Music: Roberto Di Gioia — ‘Tatort’
Much of the establishment, in reaction to Bernie Sanders’ ascent, is behaving like an out-of-touch aristocracy
This is a wake-up moment for the American power establishment. Many in this elite are behaving like aristocrats in a dying regime — including in media. It’s time for many to step up, rethink, and understand the dawn of what may be a new era in America.pic.twitter.com/tr2jpTD7YY — Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) February 23, 2020 Jeet Heer writes: Bernie Sanders’s overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucus is sending shock waves through the American political system, perhaps nowhere more than on MSNBC….
Is the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic yet?
Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker write: On Tuesday, Feb. 18, no coronavirus cases had been reported in Iran. On Sunday, the government announced 43 cases and eight deaths. Some 152 cases (and at least three deaths) were confirmed in Italy on Sunday, up from three cases on Thursday. The number of infected people in South Korea jumped to 763 (and six deaths) in just days. As of Monday, Covid-19 was detected in at least 29 countries. In nations with…
Trump has sabotaged America’s coronavirus response
Laurie Garrett wrote last month: When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.” The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting…
The coronavirus outbreak could bring out the worst in Trump
Peter Nicholas writes: When a senior White House aide would brief President Donald Trump in 2018 about an Ebola-virus outbreak in central Africa, it was plainly evident that hardships roiling a far-flung part of the world didn’t command his attention. He was zoning out. “It was like talking to a wall,” a person familiar with the matter told me. Now a new coronavirus that originated in China is confronting him with a potential pandemic, a problem that Trump seems ill-prepared…
Witch-hunt: The ongoing purge of officials perceived as disloyal to Trump
The New York Times reports: In some of the most critical corners of the Trump administration, officials show up for work now never entirely sure who will be there by the end of the evening — themselves included. Even for an administration that has been a revolving door since Day 1, this has become a season of turmoil. At a moment when first-term presidents are typically seeking a stable team to focus on their re-election, President Trump has embarked on…
How JPMorgan Chase became the Doomsday Bank
Bill McKibben writes: Bankers like numbers. Numbers tell the story. No emotion gets in the way. So let’s look at the numbers: Over the past three years — that is, in the years after the world came together in Paris to try to slow climate change — JPMorgan Chase lent $196 billion to the fossil-fuel industry. Over the past three years, JPMorgan Chase lent more money to the fossil-fuel industry than any bank on Earth — 29 percent more. And…
The strange influence the sun has on whales
Ed Yong writes: The first clear evidence that some animals have a magnetic sense came from a simple-enough experiment—put an animal in a box, change the magnetic fields around it, and see where it heads. German scientists first tried this in the 1960s, with captive robins. When it came time to migrate, the birds would hop in a particular direction, as if they innately knew the way to fly. But when the team altered the magnetic fields around the robins’…
Music: Roberto Di Gioia — ‘Cat From Katmandu’
World is approaching coronavirus tipping point, experts say
The Guardian reports: The world is fast approaching a “tipping point” in the spread of the coronavirus, according to experts, who warn that the disease is outpacing efforts to contain it, after major outbreaks forced Italy and Iran to introduce stringent internal travel restrictions and South Korea’s president placed the country on red alert. Some of the countries most affected by the virus are scrambling to halt its progress two days after Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World…
Sanders eviscerates the conventional wisdom about why he can’t win
Ryan Lizza writes: On Saturday in Nevada, Bernie Sanders laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries. You could see the dominoes of punditry cliches falling inside the caucus rooms. At the Bellagio Hotel, which held one of several “Strip caucuses” meant to be easily accessible to hospitality workers along Vegas’ main drag, 75 Sanders supporters gathered along the wall of a ballroom. The powerful Culinary…
Bernie Sanders’ plans may be expensive but inaction would cost much more
Robert Reich writes: In Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, the former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals would cost $50tn. Holy Indiana. Larry Summers, formerly chief White House economic adviser for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60tn. “We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal,” he told CNN. Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, claims Sanders’ agenda would at least double federal…
How young Latinos delivered Nevada to ‘Tío Bernie’
The Intercept reports: On Saturday, caucus-goers began gathering around 10 a.m. at the Desert Pines High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. It had started raining early in the morning — a rare occurrence in Las Vegas — and didn’t lighten up until the rain stopped in the early afternoon. The high school, whose mascot is a jaguar, is located in a predominantly Latino, working-class neighborhood. Almost all the caucus-goers were people of color. The school served as the caucus site…
This is how kleptocracies work
Sarah Chayes writes: Donald Trump’s decision this week to pardon several Americans convicted of fraud or corruption has garnered condemnation from many in the political establishment. The pardons were shocking to some, but to me they were eerily familiar—straight out of the kleptocratic playbook I’ve experienced and studied in a dozen other countries. I was immediately reminded, for instance, of an episode from August 2010. I had been living and working in Afghanistan for the better part of a decade,…
Justice Sotomayor warns the Supreme Court is doing special favors for the Trump administration
Vox reports: The Supreme Court voted along ideological lines Friday evening to allow a Trump administration rule restricting low-income immigrants’ ability to enter the US to take full effect. All four of the Court’s Democratic appointees dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing a sharply worded dissenting opinion accusing her Court of “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration. “It is hard to say what is more troubling,” Sotomayor wrote. “That the government would seek this…
The garbage language that makes business sound as though it’s running well
Molly Young writes: I worked at various start-ups for eight years beginning in 2010, when I was in my early 20s. Then I quit and went freelance for a while. A year later, I returned to office life, this time at a different start-up. During my gap year, I had missed and yearned for a bunch of things, like health care and free knockoff Post-its and luxurious people-watching opportunities. (In 2016, I saw a co-worker pour herself a bowl of…