Saying the quiet part about unemployment out loud

One of the bright spots in the current economy has been the low unemployment rate and the increase in wages. It is an open secret that corporations likes to have high unemployment because it makes workers powerless and thus can be forced to accept lower wages and less likely to ask for better working conditions or (horror of horrors) form unions, since they can be scared by the prospect of getting fired. But businesses rarely say that out loud because it looks bad to say that you want to see more people out of work. So they usually find ways of directly avoiding doing so and do not really need to since business owners are aware of this open secret. But a recent report from Bank of America actually said that it hopes for higher unemployment in the future.

A BANK OF AMERICA executive stated that “we hope” working Americans will lose leverage in the labor market in a recent private memo obtained by The Intercept. Making predictions for clients about the U.S. economy over the next several years, the memo also noted that changes in the percentage of Americans seeking jobs “should help push up the unemployment rate.”

The memo, a “Mid-year review” from June 17, was written by Ethan Harris, the head of global economics research for the corporation’s investment banking arm, Bank of America Securities. Its specific aspiration: “By the end of next year, we hope the ratio of job openings to unemployed is down to the more normal highs of the last business cycle.”

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Really? Australians still take an oath of allegiance to the queen?

Lidia Thorpe, an Indigenous person who was elected to the Australian senate as a member of the Green party, added the word ‘colonizing’ before the words ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ while taking the oath of office. The presiding officer stopped her and said that she should only read the words on the card, which she then did, while making clear with her intonation and facial expressions that she found it offensive.


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The Tyre Extinguishers war on SUVs

I came across this article that followed a group of activists, part of a global movement known as Tyre Extinguishers, who are going around deflating the tires of massive SUVs found in urban areas.

The Tyre Extinguishers movement started in the UK, spread to a clutch of other countries and has now landed in the US. Since June, dozens of SUV and pickup truck owners in New York, the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago have discovered their vehicles with flat tires along with a note on the windshield declaring: “Your gas guzzler kills.”

The leaflet, complete with a Ghostbusters-style picture of a crossed-out SUV, states the vast amounts of planet-heating emissions generated by the vehicles are “nails in the coffin of our climate”, adding: “You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s your car.”
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As the acts of minor sabotage mounted last Wednesday, the activists had to invoke some self-imposed rules. No SUVs with disabled stickers were targeted, nor anything that appeared to be used for certain work. A vehicle was chosen for a deflation only for the group to notice it had a “surgeon” sign in the window – the lentil was swiftly removed before the tire fully deflated. Conversely, an SUV that was deemed “so huge, so gross” had two of its tires collapsed.

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A MAGA movement I can get behind

That is the Mothers Against Greg Abbott movement that is fighting against the reactionary Texas governor and the state’s highly restrictive abortion laws.

Governor Abbott will face Beto O’Rourke in November in Texas’s gubernatorial election. Axios reported that although Abbott has more funding overall, O’Rourke has raised more campaign money than the incumbent since February, reflecting the ever-tightening race. In December, only 37% of voters said they supported O’Rourke, while this month, 43% said they supported him.

Mischievous or mischievious?

During the past week, I spent a lot of time with my grandsons in various playgrounds. At one of them, the three-year old was at the top of a slide, about to go down. A woman who was there with her daughter looked at him and said to me, “Look at his mischievious smile!” And it is true, my younger grandson does have a mischievous smile. But what struck me was that the woman said “mischievious”, pronouncing the last five letters as two syllables ‘vee-yes’, instead of the single syllable “vous”.

It was not the first time I had heard people pronounce it this way. Her comment made me wonder if this was a regional variation so I looked it up and found this article about it.
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To comma or not to comma?

The comma is a very useful punctuation mark enabling the writer to make their point much more clearly and avoid confusion. I have read passages where, due to the lack of a comma, the meaning was ambiguous.

I do not have hard-and-fast rules for commas. My guiding principle is to ask myself whether it adds to the clarity or the rhythm of the sentence. Typically I use them to separate ideas or lists of objects or, in the case of a long sentence, insert parenthetical remarks, as I just did.

But there are others who overdo it, as in the passage below. (Ignore the various typos and spacing errors because this looks like it was written in a rush and not proof-read before printing.)

