10.17 Trump‘s letter to Erdogan “Don’t be a fool!”
10.17 ABC’s Jonathan Karl, at White House Briefing: “[T]o be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is: Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well.” Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”
10.17 Boris Johnson says a Brexit deal has been struck. It is now in the hands of the UK parliament, which meets on Saturday.
10.17 Rep. Elijah Cummings dies at 68
10.16 The House voted 354-60 to condemn Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria.
10.16 A White House meeting to discuss Syria turns acrimonious, as Trump calls Speaker Pelosi “a third grade politician.” Trump leaks photo, captioned “Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Post: “The photo is striking: Pelosi, in electric blue, the only woman visible at the table, standing across from a homogeneous row of men and pointing her finger at the president. After the insult, Pelosi and the Democrats walked out. Axios: A GOP official in California said: “The needle on the Batsh*t Crazy Meter may have gone past the red zone today.”
10.15 Judith Shulevitz in The Atlantic: The inability to plan even a week into the future exacts a heavy toll. For her recent book, On the Clock, the journalist Emily Guendelsberger took jobs at an Amazon warehouse, a call center, and a McDonald’s. All three companies demanded schedule flexibility—on their terms. The most explicit about the arrangement was Amazon. While filling out an online application, Guendelsberger found the following advisory: “Working nights, weekends, and holidays may be required … Overtime is often required (sometimes on very short notice) … Work schedules are subject to change without notice.” One Amazon co-worker told Guendelsberger that she barely saw her husband anymore. He worked the night shift as a school custodian and came home to sleep an hour before she woke up to go to work. “We have Sunday if I’m not working mandatory overtime, and occasionally we have Monday morning—if I don’t have to work Monday morning—to see each other, and that’s pretty much it,” she said. On the other end of the labor force are the salaried high earners for whom the workday and workweek remain somewhat more predictable. But their days and weeks have grown exceedingly long. For her 2012 book, Sleeping With Your Smartphone, the Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow conducted a survey of 1,600 managers and professionals. Ninety-two percent reported putting in 50 or more hours of work a week, and a third of those logged 65 hours or more. And, she adds, “that doesn’t include the twenty to twenty-five hours per week most of them reported monitoring their work while not actually working.” In her 2016 book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, the economist Heather Boushey described the predicament in stark terms: “Professionals devote most of their waking hours to their careers.”
10.15 With a sweep of the Cardinals, the Washington Nationals win the National League pennant.
10.15 Harold Bloom dies
10.15 Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other share the Booker Prize
10.15 Max Boot in the Post: The Trump administration makes so much news that it’s easy to become numb and forget how unprecedented and awful its conduct really is. It’s important, therefore, to pause and remember what happened last week. The seven days between Oct. 6 and Oct. 13 saw far, far more corruption, chaos and dysfunction revealed than any other administration has experienced during eight years in office. Not only is the Trump administration profoundly crooked, but it is also so hopelessly inept that it’s unable to keep its machinations secret. It’s as if the Three Stooges starred in a sequel to “Breaking Bad.”
10.15 Contestant Blair Davis on Wheel of Fortune: “I’ve been trapped in a loveless marriage for the last 12 years to an old battle-ax named Kim. She cursed my life with three step-children named Star, RJ, and Ryan, and I have one rotten grandson.”
10.15 Trump: “There was a lot of corruption; maybe it goes right up to President Obama. I happen to think that it does.”
10.15 Biden: “Mr. President, release your tax returns, or shut up.”
10.14 Max Boot in the Post: The Republican members of Congress who are apoplectic (“Shameful disaster unfolding in Syria,” tweeted Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming) have no one to blame but themselves. They are the ones who continue to support a president who has been unabashed in his love of dictators, his disdain for human rights and his willingness to betray anyone or anything to advance his own interests. Most of the time, the costs of the Trump presidency are inchoate — laws are broken, norms transgressed. But when it came to immigrant children in cages or Kurds in the line of fire, the costs are all too human and horrifying. Are you happy now, Trump supporters? Is all this worth a corporate tax cut?
