Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-31

‘Fat but Fit’? The Controversy Continues

‘This is a nothing burger’: How conservative media reacted to the Mueller indictments

The repeated, incorrect claim that Russia obtained ‘20 percent of our uranium’

Historians respond to John F. Kelly’s Civil War remarks: ‘Strange,’ ‘sad,’ ‘wrong’ - "Kelly makes several points. That Lee was honorable. That fighting for state was more important than fighting for country. That a lack of compromise led to the war. That good people on both sides were fighting for conscientious reasons. Both McCurry and David Blight, a history professor at Yale University and author of 'Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,' broadly reject all of these arguments. 'This is profound ignorance, that’s what one has to say first, at least of pretty basic things about the American historical narrative,' Blight said. 'I mean, it’s one thing to hear it from Trump, who, let’s be honest, just really doesn’t know any history and has demonstrated it over and over and over. But General Kelly has a long history in the American military.'"

Blue states already subsidize red states. Now red states want even more.

Monday, October 30, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-30

She bought 26 Lady Gaga tickets to celebrate beating cancer. She never made it to the concert.

A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN

Einstein scribbled his theory of happiness in place of a tip. It just sold for more than $1 million.

The ‘dossier’ and the uranium deal: A guide to the latest allegations

John Boehner Unchained: The former House speaker feels liberated—but he’s also seething about what happened to his party. - "Republicans, having spent and borrowed extravagantly during the Bush years—and expanded the reach of the federal government with No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, and the bailouts—now faced a conservative backlash. Pivoting sharply, GOP lawmakers greeted the election of Barack Obama in 2008 with unified opposition to his stimulus package. This brought accusations of hypocrisy. 'People thought we had spent too much. Thought the tax cuts were too much,' Boehner says. 'OK, fine—we need to look ahead. We’ve got a spending problem.'
...
"The rising influence of Heritage and other 'outside groups' on the right—Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots—made the speaker’s job infinitely harder. Egged on by an angry GOP base, they repeatedly cornered Republicans into fights they couldn’t possibly win. The defining implosion of their first year in the majority came in late July when it was revealed that Jordan’s staff had been conspiring with outside groups to pressure RSC members—Jordan’s own members—to vote against Boehner’s debt deal. It was a stunning breach of decorum and a confirmation of what Obama had already figured out: that Boehner wasn’t dealing from a place of strength. Jordan apologized profusely to the conference, but it was too late. Whatever trust once existed between the warring GOP factions had vanished, never to return—and it destroyed Boehner’s credibility with Democrats. 'He could practically never deliver his votes,' Pelosi tells me. When I ask Boehner about this, during a rain delay at Wetherington, he smirks. 'It’s hard to negotiate when you’re standing there naked,” he says. “It’s hard to negotiate with no dick.'
...
"The resentment toward Boehner was rooted in many grievances, some more legitimate than others. Without question, he ran the House in a top-down fashion inherited from Gingrich, centralizing the policymaking process in leadership offices and spurning input from back-bench members. He would also anger conservatives by allowing deadlines to creep up, refusing to state the conference’s strategy because he knew they would disapprove—and then he would jam them at the last minute. There also was outrage at his punitive tactics. In late 2012, he had kicked Huelskamp and several other conservatives off key committees as punishment for their votes against leadership initiatives. It was predictable: The earmark ban had robbed Boehner of his best tool to incentivize on-the-fence members, leaving him to lead with all sticks and few carrots. With outside groups actively recruiting primary challengers, members in red districts often saw no political upside in voting with the leadership—a dynamic Boehner could not counter.
...
"Boehner worries about the deepening fissures in American society. But he sees Trump as more of a symptom than the cause of what is a longer arc of social and ideological alienation, fueled by talk radio and Fox News on the right and MSNBC and social media on the left. 'People thought in ’09, ’10, ’11, that the country couldn’t be divided more. And you go back to Obama’s campaign in 2008, you know, he was talking about the divide and healing the country and all of that. And some would argue on the right that he did more to divide the country than to unite it. I kind of reject that notion.' Why is that? 'Because it wasn’t him!' Boehner replies. 'It was modern-day media, and social media, that kept pushing people further right and further left. People started to figure out … they could choose where to get their news. And so what do people do? They choose places they agree with, reinforcing the divide.'

"He continues: 'I always liked Rush [Limbaugh]. When I went to Palm Beach I would always meet with Rush and we’d go play golf. But you know, who was that right-wing guy, [Mark] Levin? He went really crazy right and got a big audience, and he dragged [Sean] Hannity to the dark side. He dragged Rush to the dark side. And these guys—I used to talk to them all the time. And suddenly they’re beating the living shit out of me.' Boehner, seated in his favorite recliner, lights another cigarette. 'I had a conversation with Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, ‘Listen, you’re nuts.’ We had this really blunt conversation. Things were better for a few months, and then it got back to being the same-old, same-old. Because I wasn’t going to be a right-wing idiot.'"

Nancy Pelosi isn’t going anywhere. Will it help or hurt Democrats in 2018?

