Jessica Chastain: The Sweet Smell of Success

At the New York Times:

As she rose from her chair at the Calvin Klein fashion show in Midtown Manhattan the other week, Jessica Chastain was all but engulfed by an onrush of journalists and celebrity groupies imploring the lanky, flame-haired actress for a word, a glance, a nanosecond of her time.

Stefano Tonchi, the editor of W, embraced her showily as cameras clicked and whirred. Tim Blanks, the editor at large for Style.com, thrust a microphone in her face, pleading for an interview, before a pair of overzealous handlers leapt onto the catwalk to spirit her away.

Yes, Ms. Chastain can Hoover that kind of attention. One of Hollywood’s most avidly courted actresses, she is bait these days for the style set as well, having shone in recent months as fashion’s favorite clothes hanger. Reporters’ in-boxes are cluttered with bulletins announcing that she wore Roland Mouret to the Bafta Awards, appeared in Alexander McQueen on the SAG red carpet, and in Dior at the Writers Guild Awards. Before long we’ll be reading she was turned out in Dolce & Gabbana for the opening of a Sicilian breadbox.

Twice nominated for an Oscar (she is a front-runner on Sunday for best actress for her role in “Zero Dark Thirty”) and an increasingly high-profile presence on the red carpet, Ms. Chastain has become a paparazzi favorite, yet not one who projects the worldly glamour of a Cate Blanchett or Julianne Moore.

RTWT.

Funny, but as I was posting this, Kristin Chenoweth was interview Ms. Chastain on the red carpet at the Oscars. She's indeed looking fabulous.

More later...

Nationwide Day of Resistance Rallies — February 23, 2013

Doug Ross has a roundup, "Top 15 #DayofResistance Photos You Will Never See in Democrat Media."

I was cracking up at this photo below. It's the 405 Freeway tea party patriot. I've been seeing this guy during my afternoon drive time since late 2009. A couple of months back I saw him getting on the freeway around Seal Beach Boulevard and I snapped a couple of photos with my iPhone. I never did get around to posting them, but now's a good a time as ever, considering his appearance at the Westminster rally on Saturday, photo courtesy of The 405 Radio, "Day of Resistance - 2/23." More on that later.

Meanwhile, at Twitchy, "Thousands attend Day of Resistance rallies in support of Second Amendment [photos]."

'We live in a culture of violence, and that culture is nurtured and glamorized by the movies...'

From the letters at the Los Angeles Times, "Feedback: The culture of violence":

Betsy Sharkey's premise, "A Critic Says the Problem Isn't the Movies but Real Life, Where Killing Is All Too Common," is misguided and unrealistic [Feb. 17]. If killing and violence are all too common in real life, does producing more films, which seem to glorify gratuitous killing and violence, alleviate the problem? I don't think so.

After all, fashion, sexual behavior and language in films seem to have an influential and imitative effect in people's lives. Why would violence be exempt?

Sharkey claims that nothing she's seen in movies comes close to what she's witnessed firsthand. How can this be? In real life, one kick to the head could end a life, or most likely end the fight, but in films, a dozen kicks to the head seem to prolong a fight rather than end it.

We live in a culture of violence, and that culture is nurtured and glamorized by the movies. We can become only more inured to that violence and more violent as a society, because ultimately, life imitates art.

Giuseppe Mirelli

Los Angeles

More letters at the link.

And see Instapundit, "SHILLING FOR HOLLYWOOD: L.A. Times: Violent Movies Don’t Cause Violence, but Guns Do." Also, "IF YOU’RE WATCHING THE OSCARS TONIGHT — OR IF YOU’RE NOT — you might want to read my Wall Street Journal column: The Hollywood Tax Story They Won’t Tell at the Oscars: It’s easy to demand higher levies on the ‘rich’ when your own industry gets $1.5 billion in government handouts."

