Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Not posting this because I agree with it, exactly, but because it's worth consideration.
Putin doesn’t want the nation to address its guilt and ignorance. So we started a civic movement that humanises the victims
By Sergei Parkhomenko @ TheGuardian.com, March 7
Earlier this year the Russian ministry of culture banned the satirical film The Death of Stalin, supposedly because it contained “information whose dissemination is prohibited by law”. On Russian-language social media, the withdrawal of the film’s screening licence was met with widespread laughter and scorn: what sort of secrets could this movie possibly have disclosed? Could it be that Stalin is indeed dead? – so went the irony.
It looked ridiculous. But back in December, there had been an ominous precursor: Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB intelligence services, told the Rossiyskaya Gazeta government newspaper that Stalin-era repressions had been justified. He mentioned the need to counter Trotsky’s networks, and plots that had “ties with foreign secret services”. He also claimed that “mass-scale political repression” had ended by 1938 – a blatant rewriting of history.
As Vladimir Putin prepares for re-election on 18 March, Russia’s Soviet past has become a constant object of manipulation by a regime that is for ever sending out mixed messages [.....]
The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims in the lawsuit to have had an affair with Trump several years prior to his presidency. However, the lawsuit claims that when he was running for office and multiple women were coming forward to share stories of their own alleged encounters with the then-Republican presidential candidate, Cohen intervened in an attempt to keep Clifford from coming forward as well. The lawsuit says Cohen has continued his attempts at silencing Clifford -- including as recently as February 27, 2018.
A new documentary from Peter Schweizer, a right-wing journalist known for his investigations into Hillary Clinton, signals a revised strategy for conservatives in the culture wars.
By Michael M. Grynbaum & John Herrman @ NYTimes.com, March 6
Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech.
Arguing that Silicon Valley is stifling their speech and suppressing right-wing content, publishers and provocateurs on the right are eyeing a public-relations battle against online giants like Google and Facebook, the same platforms they once relied on to build a national movement.
In a sign of escalation, Peter Schweizer, a right-wing journalist known for his investigations into Hillary Clinton, plans to release a new film focusing on technology companies and their role in filtering the news.
Tentatively titled “The Creepy Line,” Mr. Schweizer’s documentary is expected to have its first screening in May in Cannes, France [.....] He used the same rollout two years ago for his previous film, an adaptation of his book “Clinton Cash” that he produced with Stephen K. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News [....]
In the special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th district, Conor Lamb has split ways with the national party.
By Elaine Godfrey @ TheAtlantic.com, March 5
[....] Lamb, a former federal prosecutor and a Marine, is running against the Republican Rick Saccone to fill the congressional seat vacated by Tim Murphy, the district’s longtime Republican representative. Murphy resigned in October after it was revealed that he had an extramarital affair and asked his mistress to get an abortion. Despite having 70,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, the district—which encompasses parts of Allegheny, Washington, Greene, and Westmoreland Counties—tends to elect Republicans: Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton here by 20 points in the 2016 presidential election, and Mitt Romney and John McCain both won by similar margins. Murphy, who held the seat for 15 years, ran uncontested in the last two elections.
But for the first time in decades, the race is competitive [.....]
By Jacqueline Thomsen @ TheHill.com, March 5
Chief of staff John Kelly is reportedly frustrated with White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and has questioned what the couple does during the day, The Associated Press reported Monday.
Sources told the AP that Kelly is angry with the pair, claiming that they are responsible for President Trump changing his mind on policies at the last minute. He also questions what the couple does all day and is upset by their “freelancing,” according to the AP [....]
By Julia Manchester @ TheHill.com, March 5
A federal judge in Maryland on Monday dismissed a challenge to President Trump's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
"This Court does not like the outcome of this case, but is constrained by its constitutionally limited role to the result that it has reached," Judge Roger Titus said in his opinion. "Hopefully, the Congress and the President will finally get their job done."
"An overwhelming percentage of Americans support protections for 'Dreamers,' yet it is not the province of the judiciary to provide legislative or executive actions when those entrusted with those responsibilities fail to act," Titus continued [....]
But that doesn’t mean they will.
By Nathaniel Rakich @ FiveThirtyEight.com, March 5
On Monday afternoon, Sen. Thad Cochran, the first Republican in over a century to win a statewide race in Mississippi and the longest-serving member currently in Congress, announced he would resign from office on April 1 [....] Cochran’s seat wasn’t scheduled to be up for election until 2020, so we’re looking at another special Senate election in the Deep South [....] Special elections in Mississippi are nonpartisan; that is, party affiliations aren’t printed on the ballot, and — instead of party-specific primaries — all candidates will run in one free-for-all of a race [.....]
The nonpartisan setup has the potential to help Democrats, because Mississippi is two things: Very Republican and very inelastic, meaning it has very few persuadable voters and doesn’t swing much from one election to the next. Most voters in Mississippi reliably vote for either Republicans or Democrats. Under normal circumstances, that makes it extremely difficult for any Democrat to claw his or her way to 50 percent of the vote, but in a campaign without party labels (or at least where they aren’t front and center), the lead weight that is a “D” next to one’s name is partially lifted.
And Democrats have a couple of candidates on their bench who could credibly run a centrist campaign [....]
