1.31 Ginny and I see Colin Quinn at the Tarrytown Music Hall.
1.31 Paul Krugman in the Times: In terms of actual policy, it probably doesn’t matter much who the Democrats nominate — as long as he or she wins, and Democrats take the Senate too. If you’re a centrist worried about the gigantic spending increases Sanders has proposed, calm down, because they won’t happen. If you’re a progressive worried that Biden might govern like a Republican, you should also calm down, because he wouldn’t. In practice, any Democrat would probably preside over a significant increase in taxes on the wealthy and a significant but not huge expansion of the social safety net. Given a Democratic victory, a much-enhanced version of Obamacare would almost certainly be enacted; Medicare for All, not so much. Given a Democratic victory, Social Security and Medicare would be protected and expanded; Paul Ryan-type cuts wouldn’t be on the table.
1.30 EJ Dionne in the Post: Like so many of the binaries in politics, the restoration/transformation optic captures something important but is also a false choice. The country can’t simply pick up where it left off before Trump took office. The radicalized conservatism that dominates the Republican Party will not go away even if he is defeated. The inequalities of class and race that helped fueled Trump’s rise have deepened during his presidency. You might say restoring the norms that Trump threatens requires transformation. And the majority that opposes Trump is clearly seeking a combination of restoration and transformation. They want to bring back things they believe have been lost as a prelude to moving forward. What they want most to restore is progress. Progressives and moderates need to realize that at this moment in history, they share a commitment to what public life can achieve and the hope that government can be decent again. They reject overt appeals to racism that have been Trump’s calling card and an approach to politics based on dividing the nation. Together, they long for a politics focused on freedom, fairness and the future. What should bring moderates and progressives together is an idea put forward long ago by the late social thinker Michael Harrington: “visionary gradualism.” The phrase captures an insight from each side of their debate: Progressives are right that reforms unhinged from larger purposes are typically ephemeral. But a vision disconnected from first steps and early successes can shrivel up and die. Vision and incremental change are not opposites. In our nation’s history, the two have reinforced each other — for example, in protecting the environment, achieving social security for the elderly and assistance to the unemployed, protecting civil rights, and expanding health insurance coverage. This lesson will apply for any new Democratic president, no matter which wing of the party she or he represents.
1.29 Dershowitz: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
1.29 Robert Samuelson in the Post: Together, younger workers and women raise job tenure. This, in turn, obscures the major story: the decreasing job tenure of middle-aged men from their 40s to 60s.“Focusing on men in specific age categories,” the study says, “we find a substantial decline in the fraction of workers who have worked with the same employer for more than 20 years.” The numbers are dramatic. In the 1980s, an estimated 39.5 percent of men 50 to 59 had been in their current jobs for 20 years or more. For men 60 to 64, the percentage — 40 percent — was virtually identical. By the mid-2010s, those percentages had dropped sharply to 26 percent for men 50 to 59 and to 32.3 percent for men 60 to 64. Meanwhile, women’s average job tenure was increasing. For those 50 to 59, the share who had 20 or more years in the same job rose from 15.2 percent in the 1980s to 21.3 percent in the mid-2010s. Among workers 60 to 64, the share increased from 23.1 percent to 27.9 percent in the mid-2010s.
1.29 David Litt in the Post: If ever there were a moment for the Senate to rise to the occasion — to show the American people that, after years of dysfunction, it is still what countless senators have long referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body” — that moment is now. So far, the Senate is failing the test. Instead of demonstrating the upper chamber’s value as a steady hand guiding our democracy, the impeachment trial is confirming that the Senate has become a place where short-term political concerns beat out careful deliberation, and where partisanship has done away with open debate. The problem runs deeper than any single cultural or political trend, and it goes beyond the conduct of any individual senator. One of America’s most hallowed institutions has become a threat to our democracy itself. . . .By granting extremist minorities immense amounts of power, and shielding them from public accountability, the upper chamber disincentivizes the responsibility it is meant to foster. Our democratic institutions are meant ensure that power is derived from the consent of the governed, yet the current design of the Senate ensures the opposite.
