The Justice Department's report that is expected to conclude that the FBI's federal investigation into potential links between Russia and President Trump's 2106 campaign wasn't politically motivated will be released Monday.Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who wrote the report, is said to have found that there was enough evidence to justify the FBI wiretapping Carter Page, Trump's former campaign adviser who reportedly had contact with Russian officials multiple times.People familiar with the report told the Los Angeles Times that the contents of the report will not only exonerate the FBI but also largely dismiss claims from the Trump administration and its allies that the federal agency broke the law in search of evidence and purposely went after Trump's campaign.
On a ten-minute-long segment of his show earlier this week, Tucker Carlson lamented the state of American capitalism. "During the last gilded age, 125 years ago," he told his viewers, "America's ruling class may have been ostentatiously rich, but it was still recognizably American." He checked off a few of that class's most luminous names--Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al--before stopping to heap praise on one man in particular: Henry Ford."In January of 1914," Carlson lectured, "Henry Ford more than doubled the prevailing factory wage, to a then-astounding five dollars for an eight hour day. Ford didn't have to do it, but his company was succeeding and he thought he should. Some historians trace the creation of the American middle class to Henry Ford's decision."Among other things historians trace to Henry Ford is The International Jew, a 91-article series he had his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, publish. The Jewish plan, Ford's paper enlightened its readers, was "to control the world, not by territorial acquisition, not by military aggression, not by governmental subjugation, but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange." Adolf Hitler called Ford an inspiration and kept a portrait of the American industrialist by his desk.Over on Fox News, the admiration flowed along the same path on Carlson's show. Unlike the all-American Ford, the TV host continued, our nation today was being ravaged by one greedy moneyman in particular: venture capitalist Paul Singer.In contrast to past and Protestant paragons of American civic-mindedness, Carlson thundered, Singer made his wealth "feeding off the carcass of a dying nation," rapaciously robbing hard-working and industrious folks in America and the world over by acquiring their enterprises and sucking their lifeblood.
Health insurance through an employer -- the way most Americans get it -- costs an annual average of almost $23,000 to cover a family. That's enough to buy a new Volkswagen every year.While those costs keep rising, Americans' life expectancy is falling.
Most efficient healthcare systems, 2018.
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) December 7, 2019
1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. Spain
4. Italy
5. South Korea
7. Japan
8. Australia
16. France
16. Canada
20. China
21. Mexico
28. Netherlands
35. UK
45. Germany
51. Brazil
53. Russia
54. US
(Bloomberg)
It's the holiday gift for when you can't think of what else to give. Good for old, young, women, men, north, south -- NPR even sells 'em! Socks. And they are having their moment. "Socks have gone through their ups and downs and have had very very many different moments in the fashion world, and there's certainly a resurgence today, as you have probably noticed," says Steven Frumkin, a dean at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. "People want to make a statement, and one of the nice ways of doing it is to have a pair of socks that says something."
For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump and Republican loyalists in Congress, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department officials would get to the bottom of an alleged conspiracy against the Trump presidency.They would, in Trump's words, "investigate the investigators." It was oh so promising."I will tell you this," Trump blustered on October 25. "I think you're going to see a lot of really bad things," he said. "I leave it all up to the attorney general and I leave it all up to the people that are working with the attorney general who I don't know. ... I think you'll see things that nobody would've believed."Horowitz, as the DOJ inspector general, had the narrower assignment. He was tasked with investigating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants issued to intercept the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz had to answer the question: Was Page targeted for political reasons, perhaps based on the famous "Steele Dossier"?Durham, a senior U.S. attorney in Connecticut, has a broader brief: to review the FBI's decision to open an investigation of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russians in 2015. Durham was selected for the job by Barr.For those inclined to believe Fox News and the president, the "deep state cabal" that allegedly targeted Trump was running scared. In early October, Fox News reported that "Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation." From this report, the Daily Caller imaginatively extrapolated that Durham's probe had expanded to include "looking at the activities of foreign intelligence agencies." (One British official told the Independent that Barr and his minions asked, "in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.") On October 22, the Washington Examiner said Durham was "scrutinizing four key figures"; the Spectator, a right-wing British magazine, claimed former CIA director John Brennan was in "Durham's crosshairs."And so on.Trump's words, ironically, are coming true. Horowitz, it is now reliably reported, found that the Trump/Fox News talking points about a "deep state" conspiracy against Trump are, in fact, "things that nobody would've believed."Horowitz's report, says USA Today, is "expected to conclude the FBI was justified in launching its two-year inquiry into the Trump campaign and possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election."The Washington Post reports that Durham has already disappointed Trump.
