Mark Shields: Quiet Eloquence of Example (Creative Syndicate)
The 1994 funeral of former Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill was truly memorable. To the same North Cambridge, Massachusetts, church, St. John the Evangelist - where O'Neill was baptized as an infant and had married his beloved Millie - came two former U.S. Presidents, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, scores of senators and members of congress. But more important to O'Neill, also filling the pews were nurses, waitresses, firefighters and nuns.
Froma Harrop: Details Are the Hobgoblin of Health Care Politics (Creative Syndicate)
What can you say about a political party that argues endlessly about how much they'd have to raise middle-class taxes to pay for a leading candidate's proposal? Elizabeth Warren has run herself - and much of the Democratic Party - into this political ditch. … Last January, Warren wisely kept things general. She said her goal was "affordable health care for every American" and there were "different ways we can get there." The simplest, least detail-burdened way is to add a public option, a government-run health plan, to Obamacare. Yes, that's Joe Biden's plan, folks.
Froma Harrop: Identity Politics Are a Dead End (Creative Syndicate)
The problem with identity politics is that the moment you single out what you will do for one identity, the other identities feel excluded. Barack Obama had a natural appeal to African Americans, but he didn't take others for granted. There was a reason he chose regular white guy Joe Biden for his running mate, despite some of Biden's awkward racial comments.
Froma Harrop: The Only Thing Over for Coal Country Is Coal (Creative Syndicate)
Appalachia extends to parts of 12 states and all of West Virginia. It is a generally poor region getting poorer and sicker as healthy, young people leave and as demand for coal plummets. Trump's policies, meanwhile, are making life tougher in these struggling areas. For example, his attacks on the Affordable Care Act have caused rural hospitals to close, making health care harder to find in isolated areas and draining away one of the few growing sources of good jobs.
Susan Estrich: Matt Lauer's Mistaken Defense (Creative Syndicate)
In his open letter responding to an allegation of rape contained in Ronan Farrow's new book, Matt Lauer (and, presumably, his lawyers) shows yet again that he doesn't get it. "It" being abuse of power, the meaning of consent and the offensiveness of his approach. "It" being the law - as it has evolved, thankfully.
Susan Estrich: It's Always Sunny in Pompei (Creative Syndicate)
You close the windows. Turn on the air, if you have it. Check the live maps. Twitter. Figure out how to make your smart TV just a television. Text whoever you need to check on or reassure. Cancel any long drives you don't have to make. It's a fire day in California.
Lenore Skenazy: Get Your Fear Here! Fresh, Hot Fear! (Creative Syndicate)
When an 8-year-old girl in Atlanta said she had been almost abducted at school by a man who grabbed her off the slide at recess - and his gun fell out of his pocket, and he aimed it at her and touched it to her nose, and he choked her, too, but ran off the minute the teacher blew the whistle to indicate recess was over - at least one veteran newsman thought, "Hmm." Bill Torpy, a columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, immediately texted a friend that this tale sounded totally fabricated, "a figment" of the girl's imagination.
E & J Gallo Winery is a winery and distributor headquartered in Modesto, California. It was founded in 1933 by Ernest Gallo and Julio Gallo, and is the largest exporter of California wines.
The two brothers started the winery in 1933, following the repeal of Prohibition after years of growing and selling grapes. Ernest and Julio were competing against larger, more established, and better financed companies, including more than 800 wine companies established in California in the first few years after the repeal of Prohibition. Their starting capital was less than $6,000 (~$110,000 inflation-adjusted to 2017), with $5,000 of that borrowed by Ernest from his mother-in-law. The brothers learned the craft of commercial winemaking by reading old, pre-Prohibition pamphlets published by the University of California which they retrieved from the basement of the Modesto Public Library.
By 1993, E. & J. Gallo was the country's largest winery, with a 25% share of the American wine market.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
E & J Gallo Winery.
Alan J answered:
Ernest & Julio Gallo.
Randall wrote:
Gallo?
Dave said:
E & J Gallo Winery. The company that brought you Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers thanks foreigners for their support. Most of the exported California wine is consumed by drinkers in the European Union and Canada, although with Trump's feckless trade wars that might change.
