Kodak

Reports of Kodak’s death are greatly exaggerated—for now. Kodak is pushing back on reports that the 133-year-old company is set to go belly-up.

CBS Evening News co-anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois ended the Aug 12 broadcast by running a video tribute to the Rochester-based company.

Kodak “can see the writing on the wall” said Dickerson, referring to the company’s disclosure expressing doubt about its future.

What did Kodak expect? It tacked on a “Going Concern Assessment” in its Q2 financial report. That set off gongs. Those assessments are usually buried in 10-Q and 10-K statements. For the quarter, Kodak lost $26M on a four percent drop in revenues to $263M. It made $26M a year ago.

Kodak tried to put things into focus. On Aug. 13, it released a statement, expressing confidence that it can pay off a term loan before it is due.

Donald Trump's insane tariff policy offers a glimmer of hope for Kodak. “We manufacture a wide range of products in the U.S., including lithographic printing plates, photographic and industrial films, inkjet presses and inks, and pharmaceutical key starting ingredients—and our expectation is that tariffs instituted by the U.S. government are designed to protect American businesses like ours,” said Kodak CEO Jim Continenza.

Kodak lives on to fight another day.

Shame on the RNC… The Republican National Committee has sent out a fundraising pitch, saying the GOP stands as a bulwark against those who want to “erase American history.”

It points to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s decision to restore the Arlington Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery that was torn down by protestors in 2020.

Hegseth plans to spend $10M to restore the statue by 2027, which he claims was ripped down by “woke lemmings.”

That’s unhinged. The statue is “one the cruelest, most racist monuments in the country, and its location at the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery makes it even more offensive,” according to retired General Ty Seidule.

He vice chaired the naming commission that was responsible for the law requiring the Pentagon to remove all symbols and commemorations that honored the Confederate States of America.

Seidule described the Arlington Confederate Monument statue in an opinion piece in The Hill.

It “depicts a tearful, overweight enslaved woman, a ‘mammy,’ cradling the child of her Confederate enslaver, supporting him as he departs for war," he wrote. "The monument portrays faithful slaves and kind white masters, a historical lie. Slavery featured legal rape, torture and selling husband from wife, child from mother.”

The statue was installed at Arlington in 1914 after a campaign by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to promote the positives of the rebel movement.

When members of the naming commission first visited the statue, "they were shocked by its overt racist imagery and anti-US sentiments,” according to Seidule. The panel voted unanimously to recommend its removal.

Hegseth says returning the statue represents a “reconciliation moment.” Who is he reconciling with?

The RNC claims returning the statue is “honoring” American history. No it isn’t. It’s whitewashing it.

Hey Vlad… When are you going to release the 38 journalists that are languishing in your gulags? That would be a great question for Trump to ask indicted war criminal Vladimir Putin at their meeting in Alaska. Trump, though, may admire Putin’s arbitrary arrests of journalists on trumped-up charges.

Russia, which is the world’s No. 5 jailer of reporters, on Aug. 14 declared the Reporters Without Borders media advocacy group “an undesirable organization” for its so-called role in undermining the country’s national security. Any Russian working for, or contributing to RWB could face five years in prison.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty had been on that undesirable organization list until Trump killed them.

Putin owes his buddy a debt of gratitude.