Damon Harris, Temptations Singer, Dead at 62

At the Baltimore Sun, "Otis ‘Damon’ Harris, Temptations singer and Baltimore native, dead at 62."

Harris is singing lead toward the end of the clip.

More here, "Damon Harris of the Temptations, RIP."

George Will Picks 'Zero Dark Thirty' for Best Picture

A rebuke to Senators Levin, Feinstein, and McCain.

From this morning's "This Week":

My preditions: Best Picture: "Argo." Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis for "Lincoln." Best Actress: Jessica Chastain for "Zero Dark Thirty."

Not sure about Best Director or any of the others. We'll see tonight.

RELATED: At the New York Times, "A 9/11 Victim's Family Raises New Objections to ‘Zero Dark Thirty’." (At Memeorandum.)

Whiney bitches. Sorry for you loss, but sheesh.

Oscar Sunday Rule 5

Tonight the Academy Awards will broadcast from Hollywood. I'm sure I'll have some roundups from the red carpet tomorrow. In the meantime, here's Jennifer Lawrence, "'I don't want anything coming undone!': Jennifer Lawrence raises the wow factor in racy cut-out black dress at Independent Spirit Awards." (More here.)

Now, some Sunday Rule 5.

At the home of the originator, "Rule 5 Sunday: Gold, Girls And Guns."

Also at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is an evil big soft drink causing obesity which makes the world boil, you might just be a Warmist." And, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

More at 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny, "Morning Mistress." Also, "Hot Pick of the Late Night - Rule 5," and "Lingerie Ladies - Rule 5."

And at Subject to Change, "Armed Chicks."

Still more from A View From the Beach, "Rule 5 Saturday – Katherine Heigl."

And at Laughing Conservative, "Alyssa Miller."

And speaking of restraining orders, we're going to have to put Bob Belvedere on lockdown! See, "Rule 5 Saturday: Caitlin Wynters."

Also going on lockdown is Reaganite Republican, "Mexican TV Weather-Girls: Today's Forecast? HAWT!"

Plus, at The H2 "Big Boob Friday," and at Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart (on Saturday?) - Cameron Russel."

Plus, Theo's got his Sunday "Bonus Totty..."

And wrapping it up for now is Daley Gator, "DaleyGator DaleyBabe Sabine Jemeljanova."

Portland, Maine, Police Officer Illegally Detains Lawfully Carrying Law Student, Promptly Gets Schooled on Arrest and Reasonable Suspicion Case Law

This is absolutely amazing.

At Gateway Pundit, "Ballsy Law Student Schools Uninformed Law Officer on Gun Rights (Video)."

Video at Adrienne's Corner, "Law student lawfully carrying gun refuses to be intimidated by police...(video)."

Don't Miss This Surprisingly Good Piece on 'Gleeful Provocateur' Michael GoldFarb at the New York Times

This piece had me laughing a couple of times, which is unusual for the reporting at the Old Gray Lady.

See, "Michael Goldfarb Gleeful Provocateur at Intersection of Many Worlds":

At 11:42 a.m. on Feb. 14, a conservative online magazine called The Washington Free Beacon posted a dispatch about a speech Chuck Hagel gave in 2007 in which it said he called the State Department “an adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office.”

The report was based on “contemporaneous” notes an attendee posted online. An hour later on the floor of the United States Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urgently cited that statement as another reason to delay Mr. Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary.

Mr. Hagel denied saying it, and no recording has surfaced. But after a successful filibuster against the nominee, a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel effectively declared partial victory and vowed to “redouble its efforts to bring to light Mr. Hagel’s complete record.”

All in all, it was a very bad day for Mr. Hagel, and a smashingly good one for the conservative political operative of the moment — Michael Goldfarb.

At 32, Mr. Goldfarb is a founder of The Free Beacon, which is gaining prominence as a conservative clarion; a onetime presidential campaign aide to Senator John McCain, who provided critical support for the filibuster; and the strategist for the Emergency Committee for Israel, an anonymously financed group that advertises against President Obama and Congressional Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel. On top of that, he is a partner at Orion Strategies, a consulting firm whose clients have included the national governments of Taiwan and Georgia.