10.14 The Times: Fiona Hill, testified that Mr. Bolton told her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about a rogue effort by Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the people familiar with the testimony. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at the deposition. (Another person in the room initially said Mr. Bolton referred to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney, but two others said he cited Mr. Sondland.) It was not the first time Mr. Bolton expressed grave concerns to Ms. Hill about the campaign being run by Mr. Giuliani. “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” Ms. Hill quoted Mr. Bolton as saying during an earlier conversation.
10.12 Simone Biles wins her 24th World Championship meda, the most for any gymnast.
10.12 Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge became the first marathon runner to break the two-hour barrier, running 26.2 miles in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40.2 seconds early on Saturday morning in Vienna, Austria
10.11 Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post: Republicans have been granted an off-ramp from the Trump traffic jam, a way of perhaps saving the Senate and holding down losses in the House. All they need do is declare they will not support him in 2020. It would be easier to get a somewhat competitive candidate to win 30 to 35 percent in an early primary race to help nudge him off stage but it is not, strictly speaking, necessary. All they need is a modicum of common sense and a mammalian survival instinct. Well, yes, that’s why he is still a better than even chance to be the nominee. But the odds are increasing that Republicans one way or another may be forced to shove him aside. When they do, the potential replacement better not be someone who excused the inexcusable
10.11 Farhad Manjoo in the Times: “It turns out the West’s entire political theory about China has been spectacularly wrong. … China’s economic miracle hasn’t just failed to liberate Chinese people. It is also now routinely corrupting the rest of us.”
10.11 Testifying in defiance of President Trump, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators that Trump himself pressured the State Department to oust her and get her out of the country: “Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the president, I was nevertheless incredulous that the U.S. government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
10.11 Charles Duhigg in The New Yorker: “Silicon Valley is filled with product companies. … Amazon is a process company. … No other tech company does as many unrelated things, on such a scale, as Amazon. Amazon is special not because of any asset or technology but because of its culture — its Leadership Principles and internal habits. Bezos refers to the company’s management style as Day One Thinking: a willingness to treat every morning as if it were the first day of business, to constantly re-examine even the most closely held beliefs. “Day Two is stasis,” Bezos wrote, in a 2017 letter to shareholders. “Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day One.”
10.10 Albany
10.9 Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian: “Do Americans still have a government? I do not know. What I do know is that President Trump and the upper echelons of the executive branch are at war with the legislative branch, the rule of law, the constitution, federal civil servants and the American people. It’s a conflict that pulls in many directions, and if the president threatened civil war the other day as something that could happen if he doesn’t get his way, we can regard the ordinary state of things as a low-intensity civil war or a slo-mo coup that’s been going on from the beginning. Tuesday’s White House refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry only escalates their defiance and their chaos. The chaos takes so many forms. Innumerable stories have made it clear that even the president’s own aides and cabinet members treat him like a captive bear or a person having a psychotic breakdown – like someone unstable who must be kept from harming himself and others. They have done that by heaping on the flattery, and by warping and limiting the information he receives, and often by doing their best to prevent his directives from being realized.”
10.9 Matt Lauer is accused of rape
10.9 Lawrence Summers in the Post: By almost any measure, U.S. citizens no longer share a common lived experience. Men age 25 to 54 in Arlington, Va., have a 5 percent chance of being without work. Men in Flint, Mich., have more than 35 percent chance of that. Life expectancies across states differ by more than five years — more than the impact of doubling all cancer rates. Intergenerational mobility differs by a factor of more than two across regions of the country. Areas with high rates of joblessness also have high rates of depression and pessimism about the future, and low rates of confidence in U.S. institutions.
