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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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Tweet by Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, with video, Nov. 14
Shep Smith just took apart the Uranium One conspiracy theory in what amounts to a methodical annihilation of his own network's coverage of the story.
By Hayley Britsky @ Axios.com, 1 hr. ago
The Pentagon plans to pay for a gender transition surgery for an active-duty service member on Tuesday, the first such procedure to be approved by the Pentagon, according to NBC [....]
Insubordination? Or "nobody really pays attention to the Clown-in-chief and he knows it"?
Anyone who's gone through fading parents understand this look of panic when what used to be a simple task becomes horribly complicated. I almost wish him the best as he navigates this downward spiral - though he could easily do it somewhere else. Bill Gates is putting up $100 million for Alzheimer's research - perhaps $1 million could go to getting him the hell out of there.
By Scott Shane, Nicole Perlroth & David E. Sanger @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 12
By Benjamin Hart @ NYMag.com, Nov. 11
About 60,000 anti-Islam, anti-immigrant nationalists and fascists trooped through Warsaw on Saturday, marking Poland’s Independence Day in a striking display of right-wing strength.
For the event, the marchers chose the slogan “We Want God,” a phrase from a Polish religious song that was uttered by President Trump during his visit to Poland in July.
The march, organized by a Polish youth movement, drew extremists from around Europe. The Wall Street Journal reports that banners displayed slogans such as “White Europe,” Europe Will be White,” and “Clean Blood.” Al Jazeera reports that some of the marchers’ chants “directed expletives at refugees, leftists, liberal media outlets, and the U.S." [....]
By the New York Times Editorial Board, Nov. 11 (tor the Nov. 12 Sunday Review)
It reads like: this one last try and then we're calling for impeachment. Their laundry list makes it one of the longest editorials I've seen them do. Has lots of links, and color highlighting for those with poor attention spans.
...To rebuild lost trust and win support, future Democrats face the twin challenges of, first, persuading voters that Trump is on track to negatively affect their livelihoods and, second, reclaiming the mantle of working-class hero that every successful Democratic nominee has embraced since vaudeville ruled the stage at the Cresco Theatre.
By Christian Farias @ NYMag.com, Nov. 10
[....] a new report in today’s Wall Street Journal should rock the Trump administration, if not the president himself, because it deals with post-election conduct that may have continued even after the inauguration. Mueller is said to be investigating whether Flynn and his son were scheming with the government of Turkey to essentially kidnap Fethullah Gulen, a cleric living in Pennsylvania who has long been a thorn on the side of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The purported plot, if carried out, would’ve netted the Flynns up to $15 million [....]
[...] what if Flynn’s machinations to whisk away Gulen continued even after he took the oath of office as Trump’s national security adviser? And if he did do that, did other administration officials know? [....]
The World Anti-Doping Agency, the global regulator of drugs in sports, has obtained a digital trove of data that holds the results of thousands of drug tests run on Russian athletes dating back several years. It is considered a final piece of the puzzle revealing the contours of a state-sponsored doping scheme that Russia conducted across multiple Olympics.
The agency said in a news release on Friday that its investigations department was in possession of an electronic file that it believed to contain “all testing data” from January 2012 to August 2015.
The database, fiercely protected by Russian authorities who have been unwilling to share the information with antidoping investigators, did not arrive through official channels but rather from a whistle-blower, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity [....]
By Jen Kirby @ Vox.com, Nov. 9
What the hell is happening with this case?
By Todd C. Frankel @ WashingtonPost.com, Nov. 9
For residents of well-to-do suburbs in red and blue states alike, the Republican tax overhaul could result in a financial squeeze if popular deductions are cut or disappear. And the GOP is already concerned about the political risks of attacking provisions favored by prosperous suburbanites.
ALPHARETTA, Ga. — On the income distribution charts at the center of tax overhaul plans, Courtney Mishoe knows she’s doing well. She works as a tax manager at a firm in the Atlanta suburbs. Her husband is a police officer. Together, they make more than $180,000 a year. They are solidly in the upper middle class. But they have a mortgage and three kids, including one in day care and another in high school with plans to go to college. It all adds up. They depend on tax deductions to make their budget work.
