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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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.”

The Wires
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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.”

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Page Links
Tuesday
Sep142010

The Newt Embraces Social Darwinism and Reincarnation

Art by Barbara Broido.(For more great doodles, go to Broido's site, Barbara's Doodle Blog.)

Maureen Dowd uses her bully pulpit wisely today to excoriate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for "shamelessly embracing his party's lunacy." She notes that Newt is "claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene." The Newt's muse, an "Ann Coulter-in-pants" named Dinesh D'Souza, argues that Barack Obama's father "is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."

The Constant Weader comments:

Oh boy! Social Darwinism and reincarnation!

In fairness, it's quite possible Newt has a mental disease and we should be more understanding. But as long as the media give him a microphone & introduce him as "the former Speaker," we must treat him as if he knows what he's saying.

Barack Obama barely ever saw his father after the younger Obama was two years old. The President's mother & maternal grandparents reared him. If he has any "intellectual heritage," it comes from Kansas (and I'm not talking about The Wizard of Oz, Newt).

How was it exactly that Papa Obama infiltrated the mind of the future President? Is a man really genetically engineered to take on his father's political beliefs? Nature beats nurture? Or is it that reincarnation thing? Let's have a seance!

It's fairly hilarious that Gingrich is busy rewriting President Obama's childhood inasmuch as Gingrich -- according to an Esquire profile -- has completely rewritten his own. Writer John Richardson details how Newt makes his childhood "sound ideal," yet,

His mother married his father when she was sixteen, left him a few days later, and struggled with manic depression most of her life. His stepfather [who reared Newt & moved the family to a series of Army bases] was an infantry officer who viewed his plump, nearsighted, flat-footed son as unfit for the Army.

Whatever Newt's actual family history, he appears to be the reincarnation of a cruel, mendacious, opportunistic lowlife -- a newt with a personality disorder. It is one of the tragedies of American history that this man once held a powerful position. He was never a leader, always a follower, & now he is following his party over a cliff of right-wing extremism that knows no boundaries and is trying to break its fall by holding tight to an umbrella of fear-mongering, prejudice and outright lies.

Update: Commenter Jim F. of Los Altos (#3) points to Paul Krugman's blogpost on the Gingrich/D'Souza "madness." Krugman remarks that the whole basis of the "Kenyan" plot theory is an Export-Import Bank loan to Brazil. Says Krugman,

Except, you know, the Ex-Im bank’s job is to promote US exports — and this was a loan for the specific purpose of buying US-made oilfield equipment. And the board approving the loan was … a board appointed by George W. Bush. In other words, aside from being ignorant, this is complete the-Commies-are-putting flouride in the water to steal our vital bodily fluids stuff.

Update: without actually employing the terms "racial prejudice" or "ethnic stereotyping" or "lying through their yellow teeth," Matt Bai of the New York Times postulates that Republican lowlifes (another term he doesn't use) are trying to cast President Obama as "The Other" in order to motivate their base of stupid, racist yahoos (okay, Bai doesn't describe the base as "yahoos," either, but you know that's what he would write in a less hoity-toity publication).

Update. Brendan Patrick Keane in Irish Central: the real scandal in Newt's outrageous rant is this: "Newt Gingrich embraces British colonialism."

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