But this isn’t just about Exxon’s past actions. In the same year as the Levine presentation, 1989, many energy companies and fossil fuel dependent industries came together to form the Global Climate Coalition, which aggressively lobbied US politicians and media.
Then in 1991, the trade body that represents electrical companies in the US, the Edison Electric Institute, created a campaign called the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) which aimed to “Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”. Some details of the campaign were leaked to the New York Times.
“They ran advertising campaigns designed to undermine public support, cherry picking the data to say, ‘Well if the world is warming up, why is Kentucky getting colder?’ They asked rhetorical questions designed to create confusion, to create doubt,” argued Naomi Oreskes.
The ICE campaign identified two groups which would be most susceptible to its messaging. The first was “older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers”.
The second group was “younger, low-income women,” who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.
A 17-year-old died after hitting his head on a beam or falling out of the car in a downtown St. Louis parking garage while hanging out of the sunroof.
The incident happened just after 11:00 p.m. Saturday in a garage in the 1000 block of Spruce. Police said the teen was inside a white SUV that was being driven by an 18-year-old woman. A 14-year-old girl, the 17-year-old and a 26-year-old man were hanging out of the sunroof when the incident occurred.
The driver then sped from the scene, leaving the victims behind.
As much as I wanted to scream, “How can you be so STUPID?????” it was just so gawddamned idiotically unnecessarily sad.
@Teve: Which is why she will do everything she can to put off the vote until Nov 4 and then cast a yes for the religious fanatic Trump is about to nominate. She has to ensure she still has a seat on the wing nut welfare train.
@Kylopod: Saw the latest Des Moines Register poll that showed Greenfield ahead of Ernst. Wow! Bolt of hopefulness! Then read that Ernst also trailed in the June DMR poll. Double wow!
We are going to hear a lot about the sincere beliefs held by the anti-abortionists and how their deeply felt religious leanings are being violated. Let’s all remember that when RvW was passed it was not considered a particularly religious issue. The national newspaper for the Southern Baptist Convention carried an editorial (by the editor himself, if I am not mistaken) deciding that, on balance, RvW was a net good.
The Right to Life movement is a manufactured movement, started by the Roman Catholics to divert attention from their growing child abuse scandal, with the other Christian denominations jumping in when they saw what a fundraising opportunity it was.
This is why I am always extremely skeptical of the special pleading that this issue is like no other and therefore liberals need to back down. Just as the case of Hillary’s emails, or Al Gore’s exaggerations, or John Kerry’s betrayal of his military brethren, this is a phony issue and if it was not this one, it would be another manufactured issue.
The otherwise fair and balanced NYT profile of Amy Coney Barret today failed to ask certain crucial questions, such as which ice cream flavor she liked best and whether she thinks puppies are cuter than kittens. Otherwise there is absolutely nothing missing, and it’s wonderful to know that this kind, warm, wise loving woman will be going to crossfit classes and hugging her children as she votes to outlaw abortion and homosexuality, guaranteeing lives of misery and desperation to millions of Americans.
@JohnMcC: It’s more encouraging because Iowa’s a bigger lift for Dems. Maine is a state Hillary won in 2016, and it’s expected to go to Biden quite easily (though Trump may be favored in ME-02). Iowa, on the other hand, is leaning toward Trump in the polls, albeit narrowly. I’m skeptical that there’s much room for ticket-splitting this year. (In fact I think the limited ticket-splitting that does occur is practically all that makes Collins viable at all at this point.) And who knows what effect Iowa’s sabotage of drop-boxes will have. I think there’s actually a potential it might disproportionately hurt rural voters who lean conservative–which just goes to show how unpredictable the situation really is.
The Right to Life movement is a manufactured movement, started by the Roman Catholics to divert attention from their growing child abuse scandal, with the other Christian denominations jumping in when they saw what a fundraising opportunity it was.
Additionally (and we’ve discussed this before here), evangelicals latched onto it in the ’80s mostly as a substitute for the fading issue of desegregation.
Still, even though we can harp all day about its phoniness and the idea that “pro-life” voters would want to reelect a man who presided over the deaths of 200,000, I don’t think there’s any doubt it is a motivating force among certain blocs of voters–or at least it has been in previous elections.
@wr:
My only consolation is that such a rushed appointment virtually guarantees some fault or perjury on the part of the GOP nominee that will allow for a review and impeachment in the coming months. Should we win the Senate (and that’s looking increasingly likely), we’ll be in a position to hold accountable the person who was foolish enough to stick their neck out for this and the lies they’ll surely tell in confirmation hearings. Hell, Kavaunagh might need to watch his ass too considering what was let skate with him.
