Tim HerreraSmarter Living Editor |
| It’s Dec. 21, and let’s be honest: You’re still not done with your holiday shopping. |
| That’s fine! Many, many of us are in the same boat — as I write this newsletter, I have a dozen Amazon tabs open of gifts I still need to buy. (While we’re on the subject, here are some tips to beating procrastination.) |
| But fear not. In collaboration with Wirecutter, a New York Times company that reviews and recommends products, we have tons of recommendations to get you through the next few days. |
| Your first stop should be The Times’s Holiday Gift Guide. You’ll find everything from presents for the traveler in your life or the family bookworm, to items for the kitchen or little knickknacks for that one person who’s impossible to shop for. All that and much, much more. You can also check out Wirecutter’s list of the best things they bought in 2017. |
| But that’s if you’ve got time. If you want a quick-and-dirty, “Please Tim, just tell me what to buy!” guide, look no further. Below are five great cheap(ish) things that will make excellent gifts for anyone on your list. (However: I make no promises about fixing your procrastination for next year.) |
| External battery |
| Nothing brings me more peace of mind, especially when I’m traveling, than having a week’s worth of phone charges in my bag. (What that says about my overall mental health is a whole other issue.) |
| But that’s what you get with a good external battery, like the Anker Powercore 20100, which is one of a handful of battery packs Wirecutter recommends. |
| They say you can’t buy happiness, but never having to think about whether your phone will die while you’re out comes pretty close. |
| 6-foot charging cable |
| This was our very first recommendation, and it remains one of the small things that can have an outsize impact on your life. |
| Wirecutter’s favorite lightning cable (for Apple products) is the Anker PowerLine Lightning. Their favorite Micro-USB cable is Anker PowerLine Micro USB. They also have recommendations for newer USB-C phones and tablets. |
| Travel mug |
| Another one of those items that will make you wonder how you lived before it: The Zojirushi stainless steel travel mug. |
| I’ve been using it for years, and what has really become the killer feature for me — aside from the fact that your hot beverages will, by all practical measures, never cool — is that this thing does not leak. I’ve tried other travel mugs here and there, and every so often I have a little spill here, a few drips there. But never with the Zojirushi. |
| Wireless headphones |
| Whether you need them for the gym, running a trail or working at your desk, wireless headphones are total game-changers. |
| Wirecutter’s top pick for working out — and my personal favorites — are the JLab Epic2. They’re comfortable, sound great and, most important, actually stay in your ears so you’re not constantly adjusting them. |
| For runners, Wirecutter recommends the Plantronics BackBeat Fit, which are durable, easy to use and still let you hear what’s going on around you. |
| For desk warriors who just want to get some work done, Wirecutter’s favorite noise-canceling headphones are the Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II. At $350 they don’t come cheap, so also think about the Jabra Move Wirelesss headphones. |
| And finally, even people who’d rather not be wearing headphones at all can appreciate the freedom afforded by true wireless earbuds, such as Apple’s Airpods. |
| Really, really good tweezers |
| Since I started writing the 5 cheap(ish) things newsletter this summer, no single product has elicited more feedback than these Tweezerman Slant Tip tweezers, which I recommended you pick up for your bathroom. About a third of the people who wrote in thought I was insane for recommending $17 tweezers; another third were intrigued by the idea that really good tweezers could have such an impact; and the final third were the converted, those who owned really good tweezers and knew that the price of admission is well worth it. |
| This is one hill I’ll die on: This pair of tweezers — for only $17! What a steal! — was the best under-$20 product I bought all year. Get a pair for yourself. Get a pair for family. Get a pair for everyone you know. |
| Got any great last-minute gifts we left out? Let me know at tim@nytimes.com on Twitter at @timherrera. |
| Happy shopping! |
| —Tim |
Smarter Living: 5 cheap(ish) things that make great last-minute gifts, Thursday, December 21, 2017
Merry Christmas, Vladimir — Your Friend, Donald , Thomas L. Friedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/opinion/merry-christmas-vladimir-your-friend-donald.html?emc=edit_th_20171220&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
Merry Christmas, Vladimir — Your Friend, Donald
Thomas L. Friedman DEC. 19, 2017
At the end of this banner stock market year, you can bet that major business publications will be naming their investor of the year. You can stop now. I have the winner, and nobody is even close when it comes to his total return on investment: Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
A recent report in The Washington Post, quoting intelligence sources, said Putin may have spent less than $500,000 to hack our last election and help (though Hillary helped much more) Donald Trump become president. And Putin’s payoff is Trump’s first year: a president who is simultaneously eroding some of our most basic norms, undermining some of our most cherished institutions and enacting a mammoth tax bill that will not make America great again.
If you assume, as I do, that Putin wants to see an America that is not an attractive model for his own people or others to emulate, and that he wants an America run by a chaos president who cannot lead the West, then Trump is his dream come true, whether or not there was any collusion between them.
So Vladimir Putin, come on up! You’re my Investor of the Year. You’re the Warren Buffett of geopolitics.
