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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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By Marina Lopez @ WashingtonPost.com, April 5, 5:55 pm ET
SAO PAULO, Brazil — A Brazilian judge ordered former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva late Thursday to report to jail by 5 p.m. Friday in a surprise move expected to galvanize widespread protests in a country already shaken by a supreme court decision earlier in the day.
The order was issued by Sérgio Moro, the main judge presiding over Brazil’s “Car Wash” corruption investigation, who first convicted Lula on money-laundering and corruption charges in 2016.
It followed the top court’s 6-to-5 vote to reject a bid by Lula to stay free while he pursued appeals — a decision that effectively removed the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential election later this year. The resulting vacuum instantly recast the political landscape in Latin America’s largest country [....]
No Hopey, free at last?
By Cristiano Lima @ Politico.com, April 5
President Donald Trump on Thursday ditched his “boring” prepared remarks at a tax roundtable in West Virginia, and instead repeated his claim that “millions” of people are voting illegally and boasted that he was right about the threat of Mexican rapists.
“You know, this was going to be my remarks, it would’ve have taken about two minutes, but to hell with it,” the president said, tossing papers in the air. “That would have been a little boring, a little boring.”
The event, at which the president and state officials were slated to discuss the recently enacted Republican tax law, quickly veered off track as the president doubled down on some of his most incendiary and unsubstantiated claims [....]
By Anemona Hartocollis @ NYTimes.com, April 4
A group that is suing Harvard University is demanding that it publicly release admissions data on hundreds of thousands of applicants, saying the records show a pattern of discrimination against Asian-Americans going back decades.
The group was able to view the documents through its lawsuit, which was filed in 2014 and challenges Harvard’s admissions policies. The plaintiffs said in a letter to the court last week that the documents were so compelling that there was no need for a trial, and that they would ask the judge to rule summarily in their favor based on the documents alone.
The plaintiffs also say that the public — which provides more than half a billion dollars a year in federal funding to Harvard — has a right to see the evidence that the judge will consider in her decision.
Harvard counters that the documents are tantamount to trade secrets [....]
Sounds like the college-educated vs. working class problem to me. As well as the "Kansas" problem.
By Matt Friedman @ Politico.com, April 3
New Jersey‘s new governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, wants the state to be a “progressive blue beacon“ after eight years of Republican Gov. Chris Christie. But Murphy‘s plans face a big obstacle — one from his own party in the form of Senate President Steve Sweeney.
Sweeney, a burly Gloucester ironworker whose working-class South Jersey style cuts a sharp contrast to Murphy, a former ambassador and Goldman Sachs alum, has embarked on an anti-tax crusade that threatens the funding for much of the governor’s agenda [....]
By Corey Kilgannen @ NYTimes.com, March 19 (but NYTimes' editor has put it at center of today's home page)
[....] While the dairy industry nationwide is in the grip of an economic crisis — fueled by decreasing demand as customers turn to milk alternatives — the picture is particularly bleak in New York where dairy sales represent about half of total farm sales every year.
New York is the third largest milk-producing state in the country and low milk prices have not only devastated farmers financially — most are selling milk for less than it costs to produce — but also emotionally.
The situation has become so grim that NY FarmNet, a leading farm support group, has started running suicide prevention training for local agricultural service providers and lenders who deal with dairy farmers.
After a local dairy farmer took his life in January, Agri-Mark, a large cooperative that bought milk from the farmer, sent its 550 members in the state a list of suicide and mental health hotlines — along with the news that milk prices would drop even lower this year [....]
By Christopher Brennan @ NYDailyNews.com, April 3
[....] Devyn Holmes is on life support at a Houston-area hospital with a gunshot wound to the head, the result of a clip posted on Facebook Sunday morning where people in a car were handling two handguns.
“You’re making me nervous,” Holmes, 26, says at one point before he is told the weapon isn't loaded [....]
I remember a Hispanic girl from Texas, living in the EU, every reason to be liberal, not exactly an engaged Bernie type, but she just didn't trust Hillary, couldn't put her finger on why. And so she wasn't going to vote (and by that point, absentee ballots deadline would have been near).
