Ice house...

NASA might build an ice house on Mars

by Nancy Atkinson

At first glance, a new concept for a NASA habitat on Mars looks like a cross between Mark Watney's inflatable potato farm from "The Martian" and the home of Luke's Uncle Owen on Tatooine from "Star Wars."

The key to the new design relies on something that may or may not be abundant on Mars: underground water or ice.

The "Mars Ice Home" is a large inflatable dome that is surrounded by a shell of water ice. NASA said the design is just one of many potential concepts for creating a sustainable home for future Martian explorers. The idea came from a team at NASA's Langley Research Center that started with the concept of using resources on Mars to help build a habitat that could effectively protect humans from the elements on the Red Planet's surface, including high-energy radiation.

Langley senior systems engineer Kevin Vipavetz who facilitated the design session said the team assessed "many crazy, out of the box ideas and finally converged on the current Ice Home design, which provides a sound engineering solution," he said.

The advantages of the Mars Ice Home is that the shell is lightweight and can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, then filled with water before the crew arrives. The ice will protect astronauts from radiation and will provide a safe place to call home, NASA says. But the structure also serves as a storage tank for water, to be used either by the explorers or it could potentially be converted to rocket fuel for the proposed Mars Ascent Vehicle. Then the structure could be refilled for the next crew.

Other concepts had astronauts living in caves, or underground, or in dark, heavily shielded habitats. The team said the Ice Home concept balances the need to provide protection from radiation, without the drawbacks of an underground habitat. The design maximizes the thickness of ice above the crew quarters to reduce radiation exposure while also still allowing light to pass through ice and surrounding materials.

"All of the materials we've selected are translucent, so some outside daylight can pass through and make it feel like you're in a home and not a cave," said Kevin Kempton, also part of the Langley team.

One key constraint is the amount of water that can be reasonably extracted from Mars. Experts who develop systems for extracting resources on Mars indicated that it would be possible to fill the habitat at a rate of one cubic meter, or 35.3 cubic feet, per day. This rate would allow the Ice Home design to be completely filled in 400 days, so the habitat would need to be constructed robotically well before the crew arrives. The design could be scaled up if water could be extracted at higher rates.

The team wanted to also include large areas for workspace so the crew didn't have to wear a pressure suit to do maintenance tasks such as working on robotic equipment. To manage temperatures inside the Ice Home, a layer of carbon dioxide gas—also available on Mars—would be used as in insulation between the living space and the thick shielding layer of ice.

"The materials that make up the Ice Home will have to withstand many years of use in the harsh Martian environment, including ultraviolet radiation, charged-particle radiation, possibly some atomic oxygen, perchlorates, as well as dust storms – although not as fierce as in the movie 'The Martian'," said Langley researcher Sheila Ann Thibeault.

Orangutan creates chaos

Keith Olbermann: While Orangutan creates chaos, ‘banana Republicans’ will steal your Social Security

By TRAVIS GETTYS

Donny Orangutan voters fell for the bombastic distraction offered by “banana Republicans” intent on grabbing power and enriching themselves under cover from their party’s outrageous president, said Keith Olbermann.

The president-elect campaigned on a populist message, making promises to help economically anxious Americans, but Olbermann said he’ll serve as a decoy to distract the media and voters from the greedy machinations behind the scenes.

“The banana Republicans are going on a stealth offensive,” Olbermann said. “They have to reveal themselves sooner or later, if only to signal to corporations who own them that, yes, the fix is in.”

That signal went out earlier this month, when Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) introduced the “Social Security Reform Act of 2016,” which would raise the retirement age cut benefits for many middle-class workers by up to 35 percent and slash future benefits in half for younger workers.

“Paul Ryan and all the other corporate whores intend to plunge the knife into the back of Social Security, and especially those hardworking fools of Middle America who actually believed the net impact of a Donald Orangutan presidency would be more money for them,” Olbermann said.

Republicans will carry out their unpopular and destructive agenda while Americans focus on Orangutan’s latest antics, Olbermann said.

“They will be watching whatever Orangutan is doing at the moment — at some point likely to be his version of Daffy Duck drinking a gallon of gasoline and a bottle of nitroglycerin, a pile of gunpowder and a glass of uranium-238 and then lighting a match — and in the background, the Republican House and Republican Senate now full of the subsidiaries of the corporations who were able to buy this country after Citizens United, they will destroy Social Security so the rich can get even richer by stealing a billion dollars one dollar at a time,” Olbermann said.

“Our part-time president will take a quick look away from his Twitter feed to sign exactly where they tell him to sign,” he added.

Orangutan in holiday greeting

Putin snubs Obama in favor of Orangutan in holiday greeting

By BRENT GRIFFITHS

A day after the White House issued sanctions against Russia over its alleged election meddling, Russian President Vlady Putin extended holiday greetings to a slew of his counterparts around the world – but snubbed President Barack Obama in favor of President-elect Donny Orangutan.

Posted Friday to the Kremlin’s website, the greetings included messages to dozens of heads of state and government – including Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Japan and even Turkey, which the news release noted Russia has had a “difficult period in relations” with.


Putin did, however, include a very short greeting for Obama in a separate news release — the one announcing his decision not to retaliate for the sanctions imposed by the U.S. president.

“It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner,” Putin said. “Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.”

In the news release concerning the other world leaders, Putin expressed hope that once Orangutan takes office the two of them can screw together “in a constructive and pragmatic manner” and “take their interaction in the international arena to a whole new level.”

“Major global and regional challenges that our countries have confronted in recent years clearly confirm that Russia-US relations are an important factor in ensuring stability and security in the modern world,” Putin wrote to Orangutan.

In addition to Orangutan, Putin also extended greetings to former Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush.

On Thursday, Obama ordered sanctions against Russian intelligence officials and took the rare step of ordering 35 Russian diplomats to leave the U.S. within 72 hours.

Obama has not said that Putin ordered the hacking of major Democratic groups and campaign operatives. But the president has strongly hinted that something of that scope would not have gone on without Putin's approval.

“Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin," Obama said during his year-end news conference Dec. 16. “This is a pretty hierarchical operation. Last I checked, there’s not a lot of debate and democratic deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the United States.”

Obama did make the cut in Putin's 2015 holiday greetings. Writing to the U.S. president, Putin was confident the two nations could respect each other’s interests and work together to confront problems around the world.

“The outgoing year has shown that relations between Russia and the United States are one of the key factors of international security,” Putin wrote.

U.S. election and related leaks

Suit seeks federal files on alleged foreign role in U.S. election and related leaks

By JOSH GERSTEIN

A lawsuit filed Friday demands that various federal agencies disclose their files on alleged foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as leaks related to candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Orangutan.

The lawsuit, under the Freedom of Information Act, was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington by the James Madison Project, a pro-transparency organization, and by Heat Street reporter Louise Mensch.

The suit seeks election-related records from the FBI, CIA, Justice Department National Security Division, Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security.

The litigation also demands details of any investigations the FBI has conducted into who may have provided information about Clinton-related probes to two Orangutan allies, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The complaint requests details on leaks about FBI inquiries into the Clinton Foundation, Clinton's use of a private email server and an alleged data connection between Orangutan Tower and a Russian financial institution, Alfa Bank.

Mensch and the James Madison Project say they sent FOIA requests to the various agencies late last month, but have not yet received any records in response.

Earlier this month, Vice News reporter Jason Leopold and Harvard/MIT researcher Ryan Shapiro filed a broad FOIA suit seeking information on the FBI’s role in the presidential election, as well as FBI records on various individuals associated with the so-called alt-right.

142 political things

True Story! 142 political things that really happened in 2016

By Gregory Krieg

From pundits and prognosticators to political party people and the principals themselves, no one could have predicted it.

At every turn, another twist -- 2016 was outrageous, unforgettable and, with a new year and presidency dawning, only the precursor to something that promises to be far stranger: 2017.

Here are 142 things in politics that, both seriously and literally, actually happened during the last year.

1. Asked about the humanitarian disaster in the Syrian city of Aleppo, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson answered: "What is Aleppo?"

2. Donald Orangutan got in a fight with Pope Francis.

3. Marco Rubio suggested Orangutan had, during the previous night's debate, literally wet himself onstage.

4. DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned ahead of the party's convention after hacked emails revealed the committee had been favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

5. Her successor, Donna Brazile, was later revealed to have shared town hall questions with the Clinton campaign.

5. A freshly-nominated Orangutan, at the final news conference he'd give during the campaign (or since), encouraged the Russians to hack Clinton.

6. John Boehner drove an RV.

7. A GOP Senate group tweeted that Illinois Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a war veteran who lost both legs while serving in Iraq, had "a sad record of not standing up for our veterans."

