Reading archive 2025-07-16 pt 2

Another Moderate Republican Opts Out: For the likes of Don Bacon, quitting Congress has become a familiar endgame.

Flattery, Firmness, and Flourishes: World leaders and diplomats quietly swap strategies for managing Trump.

The Biggest Myth About the YIMBY Movement: There’s nothing centrist or conservative about the push to lower housing costs. - "This is what a populist antitrust effort in housing looks like: undoing regulatory capture, breaking up economic gatekeeping, and creating a fairer market. And yet, in a spectacular act of projection, NIMBYs accuse housing advocates of conservatism even as they defend the interests of wealthy landowners protecting their cultural and economic turf. This smear campaign is meant to freeze blue-state efforts to help people struggling to afford a place to live. And if the broader left fails to recognize this NIMBY misinformation for what it is, it might work."

The Trump Administration Is About to Incinerate 500 Tons of Emergency Food: Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.

Putin Needs to Believe He Can’t Win: The way to get a peace agreement is to change the battlefield.

Reading archive 2025-07-14

Tariffs give the U.S.’s only native caffeinated plant a shot at stardom: Yaupon, a holly, may be little-known outside Indigenous groups, but that may soon change thanks to tea and coffee tariffs.

The CIA reveals more of its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald: New documents show an officer known only as Howard managed a Cuban group that interacted with Oswald in the months before the JFK assassination. - "He said a plausible theory was rogue CIA officers created the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, unknown to the agency, and that 'the CIA covered it up not because they were involved, but because they were trying to hide the secrets of that period.' He said many in the CIA were angry with Kennedy after he withdrew support for the agency’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 as well as for his gradual move toward peace with the Soviet Union after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962."

Putin took Trump for granted. He’s going to pay for his mistake.: After the president’s startling, welcome shift on Ukraine, there’s more to do.

Budget woes jeopardize plan for costly new D.C. Archives building: Supporters of new building discouraged as D.C. mayor’s spending plan envisions more affordable option to house Duke Ellington’s birth certificate, Frederick Douglass’s will and other pieces of history.

Two men sentenced in killing of D.C. girl, ending years of prosecutions: In all, eight men and one woman, most convicted of murder, have been sent to prison for the 2018 shooting of 10-year-old Makiyah Wilson, a crime that stunned the city.

Where D.C. Council Ward 8 candidates stand on key issues: The four candidates, all Democrats, were asked questions on issues such as the redevelopment of RFK Stadium, housing and policing in the ward.

A clinic blames its closing on Trump’s Medicaid cuts. Patients don’t buy it.: A clinic in rural Nebraska has become a political flash point after tying its looming closure to Trump’s law cutting Medicaid. - "Down the road on the town’s main street lined with American flags, Kerri Kemp said she didn’t like the Medicaid cuts either. The 47-year-old got Medicaid coverage after Nebraska voters chose to expand eligibility for the program in 2018, adopting an optional part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. But it was hard to document all her work as a bartender, county worker and rancher, and recently she’d struggled to submit the paperwork. Now she is uninsured. 

"Work requirements could make it harder to qualify when they take effect in 2027, just after the 2026 midterms. But Kemp, a lifelong Republican and Trump supporter, doesn’t hold that against Trump and suggested he might change course. 'I really think he’s gonna do something,' she said." [ed. note: perfect, no notes]

Reading archive 2025-05-19

Easily distracted? How to improve your attention span

An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound To Happen?: Read on to find out what exactly 'efilism' is. - "In 2006 the South African philosopher David Benatar published Better Never to Have Been, arguing that existence itself is harm, because, according to him, the absence of pain is always good while the absence of pleasure matters only to someone forced to miss it. His book supplied the term antinatalism and the asymmetrical equation that sustains it: any new birth inevitably adds suffering to the ledger.

...

"Readers of my work will know that Mosher’s tirades fascinated the Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza whose own YouTube videos riffed on efilism. He would eventually come up with his own, related, ideology called 'eulavism,' which instead of being just against life, was against values. 

