The Doomsday Clock—a Cold War relic that’s weirdly (and sadly) retained minor relevance) has hovered at five minutes to midnight for the past three years. Everyone expects that to change today—putting us closer to annihilation. Nuclear warheads, climate change, fanaticism, our continued heartless stupidity as a species… they can all take a bow, if they’d like.
But least your aging Subaru is probably safe now? After a spike in reported Subaru thefts in Portland, cops think they’ve got the guy behind ’em. He was found slumped over the wheel of a Toyota that had been reported stolen.
The police bureau’s new equity manager—hired to sharpen the bureau’s efforts on internal diversity, rooting out bias, and community outreach—is personally familiar with the challenges at hand. Her father was the bureau’s first African American sergeant, one of her brothers also retired as a sergeant, and another brother is currently serving as a lieutenant.
Someone’s having too much fun with the brewing intrigue over the mysterious University of Oregon professor who made off with thousands of internal emails and apparently has until today to give them up. Or else.
Sleep easier if you hate vaccines but also went to the Rose Bowl. The Lane County man who caught measles in connection with the senseless Disneyland outbreak didn’t actually go watch the Oregon Ducks play in Pasadena, as had been feared. It’s still not clear whether this fellow was ever vaccinated or not.
Willard Romney and John Ellis Bush are plotting a summit to see if they can avoid a fight for the right to serve as standard-bearer for establishment Republicans in 2016. Party rules allow only one otherwise grownup candidate still using a childish WASP nickname on any given primary ballot.
Hillary Clinton would probably trounce either of them, by the way. So there’s that, too.
And yet? I feel like this sudden Republican appropriation of concerns over “income inequality” and about the middle class, by men who’ve built their political careers saying the opposite, might prove a winning stroke.
The Republican men who run the House of Representatives, meanwhile, wasted little time reaching way past their (gerrymandering-built) mandate—abruptly dropping a bill banning all abortions after 20 weeks after what was looming as a looming vote threatened to open a party schism.
Not to be outdone by the US Senate, of course. The chamber, save for one Republican, agreed in a vote that climate change is a real thing, and not some wacky scientific, New World Order hoax. But Republicans refused to support another vote that put the blame for said climate change on human activity.
A black man who had both of his hands up while trying to get out of his car and get on the ground after a traffic stop was shot and killed two minutes after police in New Jersey approached him. The encounter, caught on video, shows officers exclaiming that Jerame Reid was reaching for a gun, with Reid exclaiming that he wasn’t. Again, with his hands up.
Barrett Brown, a writer followed closely by Anonymous, is facing a prison sentence for crimes that include, his lawyers say, posting publicly available data that had previously been stolen.
THE SOW TOOK THE MEASLES. THE SOW TOOK THE MEASLES. THE SOW TOOK THE MEASLES.
‘Equity’ Manager?
You mean the joke of the Police Department.
I am halfway through On The Beach by Nevil Shute so thanks for the Doomsday write-up!
^You should see the movie, too. If you can find it.