Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Bruce took the day off.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BARF!
GAG ME WITH "CITIZENS UNITED".
"WE DON'T DO BODY COUNTS."
FUN AND GAMES IN CLEVELAND!
"WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN!"
THAT SINKING FEELING!
JOHN KASICH SHOULD AVOID PARTIES THAT ARE STUPID AND FULL OF HATE!
OINK, OINK!
ECT. ECT. ECT. ECT.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Way too effing hot and very, very dry.
Latest To Shun NC
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam on Monday became the latest band to boycott North Carolina over a law against transgender people, calling the measure "despicable."
The alternative rockers led by Eddie Vedder called off a concert scheduled in the state capital Raleigh for Wednesday, saying they hoped to be able to return at a later date.
The band said North Carolina's law "is a despicable piece of legislation that encourages discrimination against an entire group of American citizens."
"The practical implications are expansive and its negative impact upon basic human rights is profound," the band said in a statement.
"We want America to be a place where no one can be turned away from a business because of who they love or fired from their job for who they are," it said.
Pearl Jam
Thousands Register To Wrong Party
Voters
A survey has found that tens of thousands of voters, including Demi Moore and other celebrities, have mistakenly registered as members of a conservative minor political party in California in a mix-up over its name, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The Los Angeles Times said that a telephone survey of 500 members of the American Independent Party found nearly 3 of 4 people did not realize they had enrolled in a political party that opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage and calls for building a fence along the U.S. border.
The newspaper said voters were confused by the use of the word "independent" in the party's name. In California, voters who do not want to register with any party must check a box on a registration form for "no party preference."
When Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, registered to vote in 2013, he selected the American Independent Party. A family spokesman said Schwarzenegger, 22, plans to change his registration.
The American Independent Party's roots date to 1967 when George Wallace, a segregationist, launched his ?second? run for the White House. Wallace, who had run as a Democrat in 1964, helped create the party and ran on its ticket. Today, that party exists only in California.
Voters
Protesters Acquitted
London
A British judge has acquitted eight protesters who blockaded the entrance to an arms fair, accepting their argument that they acted to stop illegal weapons trading.
The defendants from Britain, Bahrain, Belgium, Chile and Peru were charged with "willful obstruction of the highway" after blocking the entrance to the huge Defense and Security Equipment International, or DSEI, trade show in London in September. They denied guilt, saying they had acted to prevent greater crimes.
Defense witnesses told the trial at London's Stratford Magistrates' Court that there was evidence weapons had been sold illegally at the fair in previous years to countries accused of human rights violations, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
District Judge Angus Hamilton acquitted the defendants Friday. In a written ruling published Monday, he said the defendants were "perfectly sincere" in concluding that illegal weapons were being sold and "that their intervention was necessary to seek to prevent this."
London
Belongs To Britain
Koh-i-Noor Diamond
A priceless diamond that is part of the Queen Mother's Crown was given to Britain and not stolen, India's government on Monday told the Supreme Court, which is hearing a suit seeking its return.
The 108-carat Koh-i-Noor gem, which came into British hands during the colonial era, is the subject of a historic ownership dispute and has been claimed by at least four countries including India.
But India's Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said the 19th-century Sikh king Ranjit Singh had given the stone to the British.
It is now set in the crown that was worn by Queen Elizabeth's mother until her death in 2002, and is on public display in the Tower of London.
"It was given voluntarily by Ranjit Singh to the British as compensation for help in the Sikh Wars. The Koh-i-Noor is not a stolen object," he told the Supreme Court.
Koh-i-Noor Diamond
Misled Lawmakers
Pentagon
The Pentagon misled Congress by using inaccurate or vague information about sexual assault cases in an effort to blunt support for a Senate bill that would make a major change in how the military handles allegations of sexual misconduct, an Associated Press investigation found.
Internal government records that summarized the outcomes of dozens of cases portrayed civilian district attorneys and local police forces as less willing than senior military officers to punish sex offenders. The documents buttressed the Pentagon's position that stripping commanders of their authority to decide which crimes go to trial - as the Senate legislation proposes - will mean fewer victims will get justice because there will be fewer prosecutions.
But in a number of the cases, the steps taken by civilian authorities were described incorrectly or omitted, according to AP research and interviews. Other case descriptions were too imprecise to be verified.
There also is nothing in the records that supports the primary reason the Pentagon told Congress about the cases in the first place: To cast top military brass as hard-nosed crime fighters who insisted on taking the cases to trial after civilian law enforcement said no.
