THE SOURCES BEING BOLTON AND PENCE:

Three officials said Bolton argued against Trump calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25 because he was concerned the president wasn't coordinating with advisers on what to say and might air personal grievances. The officials declined to say whether that included concerns that Trump might raise questions about his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Ukraine.

Bolton was among the senior members of the president's national security team, including Vice President Mike Pence, who did not listen in on the Zelenskiy call, officials said.

BLOWN:

Head-of-state phone calls are a big-ticket item, scheduled rarely, and meant to open the way for a significant new agenda, to close a tough deal, or to manage a crisis that affects America's national security. Preparation for such calls is carefully managed, drawing on experts across the government's national-security community to winnow down the agenda to issues that only the president can litigate, coordinate talking points and positions among colleagues, and ensure that there will be no surprises from foreign counterparts.

The transcript of President Donald Trump's call with the Ukrainian president, too, looks eerily familiar. Note takers in the White House Situation Room collaborate with NSC directors and use speech-to-text software to pull together a working transcript that chronicles the call, a great resource when listening to translations. NSC and press experts quickly draft a public read-out of the discussion, attempting to shaping the message for a range of audiences. Summaries and records of presidential calls are in high demand among government officials, who use them as a map to plan their next steps. They are usually shared briefly and informally among colleagues and then more formally at senior-leader levels, when memos for the record are complete. Distribution of such memos may be constrained by the sensitivity of negotiations or if they make reference to high-risk security activities, but it is generally accepted that sharing as much as possible about such discussions is beneficial and desirable.

The other elements of the discussion are, taken on their own, also not unusual. Career ambassadors can play a stabilizing role in delivering policy messages, bridging the gap between foreign governments and American administrations. Special envoys--including private citizens--occupy a trickier place in the execution of foreign-policy portfolios, sometimes offering an outlet for tough negotiations and other times awkwardly making waves without bureaucratic resources or sway. Foreign assistance can be usefully conditioned on progress in governance, human rights, security, and cooperation. And high-profile travel and bilateral meetings can be a carrot--or a stick--for a rewarding partnership.

The whistle-blower's complaint is shocking because it offers all of these elements reflected in a warped fun-house mirror. Regardless of the machinations of his staff, Trump sought and conducted this phone call with the intent of executing personal and political business.

#ALLCOMEDYISCONSERVATIVE:

.@HillaryClinton trolls Trump as impeachment talk ramps up: "But my emails" https://t.co/eqTHb1WqEM

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 30, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Senator Mitch McConnell appeared to put to rest speculation that he would use his position to derail any impeachment effort by the Democratic-led House by avoiding a trial at all. [...]

Three House committees on Monday said a subpoena for documents had been sent to Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, had said on television that he asked the government of Ukraine to "target" former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a potential Democratic candidate to run against Trump in the 2020 election.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Wall Street Journal reported, something also likely to draw the attention of House investigators.

ONLY NIKKI GOT OUT UNCORRUPTED:

NEW: Attorney General Barr has held private meetings overseas w/ foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intel agencies' examination of Russian interference in the 2016 electionhttps://t.co/DsQZ2pJ1qa

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 30, 2019

PREVIOUS:

KIEV, Ukraine -- In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump's former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine's chief prosecutor.

The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United States financial and military aid, and keenly aware of Mr. Trump's distaste for the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign, some lawmakers say.

The decision to halt the investigations by an anticorruption prosecutor was handed down at a delicate moment for Ukraine, as the Trump administration was finalizing plans to sell the country sophisticated anti-tank missiles, called Javelins.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

President Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Attorney General William P. Barr gather information for a Justice Department inquiry that Mr. Trump hopes will discredit the Mueller investigation, according to two American officials with knowledge of the call.

The White House restricted access to the call's transcript to a small group of the president's aides, one of the officials said, an unusual decision that is similar to the handling of a July call with the Ukrainian president that is at the heart of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump. [...]

In making the request, Mr. Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. The F.B.I.'s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began after Australian officials told the bureau that the Russian government had made overtures to the Trump campaign about releasing political damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Australian officials shared that information after its top official in Britain met in London in May 2016 with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told the Australian about the Russian dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

PREPPING THE BOTS FOR THE DISAPPOINTMENT:

Former investigators who fear Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz will pull punches in his upcoming report on alleged FBI abuses point to his inquiry into the so-called tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2016.

HOW BIOLOGY INFECTED SCIENCE:

Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder talks about her book Lost in Math with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hossenfelder argues that the latest theories in physics have failed to find empirical confirmation. Particles that were predicted to be discovered by the mathematics have failed to show up. Whether or not there is a multiverse has no observable consequences. Hossenfelder argues that physicists have become overly enamored with the elegance and aesthetics of their theories and that using beauty to evaluate a model is unscientific. The conversation includes a discussion of similar challenges in economics.

DUDE, IT'S NOT A PROJECTION:

In interviews on Sunday talk shows, top GOP allies of the President repeated White House talking points -- or in the case of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, appeared to be reading directly from a prepared script. In an appearance on CBS' "60 Minutes," House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy was challenged for regurgitating White House talking points, though he denied having received them.

Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, and CNN's Jake Tapper got into a contentious exchange Sunday on "State of the Union" after the lawmaker made false and misleading claims about the unfolding Ukraine drama.

The Sunday appearances did little to quell the furor around Trump's behavior.

While they were in front of cameras without a strong rebuttal, Trump privately resisted appeals for help. He has dismissed talks of forming an impeachment response team, raging that talk of bringing former aides back to help him projected weakness.

TRUMPBOTS ON BRAND:

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) resigned, effective Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled hearing to change his plea to guilty in an insider trading case. [...]

Collins was the first congressmember to endorse President Trump's campaign and remained a strong supporter ever since.

IN THE ABSENCE OF IDEAS, THEY HAVE ONLY REACTION:

In a sane world, the reaction of Republicans to the "memorandum of telephone conversation" between President Trump and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, combined with the whistle-blower complaint filed by an intelligence officer describing a White House cover-up, would be similar to the response of Republicans after the release, on Aug. 5, 1974, of the "smoking gun" tape that finally broke the Nixon presidency. Republicans would begin to abandon Mr. Trump, with senior figures urging him in private and in public to resign.

This may be asking too much of Republicans, who have lost their way in the Trump era. One might hope that some of the party's elected officials would forcefully condemn the president on the grounds that there is now demonstrable evidence that he had crossed an ethical line and abused his power in ways even beyond what he had done previously, which was problematic enough.

But things are very different today than they were in the summer of '74. Mr. Trump was on to something when he famously said, during the 2016 campaign, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, O.K.? It's, like, incredible." What most people took to be hyperbole turned out to be closer to reality.

WEALTH IS LIBERATING:

We are currently sending money to 20,000 Kenyans in different communities. It's a randomised control trial, which means these 20,000 people are divided into three different groups. Those in the first group receive the basic income as a lump sum. In the second group, everyone 18 years old or older receives $22 per month for two years. Adults in the third group also receive $22 per month, but this time for twelve years. This experiment began a year and a half ago.

Both the scale and ambition of this project are truly massive. Now that you're 18 months in, do you have some preliminary results you could share?

We don't yet have statistical data, but we have already had many conversations with participants about how their basic incomes have impacted their lives, work, risk-taking, migration, financial planning, personal relationships, and even experiences with domestic violence.

In terms of work, we've been told that the basic income has given people their first feeling of what it's like to be an employed person. To feel what you and I feel when we earn money every month. And what they say is that for the first time, they're able to plan. They don't just spend money at the spur of the moment because it came, or live each day as it comes. They plan for their month, and they are even working harder because they realise that this money has given them a head start. They need more than just what the money can offer.

We have seen situations where recipients have moved from their original villages to small towns or lake sides to look for work. People who previously were grounded in their villages now say, 'You know what? I have some little money. I can travel. I can afford a house for $5, and so I can take the risk to stay in a neighbouring town and look for a job. And if I get that job, it can supplement what I'm doing.'

I remember one lady who, the moment she started receiving the basic income, left her baby with her mother. For six months she went to the nearest town and started a small business. That business grew, and today she has taken back her baby. This money gave her a head start in opening a small business, and now that business can take care of the two of them.

We also see parents taking their children to school, responding to their medical needs, including taking out government medical insurance so that they can better handle risks. It's as if basic income is giving people a new lease of life. I have seen them become vibrant, as if they're living life anew. Why? Because basic income has increased the number of meals people take in a day. Nutrition has improved across board.

JUST READ THE TRANSCRIPT AND IMPEACH (profanity alert):

Presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris told MSNBC the impeachment process won't take long because President Donald Trump has already confessed. 

"Here's the thing, Joy," Harris said during a phone interview with AM Joy's Joy Reid. "Basically, the president has confessed and there is evidence of consciousness of guilt which is, they tried to bury the transcript. We've got a transcript. I mean frankly, people have said to me you know 'do you think these hearings are going to take very long?' Not really because there's a whole lot of direct evidence including his virtual confession." 

Harris explained she is confident the House Democrats' impeachment process will be successful.

"So we just need to get on with it and not be distracted by the okie-doke and those people who would have us looking at the shiny thing over there," Harris said. 

DON'T SWEAT IT, BRO', HE'S INDEFENSIBLE:

McCarthy is asked about when Trump said, "I would like you to do us a favor though."

MCCARTHY: You just added another word.

PELLEY: No, it's in the transcript.

MCCARTHY: He said-"I'd like you to do a favor though"?

PELLEY: Yes, it's in the White House transcript. pic.twitter.com/Sc8Lsv25xX

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 30, 2019

WHEN YOU'RE LOSING AUSTRIA....:

THERE'S YOUR DONALD 2020 MOTTO...:

LAUGHINGSTOCK:

Amid a flurry of retweets commending conservative radio host Mark Levin's clash Sunday morning with Fox News's Ed Henry, President Trump retweeted a bot that substitutes the word "shark" for key words in his tweets and retweets.

THE ONLY CONSOLATION OF THE OFF-SEASON IS THAT IT'S WINTER:

You knew Madison Bumgarner was going to be involved in Bruce Bochy's final game as manager, even if the did not pitch.

This was even better.

In the fifth inning of Sunday's game against the Dodgers, Bumgarner lined out as a pinch-hitter against his longtime rival Clayton Kershaw, in a moment that surely was choreographed by the two managers.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts brought Kershaw in to pitch the fifth inning of a game Los Angeles led 5-0. Giants pitcher Enderson Franco was due to bat third. When Bumgarner emerged from the dugout instead, the Oracle Park fans went wild.

THE BUSH-SHAPED HOLE IN THE PARTY:

Donald Trump's nomination and election in 2016 have been portrayed as the fruition of the ideological and demographic trends within the Republican Party over the last three or four decades.  In reality, though, Trump's presidency represents a rejection of both conservative ideology and the pragmatic moderation, closely associated with Lincoln and rooted in the party's historic values, with which the Ripon Society had identified.

In no sense can it be said that Donald Trump's presidency is a Republican one, and there is little evidence that it will become so during his time in office.  Trump's disdain for the rule of law, constitutional checks and balances, and limits on executive power is a far cry from both historic Republican principles and classic conservative beliefs. Under Trump, appeals to division have replaced an instinct for unity, and the exercise of personal power has replaced respect for democratic norms and institutional integrity. 

Can "Republicanism," the set of principles that brought me to the party a half-century ago, be reconciled with the personality cult that the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump? How applicable is the past to the present and the future of the party? Do the fundamental and historic principles and values of Lincoln and of the founders of the Republican Party have any meaning and application to its current circumstances? And do the history and experiences of the Ripon Society have any bearing on these questions? 

In the short run, there seems little incentive for those who hold elective or appointive public office as Republicans to assert positions and principles contrary to those identified with Trump. Most Republicans are too fearful of Trump's power to assert positions inconsistent with his.

But in the long run, if the Republican Party is to sustain a competitive position in American politics, it will have to regain influence with younger generations of voters. The generational divide, augmented by the growing diversity of the electorate, is the greatest challenge to a post-Trump Republican Party.  

The Trump strategy -- which is almost certainly instinctive rather than deliberate -- has centered on building overwhelming support among older whites (particularly men) living in exurban and rural areas, in small cities and towns, in Southern and Mountain/Plains states, and the Rust Belt, who feel culturally and/or economically threatened. This strategy obviously has been successful for him and may well lead him to a second term. 

Demographically, however, the Trump approach does not seem sustainable. Time inevitably will take its toll on a shrinking Trump coalition. This will hold significant implications -- if not for Trump in 2020, then certainly for his successors and for the Republican Party.  

The values of the majority of young Americans seem clear: They seek education, skills, and opportunities to rise and prosper.  They are attracted to the growing major metropolitan regions of the country that are centers of innovation and of the emerging (often information-related) sectors of the American economy.  They are open to international engagement, enthusiastic about diversity, tolerant of differences, and committed to justice.  

Freedom, opportunity, and equality comprised the core of Lincoln's beliefs and were the principal motivations for the establishment of the Republican Party.  Lincoln held that the role of government was to assure opportunity for all Americans and guarantee equal protection before the law: Government was to be limited, but effective, and power, to be dispersed and restrained.  For Lincoln, as for the Founding Fathers, these core principles, inherent in the birth of the United States, made its survival essential to the future of liberal democracy everywhere.  Certainly these values have resonance with younger Americans, whose connection to the future Republican Party will be essential to its survival and influence. 

One of the surprises of the Trump era for me, personally, has been the discovery of common ground between moderates, such as myself, and principled "movement conservatives" with whom I have disputed for years.  We have found a shared commitment to the historic Republican and Lincolnian values of freedom, equality, and opportunity that motivated the Ripon Society and to the conservative principles of limited government and constrained executive power, the rule of law, the dispersion of authority to the levels of government closest to the people, and a belief in strong families and communities. 

These values are threatened by the Trump presidency, but seem essential to the long-term survival of the Republican Party.  The re-assertion of these shared and historic principles can allow a restored Republican Party to establish a position among new and emerging generations of Americans, rather than to rely upon those who are resistant to, and fearful of, change. However, the principles that motivate the Party must be given form and substance through realistic and relevant policies and programs that are responsive to the goals and interests of young people and to rapidly changing economic social, cultural, and environmental conditions. 

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Hannity guests claim George Soros' "dirty money" backed Ukraine whistleblower report: "This was a set-up" https://t.co/YjCrjG2gMA

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 29, 2019

NEVER BOYCOTT:

The potential for newfound influence has forced Arab citizens to confront a dilemma going back to Israel's founding: Working within the system might secure social gains for the marginalized community, but risks legitimizing a state that many feel relegates them to second-class status and oppresses their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We truly want to support Gantz," said Abed Abed, a food wholesaler in the Arab town of Nazareth in northern Israel. "But at the same time we are Arabs, and the people in Gaza and the West Bank are our brothers. If Gantz goes to war in Gaza tomorrow, then we can't be part of it. So we're in big trouble."

Israel's Arab citizens make up 20% of the population of 9 million and are descended from Palestinians who remained in Israel following the 1948 war that surrounded its creation. They have citizenship and the right to vote, they speak Hebrew and attend Israeli universities, and have increased their presence in a wide array of professions, from medicine to tech startups.

But they still face widespread discrimination, particularly when it comes to housing, and accuse Israeli authorities of ignoring crime in their communities, contributing to soaring homicide rates. They also have close family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and largely identify with the Palestinian cause.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Republicans can't win the White House without carrying Texas. And the firewall within the firewall state runs through places like Montgomery County, just north of Houston. For Republicans to survive 2020, they'll need pockets of suburbia where loyalties run deep -- so deep that voters shrug at the threat of impeachment and allegations that President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine for dirt on a rival and covered up his effort.

But there are other sorts of suburbs in Texas, like parts of Collin and Denton counties where spectacular growth has overturned the old order. Many have already slipped from the GOP's grasp --once reliable deposits of white conservative votes now transformed by demographic shifts and other forces.

Donald Trump's 9% spread over Hillary Clinton in Texas was the worst showing in decades for a GOP presidential nominee. Sen. Ted Cruz survived in 2018 with less than 51% of the vote, the closest call for any statewide Republican candidate in a quarter century.

Democrats showed surprising strength in Dallas suburbs, for instance, toppling a congressman and two state lawmakers.

"People, Democrat or Republican, they think this is a solidly red area. The demographics are changing. ... I look at my high school pictures, and it was very white here. That's definitely changed," said one of the freshman Democrats, state Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton. [...]

With New York and California safely in their column, Democrats could all but clinch the presidency if they can flip Texas. For the GOP, Montgomery County is critical to avert that.

Cruz survived by just 215,000 votes out of nearly 8.4 million last November. If he hadn't run up the score in Montgomery County, beating Beto O'Rourke by a 3-1 ratio and piling up 86,000 more votes, it would have been far closer.

This county alone accounted for 40% of his statewide margin of victory.

THE NATURE OF OCCUPATION:

Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip for three days for the celebration of the Jewish new year, according to the military on Sunday.

A military statement said all crossings between the Palestinian territories and Israel will be closed and entry to Israel for all Israeli-issued permit holders will be banned, except for humanitarian and medical cases.

CULTIVATED DERANGEMENT:

The Right's bubbled ecosystem in a nutshell. https://t.co/6M4REBFjNZ

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 29, 2019

OR JUST BE DONALD:

Former Trump homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said on ABC's "This Week" that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016 has been "debunked," and he condemned Rudy Giuliani for continuing to push it with President Trump.

"It's not only a conspiracy theory, it is completely debunked. I don't want to be glib about this matter, but last year, retired former Sen. Judd Gregg wrote a piece in The Hill magazine saying the 3 ways or the 5 ways to impeach one's self. And the 3rd way was to hire Rudy Giuliani. And at this point, I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing in repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again. And for clarity here, George, let me just again repeat that it has no validity."

REASON ENOUGH FOR THE rIGHT TO OPPOSE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE:

Kira Johnson's is not an isolated case. In the United States, 700 women a year die during pregnancy, in childbirth, or in the months that follow. No other industrial nation has such a high rate of maternal mortality. In Germany, the proportion is less than half this.

Black women in the United States are particularly at risk. All across the country, they are three times as likely to be affected as white women. In certain states, the color of a woman's skin has even greater influence over life and death. Washington DC comes right at the bottom of the ratings.

It is unclear why Kira Johnson was operated on too late for a second time. But there are many reasons why African-American women are disproportionately affected. One is the lack of access to health care, says Aza Nedhari. Nedhari works as a midwife and is the director of Mamatoto Village, a society that runs a birth center in the south of the city of Washington DC. There are four hospitals in Washington with maternity wards, but none are in the south, where the population is predominantly black.

Nedhari can look after only a few pregnant women in her birth center, and only if the pregnancy is without complications and the birth spontaneous, i.e. if the child is born naturally. The majority of expectant mothers, especially those with high-risk pregnancies, have to go to hospital for tests and to give birth. Nedhari explains that for most women in the south of the city, this means they have to travel for well over an hour each way. It's also often difficult for pregnant women with insecure jobs, or children, to attend all their check-ups.

Stacey D. Stewart is another who sees the lack of medical care -- and affordable care in particular -- as the reason why maternal mortality in the US as a whole is so high. Stewart, the president of the women's rights organization March of Dimes, is calling for the status of midwives and doulas to be enhanced so that mothers can receive better care in their home districts. Her organization also campaigns for treatments in the first 12 months after the birth to be covered by Medicaid and for insurance coverage not to end with the birth itself.

EVEN THE INCELS CAN'T OPPOSE IMPORTING SUPERMODELS:

IT'S A RICO PROSECUTION:

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

The title of the book, Schur said, was in itself a key inspiration. "The title, What We Owe to Each Other, stuck in my head and was a quietly, to me, radical idea, because it starts with this presupposition, which is: We owe things to each other. It's not, 'Do we owe things to each other?" It's 'This is what we owe to each other.'"

What We Owe to Each Other is an extended and at times technical defense of a theory Scanlon calls contractualism: in short, the idea is that to act morally is to abide by principles that no one could reasonably reject.

The meat of the theory appeals to Schur. "What he says in the book is a controversial position, but which I found to be very uncontroversial, which is that you ought to design rules that couldn't be rejected by the people that you're having to share the world with," he explains.

That seems quite immediately applicable in a show like The Good Place. The show at its root is about four people -- Eleanor, Chidi, Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto), and Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil) -- who have to form a society together in an afterlife they know isn't quite fair. It's not fair because both Eleanor and Jason (a small-time drug dealer from Jacksonville, Florida, who has been mistaken for a Buddhist monk named Jianyu Li) have both been misplaced, suggesting something's terribly amiss. And it's not fair because all four of them are turned into bundles of anxiety and doubt by the first season's end.

So the four of them -- and their non-human comrades Michael and Janet (D'Arcy Carden), a supernatural personal assistant ("Not a robot!") who knows all the information there is to know in the universe -- have to build their own kind of moral system to live by, one that doesn't necessarily abide by the rules being enforced by the authorities governing the afterlife, but which is born out of a sense of duty to each other as fellow human (and superhuman) beings.

Pamela Hieronymi, a UCLA professor, one-time Scanlon student, and avowed contractualist whom Schur has consulted periodically after cold-emailing her for advice, was brought in to talk to the writers before seasons two and four. She argues the contractualist roots of The Good Place come through most vividly in flashbacks to Eleanor's life on Earth. Her behavior is at its most loathsome when she's free riding: promising to serve as a designated driver to her colleagues, then drinking anyway, for instance.

"She's failing to live by contractualist reasoning there," Hieronymi concludes. . [...]

Setiya and Thompson both work in a philosophical tradition that argues that morality comes not from duties to other people but living up to what it is to be a good human being, cultivating and reflecting deeply human virtues. You can (very, very broadly) term this tradition neo-Aristotelianism, or virtue ethics.

Lately, Schur tells me he's been feeling more affinity with this brand of philosophy, and it's been reflected on The Good Place. "Scanlon's book has been a sort of spine of the entire show, but I would say that what you might call traditional Aristotelian virtue ethics have supplanted it in terms of what the show's overarching statement about the world is," Schur says.

"The idea that Mike keeps coming back to is that you try -- you won't always succeed but you try," says Todd May, a Clemson professor who started advising The Good Place in later seasons after Schur encountered his book Death (which argues life's finitude gives it meaning). "He says we're going to try but we're going to fail and the key is trying knowing you're going to fail."

CHARACTER IS DESTINY:

The example of the Roman republic, which often was on the minds of our Founding Fathers, illustrates just how dangerous that line of thinking can become. When the chief executive is the state, when the treasury is his gift for the giving, and when opposition to him is treason, then you no longer have a republic at all. It is always worth remembering that the Latin word from which the English title "emperor" comes means "commander in chief," a term that increasingly shapes how we view the presidency -- a shift away from republican norms for which conservatives bear some responsibility.

Virtue Inc. was a very big business in the 1990s, and the basic conservative case against Clinton and Clintonism was: Character matters. But the role of character is almost always misunderstood. It begins with a preference for having men of integrity serving in positions of power, but it does not end there. Character is functional in a democratic republic -- it is an eminently practical concern. One of the problems with having a man such as Donald Trump serving in the presidency is that in cases of moral ambiguity, it is impossible to extend to him the benefit of the doubt. There is no doubt at all about what manner of man he is.

To the extent that conservative media apologists for Trump have been sincere about anything other than the pursuit of market share, their case for Trump has been one of pragmatism. "He fights!" they said. "He gets things done!" If that were true, there would be a "big, beautiful wall" stretching from Texas to California.

Trump's character is in fact a practical liability, one that has seriously impeded his ability to pursue his agenda. His egoism, laziness, arrogance, and above all his habitual dishonesty are crippling. That is why he has been most effective on ordinary Republican priorities such as taxes and judges, those areas in which he can deputize such old swamp-dwelling dinosaurs as Mitch McConnell and the ladies and gentlemen of the Federalist Society to actually get things done. Left to his own devices, he's an ordinary Twitter troll and conspiracy nut with very little in the way of direction or a coherent policy agenda.

THE MOST VALUABLE LESSON THEY TEACH YOU IN LEGAL WRITING...:

I can't tell you what's going to happen to his blockbuster complaint about the president's behavior, but I can tell you that the whistle-blower's college writing instructor would be very proud of him.

As a writing instructor myself for 20 years, I look at the complaint and see a model of clear writing that offers important lessons for aspiring writers. Here are a few:

The whistle-blower gets right to the point.

We know right away what his purpose is and why we should care. He wastes no time on background or pleasantries before stating that he is writing to report "an 'urgent' concern." And then he immediately states it:

"In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election."

The whistle-blower uses subheadings to make sure we can connect the dots.

Most subheadings don't do much to enhance a document. The whistle-blower's subheadings do what the best subheadings do: They structure the complaint and provide a clear outline of what the document contains:

I. The 25 July Presidential phone call

II. Efforts to restrict access to records related to the call

III. Ongoing concerns

IV. Circumstances leading up to the 25 July Presidential phone call

The bonus of good subheadings is that they serve as a guide for writing the rest of the document. Even if you're writing something less formal, you can use subheadings to organize your document and then remove them before you share it.

The whistle-blower gets an A for his topic sentences.

Strong persuasive or expository writing features topic sentences that tell the reader what to focus on.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

"Just as the Bishop of Oxford refused to consider that he might be descended from an ape," Tom Holland writes cleverly in the introduction to his enormous new book Dominion, "So now are many in the West reluctant to contemplate that their values, and even their very lack of religious belief, might be traceable back to Christian origins." Holland's book is an attempt to argue that modern European civilization has its roots in Christianity, and that European culture is still "saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions."

Holland is a novelist and historian, whose elegant prose, good humor, and keen sense for an arresting image has been matched by a instinct for scholarly adventure. In his In the Shadow of the Sword, for example, Holland argued, in the face of some amount of Islamist intimidation, that the evidence for the historical truth of the origin stories of Islam is lacking. In Dominion he takes on the cheerful prejudices of secular liberalism. [...]

Christianity came not with a triumphant warrior wielding his sword, but with a traveling carpenter nailed to a cross; it came not with God as a distant and unimaginable force but with God as man, walking among his followers; it came not with promises of tribal dominance but with the hope of salvation across classes and races. [...]

Holland's stylistic talents add a great deal to the book. His portraits of Boniface, Luther, and Calvin are vivid, evocative, and free of romanticization or its opposite. Some of his accounts of episodes in religious history are a little superficial--he could have read Helen Andrews for a more complicated portrait of Bartolomé de las Casas, for example--but a sweeping historical narrative without superficial aspects would be like an orchard with no bruising on the fruit. It is only natural.

Some secularists write as if everything good about the modern world is the result of the Enlightenment and its promotion of the natural sciences, liberalism, and secularism. Holland has no time for this. Was the idea of the preeminent significance of the individual not rooted in the idea that each man is equal before God? Did the idea of the separation of church and state not go back to Augustine? Had Aquinas not said the Holy Scripture "naturally leads men to contemplate the celestial bodies"? One could mention previous Christian achievements on which liberalism depended, such as the promotion of monogamous unions and the prohibition of cousin marriage.

Holland is right about this, and does not neglect the dark corners of the Enlightenment: the graves of Frenchmen massacred by revolutionaries, the morbid fantasies and secular hubris that led to communism.

80-20 NATION:

Not coincidentally, 80% of Americans support a path to citizenship for immigrants. Donald's base is just the Nativists. https://t.co/iWapKExP2e

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 29, 2019

ALONG THE ANGLOSPHERE:

HANOVER -- Lord Dartmouth arrived by Dartmouth Coach to visit Dartmouth College last week.

The British businessman and former politician confessed his eyes "misted over" when he first glimpsed his hereditary title emblazoned on the side of the bus when he boarded it in Boston for the ride. He was taken aback again when he arrived in Hanover.

Back home in the county of Devon in southwest England, where Lord Dartmouth lives about 15 miles from the town of Dartmouth, "You only see the word 'Dartmouth' on road signs," he told an audience who had come to hear him deliver a public lecture on Brexit at the college Tuesday night.

"By contrast, you see 'Dartmouth' here everywhere," the British peer marveled.

Lord Dartmouth, the 10th Earl of Dartmouth -- known by his family name, William Legge -- made his fourth visit last week to the American college named after his ancestor, the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, who helped raise money for Eleazar Wheelock's plan to found a college to educate native Americans before falling out with Wheelock after the clergyman's plans changed to cater to the sons of colonists.

Even as a boy growing up, Legge was aware his family had a link to something far away in America: a copy of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine every month would plop through the mail slot in the door addressed to his father, the 9th Earl of Dartmouth, Legge recalled over a breakfast of corned beef hash, poached eggs, black beans and a side of mustard Wednesday morning at Lou's Restaurant & Bakery in Hanover.

SILLY GOOSE...:

Since the day he took office, Donald Trump has blamed a "deep state" for trying to undermine his Presidency. This morning, the American people have an opportunity to judge the so-called deep state themselves. A meticulous nine-page whistle-blower complaint was released this morning by the House Intelligence Committee. In the document, an unnamed U.S. intelligence official describes an apparent effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to pressure Ukraine to launch a criminal inquiry into a political rival, Joe Biden. Furthermore, the whistle-blower alleges that White House officials then covered up the President's actions. The White House and the Department of Justice then delayed Congress from seeing the whistle-blower complaint. In all, the actions taken by the President, White House officials, and the Justice Department surrounding the complaint threaten the checks and balances between the President and Congress, which define and protect American democracy.

WHAT ABOUT HER EMAILS!:

Donald Trump's administration is amping up an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, The Washington Post reported Saturday, breathing new life into a pet issue used by the president to rail against his opponent during the 2016 elections.

GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN:

The film version of The Fellowship of the Ring culminates with the death of Boromir, differing from Tolkien's book in which Boromir's death comes at the beginning of The Two Towers. It's a scene that has great sacramental significance in Tolkien's original work, the final exchange of words between Boromir and Aragorn reflecting the formal aspects of the sacrament of penance, in which the repentant sinner must have contrition for the sins he has committed, confessing them, and making satisfaction in terms of an act of penance. Boromir's final words contain all three of these prerequisites for a good and holy confession: "I tried to take the Ring from Frodo [confession]. I am sorry [contrition]. I have paid [satisfaction]." Aragorn's role is that of the priest, acting in persona Christi, who forgives the sin and bestows "peace" upon the penitent. Mr. Jackson deviates radically from Tolkien in this scene, replacing the sacramental "confession" with Boromir's fraternal "confession" that he would have followed Aragorn, proclaiming him to be "my brother, my captain, my king." Thus the allusive allegorical confession to God in Tolkien's original story is replaced with an explicit literal confession in Jackson's adaptation, expressive of Boromir's final reconciliation with the man (and king) whom he had wronged. The effect lacks the nuanced subtlety and the depth of theological applicability of Tolkien's original, but it has great power nonetheless in terms of its cathartic effect upon the viewer. Had Mr. Jackson chosen merely to reiterate Tolkien's words, it is very unlikely that the literary subtlety of the original text would have been grasped by the viewer, the allegorical significance being lost in the fast-paced medium of film, weakening the scene and depriving it of the catharsis that Mr. Jackson's reworking of it provides. As I pondered the artistic license that Mr. Jackson had granted himself in this most important of scenes from Tolkien's book, I realized that a film adaptation of a literary work should not be expected to follow the literal letter of the original but should seek faithfully to encapsulate and project its true and essential spirit because, and to co-opt the words of St. Paul, "the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life."

RUBEY:

By his own account, Giuliani's fixation with the country began last November when, he told Fox News, he was approached by a "very significant distinguished investigator". He has not named the investigator, though the whistleblower's complaint and other sources have illuminated close ties between the former mayor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who until last month was Ukraine's chief prosecutor, and Lutsenko's predecessor, Viktor Shokin.

As the complaint sets out, Giuliani met Lutsenko at least twice: in New York in January and in Warsaw the following month. The timing of those encounters could be important in the rapidly unfolding impeachment inquiry in Washington, as they came at a key moment for Lutsenko.

The prosecutor was facing growing criticism in Kyiv over stalled investigations into corruption. In November 2018, when Giuliani says he began to focus on the country, Lutsenko offered to resign after a young anti-corruption activist, Kateryna Handziuk, died from a sulphuric acid attack.

Lutsenko stayed in office. But the Guardian has learned that he began seeking a lifeline to the US, in the hope it might save him as difficulties back home intensified.

