- As domestic abuse claims roil the White House, Trump says lives are being ruined ‘by a mere allegation’ (WaPo) "Trump's message also appeared to be a response to the larger national reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse of power, which has seen victims, mostly women, come forward to accuse dozens of prominent men in business, politics, entertainment and other realms. Trump has said almost nothing previously about the 'me too' movement, which has led to a reexamination of power dynamics and expectations for men and women in the workplace."
- Trump, Saying ‘Mere Allegation’ Ruins Lives, Appears to Doubt #MeToo Movement (NYT) "Mr. Trump’s tweet also echoed his response last year to allegations that Roy S. Moore, the Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Alabama, had molested underage girls. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Moore, who lost the campaign to the Democrat, Doug Jones."
- G.O.P. Squirms as Trump Veers Off Script With Abuse Remarks (NYT) "Republican congressional leaders and strategists have pleaded with lawmakers and candidates to stay focused on economic growth and December’s tax cuts, a message they hope will be their salvation before the elections in November. Then the president jumped into the controversy roiling over a former top aide accused by two former wives of abuse, defending him and offering no denunciation even for the idea of assaulting women. And the president went even further on Saturday, appearing to ignore victims of sexual abuse and seeming to raise doubts about the broader #MeToo movement. The president’s seeming indifference to those claims of abuse infuriated Republicans, who were already confronting a surge of activism from Democratic women driven to protest, raise money and run for office because of their fervent opposition to Mr. Trump."
- Before There Was #MeToo, There Was Mary Cunningham (NYT) "She decided to turn down Wall Street and move to Southfield, Mich., where Bendix was based. She started as Mr. Agee’s executive assistant and was soon promoted to vice president of strategic planning, a position that made Ms. Cunningham one of the highest-ranking female executives in the country. Ms. Cunningham, one of the first women ever to hold a leadership role at a Fortune 100 company, became the subject of a media frenzy in the early 1980s amid speculation and innuendo that she had slept her way to the top of Bendix Corporation, the auto parts manufacturer that Mr. Agee then helmed. (In a later article about that scandal, Forbes referred to Ms. Cunningham as 'undeniably appealing.') Ms. Cunningham has always said the two didn’t have a romantic relationship until years later, after she left Bendix. For his part, Mr. Agee said he had promoted the bright Harvard M.B.A. solely on her abilities."
- How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Changing Our Lives — and Our Politics (NY Mag) "But the real reason to panic may be that the contemporary relationship market is producing two things in great abundance: highly educated single women and less-educated, low-status single men. This trend is not caused by cheap sex — the real culprit is more likely women’s relative rise and men’s failure to adjust to the new economy — but has been exacerbated by cheap sex’s devaluation of marriage and fertility."
- How Silicon Valley Came to Be a Land of ‘Bros’ (NYT) "In 'Brotopia,' which hits book stores on Feb. 6, the secret sex parties are just a symptom of a much deeper problem that Silicon Valley’s tech industry has with its treatment of women. Ms. Chang’s examination of that issue coincides with the #MeToo moment and the broader debate about gender equality that it has sparked."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- One Cause of Market Turbulence: Computer-Driven Index Funds (NYT) "After propelling the market to historic highs, passive investment strategies — which follow a simple set of rules and are carried out by sophisticated computer programs, not humans — are among the factors fueling the market’s recent plunge. Indexing giants like BlackRock and Vanguard now own vast swaths of the market and are the largest shareholders in just about all the major companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index."
- Warren Buffett's playbook for a stock market correction (USAToday) "Corrections are normal and unpredictable. Nobody -- not analysts, the media, or even Buffett himself -- can tell you with accuracy when one will occur. Don't get upset or afraid when the market drops. Instead, recognize what is really happening from a long-term perspective -- the stock market is going 'on sale.' Whatever you do, don't panic and sell your stocks. When you see others panicking and headlines that say the market is in a tailspin, that's the time to look for bargains. Always try to keep some cash on hand, so you're able to take advantage of the bargains offered by market corrections."
- The Era of Fiscal Austerity Is Over. Here’s What Big Deficits Mean for the Economy. (NYT) "The trillion dollar question is how it will affect the economy. In the short run, expect some of the strongest economic growth the country has experienced in years, and some subtle but real benefits from a higher supply of Treasury bonds in a world that is thirsty for them. In the medium run, there is now more risk of surging inflation and higher interest rates — fears that were behind a steep stock market sell-off in the last two weeks. In the long run, the United States risks two grave problems. It may find itself with less flexibility to combat the next recession or unexpected crisis. And higher interest payments could prove a burden on the federal Treasury and on economic growth. This is particularly true given that the ballooning debt comes at a time when the economy is already strong and the costs of paying retirement benefits for baby boomers is starting to mount. It’s hard to overstate how abrupt the shift has been."
