9.21 Paul Simon at Madison Square Garden
9.19 From Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time, by Ian O’Connor: “One New England assistant said the general feeling among staff members around that time wasn’t that Belichick‘s system could make Super Bowl quarterbacks out of all 32 NFL starters. ‘But if you gave us any of the top 15, we could do it,’ the assistant said. ‘I don’t think the coaches view Tom as special as everyone else in football does. Mr. Kraft thinks Tom is the greatest gift ever, but the coaches don’t.'”
9.17 Howard Glazer in the Gotham Gazette: If anything, New York as a whole demonstrated that New Yorkers like their progressivism, but they like it tempered with fiscal reality, with experience, and the desire and ability to find common ground between Findley Lake and Pelham Bay. That’s not what Nixon was selling — but its Cuomo’s whole brand.
9.17 Philip Plotch in the Daily News: Cuomo has shrewdly used his powers over appointments and resources to bend the authorities to his will, emboldening his staff to monitor them and align their priorities with the governor’s. On the new bridge, Cuomo’s relentless pressure expedited necessary approvals, broke logjams and secured resources. After setting an opening date for the Second Ave. subway, MTA officials watched in awe as the governor intimidated contractors to get the new service up and running on time. When he thought the bureaucracies were moving too slowly, he brought officials into his office, cross-examined them and reduced some of them to tears. One official told me, “He’s a hard driving S.O.B.; that’s why s–t’s getting done.”
9.16 Vontae Davis, a two-time Pro Bowler playing for Buffalo after nine years with Miami and Indianapolis, retired halfway through Sunday’s 31-20 loss to the Chargers,
9.16 Ruth Marcus in the Post: There must be a full investigation, beginning with FBI interviews of both Christine Blasey Ford, who made the accusation, and Kavanaugh himself, likely followed by some form of hearing. Though I would put nothing past the people who stole a Supreme Court seat from Merrick Garland, even this crew of Senate Republicans cannot muscle through the nomination, bleating about the unfairness of 11th-hour complaints. The urgency is to investigate, not to rush to confirm a lifetime appointment. . . .Then comes the hard — or what seems to be, right now, the harder — part: What happens if, as the nation witnessed 27 years ago with Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, the two accounts continue to diametrically diverge? Ford says a “stumbling drunk” Kavanaugh and a friend grabbed her at a high school party, when she was 15 and Kavanaugh 17; that 
Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and groped her; that he put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream. These are allegations that, if true, constitute some form of criminal sexual assault, which makes them, as my colleague Jennifer Rubin has pointed out, inherently more serious than the sexual-harassment allegations, which were of course horrifying in their own way, involving Thomas. Yes, it was high school, but if you do something bad enough in high school, it can lose you your seat on the Supreme Court. And this, to me, constitutes bad enough, even if she managed to get away before worse happened.
9.15 Looking south from the office, through a rain-spattered window, at 5 PM
9.14 Paul Manafort pleaded guilty Friday to criminal charges stemming from his time as a lobbyist in Ukraine. In exchange for sentencing leniency, he will be a witness for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
9.14 John Podhoretz in the Post: “Andrew Cuomo is either the worst great politician or the best bad politician in America. He is a master of the backroom deal and knows how to work every lever of power to his advantage. What’s fascinating is how he combines these remarkable abilities with an almost hilarious incompetency when it comes to the talents we ordinarily associate with successful elected officials. He has a tin ear, a thick tongue and an unattractive mien. Turns out he didn’t need to have a good ear, a silver tongue or a star’s wattage to secure his party’s nomination for governor yet again. What he needed was his unparalleled knowledge of how to use the New York Democratic Party machine to generate the turnout he required to swamp the insurgent leftist campaign of Cynthia Nixon. There’s no way of looking at Gov. Cuomo’s commanding victory — after how badly he handled the stump and his one debate in the last six months — without saying: Damn, he’s good at this.”
