Anthony Weiner Has Some Advice For Michael Grimm: "Don't Do Interviews For A While"

Following NY Rep. Michael Grimm’s apology yesterday for threatening to break a reporter in half and throw him off a balcony, none other than former NY Rep. Anthony Weiner had some advice for the cantakerous congressman. Wring in the New York Daily News, Weiner began: “First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while…” but the snark and irony surges from there.

 

Weiner’s New York Daily News Op-Ed advice begins…

First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while.

 

For that matter, you may not want to attend community meetings, visit your office or go a sporting event. Fact is, an investigation that’s hanging over your head is the kind of thing people might be curious about. People ask you about embarrassing stuff even when you want to talk about other things. Especially when you want to talk about other things.

But gets a little snarky…

Better yet, if you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with. I only know what I read in the papers about all this. (OK, maybe I know a bit more.) But it does seem like a lot of people are being investigated and indicted in connection with Mikey Suits’campaign.

 

I’ll leave it to the authorities who are probing this in New York, Washington, Texas and Israel to work out what happened, but it seems like we may be headed for another of those Nixon/Christie “mistakes were made” moments.

And then, in the irony of the decade (given Weiner’s outrageous outbursts to his voters and reporters alike)…

If you ignore the first two rules, try answering the questions posed to you, calmly.

 


 

I know that “can you tell us about the status of the ethics investigation into you?” sounds like fighting words. But it can actually be an invitation to explain some of the messy doings that have swirled around you since nearly the moment you were elected.

Weiner concludes…

Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries.

 

Sometimes that means getting a certificate of appreciation from the local Kiwanis Club, and sometimes it means having a reporter ask a question you don’t like. If you are living right, there are many many more of the former than the latter. But being an elected official is a high honor. You roll with the punches.

 

…

 

I did a terrible job following these rules. I did embarrassing things and made them so much worse by being dishonest about them.

So, people that live in glass houses shouldn’t screw there?


    



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Anthony Weiner Has Some Advice For Michael Grimm: “Don’t Do Interviews For A While”

Following NY Rep. Michael Grimm’s apology yesterday for threatening to break a reporter in half and throw him off a balcony, none other than former NY Rep. Anthony Weiner had some advice for the cantakerous congressman. Wring in the New York Daily News, Weiner began: “First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while…” but the snark and irony surges from there.

 

Weiner’s New York Daily News Op-Ed advice begins…

First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while.

 

For that matter, you may not want to attend community meetings, visit your office or go a sporting event. Fact is, an investigation that’s hanging over your head is the kind of thing people might be curious about. People ask you about embarrassing stuff even when you want to talk about other things. Especially when you want to talk about other things.

But gets a little snarky…

Better yet, if you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with. I only know what I read in the papers about all this. (OK, maybe I know a bit more.) But it does seem like a lot of people are being investigated and indicted in connection with Mikey Suits’campaign.

 

I’ll leave it to the authorities who are probing this in New York, Washington, Texas and Israel to work out what happened, but it seems like we may be headed for another of those Nixon/Christie “mistakes were made” moments.

And then, in the irony of the decade (given Weiner’s outrageous outbursts to his voters and reporters alike)…

If you ignore the first two rules, try answering the questions posed to you, calmly.

 


 

I know that “can you tell us about the status of the ethics investigation into you?” sounds like fighting words. But it can actually be an invitation to explain some of the messy doings that have swirled around you since nearly the moment you were elected.

Weiner concludes…

Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries.

 

Sometimes that means getting a certificate of appreciation from the local Kiwanis Club, and sometimes it means having a reporter ask a question you don’t like. If you are living right, there are many many more of the former than the latter. But being an elected official is a high honor. You roll with the punches.

 

…

 

I did a terrible job following these rules. I did embarrassing things and made them so much worse by being dishonest about them.

So, people that live in glass houses shouldn’t screw there?


    



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Roads recovering, not perfect; no word yet on schools for Friday

State says: come get your abandoned cars before we have to tow them

UPDATE 12:35 p.m. Jan. 30 — Now that everyone has had time to recover from Tuesday’s snowstorm and the resulting frozen roadways, things are starting to get back to a semblance of normality in Fayette County.

