Must Read

• NASA, New Pluto Images from NASA’s New Horizons: It’s Complicated
• Bruce Bartlett, Jeb’s tax plan makes George W. Bush’s policies look good
• Rima Regas, Bernie Bias: The Mainstream Media Undermines Sanders at Every Turn
• Ezekiel Emanuel (NYT), The Solution to Drug Prices

Should Read

• Peter Loftus, Bernie Sanders to Introduce Bill Targeting High Drug Prices
• Domenico Montanaro and Tamara Keith, Fact Check: Hillary Clinton’s Email Defense Is A Mixed Bag
• Garry Emmons, Sports Superfans, Deflategate Obsession And America’s Collective I.Q.
• Robert Reich, What Happened to the Moral Center of American Capitalism?
• Chris Shelton, Why Workers Need the Working Families Party
• Daniel Larison, Scowcroft, the GOP, and the Nuclear Deal
• Tyler Rogoway, So What the Hell Is Russia Doing In Syria Exactly? Continue reading →

Must Read/Listen

• Kenneth Thomas, Obamacare hasn’t killed full-time jobs, either
• Paul Krugman (NYT), The Fed Should Remember the 90s
• Matt Taibbi, The Republicans Are Now Officially the Party of White Paranoia
• NPR, Law Professor: [Rowan County KY clerk Kim] Davis Can’t Evoke Religion To Deny Marriage Licenses
• Charlie Pierce, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Are Calling for a Revolution

Should Read

• Noam Scheiber (NYT), As His Term Wanes, Obama Champions Workers’ Rights [Ed.:  A good thing and it’s about time.]
• Ross Eisenbrey, NLRB Decision in Browning-Ferris Restores Employer Accountability for Wages and Working Conditions
• Dean Baker, A Public Service Announcement: The Bureau of Labor Statistics Budget
• Sabrina Tavernise (NYT), Colorado’s Effort Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success [Ed.: Use of long-acting birth control reduces birthrates.  Wow, who knew?]

Continue reading →

Must Read

• Matt Taibbi, Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny
• Robert Borosage, The Economy: Beneath the Din
• Brad DeLong, A Cautionary History of US Monetary Tightening
• Justin Miller, How the NLRB Just Radically Changed Labor Relations

Should Visit

• Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Should Read

• Mike the Mad Biologist
• Mike the Mad Biologist, The Plight of Moderately-Skilled White Collar Workers
• Curt Nickisch, Market Basket Is Back To ‘Business As Usual,’ But With New Bills To Pay
• Dean Baker, Robert Shiller’s Case for a Stock Market Bubble
• Campaign Zero
• Tom McNeill, What’s It Like to Get a Ph.D. in Science? [Ed.:  He pretty well captures what it was like for me 20-25 years ago.]

Continue reading →

Must Read

• R.L. Stephens II, I often can’t afford groceries because of volatile work schedules at Gap [Ed.:  If one job isn’t enough to pay the bills then you get a second job.  But how do you hold a second (or third) job if you don’t know what your work schedule for your first job is?]
• Robert Borosage, Sanders and Trump: The Populist and the Demagogue
• Matt Taibbi, Inside the GOP Clown Car
• Maciej Ceglowski, Web Design: The First 100 Years
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Debt is Good [Ed.:  My thoughts on the subject from a couple years ago.]

Should Read

• Renee Loth, Socialist Propaganda: Will Everything Bernie Sanders Touches Turn Red?
• Roger Lowenstein, The Sometime Liberal
• Rep. Seth Moulton, The Iran Nuclear Deal: The Best Option on the Table
• Chad Orzel, Planning To Study Science In College? Here’s Some Advice
• Victor Fleischer (NYT), Stop Universities From Hoarding Money
• Dave Dayen, SEC Admits It’s Not Monitoring Stock Buybacks to Prevent Market Manipulation
• Veronica Pollack, Veronica Pollack Responds to an Internet Heckler

Continue reading →

I’ve been on vacation for the past week so this week’s Digest is a short list of Must-Reads for the year.   I almost certainly missed some but the list below has the ones that made my initial cut.   The ones to read if you’re only going to read a few:

• James Fallows, The Tragedy of the American Military
• Henry Farrell, A Brief Theory of ‘Very Serious People’
• Lance Mannion, When I was your age, there used to be conservatives who were actually conservative
• Jim Walsh, Cautious Optimism: An Insider Sizes Up The Iran Nuclear Deal
• Maciej Ceglowski, Web Design: The First 100 Years
• John Richardson, When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job: Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it.
• But some things make me smile:

Continue reading →

Must Read

• Rick Perlstein, The New Holy Grail of GOP Primaries
• William Saletan, Not Fit to Lead:  The Iran hearings have shown how the Republican Party can no longer be trusted with the presidency.
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Corbyn and the Cringe Caucus

Should Read

• Katha Pollitt (NYT), How to Really Defend Planned Parenthood
• Rep. Seth Moulton, Statement on Iran Nuclear Deal
• Rebecca Klein, Kansas Underfunded Education And Cut Tenure. Now It Can’t Find Enough Teachers To Fill Classrooms.

