Lazy Caturday Reads: A Mixed Bag of Stories

Posted: April 25, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Artist unknown

There isn’t a lot of urgent news today, which is kind of nice for a change. I’ve got a mixed bag of interesting stories though.

Before I get to the politics news, I want to share a fun story about a woman who had a small but significant part in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.”

Alex Williams at The New York Times (gift link): Joy Harmon, Car-Washing Temptress in ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ Dies at 87.

Joy Harmon, who needed only three minutes, a bucket of soapy water and a housedress held together with a safety pin to sear herself into Hollywood history as a chain-gang prisoner’s fantasy come to life in the classic 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke,” died on April 14 in Los Angeles. She was 87.

She died in hospice care after contracting pneumonia in recent weeks, her daughter Julie Gourson Matthews said.

Ms. Harmon never achieved leading-lady status. Still, she tallied more than 30 screen and television credits, often popping up in an episode or two of popular 1960s and early ’70s TV shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Monkees,” “Batman,” “Bewitched” and “The Odd Couple.”

Onscreen, she was hard to miss, with her pinup figure, platinum hair and ice-blue eyes. “Gosh, you have the bluest eyes!,” she recalled Paul Newman, the star of “Cool Hand Luke,” once saying to her — no small praise coming from an actor known for his own dazzlingly blue eyes….

Ms. Harmon, listed in the credits as the Girl, appears about 23 minutes into the movie and is gone before minute 27. But she makes the most of her screen time.

Emerging from a farmhouse, bucket in hand, she languidly scrubs down a 1941 DeSoto in full view of the sweat-drenched, shirtless prisoners digging a roadside ditch nearby.

“Hey, Lord, whatever I’ve done, don’t strike me blind for another couple of minutes,” Dragline (George Kennedy), the alpha dog of the chain gang, says.

While the prisoners wipe their brows and gawk, the amply endowed Ms. Harmon nearly bursts out of her skintight dress as she bends to scrub hubcaps or sprawls across the hood, occasionally pausing to squeeze her sponge so that the suds cascade down her torso.

“Oh, God, she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” one lustful prisoner says.

“She knows exactly what she’s doing,” Luke responds. “She’s driving us crazy and loving every minute of it.”

A bit about Harmon’s life:

Patricia Joy Harmon was born on May 1, 1938, in Flushing, Queens, the elder of two daughters of Homer Harmon, a promotional director at the Roxy Theater in Manhattan, and Bernice (Hopmann) Harmon. (Many accounts cite her birth year as 1940, but she shaved two years off her age once she was in Hollywood, her daughter said.)

She grew up in Wilton, Conn., and began modeling at an early age. At 17, she was a runner-up in the Miss Connecticut beauty pageant.

CNN: Araghchi leaves Pakistan, Iranian sources tell CNN.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi departed Islamabad on Saturday evening local time, according to Iranian sources familiar with the discussions, after meetings in the Pakistani capital to discuss a truce with Washington and consult key allies in the region.

It was not initially clear where Araghchi would travel next, but the Iranian Foreign Ministry previously said he would also visit Oman and Russia during the trip.

Lindsay, by Linda Lee Nelson

Some background: Araghchi landed in Islamabad on Friday evening for a flurry of meetings with Pakistan’s top leadership, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the country’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has served as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington.

Pakistani ministers are trying to facilitate a second round of talks between US and Iranian officials, after lengthy discussions in early April failed to alleviate the thorniest diplomatic hurdles between the warring parties.

The White House said Friday that a US delegation would travel to Islamabad this weekend, but Iranian media had denied reports that Araghchi would directly negotiate with Washington during his trip, leaving the status of talks uncertain.

Trump has just called off the trip to Pakistan by Witkoff and Kushner.

The New York Times published a fascinating article about Iran’s leaders this week. It appears that the Revolutionary Guards are actually in control of the government, and it’s not clear if the men doing the negotiating actually have the power to make final decisions.

Farnaz Fassihi at The New York Times (gift link): A New Era and New Leadership: The Generals Who Are Running Iran.

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled Iran as the supreme leader, he exerted absolute power over all decisions about war, peace and negotiations with the United States. His son and successor does not play the same role.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son, is an elusive figure who has not been seen and whose voice has not been heard since he was appointed in March. Instead, a battle-hardened collective of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and those aligned with them are the key decision makers on matters of security, war and diplomacy.

In the Garden, by Thomas Little

“Mojtaba is managing the country as though he is the director of the board,” said Abdolreza Davari, a politician who served as senior adviser to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he was president and knows Mr. Khamenei.

