"Reporting from a place no one has reported back from before"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly_(film)

Stunning film.

"And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama's first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.

The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.
But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

"It is unproductive to spend it worrying about the way Obama is covered," said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain. "That being said, it certainly hasn't escaped us that the three network newscasts will originate from stops on Obama's trip next week."
News executives say they generally devote the same resources to the candidates. But they do not dispute that Obama has received more coverage this year, not only because of the historic nature of his campaign and his newness to the political scene relative to McCain, but also because of the protracted nature of his primary battle with Clinton, which was at a peak when McCain last went to Iraq.
The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain."

- they can cover whom they want when, but why maintain that you are somehow objective? They think we are fucking idiots.

"the Goot is on the Loose"

Guttenberg is shown haunted by the memory of his peers shunning John Travolta when it seemed he'd never live up to Saturday Night Fever again. The actor says, referring to his dating exploits, "the Goot is on the loose," and you figure he must have been making a joke. But then he starts sounding weirder and weirder, and maybe kind of like a jerk, and the next thing you know he's talking about his compulsive drinking, lying and womanizing.
The interview, for me, went clearly haywire right about here:

“I’ve tried to stay fit, you know, because it’s my instrument, this is my violin,” he said, gesturing over his body. “I play the violin. So I want to keep it tuned up …. So I work out there during the day, and then I write.”

This is my instrument? Surely profile author Spencer Morgan left out a "with a chuckle" or "jokingly" somewhere. Like, say, at the end of this:

“I go in spurts,” he said. Upcoming Goot pictures include Mojave Phone Booth, about a phone booth in the middle of the desert, and Major Movie Star, in which he plays Jessica Simpson’s dad. “I guess that’s just an artist’s life,” he said, gazing out over the park [and making that jack-off motion with his fingers?? and ironically holding up a copy of Police Academy 4: Citizens Patrol and grinning like a maniac?].

Guttenberg also says, seemingly appropos of nothing, after calling himself a "seducer," that "the meek will inherit the earth... so be nice to the meek. The old man spitting on the corner. The janitor cleaning up. The man behind the counter at the convenience store. Those are our people—that guy driving that truck—they make the world go."

That non-sequitur is still ringing in your ears (along with the cheesy, swelling orchestral score you'd expect to accompany Guttenberg's soliloquy at the end of some cornball flick from, yes, the 1980s) when the actor starts spilling his guts about his drinking:

“I indulge in wine, and I love vodka, I do,” he said. “And I love scotch, you know. And I love weed. And I love women. And I do have, you know, those … Addiction is such an overused word."
Um....
"I’ll go out with women, because it’ll make me feel better. Women that I shouldn’t be around, but maybe they’ll make me feel better.”

He estimated that he’s dated some 600 women, but still hasn’t found Mrs. Right.
Steve, maybe you should end the interview before you dig yourself in any dee...

“I’ll lie to make myself feel better,” he said. “If I feel shitty, and someone says, ‘What are you working on,’ I’ll get really pissed off and go, ‘Yeah I’m doing a thriller with, you know, George Clooney.’ I make myself feel better by that—that’s an addiction to whatever that is, to make myself feel better, to take the pain away.”

OK, well, it's time to update Wikipedia or something, because none of this is in there. Anyway, Steve, it's been nice catching up, great seeing you, catch you maybe at the 30-year reunion and, hey, don't ever change old buddy!

Oil's Free Marketeers Rise Up
With the campaign against oil speculation in full swing, the speculators visit Congress to rally a defense
by Moira Herbst

The quaint portrait of a silver-haired farmer overlooks the hearing room of the House Agriculture Committee at the Capitol in Washington. It's a throwback to the days when the committee's business was most concerned with whether a drought might wipe out the season's corn crop, or whether an early frost could drive orange juice prices through the roof.
But these days the delegates of the National Association of Wheat Growers have company. Slick-dressed representatives of commodities exchanges prowl the halls of Congress, lobbying against a slew of legislation aimed squarely at the heart of their enterprises.
At the latest round of committee hearings July 10-11, tanned and fresh-faced Charles Vice, president and chief operating officer of IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), warmly greeted Greg Zerzan, head of global public policy for the International Swaps & Derivatives Assn. (ISDA). James Newsome, president and CEO of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NMX), arrived looking a bit weary as he greeted colleagues with a smile; he'd had to rearrange plans with his family to attend the hearing. Aides and assistants swirled around them, tapping into BlackBerrys and talking hurriedly on Bluetooth devices.
In this summer of torrid gas prices, a veritable witch hunt has been launched to determine a culprit for the oil price surge. Various congressional committees and subcommittees have convened more than a half-dozen hearings in recent weeks on the issue of oil markets. The Agriculture Committee, venue of the latest public skirmishing, has oversight of commodity futures trading. So far this year, lawmakers have proposed 19 bills that would increase scrutiny or regulation of commodities trading.
In response, notoriously tight-lipped hedge funds and derivatives traders and other investors are stepping forward to explain why they do not deserve to be the whipping boys for a public confused and angry over exorbitant fuel prices. Executives and lobbyists are urging politicians to stop the finger-pointing. They have been stating their well-reasoned cases that speculation is actually good for the market's integrity—not to mention for consumers and retirees whose pension funds are profiting from lucrative commodity investments.

