BUTLER, PA (The Borowitz Report)—In what experts are calling his most embarrassing implosion ever, Tesla CEO Elon Musk presided over yet another failed launch on Saturday.
As Musk looked on, a visibly impaired rocket started emitting abnormal, erratic noises before totally self-destructing.
“The rocket was old, malfunctioning, and without even a semblance of a guidance system,” one observer said.
Experts questioned why the Tesla chief would participate in a launch destined for failure, but Musk claimed, “It’s not a failure if the rocket won’t admit it failed.”
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Three station platforms aren’t the correct height for wheelchair access — and 25 shelters need to be removed, welded and painted again — along Seattle’s latest addition to its RapidRide bus service.
The line, which traverses the Capitol Hill, First Hill, Central District and Madison Valley neighborhoods, opened last month.
Orange steel plates are on the street at three center median stations, in order to raise buses by less than an inch for better operation of wheelchair ramps. The problem was identified before the route began running on Sept. 14 and the steel plates are temporary, said Ethan Bergerson, a spokesperson with the Seattle Department of Transportation, which was responsible for the line’s construction.
King County Metro, which operates the line, is looking at other ways to solve the problem, including bus adjustments or changing platform height to a designated 13 inches so the plates can be removed.
The three stations with low platforms are at stop 104, serving eastbound Madison Street between Terry and Boren avenues; stop 105, for eastbound Madison Street between Summit and Boylston avenues; and stop 124, which serves westbound Madison Street at East Union Street and 12th Avenue East.
Aside from the platform flaws, all of the line’s 25 bus shelters have issues with paint thickness and color, incorrect welds and holes in their frames. Unfixed, the shelters could easily rust and have an otherwise shorter life span.
Work began Friday on the shelters and will happen offsite. Two to four shelters will be removed at a time, and repair and reinstallation is expected to be complete within four months.
The line will continue normal operations through the work.
Neither SDOT nor Metro provided an estimate of how much the repair work would cost, or what led to the construction flaws.
Al Sanders, Metro’s spokesperson, said engineers and project managers at SDOT and Metro are looking into what went wrong, adding he wouldn’t “point fingers.”
“We’re working to discover where the issues were,” Sanders said. “We just want to make sure they’re fixed.”
The $144.3 million, 2.5-mile line runs every six minutes for most of every day, largely along Madison Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and First Avenue. On Sundays, it runs less frequently.
Building the line took three years, and brought nearly 4 miles of new sidewalks, new bike and pedestrian signals, rebuilt utilities by Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, thereplacement of a 120-year-old water main, and a road made of concrete designed to slow speeds down near schools, libraries and hospitals.
Metro’s RapidRide network launched in 2010 with the A Line connecting Tukwila to Federal Way. The program promised more frequent service with swifter commutes, using some elements associated with bus-rapid transit like bus-only lanes, traffic signals that turn green for the vehicles, fewer stops and more doors for passengers to get on and off the coaches.
The G Line is the eighth in Metro’s RapidRide network. Four more lines are in the works — the I, J, K and R lines — and are expected to begin service in 2027 through 2030.
So what am I thinking about on this first anniversary of the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran-Israel war? Something my strategy teacher, Prof. John Arquilla of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, taught me: All wars come down to two basic questions: Who wins the battle on the ground? And who wins the battle of the story? And what I am thinking about today is how, even after a year of warfare, in which Hamas and Hezbollah and Israel have inflicted terrible pain on one another’s forces and civilians, no one has decisively won the battle on the ground or the battle for the story. Indeed, one year after Oct. 7, this is still the first Arab-Israeli war without a name and without a clear victor — because neither side has a clear win or a clean story.
We can and should sympathize with Palestinian statelessness and Arabs in the West Bank living under the duress of Israeli settlements and restrictions, but to my mind, there is nothing that can justify what Hamas attackers did on Oct. 7 — murdering, maiming, kidnapping and sexually abusing any Israeli they could get their hands on, without any goal, any story, other than to destroy the Jewish state. If you believe, as I do, that the only solution is two states for two indigenous peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the Hamas rampage set that back immeasurably.