9.14 New York Times: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was the epitome of the very establishment the Democratic left has been frothing against: He raised big checks from big corporate powers. He was a dynastic candidate seeking a third term. He talked about capping taxes and constraining spending. And he won a resounding victory on Thursday. Mr. Cuomo turned back a progressive primary challenge from the actress Cynthia Nixon in such emphatic
fashion — he won by nearly the same margin as he had four years ago against a little-known and underfunded challenger — that by the next morning, he was back to being asked about 2020 presidential ambitions that he had flatly denied only weeks ago. The victory was thorough. Mr. Cuomo carried Long Island with roughly 75 percent of the vote. He won the Bronx, his best county in the state, with nearly 83 percent support. His next best borough in the city was its political polar opposite: Staten Island. He flipped parts of the Hudson Valley that he lost four years ago by double digits. . . .His decisive win on Thursday — less than three months after Representative Joseph Crowley’s stunning defeat at the hands of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a congressional primary — was the latest sign that the wildfire of progressive energy that is burning through the Democratic Party nationally may not be potent enough to topple leading Democrats statewide. No incumbent Democratic governors or senators lost primaries this year, in contrast to the early Tea Party victories over establishment Republicans in 2010. Mr. Cuomo said his triumph was a testament to all that he had accomplished in his two terms, citing specifically same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage and paid family leave. His critics and opponents proposed only “academic” arguments and ethereal ideas. “We have provided real-life solutions,” he said. It was a variation on one of his favorite themes that he has used to bludgeon rivals, from Ms. Nixon to Mayor Bill de Blasio. “You cannot have the word progressive without the word progress. It doesn’t work,” he said. “And we provided and achieved progress and that’s the message of last night.”
9.14 Interview at O’Melveny
9.14 Hurricane Florence makes landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, as a category 1 storm with winds of nearly 90mph
9.13 Gov. Cuomo wins the Democratic primary with two-thirds of the vote.
9.13 Emma Thompson: “I’ve always felt that humorlessness is the root of all fascism.”
9.13 Maria Michelos: Thank you so very much for your message. It’s people like you (one of the few) who makes leaving here more difficult than I imagined. We’ve dealt with some of the more stressful moments here together and you, along with Tom, were always my saving graces. I will miss you and your light-heartedness even when things were at their toughest here. Thank you for all of your encouragement, prose expertise and kindness.
9.13 Timothy O’Brien, Trump biographer: “One of his great strengths is that he lives in his own reality distortion field — there is this narrative going on all the time in his head about how successful he is, how great he is — one of the things that allows him to plow ahead after he makes mistakes.”
9.13 Greg Sargent in the Post: The political theorist Martha Nussbaum has urged us to see the debate over “political correctness” in light of the cosmopolitanism first elaborated by the ancients, that is, the idea that through reason we can come to treat one another, regardless of background, as having equal worth by virtue of our respective “moral affiliation” with “rational humanity.” Nussbaum argues that the sneering at “political correctness” really amounts to a declaration that we do not have any “duty” to put in the intellectual, political and societal work necessary to counter or ease “racism, sexism, and other divisive passions” that militate against tolerance and humanism, in ourselves or in others. What Trump basically declares again and again, in one form or another, is that those who demand resistance to our basest and most divisive and hateful instincts should just shut up and stop ruining all the fun. Instead, by all means, go ahead and revel in them — without apology.”
9.12 Trump: “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000……..This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising Billions of Dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”
9.12 Middle-class income rose to the highest recorded levels in 2017 and the national poverty rate declined as the benefits of the strong economy lifted the fortunes of more Americans, the U.S. Census reported Wednesday. The median U.S. household earned $61,372 last year, meaning half of the families in the country brought in more income than this and half earned less. Crossing the $61,000 mark signals the American middle-class may have finally earned more than it did in 1999
9.11 Thomas L. Friedman in the Times: Republicans say they’re disgusted by Trump’s ignorance and indecency but love his “deregulations” and “tax reforms” — those very sanitized words — this is what they love: taking huge fiscal and environmental risks — effectively throwing away our bumpers and spare tires that we may soon need to drive through the next financial or climate storm — for a short-term economic and political high. How different is that from Trump’s indecency? Let’s be clear, Trump cheated on his wife, but his party’s now cheating on their kids. You tell me who’s worse. And don’t get me started on the recently signed $716 billion defense budget for the 2019 fiscal year — a spending hike so dramatic, as defense analyst Lawrence Korb pointed out, that it means since Trump took office under two years ago, “the defense budget will have grown by $133 billion, or 23 percent.” And there’s no major war going on.
