Bob CollinsAnyone who actually knows the market knows that past performance is no indication of future results. Obama’s 16 percent drop in value over the same period of time as Trump’s 6 percent increase only tells us one thing: Markets go up and markets go down.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
Bad Lip Reading has just released its latest spoof: the inauguration. Read more →
It was — and is — bad enough when the Mayo Clinic Lynx became the first major sports team in this area to plaster advertising on their uniforms. They did so with good reason; the WNBA is still a struggling league. Its step-parent — the National Basketball Association — is not. The owners, thanks to a rich new TV deal, can’t count their money fast enough to keep up. Read more →
Jack Lipscomb, 19, has spunk. We like spunk.
Lipscomb, a fan of the Cleveland Indians, wants to throw out a ‘first pitch’ at a home game, a reasonable request considering the usual boring array of people who are entrusted with the task in baseball these days. Read more →
The latest volley over whether journalist should say Donald Trump is lying comes after he indicated this week that he would have won the popular vote for president had it not been for voter fraud. There’s no evidence that’s the case, nor is it the first time the president has repeated the falsehood nor been told it’s a falsehood. Read more →
We’ve always had a special place in this space for people who walk away from whatever chains tie them to the daily routine and walk or kayak or bike across America, often in search of it or themselves.
Perhaps we’re being too romantic because the story of Mark Baumer is frightening. Read more →
There is something astonishing when this tweet draws virtual gasps on Twitter for the courage it took to write it.
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A little early, perhaps, we have reached that time of the year that keeps tow truck operators in the tall clover. Read more →
Because: football Read more →
There was, apparently, some anger within NPR when two of its journalists — David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna — were killed when their Humvee was hit by heavy weapons fire while they were covering the war in Afghanistan last June.
Why were they in harm’s way? Could their deaths have been avoided.
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Lost in today’s announcement of Oscar nominations was the category of documentaries, which generally are nowhere near as intriguing as the make-believe world of film.
Let’s do something about that by specifically pointing out that Joe’s Violin has been nominated in the category of ‘Best Documentary Short Subject.’ Read more →
Southern Minnesota drug court Judge Larry Collins is retiring with the luxury of knowing he did some good. He knows that because the people who went through his court told him so. Read more →
Of all of the ludicrous, misplaced, and, frankly, chilling criticisms and intimidation of the free press in recent days, none rises to the level of absurdity as the criticism leveled against the Minnesota media overnight for showing images of Gov. Mark Dayton’s collapse during his State of the State address. Read more →
NOAA’s new GOES-16 satellite has given us the clearest high-resolution pictures yet from a geostationary satellite 22,000 miles above us.
The first images — it’s still undergoing testing — were released today. And they’re magnificent. Read more →
A study of baseball players, who spend most of their summers in different time zones, finds that traveling eastward is more disruptive than going west. But it also found that home teams suffer more than visiting teams. Read more →