Dave Weigel, at Bloomberg Politics, reports on how “The Campaign Finance Gyrocopter Man Describes His New, Surreal Existence“…
… Two weeks before the Washington, D.C. court hearing on his stunt—he was charged with a felony—Hughes is embracing his status as a spokesman for campaign reform. He’s declared solidarity with the Stamp Stampede, the reform campaign that marks money with warnings “not to be used for bribing politicians.” He’s been the focus of columns and front page stories about campaign finance as a “rising issue” in the 2016 elections. Buzzing over the Capitol lawn and drawing out a bomb squad actually seemed to cut through the pundit fog about how nobody cared about money in politics anymore…
In the meantime, Hughes was frustrated that the 535 letters he’d attempted to deliver to members of Congress had been impounded. So had the gyrocopter.
“The last word I got they were going to melt it down and make beer cans,” said Hughes. “I’m kidding! The last I heard, they’ve got it in a safe location and it may be evidence. I’m never going to do anything like this again–in case they’re listening on the call, let me be clear about that. The feedback I’m getting says I’ve lit a fire on issue of campaign finance and big money, so I’m going to focus on that.”
That didn’t mean he had happily parted with the gyrocopter. Ideally, as he focused more on public campaigning and visits to primary states, he could get it back.
“I’ve got blood invested in that machine,” he said. “I could go down a list of that machine, and how I built it. Everyone who’s worked on a machine has a piece of his soul in it. But I might not get it back. I knew that getting in.”
… which sparked a fifty-year-old memory of watching You Never Can Tell on late-night tv, and Dick Powell (resurrected German Shepard in human form) mournfully complaining to his (former race horse in human form) assistant that when the police released him in connection with the murder he’s trying to solve, “… they kept my biscuits, too!”
I wonder if that movie is worth rewatching?
***********
Apart from cheap nostalgia, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?
srv
As someone who has built an aircraft, you groundlings would never understand this man’s sacrifice.
Shana
Just got back from New York where Hubby and I saw Fun Home last night (Terrific) and Zorba this afternoon (pretty damn good but now done). Trying to get Verizon Wireless to talk to me about elder daughter’s problem with phone roaming charges in Anchorage (summer job from Law School, working for the Public Defender’s office). Missing Hubby already, he’ll be in Orlando all week at a meeting.
Elizabelle
Wolf Hall.
BillinGlendaleCA
Playing with cell phones. Got a couple of Moto G’s for remotes and I’m thinking trying to update the OS on one without creating a paperweight. Got a Lumia and trying out windows phone and upgrading it to Win10.
gogol's wife
@Elizabelle:
That was the greatest piece of television I have ever seen. I am so blown away by it. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.
Mike in NC
Tropical Storm Ana dropped 6 inches of rain today. Please go away.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: What is this rain you speak of.
muddy
I went out dumpster diving with a friend. I wasn’t really into it, I mainly went to please her because it’s her new thing. But I am into going again, I can’t believe the stuff they throw away! I got a galvanized trash can with a dent, heavy duty bolt cutters that need an adjustment, many picture frames with mats and glass, and a fancy tea kettle. And then the food. Bags and bags of perfectly good food. It wasn’t even iffy or up to the pull dates. Ridiculous.
She got a hell of a lot of stuff as she says she is going to re-sell items. I think really she’s a bit of a hoarder, but anyway… I just take what I really want. Left plenty behind. I was just gobsmacked at the things we found at box stores.
Roger Moore
@Mike in NC:
Preferably to the Northern Sierras.
Eric U.
@muddy: when the students leave the dorms, the stuff they throw away is pretty amazing. This is even after they donate anything they think is worthwhile to the sale that the university puts on
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: @gogol’s wife: Mark Smeaton was an idiot. The other defendants were playing the game of thrones and lost.
Corner Stone
@muddy:
What?
srv
Hersh uncovers the real truth
Corner Stone
Fucking embarrassing, Rockets.
muddy
@Corner Stone: What, what?
