Back on 10 March
Thursday, March 30, 2017
ON "ROBOTS" AND JOBS
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Larry Summers: The robots are coming, whether Trump’s Treasury secretary admits it or not (WaPo) "Yes, you can debate whether technological change is in net good. I certainly believe it is. And you can debate what the job creation effects will be relative to the job destruction effects. But I do not understand how anyone could reach the conclusion that all the action with technology is half a century away. Artificial intelligence is transforming everything from retailing to banking to the provision of medical care."
- At BlackRock, Machines Are Rising Over Managers to Pick Stocks (NYT) "As part of the restructuring, seven of the firm’s 53 stock pickers are expected to step down from their funds. Dozens more are expected to leave the firm. According to data from Morningstar, only 11 percent of Blackrock’s actively managed equity funds have beaten their benchmarks since 2009. Since 2012, $27.5 billion has left BlackRock actively managed mutual funds, per Morningstar data."
- A.I. Versus M.D (New Yorker) "But they found that if they began with a neural network that had already been trained to recognize some unrelated feature (dogs versus cats, say) it learned faster and better. The cognitive revolution will allow computers to amplify the capacity of the human mind in the same manner. Just as machines made human muscles a thousand times stronger, machines will make the human brain a thousand times more powerful. Thrun insists that these deep-learning devices will not replace dermatologists and radiologists. They will augment the professionals, offering them expertise and assistance."
- Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs (NYT) "The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Trump promised to bring back coal jobs. That promise ‘will not be kept,’ experts say (WaPo) "But industry experts say coal mining jobs will continue to be lost, not because of blocked access to coal, but because power plant owners are turning to natural gas."
- Donald Trump launches an attack on climate-change policy (Economist) "Because it has never been implemented, the Clean Power Plan’s demise hurts less than green groups suggest. Mr Trump’s action could prove largely symbolic. Around 30 states already require power companies and utilities to increase their use of renewable energy over the next decade. And states with economic heft, such as California, are already climate champions. Even in Republican strongholds, such as Iowa and Texas, Congressional subsidies have helped wind projects to thrive."
- Donald Trump and the Myth of the Coal Revival (New Yorker) "...avoiding talk of climate change has become an apparent point of pride in the Trump Administration. The irony of the executive order, as many analysts have already pointed out, is that it denies economic realities, too. The C.P.P., Reilly said, largely locked in 'what was going to happen anyway'—namely, a steady decline in the demand for coal caused by Trump’s beloved free market. Several studies have found that the C.P.P. itself would dramatically improve air quality. Indeed, economists have projected that the cost of implementing the C.P.P. would be recovered in public-health benefits alone, since it would reduce soot-and-smog-forming emissions. This is especially true for communities downwind of coal plants, which have been suffering for decades."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Watch what happens when Spotify gives unknown music acts a big push (Re/code) "...artists generally see a boost of 50 percent to 100 percent once they get on Spotify-sponsored playlists; even after those spikes wear off, the artists often see a 20 percent increase in their streams."
INTERNET PRIVACY:
- Republicans voted to roll back landmark FCC privacy rules. Here’s what you need to know (WaPo) "Tuesday's vote is likely to lend momentum to a broader rollback of Obama-era policies, particularly in the technology sector. And it empowers Internet providers to enter the $83 billion market for online advertising, where the ability to collect, store, share and sell consumers' behavioral information is directly linked to companies' bottom line. Proponents of the repeal argue the regulations stifle innovation by forcing Internet providers to abide by unreasonably strict guidelines. But defenders of the privacy rules say they are the only thing preventing broadband companies from spying on their customers and selling that data to the highest bidder."
- How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers (NYT) "The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept — namely that the information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea: For decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal rules have protected the privacy of the information in a telephone call. In 2016, the F.C.C., which I led as chairman under President Barack Obama, extended those same protections to the internet. There’s a lot of hypocrisy at play here: The man who has raged endlessly at the alleged surveillance of the communications of his aides (and potentially himself) will most likely soon gladly sign a bill that allows unrestrained sale of the personal information of any American using the internet."
- The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them (The Verge) "The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress."
- Six Reasons FCC Rules Aren’t Needed to Protect Privacy (Competitive Enterprise Institute) "Much of the narrative surrounding this debate centers on the fear that consumers will have no privacy protection if the president signs the resolution. But these fears, simply put, are based on a myopic understanding of the numerous laws, regulations, and institutions that protect our privacy on the Internet other than the FCC’s burdensome, legally questionable privacy rule. Here’s a partial list of all the things that are stopping ISPs from misusing customer data or selling it to third parties in a way that could harm Internet users. Federal and state wiretapping laws. Under the Wiretap Act, it’s generally illegal to intentionally intercept or divulge the contents of electronic communications—including Internet traffic—without the consent of a party to the communications. State attorneys general. Every state has a law on the books making it illegal for companies to engage in deceptive practices. Litigation (or arbitration) against providers that violate their privacy policies. Nearly every ISP maintains a privacy policy or terms of service that sets forth the circumstances in which it may collect and disclose subscriber information... The FCC itself. Even without the privacy rule, the FCC is authorized under Section 201(b) of the Communications Act to police 'unjust' or 'unreasonable' practices by broadband providers, including conduct related to data privacy. Technologies that circumvent surveillance. Many tools can protect Internet users’ communications from ISP monitoring. Some of these are often 'on' by default. The marketplace. Speaking of voluntary measures, not every hypothetical scenario involving unseemly corporate conduct justifies a federal regulatory response."
NEWS:
- ‘Way Out of Line’: Iowa Voters Rethink Support for Steve King (NYT) "And there is no shortage of voters who echo Mr. King’s contention that 'culture and demographics are our destiny,' as he said earlier this month to cheers from white supremacists. Sitting at the Hardees in Orange City last week, Don Engeltjes, 76, said he agreed with Mr. King on the need to clamp down on immigration. He said he believed new arrivals were a drain on taxpayers’ money, lumping immigrants from Mexico in with those from the Muslim world. 'But Don, your dad is an immigrant too,' another man piped up, noting that Mr. Engeltjes’s father, like many forebears of the district’s voters, had come over from Holland at age 9. 'You bet he was,' Mr. Engeltjes replied. 'But the way it’s going nowadays, man, they’re outproducing us. We’re going to be the minority in a few years.' Asked by a reporter who he meant by 'we,' Mr. Engeltjes said: 'The white people. The American people.'"
- Trump now says he wants to work with Democrats — but it may already be too late (WaPo) "The abrupt talk of bipartisanship comes after two months in which Trump alienated Democrats with personal attacks and polarizing policies, both of which have made the road to cooperation more politically risky for the minority party. And Trump’s halting overtures to moderate Democrats and unions early in the administration have produced little, if anything, in the way of policies or legislation."
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- At BlackRock, Machines Are Rising Over Managers to Pick Stocks (NYT) "As part of the restructuring, seven of the firm’s 53 stock pickers are expected to step down from their funds. Dozens more are expected to leave the firm. According to data from Morningstar, only 11 percent of Blackrock’s actively managed equity funds have beaten their benchmarks since 2009. Since 2012, $27.5 billion has left BlackRock actively managed mutual funds, per Morningstar data."
- A.I. Versus M.D (New Yorker) "But they found that if they began with a neural network that had already been trained to recognize some unrelated feature (dogs versus cats, say) it learned faster and better. The cognitive revolution will allow computers to amplify the capacity of the human mind in the same manner. Just as machines made human muscles a thousand times stronger, machines will make the human brain a thousand times more powerful. Thrun insists that these deep-learning devices will not replace dermatologists and radiologists. They will augment the professionals, offering them expertise and assistance."
- Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs (NYT) "The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. The paper is all the more significant because the researchers, whose work is highly regarded in their field, had been more sanguine about the effect of technology on jobs. In a paper last year, they said it was likely that increased automation would create new, better jobs, so employment and wages would eventually return to their previous levels."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Trump promised to bring back coal jobs. That promise ‘will not be kept,’ experts say (WaPo) "But industry experts say coal mining jobs will continue to be lost, not because of blocked access to coal, but because power plant owners are turning to natural gas."
- Donald Trump launches an attack on climate-change policy (Economist) "Because it has never been implemented, the Clean Power Plan’s demise hurts less than green groups suggest. Mr Trump’s action could prove largely symbolic. Around 30 states already require power companies and utilities to increase their use of renewable energy over the next decade. And states with economic heft, such as California, are already climate champions. Even in Republican strongholds, such as Iowa and Texas, Congressional subsidies have helped wind projects to thrive."
- Donald Trump and the Myth of the Coal Revival (New Yorker) "...avoiding talk of climate change has become an apparent point of pride in the Trump Administration. The irony of the executive order, as many analysts have already pointed out, is that it denies economic realities, too. The C.P.P., Reilly said, largely locked in 'what was going to happen anyway'—namely, a steady decline in the demand for coal caused by Trump’s beloved free market. Several studies have found that the C.P.P. itself would dramatically improve air quality. Indeed, economists have projected that the cost of implementing the C.P.P. would be recovered in public-health benefits alone, since it would reduce soot-and-smog-forming emissions. This is especially true for communities downwind of coal plants, which have been suffering for decades."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Watch what happens when Spotify gives unknown music acts a big push (Re/code) "...artists generally see a boost of 50 percent to 100 percent once they get on Spotify-sponsored playlists; even after those spikes wear off, the artists often see a 20 percent increase in their streams."
INTERNET PRIVACY:
- Republicans voted to roll back landmark FCC privacy rules. Here’s what you need to know (WaPo) "Tuesday's vote is likely to lend momentum to a broader rollback of Obama-era policies, particularly in the technology sector. And it empowers Internet providers to enter the $83 billion market for online advertising, where the ability to collect, store, share and sell consumers' behavioral information is directly linked to companies' bottom line. Proponents of the repeal argue the regulations stifle innovation by forcing Internet providers to abide by unreasonably strict guidelines. But defenders of the privacy rules say they are the only thing preventing broadband companies from spying on their customers and selling that data to the highest bidder."
- How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers (NYT) "The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept — namely that the information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea: For decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal rules have protected the privacy of the information in a telephone call. In 2016, the F.C.C., which I led as chairman under President Barack Obama, extended those same protections to the internet. There’s a lot of hypocrisy at play here: The man who has raged endlessly at the alleged surveillance of the communications of his aides (and potentially himself) will most likely soon gladly sign a bill that allows unrestrained sale of the personal information of any American using the internet."
- The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them (The Verge) "The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress."
- Six Reasons FCC Rules Aren’t Needed to Protect Privacy (Competitive Enterprise Institute) "Much of the narrative surrounding this debate centers on the fear that consumers will have no privacy protection if the president signs the resolution. But these fears, simply put, are based on a myopic understanding of the numerous laws, regulations, and institutions that protect our privacy on the Internet other than the FCC’s burdensome, legally questionable privacy rule. Here’s a partial list of all the things that are stopping ISPs from misusing customer data or selling it to third parties in a way that could harm Internet users. Federal and state wiretapping laws. Under the Wiretap Act, it’s generally illegal to intentionally intercept or divulge the contents of electronic communications—including Internet traffic—without the consent of a party to the communications. State attorneys general. Every state has a law on the books making it illegal for companies to engage in deceptive practices. Litigation (or arbitration) against providers that violate their privacy policies. Nearly every ISP maintains a privacy policy or terms of service that sets forth the circumstances in which it may collect and disclose subscriber information... The FCC itself. Even without the privacy rule, the FCC is authorized under Section 201(b) of the Communications Act to police 'unjust' or 'unreasonable' practices by broadband providers, including conduct related to data privacy. Technologies that circumvent surveillance. Many tools can protect Internet users’ communications from ISP monitoring. Some of these are often 'on' by default. The marketplace. Speaking of voluntary measures, not every hypothetical scenario involving unseemly corporate conduct justifies a federal regulatory response."
NEWS:
- ‘Way Out of Line’: Iowa Voters Rethink Support for Steve King (NYT) "And there is no shortage of voters who echo Mr. King’s contention that 'culture and demographics are our destiny,' as he said earlier this month to cheers from white supremacists. Sitting at the Hardees in Orange City last week, Don Engeltjes, 76, said he agreed with Mr. King on the need to clamp down on immigration. He said he believed new arrivals were a drain on taxpayers’ money, lumping immigrants from Mexico in with those from the Muslim world. 'But Don, your dad is an immigrant too,' another man piped up, noting that Mr. Engeltjes’s father, like many forebears of the district’s voters, had come over from Holland at age 9. 'You bet he was,' Mr. Engeltjes replied. 'But the way it’s going nowadays, man, they’re outproducing us. We’re going to be the minority in a few years.' Asked by a reporter who he meant by 'we,' Mr. Engeltjes said: 'The white people. The American people.'"