The Honorable Skeptic from Minnesota
At the two-day hearing, trading executives explained that supply and demand are inflating the price of oil; the market is merely the messenger of an unpopular reality. "No one likes to pay $5 [per gallon] for gas, but at the end of the day it's not the market's fault," Zerzan told the committee. On July 11, the hearing's second day, the messenger delivered another milestone: Crude prices reached a new intraday trading high of $147.27 per barrel, before settling at $145.08.
The ISDA, which Zerzan leads, is the trade group for over-the-counter derivatives traders, and has been among the leaders in the lobbying effort against greater oversight of oil trading. Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange operates a commodities exchange, with physical operations in London and New York but an electronic platform that stretches across the world.
Representative Timothy Walz (D-Minn.) greeted the speculators' arguments with skepticism. At one point, he noted that U.S. airlines are among those industries under serious threat from soaring energy prices, and they are calling for more oversight of oil trades. He asked Zerzan, the swaps and derivatives chief, what explanation he could offer Walz's constituents and large companies based in Minnesota, such as Northwest Airlines (NWA).
"Northwest should have gotten a swaps agreement," said Zerzan, referring to the successful use of hedging in the oil markets (BusinessWeek.com, 5/7/08) by Southwest Airlines (LUV). Because of extensive hedging contracts on its fuel purchases, Southwest is the only major U.S. carrier that has remained profitable. The airline also has much of its expected fuel use covered for 2009 at prices far below the current market rate. Walz pressed him further, pointing to the growing chorus of voices targeting speculation: "So ExxonMobil (XOM), consumers, Northwest Airlines…everybody's wrong but the commodities traders?" asked Walz. "We haven't found a better method [than trading] to determine prices," Zerzan replied.

Battle Lines for the Media Campaign
The speculators' defense has expanded beyond the halls of Congress and into the media. IntercontinentalExchange has begun an aggressive advertising campaign in The Washington Post (WPO), Web site Politico, and other venues warning of "unintended consequences" if Congress acts hastily to boost regulation of oil trading. Next to a large picture of an onion, the headline of the ad reads: "If you make laws in a hurry, it's bound to end in tears."
The text of the campaign points to Congress' 1958 ban on futures trading in onions as farmers blamed futures markets for price fluctuations. What followed was a rocky road for onion prices, which increased 400% in late 2006 and 2007, crashed 96% this past March, and surged 300% in April, according to the ad. "From oil to onions, well-regulated futures markets create stability and predictability by allowing consumers to hedge price risks," the print ad reads. "So maybe when you peel the onion, the futures markets work a little better than some people think."
At the same time, a coalition of transportation interests led by a dozen large U.S. airlines has launched a campaign to enlist Americans' support in pressing Congress to curb oil futures trading. "As largely unregulated speculators pocket billions of dollars at your expense, the price of commodities has increased out of proportion to marketplace demands," says the group's Web site, www.stopoilspeculationnow.com. And so the debate rages.

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

A Moderate Massacre

"The Palestinian Authority has asked Israel to hand over the remains of Dalal Mughrabi, the Palestinian woman who led the March 11, 1978 coastal road attack in which 36 people were murdered and 71 wounded," the Jerusalem Post reports:

Israel is planning to deliver Mughrabi's remains, together with those of scores of Palestinians and Lebanese, to Hizbullah in the context of the new prisoner exchange between the two sides.
The PA said in its request that it wanted to "honor" Mughrabi by holding a big funeral for her in Ramallah.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a "the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel." He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in "Palestine."

"We want to turn Dalal's funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration," the Fatah official said. "The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women's struggle."
The March 20, 1978, issue of Time described Dalal's "operation":

Their orders were to kill until they themselves were killed. And thus last week a Palestinian suicide mission left a grisly trail of carnage along Israel's main coastal highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Slipping ashore from the Mediterranean on the afternoon of the Sabbath, the terrorists hijacked two buses filled with tourists and sightseers, took them on a wild ride down the road toward Tel Aviv, shooting along the way at everyone in sight, and finally destroyed one bus in an orgy of fire and death. Official statistics put the dead at 37 (all but a few of them civilians, among them at least 10 children) and 76 wounded--a toll that exceeded the 1972 Munich massacre (11 dead) and the slaughter at a Ma'alot school in 1974 (26). It was the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history.
The Sabbath massacre came on the eve of Israeli Premier Menachem Begin's scheduled departure for Washington, where he was to confer with President Carter this week on the derailed Middle East peace talks. . . .
The timing of the attack left no doubt about the terrorists' purpose: to sabotage any attempt by Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to move toward a peace that would ignore or bypass Palestinian interests.

The fullness of time does not seem to have diminished the bloodthirstiness of the Palestinian leadership--and remember, the people who want to honor Mughrabi for murdering children in the name of preventing Israel from making peace with its neighbors are the "moderates."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/07/the_essential_beer.html