My daily routine involves very little TV watching; I gather almost all of these news stories from online sources or from friends and colleagues.
But on Friday I just happened to tune in to CNN as Brooke Baldwin was giving her final sign-off after 13 years at the network. She was the probably anchor there I respected the most -- warm, articulate, passionate but always professional. She seemed to make an effort to stay relatively neutral in a deeply polarized time and despite pressure from upper management.
All the cable news networks try to turn their news readers (i.e. anchors) into personalities they can market. This often means that any pretense of journalistic objectivity gets lost in the process. It's extremely difficult to be both an anchor and an honest journalist. Walter Cronkite set the standard a long time ago; few today can live up to his example. But Baldwin usually came pretty close, and for that I salute her.
I'm not well enough informed to know why she is leaving; no doubt network politics were at least partially at play. It's one more reminder that jobs come and go in all of our lives, but it's important to remain who you actually are, regardless of title or what your bosses demand of you.
Life is way too short to live any other way.
***
Gun violence has become so pervasive that it's uncomfortably predictable that the next mass shooting will be just around the corner -- actually as well as metaphorically. There have been at least 45 of these slaughters in the past month, where four or more people were murdered by a lone gunman.
Yet nothing I read suggests that there is any realistic hope of restricting people's access to the weapons of mass destruction in the U.S. Even though many of the shooters like the one in Indiana were "known" to authorities as potentially violent individuals before they acted out their murderous rampages!
That's because of the right to bear arms.
I don't know about you, but I've had enough of the Second Amendment to the Constitution for a lifetime. Too many others lives have been cut short for me to believe in the right to bear arms any longer.
If that makes me an outlier, maybe you can call me an unarmed outlaw...
***
The headlines:
* The U.S. has reported at least 45 mass shootings in the last month (CNN)
* Suspected gunman at FedEx facility was a former employee, police confirm (WaPo)
* With Militants Gaining New Footholds, Afghanistan No Longer Central to Counterterrorism Fight -- The new locations for terrorist groups are often much closer to vital Western interests and global shipping lanes than landlocked Afghanistan, from which President Biden said this week he will remove U.S. troops by September. (WSJ)
* The Bay Area has a large Afghan community, and many members moved there after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. They reacted to the announced U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. [NPR]
* Leaving Afghanistan, and the Lessons of America’s Longest War (New Yorker)
* Can The Afghan Army Hold Off The Taliban Without The U.S.? (NPR)
* Chicago’s police oversight group released footage of an officer fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy more than two weeks ago. Police said the shooting followed an "armed confrontation" with Adam Toledo, but video footage showed no gun in the boy's hand and that he complied by putting his hands up. “If you’re shooting an unarmed child with his hands in the air, it is an assassination,” Adeena Weiss-Ortiz, the Toledo family’s attorney, said. [HuffPost]
* Opponents of Myanmar coup form unity government, aim for 'federal democracy' (Reuters)
* Calls to impeach Bolsonaro are rising, but his grip on Brazil remains strong (WaPo)
* California regulators are stepping up their oversight of PG&E, after concluding the company was stumbling on wildfire safety by doing a bad job of removing trees and hazardous power lines. [Sacramento Bee]
* U.S. setting up $1.7B national network to track virus variants (AP)
* Andrew Yang leads new NYC mayoral poll — despite string of gaffes (NY Post)
* Two dozen U.S. senators sent a letter to the White House outlining steps to shutter the crumbling military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where many men have been held uncharged for nearly 20 years. (NPR)
* Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, was a Russian agent who fed election data on U.S. citizens to the Kremlin, the Treasury Department said in announcing new economic sanctions on Moscow. During the 2016 presidential election, Kilimnik also provided the Russian Intelligence Services with “sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” it said. [HuffPost]
* Soaring retail sales and a sharp drop in jobless claims are the latest reflection of a quickening recovery and suggest a year of remarkable growth. (NYT)
* Fox News host Tucker Carlson doubled down on his support of the white nationalist "great replacement" theory this week, exciting white nationalists across America who think it will help their movement. VDare, a well-known white nationalist website, gushed over Carlson’s monologue like a proud parent. [HuffPost]
* Republicans desperate to oppose Biden’s jobs plan settle on a nonsense reason (WaPo)
* France Lawmakers Pass Contentious Bill Extending Police Powers (WaPo)
* Undocumented immigrants are on the front lines of the pandemic as essential workers but have been excluded from government stimulus and unemployment benefits.Over 30 workers in New Jersey have been on a hunger strike for nine days. [HuffPost]
* Teens slept 45 minutes more a night when their school district tried a new scheduling strategy (CNN)
* Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon (WaPo)
* Newborn Loses Faith In Humanity After Record 6 Days (The Onion)
***
Lay down your guns and surrender
Remember days we thought would last forever
Nothing better but we let them slip away
'Cause in the end we make the bed we lie in
Let's start trying, what's the point of talking about it
Songwriters: James Barnes / Richard Wjr Nowels
-30-
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