Archives for February 2019

Day 759 February 4, 2019

637 Days to the 2020 election and 715 Days to Inauguration Day

The Super Bowl is over and for sports fans this means a dearth of much happening until spring training. However, take heart, it was reported yesterday that over 1,000 games of women’s softball will be played this season. 

As to the Super Bowl, it was just as I predicted. I wrote Saturday “Patriots by 1, 7, 3, 2 or 38.” They won by ten and by applying White House Trumpian CYA logic that is what I said. No one wins a Super Bowl by 1,2, or 38 so applying Ann Coulter excuses “That’s just puffery,” and can therefore be dismissed, leaving by prediction of “7,3” which could be interpreted as “7 and 3” which is ten, which is what they won by, which is what I said. (Ho, Boy. I love this “new logic.”)

Speaking of new logic did you hear about Trump’s new geography? Yeah, Mr. “I have a very good brain” demonstrated his adeptness in geography by stating that Nepal was part of India (it isn’t), and then with a scale model in front of him (made to help him understand which countries were which and where they were) said that Bhutan was part of India (it isn’t.) If you google “Trump geography” you will find many instances of videos showing he gets a D- to a F in that subject.

This is exactly what I want in a world leader. A guy who has no idea where any country is, let alone whether they are friendly toward us. Speaking of which now Mr. Trump is repeating the propaganda lines from North Korea. Having moved on from doing Russia’s bidding he seems intent on doing that of North Korea. I have a suggestion for our president and the NPRK’s “Dear Leader.” I suggest they play golf together in North Korea. It is a well known fact within North Korea that the Kim’s dad was an outstanding golfer. I don’t know if any of it rubbed off on the kid, but in a museum in North Korea it is a fact that they say that Kim Jong-Il recorded five holes-in-one on one round of golf alone! It would be a pity if Mr. Trump outplayed Mr. Un. They don’t take kindly to being shown up. If it were to happen there could be an artillery cannon in Donald’s life.

I’m glad Ralph Northam didn’t quit. He was set up. This morning there are resurfacing old reports about sexual abuse charges against the Lt. Governor. These are the same charges as showed up during the campaign and were found to be baseless. Some say Corey Stewart is behind this. He’s the racist carpetbagging Confederate flag waving wannabe from Minnesota who moved here and ran against Northam for Governor.

637 Days to the 2020 election and 715 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Oxkintok, Yucatan, Mexico

Day 758 Sunday February 3, 2019

638 Days to the 2020 election and 716 Days to Inauguration Day

I’m reading Alec Baldwin’s memoir “Nevertheless.” I was drawn to it based on an interview I heard with him on NPR. In that interview he said he grew up on Long Island. The family struggled financially on the salary of a high school teacher. Alec found ways to stay home from school or to stay up late to watch movies on TV. He said his mother was constantly exhausted by all the kids and chores. He said of his siblings and friends of that time, “We were idiots.” In the summer, his mother would throw them out of the house and they’d play outside until suppertime. 

Alec is a few years younger than me, but because he grew up outside of New York City, as I did, we shared the same radio and TV stations. His descriptions of lying next to his mother watching TV is wonderful. He’s a very good writer. He recalled how one TV station played the same movie all week long, (It had to be WPIX. The only independent station out of New York and the show was called “Million Dollar Movie.”) 

At a young age he became a student of film. One weekend he said he watched “Inherit the Wind” five times and memorized every line in it. That is where we differ. Not only would it not occur to me to memorize those lines, I would be terrible at it. 

As the book progressed to his start in acting I was struck by how he criticized people in the industry that he said had no talent or creative vision. These were typically management types. I don’t think I would have the guts to do that. I also kept seeing his wonderful SNL skit “Sweaty Balls” playing over and over in my mind as I read on. He did assume that you knew some of the things that happened in his life and didn’t describe them, other than to talk about his reaction to events, leaving me to wonder what exactly those events were. 

Oh yes, that’s right he was married to Kim Basinger and there were problems. What were they? There were a few other references. 

