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unawinn

El primer año de Donald Trump: ¿cuánto crédito merece realmente el presidente... - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...oticias-internacional-42755419

donald donald trump trump credit economy politics US policy

shared by unawinn on 22 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • El primer año de Donald Trump
    • unawinn
      unawinn on 22 Jan 18
       
      centecimo
  • El Producto Interno Bruto (PIB) de Estados Unidos creció por encima del 3%, la bolsa de valores ha alcanzado cifras récord y el desempleo está en uno de sus niveles más bajos en dos décadas.
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  • poner fin al programa de Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (conocido como DACA), que durante la era Obama le dio residencia a unos 700.000 inmigrantes indocumentados que entraron
  • economistas dijeron que Trump sí puede adjudicarse mucho del mérito por el actual estado de la economía
Javier E

We Cannot "Reopen" America - The Bulwark - 0 views

thebulwark.com/we-cannot-reopen-america

pandemic economic effects Crisis

shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Vegas, Baby
  • Las Vegas will not “reopen” because the city as we knew it in February 2020 is gone.
  • Las Vegas is the 28th-largest metropolitan area in America, home to 2.2 million people. Its main business is gambling-related tourism. The city welcomes roughly 42 million visitors a year who pour $58 billion dollars into the local economy and support 370,000 jobs. Almost 40 percent of the area’s workers are employed in the hospitality industry.
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  • How will the airline industry “come back” when people decide to take flights only for travel that cannot be avoided—and international travel is severely restricted?
  • Getting on an airplane to fly to a city so that you can stay in a hotel, eat in crowded dining rooms, and stand elbow-to-elbow with strangers around a craps table will be far, far down the list of behaviors on which most people are open to taking a risk.
  • If the tourism industry were to only decline by 30 percent in Las Vegas, it would be an utter catastrophe
  • Dinner and a Movie Consider the movie theater.
  • (1) If every theater in America opened tomorrow, what percentage of normal attendance would you see? 70 percent? 50 percent? 30 percent? What would that translate into as a percentage of total revenue decline, once you factor in concession sales? (2) The theatrical exhibition business is such a low-margin industry that even a 30 percent decline in revenues would be enough to push just about every operator in America into bankruptcy.
  • Let’s say you are Disney and you made Black Widow expecting it to open to $130 million dollars, pre-pandemic. Now you think that, at some point in the undetermined future, maybe it will open $70 million. Or possibly $30 million. Are you going to take that sort of chance with this asset? Or would you rather bootstrap the part of your business that looks like the future—meaning, your streaming service—and eschew the theatrical release altogether?
  • we could scan the economic landscape and find existential dislocations pretty much everywhere.
  • Up until this past January, 70,000 people got off an airplane in Las Vegas every single day, mostly to take in the city’s charms. On these flights, passenger seats are roughly 17 inches wide with 31 inches of pitch.
  • How will professional sports—which require thousands of people to be packed into small spaces—play in front of live crowds again? The sports leagues may be able to limp along with only broadcast revenues, but the micro-economies built around stadiums and arenas will not.
  • As teleworking becomes increasingly accepted—or even preferred—the physical office will wane. What happens to commercial real estate?
  • not just a single national lockdown of a country’s population and economy is in store to fend off mass contagion but rather quite possibly a succession of them—not just one mother-of-all-economic-shocks but an ongoing crisis that presses economic performance severely in countries all around the world simultaneously.
  • the American economy is a tightly integrated system where disruption in one sector can cascade into failures everywhere else. In the last 50 years we’ve seen how shocks to finance or energy were sufficient to throw the entire country into deep recessions.
  • Exactly what sort of recession should we be expecting when several sectors are pushed toward extinction, all at once?
  • Here in the United States, we watch, week by week, as highly regarded financial analysts from Wall Street and economists from the academy misestimate the depths of the damage we can expect—always erring on the side of optimism.
  • After the March lockdown of the country to “flatten the curve,” the boldest voices dared to venture that the United States might hit 10% unemployment before the worst was over
  • our weekly jobless claims reports and 22 million unemployment insurance applications later, U.S. unemployment is already above the 15% mark: north of 1931 levels, in other words. By the end of April, we could well reach or break the 20% threshold, bringing us to 1935 levels, and 1933 levels (25%) no longer sound fantastical
  • Even so, political and financial leaders talk of a rapid “V-shaped recovery” commencing in the summer, bringing us back to economic normalcy within months. This is prewar thinking, and it is looking increasingly like the economic equivalent of talk in earlier times about how “the boys will be home by Christmas.” . . .
  • The Long War
  • yes, there will eventually be creative destruction that spurs innovation and increasing economic activity. But that is in the long run.
  • The reality of our near- and medium-term future is something very different. And whatever the government orders people to do, that reality will look more like our “stay-at-home” present than the pre-virus past.
  • he movement to “reopen” America is a fallacy based on a fantasy. The fallacy is the notion that lifting stay-at-home orders will result in people going back to their normal routines. This is false.
  • Share via email Print
  • the sooner people grasp how completely and fundamentally the world has changed, the faster we’ll be able to adapt to this new reality. Let’s take a close look at just a couple of examples.
Javier E

