FiveThirtyEight: The Bottom Could Fall Out For Trump

Let’s not naively insist on taking a wait-and-see approach regarding the events of the past 24 hours. The revelation of a tape from 2005 in which Donald Trump was caught making a number of lewd comments about women, and seemed to condone unwanted sexual contact toward women, is bad news for Trump. (#Analysis.) It’s not going to help Trump to become president in a country in which 53 percent of voters are women. [...]

Many of those Republican defections are strategic rather than sincere, of course. If the news had broken when Trump was 5 or 6 percentage points ahead of Clinton instead of 5 or 6 points behind her, we probably wouldn’t see quite so coordinated and forceful a reaction. But the timing of this is just about as bad as possible for Trump. Even before the “hot mic” tape, there were reports that GOP elected officials might abandon Trump if he had a poor second debate. That makes sense, given that the Senate is still close to a toss-up and hasn’t made a definitive break in either direction. With one month left until the election, there’s perhaps just enough time for vulnerable Republican candidates to convince themselves that they’re better off abandoning Trump than sticking by him. [...]

On the one hand, the fact that Trump’s support was so low to begin with could presumably mitigate the damage to him. If you’re only getting 40 percent of the vote, the voters you do have are probably pretty committed to you — and Trump has some passionate supporters.

On the other hand, the fact that Trump has only 40 percent of the vote means that the downside for him is awfully far down. What if he doesn’t win over any undecideds, and 40 percent turns out to be more of a ceiling than a floor? Trump’s unfavorable rating was approaching 60 percent even before the “hot mic” tape surfaced, which means he was already running into a headwind in terms of picking up additional support. Furthermore, he’s targeted a narrow slice of the electorate instead of a majority coalition. He doesn’t have much of a ground game to turn out his marginal voters, and, especially if he’s losing in the polls, they could decide that it just isn’t worth the time to vote.

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BBC News: Basra Museum: How Saddam's palace was given to the people

"At first I really fought with myself about taking on the job of renovating a palace once owned by Saddam," says Aloosawi. It troubled him that the building had been constructed in the mid-1990s, a period when the country was suffering from war and famine.

"On the day that I saw if for the first time, I realised that it had not been built with bricks but with the blood of the people. On the day of the opening, though, I cried twice. Out of happiness. Because I saw how much the museum in this space meant to Iraqis." [...]

Most Iraqis under Saddam's regime knew nothing of what went on behind the palace walls. Engineer Duray Tawfik, from HWH Associates, the British engineering company overseeing the project, says he was horrified to learn that three meals were cooked each day by Saddam's staff, in case the leader ever turned up. He never did. [...]

"You wouldn't believe the interest from the public," says Obaid. "Social media has just exploded." At the opening a man approached the team to say he has many artefacts he wants to donate - including what he says is the front door from the first church to be built in the city.

"It may seem strange to house a museum in this palace," Obaid adds. "Something built by Saddam, something that symbolises so much pain and inhumanity. But who has won this time? Saddam Hussein or civilisation? Civilisation always wins."

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The New York Times: Colombian Opposition to Peace Deal Feeds Off Gay Rights Backlash

When Colombians last weekend rejected the peace deal between Mr. Santos’s government and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the decision shocked the region and laid bare generations of anger at the rebels. Many Colombians felt the guerrillas would have gotten off too easily in a deal that would have allowed a vast majority of them to avoid prison.

But critics of the agreement appear to have harnessed something else as well: a resurgent conservative movement, angered by Colombia’s socially liberal tilt in recent months.

“The opposition used that argument regarding gay marriage, abortion, religion to attract and rally against the peace accords,” said Juan Carlos Garzón, a researcher at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a research group in Colombia. “It was an effective strategy to drive the most conservative voters against the peace agreement.” [...]

In April, Colombia’s highest court legalized same-sex marriage, and last year it removed barriers to adopting children for gay individuals and couples. The country, torn by long drug wars, legalized medical marijuana late last year. A push to lift restrictions on abortions also emerged this year as the Zika virus spread.

Then came the deal with the FARC. For some conservatives, it was bridge too far: a pact with a Marxist guerrilla organization that had terrorized Colombia for decades.

“People have used the reaction to the peace agenda to talk about a larger conservative rollback in Colombia, a broadened cultural war,” said Winifred Tate, an anthropology professor at Colby College in Maine who studies Colombia.

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The Guardian: The Tories have set course for a ‘hard Brexit’. How long can unity hold?

Last week’s Tory conference required everyone to clear their memory banks and delete all such inconvenient details of recent history. Never mind what Rudd had believed so passionately in June. Here was the new-look home secretary embracing a hard Brexit as a fantastic opportunity to slash immigration, keep young foreigners out if they were judged second-rate, and shame British companies who signed up too many overseas workers and not enough Brits. “Work with us, not against us, and we’ll better control immigration and protect our economy,” was her message now. When Theresa May spoke the following day, Rudd and Johnson, the prime minister’s surprise choice for the post of foreign secretary, were new best friends, sitting side by side, glancing approvingly at one another time after time as ovation followed ovation. [...]

The frustration of those who want to fight against hard Brexit and who are tearing their hair out at Labour’s divisions on issues as central to the Brexit debate as immigration was perhaps best exemplified by news that an exasperated Tony Blair was considering returning to some role in front-line politics. “Frankly, it’s a tragedy for British politics if the choice before the country is a Conservative government going for a hard Brexit and an ultra-left Labour party that believes in a set of policies that takes us back to the 60s,” Blair told Esquire magazine. “Do I feel strongly about it? Yes, I do. Am I very motivated by that? Yes. Where do I go from here? What exactly do I do? That’s an open question.” [...]