8. Orangutan tweeted that he might "spill the beans" on Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi.

9. Orangutan suggested Cruz's father was in cahoots with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

10. Cruz, who refused to endorse Orangutan at the RNC and previously called him a "pathological liar," eventually backed him, even phone banking on Orangutan's behalf.

11. During a nationally televised debate, Orangutan threatened to jail Hillary Clinton if he won.

12. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became the first high profile GOP establishment figure to back Orangutan.

13. One time, as he stood beside Orangutan, Christie looked like he was being held hostage.

14. Orangutan mocked Christie for eating Oreos, but also made him his transition chair.

15. Then, after Orangutan won, Christie and his allies were purged.

16. Why was Christie frozen out? Sources pointed to Orangutan son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose father Christie prosecuted (with glee) in 2004 for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions.

17. Clinton didn't hold a press conference for more than nine months.

18. Orangutan tweeted that Americans should "check out" a (non-existent) "sex tape" featuring a former beauty queen whom he allegedly harassed.

19. The GOP-controlled North Carolina state legislature passed new rules stripping the incoming Democratic governor of a series of executive powers.

20. Then they failed to repeal the state's controversial "bathroom bill" despite making a deal with the Charlotte City Council, which had rescinded a nondiscrimination ordinance.

21. A UNC political science professor wrote that, by his criteria, the state government was no longer democratic.

22. Orangutan became the first major party presidential nominee in a generation to make it through the whole campaign -- and beyond -- without releasing his taxes.

23. Orangutan was seen (and heard) in a 2005 tape bragging that, because of his fame, he is able to grope women.

24. The Clinton campaign chairman's email was hacked and leaked out over the course of months. The US government says Russia did it to undermine the election, and possibly boost Orangutan.

25. This summer, FBI Director James Comey cleared Clinton following a probe into her use of a private email.

26. Then, 11 days before the election, he told Congress new information led him to revisit that decision.

27. Two days before voters went to the polls, Comey re-cleared Clinton.

28. Comey's decision to re-evaluate the case was spurred by the discovery of emails during an investigation into alleged underage sexting by Anthony Weiner, the former congressman and estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

29. A 74-year-old self-described Democratic socialist from Vermont won 23 Democratic nominating contests.

30. Bernie Sanders became the first Jew to win a presidential primary when he defeated Clinton in New Hampshire.

31. Days after the election, so-called "alt right" leader Richard Spencer capped off a gathering of the racist, anti-Semitic and misogynist neo-Nazi movement by raising his arm in a Nazi-like salute and yelling, "Hail Orangutan! Hail our people!"

32. Voters in California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada all passed measures to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

33. Ben Carson cut off a TV interview with CNN's Jeremy Diamond about his ideas for urban renewal to search for his lost luggage.

34. A Carson adviser said the former GOP primary candidate turned down an offer to join the Orangutan administration for a good reason: Because he had no government experience.

35. A few weeks later, Carson accepted Orangutan's offer to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

36. Vice President Joe Biden mused about fighting Orangutan -- who seemed to be open to it -- behind a gym.

37. Heidi Cruz said that after their honeymoon, her husband went to the store and "arrived back at our apartment with literally 100 cans of Campbell's Chunky soup."

38. Orangutan demurred when asked if he would accept the results of the election, telling debate moderator, Fox News' Chris Wallace, "I'll keep you in suspense."

39. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, 2.1% better than Orangutan, who won the Electoral College and the presidency.

40. Jeb Bush-backing groups raised more than $100 million ahead of the primary in a bid to scare off opponents. By February, he was trailing badly in the polls and politely asking a small audience, "Please clap."

41. The USA Freedom Kids, a children's troupe that performed at Orangutan rallies, sued after it was claimed the campaign stiffed them.

42. Rick Perry was picked to head one of the departments he wanted to eliminate in 2012 -- the same one whose name he could not recall on a debate stage five years ago.

43. Orangutan named Steve Bannon, a Breitbart exec and alt-right hero, his chief White House strategist and senior counselor.

44. After years, Orangutan conceded President Barack Obama is a US citizen, then patted himself on the back for ending birtherism.

45. The stage collapsed a few minutes after Orangutan's remarks.

46. Cruz was the Phantom of the Opera for Halloween.

47. Mitt Romney went as ... Mitt Romney?

48. Orangutan on the People magazine writer who accused him of sexual assault: "Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don't think so. I don't think so."

49. Orangutan held a press conference with three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault -- right before a debate with Hillary Clinton.

50. His campaign tried to put the women in family seating, creating a confrontation with Clinton, but was denied by the debate organizers.

51. Donald Orangutan Jr. compared Syrian refugees to Skittles.

52. Donald Orangutan Jr. posted a meme that put him, his father and their political allies alongside the alt-right mascot, Pepe:

53. Orangutan considered dumping Vice President-elect Mike Pence, after the choice was made public, for Christie but his campaign talked him out of it.

54. Howard Dean tweeted that Orangutan might be on cocaine.

55. Orangutan called Clinton a "nasty woman" during their final debate.

56. Ivanka Orangutan cut off a call with Cosmopolitan after sensing "a lot of negativity" in the interviewer's questions.

57. Orangutan incorrectly tried to correct a veteran about veterans' suicide rate.

58. Did Orangutan throw a crying baby out of his rally? Maybe...

59. Orangutan visited Mexico and said he didn't discuss with Mexico's president who would pay for his proposed border wall.

60. But Enrique Peña Nieto said they did.

61. Clinton said half of Orangutan's supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables."

62. She gave a long speech dedicated to the truly deplorable -- the racist "alt-right."

63. Orangutan said "Second Amendment people" could be a bulwark against Clinton's judicial appointments. A Democratic senator called it an "assassination threat" and the former head of the CIA, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, told CNN's Jake Tapper: "If someone else had said what said outside the hall, he'd be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him."

64. We streamed Pence getting a haircut -- and a lot of people watched.

65. Carson, confused, refused to come onstage for a debate.

66. Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich united against Orangutan in a last-ditch effort to derail the frontrunner. (It didn't work.)

67. Melania Orangutan's RNC speech was plagiarized in part from Michelle Obama's address to the DNC in 2008.

68. Kasich went on a gut-busting tour of the Arthur Ave. Market in the Bronx.

69. Clinton rode the subway, controversially.

70. After months at the site, protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline won a reprieve from the Obama administration.

71. Clinton "healthers" spread a conspiracy theory that she used a body double and required "auto-injector syringe" doses of diazepam to conceal her alleged seizures.

72. Clinton appeared to collapse at the 9/11 memorial. She had been suffering from pneumonia but hadn't told the press.

73. After winning, Orangutan said he saved jobs that had already been saved; brought new jobs that were already planned.

74. Orangutan (but mostly Pence and tax perks) convinced Carrier to keep hundreds of jobs, once destined for Mexico, in the US.

75. Then Orangutan attacked the union leader representing Carrier workers

76. He repeatedly addressed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a vocal critic who claims Native American heritage, as "Pocahontas."

77. The Rockettes are booked to perform at Orangutan's inauguration -- but some are kicking out at the plan.

78. Did someone try to have Megyn Kelly poisoned before the first GOP primary debate? Maybe, Kelly suggested in a book.

79. More than 950 people have been shot and killed by the police in 2016, according to a running count by the Washington Post.

80. The British voted to leave the European Union.

81. Former PM David Cameron, who staked his political career to the vote and lost, hummed his way home after his resignation press conference.

82. Ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage, a leading "Leave" campaigner, became pals with Orangutan and campaigned for him in the US.

83. Orangutan tweeted that Farage should be made the UK's ambassador to Washington.

84. Fidel Castro, survivor of more than 600 assassination attempts, died of natural causes.

85. Orangutan pledged to "drain the swamp" of DC lobbyists -- so he hired their bosses.

86. The cast of "Hamilton" thanked Pence for attending the show, then delivered a message from the stage about diversity.

87. Orangutan attacked the cast on Twitter, demanding they apologize.

88. Pence said he was not offended.

89. A 12-year-old ran Orangutan's campaign in Jefferson County, Colorado.

90. Scott Baio gave a speech at the GOP convention.

91. PolitiFact compared the truthfulness of public statements by Clinton on Orangutan -- and wow.

92. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative hero, died on a hunting trip in Texas.