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: You should have gone with Wolf Hall.
Omnes Omnibus
@muddy: What what? What?
/Bertie Wooster
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus: I say!
Omnes Omnibus
A sticky wicket, that.
Belafon
@srv: Saw that. Can you see the bait and switch:
His contention is that the US didn’t tell Pasha of the mission, but his evidence is that Pasha knew bin Laden was in Abbottabad. Just because Pasha knew bin Laden’s location does not mean he knew anything of the mission.
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus: I grew up in the Middle East and there were some old British ex-pats who’d been there forever – they actually said stuff like you’d read in Jeeves. A few of the guys had that “retired colonel” looking brush-stache and it was really hard not to laugh.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Back at work. The wind’s still blowing in Cloquet, but it must be from a different direction as the door alarm isn’t going off tonight.
Other than that, I’m moving ahead on tackling Chapter 13 and, of course, pimping my Kickstarter, which is now trying to raise enough to have a print edition.
Omnes Omnibus
@muddy: I’ve bumped into them in pubs and clubs. I am enough younger than the WWII generation that most of that sort of banter came from people my grandparents’ age.
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
I’ll definitely have to watch the rerun tomorrow night. What a pig Henry is.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Of course he was a pig, most kings were – one way or another. But by the rules of his time, one of the most important things he could do was father a male heir.
ETA: And the most important thing a queen could do was give birth to a male heir.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Any thoughts on what was going through Cromwell’s mind while Henry was bear-hugging him?
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m out of step with the generations in my family because I was a late-middle-aged-whoops child. My parents were grandparent age (other sibs grown) and they hadn’t lived in the states since the 50’s. They were married during WWII and weren’t kids even then. They were born in the nineteen-teens, I was in the 60s!!
Of course you would never say WWII anyway, it’s The War. I never realized i had picked up this usage until my own kid asks me, Which one?
Doug R
@srv: I bought a 90 dollar quadcopter and played with it in our apartment courtyard/fire lane which is cinder blocks sunk into the turf. Not fragile aircraft friendly-I managed to crack one arm and fragment another. I bought a different quadcopter at another hobby store, noticed the battery was almost identical with the same connector, so I connected it-top speed whirring and SMOKE. Fried the board on that one. I went back to the first store and told him my sob story and he knocked 10 bucks off another machine.
Then after poking around on some forums, I got the idea to take the board from the first machine and hook it up to the rest of the second machine. A little tracing of prop spin directions, a little swapping of props and polarities, and I have a frankenmachine to go with the new one. It’s a little wobbly, but it flies.
I am thinking Hughes spent WAY more than 300 bucks to build his contraption, especially if it holds 535 letters.
danielx
A posting by an old friend on the occasion of my natal day, with some name substitution….
I am truly honored. No man ever had a better friend or compliment.
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: “I did what was necessary. I don’t have to like it.”
@muddy: I was also born in the ’60s, but as the elder child of parents born, more or less, during the war.
danielx
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sounds much like a phrase I’m told is used in the, ah, special operations community – ‘we do a lot of things nobody should have to do because they’re necessary’.
Tenar Darell
@muddy: My father was 10 years older than my mother, they married older, waited a few years to have me, and I’m the eldest. It’s weird, isn’t it, being somehow out of one’s generation by one’s parents. Like having an experience that you were never meant to have because your parent(s) are older than the norm.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Happy Birthday. But recently, I had a 13 y/o nephew come up to me and say that something I had said about Iggy Azalea and cultural appropriation (not in those words) was something he had thought about and now agreed with. I was rather proud of that from the POV of both a liberal and an insufferable hipster music snob.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: I take it the Clips won.
