Newsmax is a rightwing propaganda website (details here) originally funded by Richard Mellon Scaife who, until his 2014 death, spent much of his inherited billions on spreading rightwing extremism. It has a following. I don’t know why. That defies logic (more about this below). Anyway, “[...]
Archive for May, 2022
Why cats are superior to humans
They didn’t invent nuclear weapons. They don’t build nuclear weapons. They haven’t used nuclear weapons. They don’t threaten to use more nuclear weapons. And they get you to wait on them, hand-and-foot, simply by looking at you. Return to The-Ave.US Home Page[...]
May 3rd, 2022 - 11:27 pm § in Misc.
Repurposing Concrete’s cement silos into a climbing wall
The town of Concrete, Washington, is a gateway to the North Cascades. The cement plant, which supplied cement for the Grand Coulee Dam and projects in Seattle, was built in 1908 and has stood abandoned since 1967. The site is currently owned by the town. Now the 100-foot high cement silo, with walls[...]
May 3rd, 2022 - 10:54 pm § in Law and Courts
Is the Supreme Court’s reputation irretrievably ruined?
I doubt it. First of all, the Alito draft isn’t necessarily the court’s decision. Most people assume it is, but we’ll have to wait and see. Second, the Supreme Court doesn’t have much of a reputation to begin with, and you can’t lose something you don’t have. Occa[...]
May 3rd, 2022 - 9:38 pm § in Health, Law and Courts
How to make sure we don’t have enough nurses
Overwork them, underpay them. Deny them lunch and rest breaks, time off, and family leave. Stress them out, burn them out, then throw them in prison if they make a mistake. “Diana Campion, a nurse practitioner who lives in Florida, recently contemplated going back to bedside nursing part-time,[...]
California nurses’ strike bears fruit
A couple weeks ago I wrote here that nurses at Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto were threatening to strike over pay and working conditions. They did walk out, and after spending a week on picket lines, they appear to have won. The union president called the [...]
Don’t judge all Russians by Putin’s behavior
Most of the badness is the handiwork of just one of them, and he doesn’t dance. In Italy this week, Russian and Ukrainian ballerinas danced together in a benefit show to raise money for the Red Cross (read story here; watch video below). A lot of the awful stuff that happens in the world resul[...]
May 3rd, 2022 - 3:27 pm § in Russia
Don’t kid yourself about nuclear war
The handwringing has begun. Michael Christ, writing for CNN, says (here): “The Pentagon response [to Putin’s latest nuclear saber-rattling] appears to be an ‘extra urgency in developing a new generation of doomsday weapons that could maintain deterrence,’ according to David I[...]
Democrats accuse Trump’s justices of lying, but did they?
“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused ‘several’ Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices of lying to the Senate about their views of Roe v. Wade,” Huffington Post reported after a draft opinion by Samuel Alito leaked to the media. [...]
May 2nd, 2022 - 10:30 pm § in Law and Courts
What the leaked draft means for abortion
First, this isn’t a Supreme Court decision yet, only a draft, but it probably reflects what the court’s going to do and is pretty close to the eventual decision’s final form. Republicans are already angrily accusing Democrats of leaking the draft in order to “attack the court[...]