Late in the book he talked about his short lived gig on MSNBC. It was a late night talk show. Stark, stripped down, two people talking. Something like the old Tom Snyder show, Tomorrow, and a Larry King interview. I remember the first episode. I liked it. Then something happened and he was gone. Alec described the something. He was being hounded by photographers who were in his personal space and that of his wife, car and family. He yelled at them to back off and at the end of the tirade said, “cocksucking.” The press picked up on the tirade, but dropped the last word and ran a headline saying, “Faggot,” which made it look like he hated gay people. Never mind that he had worked for many gay causes over the years, the hunt was on. Anderson Cooper and Andrew Sullivan lambasted him, as did various gay organizations. This started on a Friday, by Monday he was fired by MSNBC. When it went to litigation they played the actual video footage, all the way through and the word “faggot” wasn’t in there, but the damage had been done.

A similar thing happened to Baldwin around the word “coon.” He didn’t say it but TMZ ran with it and when finally confronted they said they thought he said it. The damage was done.

Remarkably, a few years later after doing his Trump impression on SNL those same types now love him (Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer comes to mind.)

So now we have Ralph Northam. A mild mannered doctor who has become Governor of Virginia. A photo surfaced from his yearbook. On the same page as his photo is a photo of a guy in black face and a guy in a KKK costume. Who found this and published it? The guys who ran Roger Moore’s campaign. Okay. Stop. Right there is enough for me to say, “Let’s not go crazy.” Too late. The Dems are piling on, or as Alec said of Bill De Blasio “running to be the most politically correct politician…” The Dems are piling on saying he should resign. Will you all stop shooting yourselves in the feet? When a Republican gets caught he says, “So what?” the firestorm passes and the idiot is seen again. It seems Northam is getting the Franken treatment, and like with Al, it is uncalled for, at least until we get some clarity. But no. let’s jump on the band wagon shall we? That’s easier and safer.

It seems Northam got blind sided on Friday and asked for forgiveness. F That! Then he called around to his old med school buddies trying to figure out when the photo was taken, couldn’t remember it, and held a press conference on Saturday saying it wasn’t him in the photo. Not good enough. Why did he apologize on Friday? Because he was scared? How about that? Reading the heinous things that lawyers, paparazzi, and opinion people have done in Baldwin’s brushes with these folks a mild mannered guy like Northam will get savaged. He’ll have to stand pretty much alone because the Dems won’t stick by their own. Sad.

Speaking of Bill de Blasio he was on Bill Maher latest show. I really liked what he had to say. Curiously, Maher let people talk instead of jumping in and trying to force them to say something he believed and they thought more nuanced. I guess he had expended all that on the Texas Congressman who is a Republican, a Latino, and has most of the Mexican border in his district. Maher couldn’t get him to say we don’t need a wall.

Back to de Blasio, what he said was the Dems need to speak up loud and clear as progressives because trying to say you are middle of the road gets you no where politically. He also said they need big bold ideas not tinkering with existing ones. You need to make it clear to people who’s side you are on. The trouble with Hillary was working people couldn’t figure out if she was on their side or that of big business. The problem with Obamacare was that people couldn’t figure out if it applied to them. Medicare is easy. If you turn 65, you’re covered. Make it easy for folks. The problem with health insurance is that it’s hard to figure out what applies to you. Lift that burden, cover everybody. If they know they’re covered and they don’t have to jump through all those hoops then costs will come down Yes, if you do Medicare for all then it will cost 32 trillion over ten years, but what is left out of that criticism is that if you do nothing it will cost 50 trillion. (Part of this was what the panel said and not de Blasio.) I liked the point about doing things big. It would get the job done and we could move on.

Let’s stop apologizing and being jerked around by our perfectionism and let’s do something and see if it works.

638 Days to the 2020 election and 716 Days to Inauguration Day

PS North Gate, Jerash, Jordan

 

Day 757 Saturday February 2, 2019

639 Days to the 2020 election and 717 Days to Inauguration Day

Our remote clicker has a undocumented feature and that is that if you press the DVR rewind or forward button, from time to time, it will take you out of what you were watching and bring you back to live TV and move you up one channel from what you had been watching previously on live TV. (I guess I could have written “it changes the channel.” Oh well. Ever onward.)

