truesee's Blog

Shaq and controversy on final day of Spelling Bee

 

JOSEPH WHITE

The Associated Press 

Updated: 7:09 p.m. Friday, June 4, 2010

Posted: 9:04 a.m. Friday, June 4, 2010

GRAND ISLE, La. — Dogged for being too calm in crisis, President Barack Obama unleashed frustration for all to see Friday, warning BP it had better do right by the people whose lives it has wrecked.

The president's third trek to the Gulf of Mexico was about the workers with no government titles, the shrimpers and the shopkeepers, the fishermen whose lives have been upended and are running out of people to blame.

Yet Obama's trip was also about him.

He says it serves little substantive point to go around and yell — that people want results, not a show — but presidents face peril if they do not connect emotionally. As the crisis has dragged on — and his poll ratings have slipped — his words for BP's leaders have grown sharper.

"I don't want them nickel-and-diming people down here," Obama said after his latest briefing on the oil response. He promised his government would look over BP's shoulders to ensure it was paying out claims.

His visit amounted to one long I'm-on-your-side passage for reeling communities. Along that same line, he invited family members of the 11 workers killed when the BP rig blew up to visit the White House next Thursday. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president had written to each of the families.

As for BP, Obama cast the oil company as a corporate giant interested in protecting its image with TV ads and its shareholders with bountiful dividends.

"I don't want somebody else bearing the costs of those risks that they took," Obama said. "I want to make sure that they're paying for it."

The president's visit came as engineers with BP worked to settle a funnel-like cap over the deep-sea leak to try to collect some of the crude now fouling four states. It was not clear how much oil was being captured, and some continued to flow, generating frightening photos of seabirds clogged in the muck.

The oil rig that exploded on April 20 has caused a massive, ongoing spill that is polluting the waters and shores of the Gulf states and consuming the attention of the president. Obama scrapped a trip to Indonesia and Australia to deal with it — no small international sacrifice, especially since he had already resorted to that move once before this year to finish a health care law.

Yet in unleashing his most fiery words yet about BP, Obama underscored his awkward situation: To fix the problem, he is reliant on the same people whose motives he now questions. The government is not equipped to handle the tricky, deepwater effort BP is leading to fix its gushing well.

From his briefing outside New Orleans, Obama bounded on a two-hour-plus motorcade drive to Grand Isle, a small barrier island, to hear from the people. The weather made the trip feel fittingly hard. A driving rain forced him to drop plans to travel by helicopter.

Along the way, he passed this roadside sign: "HELP US NOW!!"

At another spot, the side of a building had been adorned with a portrait of Obama reminiscent of his famous presidential campaign posters. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.

In casual clothes, Obama went to a bait shop to talk to fishing industry workers about how the disastrous oil spill is affecting their business.The shop owner was there to meet him along with a shrimper, an oysterman, a marina owner and others.

More than six weeks into the disaster, his demeanor has come into question. The calm-in-crisis state that helped him win the presidency has seemed off in tone.

Just ahead of the Gulf visit, he declared himself furious at a situation that "is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years." He criticized BP for not responding more quickly.

But polls show the public growing more negative toward the president's own handling of the spill, and he was aiming to demonstrate he was staying on top of the situation Friday — without getting in the way. Obama visited the Gulf region twice in May, and this tour surely will not be his last.

"We'll keep on coming back until we have dealt with an unprecedented crisis," Obama promised.

Somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons of crude oil have been disgorged into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, according to government estimates. Eleven workers were killed in the blast.

Obama's administration on Thursday handed BP a $69 million bill for recovery costs to date — a figure sure to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

 

 

Brent Jones

An off-duty Baltimore police officer on Friday morning shot a 26-year-old Baltimore man who was attempting to burglarize the officer's Dundalk home, according to city and county police.

Antonio Lionell Fenwick of the 1900 block of E. Belvedere Avenue was found shot in the officer's living room at about 6 a.m. in the 1800 block of Willow Spring Road, according to a preliminary investigation.

A county police spokesman said it was unclear if the suspect was armed. Lt. Robert McCullough, the spokesman, said the man was going through the officer's items and was near unlocked weapons when he was spotted by the officer, who came from his upstairs bedroom after hearing the commotion. The suspect was shot once in the upper body after a brief confrontation, McCullough said.