1.27 Jill Lepore in The New Yorker: “Starting in about 2005, the number of democracies around the world began to fall, as it had in the 1930s. Authoritarians rose to power: Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Donald J. Trump in the United States. American democracy in the 21st century is withering. The Democracy Index rates a hundred and sixty-seven countries, every year, on a scale that ranges from ‘full democracy’ to ‘authoritarian regime.’ In 2006, the U.S. was a ‘full democracy,’ the seventeenth most democratic nation in the world. In 2016, the index for the first time rated the United States a ‘flawed democracy,’ and since then American democracy has gotten only more flawed. True, the United States still doesn’t have a Rome or a Berlin to march on. That hasn’t saved the nation from misinformation, tribalization, domestic terrorism, human-rights abuses, political intolerance, social-media mob rule, white nationalism, a criminal President, the nobbling of Congress, a corrupt Presidential Administration, assaults on the press, crippling polarization, the undermining of elections, and an epistemological chaos that is the only air that totalitarianism can breathe.”
1.27 The Atlantic: “John Bolton knows that by speaking last, he can present testimony precisely calculated to hurt those he most wants to embarrass.”
1.26 Times reports that in Bolton‘s book, Bolton says Trump told him he was holding up the money until Ukraine agrees to launch investigations
1.26 18-year-old Billie Ellish became the first woman—and second artist ever—to win all of the “big four” awards (Best New Artist, Best Record, Best Song, and Best Album) in one evening
1.26 Aaron Blake in the Post: Trump’s team tried to argue that the investigations were legitimate, it focused mostly on the idea that Hunter Biden’s employment at a Ukrainian gas company was problematic. It spent considerably less time arguing for the theory that Trump actually raised with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on their July 25 phone call: that then-Vice President Joe Biden sought to help his son by pushing out Ukraine’s top prosecutor. Ditto the other investigation Trump sought. In fact, Trump’s legal team spent literally zero time talking about the one involving the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and a server that was supposedly in Ukraine. Trump’s team didn’t utter the word “CrowdStrike” once in three days, in fact, nor did it even mention a “server” in Ukraine. It instead more broadly defended the idea that Ukraine might have interfered in the 2016 election. But to be clear, the ideas that Ukraine interfered in the election and that Hunter Biden’s work was problematic weren’t what Trump asked Ukraine to investigate.
1.26 Alan Dershowitz: “Nothing in the Bolton revelations – even if true – would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. Even if the president, any president, were to demand a quid pro quo as a condition for sending aid to a foreign country – obviously a highly disputed matter in this case – that would not by itself constitute an abuse of power. Quid pro quo alone is not a basis for abuse of power. It’s part of the way foreign policy has been operated by presidents since the beginning of time.”
1.26 A helicopter crash in Los Angeles takes five lives, including Kobe Bryant, 41, and his 13 year old daughter,
1.24 Francis Fukuyama in the Post: “Often structural change can come about only as a result of external crises combined with the proper visionary leadership. Democrats will not win back swing state voters by writing off their opponents as simple racists and xenophobes; they need to show empathy for the legitimate concerns of a working class that is in serious trouble. Identity is an inherently flexible concept that can be deliberately shaped in broader or narrower ways. Liberals around the world have lost ground to populists by ignoring the broad moral appeal of national identity, which in a diverse contemporary society needs to be built around liberal and democratic values. Klein dismisses complaints about political correctness and identity politics on the left, but a politics built on the grievances of ever-narrower identity groups breeds similar thinking on the right, and it cannot be the basis for a broader democratic, civic identity that is the ultimate answer to polarization.”
