NO ONE WILL MISS JOBS:

Have you ever wondered what it takes to live the good life? Have you ever wondered what the secret to success and happiness is? Harvard researchers seem to have an answer in a 79-year-old study.

After poring through a mountain-load of data, obtained from in-person interviews, questionnaires, medical records, etc., researchers concluded that close relationships are what make men happy, and that social ties shield people from life challenges while improving mental and physical health.

This is surprising in a culture that recognizes hard work as the ticket to the good life.

"I COULD HAVE COMPROMISED MYSELF MORE!":

The chief of staff criticised the implementation of the family separations policy at the border, which in the summer "brought down a greater deal of thunder on the president".

Of Trump's demanded wall, for which he has shut down the US government despite campaigning on a promise to make Mexico pay, Kelly said: "To be honest, it's not a wall."

"The president still says 'wall'," he said. "Oftentimes frankly he'll say 'barrier' or 'fencing,' now he's tended toward steel slats. But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it."

Citing the thorny question of withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Trump's urge to pull out of Nato, the Times said Kelly "defended his rocky tenure, arguing that it is best measured by what the president did not do when Kelly was at his side".

LAST MAN IN THE BUNKER:

THEY ARE THE UNSKILLED WORKERS:

[Gallup CEO Jim Clifton] summarized in a succinct sentence the bottom line of why your company's employee turnover may be high. He said:

The single biggest decision you make in your job--bigger than all the rest--is who you name manager. When you name the wrong person manager, nothing fixes that bad decision. Not compensation, not benefits--nothing.

That's what Clifton wrote in the summary accompanying Gallup's 2013 "State of the American Workplace" employee engagement study. That quote is the conclusion Gallup drew from decades of data and interviews with 25 million employees. But companies keep getting this decision wrong, over and over again.

Clifton says decision makers at the top of the food chain spend billions of dollars every year on everything but hiring the right managers. He writes, "They'll buy miserable employees latte machines for their offices, give them free lunch and sodas, or even worse--just let them all work at home, hailing an 'enlightened' policy of telecommuting."

If you're an executive concerned about low morale, employee satisfaction or engagement, or--at worst--a revolving door at your company, start by looking at who your current managers are. You have a choice to make: Develop their leadership skills or filter them out of their leadership roles.

WHILE WE HOPE HE GETS TO hEAVEN...:

The musical, Blimp, never took off, although its would-be signature song became an international sensation -- by some accounts the second-most-recorded song in history, after the Beatles' Yesterday. Written by composer Antônio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinicius de Moraes, it neatly filled a major plot hole: What might cause an extraterrestrial guest to linger in Brazil?

The answer, rendered into English by lyricist Norman Gimbel, was a beautiful woman from southern Rio de Janeiro:

"Tall and tan and young and lovely

"The girl from Ipanema goes walking

"And when she passes, each one she passes goes 'ah!' "

With help from Gimbel, The Girl From Ipanema went on to drive the bossa nova craze in the United States and beyond, introducing millions of listeners to Brazil's "new wave" fusion of samba and jazz. Alternately celebrated and mocked, with its ubiquitous instrumental covers derided as innocuous Muzak, versions of the song were used as elevator music in a scene from The Blues Brothers and as a soundtrack to the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Yet the tune was just one of many hits for Gimbel, an Oscar- and Grammy-winning lyricist who co-wrote the theme songs to Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, as well as the chart-topping ballad Killing Me Softly With His Song.

A RACE THAT REQUIRES NIKKI AT THE TOP OF THE TICKET:

It seems unlikely that the two most popular New Hampshire Republicans would run for the Senate in 2020.

Gov. Chris Sununu repeatedly has vowed that he has no interest in running for the U.S. Senate. The odds are much greater that the governor would run in 2020 for a third term in the corner office rather than for a full-time job in the nation's capital.

"I have absolutely no interest," Sununu told the Concord Monitor in June. "I'm a manager. I love to manage."

While she's staying mum, it's also highly doubtful former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte would run in 2020.

Ayotte, who lost to then-Gov. Maggie Hassan by just 1,017 votes out of nearly three-quarters of a million cast in 2016, has joined the boards of numerous corporate and nonprofit entities, including News Corp., BAE Systems, Bloom Energy, Caterpillar, the One Campaign and the McCain Institute. She's also a member of the executive committee of New Hampshire Veterans Count.

People close to her say it's unlikely she'd run in 2020, with Shaheen running for re-election and with President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket.

Ayotte struggled when asked at a 2016 Senate debate if she considered Trump a role model. A few weeks later, she broke with her party's presidential nominee after Trump's controversial 2005 Access Hollywood comments regarding women surfaced.

While those close to Ayotte say the odds right now are slim to none that she would run in 2020, a lot can change politically as the cycle progresses over the next year and a half.

MAP MOGUL:

There's good chance that any time you slide off the top of a chairlift, you'll be faced with James Niehues's work. The 72-year-old Coloradan has hand-painted the maps used by more than 200 ski resorts. But skiing's most prolific artist says he stumbled into it by luck. In 1987, Niehues had just moved to Denver from Grand Junction, Colorado. He had a couple of kids, and he was looking for work as a graphic designer after his work at an auto-parts manufacturer dried up. He reached out to local artist Bill Brown, who gave him a one-off job working on the trail map for Winter Park's Mary Jane Mountain. Brown, who was the only resort-map artist at the time, was looking to retire, and he passed the ski-map mantle on to Niehues. 

Aside from ideal timing, Niehues says he thinks he has an innate ability to see a whole mountain in one shot. We'd have to agree--his maps are incredibly accurate, down to the parking lots, but with a nostalgic wash of pastel color that's instantly recognizable. 

"PREPARE THE CHILD FOR THE ROAD, NOT THE ROAD FOR THE CHILD":

"It is a feature of developed societies but not of developing ones," Greaves adds. "The disease tracks with affluence."

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is caused by a sequence of biological events. The initial trigger is a genetic mutation that occurs in about one in 20 children.

"That mutation is caused by some kind of accident in the womb. It is not inherited, but leaves a child at risk of getting leukaemia in later life," adds Greaves.

For full leukaemia to occur, another biological event must take place and this involves the immune system. "For an immune system to work properly, it needs to be confronted by an infection in the first year of life," says Greaves. Without that confrontation with an infection, the system is left unprimed and will not work properly."

And this issue is becoming an increasingly worrying problem. Parents, for laudable reasons, are raising children in homes where antiseptic wipes, antibacterial soaps and disinfected floorwashes are the norm. Dirt is banished for the good of the household.

In addition, there is less breast feeding of infants and a tendency for them to have fewer social contacts with other children. Both trends reduce babies' contact with germs. This has benefits - but also comes with side effects. Because young children are not being exposed to bugs and infections as they once were, their immune systems are not being properly primed.

"When such a baby is eventually exposed to common infections, his or her unprimed immune system reacts in a grossly abnormal way," says Greaves. "It over-reacts and triggers chronic inflammation."

As this inflammation progresses, chemicals called cytokines are released into the blood and these can trigger a second mutation that results in leukaemia in children carrying the first mutation.

"The disease needs two hits to get going," Greaves explains. "The second comes from the chronic inflammation set off by an unprimed immune system."

In other words, a susceptible child suffers chronic inflammation that is linked to modern super-clean homes and this inflammation changes his or her susceptibility to leukaemia so that it is transformed into the full-blown condition.

From this perspective, the disease has nothing to with power lines or nuclear fuel reprocessing stations, as has been suggested in the past, but is caused by a double whammy of interacting prenatal and environmental events, as Greaves outlined in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer earlier this year.

Crucially, this new insight offers scientists a chance to intervene and to stop leukaemia from developing in the first place, he adds. "We do not yet know how to prevent the occurrence of the initial prenatal mutation in the womb, but we can now think of ways to block the chronic inflammation that happens later on."

AND POOR DONALD THINKS THE SAFETY WORD IS, "WALL":

"I think the American people recognise that we must keep government open, that a shutdown is not worth anything," said Pelosi as Trump nodded. "And that we should not have a Trump shutdown."

The president looked up and said: "A what? Did you say a Trump - ?"

After two years surrounded by loyalists and sycophants, Trump had got his first taste of what life will be like with Pelosi in control of one half of Congress. And as the cameras rolled, he quickly lost his cool, declaring he would be "proud to shut down the government", trapped on live TV by his temper and the pincer movement of Pelosi and the top Democratic senator Chuck Schumer.

Pelosi walked out of the White House into brilliant sunshine in sunglasses and a fiery red coat looking triumphant and returned to Capitol Hill to make jokes about Trump's manhood and utter the memorable description: "It goes to show you: you get into a tickle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you." [...]

According to the Wall Street Journal, there were more than 135,000 adverts during the midterms attacking Pelosi by name, and some Democratic candidates ran for election vowing not to vote for her as speaker if they won.

Wendy Schiller, chair of political science at Brown University, called the attack ad strategy "wasted money, pure and simple". Republicans "mistakenly believed that voter animosity towards strong women was interchangeable, so they tried to get the voters who disliked Hillary Clinton to see Nancy Pelosi the same way and then transfer that dislike to their local Democratic congressional candidate.

"That is just way too many connections for most voters to make, and it infuriated a lot of women. It is as if the GOP did not live in the same #MeToo moment as the rest of us."

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

Only New York saw a larger population decline of 48,510. The Empire State has about 7 million more people than Illinois.

With an out-migration of more than 114,000 in 2017, Illinois was relegated to America's sixth-largest state, falling behind Pennsylvania.

The new data begins in July 2017, the same time that Illinois lawmakers voted to override Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto to pass a historic income tax hike, raising the income tax rate to 5 percent, up from 3.75 percent.

In the months before July 2017 dating back to the recession, Illinois saw job growth at 1.7 percent, in line with the rest of the nation. Data from the next twelve months that coincide to the day with census data, Illinois saw jobs growth slow to .97 percent, 44th in the nation.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Tesla Inc. shares are poised to end the year well ahead of major stock indexes and the company is still basking in the afterglow of the profit reported for its latest quarter.

Wall Street's message for the company in 2019? Do it again and again.

On paper, at least, the early predictions are rosy: Wall Street expects Tesla TSLA, +5.61%  to report an adjusted profit of $6.75 a share for all of 2019, which would stand against expectations of an adjusted loss of $1.68 a share for this year. 

"IF ONLY I DO ENOUGH DAMAGE NO FOREIGNERS WILL WANT TO COME HERE!"

DONALD WHO?:

BUT STILL CAN'T SPELLCHECK:

THE WAGES OF OBSTRUCTION:

New Jersey prosecutors have collected evidence that supervisors at President Trump's Garden State golf club may have committed federal immigration crimes -- and the FBI as well as special counsel Robert Mueller have played part in the inquiry, the Daily News has learned.

Anibal Romero, a Newark attorney who represents several undocumented immigrants who used to work at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, said Friday he recently met with investigators from the state attorney general's office and handed over fraudulent green cards and Social Security numbers that management at the club allegedly procured and gave his clients, Victorina Morales and Sandra Diaz.

Before he met with the state prosecutors, Romero said he reached out to Mueller's office because, while he wanted to contact federal authorities, he was concerned about looping in the Justice Department, which was headed by Jeff Sessions at the time.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?:

This past summer, for the first time in more than two decades, Congress passed a pro-ESOP piece of legislation. Introduced by Gillibrand in the Senate and Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., in the House, the Main Street Employee Ownership Act makes it easier for small businesses to establish ESOPs and co-ops. It was included in the defense bill that President Donald Trump signed in August. (Another likely 2020 presidential contender, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced legislation this year for a different type of employee ownership. Known as co-determination, it would require companies with revenue over $1 billion to allow workers to elect at least 40 percent of their board of directors.)

Unlike conservatives, who have defended employee ownership on the grounds that it's most certainly not socialism -- indeed, it turns laborers into capitalists -- liberals have taken to ESOPs because they strengthen worker power, boost worker income, and increase corporate transparency. Workers, the arguments goes, care as much about their employment as they do about corporate profitability, so they won't advocate for a strategy that leaves them jobless, even if it is better for the short-term bottom line. "Simply put, when employees have an ownership stake in their company, they will not ship their own jobs to China to increase their profits; they will be more productive, and they will earn a better living," Sanders said last year.

Some progressives have criticized ESOPs, with the argument that they are little more than tax breaks for corporations that don't give workers real ownership of a company or a meaningful say in its management. ESOPs can also create tensions with traditional labor unions, as the latter seeks to organize workers, while ESOPs tend to blur the relationship between workers and owners.

Indeed, not many unionized ESOP companies exist. Some unions -- like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Steelworkers -- have been open to the idea. Others, "like the [United Automobile Workers], are inherently distrustful," said Loren Rodgers, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership, a national nonprofit based in Oakland, California. "In the auto industry, the threat of strikes is really important, and it's harder to get people to strike against something when that might hurt the value of the shares in their retirement account."

MORE THAN 14 MILLION current and former private sector workers have participated in ESOPs, according to the National Center for Employee Ownership. They work in almost every industry, from supermarkets, like the chain Publix, to policy research, like the firm Mathematica. About 7,000 companies today have the retirement plans. Research released earlier this year estimated that the average worker in an ESOP had accumulated $134,000 in retirement wealth from their stake.

Joseph Blasi, an economic sociologist who directs the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University, has long championed ESOPs because he believes they benefit both workers and companies, and are a way to transfer wealth to the middle class. Blasi points to studies showing that workers at ESOP companies tend to earn 5-12 percent more in wages than those at traditionally owned companies, have retirement accounts that are 2.2 percent larger, and are far less likely to be laid off during economic downturns.

Sobering statistics about growing wealth inequality -- like that the top 10 percent of households owns 80 percent of the financial assets, and the top 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined -- underscore the need for economists, activists, and policymakers to figure out ways to counteract these trends.

"I've been working on them for over 40 years and only now have ESOPs become cool," said Blasi.

A PAPER PUBLISHED this summer by a young economics researcher in Denmark has reinvigorated interest in ESOPs, as his findings suggest that the financial benefits of the retirement vehicle may be even greater than previously understood.

FEEL SAFER NOW?:

The boy's father, Ali Hassan, brought him to the United States for medical treatment in October. His mother Shaima Swileh remained behind in their Egypt home. The boy and his father are U.S. citizens but Swileh is not.

Yemeni citizens are restricted from entering the United States under President Donald Trump's travel ban. She applied for a waiver in 2017, but U.S. officials granted it only in December after the council sued alongside a petition from Rep. Barbara Lee.

Swileh held her son for the first time in the hospital on Dec. 19.

WHOLLY-OWNED SUBSIDIARY:

When the U.S. government put out its latest sanctions list on Dec. 19, the man named at the top did not seem especially important. Described in the document as a former Russian intelligence officer, he was accused of handling money and negotiations on behalf of a powerful Russian oligarch. The document did not mention that the man, Victor Boyarkin, had links to the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump.

A months-long investigation by TIME, however, found that Boyarkin, a former arms dealer with a high forehead and a very low profile, was a key link between a senior member of the Trump campaign and a powerful ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his only interview with the media about those connections, Boyarkin told TIME this fall that he was in touch with Trump's then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in the heat of the presidential race on behalf of the Russian oligarch. "He owed us a lot of money," Boyarkin says.

DONALD HAS TO KILL FARMING TO KEEP THE WORKERS OUT:

American farmers are facing the "imminent collapse" of key markets and fear uneven trade playing fields as Australian, Canadian and other rival nations take advantage of the soon-to-be implemented Trans-Pacific Partnership.

After President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the TPP on just his third day in the White House in 2017, the States will be left on the sidelines when the re-shaped TPP-11 comes into effect 12am on Sunday AEDT.

Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore were the first nations to ratify the agreement, formally titled the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement. Vietnam, Chile, Brunei, Peru and Malaysia are set to follow in coming months

US farmers, already hit hard by Trump's tariff battle with China and the lack of a free trade agreement with Japan, are bracing to immediately lose market share.

American wheat and beef producers have been particularly vocal.

They expect Australian farmers to use their TPP advantage to sell more to Japan.

From 2000 to 2017, Chinese imports of U.S. soybeans steadily increased. In 2016 and 2017, the U.S. exported 67,854,202 metric tons of soybeans to China, which was good for about 60% of total U.S. soybean exports during those two years.

In 2018, amid trade tensions, China basically stopped importing U.S. soybeans: Through September 2018, U.S. soybean exports China were down 98% compared to 2017. At the same time, the USDA forecasted that soybean production for 2018 will be an increase of 7% from 2017.

As a result, U.S. soybean inventory is poised to reach an estimated 955 million bushels in 2019, nearly doubling the 2018 stockpile.

WHICH IS WHY IT WAS ANDROPOV WHO INITIATED REFORM:

Viktor Suvorov is a literary pen-name: he was born Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun in Soviet Ukraine; his father a military officer, his mother a nurse. (His Ukrainian roots are another reason the Kremlin might have it in for him, sources in Moscow tell me.) His father was a confirmed Bolshevik who believed the USSR could flourish were it not for the "bad guys at the top", and Suvorov grew up a "fanatical communist". He attended military school, joined the Red Army and took part in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. An outstanding officer, he trained tactical reconnaissance sergeants and served in the intelligence division of the Volga military district headquarters - an experience Suvorov describes in Aquarium.

In 1970, he was recruited by the GRU. He was now part of an elite organisation that was a bitter rival of the KGB. His disillusionment with the Soviet system began only when he got to Geneva, he says, where he was attached to the UN mission. Suvorov says he was summoned to the airport one day to watch the arrival of an Ilyushin-76 transport plane from Moscow. When its ramp was lowered, gold bars were taken out of the cargo bay - to buy food from America. "We couldn't feed ourselves," he says.

Further disillusion came when he and his "wonderful spy wife" Tatiana went on holiday. They took the train from Basel and travelled across West Germany to east Berlin, passing the wall. "It was the same people, same history, same bloody Germans. [But] it's a Mercedes here and it's a Trabant there," he recalls with a laugh. He read George Orwell's Animal Farm. "At first I thought: 'These aren't Russian pigs, they're pigs from Berkshire.' Then I realised it was about the people in the Kremlin. They had banned the book inside the Soviet Union because they recognised themselves."

He read Nineteen Eighty-Four. "Orwell was never a communist, but was close to them. He understood the totalitarian state has to be like that. He never visited the USSR, but he realised everything better than anybody could imagine," Suvorov says. He says his wife - the daughter of an intelligence officer - agreed to defect with him. They have been married for 47 years. "It's an achievement," he says.

From his new home in the UK, Suvorov wrote one of the most influential books of the perestroika era, Icebreaker. When it was published in 1988, his argument was heretical: that Stalin had been secretly plotting an offensive against Hitler's Germany, and would have invaded in September 1941, or at the latest by 1942. Stalin, he wrote, wanted Hitler to destroy democracy in Europe, in the manner of an icebreaker, thereby clearing the way for world communism. The book undermined the idea that the USSR was an innocent party, dragged into the second world war. Russian liberals supported Suvorov's thesis; it now has broad acceptance among historians.

PITY THE POOR TRUMPBOTS:

Republicans have quietly and unceremoniously ended their congressional investigation of whether the FBI and Justice Department were biased in their handling of inquiries into Hillary Clinton's emails and Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

House judiciary chairman Robert Goodlatte and oversight chairman Trey Gowdy, who are retiring next week, sent a letter rather than a full report to the Justice Department and the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

FOLLOW MARTY...:

A Virginia study concluded that the commonwealth's tax incentives - whether they be tax credits or tax exemptions - do not provide much return as an economic investments. The study, conducted by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, found that grants were more effective between Fiscal 2010 and Fiscal 2017.

According to the study, nearly 60 percent of incentive spending was through tax incentives. The state spent $835 million on tax exemptions and $180 million on tax credits. About 42 percent was spent on grants, which was $715 million. The remaining $25 million were spent on other incentives, which include loans and gap financing programs.

NIKKI 2020:

"I think it's more likely than not he will get impeached," the American University professor [Allan Lichtman.] told DW.

After previously predicting 30 years of presidential elections correctly, Lichtman became a media phenomenon when he -- against mainstream wisdom -- predicted early on that Trump would win in 2016.

Now Lichtman is convinced that as of 2019, and for the remainder of his term, Trump will be engaged in a fight to remain in office -- a fight he well may lose. [...]

Lichtman is not just convinced that Trump will be impeached. He also sees an increasing likelihood that Trump will actually be ousted from the presidency, which many other political experts still consider unlikely. If the House votes to impeach Trump, removing him from office requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. Republicans still control that body by a 51-49 majority, meaning a substantial number of GOP lawmakers would have to vote to oust a president who is a member of their own party.

Such a scenario is less unrealistic than it sounds, said Lichtman, pointing to the steady drip of incriminating information from the Mueller probe and Trump's conduct in office that is beginning to take its toll on Republicans -- a sentiment backed up by the recent midterm results. With presidential and Congressional elections in which Senate Republicans face a much less favorable electoral map than this year just around the corner in 2020, the GOP may be ready to cut Trump loose.

"The way in which Trump could be impeached and removed would be if Republicans think he is going to drag them down with him," said Lichtman. "They don't have any personal loyalty to Trump. They are worried about antagonizing his base and losing Republican primaries. But if they think he is going to be a political liability, they may be willing to abandon him."

He viewed Senator Marco Rubio's recent remark that it would be a "terrible mistake" for Trump to pardon his former campaign manager Paul Manafort as an indicator that some influential Republicans may be ready to reconsider their support for the president, should circumstances merit it.

"Republicans supported [Richard] Nixon until the evidence became so overwhelming that he was a tremendous liability to them," said Lichtman, referring to the former GOP president who resigned in 1974 during the Watergate scandal. "I am not saying he won't survive, but I am saying it's unlikely."

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. voters surveyed say President Trump should be either impeached and removed from office or formally censured, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill.

The poll shows that a majority of voters polled think some kind of action should be taken against Trump, though they are divided on how far lawmakers should go as Democrats prepare to take over the House majority.

TRUTH-TELLING:

The story of supernormal stimuli begins with the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen. As a boy growing up in The Hague in the 1910s, Tinbergen was fascinated by the fish and fowl inhabiting the little pond in his backyard. These early encounters with the wildlife of the Netherlands informed his later work, and as an adult, he kept an aquarium in his home.

One day he noticed that the male three-spined sticklebacks--which have "gorgeous nuptial colors," Tinbergen observed, "red on the throat and breast, greenish-blue on the back"--went into attack mode every time a red postal van parked outside. They dropped their heads and raised their dorsal fins, a posture normally assumed only in the presence of a rival male.

Wondering whether the fish were reacting to the postal van, Tinbergen introduced variously colored objects into the tank. He discovered that the males became aggressive in response to anything red--the unmistakable sign of another male's presence--regardless of whether it resembled a fish. The observation sparked Tinbergen's discovery of color's influence on animal behavior, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973.

When he wasn't observing three-spined sticklebacks, Tinbergen spent a lot of time with adult herring-gull hens, which have pronounced orange spots on their lower mandibles. For the first few weeks of a chick's life, its mother's beak is its sole food source. That orange spot is a good target for chicks to aim at when they peck at their mother to prompt her to regurgitate food.

Tinbergen noticed that the chicks in his lab, like the male sticklebacks in his aquarium, aggressively pecked not just at their mother's beak but at anything with an orange spot on it. It occurred to him that it might be possible to one-up nature, to "make a dummy that would stimulate the chick still more than the natural object," he wrote.

So Tinbergen started making "super-gulls": cobbled-together constructions that amplified the orange spot to which the chicks so enthusiastically responded. He painted orange spots on everything from old pieces of wood to kitchen utensils. He made the orange spots bigger and surrounded them with white rings to enhance the contrast. The chicks pecked at absolutely everything that had an orange spot on it. The bigger the spot, the more aggressively the chicks pecked.

Tinbergen called his exaggerated orange spots "supernormal stimuli," which, he concluded, "offer stimulus situations that are even more effective than the natural situation."  [...]

What is a punch line but a supernormal stimulus?

We respond to witty words and images more intensely than to "normal" objects, just as Tinbergen's theory of supernormal stimuli suggests. "Humor at its best is a kind of heightened truth--a super-truth," E. B. White wrote. This is also true of wit, which takes routine seeing and heightens it by shearing ordinary things and meanings of their habitual context, revealing them as suddenly strange and unfamiliar.

"TRAPPED IN A WORLD THAT'S A DISTORTED REALITY":

[T]he important part of the McClatchy story isn't the cell phone data, rather indications that friendly spies had information about the reputed Prague trip. As the report states, "[in] late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague." In other words, a friendly spy service picked up signals intelligence that may corroborate the Steele dossier.

In the SIGINT world, such tells are called "reflections" and they happen all the time. They're not hard evidence, yet they are intriguing. If Russians--particularly prominent or well-connected ones--believed that Michael Cohen was visiting the Czech Republic when it's claimed he was, that's an important fact, even if far from decisive proof. That unnamed Eastern European intelligence agency shared their Cohen SIGINT report with American counterparts some time ago, my sources tell me, and it's in the possession of Robert S. Mueller, III and his Special Counsel investigation.

In addition, the National Security Agency, our own eavesdroppers, intercepted at least one similar piece of intelligence back in the late summer of 2016. As an NSA official told me, this SIGINT was highly classified and involved "senior Kremlin types" mentioning that Michael Cohen was in Prague. It was "office chit-chat, really," explained the NSA official, and it included no details of what Cohen was doing in the Czech Republic, yet "these Russians stated it as a fact" that the Prague trip happened when the Steele dossier said it did.

STANDING TALL:

Voters like to think that they rationally assess political candidates entirely based upon policy positions, character and abilities. But more-primitive forces also shape political judgments, including a bias in favor of taller candidates. At a height of 6 feet 4 inches, O'Rourke stands (sorry couldn't resist) to benefit.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, no major political party has nominated a shorter-than-average man for president. (There are far, far too few data points to draw any conclusions about height and female nominees, but the one in all of U.S. history we've had so far is reportedly 5 feet 5 inches, slightly taller than average for women.)

And over the course of U.S. history, the taller presidential nominee has won the popular vote two-thirds of the time. Tallness bias is not unique to Americans. When asked to draw pictures of the "ideal national leader" and "typical citizen," people from a range of countries draw the former as being taller than the latter.

WE EVEN GET TO VOTE HIM OFF THE ISLAND:

Burnett has never liked the phrase "reality television." For a time, he valiantly campaigned to rebrand his genre "dramality"--"a mixture of drama and reality." The term never caught on, but it reflected Burnett's forthright acknowledgment that what he creates is a highly structured, selective, and manipulated rendition of reality. Burnett has often boasted that, for each televised hour of "The Apprentice," his crews shot as many as three hundred hours of footage. The real alchemy of reality television is the editing--sifting through a compost heap of clips and piecing together an absorbing story. Jonathon Braun, an editor who started working with Burnett on "Survivor" and then worked on the first six seasons of "The Apprentice," told me, "You don't make anything up. But you accentuate things that you see as themes." He readily conceded how distorting this process can be. Much of reality TV consists of reaction shots: one participant says something outrageous, and the camera cuts away to another participant rolling her eyes. Often, Braun said, editors lift an eye roll from an entirely different part of the conversation.

"The Apprentice" was built around a weekly series of business challenges. At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be "fired." But, as Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to "reverse engineer" the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump's shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense. During the making of "The Apprentice," Burnett conceded that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, "We know each week who has been fired, and, therefore, you're editing in reverse." Braun noted that President Trump's staff seems to have been similarly forced to learn the art of retroactive narrative construction, adding, "I find it strangely validating to hear that they're doing the same thing in the White House."

Such sleight of hand is the industry standard in reality television. But the entire premise of "The Apprentice" was also something of a con. When Trump and Burnett told the story of their partnership, both suggested that Trump was initially wary of committing to a TV show, because he was so busy running his flourishing real-estate empire. During a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio, in Los Angeles, Trump claimed that "every network" had tried to get him to do a reality show, but he wasn't interested: "I don't want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters, and everyone else I have to deal with in my business. You know, mobsters don't like, as they're talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn't play well with them."

"The Apprentice" portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth--a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. "Most of us knew he was a fake," Braun told me. "He had just gone through I don't know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king." Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, "We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise."

HUMAN/KIND:

Let me share with you three things that I learned from Amos Oz -- things that have formed my outlook on what it means to be human, on Judaism, and on Israel itself.

First, what it means to be human.

Amos Oz was born Amos Klausner, and his father's name was Yehuda Klausner.

In the 1940s, the Klausner family lived in Jerusalem. Mr. Klausner dreamed of becoming a best-selling author of scholarly books. He wanted to be like his friend, Israel Zarchi, whose books always sold out within a few days of their printing.

Yehuda Klausner would privately print his books, and he would take them to Achiasaph's book store on King George Street in Jerusalem.

No one bought Mr. Klausner's books. They just sat there in a pile, as their author became more depressed and more discouraged.

Finally, one day he got a call from the bookstore. All of his books had been sold! There had been an absolute run on his books! So much so, that a bookstore in Tel Aviv had put in an order as well!

Yehuda Klausner was elated, and this launched his modest career in scholarly writing.

A few years later, young Amos Oz was visiting Israel Zarchi in his cluttered apartment. Mr. Zarchi left the living room to get Amos a cup of hot cocoa. While Mr. Zarchi was in the kitchen, Amos was looking around, and he noticed something under the coffee table in the corner of the room.

It was a pile of his father's books.

Israel Zarchi returned to the living room with the cup of cocoa. He saw Amos looking at the pile of his father's books - and he held his index finger to his lips, as if to say: Please don't say anything to your father.

You know what had happened. Israel Zarchi had secretly bought all of Klausner's books.

And because of that, Yehuda Klausner had thought himself to be a minor commercial success, and because of that, he continued writing.

This is what Amos Oz has said about that incident:

"I have many close and dear friends. And yet, I am not sure that I could do for any of them what Israel Zarchi did for my father. Israel Zarchi was poor. He lived hand to mouth. At a certain moment, he must have said to himself, I can either buy some clothes that I need, or I can buy the three copies of Klausner's book.'

"And he chose to buy my father's book."

I share this story because it is one of the most important illustrations that I know -- of the cardinal Jewish value of chesed, selfless love.

THE CHICAGO WAY:

Bolsonaro has put the University of Chicago graduate Pablo Guedes in charge of devising his government's economic plan. There are scant details on it for now but we know the country faces a delicate fiscal situation that must be addressed with spending cuts and increased revenues. This would be possible thanks to the privatization of non-essential government companies, which would exclude oil giant Petrobras and various energy-sector firms.

There is also strong budget pressure from the country's costly pensions system, which threatens to increase the fiscal deficit that is already close to 8% of GDP per year. This makes Brazil's access to international credits more costly, so the new government will likely put a pension reform among its priorities, increasing personal contributions and raising the retirement age with appropriate incentives.

Brazil also has considerable room for growth when it comes to trade. International trade represents for example only 23% of its GDP, in contrast with 44% and 57% for Peru and Chile respectively. Bolsonaro has more than once shown an interest in taking the country closer to the Pacific Alliance, a Latin American liberal trading block that is in clear contrast with the protectionist approach that has dominated Mercosur. Brazil would have to leave behind the protectionist approach if it wishes to develop an open trading policy.

The announcement that Bolsonaro's first visit abroad will be to Chile, not Argentina, Brazil's traditional trading partner in the region, shows the new administration's liberal economic inclinations and greater regard for the national interest in seeking pacts and deals. That will mean unshackling itself from the commitments Mercosur membership implies. Brazil will also seek to strengthen its position as a recipient of foreign investments, which requires boosting market confidence in the country. That should help boost internal demand, create jobs and make inroads into a current unemployment rate of 12%.

THE eND OF hISTORY LIFTS ALL BOATS:

OUR TWO rEPUBLICAN PARTIES:

The rise of Beto O'Rourke poses an obvious threat. The Texas congressman has replicated aspects of Sanders's appeal -- his positivity and refusal to accept PAC money -- while exceeding it in some ways. Sanders is charismatic in an unconventional way, the slovenly and cranky but somewhat lovable old uncle, while O'Rourke projects a classic handsome, toothy, Kennedy-esque charm that reliably makes Democrats swoon. Hard-core loyalists find the contrast irksome. "Reading Karl Marx is cool," said Nomiki Konst, a Sanders loyalist and candidate for New York City public advocate, to NBC. "Doing a livestream while you're doing your laundry is a gimmick." The comment sums up the left's well-grounded fear that Sanders's hard-core ideological appeal can be easily disarmed with personal charisma.

And while O'Rourke has yet to decide on a presidential campaign, and would have to overcome an enormous field if he does, the Sandernistas are hardly paranoid to discern the kind of groundswell that could quickly propel O'Rourke to the front of the pack. Former Obama strategist and current Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer wrote a piece urging O'Rourke to run (without endorsing him). O'Rourke reportedly met with Obama, who favored him with public praise. "What I liked most about his race was that it didn't feel constantly poll-tested," Obama said. "It felt as if he based his statements and his positions on what he believed."

What Obama is describing here is O'Rourke's ability to speak naturally and with apparent conviction -- one never knows if a politician is expressing genuine conviction or just performing it well -- without taking hard-left policy stances. O'Rourke's short career has allowed him to avoid being pinned down on every item in the party platform. He generally occupies the center of the Democratic Party, and often expresses broad sympathy for left-wing policy goals while suggesting he favors a more pragmatic alternative. On health care, he advocates "achieving universal health care coverage -- whether it be through a single-payer system, a dual system, or otherwise -- so that we can ensure everyone is able to see a provider when it will do the most good and will deliver health care in the most affordable, effective way possible."

One of the deeper strategic goals of the left is to equate progressive maximalism with authenticity, like Sanders did. They want candidates who take uncompromising left-wing positions to be seen as authentic, and candidates who adopt more moderate lines to be seen as calculating and phony. The socialist left will attack any non-Sanders candidate, but O'Rourke is especially dangerous to their project precisely because of his Obama-like personal appeal.

The frequently invoked comparisons between O'Rourke and the 44th president explain both O'Rourke's wide appeal within the party ranks and the mistrust he has inspired on the far left. Socialists generally regard Obama as a failure; Sanders often critiqued Obama implicitly, sometimes explicitly.

A BIG HAND FOR THE LITTLE LADY:

While the strategy is fluid, House Democrats hope to pass a funding bill shortly after members are sworn in. They believe that would put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to follow suit. And they're confident that their political leverage will only increase the longer the shutdown lasts -- a notion that some GOP leaders privately agree with.

Indeed, the specter of a lengthy shutdown could hurt Trump's already damaged image more than it would Democrats -- especially because he claimed ownership of the crisis two weeks ago. Democrats believe the shutdown battle -- combined with the volatility in financial markets and special counsel Robert Mueller closing in on Trump -- exacerbates the appearance of a cornered president acting out of his own political self-interest instead of the needs of the American public.