Photos: I couldn't find any figures about the export numbers for US produced 'Bum Wines.' E & J Gallo produces Night Train and Thunderbird which will definitely get you drunk for very little money as long as you don't mind the medicinal taste | All you need to know about trickle down economics and the rising population of the Working Poor.
Stephen F responded:
Gallo Wines
Cal in Vermont replied:
Gallo is the largest exporter of California wine. It also sells 4.1 billion dollars of plonk world-wide making it the world's top producer of wine. Really cheap wine. Imagine what quantity that must be...
Deborah wrote:
I don't know for sure, so my WAG is E.J. Gallo Co. I know they sell wines under different labels and companies, so now i've justified my guess. I'm interested i seeing the correct answer.
90° yesterday and thankfully no wind to speak of - Ma Nature is giving us a respite before Sunday's predicted extreme winds. I hope they don't live up to the hype.
Dave in Tucson replied:
Ummmm, Ernest & Julio Gallo? Enjoy their XO brandy on occasion.
Joe S responded:
Based on yesterday's quiz I'm guessing it's Gallo. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Ray R, visiting Glasgow, wrote:
Gallo vineyards.
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BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
• Fritz Leopold Hennig, a painter, was a German prisoner of war who was returned to Germany by way of Venice after the end of World War I. As a painter, he wanted desperately to see Venice, especially since he believed he would never again be in Venice. He asked for permission to leave the ship, the Semiramis, but found it difficult to get permission to leave, as shore leave for returning prisoners of war was against regulations. However, an Italian officer was sympathetic to him. He told Mr. Hennig to speak only English, then he and Mr. Hennig got ready to leave the ship by the gangway ladder. A guard stopped them, telling them that no civilian could leave the ship, but the Italian officer replied, "That's all right. This is the American Consul who has just been visiting the ship." The guard apologized and saluted Mr. Hennig and then the Italian officer. Mr. Hennig visited Venice for two days before reboarding the ship and returning to Germany.
• Adam Elsheimer, a gifted painter, died in 1611 at age 32, leaving behind an impoverished family. Mr. Elsheimer had suffered from depression, and during the times when he was not able to work, he had run up debts. One of his friends was the artist Peter Paul Rubens, who wrote to Mr. Elsheimer's widow, offering to help sell the paintings that Mr. Elsheimer had left behind. This would help the family financially. Mr. Rubens wrote a friend that "if the paintings should not be sold immediately, we shall in the meantime find a way to advance her a good sum of money … without prejudice to the sale." Mr. Rubens mourned both the death of a friend and the loss of the "most beautiful things" that his friend could have created but had not created because of his depression and death.
• Children's book author and illustrator Tomie dePaola got a break early in his career when agent Blanche Gregory decided to take on a few new clients and asked him to bring in his portfolio for her to look at. Unfortunately, this break seemed to vanish when Ms. Gregory was elected to the time-consuming position of President of the Agents' Guild and decided that she did not have time to take on any new clients. Fortunately, she did Mr. dePaola the kindness of speaking to artists' agent Florence Alexander and asking her to look at his portfolio. Ms. Alexander did, she liked what she saw, and she became Mr. dePaola's agent.
• While growing up in England during World War II, children's book author and illustrator Michael Foreman remembers how kind and friendly the American soldiers were. Michael and the other boys would run behind the trucks filled with American soldiers in the back and shout, "Got any gum, chum?" Usually, they were rewarded with a shower of packs of chewing gum and packages of cookies.
• Works of art can deteriorate. Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum heard with dismay that the colors of one of his paintings had faded, so he rehired the model and repainted the work of art, and then he gave the painting to the art collector. Art critic Daniel Grant said, "Nerdrum isn't the only artist who tries to make amends for work that doesn't hold up, although few will go to such lengths."
Husbands and Wives
• Some people don't like their caricatures. Mr. Nicola Ross-Lemeni, a bass-baritone, is one of them. While making his debut as Mephistopheles in Faust, Mr. Ross-Lemeni discovered that a caricature of him by Sam Norkin was going to appear on the cover of The Saturday Review. He saw the caricature, disliked it, and threatened to sue if the caricature was published. Fortunately, the threat of a lawsuit was dropped after Mr. Ross-Lemeni showed the caricature to his wife, who said, "Why, Nicky, you are never looking so handsome in your whole life!"
