Following the news is such a part of my job that it's tough to give it up sometimes even on vacation. This time I managed to do it, though. So I came back to work ready to look freshly at unfolding events and discovered, alas, it was the same old crap they'd been shoveling when I left.
On my usual post-election sabbatical. Back on Tuesday, May 19.
OK, Carly Fiorina is on nobody's list of probable GOP presidential primary winners -- they're not likely to nominate someone who's never won anything before. But, man, is she ever brightening up the political scene. She says she is the one who can best go one-on-one with Hillary, without getting caught up in the usual fear-of-being-seen-as-sexist trap. And she may have a point. She is better than any conservative I've seen in years at turning "Gotcha!" attempts back on her inquisitors.
Most of us look at splashy, chaotic events like the upheaval in Baltimore through the lenses of our preconceptions. It's a crime problem. It's a racism problem. It's police misconduct. It's the breakdown of the family. It's poverty. On and on.
Juxtaposition of the day.
First up, the "myth of retirement."
61% of Americans expect to continue working past the age of 65
Only 21% of Americans say they plan to stop working at the age of retirement, according to a new survey.
Interesting words I encountered while wandering through the blogosphere.
From an article about some sneering left-wing writers at PEN, which, among other thngs, gives out a yearly award for journalistic courage, boycotting the awards ceremony for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed last year for daring to satirize militant Islam, because, you know, they were using the right to free expression, for (gasp!) hate speech:
Someone seeking the presidency has a big ego? Who knew?
Ben Carson, who formally announced his run for the presidency Monday, is a brilliant surgeon, gifted storyteller and charismatic speaker. But modesty is not among his talents.
[. . .]
I forgot to mention this yesterday, but I noticed on Sunday that The Journal Gazette editorial page has jumped on the "poor Californians being whupped by climate change" bandwagon:
It’s tougher to pretend there’s no danger from climate change if you live in California, which is struggling under a historic drought.
If you have certain requirements for a job, and those requirements keep a very high percentage of one group or another out of that job, do members of those groups need to try harder, or should the standards be changed? That's a debate that's held all the time in this country, and various jurisdications have come up with various answers, Sometimes, there is a little more urgency in coming up with the right answer:
Oh, no! We have only eight years to avoid climate-change catastrophe!
Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential UN panel warned yesterday.
Golly, gee, the GOP has gone and discovered diversity:
The kids just won't believe it when we tell them to be careful online because stuff stays there forever, will they?
One of the darkest days in American history:
Forty years later, the images remain searing: Throngs of desperate South Vietnamese civilians trying to scale the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, hoping somehow to squeeze aboard one of the helicopters evacuating U.S. personnel and their associates in the face of an onslaught by North Vietnamese forces.
[. . .]
This seems to be amusing lots of folks on the right:
Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t just running against Republicans. She’s also running against parts of her husband’s legacy.
Call it a mobile majority. At the start of 2015, 39 of the top 50 digital news websites have more traffic to their sites and associated applications coming from mobile devices than from desktop computers, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of comScore data.
Why wasn't God in Balimore, or perhaps Nepal? Maybe he was too busy fixing a fight:
Filipino boxing hero Manny Pacquiao is confident he can beat American arch-rival Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas on Saturday with the power of God, after abandoning a life he said was packed with sin condemning him to hell.
Awww. Cute puppy-and-a-bird video. You don't want to see the kitty-and-a-bird video.
Rand Paul on the violence in Baltimore:
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a contender for the GOP nomination for president, offered his take on the Baltimore riots on Laura Ingraham's show this morning, saying a "lack of fathers" and a "lack of a moral code in our society" were responsible for the "thievery and thuggery."
It's risky to predict Supreme Court decisions, but the consensus seems to be, 1) The court will split in the usual four-four way on the gay marriage question, 2) Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the swing vote and, 3) given the opinion he wrote in the case partially dismantling the federal Defense of Marriage Act, he will vote in favor of gay marriage. Therefore, gay marriage as the law of the land is a done deal.
Interesting words I encountered while wandering through the blogosphere.