Just do the math:
On norms, we’ve grown numb to a president who misleads or outright lies every day. Different newspapers measure this differently. The Washington Post says Trump has averaged 5.5 false or misleading claims every day in office, putting him on pace for 1,999 in his first year. According to The Times, Barack Obama told 18 “distinct falsehoods” over his entire eight-year presidency, while Trump, in his first 10 months in office, “has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly.”
Given the power of the president to shape our public discourse, it’s chilling to imagine what four years and 8,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump will do to trust in government in America — and how deeply that will filter into society, giving permission to anyone and everyone to lie with impunity.
In terms of institutions, Trump has personally disparaged the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department. His head of the Environmental Protection Agency has turned the E.P.A. over to the fossil fuel industry. Ditto at Interior. His I.R.S. is being starved of funding to do its job. And his secretary of state is gutting the State Department, shedding our most experienced diplomats and replacing them with … no one.
The Treasury secretary’s economic “analysis” of the G.O.P. tax bill consisted of a one-page — fewer than 500 words — assessment, claiming that the $1.5 trillion plan would more than pay for itself, assuming a whole set of perfect circumstances come true. Your kid’s third-grade book report was longer than the Treasury’s analysis of our biggest tax overhaul in 30 years.
The Times reported that the actual experts in the Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy, which Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had credited with running his models, said they were “largely shut out of the process” of analyzing the bill.
But this erosion of institutions is not all on the White House — the G.O.P. congressional leadership went along for the ride, spurning proper congressional oversight of the tax bill. There were no hearings with a range of economic and tax experts, and only nominal debate. It was just rammed through.
In short, the G.O.P. Congress treated this one-in-a-generation tax rewrite with as much rigorous analysis as naming a post office for Ronald Reagan! This is how democratic institutions get soiled.
And then there’s the future: Putin never could have dreamed up this deformed Trump-G.O.P. tax bill, but it is precisely how you don’t make America great again. We actually have a tried-and-true formula for that — one employed by every great American president since our founding. It has five parts, and this bill pretty much ignores all five.
First, we’ve always educated our citizens up to and beyond whatever the main technology of the day was — when it was the cotton gin, that meant universal primary education; when it was the factory, that meant universal high school; and now that it is the computer and artificial intelligence, it should be some form of postsecondary education for all — and then lifelong learning. If we were really doing tax reform intelligently, we’d make all postsecondary education tax deductible, to encourage everyone to become a lifelong learner.
Instead, this bill will spend money preserving unfair tax breaks for hedge fund billionaires and shrinking the inheritance tax on their heirs.
Second, we invested in the best infrastructure — roads, rail, ports, airports, telecom. This tax bill not only makes no provision for that, it actually erodes such investments in many states. With a limitation on the deduction for state and local taxes, and the deficit’s ballooning by $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, many cities and the federal government will have fewer resources for new schools and bridges.
Third, we had the best rules to incentivize risk-taking and to prevent recklessness. I am all for cutting corporate taxes — and payroll taxes — but I’d offset them with a carbon tax that would simultaneously combat climate change and stimulate renewable energy, the next great global industry, to make us more resilient and innovative. It never occurred to Trump.
Trump and his allies actually tried to get rid of all the regulatory subsidies to stimulate wind, solar and electric car production, and, I must say, it was fun to watch Republican senators get them all restored, because they are such important job creators in their states.
Iowa’s Chuck Grassley saved the wind credits, because of the vast number of wind turbines in his red state; Dean Heller of Nevada saved the electric vehicle credits, because of all the jobs that the Tesla battery factory has created in Reno; and Rob Portman helped save all these clean tech credits because of the thousands of new jobs they’ve stimulated in Ohio. It shows you just how ignorant Trump is about the benefits of clean tech.
On health care regulations, though, the whole G.O.P. bought into Trump’s nonsense, eliminating the Obamacare requirement that all individuals buy health insurance. It means we are returning to socialized medicine. Now lots of healthy young people, and others, will forgo health care, and when they get sick, they’ll go to hospital emergency wards to get treated — and those of us with health insurance will pay for their care through higher premiums or higher hospital bills. That’s called socialism. Marx would approve.
Fourth, we had, in the last century, the most open immigration policy to attract the most high-I.Q. risk-takers, the people who often start new business, as well as high-energy lower-skilled workers. I don’t have to tell you where Trump is on that.
Fifth, we had the most government-funded research to push out the boundaries of science so our companies could pluck the best ideas — witness the internet and GPS — to start new industries. The surge in the deficit created by this tax bill will curtail precisely such research.
So there you have it: a tax “reform” bill that defies all five principles that made us great for two and half centuries.
Rather than starting by asking the question: What world are we in, what are the biggest trends — like rapid technological change, the automation of an increasing number of middle-skill jobs, increasing climate disruptions, a world getting more interdependent than ever — and how we can use tax policy to enable more of our citizens to get the most out of these trends and cushion the worst, we have a bill driven by the need to reward big donors and to put “points on the board” for Trump before the midterms.
Even Putin surely could not have imagined that Trump would be this foolish and the G.O.P. this cynical. It’s just the extra dollop of caviar on Vladimir’s Christmas blini.
