Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Growth of Family Income (Chart)
Growing Together and Growing Apart.
Susan Estrich: The Goings On at Goldman (Creators Syndicate)
Midlevel executives at big Wall Street firms leave every day of the week, particularly if - as was the case with Greg Smith - they've worked somewhere for 11 years and haven't "made" managing director. Usually, the departures are "friendly," even if they really aren't. You use your credentials - and the references - from that top firm to get a job with a slightly less top firm or with a client or affiliate. What you don't do is trash your old firm, which makes you a pariah.
Mark Shields: In 2012, Are We Americans Citizens or Consumers? (Creators Syndicate)
In 2007, my friend and colleague on "PBS NewsHour," Jim Lehrer, interviewed resident George W. Bush and asked the following question about the U.S. wars then being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan: "Why have you not, as president of the United States, asked more Americans and more American interests to sacrifice something? The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They're the only ones who are actually sacrificing anything at this point."
Connie Schultz: Faith in Alabama (Creators Syndicate)
There's been a lot of coverage this week about a poll that claims that more than half of Alabamians think President Barack Obama is not a Christian, but a Muslim. This doesn't pass the straight-face test with anyone talking to a lot of people in Alabama. As a number of journalists there pointed out to me, you always can find people willing to say crazy things. That's as true in Ohio, where I live, as it is in Alabama. But something's fishy.
Tom Danehy: The entrenched bureaucrats with the Arizona Interscholastic Association continue to stumble (Tucson Weekly)
The late, great Chris Limberis, whose spirit will forever grace this publication and whose journalistic jock I was never even able to contemplate carrying, always told me that the crooks were easy to get; it was the entrenched bureaucrats, who answer to no one, at whom you really have to hammer away. Chris said that the bureaucrat can absorb two or three body blows, lie low for a while, and emerge stronger, more entrenched and even less likely to give a damn about anything after the public's short attention span kicks in.
Amanda Craig: "The Hunger Games and the teenage craze for dystopian fiction" (Telegraph)
Wizards and vampires are out. The market in teen fiction is dominated now by societies in breakdown. And it's girls who are lapping them up.
Henry Rollins: Rebelling in Sweet Home Alabama (LA Weekly)
Whenever I'm here, I think of America's turbulent past and of the rebel flag that you sometimes see on car bumpers and elsewhere in this part of the country. It is a symbol that holds many different meanings, depending on whom you ask. To this day, its appearance can get emotions running hot. To me, it's an appendage of America's past, not offensive, just sad.
Forrest Wickman: Jack White Returns to the Sound He Always Should Have Had (Slate)
White's vaguely coded, food-related sexual metaphors channel an era when being more explicit wasn't a possibility on air-here as ever one gets the sense that White is living in a slightly updated version of the late '50s or early '60s. For this reason I've never been as excited about White as many of his other fans. Still, he does vintage rock better than anyone else-sorry, Black Keys-and I'm excited that with 'Blunderbuss,' he's finally giving himself his due.
Robert Lloyd: "Commentary: 'South Park' is Still Killing It" (LA Times)
Sixteen years of "South Park - it began so long ago that Patrick Duffy was the subject of a joke in its second episode - sounds even more amazing than 23 years of "The Simpsons," given the younger show's habitual profanity, vulgarity and violence. But that is also obviously part of its appeal and, indeed, often its very point.
Five Controversial Murals (Neatorama)
We all know that some of the best art is controversial, but these five murals might be crossing the line. Or are they? Read up on these works of art and decide for yourself whether they warranted alteration or removal.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bosko Suggests
Clock Towers
Have a great day,
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Thanks, Bosko!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cold and rainy. Warmer in NYC.
Arrested In Protest At Sudanese Embassy
George Clooney
Actor George Clooney and his father have been arrested at a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington.
The protesters accuse Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, of provoking a humanitarian crisis and blocking food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains in the county's border region with South Sudan.
Clooney, his father, Nick and others, including Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia and NAACP President Ben Jealous, were arrested after being warned three times not to cross a police line outside the embassy. They were handcuffed and placed into a U.S. Secret Service van.
Clooney said earlier that he hopes to draw more attention to the issue and that if action is not taken in the next three to four months "we're going to have a real humanitarian disaster."
George Clooney
Not A Journalist
Mike Daisey
Mike Daisey, a burly man who makes a living telling stories, has found himself in the middle of a storm of controversy - put there by his own words.
