READER SURVEY
Please help me improve the value you get from Wide World of News by taking a moment to answer just a few questions.
All responses will be kept confidential and/but will allow me to better serve you.
1. I read Wide World of News because (check all that apply):
A. I love the jokes. ____
B. It makes me feel like I am actually in the Gang of 500. _____
C. I’ve never noticed any jokes, but it tells me what I need to know. _____
D. I trust Mark to consume the news for me and tell me what’s important. _____
E. As I member of the Gang of 500, I like finally having a daily account of the group’s activities. _____
F. Mark is able to hear the dogs that aren’t barking in some other quarters of the media, such as asking questions like, Who will handle two big pieces of the Klain portfolio when Jeff Zients takes over – congressional relations (with BOTH parties) and liaison to the progressive wing of the party? _____
G. If Mark says there are no other essential reads, I believe him – and it saves me a lot of time. _____
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I. I’m not interested in the Beatles, but Mark’s coverage allows me to keep up with my grandparents’ interests. _____
J. I’m not interested in Taylor Swift, but Mark’s coverage allows me to keep up with my grandkids’ interests. _____
K. Mark is able to weave and stack the day’s news in a way that is at once understandable and sophisticated, such as:
From the factual to the fanciful, there is a lot of coverage of the Biden document situation today.
Start with this New York Times piece, which seems to be a scooplet but could end up being a scoop:
President Biden’s lawyers told the Justice Department in November that they had no reason to believe that copies of official records from his vice presidency had ended up anywhere beyond a think tank in Washington, where several classified documents had been found that month, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
That assertion, the people said, was based on interviews with former officials who had been involved in the process of packing and shipping such material. The Biden legal team had surveyed them after the discovery on Nov. 2 of a small number of classified files in a closet of his former office at the Penn Biden Center, seeking to understand how the files got there.
Then devour every bit of Marcy Wheeler’s essential reading annotative analysis of the Times piece:
DOJ doesn’t entirely trust Biden’s attorneys…
If Biden’s office sent originals of the classified documents found at Penn Biden to NARA, it makes their inclusion in documents sent to the policy office far less attributable to a mistake….
There are still key parts of Biden’s story that aren’t being explained, most importantly whether the documents discovered this month inside Biden’s house were discovered in storage or in an actively-used office. If DOJ knows that the difference between the two would be critical information for the public to know, then this story would only further degrade confidence in Biden’s lawyer on the part of DOJ.
Then note that both of Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. papers are being virtually pushed by all this back into the arms of Donald J. Trump, with the New York Post editorial very similar to this from the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Biden’s handling of documents hasn’t been all that different from Mr. Trump’s after all. It appears he felt entitled to take classified documents home with him while a Senator. Did he put them in his briefcase to read on Amtrak on his commute home for the weekend? His attitude toward classified information was unserious enough that he kept them for years.
Then open up to the next nesting doll to find Miranda Devine’s column, in which she does her very best to stay out of the fevered swamps of House Republican and Twitter conspiracy theories to focus on the (Surprise! No surprise….) Hunter Biden angle:
This is the thread that links the president to the long-running Delaware federal investigation into his son’s foreign business dealings.
That three-year period corresponds to the most frenetic influence-peddling activity overseas by his son Hunter and brother Jim Biden, who made millions of dollars from shady interests in Ukraine, China, Russia and elsewhere.
How much more valuable their product would be if they had access to classified documents?....
One striking email during this period stands out. It was from Hunter to Archer on April 13, 2014, a week before Joe Biden visited Ukraine to meet the then Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and refers to “my guys upcoming travels.”
For Hunter, it was an uncharacteristically lengthy email, listing 22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s “destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk.
“The strategic value is to create a land bridge for RU to Crimea. That won’t directly affect Burisma holdings but it will limit future UK exploration and utilization of offshore opportunities in particular,” Hunter wrote.
“It will also result in further destabilization of UK nationally and for whatever govt is in power. And the US will respond with even stronger sanctions. Those sanctions will threaten the tenuous support of the EU which does not have the political will to incur steep energy price increases.”
In point 22, Hunter instructed Archer to buy a “burner phone,” presumably to keep their conversations private. “Buy a cell phone from a 7/11 or CVS tmrw and ill do the same.”
It’s a prescient and very well-informed email, unlike anything else Hunter wrote in the nine years covered in the laptop, and it has the distinct flavor of an official briefing, perhaps even a classified one.
Now, if you want to go from there to all the various evidence-free (so far!) conspiracy theories, you can come look at my Twitter feed or inbox, and learn that this was a plot to get the Bidens rich – or a plot to end Joe Biden’s reelection bid. You choose! _____
L. Mark tells me stuff like if Dick Durbin says the document controversy leaves his longtime friend Joe Biden “diminished” and that the president should be “embarrassed,” that tells you what you need to know about how worried and ticked off congressional Democrats are, since Mark explains things such as “The Dick Durbin Rule” that makes understanding Washington both fun and easy. _____
M. Mark recommends articles such as this Wall Street Journal piece on the Penn Biden Center, giving me confidence that there is enough new and interesting in there that I should read it. _____
N. Mark recognizes that Donald Trump’s political strength is substantially diminished but that he is still the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, and he regularly reminds me that the Dominant Media slants all stories about Trump’s standing within the party towards the negative, as with this Washington Post story about the former president’s upcoming South Carolina endorsement event, at which Trump will be backed by the Palmetto State’s governor and senior senator – but still paints it all as a disaster for Trump. _____
O. Mark provides items like the White House week-ahead schedule that I appreciate. _____
P. Mark is always tracking the Electoral College, even two years out from Election Day, so he helpfully recommends a Washington Post story about Democratic despondency over its Florida prospects. _____
Q. I miss seeing Mark on TV and Wide World of News is a good way to keep up with his work. _____
R. Every Sunday, Mark makes me feel like I am right at the head table at Lauriol Plaza. _____
S. The FAKE Ron Klain “memos.” _____
T. The “What to say to that loudmouth on your morning Zoom” features. _____
U. I love fixing the many tupos in my head — or helpfully pointing them out to Mark. _____
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