RACISM IS A TOUGH SELL IN AMERICA:

Forty-seven percent of adults hold Trump responsible, while 33 percent blame Democrats in Congress, according to the Dec. 21-25 poll, conducted mostly after the shutdown began. Seven percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans. [...]

Just 35 percent of those surveyed in the opinion poll said they backed including money for the wall in a congressional spending bill. Only 25 percent said they supported Trump shutting down the government over the matter.

IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR AMERICANS:

On the long journey from Central America to U.S. soil, many migrants have taken solace in their religion.

Several 'caravans' of mostly Honduran migrants who made the trek this year faced arduous conditions, braving fierce heat by day and searching for a safe place to sleep at night.

Many regard their faith as their compass.

For migrants far from home, the street often becomes their place of worship. On a warm afternoon in late November, pastor Jose Murcia, a Salvadoran who lives in the United States, preaches outside a temporary shelter in Tijuana to a cluster of men.

Later, Murcia joins a pair of men kneeling in the middle of the road, their heads bowed in prayer.

On their way to the U.S. border, the migrants walked the length of Mexico. Here, the Virgin of Guadalupe - an image of the Virgin Mary who devotees believe appeared to an indigenous man in the 16th century - looms large. As if seeking her protection, a man drapes himself with a banner depicting her as he crouches before a phalanx of riot police in Tijuana.

THE DATA THEORY OF VALUE:

Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower and former employee with Cambridge Analytica, swears in to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 16, 2018.ANDREW HARRER/GETTY IMAGES

IT'S NO SECRET that companies like Facebook and Google scoop up personal information to serve users ads. But if anything became clear this year, it's that consumers have a lot more to learn about what happens to their data online--how it's gathered, who gets to look at it, and what it's worth.

American corporations are expected to have spent over $19 billion this year acquiring and analyzing consumer data, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, from names and emails to the unique way we fumble with our smartphones. That info is used by marketers, advertisers, analysts, and investors for a host of purposes that remain largely opaque to the average person. In some places, seemingly irrelevant factors like the type of device you have, your email address, or the time of day you make a purchase may be used determine whether you qualify for a loan. Despite all the power and value this data can have, there are few laws in the US regulating the collection and sale of it. [...]

Our personal data is being sold, traded, and shared in ways that we're only beginning to fully unravel. In just the past year, we've learned how these troves of information can be used to influence elections, enrich hedge funds, and even catch a murderer. The next step in 2019 will be deciding what should be done about it.

WITCH HUNTS ARE A FUNCTION OF WITCHES:

To see how female students react to a rival, researchers brought pairs of them into a laboratory at McMaster University for what was ostensibly a discussion about female friendships. But the real experiment began when another young woman entered the room asking where to find one of the researchers.

This woman had been chosen by the researchers, Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma, because she "embodied qualities considered attractive from an evolutionary perspective," meaning a "low waist-to-hip ratio, clear skin, large breasts." Sometimes, she wore a T-shirt and jeans, other times a tightfitting, low-cut blouse and short skirt.

In jeans, she attracted little notice and no negative comments from the students, whose reactions were being secretly recorded during the encounter and after the woman left the room. But when she wore the other outfit, virtually all the students reacted with hostility.

They stared at her, looked her up and down, rolled their eyes and sometimes showed outright anger. One asked her in disgust, "What the [expletive] is that?"

Most of the aggression, though, happened after she left the room. Then the students laughed about her and impugned her motives. One student suggested that she dressed that way in order to have sex with a professor. Another said that her breasts "were about to pop out."

The results of the experiment jibe with evidence that this "mean girl" form of indirect aggression is used more by adolescents and young women than by older women, who have less incentive to handicap rivals once they marry. Other studies have shown that the more attractive an adolescent girl or woman is, the more likely she is to become a target for indirect aggression from her female peers.

"Women are indeed very capable of aggressing against others, especially women they perceive as rivals," said Dr. Vaillancourt, now a psychologist at the University of Ottawa. "The research also shows that suppression of female sexuality is by women, not necessarily by men."

Stigmatizing female promiscuity -- a.k.a. slut-shaming -- has often been blamed on men, who have a Darwinian incentive to discourage their spouses from straying. But they also have a Darwinian incentive to encourage other women to be promiscuous. Dr. Vaillancourt said the experiment and other research suggest the stigma is enforced mainly by women.

"Sex is coveted by men," she said. "Accordingly, women limit access as a way of maintaining advantage in the negotiation of this resource. Women who make sex too readily available compromise the power-holding position of the group, which is why many women are particularly intolerant of women who are, or seem to be, promiscuous."

BEBO; IT'S COLD OUTSIDE:

[C]hucho Valdés is about to release a new album, Jazz Batá 2, that burnishes his stature as a towering Afro-Cuban pianist of our time, while reclaiming a meaningful chapter from his past. The album is due out  Nov. 16 on Mack Avenue Records, which has shared one track here as an exclusive premiere: "100 Años de Bebo," or "100 Years of Bebo," featuring violinist Regina Carter.

The song's title is a nod to Bebo Valdés's centenary, which falls on Oct. 9. (Chucho has the same birthday; he'll be turning 78.) A danzón-mambo with a lilting melody exquisitely played by Carter, it's a composition that holds sentimental associations.

"No one's heard this tune," Valdés says in a press release. "I'm the only person who knows it. When I was a child, Bebo played it on the piano at home. Just a tune, very beautiful, and as many times as he played it, it always captured my attention. I don't believe he ever recorded it. Since it's his centenary, I added an introduction, I put a tumbao at the end, and recorded it." (Don't miss the delirious "laughing" effect that Carter plays at the onset of the tumbao, just after the three-minute mark -- and stay put for her marvelous solo, which leads to a show of mastery by Valdés.)

Apart from Carter, a guest who also graces a radiant track titled "Ochún," the supporting personnel on Jazz Batá 2 consists strictly of musicians from the Guantánamo region of Cuba: longtime Valdés associate Yaroldy Abreu Robles on percussion; Yelsy Heredia on bass; and Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé on batá drums and vocals.

As the title implies, Jazz Batá 2 is also a sequel -- to Jazz Batá, an album that Valdés released in 1972, for the Cuban label Egrem. A forward-thinking experiment in cultural convergence, that album paired modern jazz piano with the earthy thrum of the batá, an hourglass-shaped drum adapted from Yoruban religious practice. The percussionist on the album was Oscar Valdés (no relation), and the bassist was Carlos del Puerto. Both became founding members of Irakere, whose explosive success eclipsed the acoustic sound of Jazz Batá, rendering it a kind of curio.

THE TAXINGEST PRESIDENT EVER:

Bloomberg's Global Trade Tracker is softening amid a fading rush to front-load export orders ahead of threatened tariffs. And volumes are tipped to slow further even as the U.S. and China seek to resolve their trade spat, with companies warning of ongoing disruption.

Already there are casualties. GoPro Inc. will move most of its U.S.-bound camera production out of China by next summer, becoming one of the first brand-name electronics makers to take such action, while FedEx Corp. recently slashed its profit forecast and pared international air-freight capacity.

"Any kind of interference with commerce is going to be a tax on the economy," said Hamid Moghadam, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Prologis Inc., which owns almost 4,000 logistics facilities globally. "And the world economy is probably going to slow down as a result of it."

IF ONLY THERE WERE HOT DOG VENDORS IN CHURCH:

TRY TO DO BETTER THAN PUTIN, HUH?:

Reid Hoffman, the tech billionaire whose money was spent on Russian-style social media deception in a Senate race last year, apologized on Wednesday, saying in a statement that he had not approved the operation and did not support such tactics in American politics.

Mr. Hoffman said he had no idea that political operatives whose work he had financed had used fakery on Facebook and Twitter in the special Senate election a year ago in Alabama. But he had an obligation to track how his money was spent, he said, and he promised to exercise more care in the future.

"I categorically disavow the use of misinformation to sway an election," said Mr. Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and a prominent figure at the intersection of Silicon Valley and Democratic politics. [...]

Democratic political strategists say the small Alabama operation -- which accounts for a minuscule share of the $51 million spent in the contest -- was carried out as a debate about tactics intensified within the party.

Democrats had been shocked to learn of Russia's stealth influence campaign to damage Hillary Clinton and promote Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential race. But at least a few Democrats thought their party could not shun such tactics entirely if others were going to continue to use them.

The Alabama operation is among the first examples to come to light of such underhanded methods on social media in American politics.

A WHOLLY-OWNED ASSET:

In the fall of 1992, after he cut a deal with U.S. banks to work off nearly a billion dollars in personal debt, Donald Trump put on a big gala for himself in Atlantic City to announce his comeback. Party guests were given sticks with a picture of Trump's face glued to them so they could be photographed posing as the famous real-estate mogul. As the theme music from the movie Rocky filled the room, an emcee shouted, "Let's hear it for the king!" and Trump, wearing red boxing gloves and a robe, burst through a paper screen. One of his casino executives announced that his boss had returned as a "winner," according to Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio.

But it was mainly an act, D'Antonio told Foreign Policy. In truth Trump was all but finished as a major real-estate developer, in the eyes of many in the business, and that's because the U.S. banking industry was pretty much finished with him. By the early 1990s he had burned through his portion of his father Fred's fortune with a series of reckless business decisions. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times. When would-be borrowers repeatedly file for protection from their creditors, they become poison to most major lenders and, according to financial experts interviewed for this story, such was Trump's reputation in the U.S. financial industry at that juncture.

For the rest of the '90s a chastened Trump launched little in the way of major new business ventures (with a few exceptions, such as the Trump World Tower across from the United Nations, which began construction in 1999 and was financed by two German lenders, Deutsche Bank and Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank). "He took about 10 years off, and really sort of licked his wounds and tried to recover," D'Antonio said. As late as 2003, Trump was in such desperate financial trouble that at a meeting with his siblings following his father's death he pressed them to hurriedly sell his father's estate off, against the late Fred Trump's wishes, the New York Times reported in an investigation of Trump family finances in October. And his businesses kept failing: In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy with $1.8 billion dollars of debt.

But Trump eventually made a comeback, and according to several sources with knowledge of Trump's business, foreign money played a large role in reviving his fortunes, in particular investment by wealthy people from Russia and the former Soviet republics. This conclusion is buttressed by a growing body of evidence amassed by news organizations, as well as what is reportedly being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Southern District of New York. It is a conclusion that even Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has appeared to confirm, saying in 2008--after the Trump Organization was prospering again--that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."  

Trump's former longtime architect, Alan Lapidus, echoed this view in an interview with FP this month. Lapidus said that based on what he knew from the internal workings of the organization, in the aftermath of Trump's earlier financial troubles "he could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he's acknowledged."

HIS BONE SPURS MAKE READING DIFFICULT:

Less than two hours after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis went to the White House on Thursday to hand a resignation letter to President Trump, the president stood in the Oval Office and dictated a glowing tweet announcing that Mr. Mattis was retiring "with distinction" at the end of February.

But Mr. Trump had not read the letter. As became apparent to the president only after days of news coverage, a senior administration official said, Mr. Mattis had issued a stinging rebuke of Mr. Trump over his neglect of allies and tolerance of authoritarians. The president grew increasingly angry as he watched a parade of defense analysts go on television to extol Mr. Mattis's bravery, another aide said, until he decided on Sunday that he had had enough.

THE MORE WE KNOW, THE BETTER THE DOSSIER TURNS OUT TO BE:

JUSTICE WARRIOR:

TEN YEARS AGO last Friday, then FBI Director Robert Mueller bundled himself in his tan trench coat against the cold December air in Washington, his scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. Sitting on a small stage at Arlington National Cemetery, he scanned the faces arrayed before him--the victims he'd come to know over years, relatives and friends of husbands and wives who would never grow old, college students who would never graduate, business travelers and flight attendants who would never come home.

Burned into Mueller's memory were the small items those victims had left behind, items that he'd seen on the shelves of a small wooden warehouse, outside Lockerbie, Scotland, a visit he would never forget: A teenager's single white sneaker, an unworn Syracuse University sweatshirt, the wrapped Christmas gifts that would never be opened, a lonely teddy bear.

A decade before the attacks of 9/11--attacks that came during Mueller's second week as FBI director and which had awoken the rest of America to the threats of terrorism--the bombing of Pan Am 103 had impressed upon Mueller a new global threat.

It had taught him the complexity of responding to international terror attacks, how unprepared the government was to respond to the needs of victims' families and how on the global stage justice would always be intertwined with geopolitics. In the intervening years, he had never lost sight of the Lockerbie bombing--known to the FBI by the codename Scotbom--and he had watched the orphaned children from the bombing grow up over the years.

Nearby in the cemetery stood a memorial cairn made of pink sandstone--a single brick representing each of the victims, the stone mined from a Scottish quarry that the doomed flight passed over just seconds before the bomb ripped its baggage hold apart. The crowd that day had gathered near the cairn in the cold to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

For a man with an affinity for speaking in prose, not poetry, a man whose staff was accustomed to orders given in crisp sentences as if they were Marines on the battlefield or under cross-examination from a prosecutor in a courtroom, Mueller's remarks that day soared in a way unlike almost any other speech he'd deliver.

"There are those who say that time heals all wounds. But you know that not to be true. At its best, time may dull the deepest wounds; it cannot make them disappear," Mueller told the assembled mourners. "Yet out of the darkness of this day comes a ray of light. The light of unity, of friendship, and of comfort from those who once were strangers and who are now bonded together by a terrible moment in time. The light of shared memories that bring smiles instead of sadness. And the light of hope for better days to come."

He talked of Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and of inspiration drawn from Lockerbie's town crest, with its simple motto, "Forward." He spoke of what was then a two-decade-long quest for justice, of how on windswept Scottish mores and frigid lochs a generation of FBI agents, investigators, and prosecutors had redoubled their dedication to fighting terrorism.

Mueller closed with a promise, "Today, as we stand here together on this, the darkest of days, we renew that bond. We remember the light these individuals brought to each of you here today. We renew our efforts to bring justice down on those who seek to harm us. We renew our efforts to keep our people safe, and to rid the world of terrorism. We will continue to move forward. But we will never forget."

Hand bells tolled for each of the victims as their names were read aloud, 270 names, 270 sets of bells.

The investigation, though, was not yet closed. Mueller, although he didn't know it then, wasn't done with Pan Am 103. Just months after that speech, the case would test his innate sense of justice and morality in a way that few other cases in his career ever have.

MELTING SOAPFLAKES:

HE'S GREAT FOR ISRAEL:

[C]onsider the Trump presidency from a purely Israeli standpoint. Are Israelis better off now that the U.S. Embassy is in Jerusalem? Not materially. The move was mostly a matter of symbolism, albeit of an overdue and useful sort. Are Israelis safer from Iran now that the U.S. is no longer in the Iran deal and sanctions are back in force? Only marginally. Sanctions are a tool of strategy, not a strategy unto themselves.

What Israel most needs from the U.S. today is what it needed at its birth in 1948: an America committed to defending the liberal-international order against totalitarian enemies, as opposed to one that conducts a purely transactional foreign policy based on the needs of the moment or the whims of a president.

ISIS, NOT AL QAEDA:

Most dangerous is Bolton. He publicly advocated war with both Iran and North Korea before his appointment, and his strategy in Syria risked conflict with several nations. He's demonstrated that he has no compunctions about defying the president, crafting policies that contradict the latter's directives. Indeed, Bolton is well-positioned to undermine even obvious successes, such as the peaceful opening with North Korea.

Supporting appointments to State and the National Security Council have been equally problematic. Candidate Trump criticized the bipartisan War Party, thereby appealing to heartland patriots who wonder why their relatives, friends, and neighbors have been dying in endless wars that have begotten nothing but more wars. Yet President Trump has surrounded himself with neocons, inveterate hawks, and ivory tower warriors. With virtually no aides around him who believe in his policies or were even willing to implement them, he looked like a George Bush/Barack Obama retread. The only certainty, beyond his stream of dramatic tweets, appeared to be that Americans would continue dying in wars throughout his presidency.

However, Trump took charge when he insisted on holding the summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Now U.S. forces are set to come home from Syria, and it appears that he may reduce or even eliminate the garrison in Afghanistan, where Americans have been fighting for more than 17 years. Perhaps he also will reconsider U.S. support for the Saudis and Emiratis in Yemen.

Trump should use Secretary Mattis's departure as an opportunity to refashion his national security team. Who is to succeed Mattis at the Pentagon? Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan appears to have the inside track. But former Navy secretary and senator Jim Webb deserves consideration. Or perhaps it's time for a second round for former senator Chuck Hagel, who opposed the Gulf war and backed dialog with Iran. Defense needs someone willing to challenge the Pentagon's thinking and practices. Best would be a civilian who won't be captured by the bureaucracy, one who understands that he or she faces a tough fight against advocates of perpetual war.

Next to go should be Bolton. There are many potential replacements who believe in a more restrained role for America. One who has been mentioned as a potential national security advisor in the past is retired Army colonel and respected security analyst Douglas Macgregor.

Equally important, though somewhat less urgent, is finding a new secretary of state. Although Pompeo has not so ostentatiously undermined his boss, he appears to oppose every effort by the president to end a war, drop a security commitment, or ease a conflict. Pompeo's enthusiasm for negotiation with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin is clearly lagging. While the secretary might not engage in open sabotage, his determination to take a confrontational approach everywhere except when explicitly ordered to do otherwise badly undermines Trump's policies.

Who to appoint? Perhaps Tennessee's John Duncan, the last Republican congressman who opposed the Iraq war and who retired this year after decades of patriotic service. There are a handful of active legislators who could serve with distinction as well, though their departures would be a significant loss on Capitol Hill: Senator Rand Paul and Representatives Justin Amash and Walter Jones, for instance.

Once the top officials have been replaced, the process should continue downwards. 

RESTORING HIS VIABILITY:

The main line of attack against O'Rourke is that he isn't progressive enough -- that he's been too close to Republicans in Congress, too close to corporate donors and not willing enough to use his star power to help fellow Democrats -- and it is being pushed almost exclusively by Sanders supporters online and in print.

It's been the first flashpoint in what promises to be a politically bloody primary -- one that has drawn responses from foot soldiers in the Obama and Clinton wings of the party -- as Democrats begin to focus on who has the best chance to deny President Donald Trump a second term in the Oval Office.

Nomiki Konst, a progressive activist and 2016 Sanders supporter who is now running for public advocate in New York City, said liberal activists mostly kept quiet about their concerns over O'Rourke's record, including the backing he got from the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, before he lost a Texas Senate race to Republican Ted Cruz in November.

"They sucked it up while he was running" because they wanted him to win, Konst said. "But now it's a different story."

The biggest difference may be that O'Rourke is now a threat to Sanders in the 2020 primary. Though neither man has announced whether he will run, O'Rourke captured the hearts and dollars of veteran Democratic activists, donors of all ages and millennial political newcomers across Texas and the nation in his Senate run.

"I think this week can be understood as a kind of turning point, where -- for the first time really -- millions of Americans are seeing pieces that look underneath the superficial gloss of projections onto Beto," said Norman Solomon, who was a delegate for Sanders at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

"What we're seeing is someone who's a big step up for red-state Texas statewide and actually a big step down for where the majority of Democrats are nationwide. ... If we buy the Beto package, we're gonna have buyer's remorse later on."

[O]'Rourke's ability to connect with younger and progressive white voters -- Sanders' source of strength in his losing 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton -- puts him in direct competition with the Vermont senator.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Dec. 19 showed that 57 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 have a favorable view of Sanders, while his unfavorable ratings are higher than his favorables with voters 35 and older.

Twenty-five percent of millennials view O'Rourke favorably and 15 percent view him unfavorably, with 59 percent telling Quinnipiac they haven't heard enough about him to know how they feel.

And while the vast majority of Democrats have an opinion about Sanders, that's not true of O'Rourke yet, with 51 percent reporting they don't have enough information to form an opinion.

That explains the rush to define him in negative terms.

Around this time four years ago, before the presidential primaries had begun, the most plausible Republican candidates seemed to be reading from more or less the same script. There were differences, to be sure, between Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush, but for the most part, they offered a mixture of social conservatism, budgetary austerity, and neoconservative foreign policy. Even as the field dwindled, Cruz, Rubio, and the supposedly moderate John Kasich--the last mainstream candidates left standing--all supported slashing Social Security and Medicare to make room for large income tax reductions. They were cut from recognizable GOP cloth, if tailored to slightly different tastes.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, was different, and not just in the color of his hair and the length of his ties. While all the other Republicans were converging around the policy positions of Paul Ryan, Trump identified a section of potential GOP voters who were being overlooked. It was to them that he directed his startlingly new positions on trade, immigration, foreign policy, and entitlements; for them that he promised to protect Medicare and Social Security; and for them, that he proposed a noninterventionist, what's-in-it-for-us foreign policy, and pledged to end free trade agreements. 

The majority of GOP voters--as much as 60 percent--didn't particularly like these positions. (And GOP funders, especially those in the Koch network, saw his policy positions as an outright repudiation of their core ideological commitments.) The ordinary Republican candidates--the 16 not named Donald Trump--knew as much. But in fighting for the "normal" 60 percent of the Republican electorate, they ensured their own defeat. In Illinois, the three conventional Republicans (Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich) took 59 percent of the vote, but because it was split three ways, not one was able to top Trump's 39 percent. The same thing happened in North Carolina, where voters gave the orthodox candidates 58 percent, and Trump took the state with 40. The strategy may not have been intentional, but it turned out to be foolproof: Carve out a distinct political ideology that appeals to a solid minority of primary voters, and let the rest of the candidates vie for, and consequently split, the rest of the vote. 

More than a dozen candidates may run for the Democratic nomination in 2020: governors from the Plains states, senators from the coasts, billionaire entrepreneurs. But the most serious so far--Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders--run the risk of falling into the same trap as the main Republicans did in 2015.

BIRD OF SPRING:

Alfred Appel tells it definitively in his book Jazz Modernism: From Ellington and Armstrong to Matisse and Joyce:

The house was almost full, even before the opening set -- Billy Taylor's piano trio -- except for the conspicuous empty table to my right, which bore a RESERVED sign, unusual for Birdland. After the pianist finished his forty-five-minute set, a party of four men and a woman settled in at the table, rather clamorously, three waiters swooping in quickly to take their orders as a ripple of whispers and exclamations ran through Birdland at the sight of one of the men, Igor Stravinsky. He was a celebrity, and an icon to jazz fans because he sanctified modern jazz by composing Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman and his Orchestra (1946) -- a Covarrubias "Impossible Interview" come true.

As Parker's quintet walked onto the bandstand, trumpeter Red Rodney recognized Stravinsky, front and almost center. Rodney leaned over and told Parker, who did not look at Stravinsky. Parker immediately called the first number for his band, and, forgoing the customary greeting to the crowd, was off like a shot. At the sound of the opening notes, played in unison by trumpet and alto, a chill went up and down the back of my neck.

They were playing "KoKo," which, because of its epochal breakneck tempo -- over three hundred beats per minute on the metronome -- Parker never assayed before his second set, when he was sufficiently warmed up. Parker's phrases were flying as fluently as ever on this particular daunting "Koko." At the beginning of his second chorus he interpolated the opening of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite as though it had always been there, a perfect fit, and then sailed on with the rest of the number. Stravinsky roared with delight, pounding his glass on the table, the upward arc of the glass sending its liquor and ice cubes onto the people behind him, who threw up their hands or ducked.

Parker didn't just happen to know a few bits of Stravinsky to whip out as a novelty; he had, at that point, already deeply internalized the work of the man who composed The Rite of Spring (1913), the most rhythmically complex piece of orchestral music to date.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Sabah al Saadi, the leader of the Islah parliamentary bloc, called for an emergency session of parliament "to discuss this blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty and to stop these aggressive actions by Trump who should know his limits: The U.S. occupation of Iraq is over."

The Bina bloc, Islah's rival in parliament and led by Iran-backed militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, also objected to Trump's trip to Iraq.

"Trump's visit is a flagrant and clear violation of diplomatic norms and shows his disdain and hostility in his dealings with the Iraqi government," said a statement from Bina.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

This is above all a pocketbook issue for me. A gas-powered vehicle would be too expensive. I plan to keep my next vehicle 10 years, at least. Over that time the cost of ownership for an EV, including fuel (on the order of a penny a mile for the electricity), repairs and maintenance would be considerably lower than comparable costs of an IC car.

My other big worry: resale value. In case you haven't been following the news from the Paris climate talks, most nations of the world have put the IC vehicle under a death sentence. Post-Paris, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that there will be between 125 and 220 million EVs on the road by 2030.

We are living through the S-curve of EV adoption. The total number of EVs on global roads surpassed 3 million in 2018, a 50% increase over 2016, according to the IEA. In November Tesla Model 3 was the best-selling small/midsize luxury sedan in the U.S; and Model S sales (26,700, year to date) outsold Mercedes-Benz S Class, BMW 6- and 7-Series, and Audi A8 combined, according to industry-tracker goodcarbadcar.net.

During the reasonable service life of any vehicle I buy today, I expect the demand for IC-powered vehicles will drop to practically zero, equivalent to the current market penetration of flip phones. No one will want them and there will be nowhere to get them fixed; by that time widespread fleet electrification will have cratered traditional dealerships that depend on service dollars to survive.

SIMON LEGREE SMILED:

THE BUSH WAY:

Every year, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, I think about George W. Bush.

It was in that week each year for the eight years I covered him as a reporter that he gave me a spectacular gift -- and he knew it.

I started covering the newly elected president in 2000, when I was in my 30s. Back then, as a reporter for The Washington Times, we went everywhere the president went -- everywhere. If he went to Charlotte, North Carolina, to give a 30-minute speech on an airport tarmac, we went. Up at 4 a.m., an hour-long commute to Andrews Air Force Base, in place on the ground hours before POTUS landed, and there for hours and hours after he left -- sometimes right through the evening news so network reporters could file live from the site.

We also went with the president to Texas every summer -- often for a month -- and every winter, too, over the holidays.

But here's the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never.

Mr. Bush and first lady Laura Bush would always depart the White House a few days before the holiday and hunker down at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. After a few years, I asked a low-level White House staffer why.

I still remember exactly what she said: "So all of us can be with our families on Christmas."

Who was "us"? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that's who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, 100 Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those city cops required whenever the president's on the move in D.C.

For me, that one-day delay was huge. My kids were 6 and 8 years old when Mr. Bush took office. When he went home to Prairie Chapel that last time in 2009, my girl was driving, the boy was 6 foot 1. But in the meantime, I was home for eight Christmas mornings, playing Santa, stoking the fire, mixing up hot chocolates.

That was President Bush. And every year for the past five, I've thought about what that meant to me.

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

During the presidential campaign, the outlier in Donald Trump's foreign-policy orations was his treatment of Iran. On Europe, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia (remember President Barack Obama's "off-mic" tête-à-tête with President Dmitry Medvedev?), and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump largely followed his predecessor. Differences existed, certainly in style and manner, but the overlap between the two men on most of the big foreign-policy questions was profound.

When it came to the clerical regime in Iran, however, the two men were polar opposites. Trump thought the nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was "the worst deal ever." He also let loose against Tehran's Islamic radicalism, terrorism, quest for regional hegemony, and fondness for sowing mayhem in the Middle East. Trump's serrated rhetoric stood in contrast to the comments of Obama, his secretary of state, and other senior officials, who had muted their criticisms of Tehran in their pursuit of the atomic accord and, as important, a new strategic realignment, wherein a less interventionist America might, so the theory went, find a modus vivendi with a richer, commercially engaged, and moderating Islamic Republic.

As president, Trump followed through. The nuclear deal went down, the sanctions came back, and despite moments of wobbliness concerning troop deployments in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Trump administration held fast in the Middle East. National-Security Advisers H. R. McMaster and John Bolton, United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and, perhaps most of all, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new approach to the Islamic Republic. The Trump administration wasn't inclined to roll back the clerical regime, but it did seem ready to contest and contain Iran's Shiite imperialism in Syria, Yemen, and even in Iraq, in which the president had never evinced much interest.

Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, concurrently with his intention to drastically reduce the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan and the likely soon-to-be-announced further drawdown of U.S. personnel in Iraq, has made mincemeat of the administration's efforts to contain Iran.

IT'S NO COINCIDENCE HELL IS WARM:

Kajimura's lab at UCSF focuses on metabolism and energy balance, and specifically on the function of the body's fat cells. He says cold exposure during workouts may be beneficial for a number of reasons. For one thing, shivering burns a lot of calories. "Shivering is a very energy-demanding and tiring process," he says. If your goal when exercising is to lose weight, working out in the cold may help a bit.

Some of Kajimura's research has also shown that spending time in cool or cold environments converts some of the body's fat cells from unhealthy "white" fat to heat-producing, metabolically active "beige" fat. Kajimura says this conversion seems to help the body acclimatize to cold environments and increases resting energy expenditure -- the amount of calories a person burns just sitting around. Research by Kajimura and others has shown that beige fat may limit blood sugar spikes and even combat metabolic disorders like diabetes. "For now, this is just a theory," he says. "We need more investigation."

Exercise also appears to promote the development of beige fat. Kajimura says one hypothesis is that beige fat helps the body filter byproducts called metabolites that are released during exercise. Evidence suggests certain metabolites can contribute to fatigue and post-exercise soreness. So, for a lot of reasons, "Combining cold stimulus with exercise is a great idea," he says. "I highly recommend exercising outside in the early morning or swimming in cold water."

Fat and fatigue benefits aside, cool-weather training may offer other perks. Maintaining proper internal temperature is one of the body's main priorities during any activity, says Mike Jett, an instructor and lab director in exercise physiology at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Exercise produces heat, which the body must labor to counteract if workout conditions are hot and humid. While that's not a big deal in most circumstances, it can hamper athletic performance. "If heat accumulates, exercise intensity is reduced," Jett says. Meanwhile, exercising in cool conditions (or even in cold ones, assuming you're properly bundled) seems to be optimal. The body can devote all its resources to training and performance, rather than to temperature regulation, Jett says. However, "Working out in an intentionally hot room does not make sense from a performance standpoint," he adds.

There may even be some mental health benefits associated with cold-weather exercise. A small 2004 study from Finland found that winter swimming combatted tension and fatigue and improved overall well-being among 36 middle-aged adults. Cold-water exposure seems to activate the central nervous system and stimulate the circulation of hormones that may promote improved mood and energy, write the authors.

WHEN QUID MET QUO:

As President Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on Capitol Hill in January, his incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, sitting a few yards away, texted a former business partner that a nuclear power project that would require lifting sanctions on Russia was "good to go," a senior House Democrat said in a letter released on Wednesday.

Quoting a confidential informant, Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote that Alex Copson, the managing partner of ACU Strategic Partners, told the informant that Flynn would see that the sanctions on Moscow were "ripped up."

EVEN KIDS KNOW THE ROUTINE AFTER HEARING HIM SPEAK:

DONALD WHO?:

Private buyers of Iranian crude have had "no problems" exporting it, Iran's oil minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday by state news agency IRNA, despite U.S. sanctions targeting Iran's oil exports.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

At one point, Tur-ha Ak, a black organizer with Brooks's Anti-Police Terror Project, asked to speak. As his turn approached, the young man who was chairing the meeting asked if Ak was a member. A number of white people had spoken before him, including Forrest Schmidt, 42, who was attending his first DSA meeting. "None of us had our credentials called," he said. "Nobody said, 'Are you a DSA member?'" When Ak responded that he was not a member, the chair asked him to take a seat.

The room erupted. The procedural rules were racist, Ak proclaimed, raising his voice over a cacophony of protests and chants. "The energy," Brooks recalled, "turned into that of a white mob." She decided to take the floor. "My name is Cat Brooks," she said. "I've been organizing in this city longer than most of you have lived here." In a brief, piercing speech, she accused the largely white crowd of being gentrifiers and then walked out, leaving members confused and outraged.

The debate quickly moved to Twitter, Reddit, and other corners of the internet. In an online essay, Jeremy Gong, an East Bay member who sits on DSA's National Political Committee, the organization's highest decision-making body, argued that Cat Brooks "weaponized" her race to coerce DSA into supporting her candidacy. He would not endorse her. The July DSA meeting, he wrote, was a textbook example of "race reductionism and liberal guilt politics." By insinuating that white members were "the problem" when it came to Oakland's gentrification, he claimed, Brooks had mistakenly reduced what was fundamentally a class conflict into a racial one.

Though a dustup among a small group of lefties in Oakland may seem to be a parochial affair, the controversy surrounding Brooks is part of a fierce debate about race within the newly invigorated socialist movement. Since 2016, when it had only 6,500 members, DSA has added nearly 50,000 members and over 125 chapters across the country. In 2018, two of its members--Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, both women of color--were elected to serve in Congress, and 21 more won seats in state legislatures. Though DSA is separate from the Democratic Party, some of its members represent both institutions, while DSA itself is at the cutting edge of the broader progressive movement, a loud, insistent voice on issues ranging from universal health care to debt forgiveness.

But unlike other progressive groups, DSA has to contend with internal factions that are very seriously wedded to a certain strain of socialist ideology--one that emphasizes, as Karl Marx did, a churning class war that governs the history of humankind. For these socialists, an anti-capitalist movement must be anti-racist, since capitalism has been instrumental in the subjugation of minorities. But they are also weary of liberal politicians who, they say, exploit race to pander to minority groups, all while skirting the deeper class conflict at work. In the past year, these hard-liners have clashed on numerous occasions with other socialists, often minorities themselves, who contend that righting America's unique wrongs requires an approach distinct from the universal precepts of historical materialism--one that emphasizes racism's special impact on inequality, supra-class.

In the Brooks controversy and other incidents, these tensions have come to a head, badly dividing the movement and raising difficult questions about socialism's potential as a political force in the United States.

THE LEFT VS THE REPUBLICAN LEADER OF THE HOUSE:

Earlier this year, amid "internal divisions" in the party, Pelosi signaled her intention to put pay-go into the rules package. "Democrats are committed to pay-as-you-go," her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in June. Former Progressive Caucus chair Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) responded by calling pay-go "an absurd idea," saying it's "irresponsible to try to tie up Congress's ability to respond to economic downturns or, in the current discussion, to slash programs."

Pelosi has defended and expanded pay-go for over a decade. She first instituted it as a standing rule the day she received the speaker's gavel in 2007, and was a driving force in passing the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in 2010, signed by Barack Obama. That law puts the burden on the president to enforce across-the-board cuts if Congress violates pay-go. The prospect of any president implementing an unpopular hatchet job like that is remote. So the House rule looms large in this fight by constraining new spending at its source.

