Josie

@Dip_Incontinent @gothburz BYOB Bitches

@gothburz When the event is re-held, don’t provide any wine. Instead put a large sign on each table that says “We assume that the journalists who stole the wine from the last event will bring it to this one.”

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

@carolee9321478 @aliciaandrz Not helpful

@aliciaandrz No backup plan?

I experienced every working mom’s worst fear today: my kid threw up on a crucial work day. during end of semester crunch time. & you just have to figure it out. no one is coming to save you. I’m very tired.

@jasonrantz Hmmm...irrigation districts and farmers beg to differ with your denialism

Cliff Mass: Washington reservoirs are full months early as drought panic fades — and the media has nothing to say seattlered.com/weather/washin…

@joeljmiller Applets and Cotlets for the win. Just saying

So here’s the situation: I ordered some Turkish delight for Naomi. We’re in deep in the Chronicles of Narnia, and she is stoked to try TD. I happen to love it, and I know the good stuff. So I ordered it from Turkey. What I didn’t know? This has turned into a federal case—literally. I now have two boxes of candy trapped in US customs until I comply with something called Prior Notice of Imported Foods (Title 21 Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR), Part 1, Subpart I). The onus of compliance is apparently on me, the “importer,” and the FDA says they expect filling out the paperwork will take 46 minutes. For two boxes of candy. And people wonder why I’m a libertarian. Consider it Reason No. 46,781.

@FionaBowler There is one person on every street, just waiting for something to happen, so they can report on it to someone. Preferably the police.

@Manhattva @stackerco Perhaps a better take would be the writers of the ancient text buried the contributions of women. Mary the Tower as an example

I should have expressed my observation better than this. When Cardon pointed out that all 12 apostles were men, she replied almost frantically that that’s because Jesus was afraid of what people would think because women were just property. The other side of that coin would be that because Jesus clearly was not afraid of speaking truth to authority, that he would have to be a misogynist. Probably a little unfair for me to have tweeted that, but that was the impression that I got from it.

Julie Hanks is not ok. If you have someone following her on social media in your family, consider talking to them about the state of their lives. She just started explaining how Jesus was a misogynist on Ward Radio. Crazy work.

@aliciaandrz Some age better than others. :)

there are so many books from my childhood I’d love to go back & read: Wayside School, Animorphs, Goosebumps, the Baby Sitter’s Club, Sweet Valley High, Island of the Blue Dolphins, the Danielle Steel books I stole from my mother. I wonder what memories rereading them would bring.

@aliciaandrz They come back. It takes a couple years but they do come back.

my daughter asked me my opinion on what pants she should wear to school & I told her. she walked out wearing the ones I didn’t pick & I’m not built for parenthood, y’all. just one slight after another.

@PaulMarcoe Tahoma

Sometimes you just need to pull over and take a picture with your phone. What an absolutely glorious view of our beautiful Mount Rainier!

@MediawatchNw Head over to Helpline House. Help the people. Feel good. Make friends.

Ok, first real week of retirement kind of sucks. Feeling bored and lonely. I know it’s just temporary and that I’ll soon find my place in life. But right now I’m missing people.

@aliciaandrz Brave. You are brave.

my big accomplishment for 2025 was asking for enough help, connection, & support to stay alive. I might be cringe. I might be an oversharer. I might be “unprofessional” (whatever that means). but I’m alive. here’s hoping 2026 feels lighter.

@JDelorean28888 @DK3OffTheT @ThrillaRilla369 We made them in metal shop

My mom told me highschools had smoking areas when she was younger

@DK3OffTheT @ThrillaRilla369 School closed for the first day of elk season

@ThrillaRilla369 That’s crazy! Who else remembers having these too?

@ThrillaRilla369 Yep.

@weatherchaser5 I have no fingernails left

Emotional support snacks and anxiety. I am ready.

@aliciaandrz Your lipstick is fire

my husband said I looked very “professor-beautiful” this morning, which I will take as a compliment.

@garrett_guedry @TrueFactsStated The Guadalupe River has a history of devastating floods with major events in the 1800s, 1900s and into the 2000s. The 1998 flood was particularly significant, exceeding 500-year flood projections.  A 1987 flash flood near Comfort, Texas, resulted in 10 fatalities at a church camp

Absolutely not. The NWS issued a flood warning 12 hours before. A flash flood warning was issued 3 hours before. The Guadeloupe hasn’t flooded like this in generations. No one could have foreseen a 27 foot wall of water claiming 60 year old businesses, homes, and campgrounds in a matter of minutes. To insinuate anything to the contrary is to diminish and trivialize this horrific tragedy and loss of life.

Yes or no? Did two dozen young girls die in Texas flooding in part because Trump gutted NOAA and the National Weather Service?

@holly__heart @MJTruthUltra Conflicts with research by the CATO Institute. Significant impact on benefit use by families with children via free and reduced lunches and other use of public education. Also fails to account for immigrant payroll tax contributions for programs they will never use like SSI

@MJTruthUltra Here’s your source.

This is why Democrats are freaking out about Medicaid… Do you feel sick yet? • 59% of ILLEGAL aliens get some kind of tax-payer funded welfare. —— Immigrant headed households get 54% —— US Born households get 39% • 22% of ILLEGAL aliens get some kind of tax-payer funded Cash Assistance. —— Immigrant headed households get 22% —— US Born households get 16% • 42% of ILLEGAL aliens get tax-payer funded Food Assistance. —— Immigrant headed households get 36% —— US Born households get 25% • 42% of ILLEGAL aliens get tax-payer funded Medicaid. —— Immigrant headed households get 37% —— US Born households get 25% This study was done in 2023 by the Center for Immigration Studies… not even counting the millions of illegal aliens Biden let into the US since then.. Post this under every single Democrat post you see crying about “Medicaid cuts”

@aaron_lubeck You would rather use precious old growth when decent hemlock or fir is available

Enshiitification of product. Over time, everything is lower quality.

@GGunthorp So, let's bring back LFPA and LFSP and support smaller farms instead of giving $10 Billion to commodity farmers?

Serious question….who was at the table?