…it’s not like it’s a surprise at this point…but all the same
The president’s nomination of Judge Barrett, a favorite of conservatives, to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will kick off a furious and unprecedented scramble to confirm her in the Senate before Election Day.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, delights in confirming Republican-nominated jurists. District courts, appeals courts, most especially the Supreme Court — he wants to fill them all. In fact, with his party’s having largely given up on legislating in recent years, this may be what Mr. McConnell regards as his main duty. It is certainly the part at which he excels.
…but not for nothing it seems odd that she’d be prepared to call herself a “supreme justice” at work when apparently her religious convictions include the belief that as a married lady her judgement is explicitly subordinate to her husband’s…so frankly I don’t see how she’s even in line for the job since surely she’d have to run everything past her “better half” & I’m pretty sure that pretty much wouldn’t be what you’d call a lawful arrangement…but we sure are going to hear a lot about this particular shitty idea in the days & weeks to come so fuck it…it’s the weekend & there has to be something else to read about
…& while there may be “an app for that”…that doesn’t mean you get to get that app
Apple’s 30 percent commission in its App Store […] would be the largest contributor to taking in barely $1 in revenue from a planned $10 monthly subscription fee. “I couldn’t see how we’d make any money,”
…but that’s a whole other rant so I’ll just stick this here & spare you that
Even as early voting has gotten underway, some pivotal states are still litigating how ballots should be cast and counted, creating uncertainty that is being fanned by President Trump.
Attorney General William P. Barr personally told President Trump this week about an investigation into nine discarded mail ballots in northeastern Pennsylvania that the president later touted as evidence of widespread election fraud, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal administration discussions.
The play instead is more complex, and I lay it out in my @Slate piece yesterday. The argument of the legislatures would be that vote count is SO uncertain/marred by fraud that we don't know what the voters want so we are choosing electors directly. /6
…another thread…but the gist is that the dog they’re threatening to run with really shouldn’t hunt…it links out to some Slate pieces that are arguably worth a read, too
…if he only had a brain he might be able to see that there are people out there genuinely looking into some pretty neat ideas that could maybe lead to what we used to call “scientific breakthroughs”
Nothing Eats Viruses, Right? Meet Some Hungry Protists
…back when that didn’t just mean some actual science broke through the wall of lethal delusion
Trump’s Stalinist Approach to Science
…when there’s a pandemic fucking with the entire world any idiot (…well…nearly any idiot, I guess) could tell you science is your friend
Trump Says D.A. Is Using ‘Speculation and Innuendo’ to Get His Tax Returns
…c’mon now…that isn’t fair
Judges on a federal appeals panel expressed skepticism at a hearing on Friday about President Trump’s arguments that a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney seeking eight years of the president’s tax returns was overbroad and issued in bad faith.
…if you remove the speculation & innendo from the equation dipshit mcdingus the least presidential president since forever wouldn’t be able to open his puckered sphincter of a mouth & mewl whatever his latest round of defensively offensive mendacities…I mean “defend himself”
“Fred was the son of a working class socialist MP who became a world tennis champion at a time when tennis was an elitist sport. He started a business with a Jewish businessman from Eastern Europe. It’s a shame we even have to answer questions like this. No, we don’t support the ideals or the group that you speak of. It is counter to our beliefs and the people we work with,” John Flynn, Fred Perry Chairman 2017
…I do appreciate the sentiment…& it is an open thread, after all
…but on balance I think that one would have been an odd fit if I’d tried to fit it into that lineup?
…& although I firmly believe voting for the man is the only same option in this instance…I guess I don’t feel like Joe is the kind of leader Neil’s talking about so it didn’t originally occur to me
…the needle & the damage done, though…that might have cropped up in my rotation from time to time lately
bare with me…i skipped your links
woke up this morning to the ex neighbourlady asking me to go shopping for her…apparently she dropped her lemonade and needs a new bottle
i already went shopping for her last nite….got to her house to pick up the card and she didnt have it…so she asked me if i felt like cycling over to where ever the fuck her kid was to get her pinpass
i did not… told her to call me when she had the card
anyhoo by the time i got home her kid was at my door with the card…
fucking irritating…but word is bond and all that shit so i got her shopping
now she wants more shopping
i reckons i could probably spit on the supermarket from her house
told her to get herself a fucking scoot mobile and stop being a lazy asshole also no im not going shopping today
am i the asshole here?