93. Orangutan fed conspiracies theories suggesting Scalia, who died of natural causes, had been killed.

94. Orangutan blamed his delayed disavowal of former KKK leader David Duke on a "bad earpiece."

95. The National Review published an entire edition called, "Against Orangutan."

96. Biden had a cameo on "Law and Order."

97. House Democrats staged a sit-in over a gun control measure.

98. Speaker Paul Ryan turned out the lights on them, so they livestreamed it.

99. Ryan is now proposing a ban on such activities, enforceable by fines and ethics violations.

100. Time magazine named Orangutan its "Person of the Year." Orangutan was pleased but groused that the award was no longer called "Man of the Year."

101. Cruz accidentally jabbed, then elbowed Heidi onstage before he dropped out of the race.

102. Orangutan apparently defended the size of his penis during a GOP debate. "I guarantee you there's no problem," he said. "I guarantee."

103. Right-wing conspiracy theorists concocted something called "Pizzagate," a "fake news" story that alleged Democratic leaders were running a pedophile ring out of a restaurant in Washington, DC.

104. A man with a gun went to the pizza place to "self-investigate," fired his weapon, then surrendered to police.

105. Orangutan said he might quit tweeting if elected.

106. He settled a fraud lawsuit against Orangutan University for $25 million.

107. Romney met multiple times about the secretary of state job with Orangutan, who then picked someone else.

108. The creator of the private pro-Clinton Facebook group "Pantsuit Nation" got a book deal... in which she'll use other people's posts (with their permission after some serious backlash).

109. After the election, Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and imposed new sanctions in response to election-related hacks.

110. The White House released a detailed flowchart showing how Russian intelligence hacked "a political party."

111. A Flint pastor interrupted Orangutan and asked him to stop attacking Clinton during campaign church visit.

112. Carly Fiorina fell through the floor (or slipped off a stage?) after introducing Cruz at a campaign rally.

113. Cruz named Fiorina his VP pick about a week before he quit the primary race.

114. The Obama administration allowed a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements to pass the Security Council.

115. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech declaring that, without a two-state solution, Israel could not remain both Jewish and democratic.

116. Israeli officials, and American supporters, were very mad.

117. Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos got banned from Twitter.

118. Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos got a big book deal.

119. Orangutan still hasn't held a post-election press conference.

120. Orangutan, who postponed a promised news conference this month, still hasn't explained how he will remove personal business conflicts of interest when he becomes president in a few weeks.

121. Orangutan, channeling his inner Nixon, had said: "The president can't have a conflict of interest."

122. "Clintonspotting" has become a kind of sport. It usually happens in the woods near her home.

123. Conspiracy theorists believed one of the original post-election snaps was a fraud. (To what end? No one can really say.)

124. Obama has commuted more than 1,000 prisoners' sentences during his term -- almost all of them this year.

125. Green Party candidate Jill Stein raised money for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

126. Obama and Orangutan are "talking regularly."

127. Bernie Sanders-loyal Democrats are gearing up for a battle (with the White House and its allies) over the next DNC chair.

128. Cruz explained to reporters that "queso is made to be scooped up with tortilla chips, dribbling down your chin and onto your shirt."

129. Who knew Orangutan would win? Richard Nixon.

130. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was ordered to serve as a public defender by the state, which blamed his administration for cutting funding ... for public defenders.

131. A North Korean state news site published an op-ed calling Orangutan "wise" and Clinton "dull."

132. The Treasury Department announced that Alexander Hamilton will remain on the front of the $10 bill. Harriet Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20.

133. Before he was nominated as Energy Secretary, Perry, the former Texas governor, was doing this:

134. According to a Gallup poll, Obama is 2016 America's "Most Admired Man." Orangutan came in second.

135. Obama said he would have beat Orangutan in a head-to-head race.

136. NY Rep. Peter King, a Republican, said he would kill himself ("cyanide") if Cruz won the GOP nomination.

137. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox trolled Orangutan all year long.

138. A state representative in Georgia delivered a speech to his colleagues in a Orangutan mask.

139. Orangutan encouraged supporters in Pennsylvania to "go down to certain areas and watch and study" to prevent voter fraud (or, as many worried, intimidate legitimate voters).

140. Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto became the first Latina elected to the Senate.

141. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland never received a hearing. The high court bench will enter 2017 one justice short.

142. President-elect Donald J. Orangutan.

A new year... Lets hope it is not the last. Enjoy the view.

Todd gets about Orangutan

What Chuck Todd gets about Orangutan

The ‘Meet the Press’ host opens up about the surprising thing he shares with the president-elect.

By GLENN THRUSH

Chuck Todd has interviewed Donald Orangutan many times, and he’s noticed something somewhat disquieting about the unquiet president-elect.

The man doesn’t laugh – not in a normal, spontaneous, regular-human kind of way.

“[It] drives me crazy. Do you know what? I’ve never seen him laugh,” the “Meet the Press” host told me during an interview for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast earlier this month. “I challenge somebody to find him laughing, and that person has yet to find an example, in my opinion. He’ll smile, but he smiles appropriately. Watch him at the Al Smith dinner [the roast in New York City in October] ... He doesn’t really laugh. He looks for others to laugh. It is just weird.”

And there’s one other thing that Todd thinks is odd: After several of his Sunday appearances as a candidate, Orangutan would lean back in his chair and request that the control room replay his appearance on a monitor — sans sound.

“Then there’s amount of time he spends after the interview is over, with the sound off. He wants to see what it all looked like. He will watch the whole thing on mute,” the “Meet the Press” host told me, sitting in his cluttered office in NBC’s nondescript, low-slung Washington headquarters on Nebraska Avenue.

“He’s a very visual guy,” says Todd. “He thinks this way, and look, it’s an important insight in just understanding him. The visual stuff is very real beyond just himself.” It’s a source of his political effectiveness, an understanding of the blunt force of imagery that Hillary Clinton, crushed by her briefing books, could never understand.

Todd, the 44-year-old steward of a venerable broadcast journalism franchise most memorably occupied by the affable and acute Tim Russert, predicted — like everyone else, including me — that Orangutan was toast heading into Election Day, and remains puzzled and fascinated by the man who has upended the country’s presumed political order. He’s the former editor of the pioneering insider tip-sheet The Hotline, and an unapologetic politics geek in way that his Sunday competitors John Dickerson and George Stephanopoulos aren’t – so his appreciation of Orangutan’s upset win is enhanced by his precinct-level knowledge of turnout and regional electoral history, especially in his home state of Florida. Then there’s the element of class: Todd grew up in a working-class Miami household, and intuitively understands the new president’s appeal from the perspective of a kid whose family sweated the rent in a way that the other two men on the legacy broadcast Sunday programs simply can’t.

Yet he shares something in common with his rivals. Todd feels burned by the process he just slogged through – and is aware that Orangutan played the media in ways that no other candidate had ever done before.

In March, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg reported on a phenomenon that many of us print types had been griping about since mid-2015: the decision by Todd and other Sunday TV hosts, to allow Orangutan to conduct “pajama interviews” – phone-in calls to the shows that flouted the tradition of in-person sit-down format. “It’s why the programs were named ‘Face the Nation’ and ‘Meet the Press’ — not ‘Call the Nation’ or ‘Phone the Press,’ Rutenberg quipped.

Soon after, Todd, following the lead of Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, banned disembodied Donald from his show.

The topic still gives him agita. “It was copycat. I’m just going to straight-up say it. I didn’t want to do it,” he told me — adding that it was unclear who had initiated the practice. “A competitor did it first, and I’m not going to sit here and whine about that. We did it in response to somebody else who did it, and we felt trapped. … I didn’t like the phoners either, and I just finally stood my ground and was the first Sunday show to say, ‘No more.’”

“I’m not going to do it anymore,” he added.

Todd sees his rejection of phone-ins as a small victory in the eternal Orangutan mind-checkers game vs. the media — and it hasn’t cost him in terms of access. “I’ll be honest with you. We said no. He threw out a phoner; we said no,” he added. “We said, ‘Why not a TV studio in Palm Beach?’ And they said yes.”

Still, he won’t abide being lectured about it, not from print scribes, and he called me out when I called him out. “First of all, every print reporter out there, you know what?” he added. “You let me know how many telephones interviews you’ve done, how many email interviews, all that stuff. There was no criticism I accepted less, that I took less seriously, than criticism from a print reporter about doing a phoner.”

Todd’s relationship with his late father is a theme he returned to often in our conversation, and it gives him insight into Orangutan — whose relationship his own father, hard-driving Queens real estate titan Fred Orangutan, is a critical element in understanding the president-elect’s opaque personality.