• Andrew Wyeth once sold the right of reproduction of one of his paintings to the Saturday Evening Postfor $1,000. Shortly afterward, the editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post telephoned him and said, "We all love your painting and we want to commission you to do ten covers a year for the Saturday Evening Post. Andrew's wife, Betsy, told him, "If you accept that, I'm leaving for good. You'll never be a painter." He knew that she was right and turned the offer down.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'God Friended Me', then a FRESH'NCIS: The Expendable One', followed by a FRESH'Madam Secretary'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Sunday Night Football', followed by a FRESH'Jimmy Fallon'.
ABC begins the night with the chestnut 'It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown', followed by a FRESH'Kids Say The Darndest Things', then a FRESH'Shark Tank', followed by a FRESH'The Rookie'.
The CW offers a FRESH'Batwoman', followed by a FRESH'Supergirl'.
Faux fills the night with LIVE'World Series Baseball - Game 5', then pads the left coast with local crap.
MY recycles an old 'How I Met Your Mother', followed by another old 'How I Met Your Mother', then an old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by another old 'Big Bang Theory', then still another old 'Big Bang Theory', followed by yet another old 'Big Bang Theory'.
A&E has the movie 'Walking Tall', followed by the movie 'White House Down', then the movie 'White House Down', again.
AMC offers 'The Walking Dead', another 'The Walking Dead', followed by a FRESH'The Walking Dead', then a FRESH'Talking Dead'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] PLANET EARTH - SEASON 1 - EPISODE 10-Seasonal Forests
[7:00AM] GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)
[9:00AM] THE DEAD ZONE (1983)
[11:30AM] SLEEPWALKERS (1992)
[1:30PM] GRAVEYARD SHIFT (1990)
[3:30PM] THE DEAD ZONE (1983)
[6:00PM] CUJO (1983)
[8:00PM] PET SEMATARY (1989)
[10:00PM] PET SEMATARY II (1992)
[12:00AM] PET SEMATARY (1989)
[2:00AM] PET SEMATARY II (1992)
[4:00AM] CUJO (1983) (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of NJ', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of NJ', then a FRESH'Married To Medicine', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Step Brothers', followed by the movie 'Wedding Crashers'.
FX has the movie 'War For The Planet Of The Apes', followed by a FRESH'The Weekly', and another 'The Weekly'.
IFC -
[7:30A] Friday the 13th
[9:30A] Friday the 13th
[11:45A] Friday the 13th, Part 2
[1:45P] Friday the 13th Part 3
[3:45P] Final Destination
[6:00P] Final Destination 2
[8:00P] Final Destination 3
[10:00P] The Final Destination
[12:00A] Final Destination 5
[2:00A] Final Destination 2
[4:00A] Final Destination 3 (ALL TIMES EDT)
Sundance -
[6:30am] Law & Order
[7:30am] Law & Order
[8:30am] Law & Order
[9:30am] Law & Order
[10:30am] Law & Order
[11:30am] K-9
[2:00pm] Summer Rental
[4:00pm] 48 HRS.
[6:00pm] Vegas Vacation
[8:00pm] The Karate Kid
[11:00pm] The Karate Kid Part II (ALL TIMES EDT)
SyFy has the movie 'Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 1', followed by the movie 'Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 2'.
Jane Fonda accepted an award while in handcuffs after being arrested for protesting climate change.
The actor was detained in Washington DC on Friday, for participating in a demonstration in favour of a Green New Deal. Ted Danson was also arrested.
Fonda was unable to attend the British Academy Britannia Awards ceremony that took place in Beverly Hills later that evening, where she was honoured with the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film.
In a video released as part of her acceptance speech, Fonda - detained by police - can be heard shouting: "Thank you, Bafta! I'm very honoured."
Holding up her handcuffed hands, Fonda adds: "Sorry I'm not there."