Obviously, Pelosi and her allies on pay-go consider the rule good politics, allowing them to rebut charges about "tax and spend" liberals by insisting that every new program is fully paid for. If anybody actually cared about the deficit, instead of habitually using it as a weapon to rein in the opposition party, maybe that logic would be compelling. 

CONFUSION TO THE ENEMIES:

Moscow says planes were landing in Damascus and Beirut at the time of the attack, air defenses downed 14 of 16 missiles fired by Israel

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian Christians in Gaza are feeling a damper on the Christmas spirit this year as Israeli authorities have blocked many from receiving exit permits to celebrate the Christmas holidays in Bethlehem in the West Bank.

While Western Christians celebrate, following the Gregorian calendar, Dec. 25 of every year, Eastern churches -- to which the majority of Palestinian Christians belong -- follow the Eastern calendar and celebrate on Jan. 7.

The international organization Middle East Concern, which advocates for the rights of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, said in a Dec. 10 statement that most of the applications by Christian Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for permits to participate in Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem had been rejected by Israeli authorities. It noted that "nearly all" of the requests were rejected, "with only Christians over the age of fifty-five being allowed to travel."

WHERE WE FAIL TO VINDICATE OUR VALUES:

Story of the betrayal of the Kurds by the US government in 1975, as reported in the @washingtonpost in 1991.

Thanks to @DanielPipes for this. https://t.co/Z7qHRMsTTP

— Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) December 24, 2018

TODAY'S JEWRY:

If you're curious what the book is about, the entire argument is helpfully summed up in the title. Europe is dying -- being murdered, in fact -- by hordes of Muslim immigrants, aided in their task by craven liberal politicians. As Murray describes it, insufficiently harsh border policies have opened the gates to migrants bent on committing no lesser crimes than mass rape and indiscriminate murder. Meanwhile, white Europeans, exhausted by their own history and driven into moral relativism by the decline of the Christian faith, are slowly being replaced by an implacably hostile and alien population of foreigners.

The "mass movement of peoples in Europe," Murray writes, has led to "streets in the cold and rainy northern towns of Europe filled with people dressed for the foothills of Pakistan or the sandstorms of Arabia." This is an early clue to the relentlessly paranoid tenor of the book: In South Asia or the Middle East -- just as among the Western immigrant populations who hail from those places -- many, if not most, people today dress in Western clothing, regardless of how appropriate it is for the climate. [...]

In case it needs to be said, some migrants, particularly young people, do commit crimes. There have been violent crimes involving migrants, including some who were refugees. But Murray's narrative of lawlessness is blinkered to the point of being propaganda. While European Union-wide statistics are not readily available, it's worth noting that Germany, the country that took the most refugees during the peak of the crisis, reported its lowest national crime rate this year since 1992. Similar decreases have been recorded in Italy, one of the front-line states for those arriving from across the Mediterranean. Across the continent, the wave of refugees has already crested, without the breakdown of law and order claimed by far-right polemicists.

It's not even clear that there are so many migrants. According to United Nations data, between January 2014 and March 2018, roughly 1.8 million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea to try and enter the EU. This number -- which has driven Murray to such angst that he has pronounced the "death of Europe" -- amounts to less than one-third of 1 percent of the EU's population. In the meantime, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Pakistan continue to quietly host millions of refugees, many of whom were driven from their homes as a result of wars of aggression supported by Murray, whose past books include forthright tomes like "Neoconservatism: Why We Need It."

Even if no immigrant in Europe ever committed a crime, it seems like Murray would keep moving the goal posts against them anyway. In some of the most eye-opening portions of "The Strange Death of Europe," he waxes nostalgic about medieval European warriors like Charles Martel who battled Muslim armies in the eighth century, drawing insidious connections between this ancient episode, among others, and the people he sees on the streets of Europe today. In other words, it's not ultimately even about what immigrants and minorities do, it's about who they are. On a trip to Paris, Murray laments that some of the subway lines are like "taking an underground train in an African city," asserting contemptuously that most of the people are "going to low-paid service jobs or appear to be heading nowhere."

I RECENTLY FINISHED reading Murray's book while I myself was on a subway in Paris. This was a strange experience in some respects, particularly since I'm technically one of the invaders from the "foothills of Pakistan" that the book raises the alarm about. It was also strange because Murray actually begins his argument by citing my own favorite book: "The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig.

Zweig was an Austrian-Jewish writer who was driven from Europe by the rise of fascism during the mid-20th century. While Murray cites him to reinforce his case about the continent's looming mortality, the actual threat that Zweig warned about in his writings was from the xenophobic parties of the European far right. Those people eventually did destroy Zweig's world, forcing him into a life of forlorn exile. He killed himself in Brazil in 1942.

VIDEOS? WPIX WAS A LIVE STREAM:

There are thousands of hours of logs burning online and on streaming services. There are over a hundred videos alone on the YouTube channel Virtual Fireplace. We watched as many as we possibly could, then picked the ones that burn the brightest for you. [...]

2. WPIX Yule Log

Log-for-log, the original WPIX version doesn't hold up by today's standards. For starters, there's no natural sound, just music. That's a problem. A good crackle is the foundation of any respectable yule log video. But the OG is not on this list for its production value. We wouldn't be here without it.

1. Fireplace for your home: Classic edition

If George Ford is the Orson Welles of yule log videos, this is his Citizen Kane. Like birchwood, the fire starts slow and builds over time, reaching a ferocious peak about 15 minutes in. That's where it hits its stride, blazing in perfect symmetry for another 30 minutes until it begins to slowly die. It's hard to imagine a more perfect fire with a more perfect sound.

Netflix gave it its own trailer and behind the scenes video when it started running it in 2013. It's literally restoring people's faith in Christmas.

ONE OF THESE PLACES IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS:

4 

After decades of decline, motherhood and family size are ticking up in the U.S. Among women at the end of their childbearing years (ages 40 to 44), 86% had ever given birth by 2016, an increase from 80% in 2006 and about the same share as in the early 1990s. Women also are having more children: On average, women in 2016 had 2.07 children during their lives - up from 1.86 in 2006, the lowest average on record.

In addition, there has been a substantial increase in motherhood over the past two decades among women who have never been married. In 2014, more than half (55%) of women ages 40 to 44 who had never married had given birth - up from 31% in 1994.

A HUMAN HOLIDAY:

BEIRUT -- The Iranian cultural attaché stepped up to the microphone on a stage flanked by banners bearing the faces of Iran's two foremost religious authorities: Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader.

To the left of Ayatollah Khomeini stood a twinkling Christmas tree, a gold star gilding its tip. Angel ornaments and miniature Santa hats nestled among its branches. Fake snow dusted fake pine needles.

"Today, we're celebrating the birth of Christ," the cultural attaché, Mohamed Mehdi Shari'tamdar, announced into the microphone, "and also the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution."

"Hallelujah!" boomed another speaker, Elias Hachem, reciting a poem he had written for the event. "Jesus the savior is born. The king of peace, the son of Mary. He frees the slaves. He heals. The angels protect him. The Bible and the Quran embrace."

"We're celebrating a rebel," proclaimed a third speaker, the new mufti of the Shiite Muslims of Lebanon, the rebel in question being Jesus.

The mufti, Ahmed Kabalan, went on to engage in some novel religious and political thinking: Christians and Muslims, he said, "are one family, against corruption, with social justice, against authority, against Israel, with the Lebanese Army and with the resistance."

The proclamations from the stage were applause lines -- perhaps against the odds, given that the audience at the Iranian-sponsored event on Saturday consisted mostly of observant Shiites from the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut. Occasionally, the crowd chanted praise for the Prophet Muhammad.

When a pair of Iranian bands flown in for the occasion began playing Assyrian and Persian Christmas carols, the audience clapped along.

From its founding as an independent republic, Lebanon has walked a tightrope, not always successfully, with its Muslim and Christian populations make up most of the country's 18 officially recognized sects.

Nearly 30 years after the end of a civil war in which Beirut was cloven into Muslim and Christian halves connected only by a gutted buffer zone, Lebanese from all different sects now commonly mingle every day at home, at work and in public.

But few seasons frame the everyday give-and-take of religious coexistence quite like Christmastime in Lebanon.

WHERE'S THE INCONSISTENCY?:

[I]s another year ends, I'm left wondering: Will "Christian conservative" be an oxymoron in 2019?

Before we go any further, I should confess that I have never actually identified myself as a Christian conservative, because the term conjures visions of "religious right" figures like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

However, I am a (very flawed) Christian and a (somewhat conflicted) conservative. These two identities--the sacred and the secular--once coexisted happily. Not so today. Increasingly, my faith and my political loyalties are at odds, and sometimes even seem to be mutually exclusive.

Trump's fundamental character deficiencies are part of the problem. We all fall short, but Christians aspire to bring about the fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control). These virtues aren't just out of step in today's society--they are utterly countercultural in Trump's Republican Party.

Unlike Ronald Reagan's sunny optimism, rooted in faith in America's future, Trump motivates via fear. His worldview is rooted in a scarcity mentality that says someone else is stealing your share of the pie. This carnal mindset clashes with a faith that calls us to gladly give to others (I'm speaking here about personal charity, not redistribution via the tax code)--and trusts in God to provide for our daily needs.

IMPORTING THE SUPERIOR BRIT:

The average adult migrant from the European Economic Area yielded £2,370 more for the Treasury in 2017 than the average British-born adult did https://t.co/D4p0mf1MIi

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 25, 2018

TURNING OVER A NEW SEIF:

Italy and Russia announced that they do not oppose a return to Libyan political life by Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the son of later ruler Moammar.

An official in the Italian government had stated that Rome "cannot claim that Seif al-Islam has no right to pursue a leadership role in his country."

It cannot oppose his return to politics if he enjoys popular support, he added. "This is democracy."

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

The U.S. State Department in November exempted the Chabahar Port project from sanctions in recognition of its importance to landlocked Afghanistan.

The effort to build up Afghanistan's economy is also aimed at reducing Kabul's dependence on foreign aid and putting a major dent in the illicit opium trade that has been a major source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency.

New Delhi has poured $2 billion into development in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban's government.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

THE CENTRAL ANGLOSPHERIC INSIGHT...:

Vicar's kids have spent all their lives back stage and are often unimpressed with religious razzmatazz. "No Dad, I don't want to go to Midnight Mass again. It's boring. And anyway, God doesn't exist."

I summarise a little, but that's the gist of it. Bulging with semi-digested food (we have our main Christmas meal on Christmas Eve) a declaration of post-dinner atheism has traditionally been the most effective way to stay firmly planted on the sofa. I am considering implementing an 'atheists do the washing up' policy this year. I reckon that might make a difference to the religious affiliation of the household. We will see. [...]

The problem with discussing the question of God's existence is that it often turns into an argument about what we mean by existence rather than an argument about God per se. Consider, for instance, the surprisingly difficult question of the existence of numbers. Philosophers have been debating this since the Greeks. Is there an independent reality to the number seven - something over and above the objects that there may be seven of, like tables or cars? Or is mathematics simply a clever and complicated organising principle supplied by the human mind? Or something else entirely? No one is doubting that there are such things as numbers - the question is more like, in what way do they exist or what do we mean by their existence?

In other words, most philosophers don't believe that the existence of numbers is an empirical question at all - it is not something that scientists can design experiments to establish.

We cannot say that philosophy wants to know everything and, at the same time, exclude some knowledge that can be known.

The first step would be to show how revelation is not a feeling or a product of human imagination. Revelation does not contradict reason. If something said to be irrational is found in revelational accounts, that revelation must be rejected. On the other hand, if something is found in revelation that, on examining it, proves to make reason more reasonable, makes it aware of a truth that it did not arrive at by itself, then it would seem that revelation and reason have origins in the same source.

Revelation is not something we can expect, something due to us in virtue of what we are. The universe might be just as it is with no claims to a further knowledge found in it. But what we have in fact is a world in which, in addition to reason, we have divine claims or events addressed to this same reason. Revelation has an intelligibility to it, whether we "believe" it or not. It bears the character of mind addressing mind. How so?

If we take the central notions found in Christianity, namely the Trinity and the Incarnation, we see that Christians themselves hold that these events and their explanations cannot be "proved" by reason. To maintain that one can "prove" that God is triune in person is a heretical position. Yet, Christians hold precisely this understanding of the Godhead as something to be believed. This holding would at first sight make them to be irrationalists. The doctrine of the Trinity, however, is intelligible. We know what it means. It is a statement of otherness and order within the one God. This otherness is personal--the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, neither is the Holy Spirit.

What is the significance of this knowledge contained within revelation to the philosopher? The philosopher does not see how God is triune. He can understand what the Christians hold on this topic. But the philosopher on his own terms is puzzled by a question he cannot answer in his own discipline. Aristotle put it well. God, the First Mover, thought thinking itself, seems to lack something, namely, friendship, that is a perfection in the creature, man. But once he has heard of the Christian teaching on the Trinity, on the otherness in God, the philosopher can see that the doctrine of the Trinity puts revelation in line with reason. Revelation does seem to correct reason by making it more reasonable in its own order.

Once we understand the implications of this connection of reason and revelation, it becomes clear that what it contained in revelation can incite reason to broaden its own understanding of reality. In other words, from the point of view of the philosopher, revelation makes reason more itself--more reasonable. It does this by considering how a revelational teaching expands something not fully understood by reason itself.

Reason united with revelation enlarges our freedom because it enlarges our knowledge of our own personal destiny. Plato's "myth" at the end of The Republic taught us that our lives are not unimportant. They are held accountable for what was freely chosen. In this sense, we are both freer and more responsible when we know how the teachings of reason and revelation respond to each other in an intelligible whole.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S PLAN:

THE SELF IS, OF COURSE, OBSERVED:

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is the finest cinematic exploration of the commercialization of Christmas. The central story is that Kris Kringle, a man who looks like and believes he is Santa Claus, is hired to play Santa Claus at Macy's department store. When it is revealed that he believes he is the real Santa Claus, Kris must defend his sanity in court.

Rather than condemn commercialization, Miracle on 34th Street recognizes that Christmas and commercialism are like milk and cookies--you can't have one without the other. It pragmatically accepts commercialism as a part of the celebration of Christmas in America. Gift giving requires a marketplace. Kris is not opposed to working for a department store in which the prime purpose of having children visit Santa is so that moms and dads will buy things while they are there. He is highly knowledgeable of the toy market. He knows where and for how much toys are sold. As if to drive home the point, Kris sings the nursery rhyme "To Market, To Market" to Susan (played by a young Natalie Wood). Insofar as markets are where toys are bought and sold, Kris accepts them as useful and a legitimate part of Christmas festivities.

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville explains that the American morality is the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood. Enlightened selfishness motivates Americans to be honest and self-restrained, for they know that these virtues are the surest way to get what one wants from others. Americans, Tocqueville observes, love to praise how their self-interest produces the common good.

Nevertheless, Tocqueville sees evidence of Americans giving themselves over to "unreflective" impulses of goodwill towards others. Americans are, as he says, better than they say. They demonstrate through their actions not their words sincere self-forgetting behavior.

Miracle on 34th Street explores how calculated self-interest can ameliorate some of the worst tendencies of commercialism. Self-interest rightly understood does what Tocqueville says. Yet, self-interest also provides "cover" for characters to act on more noble grounds. Characters makes decisions that require loyalty and resolve that go beyond mere self-interest.

LAUGHINGSTOCK:

BOST AIRFIELD, Afghanistan--On a holiday visit to American troops overseas, Gen. Robert Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, was asked by a Marine about President Trump's orders to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.

What, the Marine wanted to know, did the orders mean for those on combat deployments?

"That's a really good question," the commandant said. "And the honest answer is I have no idea."

At every stop on his tour, Gen. Neller has faced questions about what the recent drawdown orders and the resignation of Defense SecretaryJim Mattis mean for Marines and for the broader U.S. military strategy in the Middle East.

The questions have come from Marines bundled in parkas while training in Norway as well as those sweating in the heat of Afghanistan, who are eager to know how the turmoil in Washington affects them.

"Are your families asking if you're leaving?" he questioned a group of Marines in Helmand province. Many nodded yes.

"You're not leaving," he deadpanned, to laughs from troops midway through a months-long deployment.

IT'S WHY ONLY pROTESTANTS BELIEVE IN gOD:

In his book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" Philip Yancey describes a conference on comparative religions where experts from around the world debated which belief, if any, was unique to the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis happened to enter the room during the discussion. When he was told the topic was Christianity's unique contribution among world religions, Lewis responded: "Oh, that's easy. It's grace."

Lewis was right. No other religion places grace at its theological center. It was a revolutionary idea; as Mr. Yancey puts it, grace "seems to go against every instinct of humanity." We are naturally drawn to covenants and karma, to cause and effect, to earning what we receive.

Grace is different. It is the unmerited favor of God, unconditional love given to the undeserving. It's a difficult concept to understand because it isn't entirely rational. "Grace defies reason and logic," as Bono, the lead singer of U2, put it. "Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions."

There's a radical equality at the core of grace. None of us are deserving of God's grace, so it's not dependent on social status, wealth or intelligence. There is equality between kings and peasants, the prominent and the unheralded, rule followers and rule breakers.

SO MUCH WINNING!:

Trump is ensnared in one of the most challenging periods of his presidency, and the stock market's fall has stolen one of his favorite talking points. A partial government shutdown began Saturday morning. Several of his Cabinet officials have departed. At least two people withdrew from consideration to become his next chief of staff, and Democrats have balked at giving him money to build a wall on the Mexico border.

Mnuchin had enjoyed a relatively close relationship with Trump until recent months. Trump has blamed Mnuchin for recommending Powell to the Fed job, and Trump has also fumed at Mnuchin over the stock market's poor performance this year.

Two Trump advisers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the calls would stoke unnecessary alarm. "No one thought we were at crisis level," one of these people said. "It's going to create more of an issue than we had already."

Mnuchin and the president had a call on Saturday to talk about how to reassure the markets. Aides said that Trump knew the Powell story hurt the markets but did not want to defend the Fed chief. So he told Mnuchin to put out a statement.

"Trump is [mad] at him because Powell was his pick. And he thinks Mnuchin is doing a bad job on the economy," said one of the advisers, who suggested Mnuchin's fate could be perilous.

TRUMPONOMICS:

China's soybean imports from the United States plunged to zero in November, marking the first time since the trade war between the world's two largest economies started that China, the world's largest soybean buyer, has imported no U.S. supplies.

LUCKILY, NO ONE EXPECTS BOLTON TO HAVE A SENSE OF HONOR:

New: In weeks before the Syria decision, national security adviser John Bolton instructed senior officials to meet directly with coalition partners and assure them the US is "staying in Syria until Iran is out of Syria," two sources tell CNN. 1/

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) December 24, 2018

IT'S NOT OFTEN ONE MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR A WORLD SLUMP:

President Donald Trump lashed out at the Federal Reserve on Monday after administration officials spent the weekend trying to assure the public and financial markets that Jerome Powell's job as Fed chairman was safe.

"The only problem our economy has is the Fed," the president tweeted Monday. "They don't have a feel for the Market, they don't understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch -- he can't putt!"

On Wall Street, stocks had already been down but intensified their fall after Trump's tweet. Markets were already facing their worst month in a decade over fears about a U.S. trade war with China, a slowing global economy and chaos in the Trump White House.

WHAT'S NOT DEPLORABLE ABOUT TRUMPISM?:

[A]s prosecutors move ahead with charges, the all-male Proud Boys group is in disarray. Ten members have been arrested in connection with the violence, charged with riot and attempted assault as part of an investigation into their activities.

The Proud Boys have been widely condemned as a hate group. Facebook and Instagram have banned the group. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a "hate group." An organization called New York City Antifa, whose members describe themselves as "anti-fascists," has named the Proud Boys who were involved in the violence and has posted details about their lives on Twitter.

Even the founder, Gavin McInnes, has distanced himself, announcing on YouTube in late November that he was quitting the group "in all capacities, forever." His departure left the Proud Boys without a figurehead, though the group has since said in an online message that, "We're not going anywhere."

Though Mr. McInnes has said he disavows racism, he wrote that the prominent white nationalist, Richard B. Spencer, "comes across as perfectly reasonable in conversation," and he said Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is black, is "kind of like Sambo." When he quit the group, he blamed "rumors and lies and terrible journalism" for undermining "the greatest fraternal organization in the world." [...]

At the same time, previously unreleased video, obtained by The New York Times, shows that the Proud Boys initiated the attack in Manhattan against a handful of anti-fascist protesters, not the other way around, as Mr. McInnes had initially said.

Prosecutors said at court appearances for some of the accused Proud Boys members that video evidence will prove that the Proud Boys started the fight. [...]

The people who turned out to hear Mr. McInnes speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club in October represented a cross-section of New York's far-right subculture: libertarians, conspiracy theorists and nationalists who have coalesced around their opposition to Islam, feminism and liberal politics.

Irvin Antillon, 49, who is accused of kicking protesters on the ground, is a member of a Latino skinhead group, Batallón 49, who traveled to Charlottesville last year for the "Unite the Right" rally, where an anti-racist protester was killed, experts said.

In one online photograph, he poses shirtless, showing off tattoos of Nazi symbols.

Mr. Hare, 26, of Harrisburg, Pa., was filmed in early October punching leftist protesters at a "Resist Marxism" rally outside the statehouse in Providence, R.I., and traveled to another far-right rally in Portland, Ore., in August, where Vice News Tonight filmed him wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest.

Mr. Young, 38, of Rockland County, N.Y., who is accused of punching and kicking three people, has called Muslims "a virus" who "feed off the host nation until it's dead" in an online video.

THEY HIRED HIM TO KILL MUSLIMS:

The conservative opposition to conventional American foreign policy is anything but monolithic. One group of critics continues the Jeffersonian tradition of preserving American liberties at home by minimizing American involvement abroad. Figures like Sen. Rand Paul and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, speak to this side of the populist coalition. Jeffersonians are skeptical of international institutions and alliances as well as American interventions to protect human rights abroad. They oppose big defense budgets and extensive military deployments and see no reason for an anti-Russia foreign policy. Many believe that Israel seeks to drag the U.S. into Middle East struggles that Washington would do better to avoid. Sen. Paul was quick to announce his support for President Trump's Syria decision.

The other, Jacksonian wing of conservative populism shares the Jeffersonian suspicion of multilateralism and humanitarian interventions, but is more supportive of the American military and of maintaining America's reputation for standing by allies. Jacksonians are hawkish about China, Russia and Iran and favor a strong relationship with Israel. This tendency in American politics is represented by figures like Sen. Tom Cotton, a U.S. Army veteran who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and has criticized Mr. Trump's Syria decision.

Mr. Trump's beleaguered presidency needs both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian support to survive, and until the Syria decision, he had managed the tension between the two currents pretty effectively. Both Jacksonians and Jeffersonians supported the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, and both hailed the president's skepticism about humanitarian intervention. Both sides enjoyed the discomfiture of the foreign-policy establishment when Mr. Trump challenged conventional wisdom, and both praised his willingness to pursue a more unilateral course in foreign affairs.

That harmony may soon sour. Mr. Trump's decisions on Syria and Afghanistan risk a rift between the president and his Jacksonian supporters and provide a way for some in the GOP to break with the president without losing their own populist credentials. The betrayal of the Kurds, the benefits to Iran of American withdrawal, the tilt toward an Islamist and anti-Israel Turkey, and the purrs of satisfaction emanating from the Kremlin are all bitter pills for Jacksonians to swallow.

ALL GRIFT, ALL THE TIME:

Pentagon ethics rules require Shanahan to recuse himself from any decisions regarding Boeing. But the plane-maker, which historically places second behind Lockheed Martin as America's biggest defense contractor, has enjoyed a chain of successes winning major competitive contracts.

In August, Boeing snagged a $7-billion contract to build aerial-refueling drones for the Navy. A month later it won a $2.4-billion contract to build helicopters for the Air Force. In September, it also scored a $9-billion contract to build training jets for the flying branch.

A much smaller contract perhaps is the most troubling. On Dec. 21, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon would request funding in the 2020 defense budget for a dozen upgraded F-15X fighters worth $1.2 billion. Boeing builds the 1970s-vintage, non-stealthy F-15 at its plant in St. Louis.

The Air Force for years has said it does not want more F-15s, instead preferring to order F-35 stealth fighters from Lockheed for around the same price as the F-15X, per plane. But the Pentagon reportedly overruled the Air Force and added the new Boeing fighters to the budget.

Shanahan "prodded" planners to include the planes, according to Bloomberg--this despite the requirement that Shanahan recuse himself from decisions involving Boeing.

GET RICH QUICK SCHEME:

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Israel's Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, who is responsible for the rabbinical courts, has reassigned a rabbinical court judge who was seeking to investigate irregularities and corruption in ultra-Orthodox nonprofit groups. 

According to people familiar with the issue, Lau yielded to pressure from parties with an interest in stopping the investigation launched by the judge, "dayan" in Hebrew, Rabbi Shlomo Shtasman. Rabbi Shimon Yaakobi, the rabbinical courts' legal adviser, told Lau in a letter that Shtasman was even threatened by "people involved in the cases he was hearing."

WHY ELSE WOULD HE HANG OUT WITH THE GUY?:

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz threatened to sue the women who alleged that they were forced to have sex with him by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But first, he said, they had to make their claims in public, and not in a litigation setting.

DONALD WHO?:

Active duty military approval ratings:

Mattis- 84% and just 4% disapproval
Trump- 44% approval
Trump approval with military women- 26%
Trump approval with military minorities- 29% https://t.co/JGus62EHJV pic.twitter.com/Ofit2CZH4t

— Evan Siegfried (@evansiegfried) December 23, 2018

DONALD WHO?:

In a precautionary move, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spent Sunday on the phone speaking with the chief executives of some of the country's largest banks to avoid yet another market whiplash when Wall Street opens Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The secretary, who has been visiting his children in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, tried to get ahead of further market jitters following reports that President Donald Trump was consulting advisers about whether he had the legal authority to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell.

"It's being pre-emptive," a person familiar with the matter told CNN. "It's sending the proper message to the market so they can calculate the real picture into their Monday opening. They don't have to wait until something happens to be reassured."

DUH?:

Trump's incoming chief of staff suggested that Democratic leaders are stalling on shutdown until they have House control https://t.co/p5XZD8VSu0

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) December 23, 2018

ZIONISM IS NOT JUDAISM:

In the past few weeks, two African American leaders have been accused of anti-Semitism - Alice Walker and Marc Lamont Hill. The problem is, only one of them actually made anti-Semitic remarks - Walker. 

And by erasing the difference between Walker's remarks and Hill's, we Jews are minimizing the threat and danger of actual anti-Semitism. In writing off the whole pro-Palestinian movement as anti-Semitic, we lose the ability to call out anti-Semitism when it really happens. Moreover, we lose any leverage over people in that movement. [...]

The problem is what Hill said was not the least bit anti-Semitic. He was punished for advocating wholeheartedly and unapologetically for Palestinian rights - as non-Jews on the Left, and particularly people of color, routinely are.

By contrast, last week, Alice Walker recommended an openly, rabidly anti-Semitic book in the New York Times. And it wasn't even the first time. It turns out she has been praising the book's conspiratorial author, David Icke, for years. [...]

She claimed to have found in the wisdom of Youtube videos "the trail of 'The Talmud' as its poison belatedly winds its way into our collective consciousness."

Walker's awful anti-Semitic comments only serve to highlight how unfairly Hill was treated. Hill and Walker stand on opposite sides of the bright line between criticizing  Israel and expressing anti-Semitism; where Hill restricted himself to politics, Walker attacked Jewishness itself. Hill spoke of liberation; Walker talks conspiracy theories. 

WAIT, I COST ME WHAT?:

Every time the Fed raises rates, Trump's payments on some $340 million in variable-rate loans go up. Since his January 2017 inauguration, the Fed's steady rate hikes may have added a cumulative $5.1 million a year to his debt service costs, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the president's financial disclosures and property records.

If Federal Reserve officials raise interest rates by another quarter percentage point when they meet Dec. 18-19, as investors expect, make that $6 million per year.

A NATION, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT:

Green is Kurdish-controlled territory that should go to an independent Kurdish state. I don't mean US troops should fight for it. Kurds should fight for it if they want it. But the US and allies should provide arms and diplomatic recognition. Which you can bet they will not do. pic.twitter.com/Z9NowfXDFf

— Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) December 20, 2018

ENTER TRUMPONOMICS:

The numbers are cosmic.

From the depths of the Great Recession in March 2009 through September of this year, the shares of the 500 largest public U.S. companies grew by $18.9 trillion.

In addition to the rise in stock prices, those 500 businesses delivered $3.1 trillion to their shareholders in the form of dividends.

Add them up, and by September 2018, the total comes to more than the entire $21.9 trillion of federal debt.

"The greatest amount of wealth creation in history" is what Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices called it.

Then -- well, you know: It's been an ugly three months.

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

ALL THAT JAZZ #54

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

Tests on 55 'rare' Scotch whiskies have revealed more than a third to be fakes, prompting concern about the scale of counterfeiting in the secondary market.

If genuine, the 21 whiskies would have a combined value of £635,000, said Rare Whisky 101, a valuation and consultancy service that acquired the bottles via the secondary market and commissioned the lab tests - which used radiocarbon dating.

THE STAB IN THE BACK:

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

When President Trump grows frustrated with advisers during meetings, which is not an uncommon occurrence, he sits back in his chair, crosses his arms and scowls. Often he erupts. "Freaking idiots!" he calls his aides. Except he uses a more pungent word than "freaking."

For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him. [...]

Mr. Trump is said by advisers to be consumed by the multiplying investigations that have taken down his personal lawyer, campaign chairman, national security adviser and family foundation. He rails against enemies, who often were once friends, nursing a deep sense of betrayal and grievance as they turn on him. [...]

More recently, the president has told associates he feels "totally and completely abandoned," as one put it, complaining that no one is on his side and that many around him have ulterior motives. That extends even to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was credited for helping push through the criminal justice bill, praise that Mr. Trump took note of.

Longtime associates said Mr. Trump's relationship with his children has grown more removed and that he feels he does not have a friend in the White House.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

JERKING IN THE NOOSE:

A MALICIOUS LONER paralyzed one of the world's great cities this week. Meanwhile, a drone operator shut down a major international airport.

Donald Trump and the drone enthusiast who halted flights out of London's Gatwick Airport apparently have a lot in common. Both have been willing to wreak havoc with a callous disregard for the public.

The motivation behind Trump's pre-holiday assault on Washington -- sewing chaos, breaking promises, shutting down the federal government, changing his policies from one minute to the next, forcing out one top official after another, spooking the stock market - is easily explained. Trump is a psychopathic criminal who feels cornered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, so he is lashing out in every direction.

After two years in office, at least one thing about Trump has become predictable: He reacts violently whenever Mueller appears to be making progress in his investigation. When he hears Mueller's footsteps, Trump has one go-to move that he cynically uses time and again: He returns to the issues and slogans that energize his base, no matter what the cost. He embraces his base because he believes it will provide him political protection from the fearful Mueller.

Trump has plenty of reason to worry about Mueller these days. The signs are everywhere that Mueller's investigation is intensifying and closing in on Trump and the crooks around him.

NOT DRAWN THAT WAY, JUST IS BAD:

President Donald Trump has at least twice in the past few weeks vented to his acting attorney general, angered by federal prosecutors who referenced the President's actions in crimes his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Trump was frustrated, the sources said, that prosecutors Matt Whitaker oversees filed charges that made Trump look bad. 

WHEN EVEN LINDSEY CAN'T BE BOTHERED SUCKING UP TO YOU...:

In other corners of the rattled capital, his most reliable allies refused to defend him on his decision to pull back troops from the Middle East.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a reliable lieutenant in partisan battle, is now one of the president's most vocal critics on Syria. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, issued a rare statement that he was "distressed" by the departure of the defense secretary, Jim Mattis. Even Fox News, the mirror Mr. Trump has used to reflect the story of a presidency reshaped in his own image, has broadcast segments critical of his abrupt decision to pull troops.

As he lost the public support of those once willing to step forward on his behalf, Mr. Trump grew angry over his news coverage and told people close to him that he would be fine without Mr. Mattis. He rebuffed them for even expressing concern.

Mr. Trump also privately groused about having to postpone departure plans for his 16-day trip to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. On Friday, Melania Trump, the first lady, had already made plans to leave town with the couple's son Barron, according to her spokeswoman. Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, who are also planning to go to Mar-a-Lago, were preparing to stay with Mr. Trump in Washington, an administration official said.

Outside the family, a litany of staffing problems loomed as the shutdown deadline drew nearer. Mr. Trump privately complained that Mr. Mulvaney, who stepped into the vacancy left by John F. Kelly after others turned down the chief of staff position, had given him few options for averting the shutdown.

As the day drew on, reports surfaced that Mr. Mulvaney, who is set to take over for Mr. Kelly on Jan. 2, had once called Mr. Trump's plans for a border wall "absurd and almost childish."

ABANDON SHIP!:

A person familiar with the matter said McGurk has quit because he objected to President Donald Trump's decision to pull out U.S. troops from Syria, a decision followed by the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis a day later. CBS reported McGurk's resignation earlier on Saturday.

THANKS, UR!:

BOP'S GLISTEN:

The Royal Roost, which was located at 1580 Broadway, was originally a chicken restaurant. It struggled to make a profit, and the would-be poulter, Ralph Watkins, sold it to Sid Torin. You might not know his given name, but you'll recognize his nom de jazz of Symphony Sid, the man who turned a place to nosh on some legs and breasts into a venue that did worlds for postwar jazz, helping bebop to blossom and send its seeds a'wafting into millions of homes, courtesy of the radio. Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Max Roach, Miles Davis, and of course the Bird were all Roost regulars. The club was near the Met, which led to its dashing handle of "the Metropolitan Bopera House." In jazz, even a nickname is a hot lick.

At this point in his career, Parker has already done a lot of his innovating. The core bebop texts have been waxed, and he's nursing a dream to record with strings, one he'll realize in November of the next year. He's an inventor still, but a lot of that invention is glimpsed in live performance. Bird has some stalwart help this holiday morning at the Roost: Max Roach on drums, Al Haig on piano, Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Bennie Green on trombone, among others. Symphony Sid certainly does not sound dimmed by any revelries from the previous evening. If he had been out late wassailing, you'd not know it. He's clearly gassed to have the Bird for Christmas morning, and that energy feels pervasive. Miles Davis' "Half Nelson" is taken at a gallop; we are obviously not here to lollygag over Bloody Marys at brunch. Sometimes Bird's lines could become enjambed, like he was thinking so quickly that one figure would run into the backside of another, maybe several others--but here, right now, he's bang on. The number feels complete, total, definitive, but also a setup. Rarely do we feel that we are both wholly satiated and just getting started. But we are.