That lifeline was Giuliani.

"[Lutsenko] strongly needed some political ally, he believed that Giuliani could convey specific messages to Trump, and he created this message to become more interesting to the American establishment," said a law enforcement source familiar with the Giuliani-Lutsenko connection.

That Giuliani might have been fed information by Ukraine's then-top prosecutor that was adulterated to make it more appealing to Trump is a startling potential twist in the developing scandal.

According to the Guardian's source, Lutsenko appeared in conversation with Giuliani to have invented a "don't prosecute" list he claimed was given to him by the then US ambassador to Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch - news of which apparently made its way up to Trump.

Yovanovitch was abruptly removed in May after Giuliani pressed for changes in the embassy. Giuliani has since claimed without evidence that the "don't prosecute" list was part of a liberal anti-Trump conspiracy that included Yovanovitch and was bankrolled by the philanthropist George Soros.

The US state department has dismissed the claim as an "outright fabrication".

WHAT WE COULD REALLY USE RIGHT NOW...:

Next week we will begin to make public our statistical findings, showing how this sample of America's registered voters viewed the issues--and changed their views on the issues--after they got a chance to deliberate "under good conditions." But here are some things I learned during those four days that can't be fully captured by the numbers.

Ordinary Americans do not want to be as bitterly divided as their parties, political campaigns, and media are driving them to be. They are pained to the point of being traumatized by the current level of partisan polarization, and they are begging for relief. Reaching across all kinds of divides in Dallas--and not just in the group issue discussions but in deeply personal exchanges over dinner and drinks as well--they found some common ground. And they wanted to know why their politicians can't do so as well. A heavily tattooed older man from Colorado with a gray beard, long gray hair, and a tall cowboy hat, asked, "If 500 people can get together--from different ages, races, geographic regions, with conflicting opinions--why can't. . . .our Congress do that?"

Good conditions really do matter. Most of the small groups (which were about the size of a jury) spanned across America's partisan, ideological, racial, and other identity divides. But when they were able to sit together in a room and talk about issues as individuals, rather than as warring red and blue tribes, something changed. At least they came to understand where their fellow Americans were coming from. A retired schoolteacher from Mariposa County, California, told me: "It's become dangerous to express your view. But if you get people out of their places, with moderators and parameters. . . .[it's different.]" Said a middle-aged man from Wisconsin: "I didn't know who was a Democrat, who was a Republican, and who an independent. People just shared their views. That made it much easier to listen and have a respectful exchange."

Americans are fed up with the politics of personal destruction. Pretty soon into the experiment, it was clear to all of us that they just didn't want to hear it any more. The one time that a delegate went negative in the plenary--by alluding to Governor Mark Sanford's alibi of a hike on the Appalachian Trail to cover up his extramarital affair--his fellow delegates made their displeasure loudly known. "We've really liked the fact," said a woman from Ohio, that (save for that Sanford moment) "this hasn't focused on the personalities; its been about the issues. That breaks the norm."

Americans welcome a spirit of civility and bipartisanship. Over and over, people remarked to me about how refreshing it was to hear contending policy experts from different parties or ideological orientations discuss the issues in a friendly and mutually respectful way, without feeling compelled to always disagree, disparage, or destroy the other side. In fact, delegates were disarmed by the spirit of good will (and even occasional humor) that leavened the policy debate on taxes and the economy between Jared Bernstein (former economic policy advisor to Vice-President Biden) and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former chief economic advisor to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign), and by the significant common ground on foreign policy issues between former Obama White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and former George W. Bush national security staffer Kori Schake.

Ordinary people want to understand the issues better, and they appreciate balanced and accessible means to do so. Joyce, from Torrance, California, told me, "I'm leaving a changed person. I thought I was reasonably informed, but I wasn't. I heave learned so much about the issues that I didn't know. I will now follow them more closely."

People are ready to re-think their views in the face of fresh evidence. A young African American woman told me she had gravitated toward a more nuanced and gradual stance on the proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. "When I took the first survey," she said, "I thought it was a great idea. But you learn it could really hurt small business."

Americans have not given up on their democracy, and their faith in it can be restored. As they were leaving last Sunday, many said they were honored to have been chosen for the exercise, and that it had restored their faith and pride in American democracy. One was Jackie, an elementary school teacher from Tennessee. "I'm coming away much more informed, energized, and proud to be part of this country," she said. "This made me realize, we all want the same things, to be safe and valued, to have this be a great country."

Everybody wants to be treated with respect. And this ethic--constantly nurtured and reinforced from beginning to end in Dallas--was vital to the success of America in One Room. Heather, from University City, Missouri, told me, "I have had the first civil conversation about politics that I have had in a very long time. Because on Facebook, they just call me names." Reggie, an African-American from the San Diego area, said of his small group, "We all listened to one another and respected their viewpoints. In the end, that's all anybody wants, to be heard and understood."

A LOVE DEFERRED:

Can you hear the cha-cha-cha in The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"?
Or the mambo in Ray Charles' "What I'd Say"?
Or the Afro Cuban clave beat in "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley?

🔊 @altlatino examines the Cuban roots of rock 'n' roll. https://t.co/U0fkyZK4fm

— NPR (@NPR) September 28, 2019

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN AN ADMISSION OF GUILT?:

The sources say the President is not upset with Mulvaney for the White House releasing the summary of his July 25 call with Ukraine's leader or the whistleblower complaint because he had been convinced that it was necessary.

What Trump and other aides are frustrated with, according to the sources, is that Mulvaney did not have a strategy for defending and explaining the contents of those documents as soon as they were publicly released.

TRYING TO SAVE HIS OWN SKIN:

When Barr did learn of that call a few weeks later, he was "surprised and angry" to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani, a person familiar with Barr's thinking told The Associated Press. This person was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

There is a kind of karmic hilarity to the fact that in order to protect Trump, his staff centralized the materials that could doom him in a highly classified system that can't be erased or manipulated without a record of access by a very small number of people.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 28, 2019

HEY, SOMEONE HAS TO PROGRAM JOHN SOLOMON::

In the months before the steps taken in March on the politically explosive investigations sought by Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani had met at least twice with the man who would become a central figure in his efforts and a target of criticism in both countries: Mr. Lutsenko, 54, Ukraine's top prosecutor.

First at a meeting in New York and later in Warsaw, Mr. Giuliani pushed Mr. Lutsenko for information about -- and investigations into -- a pair of cases of keen interest to his client.

They included the Bidens' activities in Ukraine and the release during the 2016 campaign of incriminating records about Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's campaign chairman. Mr. Giuliani said early this year he had become increasingly convinced that the Manafort records were doctored and disseminated by critics of Mr. Trump to sabotage his campaign, and later used to spur the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

No evidence supports this idea and Mr. Manafort's own retroactive filings under the Foreign Agent Registration Act corroborated the Ukrainian documents, which also matched financial records in the United States.

Still, it was not long before Mr. Trump, sensitive to any questions about the legitimacy of his 2016 victory, began echoing Mr. Giuliani's language about what they viewed as the Ukrainian origins of the Russia investigation.

But Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani had also taken a growing interest in the role played by Mr. Biden, as vice president, in the dismissal of a previous Ukrainian prosecutor who had oversight of investigations into an oligarch who had served in a previous Ukrainian government and whose company had employed Hunter Biden. No evidence has surfaced that the former vice president intentionally tried to help his son by pressing for the dismissal of that prosecutor, whose ouster was being sought by other Western governments and institutions concerned about corruption in the Ukrainian government.

In their first meeting, in January, Mr. Lutsenko later told people, Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Trump and excitedly briefed him on the discussions. And once Mr. Lutsenko's office took procedural steps to advance investigations involving the Manafort records and the oligarch linked to Hunter Biden, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump and their allies aggressively promoted stories about the developments to conservative journalists at home, further turning a foreign government's action to the president's advantage.

"As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges," Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter in March, echoing the headline of one of the first such pieces by a Trump-friendly journalist.

IT'S ONLY OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE!:

[H]ere's where Friday night's Washington Post story perhaps magnifies the Ukraine scandal: The report, by Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima, alleges that there is a memorandum summarizing the White House meeting  on May 10, 2017, between Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a meeting at which Trump revealed highly classified information that exposed a foreign agent, and at which he also told Lavrov and Kislyak  that firing FBI Director James B. Comey the previous day had relieved "great pressure" on him.

The Post goes on to note that "it is not clear whether a memo documenting the May 10, 2017, meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was placed into that system, but the three former officials said it was restricted to a very small number of people." Here's the problem: That May 10 2017 White House meeting was the subject of intense scrutiny by the Mueller probe, because it went directly to the question of why Comey was fired. Page 71 of the second volume of the Mueller Report notes that "In the morning on May 10, 2017, President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office." The footnote cites to a White House Document entitled "Working Visit with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia" which is dated 5/9/17, the day before the meeting, and to an email (5/9/17 White House Document, "Working Visit with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia"); SCR08_001274 (5/10/17 Email, Ciaramella to Kelly et al.).  That's the only document that seems to have been produced in reference to the May 10 meeting. There is confirmation of Trump's remarks about Comey's firing being a relief from Sean Spicer and Hope Hicks.

That's it. The May 10 meeting is supported by an email. Now the question becomes, if there was a memorandum of that meeting, how is it possible that it was not produced to Mueller?

THEY'LL HAVE THE TEAM T-SHIRTS PRINTED BY NIGHTFALL:

THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

The former New Jersey police chief caught on recordings making hateful remarks against African Americans once shared his thoughts about the 2016 election while discussing the arrest of a black suspect.

"I'm telling you, you know what, Donald Trump is the last hope for white people, cause Hillary will give it to all the minorities to get a vote," former Bordentown Township Chief Frank Nucera said, according to a transcript displayed at trial. "That's the truth! I'm telling you."

Nucera's federal trial on charges of hate crime assault and lying to the FBI entered its third day Wednesday with more testimony from the police K-9 sergeant who made dozens of recordings of his former chief.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

I received a note from my old friend Larry Shackley, a longtime NR reader and a great admirer of P. G. Wodehouse. In fact, Larry is reading through the complete Wodehouse -- complete -- right now. He came across this statement from the writer in 1956. It sounds awfully present-day, doesn't it?

"Humorists have been scared out of the business by the touchiness now prevailing in every section of the community. Wherever you look, on every shoulder there is a chip, in every eye a cold glitter warning you, if you know what is good for you, not to start anything."

WHEN gOD OUTGREW yAHWEH:

In a small Jerusalem study bursting with books, an affable professor, cap on his head and white beard covering much of his face, has found the formula to end a centuries-old controversy. If he's right, history books will require rewriting and sermons in churches around the world will have to be rethought. "It will have far-reaching implications for relations between Jews and Christians," Israel Knohl tells me when we meet in his office at the Shalom Hartman Institute, in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood.

Bible scholar Knohl, 67, specializes in finding unconventional explanations for fateful issues and has no compunctions about angering his colleagues along the way. Earlier studies by the religiously observant holder of the Yehezkel Kaufmann Chair in Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have sparked furious debate, transcending the confines of academia. This time, the subject is more highly charged than ever: the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. [...]

Jesus' trial and crucifixion, he maintains, constitute a "dramatic and decisive moment" in the history of the Jewish people and of Western culture as a whole. It is the moment at which the two approaches - the anti-messianic and the messianic - meet in an unavoidable collision, whose impact is still felt today.

Jesus was apparently born and raised in Nazareth. His name (Yeshua or Yeshu, in Hebrew) signified the anticipation of yeshua, salvation or redemption. As a young man, he was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, who similarly immersed thousands of people who flocked to him in order to confess their sins, repent and be purified. The New Testament relates that during his baptism, Jesus heard a voice saying, "Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased," and the holy spirit descended on him like a dove.

Subsequently, in a Nazareth synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus recites verses from the Book of Isaiah that begin, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me," and tells the worshippers, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:18-21). According to Knohl, in his deeds, Jesus "continued the messianic biblical tradition" and supported his words with references from the Hebrew Bible about the image of the Messiah.

Afterward, in Jerusalem on Passover, Jesus enters the Temple courtyard, chases away the buyers and sellers and the peddlers of doves (which were used for sacrifices), and overturns the tables of the money changers. This is an affront to ritual, which causes a tumult in the Temple and infuriates the priests.

Why was he not arrested immediately after this act?

Knohl: "Many among the Jewish people hoped he would prove himself to be the Messiah, who would redeem the people and restore its freedom. He enjoyed great public sympathy. The people were fond of him, cheered him on, supported and protected him."

Thus Jesus was able to return to the Temple courtyard on a later occasion and to speak publicly. His principal argument was extreme: The Messiah, whose advent the people awaited, is not a descendant of David, as everyone believed until then. As such, Jesus solved the problem of his own lineage, as one who was not descended from the House of David and was a pretender to the messianic crown. In addition, he presented a new model of the Messiah: Whereas the disciples who followed him clung to the prevailing belief in a triumphant warrior Messiah and expected him to deliver the people from Roman rule, Jesus saw himself as a suffering, nonviolent, poor and weak Messiah.

This position would seem to be at odds with the general approach found in the Hebrew Bible, according to which God is above suffering, which is solely a human attribute. According to that description, it follows that if the Messiah is a quasi-divine figure, it wasn't possible for him to suffer, as Jesus claimed. However, Knohl looked for and found evidence of divine suffering in other sources, and explains that, "The portrait of the divinity suffering with his people appeared in Jewish tradition before the birth of Christianity."

In support of this thesis, the scholar cites Isaiah 63:9: "In all their afflictions he was afflicted." The Hebrew text emends the word lo [spelled lamed aleph, meaning "not"] to lo [lamed vav, meaning "to him"], which is very significant in this context. According to the emended version - whose date is unknown - God is regretful, and shares in Israel's suffering. For the first time, the image of a suffering God enters the Bible, a concept previously foreign to the biblical way of thought.

OXYMORONIC:

ONE OF THE GREAT PERVERSITIES in American politics today is that we see Christian leaders taking their cues from Donald Trump, rather than the other way around.

And the perfect example of this inversion--the archetype of the Trumpian-Christian--is Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Unlike his late father, Jerry Falwell Sr., who founded Liberty University in 1971 and the Moral Majority in 1979, the junior Falwell is not a reverend. His background is in real estate development. But because of his famous name and his perch at the top of a large and prominent Baptist-founded college, his support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries was seen as a key turning point in the campaign. It came at a time when Texas Senator Ted Cruz had been expecting Falwell's endorsement and when Cruz seemed to be emerging as the consensus candidate for conservative Christians.

Falwell, of course, has been steadfast in his devotion to the president ever since. Trump accepted an invitation to speak at Liberty's commencement ceremony in May of 2017. And the intervening months have made one thing clear: mingling with Christians makes no impression whatsoever on Trump. But Trump seems to have become a role model for his Christian admirers. You can see the dynamic play out in an uncanny way in Falwell's recent life and times.

These times have lately brought some unusual tribulations. The roots of the current troubles go back to 2012, when Falwell and his wife Becki met a "pool boy" at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida. They struck up some sort of relationship with him. They decided to back him in a real estate investment involving a "gay-friendly" Miami hostel, which also involved their son Trey, who was then twenty-three. Eventually there was a lawsuit over the financing of the hostel. As several news outlets later reported, there were supposedly racy photos of Becki Falwell circulating that may have been used as leverage in the legal battles. (Falwell has denied the existence of compromising photos "of me," but in June reporters at the Miami Herald said they had seen three photographs, adding: "They are images not of Falwell, but of his wife in various stages of undress.")

One of the earliest probes into the Florida real estate deals was written in August of 2017 for Politico Magazine by Brandon Ambrosino, a graduate of Liberty University. Ambrosino has cultivated sources at Liberty who are displeased with Falwell's leadership. Earlier this month, Ambrosino returned to Politico with a follow-up investigation into the way Falwell runs Liberty University. He detailed "how Falwell presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains." He included new revelations about "Falwell's decision to hire his son Trey's company to manage a shopping center owned by the university, Falwell's advocacy for loans given by the university to his friends, and Falwell's awarding university contracts to businesses owned by his friends."

And to make matters worse, Reuters reported in August that Falwell had also made a sweetheart real estate deal with a young "personal trainer" the Falwells had been working out with. Falwell agreed to sell an eighteen-acre sports facility owned by Liberty to the trainer, a Liberty grad, and then financed the deal so that the trainer didn't have to put up his own money.

As such reports received national press attention, you could watch Falwell's reaction and almost see the thought bubble above his head: "What would Donald do?"

...AND CHEAPER...:

Backers of nuclear fusion believe it is the fuel source of the future as it basically turns hydrogen in sea water into usable electricity - with no radioactive waste and no emissions. Last night Boris Johnson announced the Government will fund the world's first nuclear fusion plant. The £220m investment will build on work already being done in Britain - the country houses the world's largest nuclear fusion research experiment, in Culham, Oxfordshire and Mr Johnson visited the facility within days of taking office.

Many feared lack of investment meant the USA and South Korea were leaving Britain in their technological wake.

Whoever successfully scales up nuclear fusion could licence the technology across the globe as the new power source will be worth billions.

Mr Johnson has pledged to pump an initial £220million into the project and the Government hopes to build the world's first nuclear fusion plant by 2040.

Fusion power utilises the technology used in the hydrogen bomb and aims to squeeze hydrogen atoms together to make helium, which creates vast amounts of energy.

HE'S BILL, NOT DICK:

The most damning evidence came from the president himself. It centers around a phone call with the president of Ukraine in which Trump raises the issue of investigating the son of presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and the implication of Trump's words is clear as day. He asks for an investigation that would benefit him politically and has nothing to do with legitimate U.S. interests, and he brings it up repeatedly, including immediately upon the Ukrainian president mentioning the need for U.S. security aid.

This is an impeachable offense. Republicans spent Wednesday arguing there was no explicit quid pro quo, but there is seemingly no line the president can cross that would inspire them to put the public good ahead of politics. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, joined by the entirety of Connecticut's congressional delegation, has called for impeachment proceedings, and that process must now begin in earnest.

The proper next step for the president is clear. He should resign. He has repeatedly proven himself unfit for office and appears to view the presidency as a position meant to benefit himself personally, not as one that must represent the interests of an entire nation.

REPLACED:

The album's final mix -- not of Wallace's doing -- was tailored to the sonic flavor of the day for radio purposes. It sounded dated even by the time 1999 rolled around.

Turns out, though, that wasn't the final mix, and now the producer gets the final say.

Enter Dead Man's Pop, a new four-disc Replacements box set from Rhino/Warner Bros. Records. If not a full-blown makeover of Don't Tell a Soul, the new expanded collection -- which hits stores Friday in vinyl and CD format -- at least feels like a do-over, and a worthy one at that.

"Producing that record was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me," said Wallace, whose other production credits include albums by Faith No More, the Monkees, Maroon 5 and 14 Songs, Westerberg's 1993 solo debut.

"Obviously, I'm thrilled to finally get this one right."

Named after a line Westerberg said in an interview about his brand of melodic, Beatles/Big Star-style guitar pop being out of vogue in 1989, Dead Man's Pop features a two-disc live set from the Don't Tell a Soul tour and one disc of outtakes. The latter disc includes nine tracks from a famously disastrous -- but not entirely fruitless -- 10-day recording session in Bearsville, N.Y., plus a drunken six-song Los Angeles session with 'Mats admirer Tom Waits. (Really more like three songs and three tracks' worth of revelry, but whatever.)

The centerpiece of the new collection, though, is the earlier, rawer version of Don't Tell a Soul that Wallace mixed himself at then-new Paisley Park Studios back in 1988 before handing the album off to Warner Bros.

Replacements biographer Bob Mehr, who coproduced the new box set, succinctly summed up Wallace's original mix this way: "Whether or not it's the better version of the album, it's the one that sounds more like the Replacements."

IT'S NOT AS IF THE TRUMPBOTS HAVE ANY FACTS ON THEIR SIDE:

The Carlson-Smith is a reminiscent of a spat between Smith and Hannity that stemmed from the news anchor telling Time magazine in March 2018 that "they don't really have rules on the opinion side," which he said exists to be "entertaining." In response, Hannity tweeted, "While Shep is a friend with political views I do not share, and great at breaking news, he is clueless about what we do every day." Ingraham also chimed in, calling Smith's comments "inconsiderate & inaccurate."

There's always been a gap between the network's news and opinion wings, but people who appear on Fox News tell THR that the chasm has recently been growing.

A television news executive who closely watches the company agreed, saying that the gap "is definitely getting wider." This person added, "I think it's gotten much more difficult for the actual journalists to operate under the legacy explanation of news plus opinion."

Carl Cameron, who spent 20 years at Fox News and left as the network's chief political correspondent, said he used to take the brunt of the opinion wing. "I was routinely roughed up by the primetime hosts," he said. "It was clear that the entertainment side was at odds with the news department only if you lived in the middle of it."

In a conversation Friday, Cameron took issue with Carlson's commentary about Smith and Andrew Napolitano, and also expressed reservations about the combative way left-leaning Fox News contributor Juan Williams was treated by his fellow panelists on The Five this week after he suggested that they had read White House talking points about Ukraine.

"I don't think anybody would object to having a disagreement, but that type of behavior is kind of thuggish," he said. "Haven't we had enough of that? It's not necessary."

GETTING RID OF DONALD WAS THE SOLE JUSTIFICATION FOR JOE:

Washington Free Beacon founding editor Matthew Continetti said on Friday that House Democrats are willing to offer former Vice President Joe Biden as a "sacrificial lamb" in their push to mark President Donald Trump with "the asterisk of impeachment."

MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE:

NEIN VOLK:

The US President's special representative for Ukraine has reportedly resigned from his posting.

CNN understands Kurt Volker walked away from the role after he was named in a whistleblower complaint surround Donald Trump's correspondence with the Ukrainian president.

EXTREMELY ON-BRAND:

A military official formerly in charge of all White House communications for the U.S. Army at Mar-a-Lago was sentenced to three years of probation on Friday after he made false statements to a federal agent during a child pornography investigation.

Richard Ciccarella -- a non-commissioned officer who told federal agents he was in charge of communications at President Donald Trump's Palm Beach resort -- became a target of an investigation after he uploaded photos of a young girl to a seedy Russian website between 2017 and 2018, according to court documents.

HECK, IF IT WAS TIME DEPENDENT, WHY NOT THIS ONE...:

At the end of 1944, The Manchester Union (a predecessor of today's New Hampshire Union Leader, albeit with a different owner and editorial perspective) noted that New Hampshire was the last state in the country without a motto. The newspaper sponsored a public, statewide contest to solicit potential mottos. Under the terms of the contest, a panel of judges convened by the newspaper would review the entries, choosing one that would be forwarded to the New Hampshire Legislature, where it would be considered for adoption.

Public response to the contest was enormous. More than 1,500 people submitted some 3,500 entries. It took the committee of judges months to review the entries, and in late April 1945, the committee made its recommendation.

The winner was "Strong and Steadfast as the Granite Hills," proposed by a then well-known writer from Gilmanton, Curtis Hidden Page.

A special Joint Committee of the House and Senate recommended "Strong and Steadfast as the Granite Hills," relying on simple but persuasive logic. "Foremost in our minds was that New Hampshire is known as the Granite State," said state Sen. R. Robert Matheson, of Goffstown, the committee's chairman, in his remarks in support of Page's submission. "Her chief attribute is everlastingly set upon a firm, strong and steadfast foundation, her everlasting hills."

The state Senate approved Page's motto on Wednesday, April 25, 1945.

While adoption of a state motto was front-page news then, far more important events were taking place, across the Atlantic Ocean on the battlefields of World War II. "Reds Ring Berlin, Cross Elbe: Fantastic Battle Rages in Reich Capital; Hitler May Be Caught in Trap" read the headline of The Manchester Union on April 26, 1945.

Other stories that day suggested the War in Europe would soon be over: "VE Day To Be Proclaimed by Allied Chiefs of State." Another story reported that Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had fled his villa east of Milan, telling his staff the war was lost. Equally important was the headline heralding President Harry Truman's address to delegates charged with creating the charter for the United Nations, in which he encouraged them to be "architects for a better world."

These were dramatic and historic days for anyone engaged in the fight against totalitarianism and fascism. Just five years earlier, Hitler had begun his assault of Great Britain. On the day of the New Hampshire Senate's motto vote, Hitler's empire and its twisted political philosophy based on racial, religious and ethnic identity were nearing defeat. Allied victory seemed certain, but it came at a terrible cost. On the same day of its story about the Senate vote, The Manchester Union reported that 1,244 New Hampshire men had died so far in World War II.

Not surprisingly, amid the motto debate, the historic events in Europe caught the attention of at least one elected official: State Sen. Earl Hewitt, of Enfield, asked if a different phrase, "Live Free or Die," had been considered as a motto.

Yes, responded Sen. Matheson, who nevertheless affirmed that "Strong and Steadfast" had the unanimous support of the Joint Committee.

A week later, on Wednesday, May 2, 1945, when the House met to consider the joint committee's motto, the finality of "Strong and Steadfast" as a state motto came unglued. Rep. J. Walker Wiggin, of Manchester, led a floor flight to replace "Strong and Steadfast as the Granite Hills" with "Live Free or Die." He spoke for 30 minutes and was followed by other representatives, who were supported by several patriotic organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Context always matters in politics. At the same time as the motto debate unfolded in the House, the leading headlines in The Manchester Union reported news of earth-shaking consequences: "Berlin Falls, Soviets Report Hitler, Aides Took Own Lives" and "Axis Surrender Million Men to Allies."

While not officially over, World War II in Europe essentially ended the same day Rep. Wiggin launched the floor fight over the state's motto. If there was to be debate about "Live Free or Die" versus "Strong and Steadfast as the Granite Hills," it would not be based on the rational merits of each proposed motto. Instead it became an emotional vote, heavily influenced by the truly historic events occurring thousands of miles away.

Indeed, The Manchester Union knew the tide had turned in this debate. Its reporter noted that "...even though a lengthy list of speakers scheduled to argue the respective merits of the suggestions before the House was curtailed sharply as it became obvious that the Stark quotation, a late-comer ... would be approved."

Put simply, "Strong and Steadfast as the Granite Hills" stood no chance against a motto coined by an American Revolutionary hero that embraced freedom on the day Hitler was defeated.

HOBBY LOBBY:

DAN'S BADGE OF HONOR:

Three days after his now infamous phone conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Donald Trump abruptly fired his director of national intelligence in favour of an inexperienced political loyalist.

According to a New York Times report, the White House learned within days that the unorthodox call on 25 July with Zelenskiy had raised red flags among intelligence professionals and was likely to trigger an official complaint.

That timeline has raised new questions over the timing of the Trump's dismissal by tweet of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Dan Coats, on 28 July and his insistence that the deputy DNI, Sue Gordon, a career intelligence professional, did not step into the role, even in an acting capacity.

Instead, Trump tried to install a Republican congressman, John Ratcliffe, who had minimal national security credentials but had been a fierce defender of the president in Congress.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community's behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. 

IRON LADDY:

Margaret Thatcher loved Spitting Image as well, because she realised very quickly that their image of her as the best man in the cabinet [Thatcher was voiced by a man and portrayed shaving and using male urinals] was one to pursue. From then on, she deepened her voice, she wore dark suits - basically she conformed to the image that Spitting Image had broadcast. She was very pleased with it.

PRIDE OF THE TRUMPBOTS:

Separately, the Washington Post reported on Friday that in 2017, Trump told Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that he was not bothered by Moscow's meddling in the 2016 US elections because the US did the same in other countries.

Citing three former officials who requested anonymity, the Washington Post said the meeting was held just one day after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, with the US president telling Lavrov and Kislyak that the sacking had relieved him of "great pressure".

THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

An expert on right-wing extremism has warned of "massive rearmament" by neo-Nazi groups after German police seized 61% per more weapons during raids on the radical right in 2018 than the previous year.

German public broadcaster ARD on Friday, citing Interior Ministry figures requested by the left-wing Linke Party, showed 1,091 weapons were seized during raids on far-right extremists last year. In 2017, 676 weapons were confiscated.

COUNTRY MORE THAN SEAT:

She just knew.

"The President of the United States," Sherrill wrote on Monday night in a separate statement that she posted on her Facebook page, "is threatening our national security."

Late Wednesday afternoon, I walked with her from her office to the Capitol, where we stood outside the doors to the floor of the House.

"It's so incredibly offensive," she said, "because we, in my mind, are not a democracy--we are the democracy. We have always protected democracies across the world. I don't have rose-colored glasses about some of the things the United States has done that have been bad for the world--but, my gosh, we've protected democracies from foreign influence. We've helped nations become democracies. And so, to have the president now try to use a foreign government to harm our democracy at home ..."

"It's just so beyond the pale," she continued when we got back to her office.

She likened the president's actions to those of the Mafia.

"To hear the president kind of shake down a foreign power, it's just egregious conduct," she said. "And so, the bright line, of course, is the fact that, in very basic terms, the president of the United States withheld congressionally directed military funding, illegally, from the foreign power, and then went to that foreign president and said, 'Could you do me a favor? Basically, look into this guy running against me.' That's the bright line."

She was sitting in the middle of the couch in her office, and I was sitting on a chair across from her with a coffee table between. On her shelves were her helicopter helmet and a doorstop of a history of the Navy and a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution given to her by a constituent, and I asked her whether she knew that her op-ed with the other "badasses and the guys," as she called the seven of them, was going to lead to ... all of this? To more and more Democrats voicing similar support? To the dam breaking, so to speak?

She was, at first, the calm, cautious controlled Sherrill I've become accustomed to.

"That wasn't part of the calculation," she started.

"But I think we suspected that our decision would have an impact," she added.

Here, though, after practically reflexively mentioning people's tax burdens and health care costs and the importance of the funding of tunnels and roads for the many commuters in her district, she found herself grappling with the breathtaking stakes of this now much larger fight. And for Sherrill, it became clearer and clearer as she kept talking, this is far from merely about checking the 45th president.

"It's critical for people to believe in our democracy," she said, "and to not feel like ... the whole thing is rigged."

This is when her chin started to quiver.

"I think it's incumbent upon me to be able to explain to our country why this is different and why we have to act.

"This is against everything we fought for in the military," she continued, "as somebody who invested in her country from the time I was 18 years old. Um, so I think we all knew we had to stand up for these values, but now we have to remind people in the country"--she stopped, trying to gather herself again, to little avail--"who don't seem to be coalescing around our values right now. We have to remind people that these aren't just kind of a set of, um, you know, these aren't just kind of things that somebody worked out on the back of an envelope in 1776. I mean, these are, these are things that a group of people who were deciding that they didn't want to operate under tyranny, a group of people who were deciding that they wanted to try this experiment, where individuals, um, could actually have a say in the government ..."

Sniffling, she kept talking. "I'm trying to talk through this," she said. "I hate that I'm getting emotional about it, but I just think that, um, we as Americans are--it's just there's a little bit of a lack of faith right now, and I think it's important that we remind people of the sacrifices that"--she paused again to try to settle her voice--"I think it's important that we remind people of the sacrifices that have been made for the Constitution and for what we believe in."

It feels, Sherrill said, like a "1776 kind of fight."

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

[W]hat Senator Warren's proposal enjoys in political appeal, it lacks in workability.

Mr. Yang has a very different approach. He proposes implementing a value-added tax and using the revenue to provide every American adult with a universal basic income of $1,000 per month, which he calls a "freedom dividend."

It's easy to see how the Yang proposal would work. Value-added taxes, which are essentially sales taxes, have proven remarkably efficient in many European countries. And the universality of the dividend would make it simple to administer.

The Yang proposal would not only be more workable than the Warren plan, but it would also target those who spend lavishly.

Consider two hypothetical C.E.O.s, each earning $10 million a year. Spendthrift Sam spends all his money living the high life. He drinks expensive wine, drives Ferraris and flies a private jet to extravagant vacations. Frugal Frank lives modestly, saving most of his earnings and accumulating a large nest egg. He plans to leave some of it to his children and grandchildren and the rest to charity.

Ask yourself: Who should pay higher taxes?

The Warren proposal hits the frugal executive hard but leaves the spendthrift without a scratch. The Yang proposal hits the spendthrift hard and takes a smaller bite from the frugal person who has saved his money. If you, like me, think that society could benefit from fewer spendthrifts and more savers, Mr. Yang's proposal makes much more sense than Senator Warren's.

