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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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“Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners.” -- Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That(1929).
By Gregory S. Schneider & Laura Vozzella @ WashingtonPost.com, March 31
RICHMOND — Gov. Ralph Northam (D) has begun doing something normal for most politicians but risky for him: appearing in public and taking questions from reporters. [....] the glare of national attention has faded. Northam dismissed his outside crisis management team when its two-week contract expired. And, with increasing confidence, he has begun exercising the power of his office.
[....] Northam isn’t going away [....] And neither is Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D), who denies two separate allegations of sexual assault, nor Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), who admitted wearing blackface during his college days.
The nation will be reminded of the accusations against Fairfax starting Monday, when “CBS This Morning” airs an interview between Gayle King and one of the women, Vanessa Tyson, to be followed by a segment on Tuesday with a similar interview with the second woman, Meredith Watson. On Sunday, Fairfax’s representatives released a lengthy statement that said he voluntarily took and passed two polygraph tests that “demonstrate that the accusations made against the lieutenant governor are false." [....]
By Gavin Newsham @ (Murdoch's) NYPost.com, March 30
Sixteen of the last 19 US presidents have played golf — and now, in Donald John Trump, the nation can finally boast the very best of them all. Well, that’s what he’d like you to believe.
“To say ‘Donald Trump cheats’ is like saying ‘Michael Phelps swims,'” writes Rick Reilly in the new book “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump” (Hachette Book Group), out Tuesday. “He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf … if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.”
Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated columnist who has played with Trump in the past, spoke to dozens of players — both amateur and professional — to recount some of the president’s worst cons on the course, starting with his declared handicap of 2.8 [....]
By Charlie Devereux @ Bloomberg.com, March 29
Some abandoned countryside hamlets are going for as little as $96,000 as Spain fights rural 'desertification."
Veteran Diplomat Burns is a former career Foreign Service Officer and President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since February 2015; Ambassador of the United States to the Russian Federation from 2005 until 2008; Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2008 to 2011; United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014. A relatively easy read to get a big picture reality check, from someone with a lifetime of experience; he's talking because he has a memoir out.
A tale of accidental virality in the age of algorithms by Will Oremus @ Slate, about which Nate Silver says:
This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system.
By a team of eight (!) reporters @ Vox.com, March 29
A few months after majorities of Wisconsin voters re-elected Democrat Tammy Baldwin to the US Senate with a 10-point cushion but only sent Republican Governor Scott Walker packing by a razor-thin margin, the Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez announced that the city of Milwaukee will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Given the roughly 12 percent of voters who split their ticket in Wisconsin in 2018, the Badger State is once again a focal point of an upcoming presidential election [....]
What is happening in Wisconsin? How is it that more than one in ten voters split their tickets in such a polarized state? [....]
Glass is dropped at campaign event. Hickenlooper picks up glass shards with his bare hands. What does this mean for his electability? Did he fumble the glass or was it knocked out of his hand? Or did someone near him drop it when Hickenlooper bumped into him? Was it appropriate to pick up glass shards with bare hands? Read this important discussion from politico, one of the top serious news sites on the internet.
Seema Verma employs a team of private consultants who write her speeches, polish her brand and travel with her across the country
By Adam Cancryn & Dan Diamond @ Politico.com, March 29
The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.
The communications subcontracts approved by CMS Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.
Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare [....]
By Heather Murphy @ NYTimes.com, March 28 WITH VIDEO
[....] Scientists believe they now understand why. In a paper published Thursday in The British Journal of Anaesthesia, researchers attributed Ms. Cameron’s virtually pain-free life to a mutation in a previously unidentified gene. The hope, they say, is that the finding could eventually contribute to the development of a novel pain treatment. They believe this mutation may also be connected to why Ms. Cameron has felt little anxiety or fear throughout her life and why her body heals quickly. “We’ve never come across a patient like this,” said John Wood, the head of the Molecular Nociception Group at University College London [....]
The study emerged amid major developments in the emotionally charged debate over how to responsibly treat pain [....]
And it was yet another reminder that we need less addictive alternatives for chronic pain, said Dr. Stephen G. Waxman, a neurologist at Yale and the author of “Chasing Men on Fire: The Story of the Search for a Pain Gene.” Dr. Waxman was not involved in the recent paper but he also studies people who have rare mutations that alter their experience of pain [....]
Senator Warren questioned Energy Secretary Rick Perry in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March 28, 2019. WITH VIDEO. Is an interesting Warren tweet from her official "Senate account", not her campaign, and so ostensibly on policy points as a Senator. But at the same time, certainly makes her look presidential.
Thierry Baudet once called politicians brain-dead. Now his upstart white nationalist movement has eclipsed Geert Wilders and won more Senate seats than the prime minister’s party.