Revolutionizing Your Body From Within, Then Best-Selling Author Isabel Allende On Her Late... - Diane Rehm: On My Mind
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/381443514/diane-rehm-on-my-mind
NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Dr. Michael Mosley on the powerful army of microbes inside our gut and what they mean for our mood, weight and immune system.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nEYf-Dt-RadInDGA2lV-cqLdji65hQqI/view?usp=sharing
NOVEMBER 24, 2017
Dr. Michael Mosley on the powerful army of microbes inside our gut and what they mean for our mood, weight and immune system.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nEYf-Dt-RadInDGA2lV-cqLdji65hQqI/view?usp=sharing
The Great Al Franken Moment - Gail Collins
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/opinion/al-franken-sexual-harassment.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fgail-collins&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
DEC. 8, 2017
Ten years from now, do you think we’ll be talking about where we were when Al Franken announced he was resigning from the Senate?
You never can tell.
It was a historic moment that had virtually nothing to do with Franken himself. In the grand cavalcade of sexual assault charges we’ve been hearing lately, his list — from fanny-gropes to tongue-thrusts — is appalling but pretty minor league. And the picture of Franken feeling up the well-protected breasts of a sleeping colleague on a tour could have been subtitled “Portrait of a Comedian Who Does Not Suspect He’ll Ever Run for Senator.”
“Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,” he said in a rather bitter farewell address.
Franken was a good politician, and many Democrats hoped he might grow into a presidential candidate. But it was his destiny to serve history in a different way. He was caught up in a rebellion of epic proportion, one that was not just about unwanted groping but a whole new stage in the movement of women into the center of public life.
For most of the long span of Western civilization, they were consigned to the home. (Back in the 1860s, the A. T. Stewart Dry Goods Store in New York City installed a ladies’ restroom in what was possibly the first acknowledgment that respectable women might be outside their homes long enough to need to go to the bathroom.) A century ago they won the right to vote, but it didn’t come attached to the right to walk down the sidewalk alone.
Over the last 50 years or so, the rules about a woman’s place were shattered. It’s still hard to appreciate how vast the change was. It began at a time when, in many states, jury duty was regarded as an inappropriate task for women since it would take them away from their housework. They almost never worked in the outside world unless they were too poor and desperate to stay in their proper place.
Now we live in a world where men who were hoping to hand over their business to the next generation, or maybe have a doctor in the family, look at their new baby girl without a shred of disappointment. I saw all this happen, and it knocks me out whenever I think about it.
But it’s a revolution still in the making. The struggle for equal opportunity is far from over, and men haven’t all adapted to the presence of women at the next desk, in the conference room or driving together to the big meeting in Dayton.
Some are lecherous bosses who think their power gives them a version of the right of the old lords to sample the favors of every girl in the neighborhood. Some are otherwise nice people under the deeply mistaken impression they’re so attractive no woman would mind a surprise hand up her skirt.
It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’d need to go through a huge social trauma that would firmly establish the new rules. And here we are. We’ve had three resignations from Congress this week. (One involved a lawmaker asking female staff members if they’d act as a surrogate mother. Try to imagine a female representative inquiring whether men in the office want to be sperm donors.) There are sexual harassment crises in state legislatures from Alaska to Florida. The entertainment and communications worlds are rocking.
“This is our moment,” said Representative Jackie Speier, the San Francisco Democrat who’s been one of the leaders of the anti-harassment forces in Congress.
The moment won’t really have arrived until the same thing is happening everywhere from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to fast-food franchises. But it’s a start.
“It does feel like a tipping point,” said Estelle Freedman, a Stanford University historian who’s written extensively about the way earlier generations of American men cheerfully recast rape as “seduction” and sexual harassment on the streets as “mashing.”
The critical combination, Freedman said, was a new ethos combined with the movement of women into positions of power. Franken was forced out of the Senate because there were women senators who could lead the call for him to go. “And it was women journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story,” Freedman noted. “All these strains are coming together.”
Franken thought he was one of the leaders of the revolution. And he was, on a political level. But he’s an excellent example of why the uprising had to be extreme and dramatic. As the accusations mounted, he often claimed not to have remembered the incidents. It’s been a pretty common response in the recent uproar.
But we have to have elected officials — and movie stars, and journalists, and professors, and choreographers — who, when confronted with charges of feeling up a constituent or forcing a wet kiss on a co-worker, can honestly and instantly say: “Good Lord, no. I’d never do that.” Just as they would if they were charged with stealing cash from the register or kicking a puppy.
We haven’t had many opportunities lately to contemplate the world moving in exactly the right direction. But here we are. I’m sorry about Al Franken, but still — savor the moment.
DEC. 8, 2017
Ten years from now, do you think we’ll be talking about where we were when Al Franken announced he was resigning from the Senate?
You never can tell.
It was a historic moment that had virtually nothing to do with Franken himself. In the grand cavalcade of sexual assault charges we’ve been hearing lately, his list — from fanny-gropes to tongue-thrusts — is appalling but pretty minor league. And the picture of Franken feeling up the well-protected breasts of a sleeping colleague on a tour could have been subtitled “Portrait of a Comedian Who Does Not Suspect He’ll Ever Run for Senator.”
“Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,” he said in a rather bitter farewell address.
Franken was a good politician, and many Democrats hoped he might grow into a presidential candidate. But it was his destiny to serve history in a different way. He was caught up in a rebellion of epic proportion, one that was not just about unwanted groping but a whole new stage in the movement of women into the center of public life.
For most of the long span of Western civilization, they were consigned to the home. (Back in the 1860s, the A. T. Stewart Dry Goods Store in New York City installed a ladies’ restroom in what was possibly the first acknowledgment that respectable women might be outside their homes long enough to need to go to the bathroom.) A century ago they won the right to vote, but it didn’t come attached to the right to walk down the sidewalk alone.
Over the last 50 years or so, the rules about a woman’s place were shattered. It’s still hard to appreciate how vast the change was. It began at a time when, in many states, jury duty was regarded as an inappropriate task for women since it would take them away from their housework. They almost never worked in the outside world unless they were too poor and desperate to stay in their proper place.
Now we live in a world where men who were hoping to hand over their business to the next generation, or maybe have a doctor in the family, look at their new baby girl without a shred of disappointment. I saw all this happen, and it knocks me out whenever I think about it.
But it’s a revolution still in the making. The struggle for equal opportunity is far from over, and men haven’t all adapted to the presence of women at the next desk, in the conference room or driving together to the big meeting in Dayton.
Some are lecherous bosses who think their power gives them a version of the right of the old lords to sample the favors of every girl in the neighborhood. Some are otherwise nice people under the deeply mistaken impression they’re so attractive no woman would mind a surprise hand up her skirt.
It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’d need to go through a huge social trauma that would firmly establish the new rules. And here we are. We’ve had three resignations from Congress this week. (One involved a lawmaker asking female staff members if they’d act as a surrogate mother. Try to imagine a female representative inquiring whether men in the office want to be sperm donors.) There are sexual harassment crises in state legislatures from Alaska to Florida. The entertainment and communications worlds are rocking.
“This is our moment,” said Representative Jackie Speier, the San Francisco Democrat who’s been one of the leaders of the anti-harassment forces in Congress.
The moment won’t really have arrived until the same thing is happening everywhere from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to fast-food franchises. But it’s a start.
“It does feel like a tipping point,” said Estelle Freedman, a Stanford University historian who’s written extensively about the way earlier generations of American men cheerfully recast rape as “seduction” and sexual harassment on the streets as “mashing.”
The critical combination, Freedman said, was a new ethos combined with the movement of women into positions of power. Franken was forced out of the Senate because there were women senators who could lead the call for him to go. “And it was women journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story,” Freedman noted. “All these strains are coming together.”
Franken thought he was one of the leaders of the revolution. And he was, on a political level. But he’s an excellent example of why the uprising had to be extreme and dramatic. As the accusations mounted, he often claimed not to have remembered the incidents. It’s been a pretty common response in the recent uproar.
But we have to have elected officials — and movie stars, and journalists, and professors, and choreographers — who, when confronted with charges of feeling up a constituent or forcing a wet kiss on a co-worker, can honestly and instantly say: “Good Lord, no. I’d never do that.” Just as they would if they were charged with stealing cash from the register or kicking a puppy.
We haven’t had many opportunities lately to contemplate the world moving in exactly the right direction. But here we are. I’m sorry about Al Franken, but still — savor the moment.
We’ll Be Cheerful if It Kills Us - GAIL COLLINS
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/opinion/guns-conceal-carry-reciprocity.html?emc=edit_th_20171207&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
By Gail Collins, Dec. 6, 2017
Hey, there are a lot of big movies opening up this month. One is a “Star Wars” installment and another involves Matt Damon becoming five inches tall.
I am mentioning this just to prepare you for a short discussion of gun laws. There’s been another big vote in Congress, and attention must be paid. But I promise to break up the story with totally unrelated cheerful information whenever possible.
First, the news: On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it impossible for states to do anything about people who carry in guns from other states.
We have seen this idea, known as “concealed carry reciprocity,” before. It basically says gun owners only have to follow the laws of the state they hail from. Some states will give a permit to carry a concealed weapon to an 18-year-old. Some don’t care about a record of stalking. Some don’t have any rules at all — you’re O.K. to pack a pistol if you can breathe.
“The Republicans yell states’ rights all the time, but they’re hypocrites,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. He claimed, in a phone interview, that the last time Congress passed a bill to impose the laws of one state on a different state “it was the Fugitive Slave Act.” We can look forward to more of this discussion since Nadler is now the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. It used to be John Conyers, but then there was that sexual harassment matter.
Did you know “Top Chef” is coming back to TV this week? Perhaps you’re tired of reality cooking contests. But imagine how relaxing it could be to spend an entire hour in a world where the worst possible thing that could happen involves under-seasoning.