- A 100-Year Curse on GOP Presidents Might Explain Why Stocks Are Tumbling (Time) "'Every Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt has experienced a recession in his first two years in office,' says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for the research firm CFRA. Since stocks are a forward-looking gauge of the health of the economy — the market has historically begun to slide 7 1/2 months before the onset of a recession — this crash could be Wall Street’s way of saying it expects a recession later this year, Donald Trump’s second year in office. Right now, few economists think a recession is lurking, as jobs are being created at a healthy clip, wages are starting to lift, and economic activity seems to be accelerating, not slowing down."
NEWS:
- Rob Porter Is a National Security Scandal, Too (Politico) "As staff secretary, Porter held one of the most important, and under-appreciated, positions at the White House. The staff secretary normally is responsible for managing all information that flows to the president – usually including the secrets known only to a small handful of people – principally, President Trump and Chiefs of Staff Priebus and Kelly, and National Security Advisers Michael Flynn and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. News reports indicate that Porter was granted an 'interim security clearance.' If an employee receives an interim security clearance, he or she is allowed by law to serve in positions designated 'National Security/ Non-Critical Sensitive' or 'National Security/Critical Sensitive.' They cannot, however, be given a 'Special Sensitive' job, which requires a different level of clearance: Top Secret/Special Compartmentalized Information – also known as TS/SCI or TS/CodeWord. What does that mean? The staff secretary is the person who manages the paper flow to the Oval Office. It is hard to imagine that person does not have TS/SCI level clearance, as that would require the NSC staff to navigate around the staff secretary, rather than thru him/her."
- Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings (WaPo) "Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred 'style of learning,' according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m. Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the 'homework' that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable. The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon" and Dan Coats’s over-the-top defense of Trump’s intelligence briefings (WaPo)
- U.S. Spies, Seeking to Retrieve Cyberweapons, Paid Russian Peddling Trump Secrets (NYT) "After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump... Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian... But instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data."
- As Britain Stumbles Over ‘Brexit,’ Support Grows for 2nd Vote (NYT) "Since a majority of Britons voted narrowly to leave the bloc more than 18 months ago, most politicians have treated a withdrawal, known as Brexit, as inviolable. Even amid signs of a slowing economy, few saw signs of a shift in public opinion. Until now. As the political stalemate drags on, and with business leaders issuing ever more urgent alarms about the threats to the economy, growing public doubts are beginning to register in some opinion polls. And opponents of Brexit are quietly cultivating what they see as that rising sentiment in their campaign to soften, if not reverse, the whole process."
- Fox News Removes a Top Executive’s Column on Olympic Team Diversity (NYT) "The column suggested, sarcastically, that the United States Olympic Committee adopt a new motto: 'Darker, Gayer, Different.' Its headline, 'In Olympics, let’s focus on the winner of the race — not the race of the winner,' prefaced a critique of American Olympic officials who had praised the diversity of the squad headed to this month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea."
- As DeVos Approves Education Plans, She Finds Skeptics in G.O.P. Governors (NYT) "The majority of states now have the green light from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to begin implementing a sweeping federal education law passed in 2015 to replace the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law. The law required every state education department to submit a plan. Ms. DeVos has approved 35 plans... Of those 35, six are from states where the governor refused to sign on... Three others that did not get a governor’s endorsement... Of the nine disputed plans, seven are opposed by Republican governors."
SCIENCE:
- Is Cape Town Thirsty Enough to Drink Seawater? (Wired) "If current projections hold, the South African city of 4 million will run out of water on May 11, known as Day Zero. The irony is that a whole sea of water laps at the shores of the coastal city. But if you wanted to drink it, you’d have to build an expensive, energy-intensive desalination facility. Cape Town is indeed rushing to bring such projects online, at least on a temporary basis, and in so doing is exposing a dire reality: Pockets of humanity around the world may have to rely on the sea to survive drought in the very near future. Because it’s likely that climate change is exacerbating this drought."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Kentucky Rushes to Remake Medicaid as Other States Prepare to Follow (NYT) "...Kentucky is rushing to roll out its first-in-the-nation plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job... Such restrictions are central to Republican efforts to profoundly change Medicaid... The ballooning deficits created by the budget deal that President Trump signed into law Friday and the recent tax bill are likely to add urgency to the party’s attempts to wring savings from entitlement programs."