Fenwick was transported to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center where he is in critical condition, McCullough said.

According to electronic court records, Fenwick had previously faced charges including theft, assault and armed robbery in 2001 but was not convicted.

The officer, who was not hurt during the altercation, is an 18-year veteran of the city Police Department, according to McCullough. He has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, which is being led by the county department.

Tech Buzz Examiner

 

Tobacco giants Reynolds, Philip Morris & Lorillard claim graphic NYC smoking posters go too far

Alison Gendar
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 

Thursday, June 3rd 2010, 3:46 PM

 

Savulich for News

Three tobacco giants are suing the city over graphic anti-smoking posters that stores selling cigarettes have to post near the cash register.

R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and Lorillard claim the color images of cancer-ravaged lungs, a decayed tooth and a stroke-damaged brain are "unappetizing" and violate the First Amendment.

"The signs...do not describe the risks of smoking in purely factual terms," claims the lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan Federal Court.

The stores are being forced to "undertake graphic advocacy on behalf of the city" - which is barred by the First Amendment, the court papers allege.

The suit was joined by two grocery stores and two retail groups.

Calls to City Hall and the city Health Department were not immediately returned.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/06/03/2010-06-03_tobacco_giants_reynolds_philip_morris__lorillard_claim_graphic_nyc_smoking_poste.html#ixzz0ppAgfFgN

 

NEW YORK (AP) — Rue McClanahan, the Emmy-winning actress who brought the sexually liberated Southern belle Blanche Devereaux to life on the hit TV series "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 76.

Her manager Barbara Lawrence said McClanahan died Thursday at 1 a.m. of a stroke.

She had undergone treatment for breast cancer in 1997 and later lectured to cancer support groups on "aging gracefully." In 2009, she had heart bypass surgery.

McClanahan had an active career in off-Broadway and regional stages in the 1960s before she was tapped for TV in the 1970s for the key best-friend character on the hit series "Maude," starring Beatrice Arthur.

But her most loved role came in 1985 when she co-starred with Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty in "The Golden Girls," a runaway hit that broke the sitcom mold by focusing on the foibles of four aging — and frequently eccentric — women living together in Miami.

"Golden Girls" aimed to show "that when people mature, they add layers," she told The New York Times in 1985. "They don't turn into other creatures. The truth is we all still have our child, our adolescent, and your young woman living in us."

Blanche, who called her father "Big Daddy," was a frequent target of roommates Dorothy, Rose and the outspoken Sophia (Getty), who would fire off zingers at Blanche such as, "Your life's an open blouse."

McClanahan snagged an Emmy for her work on the show in 1987. In an Associated Press interview that year, McClanahan said Blanche was unlike any other role she had ever played.

"Probably the closest I've ever done was Blanche DuBois in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' at the Pasadena Playhouse," she said. "I think, too, that's where the name came from, although my character is not a drinker and not crazy."

Her Blanche Devereaux, she said, "is in love with life and she loves men. I think she has an attitude toward women that's competitive. She is friends with Dorothy and Rose, but if she has enough provocation she becomes competitive with them. I think basically she's insecure. It's the other side of the Don Juan syndrome."

After "The Golden Girls" was canceled in 1992, McClanahan, White and Getty reprised their roles in a short-lived spinoff, "Golden Palace."

McClanahan continued working in television, on stage and in film, appearing in the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau vehicle "Out to Sea" and as the biology teacher in "Starship Troopers."

She stepped in to portray Madame Morrible, the crafty headmistress, for a time in "Wicked," Broadway's long-running "Wizard of Oz" prequel.

In 2008, McClanahan appeared in the Logo comedy "Sordid Lives: The Series," playing the slightly addled, elderly mother of an institutionalized drag queen.

During production, McClanahan was recovering from 2007 surgery on her knee. It didn't stop her from filming a sex scene in which the bed broke, forcing her to hang on to a windowsill to avoid tumbling off.

McClanahan was born Eddi-Rue McClanahan in Healdton, Okla., to building contractor William McClanahan and his wife, Dreda Rheua-Nell, a beautician. She graduated with honors from the University of Tulsa with a degree in German and theater arts.

