It’s Memorial Day, and a time to honor the fallen.:
• Memorial Day: Each year on the last Monday in May, the Defense Department joins the nation in honoring service members who lost their lives in defense of the nation, and mourns with their families. (U.S. Dept of Defense)
• Eric Paliwoda was a big dude. Probably six-foot-six. Those big, meaty hands that would swallow your own in a tight handshake. His jaw stuck out, exaggerated by a lip full of dip. Thousands more proud warriors and their families paid a terrible price in the service of our country. We owe it to them to live good lives, to love and take care of each other, and to make our corner of the USA just a little bit better. To do something with this time that we’re given when theirs was taken away. To make their sacrifice worth it. For them, and for us. (Stevens Sweet)
• The Tangled Roots of Memorial Day and Why It’s Celebrated: The holiday marks the unofficial start of summer and honors those who have died in the nation’s wars. Here’s how it all began. (New York Times)
• Bud Anderson, the last World War II ‘triple ace,’ dies at 102: Anderson shot down 16 German planes in World War II, flew bombing missions in Vietnam and served as a test pilot alongside Chuck Yeager. (Task and Purpose)
• Sunk at the Pier: Crisis in the American Submarine Industrial Base: Across my career as a naval officer, entering as an ensign in 1988 and retiring as a captain in 2014, and then as a consultant to both government and industry since, I have watched the American submarine fleet fall precipitously from its Cold War high of 140 nuclear-powered “boats” to less than half that number, sixty-seven boats, today. Moreover, of the current sixty-seven nuclear submarines, only forty-nine fall into the hunter-killer “fast attack” classification. (American Affairs Journal)
• What’s BlackRock Without Larry Fink? Shareholders Fret About Future. Investors in the world’s biggest asset manager are asking how much more room it has to grow and who will drive that growth once its chief executive retires. (New York Times)
• Why the illegal sand trade is out of control right now: There’s a global sand shortage and it’s stirring up a whole lot of chaos (The Hustle)
• Nuclear Energy’s Bottom Line: The United States used to build nuclear-power plants affordably. To meet our climate goals, we’ll need to learn how to do it again. (The Atlantic) see also Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity: They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly. (New York Times)
• Is home ownership the wrong dream for America? The house, the yard and the picket fence have long been part of the American Dream. Owning a home is lauded as a way to grow your wealth and pass it down to future generations. But high demand and short supply, coupled with today’s soaring interest rates, have made home ownership out of reach for many Americans. We talk about the cultural and financial forces at work and the generational shift in thinking about whether buying a house is the best place to put your money. (Washington Post)
• Biden’s top military adviser chides Israel for losing ground to Hamas: (Politico)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, and The Persuaders. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for the New York Times, he has also written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Time. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Why Has America Lost Confidence in itself?
Source: Kevin Drum
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