Opinion | Empathy Is Exhausting. There Is a Better Way. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...israel-war-empathy-pain.html

empathy compassion response indifference evil distress

shared by Javier E on 03 Jan 24 - No Cached
  • “What can I even do?”Many people are feeling similarly defeated, and many others are outraged by the political inaction that ensues. A Muslim colleague of mine said she was appalled to see so much indifference to the atrocities and innocent lives lost in Gaza and Israel. How could anyone just go on as if nothing had happened?
  • inaction isn’t always caused by apathy. It can also be the product of empathy. More specifically, it can be the result of what psychologists call empathic distress: hurting for others while feeling unable to help.
  • I felt it intensely this fall, as violence escalated abroad and anger echoed across the United States. Helpless as a teacher, unsure of how to protect my students from hostility and hate. Useless as a psychologist and writer, finding words too empty to offer any hope. Powerless as a parent, searching for ways to reassure my kids that the world is a safe place and most people are good. Soon I found myself avoiding the news altogether and changing the subject when war came up
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  • Understanding how empathy can immobilize us like that is a critical step for helping others — and ourselves.
  • Empathic distress explains why many people have checked out in the wake of these tragedies
  • Having concluded that nothing they do will make a difference, they start to become indifferent.
  • The symptoms of empathic distress were originally diagnosed in health care, with nurses and doctors who appeared to become insensitive to the pain of their patients.
  • Early researchers labeled it compassion fatigue and described it as the cost of caring.
  • when two neuroscientists, Olga Klimecki and Tania Singer, reviewed the evidence, they discovered that “compassion fatigue” is a misnomer. Caring itself is not costly. What drains people is not merely witnessing others’ pain but feeling incapable of alleviating it.
  • In times of sustained anguish, empathy is a recipe for more distress, and in some cases even depression. What we need instead is compassion.
  • empathy and compassion aren’t the same. Empathy absorbs others’ emotions as your own: “I’m hurting for you.”
  • Compassion focuses your action on their emotions: “I see that you’re hurting, and I’m here for you.”
  • “Empathy is biased,” the psychologist Paul Bloom writes. It’s something we usually reserve for our own group, and in that sense, it can even be “a powerful force for war and atrocity.”
  • Dr. Singer and their colleagues trained people to empathize by trying to feel other people’s pain. When the participants saw someone suffering, it activated a neural network that would light up if they themselves were in pain. It hurt. And when people can’t help, they escape the pain by withdrawing.
  • To combat this, the Klimecki and Singer team taught their participants to respond with compassion rather than empathy — focusing not on sharing others’ pain but on noticing their feelings and offering comfort.
  • A different neural network lit up, one associated with affiliation and social connection. This is why a growing body of evidence suggests that compassion is healthier for you and kinder to others than empathy:
  • When you see others in pain, instead of causing you to get overloaded and retreat, compassion motivates you to reach out and help
  • The most basic form of compassion is not assuaging distress but acknowledging it.
  • in my research, I’ve found that being helpful has a secondary benefit: It’s an antidote to feeling helpless.
  • To figure out who needs your support after something terrible happens, the psychologist Susan Silk suggests picturing a dart board, with the people closest to the trauma in the bull’s-eye and those more peripherally affected in the outer rings.
  • Once you’ve figured out where you belong on the dart board, look for support from people outside your ring, and offer it to people closer to the center.
  • Even if people aren’t personally in the line of fire, attacks targeting members of a specific group can shatter a whole population’s sense of security.
  • If you notice that people in your life seem disengaged around an issue that matters to you, it’s worth considering whose pain they might be carrying.
  • Instead of demanding that they do more, it may be time to show them compassion — and help them find compassion for themselves, too.
  • Your small gesture of kindness won’t end the crisis in the Middle East, but it can help someone else. And that can give you the strength to help more.
katyshannon