McClanahan's acting career began on the stage. According to a 1985 Los Angeles Times profile, she appeared at the Pasadena (Calif.) Playhouse, studied in New York with Uta Hagen and Harold Clurman, and worked in soaps and on the stage.

She won an Obie — the off-Broadway version of the Tony — in 1970 for "Who's Happy Now," playing the "other woman" in a family drama written by Oliver Hailey. She reprised the role in a 1975 television version; in a review, The New York Times described her character as "an irrepressible belle given to frequent bouts of 'wooziness' and occasional bursts of shrewdness."

She had appeared only sporadically on television until producer Norman Lear tapped her for a guest role on "All in the Family" in 1971.

She went from there to a regular role in the "All in the Family" spinoff "Maude," playing Vivian, the neighbor and best friend to Arthur in the starring role.

When Arthur died in April 2009, McClanahan recalled that she had felt constrained by "Golden Girls" during the later years of its run. "Bea liked to be the star of the show. She didn't really like to do that ensemble playing," McClanahan said.

After that series ended in 1978, McClanahan landed the role as Aunt Fran on "Mama's Family" in 1983.

McClanahan was married six times: Tom Bish, with whom she had a son, Mark Bish; actor Norman Hartweg; Peter D'Maio; Gus Fisher; and Tom Keel. She married husband Morrow Wilson on Christmas Day in 1997.

She called her 2007 memoir "My First Five Husbands ... And the Ones Who Got Away."

Eau de marketing, with hint of pepper

Sniffing for customers, N.C.150 billboard wafts odor of grilling steak toward road.

Jen Aronoff
Charlotte Observer

Bloom fired up the grill-board to promote its new line of beef. It will "smell" daily during rush hours through June 18.

JEFF WILLHELM

Shah

Bloom's new billboard on N.C. 150 near Lake Norman makes scents. Really. A fan pumps out an odor of grilling meat. JEFF WILLHELM

There's something in the air along a busy local road, and it's not just exhaust fumes: It's the smell of grilled steak, courtesy of what appears to be the nation's first scented highway billboard.

The Bloom grocery chain, part of Salisbury-based Food Lion, hopes to catch shoppers by the nose by wafting black pepper and charcoal smells from the base of a sign along River Highway (N.C. 150) in Mooresville.

And though businesses have been employing specialized aromas to boost sales and create ambiance for years, this, it appears, is a different frontier - one designed to cut through the clutter that commuters encounter every day.

After all, you can tune out noise. You can disregard other signs. But a new smell? "It will definitely catch your attention, because we have to breathe," notes Harald Vogt, founder of the Scent Marketing Institute, a New York-based independent consultancy.

Bloom fired up the grill-board last Friday to promote its new line of beef. It will emit scents from 7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. every day until June 18, spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown said. It shows a towering fork piercing a giant piece of meat, and is visible to westbound traffic.

The company developed the idea with Charlotte advertising agency Birdsong Gregory and Charlotte-based ScentAir, which provides custom scents and fragrance-delivery systems for businesses, including hotel lobbies, casino gambling floors and retail stores. A billboard is a bit outside of ScentAir's usual realm, but it appreciated the creative challenge, marketing director Murray Dameron said.

A high-powered fan attached to the bottom of the billboard pole disperses the aroma by blowing air over cartridges loaded with fragrance oil, Dameron said. ScentAir has also used the system at outdoor events or large indoor spaces, including during the 2008 World Series at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. Yes, he said, fans noticed that the domed stadium smelled like oranges.

For the billboard, he said, "it's basically a blend of black pepper and kind of a charcoal grilling smell," he said. "It smells like grilled meat with a nice pepper rub on it."

When good smells go bad

Such scented outdoor advertising has few precedents, said Jeff Golimowski, spokesman for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. ScentAir previously erected a fragrant street-level, mural-style sign in Israel, but the most famous example came in San Francisco in 2006, when the state's milk promotion board installed strips that gave selected bus shelters the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies.

The campaign attracted plenty of publicity, but crumbled after little more than a day, amid complaints from people with asthma or environmental allergies.