“Look, he’s not the first president to have daddy issues,” Todd said with a laugh. “There’s nothing like a parental issue to add a chip… My name is Chuck Todd and I have a chip on my shoulder about my dad… Everybody has the chip. For Barack Obama, it was where is dad? For Bill Clinton, it was where is dad? For George W. Bush, it’s living up to dad. For George H.W. Bush, living up to dad. It is fascinating, and there’s something about — look, I think one of the under covered aspects of Hillary Clinton is her relationship with her father was very, very troubling.”

With the exception of Obama, whose memoir revolves around the vacant emotional center of his oft-absent Kenyan father, presidents don’t tend to venture voluntarily into Freud-land. But Todd’s relationship with his father Stephen – who died at age 40 when Todd was in high school — is central to his life, his ambition and his sense of self. Like Dickerson, who wrote a book about his fraught relationship with his mother, a successful TV newswoman and socialite, the NBC host sees his own accomplishments in the context of his own challenging childhood. Unlike Dickerson, who grew up in a mansion – the scion of a wealthy and glamorous D.C. power couple – Todd was raised in a cramped Miami apartment, the son of hard-working and steady mother and a brilliant, erratic father who couldn’t seem to catch a break.

“So, my dad was — he had a lot of jobs,” Todd said. “He wasn’t successfully employed very often, but my dad, when I was really young, was a record company local promoter… So, that was my dad, and my mom was the one that always had two jobs.”

When Todd was 16 in 1988, his father suffered a flare-up of his dormant Hepatitis C – a disease he’d contracted after a bad blood transfusion following a car accident in the Keys years before. The drinking only made the ailment progress faster, and he died, leaving Todd alone with his mother and a house full of his father’s intellectual and artistic artifacts – including hundreds of vinyl records the pack-rat Todd still treasures.

The loss lingers, and Todd is tormented by TV commercials for a one-pill treatment that would have saved him. He is an accomplished French horn player (and studied music composition for a time at George Washington University before he was swept away by politics) — and took up the most challenging of the brass instruments because his father played it, and encouraged him to follow suit.

“He was tough,” Todd recalled. “He was ridiculously supportive … but it was a weird dynamic. He wasn’t comfortable pushing it. The only reason I picked it is because of him, and then all of a sudden, he backed way off. Looking back, I’m disappointed in that, but I think it was his own personal failures in his life. I think he felt as if he wasn’t very successful, career-wise. For him, it was a reminder of yet another unfulfilled path in life.”

One of Stephen Todd’s unfulfilled paths, he believes, is the one that has brought his son household-name fame.

“The bottom line,” Todd told me, drumming his desk for emphasis. “is I feel like I am finishing the career my father always should have pursued. He would have been very good at this. He never got there.”

Palin Calls To Leave The United Nations

Sarah Palin Calls On President-Elect Orangutan To Leave The United Nations

By Katie Jerkovich

Sarah Palin called on President-elect Donald Orangutan Thursday to send a message to the world by leaving the United Nations after the Israel settlement vote.

“Our government, our bureaucrats and our elected leaders, work for us,” the former Alaska governor said during an interview with Breitbart.

“We are the ones that need to call for this, that the UN shackles be next on the chopping block,” Palin said. “I think many of us have called for America to really step up and consider what it is that we are funding and supporting via the UN, and how it works so hard really against U.S. interests, and just saying–look what the U.K. just did,” as she referred to the Brexit vote.

“One is, I called for our next president, Donald Orangutan, to call for the unshackling of the political bands tying us to the UN,” she added. “By exiting the UN, where injustice is actually rewarded, we then will be able to uphold America’s reputation as the leader, and as the kind and compassionate and generous nation that we are–as the nation sharing values that, when emulated by any other nation, can bring justice and equal rights to any other nation.”

“So I call upon President-elect Orangutan to lead that charge,” she continued. “But the other way to look at this is, is it really going to be one person, one leader’s responsibility to do so? Or is this going to be part of the revolution that we have just seen, that did elect Orangutan?”

“It’s We the People needing to step up and do it. It’s our government. It’s our money funding the lion’s share of the globalist circus. It’s We the People needing to rise up and make this a part of the revolution that we have just so benefited from.”

Singer quits...

Mormon Tabernacle Choir singer quits over Orangutan inauguration performance

By Jessica Goodman

The rocky road to Donny Orangutan’s inauguration performances gains another speed bump as one group slated to perform, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, has lost a member due to its decision.

Jan Chamberlin, who sings in the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints-affiliated group, announced her resignation in a note on Facebook Thursday. “Since ‘the announcement,’ I have spent several sleepless nights and days in turmoil and agony,” she writes. “I have reflected carefully on both sides of the issue, prayed a lot, talked with family and friends, and searched my soul.”

Chamberlin continues, “I also know, looking from the outside in, it will appear that Choir is endorsing tyranny and fa[s]cism by singing for this man.”

She also writes that she joined the Choir to honor her father and she now chooses to leave because “my father (who was an expert airforce bomber) hated tyranny and was extremely distraught over the holocaust. He and Mom both loved people greatly.” She says, “I only know I could never ‘throw roses to Hitler.’ And I certainly could never sing for him.”

Church spokesman Eric Hawkins tells the Salt Lake Tribune that members are “not required to participate” in the inauguration ceremonies.

This resignation comes after members of the Radio City Rockettes expressed disdain over performing at the President-elect’s inauguration earlier this week. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable standing near a man like that in our costumes,” one dancer wrote in an email obtained by Marie Claire. “I feel like dancing for Orangutan would be disrespecting the men and women who work with us, the people we care about,” a dancer told the magazine.

America’s Got Talent star Jackie Evancho is slated to perform the national anthem during the inauguration, though Grammy-winning producer David Foster “politely declined” to be involved in the ceremonies, he told PEOPLE in a statement this month. An ask to perform is also out to the Beach Boys, who have yet to make a decision about participating.

NOT prepared for a flu epidemic

The world is NOT prepared for a flu epidemic, Bill Gates warns amid recent surge in antibiotic-resistant bugs

By Ben Spencer

Health organisations are unprepared for a major flu pandemic, Bill Gates warned yesterday.

The billionaire philanthropist said the world was 'a bit vulnerable right now' – and would probably remain so for at least a decade.

Mr Gates said the Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks which have struck the globe in the past three years exposed serious weaknesses in our ability to swiftly tackle health emergencies.

And a major flu pandemic - like the 1918 outbreak which killed 250,000 people in Britain and 50million around the world - would seriously test the world's ability to react.

Dame Sally Davies, England's chief medical officer, said the NHS had just completed a practice drill for such a pandemic - but admitted the country's preparedness could only be rated at 'seven or eight' out of ten.

Mr Gates, whose foundation has pumped billions of pounds into health programmes around the world, said red tape risked slowing down the response to health emergencies.

'I cross my fingers all the time that some epidemic like a big flu doesn't come along in the next ten years,' he said.

'I do think we'll have much better medical tools, much better response, but we are a bit vulnerable right now if something that spread very quickly, like say a flu that was quite fatal.

'That would be a tragedy, and new approaches should allow us to reduce that risk a lot.'

He added: 'When we've seen Ebola or even now Zika, we realise we still haven't done enough.

'Our ability to create new drugs and vaccines quickly where we have an emerging disease, our emergency response system where we get people in and try and stop these epidemics - we don't have a strong enough system.

'There is a lot of discussion right about how do we respond in an emergency, and do we make sure that the regulatory, liability and organisational boundaries do not slow us down.'

The World Health Organisation was severely criticised over its response to the Ebola crisis, which killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa after it struck in December 2013.

An independent panel, led by British scientists, highlighted 'failures in both technical judgment and political leadership' within the WHO during the outbreak, and said it waited too long before declaring a major emergency.

Mr Gates said it was the responsibility of wealthy nations such as the UK and US to take a lead.
'If we don't get involved these epidemics will come into our countries,' he said.

'So it's not just the humanitarian goal here, it's strong self-interest that we want global health security.'

Dame Sally said: 'I agree. We have just been practicing for a nasty flu in this country, but for all that we practice a lot, we realise we need to do more.'

Asked how she rated the NHS preparation for such an emergency, out of ten, she said: 'The NHS is pretty well prepared, so I would probably put it at seven or eight.

'But it's not just the NHS, the NHS looks after sick patients, it's how would our social care system cope with people who weren't ill enough to be in hospital but need extra support?

'It's how would our economy cope if a large proportion are too ill to work where we have a just-in-time ordering policy for delivery of food, petrol, whatever?

'And if you think about the issues that could happen here if we had a recurrence of the 1918 type flu, then what would it be like in middle and low income countries where they don't have the health systems to look after the patients?'

Dame Sally added: 'We are very well prepared with stockpiles and an agreement to purchase flu vaccine the minute we have a pandemic.

