Today’s comic by Matt Bors is The Negotiator-in-chief:
There are 1,287 days left with Donald Trump in office if he serves out his full term.
• Kinda tough to call it “Fake News” Now:
“Donald Trump Jr may have thought that he was devilishly clever by voluntarily releasing the email chain just ahead of a New York Times story. But by putting it out himself, he made it impossible for Republicans with any grasp of reality to denounce the bombshell as ‘Fake News.’ The best that they can now muster—and it was the underlying theme of Hannity’s fawning interview—is to shout, ‘Fake Interpretation.'”
“Somehow that doesn’t have the same ring.”
• Gravely wounded Rep. Steve Scalise has been released from intensive care: But he is still in “serious” condition: Scalise’s wounds became infected and he was moved to the ICU days after several surgeries repaired damage to his internal organs and bones caused by a gunman’s bullets during baseball practice June 14.
• As scientists have been predicting for months, gigantic iceberg “calves” in Antarctica:
A giant iceberg twice the size of Luxembourg has broken off an ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula and is now adrift in the Weddell Sea.
Reported to be “hanging by a thread” last month, the trillion-tonne iceberg was found to have split off from the Larsen C segment of the Larsen ice shelf on Wednesday morning after scientists examined the latest satellite data from the area.
The Larsen C ice shelf is more than 12% smaller in area than before the iceberg broke off.
• During the Great Depression, one New Deal program brought books to Kentuckians living in remote areas:
The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. The project, as implemented by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), distributed reading material to the people who lived in the craggy, 10,000-square-mile portion of eastern Kentucky. The state already trailed its neighbors in electricity and highways. And during the Depression, food, education and economic opportunity were even scarcer for Appalachians.
• An interview with the writer whose new book shows how Martin Luther King Jr. turned a reluctant JFK into civil rights champion:
President John F. Kennedy is often credited with being a champion of civil rights, but, in fact, he was a reluctant advocate. He only delivered his famous speech describing civil rights as a “crisis” and a moral issue in 1963, after years of racial confrontations about school desegregation and violent protests in many American cities. Only when he saw the brutal attacks by Birmingham, Alabama, police on peaceful student demonstrators, egged on by the governor and the mayor, did he realize he had to speak to the nation.
Writing about the Speaker’s Lobby new dress code, Erin Keane reminds us that the “sartorial is always political”:
Dress codes, other than those imposed for physical safety, are political, especially when their interpretation is left up to the judgment of those in power.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask a middle school girl who can’t wear a tank top to school because officials think she might be a “distraction” to the boys. Ask a young man who’s been told by a store owner he has to leave because he’s wearing a hoodie. Ask a black woman who’s been reprimanded by her white boss who has decided her hair is “unprofessional.” Today, yoga pants in school are often deemed inappropriate for girls; in the 1960s, girls had to fight to be allowed to wear pants to school at all. How do we decide what’s “appropriate?” Depends on who’s in charge.
• New report says household income plays crucial role in determining a child's prospects:
The importance of money in determining a child’s life prospects is highlighted in a major new study published today – with household income found to have a significant impact on everything from children’s cognitive and educational outcomes to their social development and physical health.
“We can now confidently say that money itself matters and needs to be taken into account if we want to improve chidren’s outcomes,” says the review’s co-author, Kerris Cooper. “We often focus on gaps at school – but what the evidence shows is that money doesn’t only make a difference to children’s cognitive outcomes, it also makes a difference to their physical health, to birth weight, and to social and behavioural development.”
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter agree that in the face of such fast-breaking and insane developments in both the Trump-Russia and health care tax cut stories, there’s only one way to keep up with both: under the catch-all umbrella of Treasoncare!
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