- 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)
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