…if you want someone to do you a favor it’s generally in your interest to make it as minimal an imposition as possible if you want to stand a chance of it not being the last favor they’re prepared to do you
…I’d even go so far as to say that in this particular case not having the means of payment ready before asking the question shows an unwelcome indifference to the value of your time…to only figure out later on that she had other items she wanted & request a second (indeed third) trip on your part is frankly insulting & implies a degree of thoughtlessness on her part that speaks to a selfish disposition I wouldn’t be inclined to reward
…literally the least she could have done was to think through how to not make the first extra trip a waste of your time by figuring out something worth picking up beyond replenishing something you’d just supplied & then to be adequately prepared for the possibility you’d agree to have you on your way with minimal fuss & bother
i know
tbh…i like being a nice guy and helping out and shit
but shes dangerously close to bringing out my true colours
and then ill probably steal her cats and burn her house down
also call her names…..lol
also..in unrelated news it looks like europe is heading for lockdown 2 electric go fuck having a jobaloo
fucking yay
farscy may be a little bit pissed off at everything right now
I have a neighbor who used to call for the dumbest favors. He’d go on vacation and let someone stay a couple of days at his house, and when they left called and asked if I could go check if they had turned all of his AC units to the low setting. One time he asked if I could check if he had unplugged his electric shaver. Before me, another neighbor was his neurosis abater, and she reported she got stuck one time crawling on his basement floor checking pilot lights.
Anyway, I got more irritable and less cooperative, and now he calls another neighbor when he needs some stupid thing done.
I’ve never understood why any government would bribe IOC officials (and apparently they all do; it’s a toss-up as to whether the IOC or FIFA is the most corrupt sporting body on earth.) They’re almost always colossal financial failures. Bloomberg wanted to bring the Olympics to NYC at some point but opposition was so fierce even he backed down and withdrew the bid. Same thing happened in Boston more recently.
The only Olympics in modern times that ever showed a net surplus was the 1984 Olympic Games in LA. How did they do it? The 1976 Montréal Olympics was such a financial catastrophe (it took 30 years to pay off the debt for just the stadium) that in 1979 LA was the only city that put in a bid to host. Even then they probably had to grease the skids with IOC members. LA had hosted the Olympics before, in 1932 (see note below), and because of their favorable climate and wise upkeep they could repurpose some of that infrastructure, and they had other existing venues they could press into service. Meanwhile, probably because LA knows how to profit from media in all forms, they managed to get unprecedentedly sky-high broadcasting fees. Other than that–it’s going to take Rio generations to recover from the 2016 Olympics, if they ever do. Does anyone even remember the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang? I certainly do not and had to google whether they were even held.
NOTE: We have a strange obsession with Charlie Chan movies. They’re very much a product of their era. Chan, for example, was played by a Finn, Warner Oland, among others, but he’s the most famous. Problematic as they are for viewers today, imagine my delight when I discovered that there is one called “Charlie Chan at the Olympics”. Which Olympics? The 1936 Berlin “Nazi” Olympics. Oh, let’s get right to this, I thought.
It proved to be quite a disappointment, because there are no swastikas or Hitler uniforms or anything. There’s a scene where the Berlin police show up and they’re dressed as they would have in the Weimar era. If you’re ever seen Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia,” which is the 1936 Berlin “Nazi” Olympics, you’ll see Nazi iconography all over the place. Not so with the Chan movie. What they did was rerun footage from the 1932 LA games, a wise move for cost-saving and politically delicate reasons.
…Charlie Chan was definitely a product of its times…No. 1 Son & all that…but if you like them & you haven’t seen an old British flick called “One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing” I recommend checking it out?
…as for the Olympics stuff…I’m very much a heathen about sports but even I know that the games are up there with the football world cup for having reasons not to want anyone knowing how the sausage is made?
I have not seen “One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing” I will hunt for it.
Number One Son, Keye Luke, was actually born in China but grew up in Seattle. According to Infallible Wiki he was a founding member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and was the first Chinese-American to be contracted to RKO. He was also Kato in the “Green Hornet” serials in the immediate pre-WWII era.
If you remember the “Kung Fu” TV series (poor David Carradine) Luke played Master Po. For those who don’t, the decidedly not-Chinese David Carradine plays a Chinese monk in the American Wild West. Don’t ask. It all made sense in the 1970s. Unbelievably, the show is not on heavy rotation, like “Law & Order.”
…they did a sort-of-based-on-the-bruce-lee-pitch series recently (called Warrior) that’s sort of like Deadwood crossed with Kung Fu Hustle & set in San Francisco during the gold rush era
…when I say “like Kung Fu Hustle” I don’t mean it’s a comedy (although there’s some humor) so much as some of the characters seem quite modern-style in their attitudes & such…& the fight choreography is pretty great
Have you seen the 30 for 30 on Bruce Lee? He was going to play David Carradine’s part on Kung Fu but they didn’t like his accent! He also played Kato in the TV series Green Hornet and grew up in Seattle.
…I loved The Green Hornet when I was a kid & didn’t figure out it was Bruce Lee until years later
…in some places I believe it was (understandably) called “The Kato Show” rather than pretend the Green Hornet himself was the thing anyone tuned in for
I have a special fondness/loathing for non-Asian actors cast in Asian roles. I don’t know why, we’re not Asian, it’s just a hobby, like collecting a baseball team’s player cards.