9.11 Paul Krugman in the Times: Obamacare went into full effect, the answer is a very clear yes. It hasn’t worked perfectly, and its successes haven’t come in quite the form its proponents expected. But it has delivered huge progress, especially in states run by politicians who are trying to make it work. It’s worth remembering what Republicans said would happen before the A.C.A. went online: that it would fail to reduce the number of uninsured, that it would blow a giant hole in the budget, that it would lead to a “death spiral” of rising premiums and declining enrollment. What actually happened was a dramatic fall in the uninsured, especially in those states that expanded Medicaid. The budget costs of expanding Medicaid and subsidizing other insurance have been significant, but estimates for 2019 suggest that these costs will be around $115 billion — much less than half the revenue lost due to the Trump tax cut.What about that death spiral? Premiums on the health exchanges established by the A.C.A. initially came in much lower than expected, then rose sharply when the people signing up for those exchanges turned out to be fewer and sicker than insurers had hoped. But the markets have now stabilized, with only modest preAnd while the exchanges are covering fewer people than projected, Medicaid is covering more than expected, so that overall gains in coverage have been surprisingly on target. In early 2014, the Congressional Budget Office projected that under the A.C.A., by 2018 there would be 29 million uninsured U.S. residents. The actual number is … 29 million.9.11 Gov Cuomo: “They don’t believe in what we believe, they don’t believe in who we are and they are trying to to attack us. Now, what do we have to do? We have to elect a Democratic congress because that’s the only way you stop this madman.”
9.11 Laura Nahmias in Politico: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is determined not to become the latest casualty of the progressive uprising of 2018 on Thursday — that’s why he’s spending feverishly in his primary campaign against Cynthia Nixon, trying to juice turnout through direct mail and touting infrastructure projects across the state. But both camps remained on edge in the waning hours of the New York Democratic primary, as the volatility of this year‘s primary cycle hung over deep blue New York and the governor took sharp criticism for his campaign tactics after the state party machinery that he controls sent out a flier accusing Nixon of anti-Semitism — a move that appeared aimed at bringing some Jewish voters out to the polls. Cuomo, widely assumed to harbor presidential ambitions, is a notoriously fastidious campaigner, ever-mindful of his father Mario’s losing bid for a fourth term as governor, and sources close to his campaign said in that respect, this year is no different than when he fended off a primary challenge from Zephyr Teachout in 2014. “They’re spending money, they’re making announcements. They’re doing everything they can think of, they’re trying to cut off lines of attack. And, so, because of that, I think they expect that they’re going to win. They didn’t take anything for granted,” Bill Cunningham, a former Mike Bloomberg aide who also worked for Mario Cuomo’s gubernatorial campaigns, told POLITICO. “The wild card are these new energized voters, how many are there, and will they show up if it’s raining.” “You don’t spend half a million dollars a day for the last several weeks if you’re feeling good about your chances,” Nixon’s campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt told POLITICO by email. People working in the Cuomo campaign and sources close to the governor said they think Nixon, the former “Sex and the City” actor and activist, is a flawed candidate who ran a flawed campaign — a white, wealthy progressive woman who will have a hard time winning without the support of a majority of New York’s black female voters, and who has failed to garner game-changing endorsements from political figures or any of the city’s biggest news outlets. “The press gave her a pretty good ride, and she’s making him a little crazy which is part of what she’s supposed to do,” one person close to the governor said. “If she’d been far better qualified, she could have really given him a run for his money.” Another New York campaign operative put it more bluntly: “If Cynthia Nixon were black, I think Andrew Cuomo would be in a lot of trouble.”
9.11 Pat Robertson: “In the name of Jesus, you Hurricane Florence, we speak to you in the name of Jesus, and we command the storm to cease its forward motion and go harmlessly into the Atlantic. Go up north away from land and veer off in the name of Jesus. We declare in the name of the lord that you shall go no farther, you shall do no damage in this area. . . .In Jesus’ holy name, be out to sea!”
Adam Clymer, ex of @nytimes, died today. Times’s Michael Cooper was with him at the 2000 rally where Bush called Adam a “major-league asshole” on an open mic. Adam whispered to Michael: “….He called me a major-league asshole–but I’m not the one who traded Sammy Sosa.”
— Clyde Haberman (@ClydeHaberman) September 11, 2018
9.10 Andrew Ross Sorkin in the Times: This week is the 10th anniversary of the inflection point of the financial crisis: the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the biggest bankruptcy in history. To some, it feels like a long time ago.Yet, its effects still echo in the way we live today — in the attitudes that pervade our economy, our culture and our politics. It is hardly a stretch to suggest that President Trump’s election was a direct result of the financial crisis.The crisis was a moment that cleaved our country. It broke a social contract between the plutocrats and everyone else. But it also broke a sense of trust, not just in financial institutions and the government that oversaw them, but in the very idea of experts and expertise. The past 10 years have seen an open revolt against the intelligentsia.Mistrust led to new political movements: the Tea Party for those who didn’t trust the government and Occupy Wall Street for those who didn’t trust big business. These moved Democrats and Republicans away from each other in fundamental ways, and populist attitudes on both ends of the spectrum found champions in the 2016 presidential race in Senator Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump. . . . The deepest crises, he said, always lead to populism. And it should be no surprise that a crisis leads to conflict and, in some extreme cases, war. “I would be worried about the emergence of populism,” he said, “because populists tend to want to fight with the other side rather than try to find ways of getting through it.”