An all-around anti-liberal provocateur, Mr. Goldfarb has blazed a trail in the new era of campaign finance, in which loosened restrictions have flooded the political world with cash for a whole new array of organizations that operate outside the traditional bounds of the parties.

Often working with money from major Republican donors, most of whom have preferred anonymity, Mr. Goldfarb has been in the middle of nearly every major partisan dispute of Mr. Obama’s presidency — over Iran, Israel, terrorism policy and now Mr. Hagel and guns. For a time, Mr. Goldfarb worked as a communications strategist to the leading bêtes noires of liberals, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

Mr. Goldfarb did not come up via state politics, Capitol Hill or the Republican National Committee, proving grounds that made the careers of top party operatives like Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and Matt Rhoades, the campaign manager for Mitt Romney.

His career was spawned, rather, in the conservative confines of The Weekly Standard and allied organizations, namely the Project for the New American Century, which is well known for promoting the war in Iraq. He has since gone on to thrive in the influential world of outside ideological groups. Mr. Goldfarb, known as a flamethrower on both sides of the aisle, has achieved unparalleled hybrid status in the process.

In his work at The Free Beacon, for groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel and at Orion, he has combined a relatively new form of weaponized journalism, politicking and public policy into a potent mix.

“He’s at the intersection of a lot of different worlds,” said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who has been a boss, mentor and colleague to Mr. Goldfarb. He said Mr. Goldfarb was representative of a new generation of conservatives whose emergence at a low ebb of their party’s power has made them “a little more entrepreneurial, more outspoken and risk-taking — not so worried about moving up a corporate ladder.”

A wisecracking native of suburban Philadelphia, Mr. Goldfarb has described himself as a cudgel. His signature political attack can best be described as gleeful evisceration, which at times has exposed him to charges of going too far and of getting too personal.

The liberal writer Lee Fang got a taste when he wrote an article for The Nation linking work that Orion has done for Taiwan to articles in The Free Beacon voicing criticism of the Obama administration for blocking a sale to Taiwan of F-16 jets.

Mr. Goldfarb denied any connection between his work at Orion and the articles, saying he did not personally handle Taiwan’s account or write the articles.

But The Free Beacon responded viscerally, with a report featuring pictures of Mr. Fang — who formerly wrote for the anonymously financed liberal blog ThinkProgress that frequently attacks the Kochs — shirtless and blowing a thick cloud of smoke. The headline read: “High Times at The Nation.”

In an interview, Mr. Fang, 26, said the photographs were from college and could have been found only in his password-protected account with Photobucket. He said he had filed a police report to get to the bottom of it. He said he felt doubly violated because the photograph was in a file that included revealing shots of his girlfriend.

“I think he’s just out to hurt people,” said Mr. Fang, who first tangled with Mr. Goldfarb when he was writing for ThinkProgress about the Kochs. “I don’t understand what his greater goal is; what would be the perfect solution to fix the most serious problems in America?”

Though Mr. Goldfarb would not share how The Free Beacon obtained the photographs, he said in a telephone interview that they were publicly available and were secured by legal means.

As he tells it, he is simply trying to have fun while practicing his admittedly combative brand of politics — the humor of which, he said, his liberal critics are too self-serious to get.

Here's that piece, "High Times at the Nation." That alone is worth the price of this report. Man, that photo of Fang is hilarious --- perfectly encapsulating the stupidity of today's radical left-wing Democrats.

More seriously, check out the home page for the Emergency Committee on Israel, which features its YouTube ads right on the main page.

And don't miss the rest at NYT. A surprisingly pleasant read first thing Sunday morning.

Added: A Memeorandum thread.