Trump’s nominees might not be seated all that long even if they manage to sneak through. Trump’s team is notoriously sloppy so baring a miracle, there will be plenty of dirt for an impeachment in Jan…..
@Kylopod: Everybody likes imaginary babies. They’re always smiling. They never cry. They don’t shit their diapers. They don’t bang pots and pans. They don’t break your glasses. And they’re FREE! You don’t have to pay for them. And if you get tired of them you can just put them up an the imaginary shelf.
Real old people on the other hand, nobody likes them. They have wrinkly skin. They smell funny. They shit themselves. They wet themselves. Sometimes they do both at the same time. Then they complain about it. And if they’re not complaining about their bowels, they’re complaining about the weather. Or their kids. Or their grandkids. Or the great grandkids they don’t even have yet. Hell, they complain about everything. What is worse, we pay them for it! Imagine what we could do with all that sweet SS money. And Medicare??? Jiminy Christmas! What are we keeping them around for? Stories about the “good old days”? Shit, we all know those days weren’t all that good, because them old folk won’t let us forget how bad it was for them back then! Don’t even get me started on what we have to go thru to feed those oxygen depleters.
@Kylopod :
Ah, but you see those 200K may not have died or died of something different that makes their God-King blameless. Even if they accept the numbers are true and that Trump is at fault, they will reason to themselves that the victims brought it upon themselves somehow: went somewhere they shouldn’t, didn’t protect themselves properly, had underlying –sin– medical conditions, etc. In a just world ruled by a just god, they must be at fault somehow for their death. Meanwhile those poor “babies” they imagine dying by the millions are true innocent martyrs and angels; you know, like they kind they hear about in church? Even though no one is born innocent in the Christian belief system, somehow these cherubic figments of the imagination are so pure it makes Christ cry to think of some woman harming their potential to be…. even though Christ could easily intervene and go “Nope, thou shalt be born as the Divine Will intends”. Since that would mean God allowed an innocent to not exist through no fault their own, they have to shift the blame and emphasis how wicked it is for the death of a pure soul to be caused by man.
It’s very easy to understand “pro-life” inconsistencies when you understand they think everyone born on this Earth deserve their fate somehow. COVID-19 is the new Tower of Siloam for them – even if they accept the victims didn’t die for their sinfulness, it’s merely an unavoidable accident 200K+ people will die and no fault of their own. Either God’s Will or Fate’s, it’s no blame for them or their King. But killing what they consider to be the only true innocents in (theoretical) existence? Nope – that’s the Devil’s work and you gotta go. It may not have originally been part of their theology but it fits very well into the fundie mindset of good/evil.
I don’t think there’s any doubt it (abortion) is a motivating force among certain blocs of voters–or at least it has been in previous elections.
As is gun rights for an overlapping bloc. I’ve mentioned Hacker and Pierson, Let Then Eat Tweets. They say that to garner electoral support, despite their plutocratic agendas, conservative parties ally themselves with existing organizations with popular support. Their examples for the GOPs are the Evangelicals and the NRA. This results in Republican pols and media supporting the agendas of these groups. Then they all happily drive each other to greater extremes.
Sabato moved the Collins-Gideon to leans Dem, as Gideon’s lead in the polls has moved outside the margin of error. ME-2 is now rated a toss up in the prez.
Sabato also moved Lindsey Graham to leans R from likely R
Trump’s team is notoriously sloppy so baring a miracle, there will be plenty of dirt for an impeachment in Jan…..
It isn’t Trump’s team that doing this, it’s the Federalist Society, McConnell, and the rest of the GOPs in the Senate. And they’re likely to nominate a woman to avoid the sexual harassment issues they hit with Boof, and before that with Thomas. The Court is now full of Catholics since that’s some sort of code for anti-abortion. If GOPs stay in power I expect it to end up all Catholic women. (With a token Jewish woman if they can find one in the Federalist Society.)
@OzarkHillbilly: @KM: I think there’s more to it than that. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that when the right talks about protecting human life, they are almost always latching onto an esoteric, counter-intuitive extension of that concept. This isn’t just seen in the abortion issue: it also applies to the Terry Schiavo controversy, as well as stem-cell research. I always get the sense that they invoke these issues as a way of kind of laying down a marker. They’re saying in effect, look, I care about life in its least obvious form, unlike those godless liberals. Becoming outraged when a functioning human adult or child dies is easy; what really shows your commitment is when you show concern for those lacking brain function, or lacking any brain at all. They’re trying to imply that, by extension, they value life in general more than liberals do. The problem is that they’ve become so preoccupied by this line-in-the-sand reasoning they don’t realize it’s become the entirety of their worldview, leading them to place less value on the more ordinary, everyday conceptions of protecting life. It’s a way of thinking that almost demands a suppression of normal empathy and compassion, because it bases the beliefs on what can be labeled as life worth protecting, and focuses on those examples most likely to depend on those labels to elicit people’s concern.