BillinGlendaleCA
@muddy: My dad was born in the teens and me in the 60’s.
redshirt
@muddy: What kind of food was perfectly good from the dumpster? Asking for a friend.
muddy
@Tenar Darell: Yeah, I think it made it harder to relate, there was such a gap. You have that gap with grandparents, but that’s a completely different relationship. I didn’t really get to know my siblings until I was an adult. They were grown and gone and we were overseas. It was kind of like having a second family, only with the same 2 parents. I grew up as an only child, but am one of 5.
I saw them all together at my parents’ 50th. It was funny because the others were interacting apparently as they did as children. I had never seen the like. Usually it was that they were adults and I was the baby. But the 4 of them carried on like bratty kids. I was laughing to myself, Who’s the grown-up now?
Eric U.
@Doug R: I got some Blade Nano QX quads for work, and they bounce really well. It’s a hoot flying them around
@redshirt: groceries throw stuff away when it expires. I’ve had ice cream from a dumpster. you need to know when they are going to throw stuff away or get very lucky (using a meaning of the word “lucky” that isn’t that common)
redshirt
@Tenar Darell: My parents are only 17 years older than me and as we all get older I find the age difference melting away between us.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my Mom outlived me in a healthy fashion.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: Cans.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Cans I can understand. Iced cream, however?
danielx
@Omnes Omnibus:
Here’s something for even an insufferable hipster music snob:
Edgar Winter’s White Trash – Give It Everything You Got
Edgar Winter and Jerry LaCroix trading sax riffs…..bad boys indeed.
Omnes Omnibus
@muddy: Age differences apparently matter. I have seen studies saying that a person who has five years as an only child develops that way. My younger brother is about 6 1/2 years younger than me. Yet, I still feel responsible for the guy… My dad is is also an eldest and he still has weird, feudal feelings of responsibility for his siblings and the rest of us.
Tenar Darell
@redshirt: I have a cousin whose mother was approximately the same age difference as your parents.
muddy
@redshirt: CVS kindly double bagged boxes of cereal. I guess they know someone might want to have it kept dry. Anyway about 3 dozen boxes, 2 months from the pulldate. At the supermarket they mostly use the crusher and you can’t get that stuff. They have smaller bins (like a trash can) that I assume are being picked up for compost. I got produce out of that. I could have gotten more, but it was hot today and there were slimy things once you got a foot down. I could see more decent stuff down in there but didn’t want it bad enough to push past slime.
Anyway I got 15 tomatoes, 1 cantalope, 2 honeydew, 4# beets, 3# parsnips, 3# turnips, 4 heads of broccoli, 6 baking potatoes, 2 eggplant, 8 apples and 3 grapefruit.
PurpleGirl
Fell sleep around 7 pm and woke up around 11:15 pm, missing a number of TV shows I usually watch on Sunday. Trying to decide what to do now.
Re Henry VIII and heirs — Imagine how history might have been different if they knew back then we we know now about how gender is determined and what we know about the causes of miscarriages. The woman was generally held to be the problem in not producing the male child when all along it was Henry’s fault.
muddy
@Omnes Omnibus: The 2nd one in my family acts like the stereotypical first child. The actual 1st is bone lazy and does not give a damn about much if any effort is involved. So I guess it fell to the next one to carry the standard.
redshirt
@muddy: Huh. I am without a response. I want to ask “why” but I feel that’s inappropriate. At the same time, I’m taking notes for when I am truly desperate.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: Going with the era….* (Damn it, if it were Fathers’ Day, I could go full on insufferable hipster music snob (I inherited it)).
*We can all work with this.
muddy
@redshirt: It’s not inappropriate. If it were my secret shame I wouldn’t have posted about it! My friend wanted to do it because she saw youtube videos about it. So I said okay. Let’s be hunter-gatherers! She called the PD to ask if it was legal, they said it was okay unless there was a sign saying No Trespassing, or if it was locked.
Anyway I figure, what’s the harm. If the stuff is gross, I won’t take it. If it’s good, why wouldn’t I take it? It was just fun, we were larking about with headlamps on. Little adventure. Free food.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: My dad had an uncle that was the same age as he was.
