Lobenthal.com

petition to protest and perhaps prevent the decapitation and crucifixion of 21-year-old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia.

And Saudi Arabia is about to head a U.N. Human Rights Council panel–excuse me??

Since you’ve pre-ordered, I’ll give you a preview.

“Are you crazy?” Zubkovskaya said to her. “Do you realize you’re marrying a man five years younger?” (Later, however, Zubkovskaya herself married Kutznetsov, who was six years younger than she.) “Every time Zubkovskaya saw me she asked, ‘Tell me, what do you do with him?’ Finally I said, ‘Inna, I don’t know; every morning I wake up, look around and think, Did I get married or did I give birth?’ ”

White/Black Swan Teresa Reichlen’s were regally pulled up today at New York City Ballet.

Imagine me giving free advice to Hillary Clinton, but

Mme. Secretary, when the Republicans practice their pit-bull repetitive syndrome about Benghazi why don’t YOU keep asking THEM why they cut funds for embassy security?

Why don’t you take the wood to them about their war on public funding for  virtually  everything??

Yes, that is her saintly visage, circa 1938, on view on those digitized billboards on West 65th Street in the midst of Lincoln Center. She’s poster girl for the Head Shots show at the Performing Arts library. The show’s up through December 30. See you there.

The used Bentley salesman exploits the ravages and casualties of war to browbeat Britain into supporting escalated war,while giving absolutely not a rat’s ass about the millions of refugees already displaced by war.

Britain’s Stop the War Coalition has an indispensable site. They just posted Anders Luftgarden’s piece in the Guardian, where he celebrates the fact that Cameron consented to admitting 20,000 refugees.

“If we keep pressing, that can be just the start. And the key to it has been shaming our leaders through our own actions, not waiting for them to do the right thing but showing them how to.”

Truth is, there is a crisis of leadership in every sector of global society. We must all wake up to the necessity of proactive individual participation in how the world is governed. We’ve seen where complacency and and detachment have led us.

David Swanson at War is a Crime, laments the unspeakable horror of us selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, where a 21-year-old awaits crucifixion for participation in a pro-Democracy rally. He may or may not be decapitated first.

The Pope’s denunciation of arms trafficking could not have come at a more propitious moment.

If the Republicans mug our government yet again, will the current Democratic leadership be able to to make the GOP accountable? I doubt it. Whereas the shutdowns of the 1990s worked to the GOP’s eventual electoral disadvantage, GOP shutdowns have been met during Obama’s presidency with a response so inept that the GOP pays no price whatsoever.

When I identified the need for an Ina Claire biography earlier this month, little did I know that the Metropolitan Playhouse was reviving her 1922 Broadway success The Awful Truth, by Arthur Richman.

It was master antique clock restorer John Metcalfe who told me about the revival. He’s incredibly on top of such things.

In 1929 Claire repeated her success in the talkie adaptation. You haven’t seen it–it’s lost.

You may have seen the 1937 film remake.

But  you haven’t read the play unless you’ve gone to the Library for the Performing Arts and read the stage manager’s typescript–it was never published.

But it holds the stage at the Metropolitan through October 18.

Carly Fiorina ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, fired 30,000 employees, and had to be paid some humongous amount of severance–accounts vary, but it was at least $21 million–to go away. She stiffed her 2010 failed Senatorial campaign workers until she decided she now wanted to run for president. And for dodging accountability about all of that, the “mainstream” media declare her the champ.