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Ruth King

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

My Fair Lady and HashtagMeToo By Marilyn Penn

By on April 21st, 2018

With particularly myopic arrogance, Jesse Green, theater critic of the New York Times, lauds the new production of My Fair Lady as the best one ever because it serves as “an ur-text of the #MeToo movement “(NYT 4/20/18) Never mind the genius of George Bernard Shaw or the combined brilliance of Lerner and Lowe – it took director Bartlett Sher to show us “how history -even if it took 100 years – would eventually start to outgrow its brutes, and how it still might do so compassionately by teaching them a lesson.” We all know the famous quote (falsely attributed to Samuel Goldwyn) “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,” but apparently for Jesse Green, a lesson is even more valuable than a message and we can all go to school on the collective wisdom of such luminaries as Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan.

Mr. Green is also excited by the inclusion of male can-can dancers in drag to enlighten us as to the cleverness of “Get Me To the Church on Time.” One can only hope to read his ecstatic response when Eliza eventually reaches maximum progressive significance as played by a transsexual actor, preferably Black. And why the need to save those outmoded period costumes and set designs? Why not update the staid version of Eliza as a vehicle for Miley Cyrus while she’s still young enough to lash her tongue at Henry Higgins and morph into someone as grand as Beyonce at the Coachella Ball

The contemporary need to keep updating classics to make them relevant usually diminishes them. The main purpose it does serve is to further narrow the imaginations of people incapable of recognizing that newer does not always mean better and that historical mores do not have to duplicate our own in order to hold our attention or respect. Fortunately, the trio of Shaw, Lerner and Lowe are not here to see the debasing comparison of their creativity to the collective mash-up of hashtagMeToo.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline update By Bruce Thompson

By on April 21st, 2018

As one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda to revive both the KeystoneXL and Dakota Access pipelines by expediting the environmental review process. The Dakota Access pipeline is now in full operation. TransCanada’s annual report gives us an update on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Keystone XL In February 2017, we filed an application with the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) seeking approval for the Keystone XL pipeline route through that state and received approval for an alternate route on November 20, 2017. On November 24, 2017, we filed a motion with the Nebraska PSC to reconsider its ruling and permit us to file an amended application that would support their decision and would address certain issues related to their selection of the alternative route. On December 19, 2017, the Nebraska PSC denied this motion. On December 27, 2017, opponents of the Keystone XL project, and intervenors in the Keystone XL Nebraska regulatory proceeding, filed an appeal of the November 20, 2017 PSC decision seeking to have that decision overturned. TransCanada supports the decision of the Nebraska PSC and will actively participate in the appeal process to defend that decision. In March 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued a U.S. Presidential Permit authorizing construction of the U.S./Canada border crossing facilities of the Keystone XL project. We discontinued our claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdrew the U.S. Constitutional challenge. Later in March 2017, two lawsuits were filed in Montana District Court challenging the validity of the Presidential Permit. Along with the U.S. Government, we filed motions for dismissal of these law suits which were denied on November 22, 2017. The cases will now proceed to the consideration of summary judgment motions. In July 2017, we launched an open season to solicit additional binding commitments from interested parties for transportation of crude oil on the Keystone pipeline and for the Keystone XL project from Hardisty, Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The successful open season concluded on October 26, 2017. In January 2018, we secured sufficient commercial support to commence construction preparation for the Keystone XL project. We expect to commence primary construction in 2019 and construction will take approximately two years to complete.”

After seven years of delays under the Obama Administration and the then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Keystone XL pipeline has an approved route and a 20-year commitment for the oil it will carry from Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma, from whence it can be distributed wherever needed throughout the United States. TransCanada is negotiating with landowners along the route for the necessary easements. Those easements will put money into American landowner’s pockets.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NORTH KOREA HALTS ICBM AND NUCLEAR TESTING AHEAD OF SUMMIT By KIM TONG-HYUNG and ERIC TALMADGE

By on April 21st, 2018

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea announced that it will suspend nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile launches ahead of its summits with Seoul and Washington, but stopped short of suggesting it has any intention of giving up its hard-won nuclear arsenal.

