- U.S. Bid to Build 5G Network Opposed by FCC Head, Wireless Lobby (Bloomberg) "If the federal government directly participates in building a wireless network intended for commercial use, it’d be a departure from the decades-long tradition of auctioning licenses to telecommunications companies to build their own networks. The Trump administration is in contact with U.S., European and Asian companies, but not Chinese firms..."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Every One of the World’s Big Economies Is Now Growing (NYT) "No tidy, all-encompassing narrative explains how the world has finally escaped the global downturn. In general terms, improvement owes less to some newfound wellspring of wealth than the simple fact that many of the destructive forces that felled growth have finally exhausted their potency. The United States has been propelled by government spending unleashed during the previous administration, plus a recent $1.5 trillion shot of tax cuts. Europe has finally felt the effects of cheap money pumped out by its central bank."
- There’s a big red flag in this report on the economy (WaPo) "For the duration of this economic expansion, consumer spending has been the dynamo driving growth in gross domestic product, or GDP. But now there are indications Americans are getting a little too dynamic. For the past two years, spending has risen faster than disposable personal income..."
ENVIRONMENT:
- Lake Michigan has become dramatically clearer in last 20 years — but at a steep cost (LA Times) "...the emergence of invasive mussels, which number in the trillions and have the ability to filter the entire volume of Lake Michigan in four to six days, has had an even greater effect. While appealing, the clarity comes at a significant cost to wildlife. In filtering the lake, the mussels have decimated the phytoplankton, a single-celled, green algae that serves as the base of the food chain. There is, however, a sliver of hope. Scientists say the invasive mussels may have reached their limits. With less plankton, the concentration of mussels in Lake Michigan dropped 40% between 2010 and 2015..."
HEALTH:
- The Connection Between Retiring Early and Living Longer (NYT) "An analysis in the United States found about seven years of retirement can be as good for health as reducing the chance of getting a serious disease (like diabetes or heart conditions) by 20 percent. Positive health effects of retirement have also been found by studies using data from Israel, England, Germany and other European countries."
MORE SMOKE:
- Trump sought release of classified Russia memo, putting him at odds with Justice Department (WaPo) "Trump and his Republican allies have placed special emphasis on the classified memo, which was written by staff for House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and suggests that the FBI may have relied on politically motivated or questionable sources to justify its request for a secret surveillance warrant in the investigation’s early phase. Democrats have characterized the memo as misleading talking points designed to smear the FBI and said it inaccurately summarizes investigative materials that are also classified. The president has told close advisers that the memo is starting to make people realize how the FBI and the Mueller probe is biased against him and that it could provide him with grounds for either firing or forcing [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein to leave..."
- Trump Ordered Mueller Fired, but Backed Off When White House Counsel Threatened to Quit (NYT) "...the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him. First, [Trump] claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May."
- Trump moved to fire Mueller in June, bringing White House counsel to the brink of leaving (WaPo) "Republican Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.) said in an interview that McGahn 'prevented an Archibald Cox moment,' referring to the special prosecutor ordered fired by President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate investigation. 'I believe now that this revelation has been made public, that there will be increasing pressure to protect Mueller,' Dent added. Trump was initially calm when Mueller was appointed, surprising White House aides, according to a senior administration official. But in the weeks that followed, the president spoke with a number of friends and advisers who convinced him that Mueller would dig through his private finances and look beyond questions of collusion with Russians. They warned that the probe could last years and would ruin his first term in office."
- Missing FBI texts have been recovered, inspector general says (WaPo) "The FBI had told the Justice Department that 'many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI's collection capabilities,' a Justice Department official told lawmakers in a letter earlier this month. As a result, the letter said, 'data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.''
