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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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And to top off this vicious vindictive brainfart, Pompeo's supposed to shift from the CIA to State to somehow implement this shithouse? And to think people have to resign for grabbing someone's butt, but not sticking their head up their ass while on duty...
Not a doctor, a nurse, never provided health care , never took a medical history, consoled a sick patient, never worked in health care, never in a pharmacy or in public health.
Oh, the good news? - "She can take notes...."
Her major claim to fame, beyond being a Trump toadie, she invented the term "alternate facts".
By Phil Rucker, Ashley Parker & Anne Gearan @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 30
The White House has readied a plan to oust embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who has become one of the most personally loyal and politically savvy members of President Trump's national security team, two administration officials confirmed Thursday.
The plan, hatched by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, is expected to be set in motion over the next few weeks, and it has broad support within Trump's inner circle, the officials said. But it was unclear whether Trump had signed off on the plan yet; the president has been known to change his mind about personnel and other matters before finalizing decisions with public announcements.
Under the plan, Pompeo would probably be replaced at the CIA by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) [....]
Op-ed by Jose Fuentes, former attorney general, Puerto Rico @ MiamiHerald.com, Nov. 28
Re Andrés Oppenheimer’s Nov. 16 column, “The stampede of Puerto Ricans to Florida is bad news for Trump:” The number of Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida since Hurricane Maria exceeds 150,000. If they register to vote and remain in Florida, they will probably transform future trends in political elections. However, I disagree with Oppenheimer’s premise that they will benefit Democrats, in revenge against President Trump [....]
Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico are not liberals. They are conservatives. Many polls show that Puerto Ricans living in Central Florida registered as Democrats consider themselves conservatives (www.PR51st.com). That is, they are a “floating vote,” aligning themselves with whomever seems best. This floating vote in 2004 carried George Bush to the presidency; Mel Martinez to the Senate; and Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 and 2012. In 2016, it stayed at home, not voting for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who lost [....]
By Steven LeVine @ Axios.com, 15 hrs. ago
In a new study that is optimistic about automation yet stark in its appraisal of the challenge ahead, McKinsey says massive government intervention will be required to hold societies together against the ravages of labor disruption over the next 13 years. Up to 800 million people—including a third of the work force in the U.S. and Germany—will be made jobless by 2030, the study says.
The bottom line: The economy of most countries will eventually replace the lost jobs, the study says, but many of the unemployed will need considerable help to shift to new work, and salaries could continue to flatline. "It's a Marshall Plan size of task," Michael Chui, lead author of the McKinsey report, tells Axios.
In the eight-month study, the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm's think tank, found that almost half of those thrown out of work—375 million people, comprising 14% of the global work force—will have to find entirely new occupations, since their old one will either no longer exist or need far fewer workers. Chinese will have the highest such absolute numbers—100 million people changing occupations, or 12% of the country's 2030 work force.
I asked Chui what surprised him the most of the findings. "The degree of transition that needs to happen over time is a real eye opener," he said.
The details: [....]
By Jonathan Swan @ Axios.com, 4 hrs. ago
[....] The back story: In a White House with a strong political operation, there'd be a big shot acting as the main strategist — marshalling party leaders across the country, controlling the Republican National Committee and ensuring the biggest donors in the conservative movement are ready for the epic fights ahead. That's more like the role Karl Rove or Ken Mehlman played for George W. Bush.
Instead, Trump has Stepien — a former aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and an experienced operative, but one of the quietest men in Washington. He's virtually unknown to conservative groups and has little sway inside the White House, and none whatsoever on Capitol Hill.
- When I texted a senior figure at a powerful conservative outside group to ask him about Stepien, he called back and admitted he needed to Google his name before responding.
- "Nobody knows what the f--- he's done or is doing to advance the president's agenda politically," a senior administration source told me. "There's no follow through on initiatives."
- Stepien seems to have little sway over the RNC chairwoman, Ronna Romney McDaniel. She often deals directly with the president and White House chief of staff John Kelly.