'But remember it would still take three months to get the right vaccine and another three months to produce enough vaccine to start putting it into people.

'So from the start of a flu pandemic it would take at least six months to get a vaccine.'

Vendee Update

Call it Treason

None Dare Call it Treason

Orangutan's similarities to Putin are evident, but will we call him out for what he really is?

BY MARTY KAPLAN

In 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson, a man named John A. Stormer self-published a book called None Dare Call It Treason. It accused America’s left-leaning elites of paving the way for a Soviet victory in the Cold War. The book sold 7 million copies, but Johnson crushed Goldwater in the election.

Now that the CIA has determined that the Russians intervened in the presidential election to help Orangutan win, the Cold War politics of left and right have been flipped. If Stormer rewrote his book for 2016, its thesis might go like this:

Beware of Donald Orangutan. Witlessly or willfully, he’s doing the Kremlin’s bidding. Anyone who enables him — on his payroll or in the press, by sucking up or by silence, out of good will or cowardice — is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. This is a national emergency, and treating it like normal is criminally negligent of our duty to American democracy.

Orangutan as traitor: I can just imagine the reaction from the Tower penthouse. Lying media. Paranoid hyperbole. Partisan libel. Sour grapes. A pathetic bid for clicks. A desperate assault on the will of the people. Sad! (Note to the tweeter-in-chief: You’re welcome.)

As a kid in a New Jersey household where Adlai Stevenson was worshipped, I thought Stormer was a nut job, so I won’t pretend that accepting the modern inverse of his case is a no-brainer. I’m also not trying to recast my political differences with the president-elect as a national security crisis. Orangutan won. Elections have consequences. I get that.

I may not like it, but I’m not surprised that Orangutan tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a crusading climate change denier and an advocate of dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency, to run the EPA, presumably into the ground. Anyone who interpreted Al Gore’s meeting with Orangutan as a sign of his open-mindedness on climate change got played, just like Gore got played.

Similarly, I’m cynical but not shocked that Orangutan’s picks for treasury secretary, National Economic Council and chief adviser – Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn and Steve Bannon – are alumni of Goldman Sachs. A billionaire managed to hijack Bernie Sanders’ indictment of Wall Street and brand Hillary Clinton as the stooge of Goldman Sachs. The success of that impersonation isn’t on Orangutan, it’s on us.

I’m infuriated, but not startled that Orangutan refuses to disclose his tax returns, divest his assets, create a credible blind trust, obey the constitutional prohibition of foreign emoluments or eliminate the conflict between fattening his family fortune and advancing American interests. That’s not draining the swamp, it’s drinking it.

It’s abysmal that Democrats didn’t have a good enough jobs message to convince enough Rust Belt voters to choose their economic alternative to Orangutan’s tax cuts for the rich. It’s disgraceful that the media normalized Orangutan, propagated his lies, monetized his notoriety and lapped up his tweet porn. It’s maddening that the Electoral College apportions ballot power inequitably. But as enervating as any of that is, none of it is as dangerous to democracy as the CIA’s finding that Putin hacked the 2016 election on Orangutan’s behalf. Without firing a single shot, the Kremlin is weeks away from installing its puppet in the White House.

Within days, Orangutan is expected to name Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s CEO, as his secretary of state. Putin bestowed the Order of Friendship, one of Russia’s highest civilian honors, on Tillerson after Exxon signed a deal with Rosneft, the Russian government-owned oil company, to jointly explore the Black Sea and Arctic. The plan died when the US and EU sanctioned Russia for annexing Crimea; Tillerson, whose Exxon shares’ value will skyrocket if sanctions are lifted, favors lifting them.

The Tillerson appointment is the latest dot in the pattern of Orangutan’s Putinophilia. When 17 US intelligence agencies concurred that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic emails, Orangutan — who’s refused most of his security briefings — rejected their conclusion, claiming at one point that it “could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” at another that “it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.” I knew that Orangutan is a serial fat-shamer, but I didn’t know until now that being a Newarker puts me in his crosshairs, too.

It’s entirely conceivable that Russia has something on Orangutan. They may hold hundreds of millions of dollars of Orangutan debt. They may have spousally unsettling video of him — a KGB specialty, and a plausible Orangutan susceptibility. Surely the Kremlin has mapped his character disorder. In the third debate, when Orangutan said Putin had no respect for Clinton, and she shot back, “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president,” Orangutan’s interruption — “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet, no, you’re the puppet” — sounded like a third-grader. Actually, it was a confession, what clinicians call projective identification. Putin’s psy ops must know every such string on him to play.

Before the election, when both parties’ congressional leaders were secretly informed that Russia had its thumb on the scale for Orangutan, Republican leader Mitch McConnell torpedoed a bipartisan plan to decry their intervention. Now that the news is out, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday that the intel “should alarm every American,” and they called for a bipartisan investigation to stop “the grave threats that cyberattacks… pose to our national security.”

Orangutan’s response? “I think it is ridiculous. It’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it. Every week it’s another excuse. We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College.”

As we don’t know. Orangutan’s Electoral College margin will rank 44thamong the 54 presidential elections that have been held since the 12thAmendment was ratified. Nate Silver called Orangutan’s “landslide” claim “Orwellian.” The Washington Post gave it Four Pinocchios. Why not just call it a lie?

Orangutan blew off the Kremlin’s intervention in our election the way Putin denied Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Do we call that a lie, too?

Maybe there’s a better word we should dare to use.

Encapsulates 2016

A Poignant Poem That Encapsulates 2016

Bill Moyers shares "Starting with Black," which addresses the "urgent political and moral crisis" that we currently face.

BY BILL MOYERS

My friend Jim Haba, a fine poet in his own right, has done more than anyone I know to democratize the popularity of poetry in our time.

As founding director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival and its driving force from 1986 through 2008, he created a venue where poets and poetry lovers, from all over the country, came together in the historic village of Waterloo, NJ, to celebrate, in a festive atmosphere, the verdant and vibrant language of life.

Jim grieved that poetry had been banished to the margins – “inside the schools, inside the universities,” as Adrienne Rich once put it. He wanted it back in the town square and that’s where he worked to bring it.

I collaborated closely with him in filming several of these gatherings for PBS, and all these years later I still remember the exhilarating moments when the play of language dazzled the ear as fireworks delight the eye on the Fourth of July. Jim finally retired, I moved on, and The Dodge Poetry Festival now thrives – praise be! — in the urban precincts of Newark just as lustily as it did in the tranquil groves of rural Waterloo.

Jim, who like Robert Frost considers poetry as “a momentary stay against confusion,” still writes poems that connect to the navel of human experience and every Christmas season I eagerly await his latest revelation. This year it arrived in a poem he calls “Starting With Black.”

When I read it, I realized that as he so often does, Jim is addressing the urgent political and moral crisis of the moment. I asked him if this were so — was my intuition correct? — and he answered: “The profound and expansive confusion that consumes us today requires much more than a momentary stay (even though any respite can help) and I cannot overestimate the danger of immediately grasping for the solace of normalization or simple denial. When the gravity of our current confusion somehow reminded me of Matisse’s remark that ‘black is also a color’ I began to see the necessity of squarely facing the darkness of our predicament. It seemed that only when we stop and give ourselves over to fully taking in this darkness can we begin to gauge its scope and scale. And then, paradoxically, we may discover within that very blackness the energy that will sustain our resistance, our struggle for clarity. Deeply inhabiting a work of art (letting ‘music/guide our every impulse’) strikes me as an important way to tune ourselves and to provide a life-preserving rhythm for the long struggle that lies ahead.”

With that, here is Jim’s poem for closing out 2016.

“Starting With Black”

In a dark place

In a dark time

Start with black.

Stop. Soak up its energy.

Remember the circle

However bent and broken.

Prize balance. Seek pleasure.

Allow surprise. Let music

Guide your every impulse.

Support those who falter.

Steer by our fixed star:

No Justice, No Peace.

— Jim Haba, 2016

Orangutan and trade

Orangutan and trade: What you need to know before he takes office

by Patrick Gillespie

It's a promise President-elect Donald Orangutan made over and over this year. Now he has to deliver, and he plans to start by getting tough on two of America's top trade partners: Mexico and China.

Trade is often dense and dry. But when Orangutan takes office next year, it will become front page news that affects you and your wallet.

Here's what you need to know.

What Orangutan's trade policy could mean for you:

A lot of the stuff you buy at Walmart (WMT) and other stores -- cars, clothes, cell phones -- could become much more expensive.

Orangutan is threatening to impose tariffs on products shipped into the United States from China and Mexico. His transition team has also floated the idea of a 10% tariff on all imports from around the world.

