by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
There should be a holiday in this guy’s honor. @mdvessely @TimMoraghan @BradleySKlein @kkangilly @KellyShumate4 @arguth3 pic.twitter.com/HmjadY8Jwb
— Anthony Pioppi (@AnthonyPioppi) December 20, 2018
Starting Five
The Federal Reserve Bank which, to our knowledge, does not even have an ATM in the lobby
Fed X
As Fed Ex stock was tanking (a friend observed that this is the company’s worst week since Tom Hanks’ plane ditched in the Pacific), the Federal Reserve, ignoring the pleas of President Trump and investors, raised interest rates for the fourth time this season. This would be extremely troubling news, we decided, if we knew what it meant. So we decided to look it up.
Without getting all Alan Greenspan on you, the federal interest rate is the lending rank between banks. All U.S. banks must maintain a certain amount of cash on reserve, and Susie B. and her Amazon windfall cannot fund all of them (especially not now). So they lend and borrow between one another, and yesterday, for the seventh time since Trump took office, the Fed voted to an incremental raise in rates.
The Fed almost never, if at all, raised rates during the Obama presidency as the country was struggling to recover from the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Curiously, raising the federal interest rate has the most profound effect on mortgage (and to a degree, credit card) rates.
Okay, we may have gotten at least half of this wrong. We know. We know. We KNOW! Stick to sportsball.
2. Who’ll Stop The Rain Suns?
How often does this happen? An NBA team that has won 14.3% of its games nearly midway through the season DOUBLES its win total in one week. Ladies and gentleman, your 2018-2019 Phoenix Suns, who won their fourth in a row in Boston last night to leap from 4-24 one week ago to 8-24.
Playoffs!
The return of All-Star caliber guard Devin Booker from injury has had something to do with Phoenix’s resurgence (if only there were a mythical figure that could serve as a metaphor here), as he scored 25 (he scored 38 at MSG two nights earlier). What Suns fans should love is that rookie DeAndre Ayton put together an impressive 23-18 night. Oft-overlooked T.J. Warren had 21 and for the second year in a row is averaging better than 18 ppg.
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The Suns had lost 10 in a row before this win streak began. What happened? Well, the W streak does coincide with 90 year-old fan Greta Rogers tearing owner Robert Sarver a new one. Makes us wonder why Gov. Ducey appointed Martha McSally to take John McCain’s place and not Greta?
3. Syria Later
Our work here is done
In the last 24 hours, the White House has apparently caved on its demands for funding the border wall or else and has announced that the U.S. military will pull out of Syria. Someone just wants to get away to Florida and play golf, no?
In a video message posted yesterday our Supreme Leader said, “We have won against ISIS. We’ve beaten them and we’ve beaten them badly. We’ve taken back the land and now it’s time for our troops to come back home. I get very saddened when I have to write letters or call parents or wives or husbands of soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country.
4. The Year In Pictures: New York Times Edition
Today’s edition of 2018 In Pictures, compiled by The New York Times here and including this iconic shot by Joe Raedle of Getty Images, is incredible. Give yourself five minutes and peruse.
5. Leo!
Gay. Vegetarian. Never married. Animal lover. Lefty (in terms of dexterity, but possibly politically). Often out of work. No, we’re not talking about us (I’m a righty), but instead Leonardo da Vinci, whose biography, by Walter Isaacson, we’re currently working our way through.
Funny anecdote: When he turned 30 Leonardo wrote the ruler of Milan looking for a job. In the first 10 paragraphs of his missive he noted most of his manifold skills, e.g. technical, engineering, etc. Finally, in his 11th and last paragraph, the man who’d go on to create the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper wrote, “Also, I can paint.”
Buried the lede there, Leo.
Music 101
Friday I’m In Love
Robert Smith likes to say of this 1992 hit by The Cure that it’s exactly the kind of happy, poppy song that is for people who are NOT fans of The Cure. “I don’t care if Monday’s blue” is a direct reference to the song from a decade or so earlier by New Order. Yes, we are aware that today is Thursday…
Remote Patrol
A Charlie Brown Christmas
8 p.m. ABC
Feels as if this has already aired this season, but who cares? If there can be non-stop sappy romcom Christmas films on The Hallmark Channel, why isn’t there a channel designated to air your favorite childhood Christmas specials THE WEEK BEFORE Christmas? For now, bravo, ABC! There may be no Christmas special that treats its prepubescent viewers more like adults than this one. There’s even great jazz piano and a gospel reading.
Some months or maybe over a year ago, with the GOP leadership and rank-and-file making it clear that they were willing to put up with Trump’s misogyny, white supremacism, etc., you or someone in these comments asked what it would take for these people to turn on him. My answer was this: a big drop in the markets.
Well, now it’s here, or appears to be — the S&P’s losses in the last 90 days are approaching 15%, and the December numbers are the worst since the 1930s. And the tax cuts and tariffs don’t seem to be helping anyone outside of the 1%. We’ll see how many people have a sudden change of heart toward the guy they have blindly supported now that their retirement accounts are headed south for the first time in years.
They’re not just “headed South”, they’re already in GEORGIA, close to the FL-GA line! Other than that, I completely agree. 🙂
Actually jdubs, there are a couple TV channels broadcasting the “classic” Christmas animated specials for the past month. I see the listings as I zoom up & down the TV channel schedule at night. Unfortunately, I haven’t stoped to watch & am not sure which channels they are but I’ll look tonight! I think one of them is Freeform.
I’ve been meaning to ask you & you may have written about this previously (but due to my increased age (ahem) & now downright angst over my investment paper losses (“Paaaper losses, paaaaper losses” isn’t that how the song goes? Wait, I guess that was “ROSES”, well, whatever) I have now forgotten, so do YOU have any NYC Christmas traditions? Something you do/see every year while you’ve lived in NYC? For example, do you go see the Rockefeller tree or ice skate or see the Radio City Music Hall Xmas show or take a walk to look at all the big dept store Xmas window displays? OR perhaps go see ‘The Nutcracker’ (I’m thinking this is a ‘no’ unless nieces are in town) or watch the Knicks lose in person while wearing a festive sweater ( 😉 ) or maybe just get together with friends/co-workers at your favorite bar/restaurant?
My “Christmas tradition” for the past 7-9 years has been to watch as many TV Xmas Movies as there are hours at night & weekends from Nov 1 – Jan 1. AND I don’t just watch, I er, write them down, along with the network, the date I viewed, a brief synopsis, a critique & I (DON’T LAUGH!) rate them on a scale from 1-10. And as Jacob has recently stated, I can be “HARSH” in my assessment. 🙂 No Xmas TV-movie has ever received a 10 & only one has gotten a 9 & maybe a handful have gotten an 8. The past few years, the unfortunate truth is that as Hallmark & now some other channels are all battling to be crowned “HOLIDAY CABLE CHAMP”, and more original movies are produced, the quality has plummeted. I yell at the TV almost as much as if I was watching the Supervillains or SAS. Anyhoo, if you ever have a question about a Xmas TV-Movie, I’m your go-to gal. 🙂
This is a good question, Susie B. Now, besides returning to Arizona to freeload off my parents for a week or four, one thing I do try to do every year is watch METROPOLITAN, the 1990ish indie film by Whit Stillman. I first saw it while covering a story in early December in Maine, circa 1991, and it just completely made me fall deeper in love with NYC at this time of year. It’s not a Christmas film, per se, but it takes place in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.