Someone mentioned yesterday how Trevor Noah knew Trump would win - because he had lived in Africa and knew that these kind of lies work, and work well. We think we're educated and sophisticated - which makes us sitting ducks for flattery and primitive tricks from the hucksters and grifters. (that's also why we pay twice as much for shittier healthcare "American exceptionalism" is just code for "jack up the price, we got another sucker coming through thw door". oh, and from that WaPo article on exit polls the other day we see that the number of college educated is much lower than we profess - even on the Dem/Hillary-supporting side. Equal opportunity? Hardly.)
By Spencer Ackerman @ DailyBeast.com, April 3
The president declared ‘it is time’ to bring U.S. forces in Syria home. At nearly the same moment, his top diplomat and general for the region said, ‘that mission isn’t over.’
In private negotiations in early March about a possible presidential interview, Mueller described Trump as a subject of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.
Carrot dangled ... stick comes later.
There has been another shooting, this time at Youtube Headquarters.
Female might have been the shooter and supposedly has been shot dead.
More to come.
Of course there will be more to come; mass shootings are a part of everyday life nowadays.
As America remembers the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his assassination Wednesday, segments of one influential American demographic are reflecting on their role in perpetuating the white supremacy that the civil rights leader rallied against.
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Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently wrote about how poorly many conservative Christians responded to King's call to dismantle racism, often using their faith and the Bible to reject support for integration. Moore wrote in the Memphis Commercial-Appeal last week:
“Conservative Christians must be careful to remember the ways in which our cultural anthropology perverted our soteriology and ecclesiology. It is to our shame that we ignored our own doctrines to advance something as clearly demonic as racial pride.
So, regardless of our backgrounds, it is appropriate that we pause and consider not only Dr. King’s life and legacy, but also our own past and future. As we do so, we are reminding ourselves of how far we have to go as Americans to see the promise of racial justice realized.”
Moore's group is partnering this week with the Gospel Coalition, a network of conservative evangelicals, to host MLK50 in Memphis to take an “opportunity for Christians to reflect on the state of racial unity in the church and the culture.”
..........
Eugene Scott, WaPo today.
Op-ed column by Paul Krugman @ NYTimes.com, April 2
Pessimistic facts regarding the known problem of red regions not wanting the help that would actually help them; summary:
And when it comes to national politics, let’s face it: Trumpland is in effect voting for its own impoverishment. New Deal programs and public investment played a significant role in the great postwar convergence; conservative efforts to downsize government will hurt people all across America, but it will disproportionately hurt the very regions that put the G.O.P. in power.
The truth is that doing something about America’s growing regional divide would be hard even with smart policies. The divide will only get worse under the policies we’re actually likely to get.
The GOP leader promised a free-wheeling Senate. The numbers show it’s been anything but that lately.
By Burgess Everett @ Politico.com, April 2
Republican John Kennedy has served in the Senate a full 15 months — and not once received a roll call vote on one of his legislative amendments. “I think it sucks,” the Louisiana senator fumed as Congress headed home in March for a two-week recess. The Senate has voted on only six amendments this year.
“All I hear is, ‘Well, it’s not done that way,’” Kennedy said of his call for a more robust debate of ideas on the Senate floor. “Well, the way we’ve been doing it for a long time sucks.”
When Mitch McConnell took over as majority leader in 2015 after years in the minority, he vowed to make good on a central campaign pledge of returning to a more “free-wheeling” Senate. And in the early days of his tenure, he did: McConnell presided over open, raucous floor debate on the Keystone XL Pipeline, winning praise even from some Democrats.
But the Senate has reverted to form [....]
Hint: It’s not Corey Lewandowski.
Politico Magazine Profile by Theodoric Meyer, April 2, 2018
When Brian Ballard signed the lease last year for an office on the second floor of the Homer Building, a downtown Washington edifice that's home to a number of lobbying firms, he promised himself he would stay in the space for five years. He lasted one. In February, his firm, Ballard Partners, moved into a bigger office on the fourth floor to accommodate the new lobbyists Ballard has hired since the election of one of his former clients, President Donald Trump.
At the firm's first staff meeting in the new offices, Ballard and five of his Washington lobbyists sat in new leather chairs around a small conference table, with Ballard at the head. Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman from Florida whom Ballard hired last year, phoned in from Paris with an update on the firm's work for the Turkish government. Jamie Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, called from Brussels and updated Ballard on a meeting he'd had with Moise Katumbi, an exiled opposition leader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who’s a client [....]