Toady Foster

From VANITY FAIR:

On Monday, Trump convened his first full Cabinet meeting since taking office, gathering the heads of every major government agency for a press gaggle around the elliptical mahogany table that occupies a prominent place in the West Wing. Traditionally, the media is present only at the beginning of such meetings, during which the president makes a brief statement and a few photos are snapped before a review of the administration’s progress continues behind closed doors. Trump tried something a little different.

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Take Them Out! To the ballgame, I mean.

From Mitchell Bard at THE HUFFINGTON POST:

Noted football coach Bill Parcells once said, “You are what your record says you are.”

Parcells’ quote jumped into my mind when I was thinking about the slate of Tea Party-influenced Republicans running in November. I feel like we’ve become immune to the stories about the extreme and, sometimes, downright delusional things they’ve said, since they’ve come in a steady stream over the past several months. But if you step back and look at the group as a whole (or at least some of the leading Tea Party favorites), you can get a real sense of what the Republican Party is offering voters in November.

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(In the window, not allowed to participate: Michael Phathead Steele. Back row, l to r: Coach Rush Limbaugh, cheerleader Rich Iott (running for OH-Nein), Coach Glenn Beck, Marco Rubio. Middle-but not moderate-row, l to r: Linda McMahon, Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Carl Paladino. Front row, l to r: Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck, Dan Maes, Sharron Angle, and Batboy David Vitter)

Behind the Curtain

From D.C. WATER COOLER:

This year should be a blowout for Republicans. 2010 is a year when voter dissatisfaction is extreme, high unemployment lingers, and Republican turnout is expected to be strong. Yet one group of Republican candidates is performing poorly in races from coast to coast. Why did Republicans choose such a weak bunch of women?

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Rowdy With a Chance of Screwballs

From Betsy Reed at THE Nation:

In the media spectacle that is the 2010 midterm elections, women of the GOP are playing starring roles. They have figured prominently in nearly every plot and subplot that holds any real interest or potential for debased amusement: from Indian-American Nikki Haley’s triumph over her mudslinging male rivals for the GOP gubernatorial nod in South Carolina, to Carly Fiorina’s catty open-mic swipe at her opponent Barbara Boxer’s hair in the first-ever contest between two women for a California Senate seat, to WWF founder and Connecticut Senate hopeful Linda McMahon’s gifts to oh-so-lucky Democratic ad firms (including video of the candidate physically attacking a buxom, scantily clad woman purporting to be her husband’s lover), to the daily dose of clips revealing Christine O’Donnell’s youthful preoccupations with witchcraft and masturbation. Remember when politics was boring?

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