Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Meredith and Eric took first place at the National Championships with a flawless, beautiful performance… stunned the people online and the commentators with **OMG WHO ARE THESE GUYS!!!** reactions. They can’t go to World Championships until the elder is 14, which is next year. But my god, they were the best I’ve ever seen them, [...]
Michael Jackson commissioned fantasy art about himself that defies description; one of the pieces resembles a Communist Chinese propaganda poster with Comrade Michael leading the oppressed children of the world…just check out the pieces and imagine how much he spent on this stuff. I’m thinking of a Botticelli-like painting like that first one with Bernie [...]
http://bit.ly/6bT2Os (from the Newseum, possibly not good after tonight – front page of today’s Daily Herald) IL_DH (pdf of the page – big center layout of photos of the girls)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225492/page/1 The Power of Two: http://www.newsweek.com/id/225098 Photo gallery of the kids, etc. The Intro picture is particularly stunning. This has been in the works since spring. Newsweek came in with a Pulitzer-award winning photographer who was fresh from covering the White House and Obama and Bush to do the shots. The interviews mostly were around [...]
Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it: Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his [...]
The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that five SEC exams and investigations of Bernie Madoff were incompetently done. I can believe one screwup happened, but five? Five is agency policy to not look too hard. Both Markopolos and an SEC staff accountant testified that it was clear the Boston office’s [...]
John Ensign has decided that he’s not resigning his seat, he’s running for re-election and he’s expecting the voters to forget it as soon after Britney Spears is killed in a love-suicide pact with Lindsey Lohan and CNN spends a week of coverage on the aftermath as possible. Well, whatever keeps his dad’s and the [...]
New Zealander taekwondo champ trying to open a whorehouse in his home country to support his bid to go to the London Olympics in 2012. Well, it’s not as nice as a Wheaties box…
I am singularly uninterested in the Jackson story. I’ve seen enough oddball celebrity circuses, and the really interesting and truly weird stuff will not come out for a while for most people. I expect more news circuses repeated endlessly on the news, and I will ignore them all. Finally, someone sems to be doing something [...]
I absolutely refuse to watch the train wreck of Jon and Kate Plus Eight – haven’t for a while, and I did catch about 10 minutes of the start-of-season one before I got nauseated. I’m hearing stories about their ratings falling apart, and I’m just as glad. First off, while some find the whole thing [...]
I like reading Alonso Duralde’s reviews of movies on MSNBC – I don’t always agree with him, but he’s fun and he catches things I want to know about. Susan (and then Mere) are big fans of the original WITCH MOUNTAIN movies; there’s a lot of the 1970s and 1980s live action Disney that I [...]
More stuff coming out on the octuplet stuff. The dirty secret that many fertility clinics don’t want people to notice is that they sell hope by the very expensive bucketful, and their stats / success rate is actually worse than advertised if you can get past the caveats and BS. But if the people [...]
OMG. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade just got Rickrolled. By Astley himself. Totally SFW, and hilarious if you get the whole rickroll joke.
An interview with Elizabeth Edwards, who is throwing herself into health reform. A random act of kindness by a stranger – you’re at the airport, and you’re overseas from your new spouse, wanting to get home so bad it hurts. The airport staff at check-in tells you that your suitcase is way overweight, and that [...]
Gives Rachel Maddow her own show right after Keith Olbermann. This should be good….yes, Virginia, out Lesbians can host a national news show on TV. “You mean when I started working on AIDS in prisons, was this where I thought it would end up? Yeah. This is pretty much it. Phase forty-seven of my master [...]