Others questioned the tact of placing a tempting food smell in an area where poor and homeless people would encounter it.

The milk board said the smells were perfectly safe, and ScentAir says the same about the fragrances used in Mooresville.

"It's another way that out-of-home advertising is adapting to new technologies," Golimowski said. "You see digital billboards, Bluetooth-enabled bus shelters, mobile phone apps. Something like this that engages all of the consumer's senses, and really evokes a sensation and memory, is another very interesting step."

Scent marketing has been growing slowly because it's difficult for companies to measure the return on investment and justify the expenditure, especially in a recession, the Scent Marketing Institute's Vogt said. But, he noted, it has the potential to break out much more, given the powerful memory links that scent can form.

Still, companies have to be careful not to irritate the very consumers they're trying to win over. Some people are highly sensitive to scent, while others object to prominent scents in public spaces, Vogt noted.

Not easy to catch the smell

Scented outdoor ads also remain rare simply because they're difficult to control, he said. Weather and wind patterns could thwart the scent diffusion.

That could be an issue with the Bloom billboard. Its fan is supposed to have a range of 30 to 50 yards, so someone could catch a whiff while driving by. But results this week suggested it was falling a bit short.

Located up an embankment next to a retention pond, the fan was pointed slightly downward Wednesday afternoon, ruffling the grass around it. Close up, a black peppery, grill-evocative smell was noticeable, particularly in a favorable breeze. Outside of about 15 feet away, however, it was difficult to perceive, and indistinguishable during a ride past with the windows down.

Mahesh Shah, owner of the Quick Mart Shell gas station next door, didn't even realize that the billboard was supposed to smell until the media arrived.

"If nobody tells, you don't know," he said as traffic zoomed by. Not that he'd be tempted anyway: He doesn't eat meat.

Cheryl Reid, manager of the Storage Company, a mini-storage business on the other side of the sign, couldn't smell anything from her door this week. When she walked closer, about 30 feet from the fan, she caught a faint, charcoal-scented breeze that didn't smell strongly of steaks, she said, but also wasn't unpleasant.

"You might can smell it a little bit, but unless people are stopped out there or real close to the sign, I don't know that they're going to get the desired effect from it," she said.

She was unsure, she said, of whether it made her want a steak more.

Suspect robs Fairfax bank, forgets to flee: Busted

Washington Post

May 28, 2010

Paul McCartney tells critics to 'lay off' of President Obama: 'He's a great guy'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Wednesday, June 2nd 2010, 3:14 PM

 

TRIPPLAAR KRISTOFFER/SIPA

Gov. Jan Brewer to President Obama: 'We'll see you in court' to defend Arizona immigration law

Michael Sheridan
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

 

Wednesday, June 2nd 2010, 10:16 AM

 

Wong/Getty; Tingle/AP

Covering Obama, press encounters Nation of Islam

Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
05/30/10 8:56 AM EDT

 

President Obama’s home is in the same Chicago neighborhood as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.  On Saturday night, the overlapping of Obama’s and Farrakhan’s worlds made for a strange, and sometimes testy, encounter between the Secret Service, the press corps covering the president, and the paramilitary security force, the Fruit of Islam, surrounding Farrakhan.

The encounter was written up — for distribution to the press, not necessarily for publication — by the New York Times’ Jackie Calmes.  It began a little after 4:00 p.m. when Obama and his family walked to the nearby home of longtime friend Marty Nesbitt for a backyard cookout.  It just so happens that Nesbitt lives across the street from Farrakhan.

A few hours after Obama went to Nesbitt’s home, the press pool, including Calmes, was waiting in a bus parked near 49th Street and Woodlawn Avenue, next to Farrakhan’s mansion.  The reporters’ Secret Service minder allowed them off the bus to stretch their legs.  As they stood on the sidewalk, some of the journalists inadvertently touched the grass next to the sidewalk, and that is when the encounter began.  From Calmes’ report:

Immediately a polite man in jeans and T-shirt emerged to ask us to stay off the grass. Though this grass was the curbside city property, we obliged.

