And when the day comes that you, the American taxpayer,
own this Bank, you will be ready to make it a
Bank for America—one that brings benefits not to the privileged only, but to all of our customers, and to all of our stakeholders too.
posted by Surfin' Bird
on Apr 20, 2012 -
15 comments
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.
So wrote John Updike in his
moving tribute to Red Sox legend Ted Williams -- an appropriately pedigreed account for this
oldest and
most fabled of ballfields that saw
its first major league game played
one century ago today.
As a team
in flux hopes to recapture the magic with an
old-school face-off against the New York
Highlanders Yankees, it's hard to imagine the soul of the Sox faced the
specter of
demolition not too long ago. Now
legally preserved, in a sport crowded with corporate-branded superdome behemoths,
Fenway abides, bursting with
history,
idiosyncrasy,
record crowds, and occasional
song.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 20, 2012 -
48 comments
A new study conducted by Dr. Eric Braverman, president of the nonprofit Path Foundation in New York City, and Dr. Nirav Shah, New York State’s Commissioner of Health suggests that the Body Mass Index
significantly underestimates the rate of obesity in America, especially for women. Based on BMI, about one-third of Americans are considered obese, but when other methods of measuring obesity are used, that number may be closer to 60%.
[more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus
on Apr 4, 2012 -
118 comments
"It’s been nearly 6 years since the series finale of The West Wing, and more than 12 since the one-hour drama, which [Aaron] Sorkin created and largely wrote, first walked and talked its way through NBC’s Wednesday-night lineup; and yet you might think the series never ended, given the currency it still seems to enjoy in Washington, the frequency with which it comes up in D.C. conversations and is quoted or referenced on political blogs.
In part this is because the smart, nerdy—they might prefer “precocious”—kids who grew up in the early part of the last decade worshipping the cool, technocratic charm of Sorkin’s characters have today matured into the young policy prodigies and press operatives who advise, brief, and excuse the behavior of the most powerful people in the country."
posted by zarq
on Mar 11, 2012 -
134 comments
The ‘white’ slave children of New Orleans:
Almost immediately after the law came into practice, Northerners and abolitionists set up relief organisations, which battled to establish schools and provide other forms of support – but their resources were limited. They soon discovered it was near-impossible to find sympathy and support in a war-torn and racially-prejudiced county.
posted by nickyskye
on Mar 4, 2012 -
11 comments
"Still, I'm willing to bet that future generations will look back on the period between 2006 and 2008 as the real turning point. Here was the moment when what remained of the American Century ran out of steam and ground to a halt. More specifically, when Bush gave up on victory in Iraq (thereby abandoning expectations of U.S. military power transforming the Greater Middle East) and when the Great Recession brought the U.S. economy to its knees (the consequences of habitual profligacy coming home to roost), Luce's formulation lost any resemblance to reality."--
Andrew Bacevich on how
"The American Century Is Over—Good Riddance"
posted by bardic
on Feb 23, 2012 -
76 comments
"So I'm literally walking around and talking to people, "Is there a black-owned restaurant, or a black-owned dry cleaner?" and folks are looking at me like I'm insane. And if I didn't know this, I'm sure that folks outside the black community don't have this as part of their reality or part of their picture for black America. When we talk about black people, the black situation, problems in the black community, you know, we start with, "Black kids are least likely to graduate from school; black unemployment is four times higher than the national average," all these numbers. But why can't we include that over 90 percent of businesses in the black community are not owned by black people or local residents? If we were to add that to the conversation, maybe folks would say, "Oh, well no wonder things are so bad there," and start thinking about things in a different way instead of allowing those awful numbers to be a reflection of our propensities. Why is it that my people are just supposed to be the perpetual consumer class, and everyone else is supposed to benefit from our money?"
posted by empath
on Feb 23, 2012 -
174 comments
On December 19th, Ford closed the doors of their
St Paul auto plant, ending 800 jobs and 86 years of history. The plant was closed as part of Ford's move to end the Ford Ranger in North America, a truck that will still be available
overseas. Born of the 80s gas crisis, the Ranger has been Ford's compact truck for almost forty
years.
Ford blames demand for large trucks and the shrinking gap in price between the compact and full-sized truck markets, spurring
concern about the future of the compact truck market in North America.
posted by Stagger Lee
on Dec 23, 2011 -
93 comments
"Imagine 12 men in a dorm all in diapers and sitting in their own feces," he says. "It smelled like a combination of what people had for lunch that day and pus from people's open wounds. I've been in a wheelchair now for three years, and the jail is by far the worst place I've ever seen for a disabled person." --
L.A. Weekly on "Wheelchair Hell" in the L.A. County Men's Jail
posted by bardic
on Dec 8, 2011 -
42 comments
The Percentages: A Biography of Class. An autobiographical essay about growing up in the working class (as the author defines it) and then meeting the middle class (again, as the author defines it).
This is so far outside my experience that I can't even summarize it properly, but it's worth reading.
posted by d. z. wang
on Oct 16, 2011 -
123 comments
'Few Americans today can name more than one or two
current boxers, but boxing once stood at the center of American life. It has become a ghost sport, long discredited but still hovering in the nation’s consciousness, refusing to go away and be silent entirely. But there was a time when things were very different. Boxing's history
winds a thread through the broader history of the nation.'
posted by zarq
on Sep 14, 2011 -
95 comments
