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"A rousing digest of the morning's news, set to a soundtrack worth waking up for."


8/17/17 - "Love In The Dark"

Something all but guaranteed to make you smile: During Monday's solar eclipse, passengers aboard Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas cruise ship will witness the rare natural phenomenon to the most appropriate soundtrack possible, as none other than Bonnie Tyler will be on deck to sing her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

And at that moment, there will only be love in the dark.

Good morning and good luck,
Bryce T. Rudow
(@brycetrudow)

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* And check out the August Morning Commute Playlist on Spotify


 

THE DAILY DONALD: Costly blunders, unjustified capital, and "a collection of clowns"

FILED IN: PRESIDENT TRUMP, MILITARY SOLUTIONS, COMPLETE REPLACEMENT

In a potentially costly (/potentially deliberate?) blunder that harkens back to the tragic tale of Anthony Scaramucci, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon had his Tuesday afternoon comments to American Prospect reporter Robert Kuttner published for all to see yesterday morning.

According to his aides, Bannon had simply called Kuttner to share his admiration over Kuttner's recent piece on our 'economic war with China,' but he "never thought that the journalist might take his (very newsworthy) comments and turn them into a story."

As such, Mr. Bannon said things like...

  • "In Kim, Trump has met his match. The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962."
  • "There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us."
  • "Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more ... These guys are a collection of clowns."

In related news...

The Terrorist Attack in Charlottesville:
Yesterday, according to an executive who was involved in the decision, the CEOs on President Trump's American Manufacturing Council "couldn't justify the capital they were spending, hoping that this guy can function in a somewhat mature and statesmanlike way" and decided to disband it. However, after Stephen Schwarzman ("the chief executive of the Blackstone Group and one of Mr. Trump’s closest confidants in the business community") called the White House to inform the president of their decision, the president took to Twitter to declare, "Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!"

Meanwhile, international leaders are condemning the president ("We should not tolerate the monstrosities coming out of the president's mouth"), the mayor of Phoenix is asking him to delay his planned visit ("as our nation is still healing from the tragic events in Charlottesville"), Democrats in the House are (fruitlessly) trying to push for a congressional censure, and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is saying stuff like this on-air: "Our booking team — and they're good — reached out to Republicans of all stripes across the country today ... We couldn't get anyone to come and defend him here, because we thought, in balance, someone should do that. We worked very hard at it throughout the day, and we were unsuccessful."

 * What President Trump tweeted as I was writing this email: "Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!"


The North Korean Quandary:
While the world waits for North Korea to carry out its inevitable sixth nuclear test, Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Beijing yesterday afternoon that, despite his Chinese counterparts' protests, the U.S. and South Korea would be going ahead with their annual joint military drills later this week, which will see tens of thousands of troops engage in large-scale war games.


The Future of Health Care:
A White House spokesman announced that the administration will in fact be making the vital cost-sharing payments to insurance companies that help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income Americans enrolled in individual healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act this month. Additionally, in another win for health care reform advocates, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported yesterday that only two counties were projected to have no insurer selling plans on the individual market in 2018 (down from 40 earlier this year).



Oh, and:

  • "Scotland's devolved parliament is suffering an ongoing brute-force cyber attack but the attack has not breached the assembly's IT defenses, it said on Wednesday. 'At this point there is no evidence to suggest that the attack has breached our defenses and our IT systems continue to be fully operational,' the Scottish parliament said in a statement ... Hackers using a 'brute-force' attack repeatedly try to gain access to systems by trying different passwords."
  • "Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Tuesday signed into law what advocates called the nation’s most progressive reproductive health policy, expanding access to abortion and birth control at a time when the Trump administration and other states are trying to restrict them. Called the Reproductive Health Equity Act, the measure requires health insurers to provide birth control and abortion without charging a co-pay. It also dedicates state funds to provide reproductive health care to noncitizens excluded from Medicaid."
  • "In 24 of the nation’s largest cities and the counties that surround them, fentanyl-related overdose deaths increased nearly 600 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to county health departments nationwide. According to overdose records in those cities reviewed by The Washington Post, there were 582 fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl in 2014, a number that soared to 3,946 last year. Officials estimate there will be a much higher number of fatal fentanyl-related overdoses in 2017."
 


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