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Thursday 5 August 2010
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Barack Obama introduces Elena Kagan as his choice for Supreme Court justice. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Richard Adams: Elena Kagan's confirmation continues the White House's run of victories this year. But now Obama faces a rougher time
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Wednesday 4 August 2010
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The figure used as the shooting gallery target, with 'The Prez' belt buckle and 'Health Bill' in hand. Photograph: lehighvalleylive.com
A carnival game that offered fair-goers the chance to win prizes by shooting a black man has been axed after complaints that the target resembled President Obama.
"I voted for the man. It wasn't meant to be him," Irvin Good Jr, the president of Goodtime Amusements, which ran the attraction, told the Morning Call newspaper. "If they took it that way, we apologise."
The fairground shooting gallery, named "Alien Invasion", appeared at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Big Time Fair in Roseto, Pennsylvania, last month, and attracted complaints for using using a lifesize figure of a black man in a suit, wearing a belt buckle labelled "The Prez" and clutching a rolled-up sheaf of papers marked "Health Bill".
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Tuesday 3 August 2010
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Glenn Beck: rabble-rouser. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP
Over on Comment Is Free, Dan Kennedy has an excellent deconstruction of a Glenn Beck rent-a-rant:
Beck, on his syndicated radio programme, pulled together that and several other audio clips, then launched into one of his signature monologues about "dictatorship", "fascism" and "communism". Drudge linked to the video using the headline "School kids chant: 'I am an Obama scholar'…", as though it were anything more than an attempt to inspire poor kids from a poor city to stay out of gangs and get an education.
In some respects this is another mini-Shirley Sherrod affair: taking a slice of video, distorting it out of context and using it to make ludicrous claims, amplified through the right-wing media.
Beck's not going to go away anytime soon. Maybe we should just stop paying attention?
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Newsweek: sold to 91-year-old audio manufacturer Sidney Harman
Newsweek, the rusting hulk of a news magazine that was once a gleaming media flagship, has been off-loaded by the Washington Post Company to a man who made his fortune selling car stereos and hi-fi equipment.
Sidney Harman, the 91-year-old founder of audio electronics manufacturer Harman International Industries, becomes the new proprietor of Newsweek, after the news weekly was put up for sale in the wake of years of sustained losses – including a $28m operating loss last year.
No figure for the sale was disclosed but the Washington Post Company said it "will not have a material effect" on its balance sheet, suggesting the price tag was insignificant. To make the deal sweeter for Harman, the Post has agreed to pick up redundancy cost for lay-offs the new owner makes, as well as staff pensions.
Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor since 2006, said he will step down when the sale is finalised.
"In seeking a buyer for Newsweek, we wanted someone who feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism," said Washington Post Company chief executive Donald Graham after the sale was announced, setting the bar low.
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Friday 30 July 2010
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Al Gore will not face criminal charges after police said a "lack of credible evidence" means they will not pursue allegations of sex abuse made against the former vice president by a Portland massage therapist.
In a story first reported by the National Enquirer, therapist Molly Hagerty had claimed Gore had assaulted her in a hotel room in Portland, in 2006. Portland detectives reopened an investigation last month and interviewed the 2000 Democratic party presidential candidate.
The Oregonian newspaper reports:
Prosecutors said they declined to pursue the case for several reasons including: Hagerty failed a polygraph test, hotel workers provided conflicting information about that evening and Hagerty appears to have been paid by the National Enquirer, which first broke the story of the accusations.
"Mr Gore unequivocally and emphatically denied this accusation when he first learned of its existence three years ago," a spokeswoman for Al Gore said in a statement. "He respects and appreciates the thorough and professional work of the Portland authorities and is pleased that this matter has now been resolved."
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Another ill-fated attempt to beautify Washington DC. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters
A unfortunate feature of summer in Washington DC – along with humidity and mosquitoes – is The Hill's "50 Most Beautiful", an annual attempt to convince itself that the politicians, staff members and hangers-on in the nation's capital are sexy.
And every year, it fails. For the obvious reason that almost nothing about Washington DC is sexy, certainly not the people who live here.
While we wait for the far more amusing takedown by The DCeiver blog, let's delve into the sad cavalcade of the 50 unfortunates who let themselves be interviewed and photographed for this exercise in futility.
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The frustration of the Democratic party in Congress was illustrated loudly last night by Anthony Weiner, the outspoken congressman from New York City, who lost it on the floor of the House of Representatives.
In stark contrast to the normally sedate debates in Congress, Weiner launched a minute-long harangue at his Republicans opponents for employing procedure tactics to derail a $7bn measure designed to give aid to first responders – firefighters and similar – on the scene at Ground Zero and who subsequently became ill.
Despairing at Republicans who wanted to block the bill in order to use it for their own ends, Weiner erupted:
It is a shame! A shame! If you believe this is a bad idea to provide healthcare, then vote no! But don't give me the cowardly view that 'Oh, if it was a different procedure'.
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Thursday 29 July 2010
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President Barack Obama appears on ABC's The View, with co-hosts from left, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Photograph: Steve Fenn/AP
Richard Adams: Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to appear on a daytime television chat show, The View
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Wednesday 28 July 2010
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Demonstrators protest against Arizona's controversial immigration law in Phoenix. Photograph: Joshua Lott/Reuters
A federal judge today blocked the most controversial measures in an Arizona immigration law, placing an injunction on new police powers only hours before they were to come into effect at midnight.