- "Stepien's not the guy you pick up the phone and call," said a leader of a conservative outside group. "It just seems like the office is a non-entity. At most they monitor things. It's a completely passive operation."
As a result [.....]
By Adam Goldman & Nicholas Fandos @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 29
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress confronted Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, on Wednesday over an F.B.I. intelligence report that said that black extremists were targeting law enforcement because of police abuses in minority communities.
Mr. Wray met with the Congressional Black Caucus for about 90 minutes on Capitol Hill to discuss its members’ concerns about the report, which grouped together blacks who have espoused violent ideologies, some of whom went on to attack the police, under the term the “Black Identity Extremist” movement.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Wray struggled to defend the report’s analysis and could not identify a single black identity extremist group [....]
By Richard Penez-Pena @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 29
A man’s startling decision to have a co-worker hold on to his gun, and the co-worker’s instinct to alert a police officer, ended a killer’s reign of terror in Tampa, Fla., the police said on Wednesday, after arresting a man and charging him in four fatal shootings committed on the streets of a quiet residential neighborhood.
The accused gunman, Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, 24, has no prior criminal history, and even after interviewing him, investigators have no idea why he carried out the four apparently random, unconnected killings, Chief Brian Dugan of the Tampa police said. Mr. Donaldson was charged on Wednesday with four counts of first-degree murder; if convicted, he could face the death penalty.
“That firearm was used in all four murders,” Chief Dugan said [....]
A debate about the scholar Tariq Ramadan and his treatment of women has been eclipsed by a discussion about how intellectuals view Islam in French life.
By Adam Schatz @ NewsDesk @ NewYorker.com, Nov. 29
Soon after the #MeToo movement formed in the United States, in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal, #balancetonporc (“expose your pig”) erupted in France. The effect has been an unprecedented blow to what Sabrina Kassa has described, in Mediapart, as the “patriarchal belly” of a country where harassment and other sexual crimes have often been concealed, or explained away, by a Gallic rhetoric of flirtation and libertinism. In 2008, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was subjected to an internal I.M.F. inquiry over allegedly coercing a subordinate to have sex with him. Although he apologized for his “error of judgment,” he was celebrated in the French press as “the Great Seducer.” Had he not been arrested in New York, in 2011 [....] Strauss-Kahn, a powerful figure in the Socialist Party, might have been elected President of France in 2012.
The #balancetonporc movement has exposed prominent men in business, entertainment, and media, but the most high-profile scandal has been that surrounding Tariq Ramadan, an Islamic scholar and activist whom several women have accused of rape and sexual abuse [.....]
By Jonathan Chait @ NYMag.com, Nov. 28
The prevailing interpretation of Donald Trump, shared by all his enemies and many of his allies, is that he is a con man. It is a theory that explains both his career in business and politics, and has carried through his many reversals of position and acts of fraud against customers and contractors. It remains quite plausible. But new reporting has opened up a second possibility: The president has lost all touch with reality.
The Washington Post and New York Times have accounts from insiders suggesting Trump habitually insists upon the impossible in private. He does not merely tell lies in order to gull the public or to manipulate allies. He tells lies in private that he has no reason to tell [....]
By Owen Bowcott @ TheGuardian.com, Nov. 29
Former commander Slobodan Praljak drank from small bottle moments after judges upheld 20-year sentence at court in The Hague
Later Tuesday, Trump trashed Democratic leaders over supposedly undermining military pressure on North Korea by advocating for increased rights for immigrants.
"After North Korea missile launch, it's more important than ever to fund our gov't & military!" Trump tweeted: "Dems shouldn't hold troop funding hostage for amnesty & illegal immigration."
"Against the odds, Jones might be able to bring together a new coalition. If he succeeds, it will open the door for other changes. If he fails, Democrats must learn to stop ignoring their core voters between campaigns and start appealing on kitchen table issues across race lines."
Fox News incorrectly claimed Sunday that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter had died at the age of 93. It did so while praising another former president, George H.W. Bush, for being the longest-living commander in chief in the country’s history.