And if the goal is to raise substantial revenue from rich taxpayers to strengthen the social safety net, Mr. Yang's plan is more likely to succeed.

COME HOME, cONSERVATIVES:

With so many ludicrously conflicting conspiracy theories being spread by all sides in the Trump-Ukraine controversy, we should at least be able to agree that the Wall Street Journal news section is a generally neutral, careful, fair-minded source. It doesn't have the conservative, increasingly Trump-apologist bent of the paper's editorial page. It doesn't have the crusading liberal reputation of the New York Times. The Journal is generally sober, reliable, and trustworthy.

Its lead story on Thursday was a model summary, shorn of right-wing excuse-mongering and left-wing bloodlust. Therein, in one concise sentence almost halfway through the article, one finds the nub of the scandal.

To wit: "There is no known precedent for a president to offer his private lawyer and the attorney general to assist a foreign country with an investigation into his own political rival." [...]

Reasonable conservatives and respected newsmen are finally making their voices heard. National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru, friendly enough to some of Trump's views that Trump seriously considered appointing him to the Federal Reserve Board, dispassionately analyzed the Ukraine case for Bloomberg and carefully picked apart the "flawed arguments in defense of Trump." He wrote that it takes "willful naiveté" to deny that Trump was pushing a quid pro quo.

Conservative policy wonk Yuval Levin, one of the least histrionic and most thoughtful writers on the right, opines that "the president's behavior seems plainly corrupt on its face," but that "the incoherent jumble of Trump's own mind, backed now with the enormous power of the American presidency, has the capacity to create a real world that doesn't hang together."

Conservative legal favorite Paul Rosenzweig, a Whitewater prosecutor under independent counsel Ken Starr in the 1990s, said: "It seems to me almost impossible not to think that this is a big problem for the president. Instead of being able to say 'No collusion,' he now has to say, 'Yes collusion. Why does it matter?' If the Mueller investigation had revealed that President Trump had had personal conversation with (Russia President) Vladimir Putin and promised him something -- assistance in Syria in exchange for dirt about Hillary Clinton's daughter, Chelsea -- everybody would've said that's collusion, that's conspiracy, that's wrong. That's exactly what happened here."

SUBLIME:

President Trump met on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, to discuss how the N.R.A. could provide financial support for the president's defense as he faces political headwinds, including impeachment, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the N.R.A. But in return for the support, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House "stop the games" over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said.

Ties between the National Rifle Association and influential Russians were substantial and potentially lucrative enough to render the politically potent gun lobby an "asset" of Russia, according to a Senate Democrat's year-plus investigation. 

More than 4,000 pages of NRA records provided to Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the finance committee, documented deep connections between the beleaguered gun group and Maria Butina, who in December pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a Russian agent without registering with the Justice Department. Wyden's report, released Friday and undertaken without the cooperation of committee Republicans, indicates that greed motivated some NRA officials to engage in the outreach.

Butina also made clear to NRA officials long before their controversial Butina-facilitated December 2015 trip to Moscow that Alexander Torshin, her patron and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was a man with mysterious pull in the Kremlin.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

"Box of Rain." (1970).

What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through...

What do you want me to do, to watch for you while you're sleeping?

Well please don't be surprised, when you find me dreaming, too..

Walk into splintered sunlight

 Inch your way through dead dreams

 to another land

 Maybe you're tired and broken

 Your tongue is twisted

 with words half spoken

 and thoughts unclear

 What do you want me to do

 to do for you to see you through

 A box of rain will ease the pain

 and love will see you through.

Robert Hunter wrote the song for bassist Phil Lesh, to sing to his dying father.

In a rock culture that is often reticent to speak of death (with the exception of late 1950s-early 1960s "dying in car crash" songs), this is a poignant hymn of expectations of mortality.

Because, at the end of life, it is only love that sees us through.

And finally, the greatest - IMHO.

"Ripple" (1970).  Check out this international version - it will move you immeasurably, and will testify to its hymn-like qualities. 

Several years ago, I performed a funeral for a young man who died too young.

He was a Deadhead, and his family requested that I include a Dead song.

There was no contest. Here is "Ripple" in full:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung

Would you hear my voice come through the music

Would you hold it near as it were your own?

 

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken

Perhaps they're better left unsung


I don't know, don't really care 


Let there be songs to fill the air

 

Ripple in still water


When there is no pebble tossed


Nor wind to blow

Reach out your hand

if your cup be empty


If your cup is full

may it be again


 

Let it be known there is a fountain


That was not made by the hands of men

There is a road, no simple highway


Between the dawn and the dark of night


And if you go no one may follow 


That path is for your steps alone

 

You who choose to lead must follow


But if you fall you fall alone


If you should stand then who's to guide you?


If I knew the way I would take you home.

Playing tunes on a harp unstrung? King David?

Cups that are empty, and might be full again? "My cup runneth over" from Psalm 23?

On my best days, this is what I believe.

When we reach out to each other, it is as if we are reaching out to God. God is the fountain of living waters -- m'kor mayim chayim -- that was not made by the hands of men. There is a repository of love. God is place of rest for our aching, yearning, journeying selves.

And, yes - if I knew the way, I would take you home.

SAME SAME:

"I'm surprised," Phillips told TheWrap's Sharon Waxmann about the gun violence-related criticism of his film. "Isn't it good to have these discussions? Isn't it good to have these discussions about these movies, about violence? Why is that a bad thing if the movie does lead to a discourse about it?"

"I think it's because outrage is a commodity, I think it's something that has been a commodity for a while," he added. "What's outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far-left can sound like the far-right when it suits their agenda. It's really been eye-opening for me."

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON:

Hunter had heard that, during the primaries, some of Obama's advisers had criticized him to reporters for his earmarking work. Hunter said that he wasn't told by members of the Obama campaign to end his lobbying activities, but that he knew "the writing was on the wall." Hunter told his lobbying clients that he would no longer represent them, and resigned from an unpaid seat on the board of Amtrak, a role for which, Hunter said, the Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid had tapped him. "I wanted my father to have a clean slate," Hunter told me. "I didn't want to limit him in any way."

In September, 2008, Hunter launched a boutique consulting firm, Seneca Global Advisors, named for the largest of the Finger Lakes, in New York State, where his mother had grown up. In pitch meetings with prospective clients, Hunter said that he could help small and mid-sized companies expand into markets in the U.S. and other countries. In June, 2009, five months after Joe Biden became Vice-President, Hunter co-founded a second company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, with Christopher Heinz, Senator John Kerry's stepson and an heir to the food-company fortune, and Devon Archer, a former Abercrombie & Fitch model who started his finance career at Citibank in Asia and who had been friends with Heinz at Yale. (Heinz and Archer already had a private-equity fund called Rosemont Capital.) Heinz believed that Hunter would share his aversion to entering into business deals that could attract public scrutiny, but over time Hunter and Archer seized opportunities that did not include Heinz, who was less inclined to take risks.

In 2012, Archer and Hunter talked to Jonathan Li, who ran a Chinese private-equity fund, Bohai Capital, about becoming partners in a new company that would invest Chinese capital--and, potentially, capital from other countries--in companies outside China. In June, 2013, Li, Archer, and other business partners signed a memorandum of understanding to create the fund, which they named BHR Partners, and, in November, they signed contracts related to the deal. Hunter became an unpaid member of BHR's board but did not take an equity stake in BHR Partners until after his father left the White House.

In December, 2013, Vice-President Biden flew to Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping. Biden often asked one of his grandchildren to accompany him on his international trips, and he invited Finnegan to come on this one. Hunter told his father that he wanted to join them. According to a Beijing-based BHR representative, Hunter, shortly after arriving in Beijing, on December 4th, helped arrange for Li to shake hands with his father in the lobby of the American delegation's hotel. Afterward, Hunter and Li had what both parties described as a social meeting. Hunter told me that he didn't understand why anyone would have been concerned about this. "How do I go to Beijing, halfway around the world, and not see them for a cup of coffee?" he said.

Hunter's meeting with Li and his relationship with BHR attracted little attention at the time, but some of Biden's advisers were worried that Hunter, by meeting with a business associate during his father's visit, would expose the Vice-President to criticism. The former senior White House aide told me that Hunter's behavior invited questions about whether he "was leveraging access for his benefit, which just wasn't done in that White House. Optics really mattered, and that seemed to be cutting it pretty close, even if nothing nefarious was going on." When I asked members of Biden's staff whether they discussed their concerns with the Vice-President, several of them said that they had been too intimidated to do so. "Everyone who works for him has been screamed at," a former adviser told me. Others said that they were wary of hurting his feelings. One business associate told me that Biden, during difficult conversations about his family, "got deeply melancholy, which, to me, is more painful than if someone yelled and screamed at me. It's like you've hurt him terribly. That was always my fear, that I would be really touching a very fragile part of him."

For another venture, Archer travelled to Kiev to pitch investors on a real-estate fund he managed, Rosemont Realty. There, he met Mykola Zlochevsky, the co-founder of Burisma, one of Ukraine's largest natural-gas producers. Zlochevsky had served as ecology minister under the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych. After public protests in 2013 and early 2014, the Ukrainian parliament had voted to remove Yanukovych and called for his arrest. Under the new Ukrainian government, authorities in Kiev, with the encouragement of the Obama Administration, launched an investigation into whether Zlochevsky had used his cabinet position to grant exploration licenses that benefitted Burisma. (The status of the inquiry is unclear, but no proof of criminal activity has been publicly disclosed. Zlochevsky could not be reached for comment, and Burisma did not respond to queries.) In a related investigation, which was ultimately closed owing to a lack of evidence, British authorities temporarily froze U.K. bank accounts tied to Zlochevsky.

In early 2014, Zlochevsky sought to assemble a high-profile international board to oversee Burisma, telling prospective members that he wanted the company to adopt Western standards of transparency. Among the board members he recruited was a former President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who had a reputation as a dedicated reformer. In early 2014, at Zlochevsky's suggestion, Kwaśniewski met with Archer in Warsaw and encouraged him to join Burisma's board, arguing that the company was critical to Ukraine's independence from Russia. Archer agreed.

When Archer told Hunter that the board needed advice on how to improve the company's corporate governance, Hunter recommended the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where he was "of counsel." The firm brought in the investigative agency Nardello & Co. to assess Burisma's history of corruption. Hunter joined Archer on the Burisma board in April, 2014. Three months later, in a draft report to Boies Schiller, Nardello said that it was "unable to identify any information to date regarding any current government investigation into Zlochevsky or Burisma," but cited unnamed sources saying that Zlochevsky could be "vulnerable to investigation for financial crimes" and for "perceived abuse of power."

Vice-President Biden was playing a central role in overseeing U.S. policy in Ukraine, and took the lead in calling on Kiev to fight rampant corruption. On May 13, 2014, after Hunter's role on the Burisma board was reported in the news, Jen Psaki, a State Department spokesperson, said that the State Department was not concerned about perceived conflicts of interest, because Hunter was a "private citizen." Hunter told Burisma's management and other board members that he would not be involved in any matters that were connected to the U.S. government or to his father. Kwaśniewski told me, "We never discussed how the Vice-President can help us. Frankly speaking, we didn't need such help."

Several former officials in the Obama Administration and at the State Department insisted that Hunter's role at Burisma had no effect on his father's policies in Ukraine, but said that, nevertheless, Hunter should not have taken the board seat. As the former senior White House aide put it, there was a perception that "Hunter was on the loose, potentially undermining his father's message." The same aide said that Hunter should have recognized that at least some of his foreign business partners were motivated to work with him because they wanted "to be able to say that they are affiliated with Biden." A former business associate said, "The appearance of a conflict of interest is good enough, at this level of politics, to keep you from doing things like that."

In December, 2015, as Joe Biden prepared to return to Ukraine, his aides braced for renewed scrutiny of Hunter's relationship with Burisma. Amos Hochstein, the Obama Administration's special envoy for energy policy, raised the matter with Biden, but did not go so far as to recommend that Hunter leave the board. As Hunter recalled, his father discussed Burisma with him just once: "Dad said, 'I hope you know what you are doing,' and I said, 'I do.' " [...]

One of Kathleen's motions contains a reference to "a large diamond" that had come into Hunter's possession. The motion seems to imply that it was one of Hunter's "personal indulgences." When I asked him about it, he told me that he had been given the diamond by the Chinese energy tycoon Ye Jianming, who was trying to make connections in Washington among prominent Democrats and Republicans, and whom he had met in the middle of the divorce. Hunter told me that two associates accompanied him to his first meeting with Ye, in Miami, and that they surprised him by giving Ye a magnum of rare vintage Scotch worth thousands of dollars.

Hunter was on the board of the World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that generates support for the U.N. World Food Programme, and he had hoped that Ye would make a large aid donation. At dinner that night, they discussed the donation, and then the conversation turned to business opportunities. Hunter offered to use his contacts to help identify investment opportunities for Ye's company, CEFC China Energy, in liquefied-natural-gas projects in the United States. After the dinner, Ye sent a 2.8-carat diamond to Hunter's hotel room with a card thanking him for their meeting. "I was, like, Oh, my God," Hunter said. (In Kathleen's court motion, the diamond is estimated to be worth eighty thousand dollars. Hunter said he believes the value is closer to ten thousand.) When I asked him if he thought the diamond was intended as a bribe, he said no: "What would they be bribing me for? My dad wasn't in office." Hunter said that he gave the diamond to his associates, and doesn't know what they did with it. "I knew it wasn't a good idea to take it. I just felt like it was weird," he said.

Hunter began negotiating a deal for CEFC to invest forty million dollars in a liquefied-natural-gas project on Monkey Island, in Louisiana, which, he said, was projected to create thousands of jobs. "I was more proud of it than you can imagine," he told me. In the summer of 2017, Ye talked with Hunter about his concern that U.S. law-enforcement agencies were investigating one of his associates, Patrick Ho. Hunter, who sometimes works as a private lawyer, agreed to represent Ho, and tried to figure out whether Ho was in legal jeopardy in the U.S. That November, just after Ye and Hunter agreed on the Monkey Island deal, U.S. authorities detained Ho at the airport. He was later sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a multiyear, multimillion-dollar scheme to bribe top government officials in Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for CEFC. In February, 2018, Ye was detained by Chinese authorities, reportedly as part of an anti-corruption investigation, and the deal with Hunter fell through. Hunter said that he did not consider Ye to be a "shady character at all," and characterized the outcome as "bad luck." [...]

On April 1, 2019, John Solomon, an opinion contributor to The Hill, wrote about Shokin's claim that he had been conducting a corruption probe into Burisma and Hunter when he was dismissed. A month later, the Times reported that Hunter "was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general." The story, by Kenneth P. Vogel and Iuliia Mendel, provoked some Democrats to express concern that the Times was again lending credence to allegations made by Schweizer and other Trump allies. Giuliani retweeted the article, and Trump called for the Justice Department to investigate. Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama, tweeted, "Zero lessons have been learned from 2016: 1. Mainstream outlet credulously accepts Trump conspiracy about opponent 2. Trump propaganda machine uses story to spread the conspiracy on social media and through digital ads 3. Voters believe it, ignoring subsequent fact checks."

There is no credible evidence that Biden sought Shokin's removal in order to protect Hunter. According to Amos Hochstein, the Obama Administration's special envoy for energy policy, Shokin was removed because of concerns by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the U.S. government that he wasn't pursuing corruption investigations. Contrary to the assertions that Shokin was fired because he was investigating Burisma and Zlochevsky, Hochstein said, "many of us in the U.S. government believed that Shokin was the one protecting Zlochevsky." In May, Giuliani scheduled a visit to Ukraine, and told the Times that he would look into Hunter's involvement with Burisma, "because that information will be very, very helpful to my client," but then abruptly cancelled the trip, amid reports that Ukraine's President-elect was unwilling to meet with him. A week later, on May 16th, Lutsenko appeared to shift his position on Burisma, telling Bloomberg News that he saw no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son, and that "a company can pay however much it wants to its board." The reasons for his reversal were unclear, but Daria Kaleniuk, the head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, in Kiev, speculated that Lutsenko, in talking with Giuliani, had been trying to "pump his political muscle," a strategy that had proved ineffective in the new political climate.

That month, Hunter declined Burisma's offer to serve another term on the board, believing that the controversy had become a distraction. 

PWNING THE TRUMPBOTS:

Trump promptly tweeted that "Adam Schiff has zero credibility. Another fantasy to hurt the Republican Party." But Schiff, whose demeanor is as low-key and unruffled as his convictions are fierce, merely smiled at reporters outside the House hearing room and replied, "I'm always flattered when I'm attacked by someone of the president's character."

All along, first as the committee's ranking member and then as chairman since the Democrats won control of the House in last year's midterm elections, Schiff's paramount goal has been simple, as he told me just before Mueller testified to his committee about his final special counsel's report in July.

"It is our hope that we can inform the American people of the full facts, that they can appreciate the degree to which the Russians interfered in a presidential election to help Donald Trump, the degree to which the president welcomed that help, knew it was going on, welcomed it, and then lied about it and covered it up. And the degree to which those actions and his actions since continue to put us at risk, because it encourages the Russians to get involved again."

That Trump himself is now on record as asking for just such sort of help--albeit from Russia's bitter adversary, Ukraine--is a plot line almost too perfect to have been made up. "It's hard to imagine a more serious set of allegations than those contained in the complaint," Schiff told reporters after the hearing, noting that the president's actions involved numerous potential offenses, criminal or otherwise.

Schiff noted a "deep irony" in the contrast between Maguire's initial refusal to forward the whistle-blower's complaint to Congress, as generally required by law, on the grounds that it did not involve actions by the intelligence community, and the whistle-blower's accusation that the record of Trump's call with Zelensky had been stored in a special White House computer system designed to protect the most sensitive intelligence secrets.

He vowed to continue the committee's investigation through the upcoming congressional recess, calling witnesses, including the whistle-blower, as needed. "There is a whole host of people, apparently, who have knowledge of these events," he said, adding that "this whistle-blower has given us a roadmap for our investigation."

"We know what we have to do and, of course, we'll be guided by the evidence that we find along the way," he said.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

As a whistleblower alleged, White House officials ordered the memorandum of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky be stored in a separate, secure sever, a senior White House official said Friday. [...]

Trump's allies have again tried to brush off the whistleblower's complaint as inaccurate "hearsay." But just as the whistleblower provided a stunningly accurate description of the call based on secondhand knowledge, this allegation appears to be true as well.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

A main problem with her tax is that the net worth of a rich person isn't as straightforward as proponents of wealth taxes would like you to believe. Net worth includes all assets, some of which are easier to value than others. The value of assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate are pretty easy to measure. But many other assets -- such as cryptocurrencies, trusts, and private businesses -- are harder to assess.

That's why wealth taxes are always so hard to administer and so easy to avoid. It makes them a terrible vehicle for raising money. And it explains why many governments used to have a wealth tax but few still do today. According to a paper by Daniel Bunn of the Tax Foundation, "the number of current OECD members that have collected revenue from net wealth taxes has grown from nine in 1965 to a peak of 14 in 1996 to just four in 2017." He adds that "among those four OECD countries collecting revenues from net wealth taxes, revenues made up just 1.45 percent of total revenues on average in 2017." Yes, it is a difficult tax to collect.

France was one of the four countries that had a wealth tax in 2017, but it dropped the tax in 2018. (Belgium adopted its own wealth tax, meaning that the total number of countries with a wealth tax today is still four.) I would think that if the French government -- of all governments! -- dropped the wealth tax, that should be a powerful clue that the levy isn't all that Warren dreams it will be. But apparently the senator thinks she can avoid any problems by implementing anti-avoidance measures such as a repressive 40 percent exit tax on any targeted household that attempts to emigrate, minimum audit rates, and increased funding for IRS enforcement. Warren clearly doesn't believe in freedom from persecution.

But there are deeper problems with a wealth tax. First, there seems to be a profound misunderstanding of what wealth is and where the money will come from. Listening to politicians who support the levy, you get a sense that rich people use their wealth almost exclusively to fund extravagant consumption. Tax their wealth and these rich people will simply downgrade their houses -- and still be left with gigantic palaces -- or otherwise reduce their unnecessary consumption expenditures.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, that wealth is tied up in other wealth-producing activities. It's invested in companies; it is used to fund R&D that will create better goods and services for consumers; it is the capital that innovators and producers borrow from banks to grow their businesses.

CAN'T REMOVE HIM FAST ENOUGH:

IT'S A RICO CASE:

Trump's unhinged rhetoric has inspired unstable people to take matters into their own hands, including one who is now in prison for sending bombs. The president must be called to account for his abuses of power sooner rather than later, but every decent American left in public life must immediately demand that he stop any further attacks on this whistleblower, before it's too late and there's another star on the wall at Langley.

IT'S NOT THE CRIMES, IT'S THE OTHER CRIMES:

No one bothered to put special limits on the number of people allowed to sit in the "listening room" in the White House to monitor the phone call because it was expected to be routine. By the time the call was over 30 minutes later, it quickly became clear that it was anything but.

Soon after President Trump put the phone down that summer day, the red flags began to go up. Rather than just one head of state offering another pro forma congratulations for recent elections, the call turned into a bid by Mr. Trump to press a Ukrainian leader in need of additional American aid to "do us a favor" and investigate Democrats.

The alarm among officials who heard the exchange led to an extraordinary effort to keep too many more people from learning about it. In the days to come, according to a whistle-blower complaint released on Thursday, White House officials embarked on a campaign to "lock down" the record of the call, removing it from the usual electronic file and hiding it away in a separate system normally used for classified information.

HE'S WHY DONALD WON'T BE THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER:

Even a weakened League of Nations could have led to something like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Beyond that core group of Western nations, it could have spun off a larger body to represent all of the world's nations, like the United Nations, to address issues like colonialism, the environment, trade, and natural resources. Perhaps another body could set international standards for trade and finance, like the World Trade Organization.

Wilson's fatal flaw was his unwillingness to see his vision as an experiment. Prideful and reluctant to negotiate, he considered the League a complete solution to global problems. But what if Wilson had been willing to accept a flawed League? What if he had been willing to bargain and compromise? What if he saw the League as an opportunity to experiment with different tools to prevent war and promote global cooperation?

YEAH, BUT OTHER THAN BEING AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL FAILURE....:

Even those sympathetic to the spirit of a wealth tax acknowledge that there are considerable pragmatic obstacles to its implementation. Even if there were sufficient political will to pass it, it could face a constitutional challenge. Megan McArdle, a libertarian Washington Post columnist, writes:

The big problem is Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which forbids "direct taxes" on people or property unless they're "apportioned" -- doled out among the states by population. Instituting an income tax required a constitutional amendment to override that clause, and Warren's plan might well require another.

Both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren have cited numerous legal experts who say a wealth tax would be constitutional. But with the Supreme Court's composition being what it is, the question is far from settled.

There's also the matter of enforcement. As Paul Krugman notes, the wealthy are quite good at avoiding taxes and evading them illegally. And because many assets owned by the ultra-wealthy -- like artwork and diamonds -- aren't always traded on the market, Ms. McArdle writes, taxing them would mean "creating a lot of administrative capacity to track and price the assets, with the wealthy and their lawyers fighting every step of the way."

"If these difficulties prove insurmountable," writes Noah Smith, a left-leaning economist, in Bloomberg, "Warren and other egalitarian tax crusaders might consider an alternative -- an inheritance tax, which would close many of the loopholes that now riddle the U.S. estate tax." He adds:

Taxing all income from inheritances -- including trusts, foundations, gifts, estates, and any other kind of family transfers -- at a very high rate would yield a result similar to a small annual wealth tax, only its constitutionality would be less in doubt. And it would focus the tax on the rich people whose fortunes Americans are most likely to think of as being undeserved.

Skeptics of the idea of a wealth tax argue that it has a bumpy track record. While 12 European countries had a wealth tax in 1990, Greg Rosalsky writes in NPR, only three (Norway, Spain and Switzerland) still do. He writes:

According to reports by the OECD and others, there were some clear themes with the policy: it was expensive to administer, it was hard on people with lots of assets but little cash, it distorted saving and investment decisions, it pushed the rich and their money out of the taxing countries -- and, perhaps worst of all, it didn't raise much revenue.

MICROMAX:

The benefits of big metro areas for new businesses are well-known, but so are the costs in money, time, and health. In the era of remote work, you can get a lot of the benefits of the city anywhere with an Internet connection, except one - being physically around other new business-owners.

With that in mind, I decided to look at the Census Bureau's data on cities to see if there were any places in America that hit a sweet spot between being small & self-contained and being a popular place to start a new business.

Micropolitan areas are populated areas that have too much population to qualify as a rural area, and too few commuting ties to a larger city to qualify as part of a larger metropolitan area. They are between 10,000 to 50,000 people and quite a distance from a large city.

In other words - micropolitan areas are true small cities.

There are 536 micropolitan areas in America with a core city of between 10,000 and 50,000 people plus the population of the surrounding area.

Here are the Top 20 Most Popular Micropolitan Areas for New Small Businesses in America based on US Census data from 2015-2016 (most recently available). [...]

2. Claremont-Lebanon, NH-VT Micro Area

New Businesses: 437

The Lebanon area has a population of 217,215, and lies in the Connecticut River Valley. It is home to the Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth Medical Center. It also has strong transport links to the Boston area, which influences its business community.

IT'S A RICO CASE:

PURITAN NATION:

Cornerstone is one of a growing number of new evangelical churches in Vermont seeking to reach the state's spiritually homeless multitudes. "Evangelical" stems from the Greek word euangelion, meaning "good news" -- a reference to the belief that the death of Jesus Christ offered humanity a means of salvation from sin. Evangelicals are by no means a monolithic group, but those who profess to be evangelical -- about a quarter of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center's 2014 Religious Landscape Study -- tend to believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and that only those who follow Jesus can be saved from eternal punishment.

That same Pew study found that 11 percent of Vermonters attend evangelical churches, a category that includes more than 10 Protestant denominations. Of these sects, Southern Baptists, in particular, have been quietly establishing, or "planting," new churches throughout Vermont -- a practice that exists at the peculiar intersection of analytics-driven entrepreneurship and low-tech disciple-making.

Church planting is as old as Christianity itself; in the first century AD, the Apostle Paul traveled from city to city, preaching in public squares and assembling makeshift congregations in people's homes. In the two millennia since, evangelical church planting, especially in the Southern Baptist world, has evolved into a sophisticated apparatus, with a well-heeled bureaucracy and a vast network of spiritual and financial support in the form of the Southern Baptist Convention, which includes some 47,000 churches worldwide.

Over the past two decades, Southern evangelicals have become increasingly freaked out by the godlessness of New England, spawning a movement so big that parallel organizations have sprung up along its periphery. Phil Waldrep Ministries, a nonprofit based in Decatur, Ala., holds two all-expenses-paid retreats each year for pastors and their wives at luxury hotels around New England. Thomas Schwindling, the nonprofit's creative director, told me that the retreats are designed as vacations from the hardships of ministering in a gospel-resistant region: "We want to put them in hotels they dream of going to," he said. The most recent retreat, in early September, took place at the Equinox in Manchester; the program included a game show with a $5,000 jackpot. At one of last year's retreats, every attendee received a pair of L.L.Bean boots.

If New England as a whole needs religious defibrillation, Vermont would seem to represent the extreme case. The state has earned the distinction of being the least religious in the country almost every year since Gallup began conducting its annual religious attitudes survey in 2008. (The one exception was 2015, when New Hampshire claimed victory by two points.) A 2018 article in the Biblical Recorder, a North Carolina evangelical newspaper, offered this bleak synopsis of Vermont's Jesus situation: "The state has proportionately fewer Bible-believing churches and Christians than any other state. Scores of villages in Vermont have had no Bible-believing [evangelical or fundamentalist] church for decades. Thousands of families have had no Christian members in five generations. Vermont is not just lost; it is hardcore lost and gospel-resistant."

Through a plexus of national and regional organizations, mission-minded evangelicals have been coming to Vermont to search for the chinks in its gospel-proof armor. According to the Baptist Convention of New England, one of the major evangelical Christian networks in the region, at least 28 Baptist-affiliated churches have launched in Vermont since 2011, more than double the number of churches planted in New Hampshire over that same period.

WHICH MORNING DOES MITCH DECIDE THEY'RE BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM?:

Voter support for impeachment matched its highest point of Donald Trump's presidency as he faced a whistleblower allegation that he pressured Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, with more impeachment supporters than ever before saying he committed an impeachable offense, according to Morning Consult/Politico polling. 

The new Sept. 24-26 poll of 1,640 registered voters -- conducted as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed an impeachment inquiry and details emerged about the president's pressure on Ukraine -- found the public divided at 43 percent on the question of whether Congress should begin proceedings to remove Trump from office, a net swing of 13 percentage points in favor of impeachment since a poll conducted over the weekend. The figure for support rose 7 points, while opposition dropped 6 points.

This swift change in public opinion -- which is likely to accelerate rapidly -- might look abrupt, but it shouldn't have been unexpected.

Throughout his time in office, President Trump has demonstrated a unique gift: Whatever policy or idea he gets behind is subsequently opposed by the public, often decisively. His only legislative achievement to date, for instance, the December 2017 tax reform, was still under water the last time Gallup checked. By roughly 60 percent to 40 percent, Americans oppose construction of a wall along the southern border, a plan the president seems to care about more than anything else in the world. Sixty percent of Americans also want immigration levels to stay the same or increase, as opposed to 35 percent who want them decreased.

But the data trends are generally even worse for Trump. Since the beginning of his term, there has been a significant increase in Americans saying they want increased immigration levels, a once fringe position that has been bolstered over the past few years by the president's relentless nativism and immigrant scapegoating. It's not just that President Trump is incapable of bringing all but his diehards along with him on most issues, it's that he's so actively repellent to most ordinary human beings that he boosts the polar opposite position.

The second reason that support for impeachment might be jumping is that the president has been nabbed with his pasty hands in the Big Mac jar in a way that might shock even rank-and-file Republicans. The Ukraine scandal is, from start to finish, unspinnably terrible for President Trump. Even if you believe that his call with Zelensky lacked an explicit quid pro quo, one of those Law & Order, "I never told you the victim had a thigh tattoo so how did you know it was there?" moments, you might still wonder why the president of the United States felt the need to ask a newly elected foreign leader for help in investigating the leading Democratic contender for president and his son. There is no ongoing U.S. investigation into the Bidens. There is no reasonable explanation for the president's behavior other than open and shameless contempt for U.S. law.

The reaction from the right on this point has thus far been pitiful, because there's really nothing to spin.

LAUGHINGSTOCK:

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Lawfare's Quinta Jurecic joins host Charlie Sykes to break down the just-released whistleblower complaint, and where it fits in Trump's pattern of obstruction.

HE'S NOT WRONG:

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

The IC employee wrote that the July 25 call to Ukraine was not the only time documents had been improperly hidden in codeword-level systems.

White House officials moved quickly to keep the contents of President Donald Trump's controversial July phone call with the Ukrainian president under tight wraps, according to a complaint made by an unknown whistleblower that was given to Congress and released publicly on Thursday morning. 

"In the days following the phone call," I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to 'lock down' all records of the phone call," the whistleblower wrote in his complaint. "This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call."

The whistleblower said that multiple White House officials told him that the rough transcript of the president's call was put into a standalone computer system that is reserved for top-level intelligence information, not the computer system in which such transcripts are usually kept and distributed to Cabinet-level officials. 

"Some officials voiced concerns internally that this would be an abuse of the system and was not consistent with the responsibilities of the Directorate for Intelligence Programs," which manages the highly classified system, the complainant wrote. 

The whistleblower also said that he was told by White House officials that the Ukraine call was "'not the first time' under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically-sensitive--rather than national security sensitive--information."

ALL THAT JAZZ #56

STAND WITH QEII:

As William Blackstone warned in his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published in the same decade as the Entick case, if every judge were a legislator, it would 'introduce most infinite confusion; as there would then be almost as many different rules of action laid down in our courts, as there are differences of capacity and sentiment in the human mind.'

In the past the remedy for unreasonably long prorogations has been recognised as political, and not for the courts. Richard Ekins, professor of law at Oxford has called the court's action an 'unjustified novelty'. The problem, he said, is 'a willingness to overturn settled law in 'exceptional circumstances' in order to right what the Court thinks is a wrong. But the duty of the courts is to follow the law, not to remake it.'