“I don’t feel wealthy,” Mishoe said. “I don’t have a bunch of money stashed away anywhere.”
Mishoe is the type of person — affluent enough for an annual family vacation but not enough for a boat or second home — who potentially stands to lose under the Republican framework for changing the country’s tax code [....]
By Masha Gessen @ NewYorker.com, Nov. 8
A year ago, panicked friends were writing to ask me what to do now that the United States had elected Donald Trump. Like I’d know: I had spent years writing and organizing in opposition to Vladimir Putin, only to have to leave Russia. But a decade and a half in Putin’s Russia taught me something about living in an autocracy. I am familiar with the ways in which it numbs the mind and drains the spirit. I wrote a piece called “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” which was published by The New York Review of Books and read by millions of people. Today seems a good day to look at how well my proposed rules have held up [....]
A new sculpture project thoughtfully grapples with the school’s participation in slavery.
By Jacoba Urist @ TheAtlantic.com, Nov. 9
[....] Princeton University has one answer to these questions with a new public-art project that confronts the school’s participation in the nation’s early sins. On Monday, the university unveiled Impressions of Liberty, by the African American artist Titus Kaphar. The sculpture is the conceptual core of a campus-wide initiative that begins this fall and aims to reconcile the university’s ties to slavery. The Princeton and Slavery Project’s website has released hundreds of articles and primary documents about slavery and racism at Princeton, which was once jokingly described as the “northernmost outpost of Southern culture.” There is perhaps no better-suited artist than Kaphar to help the school grapple with past inequities and consider the stains of its founders. His art concentrates on the way history is remembered, highlighting the figures and inconveniences, as one 2009 Art in America review described it, who are “habitually … written out of grand historical narratives.” [....]
By Tina Nuygen @ The Hive @ VanityFair.com, Nov. 9
As Trump’s North Korean saber-rattling continues Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker looks to curtail his brinkmanship.
Of note that The Hive has a created a news category titled "The Senate Rebellion."
By Dan Diamond @ Politico.com, Nov. 8
Why the health landscape might change more than we imagine.
The article also makes that clear that right now we've got: a mess, where nobody knows where it's going. In NYC a year ago, it was a common kvetch that one couldn't get a straight answer out of a doctor's office on whether they accepted your insurance. That was nothing compared to now. Now it's hard to get a straight answer from your insurance company on whether a certain hospital or test provider is in your plan, only because: certain companies might have merged yesterday. Or vice versa. Contracts being rewritten every day....referring provider doesn't give a damn, it was good yesterday and it's the patient's problem if the bill doesn't get paid....
Once again we are witnessing a sharp uptick in the official word-salad doublespeak used to avoid talking about the Republican party base because the simple and obvious explanation behind yet another repulsive Republican phenomenon -- that fact that Donald Trump did not manufacture the racist meathead base of the GOP but was manifested by the racist meathead base of the GOP -- is too fatally incriminating for the corporate media to permit.
By Sarah Ellison @ The Hive @ VanityFair.com, Nov. 6
The news that 21st Century Fox may be selling many of its assets to Disney may end one of the great dynastic parlor games in media history.
By Reid Wilson @ TheHill.com, Nov. 7, 11:17 pm
Democrats roared back on Tuesday a year after suffering perhaps the most demoralizing defeat in modern political history, claiming big victories in races up and down the ballot and across the country.The breadth of the Democratic wins surprised even the most optimistic party stalwarts, who fretted over their own chances in key races Tuesday. But as the results rolled in, those Democrats said they had energized their core voters and capitalized on President Trump's unpopularity to reach swing voters [....]
By Max Greenwood @ TheHill.com, Nov. 7, 11:41 p.m
Hoboken, N.J. City Councilman Ravi Bhalla won the city's mayoral race on Tuesday, making him the first Sikh mayor in the state's history, The Jersey Journal reported.
Bhalla faced a crowded field of challengers in the race. But he had received the endorsement of outgoing Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who is stepping down after serving two terms [....]