The right-wing mythology that something awful was done against Robert Bork is just weird to think about.
Bork was voted down by a majority of the Senate (including a number of Republicans) for his career-long opposition to civil rights laws, and attempt to shut down Watergate.
esoteric, counter-intuitive extension of that concept.
Theoretical life is pure – pure thought = immaculate existence. It’s easy to defend the theoretical good in theological arguments. Of course you favor the divine over the mundane, the holy over the profane, the possible over the actual – all of those are clean and perfect and righteous, with no messy real-world complications to inhibit your black and white thinking. There’s a cleaner line of good/evil that lead to obvious Us/Them with Us firmly aligned with the Good. Life is better then Death so any existence no matter how degraded, humiliating painful or pointless is better then a peaceful termination or mercy kill. The Life of a fetus is more important then the Death of the mother, the Life of a terminally ill person is more important then their wish to end their pain. Much like the “babies” of anti-abortion thought, a brain-dead individual is beyond sinning by being incapable of it so therefore is considered to be worth more in their eyes.
It’s not necessarily a commitment to an ideal or label but rather the extreme emphasis on valuing of the ideal over the actual. That they can get all self-righteous about their dedication to theory over reality and pwn libs is a glorious bonus. The ideal itself can change without a problem as we’ve seen with them adopting abortion as a moral issue – what matters is liberals think in terms of the Real and they think themselves more saintly for thinking in terms of the Divinely Possible. To put in in science terms, it’s an electrician arguing with a theoretical string-theorist about how to rewire your house – which one do you want touching your electrical panel, the one who does this for a living or the person who spends all day running thought experiments on hypotheticals?
@Kylopod: Is this a legitimate tweet? Googling “Trump geography Twitter” brings up this thread by George Conway about all the times Trump has proven he knows little to nothing about the world.
@Kylopod: one of the generalizations that I think applies to the Modern Republican mindset is that they are constantly looking for a fight, and rarely for a solution.
s this a legitimate tweet? Googling “Trump geography Twitter” brings up this thread by George Conway about all the times Trump has proven he knows little to nothing about the world.
Since I was a child, I was good at geography. In addition, I have traveled extensively. I have been to all 50 states and 17 or 18 countries.
For a decade, I posted stories for free at 1 or 2 websites. One thing I noted early on, was most fiction at the website was set in generic locations. In my stories, I’m always setting scenes somewhere*. Which led to me getting a comment that said something like “I came here to read ** fiction and this author is giving me lessons in geography and how to use plastic explosives.”
*- My espionage novel set mostly in the Middle East and Europe also contains a scene set in Fort Scott Kansas. Without using Google or Wikipedia, how many of you even know where in Kansas Fort Scott is?
@Bill: Bill, honest to god I couldn’t find Kansas on a map. This says nothing about Kansas and everything about me. I couldn’t find Vermont or New Hampshire or Wyoming or South Dakota either….
No, it’s a parody I made. Last week I created a graphic template for fake Trump tweets (people at other forums have told me they can spot how it doesn’t look quite like a real tweet), and the idea for this particular fake tweet (like the jigsaw puzzle joke I posted a few weeks ago) came from an old blonde joke. Blonde jokes often translate quite nicely into Trump jokes, but without the sexism (which makes them kind of karmic, in my view).
guaranteeing lives of misery and desperation to millions of Americans.
But the Americans who become miserable and desperate will be the correct ones, so balance will have been restored. Remember, omelets and eggs donchaknow?
On weekends I tend to cook and work, or try to work, on my writing, and also to rest (when?), so I tend not to post here much (though I still read most comments).
I mention this, because would have made more sense to post this Saturday:
I don’t see how Biden and the Democrats can avoid packing the Court.
The consensus here tends toward eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, should the Democrats take the Senate, else Biden won’t be able to get anything done.
By the same token, he may need to pack the Court in order that what gets done stays done, at least for a while.
I also don’t see how either party can plan on a longer span than two years for now, and into the foreseeable future.
The managing editor of the prominent conservative website RedState has spent months trashing U.S. officials tasked with combating COVID-19, dubbing White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci a “mask nazi,” and intimating that government officials responsible for the pandemic response should be executed.
But that writer, who goes by the pseudonym “streiff,” isn’t just another political blogger. The Daily Beast has discovered that he actually works in the public affairs shop of the very agency that Fauci leads.
William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.