1.24 Eli Manning retires. Wellington Mara once said, Once a Giant, always a Giant.’ For me, it was only a Giant.” Sally Jenkins in the Post: “Eli threw 15 touchdown passes to just two interceptions in his two Super Bowl runs, and not one of them was unpressured. At one point in 2011, his line graded dead last in the league in pass blocking. Yet he led that team to an upset of the 15-1 Green Bay Packers in Lambeau, and then on to the NFC title in the mud against the San Francisco 49ers. In the latter game, he absorbed six punishing sacks and 29 more quarterback pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. Once again, the older brother was watching it tensely. “The team is literally pulverizing your little brother out there,” Peyton says. “They were taking turns. I mean, they practically got bored, ‘You go hit him now.’ He just kept getting up, and getting up, and getting up, and getting up.” Archie Manning: “I always heard ’em say Eli doesn’t care. Eli cares. But Eli doesn’t worry. He just doesn’t worry.”
1.23 Jim Lehrer dies at 85. Paul Farhi in the Post: “Jim Lehrer didn’t like being called a “journalist.” Too pretentious, he said. He wanted to be known as just a newsman. By any name, the news about Lehrer was that he was among the best.”
1.23 Adam Schiff: “Let’s say [the Russians] start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him, The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first. The framers [of the U.S. Constitution] couldn’t protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. No Constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore. And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. Right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.”
1.23 Anabella Sciorra told a packed courtroom that Harvey Weinstein raped her.
1.22 22 UN human rights experts are gravely concerned by information they have received suggesting that, in contravention of fundamental international human rights standards, a WhatsApp account belonging to the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2018 deployed digital spyware enabling surveillance of The Washington Post owner and Amazon CEO, Jeffery Bezos.
1.21 On Day One of the opening arguments of the Senate impeachment trial, Jay Sekulow, one of President Donald Trump’s legal representatives, asked posed “Why are we here? Are we here because of a phone call? Or are we here, before this great body, because since the president was sworn into office there was a desire to see him removed?” Later, Rep. Hakeen Jeffries took him to school: “We are here, sir, because President Trump pressured a foreign government to target an American citizen for political and personal gain,” Jeffries said in his statement. “We are here, sir, because President Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election and corrupted our democracy. We are here, sir, because President Trump withheld $391 million in military aid, from a vulnerable Ukraine, without justification, in a manner that has been deemed unlawful. We are here, sir, because President Donald Trump elevated his personal political interests, and subordinated the national security interests of the United States of America. We are here, sir, because President Trump corruptly abused his power and then he tried to cover it up. And we are here, sir, to follow the facts, apply the law, be guided by the Constitution, and present the truth to the American people.That is why we are here, Mr. Sekulow, and if you don’t know, now you know.”
1.21 Derek Jeter elected to the baseball Hall of Fame, one vote short of unanimously. Mike Lupica in the Daily News: “He was the star of that team, at Yankee Stadium, the old one and the new one. So he was on the biggest possible baseball stage for two decades. He played longer than any great Yankee. In the modern world of social media, with more scrutiny than the old Yankees could ever possibly imagined, as the biggest sports star in New York City, he never embarrassed himself, or his team, or his sport.”
1.21 New York Times backs Warren and Klobachar for president
1.20 Goop, owned by Gwyneth Paltrow, sells a candle called Smells like My Vagina
1.19 Raheem Mostert, a running back for the 49ers who was undrafted and who was cut by 7 other teams, scored four TDs and set or equaled four NFL records in the 49ers’s victory over Green Bay in the NFC championship game
1.22 Albany
1.21 Albany Budget message
1.20 Albany
1.19 Albany
1.18 Albany
1.17 Albany
1.18 Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, will no longer be known as “royal highnesses.” They will also repay millions spent on renovating their mansion, as the couple step back from their royal duties and begin to split their time between Britain and Canada. They will still be the Duke and Duchess of Sussex
1.17 From “A Very Stable Genius,” by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig: “The night of January 23 [2017], the first Monday of his presidency, Trump came face‑to‑face with House and Senate leaders from both parties at a White House reception … At a long table in the State Dining Room, Steve Bannon … could not stop looking at Nancy Pelosi. …Pelosi assumed Trump would open the conversation on a unifying note, such as by quoting the Founding Fathers or the Bible. Instead, the new president began with a lie: “You know, I won the popular vote.” He claimed that there had been widespread fraud, with three to five million illegal votes for Clinton. Pelosi interjected. “Well, Mr. President, that’s not true,” she said. “There’s no evidence to support what you just said, and if we’re going to work together, we have to stipulate to a certain set of facts.” Watching Pelosi challenge Trump, Bannon whispered to colleagues, “She’s going to get us. Total assassin. She’s an assassin.”
