In Late-Night Metered-Market Ratings for Saturday Night:

· "Saturday Night Live" has matched the show's highest adult 18-49 rating in Nielsen's local people meters since Nov. 12.

· The Feb. 4 telecast, with host Kristen Stewart and musical guest Alessia Cara, and featuring an appearance by Melissa McCarthy as White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, scored a 5.0 rating, 13 share in "live plus same day" household results from the 56 local markets metered by Nielsen Media Research and a 2.5/13 in adults 18-49 in the 25 markets with local people meters.

· The 2.5 in 18-49 equals the strongest "Saturday Night Live" local-market rating since the Nov. 12 telecast, which was the first "SNL" to follow the Presidential election.

· The 5.0 in metered-market households makes this the second highest rated "SNL" by that measure since Nov. 12, trailing over that span only the Jan. 21 edition hosted by Aziz Ansari with musical guest Big Sean (5.1). That Jan. 21 episode is also the only other "SNL" since Nov. 12 to generate a 2.5 in 18-49 in the local people meters.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/SATURDAY-NIGHT-LIVE-Receives-Highest-Ratings-Since-November-20170205

WASHINGTON ― The nomination of billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education is one vote shy of failing in the Republican-controlled Senate. One thing that could come to her aid is that she and the entire DeVos family are massive Republican Party donors who helped fund the election of the remaining senators who will decide her fate.

Big donors often get positions in government, ambassadorships or ceremonial titles, but rarely do they come as big as DeVos. Sitting Republican senators have received $115,000 from Betsy DeVos herself, and more than $950,000 from the full DeVos clan since 1980. In the past two election cycles alone, her family has donated $8.3 million to Republican Party super PACs.



After Sens. Susan Collins (R-Me.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced their opposition to DeVos, her opponents turned their sights on other potential no votes from Republicans. The last hope to scuttle her nomination appears to be Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Like a lot of his colleagues, Toomey has received financial support from DeVos and her family throughout his career.

Toomey received $60,050 from the DeVos family during his political career. He was also boosted by two super PACs in his successful 2016 re-election campaign that received DeVos money. Freedom Partners Action Fund, the super PAC founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, spent $7 million to support Toomey’s election while getting $150,000 from the DeVos family. Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC linked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), spent $15 million to back Toomey after getting more than $2 million from the DeVos family.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/betsy-devos-donations_us_5893bd80e4b0c1284f251c5f?uk5c2okeurrafw29&

If there is anything worse than losing a child, it is losing a child and having people taunt you over the loss.

That is what happened to the family of Noah Pozner, a 6-year-old with tousled brown hair and lollipop-red lips, the youngest of the 26 children and staff members gunned down in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

In the years since the massacre that shook the country and opened new anxiety over gun violence, the family has received hate-filled calls and violent emails from people who say they know the shooting was a hoax. Photos of their son — some with pornographic and anti-Semitic content — have been distributed on websites.

<snip>

President Trump and his national security advisor, Michael T. Flynn, have been open enthusiasts of Alex Jones’ Infowars, a Web-based radio and video network that has relentlessly pushed the theory that Sandy Hook was staged by Democrats to advance a gun control agenda.

An unabashed Trump supporter during the campaign, Jones says he received a personal call of thanks from the president-elect days after the election.

Although Trump has not spoken publicly about Sandy Hook, many residents here say he is nurturing the culture of exaggeration and paranoia on which conspiracy theorists thrive.

<snip>

Most of the families associated with Sandy Hook have removed or protected their social media accounts and unlisted their telephone numbers; some have changed homes.

Newtown residents are distrustful of outsiders. On the fourth anniversary of the massacre in December, there was a low-key prayer vigil in a Catholic Church. An unmarked police car was stationed outside the elementary school to keep an eye out for hoaxers who show up frequently, photographing children and confronting families.

“This cloud of disinformation and misinformation and fake news has been harmful to the community,’’ said Patricia Llodra, a Republican selectwoman for Newtown. “I’m not an angry person, but when I think about the hurtful things these hoaxers say, I want to ask, ‘How could you? How dare you question the pain that these families experience every day.’”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sandy-hook-conspiracy-20170203-story.html

For someone who promoted his management skills and campaigned as an “organizational genius,” as Anderson Cooper of CNN put it, it has been a rocky White House debut for Donald J. Trump, the first president to go directly from the executive suite to the Oval Office.

“Chaos” seems to be the word most often invoked, closely followed by “turmoil.” (One exception: the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, who said he preferred “action-packed.”)

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In less than two weeks, Mr. Trump created upheaval at the nation’s borders, alienated longtime allies, roiled markets with talk of a trade war and prompted some of the largest protests any president has faced.

The conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal bemoaned a refugee policy “so poorly explained and prepared for, that it has produced confusion and fear at airports, an immediate legal defeat, and political fury at home and abroad.”

Even the top House Republican, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who had released a statement praising the immigration order, later distanced himself, saying, “It’s regrettable that there was some confusion with the rollout.”

All new presidents undergo a learning curve. But Mr. Trump promised a seamless transition and, with a real chief executive in charge as opposed to a career politician, an administration that would function as a well-oiled machine.

So it doesn’t seem premature to ask some leading management experts for an assessment of Mr. Trump’s first weeks, purely from the viewpoint of organizational behavior and management effectiveness, as I did this week.

The unanimous verdict: Thus far, the Trump administration is a textbook case of how not to run a complex organization like the executive branch.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/case-study-in-chaos-how-management-experts-grade-a-trump-white-house/ar-AAmy4qq?li=BBnb7Kz

Lan Diep has been collecting comic books since the third grade and has paid more than he’s willing to admit for things that don’t, technically, exist in the real world.

He owns a working Ghostbusters trap, for example. And he keeps a piece of kryptonite under glass, just in case the Superman truthers are right.

But he concedes there are few opportunities for a grown, adult lawyer to whip out things that some people would choose to classify as toys. So they’ve languished in his closet, safe from scratches, thieves and those who would mercilessly mock him.

But a month ago, things changed. Diep realized his life until this point had just been an origin story: He became San Jose’s City Councilman Lan Diep.

And it was time to dig into the closet for a prized possession.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/01/25/a-comic-book-nerd-won-a-city-council-seat-and-was-sworn-in-holding-his-captain-america-shield/