From Steve Mnuchin Tried to Save The Economy. Not Even His Family Is Happy.

“Robert Mnuchin’s wife, Adriana, has reminded people that she is not Steven’s biological mother. (The couple married when he was a toddler.) She reluctantly attended Steven’s 2017 wedding to the Scottish-born actress Louise Linton. Ms. Mnuchin pretended her arm was injured in order to avoid having to shake hands with Mr. Trump, according to her grandson Zan Mnuchin Rozen.”

1. Exercise May Boost Your Vaccine Response. Not exactly groundbreaking, still, I should prob start working out.
2. I Don’t Know If My Relationship Will Survive The Pandemic. “Forced to live in close quarters without access to any outside support or reprieve, overwhelmed by the additional parenting responsibilities and unable to access any kind of affordable child care, we were fighting more and understanding each other less.” Whew, I have nothing but empathy for the people Campoamor writes about.
3. Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Departure Brings Relief on Liberty University’s Campus. “We almost had a monarchy, but you don’t see that at any other university, where presidents are chosen based on their skills and abilities,” said Tavia Bruxellas, a senior who is president of the student government Senate. “Everybody just sees Liberty as this big Republican university, and students are really tired of that.” Here’s hoping the country is sufficiently anti-monarchy in two months time.
4. University of Pittsburgh announces required course on racism for incoming students. “It’s forcing you to rethink your own habits and your own behavior, the things you’ve come to view as normal,” said Ottley, a neuroscience major. “Students take history classes; they take culture classes. That doesn’t always mean they’re looking at how colonialism affected you, how history has transcended and repeated itself.” I would humbly suggest the requisite introspection content like this requires can’t be forced. I even wonder if requiring the course may detract from it’s potential positive effect. The greater curricular challenge is to design the course so that its value is self-evident to a vast majority of students and they want to enroll in it.
5. Teacher turns desks with shields into tiny trucks to make first graders comfortable with social distancing.
6. Why There Are So Few Moderate Republicans Left. And Democrats. Doesn’t bode well for our future.

Robert Horry shares raw, emotional conversation he had with his son about Jacob Blake.

“And I tell my kids all the time, I say ‘dude, I don’t care what’s going on, because at the end of the day, I want you coming home to me. If you have to lay down on the ground and they can kick you, beat you – at least you’re going to go to the hospital, you’re going to come home to me. Whatever they say to you, don’t take it upon yourself to let that rage you have against that cop come out. Because he has the gun. He can end you.”

You have to forgive Pacific Northwesterners for feeling like the belle of the ball this time of year. We take it on the chin for eight months and then make up for it with the best weather imaginable especially in July and August. Temps in the high 70’s, a few clouds, cool mornings in the 50’s. Basically, nirvana.

This pic of the Good Wife and me is from Boston Harbor Marina, the end of the road in North Olympia. What you don’t see is the demolished soft-serve ice cream cone. Cheap, but very nice date.

Sarah Silverman, “We have to stop the White House to prison pipeline.”

1. Money for nothing: German university offers ‘idleness grants’. Forget the MacArthur Genius grant, this is the one you want because these are the best grant questions of all time. “The application form consists of only four questions: What do you not want to do? For how long do you not want to do it? Why is it important not to do this thing in particular? Why are you the right person not to do it?”
2. China restaurant apologises for weighing customers. What possibly could go wrong?
3. Born to Be Eaten. What’s at stake in the fight over development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? A caribou herd, and a culture that relies on it.
4. Where Did BIPOC Come From? Just when you thought the humble blog couldn’t be any more woke.
5. Joe Biden’s Secret Untapped Weapon. “By some estimates, nearly 60 percent of eligible Latino voters in battleground states, who tend to view Mr. Trump unfavorably, will sit out the 2020 election. Rallying these voters — most of them young, most of them hostile to Mr. Trump — will be vital to capturing the White House.”
6. Senator yells ‘f—, f—, f—‘ on live television during DeJoy testimony as Congress still learns how to use videoconferencing tech. You cast the first stone, I’m certainly not going to.

Pun intended. Writing by committee is usually a recipe for disaster, but this is a nice exception. I’m assigning an “A” for content and clarity.

Former National Security Officials for Biden

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