Well,I decided to get up early,at my central London Hotel, and walk,my dog,until breakfast time.

No sooner had I got out the holtels front doors, my dog ,got spooked by the door man,and consequently, I stopped in my stride, causing the young man behind me ,to bump in to me.

Obviously I immediately opologized,and said” sorry my dog got spooked.

The guy bend down,to say hello to her,and she was taken by his kindness.

Most of those commas are unnecessary and make the meaning more obscure. Here is my rewrite, where I have eliminated eleven of the fourteen commas.

Well,I decided to get up early at my central London Hotel and walk my dog until breakfast time.

No sooner had I got out the holtels front doors, my dog got spooked by the door man and consequently I stopped in my stride, causing the young man behind me to bump in to me.

Obviously I immediately opologized and said” sorry my dog got spooked.

The guy bend down to say hello to her and she was taken by his kindness.

Much clearer, no? Definitely a case where less is more.

Did Trump really want Pence, Pelosi and other members of Congress murdered?

Thanks to the congressional hearings, we know that when the mob on January 6th shouted “Hang Mike Pence!” and looked for Nancy Pelosi to kill her and ran through the halls of the Capitol seeking to find them and others whom they felt were preventing Trump from getting a second term in office, Trump was fully aware of the mob’s intentions because he was watching those three hours from 1:10 pm to 4:17 pm unfold on the TV in his private dining room. Not only did he not lift a finger to stop the mob, he egged them on, sending out this tweet at 2:24 pm.


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Samantha Bee’s show canceled

I have frequently linked to clips from her show Full Frontal because they were topical, funny, hard-hitting, and biting. So I was saddened to learn that after seven seasons, it will not be renewed this fall.

Over the course of seven seasons, Bee’s “Full Frontal” brought an aggressive and saucy voice to TV’s late-night arena, and one of the few programs led by a female point-of-view. Bee captured attention with outrageous humor and monologues that pushed the usually genial cable network to embrace hefty amounts of profanity and tackle political issues that are often polarizing.
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“We do a show to please ourselves,” Bee told Variety during an interview in 2016. “This gives us an opportunity to say the things we want in the exact way we want to say them.” In the process, her viewers get a few laughs, but also can exorcise their frustrations with modern politics and culture.
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The end of “Full Frontal” comes as Warner Bros. Discovery has been cutting back on its content spend for big cable networks like TBS and TNT. To be sure, the outlets continue to feature movies and have added more nights of sports, thanks to a recent rights deal struck between Warner Bros. Discovery and the NHL. But TBS has been cutting back on scripted series, with shows such as “Chad” and “The Last O.G.” scrapped in recent weeks. Brett Weitz, general manager of TBS, TNT and TruTV, left the company in May after the cable networks were consolidated under the aegis of Warner Bros. Discovery executive Kathleen Finch. Weitz had been a strong backer of “Full Frontal.”

It seems like scripted shows are giving way to cheaper alternatives like sports and reality TV.

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj and Conan O’Brien’s show were two very good comedy programs that also are no more.

“Yesterday is a hard word for me”: Committee is now trolling Trump

It is becoming obvious that the televised congressional hearings are infuriating Trump. After each session, he issues long rants about them essentially repeating the same things, that it is a partisan witch hunt aimed at him, and that he really did win the election. The problem for Trump is that he is a narcissistic TV addict and so he cannot resist watching a show in which he is the main character, however unflattering it is. So he essentially rage-watches.

It is clear that the members of the committee have noticed this and the last prime time hearing on Thursday, in addition to focusing on Trump’s culpability in inciting the riot and his deliberate and inexcusable passivity while it was going on, also took the opportunity to needle him with outtakes of the video statements Trump put out on January 6th (after doing nothing for more than three hours and instead just watching the riot unfold on the TV in his private dining room) and on the following day, both of which reveal his deep reluctance to condemn the violence of his supporters.

His White House advisors were apprehensive about Trump going on TV and ad libbing because they feared that he would say further inflammatory things and so they prepared a script for him to read. But he ignored it and ad libbed anyway and you can see the result below, where he called the rioters “very special” and that “we love you'”. Who did he mean by ‘we’ anyway?
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