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Created
Sat, 30/03/2024 - 01:30
Some Friday messaging advice Two bits about defining Trump caught my attention. You’d think the guy’s image is as set as can be with his friends and foes. What else is there to tell about the twice-impeached, yada-yada? But this is campaign season. The GOP was working “but her emails” all the way up to the election in 2016. Take the hint. Joe Biden is running ads here in N.C. beginning with “Here’s the difference between me and Donald Trump…” In the wake of the Key Bridge collapse this week, Biden immediately pledged, “It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge.” Full stop. Brian Beutler reminds his Off Message readers that should Trump get reelected we can expect him to hold recovery funds hostage and to extort Maryland and Baltimore for favors: Four years ago this week, it became clear that Donald Trump would husband emergency pandemic resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for Republican-run states. Or rather, Trump made it clear.
Created
Sat, 30/03/2024 - 00:00
The myths of demagogues collapsed too Lost amidst the tangle of steel and roadway that fell into the icy Patapsco River in Baltimore on Tuesday were eight men pursuing their American Dreams. Two were rescued. Crews pulled the bodies of two others from the water on Wednesday. Four others are presumed dead. Will Bunch considers who the victims were and what their lives meant: From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras. The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when COVID-19 ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.
Created
Sat, 30/03/2024 - 00:00

In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between.

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It’s an odd thing that we make our election losers do. You don’t have to give a speech when you lose at an award ceremony, or when you don’t get the promotion you were up for, or when you just barely miss the cut for the wedding party. The closest opportunity you get to uplift and inspire in those scenarios is when you gossip about it with your partner on the car ride home. And tragically, that’s rarely televised.

Created
Fri, 29/03/2024 - 23:01

Hi, Jesus. It’s Pop. Just got your message. Sorry I missed you yesterday. It was kind of wild around her. A good Friday it was not. You wouldn’t believe everything going on with this farkakte universe. Expanding and expanding and expanding, we can’t keep up! And all these bad things happening to good people? Don’t get me started. We’re trying to fix that bug, but it’s a real head-scratcher, you don’t want to know.

Anyway, no rest for the divine. So, as I said, I got your message. And, look, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t forsaken you. You think I’d forsake you? I seem like a forsaker to you? What do you want me to do? I was on another line, that’s it.

You know I’ve always been there for you. You’re my number-one boy! Remember that time we did the trick with the wine? Oh, the loaves, the fishes, the things we could do. By the way, how’s Lazarus holding up? A real mensch that guy. You should be so lucky to have a friend like him.

Created
Fri, 29/03/2024 - 16:32

PACK up your teddy bears, they have a date this Easter Sunday, 31 March, at Coffs Community Gardens. Everyone, young and old, is invited to the Teddy Bears’ Picnic in the grounds of Combine Street Community Gardens, in the park behind 51 Combine Street. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s worth it for...

The post Teddy Bears’ Easter Sunday Picnic at Coffs Community Gardens appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Fri, 29/03/2024 - 16:28

A SECTION of shoreline near the mouth of Coffs Creek will be upgraded, with the project centred on the Englands Park green space between the creek and the Coffs Coast Wildlife Sanctuary. Popular with walkers, joggers, picnickers and visitors, the area will be transformed and protected by works aimed at stemming erosion. Advertise with News...

The post Coffs Creek shoreline to be transformed appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Fri, 29/03/2024 - 15:05
Daniel Kahneman, who was, along with Elinor Ostrom, one of the very few non-economists to win the Economics Nobel award, has died aged 90. There are lots of obituaries out there, so I won’t try to summarise his work. Rather, I’ll talk about how it influenced my own academic career. When I was an undergraduate, […]