Omnes Omnibus
@muddy: My younger brother is also the most loyal person I have ever met. Stories that shan’t be shared. The kid is also the best person I have ever known – OTOH he described one of his daughter’s academic rivals as “Omnes Omnibus” smart to my mother to explain why she might not win some academic award.
Mandalay
Bernie Sanders on campaign reform on Face the Nation:
Also, too:
So now Clinton will surely be asked about her litmus tests for SC nominees. I had been thinking that Bernie would merely be a useful foil to Clinton, but perhaps he’ll turn out to be a real PITA for her.
**** SANDERS 2016 ****
redshirt
@muddy: From your posts in this thread I’ve come to realize I’m afraid of adventures now and that’s something fundamental to me.
And that I’m afraid of a lot of things now, and I didn’t used to be.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Golly, maybe one of your Libertarian candidates will win.
scav
@PurpleGirl: Given how scientific fact can be solidly ignored today when convenient, especially in power struggles, I’m not sure how much history would have been actually changed. Possibly they may have just used other rationales for getting what they wanted. He’d certainly have needed to get younger women to keep trying with, if nothing else. And there were all those other reasons to jump in and get power via the establishment of the CoE — wealth and political alliences domestically and internationally. I don’t know.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Does that mean “smart yet undisciplined”? Because holy balls, was that ever my problem. I turned into a Stepford student in graduate school, but it took me a while.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl: Didn’t Henry have a son with one of his mistresses? Given the importance of heirs, I am not sure how much history would have changed had they known more.
muddy
@redshirt: A few years ago I set out on a road trip with my dog. I felt so weird to be traveling alone and I felt nervous. I’d always had at least my kid with me before that, if not other adults. Oh, poor widdle me, all alone!. Then I thought about how silly it was. I used to drive out with a baby, in an old beater, and had no money. Here I had GPS, a cell phone, AAA, and credit cards. And a 100# pitbull. When I thought about it I realized I should have been terrified back in the day instead. But wasn’t because I was young and stupid.
As far as the dumpster thing goes, you don’t have to actually crawl inside. They have sliding doors on the side, good access with feet on the ground.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: No, if you want it from my brother, his brother is a god-damned genius. I am not. I am a guy who has really high test scores. That’s all. OTOH, if you criticize my brother for what he says, I’ll work very hard to cut you. I am not kidding.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus:Who’s brother?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Has anyone noticed the way that conservatives mock the idea of electric cars being green because we’ll need to dispose of the batteries, while also being rabidly in favor of nuclear power?
Elizabelle
@debbie: I notice that we viewers saw Mr. Cromwell’s neck, and more of it than usual, as he stepped toward the exultant (cretinous) Henry 8.
Origuy
@Brachiator:
Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond. His only acknowledged bastard, died when he was 17.
Elizabelle
@muddy:
The definitive literature on dumpster diving.
Lars Eighner and his famous essay, “On Dumpster Diving.” Might be in his terrific book, “Travels with Lizbeth,” but I’m not sure of that.
Ruckus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Those batteries can be recycled. Nuclear waste not so much. But then conservatives don’t seem to understand much about how things work, do they?
2liberal
re: deflategate:
Other teams mess with the footballs (including video proof) and just get slap on the wrist.
http://tinyurl.com/khz4dyt
when they measured the balls, they measured 11 of the Patriots’ footballs but only 4 of the Colts’. If you line up the first 4 of both sets of measurements there is no big difference in the pressure drop.
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4781236/turning-a-critical-eye-on-wells-report
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: It will be the hair weasel guy. No the other one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Or, it could be the other one…
Major Major Major Major
The Fish #9
Shameless plug. Open thread.
Tree With Water
“Former Florida governor Jeb Bush would have authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as his brother and then-president George W. Bush did, he told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in an interview to be aired Monday”.
