It’s expected to hit 103 today in Portland, Oregon. I’m a Southerner. If I wanted this kind of weather, I’d live somewhere with easy access to mint juleps. (The Oregonian)
This damn inflation has Americans resorting to cheap beer and cigarettes, just like “real” Americans — no fancy imports or filtered Marlboros like the Queen. (Wall Street Journal)
Peter Thiel isn’t an enigma wrapped in a riddle. He’s just a fascist. (Substack)
Democrats and Republicans aren’t playing the same game, a point that the brilliant Jamie Lynn Crofts has often made. (Digby’s Hullabaloo)
This wealthy California community pulled a disappearing act on the homeless. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Jeanie Cannell, her husband Roger, and his daughter, Margaret Belanger, have lived in a van at the Kennebunk service travel plaza on the Maine Turnpike for three months. Jeanie and Margaret work full time but they still can’t find affordable housing. This happens more than you realize.
Jeanie, 63, estimates she’s applied for more than 100 apartments, often paying a $35 application fee per adult. Sometimes they don’t hear back from landlords overwhelmed with dozens of applications. Other times the apartment is already gone by the time they see the listing on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist.
They’re on the waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher and haven’t been able to find a motel they can afford on Roger’s $1,400 monthly Social Security check and her income from Cabela’s.
Their circumstances are dire and complicated by the added stress Jeanie and her family are under. Roger, 72, has bladder cancer and has chemotherapy once a week. He goes to physical therapy twice a week for injuries from a devastating fall that ended his 29-year career as a dump truck driver for Shaw Brothers Construction. He is in constant, agonizing pain.
A wealthy country where anyone lives this way isn’t exceptional. It’s sick. (Press Herald)
Pottery Barn debuts furniture designed for people with physical disabilities. (Fast Company)
Catherine Caruso delves into the Wilmington, North Carolina, massacre of 1898 — that other mostly unpunished, white supremacist insurrection. (Teen Vogue)
Shanta Thake brought the disco ball to Lincoln Center. (The Daily Beast)
These six states are trying out direct democracy regarding reproductive freedom. The only catch is what happens if a majority of voters are OK with enslaving the uterus having? (The Nation)
You’d think right-wing Christian extremists would get on board with addressing the climate crisis, considering it’s an almost Biblival catastrophe. (Mother Jones)
Cops in school don’t make kids safer. Data shows quite the reverse. (Dame)
TBS has cancelled “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” after seven seasons. HBO, please come to the rescue! (LA Times)
I leave you with Ann Miller performing Cole Porter’s “Too Darn Hot” from Kiss Me Kate. The 1953 movie was shot in 3-D, which is how I saw it at New York’s Film Forum back in 2000.
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