- Trump now says he wants to work with Democrats — but it may already be too late (WaPo) "The abrupt talk of bipartisanship comes after two months in which Trump alienated Democrats with personal attacks and polarizing policies, both of which have made the road to cooperation more politically risky for the minority party. And Trump’s halting overtures to moderate Democrats and unions early in the administration have produced little, if anything, in the way of policies or legislation."
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE:
- Repeal of Affordable Care Act Is Back on Agenda, Republicans Say (NYT) "It is not clear what political dynamics might have changed since Friday, when a coalition of hard-line conservatives and more moderate Republicans torpedoed legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. The new talks, which have been going on quietly this week, involve Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and members of the two Republican factions that helped sink the bill last week, the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more centrist Tuesday Group."
- Kansas moves to expand Medicaid as GOP legislatures face pressure after ‘Trumpcare’ failure (WaPo) "The abrupt reversal in Kansas could be the front edge of a larger shift nationally, as state lawmakers absorb the repercussions of congressional Republicans’ failed attempt to repeal and replace elements of the Affordable Care Act. Kansas lawmakers are shrugging off what had long been a concern for critics of the health law: that agreeing to expand Medicaid would make the law far more difficult to repeal because it is politically dangerous to revoke benefits once people have them."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China (NYT) "But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Why We Fight (Fast Romantics)
- Repeal of Affordable Care Act Is Back on Agenda, Republicans Say (NYT) "It is not clear what political dynamics might have changed since Friday, when a coalition of hard-line conservatives and more moderate Republicans torpedoed legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. The new talks, which have been going on quietly this week, involve Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and members of the two Republican factions that helped sink the bill last week, the hard-right Freedom Caucus and the more centrist Tuesday Group."
- Kansas moves to expand Medicaid as GOP legislatures face pressure after ‘Trumpcare’ failure (WaPo) "The abrupt reversal in Kansas could be the front edge of a larger shift nationally, as state lawmakers absorb the repercussions of congressional Republicans’ failed attempt to repeal and replace elements of the Affordable Care Act. Kansas lawmakers are shrugging off what had long been a concern for critics of the health law: that agreeing to expand Medicaid would make the law far more difficult to repeal because it is politically dangerous to revoke benefits once people have them."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China (NYT) "But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Why We Fight (Fast Romantics)
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
ONE NATION, UNDER FOX...
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- One Nation, Under Fox: 18 Hours With a Network That Shapes America (NYT) "The rape case, which involved an undocumented immigrant and went virtually uncovered on most networks, received almost hourly updates on Fox, and at times was used as proof that Mr. Trump’s calls for tighter borders and a crackdown on immigration were justified. During coverage of the London terrorist attack, in a break from the rather muted coverage on CNN, 'Fox and Friends' veered into discussing the faith of the 'Muslim mayor' of London. With all that in mind...this is how the news played out through its distinctive lens. A Dangerous World. The message of fear would resonate throughout the day, in the London coverage and later in segments on the Maryland rape case. In Other News, the Wall. ...it took Tucker Carlson, whose show comes on at 9 p.m., 45 minutes to address it [the failed AHCA bill]. Mr. Carlson’s attention was on immigration, and his guest, Ann Coulter, opined that Mr. Trump should focus on immigration and a border wall. Where’s the ‘Outrage’? The Maryland case was a topic on Fox News from the morning to almost midnight. The coverage was also laced with critical comments aimed at other networks for not giving the case enough attention. A guest on 'America’s Newsroom,' Ed Martin, bluntly stated that 'they’re raping and killing our people, and that’s what Trump won on.' And even though Mr. Trump’s first push for major legislation was in peril by the end of Thursday night, the mantra from numerous Fox hosts and analysts was: Don’t blame him."
BUSINESS:
- The 'messy' way a former Goldman Sachs employee grew a $150 million startup, then turned half his employees into millionaires (Business Insider) "And what do you look for? You look for a team that is really receptive to feedback, really not just passionate but also empathetic with the customer. That's really one of the biggest mistakes I see in entrepreneurship, is a team that's super passionate about a solution, but they really don't have empathy with the people that they're targeting."
HEALTH CARE:
- On Obamacare, a Party-Wide Failure (National Review) "There’s stumbling out of the gate, and then there’s what Republicans just did on health care. They came up with a substantively indefensible bill, put it on an absurd fast-track to passage, didn’t seriously try to sell it to the public, fumbled their internal negotiations over changes — and suffered a stinging defeat months after establishing unified control of government. There has been a lot of different finger-pointing after the collapse of the bill, and almost all of it is right. This was a party-wide failure."
- The Path Forward for Replacing Obamacare (National Review) "It is not right, when confronted with such a state of affairs, to shrug our shoulders and say 'tough luck' to those who can’t afford insurance. Indeed, we have an affirmative duty to reform federal policies so as to make health insurance once again affordable for the working poor. To advocate for a fiscally fairer system — in which we subsidize the wealthy far less while covering more of the uninsured, with less total federal spending as a result — ought to be in the wheelhouse of a conservative movement that aspires to support opportunity for all and favoritism to none. The most galling aspect of the AHCA was the process itself, in which House GOP leaders recklessly put haste and politics above good policy. This rush to bad judgment about a bill that would have reshaped one-sixth of the economy was so terrible that it made Nancy Pelosi look like the standard-bearer of good governance."
- How Right-Wing Media Saved Obamacare (Atlantic) "...the GOP didn’t honestly acknowledge the hard tradeoffs inherent in health-care policy before making the case for a market-driven system. Focusing on GOP officials leaves out yet another important actor in this debacle: the right-wing media. ...Fox News viewers who watched entertainers like Glenn Beck, talk-radio listeners who tuned into hosts like Rush Limbaugh, and consumers of web journalism who turned to sites like Breitbart weren’t merely misled about health-care tradeoffs. They were told a bunch of crazy nonsense. ...Hannity said scary things like this: ...welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare. We're going to encourage, you know, inconvenient people to consider 'alternatives to living.' ...Sarah Palin posted this to her Facebook page: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Beck...warned: 'This is the end of prosperity in America forever if this bill passes. This is the end of America as you know it.' Said Rush Limbaugh, 'When this passes, they will have even more power, regulating every aspect of our lives, because they believe in their minds and hearts that we have no competence whatsoever to lead our own lives and make our own decisions.' The coverage offered by right-wing media in those years also helps explain why elected Republicans never developed compelling arguments for why voters should prefer a different set of tradeoffs. Right from the start, commentators who long ago traded their integrity for ratings spewed falsehoods so wild that anyone on the right could justify outright opposition to the legislation, without having to explain anything."
NEWS:
- Like Ike (National Review) "Time has a funny way with things: The conservative movement rejected Eisenhower in the 1950s, but which libertarian, national-security conservative, or traditionalist in 2017 would be unhappy if today’s Republicans cut 75 percent of the welfare state, tripled military spending, cut taxes modestly, and balanced the budget in the process — while working under a president with an excellent record on the most pressing domestic issue of his time? He wanted to balance the budget and end the Korean War. He integrated the military, which Harry Truman had promised and failed to do. He also desegregated the District of Columbia and the federal government, and used federal funding as leverage to force desegregation elsewhere. He fought for and signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. When the Democrats in Arkansas refused to comply with Brown, Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne. He established NASA and DARPA and signed the National Defense Education Act into law. He oversaw the revision of the Atomic Energy Act to allow for the development of civilian nuclear power. He smacked down Joseph McCarthy and, when his advisers unveiled a crackpot scheme to use nuclear weapons to save the French position at Dien Bien Phu, he replied: 'You boys must be crazy.' He sent U.S. troops into Lebanon to stop a Soviet-backed revolt. He convinced Congress to pass the Formosa Resolution, obliging the United States to defend Taiwan against Communist China. He forced the withdrawal of foreign forces from Egypt during the Suez crisis. He saw to the elevation of West Germany as a full NATO member, a critical turning point in European affairs. He helped Mohammad Mosaddegh into an early retirement. He welcomed two new states into the Union."
- Help Wanted (National Review) "...the Census Bureau is going to need a director. So will the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Parks Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Mint, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. There’s a need for administrators at NASA, the General Services Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Staffing the government with the right people is one of the key early tests of a president’s competence. Trump has yet to pass it."
READ THIS:
- Operation Shakespeare: The True Story of an Elite International Sting (John Shiffman) "In Operation Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize finalist John Shiffman tells the true story of an elaborate sting operation launched by an elite Homeland Security team that was created to stop Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea from stealing US military technology. The sting...targets an Iranian arms broker... Over the course of three years, the American agents go undercover to outwit not only the Iranian, but U.S. defense contractors and bankers willing to put profit over national security. The chase moves around the world, and as the United States tries to bring the Iranian to justice, his own government plots to assassinate him, fearful of what he might reveal."
TECHNOLOGY:
- VPNs Won’t Save You from Congress’ Internet Privacy Giveaway (Wired) "But by placing the burden of privacy entirely on consumers—and letting internet providers off the hook for wheeling and dealing in customers’ personal data, Congress is effectively conceding it has no good long-term solution for protecting Americans’ privacy."
TRUMPTELL:
- More Confusion After Nunes Reveals His White House-based Source (Weekly Standard) "But if the relevant information is at the White House, why does President Trump need a member of Congress to find and deliver that information to him? Put another way: Why didn't Nunes's source at the White House go directly to the president with such important information?"
- Devin Nunes Should Step Down as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (National Review) "Just at the time when the nation desperately needs adults to step forward who can give the public confidence that they not only understand the stakes of the Russia investigation, they also can be entrusted to conduct that investigation in good faith, Nunes unnecessarily poured gasoline on an already-raging fire. The American body politic is awash in conspiracy theories, mistrust, and wild claims of espionage and criminality. It needs leaders. It needs competence. It needs integrity."
- Now we know why Trump panicked about Russia probe (WaPo) "You know things are looking grim for President Trump when he starts tweeting about Hillary Clinton again."
- Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia (WaPo) "As acting attorney general, Yates played a key part in the investigation surrounding Michael Flynn, a Trump campaign aide who became National Security Adviser before revelations that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States in late December led to his ouster from the administration. In January, Yates warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that statements made by White House officials about Flynn’s contacts with the ambassador were incorrect, and could therefore expose the national security adviser to future blackmail by the Russians."
- Cheney: Russia's Interference in U.S. Presidential Election Possibly 'Considered an Act of War' (Breitbart) "'There was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic, fundamental democratic processes,' he said. 'In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war.'"
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year (WaPo) "There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows."
- The Scientific Reason Men Think You're Into Them When You're Not (Ozy) "What’s the takeaway in the meantime? If you’re a dude, pay attention to the right cues. 'The way a woman happens to be dressed at the bar has no relation to her interest in you per se,' Perilloux says. How should you gauge if she is interested? Try asking. 'One of the best things to do is check with your partner or potential partner with how she’s feeling rather than just making assumptions,' Treat says."
TODAY'S SONG:
BUSINESS:
- The 'messy' way a former Goldman Sachs employee grew a $150 million startup, then turned half his employees into millionaires (Business Insider) "And what do you look for? You look for a team that is really receptive to feedback, really not just passionate but also empathetic with the customer. That's really one of the biggest mistakes I see in entrepreneurship, is a team that's super passionate about a solution, but they really don't have empathy with the people that they're targeting."
HEALTH CARE:
- On Obamacare, a Party-Wide Failure (National Review) "There’s stumbling out of the gate, and then there’s what Republicans just did on health care. They came up with a substantively indefensible bill, put it on an absurd fast-track to passage, didn’t seriously try to sell it to the public, fumbled their internal negotiations over changes — and suffered a stinging defeat months after establishing unified control of government. There has been a lot of different finger-pointing after the collapse of the bill, and almost all of it is right. This was a party-wide failure."