The Supreme Court claimed to have been upholding parliamentary accountability, but the real problem is their own lack of accountability to anyone but themselves.

THANKFULLY, DONALD HAS MADE HIS SUPPORTERS PRO-RUSSIAN...:

[A]fter weeks of discussions with American officials, Ukrainian officials came to recognize a precondition to any executive correspondence, the former adviser said.

"It was clear that [President Donald] Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case," said Serhiy Leshchenko, an anti-corruption advocate and former member of Ukraine's Parliament, who had been a former adviser to Zelenskiy but has recently been distanced from the administration. "This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood."

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

But some Republicans who read the complaint were disquieted, too. "Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there's no 'there there' when there's obviously a lot that's very troubling there," said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), adding that "Democrats ought not be using words like 'impeach' before they knew anything about the actual substance."

A GOP congressional source with direct knowledge of the whistleblower complaint told conservative commentator Erik Erickson that it "paints a clear path to impeachment," Erickson writes at The Resurgent. "I wasn't happy with the transcript, but it was Trump. What do you expect? Now we are dealing with something that looks like it could be outside the bounds of acceptable conduct." The whistleblower, the source added, is "someone who does not like the president," but "regardless, the whistleblower is credible." 

...AND CHEAPER...:

A clinical study is now underway at the University of California, Los Angeles. One of the volunteers is Jason Esterhuizen of South Africa, who became blind seven years ago due to injuries sustained in a car accident. For the trial, a device called the Orion was implanted over the visual cortex in Esterhuizen's brain. He wears a pair of sunglasses that are equipped with a small camera, and those images are transmitted to the Orion, which converts them into electrical pulses that stimulate electrodes in Esterhuizen's brain. This lets him see patterns of light, which are used as visual cues, Inside Edition reports.

Esterhuizen said he's able to see "little white dots on a black background. It's like looking up at the stars at night." The study's leader, Dr. Nader Pouratian, told Inside Edition trial participants are able to determine where crosswalks and doorways are, "all extremely meaningful events that can help these people regain some form of independence." 

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

At least 218 members of the House now support at least an impeachment investigation into President Trump's actions regarding Ukraine, according to the tallies of several news organizations. That means a majority of the 435-member chamber is on board with the path House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) embarked on Tuesday evening.

EXCEPT IT SHOULD BE FREDO SPEAKING:

For those who want a visual abridged summary, here's The Godfather IV. All dialogue is from the memo. pic.twitter.com/ZViJvPuLYt

— Larry Noble (@LarryNoble_DC) September 25, 2019

HE DOESN'T GET TO RUN AGAINST HILLARY THIS TIME:

The new dynamic came into sharp relief last weekend, when a CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey showed Warren surging into the top tier in Iowa with former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders, who was well off the pace in third, trailed her in the state by more than 10 points, 22% to 11%.

Perhaps more worrying to some Sanders supporters, the Massachusetts progressive also overtook her colleague from Vermont with what has traditionally been his most reliable bloc of support: voters under 35, among whom Warren now leads in Iowa, 27% to Sanders' 22%.

Asked by a reporter on Sunday about the poll, Sanders said the campaign's internal numbers painted a different picture. But even if the senator and his staff have reason to believe the Iowa race is closer than the most recent polling indicates, interviews with two senior aides to Sanders revealed growing concerns that the Hawkeye State and New Hampshire could be at risk of slipping away.

The twin sources of frustration and internal debate, both aides told CNN, was a schedule that too often takes Sanders away from the early voting states and a perception among staff, especially in Iowa, that the campaign has been wrong-headed in its decision to put off investing there in television ads.

"It can't be this national campaign anymore. He's got to go on TV in Iowa. He's got to park himself in Iowa. He's got to show that he's the underdog fighting back," one of the aides told CNN.

The aide, who said that staff in Iowa has been "screaming for Bernie to get on TV" there, suggested that Sanders had overestimated his strength in Iowa and New Hampshire.

IN DONALD'S WORLD, FIGHTING CORRUPTION IS WRONGDOING:

IN DECEMBER 2015, I was an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the Times. That month, I published a story reporting that Vice President Joe Biden had just traveled to Ukraine, in part to send a message to the Ukrainian government that it needed to crack down on corruption.

But I also wrote that his anti-corruption message might be undermined by the association of his son Hunter with one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky had been Ukraine's ecology minister under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader who had been forced into exile in Russia.

Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma in April 2014, the same month that British officials froze Zlochevsky's London bank accounts containing $23 million. Britain's Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, was conducting a money-laundering investigation and refused to allow Zlochevsky or Burisma Holdings, the company's chief legal officer, and another company owned by Zlochevsky access to the accounts.

But the British money-laundering investigation was stymied by Ukrainian prosecutors' refusal to cooperate. The Ukrainian prosecutors would not turn over documents needed in the British investigation, and without that documentary evidence, a British court ordered Britain's Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

In September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in which he attacked the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office for failing to cooperate with the British investigation. In his speech -- which I quoted in my story -- Pyatt mentioned Burisma's owner by name.

"In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people," Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general's office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom "to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky's attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus."

When Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine in December 2015 to press for more aggressive anti-corruption efforts by the government, Hunter Biden's role with Burisma made his father's demands, however well-intentioned, appear politically awkward and hypocritical. That was the point of my story. I quoted Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said the involvement of the vice president's son with Zlochevsky's firm undermined the Obama administration's anti-corruption message in Ukraine.

"Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message," Chow said. "But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues." [...]

In May, when this issue began to surface, The Intercept's Robert Mackey wrote an excellent piece debunking the lies in the new pro-Trump version of the Biden story. In the process, he provided greater detail than I had included in my 2015 story. He wrote that Shokin had been forced from office at Biden's urging because he had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption and stifled efforts to expose embezzlement and misconduct by public officials. Biden did threaten to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Shokin was ousted. But that was because Shokin had blocked serious anti-corruption investigations, not because he was investigating Burisma.

WHO'D HAVE DREAMT THE nATIONALISTS WERE sOCIALIST?:

At a recent conservative conference in Washington, DC, according to one attendee, the "slur du jour" was "neoliberalism".

A turning point came in January, when the Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson told his three million viewers that "Republican leaders" were in thrall to "corporate propaganda", and seemed to have forgotten that "market capitalism is not a religion". Carlson expressed his loathing for private equity and payday loan companies, remarking of the latter: "Libertarians tell us that's how markets work - consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also disgusting." Subsequently, Carlson has railed against the Koch brothers, the billionaire funders of right-wing think tanks, and has characterised the average Republican politician as "a libertarian zealot controlled by the banks, yammering on about entrepreneurship".

While Carlson fires off sound-bites, a phalanx of intellectuals offers a more in-depth critique. The philosopher Patrick Deneen has persuaded many of his fellow social conservatives that their true enemy is Enlightenment liberalism: a distorted idea of freedom, Deneen argues, which has led to both social progressivism on abortion and marriage, and the injustices and inequalities of modern capitalism.

In March this year, several prominent thinkers, among them Deneen and the writers Sohrab Ahmari and Rod Dreher, signed a manifesto celebrating the death of "the old conservative consensus". Published in First Things, traditionally the intellectual journal of the religious right, the manifesto called for "a political movement that heeds the cries of the working class as much as the demands of capital". The details have been fleshed out by thinkers such as Oren Cass - who advocates an industrial policy based on supporting workers instead of maximising GDP - and in the cerebral quarterly American Affairs, the most recent issue of which proposes a huge expansion of child benefit. Part of the money, the authors suggest, could come from a financial transaction tax. 

PROFILES IN CRAVEN:

WHY THERE'S AN EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE:

During their 30-minute call on July 25, Zelensky, eager for US military aid to help his country fend off Russian aggression, slavishly kissed up to Trump, praising him for his campaign tactics and saying that "I had an opportunity to learn from you." As the conversation wound down, Zelensky brought up Trump's favorite subject--his properties.

"I would like to tell you that I also have quite a few Ukrainian friends that live in the United States. Actually, last time I traveled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower," Zelensky said, according to the non-verbatim memo of their call.

IT'S NOT TERRORISM WHEN WE DO IT:

DONALD WHO?:

PITY THE POOR TRUMPBOTS:

Hmmm... The White House just sent its talking points on Ukraine to House Democrats.

Here are some screenshots, per source. pic.twitter.com/VvNAaqKP3D

— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) September 25, 2019

AND HE HAS NO SAFETY WORD:

 Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Trump were discussing gun violence over the telephone Tuesday morning when the president abruptly changed the topic to an intelligence community whistle-blower complaint that had Democrats talking about impeachment.

Ms. Pelosi stopped him short.

"Mr. President," she declared, according to a person familiar with the conversation, "you have come into my wheelhouse." [...]

Long before she was speaker, Ms. Pelosi served as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, overseeing the secretive workings of America's national security apparatus and helping to draft the law that governs how intelligence officials file whistle-blower complaints, and how that information is shared with Congress.

She saw the latest allegations against Mr. Trump -- that he pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a leading political rival, then worked to bury an intelligence whistle-blower's complaint detailing the effort -- as an egregious perversion of the process.

ALL THAT JAZZ #55

THE dARWINIST rIGHT:

The notion that we live in a zero sum, Hobbesian world where there is limited scope for cooperation is the bogus premise behind the entire America-first platform. The notion that the United States had no interest in helping to strengthen Europe and Japan to resist Soviet expansionism and to afford U.S. exports is too ridiculous to even bother to discuss.

All U.S. presidents since 1945 have had recourse to this more contentious approach to international relations, but none chose that path. Instead, they all preferred the rule of law and supported the institutions underpinning those rules. When people in other countries are free and can prosper, that is unequivocally good for Americans. When Americans can engage in commercial transactions with foreigners, we are all better off. Rules that foster exchange and cooperation are essential. To blow up the system because you may calculate that the United States will lose the least (a sort of limited nuclear war type of doctrine) becomes a plausible course of action to nationalists who think in zero-sum terms.

IT'S NOT A pROGRESSIVE PARTY:

Bernie is down to 12% in *New Hampshire*??? Whoa. https://t.co/d28zkMwTVK

— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) September 24, 2019

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

Deflation pressure is the biggest domestic risk facing South Korea's economy and its central bank should cut interest rates aggressively, a senior economist at credit rating agency S&P told Reuters on Wednesday.

WELL, IT HELPS THAT HE ALREADY CONFESSED...:

The sudden embrace of an impeachment inquiry by previously reluctant House Democrats -- most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- is attributable to one fundamental fact: They believe the new accusations against Mr. Trump are simple and serious enough to be grasped by a public overwhelmed by the constant din of complex charges and countercharges that has become the norm in today's Washington.

In contrast to the murkiness of the special counsel's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump, Democrats see the current allegations as damningly clear-cut. His refusal so far to provide Congress with an intelligence official's whistle-blower complaint as required by law, coupled with the possibility that Mr. Trump dangled American military aid as a bargaining chip to win investigation of a political rival by a foreign government, strikes them as a stark case of presidential wrongdoing. They consider it egregious enough that they expect many Americans who had been cool to the idea of moving to oust the president to recognize the imperative for the House to act.

"It has shifted the ground," Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said about the new allegations against the president, as party support for an impeachment inquiry solidified. "It makes the brazenness of the conduct and the simplicity of the misconduct easy for everybody to understand."

"BUT I WAS JUST SOLICITING CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS...":

Rudy Giuliani's contacts with officials at the State Department as part of his controversial efforts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine are more extensive than have been publicly reported. And they raise additional questions about the degree to which senior officials throughout the Trump administration were involved in--or privy to--attempts by the president to muddy a top potential political opponent. 

Over the course of the past year, Giuliani has participated in a far-flung campaign by Trump allies to unearth damaging information about Biden and his son Hunter. As part of that effort, Giuliani pressed the Ukrainian government to investigate so far unfounded allegations of corruption in the country involving the Bidens. At the time, Hunter Biden was accused of using his father's political standing to secure lucrative business opportunities abroad. Ukraine's prosecutor general would subsequently say he had no evidence of any wrongdoing.

This summer, Giuliani briefed U.S. diplomats, including special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, on his work in Ukraine and his efforts to convince the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. But Giuliani confirmed to The Daily Beast that he also briefed another diplomat: U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. President Trump's lawyer said he briefed both Volker (whom he referred to as the "main one" in terms of his State contacts) and Sondland on multiple conference calls earlier this year about his progress in pursuing a Ukraine investigation.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE THE WALL....:

Few in the White House or the wider Trump orbit have privately defended Trump's call with the Ukraine leader in which he reportedly asked eight times about investigating the Biden clan's business dealings in the country. The incident violates the principle that U.S. officials should never allow or encourage foreign governments to interfere in U.S. elections.

Trump advisers and senior administration aides pivoted any discussion of the president's call and ensuing whistleblower complaint to focus on the Bidens ...

THE RATS DON'T WANT TO GO DOWN WITH THAT SHIP:

Several senior national security officials were so concerned that President Trump would push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to give him damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, that they tried to keep the pair from meeting or having a phone conversation, several current and former U.S. officials told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

The officials said that Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, became extremely interested in Ukraine earlier this year, and top National Security Council officials were worried he would urge Trump to use U.S. leverage in order to get Zelensky to bend. Giuliani appeared to have some sort of hidden agenda when it came to Ukraine, several officials told the Post, and he worked to have the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine removed and sidelined national security officials. In May, he announced he was heading to Ukraine to start "meddling in an investigation" that could be "very, very helpful" to Trump, but he canceled after bizarrely claiming he had been "set up."

IDEALLY SITUATED TO PRIMARY PRESIDENT PENCE:

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is moving back to her native South Carolina, re-establishing a home base and also fueling speculation that a return to politics is next on her to-do list.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

Even as recently ten years ago, after a wave of litigation striking down campus speech regulations, the vast majority of American colleges and universities still kept clearly unconstitutional speech codes on the books. They kept losing in court, yet they still couldn't quit their codes.

Fast-forward a decade and that's changed. Between 2009 and 2019, the portion of surveyed American universities with what the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education classifies as "red light" speech codes has shrunk from 74.2 percent to a mere 28.5 percent, and a total of 17 states have enacted some form of campus free-speech legislation. 

NO DOWNSIDE:

The move by Democrats in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has caused nervousness on Wall Street - but history suggests investors need not worry. [...]

Wall Street dropped and the dollar tumbled in the months ahead of President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, when he was under threat of impeachment over the Watergate scandal.

But that market volatility also stood against a backdrop of Nixon's decision to suspend the dollar's convertibility into gold and a recession following the oil shock of late 1973, according to JPMorgan's John Normand.

After early volatility, Wall Street also weathered the 1998 impeachment of Clinton, who was later acquitted by the Senate.

ABANDON SHIP!:

"I was very actively involved in advocating [for] the aid. I talked to the secretary of Defense, the secretary of State once...I have no idea what precipitated the delay."https://t.co/tfY414rqOr

— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) September 24, 2019

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

The rookie Democratic lawmaker caught House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's eye as the two women brushed past each other in a marbled Capitol hallway. Neither slowed her step. But over her shoulder, Pelosi flashed Rep. Elissa Slotkin a thumbs-up and said, "Congratulations."

"Thank you!" Slotkin responded.

The lightning-quick moment, just before noon, was just what it seemed: a high-five of sorts between Pelosi and one of the vulnerable Democratic freshmen who were, for the first time, getting behind formal impeachment proceedings against the nation's 45th president.

Slotkin of Michigan and six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds had called for Trump's impeachment from the pages of The Washington Post only the night before, most for the first time, over reports that he had pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrat Joe Biden's son. [...]

In reality, what changed is that Pelosi and the national security freshmen got behind formal impeachment proceedings, which were already in progress. But doing so is acutely risky in some closely-fought districts that in 2018 delivered House control to Pelosi's party, and divisions between progressives and moderates had roiled the caucus all year. Now, Pelosi told the caucus at a private meeting Tuesday, Democrats were united on the subject. [...]

Many Democrats, including Pelosi, had thought the public didn't understand or care enough about Mueller's findings to get behind divisive impeachment proceedings. Not even Trump's stonewalling was enough.

But that all changed late last week when Trump was reported to have asked Ukraine's leader on a call to investigate work done for the country by Biden's son.

As Trump continued to not entirely deny the charge over the weekend, freshman Rep. Abigail Spanberger sensed sentiment in her politically mixed Virginia district "pivot" from a "general pit of confusion" over the Mueller report -- to clarity.

"I saw a shift on the ground in my district," said Spanberger, another author of the op-ed. "On the ground there was a change in the conversation. This is something new. It's a new phase. This is a new type of allegation."

GOSH, WHO COULD HAVE LEAKED THAT?:

John Bolton and several other Trump administration officials urged Trump to send Ukraine the withheld $400 million https://t.co/ySZDmPS6kG

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 24, 2019

#ALLCOMEDYISCONSERVATIVE

As the Examiner becomes the Weekly Standard.... https://t.co/mgzFKm0gMK

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 24, 2019

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

To help sort through the story, we have put together a timeline of how allegations of wrongdoing by the Bidens in Ukraine percolated up through right-wing news circles to the president's desk; what the president and his lawyer have said and done about it; what the Ukrainian government has said about the situation; and how Congress has reacted.

Before we launch into the events, it's important to understand the backdrop of the political situation in Ukraine over the last few years: the country has long struggled to combat corruption, and anti-graft efforts have scaled up in the wake of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution that toppled then-President Viktor Yanukovych. In 2014, then-Vice President Biden's son Hunter joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a large private Ukrainian gas firm. Also in 2014, the firm's owner, Mykola Zlochevsky (the former Ukraininan ecology minister and a political ally of Yanukovych), came under investigation for corrupt business dealings.  In 2015, Viktor Shokin was appointed to the role of prosecutor general and thus assumed control over the investigation into Zlochevsky and his businesses.

Following cries from observers about Shokin's own ineptitude and corruption and pressure from Vice President Biden, among others, Shokin was fired in 2016 as prosecutor general. Shokin's firing drew praise from Western observers, including from the European Union's envoy to Ukraine, who noted that the firing of Shokin "creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general's office" and expressed "hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office . . . becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust."

Notably, Ukraine's then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko stated in May 2019 that he was aware of no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Hunter Biden. The New York Times reports that "no evidence has surfaced to support" President Trump's allegations that the former vice president sought to dismiss Shokin in order to help his son.

ET TU, MITCH?:

The Senate has *unanimously* agreed to Schumer's resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be turned over the intelligence committees immediately.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) September 24, 2019

THERE'S NO BAD REASON TO REMOVE HIM:

A New York Times article from the archives explains:

Seeking an injunction to halt alleged discriminatory practises, the Government contended that Trump Management had refused to rent or negotiate rentals "because of race and color." It also charged that the company had required different rental terms and conditions because of race and that it had misrepresented to blacks that apartments were not available.

How to view the DOJ's case against the Trumps? An excerpt from a new book by author and lawyer James D. Zirin took stock of some of the evidence against the father-son duo.

"The Trumps were drowning in evidence of systematic racial discrimination," he notes. "On at least seven occasions, prospective tenants had filed complaints against the Trumps with the human rights commission, alleging racially discriminatory patterns and practices."

An extended excerpt from Zirin's book "Plaintiff In Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits" explains how Richard Nixon's investigators got their hands on said evidence:

It seemed that in a July 1972 test at the Trumps' Shore Haven properties in Brooklyn, when a black woman sought to rent an apartment, the superintendent turned her away, informing her that nothing was available. Shortly thereafter, when a white woman applied, the same superintendent told her she could "immediately rent either one of two available apartments."

The two women were "testers" from the Open Housing Center. One white tester said that a building superintendent admitted that "superiors" had directed him to follow "a racially discriminatory rental policy." As a result, there were only a few black occupants in the buildings.

And that's not nearly all of the ways in which Trump and his father treated people of color differently.

Additional evidence showed that Trump employees were instructed to code black and Latin applicants with "cryptic designations" which only identified them to other Trump employees in the know about the racial coding system. And, when Trump and his father did rent to African-Americans, they real estate magnates "ghettoized his properties" by "packing minorities" into one series of apartment buildings near downtown Brooklyn.

"DANG, RACISM WAS SUPPOSED TO SAVE ME!":

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has shaken up his reelection campaign weeks ahead of the November vote, a potentially ominous sign for the Republican incumbent. [...]

The staff change occurred around Labor Day. Two people familiar with the decision said it was at least partly related to the handling of a late August rally that Donald Trump Jr. held for Bevin.

The rally was held on a Thursday afternoon in a large Eastern Kentucky event space, leading to embarrassing images of a near vacant arena.

WHO HAS TO BREAK IT TO ANDY?:

Oh, great, now some left-wing rag is saying it too https://t.co/ohGRVezhvo

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 24, 2019

THE QUEEN SHOULD OVERRULE THE COURT:

In theory, judicial review is a good thing. In theory it is a way of forcing bad bureaucrats to do their job. The Australians, with remarkable prescience, worried judicial review might be used inappropriately, so they constrained it by act of parliament. We didn't. I think we clearly should have done. Because judicial review has been used, incrementally, to erode and alter the constitution of our country - without most of us noticing and without any of us being asked. There was a convention that the common law (judge made law) only changed little bits of the law. As of today that convention is dead.

It is because of the incremental changes made by judicial review since the Nineties that the Supreme Court can declare this:

'Time and again, in a series of cases since the 17th century, the courts have protected Parliamentary sovereignty from threats posed to it by the use of prerogative powers, and in doing so have demonstrated that prerogative powers are limited by the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty...'

What that means is that prorogation can be limited by statute and the courts would enforce that statute. I doubt anyone disputes that. What it does not mean, yet what has happened, is that in the absence of such a statute, the 'Supreme' Court can step in and invent one. So lawyers and judges have, step by step, decided to give themselves more and more power.

No one expected them to do what they did today. No one expected it to be unanimous - which perhaps hurts the most. Most of us expected them to say the matter was for Parliament, not for them. As indeed Lady Hale might have noticed from the very scant list of examples she gave in paragraph 44 of her judgment - all examples of constraining prorogation are statutory.

It was a point made in open court when Lord Pannick was questioned, just after the embarrassing issue with the bundles. No example of the court controlling prorogation of parliament can be found in this country - or in any common law country. Until today.

The 11 justices have taken it upon themselves to assume the power of Parliament and by common law, make a statute. That is a far bigger constitutional outrage than Boris sending parliament on holiday over conference season.

DEVIN WEPT:

We have been informed by the whistleblower's counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so.

We're in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower's testimony as soon as this week.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 24, 2019

NEVERMIND NANCY...:

President Donald Trump reportedly ordered officials to freeze $400 million in military aid to Ukraine at least a week before he got on a call asking the Ukrainian president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden's son.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) relayed the order to the State Department and Department of Defense during an interagency meeting in mid-July, three senior administration officials told The Washington Post.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

With more than a dozen moderate House Democrats joining the long list of those demanding an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, pressure mounted Tuesday on Democratic leaders to launch a formal proceeding in the House, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said she would make an announcement by the evening. [...]

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) tweeted Tuesday that the whistleblower had expressed interest in speaking with the House Intelligence Committee, perhaps as soon as this week.

"We have been informed by the whistleblower's counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so. We're in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower's testimony as soon as this week," Schiff wrote. [...]

Six freshmen House Democrats with national security backgrounds warned in a Washington Post op-ed posted late Monday that Trump's actions would be impeachable offenses. It was not a call for impeachment, but the identities of authors -- they all won in Trump districts -- set off a cascade.

Since then, at least a dozen other Democrats who had been hold-outs against impeachment -- including Reps. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas, Antonio Delgado of New York -- reversed course and came out with their support for an inquiry. Together, they represent some of the most Trump-leaning districts in the country, suggesting they do not believe there will be a political price to pay for beginning an impeachment inquiry.

Several lawmakers who are close allies of the speaker, including Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), indicated that they, too, support the call. More than two-thirds of House Democrats now support impeachment.

"The time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the civil rights leader whose opinion weighs heavily with Democrats and who is often aligned with Pelosi.

THE LIMIT IS, AT LEAST, THE UNIVERSE:

[A]t what size do quantum effects no longer apply? How big can something be and still behave like both a particle and a wave? Physicists have struggled to answer that question because the experiments have been nearly impossible to design.

Now, Arndt and his team have circumvented those challenges and observed quantum wave-like properties in the largest objects to date--molecules composed of 2,000 atoms, the size of some proteins. 

THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

IN FAIRNESS TO DONALD....:

OPEN SOURCE IT ALL:

Medical images and health data belonging to millions of Americans, including X-rays, MRIs and CT scans, are sitting unprotected on the internet and available to anyone with basic computer expertise.

The records cover more than 5 million patients in the U.S. and millions more around the world. In some cases, a snoop could use free software programs -- or just a typical web browser -- to view the images and private data, an investigation by ProPublica and the German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk found.

We identified 187 servers -- computers that are used to store and retrieve medical data -- in the U.S. that were unprotected by passwords or basic security precautions. The computer systems, from Florida to California, are used in doctors' offices, medical-imaging centers and mobile X-ray services.

The insecure servers we uncovered add to a growing list of medical records systems that have been compromised in recent years. Unlike some of the more infamous recent security breaches, in which hackers circumvented a company's cyber defenses, these records were often stored on servers that lacked the security precautions that long ago became standard for businesses and government agencies.

"It's not even hacking. It's walking into an open door," said Jackie Singh, a cybersecurity researcher and chief executive of the consulting firm Spyglass Security. Some medical providers started locking down their systems after we told them of what we had found.

IT'S NOT A pROGRESSIVE PARTY:

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

On today's Bulwark Podcast, NBC's Jonathan Allen joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss how President Trump's Ukraine call may have tilted the balance towards a certain impeachment vote.

"NO, I'M FREDO!":

Hannity: Did our State Department ask you to go on a mission for them?

Giuliani: They did. The State Department called me and said would I take a call from Mr. Yermak., who's number two or three to the president elect who is now the president. pic.twitter.com/nXDXsE5W2L

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 24, 2019

NOW THAT THE NON-UNIQUE ISRAELIS KNOW THEIR POWER...:

Speaking to The Times of Israel on Tuesday as the two teams met, a senior Blue and White source said the centrist party's lawmakers, including its chairman, did not believe Netanyahu really wanted to form a unity government and was instead planning on forcing a third round of elections.

PITY THE POOR TRUMPBOTS...:

President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday he had withheld U.S. aid to Ukraine, an action at the center of a political storm over allegations that he pressured the country's leader to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been discussing with Democratic lawmakers whether now is the time to start impeachment proceedings against President Trump, several congressional aides and House Democrats told The Washington Post on Monday.

At least a week before his July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump told acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to hold back nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, three senior administration officials told The Washington Post on Monday.

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

A group of American conservatives has caused waves over the past 12 months by explicitly turning against big business. It includes figures such as Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, Fox News host Tucker Carlson (who recently delivered a speech entitled "Why Big Business Hates Your Family", and endorsed Democrat Elizabeth Warren's economic agenda) and a number of Catholic intellectuals such as Sohrab Ahmari and Patrick Deneen.

These Trump-friendly Right-wingers are certainly not cheerleaders for Extinction Rebellion or Greta Thunberg; at first glance they seem the polar opposite of hippies, who originally defined themselves against the "military-industrial complex" and its evil end product, the war in Vietnam.

But yes, if you can get past the tone of voice, there is something hippie about these new Conservatives, defining themselves against boundary-less financial markets, the over-mighty power of technology and global corporations, and the creep of commercial thinking into all aspects of our lives. In a sense, they are more truly 'counter-cultural' than the climate protestors, who are celebrated as virtuous by almost everybody in power.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Texas has one of the youngest populations in the country. In fact, only Utah, Alaska and the District of Columbia have younger populations - and not by much. It's projected that by 2022, one in three voters in Texas will be under 30.

"There is a lot of potential there," said Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs. "Young folks don't tend to register, don't tend to vote at the same rates that older folks do."

A historically bad investment

Low turnout in years past has hampered big investments into young voters until somewhat recently.

Texas has one of the worst voter participation rates overall -- and youth voter turnout is particularly dire. In 2014, for example, just 8% of Texas youth turned out to vote. [...]

During the last election, turnout among Texas voters under 30 tripled compared to the previous midterm election.

"2018 reversed the trend that we'd been seeing in terms of decline in voter turnout among youth and among Latinos," DeFrancesco Soto said.

That change is also part of the reason the state experienced one of the closest statewide elections in decades, when Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke lost to incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz by less than 3 percentage points.

Martinez said that close election made it easier to raise money for efforts aimed at getting even more young people and people of color to vote.

THE REPRESSION IS WHY THE rIGHT SUPPORTS HIM:

US President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has come under pressure in the face of protests back home calling for him to step down.

"Everybody has demonstrations," Trump said on Monday while meeting el-Sisi on the sidelines of the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

HE'D BE A CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN IN DONALD'S PARTY:

How does a political party replicate the electoral success of its most revered member even while repudiating a whole host of his policies? That's the riddle facing Democrats in 2020.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week put numbers on what has long been a visceral cultural nostalgia for the 44th presidency. Ninety percent of Democrats hold a favorable view of Barack Obama today, compared with just 4% unfavorable (Bill Clinton, by contrast, is at 64/15). Sixty-nine percent hold a "very positive" view of Obama, up 8 percentage points over 2015. Most relevant, 78% say they are "satisfied" that the previous occupant of the White House "did as much as was possible at the time in addressing issues facing the country."

So why, then, on issue after issue, are the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders staking out positions far to the left of anything Obama ever imagined -- even while attempting to bask in his holy glow?

THIS FOOL PROBABLY DISMISSED URANIUM ONE TOO!:

IF JUDAISM AND CATHOLICISM WERE SUCH EASY PREY...:

This concern for individual choice and the individual identity is extended to others. More American Muslims support gay marriage than American Christians. Ilhan Omar, who some conservatives comically believe is some kind of radical Salafi, took a stand this year on behalf of transgendered competitors in sports. Granted, American Muslims are bound to be more liberal than European Muslims because they tend to have originated from the educated middle classes, but America's power as an engine of secularization remains incredible to behold.

It might sound outrageously presumptuous to say these things of a faith that is not my own but Muslims have said them before. In her essay on "Hijab Culture in the American Muslim Context," Butheina Hamdah wrote:

It seems that for the hijab to comfortably sit within the public square and in order to "qualify" for inclusion in the sphere of what constitutes grounds for public reason, it has to be secularized and represent something other than its essential meaning.

She continued:

Perhaps this is what distinguishes American secular-liberalism from European secularism, particularly French secularism/laïcité: rather than a ban on certain forms of hijab in the public sphere, what occurs is a recalibration of its meaning to align with public consensus in the US - through individual autonomy or "right to self-expression."

This cultural "recalibration" could turn out to be a far more powerful liberalizing force than state intervention. Repression, real or imagined, tends to unify people around that which is or appears to be being repressed. Absorbing it into the mainstream, though, leaves little to unite around.

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

.@AOC blasts Trump's $28 billion farm rescue, asks why "socialism" isn't bad when billionaires are buying votes https://t.co/9yfxNEqhY5

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 23, 2019

YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO OFFER VLAD SANCTIONS RELIEF:

Federal law prohibits a foreign national from directly or indirectly making a "contribution or donation of money or other thing of value" in connection with a U.S. election, and prohibits a person from soliciting, accepting or receiving such a contribution or donation from a foreign national. Federal law defines "contribution" to include "any gift ... of money or anything of value made by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office." And the FEC by regulation defines "solicit" to mean "to ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value."

And that's all the law requires. Whether or not Ukraine came through, whether or not the communications involved a quid pro quo, the solicitation of a thing of value from the Ukraine President in connection with a U.S. election could be a federal crime.

...AND CHEAPER...:

Last April, Elon Musk promised that Tesla would soon be able to power its electric cars for more than 1 million miles over the course of their lifespan. At the time, the claim seemed a bit much. That's more than double the mileage Tesla owners can expect to get out of their car's current battery packs, which are already well beyond the operational range of most other EV batteries. It just didn't seem real--except now it appears that it is.

Earlier this month, a group of battery researchers at Dalhousie University, which has an exclusive agreement with Tesla, published a paper in The Journal of the Electrochemical Society describing a lithium-ion battery that "should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1 million miles" while losing less than 10 percent of its energy capacity during its lifetime.