The records were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, which provided the documents exclusively to AP. The nonprofit group on Monday said it found no evidence that any case was prosecuted at a commander's insistence.
Pentagon
Book-Scanning Project
Google
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by a group of authors who contend that Google's massive effort to scan millions of books for an online library violates copyright law.
The Authors Guild and several individual writers have argued that the project, known as Google Books, illegally deprives them of revenue. The high court left in place an October 2015 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in favor of Google.
A unanimous three-judge appeals court panel said the case "tests the boundaries of fair use," but found Google's practices were ultimately allowed under the law.
Several prominent writers, including novelist and poet Margaret Atwood and lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim, signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief backing the Authors Guild.
The authors sued Google, whose parent company is Alphabet Inc, in 2005, a year after the project was launched. A lower court dismissed the litigation in 2013, prompting the authors' appeal.
Google
Slick Rick To Drink Flint Water
Michigan
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R-Environmental Racist) will drink Flint water at home and at work for at least a month to show to residents it is safe with the use of a faucet filter, he said Monday.
The Republican governor, who has apologized for his administration's role in the city's lead-tainted water crisis, visited a house that had been confirmed to have high levels of lead and left with five gallons of filtered water. He said he understands people feel that if officials say the water is OK, then he should drink it, too.
For nearly 18 months, Flint residents drank and bathed with improperly treated water that had coursed through aging pipes and fixtures, scraping away lead. By the time Snyder announced in October that Flint would return to its earlier source of treated water, the Detroit municipal system, dangerously high levels of the toxic metal were detected in the blood of some residents, including children, for whom it can cause lower IQs and behavioral problems.
Meanwhile, a state water-quality official who told the city of Flint that a chemical wasn't needed to prevent lead corrosion from pipes has taken a different job in the state Department of Environmental Quality.
Michigan
Handcuffing Elementary Students
Tennessee
Angry parents are demanding action after they say at least five students were handcuffed at a Middle Tennessee elementary school for not stopping an off-campus fight.
The complaints were aired Sunday at First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, where The Daily News Journal reports more than 150 people gathered for a community meeting over Friday's incident at Hobgood Elementary School. The Rev. James McCarroll said the students were detained and later released from a juvenile center.
Zacchaeus Crawford, who said three of his children were handcuffed at the school, called the actions "nonsense in the fullest definition."
"There are innocent kids that have been arrested that have been entered in a system they have no business in," Crawford said.
Policies for detaining students in Tennessee are made at the local police level, said Maggi Duncan, executive director of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police.
Tennessee
Elderly Residents Defy Radiation
Chernobyl
Defying radioactive contamination and a government evacuation order, Yevgeny Markevich returned to his beloved Chernobyl shortly after it suffered the world's worst nuclear accident 30 years ago this week.
The sturdy 78-year-old former teacher is among 158 people still living in the 30 kilometre (19 mile) exclusion zone around the Ukrainian nuclear power plant where reactor number four exploded on April 26, 1986.
The area remains contaminated by radiation and is deemed uninhabitable by Ukrainian authorities.
On the day of the accident, a Saturday, Markevich was teaching a class at a local high school, not suspecting that the explosion nearby would forever transform the town and the lives of its people.
Markevich, along with almost 116,000 other people living in the area, was forced to evacuate in 1986. But he wanted to return home immediately and began creating excuses to re-enter the exclusion zone.
Chernobyl
In Memory
Doris Roberts
Doris Roberts, a character actress who labored honorably both on stage and screen for years before finding the perfect vehicle for her talents, the hit sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," died on Sunday. She was 90.
Roberts was nominated for 11 Emmys, including seven for playing Marie Barone on "Raymond," winning four for her work on that series; she picked up her first Emmy in 1983 for a guest appearance on "St. Elsewhere," making for a total of five wins overall.
When "Remington Steele" producers were looking to make changes in the supporting cast in 1983 after the show's first season, they envisioned a new character, Mildred Krebs, as an attractive 35-year-old woman who could be a rival for the affections of Pierce Brosnan's Steele. Despite how the character was then delineated, Roberts, who'd recently won an Emmy for guesting on "St. Elsewhere," asked to read for the part and won over executive producer Michael Gleason in her audition - and the character was changed to fit Roberts. She recurred in the second season and became a series regular thereafter, appearing in 72 episodes of the show from 1983-87.
She earned her first Emmy for the fourth episode in the initial season of "St. Elsewhere," "Cora and Arnie," in which she and James Coco, longtime friends, played a homeless couple who face devastation as she learns her feet must be amputated, which will render her unable to care for the mentally challenged Arnie.