“He relies heavily on the advice and guidance of the board members, and they collectively make all the decisions,” Mr. Davari said in a phone interview from Tehran. “The generals are the board members.” [….]

Mr. Khamenei, who was selected by a council of senior clerics as the new supreme leader, has been in hiding since American and Israeli forces bombed his father’s compound on Feb. 28, where he also lived with his family. His father, wife and son were all killed. Access to him is extremely difficult and limited now. He is surrounded mostly by a team of doctors and medical staff who are treating the injuries he sustained in the airstrikes.

Senior commanders of the Guards and senior government officials do not visit him, fearing that Israel may trace them to him and kill him. President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is also a heart surgeon, and the minister of health have both been involved in his care.

Though Mr. Khamenei was gravely wounded, he is mentally sharp and engaged, according to four senior Iranian officials familiar with his health. One leg was operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic. He had surgery on one hand and is slowly regaining function. His face and lips have been burned severely, making it difficult for him to speak, the officials said, adding that, eventually, he will need plastic surgery.

Just a bit more:

Mr. Khamenei has not recorded a video or audio message, the officials said, because he does not want to appear vulnerable or sound weak in his first public address. He has issued several written statements that have been posted online and read on state television.

Messages to him are handwritten, sealed in envelopes and relayed via a human chain from one trusted courier to the next, who travel on highways and back roads, in cars and on motorcycles until they reach his hide-out. His guidance on issues snakes back the same way.

The combination of concern for his safety, his injuries and the sheer challenge of reaching him has resulted in Mr. Khamenei’s delegating decision making to the generals, at least for now. Reformist factions, as well as ultra-hard-liners, are still involved in political discussions. But analysts say that Mr. Khamenei’s close ties to the generals, whom he grew up with when he volunteered to fight in the Iran-Iraq war as a teenager, have made them the dominant force.

President Trump has said that the war, along with the killings of layers of Iran’s leaders and security establishment, has ushered in “regime change” and that the new leaders are “much more reasonable.” In reality, the Islamic republic has not been toppled. Power is now in the hands of an entrenched, hard-line military, and the broad influence of the clerics is waning.

“Mojtaba is not yet in full command or control,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa for Chatham House who has contact with people in Iran. “There is, perhaps, deference to him. He signs off or he is part of the decision-making structure in a formal way. But he is presented with fait accompli presentations right now.”

So it appears that the Generals are actually running things in Iran now. You can use the gift link to read the whole article. It’s very interesting.

Back in the USA, the DOJ has withdrawn the charges against Fed chair Jerome Powell, but the damage is done.

The New York Times: The ‘Lasting Damage’ of Pirro’s Abandoned Fed Investigation.

The Justice Department’s criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome H. Powell, appears to be over. But the ramifications for the central bank are likely to prove much longer lasting.

Nine months after President Trump made a hasty visit to the Fed’s Washington headquarters and promised to “take a look” at a costly renovation, the administration has concluded its inquiry with seemingly nothing to show. Far from the criminal charges that they once pursued, prosecutors left in their wake a dark cloud over the institution and the person Mr. Trump has chosen to next lead the central bank.

The about-face has removed, for now, the immediate threat of a further escalation against the Fed. It has also potentially cleared a path for Mr. Trump’s nominee for Fed chair, Kevin M. Warsh, to succeed Mr. Powell, whose term ends on May 15.

By Richard Williams

What will be far harder to recoup is confidence in the Fed’s ability to operate independently from a White House that has shown little restraint in its efforts to bully the central bank into slashing interest rates.

Even as Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, announced that the investigation was shutting down, she warned that she would “not hesitate” to reopen the inquiry if warranted. Ms. Pirro added that she had asked the Fed’s inspector general to take over the investigation, even though the internal watchdog had been looking into the matter since July….

Kathryn Judge, a Columbia Law School professor who was a Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, said she feared “lasting damage” from the investigation into Mr. Powell — not only for the Fed but for policymakers across government.

Until now, she said, officials did not have to worry about repercussions from “taking a strong stance on policy issues in ways that are inconsistent with the president’s agenda.” But that was the sort of pressure that Mr. Powell faced as Mr. Trump sought to force rates down.

There’s some news about Trump’s corrupt case against the IRS.

NBC News: Judge questions legal basis for Trump’s $10 billion case against IRS.

A federal judge is asking the Justice Department and President Donald Trump’s private attorneys to explain whether his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, an agency he oversees as president, is the type of dispute federal courts can hear.