Yul Brynner, who played the incredibly hot King of Siam in “The King and I,” (1956) was Russian. John Wayne, born in Winterset, Iowa, played Genghis Khan, in one of the arguably worst movies ever made, “The Conqueror,” also 1956. All-American Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi (supposedly Japanese) in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
There is a great episode from the original “Hawaii 5-0” where a shady Japanese oligarch shows up in Honolulu. He is played by…Ricardo Montalban. Oddly enough, Montalban showed up again, as a presumably Mexican-born race car driver Alex Pareño, but that was years later, and before the Chrysler Cordoba and “Fantasy Island” days.
Yup Brynner was incredibly hot. As was Egyptian actor Omar Shariff, cast as Dr. Zhivago. The entertainment industry was/is a weird business, lol.
And your life seems lovely to me. 😊
As I’ve said for many years about my crazy dogs, I would like to spend five minutes inside their brains BUT NOT ONE SECOND MORE.
We have a spare room (now converted into a home gym, because pandemic gym closure) and people used to stay with us, sometimes for days on end. Sometimes people will say to The Other Half, “It must be fun to live with Mattie! He’s always coming up with–”
one more,
Neil Young – Lookin’ For A Leader
…I do appreciate the sentiment…& it is an open thread, after all
…but on balance I think that one would have been an odd fit if I’d tried to fit it into that lineup?
…& although I firmly believe voting for the man is the only same option in this instance…I guess I don’t feel like Joe is the kind of leader Neil’s talking about so it didn’t originally occur to me
…the needle & the damage done, though…that might have cropped up in my rotation from time to time lately
bare with me…i skipped your links
woke up this morning to the ex neighbourlady asking me to go shopping for her…apparently she dropped her lemonade and needs a new bottle
i already went shopping for her last nite….got to her house to pick up the card and she didnt have it…so she asked me if i felt like cycling over to where ever the fuck her kid was to get her pinpass
i did not… told her to call me when she had the card
anyhoo by the time i got home her kid was at my door with the card…
fucking irritating…but word is bond and all that shit so i got her shopping
now she wants more shopping
i reckons i could probably spit on the supermarket from her house
told her to get herself a fucking scoot mobile and stop being a lazy asshole also no im not going shopping today
am i the asshole here?
…you are not…at least not in my opinion
…if you want someone to do you a favor it’s generally in your interest to make it as minimal an imposition as possible if you want to stand a chance of it not being the last favor they’re prepared to do you
…I’d even go so far as to say that in this particular case not having the means of payment ready before asking the question shows an unwelcome indifference to the value of your time…to only figure out later on that she had other items she wanted & request a second (indeed third) trip on your part is frankly insulting & implies a degree of thoughtlessness on her part that speaks to a selfish disposition I wouldn’t be inclined to reward
…literally the least she could have done was to think through how to not make the first extra trip a waste of your time by figuring out something worth picking up beyond replenishing something you’d just supplied & then to be adequately prepared for the possibility you’d agree to have you on your way with minimal fuss & bother
im glad you agree
thank you
#NTA. She is taking advantage of you.
i know
tbh…i like being a nice guy and helping out and shit
but shes dangerously close to bringing out my true colours
and then ill probably steal her cats and burn her house down
also call her names…..lol
also..in unrelated news it looks like europe is heading for lockdown 2 electric go fuck having a jobaloo
fucking yay
farscy may be a little bit pissed off at everything right now
I have a neighbor who used to call for the dumbest favors. He’d go on vacation and let someone stay a couple of days at his house, and when they left called and asked if I could go check if they had turned all of his AC units to the low setting. One time he asked if I could check if he had unplugged his electric shaver. Before me, another neighbor was his neurosis abater, and she reported she got stuck one time crawling on his basement floor checking pilot lights.
Anyway, I got more irritable and less cooperative, and now he calls another neighbor when he needs some stupid thing done.
I’ve never understood why any government would bribe IOC officials (and apparently they all do; it’s a toss-up as to whether the IOC or FIFA is the most corrupt sporting body on earth.) They’re almost always colossal financial failures. Bloomberg wanted to bring the Olympics to NYC at some point but opposition was so fierce even he backed down and withdrew the bid. Same thing happened in Boston more recently.
The only Olympics in modern times that ever showed a net surplus was the 1984 Olympic Games in LA. How did they do it? The 1976 Montréal Olympics was such a financial catastrophe (it took 30 years to pay off the debt for just the stadium) that in 1979 LA was the only city that put in a bid to host. Even then they probably had to grease the skids with IOC members. LA had hosted the Olympics before, in 1932 (see note below), and because of their favorable climate and wise upkeep they could repurpose some of that infrastructure, and they had other existing venues they could press into service. Meanwhile, probably because LA knows how to profit from media in all forms, they managed to get unprecedentedly sky-high broadcasting fees. Other than that–it’s going to take Rio generations to recover from the 2016 Olympics, if they ever do. Does anyone even remember the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang? I certainly do not and had to google whether they were even held.
