A tribute to the copy editors who put together the indispensable In the News column that appears daily on the front page of Arkansas' Newspaper, for imitation is the sincerest form of flattery:
Katherine Lockler, a nurse in Pensacola, Fla., concluded a 12-hour shift in an emergency room by going on Facebook to call it a "cesspool of funky flu" and adding her own editorial comment by advising those who go there to "wash your stinking hands."
Robert Kaplan, who's president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, spoke of the Fed's needing to raise interest rates this year to cool off what had been an overheated advance--and cool off is what the stock market did for several days last week, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a huge drop.
Donald J. Trump, tweeter-in-chief of the United States, did manage to get a controversial classified memo released, claiming that it vindicates him against charges that he colluded with the Russians to influence American elections, but Democrats begged to differ, so this tedious dispute doubtless will go on and on until Americans' eyes glaze over.
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt's president, is finding that there's nothing to unite old enemies like having a common enemy--even if their tacit alliance must not be openly acknowledged lest it offend hardliners on both sides of their common border, but that's the Middle East for you, where secrets within secrets abound, even when they're open secrets.
Kathleen Hartnett White became the Trump administration's former nominee as head of the country's Council on Environmental Quality because she dared suggest that all of us withhold judgment on the question of climate change--is it man-made, or just in part?--until more scientific evidence is in, or as she prudently put it: "I think we indeed need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role," and was promptly declared persona non grata by the True Believers.
Hetpet, an Egyptian close to the royal family back in the heyday of the kingdom's Fifth Dynasty some 4,000 years ago, is back in the news of the day after what is thought to be her tomb was uncovered after an absence of a millennium or four, demonstrating that old courtiers never die, they don't even fade away, for the wall paintings showing scenes from her life remain very much alive, like Egypt's hope of reviving its tourist trade.
That's All, Brother, a C-47 that carried American paratroopers into the thick of the fighting for Nazi-occupied France, is to live and fly again after winding up intact although sporting new camouflage, in an aircraft bone yard in Mesa, Ariz., of all places, where it had been left by the private company that bought it during one of its at least nine lives and now can serve as an object lesson to show that not just this country's nuclear arsenal needs updating.
Stephen Blitz, the chief economist studying the American economy for TS Lombard, was taking the latest economic news with its ups and downs in stride, noting that the country is just "getting back to a more normally functioning economy," whatever that means in this age of a new abnormalcy.
The Wall Street Journal should get credit and/or blame for the most impressive and depressing correction we've seen of late: "A graphic with a U.S. News article Tuesday about United Airlines' naming rights for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum listed the biggest naming-rights agreements involving U.S. college football stadiums. The graphic was incorrectly labeled as the biggest naming-rights deals in U.S. college sports, and it incorrectly included a deal between TD Ameritrade and College World Series, which is for baseball. The graphic also incorrectly listed the value of a $22.2 million deal between Kroger and University of Kentucky as $22.5 million."
Janet Yellen, who's now finished her four-year term as head of the Federal Reserve System, is moving on to the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, where she'll be joining her predecessor Ben Bernanke, surprising only those who might have expected her to become a lobbyist or start her own think tank--two other usual activities for retired names in the economic news.
The more things change in Washington, alas, the more they remain the dispiriting same.
Editorial on 02/10/2018