Kelly is standing by his comments on Porter…
Kelly is standing by his comments on Porter…
I remember Tronc, former owners of the Los Angeles Times, boasting about how it has papers in the three largest media markets like it was just 155 days ago.
5 interesting stories
I made a new years resolution to rely less on social media for my news, and have been keeping track of interesting stories that weren’t delivered by trending news algorithms. But I’m shaking things up a bit: five interesting stories per day seems like maybe overload? So, instead, I’m just going to wait until I have five stories that especially stick with me and see if intermittent is an improvement.
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- “‘It’s a Massacre’: Blast in Kabul Deepens Toll of a Long War” (New York Times) – This is an exemplary explainer: a piece that actually makes sense of bewildering news, in this case a string of brutal attacks in Kabul. In addition, Mujib Mashal and Jawad Sukhanyar make a connection that I haven’t seen elsewhere: the surge in violence by the Taliban comes after President Trump suspended security aid to Pakistan and “many Afghan officials feared an immediate escalation in violence in retaliation.”
- “Is a Court Case in Texas the First Prosecution of a ‘Black Identity Extremist’?” (Foreign Policy) – Rakem Balogun is being held in jail on firearm charges in what Martin De Bourmont reports is the result of an FBI investigation sparked by Black Lives Matter. “This is a continuation of COINTELPRO in a modern-day form,†says Balogun.
- “Big donors ready to reward Republicans for tax cuts” (Politico) – Here’s what political quid pro quo looks like.
- “Bruce McArthur charged with three additional counts of first-degree murder, police say” (Toronto Star) – Toronto has a serial killer case: a landscaper who picked up gay men and then buried their bodies in planters around the city.
- “ПитерÑкие пенÑионерки в поддержку курÑантов летного училища (St. Petersburg pensioners support cadets)” (YouTube) – OK, so this is technically a viral story of sorts. After a video of barely dressed, dancing air cadets went viral, there were scores of imitations. But I was especially charmed by this one: two retired ladies who in the course of their nightclub homage give a tour of their apartment.
The state of State of the Union media coverage, 2018: 
I don’t get this Trump talking point, from the State of the Union prepared remarks: “Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses – many of them thousands of dollars per worker.†Doesn’t this just remind the 290-something million other Americans who haven’t received a “tax cut bonus†that the $1.5 trillion tax cut is going to the rich and the corporations they own?
The Republican hopes for holding the House in the midterms start with gerrymandering, says the NRCC chair.
Just on tradecraft grounds: telling anyone who will listen for weeks about a secret memo that will change everything is not how to drop a political bombshell.
The official conventional wisdom heading into tomorrow’s State of the Union is that Trump will show a softer side and “bring the country together” and “reach beyond the people who voted for him in 2016”. This may seem like Great Pivot thinking, that Trump one day — someday! — wake up and decide to be a generally normal right-of-center Republican. But I think people are missing something, which, if you go back through Trump’s entire career, is his unwavering strategy of taking credit for things he didn’t do. The man first made his name by pretending to be a wealthy real estate investor. After he went bankrupt, he started a business of literally slapping his name on buildings (and steaks and wine and anything else) that he had nothing to do with. Then he became a TV star by pretending to be a chieftain of industry. Pretend is what Trump does. So, if Trump paints a rosier picture than his “American carnage” of his inaugural, it’s not because he’s changed, it’s because he wants to now pretend he has made everything better. Don’t expect a 71-year-old con man to ever change his con.
Here it is, the case, by Ross Douthat of course, for a non-racist basis to be anti-immigrant. It is unpersuasive. 
Each of these “reasonable” arguments rests on xenophobia. “Increased diversity” leads to “distrust” that “stresses our politics.” California, “the model for a high-immigration future” most resembles Honduras. These aren’t subtle.
This White House narrative seems right: career conservatives trying to enact their policy agenda as fast as they can because they expect Trump to politically implode.
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