Hasta La Gadget!

Until today, we assumed the only giant primates that Donald Trump cared about were ones that do facade damage to New York landmarks while kidnapping blondes. Trump said he’s spent $5.6 million on veterans, which is roughly the amount he’s spent on ersatz marble fountains depicting little boys peeing. And during her first press conference in months, Hillary Clinton accepted blame for both the gorilla’s death AND Vince Foster’s — you can read more about it, and all the other things that happened only in our imagination, this week on HuffingtonBlurpDeBurp.Biz. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Tuesday, May 31st, 2016:

CLINTON CAMPAIGN CAN’T ANSWER SIMPLE QUESTION ABOUT KILLING A GUY – Sam Stein: “For nearly a week now, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has refused to answer a simple yes or no question: whether she favors the Department of Justice’s decision to seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people last year at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The Huffington Post first posed the question to Clinton’s campaign on May 25, one day after the Justice Department made its announcement. We followed up twice that day, and once the day after. We tried again this Sunday and Monday. The campaign only responded to one of those emails, and did so off the record — but needless to say, it didn’t answer the question.” [HuffPost]

TED CRUZ WANTS TO BE FRIENDS NOW – Katie Glueck & Burgess Everett: “Ted Cruz’s associates insist he’s returning to the Senate as the same uncompromising, hell-bent conservative he’s always been. But one thing is different, and it’s glaring: The senator who made enemies with fellow Republican senators and bragged about it to voters now wants to play nice — or at least his version of nice — with his colleagues. And the first step to improving his rancorous relationships, the Texas senator’s allies say, will be to help them keep their Senate seats. The freshman senator wants to return to the campaign trail this fall as a conservative surrogate for Republicans aiming to turn out the GOP base, they say.” [Politico]

GARY JOHNSON IS GOOD AT RUNNING – Marathons, that is. “I ran a 2:48 marathon and they don’t even report on it!” the newly-minted Libertarian Party nominee told the Candidate Confessional podcast. [HuffPost]

jbarro: People aren’t properly analyzing the tail risks associated with Trump, so I made a chart.

TRUMP PIVOTS TO GORILLA – Ashley Killough: “Donald Trump said Tuesday that a Cincinnati zoo ‘probably had no choice’ but to kill a gorilla after a young boy had entered his enclosure. ‘It was a very tough call,’ the presumptive Republican nominee said at a press conference at Trump Tower in New York when he was asked about the controversy. Trump said the gorilla appeared ‘beautiful’ and ‘calm,’ and almost mother-like with a toddler that came into his habitat. A 3-year-old boy slipped into the enclosure of a 17-year-old male gorilla named Harambe, who quickly took hold of the child. At times, the gorilla sat still with the toddler, but those quiet periods were interrupted by bouts of knocking the child against a wall and dragging him around a shallow moat.” [CNN]

GREAT LEADER ENDORSES CLASSY LEADER – It’s almost like they want to see us destabilized. Charlotte Alfred: “An editorial in North Korea’s state-run media on Tuesday offered high praise for presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump is a ‘wise politician’ and ‘far-sighted presidential candidate,’ the Korean-language article in DPRK Today argues. The editorial, attributed to Chinese North Korean scholar Han Yong-mook, is not official government policy. Yet it likely reflects the authoritarian regime’s thinking, experts told NK News. ‘There are many positive aspects to Trump’s ‘inflammatory policies,’’ the article says, listing two in particular: Trump’s offer to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and his threat to remove U.S. forces from South Korea, which is still technically at war with the North.”” [HuffPost]

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MITCH MCCONNELL IS SURE TRUMP WILL TOTALLY CHANGE HIS BEHAVIOR – Donald Trump would respect limits on his authority if he’s elected president, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Monday. ‘I think Donald Trump will understand when he’s sworn in the limits of his authority,’ McConnell told conservative radio interviewer Hugh Hewitt. ‘He’ll have a White House counsel. There will be others who point out there’s certain things you can do and you can’t do.’ Trump has openly campaigned against freedom of the press and freedom of religion, two things enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He has also vowed to disregard international law and commit war crimes. And he likes to threaten his political opponents. McConnell said President Barack Obama has been worse, pointing to Obama’s executive orders on immigration that have been held up by courts…. Orders that Trump has said “led the way” and that he would do them, but better…. [HuffPost]

TRUMP REMINDS EVERYONE ABOUT HOW MUCH HE HATES POWs – Christina Wilkie: “Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his fundraising for veterans charities and said he had not inflated reports of how much money he had donated to military organizations. ‘As of this moment, it’s $5.6 million,’ Trump told reporters at a press conference at Trump Tower in New York City. ‘The money has all been sent,’ Trump said, holding up a copy of a $1 million check he said had been a donation to a Marine Corps charity. The Donald J. Trump Foundation hasn’t used any of the money raised to pay staff or cover operational expenses, he added. Trump also named several charities — including the Fisher House Foundation, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation and the Navy SEAL Foundation — he said had received money.” [HuffPost]

