Today’s News — 4/3/2019


Today’s Hot Headlines

The Federalist: Christiane Amanpour—“Lock Her Up!” Is Hate Speech the FBI Should Shut Down

Philadelphia Inquirer: Lori Lightfoot will be Chicago’s First Black, Female Mayor

Axios.com: 2020 Presidential Election—Joe Biden Advisers Smell a Conspiracy

Power Line: Bidenfreude Photos Edition

 Washington Examiner: Let’s Face It—Bernie Sanders Could Be the Next President

Hot Air: CNN Reporter—Why Are Three White Men Leading Dem Primary Polls?

New York Times: ‘It Just Went Poof!’—The Strange Aftermath of Virginia’s Cascade of Scandals

Breitbart Sports: NFL Network Loses 4 Million Subscribers in Last 7 Months, ESPN Also Down

Cracked.com: 6 Things You Never Knew Were Mega-Popular in Other Countries

CNN/Chris Cilizza: 3 Theories On Why Trump’s Lies Don’t Seem to Faze Him or His Supporters

The Sun: Snow Chaos!—24 Car Pileup As 4 Inches of Thundersnow Hit London




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The Friday Follies, Indian Summer Edition

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You know, that age-old phenomenon of a sudden resurgence of hot weather after school starts… Yes, it’s been a hot week at home and abroad. Something(s) incendiary but instructive every single day. Not so unusual really. When you take the long view, every week brings us stuff that is hot and scary but also dumb as a Jimmy Kimmel joke. You know what I mean. You got to take time out to just laugh at some things. Like this past week. As bad as a lot of the news was, the silly still bubbles to the surface like a rueful chuckle. Our humor highlights this week come from reliable topics like religion, politics, race, money, and hats. That’s a combination that’s hard to beat. Most of the references are derived from FB posts, but reconfigured as convenient to be less informative than funny here. The weekend’s upon us. Who needs informative? Saturday, Sept 27 Bill Maher had an up and down week. He’s still torn between the divided religious household he grew up in and the secular solipsism he has ...
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Closing the Gap

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  It’s a long story that’s been through many vicissitudes, and only recently has reached a crisis point in the nation’s emotional stability. In the early days of the mass media age, women’s quest for respect from men led them to pursue intellectual accomplishment with lots of reading and whatnot. This led, understandably, to more women who needed glasses to be competitive at work and general mixed company. Sadly, one of the longest lived memes (before people knew they were memes) of that era was the Dorothy Parker quip above.  As women invaded television news in the media explosion of the late Twentieth Century, the invention of contact lenses made it possible for the biggest female stars of journalism to appear elegantly finished without attraction-diminishing spectacles. Nancy Dickerson, Barbara Walters, and Diane Sawyer managed to look both smart and glamorous. All eyes were upon them, even to the point of siring the term ‘nipslip.’ Why the incidence of women wearing eyegla...
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My World and Welcome to It

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I chopped off the top of the graphic because it featured the name of the author and is irrelevant  here.  His name is H. Paul Jeffers. You can buy the book at Amazon. Might be a good read or reference. This was going to be longer. It was longer. Until Blogger ate about 2,000 words of my draft. I try to trust the universe when painful losses in writing occur. So I’m going to trust that not Blogger but the universe was telling me to present you with an idea that can be returned to late and amplified if I see that readers are seeking out this post as a topic of interest. I had a few main points. History is almost a dead discipline. Along with other studies in humanities it has been captured by ideologues and turned into a kind of political propaganda, not a search for truth and helpful perspective. All these historians who are building lists Best and Worst Presidents aren’t interested in examining the past with a fair and analyptical eye. They’re looking to use the past to promot...
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