Alhambra Woman Blown Away at Bank Mural Featuring Her Picture From 1926

An amazing story, at the Los Angeles Times, "Taken aback by a photo from way back":

A bank's branch office in Alhambra is helping Fame Rybicki become famous.

The 91-year-old former school administrator and community activist was startled to discover that a photograph taken of her in August 1926 had been incorporated into a large mural that decorates a newly opened Wells Fargo office on the city's Main Street.

The mural is a montage of historic photos that salute 112-year-old Alhambra's early days. A 5-year-old Rybicki is shown standing with family members and uniformed attendants in front of several cars gassing up at her father's service station.

"My father had just opened the service station at the corner of Fremont Avenue and Valley Boulevard," Rybicki said. "My mother and my uncle from back East are also in the picture."

Rybicki learned of the mural when she spied a photo of it in a newsletter mailed to her last month by the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce. She and her husband, Anton, 95, now live close to daughter Joan Steen in Newport Beach.

The gas station, named Fremont Service, was a focal point in Rybicki's life.

Her father, Giles Ratkowski, a civil engineer for the Chicago North Alton Railroad, had contracted tuberculosis on a trip to Washington, D.C., where he had gone to testify before Congress about government payments owed for services during World War I.

"It was believed at that time that the only cure for TB was sunshine," she said. "One of his friends had already quit the railroad and moved to Glendale, so my father wrote to him for information and we came to California in January of 1925."

Her father decided to open a gas station so he could work outdoors in the sunlight, Rybicki said.

He looked at a spot on Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue but "decided that there weren't enough residents there to warrant building a station," she said. "That corner is now worth millions."

Instead, Ratkowski settled on the corner of Fremont and Valley and bought a double-sized lot that contained a citrus grove and a rambling, 16-room Asian-themed house that had been built 24 years earlier by an engineer named Antonio Cajal, who had served in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion.

To clear space for his gas station and a planned mini-market, Ratkowski removed rows of orange, acacia, avocado and palm trees, Rybicki said.

Being an engineer, her father designed his eight gasoline pumps himself. "They were built to keep anyone from tampering with them and stealing gasoline at night. They were the first of their kind — the gas would go back into the tanks in the ground when they were turned off," she said.

Her father closed the station and its small market at midnight and carried the day's receipts back to the family home. He was never robbed.

Rybicki, whose first name is Euphemia but is known to friends as Fame, spent much of her childhood at the station. It was from there that her father taught her to drive the family's big Packard — at age 10. And it was in the Fremont Service mini-market that as a 13-year-old she met the man she would eventually be married to for more than 70 years.

"He was 17 and was in there buying something," she said. "He later told me that he told himself that day that someday he was going to marry that girl."

How the New ObamaCare Mandates Are Already Reducing Full-Time Employment

At WSJ, "ObamaCare and the '29ers'":

Here's a trend you'll be reading more about: part-time "job sharing," not only within firms but across different businesses.

It's already happening across the country at fast-food restaurants, as employers try to avoid being punished by the Affordable Care Act. In some cases we've heard about, a local McDonalds has hired employees to operate the cash register or flip burgers for 20 hours a week and then the workers head to the nearby Burger King or Wendy's to log another 20 hours. Other employees take the opposite shifts.

Welcome to the strange new world of small-business hiring under ObamaCare. The law requires firms with 50 or more "full-time equivalent workers" to offer health plans to employees who work more than 30 hours a week. (The law says "equivalent" because two 15 hour a week workers equal one full-time worker.) Employers that pass the 50-employee threshold and don't offer insurance face a $2,000 penalty for each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. So by hiring the 50th worker, the firm pays a penalty on the previous 20 as well.

These employment cliffs are especially perverse economic incentives. Thousands of employers will face a $40,000 penalty if they dare expand and hire a 50th worker. The law is effectively a $2,000 tax on each additional hire after that, so to move to 60 workers costs $60,000.