WHAT MADE TRUMP SOOO GENEROUS? Only shame: “Phone calls to all 41 of the groups by The Associated Press brought more than two-dozen responses Tuesday. About half reported checks from Trump within the past week, typically dated May 24, the day The Washington Post published a story questioning whether he had distributed all of the money.” [AP]

DONALD TRUMP HAS NO MONEY – Ben White: “Donald Trump claims a net worth of more than $10 billion and an income of $557 million. But he appears to get there only by overvaluing properties and ignoring his expenses. POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen financial experts and Trump’s fellow multimillionaires about the presumptive Republican nominee’s latest financial statement. Their conclusion: The real estate magnate’s bottom line — what he actually puts in his own pocket — could be much lower than he suggests. Some financial analysts said this, and a very low tax rate, is why Trump won’t release his tax returns. ‘I know Donald; I’ve known him a long time, and it gets under his skin if you start writing about the reasons he won’t disclose his returns,’ said one prominent hedge fund manager who declined to be identified by name so as not to draw Trump’s ire. ‘You would see that he doesn’t have the money that he claims to have and he’s not paying much of anything in taxes.'” [Politico]

DONALD TRUMP HAS NO POSITIONS – And neither do his supporters. Ariel Edwards-Levy: “Want to get people to support a policy they’d otherwise be lukewarm about? Tell them it’s backed by the candidate or party they like. It’s a human tendency that can lead to some especially interesting results when a party’s standard-bearer is as malleable on the issues as Donald Trump has proved to be…. Those who were told that Trump ‘has said he’d like to see the minimum wage increased’ agreed with him by a margin of 57 percent to 36 percent. Those who were told that he ‘has said he would not raise the minimum wage’ were notably more likely to express their own opposition to a wage hike, by a margin of 43 percent to 52 percent.” [HuffPost]

POLITICAL HACKERY AT ITS BEST! John Feehery: “I am not of the opinion that the Republic would fail if the voters select somebody like Trump and if Trump turns out the half as bad as some conservative pundits would have you believe, there are plenty of legal mechanisms to either contain his worse impulses (the Congress and the Supreme Court, for example) or remove him from office should his transgressions become too toxic.” Yeah, there’s always impeachment! Phew. [TheFeeheryTheory]

WOMP WOMP – Michael Gerson has a sad: “For those of us with a certain political bent and background, this is the most depressing moment of all. The best of the GOP — Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan, the intellectually serious reformicons who have called attention to issues of poverty and the need for Republican outreach — are bending their knee to the worst nominee in their party’s history. Ryan drags himself slowly. Rubio eventually went with a quick Band-Aid pull. But the largest political choice each man has made this year will be one of the worst mistakes of their careers.” [RealClearPolitics.com]

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR – Here are two excited French bulldogs.

DELANEY DOWNER – Scientists from three universities unveiled data Tuesday showing that the water in Flint, Michigan is relatively safe from byproducts of the normal disinfection process — byproducts that actor Mark Ruffalo has claimed might make the water unsafe for bathing. Ruffalo also happens to run a charity whose “chief scientist” makes money off special sponges he claims can better detect the contaminants in Flint’s water…

COMFORT FOOD

– In defense of burger smashing.

– A brief overview of budget airlines.

– Puppy is utterly freaked out by BB-8

TWITTERAMA

@jeneps: Trump holds 2 pressers in 2 business days.
Sanders takes no Qs at event billed as presser.
Clinton hasn’t held a formal presser in 6 months.

@SimonMaloy: I want to know what Jeb would have done about the gorilla

@aedwardslevy: Somewhere in the Kingdom of the Animals a gorilla politician is being asked about Donald Trump

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His fervent prayer broke the serenity of the surroundings. Startled by its intrusion, my semi-trance was mercilessly broken.

Though I’ve felt disconnected from any formal practice of religion for years, I still feel reverence in certain spaces. City living requires I find sanctuaries to step away from the frenetic energy and the grounds of Washington DC’s Franciscan monastery provide such refuge.

The architecture, the vibrant gardens, and the stillness draw me back time and again. That day was no different. Sitting before the grotto, I was in a state of wakefulness taking in the messages of my surroundings. I believe wisdom lives everywhere if we’re open to taking it in.

A tree caught my attention as I took in the landscaping. Its trunk was shaped like a tuning fork. Immediately, I was reminded to attune myself to the vibration of nature and that everything else is man-made distraction.