1.17 Washington Post: More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall. The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.
1.16 Looking north from Scarborough towards Peekskill
1.16 Ellen McCarthy in the Post: The list of double standards women face on their path to public office is plenty long: They should be pretty, but not distractingly so. Assertive, but never aggressive. Maternal, yet devoted exclusively to their careers. And every word that passes their lips should be spoken in a tone, volume and cadence that is pleasing to the ever-alert ears of their audience.But there’s another quality on which women can be harshly judged that’s almost always left out of the conversation: their humor.“We often say that when women run for office they face a likability tightrope. They have to be so nuanced — and humor is a really good example of that,” says Amanda Hunter, director of research at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. “In our likability advice we say that [female] candidates should use humor, but not too much humor.”Mountains of research have established the advantages of a sharp sense of humor. People perceived as funny are also perceived as being confident and competent and are more likely to be elected into positions of leadership.But there’s emerging evidence — which jibes with the sneaking suspicions of many women who’ve tried to laugh their way to the top — that’s it’s not so clear-cut. Not for them. “Every time they display humor,” says Alyssa Mastromonaco, former deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House, of female politicians, “they’re called inauthentic or they’re trying too hard.”
1.16 Alyssa Rosenberg in the Post: The presidency, as we learned from 2008 to 2016, does not have unlimited powers to combat racism and bigotry. After the self-congratulation for dismantling a barrier comes the backlash and resentment. I don’t want to acknowledge what I know is true: that the election of the first female president would end up demonstrating that there is no office or force in the world that can defeat sexism. I’m scared that the inevitable consequence of electing one woman president might be that she would be the last for a very, very long time.
1.16 Karen Tumulty in the Post: In 2016, the Democrats nominated a woman — a woman who had also been a senator and secretary of state — only to see her go down to defeat under a barrage of attacks from an impulsive, unrestrained New York real estate developer and reality television star.But it is important not to lose sight of something else. Before Donald Trump beat Clinton, he vanquished 15 other men. The field of Republican contenders for the 2016 nomination was, collectively, one of the most impressive the party had put forward in modern memory. Some had been successful governors. Others served in the Senate. The lone woman in the Republican race had run a major corporation. Trump wiped the floor with all of them. The fact is, Trump is going to lob everything that he can think of at whoever the Democrats nominate. He will lie. He will respect no boundaries. He will play on racial fears and spread conspiracy theories. Is there any reason to believe that if Democrats pick a white male, he will be shielded from the onslaught by gender or race or anything else? Warren suggested that the opposite may be true. She noted that the half-dozen candidates on the debate stage Tuesday night had, among them, lost a total 10 elections. The only two whose records were unblemished by defeat, Warren added, were herself and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. But I’m not sure that is any more relevant when the opponent they will be facing is Trump. It was Sanders who addressed what may be the more crucial factor. “Let me be very clear,” he said. “If any of the women on this stage or any of the men on this stage win the nomination — I hope that’s not the case, I hope it’s me — but if they do, I will do everything in my power to make sure that they are elected in order to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country.” If 2016, Clinton’s team believed that Sanders did not show that same team spirit after he lost to her in a long and bitter fight for the Democratic nomination. But this time around, Democrats know something they didn’t four years ago.
1.16 Sean Hannity: “Sometimes the best defense is the ‘so what’ defense. If everything the Democrats said is true, it’s still not impeachable. If everything Lev Parnas said is true, it’s still not impeachable. That’s what this is about.”
