THE POLITICO: Hillary Rodham Clinton started the year flush with cash, but by the beginning of this month, she’d blazed through most of it — spending $11 million on ads, $3.8 million on messaging guru Mark Penn and $1,300 at Dunkin’ Donuts, just to name a few expenditures — leaving her campaign woefully unprepared for an extended battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. About $15 million — or more than half of the New York senator’s January spending — went to a cadre of high-priced consultants. Though much of the cash went through the campaign media buyer for ad time, […]
COMING ATTRACTION: An Exclusive Interview With I Am Trying To Break Your Heart Director Sam Jones
In honor of you-know-who playing the Tower on Saturday we will be running an in-depth Q&A with Sam Jones, the director of I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. Sam is probably better known for his commercial photography — you have seen his work, believe me. He recently published Here And Now (Harper Collins), a collection of his stunning celebrity portraiture, with forward by George Clooney. UPDATE: Sam shot Clooney for this week’s TIME cover story
PAUL GREEN SCHOOL OF ROCK W/ GIBBY HAYNES
“I Saw An X-Ray Of Girl Passing Gas” live at the Trocadero, Saturday night.
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR The cease-fire that’s kept Iraq’s Shiite militias in check for months is in danger of unraveling. At the same time, there’s a growing restlessness among some of the Sunni militias backed by the United States in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. Patrick Cockburn, author and Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London, joins Fresh Air to discuss what he sees as a tenuous calm in Iraq. Cockburn is author of The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq. Before the 2003 invasion, he sneaked into the country to watch firsthand the defeat of the Iraqi military. The Occupation […]
COLLATERAL: Why The Telecom Lobby Prefers Blondes
NEW YORK TIMES: Senator John McCain said Thursday that an article in The New York Times about his close ties to a woman lobbyist was untrue, that he had no romantic relationship with the lobbyist and that he had no confrontations in 1999 with worried staff members who told him to stay away from her. Mr. McCain also said he knew nothing about confrontations that the newspaper described between Mr. McCain and staff members who were worried that the senator’s relationship with Ms. Iseman would jeopardize his career. “I don’t know if it happened at their level, it certainly didn’t […]
CONFETTI BETTY: Saint John Gets His Monica On
BY AMY Z. QUINN Cindy McCain totally just had a Hillary Clinton moment. There she was, wearing that same expression, eyes locked on her husband as he denied having an affair with a different (though, not dissimilar-looking?) blond and trashing those who would besmirch his honor, in this case, The New York Times. We’ve seen that look before, just as we’ve all watched this entire drama before, even down to the part where his staff tries to make the woman buzz off. Monica Lewinsky was shipped over to the Pentagon, supposedly Vicki Iseman got a stern talking-to at Union Station. […]
Mystery Plague Wiping Out Northeastern Bat Population
BOSTON GLOBE: A mysterious and deadly sickness that has killed off thousands of bats in New York has now been discovered in two Western Massachusetts mines. Researchers say they expect to find more affected wintering bat populations as they lead expeditions into dark caves and mines in the Northeast over coming weeks. They predict that hundreds of thousands of the furry creatures will be wiped out before the end of winter. The illness – known as white nose syndrome, because some afflicted bats have a white fungus on their noses – does not appear to pose any risk to people, […]
BREAKING: NYT Drops Blonde Bombshell On McCain
WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers. A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity. When news organizations reported that […]
TONITE: The Blood Orange Side Of The Moon
NEWSDAY: If you want to see the full moon aglow in a dramatic range of colors — a shift that could be anything from bright orange to blood red to dark brown or dark gray — then look out your window starting at 8:43 p.m. Wednesday. Starting then and lasting for the next three hours and 26 minutes you’ll be able to watch the complete saga of the last visible total eclipse of the moon in North America until 2010, according to officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. FORECAST: Obscured By Clouds
FUN WITH TOURISTS: Ordinance Would Forbid Telling Gullible White Trash Things Like Ben Franklin Invented The Internet & Washington Kept Dinosaurs As Pets Etc.
BY NICK POWELL CITY HALL CORRESPONDENT In the interest of ensuring historic accuracy in the city’s burgeoning tourism industry, a long-threatened bill was finally brought before the Committee of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs today that would amend a Philadelphia law and require all Philadelphia tour guides to be certified. The bill, sponsored by Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, was met with a very mixed reaction from those giving testimony and otherwise. * The bill itself, Brown said, will be implemented in two phases before being brought before the City Council. They will first test the certification requirement, including an application […]
MEDIA: The Witch Doctors Of Spin
HUFFINGTON POST: In dueling conference calls with reporters, the Obama campaign presented an electoral landscape that could prove all but impossible for Clinton to overcome. The Clinton camp responded with defiance, suggesting that Obama was not qualified for the position of commander-in-chief and stressing that they, in fact, were positioned to eke out a delegate victory. Obama’s campaign manager projected that his boss emerged from Tuesday’s elections in Wisconsin and Hawaii with a net gain of 18 pledged delegates, padding his overall lead over Clinton to 159. “In order for them to erode this pledged delegate lead,” he added, Clinton […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR That guilty feeling after a big meal might be about more than calories and cholesterol. New Yorker science and technology writer Michael Specter joins Fresh Air to explain how carbon emissions released during food production are having an impact on the environment. Calculating carbon output is a complex, if not counterintuitive, process, Specter says. In the February 25 issue, he writes about the difficulties of measuring carbon footprints in an article titled “Big Foot: In Measuring Carbon Emissions, it’s Easy to Confuse Morality and Science.” Specter was formerly The New York Times‘ Moscow bureau co-chief, and before that […]
THIS JUST IN: The Beast & The Dragon Adored, Again
Spoon has begun confirming cities and venues for its April 2008 victory lap of the United States. Confirmed dates as of press time are: Wed/Apr-02 Kansas City, KS @ Uptown *# Fri/Apr-04 Chicago, IL @ Vic Theatre *# Sat/Apr-05 Cincinnati, OH @ Bogarts *# Sun/Apr-06 Detroit. MI @ Emerald Theater *# Mon/Apr-07 Pittsburgh, PA @ Carnegie Music Hall *# Wed/Apr-09 New York, NY @ Terminal 5 Thu/Apr-10 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory * Sat/Apr-12 Norfolk, VA @ Norva *# Mon/Apr-14 Atlanta, GA @ Centerstage *# Wed/Apr-16 Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution *# Fri/Apr-18 Nashville, TN @ Vanderbilt University (Rites of […]