NPR CEO Katherine Maher came for a 15-minute interview at a Semafor summit in D.C. on "trust in media," but it was a softball session. Instead of being pressed on NPR's liberal tilt, Semafor reporter Maxwell Tani was incredibly vague: "What have you done in your first year to build or restore trust in NPR?" I was in the room, and suppressed the desire to yell about the answer (and the question). Tani didn't mention the name of longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, or how he was effectively forced out for blowing the whistle on the leftist tilt. He didn't mention that Berliner found 87 registered Democrats in the NPR newsroom, and zero Republicans.  Now Tani might think hey, this is a room full of media reporters and critics, I don’t need to be specific. He didn’t ask about how NPR has covered Trump or Biden or Kamala Harris in the last year, or how they covered abortion or transgenderism or climate. So I’m just boiling in my seat. And then inevitably came the fog of an answer, all about process. We have a deeper process! So when your newsroom is all Democrats, who puts on the brakes on liberal bias?  This event was supposed to be about "trust in media." At the start of this, the Gallup Poll expert told the audience the media came in with 31 percent expressing a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the press. But the “great deal” number was 8 percent. A big part of that is the Republican half of America, the Trump-voter half, accurately thinks the media are a pile of butlers and maids for the Democrats and the Left. The trust question is in large part about bias, but they don’t’ want to talk about bias, because they believe in bias. Bias is power. Bias favors the so-called right side of history, or bias favors the marginalized victims of American bigotry. This questioning would underline why Katherine would skip testifying before House Republicans last year, but said yes to this event. We could wonder whether she and her NPR team asked about how tough the questions were going to be, and there were assurances made. Certainly, none of us in the audience were getting questions in. I resisted the urge to disturb the peace. I stood next to Maher at the reception afterward, but didn't horn in on the conversation she was having. Then I found NPR reporter David Folkenflik, and met him for the first time. Naturally, I told him her answer was terrible! It’s nice to be agreeable in public, even though no one’s budging on the job. Folkenflik’s been busy chronicling the latest freakout over Jeff Bezos moving The Washington Post editorial pages toward defending "personal liberties" and "free markets." More libs are cancelling their subscriptions! NPR and Folkenflik exist to channel the most left-wing factions in American news rooms. That tendency would have been a fun question for Katherine to answer. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Ah, old habits die hard. Politico apparently learned nothing after being exposed for being a government-funded lefty propaganda mill and is already trying to pin energy inflation on President Donald Trump. “Electricity prices are spiking. That’s a problem for Trump,” read Politico E&E News’s February 26 agitprop disguised as a news item. “President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to cut energy costs in half is facing a daunting reality,” railed reporter Brian Dabbs. Dabbs wielded a new report by the anti-Trump American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to drum up newfound media fears that “Electricity prices are tracking toward heights unseen since the 1990s when factoring in inflation,” supposedly due to “skyrocketing demand” of AI data centers, a problem that was already identified under the Biden administration before Trump announced a $500 billion joint venture with tech companies in AI infrastructure. So all that ballyhoo about the alleged “dream economy” former Vice President Kamala Harris was supposedly riding into the 2024 election just flies out the window now that Trump is president, eh Politico? Conveniently, Dabbs only briefly mentioned the name “Biden” twice in buried paragraphs, and both instances had nothing to do with attributing responsibility to Trump's predecessor for America's current energy struggles. This is convenient given how much Politico has mindlessly slobbered over Bidenomics over the years. The Center Square pointed out the same day that Dabbs’ piece was published that experts had notified Congress that “Biden policies raised energy prices.” Specifically, experts “pointed to a litany of federal changes that have slowed down domestic energy production and led to increased costs as a result,” Center Square reported. Former Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff Mandy Gunasekara reportedly told the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs that under Biden’s administration, “Home heating oil increased 36%, electricity increased 32%, and natural gas increased 25%.” She continued: ‘As a result, one in six American families have been behind on their electricity bills, and the cost for an average household rose approximately $10,000, significantly straining family budgets.” Did Dabbs bother mentioning any of this context? Nope. Rather, he tried to use the electricity issue to bemoan Trump’s redirection of U.S. energy policy to foster a more pro-fossil fuel friendly economic environment: “Trump so far has cracked down on renewables and blown up U.S. climate policy, arguing that more fossil fuels like natural gas will drive down costs for Americans.” In short, claimed Dabbs, “Clean energy supporters say the Trump administration’s chances at cutting costs are doomed if it pushes fossil-fuel-first priorities.” Dabbs elevated how "critics say Trump should embrace low-cost wind and solar and dole out rebates for home upgrades if he wants to bring down energy costs." Climate Depot founder Marc Morano excoriated Politico in comments to MRC Business: "It is completely devoid of reality for Politico to suggest that we continue the futile pursuit of 'green energy' to keep energy prices lower. Fossil fuels actually produce enormous amounts of energy without the need for massive subsidies mandates and banning their competition." Morano then pointed MRC to a February 28 article by fellow leftist outlet Reuters, which made a shocking admission: "The pursuit of net zero carbon emissions has been a resounding failure. Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewable energy, hydrocarbons still account for over 80%, opens new tab of the world’s primary energy and a similar share of recent increases in energy consumption, according to The Energy Institute." "Perhaps Politico ought to take a look at what Reuters is saying today," Morano quipped.    

Brian Epstein became The Beatles' manager in early 1962, and helped the band become a global phenomenon before he died of a drug overdose at the age of 32. The post The Remarkable Story Of Brian Epstein, The Man Who Discovered The Beatles — Then Died Tragically Young appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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A landscape of a castle on a lake painted by Flemish Old Master Abel Grimmer (ca. 1570-1618/19) has been rediscovered in a private collection by auctioneers Woolley and Wallis. Landscape with Peasants Near a Lakeside Castle, an oil on canvas painting, has been in the present owners’ family since 1935 when it was purchased from a Brussels gallery, but they did not know who made it. They only found out that it was a rare genuine work by Abel Grimmer when they sent photos of the painting to the auction house for appraisal. Initially working from a photograph image, paintings specialist Victor Fauvelle explained; “Genuine works by Abel Grimmer are rare and often turn out to be copies. On first look at the photos, the composition seemed to be very typical of Abel Grimmer, but we were not hopeful that it was genuine, as works by him are very rare. In order to research it further we went to The National Art Library in the V&A in London to go through the catalogue raisonné of Abel Grimmer and his father, Jacob Grimmer (1526-1590) (who was also an artist), which was published in 1991.” To delight of the department, the picture in question was described in detail in the catalogue raisonné and fitted the description perfectly. When the clients brought the picture in, Victor could tell immediately that it was a period work from the paint surface, which had the ‘unmistakable luminescence’ of this great period of Flemish late Renaissance painting. Abel Grimmer was the son of landscape artist Jacob Grimmer. Art historian Giorgio Vasari considered Jacob one of the greatest landscape painters of his time. Jacob was also known for making inexpensive copies of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and his son was also strongly influenced by Bruegel. Brueghel’s The Harvesters, a series of six panels depicting people working the fields in different seasons, inspired the naturalism of the landscape and realistic poses of the people in Abel Grimmer’s landscapes. Abel’s landscapes often depicted peasants engaged in work or leisure activities in the Flemish countryside, and the newly-rediscovered work is a fine example of his style. Abel Grimmer was an important figure in the development of Flemish landscape painting. His atmospheric work cleverly combined detailed natural elements, often in rural settings, with an emphasis on seasonal changes, which was truly innovative for his time. A keen comprehension of light and colour gives the painting a sense of realism and depth. Abel Grimmer’s fresh approach to landscape compositions marked a transition from the Medieval, more symbolic depictions of nature, to a more observational and naturalistic approach. The work goes under the hammer at Woolley and Wallis’ Old Masters, British & European Paintings sale on March 5th with a pre-sale estimate of £15,000-£20,000 ($19,000-$25,000).