MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In the News
By Laura Meckler @ WashingtonPost.com, Oct. 11
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — It’s an article of faith in this Cleveland suburb: If any place can navigate the complex issues of race in America, it’s Shaker Heights. Sixty years ago, black and white families came together to create and maintain integrated neighborhoods. The school district began voluntary busing in 1970, and boundary lines were drawn to make schools more integrated. Student groups dedicated themselves to black achievement, race relations and cross-racial friendship.
So why, last November, was 16-year-old Olivia McDowell on the stage of Shaker Heights High School, begging the packed auditorium to understand how hard it is to be one of the few black kids in Advanced Placement English? “I need answers,” Olivia said after escaping her seat, jumping onstage and taking the microphone out of the principal’s hand. She had ignored her mom’s admonition to keep quiet and, unable to suppress her rising anger, outed herself as the student at the center of a swirling controversy. “It’s my education,” she said. “My education." [....]
in Shaker Heights, healthy race relations are a cornerstone of the community’s identity, the reason many choose to live here, a central organizing principle for the schools [....] Taxpayers, including some of the wealthiest people in the Cleveland area, approved one tax levy after the next, driven by the slogan “a community is known by the schools it keeps.” [....]
But the story of Shaker Heights shows how moving kids of different races into the same building isn’t the same as producing equal outcomes. A persistent and yawning achievement gap has led the district to grapple with hard questions of implicit bias, family responsibility and the wisdom of tracking students by ability level. Last school year, 68 percent of white 11th-graders were enrolled in at least one AP or IB course, but just 12 percent of black students were [....]
By Mike Ellis & Juliegrace Brufke @ TheHill.com, Oct. 11
[....] The email included guidance for Republicans seeking to defend the president from potentially damaging witness testimony from an ambassador who was removed from her post in May under controversial circumstances.
In copies of the guidance shared with The Hill, the White House encouraged Republicans to adopt a series of messages designed to turn the tables back on Democrats, including attacks on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) handling of the investigation [....]
approaching the president's home/Reuters
Thousands of anti-government protesters in Haiti have clashed with police who stopped them marching on the home of President Jovenel Moïse. Weeks of protests over an economic crisis have been further inflamed by the killing of a prominent journalist who had been covering demonstrations.Néhémie Joseph was found dead in his car with gunshot wounds on Thursday.
Protesters are demanding Mr Moïse's resignation, blaming him for fuel shortages and worsening inflation. On Friday they burned tyres and spilled oil on the streets, chanting "out with Jovenel". Loudspeakers blasted music with anti-government lyrics. Other protesters tried to force their way through a cordon leading to Mr Moïse's residence. Police fired into the air and used tear gas to drive the crowd back.
"We are in misery and we are starving," said protester Claude Jean quoted by Reuters news agency. "We cannot stand it any more. We ask (President Moïse) to resign so that we have a new Haiti... because we suffer too much in this country." [....]
Not The Onion. By Jonathan Chait @ Intelligencer @ NYMag.com, Oct. 11
Inspired byTrump's Minneapolis rally Thursday night. Concluding paragraphs of Chait's essay:
[....] It might seem like Trump is unable to focus on his text because he is bored with the presidency. The truth is slightly different. He sees the presidency as a means to the end of positive television coverage. Here is Trump describing his great election victory:
That was one of the greatest nights in the history of television … It was one of the highest rated evenings in the history of television. You add up all those networks.
One of the greatest nights in the history of television. The president of the United States thinks of his own election as a show that he watched on TV.
Michael Pillsbury claims Beijing supplied background on alleged $1.5bn payment
By Zoe Tillman, Emma Loop and Michael Sallah @ BuzzFeed.com, Last updated on Oct. 10 at 2:59 p.m. ET
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are in custody, a spokesperson for the US attorney's office in Manhattan has confirmed.
@ Pew Research Center, Oct. 10
Three years ago, Pew Research Center found that the 2016 presidential campaign was “unfolding against a backdrop of intense partisan division and animosity.” Today, the level of division and animosity – including negative sentiments among partisans toward the members of the opposing party – has only deepened [.....]
The commander in chief is impulsive, disdains expertise, and gets his intelligence briefings from Fox News. What does this mean for those on the front lines?
By Mark Bowden for The Atlantic November 2019 print issue
[....] To get a sense of what serving Trump has been like, I interviewed officers up and down the ranks, as well as several present and former civilian Pentagon employees. Among the officers I spoke with were four of the highest ranks—three or four stars—all recently retired. All but one served Trump directly; the other left the service shortly before Trump was inaugurated. They come from different branches of the military, but I’ll simply refer to them as “the generals.” Some spoke only off the record, some allowed what they said to be quoted without attribution, and some talked on the record [....]
- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson refused to interfere in case
- 2017 episode bears hallmarks of Trump approach to Ukraine call
By J.D. Morris & Michael Cabanatuan @ SFChronicle,com, Oct. 9
California’s wildfire crisis will enter an unprecedented new stage Wednesday as PG&E plans to begin cutting power to about 800,000 customers, shutting down the electric lines that have sparked many of the state’s worst blazes and setting off a chaotic scramble of people preparing for an outage that could last a week in some places [....]