Recent film work included romantic comedy "All Over the Guy" (2001); David Spade vehicle "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star" (2003); comedies "Grandma's Boy," "I-See-You.Com" and "Keeping Up With the Steins" (all 2006); the romantic comedy "Play the Game," in which she had a substantial role opposite Andy Griffith; family adventure comedy "Aliens in the Attic" (2009); and Tyler Perry's "Madea's Witness Protection" (2012), in which she played the mother of Eugene Levy's character.
In a 2007 episode of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," Roberts played the ill, mistreated matriarch of an aristocratic New York family. In recent years the actress also guested on "Grey's Anatomy," "The Middle" (reuniting with "Raymond's" Patricia Heaton), "Hot in Cleveland," "Desperate Housewives" and "Melissa & Joey."
Doris May Green was born in St. Louis. After Doris' father deserted the family, her mother raised Doris in the Bronx with the aid of her own parents. Doris' stepfather, whose surname she took, was Chester H. Roberts. He and Doris' mother Ann operated stenographic service the Z.L. Rosenfield Agency, which catered to playwrights and actors.
Roberts made her Broadway debut in 1955 in a revival of William Saroyan's comic play "The Time of Your Life." For the hit original comedy "The Desk Set," starring Shirley Booth, she played a supporting role and served as stage manager. After an absence from Broadway of a number of years, she appeared in "Marathon '33," starring Julie Harris, in 1963-64. She served as a standby for a couple of plays, then appeared in "The Natural Look" in 1967.
Roberts starred with James Coco and Linda Lavin in Neil Simon's hit comedy "Last of the Red Hot Lovers" in 1969-71. She appeared in "Bad Habits," a pairing of two Terrence McNally plays starring F. Murray Abraham, in 1974, and made her final appearance on Broadway in 1978 in "Cheaters."
She had appeared on television even before she made it to Broadway, making her small-screen debut in 1951 on the CBS show "Starlight Theatre" and appearing on shows including "Ben Casey" and "Naked City" in the 1960s.
Roberts made her film debut in 1961's "Something Wild." Later in the decade she had small roles in "Barefoot in the Park" and "Divorce American Style" (both 1967) and somewhat larger roles in "No Way to Treat a Lady" and Kirk Douglas film "A Lovely Way to Die" (both 1968). The actress was fourth billed in the 1969 cult classic "The Honeymoon Killers."
In the 1970s she guested on shows including "Mary Tyler Moore," "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (as a faith healer), "All in the Family," "Rhoda" and "Barney Miller."
Roberts was originally intended to play Vivian, the character ultimately portrayed by Rue McClanahan, on "Maude," but the producers decided that her persona was too similar to that of series star Bea Arthur.
In 1978 she had a story arc on ABC's seminal comedy "Soap" as the mother of Father Timothy Flotsky (Sal Viscuso) who curses her son for leaving the priesthood, makes a scene at his wedding, then dies on the wedding night.
In 1979-80 she was a series regular on the single-season sitcom "Angie," starring Donna Pescow as a Philadelphia waitress, with Roberts playing her mother. Roberts directed an episode of "Angie," her only such effort.
On "Alice" she guested as the mother of the title character, played by Linda Lavin, with whom she'd worked on Broadway. In the '80s she guested on "Cagney & Lacey," "Full House" and "Perfect Strangers," drawing an Emmy nomination for her performance on the last of these.
During the '70 she appeared in films including the Alan Arkin-directed "Little Murders," Elaine May's "A New Leaf" and "The Heartbreak Kid," classic thriller "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (playing the mayor's wife), "Hester Street," Joan Rivers' disastrous "Rabbit Test" and "The Rose" (in which she briefly appeared as star Bette Midler's mother).
She had a small role as one of the grandmothers in the 1989 Chevy Chase comedy "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." During the '90s she appeared in films including "Used People," starring Shirley MacLaine and Marcello Mastroianni; Warren Leight's romantic comedy "The Night We Never Met," starring Matthew Broderick and Anabella Sciorra; "The Grass Harp," with Sissy Spacek and Walter Matthau; and Billy Crystal comedy "My Giant."
Roberts was married twice, the first time to Michael Emilio Cannata from 1956 until their divorce in 1962 and the second time to novelist and playwright William Goyen, to whom she was married from 1963 until his death in 1983.
She is survived by her son Michael, from her first marriage, who was also her manager; and three grandchildren.
Doris Roberts
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