Sid takes the microphone at the close of the number. "You know, somebody called a little while ago at the studio," he says, as you can just make out Haig lightly chording away on the piano, "and they said, 'I wonder if you'd get Bird to do something on Christmas.'" You can hear that Sid didn't think this request would necessarily be met with open arms. "Well, it's fitting," he says, more to himself than any of us, a replay of the thought process he had when the caller gave Sid his idea. "This is Christmas morning ... and the Bird's got a little arrangement, a little surprise for you, on 'White Christmas.'" As he's talking, Haig's piano chords are coming up ever so slightly in volume until, with the close of Sid's announcement, they instigate the performance proper.

These days, we cannot get away from "White Christmas." For some of us that's an annoyance--no matter how great the tune--and for others, like myself, it's a welcome sound each and every time it's encountered, so long as it's by an artist who's up to handling the job. Give me Bing, give me Clyde McPhatter, give me Elvis. Crosby gave the first public performance of the song on Christmas 1941, cutting it the next year for release as a package of songs from Holiday Inn, in late July 1942. The master was then used over and over again to the point that it was deteriorating, such was the song's popularity. (Crosby had to re-record the song due to that raddled master; what you usually hear on the radio is a version he taped in 1947, which put the song back in the American consciousness, although it had never really left.)

That original 1942 version made No. 1 on the Harlem Hit Parade, the first time Crosby reached the top spot on black charts. This is not surprising to me. The song is no work of Hollywood bunkum. It's bluesy as hell, and the blues, just like a ghost story, is perfect for Christmas. Think of something like Judy Garland's performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"--its blues feel is every bit as strong as anything by Skip James. Think of how many carols work from within the context of a bluesy minor key, and how they have a fraughtness to them that tends to elude popular songs. They appear to be pregnant with what we might think of as the overarching, the ineffable.

Now the blues tends to be slow and bebop, naturally, is fast. But everything in Parker, if you know how to listen to it, is passed through a blues filter. He must have heard Crosby's version of "White Christmas" and filed it away as an idea to return to later, in his time, in his fashion. For an artist to take a pop song and turn it into a veritable secular carol is among the greatest achievements of seasonal song alchemy. Perhaps something best undertook by a tuneful Santa, or the elfin equivalent of Rudolph, with his unique skill set. Or a transcendent alto saxophonist.

IF THE POINT IS ANGER FOR IT'S OWN SAKE, YOU CAN'T COMPROMISE:

Averill's expectations were modest. He assumed that most Greenfield residents would say they only infrequently lost their temper. He expected respondents to confess that they were embarrassed afterward, and that, in retrospect, their paroxysms had only made things worse. In fact, he figured most people would toss the questionnaire in the trash.

Then the survey from the aggrieved wife arrived. Other replies soon began flooding his mailbox, so many that Averill had trouble reading them all. "It was the best-performing survey I've ever conducted," he told me. "Some people even attached thank-you notes. They were so pleased to talk about being angry." The replies contained unanticipated responses: The betrayed wife, it turned out, wasn't all that upset about the mistress--she had harbored suspicions for years, and to be frank, if another woman was willing to put up with her husband, more power (and sympathy) to her. But how dare he show her the new car first?

Other respondents described more mundane arguments, over who ought to take out the trash, or curfews for teenagers, or snappish tones at the dinner table. People were eager to talk about their daily indignations, in part because they felt angry so frequently. "Most people report becoming mildly to moderately angry anywhere from several times a day to several times a week," Averill later wrote, summing up his research in American Psychologist.

Most surprising of all, these angry episodes typically took the form of short and restrained conversations. They rarely became blowout fights. And contrary to Averill's hypothesis, they didn't make bad situations worse. Instead, they tended to make bad situations much, much better. They resolved, rather than exacerbated, tensions. When an angry teenager shouted about his curfew, his parents agreed to modifications--as long as the teen promised to improve his grades. Even the enraged wife's confrontation with her unfaithful husband led to a productive conversation: He could keep the mistress, as long as she was out of sight and as long as the wife always took priority.

In the vast majority of cases, expressing anger resulted in all parties becoming more willing to listen, more inclined to speak honestly, more accommodating of each other's complaints. People reported that they tended to be much happier after yelling at an offending party. They felt relieved, more optimistic about the future, more energized. "The ratio of beneficial to harmful consequences was about 3 to 1 for angry persons," Averill wrote. Even the targets of those outbursts agreed that the shouting and recriminations had helped. They served as signals for the wrongdoers to listen more carefully and change their ways. More than two-thirds of the recipients of anger "said they came to realize their own faults," Averill wrote. Their "relationship with the angry person was reportedly strengthened more often than it was weakened, and the targets more often gained rather than lost respect for the angry person."

Anger, Averill concluded, is one of the densest forms of communication. It conveys more information, more quickly, than almost any other type of emotion. And it does an excellent job of forcing us to listen to and confront problems we might otherwise avoid.

Subsequent studies have found other benefits as well. We're more likely to perceive people who express anger as competent, powerful, and the kinds of leaders who will overcome challenges. Anger motivates us to undertake difficult tasks. We're often more creative when we're angry, because our outrage helps us see solutions we've overlooked. "When we look at the brains of people who are expressing anger, they look very similar to people who are experiencing happiness," says Dacher Keltner, the director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. "When we become angry, we feel like we're taking control, like we're getting power over something." Watching angry people--as viewers of reality television know--is highly entertaining, so expressing anger is a surefire method for capturing the attention of an otherwise indifferent crowd.

In the years after his survey, Averill watched as anger studies became the focus of academic specialties and prestigious journals. In 1992 alone, social scientists published almost 25,000 studies of anger.

Then, in early 2016, Averill was watching newscasts about the presidential primaries. The election season had barely started, and the Republican field was still crowded. Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, giving the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama's final State of the Union address, took a subtle jab at one of her party's candidates--a clownish figure the establishment hoped to marginalize.

"During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation," Haley told voters. "Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That's just not true."

Soon afterward, reporters swarmed Donald Trump to ask how he felt about such a public renunciation. "Well, I think she's right, I am angry," Trump told CNN. "I'm angry, and a lot of other people are angry, too, at how incompetently our country is being run." Trump continued: "As far as I am concerned, anger is okay. Anger and energy is what this country needs."

As Averill watched, he felt a shock of recognition. Everyone believed Trump would be out of the race soon. But Averill wasn't so sure. "He understands anger," he thought to himself, "and it's going to make voters feel wonderful." [...]

Trump made the most of this animosity during his campaign, as Averill predicted he would; he has mastered the levers of emotional manipulation better than any of his political opponents. But our predicament predates the current president. In 2001, just 8 percent of Americans told Pew they were angry at the federal government; by 2013, that number had more than tripled. [...]

But moral outrage must be closely managed, or it can do more harm than good. Ganz, who eventually became a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, has spent years teaching people how to use their anger to effect change. Stoking the emotion is easy. Learning how to channel it to useful ends, he told me, is harder. For anger to be productive, at some point, it must stop. Victory often demands compromise. "You have to know how to arouse passions to fuel the fight, and then how to cool everyone down so they'll accept the deal on the table," Ganz said.

YOU CAN EITHER BE PRO-DONALD OR PRO-DECENCY:

The story is told of Jim Mattis, when he was the commanding general at Quantico, relieving a young lance corporal on Christmas. The rest of that wintry day, those entering the front gate of the Marine base were startled to see that the sentry was a general, checking passes and waving cars through so that a young man could spend the holiday with his family. It is the kind of behavior animated by sentiments Donald Trump could not understand, and it reflected a kind of code by which he cannot live.

The president misunderstood his secretary of defense. The Jim Mattis one saw on the battlefields of Afghanistan and in the shattered cities of Iraq was not "Mad Dog," a sobriquet he loathed, but a resolute military leader who was a reader and a thinker. Give him a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, and he would compare it with the other two editions that he already owned.

He was, to be sure, a fierce enemy. In 2005, he got into trouble for saying, "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." He was also the man who said, "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet." And he meant it. He did not think you had to hate an enemy to kill him, but that just made him a more formidable leader in combat. His menace to America's battlefield enemies was that of the superbly calm tactician, not the blood-crazed berserker.

Mattis was also the man who said, "Engage your brain before you engage your weapon," the commander who praised the quick-thinking Marine squad leader who was smart enough to take a knee when he saw a Shia funeral procession filled with armed men walk by in the newly liberated streets of Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq. And above all, he was the division commander who, when his tour was over, got in a car and crossed the country visiting families of his fallen Marines. To see him explaining to his security detail and his driver the political importance of driving into downtown Ramadi to hobnob with the potentially hostile sheikhs was to see leadership of a subtle kind. Those young Marines were ready to follow him anywhere. Literally, anywhere. [...]

The departure of Jim Mattis from government service is proof that you cannot have it all. You have to walk if you are to remain the human being you were, or conceived yourself being, before you went in. He alone refused to curry favor, to pander at the painful televised Cabinet sessions, or to praise someone who deserved none of it. In the end, he could not do his job and serve the country as he knew it had to be served. No one could.

TRUMPONOMICS:

The Dow just suffered its deepest weekly plunge since 2008 and the Nasdaq is officially in a bear market.

The miserable performance reflects deepening fears on Wall Street of an economic slowdown and overly-aggressive Federal Reserve.

NOW WE JUST NEED THEM TO FIND THAT TWO POTS A DAY IS THE RDA:

Pros

1. Drinking Coffee In Moderation Is Good For Your Brain

Studies have begun to suggest that daily, moderate coffee consumption may help to reduce the risk of developing brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or dementia, thanks to its antioxidants.

The antioxidants in coffee may help to prevent damage to brain cells while also raising cognitive function. While you may not notice these benefits as you drink your daily cup of joe on a regular basis, these positive effects are long-term benefits.

As usual, drinking coffee in moderation is key, as these projected benefits are based on consuming three cups of coffee per day at most.

You might be interested in: Does Coffee Make You Smarter?

2. Coffee Consumption May Aid With Weight Loss

Coffee is a stimulant for the bowels as well as a natural diuretic, which can help to regulate our bodies digestion cycle.

Many today resort to weight loss or chemically created fat burning pill. But coffee is natural and possibly more effective than weight loss pills. As a bonus, calories are burned more quickly after drinking coffee due to a boosted metabolism thanks to both the coffee and your efforts. [...]

4. Coffee May Be Good For Your Heart In The Right Doses

Coffee can have positive effects on your cardiovascular system over time when in moderation, or in this case between two and six cups per day.

Drinking coffee has been linked in studies by the American Heart Association to a lower risk of developing coronary heart disease (as far in the future as ten years) and may even have the potential to protect against stroke and heart failure.

However, it still is not clear whether higher coffee consumption may have a significant impact, as nearly every individual who took part in the study usually consumed six or less cups of coffee per day

6. Regular Coffee Consumption May Help To Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

Scientists are studying coffee's antioxidant compounds (more specifically, chlorogenic acid and quinides). This led them to theorize that they contribute to our cell's' insulin sensitivity, which our bodies use to regulate blood sugar.

It is possible that coffee's natural caffeine content may limit this benefit, giving decaffeinated coffee an added benefit despite its lack of energy boosting power.

In this case, consuming in moderation still allows you to drink two to four cups of coffee per day to enjoy this benefit

GROW THE PIE HIGHER:

WE ARE ALL tHIRD wAY NOW:

 Niskanen thinkers like Ed Dolan, Samuel Hammond and Will Wilkinson made a simple and empirically verifiable observation. The nations that have the freest markets also generally have the most generous welfare states. The two are not in opposition. In the real world they go together.

The key distinction you have to make, Will Wilkinson writes, is between the redistributive state and the regulatory state. Nations like Denmark, Sweden and Canada built elaborate redistributive states to give their citizens a foundation of economic security. Then they realized they were going to have to liberalize their economies if they were going to be able to afford their welfare states.

Today, those nations have many fewer regulations governing zoning and economic activity. They score very high on the rankings of economic freedom that are put together by conservative outfits like the Heritage Foundation and the Fraser Institute.

Last week, Niskanen released a comprehensive report called, "The Center Can Hold: Public Policy for an Age of Extremes," written by Brink Lindsey, Steven Teles, Wilkinson and Hammond. The report is a manifesto for a new centrism based on what the authors call a "free-market welfare state" model.

They want government to protect citizens against the disruptions of global capitalism: "Without strong income supports that put a floor beneath displaced workers and systems that smooth the transition to new employment, political actors and the public tend to turn against the process of creative destruction itself."

At the same time, they want an open, dynamic society. They want to reduce restrictive zoning and land use regulations that favor the rich and entrenched. They see immigration as crucial to America's long-term prosperity. They want charter schools and wider choice, but within strong government structures to ensure quality. (It turns out that bad charter schools continue to attract students; the education market doesn't work totally unregulated.)

The Niskanen authors are making a compelling case for moderation; for understanding that politics is striking a rough but workable balance between competing goods; for understanding that the world is complex and our knowledge is limited, and so it's best to proceed constantly, but skeptically.

WELCOME BACK!

Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, tells host Charlie Sykes that the spirit of the magazine will live on. Plus, Mattis, Syria, the shutdown, and much more.

ENTIRELY LOGICAL:

Iran's Foreign Ministry says the presence of U.S. troops in Syria has been "illogical and a source of tension" from the very start, in its first official reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

OUR TWO REPUBLICAN PARTIES:

THOSE TRUMPIES AND THEIR MOMMY ISSUES...:

Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was obsessed with guns -- and to the chagrin of his mother, also appeared to be a fan of President Donald Trump.

So when his mother, "a liberal anti-gun type," died in 2017, Cruz used his own "Trump hat" to get a twisted final word on their political differences, a friend told police in a 425-page investigative report released on Thursday.

"Due to the fact that his mother hated Donald Trump he put it in her casket with her when she died and took a picture of her with the hat," the friend, Hunter McCutcheon, told a detective, according to a report authored by the lead detective in the criminal case against the confessed mass murderer.

THAT DANG 9TH CIRCUIT!:

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal judge's order blocking the Trump administration's new asylum restrictions.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in the 5-4 ruling.

DUDE, EVERYONE KNOWS YOU ARE:

["D]id you know [Mulvaney] called me 'a terrible human being' back during the campaign?"

Mulvaney will begin his tenure as chief of staff in the new year, although with the president fuming at him long before his actual start date, it remains to be seen whether he could somehow outdo Trump's former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, and set the new record for shortest White House stint.

PRETTY MUCH A NATIVIST WET DREAM:

High taxes. Stifling regulations. Exorbitant housing costs. Freeway gridlock. Fires and floods.

Hand-wringing over an exodus of disillusioned Californians may be a Golden State pastime, the subject of political punditry and strung-out social media threads.

But the latest data are far from dire. The U.S. Census Bureau, in its newly released surveys for 2017, shows that California's net migration remained fairly stable. Since 2010, as the economic recovery took hold and housing prices skyrocketed, departures accelerated -- but the number of newcomers rose steadily as well.

The state attracts a steady stream of college graduates, especially from the East Coast, even as many less-educated residents move to neighboring states -- and to Texas -- in search of a lower cost of living.

STANDING TALL:

With Erdogan on the line, Trump asked national security adviser John Bolton, who was listening in, why American troops remained in Syria if what the Turkish president was saying was true, according to the officials. Erdogan's point, Bolton was forced to admit, had been backed up by Mattis, Pompeo, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey and special envoy for the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, who have said that IS retains only 1 percent of its territory, the officials said.

Bolton stressed, however, that the entire national security team agreed that victory over IS had to be enduring, which means more than taking away its territory.

Trump was not dissuaded, according to the officials, who said the president quickly capitulated by pledging to withdraw, shocking both Bolton and Erdogan.

Caught off guard, Erdogan cautioned Trump against a hasty withdrawal, according to one official. While Turkey has made incursions into Syria in the past, it does not have the necessary forces mobilized on the border to move in and hold the large swaths of northeastern Syria where U.S. troops are positioned, the official said.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

THE NOMINATION IS MICHELLE'S IF SHE WANTS IT:

The survey results, provided to BuzzFeed News by She the People, a new network advocating for women of color in politics, show a majority of respondents -- 71.1% -- includes Harris in their top three choices for president, if she decides to run.

The second most popular candidate was Rep. Beto O'Rourke, whose closer-than-expected Senate race against Ted Cruz in Texas this year has propelled him into the national spotlight. O'Rourke was a top three choice for 38.3% of respondents, followed by Joe Biden for 25%, Sen. Cory Booker for 24.2%, Sen. Elizabeth Warren for 22.3%, Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams for 15.2%, and Sen. Bernie Sanders for 12.1%.

Women of color are a key voting demographic for the Democratic Party in elections across the country, and consistently turn out to vote at high rates. In Southern primaries, including early states like South Carolina, black women compose a large portion of the electorate and helped secure the nomination for Hillary Clinton over Sanders in 2016.

ANGELA AT THE WALL:

On November 16, 2016, eight days after Trump was elected, Barack Obama flew to Berlin to meet with Merkel; it was the last foreign trip of his Presidency. Obama and Merkel had not started out as good friends, but they had become as close as two public figures could be. Over dinner in the Adlon Hotel, they discussed the shocking events of the previous few months, particularly Great Britain's referendum to leave the European Union and Trump's victory running on the slogan "America First." Through the windows of their private dining room, Merkel and Obama could see the floodlit Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of a reunified Berlin.

Merkel, who was nearing the end of her third term, confided that she reluctantly felt that she had to run again, in order to be a buffer against Trump, Brexit, and the surge of right-wing populism throughout Europe. Obama urged her to do so. "Obama was obsessed with the fate of Europe during his last year in office," Charles Kupchan, who served as Obama's top National Security Council adviser on European affairs and accompanied him on the trip, told me. After the election, the situation seemed even more urgent. "His view was that Merkel was needed to keep Europe together," Kupchan said. "He was afraid that, without Merkel, Humpty Dumpty was going to fall off the wall."

The dinner was emotional. Obama later told Benjamin Rhodes, his deputy national-security adviser, that he had said to Merkel that the Trump Presidency would be like a storm. Obama told her to just "try to find some high ground," and hold on to it, Rhodes recalled to me. By the time they said good night, three hours later, it was the longest that Obama had been alone with another world leader in his eight years in office. In an adjoining room, advisers to Merkel and Obama were concluding their own dinner. Rhodes offered a rueful toast: To Angela Merkel, he said, now "the leader of the free world."

Rhodes was not the first to bestow this title on Merkel. When Time named her its Person of the Year, in 2015, it called her "Chancellor of the Free World," citing her decision to take in more than a million refugees. Merkel's immigration policy infuriated Trump, and he seized on it to help define his candidacy for the White House. "I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year," Trump tweeted. "They picked person who is ruining Germany." He often brought the Chancellor up on the campaign trail in 2016, saying at a rally in March, "What Merkel did to Germany, it's a sad, sad shame."

Before the election, Henry Kissinger had visited Berlin, and he advised German officials to arrange a meeting with Jared Kushner, which they did, although the German policy élite, like the rest of the world, didn't think Trump would win. "We were extremely poorly prepared for this," Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German Ambassador to the United States, who now heads the Munich Security Conference, told me. "I think everybody has been in quite a state of shock."

After Trump was elected, other world leaders schemed to play golf with Trump or schmooze him at Trump Tower. Merkel, for her part, released a statement, at once congratulating the President-elect and subtly announcing their differences. It spoke of "common values," including "democracy, liberty, respect of the law and of human dignity."

The foreign-policy establishment, in both Washington and Berlin, told Merkel and her advisers that Trump was sometimes unpredictable and volatile, but not an existential threat. He was ignorant, but would be constrained by his staff. He didn't really mean what he said. One veteran of Republican Administrations recommended "strategic patience," telling a senior German diplomat to ignore the tweets and focus on policy. Other Europeans received similar advice and came to similar conclusions. Rob Malley, a senior Obama adviser on Europe, who now heads the International Crisis Group, said, of the French, "Their view was that you shouldn't take irreversible steps as the result of a reversible Presidency."

From the start, Merkel entertained no illusions that Trump could be easily managed. Still, she had surmounted serious differences with Trump's two predecessors, George W. Bush and Obama, and became close partners with both. When Merkel took office, in late 2005, Germany had not moved past its antipathy for Bush, whose invasion of Iraq had opened a rift with her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. But Merkel and Bush got along, and their unlikely friendship was captured for the cameras when Bush gave her a back rub at a G-8 summit. With Obama, a decisive moment came in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Obama and Merkel worked together to form a coherent response to Putin's aggression, imposing sanctions and demanding peace talks. By 2016, they spoke as often as once a week and had what advisers for both leaders told me was a genuine personal and intellectual connection.

Russia figured heavily in the dinner conversation at the Adlon: Trump was threatening to abandon the Ukraine policy and embrace Putin. Obama's lobbying that night to get Merkel to run for a fourth term was, I've been told by German sources, critical in her considerations. "I think the Chancellor listened very carefully to what [Obama] said," a senior German official told me. As Rhodes recounts in his memoir, "The World as It Is," when Obama left the country, on November 18th, he thought he saw a tear rolling down Merkel's face as she said goodbye. Obama turned to Rhodes and said, "Angela, she's all alone." Two days later, Merkel announced that, because of "insecure times," she was running again. However, she cautioned those who hoped that she would be a foil for Trump and the Trump-friendly forces throughout Europe: "No person alone, not even the most experienced, can turn things to good in Germany, Europe, and the world, especially not a Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany."

IT'S WHY PEOPLE WORK FOR HIM:

Representative Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) lashed out at Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen during a Congressional hearing Thursday, accusing her and her colleagues of betraying Christian values by enforcing immigration law and pushing for the construction of a border wall.

"It is repugnant to me and astonishing to me that during Christmas ... a time in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jesus Christ who had to flee for his life with Mary and Joseph," Gutierrez shouted. "Thank God there wasn't a wall that stopped him from seeking refuge in Egypt. Thank God that wall wasn't there, and thank God there wasn't an administration like this or he would too have perished."

"Shame on everybody that separates children and allows them to stay on the other side of the border fearing death, fearing sickness," he concluded. "Shame on us for wearing our badge of Christianity during Christmas, and allowing the secretary to come here and lie."

DUDE, IT'S ABOUT HATING IMMIGRANTS, NOT LEADING THE WORLD:

SHAKEDOWN STREET:

After weeks of discussions about his future, Zachary D. Fuentes, the 36-year-old deputy White House chief of staff, had a plan.

Mr. Fuentes told colleagues that after his mentor, John F. Kelly, left his job as chief of staff at the end of the year, he would "hide out" at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, for six months, remaining on the payroll in a nebulous role. Then, in July, when he had completed 19 years of service in the Coast Guard, Mr. Fuentes -- an active-duty officer -- would take advantage of an early retirement program.

The program, referred to as temporary early retirement authority, had lapsed for Coast Guard officials at the end of the 2018 fiscal year, and, according to people briefed on the discussions, Department of Homeland Security officials began pressing Congress in November to reinstate it. Administration officials said they had been told that Mr. Fuentes discussed the program with officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and after reporters raised questions with lawmakers of both parties, a provision to reinstate it was abruptly pulled from a House bill on Wednesday.

The White House declined to answer questions about whether Mr. Fuentes had pressed to have the program restarted, saying only that he planned to remain on for a time as a senior adviser to aid in the transition to a new chief of staff. But in interviews, nearly a dozen White House and administration aides, none of whom would speak on the record, raised concerns about how they believed Mr. Fuentes planned to use government resources in the coming months.

THE REPRESSION IS WHY THE rIGHT ROOTED HIM ON:

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi achieved something impressive in the last few weeks: He made remarks that, in their loopiness, managed to outdo U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign rallies. In a televised address he declared, "The situation was this way, we were this way, and despite it being this way, we went this way. That is the miracle." Then, a few days later, while imploring Egyptians to lose weight and exercise more, he added, "Even in the media we have to choose guests who take care of their bodies."

One has to wonder whether Sisi is cracking under the extraordinary pressure of being in charge of a country that seems to be ungovernable. No doubt he has established some political control since coming to power, but it is hard to make the case that Sisi is actually governing. In the last six months, Egyptians have been forced to endure a potato shortage and water scarcity. Instead of addressing the issues that the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing recently highlighted, the government attacked her and the people she interviewed in the course of her research.

In the most basic sense, Sisi faces a crisis of authority; he seems incapable of using the authority he already wields. His supporters are now moving to solve that problem by giving him more. They want to amend the 2014 constitution either to extend the president's term in office or possibly abolish presidential term limits entirely. Egyptian officials and Sisi's supporters previously vowed that this would never happen. They claimed that Egypt had changed. No one believed them--and their skepticism was clearly justified. 

WHICH IS WHAT pROGRESSIVE MEANS IN AMERICA:

OTHER THAN SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY AND HATING OUR ALLIES...:

The Pentagon released Defense Secretary James Mattis' resignation letter Thursday evening, moments after President Trump announced on Twitter that Mattis would be "retiring" in late February.  [...]

[I] believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours: It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model -- gaining veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic, and security decisions -- to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my positions. 

TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH:

In a hard copy of Mattis' resignation letter acquired by CBS News' David Martin, the defense secretary said he is stepping down because of the differences in viewpoints with Mr. Trump.

"Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position," Mattis wrote.

NEWSFLASH: ANTINATALISTS HATE MOTHERHOOD!:

As a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, Ta'Lisa Hairston urged pregnant women to take rest breaks at work, stay hydrated and, please, eat regular meals.

Then she got pregnant and couldn't follow her own advice.

Last winter, Ms. Hairston told the human-resources department for Planned Parenthood's clinic in White Plains, N.Y., that her high blood pressure was threatening her pregnancy. She sent the department multiple notes from her nurse recommending that she take frequent breaks.

Managers ignored the notes. They rarely gave her time to rest or to take a lunch break, Ms. Hairston said.

"I had to hold back tears talking to pregnant women, telling them to take care of their pregnancies when I couldn't take care of mine," she said. "It made me jealous."

Discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in the American workplace. It is so pervasive that even organizations that define themselves as champions of women are struggling with the problem.

That includes Planned Parenthood, which has been accused of sidelining, ousting or otherwise handicapping pregnant employees, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.

IF HE WASN'T GOING TO OBSTRUCT HE WOULDN'T BE EMPLOYED:

Justice Department ethics officials had recommended that Whitaker, who made comments critical of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe before taking office, should not supervise the investigation, the source said.

JERRY AND THE POOL BOY:

The prominent evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. has for the first time acknowledged putting up $1.8 million for a business venture managed by a young pool attendant whom he and his wife befriended during a stay at a luxury hotel in 2012.

BuzzFeed News first reported in May on a lawsuit that claimed the Falwells had developed a "friendly relationship" with Giancarlo Granda, then 21 years old, at the lavish Fontainebleau Miami Beach, flying him in a private jet, offering "financial assistance," and ultimately setting him up in business.

TAILSPINNER DON:

Source close to White House says potus is in "tailspin" this AM about the CR. https://t.co/aZCpC2Xjmq

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 20, 2018

NOT TO MENTION THE RANK AND FILE...:

Congress is set to kick the can and pass a short-term funding bill to keep the government open until early February, seemingly surrendering on the idea of funding a southern border wall. Congressman Gohmert is not happy about this. He sees the wall as Trump's "read my lips" moment, his fundamental campaign promise, which is why Democrats are opposing it so fervently. Once Democrats got former President George H.W. Bush to break his "no new taxes" pledge, it was over for him. Gohmert sees the wall the same way, that Democrats won't support it because not building one will be the president breaking a promise. That's why Louie is so adamant that the president should not sign any bill that doesn't contain $5 billion for the wall.

In addition to Democrats opposing Trump, Gohmert says there are many on the president's team who are working against him. "There are people in power in the Republican Party that do not want to see him succeed," he said. He points his finger squarely at leadership.

HOW DEEP WAS HIS TREASON?:

Tuesday's sentencing hearing for Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security adviser, took an unexpected twist after his attempts to shift blame to the government backfired. After Flynn retracted his allegations of "entrapment" by FBI agents into lying and (re) confirmed his guilty plea, Judge Emmet Sullivan offered a startling rebuke of Flynn: "I want to be frank with you, this crime is very serious," said the judge, adding, "I am not hiding my disgust, my disdain for your criminal offense."

Lost in the circus around Flynn's sentencing -- which is delayed until March -- is the unsolved mystery of why Flynn sat across from two FBI agents to begin with and attempted to deceive them. Put simply, why did he lie?

As former special agents who used to conduct national security investigations, we have encountered deceptive subjects and know that their reasons for lying are worth exploring. Flynn's motivation for deceiving investigators remains one of the most significant unanswered questions in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's ongoing investigation. Given that Flynn has sat for 19 interviews since pleading guilty, Mueller certainly knows the answers. But for the rest of us, this piece of the puzzle can shed light on the magnitude of the threat Flynn posed to national security.

THANKS, MAVERICK!:

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

The pace of haredi Orthodox integration into both the workforce and academy has slowed significantly, indicating a "worrisome" trend in Israeli society, a Jerusalem think-tank warned in a new report.

The Israel Democracy Institute said Wednesday that full-time yeshiva enrollment has increased among the fervently Orthodox haredim, rates of employment have slowed, and fewer members of the community are enrolling in secular higher education.

WORKIN' ON UNCLE VLAD'S FARM:

The Trump campaign funneled money to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA by routing funds through a secretive LLC that appears to be little more than a shell company, an investigation by the Center for Responsive Politics has found.

While the Trump campaign stopped reporting payments to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA after the 2016 election cycle, Trump's 2020 campaign has continued to deploy the same individuals working for the firms at the center of the controversy through payments to Harris Sikes Media LLC -- a low-profile limited-liability company operating with no website or public-facing facade whatsoever.

Facing the illegal coordination allegations are National Media, Red Eagle Media Group and American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG), closely tied consultancies that share staff, resources and adjacent storefronts in Alexandria, Va.

CRP's analysis of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records found that Trump campaign political ad disclosures on file with stations across the country have continued to include signatures and names of individuals working for National Media, despite no mention of National Media or its known affiliates on any FCC or Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosures. Those individual ad buyers' names have simultaneously continued to be included in ad documents for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and America First, but with the ad buyers' affiliation listed as National Media or one of its affiliates.

Common vendors are one of the factors federal regulators consider when determining if communications may constitute illegal coordination between a campaign and outside group.

OBAMA LITE:

While Trump has repeatedly made clear his desire to bring US troops home from Syria, he has been persuaded in the past by advisers to give the mission more time. It's not clear that such a reversal will be forthcoming now, however.

"We know Trump's instincts from the get-go were to get these guys out of Syria," Tamara Wittes, a former State Department Middle East official now with the Brookings Institution, told Al-Monitor. "And yet, he has clearly been persuaded at several points 'not yet, ISIS is not quite defeated, but we can use [the troop presence] as leverage against Iran.' He becomes persuaded, and then at a certain point, ... he decides enough is enough. He just changes his mind."

Some current and former US officials faulted what they saw as overreach by administration Iran hawks, in particular US Syria envoy Jim Jeffrey and his lieutenant, Joel Rayburn, the deputy assistant secretary of state for the Levant, who have argued publicly that US forces would not leave Syria until all Iranian forces had left.

"The people who work for [Trump] -- Bolton, Rayburn, now Jeffrey -- make it worse by adding impossible objectives on Syria [involving Iran] that suggest an indefinite stay," said the US official who called Trump's decision catastrophic. The official said these arguments have "no connection to realistic objectives for our military" and go "way beyond" the goal of defeating IS and preventing its re-emergence.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

A federal judge on Wednesday struck down Justice Department rules that made it harder for asylum seekers to make successful claims based on fear of domestic abuse or gang violence, offering yet another judicial blow to the Trump administration's efforts to unilaterally rewrite immigration law.

In his ruling, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington concluded that the policies--which were rolled out by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June--were "arbitrary" and "capricious," violating federal immigration law as crafted by Congress.

THE POPULAR GOVERNMENT OF THE NATION OF PALESTINE:

A public opinion poll shows that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would lose to the leader of the Hamas terror group if elections were held today.

YOUR NEXT FURNACE WILL BE A VOLT:

The program, called DeepSolar, combed through more than 1 billion satellite images and found 1.47 million rooftop solar systems or larger solar plants in 48 states. That's more than the 1 million systems in the Open PV database, an open-source project that uses voluntary reporting. It's more than twice as much as the 0.67 million counted by Google's Project Sunroof, another project that uses AI and satellite data (though because its methods aren't published, it's hard to know what accounts for the difference).

Knowing how many solar panels exist-and where they are-can help renewable power run smoothly and grow faster. "Utilities and system operators can figure out where there's more solar power being produced, in which neighborhoods, and adjust their operations and planning," says Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and one of the authors of a new study about the project. "For example, a utility can decide to invest in storage after looking at this data."

NIKKI V. MICHELLE 2020:

Last month, speaking to Blavity, a publication for black millennials, the former US first lady explained why she continues to insist on this approach in life and politics. "I absolutely still believe that we've got to go high―always and without exception," she said. "It's the only way we can keep our dignity."

For Obama, failing to follow her own rule means losing. So she has to fight any desire to respond crudely or cruelly to insults and bullying and always keep the big picture in mind, which is admittedly difficult at times. "If you allow yourself to play on their terms, they win...Going high isn't just about the fight you want to win, but it's also about the person you want to be--and the kind of country you want to have," she told Blavity.

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Last week, Qiantu Motor announced it would aim to become the first Chinese automaker to sell its own vehicles in America. So far, Chinese manufacturers have only sold their cars under established brands, such as the Buick Envision (built by Shanghai GM, a joint venture between China's SAIC Motor and General Motors) and the Volvo S90 (Volvo was bought from Ford by China's Geely in 2010).

Qiantu (the name is Chinese for Dragonfly) plans to start building its K50 electric vehicle (EV) in 2020. The electric luxury sports car will be a joint US manufacturing effort between Chinese automaker CH-Auto and Southern California-based startup Mullen Technologies. It will be assembled from American and Chinese components.

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

Hackers infiltrated the European Union's diplomatic communications network for years, downloading thousands of cables that reveal concerns about an unpredictable Trump administration and struggles to deal with Russia and China and the risk that Iran would revive its nuclear program.

In one cable, European diplomats described a meeting between President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland, as "successful (at least for Putin)."

SIGNED. DELIVERED.:

A newly obtained document shows President Donald Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia, despite his attorney Rudy Giuliani claiming on Sunday the document was never signed. [...]

While the potential Trump Tower Moscow deal was on the table, then-candidate Trump was speaking positively about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin and minimizing Russia's aggressive military moves around the world.

