A federal appeals court in New York handed President Donald Trump another legal defeat, ruling Tuesday that Congress can see his banking records for investigations into possible foreign influence in U.S. politics or other misdeeds.A panel of 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges said two banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees seeking records related to Trump's business ventures.The court said Congress was acting within its constitutional authority to investigate a series of significant issues, including whether Trump was "vulnerable to foreign exploitation."
Yeah, but a couple bureaucrats sent each other mash notes!On Tuesday, and after weeks of impeachment hearings, the House Intelligence Committee released its report on President Trump's dealings with Ukraine. It revealed Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani made calls back and forth between Ukrainian operatives and the White House, and even that one of the committee's top members engaged with one of the Ukrainians Giuliani had tasked with digging up damaging information on Democrats.Call records obtained by the committee show Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) talked multiple times with Lev Parnas, one of the two indicted operatives Giuliani sent to Ukraine to research about the Bidens. Parnas' lawyer responded to this revelation by condemning Nunes for not recusing himself from the impeachment investigation.
THE HARD PROBLEM, DAVID CHALMERS CALLS IT: Why are the physical processes of the brain "accompanied by an experienced inner life?" How and why is there something it is like to be you and me, in Thomas Nagel's formulation? I've been reading around in the field of consciousness studies for over two decades--Chalmers, Nagel, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Jerry Fodor, Ned Block, Frank Jackson, Paul and Patricia Churchland, Alva Noë, Susan Blackmore--and the main thing I've learned is that no one has the slightest idea.
Bread has long been a foundational part of the human diet, but a revolt against it has been building for years--and seems to be reaching a crescendo. Today, many regard bread as a dietary archvillain--the cause of bigger waistlines and the possible origin of more insidious health concerns. Popular books and health gurus claim that bread and the proteins it harbors can cause or contribute to foggy thinking, fatigue, depression, and diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to cancer.But go digging through the published, peer-reviewed evidence on bread and human health, and most of what you'll find suggests that bread is either benign or, in the case of whole-grain types, quite beneficial."We have conducted several meta-analyses on whole-grain consumption and health outcomes like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and premature mortality," says Dagfinn Aune, a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. "When looking at specific sources of grains, whole-grain bread, whole-grain breakfast cereals, brown rice, and wheat bran were all associated with reduced risks."Asked if bread should be considered a "junk" food, Aune says the opposite is true. "Whole-grain breads are healthy, and a high intake of whole grains is associated with a large range of health benefits," he says, citing links to lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and mortality. In fact, his research has found that eating the equivalent of 7.5 slices of whole-grain bread per day is linked with "optimal" health outcomes.
Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics revised its predictions for four North Carolina House races on Tuesday, all in districts currently held by Republicans. Three of those districts moved left, while two of them shifted soundly into Democrats' favor. All in all, that amounts to a likely two-seat gain for Democrats in North Carolina come next year, with a slight chance to grab a third.
Paul MacDonald and Joseph Parent explain in detail that Trump hasn't reduced U.S. military commitments overseas:But after nearly three years in office, Trump's promised retrenchment has yet to materialize. The president hasn't meaningfully altered the U.S. global military footprint he inherited from President Barack Obama. Nor has he shifted the costly burden of defending U.S. allies. To the contrary, he loaded even greater military responsibilities on the United States while either ramping up or maintaining U.S. involvement in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. On practically every other issue, Trump departed radically from the path of his predecessor. But when it came to troop deployments and other overseas defense commitments, he largely preserved the chessboard he inherited--promises to the contrary be damned.MacDonald and Parent's article complements my earlier post about U.S. "global commitments" very nicely. When we look at the specifics of Trump's record, we see that he isn't ending U.S. military involvement anywhere. He isn't bringing anyone home. On the contrary, he has been sending even more American troops to the Middle East just this year alone.
And now Trump is lashing out at Macron. "NATO serves a great purpose," he declared today. "And I hear that President Macron said NATO is 'brain dead.' I think that's very insulting to a lot of different forces ... When you make a statement like that, that is a very, very nasty statement to 28 -- including them -- 28 countries."Manipulating children into doing what you want by pretending to demand they do the opposite thing is a trick most parents learn to use. It usually stops working around the age of 5.