In 1977, Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller became the first woman to ever be nominated for best director at the Academy Awards. Although she didn't win that year - "Rocky" director John G. Avildsen did - the 91-year-old with the famous white glasses will finally get an Oscar of her own Sunday at the annual Governors Awards.
"This is making me very happy," Wertmüller said last month through a translator.
Forty years ago the Federico Fellini-protege barely even registered the historic nature of her nomination, however. She was too busy thinking about her next film.
Born in Rome in 1928, Wertmüller had been working in theater, sketch comedy and puppetry before making her transition into film. A friend from school married actor Marcello Mastroianni and he made the fateful introduction to Fellini whom she assisted on the set of "8 ½."
"Anything that he would ask her to do she would do," Ruiz said. "He would see a face going by in a taxi and he would say 'get me that face' and she would chase the taxi."
Panic, joy, shock: Dan Piepenbring felt them all when Prince plucked him to collaborate on his first memoir, followed by more shock and profound sadness at news of the superstar's death while the book was in its early stages.
Though the project was thrown into chaos when Prince died on April 21, 2016, of an accidental drug overdose, his estate ultimately decided to press on, allowing Piepenbring and his publishing team free access to the pieces of his life left behind at his beloved Paisley Park, including the contents of his vault.
Now, the highly anticipated collaboration, "The Beautiful Ones," is ready for Prince fans to read as many continue to mourn, propelling the 33-year-old journalist into the spotlight to explain how he sorted it all out.
The book out Tuesday from Spiegel & Grau includes no bombshells, though Prince very much wanted to provide some, and a mere 28 memoir pages written in his elegant script and quirky style, replacing the word "I? with a drawing of a human orb, for instance. All told, Piepenbring spent 12 to 15 hours face-to-face with Prince in Minneapolis, New York and on tour in Melbourne.
Luxury Italian sports-car brand Maserati has cut sponsorship ties with Taiwan's top film awards, the latest international brand to bow to pressure from China on political issues.
Maserati said on its official account on Weibo, China's Twitter-like online platform, that it had pulled out of sponsoring the upcoming Golden Horse Awards, often dubbed the "Chinese Oscars".
The car company directly linked its decision to Beijing's stance on Taiwan, a self-ruled de facto independent nation for the last seven decades that China views as its own territory that must one day be seized, by force if necessary.
The Golden Horse awards got into trouble with Beijing after a Taiwanese director called for the island's independence in an acceptance speech at last year's ceremony.
A growing list of international firms, including luxury brands, airlines and hotels, have been pressured to apologise to Beijing or changed Taiwan's classification on their websites to "Taiwan, China" or "Chinese Taipei" in recent years.
The Trump Administration revealed Thursday that an additional 1,556 children have been separated from their parents than previously reported, bringing the total number of family separations since July 2017 up to nearly 5,500. The new instances of family separation came to light after a judge ordered the Administration to deliver an accounting of every case.
About 200 of the 1,556 cases involved children under 5 years old, says the ACLU, which is leading a class-action lawsuit against the Administration. "We - naively, looking back - assumed the government was telling us about all the children they had separated," Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney in the lawsuit, tells TIME. "I think what we've learned is that we need to continuously press the government to find out what they may not be disclosing."
The ACLU's class-action lawsuit has now expanded to include the 1,556 families along with the original 2,800 who were separated during former Attorney General Jeff Sessions' Zero-Tolerance Policy. "At every stage of this case there have been shocking revelations," Gelernt says. "In some ways, the real work is going to begin [now] because we have to try to find all these 1,500 families."
The newly-disclosed cases deal with the period of July 1, 2017 through June 26, 2018, according to the ACLU - meaning many families were separated months before Sessions' Zero-Tolerance Policy began on April 6, 2018. "There was a lot of public outcry over children who were separated during the Zero-Tolerance Policy, but this group of kids never really got that kind of public attention," says Christie Turner, Deputy Director for Special Programs at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), which is assisting in locating the families and providing them with legal services.
"This was happening and a lot of us [lawyers and advocates] had a sense that it was happening, because we were hearing about individual cases where [separation] was occurring," she adds. "We didn't understand the scale. I don't think anyone really did know, outside of the government, that it was such a huge number."
