Ultimately, Boehner’s quandary boiled down to a choice between protecting his right flank and doing what he thought was best for the country. He chose the former.

It wouldn’t be the last time.



Tuesday, November 12, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt four)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Robert Jeffress, the prominent pastor of a Dallas megachurch, denounced Romney’s religion as a “cult” and implored evangelicals to oppose him. During an organized debate with Christian attorney (and Romney supporter) Jay Sekulow, Jeffress addressed “the hypocrisy” of church leaders who “for the last eight years of the Bush administration have been telling us how important it is to have an evangelical Christian in office who reads his Bible every day. And now suddenly these same leaders are telling us that a candidate’s faith really isn’t that important.” Jeffress added: “My fear is such a sudden U-turn is going to give people a case of voter whiplash. I think people have to decide, and Christian leaders have to decide once and for all, whether a candidate’s faith is really important.”

Jeffress continued his crusade during the 2012 campaign. A supporter of Perry for president, the pastor used an appearance at the Values Voter Summit in October 2011 to drive a wedge between Romney and evangelicals. “I just do not believe that we as conservative Christians can expect him to stand strong for the issues that are important to us,” Jeffress told reporters. “I really am not nearly as concerned about a candidate’s fiscal policy or immigration policy as I am about where they stand on biblical issues.”

(Four years later, Jeffress would become Candidate Trump’s most visible Christian disciple, appearing with the thrice-married, casino-owning candidate onstage in Texas during the heat of the GOP primary race. “I can tell you from experience, if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States we who are evangelical Christians are going to have a true friend in the White House,” he said, according to the Dallas Morning News.)



Monday, November 11, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt three)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

Numerous state governments debated newly urgent legislation in 2009 and 2010 requiring presidential candidates to release long-form birth certificates. This paranoia echoed beyond the provinces: Twelve House Republicans cosponsored a similar bill in Congress, lending a higher degree of legitimacy to the conspiracy theorizing. When one of the cosponsors, Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, urged Cantor in a meeting to bring up the bill for a vote, he made his point with the subtlety of a sledgehammer: “Kenya hear me? Kenya hear me?”

“Louie Gohmert is insane. There’s not a functional brain in there,” Boehner says, muttering a few expletives for good measure. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

But Gohmert wasn’t an outlier. “I knew people, smart people, who were into it,” says Karl Rove. “They thought it was this vast conspiracy, that people took this kid who was born in Kenya and faked newspaper clippings from the time of his birth, and documents in the Hawaii state government files, so this Kenyan-born kid could pass for an American citizen and wind up running for president. This was the Manchurian candidate on LSD and peyote.”



Sunday, November 10, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt two)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

With his health care plan languishing, the president convened a joint session of Congress on September 9 to reset the national conversation and dispel some of the more sinister myths about his proposal. It was an attempt to bring down the temperature. Instead, the fever spiked. When Obama reiterated that his bill did not provide coverage to illegal immigrants, Joe Wilson, a South Carolina congressman seated near the front of the House chamber, hollered, “You lie!” It was an atrocious breach of decorum. It was also erroneous: Obama was right one these facts, as health care experts and fact-checkers certified, and Wilson was wrong.

Not that it mattered. Wilson’s online fund-raising exploded the next day. Talk radio hailed him as a hero. Conservative movement groups made him an honored guest at upcoming banquets. He was reamed out by Boehner behind closed doors and forced to apologize, but the lesson fo the incident was clear. By disrespecting the president of the United States with a blatant, provable falsehood, Wilson had become right-wing royalty.



Saturday, November 9, 2019

the last book I ever read (Tim Alberta's American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, excerpt one)

from American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump by Tim Alberta:

TARP is quite possibly the most successful government program of its generation. All the money was paid back, with interest, and experts believe that the intervention almost certainly staved off a Depression-like catastrophe. But the entire episode was scarring for millions of Americans who became convinced that Washington and Wall Street were playing by a different set of rules; that the economy was rigged against them; that professional politicians had sold them out.

“McCain came back to bail out the banks. He had a chance. I was hoping he wouldn’t vote for it,” says Jordan. “That was when the populist sentiment started to take root around the country. I think that was probably laying the groundwork for what happened in 2016.”



Friday, November 8, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt twelve)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

I spent the rest of the week coming into the city and going to the movies. There was a Diane Keaton retrospective at Film Forum. The ticket taker told me he’d never seen a more dedicated Diane Keaton fan. Then I’d leave and check on Rachel, who was now at home, with a nurse/minder she and I had hired to sit with her while she slept. She kept saying that she would call the kids if she could just get a few more hours of sleep.

I was watching Baby Boom when I got a text from Seth. He wanted Toby and me to come to his apartment Saturday night. It was important, he said.



Thursday, November 7, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt eleven)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

“We had these FastPasses,” I said. “We got into every ride within, like, six minutes. But you’d go on this empty line past the people who had been waiting in a different line, and you realized that you weren’t transcending a line, you were cutting one. You had subverted the system of fairness for the people who happened to not be on the club level.”

“A thing about my wife is that she can be unhappy both standing on a line and cutting a line,” Adam said. “She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?”

“You can also get a FastPass for coming to the park early in the morning, though,” Toby said. “Arriving early isn’t elitism.”