- The Path Forward for Replacing Obamacare (National Review) "It is not right, when confronted with such a state of affairs, to shrug our shoulders and say 'tough luck' to those who can’t afford insurance. Indeed, we have an affirmative duty to reform federal policies so as to make health insurance once again affordable for the working poor. To advocate for a fiscally fairer system — in which we subsidize the wealthy far less while covering more of the uninsured, with less total federal spending as a result — ought to be in the wheelhouse of a conservative movement that aspires to support opportunity for all and favoritism to none. The most galling aspect of the AHCA was the process itself, in which House GOP leaders recklessly put haste and politics above good policy. This rush to bad judgment about a bill that would have reshaped one-sixth of the economy was so terrible that it made Nancy Pelosi look like the standard-bearer of good governance."
- How Right-Wing Media Saved Obamacare (Atlantic) "...the GOP didn’t honestly acknowledge the hard tradeoffs inherent in health-care policy before making the case for a market-driven system. Focusing on GOP officials leaves out yet another important actor in this debacle: the right-wing media. ...Fox News viewers who watched entertainers like Glenn Beck, talk-radio listeners who tuned into hosts like Rush Limbaugh, and consumers of web journalism who turned to sites like Breitbart weren’t merely misled about health-care tradeoffs. They were told a bunch of crazy nonsense. ...Hannity said scary things like this: ...welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare. We're going to encourage, you know, inconvenient people to consider 'alternatives to living.' ...Sarah Palin posted this to her Facebook page: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Beck...warned: 'This is the end of prosperity in America forever if this bill passes. This is the end of America as you know it.' Said Rush Limbaugh, 'When this passes, they will have even more power, regulating every aspect of our lives, because they believe in their minds and hearts that we have no competence whatsoever to lead our own lives and make our own decisions.' The coverage offered by right-wing media in those years also helps explain why elected Republicans never developed compelling arguments for why voters should prefer a different set of tradeoffs. Right from the start, commentators who long ago traded their integrity for ratings spewed falsehoods so wild that anyone on the right could justify outright opposition to the legislation, without having to explain anything."
NEWS:
- Like Ike (National Review) "Time has a funny way with things: The conservative movement rejected Eisenhower in the 1950s, but which libertarian, national-security conservative, or traditionalist in 2017 would be unhappy if today’s Republicans cut 75 percent of the welfare state, tripled military spending, cut taxes modestly, and balanced the budget in the process — while working under a president with an excellent record on the most pressing domestic issue of his time? He wanted to balance the budget and end the Korean War. He integrated the military, which Harry Truman had promised and failed to do. He also desegregated the District of Columbia and the federal government, and used federal funding as leverage to force desegregation elsewhere. He fought for and signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. When the Democrats in Arkansas refused to comply with Brown, Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne. He established NASA and DARPA and signed the National Defense Education Act into law. He oversaw the revision of the Atomic Energy Act to allow for the development of civilian nuclear power. He smacked down Joseph McCarthy and, when his advisers unveiled a crackpot scheme to use nuclear weapons to save the French position at Dien Bien Phu, he replied: 'You boys must be crazy.' He sent U.S. troops into Lebanon to stop a Soviet-backed revolt. He convinced Congress to pass the Formosa Resolution, obliging the United States to defend Taiwan against Communist China. He forced the withdrawal of foreign forces from Egypt during the Suez crisis. He saw to the elevation of West Germany as a full NATO member, a critical turning point in European affairs. He helped Mohammad Mosaddegh into an early retirement. He welcomed two new states into the Union."
- Help Wanted (National Review) "...the Census Bureau is going to need a director. So will the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Parks Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Mint, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. There’s a need for administrators at NASA, the General Services Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Staffing the government with the right people is one of the key early tests of a president’s competence. Trump has yet to pass it."
READ THIS:
- Operation Shakespeare: The True Story of an Elite International Sting (John Shiffman) "In Operation Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize finalist John Shiffman tells the true story of an elaborate sting operation launched by an elite Homeland Security team that was created to stop Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea from stealing US military technology. The sting...targets an Iranian arms broker... Over the course of three years, the American agents go undercover to outwit not only the Iranian, but U.S. defense contractors and bankers willing to put profit over national security. The chase moves around the world, and as the United States tries to bring the Iranian to justice, his own government plots to assassinate him, fearful of what he might reveal."
TECHNOLOGY:
- VPNs Won’t Save You from Congress’ Internet Privacy Giveaway (Wired) "But by placing the burden of privacy entirely on consumers—and letting internet providers off the hook for wheeling and dealing in customers’ personal data, Congress is effectively conceding it has no good long-term solution for protecting Americans’ privacy."
TRUMPTELL:
- More Confusion After Nunes Reveals His White House-based Source (Weekly Standard) "But if the relevant information is at the White House, why does President Trump need a member of Congress to find and deliver that information to him? Put another way: Why didn't Nunes's source at the White House go directly to the president with such important information?"
- Devin Nunes Should Step Down as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (National Review) "Just at the time when the nation desperately needs adults to step forward who can give the public confidence that they not only understand the stakes of the Russia investigation, they also can be entrusted to conduct that investigation in good faith, Nunes unnecessarily poured gasoline on an already-raging fire. The American body politic is awash in conspiracy theories, mistrust, and wild claims of espionage and criminality. It needs leaders. It needs competence. It needs integrity."
- Now we know why Trump panicked about Russia probe (WaPo) "You know things are looking grim for President Trump when he starts tweeting about Hillary Clinton again."
- Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia (WaPo) "As acting attorney general, Yates played a key part in the investigation surrounding Michael Flynn, a Trump campaign aide who became National Security Adviser before revelations that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States in late December led to his ouster from the administration. In January, Yates warned White House Counsel Don McGahn that statements made by White House officials about Flynn’s contacts with the ambassador were incorrect, and could therefore expose the national security adviser to future blackmail by the Russians."
- Cheney: Russia's Interference in U.S. Presidential Election Possibly 'Considered an Act of War' (Breitbart) "'There was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government, his organization, to interfere in major ways with our basic, fundamental democratic processes,' he said. 'In some quarters, that would be considered an act of war.'"
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year (WaPo) "There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows."
- The Scientific Reason Men Think You're Into Them When You're Not (Ozy) "What’s the takeaway in the meantime? If you’re a dude, pay attention to the right cues. 'The way a woman happens to be dressed at the bar has no relation to her interest in you per se,' Perilloux says. How should you gauge if she is interested? Try asking. 'One of the best things to do is check with your partner or potential partner with how she’s feeling rather than just making assumptions,' Treat says."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Bob Marley (Grizfolk)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
NO SYMPATHY FOR THE HILLBILLY
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- No Sympathy for the Hillbilly (NY Mag) "Why did white working-class voters reject Hillary Clinton and the Democrats? Why did they fall for a billionaire con man? Why do they hate us? After the debacle of 2016, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it? Instead of studying how to talk to 'real people,' might they start talking like real people? No more reading from wimpy scripts concocted by consultants and focus groups. But it’s one thing for the Democratic Party to drain its own swamp of special interests and another for it to waste time and energy chasing unreachable voters in the base of Trump’s electorate. For all her failings, Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump and lost the Electoral College by the mere 77,744 votes... That makes it all the more a fool’s errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day. If we are free to loathe Trump, we are free to loathe his most loyal voters, who have put the rest of us at risk."
BUSINESS:
- Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Stores for Furniture, Appliances and More (NYT) "For years, retailers have been haunted by the thought of Amazon using its technological prowess to squeeze them into powder. Now the fight is coming directly to retailers on actual streets around the globe, where Amazon is slowly building a fleet of physical stores. If those experiments work...they could have a profound influence on how other stores operate. Over time, they could also introduce new forms of automation, putting traditional retail jobs in jeopardy."
- Retail Instincts Propel Investor to Venture Capitalism’s Top Tier (NYT) "Ms. Green is an unorthodox venture capitalist for several reasons. Apart from having never worked at a venture capital firm before starting her own in 2012, she is also a woman in a male-dominated field. And unlike many generalist venture investors...Ms. Green focuses specifically on commerce and other retail-related start-ups. So Ms. Green, 45, parlayed that retail knowledge into her venture capital endeavors and used it to bring specialized advice to her companies. In one of her first moves as a venture capitalist, she put $1 million into Dollar Shave Club... Later, she invested in Jet.com... Last year, both those start-ups hit the jackpot: Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion, while Walmart purchased Jet.com for $3.3 billion." and The Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide (NYT)
MEDIA:
- How the New York Times' mobile-first strategy has turned millennials into its biggest audience (The Drum) "Kopit Levien is looking beyond the transaction of a newspaper purchase or a digital subscription to a deeper and more lucrative relationship with Times 'customers'. The paper, through its Beta Group, is developing new digital products and services – specializing in property, health, cooking and crosswords – which can give the news brand an even greater role in the lives of its users."
NEWS:
- FISAgate: The Question Is Not Whether Trump Associates Were Monitored (National Review) "Thus, as long as there was a valid intelligence purpose for targeting the foreign subjects with whom Trump associates interacted, the interception of the associates’ communications would have been entirely proper. ...while such a practice might be deemed abusive, it would not be illegal — the government has nearly limitless latitude to spy on foreigners outside the U.S., and on agents of foreign powers inside the U.S. the question is usually not whether there has been illegality. It is whether political power has been abused. In reality, however, the FISA court rubber-stamps the collection and relies on executive-branch agencies to carry it out, analyze it, and decide what incidentally collected American information may be scrutinized and what American identities should be concealed. Those who are claiming that it was illegal for the Obama administration to 'incidentally' intercept the communications of Trump associates, and to unmask the identities of those associates for intelligence-analysis purposes, are almost certainly wrong. So if it was lawful for the executive branch to collect the information in the first place, it is lawful to spread the information to any intelligence agent who might assist in its full understanding and exploitation. Here, however, is the crux of the matter: To claim that something is technically legal is not to say that it is appropriate. Still, let’s not confuse a dearth of criminal wrongs with a dearth of misconduct. It is possible that the investigation of Trump officials was a massive abuse of power. It is also possible that the investigation was triggered by good-faith concerns about Putin-regime perfidy, and that the connections of Trump associates to Russian interests are scandalous even if they are not illegal, and even if the Left’s 'Russia hacked the election' narrative is a red herring. It is critical for Congress to get to the bottom of these questions, regardless of whether, technically, crimes were committed."
- The Moral Case for Spending Restraint (Weekly Standard) "Peel back the hyperbole, and what you see are cuts to domestic programs, but hardly catastrophic ones. Does this mean the government has a moral obligation to balance the budget? No. Deficits can have positive economic effects in certain circumstances. But there is an obligation to govern for the general welfare, broadly conceived to include a regard for future generations. That means keeping deficits relatively under control, either by cutting wasteful spending or increasing taxes to pay for necessary services. Our government simply does not do that. Our current fiscal situation runs contrary to the principles upon which our country was founded, and we should not delude ourselves into thinking that one side of the present divide is any better than the other."
- This is why the Freedom Caucus called the shots on Trump’s health-care bill (WaPo) "...Freedom Caucus members were able to present a united front in negotiations with party leaders. If the hard-liners’ future influence depends on capacity to compromise, the Freedom Caucus leaders may find themselves in a precarious position. In upcoming battles over tax reform and government spending, unless the caucus can convince members and party leaders that they’ll compromise, Trump and Ryan may decide to look elsewhere for votes."
- After the health-care fiasco, Trump’s next move may be even more disastrous (WaPo) "Thus, the Trump strategy — allow the ACA to collapse, and profit — makes little sense. Nothing further to the right than the GOP plan can pass, since that would alienate still more moderate Republicans. The only thing that could conceivably pass is something that would have Democratic and moderate Republican support, and thus would be more liberal than the GOP plan. That should theoretically give Democrats leverage to demand fixes to the ACA on their terms — fixes designed to incentivize more enrollment to the markets and further expand Medicaid in states that haven’t opted in — even if Trump is successful in sabotaging the individual markets."
- Meet Indivisible, the young progressives leading the resistance to President Trump (LA Times) "...Sarah Dohl, along with a handful of friends and former Capitol Hill colleagues, wanted Americans — mostly distraught Democrats — to know their voices could still be heard. Not expecting much, they published online a 26-page document in mid-December, outlining a succinct idea: resist. The strategy, said Dohl, echoes the tea party movement that sprang up in 2009. At the time, President Obama’s efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act caused a conservative uproar. Images of constituents, angered by the legislation and jabbing fingers in lawmakers’ faces, filled television screens and front pages nationwide. The next election cycle, Democrats, who at the time had controlled both chambers of Congress, lost the House. Now, members of the movement hope it’s the reverse."
- Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas (WaPo) "The White House Office of American Innovation...will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. ...with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- You can now call your congressman through Facebook (WaPo) "After submitting your address...Town Hall pulls information about your elected officials. The data comes from their public Facebook pages or a third-party database called Cicero, which tracks who your representatives may be, from members of Congress to your mayor and city council member. In some cases, it can even show you who your state attorney general is."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Bungalow (Scott Helman)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
BUSINESS:
- Amazon’s Ambitions Unboxed: Stores for Furniture, Appliances and More (NYT) "For years, retailers have been haunted by the thought of Amazon using its technological prowess to squeeze them into powder. Now the fight is coming directly to retailers on actual streets around the globe, where Amazon is slowly building a fleet of physical stores. If those experiments work...they could have a profound influence on how other stores operate. Over time, they could also introduce new forms of automation, putting traditional retail jobs in jeopardy."
- Retail Instincts Propel Investor to Venture Capitalism’s Top Tier (NYT) "Ms. Green is an unorthodox venture capitalist for several reasons. Apart from having never worked at a venture capital firm before starting her own in 2012, she is also a woman in a male-dominated field. And unlike many generalist venture investors...Ms. Green focuses specifically on commerce and other retail-related start-ups. So Ms. Green, 45, parlayed that retail knowledge into her venture capital endeavors and used it to bring specialized advice to her companies. In one of her first moves as a venture capitalist, she put $1 million into Dollar Shave Club... Later, she invested in Jet.com... Last year, both those start-ups hit the jackpot: Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion, while Walmart purchased Jet.com for $3.3 billion." and The Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide (NYT)
MEDIA:
- How the New York Times' mobile-first strategy has turned millennials into its biggest audience (The Drum) "Kopit Levien is looking beyond the transaction of a newspaper purchase or a digital subscription to a deeper and more lucrative relationship with Times 'customers'. The paper, through its Beta Group, is developing new digital products and services – specializing in property, health, cooking and crosswords – which can give the news brand an even greater role in the lives of its users."
NEWS:
- FISAgate: The Question Is Not Whether Trump Associates Were Monitored (National Review) "Thus, as long as there was a valid intelligence purpose for targeting the foreign subjects with whom Trump associates interacted, the interception of the associates’ communications would have been entirely proper. ...while such a practice might be deemed abusive, it would not be illegal — the government has nearly limitless latitude to spy on foreigners outside the U.S., and on agents of foreign powers inside the U.S. the question is usually not whether there has been illegality. It is whether political power has been abused. In reality, however, the FISA court rubber-stamps the collection and relies on executive-branch agencies to carry it out, analyze it, and decide what incidentally collected American information may be scrutinized and what American identities should be concealed. Those who are claiming that it was illegal for the Obama administration to 'incidentally' intercept the communications of Trump associates, and to unmask the identities of those associates for intelligence-analysis purposes, are almost certainly wrong. So if it was lawful for the executive branch to collect the information in the first place, it is lawful to spread the information to any intelligence agent who might assist in its full understanding and exploitation. Here, however, is the crux of the matter: To claim that something is technically legal is not to say that it is appropriate. Still, let’s not confuse a dearth of criminal wrongs with a dearth of misconduct. It is possible that the investigation of Trump officials was a massive abuse of power. It is also possible that the investigation was triggered by good-faith concerns about Putin-regime perfidy, and that the connections of Trump associates to Russian interests are scandalous even if they are not illegal, and even if the Left’s 'Russia hacked the election' narrative is a red herring. It is critical for Congress to get to the bottom of these questions, regardless of whether, technically, crimes were committed."
- The Moral Case for Spending Restraint (Weekly Standard) "Peel back the hyperbole, and what you see are cuts to domestic programs, but hardly catastrophic ones. Does this mean the government has a moral obligation to balance the budget? No. Deficits can have positive economic effects in certain circumstances. But there is an obligation to govern for the general welfare, broadly conceived to include a regard for future generations. That means keeping deficits relatively under control, either by cutting wasteful spending or increasing taxes to pay for necessary services. Our government simply does not do that. Our current fiscal situation runs contrary to the principles upon which our country was founded, and we should not delude ourselves into thinking that one side of the present divide is any better than the other."
- This is why the Freedom Caucus called the shots on Trump’s health-care bill (WaPo) "...Freedom Caucus members were able to present a united front in negotiations with party leaders. If the hard-liners’ future influence depends on capacity to compromise, the Freedom Caucus leaders may find themselves in a precarious position. In upcoming battles over tax reform and government spending, unless the caucus can convince members and party leaders that they’ll compromise, Trump and Ryan may decide to look elsewhere for votes."
- After the health-care fiasco, Trump’s next move may be even more disastrous (WaPo) "Thus, the Trump strategy — allow the ACA to collapse, and profit — makes little sense. Nothing further to the right than the GOP plan can pass, since that would alienate still more moderate Republicans. The only thing that could conceivably pass is something that would have Democratic and moderate Republican support, and thus would be more liberal than the GOP plan. That should theoretically give Democrats leverage to demand fixes to the ACA on their terms — fixes designed to incentivize more enrollment to the markets and further expand Medicaid in states that haven’t opted in — even if Trump is successful in sabotaging the individual markets."
- Meet Indivisible, the young progressives leading the resistance to President Trump (LA Times) "...Sarah Dohl, along with a handful of friends and former Capitol Hill colleagues, wanted Americans — mostly distraught Democrats — to know their voices could still be heard. Not expecting much, they published online a 26-page document in mid-December, outlining a succinct idea: resist. The strategy, said Dohl, echoes the tea party movement that sprang up in 2009. At the time, President Obama’s efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act caused a conservative uproar. Images of constituents, angered by the legislation and jabbing fingers in lawmakers’ faces, filled television screens and front pages nationwide. The next election cycle, Democrats, who at the time had controlled both chambers of Congress, lost the House. Now, members of the movement hope it’s the reverse."
- Trump taps Kushner to lead a SWAT team to fix government with business ideas (WaPo) "The White House Office of American Innovation...will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. ...with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- You can now call your congressman through Facebook (WaPo) "After submitting your address...Town Hall pulls information about your elected officials. The data comes from their public Facebook pages or a third-party database called Cicero, which tracks who your representatives may be, from members of Congress to your mayor and city council member. In some cases, it can even show you who your state attorney general is."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Bungalow (Scott Helman)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Monday, March 27, 2017
AHCA = DOA
TOP OF THE NEWS:
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- Trump’s Triumph of Incompetence (NYT) "The Trump administration is increasingly showing itself to be breathtakingly incompetent, and that’s the real lesson of the collapse of the G.O.P. health care bill. The administration proved unable to organize its way out of a paper bag: After seven years of Republicans’ publicly loathing Obamacare, their repeal-replace bill failed after 18 days. ...he’s abysmal at delivering — because the basic truth is that he’s an effective politician who’s utterly incompetent at governing. Of all the national politicians I’ve met over the decades, Trump may be the one least interested in government or policy; he’s absorbed simply with himself. And what we’re seeing more clearly now is that he has crafted an administration in his own image: vain, narcissistic and dangerous."
- Trump Learns the Hard Way That Policy Details Matter (National Review) "No, in the end, they simply didn’t like what was in the bill and didn’t have faith that the Senate would improve it, or that it would get better in conference committee. At least for now, a significant number of House Republicans fear the consequences of passing an insufficient bill more than the consequences of failing to pass a bill. It appears President Trump cared a lot more about getting a win than about what, exactly, he would be winning. And that lack of focus on the details helped deny him the victory he wanted so badly."
- ‘The closer’? The inside story of how Trump tried — and failed — to make a deal on health care (WaPo) "But legislating, it turned out, was different from cutting deals to splash his name across skyscrapers. And less than 100 days into his administration, the president found himself a red-faced Don Quixote, railing against the intractable forces on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are wearied by years of infighting."
- Inside the GOP’s Health Care Debacle (Politico) "'Forget about the little shit,' Trump said, according to multiple sources in the room. 'Let's focus on the big picture here.' Trump wanted to emphasize the political ramifications of the bill's defeat; specifically, he said, it would derail his first-term agenda and imperil his prospects for reelection in 2020. Through charm, force of personality and sheer intimidation, Trump did move some votes into the yes column. But GOP leaders were left wondering why he didn't do more—why he didn't send tweets, travel to congressional districts, put his famed dealmaking skills to work. The answer, to Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, is obvious: Because he lacked familiarity with the legislation itself, and thought it was Ryan’s job to sell the specifics."
BUSINESS:
- How Alibaba’s Jack Ma Is Building a Truly Global Retail Empire (Fortune) "Despite its heft in China and the blockbuster 2014 public offering that raised $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange and introduced Alibaba to Western investors, Ma’s company remains a mystery to most non-Chinese. There’s a simple reason for that: Few outside the world’s second-largest economy are Alibaba customers. For now, Alibaba professes to be more interested in helping U.S. businesses sell to Chinese consumers rather than the other way around."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Boston’s Debut Album Isn’t a Guilty Pleasure—It’s One of the Best Records Ever (Observer) "Boston’s debut album, which turns 40 this month, is an absolute treasure of melody and architecture. Like the debut albums by the Ramones, the Velvet Underground and Neu!, it’s difficult to know where the hell Boston came from; it is so staggeringly unique, but also deeply rousing, resonant, aurally sensuous and pleasing."
- John Mayer Knows He Messed Up. He Wants Another Chance (NYT)
HEALTH:
- The Best Exercise for Aging Muscles (NYT) "It seems as if the decline in the cellular health of muscles associated with aging was 'corrected' with exercise, especially if it was intense..."
NEWS:
- Two months out of office, Barack Obama is having a post-presidency like no other (WaPo) "And yet, while other recent ex-presidents have devoted their retirement years to apolitical, do-gooder causes, Obama is gearing up to throw himself into the wonky and highly partisan issue of redistricting, with the goal of reversing the electoral declines Democrats have experienced nationally."
- National Review Wants Credit for Opposing the Alt-Right Movement It Helped Create (Slate) "Despite the magazine’s disavowal of the alt-right, the platform it provided for these writers and its elevation—throughout its history—of ideas that have become central to the movement tie National Review to the alt-right’s intellectual origins. In truth,National Review can no more disown the alt-right than it can disown its own legacy. As often noted in alt-right circles, National Review’s early years were characterized by explicit racism."
- A conservative news crack-up? Things just got real for some partisan personalities (WaPo) "The right-leaning media have become so diversified that their factions now engage in the kind of internecine warfare that exposes the likes of Yiannopoulos and Lahren, notes Will Sommer, a Washington journalist who tracks conservative media in his newsletter, Right Richter."
- American democracy: Not so decadent after all (WaPo) "The last two months have brought a pleasant surprise: Turns out the much feared, much predicted withering of our democratic institutions has been grossly exaggerated. The system lives. Our checks and balances have turned out to be quite vibrant. Taken together — and suspending judgment on which side is right on any particular issue — it is deeply encouraging that the sinews of institutional resistance to a potentially threatening executive remain quite resilient."
SCIENCE:
- Evolution Is Slower Than It Looks and Faster Than You Think (Wired) "'Think of it like the stock market,' he said. Look at the hourly or daily fluctuations of Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and it will appear wildly unstable, swinging this way and that. Zoom out, however, and the market appears much more stable as the daily shifts start to average out. In the same way, the forces of natural selection weed out the less advantageous and more deleterious mutations over time. More broadly, the work by Katzourakis and Ho challenges the idea of a steadily ticking evolutionary clock. It also means that scientists may need to revise the dates of evolutionary events in the deep past, as they likely underestimated how long ago they truly happened, Katzourakis said."
TRAVEL:
- Why Does Mount Rushmore Exist? (NYT) "Why had I dragged my family...away from work and school to see, of all places, Mount Rushmore? ...in the 1870s...Custer’s men discovered gold. Before long, of course, the boom went bust. In the 1920s, local boosters proposed an eccentric solution. What if some of the Black Hills’ ancient rock could be carved into a monument to American history — a patriotic tribute that would also serve, in this new era of automobiles, as a roadside attraction? Instead of gold, South Dakota could harvest tourists. From the beginning, the project struck many locals as absurd. The sculpting of Mount Rushmore began in 1927... Work spanned 14 years... The sculpture was finished one month and one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor."
