‘Old age is a ceremony of losses,’ said poet Donald Hall
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. 1928 – 2018
West Virginians ask Joe Manchin: Which side are you on?
Evan Osnos writes: Months ago, in the quiet, eagle-bedecked confines of his office on Capitol Hill, Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, sketched out a social-policy bill not unlike the Build Back Better proposal that he torpedoed on Sunday, in a rebuke to his party, his President, and millions of people in his state. It was still in the early blush of the Democrats’ control of Congress and the White House, and the Party was pursuing an all-in-one proposal…
How the White House lost Joe Manchin
Eric Levitz writes: Much of Manchin’s worldview is deluded, classist, and wholly incompatible with meeting the challenges that the United States faces in the present moment. Manchin’s deficit-phobia is premised on basic misunderstandings about the nature of sovereign debt. His fear that providing cash aid to indigent families would only trap them in dependence is rooted in hateful folk wisdom, not actual social science (studies have demonstrated that giving unconditional cash benefits to low-income parents does not significantly depress their…
January 6 committee weighs possibility of criminal referrals impacting Trump
The New York Times reports: When the House formed a special committee this summer to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, its stated goal was to compile the most authoritative account of what occurred and make recommendations to ensure it never happens again. But as investigators sifted through troves of documents, metadata and interview transcripts, they started considering whether the inquiry could yield something potentially more consequential: evidence of criminal conduct by President Donald J. Trump or others that they…
Crisis of command: The Pentagon, the president, and January 6
Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix write: One of the most vexing questions about Jan. 6 is why the National Guard took more than three hours to arrive at the Capitol after D.C. authorities and Capitol Police called for immediate assistance. The Pentagon’s restraint in allowing the Guard to get to the Capitol was not simply a reflection of officials’ misgivings about the deployment of military force during the summer 2020 protests, nor was it simply a concern about “optics” of…
Who is Gabriel Boric, Chile’s next president?
The New York Times reports: Gabriel Boric rose to prominence in Chile ten years ago as a shaggy-haired student leading massive demonstrations for free quality public education. He ran for president this year, calling for a square deal for more Chileans, with more social protections for the poor and higher taxes on the rich. Now, having won the presidency on Sunday — with more votes than any other candidate in history — Mr. Boric is poised to oversee what could…
Assad shows human rights abusers everywhere how to commit atrocities with impunity
Bente Scheller writes: The regime has so far given no reason to assume that diplomacy alone will get it to change its behavior. Nor has it given any indication that it is willing to make concessions for a lasting peace. It could have offered or honored amnesties, but there isn’t one example of successful reconciliation from any province in Syria. The local cease-fires strategy embraced by the U.N. under then-Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura delivered much of Syria…
Can lab-grown brain organoids be ‘conscious’? Scientists may soon find out
Anil Seth writes: In 2022 we will see brain organoids displaying dynamics that bear comparison with the complex activity patterns indicative of consciousness in humans. This will require us to rethink what counts as a brain signature of “consciousness” and will raise serious ethical issues about brainlike structures grown in the lab. Brain organoids are tiny, lab-grown bundles of neurons, derived from human stem cells, that display various properties of the developing human brain. In medicine, they provide much-needed biological…
Music: Can — ‘Mary, Mary So Contrary’
Behind Manchin’s opposition, a long history of fighting measures for tackling climate change
The New York Times reports: Senator Joe Manchin III on Monday cited a litany of issues that drove him to oppose President Biden’s $2 trillion Build Back Better bill, from Democrats’ refusal to attach work requirements to social benefits to their failure to raise tax rates on the rich. But left almost unsaid was the issue that has always propelled his political career as a Democratic maverick: climate change. The version of the bill that passed the House last month…
Curtailing anonymity is a first step towards reducing online abuse
Stephen Kinsella writes: We have come a long way from the optimism that surrounded the internet in the early 1990s. As Tim Berners-Lee has remarked several times, there was a ‘utopian’ view of its potential to democratise news and reinforce social cohesion. Indeed, only 10 years ago, we were celebrating the role that online communications played in the Arab Spring. Now, when the subject of social media is mentioned, it is far more often associated with organisations such as QAnon…
Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of U.S. Covid cases
The Associated Press reports: Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicron’s share of infections in only one week. In much of the country, it’s even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the…
Trump implores supporters to take credit for the vaccines — even if they don’t want to take the vaccines
CNN reports: According to video tweeted by O’Reilly’s “No Spin News,” the former Fox News host says, “Both the President and I are vaxxed” and then asks Trump, “Did you get the booster?” “Yes,” Trump says to a smattering of boos in the audience. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Trump says in the video, seemingly trying to quiet the boos. “That’s all right, it’s a very tiny group over there.” CNN has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for more…
Coal in America: A legacy of environmental catastrophe
James Bruggers writes: Along the winding, two lane road that leads to Tracy Neece’s mountain in Floyd County, Kentucky, there’s no hint of the huge scars in the hills beyond the oaks and the pines. Green forests cover steep slopes on each side of the road, which turns from blacktop to dusty gravel. Modest homes are nestled into the bottomlands along a creek with gardens that grow corn and zucchini under a hot summer sun. The first sign of the…
Biden should take Manchin’s deal right now
Jonathan Chait writes: Sunday morning, Joe Manchin threw a giant twist into the plot of the Biden presidency by announcing his opposition to the administration’s signature domestic agenda. But the new plot had a gaping hole: Biden noted that, a few days before walking away, Manchin had made a counteroffer to Biden at the White House. What was the counteroffer? And why did Biden reject it? The Washington Post fills in the answer. Manchin’s proposal included universal pre-kindergarten, an expansion…
One shot to see the universe like never before
Marina Koren writes: In the beginning, the universe was dark. The Big Bang had electrified the cosmos into existence, and the new landscape buzzed with particles, chaotic and hot, before cooling off into a calm expanse of hydrogen and helium. Then something began to happen in the fog. Gravity drove pockets of gas to collapse in on themselves and ignite, creating the first stars. The radiant orbs began to cluster, forming the first galaxies: messy, misshapen things, not as polished…