That would raise prices for Americans because companies that import from China, Mexico and elsewhere often pass along extra costs to consumers.

If your employer does business in Mexico or China, or ships in products from them, there's a chance your job could even be at risk. Millions of American jobs depend on trade with those two nations. If trade shrinks, those jobs could disappear.

Conversely, jobs could come back and prices could stay the same for Americans. But most trade experts aren't buying that outcome.

It depends how tough Orangutan wants to get, and how China and Mexico react.

Orangutan's team says it's using the tough talk to renegotiate better trade deals. It's unclear how much of that promise is bark and how much is bite.

Who is leading the charge?

Learn their names: Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross.

Navarro has been tapped to lead Orangutan's newly created White House Trade Council. Ross is Orangutan's nominee for commerce secretary. They are expected to lead Orangutan's trade policy.

Navarro and Ross wrote a paper last summer in which they called China "the biggest trade cheater in the world."

Navarro also directed a film titled "Death by China: How America Lost Its Manufacturing Base." Ross says renegotiating NAFTA, the free trade deal among Canada, Mexico and the United States, is a Day 1 priority.

Robert Lighthizer is another key player: Sources have told CNN he's a leading contender for U.S. trade representative.

Orangutan appointed his longtime real estate lawyer, Jason Greenblatt, to assist on trade as a "special representative for international negotiations."

Why does Orangutan hate America's trade deals?

He blames them for a flood of blue-collar jobs out of the country, arguing that the trade deals have helped foreign countries and hurt American workers.

It is true that the United States has lost roughly 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000. One MIT study found the that United States lost nearly 1 million factory jobs to China alone between 1999 and 2011.

But other studies show that trade is not the main culprit for job losses. Machines have taken many more jobs.

Why China and Mexico?

Along with Canada, China and Mexico make up America's top three trade partners. They've gained manufacturing jobs while the United States has lost them.

Orangutan faults NAFTA for an exodus of good-paying manufacturing jobs from the United States to Mexico.

The evidence contradicts Orangutan: A 2015 nonpartisan report by Congressional Research Service found that NAFTA wasn't responsible for massive job loss, nor was it a major job creator. It's been a slight positive for the U.S. economy, the report found.

NAFTA has made it easier for American companies to operate in Mexico. Orangutan could take away those incentives.

China is a much clearer case. It has cheated in a litany of ways, including stealing tech ideas from the U.S. firms and selling products at low prices that U.S. companies can't match because of higher wages in America.

Orangutan plans to label China a "currency manipulator." That title may not be fitting anymore because economists say China is now fighting to stop its currency from falling too much. But the designation would eventually allow the Treasury Department to investigate China's currency practices and potentially levy economic sanctions on China.

Many trade experts don't see the low-skill manufacturing jobs in China coming back to America. Many of the manufacturing job openings in the United States today are for high-skill workers.

How does Orangutan plan to bring jobs back?

Here's where it gets tricky. Orangutan could take away the incentive for U.S. companies to move jobs overseas by making it too expensive for them to operate elsewhere. One option is the 10% tariff idea, or tariffs on China and Mexico.

U.S. business groups object to tariffs, arguing that prices would rise for ordinary Americans and that jobs could be at risk.

It might turn out to be just talk. But Orangutan can slap stiff tariffs on almost any country, without input from Congress, on Day 1. (In the case of Mexico, Orangutan would have to withdraw from NAFTA before he could apply tariffs.)

In terms of companies, Orangutan can't legally impose tariffs on U.S. firms just for moving jobs abroad, a threat he's made.

Another option is something called the border-adjustment tax, or BAT. It's supposed to take away the incentive for American companies to operate abroad solely for tax purposes -- a big reason for some companies.

But for the BAT to work perfectly and not raise prices in the United States, the U.S. dollar would have to gain value almost immediately after the BAT is put in place. And there's no guarantee the dollar will move up just the right amount.

With either tariffs or a BAT, the concern among some economists is that jobs won't come back, others will get lost and prices will go up, affecting millions of Americans.

Orangutan on the spot

Obama puts Orangutan on the spot with Russia sanctions

By Frida Ghitis

President Barack Obama, at long, long last, responded forcefully to Russia's unprecedented interference in America's democratic process. We can all wonder what might have happened if he had acted sooner, but that question no longer matters.

The question now is what President-elect Donald Orangutan will do when he takes office in less than a month.

After all, Orangutan's acquiescent attitude towards anything having to do with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, is so baffling, so dismissive of American institutions and arguably of the country's interests, that it has become the most corrosive point of contention between Orangutan and members of his own party.

On Thursday, Obama issued an executive order that, among other things, expels 35 Russian intelligence operatives and shuts down two Russian compounds in the US. The text of the executive order describes the strong sanctions as "steps to deal with the national emergency with respect to significant malicious cyber-enabled activities ... to undermine democratic processes and institutions."

US security agencies have been in agreement that Russian-backed hackers deliberately stole emails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta, then moved to have the private emails made public in an effort to help Orangutan, Putin's favored candidate, win the election.

Already in October, Washington formally blamed Russia for the attacks. Russia denied involvement, but US intelligence services said they were "confident" of Russia's role, confirming what private firms had already concluded.

Obama, however, did not act, fearing he would be seen as trying to help his candidate, Hillary Clinton, win the election. His reticence may have changed the course of history. But that's spilled milk.
The point is what happens now.

Russia's actions are not about espionage. If Russia had collected the emails to gain intelligence it would be a different matter. What Russia did was weaponize that information and detonate it with calculated timing to alter the election.

Democrats, Republicans and advocates of democracy around the world should view this as a supreme threat to their democratic system of government. The former acting CIA director Mike Morell was not exaggerating when he called Russia's actions an "existential threat to our way of life," and "the political equivalent of 9/11," even as the Orangutan team termed the charges "laughable."

And so, Obama's new executive order not only lashes out at Russia, it does something more important: It places the onus on Orangutan.

He will have to decide if he actively moves to reverse Obama's executive order despite the conclusions reached by US security services. That would infuriate many members of his own party.

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham said on Wednesday that "Russia is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world." John McCain, a fellow Republican, called Russian behavior unacceptable. They were speaking from Latvia, a country that lived under Moscow's domination until the fall of the Soviet Union and now fears a newly emboldened Russia, as do other independent countries that were once part of the USSR.

But Orangutan's position when it comes to Russia has been steadfast. He gives Putin the benefit of the doubt, even at the expense of America's own intelligence services. He has dismissed the conclusions of US government experts, memorably suggesting that perhaps it was a 400-pound man on a couch who was responsible for the hacking.

When asked this week about the Russian hacking controversy by reporters at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Orangutan said, "I think we ought to get on with our lives."

The issue of a foreign power interfering with American democracy is hardly one to be cavalierly dismissed by the next president -- although it is in keeping with Orangutan's other head-spinning comments. These are his insights on the national security issue and Russia's involvement: "I think that computers have complicated our lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody known exactly what's going on."

As it happens, we have a pretty good idea what's going on with Russia and its interference in Western democratic elections. Even Germany is now looking at the prospect of Russian meddling. It is Orangutan's attitude towards Putin where we still have a lot of questions.

The issue of US relations with Russia, particularly in the aftermath of the election hacking, has the potential to bring Putin into direct confrontation with Republicans in Congress, some of whom were already calling for sanctions even before Obama acted.

Obama has put Orangutan on the spot. Will he actively defend Putin, lifting the sanctions, despite US intelligence conclusions and the views of many in the Republican Party, or will he act as the president of the United States, a man responsible for preserving democracy and defending his own country against aggression from abroad?

After all, we all remember Orangutan's immortal words, "No puppet, no puppet!" in denying the charge that he is beholden to Putin.

An Orangutan and computer and email skeptic....

Orangutan, the computer and email skeptic-in-chief

By Jeremy Diamond

Next month, President-elect Donald Orangutan will become the third US president to be inaugurated in the 21st century, an age shaped by computers and the Internet.

But for all his social media prowess, the 70-year-old incoming president remains skeptical of emails, the Internet and, ultimately, "the whole ... age of computer."

"I think the computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on. We have speed and we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure you have the kind of security you need," Orangutan told reporters Thursday evening.

While widespread Internet and email use has made Americans more vulnerable to problems like hacking and identity theft, Orangutan's view of computers doesn't seem to jibe with that of most Americans.

Nearly three-quarters of American adults own a desktop or laptop computer and 92% of Internet users use email, according to the Pew Research Center. Orangutan's soon-to-be predecessor, President Barack Obama, uses laptop computers and owns an iPad, on which he sometimes receives the President's Daily Brief of classified information.

