Donald Trump ended his media blacklist, allowing us to attend his rallies as press ― and on a completely unrelated note, our blood type is O-negative. Apple unveiled its new iPhone and, judging by the reaction on Twitter, we’re pretty sure Tim Cook is forcing people to opt into an insurance marketplace. And Trump says he will ramp up military spending and offset the cost without raising taxes, something he’ll presumably accomplish by overcharging the government slightly less for using Trump services. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, September 7, 2016:
HUFFPOST NOW FREE TO GET PUNCHED IN THE FACE - Not since getting last-minute bleacher tickets to a Yankees game have we been so excited at the prospect of being yelled at by a bunch of disgruntled people. Dave Jamieson: “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has decided to end his controversial media blacklist, which had barred certain news outlets from officially attending his campaign events. The Huffington Post was one of the first news organizations on the list. In an email to HuffPost, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed that the ban had been lifted. CNN’s Brian Stelter was the first to report the news, with a quote from Trump explaining his decision to embrace the spurned media: “I figure they can’t treat me any worse.” The blacklist, if it were written down anywhere, was not made public by the Trump campaign. But a few outlets were certain to be on it: BuzzFeed, Politico, the Daily Beast, the Des Moines Register and the Washington Post. As Stelter points out, it appeared at times that Univision was among them as well.” [HuffPost]
REID PROMISES TO TIE UP SENATE UNTIL GARLAND GETS HEARING- Amanda Terkel: “[O]n Wednesday, supporters of Merrick Garland will make sure that the public remembers Congress has work to do as senators try to awkwardly look the other way. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the floor Tuesday morning and said Democrats will prevent committees from fully functioning until Republicans agree to move forward on Garland...As The Hill notes, Senate rules require unanimous consent for committees to meet after the Senate has been in session for two hours or after 2 p.m. That consent is normally granted without any controversy. So Reid won’t be able to block all committees from meeting, but he will be able to significantly restrict the time in which they can do so.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP DELIVERS FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH, THE BEST, CLASSIEST FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH - Ashley Parker and Alan Rappeport: “Lamenting the shrinking size of the United States military, Donald J. Trump warned Wednesday that America’s adversaries were preparing to capitalize on perceptions of American weakness ...The speech, which Mr. Trump delivered with the aid of teleprompters, signified yet another effort by his campaign to refocus the Republican nominee on critiques of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, and to demonstrate to voters that he can lay out detailed policy prescriptions to problems confronting the nation...Mr. Trump proposed bolstering the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, adding ships and submarines to the Navy, and investing in new fighter planes for the Air Force. He said he would end the caps on military spending, or sequester, that were imposed after the 2011 debt ceiling battle, adding that the additional spending would be offset through “common sense reforms” in other areas of government and by paring down military bureaucracy. But he did not offer specifics.” [NYT]
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SENATOR FROM POOR STATE NOT KEEN ON TALKING ABOUT PRICE-GOUGING DAUGHTER- Martin Shkreli should host a fundraiser for West Virginia’s senior senator. Steven Dennis: “West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin admits he’s a proud father seeing his daughter run a drug company, but he says he didn’t know much about the business decisions Mylan NV made as it raised prices more than 400 percent on the EpiPen ― and kept it that way on purpose. Heather Bresch, Manchin’s daughter and Mylan’s chief executive officer, has come under fire from lawmakers, including many of his fellow Democrats, for her pricing decisions on the life-saving anti-allergy drug…’We make a point ever since I’ve been in this position, and when I was governor, we made a point, we just didn’t get involved. It’s so convoluted. I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘To get into something you don’t understand and your daughter being in this type of industry it was best I stayed away.’” [Bloomberg]