 In a Friday order, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams questioned whether an actual disagreement exists, writing that a case can only stand if there is “adverseness” between the parties.

“Typically, adverseness is found in a situation where one party is asserting its right and the other party is resisting,” Williams wrote. “Consequently, if there is no adverseness, there is no case or controversy.”

The Constitution’s “case or controversy” clause says federal courts may only hear actual “controversies.”

The judge ordered both parties to explain “whether a case and controversy exists” by May 20. Williams set a hearing on the matter for May 27 in Miami.

The order comes as both sides seek to resolve the dispute. Attorneys representing Trump and the IRS asked a federal court in a joint filing last week to pause proceedings for 90 days while the parties hold talks to find a resolution.

How the hell can they resolve a “dispute” when Trump is the boss?

Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January alleging that the agency was at fault for the unauthorized release of his tax documents by a government contractor who shared them with news outlets. Trump argued that the IRS did not take the necessary steps to prevent the actions of the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 following a guilty plea.

In her order, Williams did recognize that Trump sued the IRS in “his personal capacity,” rather than as president, but wrote that “he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction.”

The corruption in this administration is beyond belief.

Some good news–it looks like Trump’s “SAVE” act is dead.

Al Weaver at NOTUS: Senate Republicans Bench Trump’s Voting Bill.

Senate Republicans have sidelined the SAVE America Act, arguing that it shouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the party’s priority list, especially amid the Iran war and growing economic woes.

Quiet Day by Yuriy Sultanov

Republican leaders this week were forced to remove the proposal as pending business in the chamber as they shifted gears to pass the budget resolution. That effectively benched the bill — which has been championed by President Donald Trump and considered a top agenda item — after an extensive pressure campaign by conservative members and influencers.

The necessary move, however, was greeted with a sigh of relief by a number of Republicans who, while supportive of the measure, believe it’s time to move on to more pressing matters. They also believe the pro-SAVE America Act blitz, led by Sen. Mike Lee and like-minded conservatives, did little to help the case, and may have backfired. Members are ready to bid it adieu as they near the final six months before the midterms.

“They’ve convinced themselves that the longer it hangs around, the more popular it gets. The reality is — I’m quite certain they haven’t gained a single vote, and may have lost a few with time,” one Senate Republican told NOTUS. “There’s some things that aren’t possible, and this is one of them.”

The member noted that while key parts of the bill — which requires voter ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote — poll well with wide swaths of Americans, including Democrats, it is hardly considered a leading issue for voters.

“When put in a lineup of the top 100 things people are thinking about every day, it doesn’t get very high on the list,” the senator continued. “We’re spending a lot of the precious resource of time and energy on something that’s not top-of-mind awareness to voters.”

I already had to produce a photo ID and prove my citizenship when I registered to vote. Good riddance to this idiotic bill.

A follow-up to The Atlantic story on Kash Patel:

Joe Sommerlad at The Independent: Atlantic writer sued by Kash Patel says she’s been ‘inundated’ with new sources corroborating her reporting.

Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic investigative journalist behind last week’s bombshell story about FBI Director Kash Patel, has said she has since been “inundated” with messages from new sources corroborating her reporting.

Fitzpatrick’s story alleged that Patel drinks to excess – so much so that, in one instance, breaching equipment was ordered to break into a locked bedroom when he did not respond to inquiries about his well-being. The profile and also characterized him as deeply paranoid about being fired by President Donald Trump.

Patel claimed the stories were false and has filed a ludicrous lawsuit.

Speaking to the Radio Atlantic podcast one week after the article, Fitzpatrick was asked about the director’s retaliatory moves and said she was undaunted.

“My response is that I stand by every single word of this report,” she said. “We were very diligent. We were very careful. It went through multiple levels of editing, review, care.

“And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after – immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information.”

Fitzpatrick said that she used more than two dozen sources for her original report, characterizing the officials she spoke to as “people who felt that not only was this conduct embarrassing, unbecoming, but that it was a national security vulnerability, and that Americans were perhaps less safe as a result.”

Asked about some of the more shocking details in her report, she said: “I had never heard anything like this as a reporter, and I think I spent a very long time, a very diligent amount of time checking it out because it was so explosive.

“And I think the fact that this was known throughout the FBI, throughout the Justice Department, that it reached the White House is because it was so alarming. And people were really frightened.”

There’s more at the link.

Those are the stories that caught my attention today. What’s on your mind?