A 2011 Hudson Institute study estimates that this insurance mandate will cost the franchise industry $6.4 billion and put 3.2 million jobs "at risk." The insurance mandate is so onerous for small firms that Stephen Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, predicts that "Many stores will have to cut worker hours out of necessity. It could be the difference between staying in business or going out of business." The franchise association says the average fast-food restaurant has profits of only about $50,000 to $100,000 and a margin of about 3.5%.

Because other federal employment regulations also kick in when a firm crosses the 50 worker threshold, employers are starting to cap payrolls at 49 full-time workers. These firms have come to be known as "49ers." Businesses that hire young and lower-skilled workers are also starting to put a ceiling on the work week of below 30 hours. These firms are the new "29ers." Part-time workers don't have to be offered insurance under ObamaCare.

Continue reading.

Obama Endorsed By...

Via What Bubba Knows:

Former First Lady Laura Bush Slams Radical Homosexual Coalition: Demands Removal From Same-Sex Marriage Advertisement

Good for her.

At WND, "Laura Bush: Remove me from pro-gay marriage ad."

And at CSM, "Laura Bush: Gay marriage group 'sorry' Bush wants out of gay marriage ads."

Yeah, decent folks like Mrs. Bush don't want to be part of your homosexual nightmare.

Texas Going Blue? Bwahaha!!

At WSJ, "Gov. Rick Perry: Texas Will Never Go Blue."

Progressives Attack Sen. Ted Cruz as the 'New McCarthy'

When the left attacks people for "McCarthyism" they've already lost the debate.

It's not red-baiting when your enemies really are red.

At Weasel Zippers, "MSNBC’s Grating Leftist Rachel Maddow Accuses Ted Cruz of “McCarthyism”… (VIDEO)." And at the Blaze, "TED CRUZ RESPONDS TO ‘NEW MCCARTHY’ NEW YORKER ARTICLE: ‘CURIOUS’ THEY WOULD ‘DREDGE UP A 3-YEAR-OLD SPEECH & CALL IT NEWS’" (via Memeorandum).

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley on Cover of New Spanish Vogue

Lovely.

At London's Daily Mail, "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley debuts new blonde hairdo as she stars as Spanish Vogue's March cover girl." Also, "Model of joy and love: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley shows off new hummingbird tattoo as she steps out in olive leather trousers."

BONUS: At Egotastic, "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Nipple Pokes and Asstastic Flashing Makes Our Day a Little Brighter."

Horrific Last-Lap Crash Mars Nationwide Race at Daytona

The New York Times reports, "Last-Lap Crash in Nascar Race Injures Fans."

And also at Deadspin, "Crash at NASCAR Nationwide Race at Daytona Leaves Kyle Larson’s Car Torn In Half By Fence, Spectators Injured By Debris."

NASCAR initially blocked this clip on YouTube, raising quite a controversy:

Emory President James Wagner's 'Contrition'

I saw the controversy over the 3/5 Compromise last week. I ignored it because it was so stupid.

But here's the headline at the New York Times' homepage, "Protest and Contrition After Slavery Comment." "Contrition"? That's big --- and stupid.

And clicking through at the link is the article, "Emory University Leader Revives Racial Concerns."

There's multiple layers of stupid here. The simple refusal to understand the 3/5 Compromise as a devil's bargain that made possible a constitutional agreement in 1787 is stupid. And the aggrieved leftists are monstrously stupid for applying at presentist epistemology to a political deal made 226 years ago. And it's a stupid lie that the 3/5 Compromise categorized black slaves as three-fifths human. The deal was that states with slave populations would be able to count them as three-fifths of the total number for purposes of representation. Black slaves had no rights, duh. Of course they were dehumanized. The institution of slavery was evil. But it's wicked stupid not to realize that there might have been no agreement on the Constitution had the deal not been struck. The stupid leftists are applying Marxist social justice ideology to attack President Wagner, who obviously wasn't in tune to the raging stupidity of political correctness that has infected America's campuses. Race and racial recrimination are enormous sources of power for the idiots of the radical left. Praising the 3/5 Compromise in such away is like giving away the store. You can call it a day with these retards. The Obama media will play up the non-troversy and the school's administration will capitulate to the stupid aggrieved race-mongers' demands. Rinse and repeat.