“Sure it is. But you’re missing my point. It’s that even when it’s not fair in my favor, I can’t get over how it’s not fair. I am a miserable person, and I don’t know if that was always true, or if I became this way.”



Wednesday, November 6, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt ten)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

He brought Bubbles upstairs, and he opened the apartment and said, “Here it is, little guy. This is your home now.” He could not have told you why, but he spent the next ten minutes hugging the dog and crying into his fur.



Tuesday, November 5, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt nine)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

I reread a few of Archer’s pieces that night. I cried a little because it hurt to be ending my career there before I was ever sent to Chile to eat the brain of a goat with my bare hands, but right then, maybe for the first time, I also realized I was never going to be sent to Chile to eat the brain of a goat with my bare hands. People could love my stories, they could go far and wife, I could do everything, but I could never be a man. But also, given the chance, I don’t think I would have taken the goat’s head and broken its jaw and done what needed to be done. Who could do that to even a dead goat? Maybe, in that way, the system worked.



Monday, November 4, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt eight)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

It was hard for Toby to pinpoint exactly when he’d noticed the change in her. Yes, she spoke to her subordinates like they were pieces of shit, but that was the culture at Alfooz & Lichtenstein—that was how they taught their employees to survive, or something. Toby would express surprise when he heard her on the phone talking to an intern or an assistant—it particularly seemed at asst2 couldn’t find his ass from his ass these days. He would hear her on the phone saying, “You forgot who you are talking to,” and “I’m sorry, but do you think I’m an idiot?” and “Honestly, I am listening to you and cannot believe what is coming out of your mouth,” and “No offense, but when I hire at a Yale job fair, I expect someone with a little light behind the eyes,” and “I saw those press kits and it looks like a homeless person off the street did them.” He assumed the stress of her work was sending her into overdrive. But then she said things to her clients like “Oh my God, were we the same person in another life?” and “You are too much,” and “That is amazing,” and “You are amazing.” See? She was also capable of that, which made the fact that she didn’t do it at home harder to stomach.

When he put it all together and applied himself to the situation, he realized that he was being spoken to like the employee, not like the client. And he’d ask, “Do you ever notice that you speak to me like one of your employees that you hate? And that you’re really nice to your clients?” And she would say, “God, Toby, do you really need me to put on a show for you, too?” And then she would do a sickly sweet impression of he wasn’t sure quite what—a 1950s housewife? A version of herself she thought Toby wanted her to be? “I’m so glad my hubby is home! Should I get you a martini?” Her voice would be bouncy and bright and he would think for the first time that maybe he should murder her.



Sunday, November 3, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt seven)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

He was a good doctor; he was even great. That was the worst part of Bartuck. He had been such a good mentor to Toby that it had been impossible to foresee that he’d become the oily money guy that he had become. Or maybe what was hard was accepting that you could be both a good doctor and a money guy and still choose to be the money guy? Either way it was sad. When Toby was one of his fellows, Bartuck told him war stories and gave him whiskey in his office at the end of their hard days. Toby remembered when Martin Loo, a subdivision head in gastroenterology, died from pancreatic cancer in a fast, sad sequence of hospital poetry that reaffirmed to Toby that what he did was good and worthy. Toby and Bartuck sat in Martin Loo’s room for hours during his final weeks, and Toby listened to them talk about their good old days at the hospital, and stories from before medical records were digital and nobody knew anything. They laughed together until Dr. Loo was too exhausted and needed to rest.

Toby and Bartuck were in the room with Dr. Loo when he died. As his breaths began coming further and further apart, they’d stood up to leave with his wife and children. But Martin’s wife had stopped them and said she believed that Martin, three days unconscious by then, would have wanted them to stay. “You were as big a part of his life as we were.” When finally his last breath was drawn, his wife put her forehead to his and said, “Goodbye, my love,” and Toby had felt then that despite his early death, Martin Loo was a lucky man. So was Toby. Right then, he couldn’t help but think what a privilege all of this was: to know these people, to try with them.



Saturday, November 2, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt six)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

“You can text me when you’re ready for them to come home,” Toby told her.

“She still doesn’t have a phone?” Roxanne asked. “Toby, the girl needs a phone!” She said that last thing in some kind of mockery or imitation of something, like a Groucho Marx voice. He remembered that Rachel had once said about Roxanne that she could only confront people or ask for something if she was doing a weird voice.



Friday, November 1, 2019

the last book I ever read (Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel, excerpt five)

from Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner:

He gave a sonogram to an MTA worker whom he had diagnosed with hemochromatosis a year ago. Now the man’s liver was a little scarred, but it was better. It was regenerating. It was almost new again. Toby pushed the wand over and around the man’s liver. He loved this part; every sonogram, every biopsy, was always like the first time. You couldn’t believe what the liver was capable of. This never got old for Toby, not since the first time he saw it in medical school, in a textbook of time-lapse pictures of a healing liver. Livers behaved in some erratic ways, sure, all the organs do. But the liver was unique in the way that it healed. It was full of forgiveness. It understood that you needed a few chances before you got your life right. And it wouldn’t just forgive you; it would practically forget. It would allow you to start over in a way that he could not imagine was true in any other avenue of life. We should all be like the liver, he thought. We should all regenerate like this when we’re injured. On the darkest days of his marriage, Toby attended to his hospital business, and out of the corner of his eyes was always the liver, whispering to him that one day, there would be not much sign of all of this damage. He would regenerate, too.