The announcement, which sets the table for further negotiations when the summits begin, was made by leader Kim Jong Un at a meeting of the North Korean ruling party’s Central Committee on Friday. It was reported by the North’s state-run media early Saturday.

Kim justified the suspension to his party by saying the situation around North Korea has been rapidly changing “in favor of the Korean revolution” since he announced last year that his country had completed its nuclear forces.

He said North Korea has reached the level where it no longer needs underground testing or test-launching of ICBMs, and added that it would close its nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri, which was already believed to have been rendered unusable due to tunnel collapses after the North’s test of its most powerful bomb to date last year.

The announcement is Kim’s opening gambit to set the tone for summit talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, set for next Friday, and U.S. President Donald Trump, expected in late May or early June.

Trump almost immediately responded with a tweet, saying, “This is very good news for North Korea and the World” and “big progress!” He added that he’s looking forward to his summit with Kim.

South Korea’s presidential office also welcomed North Korea’s announcement as “meaningful progress” toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Presidential official Yoon Young-chan said in a statement that the North’s decision brightens the prospects for successful talks between Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

By Any Means Necessary Russiagate and the Deep State: Kirk Bennett

By on April 21st, 2018

The utility of the Mueller investigation has not been the uncovering of collusion, or even in the badgering of an Administration perceived as loathsome. Rather, it has allowed American elites to avoid facing uncomfortable questions about the factors that put Trump in the White House.

I cannot contemplate the havoc of Russiagate without a shudder of horror not only for my country, but also for myself. How very different my life would have been over the past year or more if I had been one of those Trump volunteers assembled in early 2016 to give the campaign the pretense of having a foreign-policy team. For that matter, it would probably have been enough for me to have volunteered as a neighborhood canvasser to get out the Trump vote (what precious little of it there was) in my community in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Once the charge of collusion with the Kremlin had been leveled against Team Trump, my 40-year association with Russia, much of it as a diplomat, would have made me a prime suspect. A swarm of reporters would have descended on my quiet suburban street, observing my comings and goings and pumping the neighbors for information and pithy sound bites (“He seemed like a quiet, unassuming guy; I would never have thought him capable of such a thing.”).

The fact that I am a nonentity would not have spared me, any more than it has spared Carter Page or George Papadopoulos. Certainly, all my personal and business contacts had been with ordinary, working-level Russians, not the ruling elites. Nevertheless, a few of the Russian diplomats I knew 20 years ago have by now risen through the ranks, and no doubt some of them have presumed intelligence links that could have been used to cast aspersions on my patriotism. And although I knew no one at, say, Rosneft or Gazprom, I’m sure I must have known someone who knows someone in those organizations. A veritable cottage industry could therefore have arisen to contrive a daisy chain of connections, however tenuous and improbable, linking me with the inner sanctum of the Kremlin—the conduit along which cash and information presumably flowed in the supposed collusion that many people deem the only plausible explanation for Trump’s electoral victory.

Perhaps some creative journalist would even have fingered me as the American who explained to the Russians what a purple state is.

My sudden notoriety would have come as a most unwelcome embarrassment to my employer, who might well have felt obliged, however reluctantly, to let me go. Combining unemployment with the imperative to “lawyer up,” I would have been staring bankruptcy in the face and contemplating the disheartening prospect of having to crowdfund my children’s college education, and perhaps even my own retirement.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton on Election Night: ‘They Were Never Going to Let Me Be President’ A new book from Amy Chozick has revelations and rumors about a doomed campaign. Gideon Resnick

By on April 21st, 2018

“No one in modern politics, male or female, has had to withstand more indignities, setbacks and cynicism. She developed protective armor that made the real Hillary Clinton an enigma. But if she was guarded about her feelings and opinions, she believed it was in careful pursuit of a dream for generations of Americans: the election of the country’s first woman president.”

That would have been the nut graf of The New York Times story about Hillary Clinton’s historic victory that would have run under the headline “Madam President” spread across six front-page columns, according to reporter Amy Chozick’s new book, Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling.

