To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding. Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise. If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects.

But can it cause brain damage? When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5, employees from setting up phony accounts for customers.

Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5, a commendably small number. The Republican triumph in an affluent, educated Georgia congressional district showed GOP voters standing by their president. Notwithstanding national polls suggesting about 39 percent approval for the Republican president, a more-or-less standard-issue Republican candidate won by about 5 percentage points in exactly the kind of affluent, educated district supposedly most at risk in the Trump era.

But a big win is not the same thing as good news. The special elections of May and June offered Republicans a last chance for a course correction before the election cycle starts in earnest. A loss in Georgia would have sent a message of caution. The victory discredits that argument, and empowers those who want Trumpism without restraint, starting with the president himself.

The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June , we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today.

Listen to the audio version of this article: Download the Audm app for your iPhone to listen to more titles. With the powers in Pyongyang working doggedly toward making this possible—building an ICBM and shrinking a nuke to fit on it—analysts now predict that Kim Jong Un will have the capability before Donald Trump completes one four-year term.

Though given to reckless oaths, Trump is not in this case saying anything that departs significantly from the past half century of futile American policy toward North Korea.

Preventing the Kim dynasty from having a nuclear device was an American priority long before Pyongyang exploded its first nuke, in , during the administration of George W.

The Kim regime detonated four more while Barack Obama was in the White House. In the more than four decades since Richard Nixon held office, the U.

If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class. The strategy was simple. A demographic wave—long-building, still-building—would carry the party to victory, and liberalism to generational advantage. The wave was inevitable, unstoppable. It would not crest for many years, and in the meantime, there would be losses—losses in the midterms and in special elections; in statehouses and in districts and counties and municipalities outside major cities.

Losses in places and elections where the white vote was especially strong. But the presidency could offset these losses. Every four years the wave would swell, receding again thereafter but coming back in the next presidential cycle, higher, higher.

Dark Knight Rises Stock Exchange Heist Laptop/Tablet | in Edinburgh | Gumtree

The presidency was everything. She lived with us for 56 years.

She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was. The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila.

From there I would travel by car to a rural village. A new book points to the importance of strong conservative parties—and warns about the consequences when they fall short. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy is written in fire. It delves deep into long-forgotten electoral histories to emerge with insights of Tocquevillian power, to illuminate not only the past but also the present and future.

The non-rich always outnumber the rich. Democracy enables the many to outvote the few: If the few possess power and wealth, they may respond to this prospect by resisting democracy before it arrives—or sabotaging it afterward. Yet either position, fifth or sixth, is misleading: The daily appearance by the press secretary has become rarer, and moved off camera.

The daily briefing is a venerable Washington tradition, though one that has often been a target of criticism. But instead of canceling them entirely, the White House has appeared to embrace a different strategy: Guidance for the briefings have begun to include a note that audio from them cannot be used.

Additionally, though Trump has held short press conferences when foreign leaders visit, he has not held a full press conference since February.

The quality and variety of food in the U. The business seems to be struggling. But in cities across the U. Humans aren't the only mammals who kill each other.

Property Industry Eye

So how do we stack up to lions, tigers, and bears? Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish household, and never once questioned her whiteness—despite not looking like anyone in her family.

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Search Search Quick Links James Fallows Ta Nehisi Coates Manage subscription. Search The Atlantic Quick Links James Fallows Ta Nehisi Coates Manage subscription. Bane's Plan to Bankrupt Batman Doesn't Make Any Sense. Most Popular Power Causes Brain Damage Jerry Useem Jun 18, It's Trump's Party Now David Frum If you're watching superhero movies for financial advice, you're probably in trouble.

If you're watching The Dark Knight Rises for financial advice, you're probably in worse trouble. Especially if you're looking for ways to sabotage your enemy's finances, like Batman's nemesis Bane. Instead, let's take a moment and talk about why Bane's financial subterfuge is so unnecessarily risky -- if only as a reference for everyone out there with designs on taking over the world. If you haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises and don't like spoilers -- and really, who likes spoilers?

You have been warned. You might think that a terrorist able to hold an entire metropolis hostage for half a year would be a stickler for details. You would be wrong. Time and again, Bane leaves things to chance. But Bane's hit on the Gotham stock exchange is less understandable. Remember, the point was to leave Bruce Wayne destitute so he'd have to turn to a financial white knight -- who would turn out to not be such a white knight -- to keep Wayne Enterprises and its fusion reactor out of the hands of Bane's corporate benefactor.

But how does Bane impoverish Batman? Step one involves hijacking the entire Gotham stock exchange. Step two is breaking into Wayne's personal account directly from the exchange. Step three has something to do with buying lots of puts that expire at midnight on futures.

And the fourth step is, of course, profit. Well, not for Bruce Wayne. Let's count the way this doesn't make sense. As my colleague Jordan Weissmann and I discussed, none of the above steps come close to anything resembling verisimilitude.

Trading would almost certainly stop once the attack on the stock exchange started. And if trades did go through, they would probably be canceled afterward. Nor would Bane need to hook into the exchange to trade under Wayne's name. But the biggest question is why in God's name would Bane buy puts for Wayne?

Puts are contracts that protect the buyer against losses. They entitle the buyer to sell something at a certain price -- the strike price -- by a certain date.

For example, say a stock is at and you buy puts on that stock with a strike price of 90 for the next six months. If the price drops below 90 any time over that period, you can still sell it for So why would Bane buy options that protect Wayne against losses when Bane's assault would almost certainly cause huge losses?

Presumably because Bane used Wayne's money to buy waaaaaaaaay out-of-the-money puts. In other words, the strike price was very, very low -- something like 70 in our above example.

Markets would have to completely collapse for the the puts to pay off. But what if they did? Investors would panic big time after a strike on the stock exchange itself.

If the panic was big enough, Bruce Wayne's billions would seem like a relative pittance compared to his new riches. Puts that far out of the money are quite cheap -- so even a modest payout on a single contract would be multiplied many, many times over.

Which laptop/tablet did Bane's henchmen use on the attack on the stock exchange scene in Dark Knight Rises? | Yahoo Answers

Of course, this assumes that the exchange would extend the expiration on the puts for as long as markets were closed. But that's a safer assumption than anything Bane figured.

There's a much easier way to do this. Bane could have just used Wayne's money to buy calls. They're the opposite of puts. They entitle the buyer to buy something at a certain price -- the strike price -- by a certain date.

In plain English, they're a bet that prices will go up. Given that Bane's attack would send stocks swooning, there's no chance the calls would have paid off. Latest Video How North Korea Became a Crisis To understand how the standoff between Pyongyang and the world became so dire, it helps to go back to the country's founding Daniel Lombroso , Jackie Lay , and Mark Bowden Jun 19, About the Author Matthew O'Brien is a former senior associate editor at The Atlantic.

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Justin Renteria Power Causes Brain Damage Jerry Useem Over time, leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise. In the past decade, liberals have avoided inconvenient truths about the issue. There are no good options.

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