The performer had to admit Friday that much of his latest monologue, in which he describes iPhones and iPads being made in Chinese sweatshops, is a mix of fact and fiction, something he failed to point out during a media blitz promoting his critically acclaimed piece.
"It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity," Daisey said in a statement posted on his website. He did not answer questions sent to his personal email account and his publicist did not return request for comment Saturday.
The firestorm started after Ira Glass, the host of the popular public radio show "This American Life," aired an interview in which Daisey acknowledged some claims in his one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" weren't true, and Glass said he couldn't vouch for the truth of a Jan. 6 broadcast based on the show.
The New York Times, The Associated Press and dozens of other media and entertainment outlets, from MSNBC to Bill Maher's show on HBO, also were misled.
Mike Daisey
'Kony' Video
Jason Russell
Jason Russell may be the most public face of Invisible Children, the non-profit group he co-founded to stop African war atrocities. He narrates a 30-minute video on warlord Joseph Kony that went viral on the Internet.
Less than two weeks after the video's smashing success, Invisible Children is facing the prospect of carrying on without Russell - at least for a while. He was briefly detained by police and hospitalized after witnesses saw him running through streets in his underwear, screaming and banging his fists on the pavement.
Danica Russell said late Friday that her husband "did some irrational things brought on by extreme exhaustion and dehydration." She denied that alcohol or drug use triggered the behaviour.
"We thought a few thousand people would see the film, but in less than a week, millions of people around the world saw it. While that attention was great for raising awareness about Joseph Kony, it also brought a lot of attention to Jason and, because of how personal the film is, many of the attacks against it were also very personal, and Jason took them very hard," she said.
Jason Russell
Hospital News
Gallagher
Doctors have decided to wait before bringing the comedian Gallagher out of the medically induced coma he was put in after his heart attack last week in Texas.
Doctors had planned to wake the 65-year-old comedian on Saturday. But his promotional manager, Christine Scherrer, says he was trying to wake on his own. Doctors are keeping him sedated because they want to wake him slowly. She says they may try Sunday.
Scherrer says the comedian had two stents replaced after collapsing Wednesday before a performance at a bar in Lewisville, a Dallas suburb.
Gallagher
Pressured Komen Over Planned Parenthood
Benny's Minions
When he visited the United States four years ago, Pope Benedict XVI blessed a box of silver ribbon-shaped pins for breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure and sent them to its founder, Nancy Brinker.
Brinker was touched by the gesture and thanked the pontiff in person on the day of his departure.
Pope Benedict's blessings marked a high point in the Komen charity's relationship with the Catholic church. But even before the papal jetliner touched down at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington in 2008, American church leaders had already begun to emerge as critics of Komen's longstanding ties to Planned Parenthood, the women's health organization whose services include birth control and abortion.
Internal Komen documents reviewed by Reuters reveal the complicated relationship between the Komen Foundation and the Catholic church, which simultaneously contributes to the breast cancer charity and receives grants from it. In recent years, Komen has allocated at least $17.6 million of the donations it receives to U.S. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities.
Church opposition reached dramatic new proportions in 2011, when the 11 bishops who represent Ohio's 2.6 million Catholics announced a statewide policy banning church and parochial school donations to Komen.
Benny's Minions
Assuming The Mantle Of Victim
Michael Brodkorb
Michael Brodkorb once was the bane of Minnesota Democrats, a savvy and aggressive operative whose scorched-earth approach to politics - showcased on a blog called "Minnesota Democrats Exposed!" - fueled his rise to dual roles as deputy chairman of the state GOP and chief spokesman for Senate Republicans.
Today, he's as toxic to his own party as he ever was to Democrats. Fired late last year from his Senate job after an adulterous affair with the majority leader - his boss - Brodkorb is now threatening a $1.5 million wrongful termination lawsuit that his attorney says could expose more than a dozen other Capitol affairs.
Whatever the motive, the mere possibility Brodkorb may expose alleged infidelities has rocked Senate Republicans and sent politicians of every stripe running for cover.
Ludeman fired Brodkorb without public explanation in late December, one day after Sen. Amy Koch abruptly quit her leadership post. When Koch later admitted she'd had an affair, widespread speculation had Brodkorb as the other half. But that wasn't confirmed until this week when Brodkorb's attorney said the two, both married to other people, had been in an intimate relationship.
Brodkorb's potential lawsuit rests on a gender discrimination claim that even his attorney called "new and creative:" that he was treated differently as a man who had an affair with a female superior, in contrast to numerous female legislative employees he claims never lost their jobs despite affairs with male legislators.
