TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Teflon Amazon, Where Bezos Gets Rich and Bad News Never Sticks (Wired) "Amazon’s ability to avoid the villain label probably owes something to Bezos’s obsession with the company’s image. In his book on Amazon, The Everything Store, Brad Stone uncovered a memo from Bezos describing the qualities of 'cool' companies. Cool companies, according to Bezos, are polite, take risks, and take on bigger, less sympathetic companies."
- How Corn Took Over American Farms (Bloomberg) "Corn has always been a mainstay of U.S. agriculture, but its increasing profitability has driven up corn's share of total production, while grains such as wheat, oats and sorghum have steadily fallen, according to a Bloomberg analysis of a half-century of crop data. Corn will make up 68 percent of this year’s projected harvest of major U.S. grains and oilseeds... That’s up from 47 percent in 1968. The U.S. approved genetically modified (GMO) corn and soybeans for planting in 1995. That reduced those crops’ risk of disease and simplified their cultivation... Ethanol also came...in 2005 and 2007...providing a new outlet for an ever-more-productive crop."
HEALTH:
- Anti-Vaxxers Brought Their War to Minnesota—Then Came Measles (Wired) "And they [health professionals] totally expected it. Over the last decade, anti-vaxxers have fortified this corner of Minneapolis into a bastion for pseudo-science. It all began with higher-than-normal rates of severe autism in the Somali community. And when state and university researchers failed to understand why the disorder hit so hard here, families went looking for answers elsewhere: friends, and the all-knowing internet. In came the anti-vax partisans, whose success with these frightened parents has turned the neighborhood into a beachhead for what should be a totally preventable disease."
NEWS:
- As the White House defends Comey's firing, its allies join in deflecting calls for an independent Russia investigation (LA Times) "Trump’s frustration over the FBI investigation of contacts between his associates and Russian agents had flared dramatically last week, as Comey was set to make a routine appearance before a congressional panel. When Comey testified, Trump bristled at his remarks... White House officials said that Rosenstein had independently decided to undertake a review of Comey’s status... But Rosenstein’s concerns about Comey were very different than Trump’s. He thought Comey had mishandled the investigation into Clinton’s emails last year, largely in ways that were unfair to her."
- Democratic Hypocrisy and Hysteria Don’t Make Trump Right (National Review) "But — and this is the vitally important — the evidence is accumulating that Trump fired James Comey in the middle of an accelerating investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and then lied to the American people about the reason. No amount of Democratic hysteria can make that right. There is no amount of leftist hypocrisy that makes that acceptable."
- Palace whispers in the court of King Donald (Economist) "Less than four months into the reign of King Donald, his impetuous ways are making it more likely that his presidency will be a failure, with few large achievements to its name. That is not journalistic snark but a statement of fact, based on warnings from prominent Republicans and Democrats, notably in the Senate. Increasingly the mood among Senate Republicans is a mixture of incredulity and gloom, as each political success is followed by a momentum-killing outburst from the president. ...powerful folk in Washington routinely describe Mr. Trump in shockingly dismissive terms. He is compared to an easily distracted child who must be kept 'on task'. Senior Republicans call him out of his depth."
- More bad news for Trump: His poll numbers just hit a bunch of new lows (WaPo) "A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows Trump's disapproval rating rising to 58 percent... Just 36 percent approved of Trump's job performance. The Quinnipiac poll also shows the president's favorable rating — more of a personal measure than a job measure — dropping to a new low of 35 percent. The percentage of Americans who strongly approve of him is tied for an all-time low at 25 percent. And the percentage who strongly disapprove has reached an all-time high of 51 percent. Interestingly, the reason the numbers have ticked down appears to be the group that elected Trump in the first place: white, working-class voters. ...they are split, with 47 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving."
POLITICS:
- Can Trump Successfully Remodel the GOP? (National Review) "The Republican-party establishment is caught in an existential paradox. Without Donald Trump’s populist and nationalist 2016 campaign, the GOP probably would not have won the presidency. So are conservatives angry at the apostate Trump or indebted to him for helping them politically...? For now, most Republicans are overlooking Trump’s bothersome character excesses... But there are many fault lines that will loom large in the next few years. If he stalls the economy or gets into a quagmire abroad, then Trump will end up like most other American populist mavericks — as an interesting footnote."
SPORTS:
- A new Olympics reality: Fewer cities want to host the Games (WaPo) "Costs are exorbitant, economic benefits are dubious, and fewer and fewer cities bother even throwing their hats in the ring."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- 7 Discoveries That Started as School Assignments (Mental Floss)
TODAY'S SONG:
- Respect (Aretha Franklin)
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