TRUMPTELL:
- Trump's Credibility Crisis Arrives (Atlantic) "Something has happened to every new president, and something will happen to Donald Trump. It is inevitable. And when that something occurs, it is also inevitable that his administration will need to say, Trust us on this. That’s in the nature of foreign emergencies. The inevitability of this moment, when a new president says Trust me, is why so many veteran officials have warned against Donald Trump’s habits of continuing to tell instantly disprovable lies. Thus the problem: If an administration will lie about facts where the contradictory evidence is in plain sight, how can we possibly believe them on anything else? After what he has said about crowd size, about wiretapping, about birtherism, about what James Comey was testifying (even as the rest of the world could watch it on TV), no sane person can assume that Donald Trump is operating in that same realm of knowable fact. The instant skepticism about the laptop ban is the first case showing why that matters: He needs us to trust him, and we can’t."
- ‘There’s a Smell of Treason in the Air’ (NYT) "The fundamental question now isn’t about Trump’s lies, or intelligence leaks, or inadvertent collection of Trump communications. Rather, the crucial question is as monumental as it is simple: Was there treason?"
- Trump’s Wiretap Allegation (National Review) "We have repeatedly encouraged the Senate and House intelligence committees to conduct a thorough and, to the extent possible, transparent investigation of the various allegations tying the Trump campaign to Russia, and into the leaks that have fueled those allegations. At this point, it seems that the Senate’s committee may be better suited to conducting this probe than the House’s. If it is not up to the task, Congress ought to form a Select Committee."
- The tribal truths that set the stage for Trump’s lies (WaPo) "Trump did not create the conditions for his own rise. During the Obama era, conservative media, particularly talk radio, adopted what Vox’s David Roberts calls a 'tribal epistemology.' All facts were filtered for the benefit of the tribe. In this approach, information is useful only as ammunition. And conflicting views are entirely the result of bad faith. This was a political wave well suited to an empty vessel. Trump was willing to say anything the medium demanded. The main problem with tribal definitions of truth is that conflict can be expressed only in combat (verbal and otherwise). If rational arguments, conducted in good faith, holding out the possibility of compromise, are impossible, there is only one way to decide between conflicting views: power."
- Trump’s Russia Problem Is Far from Marginal (New Yorker)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- ‘Follow your passion’ is wrong, here are 7 habits you need instead (Mashable)
TODAY'S SONG (ALBUM):
- Boston (Boston)
- Trump Learns the Hard Way That Policy Details Matter (National Review) "No, in the end, they simply didn’t like what was in the bill and didn’t have faith that the Senate would improve it, or that it would get better in conference committee. At least for now, a significant number of House Republicans fear the consequences of passing an insufficient bill more than the consequences of failing to pass a bill. It appears President Trump cared a lot more about getting a win than about what, exactly, he would be winning. And that lack of focus on the details helped deny him the victory he wanted so badly."
- ‘The closer’? The inside story of how Trump tried — and failed — to make a deal on health care (WaPo) "But legislating, it turned out, was different from cutting deals to splash his name across skyscrapers. And less than 100 days into his administration, the president found himself a red-faced Don Quixote, railing against the intractable forces on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are wearied by years of infighting."
- Inside the GOP’s Health Care Debacle (Politico) "'Forget about the little shit,' Trump said, according to multiple sources in the room. 'Let's focus on the big picture here.' Trump wanted to emphasize the political ramifications of the bill's defeat; specifically, he said, it would derail his first-term agenda and imperil his prospects for reelection in 2020. Through charm, force of personality and sheer intimidation, Trump did move some votes into the yes column. But GOP leaders were left wondering why he didn't do more—why he didn't send tweets, travel to congressional districts, put his famed dealmaking skills to work. The answer, to Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, is obvious: Because he lacked familiarity with the legislation itself, and thought it was Ryan’s job to sell the specifics."
BUSINESS:
- How Alibaba’s Jack Ma Is Building a Truly Global Retail Empire (Fortune) "Despite its heft in China and the blockbuster 2014 public offering that raised $25 billion on the New York Stock Exchange and introduced Alibaba to Western investors, Ma’s company remains a mystery to most non-Chinese. There’s a simple reason for that: Few outside the world’s second-largest economy are Alibaba customers. For now, Alibaba professes to be more interested in helping U.S. businesses sell to Chinese consumers rather than the other way around."
ENTERTAINMENT:
- Boston’s Debut Album Isn’t a Guilty Pleasure—It’s One of the Best Records Ever (Observer) "Boston’s debut album, which turns 40 this month, is an absolute treasure of melody and architecture. Like the debut albums by the Ramones, the Velvet Underground and Neu!, it’s difficult to know where the hell Boston came from; it is so staggeringly unique, but also deeply rousing, resonant, aurally sensuous and pleasing."
- John Mayer Knows He Messed Up. He Wants Another Chance (NYT)
HEALTH:
- The Best Exercise for Aging Muscles (NYT) "It seems as if the decline in the cellular health of muscles associated with aging was 'corrected' with exercise, especially if it was intense..."
NEWS:
- Two months out of office, Barack Obama is having a post-presidency like no other (WaPo) "And yet, while other recent ex-presidents have devoted their retirement years to apolitical, do-gooder causes, Obama is gearing up to throw himself into the wonky and highly partisan issue of redistricting, with the goal of reversing the electoral declines Democrats have experienced nationally."
- National Review Wants Credit for Opposing the Alt-Right Movement It Helped Create (Slate) "Despite the magazine’s disavowal of the alt-right, the platform it provided for these writers and its elevation—throughout its history—of ideas that have become central to the movement tie National Review to the alt-right’s intellectual origins. In truth,National Review can no more disown the alt-right than it can disown its own legacy. As often noted in alt-right circles, National Review’s early years were characterized by explicit racism."
- A conservative news crack-up? Things just got real for some partisan personalities (WaPo) "The right-leaning media have become so diversified that their factions now engage in the kind of internecine warfare that exposes the likes of Yiannopoulos and Lahren, notes Will Sommer, a Washington journalist who tracks conservative media in his newsletter, Right Richter."
- American democracy: Not so decadent after all (WaPo) "The last two months have brought a pleasant surprise: Turns out the much feared, much predicted withering of our democratic institutions has been grossly exaggerated. The system lives. Our checks and balances have turned out to be quite vibrant. Taken together — and suspending judgment on which side is right on any particular issue — it is deeply encouraging that the sinews of institutional resistance to a potentially threatening executive remain quite resilient."
SCIENCE:
- Evolution Is Slower Than It Looks and Faster Than You Think (Wired) "'Think of it like the stock market,' he said. Look at the hourly or daily fluctuations of Standard & Poor’s 500 index, and it will appear wildly unstable, swinging this way and that. Zoom out, however, and the market appears much more stable as the daily shifts start to average out. In the same way, the forces of natural selection weed out the less advantageous and more deleterious mutations over time. More broadly, the work by Katzourakis and Ho challenges the idea of a steadily ticking evolutionary clock. It also means that scientists may need to revise the dates of evolutionary events in the deep past, as they likely underestimated how long ago they truly happened, Katzourakis said."
TRAVEL:
- Why Does Mount Rushmore Exist? (NYT) "Why had I dragged my family...away from work and school to see, of all places, Mount Rushmore? ...in the 1870s...Custer’s men discovered gold. Before long, of course, the boom went bust. In the 1920s, local boosters proposed an eccentric solution. What if some of the Black Hills’ ancient rock could be carved into a monument to American history — a patriotic tribute that would also serve, in this new era of automobiles, as a roadside attraction? Instead of gold, South Dakota could harvest tourists. From the beginning, the project struck many locals as absurd. The sculpting of Mount Rushmore began in 1927... Work spanned 14 years... The sculpture was finished one month and one week before the attack on Pearl Harbor."
TRUMPTELL:
- Trump's Credibility Crisis Arrives (Atlantic) "Something has happened to every new president, and something will happen to Donald Trump. It is inevitable. And when that something occurs, it is also inevitable that his administration will need to say, Trust us on this. That’s in the nature of foreign emergencies. The inevitability of this moment, when a new president says Trust me, is why so many veteran officials have warned against Donald Trump’s habits of continuing to tell instantly disprovable lies. Thus the problem: If an administration will lie about facts where the contradictory evidence is in plain sight, how can we possibly believe them on anything else? After what he has said about crowd size, about wiretapping, about birtherism, about what James Comey was testifying (even as the rest of the world could watch it on TV), no sane person can assume that Donald Trump is operating in that same realm of knowable fact. The instant skepticism about the laptop ban is the first case showing why that matters: He needs us to trust him, and we can’t."
- ‘There’s a Smell of Treason in the Air’ (NYT) "The fundamental question now isn’t about Trump’s lies, or intelligence leaks, or inadvertent collection of Trump communications. Rather, the crucial question is as monumental as it is simple: Was there treason?"
- Trump’s Wiretap Allegation (National Review) "We have repeatedly encouraged the Senate and House intelligence committees to conduct a thorough and, to the extent possible, transparent investigation of the various allegations tying the Trump campaign to Russia, and into the leaks that have fueled those allegations. At this point, it seems that the Senate’s committee may be better suited to conducting this probe than the House’s. If it is not up to the task, Congress ought to form a Select Committee."
- The tribal truths that set the stage for Trump’s lies (WaPo) "Trump did not create the conditions for his own rise. During the Obama era, conservative media, particularly talk radio, adopted what Vox’s David Roberts calls a 'tribal epistemology.' All facts were filtered for the benefit of the tribe. In this approach, information is useful only as ammunition. And conflicting views are entirely the result of bad faith. This was a political wave well suited to an empty vessel. Trump was willing to say anything the medium demanded. The main problem with tribal definitions of truth is that conflict can be expressed only in combat (verbal and otherwise). If rational arguments, conducted in good faith, holding out the possibility of compromise, are impossible, there is only one way to decide between conflicting views: power."
- Trump’s Russia Problem Is Far from Marginal (New Yorker)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- ‘Follow your passion’ is wrong, here are 7 habits you need instead (Mashable)
TODAY'S SONG (ALBUM):
- Boston (Boston)
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Friday, March 24, 2017
HOW MUCH TIME WILL THE AVERAGE PERSON SPEND ON SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THEIR LIFE?
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- How Much Time Will the Average Person Spend on Social Media During Their Life? (Adweek) "The average person will spend more than five years of their lives on social media, according to a study by influencer marketing agency Mediakix."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Amazon, the world’s most remarkable firm, is just getting started (Economist) "The former bookseller accounts for more than half of every new dollar spent online in America. It is the world’s leading provider of cloud computing. This year Amazon will probably spend twice as much on television as HBO... Shareholders are right to believe in Amazon’s potential. But success will bring it into conflict with an even stronger beast: government. ...if it makes as much money as investors hope, a rough calculation suggests its earnings could be worth the equivalent of 25% of the combined profits of listed Western retail and media firms."
- Wall Street’s New Trick to Dodge Trump-Induced Stock Swings (Wired) "The new tool at least attempts to help fund managers understand how businesses are processing it all. Trump Tracker automatically scans Securities and Exchange Commission filings like the annual Form 10-K for mentions of Trump. According to Sentieo’s findings, President Trump is mentioned in filings about six times more often than President Obama was at the same time during his presidency. Those mentions have risen even more sharply since election day. The industry Trump Tracker shows is most concerned about his presidency? Health care."
- The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death (New Yorker) "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear."
- Blockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works (Harvard Business Review) "The key point is that the artists themselves will finally be feasting at the center of their own ecosystem, not starving at the edges of many others."
ENVIRONMENT:
- There’s Nothing Conservative about a Carbon Tax (National Review) "What is new, however, is that some Republicans are attempting to pass off a carbon tax as a conservative policy. There is nothing free-market about their massive new tax hike, no matter how they dress it up.
Simply calling something 'conservative' or 'free-market' doesn’t make it so. The Climate Leadership Council’s carbon tax is an affront to the principles that conservatives have championed for decades. Most important, a carbon tax would destroy American jobs, encourage more wasteful spending from Washington, and burden consumers with higher energy costs. You’d be hard pressed to find a more damaging policy for American families."
