GROK: come for the recipes, stay for the meat (and for actual, unretouched photographs, of course)

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greta’s days as schoolmarm of the press room may be nearing the end

Question: Tell me why this article is biased: The New York Times: ‘Full on Fight Club’: How Trump Is Crushing U.S. Climate Policy March 3, 2025, By David GellesLisa Friedman and Brad Plumer

Grok: “The article exhibits bias through its emotionally charged language, one-sided sourcing, selective framing, and omission of counterarguments, all of which tilt heavily against Trump's environmental policy shifts. It assumes the primacy of climate action as a moral and scientific imperative, casting dissent as reckless or corrupt rather than a legitimate policy choice. While it reports factual events (e.g., policy changes, legal challenges), the presentation favors an audience that already opposes Trump, potentially undermining its objectivity for readers seeking a balanced view.”

"Just a MAGA troll making up shit in their basement" Statesman and U.S. Senator Christopher Murphy

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Sen. Murphy Rants Against 'MAGA World' After He's Called Out for Meeting With Zelenskyy Ahead of WH Visit

"Less than an hour before entering the Oval Office, Zelensky met with several lawmakers, including Murphy and other Democrats. Based on the wording of the above post, the senator (or someone else at the table) pressed the Ukrainian president to reject a 'fake peace agreement,' which is a clear shot at Trump's attempts at diplomacy. At the very least, these Democrats encouraged Zelensky to remain defiant in that position, and we all know what happened next."

“At the very least” is far too kind: these Democrats actively sought to sabotage the upcoming meeting; Murphy was quite proud of his and his fello warmongers’ efforts, until the criticism started pouring in; then it was “who, me? I never said it”. Here are his own posts: you decide.

A “fake peace agreement where Putin gets everything he wants” — Murphy at al agreed with that summation, yet he now claims that they urged him to accept it anyway. Uh huh.

Greenwich address, Stamford schools (but listing says “Inquire about paid option for Greenwich schools” — new to me)*

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clever touch: an ironic reference to the tipi while boldly striking off in a new direction

416 Taconic Road, pending at $5 million. It started off December 4 at $5.5 million and dropped to its current price February 10th.

Stamford has appraised it at $2.383 million; if that changes, the current $37,000 tax bill may increase significantly.

*Gideon informs me that his fellow Hooligan is correct: $26,000 per student per year.

Oh please, of puleeeze! Either one — or both

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Chris Murphy makes his case to lead Democrats forward

[W]eeks into President Donald Trump’s second administration, Murphy, D-Conn., has taken steps to put himself at the center of aggressive resistance to Trump — and to let his party’s rank and file know it. Murphy is spending heavily to advertise on social media platforms and is flooding the zone on television and podcasts, positioning himself as the tip of the spear of Democratic Party efforts to oppose Trump in Washington. 

… In an interview in his Capitol Hill office last week, Murphy embraced the idea that he’s on a new path “after years pursuing a role as a Senate dealmaker and “foreign policy expert”. [HAHAHAHAH] He argued his newfound push to oppose Trump is an imperative.

[He has] spent more than $1 million on ads on Meta platforms in February alone, delivering his message directly to individuals. It’s more than he has spent on the likes of Facebook and Instagram in the last five years combined, a period that includes his 2024 re-election campaign … Murphy’s aides said he has doubled his Instagram following during the last two months and seen a significant increase in engagement across platforms.

….

But he’s not focused exclusively on Trump. Murphy also wants to lead the conversation about what has gone wrong for Democrats and how they can win again in the future.

“We’re actually the party of change, the party of transferring power from powerful people to people who have no power,” he said. “I think that the traditional sort of political rules still apply. If we have people out on the streets protesting, if we’re overwhelming Republican town halls, if we’re lighting up the phone lines here, political gravity still exists.”

Murphy just won re-election in the fall — and outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris in his state with a 19-point victory, having vastly outspent his Republican challenger. He won’t have to face Connecticut voters again until 2030, so he’s not crunched for time to raise cash. First elected to the Senate in 2012, the year of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Murphy spent his first two terms in the Senate championing stronger gun laws. He eventually helped craft a historic bipartisan gun safety bill that President Joe Biden signed after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. [And that solved that problem — whew!]

Now, Murphy told NBC News, the reason it seems like he’s trying to be everywhere is that he is. 

And of course, the NYT has to ring the bell for him, because that’s what the media branch does for its fellow travelers.

Burning Madoff sends along this perspective on the man:

And I’ll add that this self-proclaimed foreign policy expert’s “solution” to the Ukrainian war is to keep supplying the Ukrainians with guns and missiles and letting both countries slaughter each other until one side runs out of bodies. Given the respective populations of Russia and Ukraine, the loser there will be Ukraine, whereupon Murphy and his war hawks can declare victory, and evacuate any remaining U.S. soldiers and citizens (uness they forget to, as in Afghanistan).