Greek voters may be living in a fool’s paradise if they think Mr Tsipras can deliver what he says, but the Germans too have to look at the consequences of their obstinacy.
The news on Friday that Mr. Romney would opt out of the race revealed as much about the party in 2015 as it did about the former Massachusetts governor’s weaknesses as a candidate. Republican leaders, especially the party’s wealthiest donors, are in an impatient and determined mood. They are eager to turn to a new face they believe can defeat what they anticipate will be a strong, well-funded Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This week’s Economist looks at the position of current Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “upgraded the war into a Russia-NATO conflict just as Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, was downgrading Russia’s credit rating to junk.”
The annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine have thus helped Mr Putin to consolidate power at home. But as the economy deteriorates, he cannot afford to let go of eastern Ukraine and seems trapped by the logic of escalating conflict.
Separately, the British government has summoned the Russian ambassador after Russian military aircraft were intercepted operating near UK airspace, apparently disrupting commercial aviation. The Foreign Office said the incident was “part of an increasing pattern of out of area operations by Russian aircraft.”
When it comes to showing that they can scale to a size that would make them a competitor for existing major-media brands, only Vice has arguably achieved that, with a business that covers news on a global level, produces entertainment and drives a lot of advertising revenue, all based on a valuable millennial audience.
At the same time, however, advertising is also part of the problem.
The story gives us a chance to revisit John Oliver’s item ahead of last year’s World Cup (and gives him a chance to revisit his favorite Blatter clip):
What is clear from its demands as they were presented and evolved over the last few days is that ISIS may be led by a group of religious fanatics who carry out gruesome campaigns of conquest and terror, but it is also a skilled political player, showing flexibility and shrewd judgment about its opponents whether they are right next to the war zone in the deserts of the Middle East, half way around the world on the Pacific Rim, or, for that matter, on the banks of the Potomac.
My new book (out early in 2016) is called Too Dumb to Fail, and will focus on how conservatism was once a proud intellectual philosophy, but has been dumbed down over the years.
Palin has contributed to this phenomenon by playing the victim card, engaging in identity politics, co-opting some of the cruder pop-culture references, and conflating redneck lowbrow culture with philosophical conservatism.
And this makes me wonder if I might have contributed to this by boosting her—and by publicly chastising her conservative critics.
You were there when it was just me and a tip jar for six years, and at Time, and at The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, and then as an independent company. When we asked you two years ago to catch us as we jumped into independence, you came through and then some. In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it.
Andrew Sullivan started in the days when old people would ask, "What's a blog?" and ends in the days when young people ask, "What's a blog?"
If you are slow,” says Anthony Mormile, ESPN’s VP of digital video, “and want to make it beautiful, you can’t live in the Twitter space. Because some guy just held his phone up to his TV and put it up on Twitter, or some guy just GIF’d it, or some guy made a Vine and got the whole play up, and here we come eight minutes after it happened with a ‘ta-da! look at this beautiful opening. And we’ve got music and natural sound!’ And you’re like ‘we already saw it, dude’.
The storm has moved further east and will be departing faster than our forecasts of the past two days. The result is much less snow than previously predicted for the western half of our region. The heaviest of the snow will be over Long Island and southern Connecticut with lighter snow elsewhere through the morning hours.
The science of forecasting storms, while continually improving, still can be subject to error, especially if we’re on the edge of the heavy precipitation shield. Efforts, including research, are already underway to more easily communicate that forecast uncertainty.
(quick programming note – as campaigning and coverage heats up in Britain, I’ll give UK politics its own category here, as a way of distinguishing its politicians’ desperate appeals to keep their jobs from similar obfuscations in other countries.)
* SPORTS * UPDATE: Former Real Madrid and Barcelona soccer star Luis Figo announced he is planning to run against Sepp Blatter for President of Fifa. He told CNN that “I care about football, so what I’m seeing regarding the image of FIFA – not only now but in the past years – I don’t like it.” The deadline for nominations is Thursday with five, possibly six, candidates likely to contest May’s election.
Meanwhile, soccer clubs around the world spent a record $4.1bn on transfers in 2014, according to Fifa. English teams, fueled by lucrative TV deals, represented the biggest contributors to the total, spending $1.2bn, way ahead of next biggest spender, Spain, whose clubs collectively spent $700m.
In the final couple of hours before driving would supposedly attract a $300 ticket, both MSNBC and CNN – using something called a Blizzardmobile – decided to drive around New York’s largely deserted streets, creating strangely compelling programming that some viewers likened to performance art or a JJ Abrams movie.