But would he do it again, knowing what he does now?
redshirt
@2liberal: Ballghazi is nothing else than a blatant attempt to destroy the Patriots by other jealous teams within the League. A plot initiated by the Colts and then carried on by the Ravens.
BillinGlendaleCA
The attempted Lolipop update failed but not too badly; I don’t have a fine looking paperweight. The Windows 10 upgrade went quite smoothly, now if I can only turn off the “missing SIM card” nag.
Tenar Darell
@BillinGlendaleCA:
@muddy: My brother and me are only about three years apart, so we didn’t have to worry about being separated by age. (Actually we fought like hell, but dog forbid anyone picked on my little brother). But one of my grandfathers did have that split. Brothers a generation older, nieces and nephews who were the same age as him. You have to explain once and twice removed and first, second and third cousins to do genealogy or deal with a family with that kind of age differential. I learned it early.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tree With Water: Considering who most of his foreign policy advisers are and that they still feel it was a good idea and we just didn’t stay long enough, YES.
Tree With Water
In fact, wouldn’t it be interesting to convene a bipartisan town hall meeting with all the principal presidential candidates and thrash out what exactly why they did support the Bush-Cheney war?
Happy to remind folks that Bernie Sanders would not be invited.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: Please go ahead and organize that townhall.
Tree With Water
@Omnes Omnibus: You have me confused with the NY Times- or maybe FOX “news” is more like it- if any outfit could put it together, it would be FOX. But I’ve long though presidential candidates should submit to free ranging discussions about American history in general, and recent history in particular, in some type of forum. It might have opened a few eyes to have heard what the champagne outfit deserter and Daddy Deferment had concluded about the American War in Vietnam. You know what I mean, Omni?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@2liberal: Given all the problems the NFL is having with domestic abuse, it would seem that underinflated balls is something they should want more of, not less.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Actually literally LOL’d.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: Really? It’s a terrible joke.
Major Major Major Major
@redshirt: Fine, I chuckled out loud. And sometimes terrible jokes are good you know.
Redshift
@Doug R:
It carried 535 letters and him, so yeah, it cost a lot more than 300 bucks. Also, it was an autogyro aircraft, not a quad copter drone.
opiejeanne
@Tenar Darell: My great grandfather was the youngest of twelve brothers. The two oldest were twins. My grandfather went to a family reunion with his father to meet his 11 uncles and some of them were 25 years older than his father. I have a photo of them all in one sitting, but I don’t know which names go with which one and the one cousin I have run across who might help me is an insanely right wing Canadian who is still damned angry about the Revolutionary War. He also seems to be a bit senile even though he is my age, 65, and has seemed that way for the past 10 years. Very frustrating.
sharl
I don’t know what to make of the Sy Hersh long read in the LRB, but it will lead to some intense (and IMO well-deserved) media criticism, e.g.,
That’s a sample of how it’s gonna be in certain sectors of social media for at least the first part of this week. (Bolding is mine.)
Aleta
Boy oh boy, that’s cutting edge thrusting and parrying. Enjoyable reading; thanks!
Zinsky
Even if Mr. Gyrocopter is a tool, I’m glad someone is passionate about campaign finance reform!
raven
Who decided to do this stupid shit of “FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE ARE UNDER THE THREAT OF BAD WEATHER”!!!!!
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@raven: They aren’t very good but I don’t really see them as a threat, and as long as they’re in Mahtomedi, I don’t think it’s possible to threaten 50 million people.
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: this!
NotMax
@raven
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Or not.
BillinGlendaleCA
Joe seems to think that the Iranian sanctions can hold in absence of a deal and we should trust our friends: the Saudis(15/19 911 hijackers) and Isreal. Joe is an IDIOT.
NotMax
Settling in for the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple marathon just beginning on TCM.
Aleta
@raven: If there’s something bad and it don’t look good …
The Thin Black Duke
@BillinGlendaleCA: Joe isn’t an idiot. He’s just loyal to the people who pay him.
