SEVEN INCHES OF BULLCRAP, THAT’S WHAT. Maybe those will be famous last words, but for all the nervousness last night and this morning about an early blast of blizzardness in Portland, the active absence of interesting inclement weather has traffic (unless you’re on a bus) doing just fine. Not that schools aren’t watching and waiting nervously. A whole bunch of ’em just canceled classes for the day. But I’m still not convinced. It seems too warm for actual snow. (Editor’s note: Shut up, Denis. You’re not a weather forecaster.)
Portland’s just spent up its $10.1 million surplus, throwing in $1 million more from its contingency funds for good measure. It was largely a Charlie Hales and Amanda Fritz production: a whole bunch of infrastructure fixes, debt payments, and livability/neighborhood programs.
The sight of a revived Boston Harbor, on display for Chinese officials hanging out on John Kerry’s rich man’s boat, proved strikingly important for goosing along secret negotiations between our two countries on seemingly aggressive fossil-fuel reductions.
Republicans already have a handful of crap ready to fling at the surprising climate accord, preparing votes in Congress on the controversial, anti-green-economy Keystone pipeline.
Russian bombers, in light of the “current situation,” might need to do more than patrol the country’s ample borders, officials there are saying. They might need to visit the Gulf of Mexico once in a while. Just because. Russian soldiers, meanwhile, are reportedly flooding back into Ukraine—sending NATO officials clucking and bumbling into one another like chickens who just spied a fox in the fields.
Normally these things would take far longer. But the Ebola crisis in a few countries in West Africa is worrisome enough that human trials of experimental Ebola drugs are finally under way.
The Army’s budget cuts, because our “wars” are “over,” have it shrinking its ranks of officers. But here’s something curious about those cuts: A disproportionate chunk have targeted officers who started out as enlisted soldiers, which comes off pretty snobby.
Where will poor people live when their apartment houses, in parts of big cities that have suddenly become desirable for the young and hip, are bought up and fixed up by developers eager to cash in on the changing times?
The FBI sent a suggested suicide note to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. back in 1964. The anonymous letter mentioned the Reverend King’s infidelities and called him “an evil, abnormal beast”
If only every poor or minority kid busted for marijuana crimes under a racially disparate criminal justice system also had an outgoing governor for a father who was willing to pardon them like magic.
Marriage equality in Kansas? The Supreme Court says it’s back on. Plus? South Carolina’s become the latest state to have the right recognized.
Bankruptcy filings are supposed to nuke debts from the records of the afflicted. That only works, of course, if the banks and institutions owed the debts actually follow the law and scrub the things from credit reports as ordered. Turns out, they very often don’t! And most people don’t look at their reports often or critically enough to do anything about it!
For the record: The poorest 90 percent of Americans now have as much wealth as the tenth of a percent.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE SNOW? THERE IS SNOW IN THIS VIDEO. SO THERE IS SOME SNOW. FOR ALL OF YOU WHO WANT SNOW. (AND ALSO SOME FINE, YOUNG, UPSTANDING, AND HANDSOME RUSSIAN LADS.)