NO MANHOOD THING FOR YOU:

The White House suggested Tuesday that President Donald Trump could back down from his demand for $5 billion to fund his proposed border wall in a year-end spending bill.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU BELIEVE THE BUBBLE:

Nobody wants to be charged with a federal crime, but if you must, you want the deal Flynn got. He was the first to cooperate in the Special Counsel investigation in December 2017, and got the first cooperator's prize: a plea to a single count of lying to the FBI, an offense usually resulting in a sentence of probation. He worked hard to earn the trust and even respect of the Special Counsel's Office, submitting to 19 interviews that were "particularly valuable" because he was the first in the door, and likely inducing others to plead guilty through his cooperation. Mueller's team recommended that he get probation, a permissible sentence under the applicable United States Sentencing Guidelines. The prosecutor recommended the same. Every defendant's ideal sentence was his to lose.

And he lost it. He now has until March to win it back.

Flynn and his lawyers faced the same problem that has bedeviled Trump and Michael Cohen and Michael Avenatti and Paul Manafort and several other figures in this circus we call life after 2016: a muscular public relations strategy is often a terrible litigation strategy. Time and again, these players have heard their public statements quoted back at them in court to undermine their legal positions. But Flynn's error was even more grievous - he incorporated media spin into a sentencing brief.

Flynn's lawyers argued in his brief that the FBI wronged him: wronged him by discouraging him from having an attorney present during his interview, by failing to warn him that false statements during the interview would be a crime, and by not telling him that his answers were inconsistent with their evidence so that he could correct himself. The Flynn-as-Deep-State-victim narrative was pleasing to Trump partisans and Mueller foes, but suicidally provocative to a federal judge at sentencing.

THANKS, DONALD!:

Since the day Trump began slapping tariffs on products (January 22nd), the Dow Jones has dropped over 2,600 points (10%). The S&P 500 is also down 10% and the Russell 2000 (small caps) is down 14% since that day.

"Trade wars are good and easy to win."

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) December 18, 2018

IN FAIRNESS, THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS FOR TRUMPBOTS:

In particular, Judge Sullivan took strong exception to the exact thing I have been complaining about, which is the suggestion that Flynn was somehow set up by the FBI and should never have been charged with lying to its agents. What caused this backlash was a highly questionable decision by Flynn's lawyers to inject right-wing talking points into their filing asking for leniency.  It was a wholly unnecessary move. Based on Flynn's extensive cooperation with the Office of Special Counsel, his lack of prior offenses, and his decades of (mostly) distinguished military service, the OSC was recommending no jail time.  Based on the sentencing guidelines, which called for a term of incarceration of 0-6 months, there was a very real prospect that Flynn would pay a fine, do some community service and get a period of supervised probation, but otherwise walk away unscathed.

In an indication of how divorced the Republicans have become from reality, several right-wing media outlets spent Monday evening speculating that Judge Sullivan might even throw out Flynn's guilty plea entirely because he would ultimately agree that Flynn had been entrapped.  That did not happen.

Instead, Sullivan tore into Flynn and his lawyers. He almost bizarrely put Flynn under oath before demanding that he admit his guilt and deny all the right-wing talking points which have recently been repeated by the president himself. He forced Flynn to admit that he knew he was wrong to lie to the FBI and that there had been no misconduct in how his interviews were conducted. He acknowledged that any possible wrongdoing then-Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and counterintelligence official Peter Strzok may have committed in other areas had no bearing on his responsibility to be truthful to federal agents.

Judge Sullivan openly questioned whether Flynn could have been charged with treason for operating as an undeclared agent of a foreign power while serving as National Security Advisor, suggested that Flynn had dishonored the flag that was displayed in the courtroom, and said "arguably you sold your country out."

He also asked Flynn's lawyers how their filing was consistent with the client taking responsibility for his actions and advised them that they might want to delay sentencing since he was not inclined to let Flynn avoid incarceration.

On Saturday, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro engaged in a bit of wishful fantasizing.

Earlier that week, Michael Flynn's attorneys seemed to imply that he was tricked into lying to the FBI. In response, the judge in Flynn's case asked for more information about Flynn's interview. Pirro wagered that the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, might blow up special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's entire case.

She hailed Sullivan as "a jurist unafraid of the swamp, a judge who has a track record of calling out prosecutorial misconduct, a man who does not tolerate injustice or abuse of power." She suggested Flynn's guilty plea might be thrown out: "The amazing part of it is, if he does it, then the house of cards of Robert Mueller falls."

That's decidedly not what happened Tuesday. In fact, quite the opposite.

At Flynn's sentencing, Sullivan made a point of making sure that Flynn stated (and restated) that he lied to the FBI, that he knew it was wrong to do so and that he accepted responsibility. Sullivan asked Flynn whether he knew that lying to the FBI was illegal, and Flynn said, "I was aware." The judge gave Flynn several chances to withdraw his guilty plea, and Flynn opted to proceed.

On Monday, Mueller's office released redacted notes of the FBI's interview with Flynn, revealing what exactly the former national security adviser lied about.

Flynn told the FBI that in his conversations with Kislyak during the presidential transition, he did not attempt to influence Russia's vote on a UN Security Council resolution concerning Israeli settlements. He admitted in his charging document in Mueller's case that a senior member of the Trump transition team directed him to contact Kislyak to learn where Russia stood and urge them to vote against the resolution.

Flynn also told the FBI that he did not ask Kislyak to refrain from escalating tensions in response to steps taken by Barack Obama over Moscow's election meddling, which included expelling alleged Russian spies and closing two Russian diplomatic compounds in the U.S. Flynn later admitted that, acting on behalf of a senior member of Trump's transition team, he contacted Kislyak to ask that Russia show restraint. Vladimir Putin ultimately elected not to escalate the situation, a move Trump called "very smart."

Though he admitted to violating lobbying laws by failing to register as a foreign agent on behalf of Turkey for hundreds of thousands of dollars of consulting work, Flynn was not charged for those crimes and has attempted to receive leniency from the Mueller investigation by offering extensive cooperation.

The Trump Foundation agreed Tuesday to dissolve itself under an agreement reached with the New York attorney general's office, the result of a major civil lawsuit alleging that the charity violated state law.

THANKS DONALD!:

Some 75% of Americans surveyed said that immigration is good for the country, up from 66% in 2012 https://t.co/dlWi9h391r

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 16, 2018

WHICH IS WHY ALL THIS INFORMATION SHOULD BE PUBLIC:

IT IS IMMIGRANTS THEMSELVES THAT THEY OPPOSE:

A high-ranking Customs and Border Protection official told Congress earlier this month that border agents were limiting asylum applications along the border because allowing too many migrants to apply would inspire more migrants to come, according to a letter written by senior House Democrats on Monday.

The statement by Jud Murdock, CBP's acting assistant commissioner, contradicted official claims that the practice of "metering" -- when officials limit the number of individuals who can make asylum claims at ports of entry on any given day -- was due to resource constraints, including a lack of detention space and personnel. When asked about the practice at a Senate hearing last week, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said that it was not meant as a deterrent.

But on Dec. 6, Murdock said in a closed congressional briefing that CBP had chosen to limit asylum-seekers at ports of entries because "[t]he more we process, the more will come," according to the letter.

THANKS DONALD!:

Two benchmark U.S. stock indexes are careening toward a historically bad December.

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 are on pace for their worst December performance since 1931, when stocks were battered during the Great Depression. The Dow and S&P 500 are down 7.8 percent and 7.6 percent this month, respectively.

BUT NO TRUMPBOT CAN PASS A TURING TEST:

Months after President Trump took office, Russia's disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there.

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram -- which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal -- claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with "radical Islamic groups."

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday.

RACISM IS A TOUGH SELL IN AMERICA:

Just this year alone, the ever-bloviating pundit with permanently perplexed facial paralysis has complained that white people aren't "designed" to live around immigrant communities, tried to disprove the idea that diversity is a virtue, and earned shout-outs from Richard Spencer, the prominent white nationalist who earned plaudits in 2016 from the Los Angeles Times and others for not dressing like a hobo clown. Prompted by media watchdogs such as Sleeping Giants and Jordan Uhl, however, some advertisers have become uncomfortable supporting Carlson's most recent rant.

Fox News's professionally angry propagandist began last Thursday's show railing against immigrants in general, claiming that they make America "poorer, dirtier, and more divided." Jordan Uhl, who works with MoveOn.org and has a large Twitter following, tweeted out a clip of the performance and tagged the financial agency Pacific Life, whose advertisement ran on Fox News immediately following the rant. Whether spurred on by Uhl's specific, popular tweet or an overall online outcry, Pacific Life announced on Friday that it was pulling its ads from Carlson's show to "reevaluate" this business relationship.

 Pacific Life insurance, which has advertised on Tucker Carlson's show for a year, said they "strongly disagree" with his comments last night about immigration and are pausing their ads on his show for the next few weeks as they "reevaluate" relationship https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pacific-life-will-pause-ads-tucker-carlsons-show-reevaluate-relationship-1169574 ...

Uhl and Sleeping Giants continued tweeting the clip of the show at other Carlson advertisers through the week to gauge whether they, too, perhaps felt uncomfortable supporting Carlson's attack on immigrants.

On Monday afternoon, another advertiser, the job site Indeed, announced it had no plans to advertise on Carlson's show in the future.

IF IT TASTES LIKE MEAT, IT'S MEAT:

Meat production chews up land and spews out methane by the kiloton, accounting for about two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. A University of Oxford study recently found that, to keep global warming below 2 degrees this century, we need to be eating 75 percent less beef and 90 percent less pork globally. "Without concentrated change, we really risk exceeding key environmental limits," Marco Springmann, one of the Oxford researchers, warns me. [...]

Still, even the most uncanny substitutes for meat face an uphill slog if they're going to replace 75 to 90 percent of beef and pork. The first taste of an Impossible Burger--a moment when low expectations work a powerful magic in the product's favor--is one thing. But how do you keep meat-eaters asking for more after their sixth, and their 26th?

Fortunately, the science here is firing on all pistons. Impossible Foods owes much of its appeal to a bioengineering process that cranks out big, blood-red tanks of "heme," a crucial molecule that gives veggie meat "that slightly metallic bloody flavor," as David Lipman, chief science officer of Impossible Foods, tells me. Meanwhile, "cultured meat," created by growing actual animal cells in a vat, is moving toward viability. In New York, the nerds at Ocean Hugger Foods have engineered a process to transform tomatoes into mock tuna. And over in the Netherlands, a company called The Vegetarian Butcher is developing a Nespresso-style device: You pour in a bag of vegetable protein and out pops fabricated meat. The company aims to release it in two years.

JUST CASHING IN:

A former business partner of Michael T. Flynn has been charged with conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government for his efforts to have Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen extradited from the United States.

Bijan Kian made his first appearance in Alexandria federal court Monday morning. According to the indictment, Kian, who ran a lobbying firm with Flynn, conspired with a Turkish businessman to illegally influence government officials and public opinion in the United States against Gulen.

The indictment demonstrates the extent to which Flynn was secretly working to advance the interests of his Turkish clients while publicly serving as a key surrogate to Donald Trump and auditioning for a role in his administration. According to the newly unsealed court document, Flynn was texting and emailing frequently about how to advance the Turkish agenda throughout the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

HARD TO GET MORE GENERIC THAN KAMALA, BETO & CORY:

[I]n a contest between Trump and a generic Democrat, Trump would almost surely lose if the current political climate holds through 2020. According to a Fox News poll this week, 38 percent of respondents said they would "definitely" or "probably" vote for Trump, while 55 percent said they would "definitely" or "probably" vote for someone else. [...]

Trump carried the Electoral College because he won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by 0.7 points each and Michigan by 0.2 points. A mere 78,000 votes carried the day.

Most presidents work assiduously to build on the coalition that brought them to power. President Trump has done almost the opposite, catering to his base while doing almost everything he can to alienate suburban Republicans and independents, which is why the GOP got shellacked in the midterms.

So if Trump runs -- which is probably a bigger "if" than many people think -- the cards are stacked against him. Fortunately for him, the Democrats will not nominate someone named Generic Democrat.

THANKS, DONALD!:

CUTTING TO THE CHASE:

Yair Netanyahu said there would not be peace in the land of Israel until either all the Jews or all the Muslims leave -- and he would prefer the latter.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT, ENOUGH TO PAY FOR WHAT YOU DO:

Niskanen's observation that tax rates needed to reflect actual rather than desired spending levels is banal to right-of-center economists in almost any country. But it was (and is) absolute heresy on the Republican right, which has elevated anti-tax absolutism into a theological principle. The Niskanen Center, founded in 2015, four years after Niskanen's death, drew upon his heresies as a basis for an unconventional and less dogmatic approach to libertarian economics. And in the Trump era, its heretical tendencies have blossomed. Rather than going along with Trump, or waiting him out so things can go back to normal, Niskanen has used the shock of his ascension to rethink the ideas that brought the American right to this point. The center has developed something that for more than a generation has been almost totally nonexistent in American politics: a right-of-center program that is detached from the conservative movement.

Niskanen's scholars have criticized the failures of conservative policy you might expect -- climate science skepticism, the Republican health-care plan -- a heterodox center-right think tank to criticize. But Niskanen has gone beyond point-by-point rebuttals and has developed a broad and deep argument with the movement's core assumptions.

Last year, Will Wilkinson argued against "small-government monomania" and in favor of a social safety net to "increase the public's tolerance for the dislocations of a dynamic free-market economy," and identified libertarianism with hostility to democracy, resulting in persistent Republican efforts "to find ways to keep Democrats from voting, and to minimize the electoral impact of the Democratic ballots that are cast." Brink Lindsey attacked "the notion that downward redistribution picks the pockets of makers and doles it out to layabout takers."

These are frontal assaults on the basic orientation of the libertarian political project. By recognizing the value of social transfers as a backstop to a free-market system, and acknowledging that the right's obsession with the protection of property has made it hostile to democracy itself, they forced themselves to rethink not only the methods but also the goals of libertarian politics.

Wilkinson, late last year, stepped away from libertarianism, acknowledging that according to libertarians' own data, countries with larger welfare states also had more freedom. This revealed "a pretty major intellectual mistake lurking within the ideal-theoretic version of libertarianism that the most prominent institutions of the 'freedom movement' were built to promote."

COMIC GOLD:

Just days before a deadline to avert a partial government shutdown, President Trump, Democratic leaders and the Republican-controlled Congress are at a stalemate over the president's treasured border wall. But House Republican leaders are also confronting a more mundane and awkward problem: Their vanquished and retiring members are sick and tired of Washington and don't want to show up anymore to vote.

Call it the revenge of the lame ducks. Many lawmakers, relegated to cubicles as incoming members take their offices, have been skipping votes in the weeks since House Republicans were swept from power in the midterm elections, and Republican leaders are unsure whether they will ever return.

It is perhaps a fitting end to a Congress that has showcased the untidy politics of the Trump era: Even if the president ultimately embraces a solution that avoids a shutdown, House Republican leaders do not know whether they will have the votes to pass it.

AND NANCY DIDN'T GET HIM ANYTHING:

The Trump administration signaled Sunday that it would not compromise to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of this week, with senior White House policy advisor Stephen Miller declaring that "we're going to do whatever is necessary" to secure money for the president's much-vaunted border wall. [...]

Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have urgently tried to avoid a shutdown and thought earlier this month that they had Trump's agreement.

But after a tumultuous week that saw the appointment of a new acting White House chief of staff and the resignation of scandal-plagued Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, together with an escalation of the president's legal exposure on multiple fronts, Trump has appeared at times to relish the idea of a highly public confrontation over the border wall, his signature issue.

In a televised showdown at the White House on Tuesday with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - soon to take the speaker's gavel - Trump asserted he would be "proud" to preside over a partial shutdown beginning at midnight Friday if his demands go unmet.

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

Has the Bank of Japan succeeded or failed? The answer is both: unemployment is strikingly low, which indicates that its monetary policy has worked; but inflation is still far below its 2 per cent target, which indicates it has not. There is still no justification for monetary tightening. But additional policy options need to be considered.

KREMLIN-RUN NATIONALISTS:

SO MUCH WINNING...:

TRANSNATIONALISM IS USEFUL FOR FRIGHTENING CHILDREN:

The secretary of state is hardly the first American politician to dismiss international organizations as bloated and stodgy. He will not be the last. But he is wrong on two basic points. 

The first is that other nations are addicted to treaties--in reality, diplomats are increasingly wary of binding multilateral instruments. The second is that cosmopolitan bureaucrats are proliferating at a dangerous rate. Although the U.N. secretariat and its agencies employ over 100,000 people worldwide, in addition to nearly 100,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers, the organization's leaders are pushing to keep staff numbers down and cut bureaucratic red tape.

The Trump administration is tilting at a rapacious multilateral system that does not exist.

Take Pompeo's line about treaties first. It is true that, in the immediate post-Cold War period, states signed off on a raft of new treaties and expanded their commitments under existing ones. The U.S. frequently struggled with these, failing to ratify important agreements like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Rome Statute authorizing the International Criminal Court. Pompeo and U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton often cite these as cases of multilateral overreach.

But recently, international negotiators have increasingly shied away from inking formal treaties of this type. In part out of deference to U.S. concerns, they have tended to forge international pacts, like the Paris accord on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals, that involve political commitments and ambitious goals, but are explicitly not legally binding treaties.

LIKE ALGER HISS TURNING JOE McCARTHY INTO A COMMUNIST:

Sir, in mobster lingo, a 'rat' is a witness who tells prosecutors real incriminating info. Perhaps a different word? Searches of lawyer's offices common enough that DOJ has a procedure for them. Here it yielded evidence of crimes you said he should be jailed for. You should stop. https://t.co/EV1txBYrhz

— Andy McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) December 16, 2018

NIKKI 2020:

Six in 10 Americans say President Donald Trump has been untruthful about the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, while half of the country says the investigation has given them doubts about Trump's presidency, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. [...]

A month after the results from the 2018 midterm elections, 48 percent of Americans say they want Democrats in Congress to take the lead role in setting policy for the country, versus 21 percent who want congressional Republicans to take the lead and 19 percent who want Trump in charge.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

President Donald Trump woke up in a bad mood Sunday morning, and knew just where to aim his ire: his good old friends at the media. Mere hours after Saturday Night LIve aired a sketch in which it imagined a magical world in which Trump was never president, the commander in chief blasted his critics in the media and wondered why criticizing him was legal in the first place. 

BUBBLE BOYS:

Things only Trump's core base vote believes, via NBC/WSJ poll:
Only 35% say Trump has brought right kind of change to country
Only 19% want Trump taking lead role in setting policy for country
Only 34% say Trump has been truthful about Russia
Only 34% want to end investigation pic.twitter.com/gasDXCyWhb

— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) December 16, 2018

IN FAIRNESS, DONALD DOES HAVE ONE DEFICIT REDUCTION PROGRAM:

Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, was sentenced for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in September. As part of his plea deal, Manafort agreed to forfeit assets that amount to between $42 million and $46 million, including about $22 million in property, CNBC reports. The case revealed how Manafort avoided paying more than $15 million in taxes by laundering $60 million from pro-Russian Ukrainians, CNN reports.

Manafort reportedly violated the conditions of his plea deal, and last month prosecutors said that he could face more charges.

Earlier this week, Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to financial crimes including paying hush money to a porn star and Playboy model. As part of his deal, Cohen agreed to pay $1.4 million in unpaid taxes and hand over $500,000 in assets as well as pay $100,000 in fines.

YOU DON'T PUT HUMANS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS OUT OF CONCERN FOR THEIR HEALTH:

The U.S. facility on the Mexico border where a migrant girl was held last week before she died is one of several Border Patrol bases the government previously found had contaminated drinking water. Some agents at the bases told investigators they refused to drink, wash their clothes or bathe in the water.

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR:

[T]here still is a political imperative for Republicans to rally around a plan of their own, especially ahead of 2020 elections for president and Congress. Democrats are seizing on Friday's ruling to highlight the repeated GOP efforts to dismantle the ACA.

"In the midterms, the threat to health care was theoretical, and now it's a clear and present danger," said Jesse Ferguson, a former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, of California, vowed her chamber would "formally intervene in the appeals process" when her party takes power in January. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said he will force votes next year that would show Republicans have been dishonest on health care, votes certain to be used in campaign ads. A liberal group is planning to pressure GOP senators up for reelection to oppose the ruling.

"They are trapped by their white-hot hatred of President Obama and everything he did," said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., speaking of Republicans. "And if they stay in that place it will be their undoing as a party."

While many congressional Democrats spoke out in the hours after the judge's ruling, Republicans on Capitol Hill were much quieter on Saturday.

The dynamic resembled this year's midterm elections, in which Democrats were eager to run on health care and Republicans sought to direct voters' focus to other topics.

HOMO ECONOMICUS IS DEAD:

The Fed was not the first to employ such an aggressive response to an economic downturn. The Bank of Japan adopted ZIRP in the 1990s in response to a collapse in its real estate market that helped trigger a decade of economic stagnation. 

There was nowhere else to go. From July 2007 to the fall of 2008, the Fed had trimmed its target policy rate from 5.25 percent to 1 percent.

The economy was so weak that many models indicated the appropriate interest rate for the Fed would have been negative - in effect a tax on savings that might prompt people to spend. While theoretically possible and in fact later adopted by a few central banks elsewhere, negative interest rates would have been a political non-starter in the U.S. Congress, and difficult to sell to the public in a fast-moving crisis.

Instead, a dramatic Fed action drove the policy rate to a range of between zero and 0.25 percent. It was, in effect, a zero rate, but more importantly demonstrated the Fed's willingness to go to extremes. [...]

The unemployment rate is at its lowest in nearly 50 years. Inflation is hovering around the Fed's target. A near decade of economic growth will become the longest expansion on record next year.

What's not to like?

It took seven years for the Fed to leave the zero lower bound, and rates are still abnormally low. By some accounts, consumers and businesses may be addicted to cheap money, and so sensitive to interest rates their willingness to buy homes or invest may fall off more quickly than in the past as rates rise.

CELEBRATE BOTH:

70% HELPS:

[Venezuelan psychologist Juan José (J.J.)] Rendón, 54, deploys social media and grass-roots tactics to protect democracy from what he views as a neo-totalitarian threat, best personified by what he calls the "criminal gang" now running Venezuela. He often evokes comparisons to longtime conservative strategist Karl Rove. Foes, however, depict him as a Roger Stone-like figure, calling him the "king of black propaganda." Rendón is deeply aware of the myth built around his controversial public self, but he won't discuss his campaigns and methods in detail, labeling such talk "disrespectful."

Juan Diego Zelaya, a Honduran politician who met Rendón on Porfirio Lobo Sosa's successful 2009 presidential campaign, says Rendón "basically sees everything happening five to seven moves in advance. It's not the typical 'Hey, let's talk about grassroots, strategy, messaging.' No. He'll tell you the story of what's supposed to happen, and then he works backward."

Rendón wielded those tactics against Latin America's early-21st-century leftward turn, as the socialist model spread from Venezuela to Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil. As a consultant, he helped right-leaning politicians win multiple presidential elections, including the two-term Colombian Juan Manuel Santos who signed a peace deal with FARC rebels. He also helped Mexico's recently departed president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ascend to power. [...]

In 2004, Rendón called fraud on Hugo Chavez's electoral victory, was chased out of his homeland and found himself country-less and in the U.S. with a nullified passport. Maduro's regime in June 2013 declared Rendón public enemy No. 1 for conspiring against socialism. "One day, we will get him and throw him behind bars and he'll pay for all the damage he's done to Venezuela," Maduro said. In 2016, the U.S. granted Rendón asylum.

Today, dressed all in jet black save for white socks, he stretches out on a white sofa and lights up a white Belmont, his choice Venezuelan brand of smokes.

As Peña Nieto leaves office amid scandal, Rendón admits regrets about his choice of clients. "Power changes people," he says. "Around 30 percent of the people we work with, they get changed by power. And half of those people change for the worse."

THE CONTINUING COST OF REFUSING TO WIN WWII:

A massive crowd had gathered in Pyongyang to celebrate the Soviet Union's role in freeing Korea from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. The rally also gave Soviet Gen. Nikolai Levedev the opportunity to introduce Kim Il Sung, whom Levedev declared a "national hero." Many of those in attendance knew the name -- Kim had been a valiant anti-Japanese guerrilla. But when the 33-year-old read a speech written by his Soviet handlers, many in the crowd were skeptical that someone so young who had spent so much time abroad was experienced enough to become the nation's savior.

After more than a quarter-century of exile in Manchuria and the Soviet Union, Kim Il Sung had returned to an impoverished Korean Peninsula in September 1945, a month before the rally. By then, the Soviets and the Americans had settled into occupation zones north and south of the 38th parallel, respectively, while a cauldron of competing domestic and foreign political factions vied for power.

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

The military suspended two soldiers from an ultra-Orthodox battalion on Sunday after they allegedly fought with border guards the day before in an attempt to get their friends released from police custody.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, a group of some 50 settlers illegally staged a protest on the outskirts of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank, during which a number of rioters threw stones at Palestinian homes.

Three suspected rock throwers were arrested by Border Police officers who were at the scene.

The army said two in-uniform soldiers from the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion of the Kfir Brigade attempted to free the two suspects and as a result "a clash broke out."

INCELEBRATE GOOD TIMES:

DS Robotics, an offshoot of DSDolls, exhibited its latest 3D-printed robotic head at the VR Expo in NanChang City in China last month, showing that manufacturing AI heads for sexbots is about to get a whole lot more affordable.

Until now, the traditional method for manufacturing silicone sex doll components is through using molds and setting casts. Using a 3D printer to create humanlike faces for DSDoll's AI gynoids means that the assembly line process will be sped up considerably and therefore, the bots will be cheaper to produce.

SOVEREIGNTY IS A TWO-WAY STREET:

Canberra's recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Saturday can best be seen as the return flight of a boomerang -- a tool that likely originated among Australian Aborigine hunters. Indeed, there is hardly a better metaphor to illustrate how the zest with which the Jewish state and its supporters urged the world to follow Washington's move last year has backfired.

While Australian Zionists celebrated the decision as "historic," a recognition of only West Jerusalem as Israel's capital may after all be detrimental to the Jewish state's efforts to secure the international community's support for Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. [...]

On October 16, Morrison, Australia's conservative prime minister, and his foreign minister, Marise Payne, announced that they would "consider recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, without prejudice to its final boundaries."

In a joint statement, Morrison and Payne said they would look at moving Australia's embassy to West Jerusalem, and acknowledge the eastern part of the city "as the expected capital of a future Palestinian state."

Already then, the writing was on the wall: Australia's declaration would be closer to Russia's surprising April 2017 recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital than to Trump's more sweeping December 6 announcement.

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

Israel's tech innovation sector is lacking some 15,000 skilled workers, mainly software engineers and data scientists. This shortage is causing local salaries to surge and is also pushing firms to seek workers abroad, a new report by Start-Up Nation Central and the Israel Innovation Authority shows.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

It's time for us to admit that comedy is a problem. For too long comedians have got away with making light of issues using the flimsy excuse of it being their job to make people laugh. Like 'free speech', comedy is now a far right dogwhistle. The Internet is filled with unregulated and dangerous comedy. Laughter has become a weapon, with sharpened japes and poisoned memes its ammunition.

For a while now, the wokest and most progressive of us have forgone humor.

ISOLATION IS A CHOICE:

When Charles Barkley's mother, Charcey Glenn, passed away in June 2015, Barkley's hometown of Leeds, Alabama, came to the funeral to pay respects. But there was also an unexpected guest.

Barkley's friends couldn't quite place him. He wasn't a basketball player, he wasn't a sports figure and he wasn't from Barkley's hometown. Here's what I can tell you about him: he wore striped, red polo shirts tucked into khaki shorts and got really excited about two-for-one deals. He was a commuter. He worked as a cat litter scientist in Muscatine, Iowa. In short, he was everyone's suburban dad. More specifically, he was my dad.

"You know, it was obviously a very difficult time," Barkley told me recently. "And the next thing I know, he shows up. Everybody's, like, 'Who's the Asian dude over there?' I just started laughing. I said, 'That's my boy, Lin.' They're, like, 'How do you know him?' I said, 'It's a long story.' "

THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

One explanation for the downturn suggested by the trip providers is that the numbers "could reflect the well-documented fact that young American Jews are growing increasingly disengaged from Israel, and have less and less interest in visiting the country - even when the trips are free".

Poll shows deep divisions between Israelis and American Jews

Haaretz noted how "recent studies have shown that Jewish millennials, who are largely progressive, feel less connected to Israel than their parents and grandparents because they perceive the country's policies as antithetical to their values."

"In particular," the paper added, "they cite Israel's treatment of Palestinians and of asylum seekers."

Just last week, a petition "signed by 1,500 Jewish students - demanding that Birthright include in its itinerary Palestinian speakers able to address the realities of occupation - was delivered to Hillel directors at over 30 campuses across the United States."

"The exclusion of voices of Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel from Birthright runs counter to our core values," the petition said.

"On a trip to Israel, we should experience the country's history and culture, but we should also learn about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and hear the voices of Palestinians living under occupation."

DESPERATE TIMES, DESPERATE MEASURES:

Earlier Friday, Chris Christie was described by White House aides as a leading contender for the job after the former New Jersey governor met privately with Trump and first lady Melania Trump for more than an hour in the White House residence on Thursday night. But Christie called Trump at midday Friday to take his name off the list. A person close to Christie said a number of current and former White House aides warned Christie that the building was unmanageable and that "no one can have success there."

Trump grew deeply frustrated at the rejections and the media narrative that no one of high stature wanted to be his chief of staff, according to a senior White House official, so he decided suddenly on Friday afternoon to tap Mulvaney.

DONALD WINS ONE!:

Twenty-seven hours before she died at an El Paso children's hospital, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal walked across the U.S. border with her father and 161 other migrants outside Antelope Wells, N.M.

It was 9:15 p.m. on Dec. 6, and the small, remote U.S. border crossing was closed for the night. There were four Border Patrol agents on duty, and no medical staff.

The migrants skirted barriers and crossed into the United States. Like most Central American asylum seekers who have been arriving at the border in record numbers, they were not seeking to evade capture but to turn themselves in.

That night, as elsewhere when large groups of parents with children appear at remote border outposts, U.S. agents strained to accommodate the needs of those in their custody. The agents radioed the nearest Border Patrol station in Lordsburg, 90 minutes away, to request a bus, the only one available along that barren desert span of the New Mexico boot heel.

What unfolded over the next eight hours, as Jakelin's condition deteriorated but went unnoticed by agents and perhaps her father, is now the subject of an internal investigation at the Department of Homeland Security, and congressional Democrats are demanding a full accounting and meetings with Customs and Border Protection officials.

On Tuesday, three days after the child's death, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that his agency's Border Patrol stations and their rudimentary holding cells were ill-suited to handle so many families and children. More medical staff and social workers were needed to handle the demographic change, he said.

McAleenan did not mention the girl's death, which was disclosed by CBP only after The Washington Post inquired about it Thursday evening. A DHS official said Friday the agency will review its policy on reporting deaths of migrants in U.S. custody.

IT'S ALMOST LIKE KOBACH WASN'T SERIOUS:

Maybe the commission, led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, might have survived if it hadn't been looking for fraud in all the wrong places.

Instead of California and other Democratic states, they might have found what they were looking for right at home in Trump country.

If the allegations are true, there was some blatant election fraud going on in Bladen County, N.C., and Canton, Miss.

But it had nothing to do with immigrants, in the country illegally or otherwise. In both places, campaigns and candidates are the alleged fraudsters.

In North Carolina's 9th Congressional District, a campaign consultant working for Republican candidate Mark Harris is accused of paying people to collect absentee ballots. Both collecting ballots from a third party and paying people to do so are illegal in that state.

All the more worrisome is that some of those ballots never made it to elections headquarters to be counted.

The allegations are so serious that Harris hasn't been confirmed the winner and the election might have to be held again.

And in Mississippi, seven Canton city officials -- including the former police and fire chiefs -- were arrested last week in connection with a variety of election offenses, including bribing voters with money, Walmart gift cards and beer. (I hope it was at least a 12-pack of a nice pale ale.)

YOU CAN'T BUILD A MAJORITY PARTY ON HATRED OF WOMEN, BLACKS, LATINOS, MUSLIMS & JEWS:

Outgoing U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas wants national Republicans to conduct a thorough "autopsy" to determine why the party lost so many seats in the House of Representatives -- including his own.

Yoder signed onto a draft letter that House Republicans are circulating in response to the party's dramatic loss of 40 seats in this year's midterm elections. The copy, obtained by McClatchy, includes Yoder's signature alongside those of Carlos Cubelo, a moderate Republican who lost his re-election race in Florida, and GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. It's unclear how many members signed it as of Friday, or whether the letter has been sent.

Stefanik served as the first female head of recruitment at the National Republican Congressional Committee -- the House's campaign arm -- but only one of the 100 women she recruited won. Next year there will be 89 Democratic women serving in the House compared to 13 Republican women. [...]

In the letter, Yoder, Stefanik and the other members say the results of this year's congressional elections "require an honest, transparent assessment" of what went wrong.

"Neither our Republican caucus, nor our party as a whole, can afford further erosion among key demographics," the letter states. "The November elections resulted in our party falling short in races that were otherwise winnable."

The letter points out that Republicans "lost a disproportionate number of seats in suburban districts and other key areas of our country" and "fell short across multiple demographics, including women, who represent a growing segment of America's voting population."

Downplaying or ignoring the causes for those losses "will lead us to repeat them," the letter warns.

Cantil-Sakauye -- a registered Republican since age 18 -- was nominated chief justice in 2010 by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Early in her career, she worked as a deputy legal affairs secretary for Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, who appointed her as a Sacramento municipal court judge.

Another Republican governor, Pete Wilson, elevated her to Sacramento County court before she became an appellate court judge.

Cantil-Sakauye said the Kavanugh hearings left her "disheartened" and "hollow." Kavanaugh's confirmation was delayed and nearly derailed when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford made sexual assault allegations against him. A subsequent hearing in September before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee exposed a sharp partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans considering Kavanaugh's nomination. Kavanaugh denounced Senate Democrats during his confirmation hearing.

The U.S. Senate voted nearly entirely along party lines confirmed him to the court the following month.

As a mother of two young women, Cantil-Sakauye didn't understand the process. Why, for example, did Republicans bring in a female prosecutor to question Ford, she asked.

She said she made the decision to shed her party label in consultation with her husband and a few friends and described the process as "humbling, tough, emotional."

She described herself as conservative on some issues, but open-minded on social justice issues.

AS THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY ENDS WITH A WIMP-OUT:

The bottom line? Mexico isn't paying for the border wall, and neither is Congress -- even if there's a Christmastime shutdown. [...]

The Democratic unity is already having its desired effect: After digging in on Tuesday in a remarkable back and forth with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a televised Oval Office debate, Trump is actively considering ways out of the wall fight to avoid a partial shutdown next Friday. [...]

