News That Just Makes You Sick
News That Just Makes You Sick
Plus: Tribalism in an Age of School Shootings
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MONA CHAREN: News That Just Makes You Sick.
In 2016, the prolific author and economist Thomas Sowell gave up his syndicated column after a quarter century. A few months later, I asked him how it felt. He was delighted. The best part, he confided, was not having to read the news so assiduously every day.
Hoo boy. “I feel ya,” as Ted Lasso might say. A New Yorker cartoon captures it: As a man and woman stroll down the street, she says, “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.” Aware that my own consumption of news was depressing me, I lit up upon finding that the BBC had inaugurated a podcast devoted entirely to good news.
Trump’s incitement of Jan 6 and his call to terminate the constitution were treason-like. And the Republicans who won’t renounce him have betrayed the sacred trust Americans have conferred on them. Judge Luttig joins Charlie Sykes on today’s podcast.
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TIM MILLER: Tribalism in an Age of School Shootings.
YESTERDAY, ANOTHER HORROR. Six dead, three of them little babies not yet 10 years old.
The answer to the “why” of these atrocities is frustratingly simple: As long as people with hate in their hearts have easy access to powerful and deadly weapons, the massacres will continue.
We can work to reduce the hate on the edges. Invest in mental health programs. Try to minimize the exacerbating traumas. Beef up our school safety precautions. Be more generous to one another.But we will never eradicate it. We are human; we are fallen; we ate from the forbidden tree.
JIM SWIFT: Mike Lee Has Nothing to Show for His Tough Talk on Japan
Last month, Senator Mike Lee gave Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida a reckless, feckless deadline: Release Lt. Ridge Alkonis, a Navy officer who has been imprisoned in Japan since last summer after being convicted of negligent driving causing the deaths of two people in an accident outside a noodle shop on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, back into U.S. custody by the end of the month—or else.
Or else what? As I wrote in early February, there are limits to what Lee, as a senator, can do to force Japan to act, and the strategy he’s pursuing will probably backfire, resulting in Alkonis serving his full sentence in Japanese custody while also damaging relations between the United States and Japan at a time when regional tensions are high and getting higher. In the language of Three-card Monte, Lee is facing what any player would recognize as a classic lose-lose-lose-we’re-all-losers-and-we-all-lose situation.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Please negotiate harder with me… Is basically what #OurKevin sent the President in a letter, because his GOP caucus is being led by the Freedom Caucus and pretty much nobody else.
The Rev. Barry Black… The Senate’s chaplain, is fed up with “thoughts and prayers.”
The lost art… Of being stuck with an album. Which reminds me of one Christmas the stash of DVDs I got for Christmas as the local bookseller went under. One of them was Idiocracy, which had not yet become a cult classic. (If you haven’t watched it yet, you’re really missing out.)
Bottomless french fries?? In this economy? Ben Dreyfuss, unlike me, was NOT a fan of The Night Agent.
From our friends at the Republican Accountability Project:
You Cruz, you lose? Vets of Ted Cruz’s vaunted 2016 operation, which of course, failed, are lining up to help Ron DeSantis.
Brook trouting… Through Armageddon, with Matt Labash.
The XFL 3.0 at midseason… The owners take stock. And the D.C. Defenders remain undefeated! If you haven’t watched yet, here’s a condensed version of last night’s game.
Grasping at Nuclear Straws… Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller write: “Vladimir Putin is trying to manipulate the West by deploying weapons to Belarus.”
Meanwhile, in Texas… A former GOP leader knew that his law partner was accused of child sex abuse but did nothing.
How Nashville police… stopped school shooting in four minutes. I have watched the footage, and wouldn’t recommend watching it, this article is fine. The work of police here was nothing short of exemplary.
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