Led by physicist Jeff Dahn, one of the world's foremost lithium-ion researchers, the Dalhousie group showed that its battery significantly outperforms any similar lithium-ion battery previously reported. They noted their battery could be especially useful for self-driving robotaxis and long-haul electric trucks, two products Tesla is developing.

What's interesting, though, is that the authors don't herald the results as a breakthrough. Rather, they present it as a benchmark for other battery researchers. And they don't skimp on the specifics.

THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

ORANGE MAN WITH WHITE FLAG:

 U.S. President Donald Trump responded positively to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's idea of creating a new nuclear deal with Iran, saying that he respected Johnson and was not surprised he had floated the idea.

BUT, RACISM SEEMED SO APPEALING...:

THE SALUTARY FASCIST INTERLUDE::

Philippine citizens are overwhelmingly satisfied with President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs, a survey showed, giving a boost to a government outraged by an international push to investigate allegations of systematic murders by police.

The quarterly poll of 1,200 Filipinos by Social Weather Stations returned a rating of "excellent" for Duterte's three-year campaign, with 82% satisfied due to a perception of less drugs and crime in the country.

That compared to 12% dissatisfied, because they believed the drug trade was still flourishing and there were too many killings and police abuses.

FIGHTING CORRUPTION ISN'T ACTUALLY CORRUPT:

The president has often been vague about the specifics of his allegations, but one detail that he and his allies have repeatedly cited is the former vice president's threatening to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine's leaders did not dismiss the prosecutor. Mr. Trump's campaign on Saturday publicized footage of Mr. Biden recounting the threat.

"I said: 'We're leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money,'" Mr. Biden recounted at a 2018 event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. "Well, son of a bitch, he got fired," Mr. Biden continued, in footage that was not included in the Trump campaign video.

The prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.

His dismissal had been sought not just by Mr. Biden, but also by others in the Obama administration, as well other Western governments and international lenders. Mr. Shokin had been repeatedly accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his office and among the Ukrainian political elite, and criticized for failing to bring corruption cases.

Did Hunter Biden do anything wrong?

Hunter Biden has not been accused of legal wrongdoing related to his work for Burisma, which paid him as much as $50,000 per month in some months for his service on the board of the directors.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Donald Trump has long heralded Michigan as the crown jewel of his 2016 victory. But the president's campaign team is increasingly grim about a repeat performance in the traditionally blue Rust Belt state.

After a midterm election that decimated the ranks of Michigan Republicans, Trump's campaign is looking to other battlegrounds he lost last time -- such as Minnesota and New Hampshire -- that they see as more promising.

A FUNCTION OF GROWTH:

[L]ightly more than 31 per cent of the world is covered in forest. The world does continue to lose forest area, but consider the rate and location of this loss. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the annual rate of deforestation has more than halved since the 1990s. Between 2010 and 2015, the world has gained 4.3 million hectares of forest per year, while losing 7.6 million hectares of forest per year. That accounts for a net decrease of 0.08 percent of forest area each year.

 

Some argue this data is faulty, because the FAO defines forest area as including natural forests and tree plantations. But that criticism is illegitimate. The FAO makes it clear that "93 per cent of global forest area, or 3.7 billion hectares in 2015," was natural forest. Natural forest area decreased at an average rate of 6.5 million hectares per year over the last five years, a reduction from 10.6 million hectares per year in the 1990s. Put differently, natural forest loss is declining by 0.059 percent per year and is heading towards zero.

 

The reason why most people labor under a misapprehension about the state of the world's forests is that news stories often ignore afforestation. In about half of the world, there is net reforestation and, as Matt Ridley puts it, this isn't happening despite economic development, but because of it.

 

The world's richest regions, such as North America and Europe, are not only increasing their forest area. They have more forests than they did prior to industrialization. The United Kingdom, for example, has more than tripled its forest area since 1919. The UK will soon reach forest levels equal to those registered in the Domesday Book, almost a thousand years ago.

 

It is not just rich nations that are experiencing net reforestation. The "Environmental Kuznets curve" is an economic notion that suggests that economic development initially leads to environmental deterioration, but after a period of economic growth that degradation begins to reverse.

 

Once nations hit, what Ridley dubs the "forest transition," or approximately $4,500 GDP per capita, forest areas begin to increase. China, Russia, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh are just some of the nations that have hit this forest transition phase and are experiencing net afforestation.

 

Poor people can't afford to care about the environment very much, because other priorities - such as survival - are more important. If that means that a rare animal must be killed and eaten, so be it. "The environment is a luxury good," says Tim Worstall of the Adam Smith Institute, "it's something we spend more of our income upon, as incomes rise."

 

A recent study from the University of Helsinki highlights that between 1990 and 2015, annual forest area grew in high and mid-income nations by 1.31 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively, while decreasing by 0.72 per cent in 22 low income countries.

LET MY PEOPLE GO:

The apparent trigger for the demonstrations was almost as unexpected: Mohamed Ali, a 45-year-old construction contractor and part-time actor who said he got rich building projects for the Egyptian military and then left for Spain, where he began posting videos on social media accusing el-Sissi of corruption and hypocrisy.

When the protests erupted, it was at the time and date Ali had urged from afar.

But the extent, and durability, of Ali's out-of-nowhere influence remains to be seen. His surge from obscurity to prominence has also raised questions about whether his sudden fame has been helped along by powerful interest groups inside or outside the government.

On Saturday evening, about 200 protesters in the Red Sea city of Suez were met with police officers firing rubber bullets, according to posts on social media and a witness.

The test of how deep Ali's influence is could come as soon as this week. In a video posted Saturday evening, Ali called for a new round of protests to take place this coming Friday.

Since coming to power in a 2013 military takeover, el-Sissi has cemented his hold through harsh repression.

DAVID ALWAYS BEATS GOLIATH:

Just don't micturate on him, he likes that. https://t.co/a811nThVFv

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 22, 2019

IT'S NOT AS IF THEY HAVE ANY PRIDE LEFT:

Trump does it every time. He denies and denies, his supporters get out on a shaky limb, and then he saws it off behind them. https://t.co/yv8227qX6A

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 22, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday assailed the Trump administration's efforts to block a whistleblower complaint involving President Donald Trump's apparent effort to have Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.

In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Pelosi said the administration "will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation" if acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire fails to provide the complaint when he testifies in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

THANKS, BIBI:

The head of Israel's majority-Arab party tweets the Hebrew Bible as he recommends Benny Gantz as prime minister to oust Netanyahu:

"The stone that was spurned by the builders became the cornerstone." (Psalms 118)

Amazing. https://t.co/wz95jbomno

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 22, 2019

IT'S NOT A PROGRESSIVE PARTY:

A slide in favorable feelings toward U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has accompanied his slide into third place in the latest Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

The net favorable rating for Sanders -- a combination of likely Democratic caucusgoers who report feeling very or mostly favorable toward the senator from Vermont -- has dropped from a high of 74% last December to 58% in September. His net unfavorable rating, combining those whose feelings are mostly or very unfavorable -- rose nearly as much in that time, going from 22% to 36%.

In June I knew I had one opportunity to drill down on the most important overarching fact in the Mueller Report.

I chose the Trump campaign's documented openness to receiving foreign govt assistance to win an American election.

The Report was not a conclusion; it was a warning. https://t.co/80NmrKh7CA

— Carrie Cordero (@carriecordero) September 22, 2019

REALIZING THE DREAM:

The Joint List's platform is anathema to the majority of Jewish Israelis, calling as it does for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, the freeing of all "political prisoners" (presumably including terrorists convicted of cold-blooded murder), and a "just solution" to the predicament of Palestinian refugees that would allow them to return to territories squarely within even the essentially uncontested borders of the State of Israel, posing a demographic threat to Israel's Jewish majority.

But this platform, and the unexpectedly high number of 13 members of Knesset who were just elected to uphold it, also constitutes a supreme challenge to Israel's self-definition as a democracy.  Being one doesn't mean accepting the validity only of voices similar to your own; it means acknowledging the legitimacy of those who oppose you, even when that opposition is vehement. When Arabs streaming to the polls is perceived as exclusively a danger rather than as an opportunity, questions need to be asked about our commitment to the fundamental values on which this country was established, explicitly enunciated in Israel's declaration of independence.

Those who hold by these values - among them "the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants" while ensuring them "complete equality of social and political rights irrespective of religion, race or sex" - would best be served by courting the Arab parties to cooperate in buttressing them. They have every reason to be responsive. It is essential for the minorities in this country - even more so than for the majority - that the cornerstones of democracy not be eroded. The sanctity of the justice system, the freedom of press, the rule of law and order, the restraint of theocratic tendencies and the rejection of religious coercion are all critical to Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state - and the fulfillment of the Zionist ideal.

In pursuit of that, the leaders of all parties should take this to heart and signal to the Joint List that they are ready for an alliance of one sort or another. The greater the stake and sense of empowerment that all citizens of this country have in any government that might emerge, the greater the chance for positive change in the realm of interfaith and inter-ethnic relations, as well as in our political culture. Should the Arabs agree, then they will indeed have played a central role in saving Israel from itself - and Zionism in the process.

THE TRUMPBOTS HAVE TO SHIFT TO, "DONALD'S LYING":

WE ARE ALL dESIGNIST NOW:

As an academic scientist who researches human evolution, I was surprised to receive an email one day from Patrice Désilets, a top computer game designer responsible for the first two Assassin's Creed games. He was working on a new game based on our early evolution in Africa, he said, and was using my book The Cradle of Humanity as one of the key reference texts. Would I like to be involved?

Patrice invited my family to Montreal in early 2018 to play and comment on an early beta version. He was greatly amused that my youngest daughter is a true gamer while I always toggle the wrong way (I'm sorry but ... up should mean up). But despite my dodgy controlling, I enjoyed a stunning game with a unique subject matter, and one which I believe offers some key insights into human evolution.

The newly released Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an open world survival game where you control a group of "hominins" - our first ancestors - and explore, expand, and lock in new knowledge so your "clan" can evolve. It takes the players from 10m years ago, and the common ancestor of both chimpanzee and hominins, to 2m years ago, when you can play as an early version of Homo erectus. The aim of the game is ultimately to evolve to the point when humans began to leave Africa.

PROFILE IN CRAVEN:

Which leads to this excruciating episode of the Remnant where the Senator tries to justify his vote because of the Fentanyl crisis. Jonah is properly ashamed on his behalf:https://t.co/EigdNVux2P https://t.co/UWjBKoRcUh

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) September 22, 2019

THERE'S NOTHING MORE AMERICAN...:

 In a first-of-its-kind experiment, an MIT political scientist tested whether informing people about potential job loss from automation would change their minds about immigration and trade.

In three studies, MIT's Baobao Zhang got the same result -- people didn't shift their beliefs. Even when presented with evidence that automation was by far the more salient risk to jobs, people continued to hold anti-immigration, anti-trade views.

These findings suggest that support for populist Trumpian policies may not be as closely linked to economic anxiety as is often argued.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (R), who is challenging President Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, said Friday that lawmakers should let the market decide when it comes to regulation on climate change.

Though Weld didn't mention anyone by name, he criticized climate change proposals put forth by 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, arguing that a carbon tax is a much more feasible and economic alternative to address the the crisis.

He told Hill.TV that his proposal would not tell people what to do, which was an advantage to the other proposals. "They make their own decisions," he said.

"That's letting the market decide about carbon -- that's a much more powerful engine than just saying I'm going to spend $10 trillion dollars to promote clean energy," he added. "You don't know if you're going to get there."

A number of Republicans and Democrats in Congress have supported putting a tax on carbon.

Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) all introduced carbon tax bills in July.

? THE POINT ISN'T CONVICTION, JUST REVENGE:

The case federal prosecutors reportedly are preparing to bring against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for lying to his colleagues at the FBI is weak and likely to fail at trial. And if it does, the Department of Justice will be embarrassed--again--and struggling to answer why it brought the case in the first place. [...]

Perhaps the DOJ's strongest evidence was a later interview by investigators that was recorded. In that interview, McCabe denied authorizing his aide to leak the story and denied being in contact with her during that time. These denials are provably false but once again the evidence is weakened by mitigating facts. In this case, McCabe called the inspector general four days after the interview, said he had been thinking about the questions, and corrected the record. That strongly undercuts a conclusion that he knowingly and willfully lied, and it will be hard for a jury to send him to prison for a false statement that he promptly corrected without being asked.

A CHANCE TO SAVE ISRAEL FROM ITSELF:

The Joint List alliance of Arab-majority parties will reportedly on Sunday present a list of demands to the Blue and White party as conditions for recommending Benny Gantz as the next prime minister, although, despite talks, the centrist party has not yet made any commitments in return. [...]

Senior party members were quoted Sunday by Hebrew-language media as saying they would present their demands later in the day to Blue and White. These include freezing home demolitions in unrecognized Arab villages, forming a team to examine the issue of those villages, passing a government decision on battling violence within the Arab sector, canceling the controversial nation-state law -- which enshrines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people -- and initiating a peace process with the Palestinian Authority.

BECAUSE JOE:

For Democrats, the current 2020 election cycle is perhaps the most important in modern history. For the party faithful, unseating Trump--a man Democrats consider to be the worst President in modern history--has become the overriding concern, even eclipsing the party's lively policy debate. One rising star, and a politician many considered would give the President a run for his money, is the junior senator from California, Kamala Harris.

Superficially, Harris looks like the party's dream candidate. She is a woman--an asset to a party animated by gender politics, concerns about diversity and still reeling from the #MeToo movement. She is also an ethnic minority (her mother is Indian, her father is Jamaican), another box ticked for a party which draws considerable support from non-whites. Her former life as a prosecutor, San Francisco district attorney and California state attorney would be a dangerous match-up for the unscrupulous Trump, who has spent more time than most avoiding a court room. Having been a senator since 2016, she is already a national political figure. She has also proved herself to be a fairly effective debater, being seen to best former Vice President Biden in previous encounters.

Despite these apparent pluses, Harris' performance in the contest has so far been lacklustre. A tussle with the frontrunner Joe Biden in the second debate saw her reach 20 percent in one Quinnipiac poll, but the bump was short-lived. At the time of writing, Harris is once again languishing in single digits.

Things have only worsened for the Senator in recent days and weeks. Following the recent third round of primary debates, Harris emerged the most damaged of all of those on stage; decreasing her pool of potential voters more than any other of the candidates, particularly among voters who prize electability. Contrary to many post-debate takes, this is not necessarily down to nascent sexism among viewers, as Elizabeth Warren managed to improve her standing among those voters at the same time.

Vice President Biden remains the solid favorite among older voters, African-Americans and moderate to conservative Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders is still the leading candidate among younger voters. Since August, Warren has made some small inroads into those demographic groups, according to CNN polling. For example, Warren gained 9 points among those over 45-years-old, while both Biden and Sanders lost ground (Biden lost four points, Sanders lost three). But, among non-white voters (Biden's core), Warren slipped two points and among 18-49-year-olds (Sanders voters), she gained just one point.

PEER TO PEER:

"We declare ceasing to target the Saudi Arabian territory with military drones, ballistic missiles and all other forms of weapons, and we wait for a reciprocal move from them," Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi's supreme political council, said on the Houthi-run Al Masirah TV.

"We reserve the right to respond if they fail to reciprocate positively to this initiative," he said, adding that the continuation of the Yemen war "will not benefit any side".

He also called on all parties in the conflict to "engage in serious negotiations".

The announcement was a sharp reversal from previous statements from the Houthis, who earlier on Friday had accused Saudi Arabia and its allies of endangering a fragile truce around the port city of Hodeidah with raids on rebel targets.

Griffiths hailed the Houthis' proposal, stressing the "importance of taking advantage of this opportunity and moving forward with all necessary steps to reduce violence, military escalation and unhelpful rhetoric".

RIGHT IN HIS WHEELHOUSE:

US President Donald Trump, a self-described deal-maker, is saddled with a long list of unresolved foreign policy deals he has yet to close heading into his UN visit this week.

There are challenges with Iran, North Korea, the Afghan Taliban, Israel and the Palestinians - not to mention a number of trade pacts. Some are inching forward. Some have stalled. [...]

Nicholas Burns, a former undersecretary of state who has worked for Republican and Democratic presidents says he doesn't have a single major foreign policy achievement in more than two-and-a-half years in office."

MAKING SUBMISSION GREAT AGAIN:

One of the great commentators on the attractions of tyranny was Hannah Arendt (well described by Henry George here). In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt discusses the foundations of totalitarian practices in the violence of worldwide European colonialism and anti-Semitism. But the most innovative chapters come at the end when she tries to understand why such a sinister form of government would emerge in the 20th century. After all, colonial violence, racism, and anti-Semitism had persisted for centuries or millennia (defending on how one defines the issues). Arendt's conclusions were that it took a unique combination of modern technology and systems of governance, combined with the emergence of new kinds of ideologies and personalities for it to come to a head like it did in the 20th century. In particular, totalitarianism was able to institute a regime of total terror because modern individuals had lost the ability to trust their very selves because they had abandoned any sense of relation to one another. This is a complex point that speaks to the brilliance of her work. Arendt makes the argument that our capacity to know things for ourselves and think, even in isolation, depends, in part, by making meaningful connections with others. The common ties that bound communities had become uprooted, destroying the "common sense" we shared with one another and which was a prerequisite both to know who we are and to be criticize and become more. The result was a society where people were fundamentally lonely. Arendt, as the philosopher of loneliness, spoke of this with great poignancy:

"What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one's own self which can be realized only in solitude, but confirmed in its identity only by the trusting and trustworthy company of equals. In this situation, many loses trust in himself as the partner of his thoughts and that elementary confidence in the world which is necessary to make experience at all. Self and world, capacity for thought and experience are lost at the same time....A lonely man, says Luther 'always deduces one thing from the other and thinks everything to the worst.' The famous extremism of totalitarian movements, far from having anything to do with true radicalism, consists in this 'thinking everything to the worst,' in this deducing process which always arrives at the worst possible conclusions." 

For Arendt, the loneliness of modern society creates the ideal conditions of the emergence of totalitarianism, as individuals left by themselves and increasingly not knowing who they are (or how to think) are yearning to submit themselves to anything which can provide a sense of fullness. The totalitarian movements offered the promise of not just belonging, but total belonging. The individual would be swallowed into the movement, becoming a single homogenous mass with one's fellows. 

THERE ARE TOO MANY EXAMPLES TO NEED TO LIE ABOUT THIS ONE:

THE CASE FOR KAVANAUGH:

For most of the book the writers take an omniscient Woodwardian tone, staying careful and balanced and not cluttering up every sentence with newspaper-style sourcing. But I couldn't help reading a lot into the title. On my own copy I idly scribbled "Mis" before the "Education," since it's clear that academic enrichment is not what the authors have in mind. In high school and college and even a little into law school, the main thing they portray Kavanaugh learning is how to expertly blend into the background hum of blasé misogyny and clubby competitive drinking.

The picture that emerges of Kavanaugh as an actual student is admirable if indistinct. He works hard, graduates near or at the top in his class. A college friend recalls him having a neat stack of books and papers he would move through like a machine. A couple of people remember him as special but just as many remember him as "straightforward and uncomplicated" -- or, as some college friends put it, "ham on white." My favorite observation about his college years is: "Along with playing and writing about sports, Kavanaugh enjoyed watching them in his downtime." Really, that could be anyone. In fact, when he got his big break as a clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski, the law professor who recommended him described him as a "good student" and not a "great one," but added, "I got to know his character from basketball."

Where Kavanaugh jumps off the page is in what might euphemistically be called "extracurriculars." He went to high school with classmates who had private pools and tennis courts and sometimes even private jets. He came of age during the era of "Porky's" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." That combination of extreme privilege and extreme license, which he seemed to take for granted as a teenager, in retrospect looks lethal. He lived in the athlete bubble and made fun of kids outside it. He was not known as a starter of trouble but as a joiner, signing on to the "100 Keg Club," riding in the Party Van, singing obnoxious songs about who was a good lay. His friends ran an underground paper called The Unknown Hoya, dispensing helpful tips such as "all it takes to have a good time with any H.H. (Holton Hosebag)" is a Montgomery County library card.

People who knew Kavanaugh said he was nice and well mannered except when he was drinking or hanging out with his friends and showed his "cocky dismissive side." In his confirmation hearings Kavanaugh bristled at his drinking being characterized as anything other than perfectly normal. And maybe it was perfectly normal by the standards of upper-middle-class white teenagers in the '80s, but the norm is sometimes worth examining. In Kavanaugh's case, it encouraged years of proud obnoxious partying, belligerent public behavior and a smugness about being above the rules. As he told a group of students in 2014 recounting his law school years, they had a motto: "What happens on the bus stays on the bus."

Pogrebin and Kelly spend significant time digging into Blasey Ford's accusations and also those of Deborah Ramirez, a woman who says Kavanaugh put his penis in her face at a Yale college party. They track down any witnesses and friends willing to talk, comb through legal documents, do their best to find the house where Blasey Ford says the assault took place. They point out critical witnesses that the F.B.I., in its very limited investigation, did not have time to interview. In the end they turn up no smoking gun, no secret confession, no friend who comes forth to say Kavanaugh was lying all this time.

What they do instead is almost too cruel: use his mother's words against him. In an extremely satisfying epilogue, Pogrebin and Kelly invoke as a guide something Martha Kavanaugh, who was a state prosecutor, would often say at the dinner table: "Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?" With this standard they come to a generous but also damning conclusion, which is that Blasey Ford and Ramirez are believable and were in fact mistreated by Kavanaugh as teenagers, but that over the next 35 years he became a better person.

THE POINT BEING, THE rIGHT HATES AMERICA:

Whereas the Right in most of the world is ideologically rooted in much of the same tribalist and socialist traditions that we despise on the Left, American conservatism has historically offered a rare exception. For centuries, the American Right has stood up for the right of individuals and communities to foster their own moral order, rather than hand over unchecked authority to distant kings, be them London royals in 1776 or Washington bureaucrats in 2019.

This beautiful tradition is exactly what has made so many Americans prosperous and happy, and to abandon it would be a tragedy of historical proportions.

Indeed, it's disturbing how eager Ahmari and his fellow Catholic traditionalists are to eliminate the so-called neutral public commons, considering that Catholicism owes its prevalence in America today to the religious freedom that a neutral public common guaranteed. Catholic immigrants faced deep discrimination throughout most of American history, so much so that an entire political party, the Know Nothings, were formed primarily to oppose them.

Editorial cartoons depicted Catholics as failing to assimilate because of their supposed foreign allegiance to Rome. If Protestant populists with Ahmari's zeal for eliminating the neutral commons had taken power in early American history, Catholics like he and I would be second-class citizens, as religious minorities in much of the world are today.

Rather, it is precisely the individual liberties and neutrality of the commons enshrined in the Constitution that has allowed Americans of all colors and creeds to flourish.

Too often, we forget the fact that despite the political divisions that the nation faces today, we still live in one of the most diverse, wealthy, and peaceful societies the world has ever seen, thanks to the combination of capitalism and classical liberalism. This is the exception, not the norm, of human history. In Suicide of the West, Jonah Goldberg called it "the miracle."

We should think hard before radically re-adjusting the formula as Ahmari proposes.

Certainly, there are other ways to order society, as seen around the world. However, a recurring theme throughout most of them is political tribalism and economic socialism.

Much of the European Right, for example, is defined by big-government policies and ethnic hostility. 

MAYBE DON'T PUT STUFF OTHER THAN AIR IN OUR LUNGS?:

The U.S. investigation into hundreds of cases of life-threatening lung illnesses related to vaping has turned up a curious abnormality: Many of the victims had pockets of oil clogging up cells responsible for removing impurities in the lungs.

Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, who has been leading the inquiry at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, wants to know where that oil came from. The answer will help explain whether these cells play a key role in the vaping-related outbreak that has killed seven people and sickened 530 so far. [...]

One possibility: The deposits are residue from inhaling vaping oils, such as those containing the marijuana ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or vitamin E acetate. Both are considered possible contributors to the current illnesses.

Some researchers suspect the oils are formed inside the lungs as part of the body's natural response to chemicals found in many commercial vaping devices. One theory is that vaping these chemicals may impair the immune system, and make people who vape more vulnerable to respiratory distress, they say.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation earlier this month has fueled the latter theory.

It found that mice exposed to aerosols of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin - common solvents used in conventional nicotine vaping devices - developed these same fat-clogged immune cells even though they were never exposed to vaping oils. These mice also had impaired immune systems compared to mice exposed to room air.

DEVIN'S MOTHER WEPT:

Did House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff have the inside details about the Trump whistleblower two weeks ago?

Earlier this month, the California Democrat announced a "wide-ranging investigation" into allegations President Trump was trying to pressure Ukraine's government into aiding his reelection campaign.

Schiff ordered the probe on Sept. 9, hours before he received the first of two letters from the intelligence community inspector general revealing the existence of a whistleblower complaint. Multiple news outlets reported this week that the complaint involved, at least in part, a phone conversation between Trump and recently elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Inspector General Michael K. Atkinson's letter didn't provide Schiff with the details, but some Republicans say they suspect Schiff knew them already and was orchestrating a headline-grabbing story from his perch on the Intelligence panel.

FORGET THE OPIODS....:

Flattery will get you everywhere with Donald Trump. The President demonstrated this powerfully on Wednesday, when he named the State Department's little-known hostage negotiator, Robert O'Brien, to be his latest national-security adviser, despite O'Brien having less relevant experience than anyone who's held the post in the nearly seven decades since it was created. In O'Brien's case, his ability to lavish praise on the boss was explicitly cited by the President as a factor in his appointment to one of the most powerful unelected positions in the world. There wasn't anything subtle about it.

On Tuesday, speaking with reporters on Air Force One, Trump said that O'Brien was one of five finalists, then quoted O'Brien as having told him, "Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States." "He happens to be right," Trump added. The next morning, O'Brien got the job...

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

ANY ENEMY OF VLAD IS AN ENEMY OF DONALD:

The situation has also highlighted Mr. Trump's grudge against Ukraine, a close ally that has long enjoyed bipartisan support as it seeks to build a stable democracy and hold off aggression from its hostile neighbor to the east, Russia.

Mr. Trump has often struck a less-than-condemnatory tone toward Russian aggression, including its interference on his behalf in the 2016 presidential election, and its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, which Mr. Trump said last month should no longer prevent Russia from rejoining the Group of 7 industrialized nations.

Only after Congress put intense bipartisan pressure on the administration did he release the military assistance package to Ukraine last week.

After delays in scheduling a White House meeting for Mr. Zelensky, and the cancellation of a trip by Mr. Trump to Europe during which the two would have met in person for the first time, a meeting was finally added to Mr. Trump's calendar for Wednesday in New York, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Privately, Mr. Trump has had harsh words about Ukraine, a former Soviet state. He has been dismissive of his own administration's recommendations that he throw the full support of the United States government to Mr. Zelensky, a former comedian and political neophyte who is seen in the West as a reformer elected with a mandate to stop both Russian aggression and the political corruption that has long plagued the country.

In May, a delegation of United States officials returned from Mr. Zelensky's inauguration praising the new president and urging Mr. Trump to meet with him, arguing that Mr. Zelensky faced enormous headwinds and needed American support. The future of Ukraine, they said during an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump, would be decided in the next six months.

Mr. Trump was not sympathetic. "They're terrible people," he said of Ukrainian politicians, according to people familiar with the meeting.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

At least a dozen Iranian students who were set to begin graduate programs in engineering and computer science say their visas were abruptly canceled and they were barred from their flights to the United States this month.

The sudden batch of visa cancellations, which came at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, set off a scramble by university officials, lawmakers, the students' union and Iranian-American advocates to figure out what had happened.

WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS:

Saudi Arabia requested what the secretary described as "extra defensive support," he said, and it will "send a clear message that the United States supports our partners in the region."

Five years before masterminding the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, Osama bin Laden laid out his strategy in a declaration of jihad "against the Americans occupying the land of the two holiest sites." The aim: "Expel the infidels from the Arabian peninsula." Bin Laden argued that the Saudi regime, whose rule derived from its safeguarding of Islam's holiest sites, had forfeited its legitimacy by ceding so much of its security to the "infidel" Americans.

Two and a half decades later, Bin Laden is dead, the U.S. still has troops patrolling his former safe haven in Afghanistan, and President Donald Trump, once billed as "the dove" in the 2016 election, is as closely tied to the Saudi leadership as perhaps any American chief executive in recent history, which is quite a remarkable statement in itself. He defended ruthless Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman after the de facto ruler's orchestrated murder of a U.S.-based Washington Post journalist; he sidestepped Congress to push through $8 billion in new "emergency" arms deals with the Saudi royals; he ritually and publicly touched the orb of global influence with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz. Now, Trump is mulling military action against Iran in retaliation for a devastating drone attack on one of the Saudi regime's key oil-processing facilities on Saturday.

"Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked," Trump tweeted out of the blue Sunday evening. "There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!"

Call it the curse of Osama bin Laden: The harder an American administration fights against the terrorist's enduring challenge, the harder it becomes to quit Saudi Arabia. Here is an administration not merely ready to defend Saudi soil as if it were a NATO member, but asking the Saudis how to proceed.

THE GLOBALIZATION LEFT/RIGHT WHINE ABOUT:

TRUMPONOMICS:

If you ask her, Peggy Stanley can give you a rough running tally of the money that Blackjewel Mining owes her husband.

First, there are the paychecks. One was supposed to be sent out mid-July, after the company filed for bankruptcy, but it never came. There's also the one that was sent out in the middle of June but bounced two weeks later when the company ran out of funds, causing the Stanleys' account to be frozen. Peggy estimates those checks amount to around $5,000.

There's also the money in their 401k, which the couple has been unable to access. And then there's the mining equipment. Peggy's husband, John, was on his shift at a mine in western Virginia when he was told to stop working on July 1. He left his supplies--including two pairs of boots, a light, and a hard hat--in his locker, thinking he could come back later to get them.

Since then, the gates have been locked. No employees have been allowed to go in, and Peggy says they were told the $400 worth of supplies in the locker had been stolen.

And for John and Peggy, who are in limbo as they wait for news about John's job, every little bit of money counts right now.

"We're wondering how we will pay the next bill or get food," Peggy said.

The meltdown at Blackjewel, which currently owes millions of dollars to more than 1,000 workers in four different states, shows just how tenuous the coal industry can be for workers.

Six coal companies filed for bankruptcy in the last year, putting workers in dire straits. In 2018, only around 80,000 people nationally were employed at coal mines--the lowest level on record. The collapse of coal threatens not just miners, but their neighbors in mining communities. A recent analysis identified 26 counties so dependent on coal for employment and tax revenue that they risk "fiscal collapse" because of the continuing decline of the industry.

PROUD BOYS:

QUESTION: WHAT IS the connection between controversial Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- who is visiting Houston this Sunday for the "Howdy, Modi" summit, as well as a meeting with President Donald Trump -- and a spate of white nationalist terrorist attacks across the West?

Answer: Anders Breivik.

You remember Breivik, right? The homicidal Islamophobe who massacred 77 people in Norway in 2011? Brevik, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison, is now viewed as a "saint" by far-right activists. Christopher Hasson, the Coast Guard lieutenant and self-proclaimed white nationalist accused of plotting the assassination of prominent Democrats and journalists, has cited Breivik as an influence. The Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant described the Norwegian mass murderer as his "true inspiration" and even suggested that they had been in contact, while the El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius, in turn, expressed support for the "Christchurch shooter and his manifesto," as did the San Diego synagogue shooter.

But where did Breivik himself draw inspiration from? It probably won't shock you to hear that he name-checked a range of conservative and far-right commentators from the U.S. and the U.K. in his rambling and racist manifesto. But it might surprise you to discover that this modern icon of white nationalist terrorism also mentioned India, and in particular Hindu nationalism, on a "remarkable 102 pages" of his 1,518-page screed.

For Breivik, it is essential that far-right, Islamophobic movements in Europe and India "learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible."

BREIVIK CALLS ON his "Hindu Nationalist brothers" to "rise up" against the Muslim conquerors of India, and extols Hindu nationalist groups because "they dominate the streets" and "do not tolerate the current injustice and often riot and attack Muslims when things get out of control." However, he complains, "this behaviour is nonetheless counterproductive."

"Instead of attacking the Muslims," he continues, "they should target the category A and B traitors in India and consolidate military cells and actively seek the overthrow of the cultural Marxist government."

