“With Rudy’s speech, to riff on the brilliance of the immortal Molly Ivins, I think I preferred this speech in the original German.”
Day: September 3, 2008
Recommended
NewMexiKen has finished with last week’s New Yorker and three items that are online merit your consideration.
Anthony Lane writes about the second week of the Olympics in Letter from Beijing. It’s a superb piece, especially as a counterweight to the TV coverage. Strongly recommended.
Ryan Lizza writes about politics in Colorado and the new Democratic party in The Code Of The West. Insightful.
And Janet Frame’s 1954 short story Gorse Is Not People is as sad a piece of short fiction as you’d ever care to read.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
I’ve been meaning to write about Vicky Cristina Barcelona the latest flick from Woody Allen. It stars Oscar-winner Javier Bardem as the bohemian Lothario painter and Penélope Cruz as his loco ex, with Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson as the Americans who fall for his charms.
Anyway, it’s an enjoyable film, better than much of Allen’s work, though not among his very best. Bardem is believable, Cruz wonderful, and everybody else right for the role. Well written, of course, and well directed.
Mostly it’s a commercial for life in Barcelona and along the Spanish coast. By the time the film was over, we were yearning for a sidewalk cafe.
No car chases or explosions; some gun shots. PG-13.
And the founder turns over in his grave
Do you miss Beijing? Are you pining for some good ol’ fashioned totalitarianism? Enjoy seeing any small voice squashed like a ladybug under a Hummer?
Then come to the University of Virginia!
At Virginia a new rule bans signs of any kind at all sporting events, including football and basketball.
Rick Reilly tells the story.
A star is born
From the Anchorage Daily News, April 3, 1996, the first appearance of Sarah Palin in any news account:
Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana.
And there, at J.C. Penney’s cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist.
“We want to see Ivana,” said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, “because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.”
Ivana Trump, the former Czechoslovakian Olympic skier who found fame and wealth as the wife of the New York tycoon, came to Anchorage Tuesday to push her line of perfume.
More than 500 people waited as long as half an hour in J.C. Penney to chat with her and receive an autographed photo.
Above via Glenn Greenwald relying on Nexis.
[Note I personally think Sarah Palin is wrong on most issues and stunningly ill-prepared. That stated, I just thought the above was interesting. It isn’t intended as piling on. It’s also the 45th mention of Costco on NewMexiKen.]
Summing up
“[I]t is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is ‘a task from God.'”
It is not about her gender.
And it is not about her daughter, who no major media outlet or politician has criticized. Only the McCain campaign is pushing that issue.
It is about her record, lean as it is, and the way it has been misrepresented by the campaign. And, even more, it is about McCain’s careless approach to a major decision he had months to prepare for.
They screwed up and they’re blaming everyone but themselves.
Oh, and this:
“Three times in recent years, McCain’s catalogs of ‘objectionable’ spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time — Sarah Palin.” (Los Angeles Times)
Best line of the day since the previous best line of the day
“Yesterday, the New Kids on the Block canceled their outdoor concert on the ‘Today’ show because Hurricane Gustav struck Louisiana. Victims of the hurricane are describing it as ‘totally worth it.'”
Conan O’Brien
Best line of the day, so far
“Well in 1984, Sarah Palin came in second in the Miss Alaska Beauty Pageant. Now she could be vice president of the United States. So for the first time in history, a beauty pageant contestant might actually bring about world peace.”
Jay Leno
Not sure we’re being fooled, but we are being mislead
You are being fooled by a shiny, sparkling distraction. My advice: Ignore the pundits and spinmeisters every time they tell you that the McCain campaign chose Gov. Sarah Palin in an effort to deprive Barack Obama of Hillary Clinton voters. Republican leaning pundits use this line because they want to exaggerate Palin’s appeal. Democratic-leaning pundits use this line as a way of mocking McCain for being out of touch with the real concerns of Clinton voters. Non-ideological pundits use this line because they are not reading the polls. It’s too early to tell what impact Palin could have among women voters, but it’s not hard to tell what group of women the McCain campaign hopes to lure. And they are not Hillary Clinton voters. “Hillary got about 10 million women’s votes. There are going to be about 62 million women voters in November,” explains Peter Brown, a pollster at Quinnipiac University. “The Palin stuff is not aimed at the Hillary 10, it’s at the other 52.”
From a longer piece by Michael Scherer at TIME.com: Swampland.
NewMexiKen’s advice: Ignore the pundit and spinmeisters all the time.
September 3rd
Ferdinand Porsche was born in Maffersdorfon in what is now the Czech Republic on this date in 1875. Porsche was an automotive engineer instrumental in the early development and racing of Austrian and German cars, notable at Austro-Daimler (1906-1923) and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (1923-1929). He developed the compressor for Mercedes-Benz and the torsion bar suspension with his own design company in 1931. And he was the leader in the development of the Volkswagen, which began production just before World War II.
It was, however, Ferdinand (Ferry) Porsche, the first Ferdinand Porsche’s son, who built the race and sports cars we recognize today, beginning in 1948.
It’s pronounced like the name Portia — por-sha.
Mark Hopkins was born on this date in 1813. Hopkins came to California in 1849, but to become a merchant not a miner. With Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker, Hopkins established the California Pacific to build east to Utah from Sacramento as part of the first transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific eventually merged with the Southern Pacific, which they — The Big Four — also owned. Today it is part of the Union Pacific, one of the four remaining major rail lines.
Mort Walker is 85 today. He’s the creator of the comic strip Beetle Bailey.
Al Jardine, the only member of the original Beach Boys not related to the others, is 66 today. He sang the lead on “Help Me, Rhonda.”
The Treaty of Paris that formerly ended the American war with Great Britain was signed on this date in 1783, more than eight years after the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.
Article 1:
His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.