Day: March 3, 2019

Van Jones angers liberals with comments at CPAC

UncleScoopy

Fuck ’em.

Everyone is always angry about everything now.

I read a lot of tweets attacking Jones as a sell-out, but not a single one arguing that he was incorrect on the substance of his comments. All he did was to praise conservative leaders for doing something right. That’s not selling out. That’s calling it fair. He’s a newsman, and they should be like referees. When somebody does something right, they shouldn’t pretend it never happened.

The reality is that we should stealthily encourage the conservatives to take the lead on issues like that, because if liberals did, the conservatives would crap all over them. Only Dick Nixon could have normalized relations with China, because if anyone else had done it, Nixon would have called him a traitor. It’s good that Donald Trump works toward normalizing relations with North Korea, because the world would be safer if NK were a modern, peaceful country, but if Obama had started moving in that direction, the right-wing wackosphere would have gone ballistic.

I’ll tell you right now – if Trump would champion powerful gun control laws, even I would gladly sing his praises and fully support a Nobel Prize. (I suppose that’s a third rail for his base, but damn, if he wants us to think of him as truly Presidential, that would show guts and leadership, and would go a long way toward winning me over.)

Yeah, yeah. I know it ain’t gonna happen.

Mahershala Ali could play some hoops

UncleScoopy

Under the name of Hershal Gilmore, then Mahershala Gilmore, he played for St. Mary’s (California), where he was a point guard.

His college career was underwhelming, but here is a nice article about his high school years, when he led his tiny school to an unlikely berth in the California state championship game. He earned praise for his talent, his unselfish play, his academic record, his tutoring of the younger kids, and for just being an overall great and humble guy.

Birthday girl Laura Harring: full-frontal nudity.

UncleScoopy

I have missed something along the way, or forgotten it. The last time I thought about this scene from Mulholland Drive, there was a big controversy because David Lynch had blurred Laura’s lower body.

Now here it is, apparently unblurred.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Laura Elena, Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen, is 55 today. In 1985 the beautiful Countess was Miss USA.

(She eventually divorced the Count, but retained the title. She also got custody of his cape.)

John Mulaney is a comedy genius

UncleScoopy

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually laughed a lot at SNL last night.

SNL’s monologues usually suck, but Mulaney’s was excellent.

SNL’s musical numbers usually suck, but Bodega Bathroom was inspired lunacy.

Nothing else reached those levels, but even the worst sketches were good. The show was not only funny, but the writing was creative and nutty. The last time I felt that way about SNL might have been when Will Farrell did his bizarre Neil Diamond impression.

One disappointment: The show featured both John Mulaney and his buddy Bill Hader. They are the geniuses behind “Stefon,” everyone’s favorite club habitue. As a general rule, I dislike SNL’s repeating bits and characters, especially the ones that weren’t funny in the first place (I’m looking at you, The Californians), but Mulaney’s attempts to make Hader/Stefon break character were always the highlight of any show in which they appeared. For one reason or another, Stefon did not appear last night to bring us up to speed on New York’s hottest clubs.

“The Green New Deal”

UncleScoopy

This is an earlier version of the plan taken from AOC’s government website

This version was eventually corrected by people with some common sense. Wow, does she have her head up her ass.

“Economic security to all who are unwilling to work”

Good luck selling that to the American public. Except of course for those who are unwilling to work.

“The Green New Deal sets a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, at the end of this 10-year plan because we aren’t sure that we will be able to fully get rid of, for example, emissions from cows or air travel before then.”

Oh, really. You’re not sure? You MIGHT not be able to completely eliminate cows and planes in ten years? Ya think?

Also, maybe she needs to put a pencil to some of her proposals, figure out how much they will cost and then how we will pay for them.

Of course you already knew she was a serious airhead when she said she could pay for universal health care by eliminating Pentagon accounting errors, which amounted to 21 trillion over 8 years. ($21 trillion is more than the cumulative spending on national defense since America was founded!)

And then there was her suggestion that the $3 billion in tax credits to Amazon could be spent on other things. Here’s how Amazon would have qualified for those:

1. New York state taxpayers would be on the hook for up to $1.525 billion should Amazon meet its 25,000-job pledge, pay an average salary of $150,000 and occupy at least 4 million square feet of space within the next 10 years, as promised. That number would increase to $1.7 billion if Amazon exceeds its goal and gets to 40,000 jobs by 2032.

2. Up to $1.2 billion would be in the form of state tax breaks under the state’s Excelsior Jobs Program, which are awarded to the company on a rolling basis only after jobs are created over 10 years.

3. New York City, meanwhile, would provide business income-tax credits worth $897 million and a property-tax break worth $386 million over 25 years.

In other words, Amazon would have to provide (according to New York’s calculations) something approaching $30 billion to the economy in order to get those breaks! And if Amazon never shows up – no tax breaks because there’s nothing to tax, but the city and state are about $20 billion poorer, not three billion richer.