The gun bill’s Republican handlers refused to permit an amendment banning bump stocks. Those are the devices that were used by the gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas. But you knew that, right? We now live in a country where average people know what’s required if you want to make an assault rifle work like a machine gun.
The concealed-carry bill is also now chained to another measure aimed at making background checks more efficient. This modest, bipartisan plan came up after the Texas church shooting, when it turned out the gunman had a criminal background that should have precluded him from buying firearms.
The Senate, which really likes the background check bill, is going to have to take the two of them up together. “A cynical ploy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, one of the co-sponsors.
This year a Brussels griffon named Newton won the National Dog Show. His handler said he likes ice cream and is “happy all the time.”
Blumenthal thinks the Senate Democrats can separate the two ideas, kill the concealed-carry bill and send the good background check plan back to the House for passage. This sounds promising, except for the part where it depends on the House Republican leadership taking a principled stand.
On Wednesday, those leaders had everything well under control. So there was no suspense whatsoever and the gun debate took place in a near-empty House, with a half-dozen people hanging around waiting for their turn to say something … inevitable. Democrats decried the fact that the Republicans didn’t want to work together. Republicans said carrying a gun made you safer.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming declared the right to carry a concealed weapon is “God given.” We will not pursue the question of What Would Jesus Pack.
American Airlines, which accidentally gave its pilots Christmas vacation, has worked out a deal so there will actually be people available to fly the planes.
Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who was in charge of getting the gun bill through the House, expressed dismay at the tenor of the debate, such as it was. “Shame on us,” he said.
Collins seemed particularly offended when a Democrat called him a “puppet” of the National Rifle Association. Which seems a little impolite, if reasonably accurate. However, Collins did refer to the opposition as “a group who enjoys killing babies.”
A family in Florida says a cat saved their kids from a rattlesnake. The cat’s name is Oreo and he is recovering from a nasty bite.
The Democrats complained that there were much better ways for the House to spend its time. Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida — home of Oreo! — suggested that instead of trying to mess with the states’ right to do their own gun regulations, the members should be working on preventing a government shutdown. Which is right around the corner.
Actually, it could come on Saturday. Followed by the deportation of 800,000 Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children.
And did you know the queen of England has invited Prince Harry’s new fiancée to Christmas dinner? This is highly unusual, but that Meghan Markle is so nice.
By Gail Collins, Dec. 6, 2017
Hey, there are a lot of big movies opening up this month. One is a “Star Wars” installment and another involves Matt Damon becoming five inches tall.
I am mentioning this just to prepare you for a short discussion of gun laws. There’s been another big vote in Congress, and attention must be paid. But I promise to break up the story with totally unrelated cheerful information whenever possible.
First, the news: On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it impossible for states to do anything about people who carry in guns from other states.
We have seen this idea, known as “concealed carry reciprocity,” before. It basically says gun owners only have to follow the laws of the state they hail from. Some states will give a permit to carry a concealed weapon to an 18-year-old. Some don’t care about a record of stalking. Some don’t have any rules at all — you’re O.K. to pack a pistol if you can breathe.
“The Republicans yell states’ rights all the time, but they’re hypocrites,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. He claimed, in a phone interview, that the last time Congress passed a bill to impose the laws of one state on a different state “it was the Fugitive Slave Act.” We can look forward to more of this discussion since Nadler is now the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. It used to be John Conyers, but then there was that sexual harassment matter.
Did you know “Top Chef” is coming back to TV this week? Perhaps you’re tired of reality cooking contests. But imagine how relaxing it could be to spend an entire hour in a world where the worst possible thing that could happen involves under-seasoning.
The gun bill’s Republican handlers refused to permit an amendment banning bump stocks. Those are the devices that were used by the gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas. But you knew that, right? We now live in a country where average people know what’s required if you want to make an assault rifle work like a machine gun.
The concealed-carry bill is also now chained to another measure aimed at making background checks more efficient. This modest, bipartisan plan came up after the Texas church shooting, when it turned out the gunman had a criminal background that should have precluded him from buying firearms.
The Senate, which really likes the background check bill, is going to have to take the two of them up together. “A cynical ploy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, one of the co-sponsors.
This year a Brussels griffon named Newton won the National Dog Show. His handler said he likes ice cream and is “happy all the time.”
Blumenthal thinks the Senate Democrats can separate the two ideas, kill the concealed-carry bill and send the good background check plan back to the House for passage. This sounds promising, except for the part where it depends on the House Republican leadership taking a principled stand.
On Wednesday, those leaders had everything well under control. So there was no suspense whatsoever and the gun debate took place in a near-empty House, with a half-dozen people hanging around waiting for their turn to say something … inevitable. Democrats decried the fact that the Republicans didn’t want to work together. Republicans said carrying a gun made you safer.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming declared the right to carry a concealed weapon is “God given.” We will not pursue the question of What Would Jesus Pack.
American Airlines, which accidentally gave its pilots Christmas vacation, has worked out a deal so there will actually be people available to fly the planes.
Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who was in charge of getting the gun bill through the House, expressed dismay at the tenor of the debate, such as it was. “Shame on us,” he said.
