I finally got a follow-up call from my recent sleep study. Turns out I stopped breathing 31 times per hour, which means I have to go back this weekend for another study with a CPAP machine. (I’m a tiny bit suspicious, since the insurance cutoff for the CPAP coverage is 30 times an hour, but whatever.)
This doesn’t surprise me as much as it might have a month ago, because that’s when I first started to notice that I frequently stop breathing while I’m awake (your proverbial shallow breather). I figure it’s just as bad when I’m asleep.
The Cape Henlopen School Board nuked its entire summer reading list to keep kids from reading The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M Danforth’s acclaimed YA novel about a gay teenager coming of age in Montana.
Originally, the board was content to merely strikeCameron Post from the list, ignoring its own rules for challenging reading assignments, and figleafed its bigotry by insisting that the book’s removal was due to profanity, rather than LGBT themes. When anti-censorship groups pointed out that many of the other books on the list contained profanity, it did away with the summer reading list altogether.
Boy, NBC really doesn’t have a clue why we hated David Gregory, or they wouldn’t be replacing him with someone so similar:
Chuck Todd, a political obsessive and rabid sports fan, is the likely successor to David Gregory as moderator of “Meet the Press,” with the change expected to be announced in coming weeks, according to top political sources. The move is an effort by NBC News President Deborah Turness to restore passion and insider cred to a network treasure that has been adrift since the death in 2008 of the irreplaceable Tim Russert. Although Todd is not a classic television performer guaranteed to wow focus groups, his NBC bosses have been impressed by his love of the game, which brings with it authenticity, sources, and a loyal following among newsmakers and political junkies.
Reporter: “What’s your signature pitch?”
Mo’ne Davis: “Strike.”
It was an amazing game and a delight for any baseball fan. Mon’ne pitched a shutout and a complete game. Twitter lit up as the word got out:
Taney won the title with aggressive baserunning and mistake-free fielding. The Dragons gave themselves an early cushion with four first-inning runs, each manufactured on the base paths.
The final run of the inning demonstrated the scope of Taney’s dominance. Zion Spearman danced off third base after a low-and-outside pitch to Kai Cummings. When Newark catcher Joseph Rinarelli tossed the ball back to pitcher A.J. Blanchard, Spearman bolted for home. He slid in just before the tag.
Newark National spent the two days before the game preparing for Mo’ne Davis, but it was of little use. The first-inning runs were all she needed. She pitched a shutout, allowing three hits. By the time Davis allowed Newark’s first hit in the third inning, Taney already had a 6-0 lead. She struck out six batters in the game.
Davis will be the first American girl to play in Williamsport since 2004. She downplayed her personal accomplishment, but her pitching performance on national television showed that gender is no barrier.
“More girls should join boys’ teams so it could be a tradition and it wouldn’t be so special,” she said.
A stout Taney defense sealed the win. Jared Sprague-Lott made several difficult plays at shortstop and Eli Simon caught two high fly balls in left field in the fourth inning. Taney did not commit an error in the game.
The game fittingly ended on a perfectly executed double play, then the celebration began.
Afterward, Taney’s players said the win was about more than baseball. For one thing, it means new uniforms, no small matter to Taney’s players. The players shouted in joy after the game in the Little League Recreation Center when they saw the new gear they will wear in Williamsport, emblazoned with the words “Mid-Atlantic” across the chest. It was another sign that they are champions.
The origins of Taney’s players added meaning to the win. They nodded in unison when asked if the win meant more because they are the first team from Philadelphia to reach the Little League World Series. Many of the players murmured about the stereotypes related to inner-city kids and baseball.
“It means a lot,” second baseman Jahli Hendricks said. “In the beginning, a lot of people were a little bit doubting us and criticizing us.”
The stereotypes are now irrelevant. The bus to Williamsport leaves Monday morning.
Here’s Mo’Ne a few years ago meeting Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the only woman to play in the Negro League”
What’s more, I think every critically minded individual has a responsibility to understand not only the ridiculous Republicans’ role in the grand disaster of our times but that of the Democrats as well. After all, the unraveling of the American middle class has been going on for decades. No national politician of the last thirty years can claim ignorance about it. The great American turn to the right, which made it all possible, is also a decades-old phenomenon that has been much-discussed over the years. No responsible person can any longer regard the right’s familiar inverted-populist trick as a postmodern mystery or a counterintuitive shocker. We understand now how conservatism has warred against “elites” in order to win over a big chunk of the working class; we have seen how the movement constantly moves the goalposts; we know about its worship of markets and its excursions into racial anxiety.
But somehow, given all this knowledge, the party of professionals and experts can’t figure out how to beat these guys once and for all and turn the economic narrative around. Instead, they gawk and laugh and fuel the right’s well-known persecution complex. And even though conservative economic ideas are the obvious culprits for what has happened to average Americans—even though conservatives have burned their bridges to the fastest-growing segments of the population—the right is still able to mount wave after wave of fake uprisings, successfully persuading a big part of the country that they are the only ones who will really do something to rein in what they like to call “crony capitalism.” For chrissake, the cover of today’s New York Times Magazine presents the market-minded Rand Paul as some kind of heir to the punk rock movement. It is crazy-making to acknowledge that, after all the disasters that these people have rained down on us, they might still control the House of Representatives, but they do—and they have a pretty good shot at winning control of the Senate this fall.
Think about this panorama of political dysfunction for long enough and an unpleasant thought begins to form: That maybe our boon companions in the Democratic Party are just as comfortable and as blind, in their own way, to what is going on in the country as are the GOPers. Maybe they are satisfied to leave well enough alone, to let demographic destiny do the hard work of delivering their majorities, and to avoid straining themselves too much. After all, it is so much easier to laugh.
