Lobenthal.com

It was pathetic to see the establishment environmental organizations roll over for Obama by falling under the siren song of “access.” Yes, they got in to see the Chief, but no, their goals were in no way vigorously supported by Obama.  So they got played. Once again.

Clinton’s scene will be a whole different kettle of fish, since she’s already revealed her hand–or rather, Wikileaks revealed it for her. Her contempt for environmentalists is another sign that SHE JUST DOESN’T GET IT. How can she not realize the climate hazards her grandchildren are going to have to face? Do people over 65 just stop being able to internalize shifting external realities?

(Boilerplate avowal: Trump is a deranged demagogue who will pillage this country and yes, I’ll vote for Clinton over him any day of the week.)

Access is irrelevant. What works is keeping the pressure on.

2000 might as well be the Ice Age given the instant amnesia of the”mainstream” media, but Heather Digby Parton at Salon, on the other hand, reminds us of the GOP’s long history of election thievery and voter suppression–continuing right up the present.

But of course the best deflection is a good offense! The GOP knows exactly how to harness the power of projection. What Trump is really doing is laying a pre-emptive defense that will serve to vanquish–at least in the court of public opinion–resistance to the voter suppression, intimidation and perhaps downright voting fraud he is undoubtedly planning. As the Supreme Court debacle also demonstrates, we are now dealing with a scofflaw political organization called the Republican Party.

Richard Eskow and Dean Baker each wonder why Chris Wallace plans to question our two beloved POTUS candidates regarding the national “debt and entitlements” despite the fact that Social Ssecurity is forbidden by law from contributing to the national debt.

It’s clear, as if there could be a moment’s doubt, that Wallace won’t be mentioning a word about “debt and the military budget,” or “debt and our very light taxation of  the rich and corporations, and our legalized tolerance of tax evasion.”

But hey, Mr. Wallace, how about a few off-the-cuff remarks from you about Fox News and the degradation of journalism in our society?

I’ll be speaking–OK, I’ll try not to lecture–at the 92nd Y, February 26, 2017, at 3:00 p.m.

So now Mr. Maverick, Mr. Senior Eminence, John “Batso” McCain, informs us that the GOP will continue to mug the U.S. judicial system once Hillary is elected.

The GOP’s unprecedented wrecking of American governance is made possible by the Democrats’ unprecedented weakness in allowing it.

Where do you think Trump got his game plane from? All he did was goose the volume up to levels we’d never before heard.

The leaves gloriously say autumn.

The weather says balmy-unto-early summer, so much that it’s stiflingly hot in the coffee shop, it’s heating system in a state of extreme conflict.

And Donald Trump says there’s no such thing as global warming.

There was a spirit of niceness to the new New York City Ballet works performed Saturday mat for the last time this season. I hadn’t seen them before. In Lauren Lovette’s For Clara, at one point the ensemble exits, leaving the lead woman onstage alone except for one last remaining ensemble figure, corps member Lars Nelson, who gets to show that he can do something beautiful by himself.

There were corps members featured as well in Peter Walker’s series of abruptly-blacking-out short takes, entitled ten in seven.

If you’re going to give company dancers a chance to choreograph, these were better than workshop quality. And complimentary to the company in the way they explored its resources.

Did you know that he’s given his archive to the Library for the Performing Arts?

It includes an incredible trove of silent home movies of the Kirov and the Vaganova Institute during the 1960s and early ’70s.

I was watching footage of Sleeping Beauty. There’s that little duet Sergeyev made to replace the pantomime dialogue between Lilac Fairy and Desire–before the Vision scene. It’s performed by Alla Osipenko and Vladilen Semyonov–just great. Gosh that woman’s legs and line were something. All she has to do is take an arabesque or stand in a pose and you’ve gotten a glimpse of balletic nirvana. It’s a silhouette that moves no matter if she’s at rest.

There is extensive footage of Kolpakova, Sizova, Menchyonok, Vikulov, Soloviev, et. al., et.  al. That  extraordinary corps de ballet. Everyone at every level absolutely confident in what they did on stage because they were trained and rehearsed to perform these old classical ballets.  They may have been bored doing these same few works over and over again, but they certainly don’t show it here. Everyone on stage seems to be living through a peak experience.

There’s a memorable look at Baryshnikov himself in the 1971 premiere Creation of the World. But the footage preserved here doesn’t seem to be mostly about him. Did he take the footage himself? Acquire it?

A lot of the dancers are so far unidentified in the catalogue; I want to look at everything.

Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Globe evokes the entire spin-cycle producing misinformation and worse about what’s happening in Syria.

“Under intense financial pressure, most American newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks have drastically reduced their corps of foreign correspondents. Reporters who cover Syria check with the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and think tank ‘experts.’ After a spin on that soiled carousel, they feel they have covered all sides of the story. This form of stenography produces the pabulum that passes for news about Syria.”

By mis-framing the question.

Has anyone explained to Raddatz that, even to impersonate a journalist with any degree of conviction, you do not simply parrot what your government’s State Department says?

Robert Parry at Consortium News isn’t buying Raddatz’s put-on:

“Raddatz’s favorable reference to the State Department accusing the Syrian and Russian governments of war crimes further suggests a stunning lack of self-awareness, a blindness to America’s own guilt in that regard. How can any American journalist put on such blinders regarding even recent U.S. war crimes, including the illegal invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?”

I love the picture of Raddatz that Common Dreams uses in its reprint. She’s wearing one of the six or so trademark expressions of our television “news reporters.”  This one says, “I’M CONCERNED.” That certain selective concern that manifests when the networks want to help the U.S. government leap into another catastrophic military misadventure.

Our corporate-owned “news” media, Parry writes, “with its deep-seated biases and inability to deal with complexity, has become such a driving force for wider wars and even a threat to the future of the planet.” Damn straight.