Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In Peggy’s case, he’s literally the same old boss. This entire season has been about characters thinking they’ve made important new changes to their lives, only to find themselves cycling back to where they’ve been before. In fact,…
Five days of fear: What happened in Boston
BOSTON (AP) — In the tight rows of chairs stretched across the Commonwealth Ballroom, the nervousness — already dialed high by two bombs, three deaths and more than 72 hours without answers — ratcheted even higher.The minutes ticked by as investigators stepped out to delay the news conference once, then again. Finally, at 5:10 p.m. Thursday, a pair of FBI agents carried two large easels to the front of the Boston hotel conference chamber and saddled them with display boards. They turned the boards backward so as not to divulge the results of their sleuthing until, it had been decided, they could not afford to wait any longer.Now the time had come to take that critical, but perilous step: introducing Boston to the two men responsible for an entire city’s terror.”Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects,” said Richard DesLauriers, the FBI agent in charge in Boston. As he spoke, investigators flipped the boards around to reveal grainy surveillance-camera images of the men whose only identity was conferred by the black ball cap and sunglasses on one, the white ball cap worn backward on the other.Continue Reading… … Read More
Obama on Boston: ‘The American people refuse to be terrorized’
Less than 24 hours after a pair of explosives detonated near the finish line of the annual 26-mile run in Boston, Massachusetts, Pres. Obama made his second address to the American public late Tuesday morning.“Obviously our first thoughts this morning are with the victims, their families and the city of Boston,” the president said from the White House in Washington.So far three fatalities have been attributed to Monday’s incident, as well as over 100 injuries.“This was a heinous and cowardly act,” said the president, “and given what we now know the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism.”“Anytime a bomb is used to target civilians, it is an act of terror,” said Obama.“The American people refuse to be terrorized.”So far the president says the FBI is not sure what to make of the attack. He said during Tuesday’s briefing that he met earlier that day with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security Lisa Monaco, but the administration has been unable to identify a motive or suspect.The president said investigators were unsure of who carried out the attack, and suggested the options are plentiful — the attack, said Obama, could have come from a terrorist either foreign or domestic, suspect, suspects or an entire organization.He also suggested commenters should be less quick to jump the gun with coming to conclusions. “We don’t have a sense of motive yet. Everything else at this point is speculation,” said the president.“In the coming days we will pursue every effort to get to the bottom of what happened and we will continue to be vigilant,” he continued, adding that his administration has been directed to implement “appropriate security measures to protect the American people,” the specifics of which were unannounced.Moments before Pres. Obama address the nation, the central terminal of New York’s LaGuardia Airport was evacuated after a suspicious package was found. The scene was determined to be safe shortly after. … Read More
Escaping a toxic waste site
FALLS CHURCH, Va. –The woman who helped free an entire community from a toxic dump, literally rewriting environmental laws in the process, was so shy at the start of the struggle she tried to hide behind a tree when neighbors called on her.Lois Gibbs took to the stage that day 35 years ago, in the seemingly idyllic community of Love Canal, N.Y., and began to find her voice. Transforming herself from homemaker to hell-raiser, she helped convince then-President Jimmy Carter to come to town in 1980 and remove 900 families from a 21,000-ton toxic dump. Earlier that year, Gibbs and her neighbors held two Environmental Protection Agency officials captive in a ploy to get the president’s attention. It worked.Long before Erin Brockovich became a movie, Gibbs helped secure an environmental victory of greater heft. Love Canal’s war against the toxins under its feet prompted the federal government to create the Superfund cleanup program and earned Gibbs the Goldman Environmental Prize.Continue Reading… … Read More
Amazon tightens its chokehold
A shudder went through the entire world of publishing Thursday afternoon, after Amazon announced the purchase of the social reader site Goodreads. When people who normally eschew Hitler analogies compare an Amazon move to the Nazi invasion of Poland, it’s time to pay attention. Or as author Alex Irvine immediately tweeted,”Next, publishers will be required to dig own graves.”Goodreads, according to Salon’s own publishing maven, Laura Miller, “was the single major readers’ community independent of Amazon.” But maintaining that independence hasn’t been easy. Up until January 2012, Goodreads used the Amazon Product Advertising API as its primary source for book data. But as Jon Mitchell explained last year, getting in bed with Amazon comes with some rather stringent handcuffs. For one thing, Goodreads wasn’t allowed to use that data in conjunction with any site or app “designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Hotel seeks “professional sleeper”
Breaking news: Every person in the whole entire world is quitting their jobs and moving to Finland.A Helsinki hotel is currently looking for a “professional sleeper” to bunk down for 35 days and test their rooms for comfort and general snooze-ability.Hotel manager Tio Tikka told the Associated Press that they are currently looking for a “dynamic person to write a quality blog” about their daily experiences at the Finn Hotel after sleeping in each of its rooms.So if you are fluent in Finnish, English and Russian (most people are, right?), send your CV to Tikka, post haste. The job opens May 17 with applications being accepted until the end of April.Related: It’s too bad that Soori the meerkat can’t write or speak any languages because he is so sleepy and would be so good as a professional sleeper.Continue Reading… … Read More
Peter Suderman on Why Price Controls Won’t Fix American Health Care
Rather than push for a government-run,
single-payer system—what liberals often term “Medicare for
all”—some left-leaning health experts are talking up a technocratic
alternative known as all-payer: Instead of the federal government
serving as a universal insurer, as in single payer, the government
would set payment rates for the entire system, public and private,
eliminating price discrepancies for different payers.
In other words, price controls. This is the great new idea that
has gripped liberal health wonks as health costs have continued to
rise: to simply have the government declare that prices must be
lower. But in reality, writes Senior Editor Peter Suderman, it’s
neither a new idea nor a particularly great one, and there’s little
reason to think it will result in meaningful restraint of health
care cost growth. View this article.
… Read More