For Breivik, it is essential that far-right, Islamophobic movements in Europe and India "learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible" because "our goals are more or less identical." He even provides a list of online resources for his readers -- and it includes the website of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh among them.

The RSS is a far-right, male-only paramilitary volunteer organization, founded in India in 1925. Breivik may have been lauding the RSS in 2011; but back in the 1920s and 1930s, the founders of the RSS were heaping praise on Europe's far-right, totalitarian regimes -- from Mussolini's fascists in Italy to Hitler's Nazis in Germany.

90-10 NATION:

WELCOME BACK, BROTHERHOOD:

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters have marched in cities across Egypt to demand the resignation of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Videos posted on social media showed demonstrators chanting "rise up, fear not, Sisi must go" and "the people demand the regime's fall" on Friday.

Protests were reported in the capital Cairo, the second-biggest city of Alexandria and Suez.

SCRATCH A TRUMPBOT...:

Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis once claimed the "Jewish lobby" controls the GOP and that Republican members of Congress have "dual loyalties" to the United States and Israel.

The comments were made during a February 2013 episode of The Jason Lewis Show, a radio program hosted by the former U.S. congressman. Lewis served one term as the representative for Minnesota's second district. He's now running for the U.S. Senate.

SO MUCH WAFFLING!:

Speaking to a Fox News reporter near the Mexican border on Wednesday, President Trump seemed taken aback when asked if the White House was preparing to roll out gun control proposals the next day, a timeline administration officials had suggested was likely. [...]

[I]dling in neutral is not something the president is doing only on guns. In discussions with his staff, Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to accomplish something big, but seems stymied as to what it might be, according to interviews with a half-dozen aides and advisers. In the meantime, he has remained on the sidelines as divisive issues are debated and is treading water even on possible staff changes he wants to make, for fear of how things "play."

On the international stage, Mr. Trump has seemed most conflicted about how to respond to Iran's attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, threatening to order "the ultimate option" one moment, and then warning that getting involved in Middle East wars was a mistake the next.

And the lack of direction is apparent even in the message he delivers at his campaign rallies. With little in the way of policy proposals or a larger vision, he has been telling crowds from New Hampshire to South Carolina, "You have no choice but to vote for me," and has been promoting his new slogan, "Keep America Great."

On guns, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has made it clear he will not take any action until the White House does. "If the president is in favor of a number of things that he has discussed openly and publicly, and I know that if we pass it, it will become law, I'll put it on the floor," he said this month.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

"If he really claims ignorance, then he was living in some strange sheltered world," said Ladonna James, a brand and marketing executive in Toronto. "Because otherwise, you cannot claim ignorance on that. He's an educator. And his father was the prime minister, who was loved by immigrants."

Trudeau's dress sense has landed him in trouble before while in office. He and his family wore a number of elaborate outfits during a 2018 official trip to India, sparking widespread scorn from critics who said he went over the top.

Liberal insiders say part of the issue is that Trudeau - who used to throw himself down stairs as a party trick when younger - does not always think twice before he tries to be funny.

"Before he does a public event, his team tells him: 'Don't make jokes,'" said one well-placed Liberal.

The prime minister himself acknowledged the issue last year after he interrupted a woman who used the word "mankind," saying he preferred "peoplekind" instead.

"I don't necessarily have the best of track records on jokes. ... I shouldn't be making jokes even when I think they're funny," he told reporters after days of mockery.

A PEOPLE WHO THINK THEMSELVES A NATION ARE ONE:

Yemen's Houthi group said on Wednesday it had identified dozens of sites in the United Arab Emirates as possible targets, in an attempt to underscore its military clout following a weekend attack it claims to have carried out on Saudi oil facilities.

"To the Emirati regime we say only one operation (of ours) would cost you dearly," Yahya Saria, the military spokesman for the Iran-aligned movement, said in a televised speech.

"Today and for the first time we announce that we have dozens of targets within our range in the UAE, some are in Abu Dhabi and can be attacked at any time."

He said the Houthis have new drones, powered by "normal and jet engines" that can reach targets deep in Saudi Arabia.

ONLY A PIKER WOULD OBSTRUCT JUSTICE IN A SINGLE COUNTRY:

Vice President Mike Pence was about to finish a routine joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw last week, when he got two astutely specific questions about his meeting the previous day with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

"Number one, did you discuss Joe Biden at all during that meeting yesterday with the Ukrainian President? And number two, can you assure Ukraine that the hold-up of [U.S. security assistance] has absolutely nothing to do with efforts, including by Rudy Giuliani, to try to dig up dirt on the Biden family?" Associated Press reporter Jill Colvin asked.

Pence answered the first question directly: "Well, on the first question, the answer is no." His response to the second question was more interesting. He essentially demurred. But to decode the significance of Pence's reply, it's important to understand the recent history of Ukraine and U.S. policy toward the country. From there, we can unpack what's at the bottom of the Trump-Giuliani efforts.

Those efforts yesterday became the focus of a new joint investigation by three House committees - Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight and Reform. In letters to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seeking "any and all" related records and a list of personnel involved, the three Democratic committee chairs outlined a litany of meetings, phone calls, tweets and other threats, including the withholding of the $250 million of security aid the reporter had referenced in the question to Pence.

"President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump's reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme," the chairmen wrote.

The reporter's questions to Pence struck at the heart of a controversy roiling U.S.-Ukraine relations since even before Zelenskyy's election win in April. Starting at least late last year, President Donald Trump and his personal attorney and advisor, Rudy Giuliani, have agitated for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden, the current frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race and the candidate they apparently think could be Trump's biggest rival for a second term.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Fifty-nine percent of voters are extremely interested in the 2020 presidential election.  That's a number typically only seen right before an election.

It's 27 points higher than around this same time in the last presidential cycle -- and only one point off the record 60 percent extremely interested the week before Election Day in 2008.

In addition, more Democrats (65 percent) than Republicans (60 percent) are extremely interested in the election and more Democrats (69 percent) than Republicans (63 percent) are extremely motivated about voting in 2020.  That helps Democratic candidates top President Donald Trump in potential head-to-head matchups. [...]

In counties where the 2016 vote was close (Hillary Clinton and Trump within 10 points), Biden is ahead by 21 points.

Among the 6 in 10 voters who feel extremely motivated about voting in 2020, Biden is up over Trump by 16 points.

YEAH, BUT HE HASN'T INJECTED ANYONE WITH METH!:

On the 20th of July 1787, Gouverneur Morris rose inside the stiflingly hot Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, to explain why he had changed his mind and now favored including a power of impeachment in the constitutional text.

Until that point, he and others had feared that an impeachment power would leave the president too dependent on Congress. He had thought that the prospect of reelection defeat would offer a sufficient control on presidential wrongdoing.

But the arguments of other delegates had convinced him--and particularly an example from then-recent British history. A century earlier, Great Britain had been ruled by a king named Charles II. King Charles was the son of Charles I, the king whose head was cut off during the English Civil War. Restored to the throne, Charles II learned to tiptoe carefully around his dangerous subjects. But there was a problem: Charles wanted more money than Parliament willingly offered him. His solution? He reached out to an old friend and patron: the king of France, Louis XIV.

Louis had sheltered Charles during exile. He knew that Charles had converted to Catholicism--a secret that could have cost Charles his throne and possibly his life if his own people had known it. Louis had no parliament of his own to worry about. He paid Charles an annual subsidy to cover Charles's fiscal shortfall. In return, he asked Charles to hand over a British base on French soil--and to stay neutral in the war Louis was about to launch against the Protestant Netherlands.

These treasons would emerge into daylight after the overthrow of Charles's brother and the Stuart dynasty in 1688. For the men of 1787, these events of the century before their own felt as vivid and central as the civil-rights era of the mid-20th century seems to us nearing the middle of the 21st.

So Gouverneur Morris said, according to notes taken by James Madison:

He was now sensible of the necessity of impeachments, if the Executive was to continue for any time in office. Our Executive was not like a Magistrate having a life interest, much less like one having an hereditary interest in his office. He may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay without being able to guard agst it by displacing him. One would think the King of England well secured agst bribery. He has as it were a fee simple in the whole Kingdom. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV. The Executive ought therefore to be impeachable for treachery; Corrupting his electors, and incapacity were other causes of impeachment. For the latter he should be punished not as a man, but as an officer, and punished only by degradation from his office. This Magistrate is not the King but the prime-Minister. The people are the King. When we make him amenable to Justice however we should take care to provide some mode that will not make him dependent on the Legislature.

Foreign corruption inducing treason was the core impeachable offense in the eyes of the authors of the Constitution.

Which is why a whistle-blower report filed with the inspector general for the intelligence community, reportedly concerning an improper "promise" by President Donald Trump to a foreign leader, has jolted Congress.

MAYBE THE CONFEDERATES WIN THE CIVIL WAR THIS TIME!:

That widening red-blue economic divide in turn drives the parties' starkly different policy agendas. It helps explain why Democrats lavish more attention on education, technology and protecting immigrants, for example, while President Donald Trump and other Republicans place mining, manufacturing and border control on center stage.

That coincides with a sharp increase in incomes and economic output for the constituencies Democrats represent in Congress. Today, the $61,000 median income of blue districts substantially exceeds the $53,000 median income of red ones, reversing the order from 2008.

The average gross domestic product for Democratic districts, near parity with Republican ones in 2008, has grown 50% higher. Output per worker has followed the same pattern.

Those shifts reflect trends within a globally-integrated economy that increasingly rewards better-educated workers and advanced technology. The share of professional and digital services jobs in Democratic districts more than doubles the share in Republican districts; a significantly higher proportion in blue areas now holds college degrees.

By contrast, Republican districts now boast the lion's share of work in basic manufacturing, agriculture and mining. They also have a slightly higher proportion of residents age 65 or older - 16.6%, compared to 14.7% in Democratic districts.

While red districts have remained demographically static, blue ones have grown more diverse. Roughly half of residents in Democratic districts are non-white, up by ten percentage points since 2008, compared to just over one-fourth in Republican areas.

RESISTING THE TEXT IS FUTILE:

Gregory A. Boyd's Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament's Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross is a massive, almost 1,500-page double volume that represents the author's attempt to resolve the tensions between a Jesus who is thought to reveal "an agape-centered, other-oriented, enemy-embracing God who opposes all violence" and the many Old Testament (OT) "portraits of Yahweh violently smiting his enemies" (xxviii-xxix). These tensions, which are very real and confront any serious reader of the OT, are magnified for pastor and theologian Boyd, who professes to stand within the Anabaptist tradition (15-17, 205, 260, and 544, n. 80) and who attempts their resolution with a pre-commitment to ideological pacifism (xxvii-xxxiv). This pre-commitment is stated from the outset and guides the entire project, governing the author's use of a "cruciform hermeneutic" and the author's treatment of all OT texts and narratives.

This task, of course, is complicated by numerous factors, not least of which is Jesus' and the New Testament (NT) writers' authoritative citing of OT figures, events, and categories. But it is further complicated (1) by the NT's unqualified recognition and acknowledgement of the OT scripture's inspiration and authority (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:1-12; 2 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 11:1-40; James 2:8-13; 2 Pet. 1:19-21); (2) by Jesus' acknowledgement of the continuity of moral law as revealed in the OT (Matt. 5:17-20), which Boyd misinterprets (75-78); and (3) by the NT writers' constant and authoritative use of the OT in myriads of ways, some of which are at times baffling to the modern reader. These realities create for Boyd a "conundrum" insofar as his own view, to be developed below, is lacking support from the historical Christian tradition (hereafter, HCT).

Boyd's project, then, requires a hermeneutic that begins with the presuppositions of ideological pacifism and works its way backward. It works its way backward (1) through the NT, in which John the Baptist, Jesus, the evangelists, and the apostles are made to espouse pacifism; (2) through church history and the early church in particular; and then finally (3) through the texts of the OT itself, whether found in the Pentateuch, the historical narratives, the Psalms, or the prophets. In light of the clear commands of God given to the leaders of Israel of old, this will not be an easy interpretive task. Along the way, Boyd finds one church father, the pacifist Origen, to assist him in reinterpreting the Old Testament and thereby helping to furnish a "new perspective" (xxxii-xxxiv) on a difficult question.

This "new perspective" wrestles with canonical material in the OT that seems "unworthy of God" (xxxii) and finds a "solution" (xl) to the theological tensions that emanate from OT "texts of terror." It does so in the following manner: "the Spirit," Boyd informs the reader, "will enable us to see beyond the surface appearance of things, where the conundrum resides, and find a resolution in a deeper, more profound, revelatory truth" (xxxiii). "Prayerfully contemplating Scripture's violent portraits of God," as Boyd retells it, he "suddenly began to catch glimpses of the crucified God in them" (ibid.). What he calls the "Magic Eye" approach to understanding the OT (xxxv-xxxvii) becomes for Boyd the key in interpreting those ethically knotty accounts in the OT of God supposedly destroying human beings. In a nutshell, what is this "Magic Eye" approach? "God, who is indiscriminate in his love and non-violent, had to accommodate his self-revelation to the spiritual state and cultural conditioning of his people in the ages leading up to Christ" (xxxv). This starting point for Boyd becomes the essence of his "crucicentric" reading of scripture. In the end, he realizes, "Origen's advice" (i.e., a mystical interpretation) "proved right" (xxxiii). With this inspiration in place, Boyd begins to apply his "cruciform hermeneutic."

Briefly summarized, Crucifixion of the Warrior God[i] (hereafter CWG) attempts to argue that the OT accounts of God's "violence"--i.e., "texts of terror" (279)--are not true portraits of the character of God. Rather, they are misconstrued and culturally conditioned--i.e., fallen--accounts that "mask" God's true character and self-revelation. These accounts, therefore, are to be understood as "literary artifices" (548) and not to be taken at face value. Let the reader beware: Boyd's argument consists of seven parts, 25 chapters, 10 appendices, one postscript, 100 pages of indices, and 40 pages of suggested reading, all of which consumes 1,445 pages of print. Wading through this project is not for the faint in heart.

WAS ANYTHING IN LIFE EVER MORE CERTAIN...:

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Lawfare's David Priess joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the anonymous whistleblower complaint, the departure of John Bolton, and new NSA Robert O'Brien and his resume.

IN FAIRNESS TO DONALD....:

The Washington Post reported Wednesday night that a phone call between President Trump and a foreign leader "included a 'promise' that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint," leading to a standoff between Congress and the acting director of national intelligence. Two of the three major cable news networks had some big questions on Wednesday night. On MSNBC, it was: Who is this leader?

"If you look through the White House records, Trump had interactions with about four or five foreign leaders in the weeks leading up to this complaint," Washington Post reporter Greg Miller told Brian Williams. "Perhaps the most relevant one is a late-July, end-of-July conversation with Vladimir Putin, in which the White House readout was very different from the Russian readout afterward." Former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul had a similar thought.

DONALD WHO?:

In an interview at the Harvard Kennedy School on Tuesday, the former top diplomat argued that Netanyahu -- whom he described as an "extraordinarily skilled" politician -- would share "misinformation" in meetings to get the Trump administration on board with his policy goals. "They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that 'We're the good guys, they're the bad guys,'" Tillerson charged.

Tillerson, who clashed with Trump on decisions including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and withdrawing from the Iran deal, explained that he "exposed" Netanyahu's tricks to the president "so he understood: 'You've been played.'" 

FROM BIBI'S LIPS TO LATINO EARS:

Arab Israelis defied expectations, withstood Likud's active and unabashed suppression campaign, and came to the polls demanding their due.

Indeed, the narrative now crystallizing in the Arab community contends that Likud's anti-Arab campaign caused the roughly 10-point spike in turnout (based on still-unofficial vote counts).

Hamad Khalailah, a 28-year-old lawyer in the large Galilee town of Sakhnin, told The Times of Israel on election day that he'd made the effort to go and vote -- for the Arab party the Joint List, to be sure -- in order to prove he could not be cowed by Likud's efforts, which included an attempt to install cameras in Arab polling stations (successful in April; banned on Tuesday) and campaign rhetoric focused on the "danger" of Arab citizens turning out to cast their ballots.

 

"I wasn't scared to come here," Khalailah said. "It is my right to vote and Netanyahu will not stop me from doing that."

As Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi put it on Wednesday, "Two weeks ago, our campaign was asleep, weak, limping. Then, a week ago, someone, a magician, set off alarm clocks at the entrances to all of our towns. That was Benjamin Netanyahu with his [polling-station] cameras bill. Then the Arabs rushed to the polls in droves."

Likud believed it had found a formula, immoral but effective, to maximize its advantage on election day. It worked, too -- until it didn't. As some Likud lawmakers have admitted, the anti-Arab campaign appears to have helped galvanize the very voters it was trying to dissuade.

But Likud's mistake could turn out to be costlier than the results of Tuesday's race, as the history of Israeli ethnic politics reveals.

The Labor party, once called Mapai, has long been dominated by Ashkenazi Jews. In the early years of Israel's existence, the party engaged in willful and systematic neglect and marginalization of newly arrived Mizrahi Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, largely excluding them from party membership and positions of influence in the young state.

The strategy worked -- until it didn't. A narrow Ashkenazi elite kept its hold on power for 29 long years. But once the spell broke, Labor and the broader Israeli left spent the next four decades (and counting) struggling to overcome the almost axiomatic Mizrahi identification with the right.

The marginalization of Mizrahim, like Likud's browbeating of the Arab community, was a deliberate effort, as the political debates of the state's early years reveal. One newspaper editor, Yehiel Halpern of Davar, Mapai's main outlet, warned his readers in a January 1951 op-ed that the deliberate marginalization of the Mizrahi newcomers could have disastrous consequences.

"They don't see the value to be gained from democratic rights and freedoms," he wrote of the Mizrahim, but blamed Mapai for that fact. By excluding them from membership and access to the ruling party's ranks, and thus to national leadership in those years, Mapai was denying the newcomers the experience of "real ownership" of their new country and "mastery over their own fate" that could transform those who had never experienced democracy into lifelong democrats.

By the 1970s, this marginalization had driven Mizrahim decisively into Likud's camp, paving the way for decades of mostly right-wing ascendance. Even in 2019, in the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi gap between Blue and White and Likud, the political reverberations of that old bigotry still echo.

Arabs make up roughly 21 percent of the Israeli population, but only 16% of the electorate. That large gap has two sources. About half the gap is due to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics classifying over 200,000 East Jerusalemites as part of the Arab Israeli population, though most are not Israeli citizens and are unable to vote in Knesset elections. The rest of the gap is due to the young age of the Arab population.

It seems safe to assume that both those demographic realities will eventually swell the Arab portion of the electorate. Since Israel is unlikely to surrender East Jerusalem anytime soon, it is likely to eventually see those residents ask for and receive voting rights to the Knesset. Similarly, barring drastic and sudden changes to human biology, those Arab children will soon grow up to be voting-age adults.

THE IDEAL RESPONSE TO ETHNONATIONALISM:

While tight monitoring of the Sept. 17 election results has delayed publication of the official numbers, as of the morning after, even partial results have made the situation abundantly clear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party's warnings that the country's Arab parties would steal the elections had a boomerang effect. The Joint List led by Knesset member Ayman Odeh will likely be the third-largest faction in the 22nd Knesset, with at least 13 of its 120 seats, after the Likud and Blue and White. According to counted ballots, turnout among Arab voters rose by 10% compared to the April elections (60%, far higher than the record-low 49% in April). The Joint List received about 430,000 votes compared to 337,000 in April in what was quite likely a response to Netanyahu's baseless accusations that fraud in Arab polling stations prevented him from forming a government after the April elections.

Knesset member Ahmad Tibi is chair of the Ta'al Party, one of the factions that form the Joint List. He summed up election day with, "The Arabs flocked to the polls," paraphrasing Netanyahu's infamous 2015 video warning of high Arab turnout and exhorting his followers to go out and vote.

THAT WASN'T HARD, WAS IT:

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apologised following the publication of a photograph that showed him wearing brownface make-up at a party 18 years ago, as he scrambled to get on top of a fresh blow to a re-election campaign dogged by controversy.

ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Clinton famously never made it to Wisconsin, where her failure to campaign is widely believed to have cost her a state that had not voted Republican for president since 1984 -- less than 23,000 votes ultimately decided the contest.

Democrats are determined not to make that tactical mistake again. The national party pointedly placed its nominating convention next summer in Milwaukee -- where a 19 percent drop in African American turnout doomed Clinton's chances in 2016.

Locally, the party is attempting to expand on Clinton's anemic performance in the WOW counties by tapping into a vein of anti-Trump sentiment that they say is palpable. Democrats have had teams on the ground organizing for months in the suburbs.

"I know if we get 40 percent we almost guarantee a Democrat a victory statewide," Waukesha County Democratic Party Chairman Matt Lowe said. "We're seeing so many volunteers every day that I don't think 40 percent is a total pipe dream."

The Democratic optimism is in part fueled by Trump's underwhelming 2016 performance in the WOW counties, where he lagged behind Mitt Romney's 2012 pace. Republicans there haven't entirely warmed to the president since then.

"It isn't that the Republican Party is withering away in the WOW counties; it was that they weren't particularly thrilled with Trump and they showed it by not voting for him," said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll. "Trump still struggles to get more than 40 percent approval, even in the WOW counties. It really is an open question about whether Republicans have come back to him here."

Democratic hopes are also colored by last year's toppling of GOP Gov. Scott Walker and a Democratic sweep of every statewide office -- a humbling defeat for what was once one of the strongest state parties in the country.

The debacle was emblematic of the political havoc unleashed by the Trump era, which hastened the end of the one-time Wisconsin GOP power triumvirate of Walker, former House Speaker Paul Ryan and former Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.

Other pillars of the old guard have also seen fit to leave the scene: Suburban Milwaukee Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the second longest-serving congressman in the nation and an early Trump skeptic, announced in early September he would not run for reelection. At the local level, activists and county chairs, including in Waukesha County, have also stepped aside.

Aaron Perry, a Waukesha alderman, said he grew so tired of Trump and accompanying GOP policies that in June he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

"There comes a point where everybody has their own threshold of how much they can take," Perry said. "We're getting to the point now where there's no way he's gaining supporters. The only way for Trump to go is down."

SO MUCH WINNING!:

Netanyahu also is scuttling a meeting on the General Assembly sidelines with President Donald Trump. Trump tweeted Saturday that he would meet with the prime minister to discuss a potential mutual defense treaty with Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will speak on the same day that Netanyahu was scheduled to address the world body.

VS. TRUMPONOMICS:

Nearly two dozen U.S. lobbying groups have joined forces to try to rein in U.S. President Donald Trump's power to unilaterally impose tariffs amid growing concern about the negative economic impact of his trade policies.

Led by the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), the groups on Wednesday said they had formed the Tariff Reform Coalition to urge Congress to wrestle back greater control of trade policy and increase its oversight of the president's use of tariffs.

Trump, who has dubbed himself "Tariff Man," has imposed or planned tariffs on steel, aluminum and nearly all $500 billion in products imported from China each year, as he pursues an "America First" policy aimed at rebalancing U.S. trade ties.

JUST A LIFESTYLE CHOICE...:

Prominent California Democratic Party donor Edward Buck has been charged with operating a drug den after injecting a man with methamphetamine in his West Hollywood home where two other men previously died of apparent overdoses, prosecutors said.

Buck, who donated to former President Barack Obama and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, is a well-known activist in California politics.

THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

Democracy is what we do to prevent political disagreement from turning into violent conflict. But the premise of Trumpist populism is that the legitimacy and authority of government is conditional on agreement with the political preferences of a shrinking minority of citizens -- a group mainly composed of white, Christian conservatives.

Who, you may sensibly ask, granted Tucker Carlson's target demographic veto power over the legislative will of the American people? Nobody. They got high on their own supply and anointed themselves the "real American" sovereigns of the realm. But their relative numbers are dwindling, and they live in fear of a future in which the law of the land reliably tracks the will of the people. Therein lies the appeal of a personal cache of AR-15s.

Weapons of mass death, and the submissive fear they engender, put teeth on that shrinking minority's entitled claim to indefinite power. Without the threat of violence, what have they really got? Votes? Sooner or later, they won't have enough, and they know it.

Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president's single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular.

Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority's self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform's major plank, because unpopular rules don't stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it's "my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis."

OUR TWO PRO-LIFE PARTIES:

BRACAGO SCHOOL:

WHEN RACISM IS ALL YOU HAVE TO OFFER:

The ad features scary-looking photos of brown-skinned prison inmates with facial tattoos while the narrator says that Bevin will "outlaw" sanctuary cities--even though there are none in Kentucky. The narrator goes on to say that Beshear "would allow illegal immigrants to swarm our state," and ties Bevin to Trump.

If any of that looks and sounds familiar, it is exactly the kind of ad that Ed Gillepie aired as he was losing the Virginia governor's race in 2017. Bevin is putting all of his chips on Trump and racism as a winning combination, which might play better in Kentucky than it did in Virginia.

NOW TRY FINDING A DECENT BAGEL...:

I was born and raised in China, and so when I came to live in the Upper Valley last year, I was eager to try the American version of my native cuisine. What I found in the area's Chinese restaurants both appalled me, and invigorated me.

Let me start by saying that "Chinese food" in New England is quite different from what you'll get in my home country. China, it goes without saying, is a big country, with a culinary tradition that's as deep as it is broad. The American version simplifies it and heightens a few qualities. And some of it is just plain odd. The chefs here -- whether they operate out of take-out storefronts or conventional restaurants -- are fond of deep-fried wontons and of stir-frying sweet vegetables in way too much oil.

This recalls what you'll get if you go to an "American" restaurant in China: greasy stew, weird cheeses, cloying cookies, as if cooks had decided to wipe away all the flavor and leave nothing but sugar, salt and fat. Shadows of oily meat and sickly sweetness ran through both of these ersatz versions of great, complex cuisines made somehow lesser in translation.

But then I decided to look deeper, and went on a quest to find the soul of Chinese food in the Upper Valley. Our area represents a small drop in a big ocean. According to "Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant," an exhibition at the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn, N.Y. (on view through Dec. 8), there are nearly 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. -- three times the number of McDonalds. You can find them everywhere with similar names: Peking Star, Oriental Garden, Star of the Orient, Dragon Garden; a real game of mix-and-match. They offer similar menus, and similar fortune cookies -- a Japanese invention that I've never seen in China. Most of them are run by staffers from the province of Fujian, which is as dependable a source for the global Chinese Food Industrial Complex as the Napa Valley is to wine or MIT is for scientists. All of these restaurants are working from a similar template, and we see it in clear focus in the Upper Valley.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Corey Lewandowski: The Mueller report was very clear. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction.

Alisyn Camerota: That's not what the Mueller report said, Corey.

Corey: It absolutely says that...

Alisyn: ... Did you read the Mueller report?

Corey: No, I never did pic.twitter.com/kBrM9F9Mx9

— New Day (@NewDay) September 18, 2019

IT'S A PURITAN NATION:

Numerous states are pushing major anti-vaping efforts, testing everything from banning flavored cartridges to PSA messages aimed at teens that feel like rehashes of the anti-cigarette movement.

That now extends to local government: D.C. suburb Montgomery County is considering a rule that'd ban vape shops from within a 1/2 mile of public middle and high schools -- effectively closing 19 of the county's 22 stores, the WashPost notes.

Legal vaping manufacturers (particularly in the marijuana variety) are rushing to make sure their product doesn't get mistaken for the bootlegged cartridges that officials believe are causing some of the vaping-related lung illnesses.

WELL, SNOWFLAKES ARE WHITE:

In new @QuinnipiacPoll data more voters who approve of Trump say whites face discrimination (57%) than say immigrants (48%) or African Americans do (41%). https://t.co/DzNWyA6A5x

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) September 17, 2019

LET THE PROS HANDLE IT:

[B]erke worked around Lewandowski's stonewalling and as much as got the Trump man to admit that he lies in public by contrasting his comments in the media--playing his appearances on a big screen--with the facts presented in the Mueller report.

The lawyer played a clip of Lewandowski on MSNBC in a May 2019 interview saying he did not remember President Trump ever asking him to "get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape, or form, ever."

Yet Lewandowski had told Mueller in 2018 that Trump had directed him to deliver a message to his Attorney General Jeff Sessions that he should make a statement in support of the president and committing to limit the jurisdiction of the special counsel.

At a follow-up meeting, Trump instructed Lewandowski--who had arranged for someone else to deliver the message in the future--to tell Sessions that if he would not meet with him, he would be fired. Lewandowski made notes of both discussions with Trump and kept them in a safe.

"I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they are just as dishonest as anybody else," a rattled Lewandowski replied when Berke highlighted his lie on MSNBC.

Berke's measured, razor-sharp performance received plaudits on social media as he found a way around Lewandowski's constant references to executive privilege by focusing on his public statements in the media and in his own book about his relationship with Trump.

"Barry Berke absolutely killed it," tweeted Harvard law professor Jennifer Taub. "Every lawyer and law student must watch this segment of the hearing. Such amazing cross-examination of Corey Lewandowski."

The writer James Fallows tweeted: "Watching Barry Berke question Lewandowski, compared w question-speeches from most of the committee members, is like watching an NBA player compared with high schoolers."

Former Republican congressman David Jolly told MSNBC on Tuesday evening that Lewandowski gave Democrats "what they needed today for an article of impeachment against the president of the United States for obstruction of justice."

NOR, LIKE DONALD, AT ANY OTHER AGE:

Weeks shy of his 95th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday he doesn't believe he could have managed the most powerful office in the world at 80 years old.

NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE:

The World Cup, played over the next month or so in Japan, will be watched by fans from Tonga to Kenya, Russia to New Zealand; even the USA, where it's become a big deal in universities. And, of course, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, both north and south.

If football really is our "national game" we are, as a group of nations, pretty bad at it. It certainly doesn't bring us joy. Sometimes when I listen to Garry or Rob, droning on during The Today Programme sports news about some ghastly score draw in the Scottish League (the only news line being that someone chucked a coin at the goalie), I wonder whether the sporting powers that be properly understand the truth: that the game really binding us together as a nation is not football but rugby union.

Every corner of the UK is good at it. The Scots are unlikely to win the World Cup but they have a fantastic team who will last the course with the world's best - and they are the weakest of the Home Nations. The Irish (including several players from Northern Ireland) could win, as might either Wales or England. Indeed Ireland, England and Wales are all in the top five world rankings.

So this World Cup should be a celebration of a sport that we are all good at: in the South Wales Valleys, the Scottish Lowlands, in Lancashire and the East Midlands, all the way down to Cornwall where the long running campaign for a national stadium is led by supporters of the Cornish Pirates rugby team. Rugby does not need to "come home" because it is already home. It is part of life.

IDEAL FOR HER:

Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, holding distinctly different advantages, have separated themselves from the crowded Democratic presidential field, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows.

In the survey, conducted after the third in the Democratic Party's series of debate, the former vice president draws 31% compared to 25% for the Massachusetts senator. At 14%, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders trails Warren by a double-digit margin while 15 other candidates receive support of 7% or less.

Biden builds his edge on dominance among three chunks of Democratic primary voters. He commands 49% among African-Americans, 46% among senior citizens, and 42% among moderate and conservative Democrats.

NEVER BOYCOTT ELECTIONS:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to secure a ruling majority in Israel's second election of 2019, exit polls released by Israeli television channels on Tuesday indicate. 

All exit polls show that Netanyahu's right-wing bloc will gain between 54 to 57 seats. The biggest party, according to two of the polls, is Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan. However, since neither Netanyahu nor Gantz appear to have gained a 61-seat majority, the two are likely to head to deliberations with President Reuven Rivlin who will determine which of them gets the mandate to try and form a governing coalition. 

Channel 12's exit polls shows Kahol Lavan leading with 34 Knesset seats, while Likud is projected to garner 33 seats. Channel 13 showed Kahol Lavan leading with 32 seats, while Likud is expected to gain 30 seats. Kan Public Broadcaster showed Kahol Lavan with 32 seats and Likud with 31.

In all three polls, the Joint List of Arab parties is projected to have the third most seats: Channel 12 gives them 11 seats, Channel 13 gives them 15 and the Kan public broadcaster gives them 13. 

BUT DO THEY LOVE THE SALAFI AS MUCH AS DONALD...:

As the threat of militant neo-Nazi groups expands and gains the attentions of federal authorities, their online propaganda tactics are taking a page out of an unlikely playbook: well-known jihadist groups.

