monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Mr. Netanyahu, his future imperiled by prosecutors and political challengers alike, has enraged Jewish leaders in Israel and the United States by striking a bargain with a racist anti-Arab party whose ideology was likened by one influential rabbi to Nazism. Even pro-Israel groups in the United States that prefer to air their disagreements quietly have issued public condemnations.

...The embattled Mr. Netanyahu, grasping for every potential vote, has turned to the extremist party Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, whose leaders have a long history of expressing support for violence against Palestinians, expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories, and a ban on intermarriage or sex between Jews and Arabs.

President Donald Trump has announced that the US will delay imposing further trade tariffs on Chinese goods.

The rise in import duties on Chinese goods from 10% to 25% was due to come into effect on 1 March.

Mr Trump said both sides had made "substantial progress" in trade talks, which sent Chinese stocks up nearly 5%.

He added that he was planning a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida to cement the trade deal if more progress was made.

A report from China's official news agency Xinhua also noted "substantial progress" on specific issues such as technology transfer, intellectual property protection and agriculture.

Mr Trump's decision to delay tariff increases on $200bn (£153bn) worth of Chinese goods was seen as a sign that the two sides are making progress on settling their damaging trade war.

Bill Kristol
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@BillKristol
Big GOP donors whining (but only on background!) about Trump but ultimately contributing to Trump is peak late capitalism, decadent conservatism, and degenerate Republicanism.

Looks like Trump is correct to stop mandatory vaccination efforts.

Scepticism about vaccines for children has risen across Europe in line with votes for populists, according to a new study, which proposes that public health officials should track populist parties in opinion polls as a proxy signal for vaccine hesitancy.

Big surges in measles cases and deaths map to countries where populist parties have become prominent – in particular, Greece, Italy and France.
[...]
“The higher the level of populist votes in a country, the greater the proportion of the population that believe vaccines are not effective,” says the paper. A correlation was also found between voting for populists and believing that vaccination was not important. The UK and Denmark had a higher proportion of people voting for populist parties (Ukip, the BNP and the Danish People’s party) compared with those who had doubts about vaccines than other countries.
... ... ...

Parents’ reluctance to vaccinate their children undermines the effectiveness of vaccination programmes in Western Europe. There is anecdotal evidence suggesting a connection between the rise of political populism and vaccine hesitancy.

Russian state television has broadcast a map of the US showing military facilities Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, in a report that was unusual even by its own bellicose standards.

The targets included the Pentagon and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. A hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes, it said.
[...]
In the Sunday evening broadcast, Dmitry Kiselyov, the presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news programme, Vesti Nedeli, showed a map of the US and identified several targets he said Moscow would want to hit in the event of a nuclear war.

The targets, which Kiselyov described as US presidential or military command centres, also included Fort Ritchie, a military training centre in Maryland closed in 1998, McClellan air force base in California, which closed in 2001, and Jim Creek, a naval communications base in Washington state.

Kiselyov, who is close to the Kremlin, said the Tsirkon hypersonic missile that Russia was developing could reach their targets in less than five minutes if launched from Russian submarines.

Hypersonic flight is generally taken to mean travelling through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound.

“For now, we’re not threatening anyone, but if such a deployment takes place, our response will be instant,” he said.

Kiselyov is one of the main conduits of state television’s strongly anti-American tone, once saying Moscow could turn the US into radioactive ash.

Asked to comment on Kiselyov’s report, the Kremlin said on Monday it did not interfere in state TV’s editorial policy.

Vaccine hesitancy and political populism are driven by similar dynamics: a profound distrust in elites and experts. It is necessary for public health scholars and actors to work to build trust with parents that are reluctant to vaccinate their children, but there are limits to this strategy. The more general popular distrust of elites and experts which informs vaccine hesitancy will be difficult to resolve unless its underlying causes—the political disenfranchisement and economic marginalisation of large parts of the Western European population—are also addressed.

Kiselyov is one of the main conduits of state television’s strongly anti-American tone, once saying Moscow could turn the US into radioactive ash.

Get some perspective, the threat of nuclear annihilation is not in the same league as an undocumented Mexican crossing the border and doing cheap work.

Smollett Hoax Proves Conservatives the MOST OPPRESSED Group in America

The man is not wrong.

Both right and relevant, a 1 2 punch.