Continue reading →

Must Read

• William Lind, What Militarism Means  [Related:  Tyler Rogoway, Marines Declare F-35B Operational, But Is It Really Ready For Combat? ]
• Matt Taibbi, In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, Or Less? [Related: Jon Green, Bernie Sanders is electable, just not for the usual reasons]
• Roger Cohen (NYT), Lovely, Lamentable London
• Eli Rabett, What Fish Need is Bicycles – BPL [“A paranoid is a man with all the facts at his disposal [and command of first semester physical chemistry].” – William S. Burroughs]

Should Read

• David Roberts, Want more wind and solar? We’ll need to get rid of outdated grid rules.
• Alec McGillis, Pumped Dry: How our roads came to depend on a broken tax scheme Washington can’t fix. An investigation.
• Venkatesh Rao, The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”
• Jonathan Weisman (NYT), Talks for Pacific Trade Deal Stumble

Continue reading →

Must Read/Watch

• Jim Walsh, Cautious Optimism: An Insider Sizes Up The Iran Nuclear Deal
• Henry Farrell, A Brief Theory of ‘Very Serious People’
• Mike the Mad Biologist, Social Justice Tuba
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Fire Phasers
• James Suroweicki, How Can Greece Take Charge?

Should Read/Listen

• Jared Bernstein, We are definitely not Greece! But if we do this we could get a little bit closer…
• Mike Konczal, Dodd-Frank turns 5 today — it’s Obama’s most underappreciated achievement
• Mike the Mad Biologist, The Accidental Genius of School Lotteries: D.C. Edition
• Nicholas Rondinone and Kathleen Megan, [Central Connecticut State University] Professor To 18-Year-Old: Making Gun-Firing Drone A ‘Terrible Idea’
• C.J. Chivers (NYT), ISIS Has Fired Chemical Mortar Shells, Evidence Indicates
• Amie Ferris-Rotman, How to Disappear a Country: In the Donetsk People’s Republic, Russia is everywhere, from the mailboxes to the license plates. Ukraine is nowhere.

Continue reading →

Must Read

• John Richardson, When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job: Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can’t really talk about it.
• Paul Starr, Cultures of Impunity [Ed.:  Apropos of Taibbi’s piece on Holder last week.]
• Mike Konczal, On Paleo and Faith in Government 
• NASA, The Icy Mountains of Pluto

Should Listen/Read

• Here and Now, What Now For Iraq?  [Ed.:  I listened to the interview with retired Marine Victoriano.  I haven’t listened to the interview with Bacevich yet but he’s always insightful.  In a more just world Elliott Abrams would be in prison for crimes against humanity and/or treason.  I’m his segment is… entertaining.]
• Fred Thys, With Mass. Off Track On Emissions Goal, Advocates Seek 1st State Carbon Tax
• Todd Gitlin (NYT), The Bernie Sanders Moment
• Carey Goldberg, ‘Not Just Lyme Disease Anymore’: 7 New Reasons To Fear Ticks This Summer
• Julie Hirschfeld Davis (NYT), Hacking of Government Computers Exposed 21.5 Million People
• Katha Pollitt, The Anti-Abortion Vanguard: Abortion opponents are at the forefront of a wider effort to punish poor women and attack social services.
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Liberals and Wages

Continue reading →

Must Read/Watch:

• Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
• Brad DeLong, What We Got Here Is a Failure to Do the Government Debt Amortization Arithmetic…
• Carli Lloyd’s goal from midfield in women’s World Cup final last weekend.
• Bernie Sanders, Why Not?

Should Read/Watch

• The Mahablog, The Right Time
• James Galbraith, 9 myths about the Greek crisis
• Jim Yardley and Binyamin Applebaum (NYT), In Fiery Speeches, Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism
• Jesse Ausubel, Nature Rebounds
• Mark Bittman (NYT), ‘A Walk on the Wild (Edibles) Side’
• Tour de France [Ed.: The other day they finished on a uphill grade of >10%, probably more like 15%.  Sprinting up a 15% grade?!  Amazing.]

Continue reading →