Every August the pundits and opinion writers take a break and things get very, very slow. The same thing is happening this year except that it isn’t even summer yet. Has not having Trump to kick around any more really taken that much of the wind from their sails? Or have they forgotten how to write about anything else?
It’s not as though there’s nothing to write about. The Trib has bought out a number of its columnists including John Kass. I take that as a sign of decreasing revenues. President Biden actually did go to Europe. I’ve seen a few half-hearted op-eds about it. We’ve apparently identified another job that Americans won’t do, American journalists anyway: criticize Joe Biden. It might come as a surprise that English, Canadian, Australian, French, German, and Russian journalists, whom I wouldn’t even vaguely characterize as “rightwingers” think he’s too old to be president and have said so in no uncertain terms.
Chicago looks to be well on its way to beating the record for homicides per 100K population it set back in 2016. Chicago’s mayor wants to declare racism a health crisis. I’d like to know the parameters of that. Does she mean racism on the part of physicians? I don’t believe it. Does she mean the stress that violence in their neighborhoods, almost entirely on the part of other black people, has an adverse effect on health? I think she’s trying to distract attention from her lousy handling of the office of mayor. 73% of Chicagoans think the city is on the right track and only 16% think that Mayor Lightfoot is doing a good or excellent job. I’m surprised it’s that high.
There’s either dissension in the ranks among Fed governors about interest rates or some of them are starting to worry that inflation might not be as transient as they had thought.
I don’t have much to say about the Juneteenth national holiday. It’s been a state holiday in Texas for a while now which makes sense. IMO it makes less sense as a national holiday. There are all sorts of local holidays around the country celebrated primarily among blacks. We could make all of them national holidays and I don’t believe it would do much either to improve black self-esteem or improve the lots of most black people in American cities.
Besides working which takes up a lot of my time I stay busy taking care of dogs, blogging, and trying to get a little sleep every now and again. I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for a while now. It’s in pre-release.