The ruling delighted the law's opponents, which require Arizona police to demand immigration documents from anyone they have stopped. In practice, say opponents, the new law would target Hispanics and subject them to racial profiling, as well as conflicting with existing federal law and wasting police time.
While the statute remains on Arizona's books, and will take effect at midnight tonight, the ruling by US district judge Susan Bolton means the most controversial provisions are suspended for the time being. That could mean appeals by both supporters and opponents going all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to legal experts.
In her 36-page ruling [pdf], Judge Bolton wrote: "There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new [law]. By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a 'distinct, unusual and extraordinary' burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose."
The US Justice Department, civil rights groups and local police had all asked the court for an injunction by the Ninth US Circuit Court to stop the law – SB 1070 – from going into effect.
Specific sections of the law barred by the ruling include:
• Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped
• Making it a crime for non-citizens to fail to carry immigration papers
• Creating a new crime of seeking to work while not a legal resident
• Allowing police to make arrests without warrants if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be expelled from the US
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Tuesday 27 July 2010
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An update on a news story from last month: an Oregon television station reports that Al Gore, the former vice president and 2000 Democratic party presidential nominee, has been interviewed by police investigating an allegation of "unwanted sexual contact" in 2006.
A law enforcement source confirms to KATU News that Portland detectives interviewed former US Vice President Al Gore this past week in San Francisco.
Portland police detectives interviewed the VP on Thursday, questioning him further about allegations that he sexually abused a licensed Portland massage therapist.
The story was originally broken by the National Enquirer at the end of June, and Portland police reopened an investigation, having previously dropped the case for insufficient evidence.
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Monday 26 July 2010
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US Marines come under Taliban attack in the northeast of Marjah, Afghanistan, earlier this year. Photograph: Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images
While some senior US figures have praised the publication of secret US military files detailing the progress of the war in Afghanistan, other Democrats and Republicans have united to condemn the Wikileaks cache in suprisingly strong terms.
Ross Baker, a professor in politics at Rutgers university and a former staff member for Republican and Democratic members of Congress, was cutting in his denunciation, on the Politico website: "This information is giving aid and comfort to the enemy and begins to look like WikiTreason."
The Republican leadership in Congress is keeping its head down and has avoided public comment – a sensible move, given that the leaks largely come from the Bush administration era and that the party remains committed to the US mission in Afghanistan.
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Wednesday 7 July 2010
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Going nuclear? Richard Nixon confers with Henry Kissinger about bombing somewhere. Photograph: AP
• It's a shame that the foot/mouth-prone Republican party chairman Michael Steele seems to have ridden out the storm over his foolish remarks about Afghanistan being Obama's war – because a bandwagon was starting to roll for an even more amusing candidate:
This is a job for Sarah Palin.... A Chairman Palin would help set the right tone for the Republican party without having to get herself entangled in the minutiae of policy-development, which has not been her forte. Sure, she'd be polarizing, but so is Barack Obama, and these are polarized times.
Wonkette summed it up best: "PLEASE GOD LET THIS HAPPEN OH IT WILL BE SO AWESOME". But some things are just too good to be true.
• Creepy former president news, and more evidence that Richard Nixon was a worse president than George Bush. Recently declassified papers show that Nixon considered nuking North Korea in 1969. That's right: in the middle of the Vietnam war. Well, it was an option.
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Life on the doll: Alvin Greene's plan for getting America back to work. (Pictured are Michelle and Barack Obama action figures from 2008.) Photograph: Reuters
My colleague Ed Pilkington makes the trip to South Carolina to interview the now famous Alvin Greene about his bizarre US Senate candidacy and Democratic primary election victory. Ed does unearth this gem from Greene's fertile brain:
It is clear, too, in the course of the two hours I spend with Greene that he has some pretty wacky ideas that, were he to win in November, would put him among the more unpredictable members of the Senate. At one point, he lurches off on his big idea for how to create jobs in South Carolina.
"Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That's something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It's not something a typical person would bring up. That's something that could happen, that makes sense. It's not a joke."
Except that those sorts of things – plastic childrens' toys – are all made in China these days.
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Thursday 1 July 2010
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George Bush: Yes but was he that bad? Photograph: Reuters
It's time for another one of those pseudo-serious polls rating the US presidents. This one, from Siena College's research institute, asked 238 presidential scholars to rank the 43 presidents [pdf], and judged that George Bush was among the worst of all time.
According to the survey:
Today, just one year after leaving office, the former president has found himself in the bottom five at 39th rated especially poorly in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. Rounding out the bottom five are four presidents that have held that dubious distinction each time the survey has been conducted: Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G Harding, and Franklin Pierce.
To no one's surprise, FDR was ranked as the number one best president, followed by Teddy Roosevelt at number two (he's on the rise, it seems) and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington at three and four.
Let's admit straight away that these sorts of polls, while fun, are silly and pointless, and that no real comparison can be made by politicians of different eras.
With that out of the way, let me say that George Bush does not deserve this calumny – although he does deserve some criticism, as most US presidents do. But this just isn't fair or reasonable.
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Famous image: Elián Gonzalez, aged six, being seized at gunpoint by federal agents from his Miami relatives in 2000. Photograph: Reuters
Richard Adams: Ten years ago, Elián Gonzalez was the centre of the world's attention in a tug of war between forces in Florida and Cuba
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