SPORTS:
- Why baseball owners won’t pay up for free agents (WaPo) "The real explanation is that teams are intelligently aligning their behavior with changing information. Baseball, like the American economy generally in this era of high-quantity, high-velocity information, is more efficient at pricing assets and allocating resources than it was until recently. This intensified dynamic has winners and losers, but many more of the former than the latter. And to oppose this churning, in the national pastime or the nation itself, is to oppose the application of informed intelligence."
- Microsoft is trying to kill passwords. It can’t happen soon enough. (WaPo) "... the company said the next test version of its stripped-down Windows 10 S operating system will strip out passwords... But killing the password altogether will take more work and time — and the problem may get worse before it gets better. Yet while there is widespread agreement that passwords are awful, they linger like roaches in the corners of our digital lives. Alternatives such as fingerprint scans, retinal scans, voice recognition and other technologies can be hard for companies — particularly non-tech companies — to implement well."
- Welcome to the Post-Text Future (NYT) "If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London (New Yorker) "Every large city in the world has fatbergs. They are horrible lumps of fat and grease, often knitted together with wet wipes, condoms, and other bits of plastic junk."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Do What You Do (Junior J & Bright Sparks)
Email topofthenews1@gmail.com... I love the feedback, corrections, suggestions, and tips. Thank you...
- Fox News Removes a Top Executive’s Column on Olympic Team Diversity (NYT) "The column suggested, sarcastically, that the United States Olympic Committee adopt a new motto: 'Darker, Gayer, Different.' Its headline, 'In Olympics, let’s focus on the winner of the race — not the race of the winner,' prefaced a critique of American Olympic officials who had praised the diversity of the squad headed to this month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea."
- As DeVos Approves Education Plans, She Finds Skeptics in G.O.P. Governors (NYT) "The majority of states now have the green light from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to begin implementing a sweeping federal education law passed in 2015 to replace the much-maligned No Child Left Behind law. The law required every state education department to submit a plan. Ms. DeVos has approved 35 plans... Of those 35, six are from states where the governor refused to sign on... Three others that did not get a governor’s endorsement... Of the nine disputed plans, seven are opposed by Republican governors."
SCIENCE:
- Is Cape Town Thirsty Enough to Drink Seawater? (Wired) "If current projections hold, the South African city of 4 million will run out of water on May 11, known as Day Zero. The irony is that a whole sea of water laps at the shores of the coastal city. But if you wanted to drink it, you’d have to build an expensive, energy-intensive desalination facility. Cape Town is indeed rushing to bring such projects online, at least on a temporary basis, and in so doing is exposing a dire reality: Pockets of humanity around the world may have to rely on the sea to survive drought in the very near future. Because it’s likely that climate change is exacerbating this drought."
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE:
- Kentucky Rushes to Remake Medicaid as Other States Prepare to Follow (NYT) "...Kentucky is rushing to roll out its first-in-the-nation plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job... Such restrictions are central to Republican efforts to profoundly change Medicaid... The ballooning deficits created by the budget deal that President Trump signed into law Friday and the recent tax bill are likely to add urgency to the party’s attempts to wring savings from entitlement programs."
SPORTS:
- Why baseball owners won’t pay up for free agents (WaPo) "The real explanation is that teams are intelligently aligning their behavior with changing information. Baseball, like the American economy generally in this era of high-quantity, high-velocity information, is more efficient at pricing assets and allocating resources than it was until recently. This intensified dynamic has winners and losers, but many more of the former than the latter. And to oppose this churning, in the national pastime or the nation itself, is to oppose the application of informed intelligence."
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Physics of SpaceX's Wicked Double Booster Landing (Wired) "You might think the coolest part of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test was the Tesla with a spaceman riding inside, flying out into space. Yeah, sure, that part was cool. But for me, the best part was this footage of the Heavy's two side boosters returning to the launch pad."
- The Physics of SpaceX's Wicked Double Booster Landing (Wired) "You might think the coolest part of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test was the Tesla with a spaceman riding inside, flying out into space. Yeah, sure, that part was cool. But for me, the best part was this footage of the Heavy's two side boosters returning to the launch pad."
Booster Landing
Booster Landing (w/ Sonic Boom)
- Welcome to the Post-Text Future (NYT) "If you probe those currents and look ahead to the coming year online, one truth becomes clear. The defining narrative of our online moment concerns the decline of text, and the exploding reach and power of audio and video."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A Fatberg’s Journey from the Sewer to the Museum of London (New Yorker) "Every large city in the world has fatbergs. They are horrible lumps of fat and grease, often knitted together with wet wipes, condoms, and other bits of plastic junk."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Do What You Do (Junior J & Bright Sparks)
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