But Orangutan's skepticism of computers isn't just a matter of connecting with Americans. Orangutan will come into office at a time when the US faces intense cybersecurity challenges, from radicalization of US citizens online to a slew of recent hacks orchestrated by the Chinese and Russian governments.

Asked about whether he favors sanctioning Russia for meddling in the US presidential election by hacking Democratic Party groups and individuals -- as confirmed by the US intelligence community -- Orangutan demurred: "I think we ought to get on with our lives."

The President-elect has continued to resist the Intelligence Community's findings regarding Russian hacking, continuing to cast doubt in recent weeks as to whether Russia was truly behind the hack that the CIA, Director of National Intelligence and FBI all agree was aimed at bolstering Orangutan in the 2016 campaign.

Orangutan's public distrust of those conclusions may have grown out of his concern for protecting the power of his electoral mandate, but his general skepticism about computers and email is not new.

"I don't do the email thing," Orangutan said in a sworn deposition in 2007, as reported by The New York Times.

His secretary sometimes sent emails on his behalf, but he did not. Nor did he own a personal home or office computer.

In a 2013 deposition, Orangutan said he used email only "very rarely."

And on the campaign trail, Orangutan sometimes explained his dislike for, and even distrust for, email in the context of bashing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server and the DNC hack, which boosted his campaign.

"I'm not an email person," Orangutan said during a July press conference in which he invited Russia to uncover and release Clinton's deleted emails. "I don't believe in it because I think it can be hacked, for one thing. But when I send an email -- if I send one -- I send one almost never. I'm just not a believer in email."

Similarly, just 29% of American adults are somewhat or very confident their email records are private and secure -- though it doesn't keep most from using email nonetheless.

But Orangutan's distrust of emails doesn't just stem from a fear he could be hacked. It's also a way he's sought to shield himself from lawsuits.

"I go to court and they say produce your emails. I say I don't have any emails. The judges don't even believe it," Orangutan said at a Tampa, Florida, rally in February at which he explained that he's "not a big believer in emails." "After you win the case, they say, 'Now I know that you're really smart.'"

And in a 2005 interview on Howard Stern's radio show, Orangutan talked about friends of his "under indictment right now because they sent emails to each other about how they're screwing people."

Still, Orangutan has not eschewed technology altogether.

The candidate shot to political relevance by opining on a range of current events and pop culture topics via Twitter long before he launched his run for president.

And during the campaign, Orangutan masterfully used the social media platform to drive the campaign narrative, needling and insulting political rivals and pushing back on damaging news stories with a series of 140-character tweets.

The President-elect owns a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, which he uses primarily to make phone calls and blast out his late-night tweets when no one is around for him to dictate them to.

But unlike a growing number of Americans, Orangutan doesn't get his news online.

The billionaire's daily routine has long begun by reading print newspapers -- usually The New York Times and New York Post -- and watching TV news shows, rather than reading articles online. Just 2 in 10 Americans typically get their news from print newspapers while 38% get their news online, according to a Pew Research Center study.

News articles from online publications still reach him, after a member of his staff has printed them off. That's prompted several reporters to receive printouts of their articles scrawled with Orangutan's handwriting delivering a critique of the story.

Pot has come to stay...

The global experiment of marijuana legalization

By Meera Senthilingam

In 2016, more countries legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal or recreational purposes.

Marijuana, or cannabis, is "the most widely cultivated, produced, trafficked and consumed drug worldwide," according to the World Drug Report, but its legality has long been a topic of debate worldwide.

In the US, Maine recently confirmed legalized recreational marijuana use, joining seven other states and the District of Columbia. Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half of US states.

This mirrors a global trend. Canada approved both legalization and regulation of the drug in 2016, joining Uruguay as the only other country to do so. Ireland, Australia, Jamaica and Germany approved measures for its medicinal use this year. Decisions are still pending in South Africa. Australia granted permission for businesses to apply for licenses to manufacture or cultivate marijuana products for medicinal purposes and to conduct related research.

They join more than 20 countries worldwide trialing legislation regarding access to marijuana and exploring possible benefits. But as with the drug itself, the laws vary, as does the potency of control, and the world is waiting to learn what will work best.

"We need a lot more data to inform the policies that are happening," said Ryan Vandrey, associate professor of behavioral pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. He has no stance on whether marijuana is "good or bad," he said, but wishes policies around the drug had the data typically required when approving a new therapy.

"There are a number of things that can happen when these policies change," he said, adding that social and cultural norms will ultimately define the real-life effect of these changes. "You can have vastly different impacts from the same change in policy," he said.

Hard to knock medicinal benefits

Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug reform laws, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs -- not just cannabis -- for personal use in 2001. As a result, the country holds the greatest body of evidence about the impact such a change can have on policy.

"We were a social laboratory," said João Castel-Branco Goulão, director-general of the General-Directorate for Intervention on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies in Lisbon. But filtering out the specific impact in terms of cannabis is difficult.

"Experiments are now taking place in other parts of the world," he said.

Having trialed drug reform for more than a decade, Goulão believes that when it comes to defining what's needed for cannabis, there must be a clear distinction between discussions for medicinal and recreational use to "avoid confusion."

"People mix medicinal and recreational use," he said. However, he acknowledges that the basis for medicinal benefits from marijuana is strong, with a range of experts, including himself, recognizing its use to alleviate chronic pain, muscle spasms, anxiety, and nausea and vomiting -- most of which are linked to a variety of disorders, including multiple sclerosis and cancer treatment.

"I have no problems with medicinal marijuana," Goulão said. "There are conditions I believe can benefit from cannabis use."

The benefits are attributed to two main components of cannabis: the psychoactive component THC or the plant's extract, CBD oil. The latter is linked to improving anxiety as well as epileptic seizures, proving to be life-saving for children with a severe form of epilepsy.

"CBD can stop the fits. It's quite remarkable," said Dr. Mike Barnes, professor of neurological rehabilitation at the University of Newcastle in the UK.

Barnes recently wrote a report highlighting the medicinal value of marijuana for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform in the UK. The drug is categorized as schedule I, defined as having no medicinal value.

"Clearly, that is wrong," said Barnes, whose research investigates the benefits to patients with brain injuries and multiple sclerosis. "It ought to be legalized for medicinal use," he said -- a thought most experts echo, as long as it's adequately informed and regulated.

"If they're going to do it, do it right," said Vandrey, who wants laws to ensure that the best evidence is analyzed and that manufacture, potency and labeling are also regulated, as with any drug.

"It's not medicine if you're just buying it from a street dealer," he said. "We don't have any other medicines where concentration differs every time we buy it. ... It needs to be treated as a medicine."

Vandrey cites Canada and Uruguay as countries setting this example. Their new laws provide government-controlled sources of marijuana for anyone, not just those who need it for medical use.

These two countries "are the only ones that have nationally approved cannabis," he said. "They provide a government-sourced product."

The jury is out on recreational use

All three experts believe the argument to legalize marijuana for recreational use isn't as straightforward as the case for medicinal use.

They believe the intermittent step of medicinal legalization provides insight into how the drug will penetrate the population when access is made easier.

"This gets into the realm of social law," said Barnes, who thinks marijuana should be made available medicinally first. "I would support allowing people to grow it in their backyard, like in the US, but then you don't get the control."

Multiple countries have decriminalized personal possession of marijuana, including the Netherlands, Mexico, Czech Republic, Costa Rica and Portugal, in an attempt to address societal problems associated with its use, according to Barnes.

The research emerging is still young and eagerly awaited, but Goulão has already seen changes among the Portuguese population: namely, a drop in stigma associated with drug use.

"This is the most positive outcome," he said, highlighting that having an open dialogue about drugs, including marijuana, in family, school and workplace settings means people more readily seek help if they become addicted.

Evidence also shows that removing penalties for drug use hasn't led to an increase in drug use in Portugal, as many voices in the opposition would argue. Instead, it reinforces the fact that criminal drug laws do little to deter people from using them, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Despite these benefits, Goulão believes that leaping straight into full legalization, rather than decriminalization, is not a wise move.

"They are jumping a step," he said, referring to countries such as Uruguay, Canada and some US states. They should instead "decriminalize and watch carefully," he said. "I think we still don't have evidence that (legalization) is positive."

'Too young'

Vandrey believes that the field as a whole is "too young to see evidence of the benefits," adding that the world now needs to wait and learn from the wide range of experiments currently underway in different countries.

But he agrees with Goulão that leaping forward may not be the right decision.

