Monday, July 23rd, 2018

1

Oh Caps Lock, My Caps Lock

All the parodies that people warned about during the election have become reality -- and reality has become a parody. That's at least one of the messages of President Trump's late night all caps tweet in which he warned Iran: "NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE." We've officially normalized the idea that all caps, in addition to being irritating, carry a particular political weight in international affairs. (CNN's headline was: Trump uses all caps in threat to Iran.)

+ The Iran tweet followed a week of DC wrangling over how to respond to Trump's Helsinki performance. Here's Evan Osnos in The New Yorker: "The Senate, in a rare act of unity, passed a nonbinding resolution against Putin's request to interrogate American officials, a proposition that Trump had entertained but finally rejected. More remarkable, though, was what didn't happen. No one resigned from the Cabinet. No Republican senators took concrete steps to restrain or contain or censure the President." (This is the most intriguing, and important, angle of this story. We like to hope that Trump's enablers would draw the line at the launching of massive war. But there's absolutely no evidence to support that hope.)

2

The O-Zone Layers

"The heart of this new law: Opportunity Zones, or 'O-zones,' low-income areas designated by each state. Investors will soon be able to plow recently realized capital gains into projects or companies based there, slowly erase the tax obligations on a portion of those gains and, more significantly, have those proceeds grow tax-free. There are almost no limits." Forbes: An Unlikely Group Of Billionaires And Politicians Has Created The Most Unbelievable Tax Break Ever. (There are a lot of ways this could go wrong. But if it goes right, it's huge.)

3

Identity Crisis

Israel recently passed a law that declares the "right of national self-determination, once envisioned to include all within its borders, as 'unique to the Jewish people.'" The NYT's Max Fisher shares an insightful look at how this move by Israel is part of a broader international trend: "Though Israel's circumstances may be unique, its sense of facing a looming decision about its national identity is not. There is a growing backlash to the idea that countries should privilege democracy over all else. That movement, driven by perceptions of physical and demographic insecurity, insists that, now, identity will come first."

4

Judgment Daze

"God was using Trump just like he had used the Apostle Paul, she said. 'Paul had murdered Christians and he went on to minister to many, many people,' Sheila said. 'I think he's being molded by God for the role. I think he's the right man for the right time. It's about the survival of the Christian nation.'"WaPo's Stephanie McCrummen takes you to a small Alabama town, where an evangelical congregation reckons with God, President Trump and the meaning of morality. This is very interesting piece. I don't agree with these folks, but their strategic political choices make some sense to me. The policy benefits Trump offers far outweigh the impact of his personal characteristics. I get that. What I don't get are all the GOP senators who have chosen to stand by and watch America's role in the world diminish day by day, tweet by tweet.

5

Ice Veins

"Now, these are everyday scenes in the city: An Ecuadorian man gets arrested while delivering pizza in Brooklyn. A Chinese father of two is detained during an interview to become a legal permanent resident. Across the boroughs, there have been reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents appearing in courthouses, workplaces, neighborhood streets, even a church, according to one advocacy group, sowing panic." The Marshall Project and NY Mag: New York on Ice.

+ The New Yorker: "But investigators at a separate ice unit ... have carried out a much less visible mission during the past nine years, targeting human-rights offenders who came to America from dozens of countries." The Painstaking Hunt for War Criminals in the United States. (So in many cases, ICE is targeting both human rights offenders and the victims of their abuse who came to America for shelter.)

6

Very Fine People Update

"'Why did you think that you could walk in here and do business as usual after what happened?' Nikuyah Walker, one of the activists there that day, bluntly asked the sitting mayor. Today, in a sign of how much has changed since white nationalists rallied here and shocked the nation, Ms. Walker is mayor herself, the city's first black woman to serve in that role." NYT: Year After White Nationalist Rally, Charlottesville Is in Tug of War Over Its Soul. (It's not just Charlottesville...)

+ More Tennesseans are sporting Confederate flag license plates than ever before.

7

Florida, Man…

"South Florida is the place where you can fake your way past the velvet ropes into the upper echelons of business and high society by showing off flashes of luxurious living. 'Miami doesn't have the due-diligence culture like Wall Street and New York. If you are a developer and someone is offering you cash with no mortgage or no documentation involved, you are very happy to take that cash. Miami is the hot-money capital of the world.'" Vice: The Insane Saga of the Fake Saudi Prince Who Scammed Miami's Rich and Famous.

8

Nine Lives

One woman lost nine family members when the Branson duck boat sank. That tragedy contrasts with another family's amazingly good fortune. "All the members of a family of nine survived — an outcome that defies probability to the point of qualifying as unbelievable."

9

Melting Pot Roast

"Jonathan Gold was a restaurant critic, one whose roving intellect uncovered a new story about food in America, one about everyday, often immigrant-run restaurants, not just fine dining. That alone made him revolutionary. But Los Angeles is not in mourning because of the loss of a food-writing pioneer. The second-largest city in America just lost a secular saint. It's mourning a welcoming guide and a listening ear, a curious palate and an endless appetite, a man who saw the very best of the city, and told the rest of America that a place written off by the national media as vapid, soulless, and sun-dazed was actually the country's beating heart." Eater: What Will Los Angeles Do Without Jonathan Gold?

+ LA Times: "Gold celebrated not just the new waves of people who came to the region, but also explained how their food served as a bridge for all of us to learn about one another."

10

Bottom of the News

"If you'd like to buy a waterboarding kit autographed by Dick Cheney, today is your lucky day." And that wasn't nearly the weirdest part of the second episode of Sacha Baron Cohen's Who is America? That prize goes to Georgia State Representative Jason Spencer who learned "how to 'intimidate' a terrorist with the prospect of homosexuality—by pulling his pants down and running at Baron Cohen, butt-first." (There are few things that will depress you more about America than watching this show. That said, it's a must watch.)

+ Medium-bodied, oaky, and just a bit radioactive. Fukushima's nuclear signature found in California wine. (This article would leave the Paul Giamatti character from Sideways saying, "You know what, just give me the merlot...)

+ "Mechanically separated chicken is a paste created by pressing unstripped chicken bones through a sieve to separate edible meat tissue (including tendons and muscle fibers) from the bones. This paste is then added to those tiny meatball toppings. (Is your mouth watering yet?)" What's actually in your frozen pizza?