I just came back from seeing “Solo” and yes, I’ll be writing a Cowboy Pete on my Patreon account, so either bìŧçh about that or sign up as you see fit.
But there is a broader thing I’m still puzzling about:
What the hëll do people want from movies these days?
Seventeen years ago today, I married Kathleen O’Shea.
You should understand that when my first marriage broke apart, I thought that was going to be it for me. I would never find a woman to love me again. My three daughters would eventually move out and I would be left alone to live out the remainder of my life.
Kathleen changed all that. She gave me a new life to live for. A new child to raise. An entirely new world in which to live. Not a day has gone by where I regretted the promises I made seventeen years ago to love her for the rest of my life.
I could not survive without her.
Thank you for being with me all this time.
PAD
I apologize to anyone in the other three time zones for the lateness of this posting. I am currently out at the Phoenix Comic Fest and it’s still Friday here. I hope no one will be too cranky, especially considering the new amount of idiocy currently happening as a result of the #FAKEPOTUS.
1) Half an hour later it’s like you’ll want to be spied on again. Back in 2016 the Chinese telecom company ZTE was forbidden to do business in the US for a period of seven years. It seemed that its equipment was not exactly according to Hoyle, allowing them to spy on the phones’ users and therefore have espionage roots in the US. To the shock of no one since it’s impossible for Trump to shock anyone anymore, he is working with ZTE to enable them to come back to America and, presumably, start spying again. This knowledge prompted the Senate to actually agree on something for once: This is bad and Trump should not be allowed to do it. Trump will naturally ignore the Senate and try to steamroll it through. Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that China is involved in stealing our intellectual property. There is no better way to do it than through ZTE, and we’re going to let them be here, and slap them on the wrist with a fine? That’s a dereliction of our duty here in the Congress, and it’s the president’s duty to protect us.” It’s almost kind of sweet to think that after over a year of Trump’s endless bûllšhìŧ that Schumer still believes Trump is interested in protecting anyone except himself.
2) It’s on/It’s off/It’s On/God knows. Remember how astounded everyone was that Trump actually seemed ready to sit down with North Korea for peace talks? His mindless followers even began stumping for the Nobel Peace Prize even though nothing had been actually accomplished by Trump. South Korea, yes, Trump, not so much. And then think about how utterly unsurprised everyone was when Trump dropkicked the entire meeting while of course blaming Kim Jong un. Well, apparently someone convinced Trump that he’d be scratching his Nobel Prize chances if the meeting went away. So now he’s turned around and stated that he’s still open to a meeting which he himself scratched, and whether or not it happens is ostensibly in Kim’s hands even though Trump was the one who cancelled it. Part of me is wondering if this is going to turn into an espionage film in which Trump and Kim get together and then masked men come sweeping in, kidnap them both, and holds them for ransom with the demand being to replace both of them. I’d watch that.
3) Gee, I thought he loved unions. Trump signed three executive orders (you remember, the things he always slammed Obama for using) that are designed to make life much harder for civil service workers. The government said that it was for making “better use” of taxpayer dollars. The American Federation of Government Employees disagreed, stating, “President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite.” So, y’know, that’s going well.
4) She couldn’t have told us this, oh TWO YEARS AGO?!? 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl stated that back when she was interviewing Trump after he’d won the GOP nomination, she asked him off camera why he kept going on and on about “fake news.” It was old hat, and he must have known that. Trump’s reply was perfect: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” He flat out admitted it, and Stahl kept that to herself until recently when she was being interviewed by PBS’s Judy Woodruff. It didn’t occur to her to try and get him to say that on camera? All that’ll happen now is that people who dislike him will say, “Of course that’s why” and all his supporters will say, “Lesley Stahl is lying.”
5) Stephen King is back! Remember when Trump blocked Stephen King and others from following him on Twitter? Here’s the thing: his Twitter feed is a government account. And there’s a rumor that the government is not allowed to restrict others from speaking. What’s the thing called again…? Oh, right. The First amendment. That’s part of the Constitution that Trump swore to uphold. Judge Naomi Buchwald stated that Trump’s blocking people violated the First amendment. The thing is, she didn’t order Trump to remove the blocking because she simply assumed that one she said what was what, Trump would take care of it himself. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Did he do anything right? Thanks to Matt Adler for pointing this out to me. Trump, after getting a phone call from Sylvester Stallone, pardoned Jack Johnson. Johnson, a legendary figure in boxing who inspired the play and film “The Great White Hope,” was ostensibly found guilty of violating the Mann Act when what he was really convicted of was becoming a boxing champion while being black. People have been asking presidents for decades to pardon him, but none did. But Trump did so. So ostensibly good on him for that.
