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About 8% of MBTA bridges are "structurally deficient." [Boston Herald]
Good news: A judge has reduced a BU grad student's penalty for downloading 30 songs by 90%. Bad news: The new amount is still $67,500. [Boston Globe]
We say there's a better than 50% chance that the developer who made a gigantic hole in Downtown Crossing will abandon the project to build in Manhattan. [Boston Herald]
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President Obama and family are vacationing at Martha's Vineyard for the second year in a row. [ABC News]
Someone took a major fall at Fenway Park last night. Amazingly it was no one on the Sox roster. [WHDH]
Barbara Lynch's Menton has made Bon Appetit's "10 Best New Restaurants" list. [Boston Channel]
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A public food market is scheduled to open at an empty Haymarket building within 18 months. (Don't hold your breath.) [Boston Globe]
Specially designated parking for motorcycles and scooters will be available on Newbury Street for 25 cents per hour. [Boston Globe]
A poll shows Mitt as Obama's toughest competitor in 2012. At least, he won't be on the Commonwealth payroll if he runs this time. [Boston Herald]
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President Obama and family spent the weekend hiking and biking in Maine. [CBS News]
Both houses of the Mass legislature have voted for giving more weight to the popular vote in presidential elections. [Boston Herald]
Some think the Celtics should help pay for police overtime for Finals-related crowd control. [Boston Herald]
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Remember the Rhode Island school district that fired all the teachers? They're probably going to rehire all of them back. [Providence Journal]
Israel has barred MIT professor Noam Chomsky from entering the country to speak at a Palestinian university. [NY Times]
If a Harvard student hadn't been caught hacking into his teachers' grading systems, he probably could've had a brilliant career on Wall Street. [WBZ]
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President Obama was talking about health care in Maine today. [WCSH-TV]
Then he's visiting Boston with floods and fundraising on his mind. [WHDH]
The off-duty security guard who saved a doctor at MGH will not face any charges for fatally shooting the attacker. [Boston Herald]
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Conan O'Brien almost has 300,000 followers after one tweet. [NY Times]
CoCo has a long way to catch up to the cat from Waltham with more than a million followers. [Boston Globe]
Springfield wants to host an Obama-Brown hoops match, and it might happen. [The Hill]
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After 14 years in prison, a wrongfully convicted man is awarded $14 million -- on top of getting 14 years of free room and board. [Boston Globe]
Boston Beer Company is teaming with a historic German brewer to create a new brew. [Beer Advocate]
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Results tagged “barackobama”
- Tipsy Cocktail Stirrers combine four garnishes into one very long garnish. You might see it as an all-purpose solution, but Bostonist sees it as a challenge: can we outdo this thing with some sort of garnish turducken? Lemogerkolinionento, a pimento-stuffed onion crammed in an olive, jammed into a gerkin, ensconed by a lemon peel. It wouldn't go with much, so you'd have to just cover it with some nondescript vodka and call it the Lemongerkolinionentotini. [The Kitchn]
The Brookline TAB reports that Barack Obama is scheduled to come to Boston tomorrow. It could be related to our record rainfall or it could be another Dunkin plaza incident, but we'll make an effort to learn more. Update: Looks like Barack will be in Portland, Maine, tomorrow afternoon before a DNC fundraiser in Boston. [Brookline TAB]
When we turned on our computer yesterday and saw chat statuses like "filling out my death panel job application," we knew that the House of Representatives had passed President Barack Obama's health care reform, and there was nothing that Massachusetts's furious array of white dudes could do to stop it. Not even Tim Cahill!
-- Let's hope this is a joke. A reality show is looking Boston women in the "Real Housewives"/"Jersey Shore" mold. [Lynn Casting
The Herald says Barack Obama and Scott Brown are tenth cousins, linked through the common ancestor Richard Singletary of Haverhill, who died in 1687. How can a Muslim not born in the United States possibly be related to a truck-driving hometown hero? The mind boggles. Could these men share genetic predisposition to a condition not covered by health insurance? In "related" news, Brown claims he could take Obama on the basketball court (with help from his daughter). [Boston Herald]
You may have heard that some guy named Barack Obama is coming to campaign for Martha Coakley today at 3pm (doors at 1pm, but if you're not already lined up we assume you won't get in) at Northeastern University's Cabot Center. You may not have heard that John Kerry will campaign for Coakley in Worcester starting at 11am (aka right now) and going to 12:30pm outside Worcester Memorial Auditorium, Lincoln Square, Worcester. Scott Brown will also be in Worcester, having The People's Rally at 3pm at 321 Main Street in Worcester. Tomororw, MLK Day finds Brown at a MLK Memorial Breakfast at Hynes Convention center at 8am, then busing from Quincy (9:30am) to Plymouth (events between 11:30am and 1:15pm). Coakley will also be at the Hynes breakfast, and there are rallies for her in Pittsfield, Springfield, and Framingham as well.
