Black Friday Open Thread

Black Friday isn’t called that because stores get “into the black” from all the retail shopping — it was coined by Philly cops in the 1960s to describe their day-after-Thanksgiving, when they had to work 12-hour shifts to handle the traffic (all the department stores were in the city then; there were no malls). Henry Grabar at Slate explains why even a record-setting sales day won’t save retailers from their current crisis.

Those who dislike the consumer frenzy should get a kick out of this supercut of the Top 10 Black Friday brawls of recent times.

Republicans keep adding all sorts of extraneous, unrelated social goals to their tax bill. Apparently, having it supported by nearly 40% of the public was considered excessive.

Interesting thing about that Tom Carper anecdote about suggesting economic adviser Gary Cohn hang up on Trump by telling him the connection was bad: It’s actually two weeks old,as demonstrated by this Nov. 8 video from The Hill. As Puck noted in a comment yesterday, Carper’s ploy got a lot more attention than the real news: that Carper was engaged in talks designed to try to win his support for the tax bill. From that Nov. 8 article:

“Gary Cohn and Marc Short were in a ‘receive’ mode, which is good,” the veteran senator said. “What I told them at the end of the meeting: I think maybe what has to happen for us to have a true bipartisan effort … the Republican effort in the House and the Senate to do this on their own, that has to prove to be unsuccessful. When it is, we will engage in a bipartisan way.”

Remember, if Hillary were president, Carper would be attacking the plan from the right.

If any news breaks out, add it below.