Kansans participating in a statewide political survey expressed greater satisfaction with the job performance of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly than Republican President Donald Trump, who finds himself underwater in the deeply red Midwest state.The annual survey by Fort Hays State University's Docking Institute of Public Affairs showed 44.1% were satisfied with the president who easily carried the state three years ago and that 44.3% were dissatisfied with the investigation-tarnished president.Kelly, who took office in January after eight years of GOP leadership in the governor's office, held support of 52.7% surveyed. At the same time, 26.4% were dissatisfied with her performance as Kansas' chief executive.On Friday, Kelly said she would continue to operate in a bipartisan manner to "rebuild the state and ensure that everyone has a seat at the table.""Kansans value strong schools, safe roads, fiscally responsible policies and they expect their elected officials to work together," she said. "I ran for governor of this great state because I share these same values. And, it is how I've governed since taking office."In 2016, Trump captured 56.6% of the vote in Kansas to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's 36%, a gap of 20.6 percentage points. Kelly prevailed in the November 2018 election by winning 48% of the vote compared to Republican gubernatorial nominee Kris Kobach's 42.9%.
[T]hrough 1,048 days, his average approval rating is back to being the very worst of the polling-era presidents. According to FiveThirtyEight, he's at 41.6%; the next worst at this point was Barack Obama at 44%. Disapproval ratings tell an even worse story: At 53.5%, Trump is the only president through 1,048 days topping 50% (with Obama again the next-worst at 49.7% and no one else above 42%).This is dangerous territory for Republicans. Even if Trump rallies between now and November, it may be too late to help his party much. Candidate-recruitment season is already well underway, and those updates at Inside Elections mostly reflect how certain seats are becoming easier for Democrats to defend or harder for Republicans to hold based on decisions by politicians who are anticipating a tough contest for the president's party.
A national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence submitted additional classified evidence to House impeachment investigators about a phone call between Pence and Ukraine's president, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed Friday.In a letter to Pence, Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the vice president to declassify supplemental testimony from the aide, Jennifer Williams, about Pence's Sept. 18 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, arguing that there is no "legitimate basis" to keep it secret.
New York Magazine's Intelligencer ran an article titled, "The Trump-Loving Town and Its Favorite Undocumented Immigrant." The author interviewed some of the Bluff's residents who got to know him. They were impressed both by Garcia's hard work ethic and his compassion for others, such as mowing lawns for the elderly free of charge."He changed me," one person said. Another added, "I didn't grow up around people like him, but if the world had a few more people like him, the world would be a better place."This has no doubt initiated an inner struggle among some of these residents. How do you reconcile a get-tough policy of blanket deportations when you know that people like Garcia -- who make the world a better place -- will be sent back?Dealing with such a conflict can lead to plowing under the barrier to simple human compassion. Stereotypes fly when you have the opportunity to get to know a person.I am proud of the people in Poplar Bluff who played the Good Samaritan to Alex. Giving him food, shelter, a job and respect. They reached out to someone different from themselves and gave him a chance. It doesn't matter what political party you're from. It matters what's in your heart. And they, in turn, were rewarded by a broader world view that welcomes the stranger.It is wrong to stoke fear of the stranger in our midst or on our border. The people from my hometown demonstrated that the surest antidote to ungrounded fear is risk-taking love, which treats people as persons and not as labels.Speaking of labels, perhaps the most inaccurate of all is the label "stranger." There are really no strangers, as if they're from another planet. We are all on this planet. We all share the amazing human experience.It's not a burden or obligation to welcome a fellow traveler; at least an innkeeper provided a stable for Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem. It's a privilege, and getting to know their stories and personalities enables us to live more deeply in our own lives. If we work on including and learning, not excluding and judging, we might be surprised by the number of Alex Garcias in our midst.