And what story is Iran telling? That it has some right under the U.N. Charter to help create failed states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq so it can cultivate proxies inside them for the purpose of destroying Israel? And by what right has Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the Lebanese people and government had no say in and are now paying a huge price for?
But this Israeli government does not have a clean story in Gaza, either. This was always going to be the ugliest of Israeli-Palestinian wars since 1947, because Hamas had embedded itself in tunnels underneath Gazan homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. It could not be targeted without significant civilian casualties. Therefore, as I argued from the start, it was doubly incumbent on Israel to make clear that this was not just a war to defend itself but also to destroy Hamas in order to birth something better: the only just and stable solution possible, two states for two people. (click on page 2 to continue)
by Casey Corr in the Post Alley commentary — thanks to Ed M.
Twelve years ago, I left my hometown of soggy Seattle and moved to dry Yakima, where my wife and I bought land overlooking acres of shrub steppe and orchards.
The switch from traffic jams, coffee houses, and views of water to open roads, sunshine, grassland, and owls hooting on my roof was a culture jolt, but equally so was the change in local politics. The country road to my house is festooned by neighbors with flags of fierce loyalty to their man Trump.
In Yakima, many voters distrust government out of a sense that elites have ignored their needs. The elites offer tax breaks to Tesla buyers and debt forgiveness to college graduates. That’s not an agenda for those who drive pick ups or who never went to college.
People in Yakima build things or grow crops. They drive long distances and operate farm equipment. They are the working people the Democratic Party claims to represent, but that’s not true anymore, and polls show working people have migrated to Trump. To see why, one reason would be that the most cherished policy of Gov. Jay Inslee and the state Democratic Party, the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), which purports to combat climate change. The program charges fees to oil companies, which in turn pass along those costs in the form of higher fuel prices, as much as 50 cents a gallon.
A November ballot measure Initiative 2117 seeks to abolish the CCA. I have no doubt the measure will be overwhelmingly supported in conservative Yakima County, while getting strong opposition from liberal King County.
Backers of I-2117 argue the CCA is excessive taxation. What the CCA precisely will cost individual families is disputed, though the conservative Washington Policy Center estimates the program last year cost $631 for a typical family with two cars and natural gas home heating. That’s a big hit in Yakima County, where the median household income is about $65,167, which is about half of Seattle’s median household income.
Passed in 2021, the Climate Commitment Act created one of the largest state tax increases in decades – though the increase was obscured by calling it a fee on polluters in a “cap and trade” program. The goal was simple: impose so much financial pain on users of fossil fuels that they use less and/or switch to alternative energy sources.
Normally, a new state program that imposes higher costs to fuel cars or heat homes would attract voter concern and media scrutiny, especially since similar proposals were rejected by voters in 2016 and 2018. But that’s not what happened. The new and improved CCA did not generate much controversy until gas prices soared to $5 a gallon and some taxpayers revolted.
Gov. Inslee, who initially had promised that the CCA might cause gas prices to go up by just “pennies” if anything, later blamed the surge in gas prices on oil company greed. His outrage was disingenuous because consumer pain was a CCA feature, not a bug.
If Trump supporters complain that things are rigged by elites against working people, they got plenty of evidence from the news media, state agencies, and the courts who put a collective thumb on protecting the CCA and downplaying any effects on family budgets
The Seattle Times turned much of its coverage over to its “Climate Lab” team whose salaries are funded in part by donations from climate activists. (The Times says donors have no influence over coverage.) The CCA has now raised $2 billion, but The Times has not done a single story examining how the new tax affects families. Times reporters will call the CCA “a new carbon market” where “top polluters” pay fees with little or no mention of the consumers ultimately paying.
Other CCA supporters are doing their part. Pressured by the state Attorney General’s office, Puget Sound Energy was not allowed to disclose program costs on itemized bills sent to customers. In court, CCA supporters secured favorable ballot language on Initiative 2117 that bars any mention of gas prices and refers instead to CCA revenues as “investments” in transportation, clean air, renewable energy, conservation, and emissions reduction. A one-time utility rebate of $200 to 700,000 lower-income customers was mandated by a state agency to credit the CCA and was timed with the election calendar.