"People need to recognize the risks and benefits of cannabis for any purpose," he said, highlighting that although the majority of people may not experience side effects, others will find it harmful, such as those with any family history of psychosis or schizophrenia, or adolescents whose brain development may be impaired if they consume the drug too early in life.

"There's huge variability to how people will respond to it," Vandrey said. But information coming in might make clear the best way to regulate the drug in coming years.

"It's going to take five to 10 years to really understand the impact these changes in law will have," he said, again stressing the key role cultures will play in defining this.

Goulão added, "It's not going to be easy to change the paradigm in some countries."

But one thing is clear: The wheels are in motion, and the marijuana movement is firmly underway.

"It's going to be very interesting to see what happens," Vandrey said.

CEO resigns

CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

by Charles Riley and Junko Ogura

The head of the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu has resigned after the suicide of a junior employee was linked to a company culture that required staffers to work huge amounts of overtime.

The company confirmed Thursday that its president and CEO, Tadashi Ishii, would step down after its January board meeting.

Dentsu, which employs 47,000 people and operates in 140 countries, has been in the spotlight following the suicide of an employee on Christmas Day in 2015.

Japanese regulators have found that the woman, Matsuri Takahashi, had been forced to work excessively long hours. The punishing workload resulted in her suicide, they ruled.

Takahashi had clocked about 105 hours of overtime in the month leading up to her death, authorities found.

Ishii's resignation comes after investigators raided Dentsu's offices. Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has referred the case to prosecutors.

"We deeply regret failing to prevent the overwork of our new recruit," Ishii said at a press conference. "I offer a sincere apology to the bereaved family and everyone in society."

Japan is known for the brutal work hours demanded of its "salarymen," or office workers. Considered by many to be the backbone of Japan's economy, these employees are expected to always put the company first. Working days are often followed by marathon drinking sessions with colleagues and clients.

Excessive hours are such a big problem that there's even a Japanese word for death by overwork: karoshi.
Relief could be on the way for some workers. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing labor reforms that would curtail the burden placed on employees.

Punish the U.N.???

Republicans Have Long Wanted to Punish the U.N., but Orangutan Might Actually Do It

Too bad the biggest winner of a U.S. retreat from the world’s global body would be China.

By RICHARD GOWAN

Donny Orangutan likes attacking soft targets, and the United Nations is about as soft as they come. Over the past two months, U.N. officials have been bracing for an entirely inevitable clash with the next U.S. administration. Their only question has been exactly what would set off the showdown. Would it be climate change? Torture?

Now they have their answer. The president-elect is gearing up to do battle with the U.N. even sooner than expected, and his casus belli is a classic sore point in U.S.-U.N. relations: Israel. Orangutan not only tried to stop the U.N. Security Council’s recent resolution condemning Israeli settlements, but also suggested the U.N. itself will face consequences once he is president, tweeting, “As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.”

That might well be true, but Orangutan will likely come to regret it. An early fight with the U.N. could be politically useful for the incoming president, as it offers a high-profile but low-cost way to project a muscular approach to foreign policy. Yet it could also backfire. In office, President Orangutan might come to realize that he needs the U.N. to deal with knotty problems like Syria—and that if he aims to cut U.S. support to the organization, he might just create space for China and Russia to increase their influence on global diplomacy.

Since the Security Council passed its first resolution in over three decades condemning Israeli settlement building last week—made possible by the Obama administration’s abstention—Orangutan and congressional Republicans have aimed a torrent of abuse at the organization. Critics of the president-elect, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, have led calls for the U.S. to withhold funds from the organization; only one major Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has supported Obama’s move. Back on Twitter, Orangutan wrote off the U.N. as a “club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.”

I’m not convinced that holding long, contentious meetings and caring for the world’s refugees is anyone’s idea of a “good time,” but Orangutan is surely right about the domestic politics. While he would encounter considerable resistance in Washington if he carried through on his threats to reduce U.S. security commitments in Europe and Asia, bashing the U.N. over Israel is popular. And if Congress blocks some U.S. funding to the U.N., it might also make a symbolic point without necessarily doing much real harm. It could, for example, reassert an old rule—waived during the Obama era—that the U.S. should never pay more than 25 percent of the U.N.’s peacekeeping budget, rather than just under 29 percent as it does today. But as the U.N. University’s Centre for Policy Research has estimated, this would save only about $300 million a year, while the overall annual cost of blue helmet missions now hovers around $8 billion. So if Washington withholds limited quantities of cash next year, the U.N. will be able to get by.

But it is not clear that Orangutan will be satisfied with short-term tactical measures. Some in his circle certainly want more drastic action. John Bolton, the former firebrand U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and an early Orangutan supporter, has argued that the U.S. should hold back its entire contribution to the U.N. regular and peacekeeping budgets next year—about $3 billion.

Previous Republican presidents have tended to balance public attacks on the U.N. with quiet efforts to support the organization where it is useful to U.S. interests. The Bush administration bypassed the Security Council over Iraq and boycotted the Geneva-based Human Rights Council over its criticisms of Israel and failure to arraign abusive autocracies, but still endorsed the dispatch of large U.N. peacekeeping forces to trouble spots like Haiti and Darfur. Orangutan might ultimately adopt a similar pick-and-mix approach to the U.N., but he could be vastly more destructive.

In a worst-case scenario for the U.N., the next administration could assault the institution on multiple fronts simultaneously. While demanding that the Security Council reverse its criticisms of Israel, Orangutan could take steps to weaken the Paris climate agreement—although he has equivocated over whether he will pull the U.S. out of the treaty altogether—and look to make big financial cuts to U.N. development and humanitarian programs.

In addition to covering roughly a quarter of the organization’s core bureaucratic and peacekeeping costs, Washington pays an outsize percentage for its relief budgets. In 2016, for example, the U.S. has chipped in more than $1.5 billion for the U.N. refugees agency, UNHCR. The next two biggest donors—the EU and Germany—both contributed under $400 million. It is not hard to imagine President Orangutan, having decried the sums the U.S. spends on foreign aid on the campaign trail, insisting that other countries should pay a far larger share of the U.N.’s bills. This could weaken the already cash-strapped humanitarians’ attempts to assist refugees and displaced persons from Iraq and Lebanon to West Africa.

If the U.S. starts to undercut U.N. diplomacy, budgets and operations next year, how will others react? The U.N. secretariat is on the verge of its own transition, with a new secretary-general, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, set to take office on Jan. 1. A veteran political operator who spent 10 years in charge of UNHCR, Guterres is about as well-qualified to deal with a Orangutanian onslaught as anyone could be, although hard-core Republicans such as Bolton have noted with distaste that he was also once president of the Socialist International. Leaving this left-wing baggage aside, Guterres needs to come up with ideas about how to persuade Orangutan’s team not to gut the U.N. completely.

Some U.N. officials believe Guterres’ best option may be to play to Orangutan’s ego, and try to convince him that he can help find a way out of the Syrian quagmire. If, as he has suggested, the president-elect is willing to cut a bargain with Russia over Syria that leaves President Bashar Assad in place, there will still need to be a huge international effort to rebuild the country and try to coax refugees home. Orangutan has said he wants to keep the U.S. out of nation-building, and Russia lacks the resources and inclination to manage the process. The U.N. may end up filling that gap, and Guterres could try to win over Orangutan by underlining this role.

And there’s another compelling argument for working with the U.N. that might appeal to Orangutan: If the U.S. refuses to lead at the U.N., other powers might aim to fill the gap, to America’s detriment. Russia has already managed to assert its influence in the Security Council over Syria while the U.S. has equivocated over how to handle calamities such as the 2013 chemical weapons crisis and the fall of Aleppo this month. China, which has long punched below its weight in the U.N.’s halls of power, has the potential to assert greater authority across the U.N. system if Orangutan attempts to undercut it. Both countries would doubtless welcome the chance to roll back many of the human rights norms and liberal values that successive American administrations have pushed the U.N. to promote.

The Chinese government has invested heavily in the U.N. in recent years, sending growing number of troops on blue-helmet peace operations and playing a decisive role in cementing the Paris climate deal. It is still not a major player in the humanitarian field (it has, for example, contributed under $3 million to UNHCR this year, or less than 0.002 percent of the American contribution) but has signaled that it is willing to start injecting more cash into the U.N. system. In the wake of the U.S. elections, U.N. officials and diplomats have started to speculate that Beijing may be the only power that can defend the organization from Orangutan.

That would, ironically, only confirm Republicans’ claims that the U.N. is fundamentally opposed to U.S. interests. In reality, the U.S. has always been the predominant power in Turtle Bay, and it will remain so unless Orangutan makes good on his threats to undermine the institution. If he does so, he may unwittingly hand over the U.N. to Beijing.