The horribly tragic shooting on the set of Rust has, at last, given Americans something to unite around.
All the news and commentary about this matter has revealed that Americans as a whole, liberal and conservative alike, are 100% agreed about Alec Baldwin. We don’t all agree that he bears some responsibility for the death of his DP, we don’t all agree that he is a marvelously talented man, and we certainly don’t all agree on his politics.
But everyone agrees that he’s a total asshole.
In this deeply divided time, this one man, by himself, has done what nobody has been able to do since WW2. He has brought us together as a nation.
In the Presidential race, Bong is running against BongBong. Even more fun, Bong’s last name is Go, and BongBong is the son of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Oh, yeah, and there is a third major player in that race. They are running against former boxing great Manny Pacquiao. There are several other candidates as well. This match-up was precipitated by the fact that the current President, Duterte, is constitutionally forbidden to seek another term.
Now it turns kind of weird. Well, weirder. In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected in separate contests. Duterte’s daughter unexpectedly filed to run for vice-president, even though the polls showed that she was the favorite to succeed her father in the #1 job. Meanwhile Duterte himself figured out that the constitution does not bar him from running for vice-president, so he also entered that race, thinking that his daughter would register for the presidential race. If his original plan had worked out, he could have ended up as her veep, with the family still firmly in control of the country, but because she decided to run for VP instead, Duterte was then slated to run against his daughter instead of with her. When he realized what had happened, he withdrew his VP bid and declared for the senate instead.
The key term here is “professional Santa school,” a hallowed institution of learning that prompted a revised slogan elsewhere: “Harvard. Now there IS a substitute.”
Nobody who lived through the 50s thought the 60s could’ve existed. So there’s always hope.
is from me. He was an old friend and I interviewed him for a Fugs profile for MOJO magazine. When he died I wrote his obit for MOJO and ended with that quote.
Whether wholly accurate or not, it gives me a boost during bad times, which has been always as of late. I’ve lost count of the folks who’ve referenced it.”
Note: That’s the one that everyone likes, even the GOP. It passed the senate 69 to 30. Elsewhere, the Democratic moderates and progressives are still squabbling, trying to finalize the social programs bill that began with a three trillion dollar price tag and is now hovering at about half of that – if it ever passes at all.
The amazing thing about this: after all the wrangling, whipping and hand-wringing, the Democrats did NOT have enough votes to pass it. Six Democrats voted against it, therefore it would have been defeated 215-219 if the GOP had held the line.
It passed because 13 Republicans broke ranks to vote “yea.” The rest of the Republicans, at least the Trumpiest ones, are very upset at those turncoats.
This was long rumored, now confirmed. (I should specify that Lana can’t confirm the rape itself, but has confirmed that rape was Natalie’s version of the encounter.)
1. It was a rehearsal. (The gun should have been totally empty, and in fact, Baldwin was told just that – that it was a “cold gun.”)
2. “Before Thursday’s shooting, some crew members quit the production over concerns related to safety issues — including gun safety procedures and Covid-19 protocols not being followed, according to the Los Angeles Times and other media reports.” This happened before the fatal incident: “A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. ‘We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe.'” (The LA Times has been well ahead of everyone else on this story.)
3. It seems that a single discharge of the gun caused both injuries. “The projectile whizzed by the camera operator but penetrated Hutchins near her shoulder, then continued through to Souza.”
4. So far, I have not seen a report of precisely what was in that discharged chamber.
“A survey published in Basic and Clinical Andrology measured the stretched penile length (SPL) of 126 adults aged between 30 and 60 alongside a range of other data including nose size, height, and weight, and found a direct correlation between nose size and penis length.”
Man, that Gerard Depardieu must be hung like Secretariat.
In Charlotte N.C., you can buy a regal estate for that money.
In Columbus, Ohio, or Houston you can buy a handsomely appointed house with 4000 sq feet of living space and five bedrooms on about 3/4 of an acre. (The one in Houston is waterfront property.)
In San Francisco, you’re on the verge of homelessness.
For a million dollars in my town, you can pretty much have any house you can find. Here is an example: 6900 square feet of living space on the waterfront.
“On June 7, 2021, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Ganymede than any spacecraft in more than two decades. Less than a day later, Juno made its 34th flyby of Jupiter. This animation provides a “starship captain” point of view of each flyby. For both worlds, JunoCam images were orthographically projected onto a digital sphere and used to create the flyby animation. Synthetic frames were added to provide views of approach and departure for both Ganymede and Jupiter.”
Illusions Perdues (“Lost Illusions”) is a new adaptation of a typically prolix Balzac work. Balzac was a literary giant. If you want to know what France was like in the second quarter of the 19th century, he is your go-to source. But he was not known for being succinct or for sticking to the point. In the course of a relatively short life (he died at 50 or so), he wrote approximately a bazillion words. His works make the efforts of Turgenev and Herman Melville seem as sparse and economical as a Hemingway short story. The book is filled with digressions, and is interrupted by the separate literary efforts of one of the characters, a poet. None of those poems were written by Balzac, but by several of his literary colleagues. In other words, as an emperor is supposed to have said to his court composer, “Too many notes, mister Mozart.”