But it turned out that simply staying off the grass was not enough to satisfy the man in the T-shirt.  Calmes continues:

Soon, however, he was pacing and talking on a cell phone. He went inside the mansion’s black wrought iron fence, crossed the well-landscaped yard, lifted a water bucket behind rose bushes and, voila!, a walkie-talkie. He was heard to refer to “the CIA” once he began speaking into it.

Soon he approached our [Secret Service] agent, asking him to move the van and its occupants, though your pooler could not hear much else he said. But the agent said, “How is this a security breach?” And he asked if the house was a government property.

The man said something else and at that point the agent stuck out his hand to shake hands and introduced himself as a Secret Service agent. He added, “Sir, I can assure you that we will do nothing to interfere with whatever is going on in there.”

It might be assumed that an assurance from the Secret Service would be enough to satisfy any security-minded guardian of Louis Farrakhan.  But not in this case.  Calmes continues:

The man is back to pacing and talking on his cell, walkie-talkie in hand.

A co-pooler searched the Internet for the address and found it listed on a Web site called NotForTourists and another called Taxexemptworld.com. Indeed, another pooler found a county Web site that confirmed this property is tax exempt for being a religious institution.

Reinforcements arrived — three men in T-shirts reading “Wide or Die!” One surly man has been staring daggers at us. Asked if this is Minister Farrakhan’s house, he just stared at your pooler. Asked again, he said, “I don’t have no comment.”

At nearly 8 p.m. local time we are still holding while POTUS and family remain at the Nesbitts.

More time passed.  The men in T-shirts were joined by even more men,  from the Fruit of Islam, Farrakhan’s security force.  From Calmes:

It’s 8:45 and nearly dark; your pool has retreated back inside the van. We’re outnumbered now by roughly a dozen Fruit of Islam agents for the Nation of Islam. As each casually dressed man arrives, he exchanges elaborate handshake/hug/double air-kisses with others. Two walked by your pooler chanting “Islam.”

Several have filmed and photographed your poolers, the van and its license plates with their cell phones.

One came and stood close to a couple poolers and OUR [Secret Service] agent. He asked if he could help. No answer. He asked again. The man said no. The agent said, “Secret Service — Please move away from this group of people.”

He did. Soon the agent asked us to go in the bus. We did.

At that point, the Secret Service was badly outnumbered by the Fruit of Islam, who apparently believed that some sort of “security breach” had occurred.  Were Farrakhan’s men armed?  Were there more on the way?  The Secret Service agent called for backup.  From Calmes:

9:20 local time and our agent got reinforcements from three Secret Service agents. One shook hands with one of the 22 Fruit members we now can count from the van. After a short discussion the three Secret Service agents walked away again.

No word on when we get to leave. We’re guessing POTUS is watching the Blackhawks game at the Nesbitts’ home.

While this was happening, word of the standoff apparently got around as a result of Calmes’ pool reports (they were sent out piecemeal by email).  Someone who had read the reports got in touch with Farrakhan to let the Nation of Islam leader know that the people waiting outside were just covering Obama.  From Calmes:

The power of pool reportage! Standoff ends, apparently with help of intermediary in Detroit:

Your pooler got a call at about 10:15 local time from a pool report reader who identified himself as the Rev. Gary Hunter, a Baptist minister in Motown who writes and blogs for the Detroit Times. He said he had called Minister Farrakhan and his son and asked them to have the Fruit stand down.

“I told him you were good people,” Rev. Hunter said. “He said he didn’t know you all were just waiting for the president.”

As it happens, the Fruit of Islam indeed had mostly gone by then. The Rev. Hunter apparently is remembered by [White House social secretary staffer Samantha] Tubman, and he said he knows our frequent press rustler Ben Finkenbinder from past travels with Obama.

Anyway, at 10:33 we pulled away and we are at the Obama residence. Never saw POTUS at all.

And that was the end of it.  Some observers will make light of the whole thing — just a little misunderstanding with those weird Nation of Islam guys — but the fact that Farrakhan’s security force is close to the president’s home is likely a matter of continuing concern to the Secret Service.  And on Saturday night, the two forces ran into each other.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/covering-obama-press-encounters-nation-of-islam-95214269.html#ixzz0pgtrtSnJ