Last night, Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe came to the First Parish Church to preach to the Cambridge choir about the great 2008 presidential campaign (and to promote his new book, The Audacity to Win, which covers the campaign process). While the evening progressed mostly as expected (Gobama!, softball questions at the end), Plouffe did toss out some decent soundbites throughout, and perhaps said a word or two that could benefit our state's own up-and-coming senate candidates. We'll certainly be watching the WGBH democratic senatorial forum (moderated by Emily Rooney) Monday at 7pm; leading up to the election, we'll see if any of the candidates take Plouffe's campaign advice to heart (or head?).
President Barack Obama is in Boston today to tour MIT and to appear at a fund-raiser for Governor Deval Patrick at Westin Copley Place. (Expect traffic snarls on Huntington Avenue and elsewhere in the Back Bay.) He will be speaking to a select group of MIT faculty, students, and staff at 12:30 in MIT's Kresge Auditorium. We'd suggest shanking a student to get a ticket for the talk, but you probably won't be allowed past the doors with a shank or a stranger's blood on you. [Globe]
Maybe Shepard Fairey, beleaguered street artist, has now admitted to lying about his use of AP photos in creating the iconic "hope" poster featuring Barack Obama. His lawyers have withdrawn now that the lies have come to light (lawyers withdrawing from lies? that's a new one). It's unclear whether Fairey's countersuit against the AP will continue under other legal guidance, but it seems unlikely.
Harvard historian Niall Ferguson just came out and said it. Obama is a lucky black man! No, really. That's pretty much what he wrote in the Financial Times: "President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US[.]" Not only that, but Ferguson also thinks that Obama is totally wrong about everything. Do you think he eats lunch a lot with Skip Gates? [via Brainiac]
In the aftermath of controversies about a Cambridge police officer arresting a famous African-American professor for existing in his own home (also known as Gatesgate, and of his own choice to call the action "stupid," Barack Obama has proposed the unthinkable: a discussion. Talking about race in America? Get out! Breaking a longstanding tradition of ignoring racial conflict, Obama has officially invited Cambridge police officer James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., to the White House for a beer and a bit of conversation about the incident. Obama's hope is that the debacle can morph into a "teachable moment" for everyone, and be brought to a conclusion that will allow the nation to focus once again on providing health care to all its citizens. Latest news has it that Skip has accepted the offer. We're excited to see the transcript of that chat, if it's released.
The AP reports that Massachusetts filed suit in federal court over the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman and limits the rights of same sex married couples. The first state to legalize gay marriage, and the cornerstone of a five-state New England bloc of marriage equality, the Commonwealth argues that DOMA "constitutes an overreaching and discriminatory federal law." President Obama pledged during his campaign to repeal the law, and there's no word on his administration's reaction to the lawsuit.
We, like the majority of Massachusetts residents, support universal health care in the Commonwealth, but the current system is badly flawed. And we need to figure out a way to fix it without screwing our most financially vulnerable neighbors.
David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, has joined Gov. Deval Patrick's reelection campaign as a consultant, the Boston Globe reported today. Plouffe's status is an obvious reminder of Patrick's friendship with President Obama. The Globe said this suggests the President will campaign for Patrick. Bostonist wants to know if Plouffe will bring the teleprompter.
Kennedy gift Bo comes home to the White House. For linguiça?
Although the Boston Globe breathlessly reported earlier this week that President Barack Obama would be spending the last two weeks of August on Martha's Vineyard, the MV Times writes today that they confirmed with a White House spokesperson that not only will the prez not be vacationing on the Vineyard, he won't be taking a vacation at all this summer. We guess maybe that whole "global economic crisis" is taking precedence over his tan. As the Times snarkily pointed out, the Globe story had no sources, just speculative quotes from Vineyarders, and "fueled a rumor that had been circulating on the Vineyard for weeks of an Obama vacation." Looks like the Globe was taken in by a case of Bored Locals Playing Telephone, a classic Martha's Vineyard off-season pastime.
- President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod. That's not news. What's news is what's on it—Dylan? Stevie Wonder? Some people have questioned the gift, but at least it's less self-centered than what the queen gave him: a picture of herself. Cute, Lizzy. [Globe]
- Soon, you may no longer be able to ease the pain of unemployment with drugs. Except alcohol and tobacco. Because those don't count. [CNN]
- Margaret Greer tries the craiglist defense. [Globe]
Our old friend, street artist slash vandalist slash conspiracy victim Shepard Fairey speaks out on his own site and in the Huffington Post about his alleged copyright infringement in using an AP photo to produce his now-infamous posters of Barack Obama. Fairey continually uses the word "reference," and points to great artists who worked from photos. However, Fairey doesn't clarify how he used the photo: was he just glancing at it as he worked, or did he (as it almost looks) just Photoshop the original image to come up with "his" artwork? And if he did "just" Photoshop the image, is that sufficient artistic contribution to constitute originality?
Though cruelly/constitutionally barred from voting, young citizens can still make their political voices heard. On January 15, the NY Times published letters from students of 826 National, the network of non-profit writing and education centers that was co-founded by Dave Eggers of the McSweeney's empire.