"Bartkus cites Lanza as an inspiration."

EU leaders relieved after centrist beats pro-Trump rival to Romanian presidency

In pro-military Nebraska, a lawmaker’s stand over Hegseth tests the GOP: Rep. Don Bacon has called for the embattled defense secretary’s ouster. Back home in Omaha, his principles resonate — but only so much.

I have seen the future of AI. It’s in Western Pennsylvania.: The region’s energy and know-how powered the Industrial Revolution. It’s following the same playbook now. [ed. note: fracking shill from the Washington Examiner]

Reading archive 2025-05-14

Manufacturing is thriving in the South. Here’s why neither party can admit it. Both parties are afraid to confront the real story behind manufacturing losses. - "A big missing part of the story: Interstate competition. The Rust Belt’s manufacturing decline isn’t primarily about jobs going to Mexico. It’s about jobs going to Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. To put it in college football terms, the traditional Big Ten has been losing out to the Southeastern Conference. In 1970, the Rust Belt was responsible for nearly half of all manufacturing exports while the South produced less than a quarter. Today, the roles are reversed, it is the Rust Belt that hosts less than one-fourth of all manufactured exports and the South that exports twice what the Rust Belt does."

Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that authored Venezuela assessment: The director of national intelligence fired top officials weeks after their group authored an assessment contradicting President Donald Trump’s legal rationale for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members. - "'Anything that reduces its independence because policymakers don’t like the independent conclusions it reaches, is the definition of politicization they are decrying. Mike and Maria are unbelievable leaders and IC professionals, not political actors,' wrote Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank."

Their adopted pig charmed the world. Then their romance crumbled.: Esther the Wonder Pig’s dads pick up the pieces after her death, and a messy breakup.

The Republican squirm is in full swing: Amid a series of extraordinary Trump gambits in recent days, Republicans are straining -- hard -- to avoid passing judgment. - "Trump and his top aides have floated suspending habeas corpus, pushed to accept a $400 million airplane from Qatar and sought to unilaterally lower prescription drug prices. All of these are legally dubious, and the first two are especially extraordinary."

‘Original Sin’ indicts the ‘cover-up’ of a steeply declining Joe Biden: Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book is an investigative account of loyalists and family members who shielded the diminished president from full public view. - "The result of more than 200 interviews, the book is a damning account of an elderly, egotistical president shielded from reality by a slavish coterie of loyalists and family members united by a shared, seemingly ironclad sense of denial and a determination to smear anyone who dared to question the president’s fitness for office as a threat to the republic covertly working on behalf of Trump.

...

"'No one thought that the Harris campaign had been without error,' they write. 'But for the most knowledgeable Democratic officials and donors, and for top members of the Harris campaign, there was no question about the father of this election calamity: It was Joe Biden.'"

D.C. man charged with murder in beating death of 18-month-old girl: Police said they responded to a report of a child in cardiac arrest in September, but an autopsy found she had numerous head and bodily injuries.

As U.S. pardon attorney, Ed Martin says he will review Biden pardons: In a news conference on his final day as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., Martin also attacked local judges and city officials’ “sanctuary city” policies.

White House eased China tariffs after warnings of harm to ‘Trump’s people’: The president has backtracked repeatedly on his tariff policies, creating a whiplash with downsides and few clear benefits so far. - "'It’s been completely insane,' Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, said of Trump’s tariff policies. 'When I step back from the euphoria over easing tariffs with China, what I see is the tariff rate is five times as high as when Trump took office. And we seem to have gotten nothing out of it at all.'"

Buttigieg, eyeing a presidential run, says ‘maybe’ Biden hurt Democrats: The former Biden administration official was in Iowa, where he warned in his highest-profile public appearance since leaving government not to ‘hang back’ against President Donald Trump.

