Mainly a New York institution. But Bob Grant, who is arguably the father of modern conservative hate radio (sorry if that sounds too harsh), died today at 84.
In case you missed this during the New Year’s hullabaloo, the billionaire founder of Home Depot, Ken Langone, says Pope Francis is not giving enough love to the extremely wealthy.
Photos from today’s epic coming out party for weed in Colorado.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), arch-Tea Partier who probably half the Tea Party thinks is nuts, is positioning himself as the political leader of the Bitcoin movement.
Yeah, no idea.
From Mike Kelly’s late evening column in the Bergen Record …
The George Washington Bridge lane closures that led to paralyzing gridlock in Fort Lee this past September were ordered by someone outside the Port Authority and possibly for “an improper motive,” said the state lawmaker leading the investigation into whether the closings were politically motivated.
“There are documents that we’ve received that would indicate that there was somebody else who initiated this,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski. “There are words that are used that would imply an improper motive.”
Wisniewski, who has scheduled more hearings next week in Trenton on the controversy in his role as chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, declined to say who those other officials might be or what their motives were.
Read the rest of Kelly’s column at the link above.
I’m not sure what to make of this. I know little of the background. But I wanted to flag the report to find out more and see if others can shed more light.
There’s a post at ArtsJournal.com about a musician named Boujemaa Razgui who is a Canadian citizen who lives in New York with a Green Card. He’s an accomplished flautist who plays various handmade flutes around the world. To quote the post by Norman Lebrecht, he travels and performs with “a variety of flutes of varying ethnicity, each made by himself over years for specific types of ancient and modern performance.” To cut to the chase, he was flying into JFK from Madrid a week ago when customs officials decided they were ‘agricultural products’ and destroyed them all on the spot.
Happy New Year to everyone in eye-shot of this post! And especially, Happy New Year to our dedicated readers. Thank you from all of us here at TPM. Running this operation, with all the freedom it’s given me, the opportunities, is one of the great blessings of my life. And so I also want to thank and wish a great 2014 to the 20 odd people who help me run it.
I’ve seen over the last few days that a lot of people aren’t sorry to see 2013 go. I’m really, really looking forward to 2014 too. But I’ll confide something to you. For me, 2013 was a good year. And a good year for this organization. A really good year.
Check out this 1999-2000 era photo of New York’s new First Family with the Clintons. Regrow the beard, I say. Click after the jump to see the full size version …
The State of Utah has appealed directly the Supreme Court to halt same sex marriages in the state.
This is a great story to end the year on. Ken Langone, billionaire founder of Home Depot (nice place, I’ve shopped there), says Pope Francis is bumming out the tycoon class by giving all the love to the poors. (I mean, Langone doesn’t seem to be a big Matthew 19:21 kinda guy, does he?) And if it keeps up, they may cut off their contributions for things like restoring St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
This reminded me of when Jesus said, “It is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than for a Pope to understand complex financial instruments or the challenges faced by those who labor with them.”
To ring in the New Year, what’s your Matthew 19:24 riff to honor Ken Langone?