Trump repeatedly predicted to Pelosi and Schumer that House Republicans could pass a border funding bill, but griped about the Senate. Then he took ownership of any impending shutdown, saying it was worth the border wall fight.

The results made Schumer's caucus almost giddy.

"They completely handed him his head. He better get used to it because that's what it's going to be like now. He's going to get fact-checked to his face," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). "He's not going to have congressional leaders or Cabinet people around him like bobble heads saying yes to everything."

WE ALREADY ESTABLISHED WHAT YOU ARE, WE'RE JUST HAGGLING OVER THE POSITION:

As Trump's financial empire was crumbling, Putin certainly had reason to believe that Trump might be susceptible.

In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects.

Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance.

He had another tour of Moscow in 1996.

Russian mobsters frequented and enjoyed the Trump casinos. Russians were heavy purchasers of units in the Trump Tower. So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at the Trump Towers. In various real estate deals, Trump, at the very least, had turned a blind eye to apparent Russian money laundering.

Though Trump had previously contemplated running for president, Putin had no idea whether that would come to pass. It was enough that Trump was a prominent figure and television star already sympathetic to Russia.

Rybolovlev's purchase of the Florida mansion put about $74 million in Trump's pocket. Trump suddenly had oxygen.

What had Trump done to earn such a favor? It may seem surprising, but the answer could be nothing. At least not then.

Trump was being enrolled in the Russian system of kompromat, of which Putin is a master. Grant a favor, ask for nothing. Both parties understand that someday something may be expected in return.

And Rybolovlev? Only four months after Rybolovlev bought Trump's Florida mansion, the Russian government ruled that his mine had not caused the damage, blaming the collapse on long-dead Stalin-era planners. The stock price of Rybolovlev's company soared. It was up long enough for Rybolovlev to recover his losses on the Palm Beach purchase, plus, presumably, an ample commission for his service.

This decision was made by officials who have been identified as key figures in Putin's circle. Kompromat is the only explanation of these events that fits all the facts as we now know them.

Looking at Trump's circumstances in 2008, Putin laid out bait in the form of an absurdly high purchase price for a piece of real estate. Trump took the bait. The snare snapped shut.

One deal was closed. Could there have been others?

Keith Darden, an international relations professor at American University who has studied kompromat, says about Trump: "He's never said a bad word about Putin. He's exercised a degree of self-control with respect to Russia that he doesn't with anything else. ... He knows there are limits, there are bounds on what he can say and do with respect to Russia."

"WAIT, PENCE CAN'T SAVE ME?":

As president of the United States, Trump enjoys certain executive powers--including the power to issue pardons for federal crimes. The people Trump has pardoned so far at the federal level range from Scooter Libby to former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt for his unconstitutional tactics against undocumented immigrants. But the keyword with the Libby and Arpaio pardons is "federal": Trump had the power to pardon them for federal crimes--and he has the power to grant Paul Manafort (his former campaign manager) a presidential pardon for tax fraud, bank fraud and all the other crimes he has been convicted of. But Trump does not have the power to issue presidential pardons for criminal convictions in individual states, including any that might come about in 2019 in New York State. And James obviously plans to keep her staff very busy next year.

James, in a recent interview with NBC News, was quite specific about the things she plans to investigate--including whether or not Trump's business interests in New York City represent a violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause, which restricts presidents and other federal politicians from receiving gifts or payments from foreign powers (for example, the Russian government).

James has said that she plans to investigate the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting in New York City that was attended by Manafort, the Trump Organization's Jared Kushner (who is married to the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump) and Donald Trump, Jr. as well as Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and others. And New York State's incoming attorney general also noted that she will be investigating Trump's real estate holdings in NYC for potential illegalities.

James told NBC News, "We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.... We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law."

Further, James has asserted that she would like to pursue state charges against any Trump associates who are pardoned for  federal crimes allegedly committed in New York State. Presently, James might have difficulty doing that because of a double jeopardy law in New York State. But in the midterms, she campaigned on modifying that law--and doing so, James told NBC News, "is a priority because I have concerns with respect to the possibility that this administration might pardon some individuals who might face some criminal charges, but I do not want them to be immune from state charges."

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

"I mean you have the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers," Coulter said.

"The only thing that keeps the Democratic base together is for them to keep focusing on: 'No, white men are the ones keeping you down, you must hate white men.' It's the only thing they all have in common," Coulter added during her appearance on The Ingraham Angle.

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

ONE OF THE MASTERWORKS OF THE ANGLOSPHERE:

First and foremost, about Halldór Laxness's Independent People. This Icelandic classic had been on my reading list for almost a decade, but something--its bulk, its ostensible subject (sheep farming), its mythic opening--held me back. Then, this summer, I took a copy to Maine, and as soon as Bjartur of Summerhouses blustered onto the page, the stubbornest hero in all of world literature, I was hooked. As for those sheep: This is a novel about them only in the sense that Lonesome Dove is a novel about cows. And though I love Lonesome Dove, Independent People is much the better book. Laxness's storytelling offers epic sweep and power, but also, in J.A. Thompson's stunning translation, modernist depth and daring, along with humor and beauty and pain to rival Tolstoy. In short, Independent People is one of my favorite novels ever.

I'd like to introduce you to the most maddening person I've ever encountered in my life: Bjartur of Summerhouses.

I've known him for 15 years, and he never fails to infuriate me; he is querulous, contrary, hard-hearted and stubborn.

And yet, I find myself drawn to him again and again.

Please do not let the fact that he is fictitious -- or Icelandic, or an impoverished sheep farmer -- deter you from entering his world, which is brilliantly conjured in the pages of Halldor Laxness' novel Independent People.

When I first opened this book, it was with a feeling of trepidation and a hefty dose of familial obligation. My mother had sent it to me in the mail, accompanied by a note that said "You must read this" -- a phrase that was underlined three times. "It's written by Halldor Laxness," she wrote. "He is one of Our People."

My mother was referring to the Icelanders; her parents' families had fled Iceland for North America in the 1800s after a devastating volcanic eruption, but she still referred to all Icelanders as "Our People."

And that is how I came to encounter the flinty yet endearing Bjartur of Summerhouses, a gritty, practical farmer who composes poetry as he strides through blizzards searching for lost sheep.

As the novel opens, Bjartur -- who spent 18 bitter years as a servant on another man's farm -- is surveying the first thing he has ever owned. It is a dark, dank, turf-roofed farmhouse on a glacial moor, where the family members inhabit one common room upstairs and the sheep, horse, cow and dog occupy the entire first floor.

But this miserable hovel is also Bjartur's palace. The character's sole quest in life -- and one of the novel's great themes -- is to live as an independent man, in debt to no one. It's a desire that comes with a price, especially in a harsh climate where interdependence is the only means of survival; Bjartur's wife, children and neighbors all bear the brunt of his obsession for independence.

If all of this seems too grim, keep reading. One of the great surprises of the novel is the author's deliciously sardonic humor and marvelous grasp of human foibles at all levels of society.

THANKS FUSION!:

Elsewhere, Steele reports that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych "confided in Putin that he did authorize and order substantial kick-back payments to Manafort as alleged but sought to reassure him that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this."

The official record supports this second allegation: Manafort's work for, and bankrolling by, Yanukovych is at the core of the criminal charges against him--conduct he has admitted. The superseding indictment filed by Mueller's office in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia goes into extensive detail about Manafort's ties to Yanukovych and other Ukrainian political and business interests, but in short:

Defendant PAUL J.  MANAFORT, JR. (MANAFORT) served for years as a political consultant and lobbyist.  Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT, through companies he ran, acted as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and foreign political parties. Specifically, he represented the Government of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine (Victor Yanukovych, who was President from 2010 to 2014), the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party led by Yanukovych), and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions after Yanukovych fled to Russia in 2014).

MANAFORT generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of his Ukraine work. From approximately 2006 through 2017, MANAFORT, along with others including Richard W. Gates III (Gates), engaged in a scheme to hide the Ukraine income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money.

Manafort's ties to Ukraine are relevant to the Russia investigation, as most readers will know, because he worked closely with an individual--Konstantin Kilimnik, a named co-conspirator in the superseding indictment against Manafort and a star player in Mueller's submission last week regarding Manafort's breach of his plea deal--suspected of ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort and Kilimnick worked on behalf of pro-Russian parties and lobbied within the United States to advance what were not merely Ukrainian interests, but Russian interests as well. Among those interests, according to the dossier, were "sidelin[ing] Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue," "deflect[ing] attention away from Ukraine," and building political support in the U.S. for "lift[ing] Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia."

The Kremlin also pursued that last interest through, among others, Trump's campaign advisor and first national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to one count of making materially false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 USC § 1001(a), and is due to be sentenced on Dec. 18. Among the things he lied about to the Special Counsel's Office were his discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the Trump administration's intent to lift sanctions:

During the interview, FLYNN falsely stated that he did not ask Russia's Ambassador to the United States ("Russian Ambassador") to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed on Russia. FLYNN also falsely stated that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the Russian Ambassador stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of FLYNN's request.

The dossier does not allege significant communications between Flynn and Kremlin-affiliated individuals during the campaign--as it does for Manafort, Cohen and Carter Page--but does remark upon Flynn's visit to Moscow in December 2015. Steele reports:

[A] Kremlin official involved in US relations commented on aspects of the Russian operation to date. Its goals had been three-fold--asking sympathetic US actors how Moscow could help them; gathering relevant intelligence; and creating and disseminating compromising information ('kompromat'). This had involved the Kremlin supporting various US political figures, including funding indirectly their recent visits to Moscow. S/he named a delegation from Lyndon Larouche; presidential candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party; Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page; and former DIA Director Michael Flynn, in this regard and as successful in terms of perceived outcomes.

The redacted addendum to the sentencing memorandum filed by Mueller's team in Flynn's case explains that Flynn has cooperated extensively with the Special Counsel's Office and provided information relevant to at least three different investigations: one criminal investigation, about which all information is redacted; the special counsel's investigation into interactions between Russian government figures and the Trump campaign; and a third, completely redacted investigation. With respect to the special counsel's investigation, the addendum notes that Flynn "assisted the [Special Counsel's Office's] investigation on a range of issues, including interactions between individuals in the Trump Transition Team and Russia," and other topics which are redacted. This indicates that the relevant information Flynn is providing to Mueller's team is not limited to the post-election discussions about sanctions relief about which he previously lied.

Notably absent from the dossier is any reference to George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pleaded guilty last fall to lying to the FBI about his contacts during the campaign with individuals tied to the Russian government and recently served a 12-day sentence after proving himself unhelpful to the Special Counsel's Office. (He was sentenced to 14 days but was released two days early, prior to a weekend.) The statement of offense asserts that over the first half of 2016, Papadopoulos had multiple in-person interactions and email communications with several individuals connected to the Russian government or whom Papadopoulos believed were connected to the Russian government, including a London-based professor, later identified as Joseph Mifsud; a female Russian national who was introduced as a relative of Russian president Vladimir Putin; the Russian ambassador in London; and an individual claiming to be affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In April 2016, Papadopoulos learned from the professor that the Russians possessed "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in the form of thousands of her emails. Over the course of approximately five months, strongly encouraged by his contacts, Papadopoulos aggressively pursued a meeting between Trump and/or senior campaign officials with Russian government officials. He communicated the idea and his progress on a number of occasions to various high-ranking Trump campaign officials. When interviewed by the FBI in January 2017 in the course of its investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election, Papadopoulos lied about the extent, timing and nature of his communications with these individuals.

Again, Papadopoulos is not mentioned in the Steele dossier. We revisit his case because it resonates with one of the themes of the dossier, which is the extensive Russian outreach effort to an array of individuals connected to the Trump campaign. Steele's sources reported on alleged interactions between Carter Page and Russian officials, but Papadopoulos's conduct would have fit right in. In any event, Papadopoulos is noteworthy as the first figure in the Trump campaign--as far as we know--approached and informed by Russian proxies that the Russian government had obtained Clinton's emails.

To conclude, we return to Carter Page, about whom there is a great deal in the dossier. We will not recount the details here because the allegations have not been corroborated in filings by Mueller's team. The only nod at confirmation we have from an official source is a heavily-redacted memorandum from the House intelligence committee minority. In it, Ranking Member Schiff describes the FBI's wholly independent basis for investigating Page's long-established connections to Russia, aside from the Steele dossier, and emphasizes that the Justice Department possessed information "obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele's reporting" with respect to Page.

As we noted, our interest is in assessing the Steele dossier as a raw intelligence document, not a finished piece of analysis. The Mueller investigation has clearly produced public records that confirm pieces of the dossier. And even where the details are not exact, the general thrust of Steele's reporting seems credible in light of what we now know about extensive contacts between numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

THE POINT OF AN ECONOMY IS TO CREATE WEALTH:

Many factors contribute to economic growth, including trade liberalization and increased labor productivity. These principles are at the heart of a free-market economy, which lends itself to individual advancement.

Economist John V.C. Nye has written:

In the most successful countries, the average citizen now enjoys a material standard of living that would have made the greatest king of [200] years ago turn green with envy.

But despite incredible gains in overall wealth, some argue that certain industries need government protection, even in advanced economies, such as that of the United States.

One of the most frequently heard arguments is that American manufacturing--which is said to have peaked around 1980 and undergone an overall decline since--needs tariffs to compete against manufacturers in other countries.

A quick look at the facts, however, shows that the U.S. manufacturing sector has become bigger and more productive as trade has expanded, although major advancements in technology may have crimped demand for low-skilled workers in the sector.

Instead of focusing on protecting certain sectors from foreign competition, we should pursue economic freedom, enabling further innovation.

Domestic and international economic development are not mutually exclusive, and in a free market, declining sectors are replaced organically by other efficient industries.

Innovation creates value for producers and consumers, and an unfettered economy sets the stage for these mutually beneficial transactions.

What is a Crusonia plant? Where did prosperity come from? Can Jonah get a laconic libertarian to digress? Tyler Cowen, George Mason University economics professor and author of Stubborn Attachments, joins the Remnant to answer these and other questions.

THAT "DESPITE" IS PRECIOUS:

Tax reform stands as the one major legislative accomplishment of the Trump Administration. The measure became law a year ago and, as forecasted, jumpstarted growth in an economy that had been largely stagnant since the Great Recession. Unfortunately, tax reform has so far not lived up to its promise of paying for itself with that increased growth. In fact, the deficit for the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in September, is the largest in six years despite increased growth and revenues. [...]

Despite the tax reform and the increased tariff taxes on trade, revenues were flat at $206 billion, about half of what the government spent.

DONE DIRT CHEAP:

WELCOME TO THE WEST, BRAZIL:

Brazil's President Michel Temer on Friday signed an extradition order for Italian militant fugitive Cesare Battisti wanted for murder in Italy since the 1970s, his press office said. [...]

Battisti faces life in prison in Italy where he was convicted of four murders committed when he belonged to a guerrilla group called Armed Proletarians for Communism. He escaped from prison in 1981 and lived in France before fleeing to Brazil to avoid being extradited.

The Italian government almost obtained his extradition in 2010 but leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva granted Battisti asylum on his last day in office that year.

WHAT DEVIN WAS HIRED TO HIDE:

Schiff went on, "At the end of the day, what should concern us most is anything that can have a continuing impact on the foreign policy and national-security policy of the United States, and, if the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization, that would be totally compromising." Schiff hypothesizes that Trump went beyond using his campaign and the Presidency as a vehicle for advancing his business interests, speculating that he may have shaped policy with an eye to expanding his fortune. "There's a whole constellation of issues where that is essentially the center of gravity," Schiff said. "Obviously, that issue is implicated in efforts to build Trump Tower in Moscow. It's implicated in the money that Trump is bragging he was getting from the Saudis. And why shouldn't he love the Saudis? He said he was making so much money from them." As the Washington Post has reported, Trump has sold a superyacht and a hotel to a Saudi prince, a $4.5-million apartment near the United Nations to the Saudi government, and many other apartments to Saudi nationals, and, since Trump became President, his hotels in New York and Chicago have seen significant increases in bookings from Saudi visitors. In a break with the Republican congressional leadership, Trump refuses to take action against Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding substantial evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and the putative head of state, directed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist who lived in the United States.

Schiff also pointed out that Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, met with the C.E.O. of a state-owned Russian bank in December, 2016, and that, the following month, Erik Prince, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, met with the leader of a Russian sovereign-wealth fund in the Seychelles, an East African archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean. "The American people have a right to know that their President is working on their behalf, not his family's financial interests," Schiff said. "Right now, I don't think any of us can have the confidence that that's the case." All of these subjects, Schiff averred, were fair game for investigation by the committee that he will soon chair.

THE WISDOM OF MARKETS:

A message from Pacific Life: pic.twitter.com/bDq9hzia53

— Pacific Life (@pacificlife) December 14, 2018

THANKS, UR!:

Kasparov said that Russia invested "enormous resources" to ensure Donald Trump's victory against Hillary Clinton.

"Russian propaganda portrayed Trump's election victory as Putin's triumph," Kasparov said.

However, the "triumph" in Moscow has been short-lived because, "as it turned out, the president of the United States, with all his enormous political power, is limited in his ability to pursue the policy that Putin would have expected from him," Kasparov added.

The allegations of Russian election meddling have dogged Trump's presidency and have given rise to an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into potential collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Trump denies the allegation, calling it a political witch hunt.

Kasparov also said that another blow to Putin has been the European sanctions imposed in response to the annexation by Moscow of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 over the past 4 1/2 years.

On December 13, the European Union prolonged the sanctions for another six months.

The sanctions, which mainly target the Russian banking and energy sectors, were first imposed in the summer of 2014 and have been extended every six months since then.

UNITED BY THEIR HATRED OF MUSLIM DEMOCRACY:

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is reported to be "seriously considering" setting up a "game-changing" Camp David-style summit meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with US President Donald Trump playing host.

The crown prince, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, has asked the emergency task force he created to deal with the fall-out from the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi to look at the idea, sources in the kingdom with close knowledge of the discussions told Middle East Eye.

THERE'S NO BAD REASON TO IMPEACH:

The inauguration paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals and event space at the company's Washington hotel, according to interviews as well as internal emails and receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect's eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to "express my concern" that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen "when this is audited."

 

If the Trump hotel charged more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. The inaugural committee's payments to the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump's role have not been previously reported or disclosed in public filings.

"The fact that the inaugural committee did business with the Trump Organization raises huge ethical questions about the potential for undue enrichment," said Marcus Owens, the former head of the division of the Internal Revenue Service that oversees nonprofits.

Inaugural workers had other misgivings. Rick Gates, then the deputy to the chairman of the inaugural, asked some vendors to take payments directly from donors, rather than through the committee, according to two people with direct knowledge. The vendors felt the request was unusual and concerning, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they signed confidentiality agreements. It is not clear whether any vendors took him up on his request.

The revelations about the inauguration's finances show how Trump blurred the lines between his political and business lives, as the real estate mogul ascended to the presidency.

THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS OF BIGOTS:

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was handed a task considered critical to the president's operations. In addition to serving as a senior adviser in the White House, he would also be playing the role of the main conduit between Trump and his friend David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI, who prosecutors said on Wednesday admitted to making a $150,000 hush-money payment "in concert with" the Trump campaign. . [...]

"Nobody got killed, nobody got robbed... This was not a big crime," Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Just as the Protestant tradition is subdivided into Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and others, Shiite Islam is also subdivided. Houthis belong to the Zaydi branch.

From the ninth century onward -- for a thousand years -- a state ruled by Zaydi religious leaders and politicians existed in northern Yemen. Then, in 1962, Egyptian-trained Yemeni military officers toppled the Zaydi monarchy and replaced it with a republic. Because of their ties to the ancient regime, Zaydis were perceived as a threat to the new government and were subjected to severe repression.

Nearly three decades later, in 1990, the region known as South Yemen merged with North Yemen to become the Republic of Yemen. Zaydis remained a majority in the north and west of the country, and also in the capital city of Sanaa. However, in terms of the overall population, they became a minority.

According to a 2010 CIA estimate, 65 percent of Yemen's people are Sunnis and 35 percent are Shiites. The majority of those Shiites are Zaydis. Jews, Bahais, Hindus and Christians make up less than 1 percent of inhabitants, many of whom are refugees or temporary foreign residents.

To reduce the dominance of Zaydis in the north, government authorities encouraged Muslims belonging to two Sunni branches with links to Saudi Arabia -- Salafis and Wahhabis -- to settle in the heart of the Zaydis' traditional territories.

Start of Houthi insurgency

Contributing to this trend, in the early 1990s, a Yemeni cleric founded a teaching institute in the Zaydis' heartland. This cleric, educated in Saudi Arabia, developed a version of Salafi Islam.

His institute proselytized with the goal of reforming Muslims through conversion. It educated thousands of Yemeni students and, in less than three decades, the new religious group grew large enough to compete with older groups such as the Zaydis.

According to scholar Charles Schmitz, the Houthi insurgency began in the early 1990s, spurred, in part, by Zaydi resistance to growing Salafi and Wahhabi influence in the north.

DUDES, YOU'RE WRECKING OUR COUP NARRATIVE!:

Legislative power brokers across the country have long designed district lines in back-room deals that entrenched their control for years, if not decades. But now, Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are carrying out a power grab in an unusually public fashion: They are seeking to make Republicans a permanent minority by essentially writing gerrymandering into the State Constitution.

The New Jersey plan comes amid a national reckoning over the consequences of gerrymandering and has been met by fierce opposition across the political landscape -- and not just from Republicans and nonpartisan watchdog groups.

Even some national Democratic leaders have criticized the plan, fearing that it undercuts Democratic efforts to attack what they term Republican strong-arm tactics in state capitals across the country. 

...AND CHEAPER...:

WHY DID YOU THINK HE BOUGHT THE PAGEANT?:

During a recent performance, Casler told the crowd that he worked on The Apprentice for six seasons, as well as some of Trump's beauty pageants during the 1990s, and he made some brutal revelations:

I worked on a bunch of those beauty pageants he had in the nineties too. That was a good idea, Miss Teen Universe? Yeah, that's like giving Jeffrey Dahmer a cooking show. He would line up the girls on the side of the stage, and he would inspect them literally, he would stick his little freaking doll fingers in their mouth and look at their teeth. I'm not kidding, this is true, he would line them up like they were pieces of meat. He'd be like, "You, you, and you, if you want to win I'm in the penthouse suite, come and see me." [...]

Casler then claimed that Trump is a "speed freak," and that Trump "crushes up his Adderall and he sniffs it because he can't read, so he gets really nervous when he has to read the cue cards."

THE CHEETO STANDS ALONE:

For the second day in a row, the president had been in the White House residence all morning, fuming about federal investigations that have moved closer to him -- and are likely to get worse.

His former confidant, attorney Michael Cohen, and other once-stalwart supporters have flipped, becoming witnesses for a Justice Department he has struggled to bend to his will. Prosecutors also secured the cooperation of American Media Inc., the tabloid publisher that routinely helped Trump muzzle bad stories and target his enemies.

The result is Trump has become increasingly isolated as he enters what may be the most difficult stretch of his presidency, one laden with political and legal dangers.

THANKS, UR!:

For only the third time in Putin's presidency, more than half the country currently holds him responsible for Russia's problems and the rising cost of living, according to a new poll by the Levada Center. Late last month, 55 percent of the country said Putin is to blame for these trends. (Sociologists recorded previous spikes in August 2012, at 51 percent, and in August 2014, at 65 percent.)

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

"I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law," Trump wrote. "He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called 'advice of counsel,' and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid."

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Joshua Block pointed out the potential issue with  Trump's defense here.

"Asserting an 'advice of counsel' defense generally constitutes a waiver of attorney client privilege, Block tweeted. 

THE HUNT FOR WAHHABI OCTOBER:

While one part of the Mueller team has indicted Russian spies and troll-masters, another cadre has been spending its time focusing on how Middle Eastern countries pushed cash to Washington politicos in an attempt to sway policy under President Trump's administration. Various witnesses affiliated with the Trump campaign have been questioned about their conversations with deeply connected individuals from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, according to people familiar with the probe. Topics in those meetings ranged from the use of social-media manipulation to help install Trump in the White House to the overthrow of the regime in Iran.

Now, according to those same sources, the Special Counsel's Office is ready to outline what cooperating witnesses have told them about foreigners' plans to help Trump win the presidency. Two sources with knowledge of the probe said Mueller's team has for months discussed the possibility of issuing new charges on this side of the investigation.

"If this is going to be unveiled, this would be like the surfacing of the submarine but on the other plank which we haven't seen," said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney.

NIKKI V. MICHELLE 2020:

A young, charismatic former governor, the daughter of immigrants from India, with foreign-policy experience and national name recognition: Many don't see a mere "voice" in Nikki Haley, they see a future president. Friends tell her she ought to run one day. "I hope she does," says Trey Gowdy, a retiring congressman from Haley's state of South Carolina. "She's very smart, very tough, very politically skilled." People in the administration who worked with her say similar things. [...]

Haley has decided to remain in New York after leaving the U.N. so that her 17-year-old son can finish high school there. (Her daughter, 20, is a nursing student at Clemson, Haley's alma mater, and her husband, Michael, remains in South Carolina where he serves as an officer in the National Guard.) Friends of hers also note that a decade in public service during one's prime earning years can take a financial toll--South Carolina's governor earns below the national average and a lot less than plenty of public employees in high-tax states--and that Manhattan is a good place to find your footing. The center of the news media universe, it's also a convenient perch to remain a presence in the national conversation. A book, a think tank role, some TV hits, and a bit of distance from the president she once served? It sure sounds like the beginnings of a campaign for something.

KNOWING YOUR ENEMIES:

In pleading guilty, Butina admitted to working with her Republican operative boyfriend Paul Erickson -- identified in court papers as as "U.S. Person 1" -- at the behest of a Russian official in order "to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over U.S. politics ... for the benefit of the Russian Federation."

NEWSFLASH: ARCHIE TO HIRE MEATHEAD:

Having run through his first choices for his chief of staff vacancy without any luck, President Donald Trump is considering his own son-in-law for the job.

Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka and already an official White House adviser, met with Trump Wednesday about the job, a top Republican close to the White House told HuffPost. He and two others close to Trump or the White House who confirmed Kushner's interest in the position did so on condition of anonymity to discuss the president's staffing considerations freely.

THE COLLUSION WAS ALWAYS ABOUT THE UR'S SANCTIONS:

[T]wo Flynn associates tell Mother Jones that Flynn has informed friends and colleagues that prior to Election Day he spoke with Kislyak about how Trump could work productively with Russia if he won the presidency.

One of these Flynn associates, who each asked not to be identified, notes that Flynn said he discussed with Kislyak a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine. 

THE FUN NEVER STOPS:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether U.S. President Donald Trump's inaugural committee misspent some of the funds it raised, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people it said were familiar with the matter.

The investigation opened by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office is examining whether some of the committee's donors gave money in exchange for policy concessions, influencing administration positions or access to the incoming administration, the Journal said.

DONALD WHO?:

The U.S. Senate delivered a rare double rebuke to President Donald Trump on Saudi Arabia on Thursday, voting to end U.S. military support for the war in Yemen and blame the Saudi crown prince for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

HERE'S A CONTRADICTION WE DON'T UNDERSTAND...:

The truth is that the wall has always been so much more than a physical structure. It's a vessel into which Trump asked his supporters to pour all their hopes, their fears, their resentments, their anger and their disappointments. It would be the instrument of their spiritual restoration, a way to not just keep out immigrants but to bring back the dignity Trump voters felt they had lost. Not only would we build it, high and wide and strong, but we would use it to make Mexico kneel down before us in subjugation. "Who's gonna pay for it?" Trump would ask his fervid crowds, and they'd cry "Mexico!" in joyful response, envisioning the day that we force our southern neighbors to open up their wallets to pay for their own humiliation while we stand tall once again.

But as he runs for reelection, he won't be able to convince them that the wall is built and Mexico has paid for it, especially if he's also telling them they still need to be afraid of the problem the wall is supposed to solve.

This contradiction will emerge for Trump on issue after issue. As much as he will describe his presidency as the most successful in history, he will always be drawn back to promoting fear and anger, as he did without success in the midterm elections. That's not only because it's where he seems to feel most comfortable, but because it's what he believes his base wants, and he sees feeding that base as his only path to victory.

THEY'LL NEED TWO FOR THE WPIX YULE LOG...:

The limited edition 11 Herbs & Spices Firelog costs $18.99 and is available while supplies last at www.kfcfirelogs.com. The price includes tax, shipping and handling.

"The smell of the Colonel's Original Recipe fried chicken is unmistakable," the fast-food chain said in a statement, noting it worked with Enviro-Log to create "the ultimate winter necessity."

According to the item description, the one-of-a-kind logs made with 100 percent recycled materials can burn up to three hours. They "may result in a craving for fried chicken" and "attract bears or neighbors who are hungry."

THE CLOSED NOOSE:

With the revelation by prosecutors on Wednesday that a tabloid publisher admitted to paying off a Playboy model, key participants in two hush-money schemes say the transactions were intended to protect Donald J. Trump's campaign for president.

That leaves Mr. Trump in an increasingly isolated and legally precarious position, according to election law experts. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments made in 2016 to keep two women silent about alleged affairs are now firmly framed as illegal campaign contributions.

FLAVORS OF RACISM:

The law called "Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People," also known as the Israeli Nation-State Law, which was passed by the Knesset last July and defines Israel as "the nation-state of the Jewish people," has raised serious concerns among political scientists, legal experts, and liberal Zionists, even as it has been celebrated by many of those on the Israeli right. Is this law the fulfillment of Zionism, or its demise? The term "Zionism" itself, and thus the question, is fraught, since Zionism is an ideology that has been at war with itself since its inception. Which Zionism are we speaking about? Taken at face value, the law seems unproblematic, as that was what many different kinds of Zionism held from the start. But when that idea is made part of the Basic Law of the country, problems arise: 25 percent of Israeli citizens are not Jews and thus find themselves outside the raison d'être of a legally defined ethnocentric state, or what Israeli scholar Oren Yiftachel calls an "ethnocracy."

Why is this a problem? For example, while we can say colloquially that America is a "Christian country" (over 90 percent of American citizens are at least ancestrally Christian), Congress does not codify that idea into law. And I would assume American Jews would feel somewhat uncomfortable with such legislation. The de facto notion of Israel as a state of the Jews is not the same thing as altering Israel's Basic Law to say as much. Two questions one could ask are: (1) What does this new law do to the present reality of statist Zionism (not all Zionism was statist, but arguably today all Zionism is statist)--that is, what kind of state now exists in light of it? And (2) Is legally binding ethnocentrism the natural fulfillment of an earlier form of Zionism that has now dominated the discourse? Or, is this an aberration of statist Zionism?

One way to get at these questions is to explore them not from the perspective of Zionism's own self-definition or justification, but rather by asking how Zionism has been viewed by others who adopted it for their own movements of self-determination. Yes, Zionism has been the most significant experiment in Jewish modernity. For a beleaguered people frustrated with the failure of emancipation to resolve the perennial problem of persecution in Europe and fueled by an age-old hope of returning to their ancestral land, the Jews' creation of an ethnocentric Jewish nation-state seemed, in the heyday of colonialism, like a viable solution to maximize collective flourishing and safety. Yet while the Zionist experiment may have been the most successful one in the contemporary politics of ethnocentricity, it was not the only one, and perhaps not even the first one, in modernity. Nor is it the last.

In fact, long before the state's existence, Zionism became the exemplar of ethnocentric politics, and it was used as a lodestar for other minority attempts to solve the problem of the limits of ethnic self-determination. [...]

Here, I discuss two examples of Zionism outside Judaism: Black Zionism and White Zionism. Black Zionism has its roots before the formal advent of Zionism: in the Pan-African writings of William Blyden and Martin Delaney, and then later in W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Stokely Carmichael. White Zionism is a new phenomenon, taken up by some in the alt-right such as Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor and to some extent Steve Bannon, each arguing from the perspective that white Christians are losing, or have lost, their majority status and privilege in America. I argue that all three "Zionisms"--Jewish, black, and white--are ethnically, or racially, based and promote the notion of a renewed society, lost in the real or mythic past, that can only be maintained by means of ethnic dominance; I argue that they can offer religious and racial freedom but never offer equality.

IT'S ONLY HOMOPHOBIA WHEN WE DO IT:

During an interview with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin Wednesday, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski criticized Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a "wannabe dictator's butt boy." The comment earned swift backlash for its homophobic undertones and prompted an apology from Brzezinski -- though not to Pompeo.

MEANWHILE, IN THE CAPITALIST WORLD:

The European Parliament on Wednesday approved a free trade agreement between Japan and the EU, covering 635 million people and almost one-third of the world's economy.

Dubbed the world's largest free trade agreement, the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement will remove duties on almost all agriculture and industrial products as well as open up the service sector and procurement. It also moves to eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade.

"Almost five centuries after Europeans established the first trade ties with Japan, the entry into force of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement will bring our trade, political and strategic relationship to a whole new level," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.

AMERICA'S TEAM:

 The boys in royal blue huddled in the middle of a soccer field, arms locked, heads bowed, their lucky hot pink socks a sharp contrast to the browning grass and storm-threatening sky striated with slate and gray. 

In few minutes, the reVision Football Club would play their final match of the fall season. If they won, they would qualify for a state soccer cup for the first time by beating last year's champions.

They would defy the odds - as they have been doing all their lives.

Most of the teenage players were born in refugee camps in Africa and arrived in this country with nothing, save a few phrases in English - "Hello" "How are you?" "Where is the food?" - and the yearning for a better life.

Here, they encountered a different kind of struggle: New languages and unfamiliar cultures, classrooms where they are bullied for their accent and skin color, hardscrabble apartment complexes where street gangs fish for fresh recruits - and now, a president who has made it clear that refugees are no longer welcome.

But one thing has remained constant. From Africa to America, they have found ways to keep playing soccer.

In the beautiful game, they discovered strength and self-confidence. In this team, which came together almost by accident, they forged a brotherhood. In their stories, they offer a glimpse into the challenges confronted by refugee children - who, in 2016, made up about 44 percent of those resettled in this country.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The news was announced in a statement released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Cohen:

The Office also announced today that it has previously reached a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, in connection with AMI's role in making the above-described $150,000 payment before the 2016 presidential election. As a part of the agreement, AMI admitted that it made the $150,000 payment in concert with a candidate's presidential campaign, and in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election. AMI further admitted that its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman's story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.

THAT'S A WHOLE LOTTA NUTTY TO FIT UNDER ONE TENT:

You probably know about the Church of Scientology's courting of Hollywood celebrities, from Tom Cruise to John Travolta to the woman who's the voice of Bart Simpson, and perhaps you've caught wind of its cozy relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department.