HEALTH:
- Economic shocks are more likely to be lethal in America (Economist) "By 2013 middle-aged white Americans were dying at twice the rate of similarly aged Swedes of all races. Suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse were to blame. White middle-age mortality continued to rise in 2014 and 2015, contributing to a fall in life expectancy among the population as a whole. The trend transcends geography. It is found in almost every state, and in both cities and rural areas. The problem seems to be getting worse over time. The fundamental cause is still a familiar tale of economic malaise: trade and technological progress have snuffed out opportunities for the low-skilled, especially in manufacturing. Life is unlikely to become more secure for the low-skilled. In fact, policy may soon make it more perilous." and New research identifies a ‘sea of despair’ among white, working-class Americans (WaPo) "Education level is significant: People with a college degree report better health and happiness than those with only some college, who in turn are doing much better than those who never went. ...less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a 'cumulative disadvantage' over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide."
LONG READS:
- Basing Life on What You Can Afford (NYT)
NEWS:
- After Backing Trump, Michigan Considers Its First Muslim Governor (Ozy) "Michigan went for Trump by a 10,000-person margin in November, seemingly in part due to his campaign promise to institute a Muslim travel ban as a way of heading off (perceived) external threats. According to exit polls, almost a fifth of Michiganders thought terrorism was the most important issue facing the country — only the economy was selected more — with Trump beating Hillary on the issue by a 55 to 42 percent margin. Now, could white voters rally behind a Muslim candidate?"
- Senate Intel Chair: 'No Idea' About Nunes Claims (Weekly Standard) "'I'm going to let him stand on whatever he said and what he's got. I have no idea what it is,' North Carolina senator Richard Burr told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday in a Capitol hallway interview."
- If we're going to rule out negotiations with North Korea, we have to be ready for war (LA Times) "The United States has no real capability to shoot down ICBMs, but we never have. We have been defenseless against this threat for six decades. For all those years, we have relied on deterrence and the promise of devastating retaliation. The logic is that the capability of our conventional and nuclear weapons deters our enemies and provides for the nation’s security. If the U.S. is going to abandon this logic now, it should be done with great care, and with the full understanding that we are risking war."
- Tillerson calls for more allied support in fight against Islamic State (LA Times) "Tillerson said the United States 'will work to establish interim zones of stability, through cease-fires, to allow refugees to return home,' using language that suggests creation of no-fly zones to protect refugees in northern Syria."
- Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important (WaPo) "...if AP’s reporting is true in its entirety, the man who ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had worked secretly to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In order to answer those questions we need an independent commission with subpoena power... If we ever get that commission, this could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics. So why aren’t more people thinking about it that way yet? The primary reason may be the fact that it’s so complicated and involves so many people, yet it lacks a single understandable explanation for what it’s really all about."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Amazon, the world’s most remarkable firm, is just getting started (Economist) "The former bookseller accounts for more than half of every new dollar spent online in America. It is the world’s leading provider of cloud computing. This year Amazon will probably spend twice as much on television as HBO... Shareholders are right to believe in Amazon’s potential. But success will bring it into conflict with an even stronger beast: government. ...if it makes as much money as investors hope, a rough calculation suggests its earnings could be worth the equivalent of 25% of the combined profits of listed Western retail and media firms."
- Wall Street’s New Trick to Dodge Trump-Induced Stock Swings (Wired) "The new tool at least attempts to help fund managers understand how businesses are processing it all. Trump Tracker automatically scans Securities and Exchange Commission filings like the annual Form 10-K for mentions of Trump. According to Sentieo’s findings, President Trump is mentioned in filings about six times more often than President Obama was at the same time during his presidency. Those mentions have risen even more sharply since election day. The industry Trump Tracker shows is most concerned about his presidency? Health care."
- The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death (New Yorker) "At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy’s rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear."
- Blockchain Could Help Artists Profit More from Their Creative Works (Harvard Business Review) "The key point is that the artists themselves will finally be feasting at the center of their own ecosystem, not starving at the edges of many others."
ENVIRONMENT:
- There’s Nothing Conservative about a Carbon Tax (National Review) "What is new, however, is that some Republicans are attempting to pass off a carbon tax as a conservative policy. There is nothing free-market about their massive new tax hike, no matter how they dress it up.
Simply calling something 'conservative' or 'free-market' doesn’t make it so. The Climate Leadership Council’s carbon tax is an affront to the principles that conservatives have championed for decades. Most important, a carbon tax would destroy American jobs, encourage more wasteful spending from Washington, and burden consumers with higher energy costs. You’d be hard pressed to find a more damaging policy for American families."
HEALTH:
- Economic shocks are more likely to be lethal in America (Economist) "By 2013 middle-aged white Americans were dying at twice the rate of similarly aged Swedes of all races. Suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol abuse were to blame. White middle-age mortality continued to rise in 2014 and 2015, contributing to a fall in life expectancy among the population as a whole. The trend transcends geography. It is found in almost every state, and in both cities and rural areas. The problem seems to be getting worse over time. The fundamental cause is still a familiar tale of economic malaise: trade and technological progress have snuffed out opportunities for the low-skilled, especially in manufacturing. Life is unlikely to become more secure for the low-skilled. In fact, policy may soon make it more perilous." and New research identifies a ‘sea of despair’ among white, working-class Americans (WaPo) "Education level is significant: People with a college degree report better health and happiness than those with only some college, who in turn are doing much better than those who never went. ...less-educated white Americans who struggle in the job market in early adulthood are likely to experience a 'cumulative disadvantage' over time, with health and personal problems that often lead to drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver disease and suicide."
LONG READS:
- Basing Life on What You Can Afford (NYT)
NEWS:
- After Backing Trump, Michigan Considers Its First Muslim Governor (Ozy) "Michigan went for Trump by a 10,000-person margin in November, seemingly in part due to his campaign promise to institute a Muslim travel ban as a way of heading off (perceived) external threats. According to exit polls, almost a fifth of Michiganders thought terrorism was the most important issue facing the country — only the economy was selected more — with Trump beating Hillary on the issue by a 55 to 42 percent margin. Now, could white voters rally behind a Muslim candidate?"
- Senate Intel Chair: 'No Idea' About Nunes Claims (Weekly Standard) "'I'm going to let him stand on whatever he said and what he's got. I have no idea what it is,' North Carolina senator Richard Burr told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Thursday in a Capitol hallway interview."
- If we're going to rule out negotiations with North Korea, we have to be ready for war (LA Times) "The United States has no real capability to shoot down ICBMs, but we never have. We have been defenseless against this threat for six decades. For all those years, we have relied on deterrence and the promise of devastating retaliation. The logic is that the capability of our conventional and nuclear weapons deters our enemies and provides for the nation’s security. If the U.S. is going to abandon this logic now, it should be done with great care, and with the full understanding that we are risking war."
- Tillerson calls for more allied support in fight against Islamic State (LA Times) "Tillerson said the United States 'will work to establish interim zones of stability, through cease-fires, to allow refugees to return home,' using language that suggests creation of no-fly zones to protect refugees in northern Syria."
- Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important (WaPo) "...if AP’s reporting is true in its entirety, the man who ran Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had worked secretly to advance the interests of Vladimir Putin’s regime. In order to answer those questions we need an independent commission with subpoena power... If we ever get that commission, this could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics. So why aren’t more people thinking about it that way yet? The primary reason may be the fact that it’s so complicated and involves so many people, yet it lacks a single understandable explanation for what it’s really all about."
READ THIS:
- The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory (John Seabrook) "How do you make a song a global smash hit that is guaranteed to make $millions? Who are the hit-manufacturers that can create a tune that is so catchy, so wildly addictive, that it sticks in the minds of millions of listeners? And who are the powerful few that have the capacity to transform, say, a young Barbadian woman called Robyn Rihanna Fenty into the global megastar that is Rihanna? In The Song Machine, John Seabrook dissects the workings of this machine, travelling the world to reveal its hidden formulas, and interview its geniuses – ‘the hitmakers’ – at the centre of it all."
SPORTS:
- Inside the 'Tinderization' of today's NBA (ESPN) "Something strange happens when NBA teams play on the road these days, a trend line that baffles statheads. In the 1987-88 season, home teams won an astounding 67.9 percent of games, boasting an average win margin of 5.8 points, the highest on record. Then, in less than a decade, the home-court advantage gap was sliced in half. By 1996-97, home teams won only 57.5 percent of the time, by an average margin of only 2.6 points. And now, after hovering around 60 percent for most of the 2000s, home-court advantage is dropping again. This season, it sits at an all-time low of 57.4 percent. What's causing the drop? I spoke with dozens of players, coaches, team trainers and front-office execs, and most think the same thing is happening: NBA players are sleeping more and drinking less. And lifestyle judgments aside, the NBA road life is simply more efficient -- and less taxing -- when there aren't open hours spent trolling clubs."
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Clever ‘DoubleAgent’ Attack Turns Antivirus Into Malware (Wired) "Discovered by researchers at the Israeli cybersecurity defense firm Cybellum, the so-called 'DoubleAgent attack' takes advantage of the Microsoft Application Verifier, a tool used for strengthening security in third-party Windows applications, to inject customized code into programs. The approach could potentially manipulate any software target, but antivirus programs would be particularly appealing to an attacker since they have such extensive system privileges for scanning."
TRUMPTELL:
- President Trump’s cascade of false claims in Time’s interview on his falsehoods (WaPo) "President Trump had a remarkable interview with Time magazine about falsehoods, in which he repeated many false claims that have been repeatedly been debunked."
- Federal elections commissioner wants Trump to back up his allegations of voter fraud (LA Times) "In January, days after he entered the White House, Trump said that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes were cast in the November presidential election. The administration has produced no evidence to back up these claims. Nationwide, Republican and Democratic elections officials said that voter fraud is rare and that it did not affect their states' results. 'Facts matter, Mr. President,' Weintraub wrote. 'The American people deserve to see your evidence.'"
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The number of books you’ll read before you die, charted (Quartz)
TODAY'S SONG:
- Free of Charge (The Band CAMINO)
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
SPORTS:
- Inside the 'Tinderization' of today's NBA (ESPN) "Something strange happens when NBA teams play on the road these days, a trend line that baffles statheads. In the 1987-88 season, home teams won an astounding 67.9 percent of games, boasting an average win margin of 5.8 points, the highest on record. Then, in less than a decade, the home-court advantage gap was sliced in half. By 1996-97, home teams won only 57.5 percent of the time, by an average margin of only 2.6 points. And now, after hovering around 60 percent for most of the 2000s, home-court advantage is dropping again. This season, it sits at an all-time low of 57.4 percent. What's causing the drop? I spoke with dozens of players, coaches, team trainers and front-office execs, and most think the same thing is happening: NBA players are sleeping more and drinking less. And lifestyle judgments aside, the NBA road life is simply more efficient -- and less taxing -- when there aren't open hours spent trolling clubs."
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Clever ‘DoubleAgent’ Attack Turns Antivirus Into Malware (Wired) "Discovered by researchers at the Israeli cybersecurity defense firm Cybellum, the so-called 'DoubleAgent attack' takes advantage of the Microsoft Application Verifier, a tool used for strengthening security in third-party Windows applications, to inject customized code into programs. The approach could potentially manipulate any software target, but antivirus programs would be particularly appealing to an attacker since they have such extensive system privileges for scanning."
TRUMPTELL:
- President Trump’s cascade of false claims in Time’s interview on his falsehoods (WaPo) "President Trump had a remarkable interview with Time magazine about falsehoods, in which he repeated many false claims that have been repeatedly been debunked."
- Federal elections commissioner wants Trump to back up his allegations of voter fraud (LA Times) "In January, days after he entered the White House, Trump said that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes were cast in the November presidential election. The administration has produced no evidence to back up these claims. Nationwide, Republican and Democratic elections officials said that voter fraud is rare and that it did not affect their states' results. 'Facts matter, Mr. President,' Weintraub wrote. 'The American people deserve to see your evidence.'"
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- The number of books you’ll read before you die, charted (Quartz)
TODAY'S SONG:
- Free of Charge (The Band CAMINO)
Thursday, March 23, 2017
TO PROMISE THINGS IS TO LIE
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- To Promise Free Things Is to Lie (National Review) "President Trump represents the notion, ascendant in Republican circles, that the only way to win elections is to fib to the American people. Power is its own justification, and there is no better way to demonstrate power than by promulgating a big lie. That fits with Trump’s view of the world, in which success is its own virtue. ...anti-establishment conservatives concluded that it would take an uncivil, indecent person to defeat Democrats. And that, of course, was the ultimate purpose: defeating Democrats. Not truth, not enacting a conservative agenda, but defeating Democrats: the lesser of two evils. Trump’s victory rewarded that theory. But the theory is untenable. It’s untenable because conservatives don’t seek the same policy results that leftists do. That means that Trump’s promises are bound to come up empty. And that means that Trump and the Republicans have placed themselves back on the horns of an ancient dilemma: They can lie to the people by promising them free things, but those things won’t materialize."