Fix this democracy — now 38 ideas for repairing our badly broken civic life

The 6 worst things men have said about sexual harassment in just one month

‘I’m the victim here’: Corey Feldman defends himself in contentious ‘Today’ interviews

Megyn Kelly blasts Bill O’Reilly on her NBC morning show

Mueller’s moves send message to other potential targets: Beware, I’m coming

Reading archive 2017-10-27 through 2017-10-29

The Daily 202: The GOP civil war is bigger than Trump. A new study shows deep fissures on policy.

Robert Mueller Sends a Message: He’s Deadly Serious

You can spend a lot on ‘true’ cinnamon, but does it taste better than the rest?

Monday, October 23, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-23

Trump is now effectively calling a Gold Star widow a liar, despite the White House not backing him up

Guy completely shuts down the anti-abortion argument with one question.

The Seeds of Trump's Victory Were Sown the Moment Obama Won

What Donald Trump has in common with Napoleon III: Alexis de Tocqueville famously extolled democracy in America, but his look at French politics may say more about us today.

The great dealmaker? Lawmakers find Trump to be an untrustworthy negotiator. - "Tony Schwartz, a longtime student and now critic of Trump who co-wrote the mogul’s 1987 bestseller 'The Art of the Deal,' said Trump’s dealmaking modus operandi is, 'I am relentless and I am not burdened by the concern that what I’m doing is ethical or truthful or fair.'
...
"Schwartz said playing to Trump’s ego, as Graham has with his golf compliments, is an effective way to manage him. His advice to those seeking to make deals with Trump: Find the most persuasive way to portray one’s agenda as a personal victory for the president, and be the last person to talk to him. 'Trump is motivated by the same concern in all situations, which is to dominate and to be perceived as having won,' Schwartz said. 'That supersedes everything, including ideology.'"

Donald Trump just hit a new low in the La David Johnson fiasco

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-22

Lawyers Begin Sketching Legal Strategy to Challenge Possible Nafta Withdrawal

The fact-checkers venture into Red America to try to win over skeptics

Tom Price's wife asks about 'legally' quarantining HIV patients

The New York Times sacks Bill O’Reilly. Again.

Nine Responses to “But What About Chicago?” - "If you insist on using the deeply problematic misnomer of “black-on-black crime” while discussing the rise of gun violence as it relates to gang activity in the greater Chicago area, particularly with guns flowing in from Indiana, Missouri, and Kentucky, then that is a conversation that I am not currently willing to have. Most crime, including murder, is intraracial. That is due in no small part to discriminatory housing practices (redlining, for instance), which are symptoms of a much bigger issue in this country. Historically, racism and arguments using racist logic have been dams blocking the flow of ideas and the streams of justice in America. In regard to the history of discriminatory housing practices and economic stagnation, and the effects that they can have on working-class African-Americans, I suggest reading (or viewing) 'A Raisin in the Sun' by Lorraine Hansberry. It takes place in . . . you guessed it."

The race to save coffee: America's favorite beverage is under attack from climate change and other woes. Science may offer a solution.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-21

Here are the four-star generals Donald Trump has publicly bashed

After Video Refutes Kelly’s Charges, Congresswoman Raises Issue of Race

Trump plans to release JFK assassination documents despite concerns from federal agencies

Feud: Elena and Neil: Why rumors of a Gorsuch–Kagan clash at the Supreme Court are such a bombshell.

Trump’s Life-Tenured Judicial Avatar

How Badly Is Neil Gorsuch Annoying the Other Supreme Court Justices?

Gorsuch v. Roberts: The rookie takes on the chief

John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump

John Kelly and the Language of the Military Coup

WestSideJayhawk: "Trump is a black hole. He will always take the low road in any situation, and he drags everyone in his orbit down into his swirling vortex of terribleness. People who work for him, people who do business with him, people who try to defend him and help him, people who criticize and argue with him, the entire Republican Party, military members and their families, and anyone else that engages with him on any level. Hell, I feel worse whenever I think, speak or write something about him. He brings out the worst in everyone, all the time."

For some veterans, John Kelly’s remarks add to a worrying military-civilian divide - "... Kelly’s comments echo a prevalent attitude in some military and veteran circles — a feeling of pride for taking on a tough job in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, coupled with a simmering resentment of civilians oblivious to their mission.
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"Kelly’s words Thursday worried Carter and others. His somber ordering of how a dead service member is moved from battlefield to burial was a helpful glimpse for Americans who have not experienced that trauma. But Carter said he paired the idea with a belief that most civilians could not conceive — or intentionally fail — to understand that burden. 'It was odd. The military does not have a monopoly on loss and hardship,' Carter said.
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"The notion of military service as the purest form of public virtue, at the cost of other kinds of service to others, is an alarming development, he said. 'Military courage is something society needs to have and we need to valorize it,' Klay said. 'But we also need a civic body that makes this a country worth fighting for.' In particular, Klay said, the politicized discourse around service, and who understands its burdens, obscures legitimate questions that all citizens need to engage with, beginning, in this moment, with why U.S. forces were in Niger in the first place."