Gathering scheduled as GOP leader Ryan sounds alarm on tariffs
By Jennifer Jacobs, Margaret Talev & Justin Sink @ Bloomberg.com, 9:14 PM EST
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn is summoning executives from U.S. companies that depend on aluminum and steel to meet this week with President Donald Trump in a last-ditch effort to halt steep tariffs announced last week, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Cohn is arranging for a White House meeting on Thursday that would include representatives of breweries, beverage-can manufacturers and automakers, along with the oil industry. Trump is scheduled to attend the meeting, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a policy disagreement [....]
Trump advisers who favor the tariffs want him to sign the paperwork while in Pennsylvania steel country on Saturday, but the signing location has not yet been decided, according to two people familiar with the location discussion[....]
A man who is critically ill after being exposed to an unknown substance in Wiltshire is a Russian national convicted of spying for Britain, the BBC understands.
Sergei Skripal, 66, was granted refuge in the UK following a "spy swap" between the US and Russia in 2010.
He and a woman, 33, were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping centre in Salisbury on Sunday.
Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury has been closed by police "as a precaution".
The substance has not been identified, but Public Health England said there was no known risk to the public's health [....]
aka "Trump's Name Is Stripped From Panama Hotel"
PANAMA CITY — A worker with a crowbar on Monday pried the word “Trump” from the sign in front of the only Trump-branded hotel in Latin America, after the building’s owner said he’d won a legal fight to take control of it.
How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.
By Jane Mayer for the March 12 New Yorker; available online now @ newyorker.com
Illustration caption: Steele told friends that Trump supporters were using him as a “battering ram” to “take down the whole intelligence community.”
In January, after a long day at his London office, Christopher Steele, the former spy turned private investigator, was stepping off a commuter train in Farnham, where he lives, when one of his two phones rang. He’d been looking forward to dinner at home with his wife, and perhaps a glass of wine. It had been their dream to live in Farnham, a town in Surrey with a beautiful Georgian high street, where they could afford a house big enough to accommodate their four children, on nearly an acre of land. Steele, who is fifty-three, looked much like the other businessmen heading home, except for the fact that he kept his phones in a Faraday bag—a pouch, of military-tested double-grade fabric, designed to block signal detection.
A friend in Washington, D.C., was calling with bad news: two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley, had just referred Steele’s name to the Department of Justice, for a possible criminal investigation [....]
Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats has become something of a rarity in today's polarized political environment—except when it comes to a select handful of objectives, like enriching Wall Street banks.
In a Twitter thread on Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called attention to a massive bank deregulation bill (S.2155) that could reach the Senate floor for a final vote next week, and highlighted the fact that a dozen Democrats are providing crucial support for the measure.
If passed, the legislation—derisively labeled "The Bank Lobbyist Act" by Warren and other critics—would make it more difficult to combat racial discrimination by big banks, provide regulatory relief for more than two dozen of the nation's large financial institutions, and eliminate many consumer protections put into place after the 2008 financial crisis."
By Gardiner Harris @ NYTimes.com, March 4
WASHINGTON — As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy.
As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts.
The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. More broadly, the funding lag reflects a deep lack of confidence by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in his department’s ability to execute its historically wide-ranging mission and spend its money wisely.
Mr. Tillerson has voiced skepticism that the United States is even capable of doing anything to counter the Russian threat [....]
What’s behind the Trump alliance between self-dealing plutocrats and blue-collar voters.
By Amy Chua @ Politico Magazine, March/April
[.....] There are a number of familiar explanations for how Trump gets away with all of this. One is that it’s all a con. Trump is an incredible salesman, the thinking goes, and he’s duping the white working class on behalf of a new set of overlords who put on their MAGA hats and sell false hope and snake-oil policies. Another explanation is that it’s all racism. Some of his white supporters from lower-income households are fine with the wealthy making off like bandits, as long as they can comfortably look down on immigrants and others of racial minority groups.
These characterizations may describe some in Trump’s base. But they also reflect the same condescension that helped get Trump elected in the first place. More fundamentally, they miss what’s truly powerful about his style of politics—call it “billionaire populism”—and just how profoundly it’s connected to the nation’s history.
In a sense, Trump has brought together two powerful strains in the U.S., forging a connection between the traditional, deeply rooted American dream and the glitziest, celebrity-obsessed aspects of modern culture, totally excluding professionals and tastemakers. A year into the experiment, there’s no question it’s working. If we want to make sense of this American moment, we need to understand what drives the strange alliance between flamboyant billionaires and blue-collar voters, what makes it so profoundly American, and where it might go next [....]
For the foreseeable future, nationalism is likely to remain a defining political force. A lot thus depends on the shape it is going to take. Instead of indulging in dreams of a post-national future, liberals should strive to make nationalism as inclusive as possible.
Interesting argument, especially if considered alongside the teenagers running for governor of Kansas ...
By Mark Mazzetti, David D.Kirkpatrick & Maggie Haberman @ NYTimes.com, March 3.
Just read it, as there is no way anyone could summarize it. If you're the type that likes convoluted spy stories or mysteries, you'll like it, trust me. It obviously started with this A copy of Mr. Broidy’s memorandum about the meeting was provided to The New York Times by someone critical of the Emirati influence in Washington and this George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman [.....] is now a focus of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel [.....] In one example of Mr. Nader’s influential connections, which has not been previously reported, last fall he received a detailed report from a top Trump fund-raiser, Elliott Broidy, about a private meeting with the president in the Oval Office.