Store brands have come a long way from blah boxes of knockoff Cheerios: Americans are increasingly piling their virtual and IRL shopping carts with in-store brands of everything, whether coffee, batteries, suit jackets, or midcentury modern sofas. Because stores don't have to hand over part of each purchase price to Coca-Cola Co. or Levi Strauss & Co., they're often able to sell their own brands for less--and make more money.
More recently, New Zealand introduced its first "wellbeing budget," with a focus on improving the wellbeing of the country's most vulnerable people.Such initiatives tend to broadly agree over the conditions required for a happy society. According to the World Happiness Report, there are six key ingredients for national happiness: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity. Scandinavian countries--which typically top the global happiness rankings (Finland is currently first)--tend to do well on all these measures.[...]The more we focus on our list of desired things, the more we fail to see what really matters. When we are certain of the things that make us happy, and urgently try to achieve them, we fail to appreciate the value of the things we already have and the multiple unknown opportunities we have yet to discover. When things inevitably go wrong in our lives, we blame others or ourselves instead of learning from what happened.Psychologists are beginning to understand the limits of this. Happy individuals tend to have humility as well as certainty; curiosity as well as urgency; and compassion as well as blame.We can apply these same lessons on a national scale. Creating a happier society requires not just promoting what matters, but also promoting the capacities for discovering what matters.We know this on an institutional level. In education, we know that it is important to promote curiosity and a love of learning as well as good exam results. In academia, we know that, although we can discover important scientific truths, almost all of our current scientific theories might be surpassed by other theories and we should remain open minded. We know that the appeal and relevance of religious institutions depends on balancing dogmatic teachings with mystery and curiosity--order and faith on the one hand, openness and flexibility on the other.Creating a happy society does not just depend on creating the right conditions. It also depends on creating the right institutions and processes for discovering those conditions. The irony is that members of the happy society described at the beginning of this article--who tend to be at ease, untroubled, quick to laugh, expansive and self-assured--are probably less focused on what makes them happy and more focused on exploring what really matters--with humility, curiosity, and compassion.
An American graduate student who had been detained in Iran for more than three years has been freed after the Trump administration agreed to a prisoner exchange with Tehran. [...]Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, meanwhile, tweeted out a picture of himself and Soleimani in a plane, with the phrase "going home." He also confirmed Wang's release in another tweet.
Bougainville, an island of just 250,000 inhabitants, belongs to Papua New Guinea -- but it may not be for long. The tiny Pacific island has held an independence referendumand, according to experts, Bougainville's residents look set to overwhelmingly back the nonbinding vote. The results are expected later this month.While independence movements like those in Catalonia and Scotland have made headlines in Europe lately, independence referenda and movements are much more widespread in Oceania and the surrounding area today. East Timor, previously annexed by Indonesia, was the first country in the region to gain independence in the 21st century."There is one thing that unites all pacific island states: namely their colonial past," said Hermann Mückler, a professor of social and cultural anthropology at Vienna University.
As of July 1, 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 1,356,458 people lived in New Hampshire, about 3% more than than the 2010 Census had counted.Many of those who have been moving in -- from abroad as well as from other states -- "have been better educated than those leaving and thus increase the state's store of intellectual capital," Johnson wrote. "Even during the worst of the (recent) recession, New Hampshire had a net gain of migrants with a college degree or more." [...]Johnson reports that the decline of the white majority from 95.1% in 2000 to 90% in 2018 represents "a doubling of the proportion of the state that is minority, from 61,600 ... to 136,000, and this growth accounted for two-thirds of the small increase in the entire population" over those 18 years.Johnson added that Hispanics now account for 3.9% of Granite Staters, to 2.9% for Asians and 1.4% for African Americans, living particularly "in the Concord-Mancheser-Nashua urban corridor, as well as in the Hanover-Lebanon region and in a few areas of the Seacoast," he wrote.People of color of child-bearing age are repopulating at a much higher rate than their white peers in the state."In all, 15.5% of New Hampshire's children belonged to a minority population in 2018," Johnson wrote. "As we look to the future, the proportion of New Hampshire's population that is minority will continue to grow."