1.15 Lev Parnas, to Rachel Maddow on MSNBC: “I’m going to use a famous quote by [U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland]: ‘Everybody was in the loop.'” Parnas alleged that President Trump threatened to withhold more than just military aid from Ukraine, saying that he, as a representative of Trump, gave Ukrainian officials a “very harsh message” that the U.S. would cut off all aid to the country if it did not announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. “The message was it wasn’t just military aid. It was all aid. Basically, the relationship would be sour. We would stop giving them any kind of aid.”, Parnas: “President Trump knew exactly what was going on. He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.
1.15 House transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate. Photographer Melina Mara shared this view of the scene as the managers walked the articles from the House to the Senate: “All of the light has gone out of the rotunda because all the sun had gone down. The only thing here are these spectrum lights lighting this gigantic room with historic paintings, like of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So all you have is this darkness with the spot of light in the middle and that’s where the managers walk through. And then you could hear a pin drop. All the murmuring stop, and they walked, and they walked mindfully. And they looked straight ahead. They did not look side to side, they were focused on getting to the Senate floor as they walked past us and all of this moody light.”
1.15 Pelosi: “Do me a favor?” “Do you paint houses too? What is this? Do me a favor?”
1.14 On the debate stage in Iowa Tuesday night, Elizabeth Warren argued that being a woman is not a liability for political candidates. It’s a strength. Warren pointed to the records of her competitors in the Democratic primary race. “Look at the men on this stage,” Warren said. “Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women: Amy [Klobuchar] and me.” And she’s more than prepared to take on President Donald Trump as a woman, she added: “The only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican anytime in the past 30 years is me.”
1.15 Washington Post: One of the explosive new documents from Lev Parnas just released by House investigators is a handwritten note by Parnas, telling himself to “get” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”
1.14 Fifteen years after winning 74 consecutive matches, Ken Jennings defeated his nearest competitors, James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter, and was named Jeopardy‘s Greatest of All Time.
1.13 LSU beats Clemson 42-25 for the National Championship. Capping a record-setting season, Joe Burrow throws for 463 yards and 5 TDs, and runs for another.
1.13 Houston Astros GM Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch have been suspended for one year after an MLB investigation found the team used technology to cheat during its World Series-winning 2017 season, sources familiar with the punishment tell ESPN. Additionally, MLB will fine the Astros $5 million and take away their first- and second-round draft picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts, sources tell Passan.
1.12 The Kansas City Chiefs dug out of a 24-0 hole to beat the Houston Texans, 51-31 — becoming the first team in NFL playoff history to win by at least 20 points after trailing by at least 20,
1.12 Jim Webb in the Post: “How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?”
1.12 Cara completes Disney marathon
1.9 Pelosi: “Dismiss equals coverup. Dismiss equals admission that you’re afraid of the facts, the truth, the witnesses and the documentation.” She argued, “We need to see the arena in which we are sending our managers. Is that too much to ask?”
1.9 Jim Malatras: I just wanted to say great job. This was a crazy year with lots of moving pieces, lots of new people, and lots of changing policy/language but you banded together and got it done. I still think Katherine may be shell-shocked from the 80-hour accomplishment slides meeting. This was my 10th one and it was truly an honor working with you on this year’s SOS (Most of the time. That’s right, Maggiore. I’m looking at you—you’re trouble)
1.9 GAMC: SOS over. Amen. The hardest one we have done and the best: a rare combination. Everything worked. The imagery worked, the room, the reception, the roll out, the substance, the rabbi, the moments, the book, the accomplishment slides, the speech, all of it. All the pieces have to come together for a masterpiece. People needed an honest evaluation of the problem, realistic solutions and hope. We delivered. It was a difficult process and required probably 100 drafts of the speech and constant refinement of every piece to get it right. High quality doesn’t just happen. It’s effort and it’s hard and demands the best we have. You guys did it. Congratulations. You should be proud of you. And you should be proud of us. I know I am. Thank you.