Democrats pull off an upset in Nebraska, electing Omaha’s first Black mayor: Voters denied Republican Mayor Jean Stothert a fourth term in a race overshadowed by President Donald Trump’s agenda in Washington — the latest test of attitudes in a political battleground.

Weight-Loss Drugs Aren’t Really About Weight: To figure out who will benefit most, doctors should consider a particularly toxic kind of fat.

The Debate That Will Determine How Democrats Govern Next Time: Did the party lose in 2024 despite Joe Biden’s economic approach, or because of it? - "The term neoliberalism is infamously hard to define and, on both the left and the populist right, often devolves into a catchall meme for everything bad in the world but the long-standing bipartisan consensus that it describes is real and meaningful. Starting in the late 1970s, leaders in both parties embraced free trade, disavowed large-scale public investment (sometimes called 'industrial policy'), favored market-friendly solutions to big social problems, and backed away from antitrust enforcement. Underlying those choices was a belief that free markets should largely be left to their own devices to maximize economic growth. The central economic disagreement between the parties was over tax rates and the size of the social safety net."

What the U.K. Deal Reveals About Trump’s Trade Strategy: The United States is settling for a tiny fraction of what it could have achieved through traditional free-trade agreements. - "If the U.K. deal is a model for deals yet to be struck with other nations, Trump will have little to show for the chaos and disruptions that his tariffs have unleashed - especially when compared with what America could have had instead."

Reading archive 2025-03-26

The NFL plus lots of new housing at RFK? That’s 4th and very long.: In the battle to bring football back to D.C., football will probably win. But at what cost? - "Once built, stadiums provide mainly low-income, seasonal jobs, generate little revenue given the tax breaks that team owners demand, and have slim economic impact because fans just shift their entertainment spending from some other neighborhood, so there’s no net gain, economists argue."

The real scandal: Those chatty Trump officials’ loathing of U.S. allies: The Signal chat fiasco sends an alarming message about Trump officials’ stance toward Europe. - "The policymakers showed no awareness that European nations and other U.S. allies had already joined U.S. efforts to ensure freedom of navigation through the Red Sea. In December 2023 — a month after the start of Houthi attacks — the Defense Department announced a multinational effort known as Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect commercial shipping. This initiative was led by the United States and joined by Bahrain, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.

...

"While Prosperity Guardian was (and is) a defensive operation, another group of U.S. allies joined in Operation Poseidon Archer, a series of airstrikes against Houthi positions in Yemen. The United States and Britain carried out the strikes, beginning in early January 2024, with reported support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands.

"Some European nations were uncomfortable with accepting U.S. leadership, fearing that the American approach was overly aggressive and could spark a wider war. So, the European Union launched its own maritime security mission, known as Operation Aspides, which has sent warships to the Red Sea. That mission has reportedly included Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain.

...

"You know who isn’t contributing? Russia and China, even though both nations (and China in particular) also benefit from the flow of global commerce through the Bab-al-Mandab Strait. Both Beijing and Moscow are, in fact, essentially the Houthis’ allies. Russia has provided targeting assistance to the group, while China’s buying of 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports ultimately aids Tehran’s financing of the Houthis. Yet, when the Trump administration officials discuss making someone pay for the U.S. military operation, they focus on Egypt and Europe — not on China and Russia."

A person with measles traveled in D.C. while contagious, officials say: D.C. health officials reported Tuesday that a person with a confirmed case of measles recently traveled around the District while contagious after coming from Minnesota.

Here’s one federal building we could — and should — scrap: The Forrestal Building’s form is impeding its function as home of the Energy Department.

Two killer whales are hunting great white sharks — to eat their livers: The orcas known as Port and Starboard have killed dozens of sharks off the South African coast with such precision that one researcher marveled at “how Hannibal Lecter it is.”

This Michigan Democrat cruised to victory in a Trump district. Here’s how.: Meet Kristen McDonald Rivet.

