Waterboarding Works, Mary Tyler Moore
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Vol. 6, No. 26
Back to the Future: President Trump will call for a re-examination of US methods for interrogating terror suspects and possibly re-establishing “black site” prisons overseas, the Associated Press reports, according to the draft of an executive order they obtained.
The document says US law must be followed and torture may not be used, but the definition of torture was stretched during the years of President George W. Bush. Trump has endorsed a return to waterboarding, which was defined by the Bush administration as not a form of torture.
Trump had the following exchange aired last night with ABC News anchor David Muir:
Trump: But I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question. Does it work? Does torture work – and the answer was yes, absolutely.
Muir: You’re now the president. Do you want waterboarding back?
Trump: I don’t want people to chop off the citizens’ or anybody’s heads in the Middle East, okay? Because they’re Christian or Muslim or anything else.
Muir wasn’t very tough on Trump, He just seemed pleased to be interviewing the president.
The Wall: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned Trump’s plans to build a border wall and said he may not come to visit Trump next week. “I regret and condemn the United States’ decision to continue with the construction of a wall that, for years now, far from uniting us, divides us,” he said. Pena Nieto said Mexico will not pay for the wall.
Finish Line: Sprinting phenomenon Usain Bolt has lost one of his nine Olympic gold medals because a team mate who ran with Bolt in the 4×100 relay at the 2008 Beijing games has been found guilty of doping. The entire four-man Jamaican team loses their medals after the re-testing of a sample from Nesta Carter found that he had used a banned substance.
Sadly, Bolt also loses the record of having won the same three events in three consecutive Olympics.
The Obit Page: Mary Tyler Moore, once the sweetheart of sitcoms, has died of pneumonia at the age of 80. Moore introduced America to the single working woman, playing Mary Richards, a writer for local television news in the 1970s “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” The unmarried character even hinted that occasionally she had sex, which was a little risqué at the time.
The show produced what is considered one of the classic sitcom episodes of all time about the death of the station’s kids show host, Chuckles the Clown. Moore’s character laughed all the way through the funeral.
Moore came on the scene as the perky wife of Dick Van Dyke in the 1960s show named after him. Moore usually played the spunky woman, but she was nominated for an Oscar playing a mother who lost her favorite son in the 1980 movie, “Ordinary People.”
Money: The Dow Jones closed above 20,000 yesterday for the first time in its history, crossing what some business writers describe as a “psychologically significant” threshold. They have to write something.
It’s interesting to note that back in 1979 when the Dow was at 850, a Business Week writer published an article titled “The Death of Equities.” He wrote that, a young U.S. executive told him, “The stock market is just not where the action’s at.” They had to write something back then, too.
Art Critic: The artist Christo, famous for turning broad landscapes into temporary works of art, has cancelled a huge project on federal land in Colorado because his new landlord is President Donald Trump.
Best known for the saffron-colored drapes he planted all over New York’s Central Park, Christo had spent $15 million of his own money preparing to put a silver canopy over 42 miles of the Arkansas River. Christo did not elaborate, but he told the NY Times, “I can’t do a project that benefits this landlord.”
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