'It was like an action movie,' neighbors say of El Chapo's capture in Mexico - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...po-capture-20160109-story.html

action movie capture mexico la times el chapo sean penn

shared by katyshannon on 11 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • is house was nothing special, a single-story, tree-shrouded home in a middle-class neighborhood in this seaside city. And there the world's most sought-after drug kingpin hid for months until his capture in a deadly shootout.
  • Neighbors noticed his comings and goings, but without special attention. And then suddenly, the Mexican naval special forces descended Friday.
  • And with that, Sinaloa cartel commander Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was captured, in a shootout that killed six of his associates. It was six months after he escaped from Mexico's maximum-security prison through a tunnel he dug under his cell.
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  • His ability to elude authorities was due in large part to the support he has among rank-and-file Mexicans. He was also able to pay off local government and military authorities and spread largesse.
  • “It makes us sad because he is a good guy and gives us security,” said Los Mochis resident Mariana Ocampo, 21.
  • In the end, it wasn't exhaustive Mexican detective work, nor sophisticated U.S. intelligence, that exposed Guzman's whereabouts. It was ego and a chance at Hollywood.
  • Mexican Atty. Gen. Arely Gomez said Guzman had been in talks to produce a movie about his life.
  • “He established communication with actors and producers, which has formed a new line of investigation,” she said in a late-night news conference as Guzman was being transported from Los Mochis.
  • One of those contacts was apparently actor Sean Penn, who revealed in an article he wrote for Rolling Stone, published Saturday, that he had held a secret interview with Guzman in October at his jungle hide-out in Mexico.
  • Surrounded by the drug lord's armed security troops, Guzman told Penn of his daring prison escape, in an interview translated by Kate del Castillo, an actress who had famously played a drug trafficker in a Mexican soap opera.
  • “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world,” he boasted. “I don't want to be portrayed as a nun.”
  • Gomez said authorities were able to track Guzman's meetings with lawyers and other associates and were close to capturing him in October, apparently after his meeting with Penn. He had been spied by helicopter, she said, but was accompanied by two women and a child, and so security forces decided not to engage.
  • Gomez also gave new details about Guzman's summer escape, saying his brother-in-law, two pilots and tunnel engineers were involved. Once he made it through the tunnel, on a motorcycle speeding over specially built rails, he was whisked to an airfield where his airplane and a decoy took off in the night.
  • In a statement Saturday afternoon, the Mexican government announced the beginning of extradition proceedings that would set the stage for Guzman to face trial in the United States.
  • The proceedings are in response to two formal extradition requests from the U.S. government for crimes including murder, money laundering and arms possession, according to the statement.
alexdeltufo

Syria will join peace talks, but wants to know what 'terrorists' will be there - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...eace-talks-20160109-story.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • he Syrian government declared Saturday it is ready to attend peace talks scheduled in Geneva later this month
  • “terrorist groups” will be participating in the meetings, according to the Syrian news agency SANA.
  • The Geneva negotiations are the first step in a road map laid out last year by the international community to end the Syrian civil war. The
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  • credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance,” constitutional reform and U.N.-supervised elections within 18 months
  • parties will participate in the conference, while excluding those deemed as terrorist organizations 
  • “terrorists” and “mercenaries,” as well as the sectarian nature of many rebel factions on the ground.
  • use of shelling and aerial bombardment against civilians, safe and voluntary refugee transfer, and unfettered access for humanitarian agencies to besieged areas of Syria.
  • “useful” and that he is “looking forward to the active participation of relevant parties in the Geneva talks.”
  • “From the government’s point of view, they’re not keen on negotiations anyway,” Rabbani said.
  • The talks face another stumbling block in soaring tensions between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia,
  • Iran’s Shiite leadership has backed Assad, a member of the Alawite sect that is related to Shia Islam.
  • Last week, Saudi Arabia executed an influential Shiite cleric, enraging Iran and leading to a cutoff of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
  • an has similarly called for calm, while diplomatic efforts from Iraq and Oman continue to encourage a reconciliation between the two countries
  • Previous attempts at jump-starting peace talks have failed because of what was viewed as the government's intransigence regarding rebel participation.
  • don’t at all see that the proposed date is a realistic one, especially since on the ground there were no confidence-building measures,”
  • He cited the situation in Madaya, a town with an estimated population of 40,000 located 25 miles northwest of Damascus that has been besieged by pro-government forces since July.
  • “The issue of Madaya has become a key point. The Syrian cannot go to negotiations while Syrians are dying of hunger and cold,”
  • the Syrian government said it would allow aid to enter Madaya in the coming week.
  • In recent days, Madaya has become a media battleground for the warring parties in Syria.
  • he furor also has affected the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, an ally of the Assad government, which is accused of perpetrating what Madaya residents have described as a nightmare
  • Hateet also accused rebel fighters bunkered inside Madaya of holding civilians hostage, barring their exit from the town.
qkirkpatrick