Collins seemed particularly offended when a Democrat called him a “puppet” of the National Rifle Association. Which seems a little impolite, if reasonably accurate. However, Collins did refer to the opposition as “a group who enjoys killing babies.”
A family in Florida says a cat saved their kids from a rattlesnake. The cat’s name is Oreo and he is recovering from a nasty bite.
The Democrats complained that there were much better ways for the House to spend its time. Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida — home of Oreo! — suggested that instead of trying to mess with the states’ right to do their own gun regulations, the members should be working on preventing a government shutdown. Which is right around the corner.
Actually, it could come on Saturday. Followed by the deportation of 800,000 Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children.
And did you know the queen of England has invited Prince Harry’s new fiancée to Christmas dinner? This is highly unusual, but that Meghan Markle is so nice.
Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway By Thomas L. Friedman,
Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway By Thomas L. Friedman,
Dec. 6, 2017
I’m contemplating writing a book on the first year of President Trump’s foreign policy, and I already know the name: “The Art of the Giveaway.”
In nearly 30 years of covering United States foreign policy, I’ve never seen a president give up so much to so many for so little, starting with China and Israel. In both the Middle Kingdom and in the Land of Israel, Christmas came early this year. The Chinese and the Jews are both whispering to their kids: “There really is a Santa Claus.”
And his name is Donald Trump.
Who can blame them? Let’s start with Israel, every Israeli government since its founding has craved United States recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. And every United States government has refrained from doing that, arguing that such a recognition should come only in the wake of an agreed final status peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians — until now.
Today, Trump just gave it away — for free. Such a deal! Why in the world would you just give this away for free and not even use it as a lever to advance the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian deal?
Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: “Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement block that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.”
Such a trade-off is needed. It would produce a real advance for United States interests and for the peace process. As Dennis Ross, the veteran American Middle East peace negotiator and author of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship From Truman to Obama,” explained: “When you stop building outside the settlement blocs, you preserve, at a maximum, the possibility of a two-state outcome and, at a minimum, the ability for Israelis to separate from Palestinians. Keep up the building in densely populated Palestinian areas and separation becomes impossible.”
Trump also could have said, as the former United States ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk suggested, that he’d decided “to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem” — as part of any final status agreement. That would at least have insulated us from looking like making a one-sided gesture will only complicate peacemaking and kept the door open to Palestinians.
In either case, Trump could then have boasted to Israelis and Palestinians that he got them each something that Barack Obama never did — something that advanced the peace process and United States credibility and did not embarrass our Arab allies. But Trump is a chump. And he is a chump because he is ignorant and thinks the world started the day he was elected, and so he is easily gamed.
Just ask the Chinese. Basically, his first day in office, Trump tore up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal — clearly without having read it or asked China for any trade concession in return. Trump simply threw out the window the single most valuable tool America had for shaping the geoeconomic future of the region our way and for pressuring China to open its markets to more United States goods.
Trump is now trying to negotiate trade openings with China alone — bilaterally — and getting basically nowhere. And yet he could have been negotiating with China as the head of a 12-nation TPP trading bloc that was based on United States values and interests and that controlled 40 percent of the global economy. Think of the leverage we lost.
In a column from Hong Kong last June a senior Hong Kong official told me: “When Trump did away with TPP, all your allies’ confidence in the U.S. collapsed.” After America stopped TPP, “everyone is now looking to China,” added Jonathan Koon-shum Choi, chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong. “But China is very smart — just keeping its mouth shut.”
Just to remind: TPP was a free-trade agreement that the Obama team forged with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It was not only the largest free-trade agreement in history, it was the best ever for United States workers, closing loopholes Nafta had left open. Some 80 percent of the goods from our 11 TPP partners were coming into the United States duty-free already, while our goods and services were still being hit with thousands of tariffs in their countries — which TPP eliminated.
As I also noted last June, the other people we disappointed by scrapping TPP, explained James McGregor, author of “One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China,” were China’s economic reformers: They were hoping that the emergence of TPP “would force China to reform its trade practices more along American lines and to open its markets. … We failed the reformers in China.”
Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. And because that’s the only support he has left, he feels the need to keep feeding his base by fulfilling crude, ill-conceived promises he threw out to them during the campaign. Today, again, he put another one of those promises ahead of United States national interest.
Dec. 6, 2017
I’m contemplating writing a book on the first year of President Trump’s foreign policy, and I already know the name: “The Art of the Giveaway.”
In nearly 30 years of covering United States foreign policy, I’ve never seen a president give up so much to so many for so little, starting with China and Israel. In both the Middle Kingdom and in the Land of Israel, Christmas came early this year. The Chinese and the Jews are both whispering to their kids: “There really is a Santa Claus.”
And his name is Donald Trump.
Who can blame them? Let’s start with Israel, every Israeli government since its founding has craved United States recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. And every United States government has refrained from doing that, arguing that such a recognition should come only in the wake of an agreed final status peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians — until now.
Today, Trump just gave it away — for free. Such a deal! Why in the world would you just give this away for free and not even use it as a lever to advance the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian deal?
Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: “Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement block that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.”