As a cardinal sliced through the scene before me, I was then drawn to some dying leaves. Their autumn fire was such a contrast to the spring greenery surrounding them. The theme that emerged seemed to be that of uncoordinated seasons. It reinforced the cycles of life, how opposites coexist, and that sadness and joy can surprisingly occupy the same space.

Then his cries broke the silence.

On higher ground, before a mosaic of Mary, a lone figure began a stream of consciousness prayer. The volume of his voice shattered the relative silence. Initially annoyed, I managed to settle into a curious space instead.

Who was this man? What was his story? What was the source of his fervor-or his pain? I could make out only pieces of his speech, a line of scripture here and there.
He continued for a few minutes then his prayer-or sermon-was over as abruptly as it started.

The silence engulfed me once more. I plunged deeper.

I thought about me in that holy place with my relationship to religion. Having been raised Catholic, I only identify as spiritual. I say that without a modicum of disdain or superiority. The “spiritual, not religious” tribe is not without the hypocrisy often ascribed to religion.

I only know that for me, spiritual means I believe that God can be found in all things. I saw it in the tree, the cardinal, the fallen leaves. After my ego backed down, I managed to find it in the praying man.

He had found It in the mosaic I had previously passed by. I didn’t recognize It there.
The Divine has many faces and we have a particular set of eyes with which to see. I am reminded of the poet Hafiz and Where is the Door to God?

Where is the door to God?
In the sound of a barking dog.
In the ring of a hammer.
In a drop of rain,
In the face of everyone,
in all we can behold.

Returning to my silent contemplation, my gaze fixed upon a beautiful flower. And once again, I understood that scripture is written upon each divine petal.

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We have pirates to blame for the Hanseatic League. It began as an alliance of city states, bonding together to defeat bandits roaming the Baltic. But it soon developed into a confederation of merchant guilds, like a medieval European Union. Between 1400 and 1800, this network of more than 100 Hansa ports and trading posts thrived. Ship-loads of timber, amber, wax, resin, wool, linen, silk, fur and rye shuttled across the chilly and treacherous Baltic.

From Lubeck to Tallin to Bergen, the League expressed its wealth and self-confidence in fine civic spaces adorned by monumental red brick Gothic architecture. Stone wasn’t easily available locally, whereas clay could be brought in from the North German Plain. Hansa’s burghers pushed brick to its limits, competing to build the tallest towers atop the vastest churches, visible from sea or land.

Inside, slender brick columns soar toward heaven, drawing the eyes of humble worshippers up in awe. During the Reformation most of the cherubs, gold-encrusted carvings and other Catholic bling were stripped out; and few of their stained glass windows survived World War Two, leaving their interior spaces light, airy and pleasingly minimalist. They bring to mind the cool, serene interiors painted by the Dutch masters.

Among the Hanseatic League’s most distinguished port cities were Wismar and Stralsund, in the north eastern corner of Germany. Together with nearby Schwerin, the elegant capital of the Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, they are being discovered by a new generation from the West who avoided the Soviet-occupied East for forty years.

All three cities -Schwerin, Stralsund and Wismar- were in the zone handed to Stalin at the end of the Second World War, and they suffered the indignity of four decades of neglect under the German Democratic Republic. However, their citizens’ misfortune may have been the trio’s aesthetic salvation: for all the Eastern Bloc’s many faults, it lacked the resources to replace medieval districts with the dismal concrete of post-war North America and Western Europe.

Thousands of half-timbered structures survive throughout what was East Germany. Travelling around the eastern part of the country, many dorfs (villages) still have squat, half-timbered agricultural sheds, or Elizabethan-looking town houses with elaborate inscriptions written across the exterior in Gothic script, their owners flaunting both their piety and their affluence. Since reunification, the Germans have done a remarkable job renovating dozens of historic towns, and they deserve visitors from further afield; its remains a mystery that as one encounters no English-speaking tourists.

When travellers read that a city has an intact central core, they are wise to brace themselves to find two or three fine streets, such as Canterbury or Salisbury in the UK or Santa Fe or New Orleans in the States. But in Schwerin, Stralsund and Wismar, there are miles of cobbled roads, lined with half-timbered or Renaissance houses. It is a pleasure to stroll their broad avenues and narrow alleys, dipping into churches or courtyards of alms houses, and stopping at a pavement cafe to enjoy the devastating ice cream sundaes the Germans have perfected.

