The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Odd Bedfellows?' Edition...
On Labor Day, the Michigan's largest construction trade union (Carpenters and Millwrights with 18,000 members) broke ranks with other major unions (UAW, AFL-CIO, AFSCME) and endorsed the GOP candidate, Rick Snyder, for governor instead of the Democratic candidate, Virg Bernero.
Breaking with Dems, carpenters union planning to back Snyder | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
Is it ever appropriate for a Union to back a GOP candidate?
(Please feel free to comment with yer response)
1.) No! Never! _________
2.) Yes, sometimes _______
Send your response to
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: 1938 in 2010 (nytimes.com)
The inadequacy of the Obama administration's initial economic stimulus has landed it - and the nation - in a political trap.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: America's History of Fear (nytimes.com)
Hysteria about Islam is but a modern echo of past American worries about Catholics, Jews and others.
NINA BERNSTEIN: Relatives of Interned Japanese-Americans Side With Muslims (nytimes.com)
…many scholars have drawn parallels and contrasts between the internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the treatment of hundreds of Muslim noncitizens who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks, then held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported.
Connie Schultz: One Man's Life Is Spared, but That Isn't Enough (creators.com)
In 1999, Rachel Troutman was sleepwalking through college, when a public defender came to her criminology class and gave a speech that shook her wide-awake.
Mark Shields: Labor Day Is the Real New Year's (creators.com)
Labor Day marks the official end of summer. Schools and colleges are all open. Temperatures drop, and days grow shorter. Seasons are changing, and so, too, are we. If you think about it, Labor Day, not Jan.1, in the middle of winter, is the real New Year's - which means resolutions.
Oliver Burkeman: Power to the people… or not (guardian.co.uk)
'To be happier you have to turn sad thoughts and feelings into happy ones. Right?'
"Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?" By THOMAS GEOGHEGAN: A conversation with Alex Jung
Since the start of the recession, the number of unemployed in the U.S. has doubled. Those who are fortunate enough to still have jobs are often working longer hours for less pay, with the ever-present threat of losing being laid off. But even before the recession, American workers were already clocking in the most hours in the West.
Roger Ebert: Review of "The American" (4 stars; rated R)
"The American" allows George Clooney to play a man as starkly defined as a samurai. His fatal flaw, as it must be for any samurai, is love. Other than that, the American is perfect: Sealed, impervious and expert, with a focus so narrow it is defined only by his skills and his master. Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Steven Zeitchik: Michelle Rodriguez: Machete reminds me of...Barack Obama (latimes.com)
Before she signed on to make "Machete," the campy celebration of the eponymous Latino legend, Michelle Rodriguez had pretty much decided she didn't want to make a movie about her own culture.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind" (3 ˝ stars; An Overlooked DVD)
I had not read the autobiography of Chuck Barris when I went to see "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." Well, how many people have? So I made an understandable error. When the movie claimed that the game show creator had moonlighted as a CIA hit man, I thought I was detecting a nudge from the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman.
David Bruce: The Coolest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes
A Kindle Book: $1.
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Marsha in TN
Hummingbird Moth
Hey Marty:
I took this picture yesterday in our back garden - one of the beautiful Hummingbird Moths and a little Skipper Butterfly. Enjoy.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Even thicker, soupier marine layer.
Cyclists Bare All
Philly
Hundreds of naked and partially nude cyclists have pedaled their way through Philadelphia to promote bicycling awareness and cleaner air.
Some of the buff bikers wore body paint, some were in bathing suits and some were completely naked.
This was the second year for the Philly Naked Bike Ride. Similar rides have taken place in more than 70 cities worldwide since 2004.
Philly
Critics Give Thumbs Down To Paintings
Bob Dylan
Art critics dismissed Bob Dylan as an amateur painter and said his work had no place in Denmark's largest museum, after the American music icon's new painting collection opened in Copenhagen.
"When we talk about music, Bob Dylan is one of the great Picassos of the 20th century, but this is not the case for his painting," said the daily Berlingske Tidende after "The Brazil Series" opened on Saturday.
"Bob Dylan paints like any other amateur, using a rather oafish figurative style," said the art history professor Peter Brix Soendergaard, interviewed by the daily Information. "He is what we used to call a Sunday painter."
The financial newspaper Boersen turned its criticism to the the Statens Museum for Kunst's management, which it said "put financial interest ahead of artistic judgement", knowing that the Dylan name "would bring in a big public".