“Be Careful How You Talk to Us”: Trump Appointee Gets an Earful in Anacostia: Cora Masters Barry laid into interim US Attorney Ed Martin at a meeting Tuesday. - "A few minutes later, Cora Masters Barry, Marion Barry’s widow, took issue, giving Martin the most severe dressing down of the day. 'You need to learn your politics,' she said. 'You need to learn geography, and world affairs. There’s a whole different pot of money that goes to Africa that stops diseases…. You don’t know what you talking about, so be careful about what you say when you go places, because you show that you’re not well read.'"

Sorry Nebraska Farmers, America Is Fresh Out of Sympathy: When you vote against your own livelihood, don’t be surprised when the check bounces.

Why Dads Take Their Gay Sons to Hooters

What’s the Matter with Abundance?: The last thing society needs is more stuff

How Trump’s policies have helped Russia and furthered Putin’s goals: Months into the new administration, a slew of policy changes have helped Russia, including defunding U.S. soft power, standing down cyber efforts and splitting with NATO allies.

Reading archive 2025-02-11

What the Democrats’ Musk Whisperer Thinks Now: “We need to make sure that Elon Musk has an allegiance to the Constitution,” Representative Ro Khanna says.

California’s smart and vocal farmers are silent about Trump as he wasted their water | Opinion

‘We’ll all have to go vegan’: Wisconsin dairy farmers fret over immigration crackdown: Business groups warn agriculture sector will collapse without foreign labour

Trumper Who Could Lose Farm Says He Had No 'Time To Research' Before Voting

‘Devastating to my state’: Why Trump’s newest tariff threats promise catastrophe for Kentucky bourbon: Canada is the No. 2 export market for U.S. distillers, after the European Union.

Trump Enrages Christian MAGA By Naming ‘Heretic’ Pastor to White House

Proposal To Stop Minting Pennies Hits Home In Greene County - "Americans for Common Cents, a pro-penny group with Artazn among its backers, stated in a January news release that eliminating the penny will not save the government money. 

"'In fact, such a move would have a significant negative impact on the U.S. Mint’s cost structure. Many overhead expenses at the Mint would remain and would need to be absorbed by other coins, increasing their per-unit costs. Additionally, without the penny, the demand for nickels would rise to fill the gap in small-value transactions,' the news release notes. 

"'Since each nickel costs nearly 14 cents to produce, this shift would drive up overall production expenses for the government. Rather than saving money, eliminating the penny would increase and redistribute financial burdens,' the news release states."

U.S. Travel Association Warns of Economic Tourism Disaster After Thousands of Canadian Tourists Cancel Trips in Protest

Trump’s Gaza proposal frustrates his new Arab American supporters: Whether Trump can keep these new supporters could have implications for key statewide races, but also on the fragile coalition the GOP assembled to gain ground.

Trump administration plans for federal contracts stir worries across Kentucky - "Payments for indirect costs cover items that make basic research possible, Capilouto said, such as building and outfitting labs; research equipment; ventilation, heat and lighting; technology, and graduate students who work in labs."

The Rise of the Selfish Plutocrats: Instead of pursuing philanthropy, many now seek to evade social responsibility. - "In 2021, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that [da Vinci's Salvator Mundi] priceless painting had been kept on private display aboard bin Salman's superyacht, Serene, a 439-foot-long, half-billion-dollar boat that had recently run aground in a navigational accident. A fragile, irreplaceable object of significance to the shared cultural history of all humanity was being kept in a hot, humid environment for the private enjoyment of one royal billionaire and his ultrarich guests. (In another room, Serene was also equipped with state-of-the-art snow machines that could produce four-inch-deep flurries on demand.)"

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified: Four IT professionals lay out just how destructive Elon Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be. - "DOGE is many things a dismantling of the federal government, a political project to flex power and punish perceived enemies but it is also the logical end point of a strain of thought that's become popular in Silicon Valley during the boom times of Big Tech and easy money: that building software and writing code aren't just dominant skills for the 21st century, but proof of competence in any realm. In a post on X this week, John Shedletsky, a developer and an early employee at the popular gaming platform Roblox, summed up the philosophy nicely: 'Silicon Valley built the modern world. Why shouldn't we run it?'"