Arguable, Teutonic sundaes deserve their own UNESCO listing, but Wismar has surely earned its recognition on the list of world heritage sites. From the railway station one follows a pretty canal, lined by eighteenth century town houses, to the church of St Nikolai. Begun in 1270, it is a Gothic masterpiece in red brick, with white decorative exterior tiles used like basket work. Inside, one vast wall is painted with the breath-taking Tree of Jesse, and another with The Man of Sorrows (“ecco homo”). However, the church is no museum piece; it became the heart of local political protest in 1989 as East Germans rose up against their Communist masters.

From St Nikolai, the canal leads to the town walls and a celebrated gateway which frames the port and the Baltic beyond. Enormous brick warehouses stand empty on the quay, waiting for someone to convert them into lofts. Also leading to the port is Spiegelberg Strasse, a broad avenue of Renaissance gems.

So authentically medieval is Wismar that the German director FW Murnau filmed his 1922 horror classic Nosferatu there, as did Werner Herzog, when he remade it in 1979. (Hitchcock credited Murnau as his greatest influence).

Wismar’s main square is lined by tall, thin houses with Dutch stepped gables, one of which is Alte Schwede (Old Swede) – Wismar was part of the Swedish empire from the Peace of Westfalia (1648) until 1903. The most unusual structure, though, is in a quiet side street: the Heiligen Geist Kirche (Holy Ghost Church), built in the 15th Century as a hospital. The rectangular interior has an extravagantly-painted wooden ceiling, depicting Old Testament scenes in innocently naive style, and a portrait of Martin Luther with a swan. Here, the town’s sickly citizens received spiritual and medical help. But today, instead of wan, bearded men in tights and lace collars, there is a cafe selling fairly traded tea and coffee in the 21st Century Protestant manner.

Stralsund is another UNESCO world heritage site, bristling with atmospheric cobbled streets. The town is surrounded by lakes and the Baltic on every side, giving it the feel of a peninsula. The interior of St Nikolaikirche, a monumental 13th century building, provides a glimpse of how churches looked when their columns, arches, apses, vaults and walls were busily decorated. It is attached to a no-nonsense red brick Gothic Rathaus (town hall) projecting the power of its burghers onto the Altmarkt (old market) before it.

The nearby new market boasts a square surrounded by Renaissance buildings, as well as a superb art nouveau house. By the Marienkirche is a more recent slice of history: a graveyard and memorial to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating the town from the Third Reich. As with Wismar, the town’s old quarter is extensive, with pretty streets lined with medieval buildings, mostly carefully renovated once the Berlin Wall came down.

To the south is Schwerin, once capital of the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Its rulers chose a delightful spot, on an island, on which to create a castle that would strike wonder into any deluded fool seeking to challenge their authority. As the traveller turns into elegant Schloss Strasse, the castle looms ahead abruptly, filling the horizon, like a ship surging up the street. It positively glows, so beautifully has it been restored. Every architectural style is sampled in its many turrets: Renaissance, Gothic, Romanesque, classical and Louis XIV. It is as if a child assembled sundry fairly-tale castle features and glued them onto the roofline, surrounding this sweet confectionary with a lake and formal gardens. No wonder the Germans call it the Neuschwanstein of the north. The castle is now the seat of the regional parliament, doubling as a popular tourist destination. It has a café terrace overlooking the lake, offering home-made cakes, those sensational ice cream sundaes, and coffee that always seems to taste so good in Germany.

Schwerin is surrounded by a dozen lakes, absorbed into its attractive urban space, meaning it is both green and highly liveable for those who like walking and cycling. Just occasionally down an alley one glimpses a shattered remnant from the Communist era. Otherwise, it presents a luminous face to the world.

I travelled throughout the German Democratic Republic in the early 1980s and remember well the facades of even the most distinguished buildings, gray and crumbling from neglect. Behind those battered exteriors were millions of people struggling to keep their dignity intact in the face of shortages, lie-filled official propaganda, and the ever-present fear of the state.

Since reunification there has been muttering about how much West German tax payers’ money goes to the East. But sitting at a cafe in Schwerin, watching joggers pad along the lakeside path, I wonder if the greater chasm isn’t between the generations within what was the German Democratic Republic. How does a middle aged East German explain to their children and grandchildren the deprivation and limited opportunities they endured, compared with the everyday affluence, comfort, convenience and choice on offer today? No doubt the war generation felt the same about the relatively privileged generation who followed them. It’s good to know that sometimes the arc of history moves in the right direction.

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It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to send a letter bad enough to actually buy a stamp. But these new space stamps might finally make it worth it.

Read more…

This week Verizon has released a list of current and near-future updates to Android device versions, starting with the Samsung Galaxy S5. At long last, this device has received its update to Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, just a few weeks (or months) after its closest brethren. As for the rest of the Android universe, we’ve got some good news and we’ve … Continue reading