In January 2015, amid concerns about the drinking water quality in Flint, Michigan, employees at the state’s Department of Technology, Management & Budget were given coolers of bottled water on each floor of their office space. Ordinary Flint residents were not extended the same courtesy until a year later.
Tonight at 9 p.m. EST, every GOP candidate who is not a[n openly] narcissistic, insolent infant will be debating on the Fox News stage for the one thousandth time. Also at 9 p.m., Donald Trump will be offering counter programming in the form of his very own, hastily assembled “Fuck You Fox News” rally. Who will win? Trick question—tonight, we all lose.
This morning I was disturbed to learn that a California-bound American Airlines flight was diverted back to London after several passengers and at least one flight attendant fell sick with a mysterious illness. Then I actually read the article and, frankly, it was horrifying.
It’s turning out to be a historic week for the most embarrassing beefs in the history of rap music. First, of course, B.o.B, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and his nephew dissed each other over the shape of the planet Earth. But they were not to be outdone: now you can avail yourself of Martin Shkreli’s diss of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, though thankfully the pharmaceutical scrooge at least spared us his rapping.
New federal filings show the ‘Black Americans for a Better Future’ Super PAC is not funded—even in the slightest—by any black Americans. In fact, most of its money comes from Robert Mercer, a reclusive white billionaire with an affinity for Ted Cruz.
Are you currently enrolled at Iowa State University? Do you have a pulse? Then Rand Paul wants YOU to attend to attend his post-caucus rally on February 1—very, very badly. So badly, in fact, that Paul is willing to personally vouch for you in writing to any of your future employers. As long as you just please say you like him.
On his right arm, to remember his time in the service of the Country Rap King, Jerry Kuntz wears a tattoo. It’s the head of a dead-eyed Texas longhorn. On one horn hangs a high school varsity letterman’s jacket, like the one Robert Underfinger used to wear all the time, when he and Kuntz worked together on the Maverick Dirt Road Street Team. Underfinger was only 18. Taylor Nixon was 19, like Kuntz was. He loved diesel trucks, so there’s a heavy-duty tire on the other horn.
On January 28, 1986, America watched on television as the space shuttle Challenger—carrying six astronauts and one schoolteacher—disappeared in a twisting cloud of smoke, nine miles above the launch pad it had just left. To a stunned nation, it appeared that seven lives had instantly been lost.
Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is in “very good health,” according to a letter from the attending U.S. Senate physician. But there’s one fact in Sanders’ health history that belies his image as a maverick populist unbeholden to monied interests: Sanders has been treated for gout.
Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, the two-time Providence, R.I. mayor and two-time convicted felon, died today at the age of 74, just two years after mounting an unsuccessful campaign to return to the office he vacated upon being sent to prison on racketeering charges in 2002. Cianci is being celebrated as a wily, colorful, old-school politician, but his actual record shows that he was a brutal and disgusting gangster, who used the police force as muscle while he abused and terrorized his victims.
Ya boy Ethan Couch is leaving Mexico today on a commercial flight to Dallas, Texas, according to Mexican immigration officials. He is ready to face the music in the U.S., his Mexican attorney Fernando Benitez told NBC News yesterday: “I believe he is relieved to be coming back. I think he has come to terms with this.”