@Kylopod:
What gives your fake tweet away as invented is that the spelling, syntax, grammar, and punctuation are far too good to be Trump’s. To wit: He’d have said that “nobody knows more geography than me.” He’d have neglected the comma after “for example.” Probably he’d have misspelled “capitals.”
And…you forbore to strew random uppercase initial letters throughout the tweet, as in “nobody knows more Geography than me.”
@KM: Many of us raised Baptist grow up believing in a theological construct identified as “the age of accountability.” It provides a more satisfying answer for preachers to give to the mom who asks “will I see my baby (who died of SIDS or whatever) in heaven” than “I don’t know, but God is just and loves both you and your baby so when you get to heaven you’ll understand whatever has happened and it’ll be okay.” (And I have to admit that I appreciate the paucity of the second answer–which is part of the reason I didn’t become a preacher even though one friend of our family recommended me to Prairie Bible Institute. But I digress…) The “age” theology, for those not in the know of fundie lore, speculates (“postulates” seems to generous to me, but again…) that until some undisclosed and highly flexible age, children are granted some sort of preset salvation from the dangers and pain of eternal fire so that children who die before whatever age that age is (usually dependent of the circumstances and the grief of the parents) are granted eternal life in heaven based on the mercy and suffering of Christ–our redeemer and model for how we are to live our lives, love our neighbors, befriend and care for our strangers, widows, and orphans, and offer forgiveness for the sins of others. (Mileage on this whole last part may vary according to road conditions, operator skill, and all the other usual considerations.)
More mainline denominations navigate the same problem with baptism, first communion, and confirmation classes which are thought–by at least some theologians and pastors that I have met–serve to either validate or void the original baptism-by-proxy deal depending on the decision of the confirmand. (The child being baptized on the basis of the statement of faith of the parents, guardians, Godparents, etc.–which also serves to explain why us fundies see infant baptism as “unbiblical” and fraudulent.)
The reason I bring this up is to note that fundie/evangelicals have really painted themselves into a corner on this whole abortion thing. Sadly, given that our theology is the one, true, and only legitimate interpretation available (doctrine of the excluded middle and all that…), by opposing abortion, we must acknowledge that we believe that it is better to bring all children into a temporal life that will end up with condemnation to hell for the vast majority of them (“many are called, but few are chosen” after all) to an eternity of suffering in hell than to permit them to go straight to the eternal joy of rest and peace with Our Father. A friend of mine from high school used to make this argument while he was a pastor (he left both his faith and his calling, sadly–at least to me, your mileage is free to vary) just to watch heads explode.
Is it any wonder that we don’t like to think through what our “faith” actually means and how it works. I’d rather simply ask my pastor to do my thinking for me, too.
@sam:
Your link doesn’t work for me. The article at the DB is, however, fascinating. It will be interesting if Streiff/Crews loses both his jobs as a result of this.
ETA: Redstate appears to have wiped Streiff from its slate, or at least taken down his articles. His name remains on the masthead.
@KM: I’m not sure that I care which one touches the electric panel–in my apartment it’s a breaker box, though, as much as I am confident that one can repair whatever problem there is and the other is likely to kill himself. (But not me, because I’m staying away from both of them. 😀 )
New: After @lachlan ‘s report, NIH spox says, “NIAID first learned of this matter this morning, and Mr. Crews has informed us of his intention to retire. We have no further comments on this as it is a personnel matter.”
I also don’t see how either party can plan on a longer span than two years for now, and into the foreseeable future.
I think it would humorous if Trump and McConnell got to seat whoever at great political cost, including McConnell’s senate majority and personal seat and then, in February and March, Justices Thomas (72) and Alito (70) suddenly came down with some need to spend more time with their families. (I understand Breyer is 82.)
It would be. But I fear the reality is at least a decade more of each.
What the rush to get a third Trump nomination confirmed does show, however, is the GOP expects trump to lose the election. If they were confident in a win, they’d play the statesmanship card and urge the King of the Covidiots to wait until after the election to submit a nomination, and for the next Congress for confirmation.
Just thought I’d mention that the quality of the articles and commentary on this site have been even better than their usual high standard the last few days. I appreciate all the authors–yes, even (especially) James who is probably the most reasonable “conservative” (small-c deliberate) writer I’m aware of and who gamely responds politely to a whole commentariat that disagrees with him. And the commentators–with a few notably trollish exceptions I am not aware of any other site with such a high proportion of thoughtful, powerful, and (generally) respectful responses. As the emotional impact and stakes–somehow–keep getting higher the debate here is simply extraordinary. So thanks to all of you for the breath of sanity and reasonable debate in an otherwise insane political landscape.
This has probably already been posted, but if not, it’s a slate article about how the problem isn’t that McConnell is a hypocrite, the problem is that he insults and degrades us when he looks America in the eye and tells obvious lies.