NOTE: We have a strange obsession with Charlie Chan movies. They’re very much a product of their era. Chan, for example, was played by a Finn, Warner Oland, among others, but he’s the most famous. Problematic as they are for viewers today, imagine my delight when I discovered that there is one called “Charlie Chan at the Olympics”. Which Olympics? The 1936 Berlin “Nazi” Olympics. Oh, let’s get right to this, I thought.
It proved to be quite a disappointment, because there are no swastikas or Hitler uniforms or anything. There’s a scene where the Berlin police show up and they’re dressed as they would have in the Weimar era. If you’re ever seen Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia,” which is the 1936 Berlin “Nazi” Olympics, you’ll see Nazi iconography all over the place. Not so with the Chan movie. What they did was rerun footage from the 1932 LA games, a wise move for cost-saving and politically delicate reasons.
Once again, I present to you an entire movie:
WHOOPS! Sorry, wrong one! Although that’s a very good one too. YouTube misidentified the file. Here ya go:
…Charlie Chan was definitely a product of its times…No. 1 Son & all that…but if you like them & you haven’t seen an old British flick called “One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing” I recommend checking it out?
…as for the Olympics stuff…I’m very much a heathen about sports but even I know that the games are up there with the football world cup for having reasons not to want anyone knowing how the sausage is made?
I have not seen “One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing” I will hunt for it.
Number One Son, Keye Luke, was actually born in China but grew up in Seattle. According to Infallible Wiki he was a founding member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and was the first Chinese-American to be contracted to RKO. He was also Kato in the “Green Hornet” serials in the immediate pre-WWII era.
If you remember the “Kung Fu” TV series (poor David Carradine) Luke played Master Po. For those who don’t, the decidedly not-Chinese David Carradine plays a Chinese monk in the American Wild West. Don’t ask. It all made sense in the 1970s. Unbelievably, the show is not on heavy rotation, like “Law & Order.”
In the biopic about Bruce Lee he pitched the show and NBC stole it from him.
…one of the great missed opportunities, that
…they did a sort-of-based-on-the-bruce-lee-pitch series recently (called Warrior) that’s sort of like Deadwood crossed with Kung Fu Hustle & set in San Francisco during the gold rush era
…I quite enjoyed it
Didn’t know about that, thanks.
…when I say “like Kung Fu Hustle” I don’t mean it’s a comedy (although there’s some humor) so much as some of the characters seem quite modern-style in their attitudes & such…& the fight choreography is pretty great
Have you seen the 30 for 30 on Bruce Lee? He was going to play David Carradine’s part on Kung Fu but they didn’t like his accent! He also played Kato in the TV series Green Hornet and grew up in Seattle.
…I loved The Green Hornet when I was a kid & didn’t figure out it was Bruce Lee until years later
…in some places I believe it was (understandably) called “The Kato Show” rather than pretend the Green Hornet himself was the thing anyone tuned in for
I have a special fondness/loathing for non-Asian actors cast in Asian roles. I don’t know why, we’re not Asian, it’s just a hobby, like collecting a baseball team’s player cards.
Yul Brynner, who played the incredibly hot King of Siam in “The King and I,” (1956) was Russian. John Wayne, born in Winterset, Iowa, played Genghis Khan, in one of the arguably worst movies ever made, “The Conqueror,” also 1956. All-American Mickey Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi (supposedly Japanese) in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
There is a great episode from the original “Hawaii 5-0” where a shady Japanese oligarch shows up in Honolulu. He is played by…Ricardo Montalban. Oddly enough, Montalban showed up again, as a presumably Mexican-born race car driver Alex Pareño, but that was years later, and before the Chrysler Cordoba and “Fantasy Island” days.
God do I need to get a life.
Yup Brynner was incredibly hot. As was Egyptian actor Omar Shariff, cast as Dr. Zhivago. The entertainment industry was/is a weird business, lol.
And your life seems lovely to me. 😊
As I’ve said for many years about my crazy dogs, I would like to spend five minutes inside their brains BUT NOT ONE SECOND MORE.
We have a spare room (now converted into a home gym, because pandemic gym closure) and people used to stay with us, sometimes for days on end. Sometimes people will say to The Other Half, “It must be fun to live with Mattie! He’s always coming up with–”
“It’s interesting, let’s put it that way.”
God forbid that a Chinese man have a Chinese accent, right?
Like daylight savings time and the electoral college, chalk up the Olympics in the “are we still doing this?” dept.