BUSIENSS:
- Forget Bitcoin. The Blockchain Could Reveal What’s True Today and Tomorrow (Wired) "A prediction market is like the stock market, except that you’re not buying stock in companies. You’re buying stock in outcomes. In theory, the better your information, the bigger the bet you’ll make. Using a blockchain, a service like Augur aims to enhance this dynamic by pushing markets across borders and removing all betting limits, roping in more people and more cash."
- Platform Companies Are Becoming More Powerful — But What Exactly Do They Want? (NYT) "...a 'platform business,' one built around matchmaking between vendors and customers. If successful, a platform creates its own marketplace; if extremely successful, it ends up controlling something closer to an entire economy."
NEWS:
- Trump Associates Caught Repeatedly in Incidental Surveillance, Intel Chairman Says (Weekly Standard) "The communications were swept up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act via incidental collection, he [Nunes] said. Incidental collection occurs when the intelligence community targets an approved foreign entity, and the foreign entity communicates with a U.S. person. Those communications are then collected and sometimes distributed within the intelligence community." and House Intelligence chair says Trump campaign officials were ensnared in surveillance operations (WaPo) "Outside of the White House on Wednesday, Nunes confirmed his opinion that Trump was not wiretapped in the sense the president meant with his March 4 tweet. But he did suggest Trump could have been caught up in incidental collection — or legal surveillance of the communications of foreign nationals who may be in contact with U.S. citizens."
- Shepard Smith, the Fox News anchorman who drives the Fox News faithful crazy (WaPo) "The hubbub around Smith, who also is Fox’s managing editor of breaking news, has drawn silence from Fox. Two rival network sources say Smith is a short-timer at Fox and thus is feeling free to speak his mind on air. But that may be more rumor than fact; Smith has been at Fox since the network began in 1996... The counter-theory is that Fox has purposely loosened its leash on Smith in order to carve out a modicum of independence from Trump."
- Trump’s Wall Meets Texas’s Biggest National Park (National Review) "'The biggest challenge to Trump’s timeline is going to be the fact that Texas, where there are currently 110 miles of wall on our 1,200-mile border, is almost entirely private property,' the Sierra Club’s Scott Nicol told the Statesman. 'Land-condemnation suits will take years, but Big Bend National Park and some remaining tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge down here are federally owned.'"
- Becoming Duterte: The Making of a Philippine Strongman (NYT) "He has alienated many with outrageous comments and irrational behavior, yet remains wildly popular. He is an antidrug crusader, yet has struggled with drug abuse himself. And he grew up a child of privilege, the son of a provincial governor, yet was subjected to regular beatings." and Duterte Aide Bristles at Times Article, Calling It a ‘Hack Job’ (NYT) "The Times made repeated requests to interview Mr. Duterte for the article, both through Mr. Abella and another official spokesman."
- Roused by Trump, First-Time Female Candidates Eye Local Seats (NYT) "The swell in interest certainly leans Democratic, and much of the protest and activism following the election of President Trump has come from those more aligned with liberal policies, but the surge is bipartisan in some states."
- A THAAD Story (Weekly Standard) "Beijing is furious that Korea has decided to, jointly with the United States, install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system on its territory. Seoul's reason for wanting a system that can shoot down short and medium term missiles is obvious, but China is having none of it. Beijing claims (spuriously) that THAAD's radar capabilities will be used to spy on China. The Chinese regime has deeper reasons for opposing THAAD as well, a senior-level South Korean diplomat in Seoul tells me: It indicates that South Korea is tilting towards the United States, and away from China. In an era of "strategic competition" between the world's two largest economies, Beijing has been trying to lure South Korea into its orbit and THAAD shows it has largely failed in this effort."
- A report card on Tillerson’s trip to Asia (WaPo) "Overall, Tillerson sent the message he needed in order to gain some traction on North Korea. The confusion that has emerged over his intentions has more to do with the Trump administration as a whole than with his own performance."
SCIENCE:
- A New Form of Stem-Cell Engineering Raises Ethical Questions (NYT) "In 1979, a federal advisory board recommended that the cutoff [to keep stem cells alive] should be 14 days. For decades, scientists did not break the 14-day rule — but only because they did not know how. Scientists could keep human embryos alive for just over a week... But last year, two teams of scientists determined how to grow human embryos for 13 days. Those advances hinted that it might be possible to allow scientists to tack on a few days more, by changing the 14-day rule to, say, a 20-day rule."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Intel’s Bold Plan to Reinvent Computer Memory (and Keep It a Secret) (Wired) "The company calls this new creation 3D XPoint—pronounced 'three-dee cross-point'—and this week, after touting the stuff for a year-and-a-half, Intel finally pushed it into the market. You can think of the new technology as a computer building block that can serve more than one purpose—a single thing that can replace several others. Where this could really change things is inside the massive data centers operated by the internet’s biggest companies. As their online empires continue to grow, these companies always need faster and cheaper ways of storing ever-larger amounts of data."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- You can buy Detroit's priciest dilapidated house for $5M (USA Today) "
SONG OF THE DAY:
- My Heart's Always Yours (Arkells)
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BUSIENSS:
- Forget Bitcoin. The Blockchain Could Reveal What’s True Today and Tomorrow (Wired) "A prediction market is like the stock market, except that you’re not buying stock in companies. You’re buying stock in outcomes. In theory, the better your information, the bigger the bet you’ll make. Using a blockchain, a service like Augur aims to enhance this dynamic by pushing markets across borders and removing all betting limits, roping in more people and more cash."
- Platform Companies Are Becoming More Powerful — But What Exactly Do They Want? (NYT) "...a 'platform business,' one built around matchmaking between vendors and customers. If successful, a platform creates its own marketplace; if extremely successful, it ends up controlling something closer to an entire economy."
NEWS:
- Trump Associates Caught Repeatedly in Incidental Surveillance, Intel Chairman Says (Weekly Standard) "The communications were swept up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act via incidental collection, he [Nunes] said. Incidental collection occurs when the intelligence community targets an approved foreign entity, and the foreign entity communicates with a U.S. person. Those communications are then collected and sometimes distributed within the intelligence community." and House Intelligence chair says Trump campaign officials were ensnared in surveillance operations (WaPo) "Outside of the White House on Wednesday, Nunes confirmed his opinion that Trump was not wiretapped in the sense the president meant with his March 4 tweet. But he did suggest Trump could have been caught up in incidental collection — or legal surveillance of the communications of foreign nationals who may be in contact with U.S. citizens."
- Shepard Smith, the Fox News anchorman who drives the Fox News faithful crazy (WaPo) "The hubbub around Smith, who also is Fox’s managing editor of breaking news, has drawn silence from Fox. Two rival network sources say Smith is a short-timer at Fox and thus is feeling free to speak his mind on air. But that may be more rumor than fact; Smith has been at Fox since the network began in 1996... The counter-theory is that Fox has purposely loosened its leash on Smith in order to carve out a modicum of independence from Trump."
- Trump’s Wall Meets Texas’s Biggest National Park (National Review) "'The biggest challenge to Trump’s timeline is going to be the fact that Texas, where there are currently 110 miles of wall on our 1,200-mile border, is almost entirely private property,' the Sierra Club’s Scott Nicol told the Statesman. 'Land-condemnation suits will take years, but Big Bend National Park and some remaining tracts of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge down here are federally owned.'"
- Becoming Duterte: The Making of a Philippine Strongman (NYT) "He has alienated many with outrageous comments and irrational behavior, yet remains wildly popular. He is an antidrug crusader, yet has struggled with drug abuse himself. And he grew up a child of privilege, the son of a provincial governor, yet was subjected to regular beatings." and Duterte Aide Bristles at Times Article, Calling It a ‘Hack Job’ (NYT) "The Times made repeated requests to interview Mr. Duterte for the article, both through Mr. Abella and another official spokesman."
- Roused by Trump, First-Time Female Candidates Eye Local Seats (NYT) "The swell in interest certainly leans Democratic, and much of the protest and activism following the election of President Trump has come from those more aligned with liberal policies, but the surge is bipartisan in some states."
- A THAAD Story (Weekly Standard) "Beijing is furious that Korea has decided to, jointly with the United States, install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system on its territory. Seoul's reason for wanting a system that can shoot down short and medium term missiles is obvious, but China is having none of it. Beijing claims (spuriously) that THAAD's radar capabilities will be used to spy on China. The Chinese regime has deeper reasons for opposing THAAD as well, a senior-level South Korean diplomat in Seoul tells me: It indicates that South Korea is tilting towards the United States, and away from China. In an era of "strategic competition" between the world's two largest economies, Beijing has been trying to lure South Korea into its orbit and THAAD shows it has largely failed in this effort."
- A report card on Tillerson’s trip to Asia (WaPo) "Overall, Tillerson sent the message he needed in order to gain some traction on North Korea. The confusion that has emerged over his intentions has more to do with the Trump administration as a whole than with his own performance."
SCIENCE:
- A New Form of Stem-Cell Engineering Raises Ethical Questions (NYT) "In 1979, a federal advisory board recommended that the cutoff [to keep stem cells alive] should be 14 days. For decades, scientists did not break the 14-day rule — but only because they did not know how. Scientists could keep human embryos alive for just over a week... But last year, two teams of scientists determined how to grow human embryos for 13 days. Those advances hinted that it might be possible to allow scientists to tack on a few days more, by changing the 14-day rule to, say, a 20-day rule."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Intel’s Bold Plan to Reinvent Computer Memory (and Keep It a Secret) (Wired) "The company calls this new creation 3D XPoint—pronounced 'three-dee cross-point'—and this week, after touting the stuff for a year-and-a-half, Intel finally pushed it into the market. You can think of the new technology as a computer building block that can serve more than one purpose—a single thing that can replace several others. Where this could really change things is inside the massive data centers operated by the internet’s biggest companies. As their online empires continue to grow, these companies always need faster and cheaper ways of storing ever-larger amounts of data."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- You can buy Detroit's priciest dilapidated house for $5M (USA Today) "
SONG OF THE DAY:
- My Heart's Always Yours (Arkells)
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Wednesday, March 22, 2017
"TRUMPTELL"
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- A 140-Character Flaw (National Review) "Every administration gets knocked off its game early on by something. What makes the furor over President Trump’s wiretapping claims so remarkable is how unnecessary it is. The flap didn’t arise from events outside of the administration’s control, nor was it a clever trap sprung by its adversaries. The president went out of his way to initiate it. He picked up his phone and tweeted allegations that he had no idea were true or not, either to distract from what he thought was a bad news cycle, or to vent, or both. Only President Trump can make it stop. He has shown, despite his unwillingness ever to admit error, an ability over the last year to simply drop and move on from counterproductive controversies. There are plenty of people who want to distract and damage his administration. The president of the United States shouldn’t be one of them."
- All the President’s Lies (NYT) "...the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women. He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies. Trump sets out to deceive people. As he has put it, 'I play to people’s fantasies.'"
- Comey’s Haunting News on Trump and Russia (NYT) "...Mr. Comey’s public confirmation ought to mark a turning point in how inquiries into Russia’s role in the election should be handled. The top priority now must be to ensure that the F.B.I.’s investigation, which could result in criminal prosecutions, is shielded from meddling by the Trump administration, which has shown a proclivity to lie, mislead and obfuscate with startling audacity. Mitigating this credibility crisis requires appointing an independent prosecutor, who would not take orders from the administration. If Mr. Trump’s assertion that there was no collusion between his campaign officials and the Russian government is true, he should want this matter to be fully investigated as quickly and as transparently as possible. The goal must be to make American political parties and democratic institutions less vulnerable to efforts to distort the electoral process as the Russians appear to have carried out. Failing to learn and heed the lessons of last year’s campaign would be an abdication of a shared responsibility to safeguard American democracy."