BillinGlendaleCA
@The Thin Black Duke: No, Joe is an IDIOT.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@muddy: I used to work for a guy whose wife told me that under no circumstances was I to tell him of the existence of FreeCycle.
Anyone who knows a landfill scavenger has all sorts of stories about the amazing things people throw away. My former boss’ best score from the landfill was a Kirby vacuum cleaner that just needed the dog hair cleared out.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Reminds me that I’ve got to pick up some panes of glass I saw beside the road yesterday.
Iowa Old Lady
Sometimes when I read BJ, I realize I live a more boring life than many of you do. And I’m glad.
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: You would have loved my ride in the front seat of a Cobra helicopter this weekend!
NotMax
@raven
And you didn’t even mention Michael Dukakis in the back seat!
p.a.
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:you can earn some nice pocket change driving neighborhoods on trash day just by picking up lawn mowers being thrown away for nothing more than a fouled plug or snapped cord.
On the other hand I know someone who would go out at 2-3 am to steal lawn furniture to sell at flea markets.
raven
@NotMax: Like this?
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: No, Dukakis was in a tank.
@raven: Yup, like that.
David Koch
@sharl: you realize Hersh once wrote JFK personally had the FBI murder Marylin Monroe and he based it on iron clad documents that later turned out to be forgeries.
David Koch
@BillinGlendaleCA: Does he mention how he opposes the sanctions in the first place saying they wouldn’t work and recommended immediate bombing in it’s place?
ThresherK
@p.a.: Ha! To paraphrase Whitman, He who steals my furniture steals trash. (Almost literally!)
At some point with the incredible bulk and mass of things we had to deal with, combined pack, recycle, Dumpster, trash, and tote to the recycling plant (for our tres moderne town with all the separation done there–cool) I was grateful for that circle of life.
I moved untold cwt* of stuff out to the curb for the two bulk trash days prior to the move. These things were in various states of repair, useless to us, and something of a purge for a nascent hoarding issue for someone in my home. Well, some of the things were gone several hours later, and I couldn’t have been happier. Better than throwing it out.
Our lawnmower, which could use a bit of tinkering, we saved and gave away this spring to a young couple (the female is my wife’s best friends’ daughter) moving into a house together. (And should they get married it will not count as the wedding gift.)
(*”Hundred weight”. I needed a better term to describe much, much more than pounds and certainly not tons.)
David Koch
@Tree With Water: maybe they could include Bernie just to ask him why voted in approval of Bush’s handling of the invasion of Iraq
the Conster
@gogol’s wife:
Amen. I’m responding now because I went right to bed after, laid there and cried because it triggered something deep. Astounding hour of TV on every level.
Eric U.
@ThresherK: if I get our bulk trash out the day before, it’s all gone by the actual day. One year I did a major and much-needed purge, and it was gone by the time my wife got home from work. So she didn’t think I threw anything away. I had a collection going on the porch this year, and someone came and got it yesterday. I’d rather not have to put it out by the curb anyway.
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I was a little surprised when I saw my wife was getting rid of the kirby. But it’s a mediocre vacuum, and very heavy. That’s probably why the person threw it out. Should have gone to metal scrappers instead of the dump, must weigh most of 50 pounds. Ours was getting annoying by the end, going through belts frequently, smelled like burnt rubber.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Eric U.: No, the person threw it out because the filter was clogged with dog hair. She said it was brand new otherwise and worked perfectly once the filter was cleared out.
It wasn’t all that long ago that you couldn’t buy a canister vacuum anywhere, much like how difficult it is to find one today that uses bags. This would have been right in that drought; she was ecstatic with the find.
Tom
My wife and I binge-watched “Gracie and Frank” on Netflix. Very funny and a lot of good emotional beats, as well as an outstanding cast.
lawguy
Watched “You Never Can Tell” again a few years ago and it is worth watching if you go in wanting a kind of silly mystery with no deep thoughts.