May, 2024 archive
The Rules of the Gamers 0
At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Gene Collier explains Trump world’s concept of how elections work.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
As it turns out, a North Carolina high school student was backpacking heat.
Guns and stupid, guns and stupid.
They go together like love and Cupid.
Let me tell you brother,
You can’t have one without the other.
Courting Disaster 0
At Above the Law, Joe Patrice reports on Trumpette judges who just make stuff up.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
If this is not de facto secession, I don’t know what is.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Another “responsible gun owner” practices a random act of politeness.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
At the Kansas City Star, Tom Heehler argues forcefully that America’s democracy is in danger because media (I’m paraphrasing here) news media is sacrificing reporting on facts, actions, and behavior to reporting on “he said she said” under the guise of fairness.
He calls it “blue sky journalism, which he defines as follows:
Inevitably, in today’s ratings-obsessed newsrooms, for every Jake Tapper or Margaret Brennan or Abby Phillip with the backbone to say no, there’s a Kaitlan Collins with the ambition to say yes, to platform a demagogue in the name of “fairness to both sides.” At least that’s what she tells herself — presumably — in makeup before going on air: “Mirror mirror on the wall, I do this not for ratings at all. I do this because I’m a good, objective, nonpartisan journalist, and doggone it, both sides deserve to be heard.”
It’s All about the Benjamins 0
At The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel looks at what went wrong at Boeing. A snippet (emphasis added):
That view quickly took hold at the new Boeing. One CEO after another drove up Boeing’s stock value by skimping on its greatest assets: its world-leading engineering and the experts who made it possible. In the last decade alone, the company spent over half a billion dollars on executive pay and $40 billion on stock buybacks instead of reinvesting those profits in operations. Cracks in this approach started showing in 2018 and 2019, when two faulty 737 Max planes crashed, leaving 346 people dead.
Non-Compete Non-Compensate Agreements
0
Sam talks with David Dayen about the FTC’s recent ruling on “non-compete” agreements and how those agreements became weaponized to suppress wages.
The Lake Effect 0
At the Arizona Republic, Laurie Roberts notes that Kari Lake personifies the Republican credo that, if one standard is good, two must be better.
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Writing at the Las Vegas Sun, Charles Parrish tells of hearing an echo.
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*Mark Twain.
Fair and Balanced? 0
At the Portland Press-Herald, Victoria Hugo-Nidal suggests that the press coverage of the student demonstrations at U. S. colleges may be slightly–er–skewed. Here’s a bit of her article:
It’s difficult to imagine getting away with doing this for any other group. Can you imagine if I pointed to Rep. Michael Lemelin – you know, the guy who said that the Lewiston mass shooting was God’s punishment on Maine for enacting “immoral laws” – and said he represented the beliefs of every single Republican in the state of Maine? I’d get torn apart. Nobody would let me get away with that.
The article is worth the two or three minutes you’ll need to read it.
Foxy Shady, the Hunt for Hunter Dept. 0
(Warning: Short promo at the end.)