By Mark Milian @ Bloomberg.com, March 30

Including graphs showing the sustainability problem and how shipping revenue overtook junk mail for the first time last year.

[....] Ending the U.S. mail relationship would probably be a bigger setback for Amazon than for the Postal Service.[.....]

So the e-commerce giant got the Postal Service off life support, but any benefit beyond that is minimal. Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the mail system, some kind of bankruptcy-style financial restructuring or reneging on those health-care promises would turn the Postal Service into a sustainable business.

Maybe that’s Trump’s goal. Building an antitrust case against Amazon—an idea the President has floated—is a tall order. Amazon’s five-year contract with the Postal Service could be up for renewal this year. Breaking up that relationship would be an easier way for Trump to inflict pain on the #AmazonWashingtonPost, as he calls it.

Two recently published books about Ukraine provide an opportunity to explore the difference between the popular and the academic history of Ukraine.

During the campaign, Paul Manafort was talking to a man tied to Russian spying.

By Zachary Fryer-Biggs @ Vox.com, March 29, 7:32 pm

Paul Manafort, the former chair of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had a long professional relationship with a man connected to Russian intelligence. And special counsel Robert Mueller says that man, Konstantin Kilimnik, was still working with Russian intelligence in 2016, when Trump was running for president.

Kilimnik had worked with Manafort since 2005, helping with Manafort’s clients in Ukraine, and continued to talk with Manafort’s team during the election.

Mueller’s team made the link public on Wednesday, saying that Kilimnik was still workingwith Russian intelligence when he was communicating with the Trump team in September and October of 2016.

It’s the closest connection to date between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian intelligence, with Mueller’s team already digging deeply into Manafort’s past businesses.

Mueller’s team is investigating 2016 Russian election meddling, but has expanded to cover President Donald Trump’s business dealings in Russia, and contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russians [....]

By Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Kristen Welker @ NBCNews.com, March 29

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's national security advisers spent months trying to convince him to sign off on a plan to supply new U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid in the country's fight against Russian-backed separatists, according to multiple senior administration officials.

Yet when the president finally authorized the major policy shift, he told his aides not to publicly tout his decision, officials said. Doing so, Trump argued, might agitate Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the officials. "He doesn't want us to bring it up," one White House official said. "It is not something he wants to talk about."

The White House declined to comment.

Officials said the increasingly puzzling divide between Trump's policy decisions and public posture on Russia stems from his continued hope for warmer relations with Putin and stubborn refusal to be seen as appeasing the media or critics who question his silence or kind words for the Russian leader [....]

Seems to me an awful quick publication of an op-ed by a fired member of the president's cabinet, almost as if he had written it in advance. 

Guest op-ed by David J. Shulkin @ NYTimes.com, March 29

It has been my greatest professional honor to serve our country’s more than 20 million veterans. Almost three years ago, I left my private sector job running hospitals and came to Washington to repay my gratitude to the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country.

I believe strongly in the mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and nothing about my political experience in Washington could ever change that. I also believe that maintaining a strong V.A. is an essential piece of the puzzle that is the United States’ national security system: We can only expect our sons and daughters to risk their lives and fight for our freedom if we can keep our promise to care for them when they return home broken, injured or traumatized. There is no excuse for not holding up our end of the bargain. The mission set forth by President Abraham Lincoln to care for those who have “borne the battle” is a sacred duty that I will remain committed to always.

During my tenure at the department [....]

Erin Wade, WaPo today.  Erin Wade is a chef, restaurateur and co-author of “The Mac + Cheese Cookbook.”

As a female chef, I am disheartened to open the paper and see the latest news of male chefs behaving badly. Mario Batali, John Besh, Ken Friedman . . . every day it seems to be someone new. Although it is encouraging to see men finally being called out for inappropriate behavior, it’s less so that the focus is still, frankly, on men. How did they react? What will happen to their empires? What’s needed is a conversation about women — not as victims, but as revolutionaries. I am an overtly feminist restaurateur, and harassment still happened at my restaurant. This is my story, my solution and my call to action.

.....

I love this guy.

Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Drip drip drip...  data data everywhere, and not a drop to drink...

A retiring GOP congressman reflects on 15 months of chaos.

By Jim Newell @ Slate.com, March 27

It only took a week for Pennsylvania Rep. Ryan Costello, a moderate Republican representing suburban Philadelphia, to recognize the headwinds that Donald Trump’s presidency would create for him and members in similar districts.

“After the travel ban,” Costello said in an interview Tuesday. It wasn’t just the overwhelming protests at airports but all the protesters who gathered at his office, too. They were linking him, their Republican member of Congress, with the decisions of the new Republican president. He remembered “the expectation that, somehow, I needed to issue a statement within X number of minutes or somehow I was complicit, or whatever they were trying to accuse me of.” [.....]