Friday, October 20, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-20

John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff whose son died in combat, defends president’s call to Gold Star widow - "The 67-year-old retired Marine Corps general also sought to claim the moral high ground by deploring the degradation of modern American society. When he was growing up, he said, women, religion and the dignity of life were sacred. Now, he said, they no longer are. There was evident irony in Kelly’s making that particular point in defense of Trump, whose presidential campaign last year was marked by name-calling, harsh rhetoric about Muslims, Mexicans and other minorities, and allegations of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women." (ed. note: lol @ John Kelly and his hypocrisy)

George W. Bush comes out of retirement to deliver a veiled rebuke of Trump

Ed Gillespie’s lobbying career included work for firms with vast interests in Virginia

‘I’ve never had a year so bad’: How Modi’s big economic changes have hit India’s small businesses

Putin talks like Russia’s next president but stays silent on whether he’ll run

CIA director distorts intelligence community’s findings on Russian interference

Retired ‘Navy SEAL’ praising Trump on Fox News was a fake

Many Trump voters who got hurricane relief in Texas aren’t sure Puerto Ricans should

The Hearing World Must Stop Forcing Deaf Culture to Assimilate: Too many hearing people view deafness as a deficiency rather than a separate linguistic context, worldview and culture.

In attack on Frederica Wilson over Trump’s call to widow, John Kelly gets facts wrong (ed. note: lol @ John Kelly and his blatant lies)

Frederica Wilson 2015 video shows White House Chief of Staff John Kelly got it wrong

What John Kelly got wrong about Rep. Frederica Wilson and the Johnson family

Rep. Frederica Wilson didn’t flinch at Trump’s attacks. Her record explains why.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-17

How the Russians pretended to be Texans — and Texans believed them

Better Call Paul: As last season ended, Chris Paul and James Harden had the same revelation: They could not beat the Warriors alone. In this ESPN the Magazine cover story, we ask: Can they beat them together?

The Supreme Court Is Allergic To Math - "'I don’t put much stock in the claim that the Supreme Court is afraid of adjudicating partisan gerrymanders because it’s afraid of math,' Daniel Hemel, who teaches law at the University of Chicago, told me. '[Roberts] is very smart and so are the judges who would be adjudicating partisan gerrymandering claims — I’m sure he and they could wrap their minds around the math. The ‘gobbledygook’ argument seems to be masking whatever his real objection might be.'"

Trump Falsely Claims Obama Didn’t Contact Families of Fallen Troops

Trump on Obama calling soldiers' families: "You can ask Gen. Kelly, did he get a call?" - eds. note: Robert Kelly was married, and his wife would have received the call. Gen. Kelly was invited to a White House reception for Gold Star families.

‘Disrespectful lie’: Anger grows over Trump’s claims about past presidents and fallen troops

FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow - "Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal. 'Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them,' he said. 'The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking.'"

Influential investor thanks God that ‘white people populated America, and not the blacks’

Monday, October 16, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-16

The Danger of President Pence: Trump’s critics yearn for his exit. But Mike Pence, the corporate right’s inside man, poses his own risks.

If Only 'Being a Colossal Dick' Was an Impeachable Offense

Obama aides lash out after Trump claims past presidents didn't call fallen soldiers' families - "Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, called the president’s claim 'an outrageous and disrespectful lie even by Trump standards' and noted on Twitter that it was Trump, not Obama, who attacked a Gold Star family that had been critical of him."

Popovich issues blistering takedown of ‘soulless coward’ Donald Trump

Bomb kills investigative journalist in Malta who reported on Panama Papers

A group of Catholics has charged Pope Francis with heresy. Here’s why that matters.

The scamming runs very, very deep

Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies - Made-up sob stories about family farms broken up to pay inheritance taxes, magical claims about self-financing tax cuts, and so on go all the way back to the 1970s. But the selling of tax cuts under Trump has taken things to a whole new level, both in terms of the brazenness of the lies and their sheer number. Both the depth and the breadth of the dishonesty make it hard even for those of us who do this for a living to keep track.

The Bannon Revolution - "Which is not to say Bannon is delusional. He and his allies are the latest group to recognize the void at the heart of the contemporary Republican Party, the vacuum that somebody, somehow needs to fill. The activists and enforcers of the Tea Party era tried with a libertarian style of populism. Paul Ryan tried with his warmed-over Jack Kempism. My friends the “reform conservatives” tried with blueprints for tax credits and wage subsidies. They all failed, and the Bannon crew actually got furthest, in the sense that they got the most unlikely figure imaginable elected president on something resembling their platform."

Friday, October 13, 2017

Reading archive 2017-10-13

“Drag Queens Ain’t Supposed to Be in Places Like This”: RuPaul’s DragCon, Bushwig, and the Old New York Drag Culture

Donald Trump’s Terrible Executive Order on Health Care

For Trump, “Consequences Are Piling Up” with Republicans in Washington

Chad withdraws troops from fight against Boko Haram in Niger - "There was no immediate explanation or comment from defence officials in Chad. But the move came a month after the vast central African country complained about an unexpected U.S. travel ban imposed on its nationals. Chad warned at the time the order could affect its security commitments - which include its involvement in the U.S.-backed fight against Boko Haram."