Republicans are galloping toward a ground war in Syria and Iraq, “a position even hawks hesitated to take a few weeks ago,” Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post.
Another ground war in the works is a plan to send 3,000 U.S. military personnel to West Africa to combat Ebola. The Ebola epidemic is spreading so fast that even such major new efforts to combat it won’t be enough, writes Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy. Garrett, a Pulitzer-winning science writer, says she hopes she’s wrong and that by Christmas her words “will look like the nattering of a crazed Cassandra.”
Time for a pop quiz: Which candidate should you vote for this fall? Via Vox.
Republicans have a 50.1 percent chance of gaining six seats to control the U.S. Senate, according to the Monkey Cage, a group of political scientists forecasting elections for The Washington Post.
But Vox has a map that shows why Republicans are nervous about their chances of taking the Senate: Democrats are spending a lot more on advertising in key states.
You can’t feed a family with GDP, writes the New York Times’ Neil Irwin, who notes that new U.S. Census Bureau figures show that growth in the economy hasn’t translated into gains in middle-class income.
It’s the annual list of people who do interesting, important things: the MacArthur Foundation recognized 21 fellows who will receive $625,000 for their work in a variety of fields. Among the recipients of the so-called “genius grant” are cartoonist and graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel; lawyer Jonathan Rapping, who founded a training center for overworked public defenders; and social psychologist Jennifer Eberhart, who researches racial stereotyping.
A gripping headline on a post marking the 20th anniversary this weekend of the Violence Against Women Act: “It’s incredibly dangerous to be a woman in America.” Still, the country has made some progress since passage of the act, intended to reduce intimate partner violence, Vox notes.
[Photo by Teresa Alexander-Arab via Flickr/Creative Commons.]