Two neo-Nazi terror groups in particular, both revealed to be under investigation by the FBI in a recent indictment of an alleged bomber who was a member of both organizations, have recently demonstrated that they're learning from online propaganda created by ISIS and al Qaeda.

In a late May post, European neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division (FKD) published a propaganda image to its now-defunct Gab page. The image featured a stylized, yet unmistakable, screengrab from an infamous ISIS how-to video promoting homemade explosives with the caption, "It's easier than you think." [...]

Similarly, Atomwaffen Division (AWD)--an American neo-Nazi group linked to five deaths in the last two years and the main inspiration for FKD--and its Canadian propagandist known under the alias "Dark Foreigner" have produced jihadist-inspired images. Recent propaganda features Osama Bin Laden, the leader and mastermind of al Qaeda and its 9/11 attack in New York City. One hyper-stylized image is a portrait of Bin Laden created by Dark Foreigner and posted with an infamous Bin Laden quote as a caption: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

The decision by racist extremists to promote images of jihadist terror groups is a conscious one. In a June 2019 post titled "The Islamic Example" on an affiliated website, AWD explains that the culture of martyrdom and insurgency within groups like the Taliban and ISIS is something to admire and reproduce in the neo-Nazi terror movement.

In discussing why the US stands ready to wage war on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the president literally said they "pay cash." https://t.co/stcn2EMdlX

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 17, 2019

HE IS DONALD:

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Some of Bernie Sanders' fiercest supporters are sounding the alarm that the campaign is bogged down by disorganization, personality clashes, and poor communication between state operations and national headquarters.

After a pair of setbacks this week -- the acrimonious shakeup of his staff in New Hampshire on Sunday and loss of the Working Families Party's endorsement to Elizabeth Warren a day later -- Sanders' allies and former aides are worried that recent disappointments are not one-off stumbles but rather emblematic of larger problems in his bid for the White House. The concerns are particularly acute in New Hampshire.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The bizarre, only-in-D.C. twist centers on a congressional report penned by a bipartisan team of young attorneys that included Hillary before she was a Clinton and written in the throes of Watergate. Then, unlike now, not a single lawmaker had been alive the last time Congress impeached a president. They had little understanding of how to try and remove Richard Nixon from the White House. So they tapped Clinton and a team of ambitious staffers to dive into the history of impeachment, stretching back to the 14th century in England: How has impeachment been used? What were the justifications? Can we apply it to Nixon?

The resulting document became a centerpiece of the congressional push to drive the Republican president from office. But then Nixon resigned. The memo was buried.

That was just the report's first life.

In an ironic twist, the document was resurrected in the late 1990s. Republicans gleefully used it to bolster their unsuccessful bid to oust Clinton's' now-husband, President Bill Clinton. Then it faded from public conscience -- again.

Until now, that is. The 45-year-old report has become a handbook House Democratic lawmakers and aides say they are using to help determine whether they have the goods to mount a full-scale impeachment effort against President Donald Trump, the same man who three years ago upended Hillary Clinton's bid for a return trip to the White House.

Essentially, Clinton, albeit indirectly, might get one last shot at accomplishing what she couldn't in 2016 -- defeating Trump.

"I can only say that the impeachment Gods have a great sense of humor," Alan Baron, an expert on the topic who has staffed four congressional impeachments against federal judges, said of the recurring role Hillary Clinton keeps playing in this story.

WE ARE FALLEN, ALL, THANKFULLY:

The hidden message is an acrostic, meaning a missive spelled out by the first letters in each line of the poem. It reads "FFAALL" and "FALL" -- an appropriate triple-use of the word "fall," as the poem's subject is the Biblical story of the decline of Satan, as well as the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.  [...]

Acrostics aren't unusual in epic poetry. Milton -- who was blind when he authored most of the poem via dictation -- also spells out "SATAN" in Book 9, in a verse describing the serpent who approaches Eve in the Garden of Eden and tempts her to taste fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Milton pulled this technique from other epic poets such as Virgil, who used an acrostic to spell out "MARS" in a verse of "The Aeneid" in which the god of war is poised to act. His method was overlooked for many years, Milton's SATAN acrostic wasn't discovered until 1977. 

The new acrostic was found by Miranda Phaal, a Tufts University senior.

PITY THE POOR TRUMPBOTS:

Trump at one point during his rally singled out Steve Cortes, an author and member of his Hispanic Advisory Council who has appeared on cable news in support of the president. He "happens to be Hispanic, but I've never quite figured it out, because he looks more like a WASP than I do," Trump said of Cortes.

The president declared that there's "nobody that loves this country more or Hispanics more" than Cortes, who was at the rally and who Trump then directly asked, "Who do you like more, the country or the Hispanics?"

OF COURSE, BACK THEN THEY WERE SUGAR POPS:

Postscript: The late William "Corn Pop" Morris's son, Leon Morris, 54, reached out to me today. He said he has no problem at all with Biden telling the story from the 60s, but he doesn't want people to think of his dad as a bad guy based on something in the distant past.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 17, 2019

OUR TWO PRO-LIFE PARTIES:

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

A chilling data leak on an unsecured server in Miami divulged sensitive personal and financial information of what appears to be the entire country of Ecuador. The discovery came from the internet security firm vpnMentor, which discovered the database containing more than 20 million individuals' data--including as many as seven million minors--on an exposed Florida-based server belonging to the Ecuadorian data and analytics company Novaestrat. Ironically, the personal data of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who had been given asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was included in the leak.

ONE STATE, ONE MAN, ONE VOTE?:

Formal annexation won't bring about any real change or extra benefits for the Israelis who live in the occupied areas. For all intents and purposes, the Israeli government already treats them as though they were living in Israel proper (extending Israeli law to them), and gives them perks (cheap mortgages and tax relief).

That's one reason that many Palestinians I know have come to believe in a one-state solution: After all, with so many Israeli settlements in the West Bank by now, a two-state solution would be impossible to implement. That's not to say, however, that many Palestinians welcome Mr. Netanyahu's formal annexation plan as a step forward toward that goal.

Israel has always wanted this land -- without its people. And the territory Mr. Netanyahu is promising to annex is sparsely populated with Palestinians. Most Palestinians living in the areas slated for annexation have already lost their land and they would not get it back. They would simply be condemned to remaining laborers in the service of Israeli usurpers.

But Mr. Netanyahu's move would, at least, have the virtue of being clarifying: If implemented, it would confirm the demise of the 1993 Oslo Accords -- a development that many Palestinians would welcome because they have been disappointed by the agreement. Under the accords, the permanent status of the territories in the West Bank was to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization; outright annexation, as Mr. Netanyahu is now proposing, would be a clear violation.

For a time, the agreement was expected to bring about a negotiated peace between the two sides and freedom for the Palestinians. Instead, over the years it has enabled Israel to keep exploiting Palestinians economically, control much of their resources and exercise total dominion over their borders.

hE AIN'T YOUR MOM:

Behind Buber's life's work, which at its core still seems aimed at young people, is a brokenhearted child. His parents separated when he was three, and his mother left him without saying goodbye. Paul Mendes-Flohr describes the child looking out from a second-floor window at the figure of his mother walking away, without a wave, to elope with a Russian military officer.

Near the end of his life, Buber re­called feeling an "infinite sense of deprivation and loss" when an older neighbor girl told him bluntly that his mother was not coming back to him. He recalled the pain of hearing the girl's words, and he admitted that the shock of that experience never left him: "Whatever I have learned in the course of my life about the meaning of meeting and dialogue be­tween people springs from that moment when I was four."

Even when Buber was addressing the political and geopolitical forces of his age, the sadness of this event reappeared, especially when the topic intersected with existential concerns. For example, in a paper he wrote in 1933, Buber ob­served that Jews of the world were lost. Modern society had fragmented them so that they were no longer guided by "the heartbeat of a living Jewish community," and the norms and strictures of Rabbinic Judaism were not enough to guide and encourage them. Jewish community must be re­newed. Buber wrote, "It is up to us to make the world reliable again for the children. It depends on us to say to them and ourselves: Don't worry. Mother is here."

IMMIGRANTS IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT:

Italian towns like Sutera and Riace took a different approach when they saw their populations decline. The two towns opened their doors to migrants who arrived in Italy in huge numbers a few years back. The hope was to provide a home for the newcomers while also reviving the town centers. Fiore, however, doesn't believe inviting migrants to move into San Piero Patti's empty houses is the solution for the town's dwindling population. He says the issue of immigration needs to be dealt with at the national government level.

"If we have forced or spontaneous migration to San Piero [Patti], it would not be beneficial either for the migrants or the locals. We need a more cohesive political solution from the government. It cannot come from one small village."

Nepumaceno says she would welcome migrants to San Piero Patti. Her biggest worry is for her daughter, who is 1 years old. The hilltop town is undoubtedly a peaceful environment to raise a child, but for young mothers, like Nepumaceno, the issues revolve around schools and health care facilities.   

"I don't know what my daughter will find in three years. I don't know if we'll still have a school or the doctors or pharmacies. In a very short period, we could lose it all."

In 10 years, Nepumaceno says, so much has changfed in the little Sicilian town. A sense of fun and vitality has ebbed away. But in the next decade, she says, things could reverse -- starting with the sale of just one house for just 1 euro.

PITY THE POOR TRUMPIES:

A top State Department official told Congress Monday evening that the Saudis view the massive attack on their oil infrastructure as their 9/11, according to two congressional sources. [...]

Brian Hook, the Trump administration's special representative for Iran, made the 9/11 comparison during a telephone briefing on Capitol Hill about the administration's latest thinking on the attack.

SOME SERVE IT HOT:

Bolton has already expressed interest in writing a book on his time in the Trump administration, and has been in contact in recent days with literary agents interested in making that happen.

"He has a lot to dish," one of the sources said, adding it was not clear if Bolton had settled on an agency yet.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

THAT OLD DEMON RUM:

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

America First!*

*Pending Saudi approval https://t.co/upTE8LamtD

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) September 16, 2019

AT THE eND OF hISTORY, THERE ARE NO POLICY DIFFERENCES...:

A 2018 review article found that these new Brexit identities now often supersede party identities that have been established for decades. For example, a majority of both Leavers and Remainers describe the other side as 'hypocritical', 'selfish' and 'closed-minded'. And this also translates to social interactions: just half of the population are now willing to talk politics with supporters of the other side of the Brexit vote, and only one in three would be happy with their child marrying someone from the other side.

But the extent to which we've become polarised on concrete issues is far less clear - and significantly under-researched, given the prevalence of the 'divided Britain' narrative. What is clear is that the electorate aren't split into simple, coherent opposing blocs: Leave and Remain identities represent coalitions of people with highly diverse views, just as party identities do.

Recent research has shown how Leave supporters are split roughly into thirds, between those who believe the UK should 'open itself up' to the rest of the world post-Brexit, those who think we should 'protect ourselves' from the rest of the world, and those in the middle. These are very distinct views of what Brexit is for and what it will achieve.

Similarly, on the Remain side, only half say they actively identify with Europe, with the other half more pragmatic and instrumental in their reasons for supporting Remain.

It's also the case that there are many aspects of attitudes and identity in the UK that are converging rather than polarising, such as views on gender equality, same-sex relationships and racial prejudice. There is also significant consensus on what government should be focusing on, with funding for health and social care and lifting families out of poverty key priorities for the public, regardless of party allegiances or Brexit preferences. And despite what we might think from the daily combative headlines, trust in other people is going up, not down.

DID NO ONE WATCH THE WIRE?:

Biden is facing skepticism for a story he has told about a 1960s confrontation at a Wilmington, Delaware pool with a guy named Corn Pop -- partly because of the name Corn Pop.

Here's an obituary for Wilmington's William L. "CornPop" Morris, who died at 73 in 2016. (Thread) pic.twitter.com/HGuLyorEvW

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 15, 2019

THE ONLY THREAT IS INTERNAL:

Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators attended a United Torah Judaism election rally in Jerusalem on Sunday, where the community's top religious and political leaders urged them to show up to vote in Tuesday's election and blasted their secular opponents. [...]

UTJ MK Moshe Gafni compared Blue and White Party No. 2 MK Yair Lapid and Yisrael Beytenu Party leader Avigdor Liberman to the ancient biblical tribe of Amalek.

Lapid and Liberman, Gafni said, are waging a "cultural war" against the ultra-Orthodox community, Ynet reported.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

SO MUCH WINNING!:

THE UNLEARNED LESSON:

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

WHAT FRANCO SAVED THEM FROM BECOMING:

When George Orwell returned to Barcelona for the third time, on June 20th, 1937, he discovered that the Spanish secret police were after him. He had been forced to return to the front in order to have his discharge papers countersigned and, in his absence, the Communists had initiated a purge of their perceived enemies. Orwell was on the list. As he arrived in the lobby of the Hotel Continental, Eileen approached him calmly, placed her arm around his neck, and smiled for the benefit of anyone watching. Once they were close enough she hissed in his ear:

"Get out!"

"What?"

"Get out at once."

"What?"

"Don't keep standing here! You must get outside quickly!"

Eileen guided a bewildered Orwell toward the hotel exit. Marceau Pivert, a French friend of Orwell's who was just entering the lobby, seemed distressed to see him and told him he needed to hide before the hotel called the police. A sympathetic member of the staff joined in, urging Orwell to leave in his broken English. Eileen managed to get him to a café on a discreet side street, where she explained the seriousness of the situation.

*

David Crook, a young Englishman working for the Independent Labour Party's (ILP) Barcelona office, had become friends with both Orwell and his wife over the last few months. He was not what he seemed. He had arrived in Spain in January 1937, the month after Orwell, eager to join up with the International Brigades and fight the Fascists. He was descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants and grew up in Hampstead, attending the prestigious Cheltenham College.

Like many young men who grew up after the First World War, he was attracted to left-wing causes. He moved to New York City, where he attended Columbia University and embraced radical politics, joining the Young Communist League. As a student delegate he traveled down to Kentucky to support the famous miners' strike in Harlan County, witnessing its brutal suppression by the National Guard. On his return to London he became a member of the British Communist Party. At one meeting, the doomed poet John Cornford spoke about the Republican cause in Spain, and Crook was inspired to enlist.

Like Hyndman, Crook was thrust straight into the action at the Battle of Jarama, taking three bullets to the leg. Recovering in Madrid, he socialized with the literary set, including the brilliant war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, her lover Ernest Hemingway, Mulk Raj Anand, and Spender. At this point he came to the attention of Soviet intelligence agents. After recruiting him, the NKVD sent him to a training camp in Albacete, where he was given a crash course in sabotage and surveillance techniques.

There he became a Communist spy. Crook's mission was to infiltrate the ILP and report on all their activities. The Soviets already had one agent in place, David Wickes, who volunteered as an interpreter with the ILP and passed what information he found on to his handlers. Now Crook was to infiltrate deeper and get hold of documents. Orwell was his most prestigious target.

POSTCARDS FROM HELL:

One of the twentieth century's greatest writers, Hans Fallada, died of heart failure in 1947. Fallada struggled with substance abuse, and after suffering a heart attack during the early winter of that year, was confined to a sanatorium where he spent his days with family and waiting for the publication of Every Man Dies Alone, his masterwork about a German couple who defy the sanctions and intimidation of the Nazis by circulating postcards of dissent in various areas of Berlin during World War II.

Every Man is as much a story about love as resistance; a testament to a middle age married couple's determination and character and the courage to pursue integrity and freedom despite facing risks of unfathomable terror. Fallada wrote the novel in what he described as a twenty-four day period of "white heat." Sadly, he would not live to see its publication--he died weeks before the book's release.

Melville House is proud to say we've published Fallada's most important books, including Little Man, What Now?, Wolf Among Wolves, The Drinker; and Every Man Dies Alone.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

DOES ANYONE EDIT THE TIMES?:

Deborah Ramirez had the grades to go to Yale in 1983. But she wasn't prepared for what she'd find there.

A top student in southwestern Connecticut, she studied hard but socialized little. She was raised Catholic and had a sheltered upbringing. In the summers, she worked at Carvel dishing ice cream, commuting in the $500 car she'd bought with babysitting earnings.

At Yale, she encountered students from more worldly backgrounds. Many were affluent and had attended elite private high schools. They also had experience with drinking and sexual behavior that Ms. Ramirez -- who had not intended to be intimate with a man until her wedding night -- lacked.

During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed.

To Ms. Ramirez it wasn't funny at all. It was the nadir of her first year, when she often felt insufficiently rich, experienced or savvy to mingle with her more privileged classmates.

"I had gone through high school, I'm the good girl, and now, in one evening, it was all ripped away," she said in an interview earlier this year at her Boulder, Colo., home. By preying upon her in this way, she added, Mr. Kavanaugh and his friends "make it clear I'm not smart."

Mr. Kavanaugh, now a justice on the Supreme Court, has adamantly denied her claims. Those claims became a flash point...

WHICH SHOULD READ, "CREDITS":

JUST ANOTHER DEMOCRACY:

 Former Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday said he would launch a "new political movement" in the latest challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from his former allies.

Davutoglu was the prime minister and chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) between 2014 and 2016 until relations soured with Erdogan and he was forced out.

ONLY BASEBALL:

When you sort a list of players in Major League Baseball history alphabetically by first name, this is the full list of all the players between Simon Pond and Sol Carter.

It is not a doctored list. It is, however, an important list. pic.twitter.com/zl6fX2Ipku

— Grant Brisbee (@GrantBrisbee) September 14, 2019

NATURAL AMERICANS:

The founder of the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak, was born in 1469 in the Punjab region of South Asia, which is currently split between Pakistan and the northwestern area of India. A majority of the global Sikh population still resides in Punjab on the Indian side of the border.

From a young age, Guru Nanak was disillusioned by the social inequities and religious hypocrisies he observed around him. He believed that a single divine force created the entire world and resided within it. In his belief, God was not separate from the world and watching from a distance, but fully present in every aspect of creation.

He therefore asserted that all people are equally divine and deserve to be treated as such.

To promote this vision of divine oneness and social equality, Guru Nanak created institutions and religious practices. He established community centers and places of worship, wrote his own scriptural compositions and institutionalized a system of leadership (gurus) that would carry forward his vision.

The Sikh view thus rejects all social distinctions that produce inequities, including gender, race, religion and caste, the predominant structure for social hierarchy in South Asia.

In the Sikh tradition, a truly religious person is one who cultivates the spiritual self while also serving the communities around them - or a saint-soldier. The saint-soldier ideal applies to women and men alike.

In this spirit, Sikh women and men maintain five articles of faith, popularly known as the five Ks. These are: kes (long, uncut hair), kara (steel bracelet), kanga (wooden comb), kirpan (small sword) and kachera (soldier-shorts).

Although little historical evidence exists to explain why these particular articles were chosen, the five Ks continue provide the community with a collective identity, binding together individuals on the basis of a shared belief and practice. 

THE HORRORWITZ, THE HORRORWITZ:

The IG report on potential FISA abuse is complete. Now being reviewed. Huge.

Documents we've seen leave little to zero doubt the FBI and DOJ violated protocol with the effect of targeting Trump. We'll see what the IG found.

Hopefully we're weeks away from getting the truth.

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) September 14, 2019

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Saudi Arabia's oil production and exports have been disrupted, said three sources familiar with the matter, after drone attacks on two Aramco plants on Saturday, including the world's biggest oil processing facility.

ALL CONVENTIONAL WISDOM IS WRONG:

AEI adjunct fellow Lyman Stone returns to the Remnant, and to America, to discuss family formation, fertility, climate change, and more.

DONALD'S NEXT LABOR SECRETARY?:

United Auto Workers President Gary Jones is an unnamed union official accused in a federal criminal case Thursday of helping orchestrate a years-long conspiracy that involved embezzling member dues and spending the money on personal luxuries, three sources told The Detroit News.

In the criminal case, federal authorities identified four current and former senior officials as complicit in the embezzlement scheme. The government did not use their names but used labels to identify the union leaders, including "UAW Official A" and "UAW Official B," and detailed numerous instances of misspending on golf, golf equipment, cigars, months-long rentals at private villas and falsified expense reports.

Multiple sources told The News that "UAW Official A" is Jones and "UAW Official B" is former President Dennis Williams. The sources spoke only on the condition that they were not publicly identified because they are not authorized to speak about the investigation.

In outlining its case, federal officials provided the most detailed accounting to date of how Jones' former aide, UAW Region 5 Director Vance Pearson, and the unnamed union officials defrauded the union by using fraudulent expense reports for items during prolonged stays in luxury Palm Springs villas. Those visits lasted days, weeks and even months beyond the union's official business purpose for being in the desert oasis.

Pearson made an initial appearance in a Missouri federal court Thursday to face charges that include embezzling union funds, mail and wire fraud and money laundering.

The criminal case outlined a pattern of corruption stretching from California to Detroit and illegal spending by union leaders who spent more than $1 million of member dues on Palm Springs villas, steakhouse dinners, 107 rounds of golf, golf gear, cigars and $400 bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne.

ABEL WINS:

There are fewer slaves in the world today, per capita, than at any other point in history. Chattel slavery, the kind that lead to the Atlantic slave trade, was once a human universal. Today, it is abolished and morally condemned. Other forms of slavery, such as child labor and forced marriage, are in decline. And the United Nations has set a target to end modern slavery by 2025.

We are closer to ending this morally bankrupt practice than at any point in our history. Will the final push come in the form of robotic automation?

A map showing the estimated prevalence of modern slavery (per 1,000 people) according to the Global Slavery Index's 2018 findings. The 10 countries with the highest prevalence are noted.

The idea is simple enough. Slavery is an economic crime. Its perpetrators lure desperate and disenfranchised peoples with the promise of a livelihood. They then force their victims to do repetitive, physically demanding, and often dangerous work while cutting them off from any physical, social, and lawful means of escape.

By design, machines perform repetitive tasks without concerns for the dangers or physical demands. In richer countries, they are already employed in industries associated with chattel slavery abroad, such as mining, farming, and textiles. As the thinking goes: if automation were to become widespread and cost effective enough, it would eradicate the need for cheap human labor and render slavery economically inefficient.

EXCEPT THAT'S THE SUBPLOT:

IT'S A RICO CASE:

The nation's top intelligence official is illegally withholding a whistleblower complaint, possibly to protect President Donald Trump or senior White House officials, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff alleged Friday.

Schiff issued a subpoena for the complaint, accusing acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire of taking extraordinary steps to withhold the complaint from Congress, even after the intel community's inspector general characterized the complaint as credible and of "urgent concern."

"A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the [inspector general] determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never," Schiff said in a statement. "This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct."

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

A @rachaelmbade @thamburger scoop: House Judiciary negotiating with *Jeff Sessions* for his testimony https://t.co/b3N4KHGJPj

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 13, 2019

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Congressional investigations, including an impeachment inquiry, into President Donald Trump have expanded in a new--and unprecedented--direction. 

As part of deciding whether to recommend articles of impeachment, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee announced on September 6 that they were probing Trump's announcement that next year's G7 would be held at a Trump-owned resort in Doral, Fla., along with Vice President Mike Pence's taxpayer-funded stay at a Trump-owned golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland. The charges represent a new front in the impeachment investigation stemming from obstruction-of-justice allegations from the Mueller Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Separately, following a Politico report, the House Oversight Committee revealed on September 6 it was investigating military stays at a Trump-owned property in Turnberry, Scotland, and substantial increases in military refueling at a nearby airport since Trump won the election.

THE ONLY ONE TO ESCAPE UNTAINTED:

Nikki Haley blasts government's budget deficit: 'We don't have an endless bank account' https://t.co/04Mo69ckRo

— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) September 13, 2019

REASSURANCE POLICY:

1. Joe Biden. This is the third debate he's won, and only the first one was close.

Biden has to show that he's sharp and vigorous. He's passed that test.

He has to hammer the most important difference between himself and his closest rivals: That they want to eliminate private insurance and they'll raise taxes to pay for their health care plans. Poll after poll shows that health care is one of the top three issues for Democratic voters. And Biden is the guy sitting on the spot that says "let people keep their private insurance." That's good ground.

Finally, he has to continue to show voters why people like him. And more than anyone else on stage, he nailed this. Three examples:

First, during the opening segment on Medicare for All, Biden focused most of his criticisms on Bernie Sanders (not the most likable guy on stage) rather than Elizabeth Warren (who is much more likable) even though they could have applied to either.

Second, when Julian Castro went after him for being a forgetful old man, he pushed back but didn't get ugly. He realized Castro was way out on a limb and he let him stay there.

Third, when gun control came up Biden turned to Beto O'Rourke. This is the exchange:

BIDEN: [B]y the way, the way Beto handled--excuse me for saying Beto. What the congressman . . .

O'ROURKE: That's all right. Beto's good.

BIDEN: The way he handled what happened in his hometown is meaningful, to look in the eyes of those people, to see those kids . . . to understand those parents, you understand the heartache.

What makes the praise of O'Rourke come off as genuine is the opening, where Biden calls him by his first name--obviously affectionately--and then catches himself and apologizes for not calling him "congressman."

The frontrunner is always the guy taking the most fire. Yet time and again, Biden was the most respectful person on the stage. Being respectful doesn't win you the nomination. But it's a mark of why Biden has such deep reservoirs of goodwill with Democratic voters.

There's a reason they like him.

Exit take: Toward the end, Biden was asked about his biggest professional setback. He started talking about losing his wife and daughter when protestors started screaming at him.

This struck me as synecdoche for pretty much the entire primary campaign so far: Young progressives so convinced of their own righteousness that they go after a guy like Biden at a moment like this, thinking that it helps their cause.

A SHARED HATRED OF MUSLIM DEMOCRACY:

Kim Jong Un must be jealous.

That's because it seems at last month's G7 conference, President Trump replaced him with a new "favorite dictator." While waiting for a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Trump walked into a room of American and Egyptian officials and asked "Where's my favorite dictator?," several people who were in the room tell The Wall Street Journal.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

McCabe's indictment had been expected on charges related to alleged lies to internal Justice Department investigators about his contacts with the media in 2016. On Thursday, Sept. 12, the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that the deputy attorney general had rejected McCabe's final appeal within the department to avoid prosecution. According to the Post, McCabe received a communication from the Justice Department informing him that "[t]he Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney's Office's decision in this matter .... Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney's Office." The Times writes that the decision was made by Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and that Rosen's top aide, Ed O'Callaghan, reached out to McCabe's team on the matter.

There is a great deal of uncertainty around what happened next, almost certainly because Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure forbids the government, court officials or grand jurors from disclosing matters before the grand jury. This may make the McCabe story a particularly hard nut for reporters to crack. But here's what we know.

Normally, when the Justice Department informs a criminal target that it is moving ahead with charges, particularly when the target is a high-profile one, the indictment follows immediately. Yet in this case, no indictment materialized. And that wasn't because the grand jury didn't meet.

According to the Post, rather, the grand jury was reconvened on Thursday--but no public charges against McCabe were filed. Now, McCabe's lawyer, Michael Bromwich, has written to U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, whose office is handling McCabe's case, stating that the defense team has heard "rumors from reporters ... that the grand jury considering charges against Mr. McCabe had declined to vote an indictment"--though the defense has "no independent knowledge of whether the reporting is accurate." Bromwich added that "based on our discussion with" government lawyers, "it is clear that no indictment has been returned." [...]

This would be a very big deal--a huge rebuke to the Justice Department's conduct of this case. Grand juries do not need to be unanimous. They need to have a quorum of their 23 members, and they require only a majority to return an indictment. They also don't proceed by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard at trial. Instead, an indictment issues on the lower standard of probable cause. In other words, if this is really what happened, it would mean that the Justice Department couldn't even persuade a majority of people who have heard from all of the witnesses that there is even probable cause to proceed against McCabe.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

A U.S. federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump violated the U.S. Constitution by profiting from foreign and domestic officials who patronized his hotels and restaurants, adding to the corruption claims against Trump.

...AND CHEAPER...:

NAZISM AND NOTHINGNESS:

[T]oday it's another of Heidegger's relationships that overshadows his life and legacy: his affiliation with the Nazi Party, which he joined in 1933 and never truly renounced. Heidegger and Hitler also shared a lover's discourse of sorts: terms such as Heimat (homeland), Volk (people) and "historical destiny", a fondness for the German forest, and contempt for cosmopolitanism and "humanism". Since the posthumous publication of Heidegger's private notebooks, their common foe is also beyond doubt, despite his feelings for Arendt: "World Jewry". [...]

Perhaps the most worrying sign of Heidegger's relevance today lies in politics - where all manner of dangerous reactionaries delight in declaring their indebtedness to him. Martin Sellner, leader of the Austrian branch of the neo-fascist network Generation Identity - which allegedly has ties to Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand this year - attributes his "path of thinking to Heidegger". For the ultra-conservative thinker and adviser to Vladimir Putin Aleksandr Dugin, mastering Heidegger "is the main strategic task of the Russian people". When Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former chief strategist, was interviewed by Der Spiegel last year, he held up a biography of Heidegger. "That's my guy," he said.

Heidegger's thought cannot be confined to a single idea or interpretation. He pined for a lost harmony and simplicity, but left one of the most divisive and complex oeuvres in the history of philosophy. He was a nature lover and a Nazi philosopher; an anti-Semite and an almost rabbinical thinker (some Nazis were suspicious of his avid Jewish readers and wanted to ban his work because of a perceived "Talmudic-Kabbalist" quality). He was obsessed with the West and is adored by its self-appointed defenders. But he was also influenced by Eastern philosophy and, convinced that the West had lost its way, he became central to anti-Western thought, inspiring the 1979 Iranian Revolution's idea of "Westoxification". Meanwhile, his more spiritual musings circulate innocently on social media, as life advice for the lost at heart.

There is no clear political philosophy in Heidegger. Born in 1889, in the small village of Messkirch, he was a philosopher whose style was often willingly - some say comically - opaque. Many of his key terms are so difficult to define that translators simply opt to keep the original German. At the time of writing, "Martin Heidegger" is one of only 174 English Wikipedia pages -out of a total 29 million - officially flagged as "incomprehensible" by the site.

This is also one of the reasons why Heidegger's standing is so fraught, even when his Nazism and anti-Semitism are set aside. The way he wrote has especially irked Anglophile readers, who suspect a man without substance. So whereas for Arendt he was "the secret king of thought" and for Levinas "the greatest philosopher of the century", Bertrand Russell, by contrast, thought Heidegger did not even warrant a place in his History of Western Philosophy (1945). "Heidegger is the only world-famous philosopher of the 20th century about whom it can seriously be argued that he was a charlatan," Bernard Williams wrote in 1981.

OOMPA LOOMPAS AGREE!:

Moments after Democrats took the debate stage on Thursday night, President Trump delivered a rambling and disjointed 68-minute speech accusing the news media and the "radical left" of wanting to destroy America.

"Whether you like me or not, it doesn't matter," Mr. Trump told an audience of Republican House lawmakers at a conference in Baltimore. "You have to elect me; you have no choice." [...]

"The bulb that we're being forced to use -- the light doesn't look good," Mr. Trump lamented during an extended aside about his dislike for energy-efficient light bulbs. "I always look orange...

OWNERSHIP IS THE RED FLAG:

It seemed inevitable that O'Rourke's call to ban ownership of military-style weapons would rile up the guns=distilled liberty true believers online, but it was, perhaps predictably, an elected Republican official--from the state of Texas no less--that led the way over the cliff. Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain tweeted a not-so-thinly veiled threat at the presidential contender, tweeting "My AR is ready for you Robert Francis," calling O'Rourke, whose nickname is Beto, by his first and middle names.

FITTINGLY...:

Between 1883 and 1887 he wrote his legendary trilogy, a fictional recounting of the glories and trials of the seventeenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among many historical events, the novels cover the Khmelnytsky Uprising of Ukrainian Cossacks, the Swedish invasion of Poland, and wars between Poland and the Ottoman Empire. The books both secured Sienkiewicz fame in Poland and abroad, and reinforced Polish nationalism and international sympathy for the Poles' cause.

As his fame grew, Sienkiewicz became more involved in Polish nationalism and philanthropy, founding or supporting projects for starvation relief, schools, and the construction of tuberculosis sanatoriums. In 1896 he published his most celebrated novel, Quo Vadis, set amid the persecution of the early Church in Nero's Rome. The work sold 800,000 copies in the United States in eighteen months. In 1905 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. [...]

