Poised Wolf Blitzer stands up to, backs down Gingrich in CNN debate

 Yessssssss. God is in his heaven, and for a couple of minutes Thursday night, the relationship between the press and grandstanding TV politicians was finally back in  balance.

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TOO MANY “DEBATES”

Gabrielle Giffords

WHAT IS THE TRUE STORY BEHIND GINGRICH’S OUSTER AS SPEAKER 13 YEARS AGO?

FROM THE NY TIMES REPORT ON MONDAY NIGHTS REPUBLICAN DEBATE:

The new landscape of the Republican campaign came into sharp view, with Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich often seeming as though they had traded personalities for the evening as they auditioned to become the strongest challenger to President Obama. It was clear from the outset that the  tables had turned, as Mr. Romney repeatedly tried to provoke Mr.  Gingrich, who has built up a reputation as a formidable debater.

FROM THE NY TIMES: January 26, 2012, 11:04 pm

Deconstructing a Demagogue

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

When not holding forth from his favorite table at Lâ Auberge Chez Francois, nestled among the manor houses of lobbyist-thick Great Falls, Va., Dr. Newton L. Gingrich likes to lecture people about food stamps and how out-of-touch the elites are with real America.

GO TO THE NY TIMES FOR THE FULL ARTICLE:

Opinion : Egan: Deconstructing a Demagogue

http://tinyurl.com/759po95

Michael Gerson, columnist, writing in the Washington Post:

“...Gingrich regularly gets into trouble when moving from analysis to prescription. Nearly every problem that crosses the threshold of his  attention becomes historically urgent, requiring a fundamental solution. This is the reason for his most revealing verbal habit. Systems are  “fundamentally broken”€� and require “fundamental change”.� Opposing views are “fundamentally a lie”� and “fundamentally alien to American tradition”.� Only the biggest ideas are sufficient to his self-regard.”

http://tinyurl.com/7hslulo

IS MICHELE OBAMA BEING TREATED UNFAIRLY BY HER CRITICS, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?

A new report by the CDC says there is a lot more binge drinking by Americans than previously realized.  WHAT’S GOING ON? The TerryReport has an essay on one factor encouraging over drinking: the movies.

The smart phone is threatening to kill off a host of consumer devices, including GPS receivers, handheld FM radios, music players and, most of all, entry level (and just above) digital cameras. Why carry even a small camera when your phone can take all the pictures you want, including video?

The answer for some consumer electronics companies is to push back with better cameras at the lower end of the scale. Here is a clip from a BusinessWeek article with a link at the bottom.

 FROM BUSINESSWEEK: “The strategy is aimed at reversing a crippling slide in entry level digital cameras, the industry’s largest market segment, and to carve out a profitable niche that can compete effectively against the expanding smartphone market. To combat improved camera technology in smartphones from Apple Inc., Nokia Oyj and others, manufacturers at the show opening in Las Vegas on Jan. 10 will, among other things, introduce models that beam photos directly to TVs and computers.

 All manufacturers, including Samsung, need to focus on the value proposition of a camera and what differentiates it  versus a smartphone, Reid Sullivan, a senior vice president of Samsung, said in an interview. The Suwon, South Korea-based company will introduce eight models that wirelessly transmit images to other devices.”  LINK

There is a new book out about the very interesting life of Gil Scott-Heron, the poet and recording artist who died last May at the age of 62. The memoir, which was pieced together from fragments of his writing over the years, is by no means fragmentary, according to a review in the NY Times. Scott-Heron made a big splash in the early 1970s with “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” and several other spoken word poems recorded and put out on an album with “The Last Poets”. More in coming days.

The photograph above is real: real surfer, real  wave, real everything. As they say, surf’s up in Southern California and the dudes and duettes are having a wonderful time, almost as much fun as the LA Times photographer who spent a long day at the beach snapping pictures. If you wanna be amazed, click here to go to the Times online photo essay.

WHY I HATE THE AIRLINES: an essay from away.com by Rob Sangster

I DON’T HATE AIRLINES, THEY HATE ME: an essay by Doug Terry, frequent flier no more.

FROM THE NY TIMES ON HOW VOTERS JUDGE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BY PERSONALITY:

JON CARAMANICA writing in the NY Times about the state of rock music in 2012

At this point rock is becoming a graveyard of aesthetic innovation and creativity, a lie perpetrated by major labels, radio conglomerates and  touring concerns, all of whom need or feel they need  the continued sustenance of this style of music. The fringes remain interesting, and  regenerate constantly, but the center has been left to rot.

TerryReport comment

Ann Szot, of Keene, N.H., said her husband thinks Ron Paul looks like “he should be sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons.” Yet he still plans to vote for him, she said. 

Meanwhile, some of the indie record labels are doing quite well by drastically reducing recording budgets and finding less expensive, creative ways to promote new artists. CLICK HERE to go to the posts on both the bad and the good.

The TerryReport is edited by Doug Terry, a former reporter in Washington, DC, for NPR who has appeared on more than 100 network affiliated television stations across the US as a  Washington correspondent. He has also reported for the CBC in Canada,  Israeli (English) Radio, The North Carolina News Network. Book reviews  by Terry have appeared in the Phildelphia Inquirer and he his reporting  work for radio has appeared in two books of collections of distinctive reporting. Terry began his career in television news at WFAA-TV, Dallas, Texas, one of the leading local/regional news stations in the United States.

Water fountain joy in Charleston, South Carolina

BIKE TRAILS IN THE DC AREA