EVAN MCMULLIN ALMOST LITERALLY NAMES JOHN DOE HIS RUNNING MATE - Really testing certain people’s “anyone but Trump” philosophy. Christine Rushton: “Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin thought he could use a placeholder name as his running mate in applications to appear on state presidential ballots. Now, McMullin, running as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump, is stuck with ‘Nathan Johnson’ as a vice presidential candidate on the ballots in eight of the nine states in which he qualifies. That has Twitter users wondering, who is Nathan Johnson? … ‘Nathan is a guy who’s on the ballot right now with the full understanding that this is going to swap out in the immediate future,’ McMullin senior advisor Rick Wilson told Politico.” [LA Times]
Give it a few weeks before Gary Johnson is arrested for getting high in the bathroom of the Al Smith dinner: “A sheriff’s department in North Dakota filed charges against the U.S. Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, for damaging equipment during protests on Tuesday over construction of an oil pipeline. Stein was part of a group protesting the Dakota Access pipeline and spray-painted construction equipment, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department said. Stein does not dispute the account. The department said Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka was charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief.” [Reuters]
REP MAKES POOR INTERN GO AND FETCH SOME MOSQUITOS - We’re guessing the printing office was glad it didn’t have to deal with this prop. Mike McAuliff: “Some members of Congress have suggested that leaders won’t care about Zika until the mosquitoes are in their districts. So Florida Rep. David Jolly (R) decided Wednesday to take that theory one step further, and brought a jar of the flying bloodsuckers from his Zika-infected state to the floor of the House of Representatives. His idea, he said was to give lawmakers a little taste of the fear his constituents feel when they hear about Zika spreading in their neighborhoods while Congress has failed since February to approve any funding to combat the mosquito-borne virus. ‘Can you imagine, colleagues, the fear and anxiety in this chamber if these 100 mosquitoes were outside this jar, not inside this jar?’ Jolly said, displaying a swarming specimen container provided by a Florida research college.” [HuffPost]
AND YOU THINK THE LIBERAL MEDIA CONSPIRACY IS FAKE?!? *SNORT* - Wake up, sheeple. Brendan James: “There is only one thing holding [Never Trump activists] back: At any given moment, every one of these men is likely to be trapped inside of an elevator. ‘Hi, @HomeDepot! Having a lovely afternoon at your Seven Corners store stuck in the elevator to the upper level of the parking deck,’ tweeted Free Beacon executive editor Sonny Bunch in March…’Are you kidding me. I’m trapped in an elevator again,’ lamented Bunch’s colleague F. Bill McMorris in January in a tweet since deleted…Former Cruz flak Amanda Carpenter, the only stuck woman discovered so far, tweeted in February: “Guys. I’m trapped in an amtrak elevator at Bwi airport. Help?’ ‘Disturbing,’ tweeted Jonah Goldberg in 2014. ‘Every elevator I’ve been in today has behaved erratically.’” [Daily Dot]
BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR - Here are the cutest dogs in Congress.
BRAVE STATE LAWMAKERS SAYS WHAT WE’RE ALL THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE FROM MASSACHUSETTS - We’re trying to lobby our HuffPost editors to do a “What’s Working” feature on this guy. Edward Murphy: “Laurie Hunt, a realtor from Wakefield, Massachusetts, who is the sister of Rep. Jeff McCabe, D-Skowhegan, the Maine House majority leader, said she regularly visits the state, particularly to shop for back-to-school clothes for her children. But not this year, she said in an email to Republican members of the State House. She won’t be coming back, she told the legislators, as long as they ‘continue to stand by and do nothing about your governor.’ That didn’t sit well with Rep. Stephen J. Wood, R-Greene. ‘Hi Laurie thanks for not coming to Maine,’ Wood wrote to Hunt. ‘We have a nought (enough) mass holes here in Maine that (are) trying to tell us true maine r’s (sic) how to live our lives and what we can and can’t do. I don’t tell you how to run your state so don’t tell me how to run our state Thanks for not coming to Maine.’” [Press Herald]
COMFORT FOOD
- Remembering the terrible precursor to the iPhone.
- Dog gets the Harry Potter treatment.
- Please shut up about Burning Man, burners.
TWITTERAMA
@notsalome: I’m all for forced progress but picking expensive headphones out of my dog’s poop every couple of weeks isn’t a chore I want to undertake
@aedwardslevy: Good practice:
-Recognizing outliers
-Recognizing house effects
Bad practice:
-LOL we reweighted this poll and now we’re winning
@AdamWeinstein: “Sure we’ll tackle that mosquito-borne virus that gives your baby microcephaly, soon as we stop these block grants for family planning”
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