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Greetings on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Dr. King’s birthday was actually January 15.
Let us all celebrate on this occasion by expressing our individual and shared resolve to extend The Presumption of Grace to everyone in our own lives and on the national town square.
Human nature being what it is, I am often asked if one must extend The Presumption of Grace to everyone, or if exceptions/exemptions are allowed.
The answer is, again, given human nature, you can all have up to three exemptions.
Fun fact: The most frequent request for exceptions are about Donald Trump and Adam Schiff.
However, if you can, try not to use up all of the three allotments.
Dear Most Intense Blues and Reds: I know the other side has routinely and habitually committed evil acts much, much, much worse than anything your tribe has done. But try to see things from their point of view.
Here is a small exercise, but a useful one.
Look in the mirror and say these two sentences aloud (and believe them both):
1. The failure of the entire Republican Party to fully repudiate Donald Trump’s false and dastardly lies about the 2020 election is a great and ongoing tragedy for the American system and for one of our two major political parties.
2. Given the voting laws in states such as New York and Delaware, many on the right are understandably upset at the outrage expressed by Democrats over the new election legislation in some Red states, at President Biden’s Atlanta rhetoric, and at the Dominant Media’s blatant favoritism towards the Democrats’ false hyperbole.
You don’t need to decree those two offenses to be symmetrical or equivalent to believe both are true.
Both are true.
Believing them both, expressing both on the national town square, calling out those in your own tribe who are in denial – doing all those things, while still extending The Presumption of Grace towards everyone (but, perhaps, towards your 1-3 exemptions), is a great way to honor the memory of Dr. King.
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Team Biden can keep saying the supply chain and inflation are on the road to being better, but the Washington Post and the New York Times have twin essential reads suggesting not so fast.
Worker shortages caused by the omicron coronavirus variant and haggling over a new dockworkers contract are likely to aggravate costly supply chain jams over the next several months, clouding prospects for quick relief from the highest inflation in four decades.
The White House says the worst supply snarls may be in the past, noting that key Southern California ports are shrinking their cargo backlogs and transpacific shipping costs have plunged by more than one-third from their mid-September peak.
But the cost of sending a standard metal container from China to the U.S. West Coast remains more than three times what it was one year ago and is expected to remain elevated through the first half of the year, fueling painful annual inflation readings, according to the Freightos index and industry executives.
Freight is taking longer than ever to cross the Pacific, with goods requiring an average of 113 days to travel from Chinese factory gates to American hands, according to data from Flexport, a freight forwarder. On Friday, the floating traffic jam of container ships waiting to enter the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach numbered a near-record 106 vessels, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a nonprofit maritime group.
“If anything, it’s getting worse,” said Phil Levy, Flexport’s chief economist. “I don’t think there’s any reason to be sounding the all-clear at this stage.”
Companies are bracing for another round of potentially debilitating supply chain disruptions as China, home to about a third of global manufacturing, imposes sweeping lockdowns in an attempt to keep the Omicron variant at bay….
American trucking companies and warehouses, already short of workers, are losing more of their employees to sickness and quarantines. Weather disruptions are leading to empty shelves in American supermarkets. Delivery times for products shipped from Chinese factories to the West Coast of the United States are as long as ever — stretching to a record high of 113 days in early January, according to Flexport, a logistics firm. That was up from fewer than 50 days at the beginning of 2019.
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Two more essential reads on this slow-ish news day:
1. The Associated Press’ one-year-in interview with First Lady Jill Biden is a love letter of the kind that Melania Trump is unlikely to have received. (Not sure Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton would have gotten such treatment either….)
2. The New York Times look at the Trump-DeSantis feud breaks little new ground, but will be poured over like the Talmud, the Rosetta Stone, the transcript of a Steve Bannon podcast, a Jeff Roe strategy memo, a Tucker Carlson text message, and a series of Sean Hannity tweets in both Tallahassee and Palm Beach.
And in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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