1.8 “In his book Walden, Thoreau wrote about dreamers and idealists – “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” That is New York – we are idealists and realists, we are dreamers and doers.”
1.8 Buck Henry dies at 91. “[Comedy] is defensive in nature. With comedy, you deflect danger. You cover up emotion. You engage your enemy without getting your face smashed in.”
1.8 Megxit: Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, announce via Instragram that they would be “stepping back” from their roles as senior royals and splitting their time between Britain and North America. The two also declared that they wanted to become “financially independent” and provide their son, Archie-Harrison, with a more balanced life. According to the British tabloids, Queen Elizabeth II is “sad,” Prince Charles is “furious.”
1.8 Sen. Mike Lee called the Trump administration’s classified briefing on Iran “the worst briefing … in my nine years” in the Senate: “They had to leave after 75 minutes, while they were in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. I find that absolutely insane. I think it’s unacceptable.”
1.8 Trump: “For far too long, all the way back to 1979, to be exact, nations have tolerated Iran’s destructive and destabilizing behavior in the Middle East and beyond. Those days are over.”
1.8 Trump: “Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast.”
1.7 Wildfires in Australia have taken the lives of 25 people and an estimated 1 billion wild animals. More than 2,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed in the nearly 31,000 square miles of the country that have burned.
1.7 Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton: America’s sky-high health-care costs are so far above what people pay in other countries that they are the equivalent of a tax of $8000 per person per year. They are surprised Americans aren’t revolting against these taxes. “A few people are getting very rich at the expense of the rest of us,” Case said at conference in San Diego on Saturday. The U.S. health-care system is “like a tribute to a foreign power, but we’re doing it to ourselves.”
1.7 Elizabeth Wurtzel dies at 52
1.7 Joe Judge hired to coach New York Giants
1.7 Iran bombs Iraqi bases where US Troops are stationed; no casualties
1.6 EJ Dionne in the Post: [Trump] accepts that he has permanently lost large parts of the country. But, given our electoral college, he knows he doesn’t have to win a plurality of the popular vote. He needs only tiny margins in swing states, and these require overwhelming support from whites, Christians, older Americans and people in small cities and rural areas. He needs them to believe that he’s their champion and that his enemies — liberals and “socialists,” big-city folk and the “politically correct,” the secular and the culturally adventurous — hate them. If keeping that level of hostility high requires direct and indirect appeals to racism and xenophobia, he’s good with that. If polarization helps Trump, then the opposite follows for progressives. They win only with coalitions that cross the lines of race, place and faith. Democratic candidates need strong support and turnout from African Americans, Latinos and city dwellers. But they cannot prevail in swing states without help from blue-collar and non-college-educated whites. Moreover, the left and center-left believe that public action is a positive good, that social solidarity is a realistic possibility and that a society thrives when it shares benefits and burdens equitably. When we live in our bunkers of hatred, none of these dispositions has a chance.
1.8 Albany
1.7 Albany: Speechwriters on the hoof
1.6 Albany
1.5 Albany
1.4 Albany
1.4 Titans beat Patriots 20-13. Possible end of an era?
1.3 Richard Haass via twitter: “Make no mistake: any war with Iran will not look like the 1990 Gulf war or the 2003 Iraq wars. It will be fought throughout the region w a wide range of tools vs a wide range of civilian, economic, & military targets. The region (and possibly the world) will be the battlefield.”
1.3 Jennifer Rubin in the Post: Trump has raised strategic incoherence to new levels. Acting without so much as briefing Congress and despite his own party’s qualms about a new war in the Middle East, Trump risks not only war but also political blowback should Iran retaliate. Sen. Chris Murphy tweeted the question on most lawmakers’ minds: “Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question. The question is this — as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”
1.3 A US drone strike killed Qasem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top military figures. Iran has vowed revenge.
1.1 On the morning after slapping a woman’s hand, Pope Francis apologized: “Love makes us patient. So many times we lose our patience. Me too, and I apologize for yesterday’s bad example.”