Such a trade-off is needed. It would produce a real advance for United States interests and for the peace process. As Dennis Ross, the veteran American Middle East peace negotiator and author of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship From Truman to Obama,” explained: “When you stop building outside the settlement blocs, you preserve, at a maximum, the possibility of a two-state outcome and, at a minimum, the ability for Israelis to separate from Palestinians. Keep up the building in densely populated Palestinian areas and separation becomes impossible.”
Trump also could have said, as the former United States ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk suggested, that he’d decided “to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem” — as part of any final status agreement. That would at least have insulated us from looking like making a one-sided gesture will only complicate peacemaking and kept the door open to Palestinians.
In either case, Trump could then have boasted to Israelis and Palestinians that he got them each something that Barack Obama never did — something that advanced the peace process and United States credibility and did not embarrass our Arab allies. But Trump is a chump. And he is a chump because he is ignorant and thinks the world started the day he was elected, and so he is easily gamed.
Just ask the Chinese. Basically, his first day in office, Trump tore up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal — clearly without having read it or asked China for any trade concession in return. Trump simply threw out the window the single most valuable tool America had for shaping the geoeconomic future of the region our way and for pressuring China to open its markets to more United States goods.
Trump is now trying to negotiate trade openings with China alone — bilaterally — and getting basically nowhere. And yet he could have been negotiating with China as the head of a 12-nation TPP trading bloc that was based on United States values and interests and that controlled 40 percent of the global economy. Think of the leverage we lost.
In a column from Hong Kong last June a senior Hong Kong official told me: “When Trump did away with TPP, all your allies’ confidence in the U.S. collapsed.” After America stopped TPP, “everyone is now looking to China,” added Jonathan Koon-shum Choi, chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong. “But China is very smart — just keeping its mouth shut.”
Just to remind: TPP was a free-trade agreement that the Obama team forged with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It was not only the largest free-trade agreement in history, it was the best ever for United States workers, closing loopholes Nafta had left open. Some 80 percent of the goods from our 11 TPP partners were coming into the United States duty-free already, while our goods and services were still being hit with thousands of tariffs in their countries — which TPP eliminated.
As I also noted last June, the other people we disappointed by scrapping TPP, explained James McGregor, author of “One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China,” were China’s economic reformers: They were hoping that the emergence of TPP “would force China to reform its trade practices more along American lines and to open its markets. … We failed the reformers in China.”
Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. And because that’s the only support he has left, he feels the need to keep feeding his base by fulfilling crude, ill-conceived promises he threw out to them during the campaign. Today, again, he put another one of those promises ahead of United States national interest.
Don’t Prosecute Trump. Impeach Him. By John Yoo and Saikrishna Prakash
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/trump-impeach-constitution.html?emc=edit_th_20171205&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
Don’t Prosecute Trump. Impeach Him. By John Yoo and Saikrishna Prakash
Dec. 4, 2017
A wayward tweet on Saturday has set off renewed accusations that President Trump obstructed justice by impeding the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
The known facts are too weak to support any federal prosecution, not to mention one as momentous as indicting a sitting president. But even if Mr. Trump did illegally conspire to improve relations with Russia, his critics are pursuing their quarry down the wrong path. Impeachment — not criminal prosecution — is the tool for a corrupt sitting president.
The tweet in question contained a seemingly explosive claim that sent critics of Mr. Trump into a frenzy: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” If the president knew that Mr. Flynn had lied to Mike Pence and to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, then the president had knowingly obstructed justice when he asked the F.B.I. director James Comey on Feb. 14 to let “Flynn go” because he was a “good guy.” According to the president’s critics, Mr. Trump then escalated his obstruction by firing Mr. Comey because of the Russia inquiry.
No responsible federal prosecutor would dream of stepping into a trial court with such a weak case. This is a tweet, hardly an admission of guilt. And on Sunday, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, made the case even weaker when he said that he had ghost-written the tweet.
Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Comey (if true — the only source for them is a memo by Mr. Comey) do not qualify as corruption, a threat or coercion as required by federal obstruction law. A mother might make the same plea for her son, or a priest for a parishioner. Asking for leniency does not constitute obstruction, regardless of whether the crime being investigated is a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids private individuals from negotiating with foreign governments, or the False Statements Act. Mr. Trump most likely fired Mr. Comey not to thwart the investigation — Mr. Trump could have just ordered it ended, which he still has not done — but because Mr. Comey refused to affirm publicly that the president was not a target.
But even if the facts rose to the level of obstruction, most legal scholars agree that prosecutors cannot bring charges against a sitting president. The Constitution imposes on the president the duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” which vests the authority to oversee all federal law enforcement. As Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist 70, “good government” requires “energy in the executive,” and a vigorous president is “essential to the protection of the community from foreign attacks” and “the steady administration of the laws.” Ever since the framing, presidents have enjoyed the right to drop prosecutions as a waste of resources. Indeed, this is the very theory that President Barack Obama raised when he unilaterally reduced the enforcement of the immigration laws under the Dreamers and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans programs.