Here’s the problem: If Trump had been around in 1913, he would have been one of the ones who actively condemned Johnson. Why do I say that? The most obvious reason is because how he has relentlessly and racially gone after black football players who knelt during the Star Spangled Banner. Trump’s relentless bashing of black players prompted the NFL to unanimously declare that players must stand during the anthem or face sizable financial punishments. You know that they did it to shut Trump up as his bashing was unquestionably having an effect on the game’s profitability. So, you know, good for Jack Johnson and good on Trump for doing something that was genuinely good. But I think it has far less to do with Johnson and far more to do with Trump (a) trying to fool us into thinking he’s not a racist, and (b) doing something that Obama had failed to do. So…yay?
Me, I think that the NFL football players, during the anthem, should criss cross their arms in the “Wakanda Forever” salute. Let them try to legislate against THAT.
PAD
Who didn’t give the slightest dámņ about the royal wedding?
PAD
Remember the old days where weeks could go by and you wouldn’t hear about the President saying or doing something insulting or stupid? I miss those days.
Now you may think that you know Trump is dumb.
1). How dumb is he? Well, Bill Gates was actually able to describe it recently in citing several of Trump’s huge idiocies. For one thing, it turned out that Trump did not know the difference between H.I.V. and H.P.V. He had no idea that the former is an S.T.D. that is the gateway to A.I.D.s, and the latter results in genital warts and sometimes cervical cancer. Furthermore, he floated past Bill Gates the prospect of opening up a government study of whether vaccinations are responsible for autism, a claim that was initially launched by a single idiot “doctor” which was thoroughly debunked by medical experts.
Remember when presidents were smart? Even fictional ones: Josiah Bartlett was proud of his intelligence and never failed to show it off at any opportunity. Could you imagine Trump engaging in a trivia-off with anyone?
2). Gutting Planned Parenthood Again. The Senate still refuses to accept the simple fact that Planned Parenthood does not use government money for abortions. They tried to cut all government funding for PP with this year’s budget and failed, mostly thanks to Democrats taking a hard line against it. Well, Trump may well have found a way to accomplish what the Senate could not. He wants to resuscitate a Reagan-era rule that prohibits abortions from being performed at any organization that received government funding. Not only that, but Planned Parenthood would not be able to counsel any woman who has an unwanted pregnancy, nor would they be allowed to provide referrals to someone who could provide abortion. This will severely limit the opportunities that women–especially low-income women–will have to receive any manner of useful counseling.
I’d say “incredible” but it’s really not. That’s the problem with Trump. Every day he is doing something that will hurt the most helpless people, and we’re starting to become inured to it.
3). I am not an animal! Remember how Hitler and his people referred to Jews as “animals.” Remember when slave owners felt their slaves weren’t human? Well, Trump picked up on that same dehumanizing description of his favor group to hate, Immigrants. He sat there and declared that people coming into the country are “animals.” His exact words. We know he’s a bigot, we know he’s a racist, but it’s just astounding to hear him quote the sentiments of Nazis and slave owners.
4). When is he going to realize he’s being an idiot? I have never heard of a president who is so utterly at war with his own intelligence agencies. Recently he declared, without a shred of proof, that the FBI had placed spies into his election campaign “for political purposes.” That claim is right up there with his baseless assertions that Obama eavesdropped on things that were said at Trump Tower. I mean, I know the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that people AREN’T out to get you, but this is insane. And we are forced to only one conclusion: Trump knows all the šhìŧ that he’s been involved with and is certain that people are spying him while he’s doing it. These are not the claims and actions of an innocent man.
5). Yeah, we weren’t expecting that. . Trump’s shot at winning the Nobel Prize is rapidly deteriorating as Kim Jong un now claims that the supposed meeting won’t be happening because the US and South Korea are engaged in military tests. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what ELSE did they think Kim would do? Why should he give up his attempts to make nuclear weapons if he believes that he might be attacked by South Korea and the US? Plus he can’t stand John Bolton. Who could blame him? No right thinking person can stand John Bolton.
Did he do anything right? Nope.
PAD
Been a busy week.
1). You can’t fake this stuff.. After complaining about “fake news” for two years, Trump has actually finally defined it.
Declaring that the “fake news” is “working overtime,” Trump went on to tweet, “Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake).”