Proponents of the CCA have argued falsely that killing the program would cut funding for road projects – even though CCA dollars are barred by law from going to highways. Proponents argue that the CCA will make the air cleaner, but the program lacks mechanisms to determine effectiveness.
Let’s be honest about problems with the CCA. It creates a painful regressive tax that falls disproportionately on working people, making it more costly to heat a home, buy food transported by trucks, or get to a job site – all the while creating a huge fund of money flowing in large measure to Democrat-aligned organizations. Those recipients are now a powerful coalition defending the program.
Despite an outflow of $2 billion in funds going to different groups, there has been almost zero scrutiny of how those dollars are spent and whether there is much nexus to carbon reduction. Many CCA dollars are going to community organizations to organize and lobby public officials. You can find $204,100 going to “develop collective knowledge concerning environmental racism and its relationship to food systems” or $486,529 for “workshops and demonstrations on preparing traditional foods.”
Seattle editorialists have shown little sympathy to arguments about flaws with CCA or the perversity of a tax that hurts most those who can least afford it. Some Seattle opinion writers have denounced backers of I-2117 as MAGA nut cases who only care about their pennies, not about pollution.
Inslee and his allies are out of touch with the struggles of working people who might object to tax dollars going to workshops on food preparation. Farmers in Yakima who are keenly aware of changing weather patterns that affect water supply and growing conditions might wonder why the CCA isn’t more focused directly on climate action. These same farmers never got the agriculture exemption promised by CCA.
Living in Yakima taught me that my beloved Seattle is indeed a different world. My hometown remains the engine of Northwest commerce and culture, but when politics tilts too far left, as it has, a kind of let-them-eat-cake mindset takes hold.
A climate program that seeks to save the planet but screws the little guy needs a rewrite. Recognizing that climate change is real, we need a policy that is fair, affordable, and provably effective. Perhaps our next governor would care to sell that on both sides of the Cascades.
Demonizing critics of the CCA is the sort of politics that breeds resentments that elites don’t listen and don’t care — thus those flags of defiance on my country road. Trump is a grifter who plays on grievances, but many of those grievances come from real inequities. Our country, like our state, is polarized and the consequences are dangerous. Shouldn’t we try to bridge this divide?
William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write).
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs.
Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims that foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on Chinese imports, will bring enough foreign money into the country to fund things like childcare, end federal budget deficits, and pay for the tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthy and corporations.
This is a deliberate lie. Tariffs are essentially taxes on imported products, and they are paid not by foreign countries but by American consumers. Economists warn that Trump’s tariff plan would cost a typical family an average of more than $2,600 a year, with poorer families hardest hit; spike inflation as high as 20%; result in 50,000 to 70,000 fewer jobs created each month; slow economic growth; and add about $5.8 trillion in deficits over ten years. It would tank an economy that under the Biden administration, which has used tariffs selectively to protect new industries and stop unfair trade practices, has boomed.
Trump simply denies this economic success. He promises to make the economy great with a tariff wall. On September 27, he told rally attendees in Warren, Michigan: “You know, our country In the 1890s was probably…the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs and we had a president, you know McKinley, right?… He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions, but we were a very wealthy country and we’re gonna be doing that now….” (click page 2 to continue)
Thanks to Diana C. – Time’s cover a few month’s ago
Screenshot
For six weeks, the former most powerful man in the world sat like an ordinary citizen in a drab courtroom, a criminal defendant being judged by a jury of his peers.
Donald Trump glowered, complained, bloviated, and snoozed during a trial both historic and tawdry over whether he falsified business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election. On May 30, the 12 jurors delivered their unanimous verdict: guilty on all 34 counts. To all his norm-shattering iterations—flashy businessman, name-brand showman, novice President—Trump has added a new title: felon.