9.10 Julie Pace, AP: “One internal GOP poll … showed Trump’s approval rating among independents in congressional battleground districts dropped 10 points between June and August.”
9.10 Robert Samuelson in the Post: As a society, we have failed to confront some of the major social, political and economic realities of our time: immigration, globalization, health spending, global warming, federal budget deficits, stubborn poverty and the aging of society, among others. What almost all of these issues have in common is that the remedies they suggest are unpleasant. They demand, in the political vernacular, “sacrifice.” To close federal budget deficits, taxes must go up and spending must come down. To deal with an aging society, people must work longer. (Also, eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare must rise, and benefits for the affluent elderly must fall.) To resist global warming, fossil-fuel prices must go up — a lot — either through taxes or regulations. The paradox is this: Though many of these measures would, initially at least, involve a loss of income for individuals, the country would be better off, because we would have responded collectively to collective threats.It is also true that, on paper at least, some problems are amenable to compromise. Take immigration. The bargain that could be struck has long been clear: Most of today’s roughly 11 million “illegal” immigrants would be granted legal status; in return, border security (yes, including the dreaded “wall”) would be strengthened, and legal immigration would be overhauled to emphasize skills, not family ties.
9.9 Les Moonves resigns, waives payout after sexual misconduct reports
9.9 Jaguars beat Giants 20-15, but Saquon Barkley rips off 65 yard TD run
9.8 Maxine Waters: I wake up in the middle of the night and all I can think about is I’m gonna get him. I’m gonna get him. I’m gonna get him. I’m in this fight and I’m not gonna move, And, as you know, there’s a difference in how some of our leadership talk about how we should handle all of this. They say, ‘Maxine, please don’t say impeachment anymore.’ And when they say that, I say impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.”
9.8 In Humble TX, Sen. Cruz told supporters that the Democratic Party “is angry, is unified and is trying to burn down the White House.” In Katy, Cruz’s comments about the opposition took a quirkier turn as he said Democrats want “us to be just like California — right down to tofu and silicone and dyed hair.”
9.8 Sebastian Mallanby in the Post: The important lesson of the crisis is not that markets are fallible, which every thoughtful person knew already. It is that essential regulations — the sort that the supposedly anti-regulation Greenspan actually favored — are stymied by fractured government machinery and rapacious lobbies. Even today, the financial system has multiple overseers answerable to multiple congressional committees, because all this multiplying produces extra opportunities for lawmakers to extract campaign contributions. Vast government subsidies still encourage Americans to take big mortgages; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still operate, despite endless talk of breaking them up. And although post-2008 regulations have ensured that banks are better capitalized, the lobbyists are pushing back. Merely a decade after the Lehman bankruptcy brought the world economy to its knees, the Trump administration is listening to them.
9.8 Tendentious referee penalizes Serena Williams three times, opening door for Naomi Osaka victory at US Open
9.7 David von Drehle in the Post: “Trump has loosed a rabid and foaming Rudolph W. Giuliani on Mueller, to no more effect than a Pekingese yipping at a Greyhound bus. With his patrician wealth, his Bronze Star and his sterling résumé, Mueller neither wants nor fears anything Trump can bring.”
9.7 Kathleen Parker in the Post: Booker has been running all his life — as a Stanford University football player, as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, as a law student at Yale. Yet, despite his studious pursuit of life lessons, he seems to have missed one: Don’t show them your hand, meaning don’t let them see how much you want it.
9.7 Barack Obama: But we believe that in order to move this country forward, to actually solve problems and make people’s lives better, we need a well-functioning government. We need our civic institutions to work. We need cooperation among people of different political persuasions. And to make that work, we have to restore our faith in democracy. You have to bring people together, not tear them apart. We need majorities in Congress and state legislatures who are serious about governing and want to bring about real change and improvements in people’s lives. And we won’t win people over by calling them names or dismissing entire chunks of the country as racist or sexist or homophobic.
9.6 Michael Gerson in the Post: “We are a superpower run by a simpleton. From a foreign policy perspective, this is far worse than being run by a skilled liar. It is an invitation to manipulation and contempt.”