Overheard in Boston, No. 2: "What if we misheard and there's actually a giant lizard coming our way?" pic.twitter.com/DlOQ8W3qtH
* SPORTS * Tuesday is Super Bowl Media Day and far from reporters having to stretch out non-stories in the run-up to Sunday’s game, DeflateGate has provided a fount of debate and opinion and – despite some fans’ weariness – shows no sign of easing up.
It is understandable why people do not care about the Patriots ball-maintenance or whether public officials lie about their sex lives. But we should care about people in power who hector us about our own morality as an exercise in spin.
Incidentally, it was on January 26, 1998, that this happened.
Not that long ago, the thing to do on a week like this would be to camp out in front of the Weather Channel and live vicariously through Jim Cantore. But now the best place to watch a storm is on Twitter. Predictably, weather Twitter is already freaking out…
MIDNIGHT ET FRI: Japan said it “would not give up” and was doing “everything [we] can to win the release” of two of its nationals apparently held hostage by Islamic State. But after the deadline passed on Friday with no word from the kidnappers, the fate of Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa remains uncertain.
According to CNN: “An ISIS spokesman told Japanese broadcaster NHK that the group would release a statement “soon” about the hostages. That statement didn’t come. When asked whether ISIS has been in negotiations with the Japanese government, the spokesman told NHK he wouldn’t comment.”
“[Former President] Hadi was a unique figure who not only tolerated drone strikes, he welcomed them,” said Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Institution think tank’s Intelligence Project. “I don’t think we’re going to have that kind of enthusiastic partner in the foreseeable future.”
While the separatist forces now seem ascendant, analysts have little doubt that their fortunes are tied to the level of support provided by Moscow. In August, on the verge of defeat, they were rescued by an all-out Russian incursion that turned the tide on the battlefield and drove Kiev to the bargaining table. The same dynamics appear to be at work now, Ukraine and NATO say, with Russian troops in unmarked uniforms apparently joining the separatists in the assaults on Ukrainian positions.
The parent company of the ubiquitous and delightfully quirky in-flight shopping magazine SkyMall filed for bankruptcy, prompting lots of listicles lamenting the loss of its cornucopia of absurdities. Here are the favorites from Yahoo Tech (18); ABC News (10); Time (12); Cosmopolitan (22); Huffington Post (19), you get the picture.
As a leader, he was always candid and had the courage of his convictions. One of those convictions was his steadfast and passionate belief in the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as a force for stability and security in the Middle East and beyond.
..As Arab uprisings raged elsewhere, he [King Abdullah] spent $130 billion on housing, jobs and other social benefits in a bid to win the hearts and minds of his subjects. His calculation appears to have worked, because despite online calls for a day of rage to protest the lack of democracy, no anti-government protest movement of the type seen elsewhere ever took hold in the kingdom.
And the king remained a largely popular figure.
His critics believe he could have done more, given Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth, to help his population. But if the stability of Saudi’s monarchy is under threat, it’s not from looming poverty or a possible uprising but from old age — and a potential succession problem.
The stage now seems set for the outbreak of full-fledged sectarian civil war, one that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror network’s most dangerous and capable affiliate, is likely to exploit for its advantage.
In the aftermath of the State of the Union, President Obama was interviewed by three “YouTube stars” and while – as you’d expect – he had his critics, the end result was refreshingly entertaining.
Driving for Hendrick Motorsports, Gordon has won four championships, 92 races and $146 million in prize money at NASCAR’s top level. He is not the best driver of all time, but he’s in the top five. He is inarguably the person most responsible for NASCAR’s tremendous rise in popularity from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.
Finally, it’s entirely possible nothing you heard at any of Thursday’s “DeflateGate”: pressers would sound out of place here:
Clashes have intensified since the weekend between government forces and Houthi rebels, and a US embassy vehicle came under fire from unknown gunmen on Monday. US diplomatic staff are on high alert and plans are in place for a possible evacuation of the embassy.
You know, just over a decade ago, I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn’t a liberal America, or a conservative America; a black America or a white America — but a United States of America.
I said this because I had seen it in my own life, in a nation that gave someone like me a chance; because I grew up in Hawaii, a melting pot of races and customs; because I made Illinois my home — a state of small towns, rich farmland, and one of the world’s great cities; a microcosm of the country where Democrats and Republicans and Independents, good people of every ethnicity and every faith, share certain bedrock values.
Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn’t delivered on this vision. How ironic, they say, that our politics seems more divided than ever. It’s held up as proof not just of my own flaws — of which there are many — but also as proof that the vision itself is misguided, and naïve, and that there are too many people in this town who actually benefit from partisanship and gridlock for us to ever do anything about it.
I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong.
(The Eurogroup’s Jeroen Dijsselbloem and Yanis Varoufakis at their tense press conference Friday night – EPA/Irish Times)
(image: CelebrityFeed)
The Overnight Note 