Senior Women Web

Jo Freeman Writes: Those who suffer defeat, be they Presidents or populations, deal with downfall in different ways. Denial is one way. Simply flip defeat on its head and claim victory. You might not get the concrete benefits of an actual victory, but you can get the psychological ones. The white South admitted to only military defeat. To claim a moral victory, it invented the Lost Cause, which saw the War as an heroic attempt of a noble people to leave a union that only wanted to exploit its wealth. Believers insisted that the reason for the War was states’ rights, ignoring the fact that the Secession Ordinances declared it to be slavery. This is a timely book. What to do with statues of Confederate soldiers has been much in the news lately. As the author points out, however, this is just the latest twist in a story that began after the Civil War. more »

The Minor League Baseball Relief Act would allow Minor League Baseball to access up to $550 million in emergency grants to be administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and made available through funding authorized under previous COVID-19 relief legislation that would otherwise be returned to the Treasury Department. “Minor League Baseball is a point of pride to hundreds of small cities and towns across the country,” said Representative McKinley. “Like many other small businesses in other industries, minor league clubs are struggling from the economic impact of the pandemic. Many of these teams are at risk of closing their doors if they don’t have additional assistance to make it through this crisis. This bipartisan legislation will ensure Minor League Baseball as we know it can survive and keep America’s pastime alive.” more »

Jill Norgren Reviews: There are a few weeks remaining before summer’s end. Here are some of my suggestions for off-hours reading — several outstanding books, newly published and golden oldies. Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamtress is an extraordinary, near perfect novel, slight of size. In The Alice Network, Kate Quinn creates a world of female spies in World War I with a parallel story of disappearance during World War II. In The Barefoot Woman Scholastique Mukasongas, like Kate Quinn, gives us another story of an intrepid woman. Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain considers a childhood quite different from Mukasongas’s, one is which a child tries to protect and save his mother from her worst instincts. An astonishing first novel-autobiographical, winner of the Booker prize, Shuggie Bain is set in 1980s Glascow, the Thatcher years. more »

FactCheck Weekly: "House Republicans have sought to change the narrative on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump protesters, claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol.” But their arguments overstate the role of the House speaker in overseeing the security of the Capitol and rely on speculation about Pelosi’s involvement and knowledge about intelligence warnings for which they have not provided any proof. Republican Rep. Jim Banks said that Pelosi, as speaker, “has more control and authority and responsibility over the leadership of the Capitol Police than anyone else in the United States Capitol” and therefore, “is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of security at the Capitol that happened on Jan. 6.” The speaker does not oversee security of the US Capitol. The speaker appoints one member of a four-member board that oversees Capitol security, and who then must be approved by the House. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested Pelosi played a role in denying efforts prior to Jan. 6 to bolster security on the Capitol grounds with members of the National Guard. There is no evidence of that." more »