‘A Very Christian Concept’: The faith’s mandate is more arduous than J. D. Vance’s account seems to allow.

Tech layoffs reveal the unintended consequences of mass job cuts: After mass layoffs, tech workers lost trust in their employers. Federal employees may soon face the same fate.

D.C. managed to avoid return-to-office chaos over Navy Yard parking shortage: Local and military officials had been sounding the alarm about a potential parking shortage.

An ICE raid gutted a town in Trump’s first term. Now, fear of a repeat.: Tiny O’Neill, Nebraska, is still recovering from the 2018 raid. It forced some businesses to close and left many residents, especially immigrants, reeling.

In the Trump era, renewable energy isn’t green — it’s ‘dominant’: Clean-energy executives are tailoring their pitches for the president and his political allies. - "One trend the groups are planning to emphasize is that congressional districts that favored Trump in the 2020 election have seen three times as much investment as a result of clean-energy tax credits, according to a Washington Post analysis. In addition, over half of all new clean-energy jobs are in Republican-led districts, according to a separate analysis by Climate Power, an environmental advocacy group.

...

"Spokespeople for [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene and 10 other Republican lawmakers with the most new clean-energy jobs in their districts did not respond to requests for comment."

19-year-old Musk surrogate takes on roles at State Department and DHS: The move illustrates that Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service aides are being asked to fulfill multiple posts at once.

The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump

Trump’s NIH challenges the model that underlies U.S. scientific dominance: The 80-year-old partnership between the federal government and research institutions has made the U.S. the leader in scientific innovation. But now a proposed funding cut threatens the arrangement. - "'At a time of rapid strides in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, brain science, biological imaging, and regenerative biology, and when other nations are expanding their investment in science, America should not drop knowingly and willingly from her lead position on the endless frontier,' Harvard President Alan M. Garber said in a letter to the university community."

The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions: The Post ventured to the front lines of an offensive against the Islamic State in northern Somalia, where foreign fighters are flowing in and cash is flowing out.

Reading archive 2022-07-24

On the campaign trail, many Republicans talk of violence: In both swing states and safe seats, GOP candidates say that liberals hate them personally and may turn rioters or a police state on people who disobey them

The education of Adam Kinzinger: He was the face of modern conservatives and beloved by Republican leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. But now he is trying to steer the party toward a new path in politics opposite his once “true friend.”

Claim that sex ed ‘grooms’ kids jolted Nebraska politics a year before it swept the nation: The unsubstantiated claim led to a backlash against sex ed that helped topple local Republican Party leaders and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school board

The Claremont Institute triumphed in the Trump years. Then came Jan. 6.: After Trump helped revolutionize Claremont from a minor academic outfit to a key Washington player, the think tank is facing blowback for standing by lawyer John Eastman after he counseled Trump on overturning the 2020 election. - "'They did not wait to bury the teaching with the teacher,' Jaffa recalled his father saying. 'What they are trying to do is put a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call it Abraham Lincoln and the dust cover of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ on ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and call it Aristotle.'"

Opinion  Quit, Joe, Quit! Biden could save the midterms with a one-term pledge.

Reading archive 2021-08-14

Opinion: Maryland can’t save the Chesapeake Bay alone - "Ninety percent of Chesapeake Bay waters flow from the Susquehanna River, yet Pennsylvania and New York seem incapable of making the necessary changes on their own."

Opinion: A car-free Rock Creek Park could become the Central Park of D.C. - "Pre-pandemic, up to 8,000 cars per weekday turned upper Beach Drive into a highway for commuting into D.C., emitting air pollution and limiting recreational usage of the park. None of that aligns with Congress’s original vision for Rock Creek."

‘Why Omaha?’: DHS bets on Nebraska as the future of terrorism research

Thousands of specially bred honeybees mysteriously went missing. The beekeeper wants answers.