If media reports are to be believed, Governor Hochul and the state’s legislative leaders are inching toward a budget deal this week. The big issues – housing, K-12 education funding, Medicaid – have been getting all of the airtime, but there are many other important policies that are in play.

A major celestial event occurred at our house this week. It’s not the one you’re thinking of. Indeed, the total eclipse of the sun turned out to be a partial bust. Thick clouds rolled in approximately half an hour before totality – or the ninety-five percent of it we were granted in our part of the Hudson Valley – and didn’t part for a good sixty minutes.

It's time to roll back this week's highlights from the WAMC Listener Comment Line.

I feel like I write some version of this topic every couple of years, only with a different sport and a different city. It might be St. Louis, or the Nets, or the Raiders.

Neither Israel, Hamas nor the Palestinians are working for peace. If Israel wanted peace it would have throttled the so-called “settlers” years ago and protected the Palestinian population. Hamas made it’s aversion to peace obvious in the brutality of their Oct. 7 attack – they got what they wanted in Israel’s brutal response.

There’s an art to the put-down, but it seems to be vanishing. You know, if you say someone’s brain is the size of a pea, you get the point across, but it’s not as memorable as, say, the approach taken by Will Rogers, who once said of a politician that “if his brain was gunpowder, he wouldn’t have enough to blow the wax out of his ears.” That, folks is rhetorical art.

As they enter a second week of late budget negotiations, Governor Hochul and the state’s legislative leaders reportedly are focusing on their top budget priorities: funding for K-12 education, Medicaid, and housing. An important looming issue that has drawn little media attention is the effort to put the largest fossil fuel companies on the financial hook for New York’s burgeoning climate damage costs.

I don’t feel depressed. I’m actually sleeping more soundly than normal. My appetite remains robust. I’m able to focus. Energy is good. My self-esteem is relatively sturdy.

I was moved to tears watching a discussion on television about the six immigrant workers who lost their lives filling potholes on the Key Bridge in Baltimore when that giant container ship lost power and knocked the bridge down. I thought of the loss of crucial bread-winning family members. I was impressed that all of these men were immigrants specifically from Central America and Mexico. I was impressed that they were deep in the fabric of American society many having been here for 18 yeas or more, yet, at the same time, they were regularly sending money back to “the old country,” just as countless European immigrants did in the 19th century.

You said it! Let's hear it. Here are this week's highlights from the WAMC Listener Comment Line.