French actor Michael Lonsdale has passed away at 89.
Lonsdale worked frequently for legendary film director Francois Truffaut. One of their collaborations was The Bride Wore Black. A film I liked very much but I was always puzzled by how Lonsdale’s character was supposed to die from his being locked in a closet.
Michael Lonsdale was a character actor. A film that featured him in an important role, was The Day of the Jackal where he plays the French police inspector who is assigned the job of stopping an assassination of Charles DeGaulle. DOJ was an excellent film and partly due to his acting.
His most famous casting was that of Hugo Drax, the villain in the James Bond movie Moonraker. Unfortunately Moonraker is one of the worst James Bond movies. Lonsdale had a good line (James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.) or two in that fiasco.
I also remember Lonsdale as the abbot in The Name of the Rose where he worked alongside F Murray Abraham, Christian Slater, and Sean Connery.
RIP Michael Lonsdale
*- Before Lonsdale was cast, Stewart Granger quit the production, James Mason turned down the role and supposedly Louis Jordan and Peter Cushing were considered for it.
@Bill: For me, my associations with Lonsdale are much more about his work with Resnais, Truffaut, Robbe-Grillet and the other Nouvelle Vague masters than with Bond…
Speaking of Bond villains, they did manage to land Louis Jourdan for what is an even worse movie than Moonraker, Octopussy.
@Scott:
That could well be. On the other hand, at least some of Streiff’s pieces can be found through links on other sites, which clearly establish that he was posting at Red State during working hours on weekdays.
Funny thing is, Streiff is one of those people who was contemptuous of Trump before Trump became the candidate in 2016, and thereafter became quite obsequious toward him.
All the conservative websites, including Hot Air (and, of course, Red State) are assiduously ignoring this development. I wonder why.
In addition to the (comparatively) large ad buy the Trump team has made in NH (~$9.5 million), they keep sending surrogates here, and Trump recently held a rally in Manchester.
What on earth is going on here? Pence will be here tomorrow.
There are only two polls (both UNH, and very old polls) that have ever shown Trump leading here, and even *those* were within the MOE. Most polls have shown Biden leading, some by as much as 13 points, but recently by as little as 3 points.
Is this a battleground state? I’m mystified and am getting a bit weirded out by it.
@Joe: HL92 has said a number of times that he believes Thomas will stay in his seat until he dies, and I suspect that’s probably accurate. I don’t see him relinquishing his seat, and certainly not for any noble gesture.
For me, my associations with Lonsdale are much more about his work with Resnais, Truffaut, Robbe-Grillet and the other Nouvelle Vague masters than with Bond…
Speaking of Bond villains, they did manage to land Louis Jourdan for what is an even worse movie than Moonraker, Octopussy.
Of course Lonsdale’s french work is more notable. Unfortunately I never saw any of it (Or just don’t remember. I saw 3 or 4 other Truffaut movies) with the exception of The Bride Wore Black.
I think Octopussy was a middling JB film. Moonraker and Die Another Day are the worst. SPECTRE and Diamonds are Forever only slightly better. The Man with the Golden Gun would rank with the worst except for Christopher Lee and the film’s great locations.
What the rush to get a third Trump nomination confirmed does show, however, is the GOP expects trump to lose the election.
Well, no, not necessarily–it means they think they might lose. It was the same with Kavanaugh in 2018. They actually ended up expanding their Senate majority, so if they’d waited, they’d have had an easier time pushing him through. They just didn’t know in advance what the outcome of the election would be, so they weren’t going to pass up an opportunity they knew might slip out of their hands. The same is true right now: they may well see Trump as an underdog (as the conventional wisdom does), but the main thing is simply that they don’t know. It isn’t necessarily evidence that they’re outright throwing in the towel with regard to Trump’s reelection. Indeed, just as was the case with Kavanaugh, they may even see it as an opportunity to boost their electoral chances by revving up the base.
The most heartening thing about the story you linked too is that the gators were not killed, yay. Nice that they are caught by trappers and sent to a farm. I imagine there are quite a few crowded Alligator farms in FL.
on personal COVID-19 news (still negative), the outbreak of sanity I reported last week lasted just two days. By Friday mom was pressuring me to attend the midday meal my sister in law was hosting.
She went and I didn’t. The bottom line, though, is that she told me I’m way more exposed at the office and when out shopping. No to the second, yes to the first. But if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, and working from home, though eminently feasible, is not an option because idiot bosses. In any cae, if I’m exposed already, I should not add yet more exposure to possible contagion.