The trial that led to the first-ever criminal conviction of a former U.S. President was often marked by its unseemliness. A motley cast of characters—the former porn star, the tabloid publisher, the crying press aide, the disgraced former fixer—recounted episodes of spankings, clandestine meetings, and payoffs, all intended to establish that Trump had criminally conspired to hide information about his behavior that could have affected voters’ choices.
But while the crimes may feel insubstantial, the stakes for American democracy are far weightier. Trump once again threatens to upend the precepts of the U.S. political system and test the foundations of the country’s rule of law.
Trump will hardly be humbled by this outcome; he’s already called the trial a scam and vowed to appeal, a process that could take months or longer. “This was a rigged trial. It was a disgrace,” Trump said after he was found guilty. “The real verdict is going to be on November 5th by the people.”
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A fruit fly’s brain is smaller than a poppy seed, but it packs tremendous complexity into that tiny space. Over 140,000 neurons are joined together by more than 490 feet of wiring, as long as four blue whales placed end to end.
Hundreds of scientists mapped out those connections in stunning detail in a series of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The wiring diagram will be a boon to researchers who have studied the nervous system of the fly species, Drosophila melanogaster, for generations.
Previously, a tiny worm was the only adult animal to have had its brain entirely reconstructed, with just 385 neurons in its entire nervous system. The new fly map is “the first time we’ve had a complete map of any complex brain,” said Mala Murthy, a neurobiologist at Princeton who helped lead the effort.
Other researchers said that analyzing the circuitry in the fly brain would reveal principles that apply to other species, including humans, whose brains have 86 billion neurons.
In one of the new studies, the researchers tackled the mystery of how sensory signals flow through the brain and prompt it to produce commands. They created a computer simulation of the complete fly brain. When presented with simulated tastes, the artificial brain produced signals to stick out the tongue. (click on Page 2 to continue)
Authors John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas have three things in common: They’re all majorly successful writers, their books have been banned in states across the country, and now, they’re joining a lawsuit to fight back.
Left to right: John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas. Photos courtesy of John Green, Rainer Hosch, and Imani Khayyam
The trio joins other authors like Julia Alvarez and Laurie Halse Anderson, as well as the Authors Guild, and publishers Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks in filing a lawsuit challenging Florida House Bill 1069. (Two students and two parents in Florida have also joined the lawsuit.)
In 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law, giving parents the ability to approve (or disapprove) what books schools could have in their libraries.
This law would require Florida’s public schools to create a searchable list of all the materials in their libraries, as well as provide notice when adding new books. Its broad provisions have led to a swath of book challenges since it went into effect in July of last year. (click page 2 to continue).
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At a town hall event in Michigan on Friday, Donald Trump was asked what actions he would take to keep autoworkers’ jobs in America.
Here is part of Mr Trump’s answer verbatim:
“So pretty much, as we’ve been saying — and what I want to do is, I want to be able to — look your business. Years ago in this area, I was honored as the Man of the Year. Was maybe 20 years ago, and the fake news heard about it. They said, ‘It never happened. It never happened.’ And I didn’t know who it was. It was a group that honored me as Man of the Year. The fakers back there — see the fake news — but they said, they said, Oh. And they looked at it, you know, they said it never happened. But I said, ‘I swear to you, it happened. It did happen.’
“I was Man of the Year, and I came and I made a speech and said, ‘Why do you allow them to take your car business away? Why do you allow it to happen? They’re taking your business away.’ And I didn’t know too much about — all I know is they were taking your car industry away from you. They said it never happened, and lo and behold, somebody said, ‘I remember the event,’ and then we found out, and we had everything. We got the awards. We had everything. It did happen, but I gave a speech, which at the time was pretty controversial …”
The level of incoherence and repetitive speech in Mr. Trump’s answer, given his age and family history (Trump’s father, Fred Trump Sr., died eight years after his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1999), should be profoundly concerning, yet his mental state remains the Thing That Must Not Be Named of the 2024 campaign as far as corporate media are concerned.