Donald Trump's fascist inclinations do not bother his fans - LA Times - 0 views

www.latimes.com/...clinations-20151209-story.html

donald trump politics culture US fascism

shared by qkirkpatrick on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • ut as I watched Trump propose a plan to halt the entry of all Muslims into the country and receive hearty cheers of approval from a campaign crowd, it no longer seemed especially amusing. Instead, it struck me that this may be what fascism looks like in a world where politics has been subsumed by the entertainment business. Trump is Don Rickles with the political inclinations of Francisco Franco.
  • most of his competitors for the Republican presidential nomination condemned his idea to ban Muslims, calling it out of step with American values (with the significant exceptions of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul). Bush said Trump is “unhinged.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie branded his idea “ridiculous.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the scheme was “downright dangerous.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich called it yet another example of Trump’s unfitness for high office.
  • Singling people out for surveillance and exclusion because of their religion certainly reeks of fascism.
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  • Fox News holds far more sway with Trump supporters than do Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals. My prediction (in this year when all predictions are a fool’s game) is that Trump will not be hurt and might actually gain if he becomes a target at next week’s GOP debate in Las Vegas
  • The share of the electorate Trump has corralled is filled with frightened and angry people. They do not mind a little fascism if it is being sold by a man who embodies their mood — a man who assures them their enemies can be crushed, as long as no one gets too picky about collateral damage and the Constitution.
manhefnawi

Louis XII: Medieval King or Renaissance Monarch? | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...al-king-or-renaissance-monarch

Louis XII Monarch France Renaissance Medieval Political Kingship 1500

shared by manhefnawi on 21 May 18 - No Cached
  • Early in the afternoon of April 7th, 1498, Charles VIII of France escorted his queen, Anne of Brittany, to an antiquated gallery at his chateau of Amboise, to watch a game of tennis
  • After the travails of Valois France during the Hundred Years War and the kingdom's subsequent recovery under Charles VII and Louis XI, few magnates any longer felt inclined to contest the title of a mature heir apparent.
  • Louis himself had been brought up in relatively impecunious circumstances, thanks partly to the antipathy of the late Louis XI towards him and his house. There were nobles who had felt that the ruler's treatment of them and their kind as well as his alleged general misgovernment warranted conspiracy and even revolt against him. Although Louis d'Orleans had been far too young to engage in that reign's most concerted expression of magnate resentment, the War of the Public Weal, he had rationalised in comparable terms his own behaviour under Charles VIII.
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  • And in all this he had invoked a version of medieval constitutionalism rooted in feudal law: that, regardless of the will of Louis XI, it was his right with his fellow princes to control the royal council and to exercise powers of regency during Charles VIII's minority
  • Such judgements spring partly from the impact of French incursions upon Italy itself, closely followed as they were by interventions from a Spain newly unified under its Catholic kings.
  • 'For France', according to Henri Lapeyre, 'a new destiny opened with the expedition of Charles VIII'. And according to Roger Doucet, although 'neither Charles VIII nor Louis Xll had any great gifts of government', during their reigns 'a great change took place, a change which may be regarded as a transformation of the monarchical system itself'
  • Whilst noblemen languished in rural penury or occupied themselves with court intrigues, the monarch held sway through the agency of his new men over a territory which, thanks not least to the acquisition of Brittany, was more unified under the Crown than ever before
  • So some jurists and humanists were ready to avow; and in propagating the ideology of monarchy, scholars were joined by artists who gave it visual expression through images pregnant with symbolism
  • On Louis XII's council nobles continued, as they had under his immediate predecessors, to rub shoulders with members of commoner extraction
  • Feudal independence might be long since gone; royal policy might no longer be susceptible to the dictates of magnate coalitions, as Louis d'Orleans had discovered to his cost. But royal resources and royal government remained very much the preserve of oligarchs amongst whom the nobility more than held their own
  • When economic recovery eventually got under way, hard on the heels of military revival under Charles VII, the conditions for reconstituting noble fortunes were not automatically restored