товарищ!!! https://t.co/HpqPbI22Dh
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) December 3, 2019
In the interview, according to the notes published by BuzzFeed News, Rosenstein described feeling "angry, ashamed, horrified and embarrassed" at how the abrupt firing of then-FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017 was handled. "It was also humiliating for Comey," his interviewers quoted Rosenstein as saying.Rosenstein said he spoke to Mueller, a former FBI director, about becoming special counsel the next day.He had a separate conversation with Mueller and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions on May 13 to see if Mueller would be interested in returning to his old job as director, the notes say."Mueller informed them he did not want to be interviewed for FBI director position," but told them his views about "what should be done with FBI," the document says. "Sessions thought Mueller's comments were 'brilliant,'" Rosenstein is quoted as saying.
In a race in which their domestic agendas are viewed as very similar, Sanders' and Warren's foreign policy views mark a clear line of distinction. Left-wing leaders around the world see an ally in Sanders -- Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently thanked him for his "solidarity" and Bolivia's ousted Evo Morales called him "hermano Bernie Sanders" -- but have not publicly embraced Warren the same way."Bernie is the only candidate who has a comprehensive foreign policy vision to stand up to the growing movement of anti-democratic authoritarianism worldwide and find solidarity with working people around the world who, in many cases, share common needs," said Josh Orton, Sanders' national policy director.
The earlier you joined Team Trump the more likely you are a criminal.Government watchdogs on Monday called for Rep. Duncan Hunter's immediate resignation after it was reported that the California Republican would change his "not guilty" plea to "guilty" in the case of his alleged campaign finance violations.
A long piece in The Economist about inequality research ("Economists are rethinking the numbers on inequality") ends with this question: "Will this flurry of new research change people's minds about inequality?" Well, maybe some change among some academics, probably not much among most activists or politicians. As for the latter, too much of the current political environment seems driven by the idea that massive inequality signals "late capitalism" and the end of the American Dream as we know it. Mostly on the left, but also on the populist right.But even if minds are hard to change, perhaps strong evidence can at least make certain beliefs less strongly held. Has income inequality surged to record levels? As the below chart shows, adjusting for taxes and transfers finds the income share of America's top 1 percent "has barely changed since the 1960s," The Economist points out.
Like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California before her, Stefanik's transformation from thoughtful conservative to frontline Trump defender should worry lifelong Republicans, NeverTrumpers and conservative-leaning independents. They once claimed an ideal, if built only on one-liners. That foundation has been shed and shredded, replaced by the GOP's increasing nihilism.We're already seeing the electoral consequences of this shift within the Republican Party. Last year, Cruz survived by a hair against a hard charge by then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke. And while Cruz survived to tilt at more deep-state windmills, many suburban Texas Republicans in the House and legislature were turned out of office.Just this month we've seen important wins in three Southern states go to Democrats. The Virginia suburbs handed the state legislature to the Democrats for the first time in nearly 20 years. While Republican Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky was thoroughly unpopular, his defeat was not preordained. Nor was Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' reelection in Louisiana. Had Trump been perhaps only half as ugly as he is, Richmond, Frankfort and Baton Rouge would be firmly in Republican hands.Go for broad appeal:If 2020 Democrats want to beat Trump, they shouldn't ignore moderates and indulge the leftMuch of what we see from Stefanik and her ilk, beyond the easy path of the Dark Side, is a fear of Trump's vaunted "base." Today, this group makes up about 40% of the country. The urban core detests him.The suburbs are experiencing a different version of white flight as college-educated white voters flee the GOP. The irony for Trump's congressional minions is that they've chosen to plant their flag in a decidedly eroding coastline: political lemmings waiting for that final leap.
Cuomo got Weber to acknowledge that Russia -- not Ukraine -- hacked the DNC server in 2016. "Nobody has ever suggested as a matter of fact that Ukraine had anything to do with that," Cuomo said. "The only person who has suggested it, in the ugliest of ironies, is Vladimir Putin. He made up a story about Ukraine wanting to go after Trump, and now members of your own party are parroting it." Weber tried to counter with a series of questions, starting with whether CrowdStrike investigated the hack for the Democrats. "Yes," Cuomo said."Is CrowdStrike in part owned by a Ukrainian?" Weber asked. "No," Cuomo replied. "Really?" Weber said. "That's not the information that we have." "You have bad information," Cuomo said, adding that Trump's former homeland security advisers Tom Bossert called the Ukraine conspiracy theory a joke and U.S. intelligence, the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller all corroborated CrowdStrike's conclusion that Russia hacked the DNC's servers.