Lobenthal.com

“Dear, we don’t need a museum piece in this company.”

Company/Congress.

Speaker Pelosi seems to be losing it. She’s making one gaffe after another. It’s shocking after her triumphant recapture of the gavel.

You don’t let “moderate” members of your caucus claim they can’t go back to their constituents and say they voted against funding ICE. You tell them to tell their constituents that they voted against putting children in cages.

You don’t believe that after the terrible border funding deal is sealed you can still elicit concessions from Trump or any other Republican.

You don’t talk smack about the the newest, most dynamic members of the House Democratic caucus to Maureen Dowd and then tell them not to post comments on Twitter.

Don’t give us drivel about Trump’s “self-impeachment.” He takes more liberties with our democracy every day and your refusal to impeach is a virtual endorsement. Your actions are enabling Trump and turning off the Democratic base.

Speaker Pelosi is reaching a point of incoherence as well as manic and unreasonable obstinacy. She’s beginning to sound a bit like Trump himself.

Not surprised that Disney’s Bob Iger is one of the sociopathically greedy oligarchs name-checked by Bernie Sanders, who cites their opposition to his campaign alongside an indictment of their economic crimes against this country.

I’ve been trying to find more coverage of Disney’s attempt to coerce de Blasio into accepting their plans to tear down landmark-quality buildings on Varick Street to build a new Manhattan headquarters. But coverage seems to be restricted to The City, which broke the story. The “mainstream” “news” media doesn’t seem interested in delving into the impropriety of Disney hiring lawyers to whom the mayor owes a lot of money in order to win his approval for their project.

I must say, that when Disney took over the New Amsterdam theater two decades ago, I kept my mouth shut because I was so thrilled that it would be restored and reopened. I began the campaign to preserve the New Amsterdam in 1975, not that Disney or anyone in the NYC administration has ever thanked me. In 1978, Marquee Magazine published my essay on the theater. The next year the theater was designated an interior and exterior landmark.Unfortunately, the upstairs Roof Theater was not interior-designated, which allowed this exquisite, superbly-preserved gem to be destroyed for a possible production by Peter Brook that never happened. The New Amsterdam’s main theater was then allowed to become dreadfully dilapidated. In 1990 engineer Will Daly contacted me and told me how parlous was the theater’s condition. Thank you, Will! He and I then began pressuring Landmarks to live up to its municipal duty and ensure that the theater was not allowed to crumble to the ground.

Subsequently, the city spent a lot of money funding an magnificent restoration of the Art Nouveau masterpiece–originally built, btw, by my relative Abe Erlanger. Inexplicably, except all-too-typically the city used public funds to present Disney with the exclusive proprietary control of the this theater, which is a municipal treasure that should not be monopolized by any one corporation, and particularly not Disney.

Not averse to self-promotion, when I heard Disney was going to own the New Amsterdam, I sent them my resume on the chance that they would hire me for some kind of historical research. Never heard from back from them, but they sent me two tickets to the reopening event, which was the premiere of Elton John’s Aida. I went with a friend, but we were so disgusted at the wall-to-wall middle management occupying the theater for its historic rebirth that we left at intermission.

Disney and Iger are contemptuous and exploitative of this city, and they should not be extended further indulgences aka socialized corporate welfare, by City Hall.

Travis Gettys at Raw Story chronicles Trump’s sex exploits with underage girls.

Completing Trump’s wholesale corruption of American justice and American democracy, Trump has obviously tasked the Attorney General with obstructing the case against Epstein to protect Trump’s own involvement.

And you can bet that not one Republican will utter a peep of protest.

His latest bid for dictator status comes in yet another attempt to shut down the Democrats’ lawsuit over his violation of the emoluments clause.

We know he never does any actual work–he’s never actually done an honest day’s work in his life–so his constant plaint that he never be subject to legal jurisdiction for fear it might distract him from something or other is even more absurd and illegal than it would be otherwise.

Her petty attacks on the progressive freshmen in her caucus sound bitter and are counter-factual.

It’s as if she’s thrown down the gauntlet against the future of the Democratic Party.

is one of the reasons that developers run the city, de Blasio has disabled the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and why Manhattan (and Brooklyn is becoming) is so grotesquely overbuilt.

Cem S. Kayatekin at The Conversation outlines a way out of the morass:

“To meet the dual challenges of affordability and climate change, New York must wrest its financial livelihood from the grip of property taxes, restructuring its economy such that the city’s municipal finances – and by extension, governance – serve a broader array of interests and sectors.”

I will go into this in the essay I’m writing on The War on the Arts in America.

David Masciotra at Salon goes into it very well at Salon, citing the facts that
“Three-fourths of the public is unaware why the U.S. fought a cold war with the Soviet Union, and 41 percent are unfamiliar with the term “Auschwitz.”

And he goes on to explain:

“America’s perverted priorities of giving tax breaks to the wealthy while its public schools decline into states of disrepair, along with a shallow and superficial news media operating under the demands of corporate ownership, are largely to blame for America’s failures, but the general public is not exactly resistant.”

In D.C., two Wednesdays ago, a world of poseurs and criminal frauds dissembling their asses off.

On stage at at the Metropolitan Opera, a microcosm where creative duplicity is innocuous–and sometimes delightful as well as instructive.

It’s a coverup of the facts vs. creative distillation of personal interpretation of life’s big and little realities.

Once I’m in my seat I’m not concerned about decrying the Misty hype or anything else peripheral to what’s on stage. It’s a pleasure to see a good performance. I wanted to enjoy her debut as Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon. And I did.

It looked well-coached, delivering on details that provide subtlety amid the primary colors of the McMillan palette. She didn’t pull to all the obvious stops. Cory Stearns gave her strong partnering support: she looked really good at the top of a lift. The final duet, which is rightly tuned as desperate and high-pitched but can seem only hysterical, was powerful and poignant.

Really, what a debut should be.

Lucien K. Truscott at Salon:

“I’ve spent my entire life trying to figure out how the entire nation of Germany, all of its ordinary citizens living in cities and towns and villages across the country, could have stood by while their own government rounded up people and stuck them in hastily built, disgusting concentration camps, and then proceeded to kill them by gas or bullets or starvation or overwork or disease or simple filth and neglect.

“This was the week I think I finally understood it.”

don’t like it when presidential aspirants stick it to corporate greed.

At Raw Story, Bob Brigham covers the outbreak of platform suppression that occurred when corporate “news” anchor Savannah Guthrie couldn’t handle Kirsten Gillibrand’s inculpation of corporate greed.