  • A notable instance is the house of La Tremoille, based mainly in western France, whose income from all sources fell by two-thirds between the end of the fourteenth century and the death of Louis XI, only to rise within two generations beyond its former level, owing not least to the efforts and system of estate-management developed by Louis II de La Tremoille, head of his house under Louis XII
  • Louis II de La Tremoille took care to cultivate royal favour. His distinguished service to Charles VIII in the wars of the 1480s which Louis d'Orleans helped to precipitate did not prevent his enjoying the patronage of the latter, once king
  • The phenomenon is obscured by the prominence in public affairs of some of Louis XII's best-known servants.
  • Personal secretary in due course to Louis XII, Robertet held numerous fiscal offices and married into the circle of Tours-based financiers upon whom successive monarchs relied to find them funds
  • and towards the 'absolutism' of the following centuries. Its formation, we are assured, was at least in some degree the achievement of Louis XII, for all that ruler's personal deficiencies and youthful waywardness
  • Confronted with economic difficulties, the nobles of Renaissance France rallied to the service of the Crown and were rewarded accordingly. What the kingdom experienced, in Bernard Chevalier's view, was 'not the rise of the bourgeoisie, but the triumph of the nobility'
  • Apanage after apanage had reverted to the Crown while, under Louis XII, the princes of the blood happened to be unusually young and the heads of other major dynasties to be preoccupied with affairs in their lands on the fringes of the kingdom
  • The most sensational domestic episode of Louis XII’s reign was the fall of one of his principal councillors and commanders, the notoriously grasping Marshal de Gie, accused in 1504 of crimes amounting to treason, owing in good measure to the machinations of the queen and her associates against him. Yet such incidents were exceptional
  • So much is evident from the legislative record of Louis XII's reign
  • Despite his advocacy of the role of the Estates-General under his predecessor, only once, in 1506, did Louis XII convene that assembly, and on that occasion as a device to extricate himself from a dilemma in his foreign affairs
  • Louis XII issued his most ambitious legislative act within his first regnal year: the ordinance of Blois on the 'justice and police' of the realm.
  • Shortly before his death Charles VIII had declared 'that there is no more clear and evident proof of custom than that which is made by the common agreement and consent of the Estates' of the relevant communities. Louis XII proceeded in a similar spirit, dispatching commissioners from his sovereign courts to consult with such Estates and so to record their customs in written form
  • The Renaissance monarchy as exemplified by Louis XII was aristocratic in its complexion, consultative in its methods and also, in a sense, popular. The reputation for benignity with which Du Moulin credited him echoed the appellation which the Estates-General of 1506 plucked from classical precedent to confer upon this monarch. Louis was the 'father of the people'; much later, the citizens of eighteenth-century Paris would remember him aw such when trying to rouse their king Louis XVI to a livelier sense of monarchical duty.
  • o far as the extant evidence will allow historians to judge, the average annual yield of direct taxation in his reign was significantly less than in Charles VIII's, and Iess than one half of Louis XI's demands in the early 1480s
  • How, then, are we to account for beliefs that Renaissance monarchy as exemplified in this reign paved the way for the authoritarianism and splendour associated with 'absolute' monarchy in the following centuries? The answer scarcely lies in the personal attributes of Louis XII
  • Despite – or because of – his excesses, he failed to beget a legitimate heir. His ultimate attempts to do so provoked ribaldry a good deal more overt than the rumours and suspicions that had accompanied his succession to the throne. Nine months after the death of Anne of Brittany in January 1514, Louis, in his fifty-third year, married Mary Tudor, teenage sister of Henry VIII of England
  • Exactly twelve weeks after his wedding, Louis XII died
  • But the impact of monarchy and interpretations of its nature did not depend upon the physical capabilities of its incumbent. The king had two bodies. Whatever the frailty of his body natural, his body mystical, epitome of the realm itself, existed before him and did not perish with his death
  • Under Louis XII, however, such propaganda reached fresh heights, with some infusion of new themes often of Italian inspiration, but above all through intensified and diversified use of traditional symbolism whereby artists and scholars cultivated portentous images of monarchy
  • Replete with time-honoured allusions, such images proliferated to an exceptional degree in the reign of Louis XII. They obliterated all impressions of the questionable character of Louis d'Orleans and his suspect biological antecedents. They elevated royal power to divine status. And they contributed significantly to clear the ground for the growth of the ideology of absolutism to full flower in the era of the Sun King
anonymous