The Pentagon said Friday it is awarding a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft, following a highly scrutinized bidding process which Amazon had been favored to win.
The 10-year contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, better known as JEDI, ultimately will see all military branches sharing information in a system boosted by artificial intelligence.
Amazon was considered the lead contender to provide technology for JEDI, with its Amazon Web Services dominating the cloud computing arena and the company already providing classified servers for other government outfits including the CIA.
But the Pentagon earlier this year delayed awarding the hefty contract, saying the process would be reviewed by newly appointed Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Esper was selected by Donald Trump (R-Grifter), who has lashed out at Amazon and company founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.
On Tuesday, Facebook announced it would contribute $1bn toward fixing California's existential housing crisis. This is a seemingly large number that will buy, temporarily, some goodwill for the tech behemoth, which has wreaked havoc on democracies across the world and hoovered revenue from news organizations.
The $1bn in grants and loans would be used over the next decade. Elements include a $250m partnership with the state of California for mixed-income housing, $150m for subsidized and supportive housing for homeless people in the Bay Area, and $250m worth of land near Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters. It follows a $1bn pledge Google made earlier this year for a similar effort.
Tech companies like Facebook have inexorably driven up rents in California's urban core, fueling wide-scale displacement and homelessness. Along with overly restrictive zoning, a failure of local municipalities to build more housing, and tenant laws that, until recently, were much friendlier to landlords, big tech's colonization of once affordable communities has ruined the lives of the working class and poor who can no longer afford to live near where they work.
Yes, it's better that Facebook contributed $1bn to housing than nothing at all. But that fat round number is a sliver of California's $215bn budget and about 1/70th of Mark Zuckerberg's net worth. One billion, spent over a decade, will not significantly alter the lives of the people suffering most from the crisis. It amounts to little more than a PR salvo from a company in desperate need of a change in narrative.
Were Facebook serious about paying reparations to the communities it has damaged, it would propose a figure far larger than $1bn. Zuckerberg would put his profits on the line to save California. But we know that won't happen. He is an oligarch of the new order, trying his best to mask his sin with a progressive sheen. He can't quite do it as well as he used to.
Following renewed focus on alleged sexual misconduct within its news division, NBCUniversal said it will allow ex-staffers to break their nondisclosure agreements. But there's a catch. They have to go through the company first.
"Any former NBC News employee who believes that they cannot disclose their experience with sexual harassment as a result of a confidentiality or non-disparagement provision in their separation agreement should contact NBCUniversal and we will release them from that perceived obligation," an NBCUniversal spokesperson told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Friday.
The announcement came shortly before Maddow's interview with The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow, who left NBC News in 2017 to join the magazine where he reported his months-long investigation into sexual abuse allegations against disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
In Farrow's new book, "Catch and Kill," he alleges that NBC had attempted to block his work on the Weinstein story ? which he had started while working for the network ? and covered up sexual assault allegations against former "Today" show anchor Matt Lauer. The book also contains explosive new details about the claims of former NBC News employee Brooke Nevils, who has accused Lauer of raping her in a hotel room during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
In a memo obtained by several media outlets earlier this month, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim accused Farrow of engaging in an "effort to defame NBC News," arguing that the network has "no secrets and nothing to hide."
A Minnesota museum is getting visitors into the Halloween spirit in what's probably the spookiest way possible - a creepy doll competition.
The History Center of Olmsted County, located in Rochester, Minnesota, launched the competition on October 16 to showcase parts of their collection that don't normally get attention.
The premise is simple. Each day, between October 16 and 24, a photo of a new creepy doll or figurine was posted on the museum's Facebook page. Participants voted by liking the photos of the dolls that they found the creepiest. The top three winners, to be announced Monday, will be on display, said Dan Nowakowski, the museum's curator.
The response has been so popular and widespread - even garnering comments in other languages - that the museum has plans to do something similar next year.
Though museum officials have a year to plan, Nowakowski said the museum is considering a creepy mask competition, which sounds both totally cool and totally horrifying.
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has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