Next, the coworker who tested positive on Sept. 2nd, has tested negative from a sample taken Friday. He’s coming back tomorrow. I think he should wait another week and do another test, just to make sure. In any case, I talked to his supervisor and threatened to cut off their daily meal allowance from petty cash if I see him wearing the face mask in any but the proper way even once (I lack the authority, but I can be very stubborn).
It’s not easy staying uninfected in a pandemic with so much effort to propagate the virus in the name of “normalcy.”
ON other things, I had one of my weird food ideas over the weekend. I’d been looking at recipes for Shepherd’s pie (there are many variations), and I thought:
ground beef
peas
onions
tomato pure
paprika
Worcestershire
mixed dried herbs (aka fine herbs)
All cooked and topped with mashed potatoes (from a mix; making them from scratch is too much work), and then placed in the oven for 30 minutes.
It came out a lot better than I expected, even though I forgot to get more milk, so I had to make a smaller amount of mashed potatoes than I wanted.
I think Octopussy was a middling JB film. Moonraker and Die Another Day are the worst.
Moonraker is by far my favorite Bond movie. It’s not the best from any rational standpoint, but it has a chase scene featuring a gondola (boat) and a fight in a gondola (enclosed ski lift). Alas, the gondola trifecta would be completed in A View To A Kill, where there is a fight in the gondola of a blimp, which is my second favorite.
I will admit that gondola ranking is not the most traditional way to rank James Bond movies, but it is fitting for the wonderful absurdity that was the late Roger Moore era.
AVTAK also had a cheesey Duran Duran theme song which was repurposed and orchestrated and appears in about a dozen points in the movie with different moods — melancholy minor key, triumphant horns, a love theme…
But, it fails to capture the absurdity of Moonraker. And not enough gondolas.
(As an aside, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye uses its theme even more egregiously than AVTAK, including as a doorbell. Completely ruins that movie for me)
@Kylopod: It’s a way of thinking that almost demands a suppression of normal empathy and compassion,
You are waaaayyyyy overthinking this. It’s a way of thinking that embraces cognitive dissonance. They are “pro-life” until they aren’t. How many of them hate abortion until they need one? I posted an article a while back about anti abortion folks in the waiting rooms of abortion clinics to get, you guessed it, an abortion. How many of these people who get all teary eyed at the idea of the “genocide of black babies” have ever uttered the words “Black Lives Matter” after George Floyd’s death? Philando Castille’s? John Crawford’s? Tamir Rice’s? Trayvon Martin’s? Walter Scott’s? How many watched those snuff films and said, “He should’ve done what he was told!”? They loooooovvve them some capital punishment. They love their tools of death. They love their “stand your ground” laws and the idea that they can kill with legal impunity.
One can dress it up in all the flowery language one wants, but in the end it all comes down to one simple fact: They are full of shit.
@Kathy: Mmmm…..shepherd’s pie. Comfort food. I like to add corn AND peas, and a big ol’ honkin thick layer of mashed taters, with that wonderful “melted to almost crisp” cheddar cheese on top.
The headline of the day-
Woman falls out of car window and onto highway while filming Snapchat video
Trump geography
The Florida headline of the day-
A Florida woman was attacked by a 10-foot alligator while trimming trees
how the oil industry made us doubt climate change
@Bill: This recently happened in STL: Teen dies after hitting head while hanging out of sunroof in downtown parking garage
As much as I wanted to scream, “How can you be so STUPID?????” it was just so gawddamned idiotically unnecessarily sad.
@Kylopod: That looks like a real screengrab.
Wow in a poll that took place two days ago Susan Collins is down five points to Gideon.
@Teve:
How’s that a wow? She’s been consistently trailing Gideon all year.
@Teve: Which is why she will do everything she can to put off the vote until Nov 4 and then cast a yes for the religious fanatic Trump is about to nominate. She has to ensure she still has a seat on the wing nut welfare train.
How about them Cowboys!
@Tyrell: Oklahoma State? Pulled away from Tulsa in the 2d half?
@Kylopod: Saw the latest Des Moines Register poll that showed Greenfield ahead of Ernst. Wow! Bolt of hopefulness! Then read that Ernst also trailed in the June DMR poll. Double wow!
@Kylopod: there was a poll that had her tied 11 days ago. I don’t follow smaller races closely so that was the only previous poll I’d seen.
We are going to hear a lot about the sincere beliefs held by the anti-abortionists and how their deeply felt religious leanings are being violated. Let’s all remember that when RvW was passed it was not considered a particularly religious issue. The national newspaper for the Southern Baptist Convention carried an editorial (by the editor himself, if I am not mistaken) deciding that, on balance, RvW was a net good.
The Right to Life movement is a manufactured movement, started by the Roman Catholics to divert attention from their growing child abuse scandal, with the other Christian denominations jumping in when they saw what a fundraising opportunity it was.