Motive in Las Vegas massacre still unclear - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

Lasvegas attack aftermath Culture policy

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • Motive in Las Vegas massacre still unclear
  • "There was something that popped his trigger or caused him to go into that direction and we have yet to determine what that is," Lombardo added. "I hope we find something in the pathology of his brain that helps us understand this."
  • The sheriff spoke openly about the planning, execution and aftermath of the shooting and search for a motive, at times speculating about aspects of the case.
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  • The sheriff said investigators are continuing to interview Paddock's girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who has told authorities she had no inkling Paddock was plotting a massacre.
draneka

Sgt. La David T. Johnson, the soldier at the center of Trump's condolence-call controve... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-was-a-family-oriented-soldier

shared by draneka on 19 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • To most of the country, Sgt. La David Terrence Johnson was an American service member killed in action in West Africa.
  • Johnson and three other American soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger on Oct. 4. He left behind a wife who is six months pregnant and two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl.
  • the fallen soldier’s loved ones have largely remained quiet, except for a few public Facebook posts sharing pictures, condolences and memories of him.
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  • Wilson, who heard the conversation on speakerphone, later said Trump’s comments made the young woman cry.
  • ‘He didn’t even know his name.’ That’s the worst part,” Wilson said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.”
millerco

Cub Scout Is Exiled After Pressing Legislator on Guns and Race - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cub-scout-colorado.html

history Us gun control politics cub scouts

shared by millerco on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • When a group of Cub Scouts met with a Colorado state senator this month, they asked her about some of the most controversial topics in the nation: gun control, the environment, race and the proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico.
  • But questions from one Cub Scout, Ames Mayfield, 11, got him kicked out of his den in Broomfield, Colo., according to his mother, Lori Mayfield.
  • At the meeting on Oct. 9, for which the scouts were told to prepare questions for State Senator Vicki Marble, Ms. Mayfield recorded her son asking the senator why she would not support “common-sense gun laws.”
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  • “I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun,” Ames said in a question that took more than two minutes. He continued, “Why on earth would you want somebody who beats their wife to have access to a gun?”
  • The event took place not long after the Las Vegas shooting. As part of her answer, Ms. Marble, a Republican from Fort Collins, defended her position on gun ownership, saying that shootings in Las Vegas and Aurora, Colo., happened in so-called gun-free zones, and that “the more guns a society has, the less crime or murders are committed.”
  • On Oct. 14, five days after the event with Ms. Marble, Ms. Mayfield was asked to meet the leader of the Cub Scout pack who oversees a number of dens in Broomfield, including the one Ames belonged to.
  • Ms. Mayfield and the pack leader, whom she did not identify, sat down at a Chipotle restaurant that afternoon. “He let me know in so many words that the den leader was upset about the topic of gun control,” Ms. Mayfield said in an interview on Saturday. “It was too politically charged.”
  • “He communicated that my son was no longer welcome back to the den,” she said.
mattrenz16

LA Students Could Be Back In Classrooms Soon, If Deal Is Approved : Coronavirus Updates... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-classrooms-to-in-person-learn

shared by mattrenz16 on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Los Angeles students could be back in the classroom for in-person learning as soon as next month under a tentative deal struck between teachers and the country's second-largest school district.
  • The agreement, which still must be ratified by members of the United Teachers Los Angeles union (UTLA), would see most students returning to physical classrooms for the first time since they were sent home a year ago this month, just as coronavirus infections were spreading rapidly.
  • "As we have both stated for some time, the right way to reopen schools must include the highest standard of COVID safety in schools, continued reduction of the virus in the communities we serve and access to vaccinations for school staff," UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz and LA schools Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a joint statement. "This agreement achieves that shared set of goals."
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  • Last month, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California would begin setting aside 10% of its COVID-19 vaccine doses to inoculate teachers, day care workers and other school employees in order to speed up a return to in-person learning.
delgadool

In Nevada, Unemployed Workers Wait for Aid That Will Still Not Be Enough - The New York... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-las-vegas-pandemic-jobs.html

politics pandemic economics

shared by delgadool on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • No state’s work force has been battered as badly by the coronavirus pandemic as Nevada’s, and people are especially struggling in Las Vegas, a boom-and-bust city where tourist dollars and lavish tips have given way to shuttered hotels and weed-strewn parking lots.
  • Las Vegas has the highest unemployment rate among large cities, with more than 10 percent out of work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and over the last year the work force in Nevada has lost more income than in any other state.
  • “I feel pretty scared every day, right now, whenever I think about my bills,”
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  • Roughly one million Nevada residents, some 45 percent of adults in the state, have fallen behind on basic household expenses, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group.
  • “I struggle so much, I lie awake in bed calculating what I can pay this time, what can wait a little longer?” she said.
  • Even as infection rates decline, there are signs that the economy could sour again — nearly 100,000 fewer residents in the state had jobs last month compared to February of last year. Employment is even worse for low-wage workers, dropping some 23 percent among residents who earn less than $27,000 a year, according to the Center for American Progress. Claims for unemployment insurance are more than triple what they were in 2019, the study found.
  • “I have not asked for much my entire life, but now we need the help,” Ms. Rodriguez said.
  • The short bursts of cash from stimulus checks create a cyclical living experience, as the relief of being able to make some payments or buy food gives way to the anxiety of bills to come.
  • “I came here to work, and I devoted my life to this community,” she said, as tears streaked her cheeks. “This is our life that we have, and we cannot always rely on handouts.”
rerobinson03