From the article:

ATLANTA — A reception Friday at Emory University to celebrate the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could have been more poorly timed, but not by much.

All week long, the president of Emory, James W. Wagner, had been trying to rewind a column that he had written for the university magazine. In it, he praised the 1787 three-fifths compromise, which allowed slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person as a way to determine how much Congressional power Southern states would have, as an example of how polarized people can find common ground.

It was, he has since said, a clumsy and regrettable mistake.

A faculty group censured him last week for the remarks. And in a speech at Friday’s reception for the campus exhibition, “And the Struggle Continues: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Fight for Social Change,” Dr. Wagner acknowledged both the nation’s ongoing education in race relations and his own.

“I know that I personally have a long way to go,” he said.

His article has been seized upon by students and faculty who say it was yet one more example of insensitivity from the Emory administration, which in September announced sweeping cuts that some say unfairly targeted some programs popular with minorities.

About 45 protesting students showed up at the reception, silently holding signs that read “This is 5/5 outrageous” and “Shame on James” as Dr. Wagner; Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a veteran of the civil rights movement; and leaders of the S.C.L.C. spoke about the fight for racial equality.

Whether the cuts, which include the elimination of physical education, visual arts, journalism, and graduate programs in economics and Spanish, disproportionately affect racial minorities is in dispute at the university, whose student body is 31 percent minority.

Certain programs that focused on or made recruiting minorities a priority have been shifted to other departments or eliminated, but university officials say the numbers are not as drastic as protesters believe.

Savings from the reorganization will be reinvested in other departments, including neurosciences, studies of contemporary China, and new media studies.

Such academic realignment is starting to happen at liberal arts colleges around the country, said Phil Kleweno, a consultant at Bain & Company who specializes in higher education.

“Not every school can excel in every subject,” he said. “Given where we are financially, these are wise decisions for many universities to make.”

Yes.

More money for programs. What better way to get more money for programs the university can't afford than to shame the president as an unreconstructed racist.

More at the link.

And more of teh stupid here: "Almost Verbatim Emory University President James Wagner: “The 3/5 Compromise is a Model to Which We Should Aspire. Also, the Liberal Arts are Like Slaves and Should Be Treated As Such”."

Gun Culture

From the always interesting Theo Spark, "Pic Dump..."

More at Theo's, "Wednesday Wenches...", and "Bedtime Totty..."

Lame Impasse Looms on Budget Cuts

Well, it's Sequester Saturday. A boring Sequester Saturday at that. This is Obama manufactured crisis. The so-called "cuts" are minuscule to non-existent and if Republicans have a spine they'll continue to hold firm. We'll see.

The Wall Street Journal has a front-page report, "Budget Standoff Presents Political Risks on Both Sides."

See also Bill Wilson, at Forbes, "The Non-Existent Spending Cuts Wrought By the ‘Devastating’ Sequester" (via Memeorandum).

More at the Daley Gator, "Bob Woodward: Obama lied about the sequester," and go straight to Woodward, "Obama’s sequester deal-changer." (At Memeorandum.)

Plus, from Peggy Noonan, "Government by Freakout."

IMAGE CREDIT: "The Looking Spoon, "An Easy Visual Explanation of How Democrats Are Exaggerating the Depth of the Sequester."

Who the Hell is Kurt Eichenwald?

Asks Robert Stacy McCain, "Never Doubt That Kurt Eichenwald Cares Deeply About Gay Kids With Bad Haircuts."

Read it at the link.

Yet more weird shit from the progressive left.

Here's the post that started the controversy, "Austin Gates Is a Victim of Abuse, Homophobia, and a Really Bad Haircut."