Chozick writes that the Clinton campaign, which she covered from the beginning, had reacted furiously to the prospect of a Joe Biden run, as floated first in an August 2015 Maureen Dowd Times column and then in a reported story by Chozick. In the book, she writes that “Biden had confided (off the record) to the White House press corps that he wanted to run, but he added something like ‘You guys don’t understand these people. The Clintons will try to destroy me.’”

Throughout the book, Chozick refers to her fellow journalists in the small pool that flew on the campaign plane as “Travelers,” while referring to many Clinton staffers collectively as “The Guys.”

Asked to comment on the book, a former campaign staffer who’s referred to in it as one of “The Guys” told The Daily Beast: “The challenge on the campaign was that you had a reporter holding the Clintons to a higher standard through a lower standard of reporting. Amy was not always an honest broker, and this book seems to be more of the same. It ridicules people with a smile, contributing little to the public discourse.”

From early on, the Clinton camp saw Trump as an enemy to encourage, Chozick writes. During the campaign, as had been previously reported, there was an effort to elevate Trump into a so-called Pied Piper in order to tie him to the mainstream of the Republican Party.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The $173 Million IRS Tech Team #Failed Adam Andrzejewski

By on April 21st, 2018

Uncle Sam’s top tech team choked on game day.

The NFL has Super Bowl Sunday. Horses have the Kentucky Derby. The IRS has Tax Day. But not even 1,500 highly compensated tech employees at the IRS could keep the website running on the most important day of the year.

Although tax season is busy throughout March and April, it all comes down to one day. And this year, on April 17, when millions of taxpayers tried to file their 2017 tax returns on IRS.gov, they were halted by a system-wide computer failure, receiving the following notice:

“Planned outage: April 17, 2018 – December 31, 9999… We apologize for any inconvenience. Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available.”

IRS Chief Information Officer Silvana Garza and her two deputy chief information officers, Karen Freeman and Marla Somerville, each made $185,100 in 2017. Additionally, Somerville received a $24,746 bonus, while disclosures show that Freeman received two bonuses totaling $61,766.

At the top of the list is the Director of Online Engagement, Operations Media. James Hammond held the position for five years before retiring to the private sector in 2017. As the senior executive in charge of the IRS website, Hammond made $240,100 – the highest base salary at the entire agency. Michele Causey was promoted to fill the spot. Ms. Causey left her executive officer position where she made $161,900 last year plus a $4,809 bonus.

The IRS handles plenty of confidential and sensitive information, and agency officials claim cybersecurity is a top priority. Rightly so, the cybersecurity employees at the IRS are highly compensated.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Condoleezza Rice Goes to the Seashore David Goldman

By on April 21st, 2018

In Jules Dassin’s 1960 comedy Never on Sunday Melina Mercouri’s Piraeus demimondaine weeps at the awful denouement of “Medea,” but cheers up when the actors take their curtain call. They didn’t die after all, Mercouri exclaims, adding, “And they all went to the seashore.” Former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice has written a report, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, on the tragic failure of democratic movements in the Middle East, Russia, and elsewhere, but with the sad bits left out. So convinced is she of democracy’s inevitable triumph that every story has a happy ending.

Iran’s regime “may for a time prevent the Iranian people from rising against their government, but it almost ensures that when they do, the landing will not be a soft one for the regime or the country.” Rice reports her “shock” when Hamas terrorists won the 2006 Palestinian elections urged by the State Department (so shocked, she says, that she called the State Department watch officer from her elliptical workout to confirm the news). She learned, she tells us, that “armed groups should not participate in the electoral process.” The remedy lies in “nurturing a diverse set of institutions…empowering entrepreneurs and businessmen, educating and empowering women, and encouraging social entrepreneurs and local civic organizations.” She praises former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who told her that the P.A.’s security services were “a bunch of gangsters,” but does not bother to mention that Fayyad was fired in 2013 after he failed to make a dent in the P.A.’s kleptocracy.

