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Wednesday, July 31, 2019

BALTIMORE SUN EDITORIAL FULL TEXT; “BETTER TO HAVE SOME VERMIN LIVING IN YOUR ‘HOOD THAN TO BE ONE.”




Seventh U.S. Congressional District, Baltimore, Maryland
GUEST BLOG / By the Editorial Board of the Baltimore Sun newspaper, Baltimore Maryland.

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.


Twitter message from Donald J. Trump:
@realDonaldTrump
 · Jul 27, 2019
 Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA......

Twitter message from Donald J. Trump:
@realDonaldTrump
....As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb."


In pointing to the 7th District, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.

This is a president who will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.

As heartening as it has been to witness public figures rise to Charm City’s defense on Saturday, from native daughter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, we would above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th District, Baltimore included, is part of the United States that he is supposedly governing. The White House has far more power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than any single member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land.

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Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

This editorial was written by the Baltimore Sun Editorial Board. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor, please send it to talkback@baltimoresun.com.

SIGN OF THE MONTH / YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP.




PillartoPost.org is delighted to launch a new monthly series reflecting the signs of our time or how to mangle the Queen’s English one sign at a time.  You’ll notice no captions because who needs 'em.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

SPAIN’S AMAZING MOUNTAIN WALKWAY




A walkway between Alora, Antequera and Ardales in Malaga, Spain, El Caminito del Rey – the King’s Path – is a three-kilometre long pathway that hugs the side of the mountains and crosses bridges, a hundred metres above ground. It is about a metre wide. It is named after King Alfonso VIII who visited the area in 1921. It was closed in 2001 for safety reasons, and refurbished and reopened in 2015.


The King's Path is a unique walkway in Spain but not one to attempt if you are scared of heights.

It is 3km (1.9 miles) long, 100 metres (328 feet) high and just one metre wide.

The King's Path (El Caminito del Rey) in Malaga was closed in 2001 for safety reasons but re-opened in 2015 after a massive restoration project. New fencing keeps walkers safe as they cross a narrow gorge with a sheer drop to the river below.

Click here for BBC video.






Monday, July 29, 2019

MEDIA MONDAY / PRESS POTPOURRI





COLUMBIA REVIEW OF JOURNALISM
REFRESHINGLY COMPETENT: CBS TALKING HEAD DEBUTS. Click here.

SALON.COM
FOLLOWING HEMINGWAY’S CUBA FOOTSTEPS. Click here.

NPR
EMOTIONS RUN HIGHER ON AIRLINES.  Click here.

NEW YORKER
NEIL ARMSTRONG AMONG THE PANDAS. Click here.

COX MEDIA
PROMISING ALZHEIMER’S VACCINE NEARS HUMAN TRIALS
Click here.

SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE
WHY WE LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES Click here.

Sunday, July 28, 2019

SUNDAY REVIEW / HEMINGWAY’S “PARIS IS FULL OF RUSSIANS”




PARIS 1920s.  La Rotonde, a sidewalk cafe popular with Russian Ex-pats.
Paris is full of Russians 
by Ernest Hemingway. 
From the public domain:  Originally published by the Toronto Star, February 25, 1922.

Paris is full of Russians at present. The Russian ex-aristocracy are scattered all over Europe, running restaurants in Rome, tearooms on Capri, working as hotel porters in Nice and Marseilles and as laborers along the Mediterranean shipping centers. But those Russians who managed to bring some money or possessions with them seem to have flocked to Paris.

They are drifting along in Paris in a childish sort of hopefulness that things will somehow be all right, which is quite charming when you first encounter it and rather maddening after a few months. No one knows just how they live except it is by selling off jewels and gold ornaments and family heirlooms that they brought with them to France when they fled before the revolution.

According to the manager of a great jewel house on the Rue de la Paix, pearls have come down in price because of the large numbers of beautiful pearls that have been sold to Parisian jewel buyers by the Russian refugees. It is true that many Russians are living fairly lavishly in Paris at present on the sale of jewels they have brought with them in their exile.

Just what the Russian colony in Paris will do when all the jewels are sold and all the valuables pawned is somewhat of a question. It is usually impossible for a large body of people to support themselves indefinitely by borrowing money, although a few people enjoy a great success at it for a time. Of course things may change in Russia, something wonderful might happen to aid the Russian colony. There is a cafe on the Boulevard Montparnasse where a great number of Russians gather every day for this something wonderful to happen and then, eventually, like all the rest of the world, the Russians of Paris may have to go to work. It seems a pity, they are such a charming lot.

Circa 2019