This is why I am always extremely skeptical of the special pleading that this issue is like no other and therefore liberals need to back down. Just as the case of Hillary’s emails, or Al Gore’s exaggerations, or John Kerry’s betrayal of his military brethren, this is a phony issue and if it was not this one, it would be another manufactured issue.
The otherwise fair and balanced NYT profile of Amy Coney Barret today failed to ask certain crucial questions, such as which ice cream flavor she liked best and whether she thinks puppies are cuter than kittens. Otherwise there is absolutely nothing missing, and it’s wonderful to know that this kind, warm, wise loving woman will be going to crossfit classes and hugging her children as she votes to outlaw abortion and homosexuality, guaranteeing lives of misery and desperation to millions of Americans.
@JohnMcC: It’s more encouraging because Iowa’s a bigger lift for Dems. Maine is a state Hillary won in 2016, and it’s expected to go to Biden quite easily (though Trump may be favored in ME-02). Iowa, on the other hand, is leaning toward Trump in the polls, albeit narrowly. I’m skeptical that there’s much room for ticket-splitting this year. (In fact I think the limited ticket-splitting that does occur is practically all that makes Collins viable at all at this point.) And who knows what effect Iowa’s sabotage of drop-boxes will have. I think there’s actually a potential it might disproportionately hurt rural voters who lean conservative–which just goes to show how unpredictable the situation really is.
@MarkedMan:
Additionally (and we’ve discussed this before here), evangelicals latched onto it in the ’80s mostly as a substitute for the fading issue of desegregation.
Still, even though we can harp all day about its phoniness and the idea that “pro-life” voters would want to reelect a man who presided over the deaths of 200,000, I don’t think there’s any doubt it is a motivating force among certain blocs of voters–or at least it has been in previous elections.
@Kylopod:
I agree.
@wr:
My only consolation is that such a rushed appointment virtually guarantees some fault or perjury on the part of the GOP nominee that will allow for a review and impeachment in the coming months. Should we win the Senate (and that’s looking increasingly likely), we’ll be in a position to hold accountable the person who was foolish enough to stick their neck out for this and the lies they’ll surely tell in confirmation hearings. Hell, Kavaunagh might need to watch his ass too considering what was let skate with him.
Trump’s nominees might not be seated all that long even if they manage to sneak through. Trump’s team is notoriously sloppy so baring a miracle, there will be plenty of dirt for an impeachment in Jan…..
@KM: 67. That’s the number that matters, that’s the only number that matters.
I wonder who would disagree with this interpretation of how the Federal Judiciary, specifically SCOTUS, has been shaped since the Reagan Presidency…
@Kylopod: Everybody likes imaginary babies. They’re always smiling. They never cry. They don’t shit their diapers. They don’t bang pots and pans. They don’t break your glasses. And they’re FREE! You don’t have to pay for them. And if you get tired of them you can just put them up an the imaginary shelf.
Real old people on the other hand, nobody likes them. They have wrinkly skin. They smell funny. They shit themselves. They wet themselves. Sometimes they do both at the same time. Then they complain about it. And if they’re not complaining about their bowels, they’re complaining about the weather. Or their kids. Or their grandkids. Or the great grandkids they don’t even have yet. Hell, they complain about everything. What is worse, we pay them for it! Imagine what we could do with all that sweet SS money. And Medicare??? Jiminy Christmas! What are we keeping them around for? Stories about the “good old days”? Shit, we all know those days weren’t all that good, because them old folk won’t let us forget how bad it was for them back then! Don’t even get me started on what we have to go thru to feed those oxygen depleters.
Nobody likes old people.
@Kylopod :
Ah, but you see those 200K may not have died or died of something different that makes their God-King blameless. Even if they accept the numbers are true and that Trump is at fault, they will reason to themselves that the victims brought it upon themselves somehow: went somewhere they shouldn’t, didn’t protect themselves properly, had underlying –sin– medical conditions, etc. In a just world ruled by a just god, they must be at fault somehow for their death. Meanwhile those poor “babies” they imagine dying by the millions are true innocent martyrs and angels; you know, like they kind they hear about in church? Even though no one is born innocent in the Christian belief system, somehow these cherubic figments of the imagination are so pure it makes Christ cry to think of some woman harming their potential to be…. even though Christ could easily intervene and go “Nope, thou shalt be born as the Divine Will intends”. Since that would mean God allowed an innocent to not exist through no fault their own, they have to shift the blame and emphasis how wicked it is for the death of a pure soul to be caused by man.