So now we understand the disconnect. To the rest of the world, “fake” means fabricated. False. Untrue. A lie. You remember a lie: the thing that comes out of Trump’s mouth whenever it’s open. But to Trump, “fake” means something that is critical of him. You see, Trump is so star spangled awesome that any critique, complaint, or negative observation of him cannot possibly be true, because no sane person would see anything wrong with him.
To any reasonable person, that is of course complete bûllšhìŧ. People get criticized constantly: by news media, on social media, by spouses or loved ones, teachers, bosses, friends and enemies alike. And they respond to it in a variety of ways: by considering the criticism, apologizing, trying to make amends, ignoring it, even doubling down (which is the typical hard right strategy.) But I can’t recall anyone flat out stating that any criticism of him at any point across the board is flat out untrue. That’s nuts.
And that’s Trump.
2). Iran away. Trump has been assiduously stating that the Iran anti-nuke deal was “the worst” ever made and that Iran was cheating on it. Curiously, our allies asserted that Iran was remaining faithful to it. These were the same allies who asserted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, which George W. ignored and launched a war that cost the lives of 4500 Americans and one million Iraqis before we found out that, no, he had no WMDs. So that worked out well.
But because, as the saying goes, those who do not listen to the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, Trump has just taken the first step into destabilizing the Middle East even further (admittedly it’s not all that stable now) by terminating America’s adherence to the Iranian deal. Because a month before you go into a meeting with a North Korean dictator to make a deal, that’s exactly the message you want to send: That you can’t be trusted to keep a deal that your country makes. You’d think that a man who allegedly wrote a book called “Art of the Deal” would know that you should never break a deal. Which, actually, he has been quoted on previous occasions: you don’t break a deal. You’re sending a message that your word can’t be trusted.
Trump can come up with all the BS excuses he wants, but it’s painfully obvious why he broke the deal: Because it was something that Obama had done. Trump, like any demented racist, is determined to shatter every single accomplishment of his predecessor. He wants to create his ideal America, one where Obama was never president because, look, nothing he ever allegedly did lasted. This is the same dìçk who keeps blaming the Democrats for HIS demolishing of DACA. If he could find a way to remove Obama’s and Michelle’s portraits from the White House, he would do so in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, Israel has taken encouragement from this dûmbášš move and is currently exchanging missiles with Iran. We could wind up seeing a full blown war between Iran and Israel with nuclear missiles flying. All because Trump has taken away the main incentive for Iran to refrain from developing nuclear weapons.
3). Get rid of your poor, your tired…. A new plan to hurt immigrants has doctors and hospitals extremely concerned. The potential new policy calls for the following: If any legal immigrant holding a visa uses Medicare, food stamps, Obamacare or a number of other government policies, then their application for a green card can be denied. But what if your child was born here, meaning they’re American citizens? Doesn’t matter: it could still cause the parents to have their green card refused. The concern is that immigrants will starve or not seek medical care lest their green card becomes lost to them. Which of course the government knows, so hey: gets rid of immigrants, right? It’s all good.
Bášŧárdš.
4). Meanwhile in Cohen Land…. It turns out that Michael Cohen created a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, which seemed to have one reason for existing: to sell access to Trump. It’s unclear if Trump knew about it at the time or not, but he knows about it now and he is extremely not happy with Cohen. It also seems to have bridged the gap between Stormy Daniels on the one hand and Russia on the other because companies with Russian ties have been “hiring” Essential Consultants. Which means Mueller’s playhouse has constructed a second floor.
Did he do anything right?. Somewhat, but he managed to get that wrong, too. Kim Jong un decided to free three prisoners in advance of meeting with Trump. Trump had been stating that he was working to do what Obama had failed to do and get the three of them released, even though only one of them had been taken while Obama was president and the other two were taken under Trump’s reign. Furthermore, it’s obvious that Kim is taking advantage of Trump’s idiocy by using the opportunity to present himself to the world as a wise, considered leader rather than the homicidal dictator we all know him to be. While idiot supporters are claiming that Trump should receive the Nobel prize, that’s absurd. Trump is a dictatorial bully, and the ONLY reason Korea is getting its act together is because they’re proving that they are collectively wiser than the idiot in chief. And then when he flew to welcome the returnees, he insanely speculated on how good the ratings they were getting were at 3 AM. When is he going to realize that ratings are NOT something the freaking president should be concerned about?
I’m betting never.
PAD
When the book (or books) are written about Trump’s relatively short lived and failed presidency, this past week will be regarded as one of the major seven days that contributed to its downfall. And it will be referred to as:
CALL OF RUDY
Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – May the Fourth Be With You, 2018”
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