10.7 Helaine Olen in The Post: The results are in. The Trump tax cuts resulted in most families saving so little that majorities continue to insist they see no difference in their paychecks. But one very small group made out spectacularly.. . .Even as President Trump melts down in public, tramples long-standing alliances, destroys the integrity of our political and regulatory systems, denies the reality of climate change and inflicts cruelties on the poor and desperate on a seemingly daily basis, the big money remains most concerned about their own bottom lines and the possibility of either Sen. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren winning the Democratic presidential nomination. One prominent Democratic donor told The Post he would refuse to vote if Warren was the nominee going up against Trump. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg claimed a Warren victory would be an “existential” crisis for the social media giant. Wall Streeters and corporate superstars rant about Sanders and Warren so much, they sound all but unhinged — billionaire private equity investor Stephen Schwarzman recently complained, “Maybe Bernie Sanders shouldn’t exist.”Some of our complainers sound as if they stepped out of a Gilded Age satire. Wall Street Journal columnist John Stoll found yacht and boat manufacturers — already bleeding financially as a result of the Trump tariff wars — stumping for Trump because higher taxes could “slow demand for high-dollar boats.” (I’ll remember that while I’m pondering my soaring bills for health care, housing and my children’s college education.)The reason is for these rants? Both Sanders and Warren are proposing not just significantly increased taxes on wealth, but crackdowns on big-money influence in politics and big-businesses power over all of us.
10.7 Michael Gerson in the Post: Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s idea of “incommensurability” strikes me as relevant here. If all moral claims are merely “emotive” — statements about ourselves rather than the nature of reality — then there is no way to argue between them. The statement that “stealing is wrong” can be debated. The statement “I feel that stealing is wrong” is not subject to rational dispute. Someone else could simply assert, “I feel that stealing is right,” and the argument would be at a stalemate. Trump is the emotivist par excellence. He holds no objective, abstract beliefs about the meaning of justice or duty. He approves of things that help him and disapproves of things that hurt him. There is no other moral grounding. Yet he makes his assertions with utter confidence. The president currently claims that asking a dependent government to dig up dirt on a political rival is a good thing, even when it involves the implication of extortion. He makes no argument about why the traditional definition of corruption has changed. He feels no need. The shift is in his interest. And that is enough to require the assent of his followers.
10.7 Washington Post: Since then, American workers have lost nearly an hour a week to their commutes, the equivalent of one full-time workweek over the course of a year. All told, the average American worker spent 225 hours, or well over nine full calendar days, commuting in 2018. The shift is being driven in large part by an increase in the share of workers with long commutes. In 2010, about 8 percent of workers had a one-way commute of 60 minutes or more. By 2018, that share had edged up to nearly 10 percent. As of 2018, there were 4.3 million workers with commutes of 90 minutes or more, up from 3.3 million in 2010. Rising commute times reflect the challenges of life in many metropolitan areas where new housing isn’t being built fast enough. As a result, many workers are forced out to far-flung suburbs and exurban areas in search of affordable homes. Transit and infrastructure woes are another factor. Many metropolitan areas put off necessary spending on roads, bridges and public transit as their populations soared, creating congestion as people try to get to and from work. In Washington, D.C., daily Metro ridership has fallen by 17 percent since 2008 while the population of the greater metro region has grown by several hundred thousand, resulting in one of the worst commutes in the nation.
10.7 Max Boot in the Washington Post, writing on The Joker: When Arthur does finally lash out, gunning down three obnoxious businessmen on the subway, he becomes a surprise celebrity. These murders spur an uprising against the 1 percent by people wearing clown masks. Mayhem ensues that is reminiscent of the 1977 New York City blackout. Rescued from the police by his newfound followers, Arthur finds himself as the unlikely leader of this populist clown posse even though, as he says, “I don’t believe in anything. I just thought it would be good for my act.” Arthur’s nihilism and opportunism in the name of populism resonate eerily in the present day. We have a Joker on the big screen — and a joker in the White House. And not only in the White House. Recent years have also seen the rise of populist firebrands such as Boris Johnson in Britain, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia. They believe in little aside from their own ambitions. (Johnson agonized about whether it was more convenient to be for or against the European Union before becoming an absolutist Brexiteer.) To attain and maintain power, they lie with abandon, demonize their opponents, spread batty conspiracy theories and manipulate people’s genuine grievances. “Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” Arthur asks. It’s not just you, Arthur. It really is getting crazier.
10.6 Following a conversation with Turkish President Erdogan, Trump announces that he is pulling back U.S. forces from northern Syria and would allow Turkish troops to move in. The Turks want to establish a buffer zone in which they can resettle Syrian refugees — and also to push back the Kurdish fighters which, because of their ties to Kurdish insurgents in Turkey, are viewed by Ankara as a threat. The Kurds have vowed to resist this Turkish incursion, setting up the possibility that, rather than fighting the remnants of the Islamic State, two U.S. allies will be fighting each other.