Michael Brodkorb
Execs Barred From Leaving Brazil
Chevron
A judge barred 17 Chevron executives from around the world from leaving Brazil in an oil spill investigation as prosecutors readied new charges over a second spill involving the US energy giant, local media reported Saturday.
The Chevron brass -- five US nationals, five Brazilians, three Australians, two French nationals, a Canadian and a Briton -- can only leave Brazil with court approval, Judge Vlamir Costa of Rio de Janeiro state ruled.
In November, Chevron was blamed for a major spill in the Frade Field area off Rio de Janeiro state, with Brazil's National Petroleum Agency (ANP) calculating that some 3,000 barrels of crude were spilled.
Brazilian authorities as a result suspended all of Chevron's drilling operations and denied it access to huge new offshore fields, which ANP says have reserves that could surpass 100 billion barrels of high-quality recoverable oil.
Thursday, Chevron reported a minor spill in the same area that caused it to stop production in Brazil. The company has not said if the two spills are related but authorities suspect the second was caused by the first.
Chevron
Spaniards Protest Noot's Banker
Madrid
Around 200 people in downtown Madrid are protesting a project that aims to build six casinos and 12 hotels and create jobs in a country where unemployment is more than 20 percent.
Madrid has been selected by Sheldon Adelson (R-1%), 78, and his company Las Vegas Sands to be the site of a vast complex called Eurovegas. But protesters say the plan will cost Spain more in grants, concessions and social problems than it can yield in benefits.
Protester Rafael Cordoba, an architect, says the "Las Vegas-style" job creation model proposed by Adelson was fraught with problems that are costly to repair, such as promoting gambling, alcohol and tobacco addiction and attracting prostitution.
Protesters on Saturday claimed the complex would also ultimately require state funding to become a reality.
Madrid
Issues Ultimatum
Vatican't
The Vatican on Friday told an ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholic splinter group they must accept non-negotiable doctrinal principles within a month or risk a painful break with Rome that would have "incalculable" consequences.
The ultimatum was issued after a two-hour meeting between Swiss-born Bishop Bernard Fellay, leader of the dissident Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and U.S. Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's doctrinal department.
The SSPX, which rejects reforms made at the historic 1962 Second Vatican Council, defied Rome in 1988 by illegally consecrating four bishops, triggering their excommunication by the late Pope John Paul.
In a gesture of reconciliation, Pope Benedict lifted those bans in 2009 and promoted the use of the traditional Latin Mass favored by the SSPX.
But Benedict has refused to grant SSPX bishops the right to reject some of the Council's teachings, such as its historic reconciliation with Judaism and other faiths.
Vatican't
Keith & Mick
Rolling Stones
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has apologized to Mick Jagger for derogatory comments he made about the lead singer in his 2010 memoir "Life", which caused a rift within the band.
In comments reported by Rolling Stone magazine, the two rock'n'roll veterans agreed it was time to move on.
Fans will be relieved to see them burying the hatchet, as the row had threatened to undermine plans to celebrate the Rolling Stones' 50th anniversary this year and to go on another world tour.
Some industry sources had put the delay down to the argument between Richards and Jagger, but Rolling Stone said it may be more closely linked to concerns over Richards' health.
"The quality of the guitarist's performances declined after he suffered a head injury on vacation in Fiji in April 2006, midway through the Bigger Bang tour," the magazine said.
Rolling Stones
Buried In Her Bed
7th-Century Teen
Archaeologists excavating near Cambridge have stumbled upon a rare and mysterious find: The skeleton of a 7th-century teenager buried in an ornamental bed along with a gold-and-garnet cross, an iron knife and a purse full of glass beads.
Experts say the grave is an example of an unusual Anglo-Saxon funerary practice of which very little is known. Just over a dozen of these "bed burials" have been found in Britain, and it's one of only two in which a pectoral cross - meant to be worn over the chest - has been discovered.
The grave, dated between 650 and 680 A.D., was discovered about a year ago in a corner of Trumpington Meadows, a rural area just outside Cambridge that is slated for development.
Alison Dickens, the manager of Cambridge University's Archaeological Unit, said the teen's grave was interesting because it had a mix of traditional grave goods - the knife, as well as a chain thought to hold a purse full of beads - along with a powerful symbol of Christian devotion.
The grave, she said, indicated "the beginning of the end of one belief system, and the beginning of another."
7th-Century Teen
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