Major highways are passable and fairly clear, but emergency officials caution there are still trouble spots on local roads, with Hood Avenue leading into Fayetteville being a prime example. Any shady stretch of road is likely to still be frozen at this point, so caution is warranted by all motorists.

read more

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Dueling Pot Billboards at the Stoner Bowl: Marijuana Is Safer vs. Marijuana Will Ruin Your Life

When teams from the two states that have legalized marijuana for
recreational use clash at Sunday’s Super Bowl, so will activists on
both sides of the debate about pot prohibition. The Marijuana
Policy Project (MPP) is
sponsoring five billboards near MetLife Stadium in East
Rutherford, New Jersey, where the Denver Broncos will face the
Seattle Seahawks. The anti-pot group Project SAM is
responding with an ad that “will be placed on digital and vinyl
billboards throughout the New York-New Jersey area.”

Four of MPP’s
ads are variations on the marijuana-is-safer theme that played
a conspicuous role in Colorado’s legalization campaign and was
recently
echoed by President Obama. Two ads criticize the National
Football League’s anti-pot policy, showing generic players asking,
“Why does the league punish us for making the safer choice?” The
other two note that marijuana is safer than football as well as
alcohol. The fifth MPP ad shows a tally of attendance at the last
10 Super Bowls next to a tally of marijuana arrests in 2012 (about
750,000 in both cases).

How does Project SAM respond? It can’t very well deny that
marijuana is safer than alcohol, since its chairman
admitted as much on national television last week. Nor can it
deny that pot prohibition generates hundreds of thousands of
arrests each year, the vast majority for simple possession. Here is
what the group came up with instead:

That’s right: Project SAM—which stands, believe it or not, for
Smart Approaches to Marijuana—is warning Americans about
amotivational syndrome. In 2014. The theme reflected in this
billboard was hoary when it was first applied to marijuana in the
1960s, having figured prominently in anti-cigarette
propaganda two decades before the federal ban on
marijuana, which before it was portrayed as a soporific that
renders people lethargic and unambitious was feared as a “killer
drug” that made them aggressive and irrationally violent.

I am not sure what target Project SAM had in mind when it
created this ad, but even kids are apt to smell the bullshit here.
After all,
many NFL players use marijuana to relax or relieve aches and
pains, and it does not seem to have affected their motivation,
perseverance, or determination. It may even have helped. The

swimmer who won more Olympic medals than any other athlete in
history was a pot smoker, for crying out loud. Nor did marijuana
prevent our last three presidents from ascending to the highest
political office in the land. MPP has a list
of various other high-achieving cannabis consumers, in case you are
curious.

Many people who are not celebrities also manage to consume
marijuana without losing in the game of life. Yet Project SAM is
still trying to persuade Americans that if they smoke pot it will
kill their drive and prevent them from accomplishing anything
worthwhile. In a country where most people born after World War II
have tried pot, it is hard to make this tired slacker stereotype
stick. But I guess it’s the best pot prohibitionists have to
offer.

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Attention New York Reasonoids: Sign Up Now For a Dynamite Reason Panel on India Next Tuesday

India watchers know that the country’s explosive economic growth
after it ended its daft autarkic policies and rolled back the
License Raj lifted nearly 300 million people out of poverty. The
country’s IT sector became the global outsourcing hub. And Indians
started harboring delusions of grandeur, talking loosely about
India becoming the nextindia.slum super power.

That was then.

Now, the country’s growth has plummeted to a mere 4 percent,
raising fears that India might be headed back to the days of the
dreaded Hindu rate of growth of 2 percent. Given that every one
percent drop in GPD growth consigns millions of Indians to poverty
– defined as living on $1.25 a day —jumpstarting India’s economic
miracle is not merely an academic question but a vital human
issue.

Given such stakes, it is no overstatement that national
elections this spring are the country’s most momentous since
Independence in 1947. The Congress Party, that formed a coalition
government in 2004, is facing a serious challenge from the
opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narenda Modi. Although
tainted by his failure to prevent a massacre of the minority Muslim
population in 2002 in the state of Gujarat, where he remains chief
minister, Modi’s promise to fix India’s abysmal infrastructure,
tackle its hidebound bureaucracy, attract foreign investment and
end affirmative action has made him the darling of business.

But a new threat emerged in the form of the Aam Adami Party
(literally: Ordinary Man’s Party) in the state assembly elections
in December. AAP’s leader, Arvind Kejriwal, a political neophyte,
ran a populist campaign promising relief from inflation and rampant
corruption of the established parties, riding to victory in New
Delhi.

But do any of the parties or candidates have what it takes to
reignite India’s economy? Are they campaigning on the right issues?
Will this election produce a government that can fix India’s broken
governing institutions and restart its economic miracle? Will any
party gain the moral authority to enact the next wave of
liberalization? Or will the elections produce more political
fragmentation with no political party obtaining a clear mandate to
enact a bold reform agenda?