But few are aware of its close partnership with the Nation of Islam, led by Minister Louis Farrakhan.

The approximately 20,000-strong black political and religious movement was formed in 1930 to improve the lives of black Americans, but in recent years has come under fire for its anti-gay, anti-white, and anti-Semitic views. Farrakhan, a vocal anti-Semite, found himself back in the news recently when he was cited as one of the reasons for the implosion of the Women's March, with some leaders of the movement accused of supporting Farrakhan and parroting his anti-Semitic talking points.

The alliance between the Nation of Islam, a black organization, and Scientology, an almost entirely white one, was hatched in the mid-Aughts, when the late Isaac Hayes, one of the only famous black Scientologists, approached Scientology leader David Miscavige and asked why the "religion" wasn't doing more to court black Americans. So Miscavige reached out to the Nation of Islam, and by 2010, they began promoting the "benefits" of Dianetics, the core set of ideas preached by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

During a sermon in Chicago on July 1, 2012, Farrakhan proclaimed to his acolytes, "I found the tool that I know can help us. And I thank God for Mr. L. Ron Hubbard. And I thank God for his research and teaching."

GONNA NEED MORE TURKS:

People who are ready to play Santa Claus in stores or at Christmas markets, even as a paid job, are becoming few and far between in Germany, according to recruitment agencies.

Willi Dahmen, who runs one such agency in the northern German city of Celle, told DW on Wednesday that he and other recruiters across Germany were facing a dearth of willing Santas this year.

Dahmen said one reason was that many young people were not willing to sacrifice their weekends or holidays to do the work.

He also lamented the fact that many Santa Clauses who did take on the job were poorly trained and had cheap costumes that were not up to the role. "What are the children to think?" he said.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

James outlined some of the probes she intends to pursue with regard to the president, his businesses and his family members. They include:

Any potential illegalities involving Trump's real estate holdings in New York, highlighting a New York Times investigation published in October into the president's finances.

The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian official.

Examine government subsidies Trump received, which were also the subject of Times investigative work.

Whether he is in violation of the emoluments clause in the U.S. Constitution through his New York businesses.

Continue to probe the Trump Foundation.

"We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law," said James, who was endorsed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

STORMY WEATHERED:

HIS LIPS WERE MOVING:

But traders in Chicago said they have seen no evidence of a resumption of such purchases following China's imposition of a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans in July.

CPNRA:

The young Russian operative called her strategy the "Diplomacy Project," an elaborate, multiyear scheme to infiltrate the conservative movement in the United States in hopes of cementing bonds to benefit the Kremlin.

Maria Butina laid out the proposal in March 2015 and then pursued her plan over the next two years, traveling to conferences to schmooze Republican presidential candidates. She established close ties to top officials in the National Rifle Association. She hosted "friendship dinners" with wealthy Americans. And she organized a Russian delegation to attend the influential National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Much of Butina's work has been reported over the past year as part of a broader campaign by Moscow to influence U.S. elections -- but new details are included in documents obtained by The Washington Post that will be filed in court Thursday, when Butina is expected to admit for the first time that her activities were part of a concerted endeavor, coordinated with a top Russian official with the express intent of establishing unofficial lines of communication with Americans who could influence U.S. politics.

The documents show Butina plans to admit she worked at the direction of a former senator who was deputy governor of the Russian central bank. That description matches Alexander Torshin, who was subjected to economic sanctions by the U.S. government earlier this year and resigned his bank position in November.

Butina is being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, not special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. But with a plea, she will become the first Russian national convicted of working to influence U.S. policy around the time of the 2016 election.

YEAH, BUT WHAT ABOUT HER EMAILS?:

[A]fter nearly four hours of rambling questions and partisan bickering, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai emerged on Tuesday from his first-ever testimony to Congress almost entirely untouched.

"He didn't make any enemies here today," said Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank that has received funding from Google. "The people who were here trying to rattle him weren't able to do it. Google came out unscathed."

Pichai was the measured, mild-mannered political tenderfoot in a sea of Washington bombast, not showing agitation at the silliest of questions or taking his interrogators' bait.

THE MOST DANGEROUS RAMO:

[T]he judiciary has proven so decisive in Brazilian affairs that critics and supporters alike often speak of the judicialização da política ("judicialization of politics"). For instance, the courts led the way to the legalization of same-sex marriage and the ban on corporate donations to election campaigns. They were also instrumental in bringing down former Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as part of the "Lava Jato" ("Car Wash") investigation, the largest anti-corruption campaign in the country's history.

The way Lava Jato unfolded is instructive. At first, Rousseff managed to appear beyond reproach from the campaign, which unfolded during her presidency. To meet a budget surplus target set by Congress, however, Rousseff fudged the books in an accounting sleight of hand involving loans from public banks.

The beginning of the end for Rousseff was a ruling in October 2015 by the Federal Court of Accounts (an auditing body) that the scheme was illegal and a violation of fiscal responsibility. As a partisan impeachment process proceeded through Congress, it turned out to be the legal ruling that was key to her downfall. It served as a constant justification for those voting in favor of impeachment, even if there were other, more partisan, motives for their moves.

It was the judiciary, too, that felled the immensely popular Lula, who was barred from running for president this year after the Supreme Court upheld the initial conviction against him for corruption. Despite his defiance, including a New York Times op-ed claiming that jailing him was akin to the military dictatorship's 1964 coup, Brazil's judiciary persisted.

Another telling fact about the Lava Jato process is that, rather than having its origins in one of Brazil's highest courts, the investigation started in Curitiba, a relatively minor Brazilian city, before wending its way through the country's judicial system. The popular head of the investigation, Sérgio Moro, was an unknown judge on the 13th Federal Court until 2014, when he began to publicize the sordid details of corruption in Brazilian politics--and not just among those in the ruling Workers' Party but politicians across the political spectrum. The elevation of Lava Jato from a provincial city to the highest courts in the country--without getting derailed by the many powerful enemies seeking to quash the investigation--speaks to the vigor of Brazil's judiciary from the top to the bottom.

Moro has since been tapped to join Bolsonaro's cabinet to fight organized crime and corruption. He has stated that he views joining the government as his best chance to ensure lasting progress in the fight against corruption. Moro has a wealth of political capital to wage his campaign, and he will most likely have high-level support for his efforts to strengthen judicial capacity. Bolsonaro himself understands how central this fight is to his electoral mandate. It is clear that a major part of why he won the presidency is that Brazilians were fed up with corruption and wanted a radical shakeup of politics in Brasília. The president-elect managed to parlay his untainted image, despite almost 30 years in politics, into one of an anti-corruption crusader unwilling to play politics as usual.

THE RIGHT VS THE MARKETPLACE:

At the beginning of the hearing, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith tried to needle Pichai with a series of studies and statistics claiming to show suppression of pro-Trump viewpoints in Google search results. Smith cited a claim from conservative outlet PJ Media that 96 percent of results for a search on news about Trump were from left-wing media and findings from psychologist Robert Epstein that Google could have swung 2.6 million votes in Hillary Clinton's favor during the 2016 election. Pichai responded that Google had investigated the specific findings, which allowed him to pivot the line of questioning to a debate over the studies' methodologies all while maintaining that Google in no way discriminates against conservatives.

Later on, Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot brought up his own grievances, claiming that Google had given lower page ranks to positive coverage of bills to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and to the 2017 Republican tax cut. "I understand the frustration at seeing negative news.

I see it on me on Google," Pichai responded, performing a bit of rhetorical jiujitsu. "There are times you can search on Google, and page after page there is negative news, which we reflect." Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat, later helped to underscore that point by complaining in jest that Breitbart and the Daily Caller seemed to dominate the first page of search results when he Googled himself.

These allegations of conservative bias also produced the hearing's most glaring gaffes--from the representatives. They played into criticisms that Congress lacks basic knowledge of the tech industry. In arguing that Google relies too heavily on "liberal" Wikipedia, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert admitted that his staff was altering his own Wikipedia page every night for two weeks, only to be rebuffed by the site's editors. (Wikipedia guidelines state that editing an employer's page is a "conflict of interest.") Iowa Rep. Steve King, after issuing several stern threats to impose regulations on Google to deal with political bias, ended his time asking why his granddaughter had come across a profane meme featuring his picture while using an iPhone. Pichai responded, "Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company."

IT'S ALMOST LIKE HIS PRIMARY OBLIGATIONS ARE TO OUR ENEMIES...:

ANY CANDIDATE WHO DOESN'T RUN ON EDUCATION DEBT RELIEF AND FREE PUBLIC TUITION...:

In 2016, educational divides emerged as one of the top explanations of voters' choices: White voters without a bachelor's degree made up the Republican base, while a coalition of nonwhite voters and white college graduates formed the Democratic base. The 2018 midterms seemed to continue what we saw in 2016: Districts with bigger black populations, Hispanic populations or college-educated non-Hispanic white populations tended to vote more Democratic, while non-college-educated white voters remained strongly loyal to the GOP. We found a clear negative relationship (R = -0.72) between the Democratic margin of victory in a district and the share of the district's population age 25 or older who are non-Hispanic white and lack a bachelor's degree -- a group that pundits often call the "white working class."

NIKKI V. BETO BEGS FOR A MIDNIGHT PHONE CALL AD:

A poll published Tuesday found that when it comes to the Democratic presidential primary in 2020, members of one progressive organization don't lean toward former Vice President Joe Biden or Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) -- they prefer Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas).

THE BEGINNING OF DEMOCRATIC RULE:

Jerry Moran is a Republican senator from Kansas. He's obviously not pleased with Trump's performance. And it's not just that Trump voluntarily offered to take "the mantle" of responsibility for a government shutdown. He had invited the Democratic leaders to the White House because he needs their help and then he proceeded to spew a fire hydrant level of lies about the border wall and related topics that Schumer and Pelosi shot down with mocking contempt.

On several occasions, Pelosi begged Trump to stop forcing them to contradict him in public in front of the press before the negotiations could even begin, but he insisted on pressing on, only to get owned over and over again.

IT'S NOT HOMOPHOBIA WHEN WE DO IT:

Pelosi went from the White House to a Democratic caucus committee meeting, at which multiple outlets report that the soon-to-be speaker of the House went off on the president.

"It's like a manhood thing for him," the Washington Post quotes Pelosi as saying, citing a source in the room. "As if manhood could ever be associated with him. This wall thing."

THE WHEELCHAIR GAMES HIGH JUMP:

It is better to have an attorney general nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate in an undoubtedly legal fashion than to have an acting attorney general serving in circumstances of dubious legality.

It is better to have an attorney general who is steeped in the traditions and culture of the Justice Department than to have an acting attorney general who is understood at the department to be operating as the "eyes and ears" of a president who is busily attacking the institution.

It is better to have an attorney general who has run the department before and served with distinction in other senior roles within it than to have an acting attorney general whose experience is limited to a brief stint running a relatively sleepy U.S. Attorney's Office, and an even briefer stint as the chief of staff to the attorney general.

Read: Trump picks a Washington insider as his next attorney general

And it is better to have an attorney general with a long-standing professional reputation as a lawyer to protect than to have an acting attorney general who is professionally on the make and dependent on the president, and whose career has included no legal practice of any distinction but, instead, work for some rather shady outfits.

None of this is a character reference on behalf of Bill Barr, President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Justice Department. In fact, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about Barr's nomination.

They are, however, all reasons to be cautiously optimistic about his nomination. 

THE ANGLOSPHERIC DIFFERENCE:

MAYBE TALK TO YOUR OWN EDITORS ABOUT ANDY?:

The idea that the FBI used the Russia investigation to intervene in the election to hurt Trump and help Clinton has always strained credulity. After all, the Russia investigation remained secret during the election while the FBI not only publicly reopened the Hillary email investigation, it also confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation and exposed rifts with the Obama Department of Justice -- casting the FBI as heroically resisting Obama-administration pressure to avoid any "overt steps" in the Clinton Foundation investigation during the campaign.

Publicly the FBI torpedoed Clinton. Privately it investigated the Trump campaign.

And now, with each new revelation from the Mueller investigation, we understand that claims of "entrapment" are increasingly bizarre. The more we learn about Trump World's contacts with Russians or Russian operatives, the more astounding it becomes. Consider this partial summary:

Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, lied to Congress about his contacts with a Russian government official as he tried to negotiate a Trump Tower Moscow deal deep into the 2016 presidential campaign.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged asset of Russian intelligence.

Longtime Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone (and Stone's sidekick, conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi) allegedly tried to communicate with WikiLeaks, a "hostile intelligence service," to obtain advance information about Julian Assange's planned document dumps.

Donald Trump's son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law met with a purported Russian representative with the intention of receiving "official documents" as part of a "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about his own contacts with a professor who "claimed to have substantial connections with Russian government officials" and who claimed to have access to "dirt" on Hillary in the form of "thousands of emails."

Indeed, the list of known contacts between Russians and senior Trump officials (and Trump family members) keeps growing. In less partisan times they'd generate far more bipartisan concern. Even now, they should at the very least demolish the worst of the pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

THE ADMINISTRATION COULD HARDLY BE MORE TRANSPARENT...:

The Times article should be deeply troubling on multiple levels. First, it's obvious Kushner was as gullible and unsophisticated on foreign policy matters as his father-in-law, making him a sitting duck for manipulation by the Saudis ("The prince and his advisers, eager to enlist American support for his hawkish policies in the region and for his own consolidation of power, cultivated the relationship with Mr. Kushner for more than two years"). If you want to know how an administration could so naively and completely base its foreign policy on the Saudis and come to believe the kingdom was actually going to sponsor the peace process and get away with denying culpability in the gruesome murder of Khashoggi, one should start with the easily snowed Kushner.

Second, what in the world is a U.S. official doing advising a foreign leader on how to escape blame for the murder of a U.S. national, a crime so repulsive that a bipartisan push is underway in Congress to enact sanctions and end arms sales to the Saudis? Giving advice to Mohammed bin Salman under these circumstances demonstrates the sort of moral blindness we rarely witness (aside from Trump). "Success" -- letting MBS get away with murder -- would be a moral abomination quite apart from the foreign policy implications.

Third, Kushner -- whether because he has financial interests or because he's easily bamboozled -- has lost track of where his loyalties should lie. He owes the United States his undivided loyalty and should never be in a position in which he assumes defense of any foreign leader. He has created a classic conflict of interest in which we cannot determine if he is motivated solely by concern for U.S. foreign policy (which he foolishly and excessively tilted in the Saudis' direction) or because of personal loyalties or business interests.

? AYERS WAS ALREADY A D CANDIDATE:

After Nick Ayers, the Georgia political operative who was the president's top pick, declined the job -- something of a plot twist in a presidency notorious for its episodic cliffhangers -- Mr. Trump is without a Plan B. Several of his aides expressed frustration that months of intense campaigning to replace John F. Kelly -- an effort led by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president's elder daughter and son-in-law -- resulted in yet another chaotic staffing scramble in a White House splintered by factions and rife with turnover.

[A]s Chris Christie pointed out, the Mueller investigation, Southern District of New York, they probably have a lot more evidence than just the word of Michael Cohen and that has to worry the president," Stokols explained.

"Yes, he and Rudy Giuliani on some level believe they can continue to attack the investigators, to try and convince the public that there's something nefarious and something politically motivated about this," he noted. "But when all the facts are laid out and people can see the investigators' work, I think it's going to be very problematic for this president."

Republicans on Capitol Hill are also growing anxious.

"And there is some understanding, I think, inside the White House of just how dark it may be getting, especially in terms of conversations -- private conversations -- that people there are having with Republicans on the Hill who are starting to be concerned," Stokols reported.

"Republican lawmakers who are -- have a huge role to play in this if it goes forward -- are starting to tell me privately, some of them, that, you know, if there's obvious evidence, the bottom is going to fall out," he explained.

"They're not going to be able to stand by this White House and that's a looming problem for the president," he concluded.

Trump may even face a greater threat from the Southern District of New York investigations.

"It's much harder to stop what's happening in that office as opposed to with the special counsel's investigation," Stokols noted. "This train has left the station, there's really nothing that this White House can do about it."

"I think that's a source of frustration to the president. Also, it's difficult to politicize, it's difficult to go out and demonize that office because, as you pointed out already, that's a Trump appointee running that office," he added.

Trump has become increasingly concerned in recent weeks about what his administration is facing come January, when newly empowered Democrats are expected to unleash the full force of their oversight powers on the Trump administration.

Those include compelling Cabinet secretaries to testify, requesting the President's tax returns and scrutinizing some of his most controversial policy decisions. Trump often complained that Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, was not politically shrewd enough for the task.

The details of the President's discussions, which have not been reported on previously, reveal how close Ayers was to becoming chief of staff. He and Trump huddled several times over the last week in the residence of the White House, where they were afforded more privacy than in the staff-filled West Wing, but they ultimately could not agree to terms and Ayers declined the job.

Multiple sources familiar with Trump's mood told CNN he's frustrated with the Ayers process. One source described his mood as "super pissed." A second added he feels humiliated, a position he doesn't like to be in, because the President did not have a backup candidate prepared like he typically does when he's fielding people for jobs.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

The result of misguided policies is that the number of California homes built in the WUI grew by 34 percent between 1990 and 2010, bringing the total to nearly 5 million homes. Research published in Land Use Policy estimates that nearly 12 million acres of wild and agricultural lands in California will be replaced with houses by 2050. Nearly 1 million homes will be "in 'very high' wildfire severity zones." Regardless of the cause, wildfires will be more devastating than they have been.

Insurance companies are sending a clearer signal to homeowners regarding wildfire risk. State officials reported that non-renewals increased by 15 percent between 2015 and 2016 and that some premiums have increased five-fold. Such signals should encourage less development in the WUI.

Policies that require wildland-urban interface homeowners to support CAL-FIRE are another step in the direction of homeowner accountability. The third-largest source of funding for CAL FIRE is the State Responsibility Area Fire Prevention Fund. It required each WUI homeowner to pay a fee of $153.33 per year. Similarly, Santa Barbara's Wildlife Fire Suppression Assessment District requires 3,300 homes to pay only $65 per year for fire prevention services. The former, however, was suspended in 2018 until 2031, and the latter is tiny compared to fire prevention expenditures.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD...:

What, one has to ask, is the public-interest angle here? Fourteen-year-olds say stupid things constantly. Yes, all of them. What possible good can it do to punish them as adults for the thought crimes they committed as minors? Had Murray committed an actual crime -- say, shoplifting or joyriding or the like -- it would likely have been expunged from his record when he reached the age of majority, especially given how impressive a young man he has become in the interim. And even if it hadn't, the press would likely have been circumspect about bringing it up. But tweets? Apparently, we just Have to Know -- and on the day of his triumph, to boot.

REPUBLICAN JUDGES...:

In a meticulous 65-page opinion, Bybee--a conservative George W. Bush appointee--explained that the president cannot rewrite a federal statute to deny asylum to immigrants who enter the country without authorization. His decision for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a twofold rebuke to Trump, halting the president's legal assault on asylum-seekers and undermining his claim that any judge who blocked the order is a Democratic hack. The reality is that anyone who understands the English language should recognize that Trump's new rule is illegal. Like so many of Trump's attention-grabbing proposals, this doomed policy should never have been treated as legitimate in the first place.

Chief Justice John Roberts and the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, joined the court's four liberal jurists in turning away a pair of petitions from Kansas and Louisiana seeking the ban on abortion providers.

NOW THAT THE WALL IS COMPLETED...:

The U.S. this week will begin withdrawing many of the active duty troops sent to the border with Mexico by President Donald Trump just before the midterm election in response to a caravan of Central American migrants, U.S. officials said Monday.

About 2,200 of the active duty troops will be pulled out before the holidays, the officials said, shrinking an unusual domestic deployment that was viewed by critics as a political stunt and a waste of military resources.

SPIES AND RIFLES AND BEARS, OH MY:

In December 2015, Butina's Russian gun-rights organization called the Right to Bear Arms sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.

The convoy to Moscow included Keene, Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel Jim Liberatore, soon-to-be NRA president Peter Brownell and NRA donors Jim Gregory, Arnold Goldschlager and Hilary Goldschlager.

Alexander Torshin -- a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions -- played a key role in the trip and, allegedly, Russia's decade-long operation infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia claims that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president.

Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests.

"Just a brief note to let you know just how much I enjoyed meeting in Pittsburgh during the NRA annual meeting," Keene wrote in a 2011 letter later obtained by anti-corruption activists in Russia that extended a personal invitation to the NRA's conference the following year.

Keene added, "If there is anything any of us can do to help you in your endeavors . . . please don't hesitate to let us know."

"We will start organizing our own Russian NRA," Torshin tweeted shortly thereafter.

In 2011, Maria Butina became founding chair of a new Russian gun rights group called the Right to Bear Arms.

By 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the Right to Bear Arms conference in Moscow. "There are no peoples that are more alike than Americans and Russians," Keene said. "We're hunters. We're shooters. We value the same kinds of things... we need to work together."

Erickson accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.

Senate intelligence and finance committees have reportedly requested documents on the NRA's connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a record $54.4 million to put President Donald Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA's membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.

DON'T WORRY, RUDY CAN HANDLE HIMSELF....:

President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani is the star of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's (CREW) lawsuit filed on Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

CREW said, citing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that the point of this action was to find the "source of the leak of information to Rudolph Giuliani in October 2016 that then-FBI Director James B. Comey was going to reopen the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of personal email system." [...]

"In recent testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Mr. Comey confirmed that he had ordered a leak investigation after Mr. Giuliani's public statements indicated he had inside knowledge of the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton that appeared to stem from his communications with people in the FBI's New York field office," the filing continued.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

The news has stunned financial market participants and policy analysts, for two reasons.

First, never before has the United States attempted the extraterritorial rendition of a foreign citizen - Meng is a Chinese national - in connection with sanctions violations. It has imposed travel and banking restrictions, but seeking an arrest warrant for this is entirely without precedent.

Earlier this year, the US government banned exports of US computer chips to the Chinese telecommunications equipment ZTE in retaliation for violations of sanctions against Iran, but sought no arrests.

Second, Meng was arrested on December 1, the day that President Trump and his economic team dined with President Xi Jinping and his advisers at the Group of 20 Summit in Buenos Aires. Trump has every interest in striking a deal with China that would enable him to declare some measure of victory in a trade war, and China has shown every indication that it is willing to make concessions to the United States on intellectual property protection, financial market opening and, at least in rhetoric, on industrial policy, while increasing its imports from the United States.

WHEN YOUR DOLLAR IS LESS SOUND THAN ARGENTINA'S:

YOUR NEXT SEMI WILL BE A VOLT:

WE'RE HEADING SOUTHEAST on Interstate 10, headed into Tucson, Arizona, when we pass the group of men in orange jumpsuits and hard hats working on the side of the highway. "Inmates Working," the sign on the back of the truck parked on the shoulder says. It's the sort of sight that can generate a swirl of curiosity, pity, and distaste in a person, but the robot doesn't register anything about who these men are. It's thinking about that parked truck and the rule buried in its code that says when it senses something on the shoulder, it's supposed to clear out of the right lane. Checking it has plenty of room, it makes a quick juke to the left, pulling its 18 wheels and four human passengers over the dashed white line.

This lane change is just one of a variety of impressive maneuvers TuSimple's self-driving truck executes during a 40-minute demo ride I took with the company's CTO, Xiaodi Hou, on a sunny Friday morning last month. Between a smooth merge onto the highway and an easy exit, it cruised steadily, adjusting its speed and position as necessary to accommodate its human-piloted neighbors.

Powering the impressive showing are the sensors studded around the truck, including two lidar laser scanners and a forward-facing radar. The key to the system, though, is the handful of cameras looking forward, to the side, and to the back. In an increasingly crowded robo-trucking field, TuSimple's bid to stand out hinges on those cameras, which Hou says let the vehicle see as far as 1,000 meters ahead--nearly triple the range claimed by by most of its competitors. With them, Hou is attempting to solve one of the most dastardly problems facing engineers who are trying to make vehicles that drive themselves.

WHAT CREDIT WAS THERE TO DIS?:

CONFUSION TO THE ENEMIES:

Syria's President Bashar Assad says Israel deliberately caused Syrian ground batteries to down a Russian transport aircraft during an Israeli airstrike on September 17.

...AND CHEAPER...:

In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them - millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal.

The air is warm and humid - just as cockroaches like it - to ensure the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.

Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills, and cockroaches could be a way to get rid of hills of food scraps, providing nutritious food for livestock when the bugs eventually die and, some say, cures for stomach illness and beauty treatments.

On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tonnes of kitchen waste a day - the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.

The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.

Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people.

A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.

"Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste," said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.

Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock. "It's like turning trash into resources," said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi.

BUY MORE FLOUR:

[G]o 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.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

"Swagger" diplomacy sounds like a contradiction in terms, but Pompeo has made it his motto. He launched his Instagram account in September by rebranding State as "the department of Swagger." An op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal last month was laced with it, contemptuously dismissing congressional and media outrage over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. So was a speech he delivered last week in Brussels, in which he trashed the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the International Criminal Court, the Organization of American States, and, perhaps for good measure, the African Union.

The results? The Senate voted 63-to-37 to halt all U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's calamitous intervention in Yemen, with 14 Republicans joining all 49 Democrats. The head of the IMF coolly observed that Pompeo didn't know what he was talking about. And the European Union went ahead with plans to substitute euros for dollars in energy transactions, making it easier for the bloc to circumvent new U.S. sanctions on Iran.

IT'S A RICO PROSECUTION:

At the time of the payments to the two women, Mr. Trump was the head of the company, and although he turned over its management to his elder sons, he still owns it through a trust. While the prevailing view at the Justice Department is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the prosecutors in Manhattan could consider charging him after leaving office. It is also possible the prosecutors could seek his testimony before he leaves office if they continue the investigation into anyone else who might have had a role in the crimes, a person briefed on the matter said. [...]

In early September, before Mr. Cohen had completed his discussions with prosecutors and before the Southern District renewed its record request, Bloomberg reported that the Southern District was investigating Trump Organization executives other than Mr. Cohen. [...]

Mr. Cohen has told the Southern District prosecutors that he arranged the hush money to the two women at the direction of Mr. Trump. In the filing on Friday, the Southern District prosecutors put the weight of their office behind Mr. Cohen's admission, saying that "with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of" Mr. Trump. [...]

Mr. Cohen also pleaded guilty to "causing" an illegal corporate donation to Mr. Trump when he urged American Media Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer, to buy the rights to a former Playboy model's story of an affair with Mr. Trump. The deal effectively silenced the model, Karen McDougal, for the remainder of the campaign.

Mr. Cohen has also told the Southern District that Mr. Weisselberg, who is one of Mr. Trump's longtime loyalists, was involved in discussions about how to pay Ms. Daniels, according to a person briefed on the matter. Mr. Cohen linked him to the deal with American Media as well.

During the campaign, Mr. Cohen recorded a conversation he had with Mr. Trump about buying the rights to negative information American Media had collected on Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump, who did not know he was being recorded, that "I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up." The deal was signed by American Media and Mr. Cohen, according to court papers. But a person familiar with the arrangement said that Mr. Trump balked at reimbursing America Media, as had been agreed to, and the media company was never reimbursed in relation to Ms. McDougal.

But after the campaign, Mr. Weisselberg handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment to Ms. Daniels, according to people briefed on the matter. In early 2017, Mr. Cohen sought to recoup the $130,000 he paid out of his own pocket to Ms. Daniels as well as $50,000 he spent on a technology company in connection with the campaign, prosecutors have said.

Not only did the Trump Organization repay those expenses, but it agreed to pay taxes Mr. Cohen might have incurred on the reimbursements. This decision to "gross up" Mr. Cohen went against the Trump Organization's typical reimbursement practices, people briefed on the matter said.

DONALD WHO?:

The decision leaves Mr. Trump to contend with fresh uncertainty as he enters the 2020 campaign amid growing danger from the Russia investigation and from Democrats who have vowed tougher oversight, and could even pursue impeachment, after they take over the House next month. [...]

[T]wo people close to Mr. Trump said that a news release announcing Mr. Ayers's appointment had been drafted, and that the president had wanted to announce it as soon as possible.

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

France, Elabe poll:

"Would you say that you are a "#YellowVests"?"

'Yes (%)' 2017 Presidential election 1st round voters of...

Le Pen (FN-ENF): 42
Melenchon (FI-LEFT): 20
Fillon (LR-EPP): 16
Hamon (PS-S&D): 9
Macron (LREM-ALDE): 5

Sample Size: 1,000
Field Work: 27-28/11/18

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) December 9, 2018

HE'S A VICTIM OF LAWNMOWER PARENTING:

"It certainly looks like they are the kind of offenses that would call for impeachment hearings into the conduct of the president of the United States," Bernstein told host Brian Stelter. "There's something much more important than just impeachment going on, and that is the fact that Donald Trump for the first time in his life is cornered," he said.

The journalist pointed out that the former businessman "always could bully his way out of a corner" when he was managing his private company. "He always could buy his way out, cheat his way out. He is boxed in by Mueller, and the people around him know that he is," Bernstein pointed out.

READING, WRITING AND RIFLES:

JOINT OPERATIONS:

The Russian ambassador. A deputy prime minister. A pop star, a weightlifter, a lawyer, a Soviet army veteran with alleged intelligence ties.

Again and again and again, over the course of Donald Trump's 18-month campaign for the presidency, Russian citizens made contact with his closest family and friends, as well as figures on the periphery of his orbit.

Some offered to help his campaign and his real estate business. Some offered dirt on his Democratic opponent. Repeatedly, Russian nationals suggested Trump should hold a peacemaking sit-down with Vladi­mir Putin -- and offered to broker such a summit.

In all, Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and presidential transition, public records and interviews show.

NO WONDER THEY WANTED CLOSED DOORS:

The FBI's scrutiny of Donald Trump's wider presidential campaign team over fears of collusion with Kremlin election-meddling began as far back as the summer of 2016, according to the former FBI Director James Comey.

Comey revealed in testimony to congressional investigators that four Americans somehow connected to the campaign, but not Trump himself, had come into the FBI's sights in late July, well before polling day.

The details were made public for the first time on Saturday when the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees released the transcript of Friday's seven-hour, closed-door interview with Comey.

Comey's statements provide new information about the timing of the federal government's probe into the 2016 presidential battle between Trump and Democrat Party nominee Hillary Clinton, and could offer new clues about what's coming down the pipeline from the Department of Justice. [...]

Representatives in the closed-door interview posed several questions to Comey about the special counsel's investigation into obstruction. At one point Gowdy asked Comey about his termination from the FBI.

"He is entitled to his opinion, but to the extent--because he also stated that he is also a witness in the investigation," said Cecilia Bessee, a lawyer for the FBI present at the interview.

"Which investigation is he a witness in?" Gowdy asked.

"To the special counsel," Bessee said, switching her phrasing on Comey's witness status. "He said he is a potential witness."

"Well, you just said witness," Gowdy said. "Is there an obstruction of justice investigation?"

"I believe there is an investigation that the special counsel is looking into," Bessee said.

"NEW":

Fruscella was one of the young lions of the New York jazz scene in the late 1940s and early '50s. Moore was active in New Orleans in the early forties--he later called it his "training ground--then in New York. Later, he was in demand in San Francisco. Peripatetic throughout his career, Moore worked in Paris for a time with drummer Kenny Clarke, moved to Copenhagen, back to New York, then to Copenhagen again, where he died in 1973 after falling down a flight of stairs. Like Moore and so many others of their jazz generation, Fruscella had drug problems and died in 1969.

The intimacy of Fruscella's tone and phrasing made him an attraction during his New York period in the fifties and helped inspire Atlantic Records to record him. The 1955 sessions resulted in the album Tony Fruscella, which became  an underground favorite and was finally reissued as a 12-inch LP thirty years later. The "new" Fruscella-Moore album just issued was also recorded in 1955. The rhythm section was New York stalwarts Bill Triglia, piano; Teddy Kotick, bass and Bill Heine, drums. Preparation for the March, 1954, date was informal, as the preponderance of blues indicates. The two takes of "Bill Triglia's Original," with its interesting middle section, constitute an interesting compositional exception. The individuality and inventiveness of the soloists and are what matter here. We may learn nothing dramatically new about Fruscella and Moore, but we are rewarded with an hour of their music that until now has been all but unknown. 

IT WASN'T AS WHEN QUESTION, JUST A WHO QUESTION:

Recently in Texas, Samuel Little, 78, has been confessing to about 90 murders spanning 35 years. Now serving three life sentences for the murders of three Los Angeles women during the 1980s, he has been giving police details that seem to validate his claim to have killed in at least 14 states. A Texas district attorney says "we anticipate that Samuel Little will be confirmed as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history," and the New York Times observes, "How a serial murderer could go on killing for years, apparently without anyone noticing a pattern, seems perplexing."

That Gosnell could have been a much more prolific killer than Little is not perplexing, for two reasons. People who should have known did not want to know because knowing would have forced them to answer questions about when in an infant's gestation it is preposterous to deny that a baby is present. And given that most "reproductive rights" militants oppose restrictions on late-term abortions because pre-born babies supposedly have no more moral significance than tumors, Gosnell sincerely thought he was doing nothing wrong in guaranteeing dead babies for those who paid for late-term abortions. This is why, in the movie and as actually happened, a female prosecutor is accurately warned by her supervisor that she would be characterized as "the prosecutor who went after reproductive rights."

No one knows how many -- certainly hundreds, probably thousands -- spinal cords Gosnell snipped before the 2010 raid on his "clinic." Law enforcement came looking for illegal drugs. They also found jars of babies' feet, fetal remains in toilets and milk cartons, and a pervasive smell of cat feces -- in a facility that had not been inspected for 17 years. Pennsylvania nail salons receive biennial inspections.

The New York Times Magazine printed a candid interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including this portion:

Q: "Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid abortions for poor women?"

Justice Ginsburg: "Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae -- in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion."

FOR ORIGINALISM:

During the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, the demand for labor in this new, growing nation meant that almost anyone who arrived here was allowed into the country with just a physical exam--unless they fell into a few deeply exclusionary categories. Before 1921, the only immigration laws that existed were ones that restricted Chinese people from immigrating (repealed only in 1943), as well as excluding most other Asians and certain categories of people such as prostitutes, those with "dangerous and loathsome contagious disease," or "the insane." Later, in 1921 and 1924, quotas were established based on race and nationality, heavily favoring immigrants from Western Europe. 

But because there were few laws and little bureaucratic control over who came and stayed, undocumented immigration was the norm for generations. As much as "amnesty" has become a dirty word today, amnesties were applied to waves of European immigrants who were here without proper authorization. The 1929 Registry Act, for example, allowed "honest law-abiding alien[s] who may be in the country under some merely technical irregularity" to register as permanent residents if they could prove they had been here since 1921 and were of "good moral character."  