When it did it to me last night I found myself watching Stephen Colbert. He announced that his next guest was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or as all of us old folk who think we are being cool say, “AOC,” and besides that’s easier to remember how to spell than her name.

I watched. Let me say anyone who messes with her does so at their peril. She is personable, engaging, and genuine. She is well spoken and what she says is practical and easy to understand. Watch out in six years when when is old enough to run for President. When she walked out from behind the curtain the crowd greeted her with a roar and a standing ovation, which didn’t stop right away. There is great affection for her. I was struck by her size. She is petite, like Ariana Grande petite. I had no idea. She has tweeted about her life, so far, as a Congressperson. One shot was a picture of her snuggled in bed eating ice cream after a long day. Somehow, I can’t see Mitch McConnell or any other politician doing that, nor would I want to see the pic. There is a level of genuineness that I have rarely seen in someone in political life. She was asked by Colbert about her being told “to wait her turn” and how many Fs did she gives about that. She looked down, laughed, and held up her hand with thumb and forefinger touching to form a “zero.” 

She was asked about the shutdown. She said that because of that she couldn’t get her office set up. She couldn’t get to work on the things she was sent to Congress to do. There was therefore “more time to get in trouble.” She recounted how she and her colleagues went over to the Senate building to look for McConnell. Not being able to find him, (she didn’t know, I suspect, about the Senator’s unmarked “hidden” offices), she started a hashtag “Where’s Mitch?” Oh boy. You in trouble Mitch-ey! 

Asked about her 70% tax plan. She pointed out this is not a new idea. This wasn’t taxing all of a person’s income at that rate, only that portion over $10,000,000.00 that a person makes in a year. She and Stephen talked that under Eisenhower the rate was 90%. The talked about her being called a socialist. “I’m not. Democratic Socialist – big difference.” Oh boy. Are you going to force the right wing, Fox and Friends to try and ferret out the difference?

Kids today: millennials, Gen Xers, Gen Y, whatever don’t give a damn about the tag Socialist. Got it? No? You will. Bye-bye.

Then we get to the freak out over Ralph Northam. OMG. The guys who ran Roy Moore’s campaign found a picture of Northam in his medical school yearbook It’s unfortunate. It’s insensitive in today’s world. So what are the Dems doing? Like they did to Franken, they are invoking a purity test based on today’s standards. Yes, it’s unfortunate, but has he shown any tendencies or behavior that would bolster the idea that Northam is racist? I haven’t heard of any, but I’m sure if there are any such evidence we’ll hear about it now. I can’t figure out how much of this is about Northam, and how much about certain politicians ganging up to appear to be in the “my poop don’t stink” camp, and how many want the Lieutenant Governor who is a black man to become Governor based on his race.

I wish Northam would just say, “Yup, I was stupid when I was younger. Sorry.” and get on with it. 

Speaking of stupid…Donald Trump…

Need I go on?

639 Days to the 2020 election and 717 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Went downtown to a small theater to see Red Velvet. The story of Ira Aldridge a black actor in the 1800s, who went to Europe to avoid the discrimination in the U.S. The play itself is about whether a black man should play the part of Iago in Shakespeare’s “Othello” in London in 1833. Powerful stuff. The theater where it was held is the small theater above the Carpenter Theater part of the Dominion Theater (ie the Altria) Group. It plays through Feb 9^th. (pictured is the actor Jamar Jones in lead as Ira Aldridge in the play “Red Velvet.”)

https://www.dominionenergycenter.com/events/detail/quill-theatre-presents-red-velvet

PPS The Super Bowl is tomorrow. I forgot. I thought we had another week. Who’s going to win? The Patriots. Don’t bet against Tom Brady. People wrote him off at the beginning of this season and I think it really pissed him off. I think he’s got this Super Bowl and maybe another in him. Just sayin’. The other team? Who cares? Now maybe he gets skunked. Maybe. Don’t bet on it. Patriots by 1, 7, 3, 2 or 38. You heard it here first!