Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, my approval rating would be at 75%

Pretty sure Trump doesn’t understand how numbers work. He’s working for an absolute max of about 65. His approval rating is 6% among Democrats, and they represent about 37% of the electorate, so he would need 100% approval from independents plus 100% of Republicans to get to just 65% overall. And one hundred percents don’t happen, particularly from independents.

He could get to 75% with imaginary math. All he would need would be every Republican, and 133% of independents!

That’s how you know Rasmussen’s poll numbers are inaccurate. They simply don’t add up. In order for Trump to get to 50%, assuming 6% of Democrats, he would need 95% of Republicans and 57% of independents, but he’s currently at 89/39. I could see some circumstances that could get him to 57% approval among independents, so it is possible for him to reach 95/57 (and therefore 50% overall), but he’d have to pull off something extremely positive that would win bi-partisan praise, like getting Russia to pull all their troops from Eastern Ukraine and brokering a true peace there. He’s clearly not there at the moment. He’s never scored higher than 42% approval from independents because he’s only doing things that please his own base, and that puts a low ceiling on his approval rating.

Trump has the lowest Gallup approval rating in history (40) for Presidents in December of their second year, but there is hope for him. The two guys nearest to his low “Second December” rating were Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan at 41, and they each left office with solid approval ratings above 60%. But he won’t get there by simply pleasing his base.

The biggies:

Best Motion Picture – Drama
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
If Beale Street Could Talk
A Star Is Born

Surprises:

1. Bohemian Rhapsody? Metacritic score – 49!! How did that make the list?

2. Although Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma is nominated in the foreign language category, it almost certainly should be on this list, possibly on the top of it. Overall, it is probably the best of the year with both IMDb visitors (8.6) and reviewers (99%). It beat A Star is Born (8.2, 88%) in both categories.  (Cuaron was nominated for Best Director.)

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Crazy Rich Asians
The Favourite
Green Book
Mary Poppins Returns
Vice

Best Director – Motion Picture
Bradley Cooper
Alfonso Cuaron
Peter Farrelly
Spike Lee
Adam McKay

Anna Nicole Smith in that intense metaphysical drama, Skyscraper (1996), adapted from a work by Strindberg.

But not AUGUST Strindberg.

It’s Chuck Strindberg, the 7-Eleven clerk who writes screenplays at Starbucks when his shift is finished.

The film is rated 2.8 at IMDb. If it had enough votes it would be among the worst 25 films on IMDb’s bottom 100.

I think it’s slightly overrated.

Somebody raised this question in another thread.

To my knowledge, there is no such scene yet, but if I were making book on it, this lady would be my betting favorite:

She has two things going for her: (1) family nudity legacy and sibling rivalry; (2) she may be the oldest female celebrity born in this millennium (January 8, 2000), so she’s had the most time past her 18th birthday to ease into it.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson accused of rape and sexual harassment by four women

I just found out from reading this article that Tyson and I were in grad school at the University of Texas together in the mid 80s. Our paths would not have crossed. I never spent any time on campus except in classes because I was living 200 miles from campus! Even if I had been living in Austin at the time, I might not have run into him. He was working toward a Ph.D, and I was in the business school taking an executive MBA program, so we had no common coursework and studied in completely different buildings. (Not to mention that I was only there on weekends, and he probably studied M-F.)

Even if two people take similar programs at UT, they might not meet unless they have common classes for some reason. UT is monstrous. It has 10,000 grad students and a total enrollment of about 50,000.

The Texas chapter of his life is one he does not like to discuss. (He got his master’s degree in astronomy, but was flunked out as a Ph.D candidate.) Heaven only knows why he chose to go to UT in the first place. He is a native New Yorker and had an undergraduate degree from Harvard, so he might have picked just about any prestigious grad school in the northeast. One wonders why he didn’t go to Columbia in the first place. At any rate, he eventually earned his Ph.D from Columbia in the field of astrophysics.

Anyway – digression over. Things look bad for him, but I hope he is innocent. Like just about everyone else, I really enjoy his TV appearances.