Of the many interesting details in The Guardian's big profile of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist running a dark horse presidential primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, this one stuck out: Sanders' 1988 honeymoon with his wife Jane in the former Soviet Union. The honeymoon doubled as a diplomatic trip that Sanders made to the city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northwest of Moscow, when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont. According to audio that survived the trip:
After receiving a rundown of central planning, Soviet-style, from Yaroslavl's mayor, Alexander Riabkov, Sanders notes how the quality of both housing and healthcare in America appeared to be "significantly better" than in the communist state. "However," he added, "the cost of both services is much, much, higher in the United States." [The Guardian]
Another highlight of Sanders' mayoralty was the ode to socialism that was written for him by poet Allen Ginsberg.
Entitled Burlington Snow, it begins with lines about “Socialist snow on the streets" and "Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops" and ends: "Isn't this poem socialist? It doesn't belong to me anymore." [The Guardian]
The drama between White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, her husband, and President Trump is only getting messier.
George Conway told The Washington Post on Tuesday that it's "maddening" to watch Trump's "incompetence," and his anti-Trump tweets are "just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day" and "frankly, it's so I don’t end up screaming at her about it." Trump had lashed out at Conway on Twitter earlier in the day, calling him a "total loser!"
Conway also detailed a number of interactions he's apparently had with Trump over the years, despite Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claiming the president "doesn't even know him!" Conway said Trump has, in fact, spoken with him over the phone to get his legal opinion several times and once asked him in person whether he should fire then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. Conway also said he once rode with Trump on the way to a costume party and that Trump went "on and on" about John Bolton's mustache, with this being a reason he didn't want to pick Bolton as secretary of state.
This report also details Kellyanne Conway's alleged frustration with her husband's tweets, writing that she "went on a lengthy rant about her husband" during a party last month attended by several journalists. She reportedly said that she believes her husband is jealous of her and that he prefers "to spend his time in front of his computer, while she preferred to socialize."
George Conway, though, told the Post he isn't jealous of his wife at all, saying, "No one was prouder than I was that she was able to elect this man president despite his obvious flaws." Read more at The Washington Post. Brendan Morrow
Florida prosecutors are reportedly already prepared to cut a deal with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Kraft was among 25 people charged last month with soliciting a prostitute at a Florida "spa" where women worked in "sexual servitude," police said at the time. Now, prosecutors are saying they'll drop the charges against Kraft and the other people charged if they "admit they would have been proven guilty at trial," The Wall Street Journal reports.
Under the reported deal, all the people charged in the prostitution sting would have to take an education course on prostitution, complete 100 hours of community service, be tested for STDs, and pay some court fees to get their charges dropped, per the Journal. But in what the Journal calls an "unusual provision," those charged would also have to look at the evidence against them and admit that, if they faced a trial, they'd be proven guilty.
A spokesperson for the Florida state attorney's office said this is "the standard resolution for first-time offenders," per the Journal. Kraft's lawyers denied any illegal activity after his arrest, so there's a chance he may still try to fight the charges in court.
Police in Jupiter, Florida, unveiled their bust of a massive prostitution ring centered in a Palm Beach County massage parlor last month. The founder and former owner of the spa, Cindy Yang, was later found to have visited President Trump's club at Mar-a-Lago several times, was invited to the White House, and reportedly said she could sell access to Trump. Kraft and Trump have been close friends for years. Kathryn Krawczyk
Amy O'Rourke's life doesn't look anything like what her husband Beto promised her 14 years ago.
When the couple first moved in together, Beto wrote a letter to Amy promising her a life of "listening to music, making dinner for friends" and "drinking wine on the front porch." Now Beto's running for president — and it's "completely contrary" to what Amy had envisioned for them, she tells The Washington Post in a profile published Tuesday.
Beto proposed to Amy on April Fool's Day, just four months after they met. The Post calls the date "appropriate," considering the antics Beto pulled once they were married:
And then there were the pranks: the remote-controlled cockroach in the kitchen, the "Psycho"-style scares in the shower. One time, according to a friend, Beto collected an especially verdant turd from one of their kids' diapers and put it in a bowl, telling Amy it was avocado. (Neither would confirm this, though Beto did allow it sounded like something he'd do.)
Though less disgusting, Amy did recount a few more issues she had with Beto in the following years to the Post. Beto was on El Paso, Texas' city council when they met, but when he said he wanted to run for Congress, she cried. He won, and it then took Beto's loss in 2018's Texas Senate race to bring him home to his three kids for his "longest stretch of time ... in seven years," the Post writes. Beto asked Amy if she'd like him to quit politics at that point, but Amy — though she'd seen "the pain in her kids' eyes when their calls kept going to voice mail" — said no.
Read more at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk
Google has just unveiled its potentially revolutionary new video game streaming service, Stadia.
The company's new platform, which was announced on Tuesday at the 2019 Game Developers Conference, will allow users to stream video games across their desktops, laptops, TVs, tablets, and phones without the need for expensive hardware, per CNBC. The company said, per The Verge, that the service will allow for "instant access to play" since no downloads are required, and it says users will be able to jump into a game in less than five seconds, writes The Hollywood Reporter. An announcement video for Stadia declares, "The future of gaming is not a box. It's a place."
Stadia will work on devices with a Chrome browser, with Google having previously tested a program that allowed users to stream Assassin's Creed Odyssey in a browser, TechCrunch reports. Although you'll be able to use USB controllers or your keyboard and mouse with Stadia, Google will also launch a controller with it, which connects directly to WiFi. No price point for Stadia has been announced, nor has a full line-up of launch titles, although one of them will be Doom Eternal, reports The Verge.
Google is the latest company to jump into the cloud gaming pool — Microsoft previously announced its own video game streaming service called Project xCloud. Amazon and Apple both reportedly plan to launch a similar services as the race to become the definitive "Netflix for games" heats up. Brendan Morrow
"Democracy in the United Kingdom is all but dead." That's according to Donald Trump Jr., at least.
The Telegraph published a scathing op-ed on the Brexit chaos in the U.K. written by President Trump's eldest son on Tuesday.
In the piece, Trump Jr. criticizes Prime Minister Theresa May for ignoring advice from his father, who expressed a similar, though less dramatic, sentiment about the withdrawal process last week. "I gave the Prime Minister my ideas on how to negotiate it," the president said last Thursday. "She didn't listen to that and that's fine."
Trump Jr. wrote that Brexit was akin to his father's 2016 presidential election victory, which he argues was followed not by a peaceful transition of power, but instead by attempts by Democrats and "deep state" operatives to subvert the will of the American people.
Both Brexit and the 2016 election, Trump Jr. writes, were votes "to uproot the establishment for the sake of individual freedom and independence, only to see the establishment try to silence their voices and overturn their mandates." He added that what is happening in Washington and between London and the EU is "the desperate, last-gasp attempt by those previously in power to cling on to what was once theirs."
He ended the piece by declaring "the battle for independence" has only just begun. Read the op-ed at The Telegraph. Tim O'Donnell