National Lampoon’s VacatingBlown Out Speaker, A Gag Order (At Long Last)Kevin Mccarthy has officially been booted from the gavel pit. It took multiple days and 15 rounds of voting for McCarthy to get the gig in the first place, so maybe it's not surprising that his hammer time only lasted 270 days. Following a motion sickness-inducing motion to vacate by the creep Matt Gaetz and a failure to secure enough votesto survive, Kevin McCarthy maintained his tradition of not telling the truth as he summarized his epically brief run: "I wouldn’t change a thing." (Even the accountants who signed Trump's property valuations don't believe that.) In retrospect, maybe Kevin McCarthy should have skipped the trip to Mar-a-Lago and gone to see the Beetlejuicemusical instead. 2Taking Coverage"The world has become an increasingly dangerous place for reporters, but — outside the war in Ukraine — no place is more deadly for them than Mexico. Since the central government began its brutal and chaotic war on drugs in 2006, at least 128 reporters have been killed there, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 13 of them last year alone, a chilling record. Mexican journalists have faced phone hacks, death threats, beatings, torture and, in one case, grenade attacks on their newsroom. They face these perils in part because the authorities whose job it is to protect them have in many instances long been infiltrated by the cartels." Nicholas Casey with a detailed look at one newspaper's attempt to cover the news in a Mexican city, where both the cartels and the government present existential threats. NYT Mag (Gift Article): Who Hired the Hitmen to Silence Zitácuaro? 3TBD"With limited resources, governments have long seen no other option but to team with Big Pharma to develop vaccines for global scourges. But after the governments pump taxpayer money and resources into the efforts, the companies get control of the products, locking up ownership and prioritizing their own gain." Or, why a Shingles vaccine is widely available while a TB vaccine is on hold. ProPublica: How a Big Pharma Company Stalled a Potentially Lifesaving Vaccine in Pursuit of Bigger Profits. 4Mongolian Beef"The children were shown a table strewn with religious objects. Some of them refused to leave their parents’ sides. Others were drawn to the colorful candy that had been placed as distractions. This boy, A. Altannar, was different. He picked out a set of prayer beads and put it around his neck. He rang a bell used for meditation. He walked over to a monk in the room and playfully climbed on his legs. 'These were very special signs,' said Bataa Mishigish, a religious scholar who observed the boy with two senior monks. 'We just looked at each other and didn’t say a word.' They had found the 10th reincarnation of the Bogd, one of the three most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism and, for many, the spiritual leader of Mongolia, where nearly half the population is Buddhist." Fascinating piece from the NYT (Gift Article): The 8-Year-Old Boy at the Heart of a Fight Over Tibetan Buddhism. (One one hand, it seems crazy to choose your leader when he's only a toddler. On the other hand, how much better off would we be if this kid ran the House of Representatives?) 5Extra, ExtraGag Reflex: Here's something you never thought you'd see in this lifetime. The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's civil fraud trial on Tuesday issued a gag order after the former president attacked his clerk by name and shared her image on social media. On the same day, Trump learned that he's no longer part of the Forbes 400. And that means a lot to him. Here's a very short blurb from my book that explains how much. 6Bottom of the NewsA Stanford professor says that the No. 1 phrase people who are good at small talk always use is one I'm quite sure I've never, ever said. Tell Me More. My most common phrase during social interactions is, "My Uber's here." Get a copy of my 📕, Please Scream Inside Your Heart, or grab a 👕 in the Store. |