Bob Dylan
Rare Color Footage Found
London Blitz
Rare color footage of the bomb damage inflicted on London during World War II has surfaced on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.
The dramatic footage shows the destruction of several London landmarks, including the flagship John Lewis store on Oxford Street.
The film was released Monday by Westminster Council to mark the start of the devastating German bombing campaign that began September 7, 1940, and continued until May 1941.
The film was found in the attic by the family of an air raid warden who shot it on the home movie equipment in use in the 1940s.
London Blitz
Art Collection On Auction Block
Jerry Hall
Model Jerry Hall plans to auction off 14 of her artworks next month, including a famous portrait by Lucian Freud that shows her nude when she was eight months pregnant.
The auction by Sotheby's will also include works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, David Bailey and other prominent artists collected by Hall, ex-wife of Rolling Stone Mick Jagger.
The auction house said Monday the works will be sold on Oct. 15-16 as part of a larger contemporary art sale.
Sotheby's says the Lucian Freud portrait called "Eight Months Gone" is the centerpiece of the auction and is expected to fetch more than 300,000 pounds ($460,000).
Jerry Hall
MDA Telethon
Jerry Lewis
Despite the struggling economy, officials with the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon say contributions and pledges from this year's Labor Day event totaled $58.9 million.
While the amount was down from $60.5 million last year and a record $65 million in 2008, Lewis said he was pleased with the support to advance the research and service programs of the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
The 45th annual telethon originated for the fifth consecutive year from the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas and reached some 40 million viewers through 170 television stations.
Jerry Lewis
Cancels London Appearance
Tony 'The Poodle' Blair
Tony Blair on Monday canceled a planned public appearance in London to promote his new memoir over concerns about potential disruption from protesters.
The former British prime minister said he didn't "want the public to be inconvenienced by the inevitable hassle caused by protesters," during his appearance on Wednesday at Waterstone's bookstore in central London.
Earlier, Blair told ITV television that a bookstore signing session could cause unnecessary "hassle and cost" for police. Protesters demonstrating against Blair's decision to join the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq hurled shoes and eggs at him in Dublin on Saturday.
Anti-war demonstrators had planned to rally outside Blair's signing, and he said he was also worried that the far right British National Party might attempt to cause trouble.
Tony 'The Poodle' Blair
Bahamas Drops Charges In Extortion Case
John Travolta
A judge in the Bahamas dismissed charges Monday against two people accused of trying to extort money from John Travolta after the actor decided he no longer wanted to face the pain of a new trial stemming from the death of his teenage son on the island chain.
Prosecutor Neil Braithwaite had submitted a motion to drop the case just as a retrial was about to start for the two defendants.
"The Travolta family has said that this matter has caused them unbelievable stress and pain and they wish to put this whole thing behind them," Braithwaite told the court after a jury had been picked to hear the case.
Ambulance driver Tarino Lightbourne and his attorney, politician Pleasant Bridgewater, were accused of threatening to release private information about the January 2009 death of Travolta's 16-year-old son, Jett, at the family vacation home in Grand Bahama.
John Travolta
Official Defends Quick Release From Jail
Paris Hilton
Las Vegas police are defending the quick release of Paris Hilton from jail after her Aug. 27 arrest on suspicion of cocaine possession, saying they wanted to avoid disruptions in the jail's operations.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Monday that Hilton was out of the jail in about three hours, roughly half the average time it takes to process people facing the same charge through the Clark County Detention Center.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Deputy Chief Jim Dixon, who runs the jail, acknowledges Hilton was pushed through the booking process in order to get her into a separate room and out of the jail as soon as possible.
He says celebrities such as Hilton draw attention from other inmates, and his officers would have had to try to keep inmates away from her.
Paris Hilton
Says Bad Publicity Behind Release
Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan, the actor made famous by the "Crocodile Dundee" films, said the bad publicity surrounding his dispute with the Australian tax office had forced it to lift travel restrictions on him.
Hogan, who was banned from leaving his homeland in mid-August after returning Down Under for his mother's funeral, arrived back in the US late Sunday and immediately launched another attack on Australian tax officials.
The 70-year-old said tax bureaucrats had only allowed him to leave because of the negative publicity generated by their travel ban.
"I have come to this great tax haven, the USA, where the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) are gentlemen compared to our lot," Hogan said.