- Trump’s Weary Defenders Face Fresh Worries (NYT) "Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party whose fate is now tightly tied to his. Over the past several weeks, Republicans in Congress and members of their staffs have privately complained that Mr. Trump’s Twitter comment on March 4 — the one where he called Barack Obama 'sick' and suggested that the former president had ordered a 'tapp' on his phone — had done more to undermine anything he’s done as president because it called into question his seriousness about governing."
- James Comey’s Remarkable Five Hours on Capitol Hill (New Yorker) "Nunes asked Comey if he had evidence that anyone currently working in the Trump Administration had undisclosed ties to Russia. Comey refused to answer. Nunes tried again: What about Kellyanne Conway? 'Same answer,' Comey said. Nunes didn’t pretend to be surprised. 'There is a big gray cloud you have put over the people who lead this country,' he went on. 'The faster you can get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be better for all Americans.'"
- The F.B.I. Is Scrutinizing Trump’s Russia Ties. How Will That Work? (NYT) "What is a counterintelligence investigation? Counterintelligence is about finding out how America’s foreign adversaries are conducting espionage, and preventing it. If such cases are not focused on prosecutions, is anyone ever charged with spying? Not often, but there are exceptions. But Mr. Comey added that as part of that investigation, agents were asking whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. That opens up the possibility of criminal charges. How long will this investigation take? Counterintelligence cases are among the most difficult, time-consuming inquiries the F.B.I. conducts. The F.B.I. wouldn’t be investigating Mr. Trump’s aides without evidence of wrongdoing, right? Yes and no. The F.B.I. has the authority to investigate crimes, but the mere fact that agents are looking at Mr. Trump’s aides does not mean they can prove wrongdoing. What kind of measures will the F.B.I. take during its investigation? It is hard to say because nearly everything that counterintelligence agents do is classified. Mr. Trump said he was wiretapped. How does that fit into this? It doesn’t, really."
- How the White House Got James Comey Wrong (New Yorker) But the larger takeaway from the White House’s spin is that the top people around Trump may have no idea how much exposure the President has on the issue of Russian collusion. Two hours after the White House official confidently predicted Comey would vindicate the Administration, Comey did the opposite..."
BUSINESS:
- Uber’s Messy Breakup Complicates Search for COO (Bloomberg) "In meetings with local staff, Jones professed that one of his biggest apprehensions was working with Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, according to a person familiar with the gatherings."
HEALTH(CARE):
- Why Cystic Fibrosis Patients in Canada Outlive Those in the U.S. (NYT) "Between 2009 and 2013, the median life span was 40.6 years in the United States versus 50.9 in Canada. Further analysis revealed a much more significant association: insurance. Compared with patients in the United States who had private insurance coverage, patients in Canada had a similar risk of early death. Compared with patients who had public insurance like Medicaid, Canadians with cystic fibrosis had a 44 percent lower risk of early death. And compared with Americans who were uninsured, Canadians had a 77 percent lower risk of early death. No study is perfect, and it’s possible that insurance coverage might just be a marker for socioeconomic status in this analysis. Study after study has shown us that poverty is associated with worse outcomes for many diseases, cystic fibrosis included. Yet the poorest in the United States are more likely to have Medicaid than to be uninsured, and in this study they had better outcomes than those with no insurance at all."
NEWS:
- The American presidency is shrinking before the world’s eyes (WaPo) "Every new administration has a shakeout period. But this assumes an ability to learn from mistakes. And this would require admitting mistakes. The spectacle of an American president blaming a Fox News commentator for a major diplomatic incident was another milestone in the miniaturization of the presidency. An interested foreigner (friend or foe) must be a student of Trump’s temperament, which is just as bad as advertised. He is inexperienced, uninformed, easily provoked and supremely confident in his own judgment. The sum total? Foreigners see a Darwinian, nationalist framework for American foreign policy; a diminished commitment to global engagement; a brewing scandal that could distract and cripple the administration; and a president who often conducts his affairs with peevish ignorance."
- Bonds That Combat the Isolation of Military Life (NYT) "'When you’re in the military, you move so often and you’re remote from family and friends, and what you’re thinking about is so different from your nonmilitary neighbors,' said Kathy Roth-Douquet, Blue Star Families’ co-founder and chief executive, who is married to a retired Marine, and whose family moved nine times in 15 years. 'Because of these things, you don’t have the kinds of bonds with a diverse set of people that are natural to how we solve our problems.'"
- Rex Tillerson Is Still Acting Like a C.E.O. (New Yorker) "In the sort of diplomacy that Tillerson must conduct now, secret talks certainly have their place; for example, in forging breakthroughs like President Nixon’s opening to China or President Obama’s to Cuba. More routinely, however, diplomatic success requires using interviews, press conferences, social media, and speeches to address and shape public and legislative opinion simultaneously in multiple countries, including the United States."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Android O, Google’s Next OS, Is Coming to Save Your Phone’s Battery (Wired) "...Android O will keep apps from sucking down more than their fair share of juice. To help curb notification overload, Android O features something Google calls 'notification channels' that let developers segment different kinds of notifications—political news vs. sports news, maybe, or text message alerts from your family vs. everyone else—and control them individually. Most of the other new stuff is aimed at making Android better across devices and form factors."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Why Are Basketball Games So Squeaky? Consider the Spiny Lobster (NYT) "Why do basketball shoes squeak? It is when two relatively smooth or flat surfaces become repeatedly stuck and unstuck by the forces of friction, creating a vibration that becomes a noise. At the core of a basketball shoe’s squeak is the stick-slip phenomenon. Noting that sneakers can be designed not to squeak, Leo Chang, Nike’s senior design director, said: 'The squeak is reassurance to a lot of players. They listen for it.'"
SONG OF THE DAY:
- All the President’s Lies (NYT) "...the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women. He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies. Trump sets out to deceive people. As he has put it, 'I play to people’s fantasies.'"
- Comey’s Haunting News on Trump and Russia (NYT) "...Mr. Comey’s public confirmation ought to mark a turning point in how inquiries into Russia’s role in the election should be handled. The top priority now must be to ensure that the F.B.I.’s investigation, which could result in criminal prosecutions, is shielded from meddling by the Trump administration, which has shown a proclivity to lie, mislead and obfuscate with startling audacity. Mitigating this credibility crisis requires appointing an independent prosecutor, who would not take orders from the administration. If Mr. Trump’s assertion that there was no collusion between his campaign officials and the Russian government is true, he should want this matter to be fully investigated as quickly and as transparently as possible. The goal must be to make American political parties and democratic institutions less vulnerable to efforts to distort the electoral process as the Russians appear to have carried out. Failing to learn and heed the lessons of last year’s campaign would be an abdication of a shared responsibility to safeguard American democracy."
- Trump’s Weary Defenders Face Fresh Worries (NYT) "Mr. Trump’s allies have begun to wonder if his need for self-expression, often on social media, will exceed his instinct for self-preservation, with disastrous results both for the president and for a party whose fate is now tightly tied to his. Over the past several weeks, Republicans in Congress and members of their staffs have privately complained that Mr. Trump’s Twitter comment on March 4 — the one where he called Barack Obama 'sick' and suggested that the former president had ordered a 'tapp' on his phone — had done more to undermine anything he’s done as president because it called into question his seriousness about governing."
- James Comey’s Remarkable Five Hours on Capitol Hill (New Yorker) "Nunes asked Comey if he had evidence that anyone currently working in the Trump Administration had undisclosed ties to Russia. Comey refused to answer. Nunes tried again: What about Kellyanne Conway? 'Same answer,' Comey said. Nunes didn’t pretend to be surprised. 'There is a big gray cloud you have put over the people who lead this country,' he went on. 'The faster you can get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be better for all Americans.'"
- The F.B.I. Is Scrutinizing Trump’s Russia Ties. How Will That Work? (NYT) "What is a counterintelligence investigation? Counterintelligence is about finding out how America’s foreign adversaries are conducting espionage, and preventing it. If such cases are not focused on prosecutions, is anyone ever charged with spying? Not often, but there are exceptions. But Mr. Comey added that as part of that investigation, agents were asking whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. That opens up the possibility of criminal charges. How long will this investigation take? Counterintelligence cases are among the most difficult, time-consuming inquiries the F.B.I. conducts. The F.B.I. wouldn’t be investigating Mr. Trump’s aides without evidence of wrongdoing, right? Yes and no. The F.B.I. has the authority to investigate crimes, but the mere fact that agents are looking at Mr. Trump’s aides does not mean they can prove wrongdoing. What kind of measures will the F.B.I. take during its investigation? It is hard to say because nearly everything that counterintelligence agents do is classified. Mr. Trump said he was wiretapped. How does that fit into this? It doesn’t, really."
- How the White House Got James Comey Wrong (New Yorker) But the larger takeaway from the White House’s spin is that the top people around Trump may have no idea how much exposure the President has on the issue of Russian collusion. Two hours after the White House official confidently predicted Comey would vindicate the Administration, Comey did the opposite..."
BUSINESS:
- Uber’s Messy Breakup Complicates Search for COO (Bloomberg) "In meetings with local staff, Jones professed that one of his biggest apprehensions was working with Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, according to a person familiar with the gatherings."
HEALTH(CARE):
- Why Cystic Fibrosis Patients in Canada Outlive Those in the U.S. (NYT) "Between 2009 and 2013, the median life span was 40.6 years in the United States versus 50.9 in Canada. Further analysis revealed a much more significant association: insurance. Compared with patients in the United States who had private insurance coverage, patients in Canada had a similar risk of early death. Compared with patients who had public insurance like Medicaid, Canadians with cystic fibrosis had a 44 percent lower risk of early death. And compared with Americans who were uninsured, Canadians had a 77 percent lower risk of early death. No study is perfect, and it’s possible that insurance coverage might just be a marker for socioeconomic status in this analysis. Study after study has shown us that poverty is associated with worse outcomes for many diseases, cystic fibrosis included. Yet the poorest in the United States are more likely to have Medicaid than to be uninsured, and in this study they had better outcomes than those with no insurance at all."
NEWS:
- The American presidency is shrinking before the world’s eyes (WaPo) "Every new administration has a shakeout period. But this assumes an ability to learn from mistakes. And this would require admitting mistakes. The spectacle of an American president blaming a Fox News commentator for a major diplomatic incident was another milestone in the miniaturization of the presidency. An interested foreigner (friend or foe) must be a student of Trump’s temperament, which is just as bad as advertised. He is inexperienced, uninformed, easily provoked and supremely confident in his own judgment. The sum total? Foreigners see a Darwinian, nationalist framework for American foreign policy; a diminished commitment to global engagement; a brewing scandal that could distract and cripple the administration; and a president who often conducts his affairs with peevish ignorance."
- Bonds That Combat the Isolation of Military Life (NYT) "'When you’re in the military, you move so often and you’re remote from family and friends, and what you’re thinking about is so different from your nonmilitary neighbors,' said Kathy Roth-Douquet, Blue Star Families’ co-founder and chief executive, who is married to a retired Marine, and whose family moved nine times in 15 years. 'Because of these things, you don’t have the kinds of bonds with a diverse set of people that are natural to how we solve our problems.'"
- Rex Tillerson Is Still Acting Like a C.E.O. (New Yorker) "In the sort of diplomacy that Tillerson must conduct now, secret talks certainly have their place; for example, in forging breakthroughs like President Nixon’s opening to China or President Obama’s to Cuba. More routinely, however, diplomatic success requires using interviews, press conferences, social media, and speeches to address and shape public and legislative opinion simultaneously in multiple countries, including the United States."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Android O, Google’s Next OS, Is Coming to Save Your Phone’s Battery (Wired) "...Android O will keep apps from sucking down more than their fair share of juice. To help curb notification overload, Android O features something Google calls 'notification channels' that let developers segment different kinds of notifications—political news vs. sports news, maybe, or text message alerts from your family vs. everyone else—and control them individually. Most of the other new stuff is aimed at making Android better across devices and form factors."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Why Are Basketball Games So Squeaky? Consider the Spiny Lobster (NYT) "Why do basketball shoes squeak? It is when two relatively smooth or flat surfaces become repeatedly stuck and unstuck by the forces of friction, creating a vibration that becomes a noise. At the core of a basketball shoe’s squeak is the stick-slip phenomenon. Noting that sneakers can be designed not to squeak, Leo Chang, Nike’s senior design director, said: 'The squeak is reassurance to a lot of players. They listen for it.'"
SONG OF THE DAY:
- Southern Cross (Crosby, Still & Nash)
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