The second aim was to showcase the personal vision of prime minister May, allowing her to explain how she intended to create “a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few”. May’s first conference speech as prime minister shunned the individualism of Margaret Thatcher and the shrinking-state Conservatism of her successors, including David Cameron, replacing all that with a commitment to an active state that would intervene wherever and whenever it could to help people “across the line”. “We succeed or fail together,” said May, recalling one Brownlee brother dragging the other across the finishing line in their recent triathlon success. “We achieve or fall short together. When one of us falters, our human instinct is to reach out our hand and help them over the line. There is more to life than individualism and self-interest,” she declared, in what was intended to be a defining section of her speech.

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CityLab: Inequality in American Public Parks

Racial and economic inequalities are well documented in American housing, education, and criminal justice. But little attention has been paid to disparities in access to the country’s public parks. In America, bike trails and baseball fields are luxurious perks of many affluent neighborhoods, boosting property values and creating a sense of community. Meanwhile, in many inner cities, public parks are magnets for crime and casualties of disinvestment. [...]

Then there’s the issue of park funding. The neighborhood parks that get the least money for certain types of recreational spending, such as lessons, supplies, and maintenance, are disproportionately in north Minneapolis, according to data provided to me by the parks board. Some of the city’s poorest communities are located there, with a large concentration of ethnic minorities. Four of the 12 neighborhood parks that received this stream of spending in north Minneapolis received less than $85,000 last year, and three got less than $25,000. Meanwhile, no neighborhood park listed in the city’s affluent southwest area received less than $150,000. To be fair, three of the northern parks did get some of the largest chunks of money from the board last year, but the variation in funding in north Minneapolis is quite stark, while it is consistently generous in southwest Minneapolis. On the other hand, the parks board does disproportionately spend more money on youth development programs, such as mentoring, at neighborhood parks in north Minneapolis. There were ten parks that received this stream of spending in north Minneapolis, compared with two in southwest Minneapolis. [...]

The state of Minnesota wants Minneapolis and other cities to spend more money on advertising and outreach to communities like Encalada’s. The Twin Cities area’s most picturesque regional parks, such as the Chain of Lakes, attract millions of visitors each year, though only about 3 percent of them are people of color. The Metropolitan Council, a local agency of state-appointed regional planners, which funds many of these parks with state money, created focus groups and discovered that lack of awareness about the parks was the biggest factor in keeping minority groups away. As a result, the council has proposed requiring cities like Minneapolis to spend more of their state funds on drawing new visitors to regional parks, such as by buying advertising in local ethnic-media outlets.

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Salon: Faith in ignorance: Politicians who quote the Bible often don’t know anything about the Bible

Yet contemporary American politics is infused with religion — in particular, with Christianity. The president is sworn in on a Bible, and it’s almost unthinkable that she or he could be openly atheistic and claim that God is a fiction and morality comes from something other than the supernatural. Even more, Scripture is often used by politicians, pundits and everyday Americans to justify their political beliefs.

For example, Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., famously dismissed climate change in 2009 by citing verses in Genesis and Matthew and saying that “the Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth — this Earth will not be destroyed by a flood.”

Similarly, President Barack Obama referenced Exodus 23 in a speech about immigration, declaring that, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger — we were strangers once, too.” [...]

Both Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals — and even non-Christians, such as Bernie Sanders — have used the Bible to support their social, political and economic positions. But what does the Bible actually say about hot-button issues like climate change, immigration, gay marriage, abortion, taxes, women, family values and social welfare? [...]

 I don’t think the Founding Fathers had a form of Christianity that we would immediately recognize today because of the presence of deism. For example, Thomas Jefferson’s attitude towards the Bible was that it needed to be edited [so he literally cut the Bible up]. [...]

 I like your term “selective literalism.” In listening to people, including my own students, I’ve noticed a strange, almost contradiction: Many are selective metaphorical literalists. For example, they take a passage like the one in 2 Chronicles [7:14] that says, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land,” and they take it literally and apply it to the U.S.

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Bloomberg: Israel Braces for Obama's Parting Gift to Palestinians

So far, nothing has come of Obama's threat. Indeed last month, Obama signed an agreement with Israel to extend the U.S. subsidy of its military for another ten years. In foreign policy, Obama is focused on the collapse of U.S. policy in Syria, which has become an even greater humanitarian emergency in the last month with the Russian and Iranian-led siege of Aleppo. Politically, the White House is working to elect Hillary Clinton as Obama's successor.

Yet with a little more than three months left of his presidency, Israeli officials privately say they worry Obama intends to try to level the playing field between the Palestinians and Israelis before he leaves office. The threat of a last-minute speech, executive order, or U.N. action has stirred some of Israel's friends in Washington. Last month, for example, 88 senators signed a letter to Obama urging him to restate "long-standing U.S. policy" to veto one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. [...]

That was in 2015, though, when Obama still had more than a year left in office. It remains to be seen how many Democrats will oppose him if he tries to punish Israeli settlement activity in the final weeks of his presidency.  

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Deutsche Welle: German coalition agrees to redraft equal pay legislation

Under plans drawn up at Thursday's meeting, workers at German businesses with 200 employees or more will have a right to claim information on "whether they are unfairly paid", said Thomas Oppermann, leader of the Social Democrats' (SPD) parliamentary group.

Businesses with 500 or more workers would face additional scrutiny, and be forced to provide regular reports on their pay structures.

Oppermann said 14 million workers across Germany would benefit from the new rules, which he said was a "great step forward. [...]

But the opposition Green party criticized the revisions, saying the law would be ineffective for most women employees, who work for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Eurostat statistics show that women in German earn on average 21 percent less than men.

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