If you thought you were down…

A goal. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post) Here’s an opinion: the Caps played badly on Monday night and have a bad playoff history and being behind two games to one is bad, and fans are in a bad mood, and there are many bad trends, and if Washington loses in the first round, that would be bad. Really bad. But the Capitals haven’t lost the series yet. What they’ve done instead is opened up the negative floodgates of Concerned Speculation and unleashed the raging torrents of Playoff Narrative, things which are now gushing all over computer screens and running freely over radio waves and coursing in heavy currents across your eyeballs, and that might be as bad as the two losses themselves….
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Fast-Growing Pet-Product Upstart Chewy Is Selling…

Dallas NewsFast-Growing Pet-Product Upstart Chewy Is Selling Out To PetSmart For A Reported $3.35 BillionForbesThis post has been updated to include Chewy’s reported acquisition price. Chewy, the online pet product startup that rocketed to nearly $1 billion in reported sales in the space of five years, may have just set a record for the richest acquisition in …PetSmart Buys Online Pet Retail Rival Chewy.comFortuneall 11 news articles »
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Medical guidelines may mean millions miss…

(Reuters Health) – More than nine million people may miss out on cholesterol-lowering drugs that prevent heart attacks and strokes if doctors choose one set of medical guidelines over another, according to a new study.That’s because the government-backed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) set a higher threshold for use of the drugs, known as statins, than the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (ACC/AHA).”I would say we’re still searching for the perfect guidelines,” said lead author Michael Pencina, of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.The 2013 ACC/AHA guidelines recommend statins for people ages 40 to 75 with at least a 7.5 percent risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years. (The…
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Elizabeth Warren Lays Out the Reasons…

Then came the Trump upset. Now prominent Democrats need to figure out how to be effective leaders of the opposition — as the party’s base sees it, the resistance. Warren’s new book is in effect a manifesto offering one vision about how that role should be played. Is it persuasive? The answer is complicated.Warren lays out a position I’d call enlightened populism. She rails against the growing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite; argues that this concentration of economic rewards has also undermined our political system; and links unequal wealth and power to the stagnating incomes, growing insecurity and diminishing opportunities facing ordinary families. She puts a face on these stresses with capsule portraits…
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To Stay Ahead of Facebook, Snap…

Photo Snap’s new technology allows users to place 3-D cartoon images into their pictures and videos. Credit Snap, Inc. To keep a step ahead of Facebook, Snap is introducing on Tuesday a new feature for its Snapchat ephemeral messaging service that will allow users to place 3-D cartoon objects into their videos and pictures.The technology is similar to the augmented reality used with Pokemon Go, a Nintendo game for mobile devices that overlays digital images on the physical world. Snap’s new technology, a 3-D lens, can also change and shift in response to physical objects.Snap said in a blog post that it launched lenses — which are images that people can superimpose on their selfies — a year and a…
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Trump: Illegal immigrant criminals are ‘getting…

President Trump told Fox News that criminal illegal immigrants are “getting the hell out” of the U.S. or being thrown behind bars, as he also took to Twitter to rail against gangs like MS-13 and the Obama administration policies he claims allowed them to flourish in American cities.  In an interview that aired Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends,” Trump spoke highly of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who is responsible for enforcing Trump’s border policy. Reprising remarks he made at the very start of his presidential bid, he emphasized the importance of removing criminal aliens. “We’ve gotten tremendous criminals out of this country,” Trump said. “I’m talking about illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime. That have murdered people,…
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Shootaround (April 18) — Paul George…

His comments and quips will live on for a long, long time in Grizzlies lore, but as Geoff Calkins of The Commercial Appeal points out, Game 2 was about much more than a sound bite: Fizdale went through all the free throw numbers. His voice rose in bitter volume as he spoke.“It was a very poorly officiated basketball game,” Fizdale said. “Overall, 35 times we shot the ball in the paint, we had 15 free throws for the game. They shot 18 times in the paint and had 32 free throws and Kawhi Leonrd shot more free throws than our whole team! Explain it to me!  We don’t get the respect that these guys deserve because Mike Conley doesn’t go crazy,…
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Kendrick Lamar gives a ‘DAMN.’ Hear…

In this brave new world of corrosive alterna-facts and neo-nuclear heebie-jeebies, let us give thanks for Kendrick Lamar, a rapper brave enough to mop up America’s most pungent funk and blast it back in verbal laser light, sea to shining sea.On his extrasensory new album, “DAMN.,” our hero outlines the ills of the nation — “It’s murder on my street, your street, backstreets, Wall Street, corporate offices, banks, employees and bosses with homicidal thoughts” — then points his finger at a really bad dude: “Donald Trump is in office.” He’s spraying red-hot invective, but his voice is a minty cool spritz. As the world grows more disordered, his vision clears.And who better to trust than a California dreamer who can…
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Alligator crawls out of Louisiana storm…

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — An alligator has been wrangled after crawling out of a storm drain in Louisiana. WWL reports (http://bit.ly/2pbVXFK) a 7-foot (2.13-meter) alligator emerged from a drain in Jefferson Parish on Monday after heavy rains. The drain was located behind an elementary school that wasn’t holding class because of spring break. The alligator did move around, but Bucktown resident Hazel Porter described it as mainly “just chilling.” Video obtained by WWL shows a group of Bucktown residents detaining the alligator by lassoing its neck and tying the rope to a nearby pole as the creature thrashes. Steven Nicholson, a witness, says wildlife professions arrived and taped its mouth shut. The wranglers placed the bound alligator in a pickup…
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In or out? Trump aides to…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s top aides will huddle Tuesday to discuss whether or not the U.S. should remain part of the Paris Climate accord — a global effort to cut down on climate-warming carbon emissions. Officials will be discussing their options, with the goal of providing a recommendation to the president about the path forward, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity, despite the president’s criticism of the use of anonymous sources. The non-binding international agreement was forged in Paris in December 2015 and allowed rich and poor countries to set their own goals to reduce carbon dioxide. It went into effect last November after it was ratified by countries, including the U.S. and…
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