Wall Street is in a bind. Normally, the presidential election features two candidates who are both beholden to its interests and thus enables them to watch the process with complacency but this time the picture is a little confused.
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The people of Cleveland are delirious today as their basketball team the Cavaliers won the NBA championship beating the Golden State Warriors 93-89. One has to have lived in this city to really appreciate the powerful emotions that are coursing through them. The city has suffered from all manner of economic difficulties in the last half century or so and like so many people in difficult economic times, they seek escapism and validation and self-worth in sports, however ephemeral that may be.
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I am fascinated by the way that films are made. There is so much going on behind the scenes to produce what seems so smooth and natural. I have posted many times about CGI and other visual effects but via David Pescovitz, I came across this short documentary about the production of sound effects in films. I had no idea that so much of the sound is added on later, and is not captured in real time by microphones that are hidden from the camera. In addition to getting the sound right, the timing is crucial.
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I came across this op-ed by Elbridge Colby (a fellow at the neoliberal Center for a New American Security and son of former CIA director William Colby) who is disturbed by the fact that pope Francis is reconsidering the ‘just war’ philosophy.
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Seth Meyers takes a closer look at the way that Donald Trump manages to speak in such a vague, unfocused way or say so many different and even contradictory things, so that his actual beliefs are obscure and can be inferred to span a wide range of policies. This enables his supporters to read into them what they want to hear.
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Glenn Greenwald says that it is really telling how the media are avoiding calling the murderer of British MP Jo Cox a terrorist, a label that they have no difficulty assigning if the killer is a Muslim or if the motive for the attack involves the various wars being waged against Muslim-majority countries.
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The city of Cleveland has put in place very strict rules governing what the public can do during the Republican convention starting July 18. The rules are so restrictive that the Ohio chapter of the ACLU has sued the city in federal court saying that such rules infringe on the free speech and other rights of the public, including the homeless who just happen to live in the 3.3 square mile area designated as the Event Zone. They are suing on behalf of three organizations: Citizens for Trump, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, and Organize Ohio. (The lawsuit can be read here.)
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Regular readers may have noticed a reduction in blog postings. This is because I have been spending some time with family and friends. First my daughter came for an extended visit and after she left we went to Washington DC to show some of the sights there to relatives who were visiting from Sri Lanka.
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There has been a concerted attack on public education for some time now. Business interests have recognized that the total public education budget is huge and, especially in the K-12 sector, is under the control of local school boards. They have seen the opportunity for making huge amounts of profits if they could only siphon that money away into for-profit entities.
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