Opinion | France Is Becoming More Like America. It's Terrible. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nce-cnews-americanization.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • For some of these critics, it’s the reason so many young people — adopting the view of Black Lives Matter activists — believe police violence is a problem. For others, it explains why the quality of academic research is in decline, as fanciful ideas concocted on American college campuses like intersectionality and post-colonialism supposedly flourish. To others still, it’s why people can’t speak their mind anymore, suffocated by the threats of “cancel culture.”
  • Instead of devoting time to the day’s top news stories, hosts tend to prefer dissecting micro-scandals that are more or less indecipherable to audiences outside the country, with chyrons capturing guests’ provocations seconds after they’re uttered.
  • Such concerns, however animating for those perennially anxious about France’s secular identity, would not ordinarily dominate a country’s attention. But they’ve been elevated into national issues because leading politicians have chosen to play along — and not just those from the right-wing opposition. High-ranking members of En Marche have joined these skirmishes and, in some cases, actively opened new fronts in the culture wars themselves.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Whether or not the strategy pays off in 2022, the culture wars are fueling support for the far right today. Polls ahead of this month’s regional elections, where 17 regional presidencies are up for grabs, show the National Rally with a solid shot of capturing majority control of a region for the first time ever — while Ms. Le Pen is within striking distance of Mr. Macron in the presidential election.
  • t’s also striking to see the depths to which political discourse has sunk in a country that prides itself on its capacity for highbrow public debate and the spotlight it reserves for intellectuals. In the middle of a pandemic and after the country’s worst economic crisis since the end of World War II, the French news cycle isn’t led by discussion over truly universal issues like wealth inequality, the health system or climate change. Instead it’s focused on navel-gazing debates about identity, fueled by television personalities.
zoegainer

November's Global Temperatures Are Highest Ever, Breaking Records - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-change-hottest-november.html

records history crisis climate

shared by zoegainer on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Last month was the hottest November on record, European researchers said Monday, as the relentlessly warming climate proved too much even for any possible effects of cooler ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
  • November 2020 was 0.8 degree Celsius (or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1981 to 2010.
  • “These records are consistent with the long-term warming trend of the global climate,” the service’s director, Carlo Buontempo, said in a statement.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • In September, the world entered La Niña, a phase of the climate pattern that also brings El Niño and affects weather across the world. La Niña is marked by cooler-than-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean.
  • 2020 was on track to be one of the three warmest years ever, the organization’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said that La Niña’s cooling effect “has not been sufficient to put a brake on this year’s heat.”
  • “Something to keep in mind is that the average global temperature is increasing at an unprecedented rate due to human influences,” she said. “That’s the main factor here.”
  • The Copernicus service scientists said the warm conditions in the Arctic last month had slowed the freeze-up of ice in the Arctic Ocean. The extent of sea-ice coverage was the second lowest for a November since satellites began observing the region in 1979. A slower freeze-up could lead to thinner ice and thus more melting in the late spring and summer.
mattrenz16

Voters Are Motivated To Keep Protections For Preexisting Conditions : Shots - Health Ne... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...-up-traditional-party-politics

shared by mattrenz16 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The sources of Puerto Rico's economic and social troubles are many, but prominent among them, Llompart believes, is a system in which the island's two main political parties have spent decades fighting over one major issue – whether Puerto Rico should remain a commonwealth territory of the United States, or seek statehood.
  • "We haven't become a state in all these decades," she said.
  • When she goes to the polls to vote for a new governor on Tuesday, Llompart said she'll vote for neither Pedro Pierluisi, the candidate for the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, nor for Carlos Delgado from the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party.
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  • Llompart said she'll split her ballot. For governor, she's supporting the candidate who supports Puerto Rico's independence from the United States, and for downticket offices she'll support candidates from a new party, Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana — or Citizens' Victory Movement — that's emerging as the first substantial challenge in decades to the island's two-party system.
  • Though polling indicates that one of the two traditional party candidates will win, the numbers also suggest it could be with support from less than 40% of the electorate, the smallest vote share ever to propel a Puerto Rican governor to office.
  • The island's youngest voters have come of age during a recession that has driven an exodus of half-a-million people — largely young adults — to the mainland United States. The past four years alone have arguably been the most tumultuous in Puerto Rico's modern history. It has declared bankruptcy, lost control of its own finances to a federal board appointed to resolve its debt, faced massive cuts to education and pensions, muddled through the recovery from two major hurricanes, faced earthquakes, corruption scandals, and a pandemic.
  • Both parties' candidates are polling around 10 to 12%, and have similar policy priorities, though the pro-independence party has historically made the island's independence from the United States a central tenet of its platform.
  • Lebrón said it's that same energy driving the unprecedented political realignment that appears to be taking hold this year, as more voters demand a move away from the two-party system they believe has prioritized the statehood question while sidelining the needs of everyday Puerto Ricans.
  • "Not in this election, but maybe in 2024, or 2028, because the numbers in the younger demographic with these two old parties are very, very weak."
  • Alexandra Lúgaro, the Citizens' Victory gubernatorial candidate – is considered a longshot to win, but if candidates from her party earn seats in the legislature or at the municipal level, it could build momentum that carries the party to stronger showings in future elections.
  • "We're exhausted," Lebrón said.
  • Tuesday's election will also include a non-binding referendum asking Puerto Ricans whether they support statehood, and two additional minor candidates for the governorship.
  • DeLeón believes Victoria Ciudadana has a better chance of siphoning support away from the traditional pro- and anti-statehood parties that he feels have driven Puerto Rico's economy into the ground.
nrashkind

