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The Ledes

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

New York Times: “Alice Munro, the revered Canadian author who started writing short stories because she did not think she had the time or the talent to master novels, then stubbornly dedicated her long career to churning out psychologically dense stories that dazzled the literary world and earned her the Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Monday night in Port Hope, Ontario, east of Toronto. She was 92.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Monday, May 13, 2024

CNN: “Thousands across Canada have been urged to evacuate as the smoke from blazing wildfires endangers air quality and visibility and begins to waft into the US. Some 3,200 residents in northeastern British Columbia were under an evacuation order Saturday afternoon as the Parker Lake fire raged on in the area, spanning more than 4,000 acres. Meanwhile, evacuation alerts are in place for parts of Alberta as the MWF-017 wildfire burns out of control near Fort McMurray in the northeastern area of the province, officials said. The fire had burned about 16,000 acres as of Sunday morning. Smoke from the infernos has caused Environment Canada to issue a special air quality statement that extends from British Columbia to Ontario.... Smoke from Canada has also begun to blow into the US, prompting an alert across Minnesota due to unhealthy air quality. The smoke is impacting cities including the Twin Cities and St. Cloud, as well as several tribal areas, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency said.”

Public Service Announcement

The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705

Marie: BTW, if you think our government sucks, I invite you to watch the PBS special "The Real story of Mr Bates vs the Post Office," about how the British post office falsely accused hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of subpostmasters of theft and fraud, succeeded in obtaining convictions and jail time, and essentially stole tens of thousands of pounds from some of them. Oh, and lied about it all. A dramatization of the story appeared as a four-part "Masterpiece Theater," which you still may be able to pick it up on your local PBS station. Otherwise, you can catch it here (for now). Just hope this does give our own Postmaster General Extraordinaire Louis DeJoy any ideas.

The Mysterious Roman Dodecahedron. Washington Post: A “group of amateur archaeologists sift[ing] through ... an ancient Roman pit in eastern England [found] ... a Roman dodecahedron, likely to have been placed there 1,700 years earlier.... Each of its pentagon-shaped faces is punctuated by a hole, varying in size, and each of its 20 corners is accented by a semi-spherical knob.” Archaeologists don't know what the Romans used these small dodecahedrons for but the best guess is that they have some religious significance.

"Countless studies have shown that people who spend less time in nature die younger and suffer higher rates of mental and physical ailments." So this Washington Post page allows you to check your own area to see how good your access to nature is.

Marie: If you don't like birthing stories, don't watch this video. But I thought it was pretty sweet -- and funny:

If you like Larry David, you may find this interview enjoyable:


Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Allison Hope comments in a CNN opinion piece:

~~~ Here's Chapman singing "Fast Car" at the Oakland Coliseum in December 1988. ~~~

~~~ Here's the full 2024 Grammy winner's list, via CBS.

He Shot the Messenger. Washington Post: “The Messenger is shutting down immediately, the news site’s founder told employees in an email Wednesday, marking the abrupt demise of one of the stranger and more expensive recent experiments in digital media. In his email, Jimmy Finkelstein said he was 'personally devastated' to announce that he had failed in a last-ditch effort to raise more money for the site, saying that he had been fundraising as recently as the night before. Finkelstein said the site, which launched last year with outsize ambitions and a mammoth $50 million budget, would close 'effective immediately.' The New York Times first reported the site’s closure late Wednesday afternoon, appearing to catch many staffers off-guard, including editor in chief Dan Wakeford. As employees read the news story, the internal work chat service Slack erupted in what one employee called 'pandemonium.'... Minutes later, as staffers read Finkelstein’s email, its message was underscored as they were forcibly logged out of their Slack accounts. Former Messenger reporter Jim LaPorta posted on social media that employees would not receive health care or severance.”

Contact Marie

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Page Links
Saturday
Sep182010

Bob Herbert implores "the movers and shakers to lift the shroud of oblivion and reach out to those many millions of Americans trapped in a world of hurt." Herbert cites a boatload of statistics on what we already know -- there is no economic recovery for average American workers.

The Constant Weader comments:

Although some of the statistics you cite are news, the general deteriorating conditions for American workers has been known for a long time. It has been reported for at least two decades that the rich are getting richer & the poor getting poorer. Every year brings new statistics that show the situation is getting worse for "real Americans."

That is why it is mind-boggling to hear Mitch McConnell defend tax cuts for the rich with this out-and-out lie: "

We can't let the people who've been hit the hardest by this recession, and who need to create the jobs that will get us out of it, foot the bill for the Democrats' two-year adventure in expanded government.

Later, McConnell's spokesman tried to walk back the remark. A little. Allow me to rephrase the spokesman's "clarification": "I'm sorry, my boss is a craven pawn of the rich and said what he meant. Let me tell you what sounds better."

The major Republican "justification" for tax cuts for the rich, as McConnell so inartfully put it, is that if they are allowed to lapse, small businesses will be pinched & will not be able to hire any of those out-of-work Americans. As the Times reported Friday evening, that is malarkey. IRS stats show only 3 percent of small businesses would be hit. Many of those approximately 750,000 so-called businesses that would be subject to the old tax rate "are sole proprietors — a classification so amorphous it can include everyone from corporate executives who earn income on rental property to entertainers, hedge fund managers and investment bankers." Ninety percent of these "small businesses" have no employees at all.

Anyone who thinks Republicans are even vaguely interested in improving the economic lives of ordinary Americans is a fool. Republicans have been as upfront as possible in their shilling for the rich, at the expense of the rest of us. Their defense of their policies is a joke, & their offense is offensive -- calling the President names, insinuating he is a foreigner -- an exotic import one might come across while on an African safari -- blaming him for the decade of decreasing economic power for American workers, & complaining that the government the Republicans themselves have hobbled isn't doing enough for American workers.

The President is finally fighting back:

Some of the Republican candidates for office are noticeably worse than the obstructionists who are already there. There is some hope. If Democrats will fight not just for their own survival, but also for the survival of Democratic values, the results of the November elections won't be as bad as today's polls indicate. But the prospects are dicey. As the AP reported, & as we all know, “...a majority of Americans today are very confident in — nobody.” All of us must do all we can to avert a Republican landslide. Nothing could be worse for the American worker.


Update: Extra-Credit Reading. Timothy Noah has a ten-part series in Slate on growing income inequality.

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