I guess there are two sides to that coin.
Here’s how an Amazon reviewer describes the book (or books – it can be published in one volume or three):
“Lost Illusions is a long and sometimes tedious novel about a young poet from the provinces.”
Here’s how Goodreads describes the same work:
“Balzac’s Lost Illusions is a massive literary undertaking, and an attempt to delve deep into the world of humanity with all its great deeds and basest desires.”
So its massive scope is either a reflection of great depth or excess verbosity, and Balzac was either an encyclopedic chronicler of his times or a guy who just couldn’t shut the fuck up.
Probably both.
Gustave Flaubert probably summed up Balzac’s strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone. He was filled with effusive praise for Balzac’s unsparing portrayal of society, while at the same time deploring his tedious prose. Flaubert once wrote of Balzac: “What a man he would have been had he known how to write!” (Quoted by Graham Robb in “Balzac: A Biography.”)
Anyway, the filmmakers managed to condense this sweeping story into a good movie of normal length, and it included some nice nudity by Salome Dewaels.
Hell, he’s not even close to being the cagiest, toughest, slimiest guy to be a Senate leader. Here is what the real master, Lyndon Johnson, would do in McConnell’s place.
1. In a secret backdoor deal, he would make whatever promises are necessary to get Manchin to switch parties, or to become an independent and caucus with the GOP.
2. It would be important NOT to announce the move until the time is right.
3. He would then give in to Democrats on eliminating the filibuster. They would be easily duped into doing so, thinking they had won a great victory.
4. Manchin would then officially switch parties and begin caucusing with the GOP.
5. Checkmate.
At that point, McConnell, possessed by Lyndon’s ghost, would have control of the Senate with the votes necessary to pass anything his heart desires, because with the filibuster gone, all Senate votes would require only 51 votes. That may not do much while the Democrats control the House, but he would also have the ability to reject all of Biden’s judicial nominations. He would also have the ability to take over the chairmanship of all committees, effectively suppressing many facets of the Senate investigations into Trump and January 6th.
Could reincarnated Lyndon find a way to coerce or persuade Manchin to change teams? You bet. How about chairmanship of any committees he likes, and all the money he wants for his next re-election campaign from conservative super-PACs. And those are only the carrots. If he failed with those alone, the ever-ruthless Lyndon would bring out the sticks.
McConnell tough? Lyndon, wherever he is, presumably looking up from the lowest rings of hell, is laughing at Mitch and calling him a pussy, as Trump did today! Lyndon and Trump were a lot alike – egomaniacs, megalomaniacs, narcissists … dicks. Of course, as the other American Pie kids said to Stifler:
There’s now even more evidence that a bizarre star system perched on the constellation Orion’s nose may contain the rarest type of planet in the known universe: a single world orbiting three suns simultaneously.
One thing that is completely clear is that the Build Back Better Bill, the $3.5 trillion one, is absolutely not going to pass under any circumstances. Manchin has made that very clear, and he holds all the power. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to get him to vote for that. The liberals can whine and cry about how that should not be true because 96%-97% of Democrat lawmakers support the bill, but the fact of the matter is that it is true, and they need a Plan B.
Slower than a dawdling turtle. Less powerful than a kitten. Look, on the ground! It’s a squirrel. It’s an old sock. No, it’s Wussyman. Wussyman, who can view the course of mighty rivers (with bifocals), hold steel in his gloved hands, and who, disguised as a mild-mannered peanut farmer, fights a never-ending battle against his mortal enemy – the swimming bunny!
On a more serious note, Jimmy Carter is arguably the greatest American ex-President among the post-WW2 group. He does have some competition among the exes of older vintage. William Howard Taft became a respected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. John Quincy Adams became a lion in the House of Representatives, where he roared tirelessly against slavery and helped to create the Smithsonian. Herbert Hoover redeemed some of his earlier missteps by helping greatly in the efforts to rebuild Europe after the Nazi calamity.
None of those great ex-Presidents were ranked among the top sixteen Presidents in the latest C-Span poll of historians. Curiously, great Presidents rarely become great ex-Presidents. Consider the top ten in that latest C-Span poll. (This is not MY top ten, but I used it just to have a starting point.) Lincoln, JFK and FDR died in office. Teddy Roosevelt should have, because he become a complete ass. Reagan was senile. Washington lived only two years, and spent most of it trying to restore a dilapidated and forlorn Mount Vernon. Ike went gentle into that good night, and was rarely seen. Truman wrote his memoirs and whined about being poor (I guess he should have kept some of those bucks he never passed). Obama is just trying to enjoy life. That leaves Jefferson as the only one of the ten who really continued to make a meaningful contribution to the world or the country.
