Новости за 16.10.2020

Right on time, Senator Ben Sasse has done it again, and by “it” I mean the one thing he’s good at: generating positive media coverage for himself. In a telephone town hall with his constituents this week, Sasse excoriated President Trump, saying he has “flirted with white supremacists” and “kisse[d] dictators’ butts.” Step aside, The Troops: We have a new Bravest Man in America, and it is the Republican senator who criticized the president long after he accepted that president’s endorsement, after... Читать дальше...

Twitter and Facebook knew this was coming. For the last four years, they have ostensibly been preparing for foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. Pressed by lawmakers, executives from both companies insisted that they had learned their lesson. “In 2016, we were not prepared for the coordinated information operations we now regularly face,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg in a 2018 blog post. “But we have learned a lot since then and have developed sophisticated systems that combine technology... Читать дальше...

A woman lies dead, decapitated by a passing taxi on a Paris street. Or maybe she is just dreaming. For a moment, she is window-shopping in Paris, but then she is in her lover’s bedroom in New York and her grandmother’s apartment in prewar Budapest. Dead and alive, American and European, insightful and sightless, the woman is aptly named Sophie Blind: Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom, but the surname Sophie took from her tyrannical husband is a testament to her bleary vision.

In September, as the presidential campaign entered its final weeks, a woman named Danielle Pletka published an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled “I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may be forced to vote for him this year.” In it, she explained that while she abhors Donald Trump’s “chronic mendacity and general crudeness,” what she fears even more than his “erratic, personality-driven decision-making” is the “leftward lurch of the Democratic Party.” Joe Biden would “run a teleprompter... Читать дальше...

This week, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon announced that the campaign had $432 million in cash on hand. This is a truly absurd amount of money for any campaign to have. It is mental. Biden’s campaign is sitting on nearly half a billion dollars in cash, and it only has three weeks left to make use of it, the horrible possibility of expensive litigation following the election notwithstanding. And it’s not just the Biden campaign that has stacked that cheese: ActBlue, the site that allows... Читать дальше...

In their two days of interrogating Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats deftly executed Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s messaging strategy: “Health care, health care, health care.” Over and over, they skewered Republicans for, as typified by Senator Kamala Harris, “scrambling to confirm this nominee because they need one more Trump judge on the bench before November 10 to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act.” That result, Democratic questioners constantly reiterated... Читать дальше...

Since 2017, extreme drought has ravaged Canyon de Chelly, on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. In normal years, the area receives an average of 12 inches of rain. That’s not the case recently. The problem is exacerbated by lack of water infrastructure. State and federal government officials have sometimes withheld water or funding for water infrastructure from Navajo, or Diné, communities during disputes over water rights.

Donald Trump’s bumptious, boisterous, blustering performance in his first face-to-face debate with Joe Biden changed the trajectory of the presidential race—giving the former vice president a hefty lead. 

Before Thursday evening’s dueling town halls began, the conventional wisdom was that, once again, Donald Trump, the greatest showman, had hoodwinked the news media. The second presidential debate had been called off after the president caught Covid-19 and balked at participating in a virtual tête-à-tête; Joe Biden scheduled a town hall with ABC’s George Stephanopolous in its place. But, waving around a dubious doctor’s note, the president quickly secured his own town hall, with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie. Читать дальше...