It’s the lucky 13th anniversary of the Golden Duke Awards. And the winners are in!
We return with an especially august panel of judges for 2019: Erin Ryan, Talia Lavin, Susie Bright, Jeet Heer, Jim Newell. And in a new innovation, 2,477 TPM members have cast their ballots for a new Members’ Choice award. Big surprise for 2019: Members voted overwhelmingly (59.7%) for President Trump and his shakedown of Ukraine for Best Scandal General Interest. But, surprisingly, the Golden Duke actually went to Duncan Hunter, the now disgraced, soon to be resigned and inevitably to be incarcerated crooked bro-rep from Greater San Diego. So that and many other surprises which you can read here in the results announcement.
Lev Parnas is a crook and (one imagines) a liar. But there’s little doubt he did things, witnessed things and knows about things that are highly relevant both to the upcoming impeachment trial and the actions and criminal activity of Rudy Giuliani and President Trump. It is also highly, highly likely that his electronic devices contain evidence that can confirm a significant amount of that and put it beyond Parnas’ say-so, which is of limited value. So Parnas’s efforts to share these records with the House is one of many reasons why President Trump, Mitch McConnell and basically all Republicans want a Senate whitewash trial absolutely as soon as possible.
We’ve come down to the final day of 2019 and the last day of the second decade of the 21st century. At TPM this was a challenging year – a lot of change, negotiating our first collective bargaining agreement, some substantial management reorganization of how the operation runs and a lot of grinding work (batting out single after single) to secure the financial basis of the organization.
But it was also a good year, really a very good year. Because we managed to accomplish the key things we needed to accomplish, which is really all that matters. Indeed, key accomplishments were ones that not only worked for us this year but laid the groundwork for vitality for years to come.