Politics

In the first woman appointment to Trump's administration, South Carolina Govenor Nikki Haley has accepted the president-elect's offer to be his ambassador to the United Nations, NBC News reported this morning. The daughter of immigrants from India, Haley served three terms in South Carolina's State House before winning the governorship in 2010 and again in 2014. A two-term governor, Haley, 44, initially backed Trump rivals Sen. Marco Rubio and then Sen. Ted Cruz during the GOP battle for a White House nominee.

Submitted by Peter Korzun via Strategic-Culture.org,

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on November 20 that Turkey did not need to join the European Union «at all costs». Instead, it could become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact. The Turkish leader said he had already discussed the idea with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.

I slammed Trump in March for calling for more torture and waterboarding.

I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence experts say that torture prevents the ability to obtain helpful information, makes us less safe, decreases national security and only creates more terrorists.

After “the most contentious election in U.S. history,” journalists wrote, “the art of fiction is dead.” We chose “the most unqualified president in history,” but voters were reacting to years of “social experimentation and economic extravagance,” motivated “not by ideology but a desire to vote against” the loser—or perhaps “a desire for change.” Democrats, meanwhile, were “turning their guns on each other” in despair.

The first two quotes are from 2000, the last from 1980, the “social experimentation” line from 1942, the “turning their guns” quote from 1880.

In my younger years, my mother tried to manage my expectations in the maddening way that mothers do. Whenever I was worked up at the prospect of some unwanted turn of events, she’d reliably intone: “always expect the unexpected.”