Anti-government 'Boogaloos' charged with planning violence at Las Vegas protests - Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...s-vegas-protests-idUSKBN23B052

shared by nrashkind on 04 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Three Las Vegas men alleged to be part of the extremist Boogaloo movement have been arrested and charged with planning to cause violence and destruction during protests in the city over the police killing of George Floyd.
  • “Violent instigators have hijacked peaceful protests and demonstrations across the country, including Nevada
  • Boogaloo is “a term used by extremists to signify a coming civil war and/or collapse of society,” the Joint Terrorism Task Force said in its news release Wednesday.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The arrests come as law enforcement agencies struggle to keep the peace in the aftermath of Floyd’s death on May 25
  • A senior Justice Department official said Wednesday that members of the loosely organized left-wing anti-fascist groups known as Antifa have been involved in violent incidents in at least two states.
  • Some of the violence is driven by opportunistic looters who started out as peaceful protesters, and some is driven by hardened criminals who are taking advantage of the situation, said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
Javier E

'The virus is moving in': why California is losing the fight against Covid | US news | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...a-covid-19-coronavirus-surging

california virus pandemic history crisis culture policy

shared by Javier E on 12 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • By early summer, however, the pressure to open back up rose. Officials discovered the state wasn’t immune to the national fatigue with social distancing and mask-wearing. Amid a patchwork of haphazard rules and guidelines, cases crept up.
  • Today, most of California is back under lockdown amid a dramatic surge in infections. The state has tallied more than 1.3m cases, and broke a record last week with more than 25,000 infections recorded in a single day.
  • LA officials said that one person is now dying of Covid every 20 minutes, and the county’s public health director, Barbara Ferrer, broke down crying at a briefing while talking about the “incalculable loss” of more than 8,000 deaths.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Staff on the frontlines say they are increasingly battling burnout after months of devastation and with a dark winter ahead. “I’ve seen younger people come in through the door, and be admitted right away to the ICU,”
  • It was frustrating that the public no longer seemed to be taking Covid protocols seriously, Santini said. “Every day we go to work, we’re putting our lives and our family’s lives on the line.”
  • “Even lower-risk activities now carry substantial risk because there is more virus out there than ever before. Simply put and bluntly put, we can’t get away with things that we’ve been able to get away with so far.”
  • Some restaurants have invested thousands in outdoor dining infrastructure they hoped would last them through the pandemic, only to see those facilities ordered to close.
  • the organization’s research has shown that 43% of restaurant owners are unsure whether their business will survive the next six months. “People who started out frustrated – today they are feeling just outright desperate.”
  • the latest Covid surge continues to shine a harsh light on inequality. California has seen record levels of unemployment and countless businesses have been shuttered for good, yet some sectors – notably the tech industry – have continued to rake in revenue.
  • post-pandemic, California could see a so-called “K-shaped recovery”, where the incomes of the highest earners continue to rise just as quickly as they plummet for those who are struggling.
  • Latinos in LA county, many of whom are working essential jobs, are also contracting the virus at more than double the rate of white residents. The toll in working-class neighborhoods has been especially devastating for undocumented people, who have been unable to access aid.
  • “We have the confluence of factors where people are facing financial instability, and feel like they have no choice but to work even if they get sick,” she said. “And particularly in California, we have a large population of undocumented people who have been demonized by the federal government and are especially vulnerable.”
Javier E

RORATE CÆLI: Pope to Latin American Religious: Full text Update: Religious co... - 0 views

rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/...n-american-religious-full.html

Pope Francis

shared by Javier E on 16 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • They will make mistakes, they will make a blunder [meter la pata], this will pass! Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine (of the Faith) will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing... But do not worry. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward... Open the doors, do something there where life calls for it. I would rather have a Church that makes mistakes for doing something than one that gets sick for being closed up...
  • It is necessary to shake things up [flip things over, lit. dar vuelta (a) la tortilla]. It is not news that an old man dies of cold in Ottaviano [Rorate note: referring to the surroundings of via Ottaviano and the Ottaviano Rome Metro station, near the Vatican], or that there be so many children with no education, or hungry, I think of Argentina...On the other hand, the main stock exchanges go up or down 3 points, and this is a world event. One must shake things up! This cannot be. Computers are not made in the image and likeness of God; they are an instrument, yes, but nothing more. Money is not image and likeness of God. Only the person is image and likeness of God. It is necessary to flip it over. This is the gospel.
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