Continue to ignore the elephant in the room if you like, but the elephant isn’t going anywhere. Mr. Trump is in bad shape.
As the world fights to figure everything out, I’ll be holding doors for strangers, Letting people cut in front of me in traffic, Saying “good morning” to folks, Keeping babies entertained in grocery lines, Stopping to talk to someone who is lonely, Being patient with sales clerks, Smiling at a passerby. Why? Because I will not stand idly by and Live in a world where love is invisible. Join me in showing kindness, Understanding and judging less. Be kind to a stranger, Give grace to friends who are having a bad day, Be forgiving of yourself–today and every day
Be the change, Be the light, Choose Life, Choose Love. Start today and never stop.
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While it’s no secret that Jimmy Carter is among the most overlooked and dismissed U.S. presidents of the modern era — and yet — he’s also one of the more remarkable and impactful leaders of the last 50 years of American history.
His post-presidency is where Carter finally earned well-deserved public praise. After losing his re-election campaign, Carter graciously accepted defeat and returned to his humble life in Georgia. He quickly got to work establishing The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization with the mission to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.
By and large, the organization has succeeded in that mission.
Carter and the Center committed to preventing and eradicating diseases throughout the global south, served as leaders in the advancement of human rights, and played a significant role in the impact of Habitat for Humanity.
Under his watch, Guinea worm disease has dropped from 3.5 million annual cases to only 15 total cases in 2021 —and we’ve seen significant progress in the fight against other potentially eradicable diseases. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
On February 18, 2023, the Carter Center released a statement saying that Carter, 98, made the decision to spend his “remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”
Carter’s long life of service, speeches, and writing have resulted in countless inspiring quotes about what it means to live a life of service and hopefulness and the role each of us can play in making our world a better place.
On September 27, Dame Maggie Smith passed away at the age of 89.
The prolific British actress was a force both on stage and on screen, earning the Academy Award for Best Actress at 35 for her titular role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969).
In the twilight of her career, Smith was perhaps best known for her role as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” franchise and as the bitingly sharp dowager countess Violet Crawley in “Downton Abbey.”
After her passing, Hugh Bonneville — who played Violet’s son Robert Crawley — said “anyone who ever shared a scene with Maggie will attest to her sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent.”
“She was a true legend of her generation and thankfully will live on in so many magnificent screen performances,” Bonneville said in a statement.
As co-stars, directors, and fellow friends memorialize Smith’s career, Good Good Good looked back on her most underrated role yet: as a long-standing charitable figure.
From disaster relief efforts to her devotion for the theater community, here are a few of the organizations that Smith supported throughout her life. (click on Page 2 to continue)
Political polls, betting markets and statistical forecasts have become ubiquitous as November approaches. But there’s one predictive tool you may have missed: primary elections in Washington state, which took place last month.
It’s an indicator that election nerds pay particular attention to, for good reason: The general election results in the state a few months later tend to move in the same direction — whether becoming more Republican or more Democratic — as the rest of the country.
This year, results from Washington state are cause for some optimism among Democrats. They suggest a national environment somewhat similar to 2020, when Joe Biden outgained Donald J. Trump by 4.5 percentage points in the national popular vote and Democrats retained the House.
Here’s what to know about one of the lesser-known bellwethers of U.S. elections:
Why Washington?
Unlike the primaries of other states, Washington’s are strong predictors of its general elections. This is true for a few reasons.
Washington has a top-two system in which all candidates, regardless of party, compete on the same ballot, with the top two advancing to the general election. This incentivizes candidates to campaign harder, to ensure they’re on the final ballot in November. And it motivates voters to participate rather than risk having their preferred candidate — or even their party — knocked off the ballot if they don’t vote.
Voting is conducted almost completely by mail, and voters have almost three weeks to vote, which lowers the bar for participation. (Primaries that rely mostly or exclusively on in-person Election Day voting are more likely to attract only the most engaged sliver of the electorate.)
The primary date is usually in August or September, much later than most other primaries, leaving less time for moods to change before the November election. (click on Page 2 to continue)
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