These are the questions that Reason Foundation plans to address
at a panel it is co-sponsoring with Asia Society and the South
Asian Journalists Association on Feb. 4, Tuesday, 6.30 p.m., at the
Asia Society’s Park Avenue premises. I’ll moderate a stellar lineup
that includes American Enterprise Insitute’s Sadanand Dhume, a
Wall Street Journal columnist, Arvind Panagariya, a
Columbia University economist who has co-authored several books
with the inimitable Jagdish Bhagwati (and Amartarya Sen’s nemesis)
whom reason.tv interviewed here,
and Carnegie Endowment’s Milan Vaishnav.

Reason still has a few complimentary tickets to give away that
you can get if you rush to this
website and register now.

Bonus material: My column on the
noxious Narendra Modi and why India ain’t going to catch up with the
West any time soon.

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Lunches Seized and Tossed in Trash at Salt Lake City Elementary School for Kids with Unpaid Balances

While I understand the need for parents to pay for their children’s lunches, what do you think the appropriate response should be by adults running an elementary school upon realizing that some young children with unpaid balances had already been served a full hot meal?

Personally, I would assume that any reasonable human being would allow the children to eat the lunches while at the same time calling up their parents to sort out the problem. However, that’s not the action deemed appropriate by the “child-nutrition manager” that visited Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City this past Tuesday. Nope, this person decided that the best course of action was to seize already served lunches and throw them in the trash in front of the victim’s classmates. Mind you, this person is called a “child-nutrition manager.” So someone in charge of “child nutrition” thinks he or she is doing their job by ensuring malnourishment due to unpaid balances.

Next stop for these kids, debtors prison, which are making a comeback in the U.S. by the way. Disgraceful.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

Up to 40 kids at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City picked up their lunches Tuesday, then watched as the meals were taken and thrown away because of outstanding balances on their accounts — a move that shocked and angered parents.

“It was pretty traumatic and humiliating,” said Erica Lukes, whose 11-year-old daughter had her cafeteria lunch taken from her as she stood in line Tuesday at Uintah Elementary School, 1571 E. 1300 South.

Lukes said as far as she knew, she was all paid up. “I think it’s despicable,” she said. “These are young children that shouldn’t be punished or humiliated for something the parents obviously need to clear up.”

Jason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches.

Better call the FBI, after all, it’s not as if there are bankers stealing billions or anything…

As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue, he said.

continue reading

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Presenting The US&PJPY 500

EM is fixed? Fed will un-Taper? Earnings will recover? Money on the sidelines? We’ve heard it all this morning as why stocks are recovering modestly… the real fun-durr-mental reason, of course, is in the chart below: behold the US&PJPY or, alternatively, USDSPY.

Still think it’s a market of stocks?

 

Or just a marginal-liquidity JPY-carry-fueled ponzi?

One good thing to come out of this centrally-planned abortion: instead of 8 monitors to follow “stuff” traders now just need one small screen to track the USDJPY – that shows everything you could possibly ever need.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bCePMC Tyler Durden

Presenting The US&PJPY 500

EM is fixed? Fed will un-Taper? Earnings will recover? Money on the sidelines? We’ve heard it all this morning as why stocks are recovering modestly… the real fun-durr-mental reason, of course, is in the chart below: behold the US&PJPY or, alternatively, USDSPY.

Still think it’s a market of stocks?

 

Or just a marginal-liquidity JPY-carry-fueled ponzi?

One good thing to come out of this centrally-planned abortion: instead of 8 monitors to follow “stuff” traders now just need one small screen to track the USDJPY – that shows everything you could possibly ever need.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bCePMC Tyler Durden

Small Tail In Today's Auction Of $35 Billion In 5 Year Paper

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nqMQYr Tyler Durden

Small Tail In Today’s Auction Of $35 Billion In 5 Year Paper

Hardly as memorable as yesterday’s historic launch of Floating Rate Notes, today’s 5 year auction in which the Treasury sold $35 billion in paper was a snoozer, and despite fears of a blow out following recent concerns about demand in the bucket following recent revulsion to 5 Years, priced at 1.572%, tailing the When Issued  1.57% modestly, however with a lower yield than last month’s 1.6. The Bid to Cover also posted a modest increase from December’s 2.42 up to 2.59, even if the general BTC trend continues to be one broadly lower. Within the internals the only notable item was the spike in Indirects, which took down 44.6% of the allocation, up from 24.8%, leaving 10.7% to the Directs and 44.7% to Dealers. Overall, nothing to write home about.


    



via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1nqMQYr Tyler Durden