Sienkiewicz's depiction of the ideal hero represents both an anthropomorphized vision of Poland and the kinds of Polish men and women that were required to secure and maintain a sovereign, independent Polish nation. Sienkiewicz's Poland is a glorious nation with a profound martial and religious legacy, but one suffering internal intrigues at the hands of vain, selfish Polish nobility who leave the nation vulnerable to external assaults from Germans, Russians, Cossacks, and Turks. This mirrored the Poland of his own day, which ceased to exist after its eighteenth-century partition by the competing powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Russia. These not only oppressed the Polish people but also often actively sought to suppress their culture and language.

Poland required the kinds of citizens who drank deeply from their heritage and who refused to be cowed by tyrannical powers. They, says Sienkiewicz, must avoid the extremes of merciless, utilitarian violence so common among their subjugators and the apathy and sensual nihilism that enticed the disaffected youth. They must instead pursue a purity and righteousness that would appeal to foreign sympathizers and prove essential to building a soon-to-be-realized flourishing Polish civic society. In contrast to the old Poland, which disastrously catered to the interests of the landed nobility, the new Poland would exemplify the Christian virtues of charity and self-sacrifice.

Sienkiewicz's vision for the good life represents a pedagogical lesson for both Poles and Americans. It repudiates moral decadence in favor of restrained, pious virtue and civic obligation, one that is fiercely patriotic and proud of its heritage. These qualities were clearly evident in the Polish citizens who resisted the Nazis and Soviets. Indeed, these traits enabled two generations of Poles to endure--and overcome--Soviet domination.

60-40 NATION:

Common themes emerged from this research that are aligned with anecdotal evidence and commonly held understandings and assumptions about the health care cost burden of small employers. Primarily, it is clear that health care costs are arguably the major concern for small businesses. Though small employers report taking steps to reduce the burden, often by shifting some of the costs onto their employees, few have considered dropping coverage altogether.

Increasing health care costs is not sustainable for small employers. They want change and are willing to take pragmatic steps. This desire for change does not adhere to party lines; across the ideological spectrum, small-business owners are open to a range of possible solutions. Those favored by small employers require legislative action, primarily at the federal level, to help small employers affordably provide health insurance to their employees.

Surprisingly, there was an openness to concepts that might be construed as extreme, like Medicare for All or a single-payer system. Other options, such as a Medicare or Medicaid buy-in, also found favor. Though business owners tend to be a conservative group, we did see an unexpected and almost apolitical frame on the issue of health care. Small-business owners did not ascribe blame to one actor or the other. They saw solutions as independent of party of origin, signaling an interest in policy and action from policymakers rather than a strict adherence to political ideology.

THE ONLY THREAT IS INTERNAL:

 For years, the resentment had been building.

In Israel, Jewish men and women are drafted into the military, but the ultra-Orthodox are largely exempt. Unlike other Israelis, many ultra-Orthodox receive state subsidies to study the Torah and raise large families.

And in a country that calls itself home to all Jews, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have a state-sanctioned monopoly on events like marriage, divorce and religious conversions.

A series of political twists has suddenly jolted these issues to the fore, and the country's long-simmering secular-religious divide has become a central issue in the national election on Tuesday.

In a country buffeted by a festering conflict with the Palestinians, increasingly open warfare with Iran and a prime minister facing indictment on corruption charges, the election has been surprisingly preoccupied with the question of just how Jewish -- and whose idea of Jewish -- the Jewish state should be.

SO MUCH WINNING!:

President Donald Trump's top advisers are rushing to find an escape hatch for a series of tariff increases in the coming months, worried about the potential for further economic damage.

THE ACTUAL BLAXODUS:

Gregory Cheadle, the black man President Donald Trump once described at a rally as "my African American," is fed up.

After two years of frustration with the president's rhetoric on race and the lack of diversity in the administration, Cheadle told PBS NewsHour he has decided to leave the Republican party and run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representative as an independent in 2020.

Now, the 62-year-old real estate broker, who supported the Republican approach to the economy, said he sees the party as pursuing a "pro-white" agenda and using black people like him as "political pawns." The final straw for Cheadle came when he watched many Republicans defend Trump's tweets telling four congresswomen of color, who are all American citizens, to go back to their countries, as well as defend the president's attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and his comments that Cummings' hometown of Baltimore is "infested."

"President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme," said Cheadle, of Redding, Calif., who switched from being an independent to a Republican in 2001. "Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves."

BIKINI ATOLL?:

On August 28, the Quinnipiac poll released its survey of registered voters from August 21-26. Not only was Trump's job approval down by 2 points to 38 percent, but his job disapproval was up to 56 percent. Trump's disapproval numbers hit 51 percent among white voters, 54 percent among seniors, 60 percent among independents, 61 percent among those ages 18-34, and 62 percent among women.  

On the issues, it was even worse for Trump: 37 percent felt the economy was getting worse vs. only 31 percent who said it was getting better (a double digit rise from June among those who felt the economy was worsening), and by 41 percent to 37 percent, voters felt that Trump's economic policies were hurting more than helping the economy. On the other major issues? Nothing for Trump to tweet about. His approval rating was negative compared with his disapproval rating as follows: 38-56 percent on foreign policy, 38-59 percent on immigration, 38-54 percent on trade, and--worst of all--32-62 percent on Trump's handling of race relations. 

Little surprise then that according to Quinnipiac, Trump would lose head-to-head matchups against Biden, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, and Warren.  Trump's highest support levels were at only 40 percent against Warren, Harris, and Buttigieg.  Trump trailed Biden: 54-38 percent. It is worth noting that Biden carried Democrats in this poll 94-3 percent, while Trump carried Republicans against Biden by 87-10 percent. In short, Biden peeled off more Republicans than Trump peeled off Democrats. 

 Gallup released its polling data after Labor Day of its survey from August 15-30; Trump had a job approval rating of 39 percent and a disapproval rating of 57 percent. This provides a sense of how bad Trump's summer has gone: Gallup's July 1 -12 survey had Trump at 44 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval. 

Next up:  the Washington Post/ABC News poll taken from September 2-5. From their poll released July 1, to this poll released September 10, Trump's job approval declined by 6 points to 38 percent and his job disapproval increased by 3 points to 56 percent. Among registered voters only, that approval-to-disapproval rating for Trump stood at 40-55 percent. This September data also showed Trump falling to 36 percent approval with 58 percent disapproval among independents (vs. 42 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval in July). Men split evenly at 47 percent approving to 47 percent disapproving Trump's job performance, but women disapproved Trump's job performance over approval by 64-30 percent. Even 53 percent of white voting age women with less than a college education disapproved of Trump's job performance, while only 42 percent approved. 

But just as with Quinnipiac, this Washington Post/ABC News gets worse once you get beyond the beauty contest questions. Trump's economic approval rating dropped from 51 to 46 percent with disapproval on the economy jumping by 5 percent from 42 percent in July to 47 percent. It is worth following the trend lines: Last November in this poll 65 percent described the economy as excellent or good, but in this September poll that had dropped by 9 percent to 56 percent. This poll also found that by 60 percent to 35 percent the nation felt that a recession was very or somewhat likely. And only 35 percent approved of Trump's handling of the trade negotiations with China, with 56 percent disapproving. 

The drop-offs were quite pronounced among independents: who split equally at 46 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving Trump's handling of the economy, which the Washington Post noted was a severe "backsliding" from July when independents approved of Trump's handling by a 12 percent edge. Not to mention that 60 percent of independents disapproved of how Trump was handling the trade negotiations with China. Overall, 43 percent of the respondents felt that Trump's trade and economic policies had increased the chance of a recession next year, vs. only 16 percent who felt Trump's policies had decreased the chances for a recession. 

ALONG THE ANGLOSPHERE:

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

President Donald Trump's administration has released $250 million in military aid for Ukraine, U.S. senators said on Thursday, after lawmakers from both parties expressed concern that the White House had held up money approved by Congress.

THE OBVIOUS QUESTION BEING...:

The most debated aspect of Menashi's record, just in terms of the amount of heat its generated among opinion journalists and pundits, is a 2010 academic article he wrote titled "Ethnonationalism and Liberal Democracy."

That article was flagged by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last month, when she broadcast a lengthy segment claiming that Menashi argued that "democracy can't work unless the country is defined by a unifying race."

That characterization inflamed Menashi's defenders. The Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein argued that, by attacking Menashi, Maddow revealed herself as the real racist. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board offered a more substantive reply to Maddow, claiming that the article is a relatively benign defense of "Israel as a liberal democracy and Jewish state" -- and claiming that any senator who accepts her argument drifts too far towards the "anti-Israel fringe."

The Wall Street Journal is correct that the lion's share of Menashi's article is an academic defense of Israel against scholars who "argue that liberal democracy precludes the state from adopting a particularistic ethnonational identity." Arraying himself against scholars who argue, in the words of one of Menashi's antagonists, that Israel "remains distinctive among democratic states in its resort to ethnoreligious criteria with which to denominate and rank its citizens," Menashi spends most of his article listing examples of other nations that also give favorable treatment to persons with a particular ethnonational identity.

To the extent that Menashi seeks to prove that many nations have a thread of ethnonationalism woven into their legal tapestry, his article is persuasive. He lists a wide array of laws -- a Greek law that "grants automatic citizenship to 'persons of Greek origin' who volunteer for military service," an Irish law creating a special process allowing persons "of Irish descent or Irish associations" to gain citizenship, and so forth -- that give some degree of favorable treatment to people who can trace their family's origins back to that nation.

Near the end of his article, however, Menashi diverges from his largely descriptive effort to normalize Israel, and suggests that ethnic diversity is itself harmful. "Social scientists have found that greater ethnic heterogeneity is associated with lower social trust," he writes. "Ethnically heterogeneous societies exhibit less political and civic engagement, less effective governing institutions, and fewer public goods."

"Surely," he concludes with a flourish, "it does not serve the cause of liberal democracy to ignore this reality."

Menashi's article does not lay out a policy agenda to deal with this "reality." Should the government teach citizens about diverse cultures so that they are more accepting? Does Menashi agree with University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax that "our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites?"

The full answers to these questions cannot be found in Menashi's ethnonationalism article. Certainly the article, at the very least, suggests that Menashi is much more likely than the typical judge to be sympathetic to policies that seek to make the United States more homogeneous. That said, at his confirmation hearing, he did deny that the views expressed in the article shape his understanding of American law. The United States, he claimed at the hearing, is "not one of those countries" that is based on ethnic or linguistic "tradition.

HOW HOLLOW ME SEEK TO FILL THEMSELVES:

People are rightly anxious about nationalism. Its connection to malignant movements in Europe and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gives reason to demur from the nationalist cause. More recently, the association of nationalism with race-based identity politics in America speaks to the ugly, jingoistic possibilities latent in the idea. In short, nationalism is bad, it is said, because it is too parochial and too exclusionary. These extremes together make nationalism too prone to violence. Nationalism is akin to primitive tribalism and thus to be avoided. . [...]

[T]the entrance into history of Jesus Christ provides a new perspective on this nationalist interpretation of the Old Testament. Christ fulfills ancient Israel's purpose, now carried forth by the Church. Christ explicitly extends his message to Jew and Gentile alike. As Paul puts it in Galatians, in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Galatians 3:28). The Great Commission and its call to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:18) suggests a mission that transcends the particularity of nations. The call to "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21) is often used to justify a crude division of authority between the state and the church. Which, however, are those things that are not God's? Is not all of creation His? Even Paul's famous admonition to obey worldly authorities (Romans 13) is in the context of stating that all authority comes from God. So, to be precise, there is nothing that is Caesar's independent of God. Caesar doesn't even own himself.

Similarly, Augustine's famous division between the City of God and the City of Man does not teach that the City of Man has some autonomous source of power. Augustine makes clear that each City has its proper role, but also that the City of Man has an inferior role. The role of the earthly city is essentially to create basic order and protect against rank injustice. It is the "tranquility of order" that Augustine seeks. But Augustine is not naïve about the earthly city. He famously says that worldly governments that do not properly understand their relation to the divine are "criminal gangs" or "robber bands." Augustine's political teaching in City of God is essentially this: the state's job is to protect public order and then to allow the Church to do what it needs to do, including acts of charity as well as the Church's more formal sacramental and liturgical duties.

Christians should be cautious about placing too much stake in any nation. As Christ himself suggests, the ultimate kingdom "is not of this world" (John 18:36).

Nationalism as a Substitute for the Church

In his classic work on nationalism, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson identified the rise of nationalism with a concomitant decline in the influence of religion. According to Anderson, the nation arose as an instrument of unity as both secularism and religious division weakened the unifying power of faith. Anderson was a Marxist, and he saw nationalism as an obstacle to his universalist ideology.

From a Judeo-Christian standpoint, political theologian William Cavanaugh has likewise argued that it is no accident that the rise of the nation coincided with the rise of secularism. Cavanaugh sees in nationalism a "migration of the holy" from church to state. 

THE POINT BEING, SHE COULD READ THEM ALOUD:

Hillary Clinton spent an hour yesterday reading her emails at my exhibition of all 62,000 pages of them in Venice. She is pictured here at a replica of the Oval Office Resolute Desk, stacked with her emails. pic.twitter.com/V8T27klycr

— Kenneth Goldsmith (@kg_ubu) September 11, 2019

THANKS, UR!:

One of the most important and least-known provisions of Obamacare was actually the brainchild of former Senator Al Franken. When health care reform was being debated in the Senate, he offered an amendment to include something called a medical loss ratio (MLR). It requires insurance companies that cover individuals and small businesses to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on patient care. For companies that cover large groups, the MLR is raised to 85 percent.

That limits private insurers to spending 15-20 percent of premium dollars on everything else, including administration, marketing, and profits. They are further required to report annually on how their premium dollars were spent, and if they exceeded those limits, pay a rebate to their customers.

Beginning in September, those rebates are about to be issued. Reporting for the Kaiser Family Foundation, Rachel Fehr and Cynthia Cox note that, for 2019, insurers will be issuing a total of at least $1.3 billion in rebates, exceeding the previous record high of $1.1 billion in 2012.

HE OUGHT TO BORROW HILLARY'S BLACKBERRY:

THE CONSERVATIVE OBLIGATION:

[I]t will serve at least two good ends: First, it will make it clear to diehard racists that they're not welcome over here. Second, it will protect impressionable young conservatives from being wooed by them.

What's needed is not mere "outreach" to black, Hispanic, or Jewish voters. Conservatives ought to make elevation of African Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled. If we can't make them stop calling themselves the "alt-right," because they won't want to be associated with us, we can at least disgust them with such a focus.

Why? Mostly because it's the right thing to do.

Conservatives don't give it enough attention, but one of the greatest evils in the U.S. today is rank racial inequality. The median income of African Americans is below $31,000, which is less than half the median income of white Americans. More blacks are imprisoned in America than are whites, even though there are nearly five white people here for every black person.

There are a thousand points of data like this, all confirming that being an African American means living with the odds stacked against you.

Do you remember playing video games that allowed you to set the difficulty level? Imagine if you could set the difficulty level for your life. The data all suggest that being an immigrant or an African American means setting a much higher difficulty level than being a white guy.

To accept this reality doesn't require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn't require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation. It just requires the sincere acceptance of two premises: First, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S.

If both of these premises are true -- and they are -- then things in the U.S. still aren't fair and can be improved. And if the game is rigged so badly in the U.S. that thousands of young men are shot on the streets of Chicago, that tens of thousands of black babies are aborted every year, that hundreds of thousands are born out of wedlock, then isn't that a crisis that deserves attention?

Conservatives ought to make it a priority to fight for the fundamental dignity and equality of racial minorities who have been denied that dignity and equality. It will require overcoming decades of injustice, and so won't happen quickly. We won't disabuse the Left of their self-satisfied smears and conceits, but that's not the point. Conservatives will be able to take solace in the fact that we're fighting the good fight and pissing off the racists.

Let me call libertarians to do the same.

I am far from the first to issue this appeal. The Cato Institute's Jonathan Blanks, himself black and libertarian, has written compellingly on the topic for Libertarianism.org and elsewhere, identifying a "longstanding libertarian habit of downplaying racism as a fact of life for minorities in the United States." Blanks levels much of his critique at libertarians' irresponsibly incomplete narrative of American history, which too often entails "looking backward to better times" of smaller government and freer markets while neglecting what else was happening then. For those "who must look to bills of sale and property lists to find our ancestors," Blanks writes, "the look back is with much less yearning."

Libertarian failure (or refusal) to recognize the non-state function of racism in American society today likewise makes our movement unappealing to black and other minority Americans regardless of the value of our ideas, Blanks continues. And some libertarians' willingness to partner with anti-statists of any stripe is also much to blame. This is best exemplified, of course, by the disgraceful "paleolibertarian" strategy of the 1980s and 1990s (in which some libertarians pursued "an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist 'paleoconservatives'"), but it is not entirely absent from the present movement. See, for instance, this appalling post from former a Libertarian Party vice-chair, made in defense of his decision to appear on a white nationalist podcast.

This sort of thing does not only turn American minorities away from libertarians. It also turns racists toward us. And just as Carney says to conservatives, it is incumbent on libertarians to create an ideological ecosystem that doesn't welcome racism. 

[T]he flagrant racism conveyed in Trump's speeches and Jonah Bennett's emails at the Daily Caller is less intractable than a movementwide mobilization behind a racist agenda. That Republicans have built a reliable coalition of racists and purported non-racists by pairing tax cuts and abortion restrictions with the subordination of black civil rights to states' rights suggests that even those who oppose racism are willing to overlook it for their own self-interest. They're fairly unremarkable in this respect -- supporting a political movement often requires making peace with ideological differences.

But it also undermines the notion that conservatism's racism problem stems from infiltration by a few bad eggs. On the contrary, it's been apparent since the Nixon administration that the Republican Party would collapse without support from racists. Perhaps such a demise is Douthat and Carney's unstated goal. In any case, the GOP hasn't been able to convince most voters that corporate welfare, reduced protections for marginalized people, and diminished health-care options for all but the most financially secure are good things on their own terms, without using racism to sweeten the deal. This wouldn't matter if conservatism was a fringe ideology. But the writers' portrayal of their movement as one victimized by unfair smears and mischaracterization belies its status as the most powerful political movement in America today, and that conservatives control most of the country's most powerful political institutions.

KNOWIG YOUR ALLIES:

President Donald Trump has left the impression with foreign officials, members of his administration, and others involved in Iranian negotiations that he is actively considering a French plan to extend a $15 billion credit line to the Iranians if Tehran comes back into compliance with the Obama-era nuclear deal.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

IF THEY CAN ALL BEAT HIM, WHAT'S JOE'S PITCH?:

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll released Wednesday shows Warren beating Trump by seven points in a hypothetical match-up, 51 percent to 44 percent, among registered voters. This is compared to a poll from ABC News and The Washington Post released in July that showed Warren and Trump tied at 48 percent to 48 percent.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the new poll also beats Trump by nine points among registered voters after leading him by just one point in July, while Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) beats him by seven points, the same margin as Warren, after previously leading him by two points. Like Warren, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg also now beats Trump among registered voters after being exactly tied in July, although he has a smaller four-point lead.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

[Trump said,] "I don't blame Kim Jong-un. ... He wanted nothing to do with John Bolton."

ISLAMOPHOBE IS THE JOB DESCRIPTION:

Civil rights groups have raised alarms about Kupperman's association with the right-wing Center for Security Policy (CSP), a DC-based think tank that has long promoted anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, including that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the US government. Kupperman, 68, served on CSP's board from 2001 to 2010.

CSP's founder, Frank Gaffney Jr., has promoted several anti-Muslim conspiracies, including that President Barack Obama was secretly Muslim and that Hillary Clinton's top adviser Huma Abedin worked for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding Kupperman be removed from the administration.

"Once again this is an example of Trump elevating foxes into the hen house, where Islamophobes are well placed to direct our nation's national security priorities," Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at CAIR, told Al Jazeera.

TO WHICH, ONE RESPONDS--"FIRE US":

The White House was directly involved in pressing a federal scientific agency to repudiate the weather forecasters who contradicted President Trump's claim that Hurricane Dorian would probably strike Alabama, according to several people familiar with the events.

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly disavow the forecasters' position that Alabama was not at risk. NOAA, which is part of the Commerce Department, issued an unsigned statement last Friday in response, saying that the Birmingham, Ala., office was wrong to dispute the president's warning. [...]

Mr. Ross called Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings, and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency's perceived contradiction of the president, according to three people informed about the discussions.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political appointees at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode.

The political staff at an agency typically includes a handful of top officials, such as Dr. Jacobs, and their aides. They are appointed to their jobs by the administration currently in power, as opposed to career government employees, who remain in their jobs as administrations come and go.

DESPOILATION IS FOR LESSER STATES:

HASTEN THE ROBOT OVERLORDS:

Most works on automation either ignore the past or, if they deal with it at all, merely focus on the Luddites, casting a with a superficial glance at the Industrial Revolution and how bad it was in the factories and the slums. However, as the historian T. S. Ashton shown, although people worked in grim conditions, things were rather more complicated than that. For many, factory work was a significant step up from a life of subsistence, squalor and back-breaking agricultural labour.

Where some authors give the impression that technological change only began in early 19th century Britain, Frey reaches further back in history for his examples. The book opens with Aristotle ('When looms weave by themselves, man's slavery will end') and then moves to Ancient Rome to explain how they held back on industrialisation due to their suspicions of the private sector and the fact that their economy was reliant on slavery. We also get a fascinating snapshot of the Middle Ages and some of the technological innovations from that period such as improvements in horsepower and windmills.

Perhaps more striking is his argument that many of the key innovations of the Industrial Revolution could have been invented earlier. It was the power of guilds that hamstrung human progress. Frey draws parallels with the modern context, and expresses concerns that workers will again attempt to hold back innovation in order to protect jobs.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

A line I've wanted to use for 800 years. "As the administration begins to resemble a game of reverse musical chairs -- too many open slots without enough loyalists to fill them -- a list emerged." https://t.co/1d3EQ0f69B ⁦@ewong⁩ ⁦⁦@adamgoldmanNYT⁩ ⁦@maggieNYT⁩

— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) September 10, 2019

SELECT ALL:

Mt. Washington Cog Railway

This three-hour experience brings visitors to the summit of Mt. Washington, where visitors can see five states, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean. The entire experience consists of an hour ride up the mountain, an hour to take in the views from the top, and an hour back down. The multi-colored train of the Mt. Washington Cog Railway feels rustic and quintessentially New England, and the route, which runs through November, lights up in the fall. 

LIBERTY IS PROCEDURE:

54-40, FIGHT:

The 60% who say the President does not deserve to be reelected is similar to the 63% who felt that way in November 2017. [...]

The President's approval rating remains about where it was in mid-August, with 39% approving of the job he's doing and 55% disapproving. 

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATION:

DONALD WAS JUST REACTING TO THE UR:

Netanyahu is in the midst of a perfect storm. All his nightmares are converging: His toughest, most fateful election campaign has entered its final leg. The confrontation between Israel and Iran over the Iranian entrenchment in Syria is escalating even as the US administration's commitment to Netanyahu's anti-Iranian campaign appears to be weakening. Netanyahu is fighting on these fronts at the same time, against great odds.

The timing of Netanyahu's news conference was hardly coincidental. Two hours earlier, his drive to place hidden cameras at Israeli polling stations collapsed when a Knesset committee sank his proposed legislation on the issue. Then a news conference was convened in Vienna by IAEA Acting Director General Cornel Feruta, who had just returned from Tehran. Netanyahu set himself two goals: To create an Iran-centric, security-focused agenda ahead of the Sept. 17 vote and fight what he regards as the IAEA's conciliatory attitude toward Iran. However, Netanyahu received a crushing blow two hours after his news conference from the least likely direction: his closest ally President Donald Trump, the gift that never stops giving.

"It could happen," the president told reporters in response to a question about whether he would be willing to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. "No problem with me."

Previous suggestions that Trump would lose interest in pressuring Iran, as was the case with North Korea, are quickly materializing...

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

On September 9, a Fox & Friends guest pushed the same anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that motivated the Tree of Life shooter to kill 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

On Monday morning, the Fox & Friends co-hosts welcomed right-wing writer Michelle Malkin, who argued that "global financiers" are "colluding to undermine American sovereignty" by "sabotaging our will when it comes to enforcing strictly immigration law." Malkin posited that tax-exempt, nonprofit charities funded by the likes of Democratic donor George Soros, along with institutions like the United Nations, are funneling "hard-earned, tax-paying American citizens' money to fund these illegal alien groups." 

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

An adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump's firing of his national security adviser John Bolton pointed to the failure of Washington's "maximum pressure strategy" against Iran.

"The marginalization and subsequent elimination of Bolton is not an accident but a decisive sign of the failure of the U.S. maximum pressure strategy in the face of the constructive resistance of Iran," Hesameddin Ashena tweeted.

GIVEN DONALD'S VIOLATION OF THE AGREEMENT...:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump could meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming United Nations meeting, with "no preconditions."

WAY TO SPIKE THE VALUE OF YOUR BOOK DEAL:

.@AmbJohnBolton resignation letter pic.twitter.com/nClIJkuQFi

— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) September 10, 2019

WHAT WILSON DID TO CA GOP, DONALD WILL DO TO AMERICA!:

Days away from the third Democratic debate in Houston and over a year from the 2020 presidential election, an exclusive poll by Univision News found that 40% of registered voters in the state say they will vote for the Democrat who prevails in the party's primary, while 33% say they will support president Trump. If undecided voters leaning one way or the other are included, the advantage would be 47% to 42% in favor of the Democrats.

The Latino vote could be decisive. A large majority of Hispanics (69%) surveyed in the state said they intend to vote for the Democratic candidate, compared with 19% who plan to support Trump (also including undecided voters who are leaning one way or another).

EVEN WITH THE OBAMACONOMY HE'S MCGOVERN:

Trump fell from a career-high 44% approval in July to 38% now, a point off his career average, with 56% disapproving. His average rating since taking office remains the lowest on record for any modern president at a comparable point in his term, and he is the first never to have achieved majority approval.

HAPPY ASHURA, ALI!:

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he had fired National Security Adviser John Bolton, seen as the architect of the White House's hard-line policy toward Iran, citing strong disagreements on a number of policy issues.

Bolton's exit comes as Trump moves closer to direct talks with Iran after pulling out of the nuclear deal, and likely signals a shift in the administration's strategy toward a softer line with Tehran.

SO OUT OF STEP WITH THE 10%!:

A majority of respondents in a new poll said they would support several initiatives to reduce gun violence following a month of mass shootings.

The NPR/Marist poll released Tuesday found the most popular proposal among members of both political parties is an increase in funding for mental health screenings and treatment, which was supported by 89 percent of respondents. 

Majorities also supported background checks, a red flag law allowing people to petition against others from gun ownership and gun licenses. 

Gun owners aligned with the majority of respondents, with the majority supporting all of these proposed plans.

Most respondents -- 57 percent -- also agreed that Congress should not pass legislation to allow teachers to carry guns, according to the poll. 

WHEN AL ROKER BECAME GEORGE ORWELL:

Craig N. McLean, NOAA's acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members Monday notifying the agency that he was looking into "potential violations" in the agency's decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump's statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency's action "a danger to public health and safety."

Also on Monday, the National Weather Service director, Louis W. Uccellini, prompted a standing ovation at a weather industry conference in Huntsville, Ala., when he praised the work of the Birmingham office, asked them to stand and said staff members had acted "with one thing in mind, public safety" when they contradicted Mr. Trump's claim that Alabama was at risk.

WHERE'S GRANT WHEN YOU NEED HIM?:

In the US state of Virginia, couples must declare their racial background from a long list of options including "Aryan", "Moor" and "Zoroastrian" before getting married. A lawsuit is aiming to put a stop to this.

The suit, filed by lawyer Victor M Glasberg on behalf of three couples, describes the statute as "unconstitutional" and "reflective of a racist past".

Mr Glasberg has also written to Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, urging him to "do what must be done to get on the right side of history".

One of the couples involved - Brandyn Churchill, 27, and Sophie Rogers, 23, of Lexington, Virginia - is hoping to have won the case by the time they get married next month.

CAN'T OUT-CULT THE TRUMPBOTS:

While turnover and dysfunction have been hallmarks of Gabbard's congressional career and, now, her presidential campaign, Robinson has been a near constant in her political orbit.

Like her, he has ties to an obscure religious sect called the Science of Identity Foundation that's based in Kailua and run by a reclusive guru whose devotees have displayed political ambitions. [...]

The Robinsons and the Stewarts all have ties to the Kailua-based Science of Identity Foundation, a controversial religious sect that was founded by Chris Butler, someone Gabbard has described as her "guru dev," or spiritual master.

Their names have appeared on a number of online forums tracking the organization. Former members interviewed by Civil Beat also confirmed the Robinsons' and Stewarts' affiliations with Butler and his religion.

The Science of Identity Foundation is an offshoot of Hare Krishna that was started in Hawaii by the surf-obsessed Butler in the 1970s, and has since spread to other parts of the U.S. as well as countries such as New Zealand, Australia and the Philippines.

Butler and his followers had clear political aspirations in Hawaii, launching their own party called the Independents for Godly Government that in 1976 fielded a slate of more than a dozen candidates for federal, state and local office.

Much has been written about Gabbard's upbringing in the religious sect and speculation continues about how much Butler and the organization are influencing or involved in her presidential campaign.

Gabbard's parents, Mike Gabbard, a Hawaii state senator, and his wife, Carol, a former school board member, were both Butler devotees. The congresswoman even spent a couple childhood years at a school in the Philippines that was run by Butler's followers.

Kris Robinson also attended one of these schools, according to Ian Koviak, a Portland, Oregon, resident whose mother was a devotee of Butler and his religion.

Koviak says he was a classmate of Robinson's at the Science of Identity Foundation's all-boys school in the Philippines, where his mother sent him while she went on a mission to Poland.

Like others who have distanced themselves from Butler and his religion -- which they call "a cult" -- Koviak has been outspoken about his experiences within the Science of Identity Foundation and at the school, participating in online forums at the Cult Education Institute website and posting to social media.

Tulsi Gabbard's Inner Circle

Robinson isn't the only person with ties to the Science of Identity Foundation who has been affiliated with Gabbard in recent years, since she's been in Congress or even during her run for president.

The congresswoman surrounds herself with people who are linked to Butler and his followers, from her chief of staff, Kainoa Penaroza, to some of her closest campaign advisors.

INNOVATION, IT'S WHAT THE GOVERNMENT DOES::

Enter aluminum hydride -- also AIH3 or Alane -- a combination of three hydrogen atoms and one aluminum atom originally developed in the 1970s as a potential additive to rocket fuel. Looking a lot like baby powder, it's much easier to transport and use than compressed gaseous or liquid hydrogen. The energy density is also far greater. Kristopher Lichter, CEO of San Francisco-based Ardica Technologies, which makes fuel cells that run on Alane, describes it as "four times as energy dense as gaseous hydrogen...but [with] none of the problems handling." It doesn't require special tanker trucks or pipelines. Instead, the powder goes into a cartridge, which when heated in a fuel cell, releases gaseous hydrogen for use in generating electricity.

If you have a handful of Alane, you're effectively holding much more energy than you would have in a compressed gas tank (see chart below).  But, says Lichter, "The difference is much bigger than that. It's much more stark because Alane is so lightweight that when I put it into a cartridge, you can't tell whether that cartridge is empty or full of Alane because the Alane itself is so ridiculously light, that all you're feeling is the aluminum cartridge itself that it contains it."

Ardica is teaming up with the U.S. Army to develop portable power for soldiers. They have a 20-watt wearable soldier power system that's been field-tested in Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments. "Assuming things go according to plan, that effort is going into production soon," said Lichter.

They are also working on a 300-watt generator, with prototypes expected in six months.

The Army is also looking to use in future vehicles, and is offering funding via phase-II Small Business Innovation Research grants.

"We're looking to scale up what they are doing with that soldier-portable stuff up to a ground vehicle requirement. So its increasing the scale of their cartridge by over 15 times," said Kevin Centeck, head of fuel cell technologies for the Army's Ground Vehicles Systems Center, or GVSC. "That will enable us to put enough energy onboard a vehicle without using bulky distribution tanks...There's excitement in that in that we can transport it much easier. We can fit more energy onboard a vehicle."