NEWS:
- Why conservative magazines are more important than ever (WaPo) "These publications are highly unlikely to affect the course of Trump, but, by making plausible sense of this moment sooner rather than later, they may affect the course of his successors. As much as their contributors may differ in opinion or even dislike one another, what unites these magazines — and distinguishes them from right-wing outlets like Breitbart — is an almost quaint belief in debate as an instrument of enlightenment rather than as a mere tool of political warfare. With so many Americans today engaged in partisan war, any publication with a commitment to honesty in argument becomes a potential peacemaker. It also becomes an indispensable forum for working out which ideas merit a fight in the first place. ...perhaps what matters more is whether they’ll manage to influence the political discussion writ large."
- Oil Boom Gives the U.S. a New Edge in Energy and Diplomacy (NYT) "This year, the United States is expected to surpass Saudi Arabia and to rival Russia as the world’s leader, with record output of over 10 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. The results go far beyond the economic, offering Washington strategic weapons once unthinkable. The United States and its allies now have a supply cushion at a time when political turmoil in Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria is threatening to interrupt flows to markets. The new energy power also relieves pressure on Washington to act militarily if tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia break out into war. And it gives Washington the leeway to apply sanctions on other producers — as it has in Russia, and may in Iran or Venezuela — with far less risk to the global economy."
- Be like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett: If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible (Quartz) "In short, we can see how at a fundamental level knowledge is gradually becoming its own important and unique form of currency. In other words, knowledge is the new money. Similar to money, knowledge often serves as a medium of exchange and store of value."
SPORTS:
- OTL: Spartan secrets extend far beyond Larry Nassar (ESPN) "...an Outside the Lines investigation has found a pattern of widespread denial, inaction and information suppression of such allegations by officials ranging from campus police to the Spartan athletic department... Since [MSU head football coach Mark] Dantonio's tenure began in 2007, at least 16 MSU football players have been accused of sexual assault or violence against women, according to interviews and public records..."
TECHNOLOGY:
- ‘Never get high on your own supply’ – why social media bosses don’t use social media (Guardian) "I used to look at the heads of the social networks and get annoyed that they didn’t understand their own sites. Regular users encounter bugs, abuse or bad design decisions that the executives could never understand without using the sites themselves. How, I would wonder, could they build the best service possible if they didn’t use their networks like normal people? Now, I wonder something else: what do they know that we don’t?"
TRUMPTEL:
- I've Watched Trump Testify Under Oath. It Isn't Pretty. (Bloomberg) "If the president goes mano-a-mano with Mueller, the outcome of that encounter is likely to hinge on how careful, credible and capable he is under oath. Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, 'TrumpNation,' alleging that the book misrepresented his business record and understated his wealth. Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals."
- Trump Launched Campaign to Discredit Potential FBI Witnesses (Foreign Policy) "The FBI officials Trump has targeted are Andrew McCabe, the current deputy FBI director and who was briefly acting FBI director after Comey’s firing; Jim Rybicki, Comey’s chief of staff and senior counselor; and James Baker, formerly the FBI’s general counsel. That Trump may have been motivated to attack specific FBI officials because they were potential witnesses against him could demonstrate potential intent that would bolster an obstruction of justice case."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Schools and lockers: No longer the right combination (WaPo) "... lockers have all but been abandoned. The trend has expanded so rapidly and widely that schools are now removing individual student lockers from their hallways, and builders and designers for many new high schools don't even include them in their plans. So, why the change? Anyone with a high schooler in their orbit knows that students now want everything they own with them all of the time. For most students, the issue is time and convenience. Lockers are also being left in the dust because schools offer more classes that use online textbooks, or they keep textbooks in the classroom to be shared by students. And the very nature of school is changing."
- 50 Cent realizes he’s a Bitcoin millionaire thanks to sales of a 2014 album (TechCrunch) "On the date of the album’s launch, one bitcoin was worth $657. If reports of his 700 bitcoin haul are accurate, then 50 made around $460,000 in sales at the time — not bad. Today, that same amount of bitcoin is worth $7,770,000."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Human Touch Mokita Remix (Betty Who, Mokita)
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