- 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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