10.6 David Leonhardt in the Times: For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group, according to newly released data. The overall tax rate for the richest 400 households last year was 23%, down from 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980. Why it matters: “That’s a sharp change from the 1950s and 1960s, when the wealthy paid vastly higher tax rates than the middle class or poor.”
10.5 Phoebe Waller-Smith on Saturday Night Live: “We all find weird things sexy and women can now speak openly about their desires without being burned at the stake. Which is nice! Love that!. “Back in the day, horny women were to be feared—and now they’re given Emmys! The sexual conversation for women is expanding. The weirder you are, the more open about it, the cooler ou are. `Oh, you locked your husband in the attic? Rock on, sister!’ Whereas Straight men thee days are allowed one fantasy. If you are looking up anything other than a woman in her mid-thirties in the missionary position, you are a pervert.”
10.5 At the world track and field championships in Qatar, Braima Suncar Dabo of Guinea-Bissau “literally drags” the exhausted Jonathan Busby of Aruba to the finish line during the men’s 5,000 meters heats. The call: “They are going to finish together here. The crowd are on their feet — anybody who’s able — standing to salute this outstanding demonstration of sportsmanship and camaraderie.”
10.3 Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast: “Donald Trump’s Oval Office performance-art masterpiece Wednesday was one for the ages, a pity-party, stompy-foot screech session by President Snowflake von Pissypants, the most put-upon man ever to hold the highest office in the land. If you watched his nationally televised press conference, Trump’s shrill, eye-popping hissy fit scanned like the end of a long, coke-fueled bender where the itchy, frenzied paranoia is dry-humping the last ragged gasps of the earlier party-powder fun. Between calling Rep. Adam Schiff a panoply of Trumpish insults (and for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to be held for treason), engaging in his usual hatred of the press, talking about Mike Pompeo’s intimate undergarments, and quite obviously scaring the shit out of Finnish President Sauli Niinisto—who looked like he was the very unwilling star of an ISIS hostage video—Trump spent the day rapidly decompensating, and it was a hideous spectacle. All the Maximum Leader pronunciamentos won’t change the reality that Donald John Trump, 45th president of the United States, has lost his shit.”
10.3 The Washington Post: President Trump told aides last year he wanted U.S. forces with bayonets to block people from crossing into the United States across the Mexico border, one of several proposals he floated. . . .Trump also suggested the excavation of a border trench, or moat, that could be stocked with snakes and alligators, the officials said, adding that such ideas, along with the bayonets, were not taken especially seriously by aides in the White House. . . .[He also suggested] that U.S. forces could open fire on migrants as they attempted to enter the country, potentially shooting at their legs to wound but not kill them.
10.2 Rahm Emanuel in the Post: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has turned her carriers into the wind. . . . Pelosi’s initial reluctance to move forward suggests she knows what’s at stake. She intends to counter President Trump’s incessant and erratic tweeting about a “Witch Hunt” and “treason” with a strategy that is evenhanded and fully appreciative of the gravity of the moment. She knows that, while impeachment is an inherently political process, the public will recoil if it appears as though Democrats are waging a political campaign. Even as recent polling reveals that support for impeachment and removal has risen quickly, all Democrats will be smart to mimic her steadiness as they step forward, serious in their manner, strategic in their direction.
10.2 Trump via Twitter: The Do Nothing Democrats should be focused on building up our Country, not wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT, which is what they have been doing ever since I got overwhelmingly elected in 2016, 223-306,”
10.1 Washington Post: There’s a growing body of evidence that the Affordable Care Act has saved lives and made some Americans healthier since the sweeping health-care bill was passed nearly a decade ago. This evidence largely comes from states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA, my Washington Post colleague Amy Goldstein reports. In some areas, such as parts of Detroit where poverty and illness are common, previously uninsured patients now have coverage under the expanded safety-net program. For some people, that means not only getting primary care — but having thousands of dollars for medication and medical bills now paid for. In other areas, more prescriptions are getting filled and dialysis patients are living longer in places where coverage was expanded.
10.1 Albany