* * *

Of Hosni Mubarak’s fall and the Egyptian military’s return to power she declares that “the Egyptian people were calling for [Mubarak’s] immediate ouster” in February 2011. By the people, she means the fraction of Egypt’s population that fit into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Then the Muslim Brotherhood “won an impressive victory in peaceful elections.” Unfortunately, the Brotherhood’s president, Mohamed Morsi, had an “Islamic and autocratic tilt” and “was blamed, whether fairly or not, for attacks on religious minorities.” In July 2013 the military overthrew him, after “violent protests swept the country, with millions of Morsi supporters and millions of his critics facing off.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In London, Three Billboards & a Jonathan In London on 17 April, three billboards eloquently protested the ongoing shame of antisemitism within the British Labour Party.

By on April 20th, 2018

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/04/in-london-three-billboards-jonathan.html   Legendary pro-Israel activist Jonathan Hoffman was interviewed that same day regarding Corbyn and the Corbynistas’ despicable stance. https://videos.metro.co.uk/video/met/2018/04/17/8225605948739072762/640x360_MP4_8225605948739072762.mp4

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

John O’Sullivan As Goes Hungary…

By on April 20th, 2018

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has married the disaffected blue-collar vote to traditional supporters of the mainstream Right. That’s why he’s loved and loathed across Europe—and why his government’s survival or rejection at the upcoming election has a significance far beyond his nation’s borders.

About a month ago in Hódmezővásárehely, a town in the south-east of Hungary (population 47,019, local attractions include thermal bathing), there was a small political earthquake. A local independent candidate in an election for the local mayoralty, Peter Marki Zay, who was supported by all the opposition parties, easily defeated the front-runner from the governing Fidesz party by a healthy margin of sixteen points.

This was a surprise on every count: the polls had suggested an easy Fidesz win; the town was regarded as a stronghold of Fidesz—an earlier mayor, Janos Lazar, is now effectively the deputy prime minister—and the national opinion polls have been predicting a major victory for the Fidesz party and Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the forthcoming general election on April 8.

Was this upset the promise of a bigger upset? If so, it would be an international upset, since Orban is a symbol of the “populist” upsurge throughout Europe and thus a scare-figure for the international Left, the European Commission, and those who see the election of populists as a threat to “liberal democracy”.

At once there was an outburst of optimistic rejoicing among Orban’s many opponents along the lines of … a Fidesz triumph wasn’t a foregone conclusion … if the opposition parties united as they had done in Hódmezővásárehely … the mathematics for an opposition victory were there … and so on. International reporters are now making their way to Budapest; the caravan has moved in for the kill.

In Brussels Jean-Claude Juncker has crossed his fingers in the hope of an Orban defeat that would mark the second death for populism—this time perhaps a more permanent death than Emmanuel Macron’s slaying of populism in the French elections had proved before populism revived in the German and Italian elections.

Orban himself did not discourage this kind of speculation. Indeed, he voiced it himself. There’s no doubt that the opposition could win, he grieved. And his people have been wearing glum faces around town, shaking their heads mournfully, and regretting that Fidesz will probably not get the two-thirds parliamentary majority it won in the last two elections.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

President Trump vs. the Foreign Policy Swamp by David Goldman

By on April 20th, 2018

President Trump’s decision to postpone new economic sanctions against Russia on Monday brought some clarity to the foreign policy fight in Washington. The issue isn’t whether UN Ambassador Nikki Haley gets confused, as she waspishly denied, but the fact that the president is fighting the swamp single-handed. Here’s the Financial Times’ snarky Edward Luce in a blast email this morning:

The explanation is simple. Everyone in the Trump administration is really hawkish on Russia. Except the president. On most days the train simply keeps running without him. People such as Haley talk to Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, John Bolton, the national security advisor, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and so on, and agree on what ought to be done.

Under the headline “Trump, a reluctant hawk, has battled his top aides on Russia and lost,” The Washington Post reported April 15 that the White House national security bamboozled the president about last month’s expulsion of Russian diplomats. Trump was told that he had to expel 60 Russians to match what the Europeans were doing.

The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on…Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. “There were curse words,” the official said, “a lot of curse words.”

The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration’s increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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