DAYLEE PICTURE: Menindee Lake in New South Wales in Australia. From National Geographic.
"As politicians and pundits in Washington continue to spar over whether economic inequality is in fact deepening, in corporate America there really is no debate at all. The post-recession reality is that the customer base for businesses that appeal to the middle class is shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away."
The Benefits of the Closet (Vanessa Vitiello) from Slate
"Often perceived as a barrier to equality, at times the closet was anything but. Instead, it allowed a gay fifth column to flourish, far behind enemy lines, among the privileged and the powerful in American society."
Obamacare Cures 'Job Lock' (Theda Skocpol and Katherine Swartz) from USA Today
"Over the next ten years, they envision millions of new jobs in a growing economy – but up to 2.5 million fewer full-time equivalent workers by 2024 compared with what would have been the case without the Affordable Care Act. This was decried by opponents of health reform as evidence that the law is a "job killer." Quite the opposite is true. ... People won't have to stay at jobs they hate in order to obtain health insurance."
Health, Work, Lies (Paul Krugman) from the New York Times
"On Wednesday, Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said the obvious: losing your job and choosing to work less aren’t the same thing. If you lose your job, you suffer immense personal and financial hardship. If, on the other hand, you choose to work less and spend more time with your family, “we don’t sympathize. We say congratulations.”"
What Obamacare’s Critics Mean by ‘Dignity of Work’ (Ned Resnikoff) from MSNBC
"When Cooke, Ryan and others bemoan the work-killing properties of Obamacare, they’re really saying that low-wage workers should be compelled to stay in these jobs or risk losing basic health coverage. That’s how important it is to keep people behind the counter at McDonald’s, even if it means those same people have less time to spend rearing their children or engaging in other forms of personally enriching, socially beneficial work."
Obamacare is Disproportionately Hurting Republicans and Conservatives (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"... only 19 percent of Americans say the law has hurt them or their family, while 64 percent say it has had no effect, and another 13 percent say it has helped. But who are those 19 percent? It turns out those telling Gallup the law has hurt them or their family are very disproportionately Republican and conservative."
It's over: Jeb Bush Will be the GOP Nominee in 2016 And That would be Horrible for American Democracy (Damon Linker) from The Week
"... it's beginning to dawn on me that Jeb Bush is probably going to be the Republican Party's nominee for president in 2016. ... Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker — the list of viable fire-breathers is longer (and less dominated by incompetents, crazies, and one-note sideshow acts) than establishment types would like. What are the alternatives?"
Hate to gloat -- but this had dawned on me before the 2012 election if not earlier.
But then there's this:
Why Jeb Bush Isn’t Going To Be the Next Republican Nominee (Daniel Larison) from the American Conservative
"The two issues that have interested him most (education, immigration) don’t really work to his advantage in the primaries, and on immigration his position will provoke more resistance than support. Like his brother when he ran for president, Jeb Bush has no foreign policy experience to speak of, and to the best of my knowledge he has never shown much interest in the subject."
Larison discounts the larger issue here: in a world of pygmies, an oversized midget can rule. It is the "bear and sneakers" story: All Bush needs to do is run a better campaign than the cavalcade of GOP clowns that is currently lining up for 2016. With the support of the national Bush political machine, his chances are pretty good in my estimation. Like Romney in 2012, even the GOP as currently constituted will turn to Jeb -- if he's the only semi-rational person on the bus. Marco Rubio has hinted that he will not run if Jeb runs (because Jeb was a key mentor for him); Christie will be lucky if he can hang onto his governorship at this point; and, while Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal have their fans, they compete with Tim Pawlenty in their anti-charisma, and, let's be clear, neither of them could compete with the Bush machine if it gets up and rolling.
TWO PITTSBURGH NUGGETS!!
The Political Makeover of a Rust Belt City: Pittsburgh Finally Banished the Old Boys' Network—But it Took a Generation from Politico Magazine
I think it is an overstatement to say that it has been "banished" -- safer to say that it has been put in "time-out" for a while thanks to the knuckleheads from Ravenstahl's tenure. Peduto will have to create a different long-term governing coalition to really call the old machine kaput.
"Bill Peduto told a left-leaning crowd that his very arrival heralded a new dawn. “There has become a chasm, a canyon, between the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “Tuesday, Pittsburgh changed from an old boys’ network city to a progressive city.” That may have been premature, and a bit self-congratulatory, but it was not too far off the mark."
The Robots That Saved Pittsburgh: How the Steel City Avoided Detroit’s Fate from Politico Magazine
"It’s hard to pinpoint the moment Pittsburgh began its three-decade climb back from the dead, but Red Whittaker marks the comeback from the instant he heard the ominous clack of a door closing behind him when he entered a secured building near the melted heart of Three Mile Island back in 1983
PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY NUGGET!!
Take a Road Trip and Tour of Presidential Homes from the WESA program, Essential Pittsburgh
"Ohio and Virginia are both nicknamed the home of presidents. From Mount Vernon to Monticello presidential homes are great places to visit and learn about history. "
NATURE AND SCIENCE NUGGET!!
De-Extinction: Could Technology Save Nature? from the Oxford University Press Blog
"... if humans are part of nature, then what is unnatural, exactly, about the human activity that supposedly threatens nature, and why try to protect nature as something apart from humans? This is the foundational challenge posed by de-extinction. It plays into criticism of the very idea of nature. To preserve nature has mostly meant to restrain or limit human interference with it. But with de-extinction, preservation is interference with nature."
An AWESOME video primer on de-extinction!!
No comments:
Post a Comment