It wasn't until 1965 that the national-origin quota system was abolished and replaced with a system whereby immigrants were admitted on the basis of relationships to immediate family members or employers. The last major overhaul of the immigration system to increase legal admissions caps, in 1990, focused largely on employment-based visas.

Complex and multifaceted as our history on immigration is, it is marked by two deep traditions that are at war with each other. One is inextricably bound up with bigotry, while the other is tied to the spirit of generosity and renewal of a country that is always being shaped by those who come here. This battle has to be fought in every generation, and it has never been easy. [...]

As America grows and ages, our economy needs immigrants to replenish America's work force as baby-boomers age. In the fast-growing industries of domestic care, home health aides, nursing assistants, and personal care aides, immigrants make up the vast majority of workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that in those industries alone, from 2016 to 2026, the US will need workers to fill 1.2 million jobs. Yet our legal immigration system is groaning under the weight of outdated category caps that simply don't meet the needs of our economy or our people. The number of visas for nonagricultural workers (such as construction workers, housekeepers, or forest workers) is stuck at the 1990 level of 66,000 visas--even though our economy requires millions. Just last year, more than 3.9 million US citizens and permanent residents who had applied legally for their closest family members--parents, spouses, children, and siblings--were in an immigration processing "backlog" that could take decades to clear. (Contrary to the "chain migration" narrative, these immediate family members are the only ones eligible to migrate via the family-based system.)

There is also still bipartisan consensus that we must fulfill our moral and legal obligations (under US and international law) to take asylum seekers and refugees from around the world. Refugees and asylum seekers are often fleeing the very forces of oppression, war, and dictatorship that threaten the world's safety, including America's. In some cases, the United States has been complicit in propping up foreign leaders that become dictators, or in fostering economic conditions that lead to devastation. In all cases, consigning millions of people to refugee camps with little freedom, dire living conditions, and no hope of determining their own futures becomes a moral question for all nations, including those that seek to lead the world. Despite statements to the contrary from this White House, the US ranks only fiftieth in the world for welcoming refugees, and leaders from all faiths (including evangelicals) have emphasized the need to strengthen, not cut, our refugee resettlement program. 

It is critical that Americans understand that there currently is no orderly, functioning process for people to come to America. Under Presidents Reagan and Bush, there were superficial, temporary fixes, such as legalizations or "amnesties" for those who were undocumented at the time. But without underlying reform so that the system functions, we were bound to end up in the same place again. Most Republicans--and too many Democrats--have given in to the simplistic narratives supplied by anti-immigrant forces, throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into mass deportations, a vast labyrinth of expensive private prisons, and a border that is already one of the most secure and militarized in the world. 

90-10 NATION:

For state and local leaders who want to pursue a bipartisan agenda, including the 20 new governors who will take office in 2019, a new national survey shows that investing in public health is not only smart policy but also good politics. In a rare level of consensus across political affiliation, geography, gender, race, income and education, 89 percent of Americans said they believe that public health departments play an important role in the health of their communities.

Commissioned by the de Beaumont Foundation, the poll also finds that 66 percent of voters believe every community should have basic public health protections and that 57 percent are willing to pay higher taxes to ensure that everyone has access to those services.

Voters placed a particular emphasis on stopping the spread of communicable diseases, bringing other government agencies together in emergencies, protecting environmental quality and supporting child and maternal health. Expressing support for these basic public health protections were overwhelming majorities of African-Americans (85 percent), liberals (78 percent), Hispanics (75 percent), mothers (74 percent), working-class people (72 percent) and Northeasterners (71 percent), along with slimmer majorities of conservatives (55 percent), white men (53 percent) and fathers (51 percent).

THERE'S A REASON HE CONTINUED TO SERVE DONALD:

Kelly, lest we forget, arrived at the White House from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where he had quickly and proudly built a reputation "as one of the most aggressive enforcers of immigration law in recent American history," to quote from a scathing evaluation of his six-month tenure in charge of DHS by the New Yorker's Jonathan Blitzer. On Kelly's watch, wrote Blitzer, "immigration arrests in the U.S. increased by forty per cent and DHS became one of the few branches of the federal government that has been both willing and able to execute Trump's policy priorities."

In March 2017, while defending Trump's 'Muslim ban', Kelly had threatened to walk out of a meeting with Arab-American and Latino groups in Michigan. In April 2017, in a speech in Washington D.C., the DHS Secretary had told members of Congress to either change the country's immigration laws or "shut up and support the men and women on the front lines." In May 2017, at a Coast Guard ceremony, the retired general was caught on a hot mic telling Trump, who was holding a ceremonial sword, that he should "use that on the press, sir."

SO WHY did anyone with functioning eyes or ears assume he would do anything different at the White House? Why did political and media elites pretend he would be a sober and moderate figure, a check or restraint on the president, rather than Trump's nasty and brutish mini-me?

How else are we supposed to describe his gaffe-laden, controversy-filled 17 months in charge? This was a chief of staff who told Fox News that "the lack of the ability to compromise led to the Civil War," while praising the pro-slavery Confederate general Robert E. Lee as an "honorable man"; who protected and promoted White House staff secretary Rob Porter -- a man accused of domestic abuse by both of his ex-wives -- and described him as a man of "true integrity and honor, and I can't say enough good things about him"; who repeatedly misled the press about what he knew about Porter and when he knew it, which led to one of his White House colleagues calling him a "big fat liar"; who claimed the "vast majority" of undocumented immigrants "don't integrate well" and "don't have skills"; who described immigrants who were eligible for DACA but had failed to apply for it as "too lazy to get off their asses"; who said he wanted to reduce the number of refugees admitted into the United States to "between zero and one"; who defended the separation of migrant children from their parents on the grounds that the kids would be "put into foster care or whatever" and bragged that the "big name of the game is deterrence"; who signed a "Cabinet order" authorizing the (potentially illegal) use of lethal force by troops at the border; who lamented that women were no longer treated as "sacred and looked upon with great honor" but who was also accused of suggesting women were more emotional than men; who breached security protocols by firing White House aide Omarosa Manigault in the Situation Room and threatening her in the process; who boasted to Manigault on a secret recording that everyone in the White House "works for me and not the president"; who made a series of false accusations against black member of Congress, Frederica Wilson, and then swore he would "never apologize" for lying about her; and who shamelessly allowed Trump to use his dead son to attack former President Barack Obama.

WHEN EVEN ANDY RUNS UP THE WHITE FLAG...:

The major takeaway from the 40-page sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors Friday for Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal attorney, is this: The president is very likely to be indicted on a charge of violating federal campaign finance laws.

It has been obvious for some time that President Trump is the principal subject of the investigation still being conducted by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Cohen earlier pleaded guilty to multiple counts of business and tax fraud, violating campaign finance law, and making false statements to Congress regarding unsuccessful efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Yes, Cohen has stated he did the hands-on work in orchestrating hush-money payments to two women who claim to have had sexual liaisons with Trump many years ago (liaisons Trump denies).

But when Cohen pleaded guilty in August, prosecutors induced him to make an extraordinary statement in open court: the payments to the women were made "in coordination with and at the direction of" the candidate for federal office - Donald Trump.

Prosecutors would not have done this if the president was not on their radar screen. Indeed, if the president was not implicated, I suspect they would not have prosecuted Cohen for campaign finance violations at all. 

OUR TWO PRO-LIFE PARTIES:

Policy also plays a role. When Mikhail Gorbachev introduced restrictions on alcohol in the Soviet Union in 1985, consumption and suicide both plunged; something similar has happened since Vladimir Putin introduced new rules in 2005. Restricting access to easy means to kill oneself can make a big difference because suicide is a surprisingly impulsive act. Of 515 people who survived the leap from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge between 1937 and 1971, 94% were still alive in 1978--which suggests that a suicide postponed is likely to be a suicide prevented. The banning of toxic pesticides has had a clear impact on rates in countries such as South Korea and Sri Lanka. Selling paracetamol and aspirin in only very small quantities has also been shown to reduce rates. Investing in health services--particularly palliative care, which helps make life tolerable for the sick--can make a difference. And if America restricted gun ownership, rates would almost certainly crash. America's rate is twice Britain's (which has tight gun controls), half America's suicides are by firearm, and the difference in rates between states, which range from 26 per 100,000 each year in Montana to five in Washington, DC, is largely explained by variations in levels of gun ownership.

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

Alternate theories abound, but the game evolved from a game called "totum" or "teetotum," often played in England and Ireland around Christmastime, writes David Golinkin, a conservative rabbi and professor at Jerusalem's Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, in an article for the My Jewish Learning website. By 1720, the game was known as "T-totum" or "teetotum," and by 1801, the four letters on the top stood for English words. There was a German equivalent too, where the spinning top was called "torrel" or "trungl" in German, and "fargl," "varfl" or "dreidel" in Yiddish. This spread continued: An Eastern European game emerged, based on the German version. And when Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, some called the spinning top a "sevivon."

Put simply, the game of chocolate gambling that American Jews know and love was a product of cultural assimilation, which is ironic, because Hanukkah's history details a civil war between two factions of Jews fighting over just that: assimilation.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

WHY DID THE U.S. ASK CANADA TO DO THIS NOW, WHEN THESE CHARGES HAVE BEEN KNOWN FOR YEARS?

McLaughlin: I'm giving the government a lot of credit here, but it could have just taken the Justice Department this long to develop a case in a way they think could stand up in court. But the timing of it is just bizarre. In a normal administration -- and I worked in a bunch of normal ones -- what happens is you have the national security advisor convene around a table in the White House Situation Room representatives from every major agency to discuss the pros and cons of a step like this. Instead, what we have here looks like three parts of the U.S. government operating without talking to each other: the Justice Department, the White House and the trade negotiators. ouse and touse and the trade negotiators.

BUT DON'T WE HAVE CONCERNS ABOUT HUAWEI?

Absolutely. There is ample evidence that, like most major Chinese companies, it is closely aligned with the military and security services and working to assist their intelligence collection and influence missions while pursuing -- very successfully -- legitimate business objectives. And there is also no doubt that China's trade practices are unfair and in need of reform. But while these issues justify pushing back on national security grounds, they are not persuasive reasons to arrest a prominent foreign national. That requires evidence of criminal behavior.

SO WHAT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR COULD BE INVOLVED?

Well, many sanctions violations do not have criminal penalties. More likely, they result in fines and denial of trade, as with another Chinese telecom company, ZTE. One possibility is that she is being charged under a provision that requires foreign companies selling to Iran to have less than 10 percent U.S. components in their products. Or perhaps there is some espionage violation that will be charged. We'll have to wait and see.

VULNERABLE? HE WON'T BE ON THE TICKET:

Keeping in mind that Trump received just 46 percent of the popular vote in 2016 and how little he has attempted to expand his base beyond that point, a president of 20 months who has yet to see a Gallup weekly job-approval rating above 45 percent--which also happens to be his approval rating in the networks' exit poll, with 54 percent disapproving--is very, very vulnerable.

Consistently, Gallup polling has shown a ratio of at least 1.4 voters strongly disapproving his performance for each one who strongly approves, and in the exit poll, 46 percent strongly disapproved while just 31 percent strongly approved. These are very troubling signs. Two years ago, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 4 points among independents while Republican House candidates topped their Democratic rivals by 6 points among independents. In this year's midterms, the 30 percent of the electorate that described themselves as independents voted for Democrats by a 12-point margin, 54 to 42 percent,

Maybe Trump can squeeze out another Electoral College majority while losing the national popular vote, but the popular-vote advantage of 9.4 million that Democrats had in House races this year dwarfs the 2.9-million edge that Clinton had in 2016. Democrats may find a way to blow this upcoming election, but it would take considerable effort to do so.

Economic activity continued to increase across much of the U.S. at the end of fall, but uncertainty among businesses appeared to be growing as tariffs and rising rates muddied the outlook for the coming year, the Federal beige book report indicated. https://t.co/Eb3tiGpg84

— Real Time Economics (@WSJecon) December 9, 2018

SO NOT A DUNCE, A WIMP NOR A RACIST?:

Amid the coverage and commentary commemorating the passing of George H.W. Bush, it was nice of the media to debunk the 1992 New York Times front page story characterizing the 41st president as being flummoxed by a supermarket scanner. Written by a reporter who wasn't present at the event, it was -- in today's parlance -- fake news.

It was even classier for former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas to reiterate his mea culpa for his magazine's bizarre 1987 cover story calling an acclaimed war hero a "wimp."

It would have been far better, however, had the record finally been corrected about the Bush campaign's much-maligned "Willie Horton ad." Instead, the nation's most prominent news outlets doubled-down on a slander that is now 30 years old: namely, that under the spell of Rasputin-like political operative Lee Atwater, Bush ran a dirty campaign with racist overtones to get elected president. [...]

The Bush campaign entered the fray in June after an authoritative piece on Dukakis' furlough program, "Getting Away With Murder," ran in Reader's Digest. Atwater and Roger Ailes, who ran the media operation for Bush, knew it was an explosive issue. They also knew it was delicate: Horton is African-American and his victims were white.

Ailes forbade the campaign from releasing Horton's photograph. When the campaign produced its now-famous Massachusetts prison "revolving door" ad, it was filmed in Utah, in sepia tones, and the inmates appeared to be white, black, and Hispanic. Earlier, two conservative provocateurs, Larry McCarthy and Floyd Brown, produced a low-budget ad showing Horton's picture and mentioning his name. Democrats pounced. This is racist, they said. Some of the media followed suit and some didn't, although with each passing year, the "vile" Willie Horton ad narrative entrenched itself more deeply in the collective memories of Democrats and the media.

Those closest to the case were the most nonplussed by this characterization. Dane Strother, a former Eagle-Tribune reporter who became a Democratic political consultant, told me race was never an issue when Dukakis' furlough program came under scrutiny. "It wasn't about racism," he said. "That didn't come up. Not ever."

One reason was that as the paper dug deeper into the story, they found other victims of crimes, not all of them white, and other furloughed prisoners who'd committed violent crimes, not all of them black.

Among the details unearthed by the Eagle-Tribune was that of the 80 prisoners listed as "escaped" by the state, all but four were on furlough when they disappeared.

I WANT A FULL AND RICH SOCIAL LIFE...:

The main body of thought overlooked by anti-liberalism of all sorts, then, from Deneen's gentle communitarianism to fascism and communism, is economics after the 1860s and an economic history after the 1940s that uses economics. Deneen, like most of our deep social thinkers, has not opened a book of economics since Marx or of economic history since Polanyi. Like most intellectuals, therefore, he does not understand how a market economy works and what its actual history has been. The facts and logic adduced from the elderly or tertiary books on which he relies are regularly nonfacts, nonlogic, fake news.

Deneen believes, on the contrary, that the poor have become immiserated. But, like Marx, he is mistaken. "Inequality" is the fashionable cry, which of course Deneen echoes. But according to careful statistical studies, world inequality among individuals has declined radically in the past thirty years. And even in rich countries, the inequality we hear so much about has been grossly mismeasured. For example, measures of inequality of wealth, such as Thomas Piketty's, ignore the largest source of modern wealth: human capital. For another example, the alleged decline of the middle class in the U.S. turns out to be mostly a rise into the upper middle class, not a fall into social classes C, D, and E. For still another--the examples are legion--the quality of goods has risen sharply, making "stagnant" money earnings more valuable. Think, to take a plebian example, of modern auto tires or, of course, the amazing power of the modern smartphone, owned now even by the plebes.

During all the millennia before 1800, income per person in today's prices for the average human bumped along at about $2 or $3 a day. It was tough, at the present level of Mali and Afghanistan or of the hard-socialist regimes. Furthermore, hierarchy prevailed. Born a milkmaid, you died a milkmaid. Doubly tough. Your smart option therefore was to look inside, following Stoic and Christian and Buddhist teaching, to take up your cross, or prayer wheel, and quit whining. You'll get pie in the sky when you die, and anyway you might acquire along the way true enlightenment.

By now, however, income per person in the same prices is about $33 a day worldwide, the condition of Brazil. And the liberalism invented in the eighteenth century has partly eroded hierarchy, the condition of Australia. This amazing fact is unknown by most intellectuals damning capitalism and is unappreciated by them even when by some chance they catch wind of it.

One is led to wonder if the two events are connected, the Great Enrichment and the inclusive liberalism Deneen dislikes. They are. In a country like Japan or Sweden or the U.S. that has embraced liberalism most warmly, incomes per person as a whole-population average have risen from the old and ancient $2 or $3 a day to anything from $90 to $120, and much more if the person is highly skilled--sufficient, say, for a condo on Printer's Row in Chicago and a trip to watch birds in Antarctica. The increase is 3,000 percent in the median or average. And the poorest have gained the most. The very rich get another diamond bracelet. Splendid. But the poor get food, housing, antibiotics, and education denied to most people during all of history but the liberal era. By now, descendants by the billions of illiterate slaves and milkmaids have acquired the instruments for full human flourishing. They may not all take it. But that merely suggests that we join Deneen in preaching to them to leave off reality TV and Fritos and get to work on their Greek and Beethoven piano sonatas.

Yet the fact that liberalism resulted in billions of people having full lives does not move Deneen, or other right conservatives and left environmentalists, who fiercely attack a "consumerism" that has in truth characterized human life always. Deneen will have none of it. He wants us to go back to Brook Farm.

The authors agree that liberalism, understood as it is broadly instantiated in the liberal, democratic capitalist West, is in crisis, but diverge regarding its nature and their prescriptions.

Goldberg claims that the happy combination of political liberty, representative government, free markets and technological creativity resulted in what he considers the "Miracle" of liberal democratic capitalism, which has provided previously unimaginable wealth, comfort, freedom and security. But if this is so, then why is the liberal West in danger of committing suicide? He asserts that it is not only because complacency, boredom and ingratitude induce us to forget how much liberalism has done for us, but also because liberalism is unnatural.

We may live in a liberal culture and polity, but we have not significantly evolved from our tribal, stone-age ancestors. Tribal chiefs and divinely-ordained leaders are more natural for us than democratic self-government and freedom. Liberalism, in Goldberg's account, does not give us an all-encompassing identity that provides a sense of meaning. And so many people are readily tempted back to our natural tribalism, which promises to reunite the fragments of the fractured liberal self.

Although Deneen is not insensate to the positives of liberalism, from rising standards of living to the freedoms liberal regimes promise, he fears that as liberalism becomes more dominant and therefore more pure, the blessings that it has provided will either be lost or prove not to be worth their price. The core of Deneen's argument is that liberalism carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and thus is failing because it has triumphed--it betrays itself as it fulfills itself. As liberalism muscles out older traditions and practices that had restrained its excesses, it becomes increasingly self-destructive and, ironically, illiberal. At the heart of this phenomenon is liberalism's determination to liberate human appetite.

For Deneen, liberalism is primarily a philosophy of individual emancipation, with an emphasis on human control of nature as a means to achieve this. Instead of controlling our appetites, we indulge them. Instead of seeking our place in family, community and creed, we seek liberation from their constraints. Instead of accepting a place in the order of the cosmos, we seek dominance. Technological prowess is put in the service of fulfilling our desires. But the scientifically-aided liberation of human appetite makes us slaves to our passions, unable to sate our inflamed desires.

And in the end, it makes us slaves to the state as well. 

SURE AS YOU'S BORN:

Carpenter's The Thing strongly echoes the same themes first put forth by the American master of nihilist horror, H. P. Lovecraft. It isn't a stretch to say that most contemporary horror as we encounter it in movies and on television was influenced by Lovecraft's disdainful, almost paranoid hatred for the world as it is. French novelist Michel Houellebecq writes in his book-length appreciation of Lovecraft, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life:

Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition towards chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. And human actions are as free and stripped of meaning as the unfettered movement of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure "Victorian fictions." All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant.

Lovecraft's wholly materialistic fiction, his disgust at being fettered by the vicissitudes of the natural world, is made radiant with the knowledge that, though things exist, their existence is entirely arbitrary. He gets us coming and going, in other words. He's disgusted by the sheer fact of existence, and simultaneously horrified that it carries no meaning beyond itself. This is the pure nihilism of gore and the animating pathos of films such as Hostel and Saw.

When it comes to this kind of horror, human institutions are merely a thin film protecting us from the truly revolting nature of life. Materialist horror operates by peeling back the pathetically flimsy protections of culture to reveal the naked and vast horror of what it considers pure existence. The horror itself results from life being completely denuded of its mystery, or perhaps from finding mystery to be an inadequate illusion we use to spare ourselves from the bare facts of existence. There's something pornographic in this compulsion to expose in nihilistic horror. Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han defines the erotic against the pornographic as something that interrupts, tarries, and holds us at a distance, while the pornographic presents itself as bare fact delivered directly and without intermediary. Narrative is erotic, but facts are pornographic. The supernatural suggests a distance between subject and object, but the aptly named "torture porn" of films like Saw collapse the space between meaning and existence, reducing both to a false equivalency: a severed limb shown in close up is the totality of meaning in the universe.

Opposing The Thing, the bare fact, is The Presence. Kirk's fiction is rich with it. Though his output was relatively modest, comprising in total some twenty-two stories along with three novels that were written predominantly in short bursts throughout the '60s and '70s, Kirk's fiction burns even more incandescently for its brevity and focus. Collected and recollected in books such as Ancestral Shadows and The Surly Sullen Bell, Kirk's fiction isn't always easy to acquire. Special orders and calls to book dealers are occasionally necessary for a few of the more rare collections, yet he always remains timely: the dynamics of The Presence being echoed in both the subject matter of the works themselves and their occasionally enigmatic physical existence, suggesting a constant interplay between the ephemeral and eternal.

Kirk's fiction is suffused with The Presence. You find it sensed by both the older man and younger boy in "An Encounter by Mortstone Pond." The Presence haunts Stoneburner in "What Shadows We Pursue." We're almost tricked into thinking the eponymous Presence has betrayed itself by materializing in "Uncle Isaiah." Old House of Fear is absolutely permeated with Presence. But what is it? It might help to think of The Presence as the exact inverse of The Thing. If The Thing is horrible because it exists, and because it implies a nihilistic void in which the material world is all that exists, then The Presence is summarized by T. E. Hulme's phrase "Nothing suggests itself." The Presence, a sense of something that can't quite be acquired by the senses, intimates a metaphysical order lying outside the material world that also gives that world coherence.

The horror of The Thing is a plaintive howl of nihilism. The horror of The Presence is a humbling challenge to our pragmatic, everyday experience of the world. The Thing is disgusting, but The Presence is awful in the traditional sense of the word, as being full of awe. It unsettles and challenges while offering a terrible glimpse of the sublime. A few contemporary cinematic examples of this school of horror can be found in The Sixth Sense, The Others, and perhaps surprisingly The Exorcist.

The spiritual crisis of evil is about God and the devil in a spiritual war for our souls. But there is a worldly dimension to this crisis. We see Regan's mother and her friends--successful, upper-class people with social and artistic pretensions, who nonetheless have something wrong with them that goes beyond sins and crimes we have learned to tolerate. They are respectable, but irresponsible. A socialite party, with its levity, is interrupted by a girl who is possessed, but no one can cares to notice; it is a rebuke of the preference for respectability over a moral effort to protect the innocent.

The exorcist of the title, Father Merrin (played wonderfully by Max von Sydow), only comes to the possessed girl in the third act. Exorcism is not our first idea--it is, in fact, our last resort. This is not merely a description of our liberal, secular society, but also of Church practice, which requires adequate scientific investigation before addressing the issue of possession. At the same time, the story uses this to dramatize how incredible evil is in the literal sense--we cannot believe what we are seeing, we do not know how to deal with it.

The story establishes two further points related to this problem. First, the beginning of the movie, which would seem to have nothing to do with the story of modern America, deals with the ancient past--the archaeological digging up of an ancient idol in the Middle East. We take a scientific attitude to old ideas about evil, thinking they cannot have any power now. We take a progressive view of power: we moderns have far more power now than has ever existed before, so what is there to fear? As a society, we have achieved unimagined powers; but individually, each one of us remains mortal and vulnerable and limited.

Second, Father Merrin himself has little doubt about the true character of the problem he is facing. He is able to explain to Father Karras that the experience of evil befalling a child, perhaps our greatest fear, is about desperation, which would make us "see ourselves as ugly and animal; to make us reject the possibility that God could love us." Redemption would seem impossible if we gave in to that desperation.

The podcast turns to horror, Catholic and scientific. I am joined by veteran and writer Scott Beauchamp to talk about William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist and about Russell Kirk's views on horror -- having read his very humanistic essay on horror in Modern Age. We talk about body horror as a way of confronting evil, of raising existential questions: Is being human special, after all, or just another meaningless accident? Next week, we turn to the scientific horror for comparison-The Thing.

WE BELIEVE IN ECONOMICS:

Nineteen nations "believe" in climate change. How are they backing up their statement of faith?

China was praised for signing on to the Paris Climate Agreement and in Argentina reaffirmed its commitment to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, however, China increased those emissions by 1.7 percent.

India, the fourth largest source for CO2, saw their emissions grow by 4.6 percent in 2017. Luckily for them, they too were praised for signing that "nonbinding communiqué."

Overall, the European Union raised their CO2 output by 1.5 percent.

France, home of the Paris Agreement, is leading the diplomatic effort to save the planet. They increased their greenhouse gas emissions by 3.6 percent.

Pollution in France will likely rise further this year from the burning cars alone. French President Emmanuel Macron announced a sharp increase in gas and diesel taxes last month. This sparked the largest riots seen in Paris in nearly 50 years as yellow-vested citizens blockaded roadways, burned vehicles and damaged artwork and infrastructure.

If the nations paying lip service to climate change aren't meeting their goals, imagine how poorly the oil-drilling, coal-mining Americans must be doing. President Donald Trump was pilloried for withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and for being only G20 leader who refused to sign the climate change statement in Argentina.

From 2016 to 2017, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 2.7 percent. Emissions from large power plants declined 4.5 percent since 2016, and nearly 20 percent since 2011. All without signing a piece of paper in Paris or Buenos Aires.

NEEDS FRED, WANTS FREDO:

While Mr. Trump is eager for Mr. Ayers to join that list, it is unclear whether the aide, who lacks experience in government beyond his stint with Mr. Pence, is what the president needs in the top West Wing post as he heads into what allies expect will be the most tumultuous year yet of his presidency. [...]

When it became clear that Mr. Trump, who has an unusual affinity for Mr. Ayers, was leaning toward him to replace Mr. Kelly, several top aides told the president that they took issue with it and that it could lead to a staff exodus.

If Mr. Ayers accepts the job, his appointment would be seen inside the White House as a coup for Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who clashed with Mr. Kelly and are seen as close to Mr. Ayers. The view inside is that they are now "running the building," one of the president's allies said. [...]

Mr. Kelly's departure is expected to have a ripple effect across the upper echelons of the West Wing staff, as well as in Mr. Trump's cabinet. One of the biggest question marks is the fate of Kirstjen M. Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security. Ms. Nielsen has clashed repeatedly with Mr. Trump, and at times relied on Mr. Kelly, who was previously her boss at the agency, to defend her.

For weeks, Mr. Trump has been offering her position to other people. At one point, Mr. Trump even broached the possibility that Thomas P. Bossert, a former homeland security adviser, would return and run the agency. But Mr. Bossert, who was forced out of the administration after John R. Bolton became national security adviser, made it clear he would not accept the position.

The ceaseless West Wing backbiting that captures headlines has belied the reality of working there, which is that aides form tight cliques and burrow into those friendships to endure the chaos of the work environment.

Other protégés of Mr. Kelly like Zachary D. Fuentes, the deputy chief of staff, are also seen as particularly vulnerable without Mr. Kelly in the top job. Mr. Fuentes, who has earned ridiculing nicknames, including "Zotus" (a play on Potus, short for president of the United States) and "prime minister," for his large ego, has already approached other departments in the administration for a position, but has cultivated few allies. Mr. Trump continues to blame him and Mr. Kelly for letting him miss a World War I battlefield commemoration outside Paris because of bad weather.

The White House communications office, which Mr. Trump has complained about for two years, is also set to undergo a restructuring. The overlap in officials has bred chronic confusion. 

A TRANSACTIONAL MAN WITH NO CHITS TO CASH:

BLUNDER BUST:

The Wisconsin GOP's lame-duck power play was not the death of democracy. But it was bad enough: petty, vindictive, and self-destructive. It was, as the saying goes, worse than a crime. It was a blunder. [...]

Truth be told, Republicans can mount a case for all of this, starting with precedent. Eight years ago, Democrats under former Governor Jim Doyle tried to use a lame-duck session to ratify state-employee union contracts that would have greatly limited Walker's flexibility. Republicans remember how the Democrats, desperate for a win, brought back a disgraced state representative named Jeff Wood to vote on the contracts. Wood was actually still serving a jail term for his repeated drunk-driving arrests and used his work-release privileges to cast a crucial vote. (The measure ultimately failed in the state Senate.)

Republicans can also argue that they were merely affirming the powers of a co-equal branch of government (something their counterparts in Washington might wish to emulate.) Their case, however, is weakened by their lack of concern for excessive executive powers prior to the November 6 election. In any case, they have big majorities in both legislative chambers and will be able to provide a powerful check on the incoming governor after he is sworn in, even without the last-minute legislation. In other words, the lame-duck bill only marginally increases their preexisting legislative clout.

"WHERE THE HECK IS THAT AMANTILLADO?":

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is methodically lining up his targets for what increasingly looks like a recommended indictment of Mr Trump for more than one federal crime. On Friday, "individual #1", as Mr Trump is called in the filings, was implicated in a federal crime in the sentencing reports for Michael Cohen, his estranged personal lawyer, and Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman.

The filings were heavily redacted. But even from what was visible, they establish connections between the Russian government and people around Mr Trump from as early as November 2015 -- eight months before he took the Republican nomination. The chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, once said that Mr Trump "had more Russia connections than Aeroflot". Mr Mueller has by no means finished mapping them out. "Individual #1" also directed Mr Cohen to break federal election laws in the payment of hush money to two women.

The looming denouement of Mr Mueller's investigations coincide with the Democratic takeover of the US House of Representatives, which formally starts in early January. Mr Trump remains fixated before then on securing funding for his border wall. But the walls closing in on his presidency are more tangible than the one on the Mexican border.

PITCHING WOO:

The prince and his advisers, eager to enlist American support for his hawkish policies in the region and for his own consolidation of power, cultivated the relationship with Mr. Kushner for more than two years, according to documents, emails and text messages reviewed by The New York Times.

A delegation of Saudis close to the prince visited the United States as early as the month Mr. Trump was elected, the documents show, and brought back a report identifying Mr. Kushner as a crucial focal point in the courtship of the new administration. He brought to the job scant knowledge about the region, a transactional mind-set and an intense focus on reaching a deal with the Palestinians that met Israel's demands, the delegation noted.

Even then, before the inauguration, the Saudis were trying to position themselves as essential allies who could help the Trump administration fulfill its campaign pledges. In addition to offering to help resolve the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, the Saudis offered hundreds of billions of dollars in deals to buy American weapons and invest in American infrastructure. Mr. Trump later announced versions of some of these items with great fanfare when he made his first foreign trip: to an Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The Saudis had extended that invitation during the delegation's November 2016 visit.

"The inner circle is predominantly deal makers who lack familiarity with political customs and deep institutions, and they support Jared Kushner," the Saudi delegation wrote of the incoming administration in a slide presentation obtained by the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, which provided it to The Times. Several Americans who spoke with the delegation confirmed the slide presentation's accounts of the discussions.

The courtship of Mr. Kushner appears to have worked. [...]

"Kushner made clear his lack of familiarity with the history of Saudi-American relations and he asked about its support for terrorism," the team noted in the slide presentation prepared for Riyadh. "After the discussion, he expressed his satisfaction with what was explained about the Saudi role in fighting terrorism" and what the Saudis said was their international leadership in fighting Islamist extremism.

HE WAS JUST THERE FOR THE NATIVISM:

THE PROBLEM WITH A FAMILY BUSINESS BUILT ON CRIMINALITY...:

The potential innocent explanations for Donald Trump's behavior over the last two years have been steadily stripped away, piece by piece. Special counsel Robert Mueller and investigative reporters have uncovered and assembled a picture of a presidential campaign and transition seemingly infected by unprecedented deceit and criminality, and in regular--almost obsequious--contact with America's leading foreign adversary.

A year ago, Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic outlined seven possible scenarios about Trump and Russia, arranged from most innocent to most guilty. Fifth on that list was "Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign--And Trump Knew or Should Have Known," escalating from there to #6 "Kompromat," and topping out at the once unimaginable #7, "The President of the United States is a Russian Agent."

After the latest disclosures, we're steadily into Scenario #5, and can easily imagine #6.

The Cohen and Manafort court documents all provide new details, revelations, and hints of more to come. They're a reminder, also, that Mueller's investigation continues alongside an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York that clearly alleges that Donald Trump participated in a felony, directing Cohen to violate campaign finance laws to cover up extramarital affairs.

Through his previous indictments against Russian military intelligence and the Russian Internet Research Agency, Mueller has laid out a criminal conspiracy and espionage campaign approved, according to US intelligence, by Vladimir Putin himself. More recently, Mueller has begun to hint at the long arm of that intelligence operation, and how it connects to the core of the Trump campaign itself.

She seemed like the model tenant. A 33-year-old nurse who was living at the Y.W.C.A. in Harlem, she had come to rent a one-bedroom at the still-unfinished Wilshire Apartments in the Jamaica Estates neighborhood of Queens. She filled out what the rental agent remembers as a "beautiful application." She did not even want to look at the unit.

There was just one hitch: Maxine Brown was black.

Stanley Leibowitz, the rental agent, talked to his boss, Fred C. Trump.

"I asked him what to do and he says, 'Take the application and put it in a drawer and leave it there,'" Mr. Leibowitz, now 88, recalled in an interview.

It was late 1963 -- just months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act -- and the tall, mustachioed Fred Trump was approaching the apex of his building career. He was about to complete the jewel in the crown of his middle-class housing empire: seven 23-story towers, called Trump Village, spread across nearly 40 acres in Coney Island.

He was also grooming his heir. His son Donald, 17, would soon enroll at Fordham University in the Bronx, living at his parents' home in Queens and spending much of his free time touring construction sites in his father's Cadillac, driven by a black chauffeur.

"His father was his idol," Mr. Leibowitz recalled. "Anytime he would come into the building, Donald would be by his side."

Over the next decade, as Donald J. Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company's practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle. [...]

Looking back, Mr. Trump's response to the lawsuit can be seen as presaging his handling of subsequent challenges, in business and in politics. Rather than quietly trying to settle -- as another New York developer had done a couple of years earlier -- he turned the lawsuit into a protracted battle, complete with angry denials, character assassination, charges that the government was trying to force him to rent to "welfare recipients" and a $100 million countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation.

When it was over, Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.