Because of the original constitutional design, President Trump ultimately can order the end of any investigation, even one into his own White House. He even has the power to pardon its targets, including himself. Mr. Trump can decide tomorrow that pursuing Mr. Flynn and others for lying to the F.B.I. agents is a waste of time and money. Though he claimed that he fired Mr. Comey for not doing “a good job,” the president can fire any cabinet and high-ranking Justice Department official for any reason or no reason.
Unfortunately, the drama over the Flynn plea and White House tweeting continues to draw time and resources away from the Constitution’s one true answer for presidential corruption: impeachment and removal from office.
If Mr. Trump has truly impeded a valid investigation, Congress should turn to impeachment, which allows for the removal of a president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeachment does not require the president to commit a crime, but instead, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, encompasses significant misdeeds, offenses that proceed from “the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Such offenses, he said, “are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
The House and Senate can make their own judgments — political as well as legal — about whether the Trump team’s involvement with the Russians or Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Comey fit this constitutional standard. Congress can begin this course of action by forming a special committee to investigate the Russia controversy and the Trump-Comey-Flynn affair, which could also find any predicate facts for a case of impeachment. If Congress believes that these events do not merit obstruction of justice or illegal conspiracy, it should go on the record with its judgment, too — a result Mr. Trump would welcome.
Congress should not wait on a special counsel to perform its most fundamental constitutional duty of investigating and, if necessary, removing a corrupt president.
Don’t Prosecute Trump. Impeach Him. By John Yoo and Saikrishna Prakash
Dec. 4, 2017
A wayward tweet on Saturday has set off renewed accusations that President Trump obstructed justice by impeding the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
The known facts are too weak to support any federal prosecution, not to mention one as momentous as indicting a sitting president. But even if Mr. Trump did illegally conspire to improve relations with Russia, his critics are pursuing their quarry down the wrong path. Impeachment — not criminal prosecution — is the tool for a corrupt sitting president.
The tweet in question contained a seemingly explosive claim that sent critics of Mr. Trump into a frenzy: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” If the president knew that Mr. Flynn had lied to Mike Pence and to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, then the president had knowingly obstructed justice when he asked the F.B.I. director James Comey on Feb. 14 to let “Flynn go” because he was a “good guy.” According to the president’s critics, Mr. Trump then escalated his obstruction by firing Mr. Comey because of the Russia inquiry.
No responsible federal prosecutor would dream of stepping into a trial court with such a weak case. This is a tweet, hardly an admission of guilt. And on Sunday, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, made the case even weaker when he said that he had ghost-written the tweet.
Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Comey (if true — the only source for them is a memo by Mr. Comey) do not qualify as corruption, a threat or coercion as required by federal obstruction law. A mother might make the same plea for her son, or a priest for a parishioner. Asking for leniency does not constitute obstruction, regardless of whether the crime being investigated is a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids private individuals from negotiating with foreign governments, or the False Statements Act. Mr. Trump most likely fired Mr. Comey not to thwart the investigation — Mr. Trump could have just ordered it ended, which he still has not done — but because Mr. Comey refused to affirm publicly that the president was not a target.
But even if the facts rose to the level of obstruction, most legal scholars agree that prosecutors cannot bring charges against a sitting president. The Constitution imposes on the president the duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” which vests the authority to oversee all federal law enforcement. As Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist 70, “good government” requires “energy in the executive,” and a vigorous president is “essential to the protection of the community from foreign attacks” and “the steady administration of the laws.” Ever since the framing, presidents have enjoyed the right to drop prosecutions as a waste of resources. Indeed, this is the very theory that President Barack Obama raised when he unilaterally reduced the enforcement of the immigration laws under the Dreamers and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans programs.
Because of the original constitutional design, President Trump ultimately can order the end of any investigation, even one into his own White House. He even has the power to pardon its targets, including himself. Mr. Trump can decide tomorrow that pursuing Mr. Flynn and others for lying to the F.B.I. agents is a waste of time and money. Though he claimed that he fired Mr. Comey for not doing “a good job,” the president can fire any cabinet and high-ranking Justice Department official for any reason or no reason.
Unfortunately, the drama over the Flynn plea and White House tweeting continues to draw time and resources away from the Constitution’s one true answer for presidential corruption: impeachment and removal from office.
If Mr. Trump has truly impeded a valid investigation, Congress should turn to impeachment, which allows for the removal of a president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeachment does not require the president to commit a crime, but instead, as Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, encompasses significant misdeeds, offenses that proceed from “the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Such offenses, he said, “are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
The House and Senate can make their own judgments — political as well as legal — about whether the Trump team’s involvement with the Russians or Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Comey fit this constitutional standard. Congress can begin this course of action by forming a special committee to investigate the Russia controversy and the Trump-Comey-Flynn affair, which could also find any predicate facts for a case of impeachment. If Congress believes that these events do not merit obstruction of justice or illegal conspiracy, it should go on the record with its judgment, too — a result Mr. Trump would welcome.
Congress should not wait on a special counsel to perform its most fundamental constitutional duty of investigating and, if necessary, removing a corrupt president.
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