monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I don't recall seeing this piece posted here:

Why Don’t Sanders Supporters Care About the Russia Investigation?
David Klion, NYT, Nov 14

George Soros's hedge fund, Soros Fund Management LLC, eliminated or reduced investments in some of the biggest names in tech last quarter, including Facebook Inc. FB, +0.92% and Apple Inc. AAPL, +1.19% Soros divested a 1,700-share stake in Apple as well as 1.55 million shares of Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. SNAP, +0.80% according to a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The hedge fund greatly decreased its holdings in Facebook and Twitter Inc. TWTR, +2.26% cutting Facebook shares from 476,713 shares to 109,451 and chopping investments in Twitter's stock and debt. Among the new investments Soros opened in the quarter were General Electric Co. GE, -0.05% General Motors Co. GM, +1.73% Campbell Soup Co. CPB, +4.09% and Oracle Corp. ORCL, +0.78%

It's a very good piece.

Why does Trump fascinate so many Chinese?

Love him or hate him, it’s undeniable that Trump is one of the most followed public figures in the world.1

With 41 million following the @realDonaldTrump personal account2, President Donald Trump recently surpassed Pope Francis’ 39.5 million followers to be the most followed world leader on Twitter.1

Strangely enough, although Trump was extremely vocal on his tirades about China during his election campaign, Trump still enjoys a large amount of popularity in China rather than being persona non grata there.

We examine why so many Chinese still think Trump – hailed online as ‘Emperor Trump’ by some Chinese netizens3 – could be the ‘best US President for China’4, and break it down to 5 reasons below.

[Political appointee to DHS] Johnson extolled the economic successes of American Jews and said “it’s an indictment of America’s black community that has turned America’s major cities into slums because of laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity,” according to a recording posted by CNN.

Johnson was active in Republican politics in Iowa for years, working for presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Donald Trump in the state, CNN said. He was a regular guest on conservative talk radio shows.

I spent part of my convalescence from a recent illness reading some of the comprehensive timelines of the Russia investigation (which indicates, I suppose, a sickness of another sort). One, compiled by Politico, runs to nearly 12,000 words — an almost book-length account of stupidity, cynicism, hubris and corruption at the highest levels of American politics.

The cumulative effect on the reader is a kind of nausea no pill can cure. Most recently, we learned about Donald Trump Jr.’s direct communications with WikiLeaks — which CIA Director Mike Pompeo has called “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” — during its efforts to produce incriminating material on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. But this is one sentence in an epic of corruption. There is the narrative of a campaign in which high-level operatives believed that Russian espionage could help secure the American presidency, and acted on that belief. There is the narrative of deception to conceal the nature and extent of Russian ties. And there is the narrative of a president attempting to prevent or shut down the investigation of those ties and soliciting others for help in that task.

In all of this, there is a spectacular accumulation of lies. Lies on disclosure forms. Lies at confirmation hearings. Lies on Twitter. Lies in the White House briefing room. Lies to the FBI. Self-protective lies by the attorney general. Blocking and tackling lies by Vice President Pence. This is, with a few exceptions, a group of people for whom truth, political honor, ethics and integrity mean nothing.

Is there a factory somewhere that pumps out idiotic racists like this guy?

Sean Illing
You’ve studied a lot of presidents and White Houses. Is the corruption and the lying in this administration unique in your mind?

Robert Dallek
This administration is a low point in our history. We’ve been through scandals before, going as far back as the Grant administration in the 19th century and the Harding administration in the early 20th century. Presidents have been accused of bribery and shady gift-giving. So it’s not entirely unique to see scandals subsume a White House.

But the shamelessness of this administration, the dishonesty, the total indifference to facts, is something I haven’t seen before — at least not this blatant. I think it’s demoralized people and made them even more cynical about politics.

Sean Illing
Is this the most dishonest administration you've ever seen or studied?

Robert Dallek
The short answer is yes. Politicians lie, but this is different...

Relevant factors are the degree of assault, the nature of the assault, the frequency of the behavior, the context, etc.

Since 1975, it has been illegal in the United States for a company or individual to own a newspaper and a radio or television station in the same local media market. The point of this rule was to prevent powerful private entities from enjoying overwhelming influence over how Americans saw the world.

In 2017, six corporations own 90 percent of American media — and the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission has decided that concerns about media consolidation have become obsolete.

Sauce for the goose makes sauce for the gander.