Book excerpt from his The Center Holds. Teasers; my bold:
Obama’s reelection campaign was like running for Chicago alderman with the help of nerdy kids who spoke a math language no one else understood. The key was microtargeting, which had bad odor in recent years thanks to the marketing industry. Microtargeting sounded intrusive, even a little creepy, but it had the potential to return politics to the most local level of all: the individual voter.
By Nahal Toosi, The Associated Press, June 8, 2013
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Just days after taking power, Pakistan's new government summoned a top U.S. envoy Saturday to lodge a protest over a U.S. drone strike, suggesting that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's team fully intends to make good on its promise to aggressively push for an end to such strikes.
In response to the New York Times' “The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill” (“Paying Till It Hurts” series, front page, June 2,)
Kenneth Prager,a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, wrote the following short Letter to the Editor, which was published June 3 along with several others:
[....] Turkish officials and pro-government news outlets have been spreading rumors in an attempt to discredit the movement, which is being spearheaded by the children of Turkey’s privileged elite, a group that until now has largely abstained from politics. Here are the top five bogus rumors being spread by the government and its supporters: [....]
By Douglas Farah, Op-ed @ ForeignPolicy.com, June 4,2013
Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has hit on a novel way to try to alleviate her self-inflicted economic free fall and acute shortage of hard currency -- invite money launderers from around the world to put their dollars in Argentine banks with no questions asked.
KILLEEN, Tex. — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people, told a judge on Tuesday that he believed he was defending the lives of the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan from American military personnel when he went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood here in November 2009.
For centuries, the church has maintained a second set of books containing sensitive documents such as notes on priests' alcohol abuse, disputes over parish funds and, later, molestation allegations.
[....] Why did the church hold on to decades-old evidence of its priests' sins?
By David Leonhardt, Sunday Review @ nytimes.com, May 25/26, 2013
[....] What Ireland and Singapore share is a low corporate tax rate. And because soda is such a simple product, with so much of its financial value stemming from the concentrate, Coke and Pepsi can reduce their overall tax rates by manufacturing it in low-tax countries. [....]
By Ethan Bronner, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, New York Times, May 25/26, 2013
WASHINGTON — Even before the F.B.I. conducted 550 interviews of officials and seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters in a leak investigation connected to a 2012 article about a Yemen bomb plot, agents had sought the same reporters’ sources for two other articles about terrorism.
RIO DE JANEIRO — The attacks have stunned this city. In one, an assailant held a gun to the head of a 30-year-old woman while raping her in front of passengers on a bus as the driver proceeded down a main avenue. In another, a 14-year-old girl from a hillside slum was raped on one of Rio’s most famous stretches of beach.
By Eric Lipton & Ben Protess, New York Times, May 23/24, 2013
WASHINGTON — Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.
BEIJING — The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, bluntly told a North Korean envoy Friday that his country should return to diplomatic talks designed to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons, according to a state-run Chinese news agency.
Floodwaters from heavy rains swamped five countries in Europe and threatened others, leaving at least six people dead and eight missing.