Paul Hogan
Battles Image Problems
Brazil
With Brazil's film industry in the midst of a major resurgence, local filmmakers, intent on chronicling the country's character in unflinching fashion, find themselves at odds with a strategy to improve the global perception that Brazil is a crime-ridden land with little to offer the international film community.
Regardless of image concerns, within the local film sector plenty has changed and optimism is running at an all-time high. Box office revenues rose 33% in 2009, while the market share for indigenous releases was up 43% to 14.2%, according to Pedro Buchter, editor of preeminent local film trade Filme B.
Massive initiatives, both private and state-sponsored, plan to add several hundred more screens to the market in the next few years. In the private sector Mexican exhibitor Cinepolis, new to the territory, is investing $284 million into unveiling 290 new screens in the next two years, while the government's Cinema Near You program will extend low-interest credit lines to national exhibitors who build in small towns or highly populated urban areas that lack theaters.
Besides the expected growth in exhibition, well-funded new film schools and state-of-the-art studio facilities, government-sponsored groups like Cinema do Brasil and Riofilme are actively championing Brazil as a welcoming place to make movies.
Brazil
Activists Convicted Of Theft
Whale Meat
A Japanese court on Monday convicted two members of the environmental group Greenpeace of stealing whale meat they claim was intended for illegal consumption.
The Aomori District Court gave suspended sentences to the activists after finding them guilty of stealing 50 pounds (23 kilograms) of whale meat from a delivery service company's warehouse in April 2008. The meat came from whales killed during Japan's government-backed research hunts.
Japan hunts whales along its coastal waters and in the Antarctic under the research exemption to the 1986 ban on whaling by the International Whaling Commission. Critics say the scientific hunts are a cover for commercial whaling because the meat from the killed whales mostly ends up in restaurants, stores and school lunches.
Junichi Sato, 33, and Toru Suzuki, 43, were sentenced to one year in prison for theft and trespassing, but they will not serve jail time, Greenpeace and court officials said.
Whale Meat
Wikipedia 'Plagiarism' Row
Michel Houellebecq
Sexist, obscene, racist were the accusations thrown at Michel Houellebecq over his previous novels. Now it's plagiarism, after France's best-known living writer allegedly cut and pasted chunks of Wikipedia into his new book.
"La carte et le territoire" (The Map and the Territory) has just hit the bookshops in time for France's frenzied autumn publishing season and is a favourite to win the prestigious Goncourt literary prize in November.
But on Monday the writer, who now lives in Spain after several years in Ireland, found himself plunged yet again into controversy after the website Slate.fr said he had copied text from Wikipedia.
The article titled "The Possibility of Plagiarism" noted at least three passages apparently lifted from the French-language edition of the user-generated online encyclopedia.
Michel Houellebecq
Money Can Buy It
Happiness
They say money can't buy happiness. They're wrong.
People's emotional well-being - happiness - increases along with their income up to about $75,000, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For folks making less than that, said Angus Deaton, an economist at the Center for Health and Wellbeing at Princeton University, "Stuff is so in your face it's hard to be happy. It interferes with your enjoyment."
Deaton and Daniel Kahneman reviewed surveys of 450,000 Americans conducted in 2008 and 2009 for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index that included questions on people's day-to-day happiness and their overall life satisfaction.
Happiness got better as income rose but the effect leveled out at $75,000, Deaton said. On the other hand, their overall sense of success or well-being continued to rise as their earnings grew beyond that point.
Happiness
Weekend Box Office
'The American'
George Clooney's hitman tale "The American" has captured the top spot at the box office with a $16.4 million debut over the long Labor Day weekend.
The 20th Century Fox revenge romp "Machete" and Sony's heist thriller "Takers" were in a duel for second-place.
"Machete" led with $14 million from Friday to Monday. "Takers" followed with $13.5 million, though the two movies were close enough that rankings could change once final numbers are released Tuesday.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Tuesday.
1. "The American," $16.4 million.
2. "Machete," $14 million.
3. "Takers," $13.5 million.
4. "The Last Exorcism," $8.8 million.
5. "Going the Distance," $8.6 million.
6. "The Expendables," $8.5 million.
7. "The Other Guys," $6.7 million.
8. "Eat Pray Love," $6.3 million.
9. "Inception," $5.9 million.
10. "Nanny McPhee Returns," $4.7 million.
'The American'
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