It’s very easy to understand “pro-life” inconsistencies when you understand they think everyone born on this Earth deserve their fate somehow. COVID-19 is the new Tower of Siloam for them – even if they accept the victims didn’t die for their sinfulness, it’s merely an unavoidable accident 200K+ people will die and no fault of their own. Either God’s Will or Fate’s, it’s no blame for them or their King. But killing what they consider to be the only true innocents in (theoretical) existence? Nope – that’s the Devil’s work and you gotta go. It may not have originally been part of their theology but it fits very well into the fundie mindset of good/evil.
@Kylopod:
As is gun rights for an overlapping bloc. I’ve mentioned Hacker and Pierson, Let Then Eat Tweets. They say that to garner electoral support, despite their plutocratic agendas, conservative parties ally themselves with existing organizations with popular support. Their examples for the GOPs are the Evangelicals and the NRA. This results in Republican pols and media supporting the agendas of these groups. Then they all happily drive each other to greater extremes.
@Teve:
Sabato moved the Collins-Gideon to leans Dem, as Gideon’s lead in the polls has moved outside the margin of error. ME-2 is now rated a toss up in the prez.
Sabato also moved Lindsey Graham to leans R from likely R
@KM:
It isn’t Trump’s team that doing this, it’s the Federalist Society, McConnell, and the rest of the GOPs in the Senate. And they’re likely to nominate a woman to avoid the sexual harassment issues they hit with Boof, and before that with Thomas. The Court is now full of Catholics since that’s some sort of code for anti-abortion. If GOPs stay in power I expect it to end up all Catholic women. (With a token Jewish woman if they can find one in the Federalist Society.)
@OzarkHillbilly: @KM: I think there’s more to it than that. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that when the right talks about protecting human life, they are almost always latching onto an esoteric, counter-intuitive extension of that concept. This isn’t just seen in the abortion issue: it also applies to the Terry Schiavo controversy, as well as stem-cell research. I always get the sense that they invoke these issues as a way of kind of laying down a marker. They’re saying in effect, look, I care about life in its least obvious form, unlike those godless liberals. Becoming outraged when a functioning human adult or child dies is easy; what really shows your commitment is when you show concern for those lacking brain function, or lacking any brain at all. They’re trying to imply that, by extension, they value life in general more than liberals do. The problem is that they’ve become so preoccupied by this line-in-the-sand reasoning they don’t realize it’s become the entirety of their worldview, leading them to place less value on the more ordinary, everyday conceptions of protecting life. It’s a way of thinking that almost demands a suppression of normal empathy and compassion, because it bases the beliefs on what can be labeled as life worth protecting, and focuses on those examples most likely to depend on those labels to elicit people’s concern.
@Kylopod :
Theoretical life is pure – pure thought = immaculate existence. It’s easy to defend the theoretical good in theological arguments. Of course you favor the divine over the mundane, the holy over the profane, the possible over the actual – all of those are clean and perfect and righteous, with no messy real-world complications to inhibit your black and white thinking. There’s a cleaner line of good/evil that lead to obvious Us/Them with Us firmly aligned with the Good. Life is better then Death so any existence no matter how degraded, humiliating painful or pointless is better then a peaceful termination or mercy kill. The Life of a fetus is more important then the Death of the mother, the Life of a terminally ill person is more important then their wish to end their pain. Much like the “babies” of anti-abortion thought, a brain-dead individual is beyond sinning by being incapable of it so therefore is considered to be worth more in their eyes.
It’s not necessarily a commitment to an ideal or label but rather the extreme emphasis on valuing of the ideal over the actual. That they can get all self-righteous about their dedication to theory over reality and pwn libs is a glorious bonus. The ideal itself can change without a problem as we’ve seen with them adopting abortion as a moral issue – what matters is liberals think in terms of the Real and they think themselves more saintly for thinking in terms of the Divinely Possible. To put in in science terms, it’s an electrician arguing with a theoretical string-theorist about how to rewire your house – which one do you want touching your electrical panel, the one who does this for a living or the person who spends all day running thought experiments on hypotheticals?
Barr, Trump going to defund the police in some cities
And their supporters will immediately whiplash around to supporting it.
@Bill:
Proof positive that you should never disturb an alligator while it’s trimming trees.
@Kylopod: Is this a legitimate tweet? Googling “Trump geography Twitter” brings up this thread by George Conway about all the times Trump has proven he knows little to nothing about the world.
@Kylopod: one of the generalizations that I think applies to the Modern Republican mindset is that they are constantly looking for a fight, and rarely for a solution.
How the right-wing legal machine actually works.
@MarkedMan: Cleek’s Law – Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
@MarkedMan: Cleek’s Law – Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
@Monala: I
Since I was a child, I was good at geography. In addition, I have traveled extensively. I have been to all 50 states and 17 or 18 countries.
For a decade, I posted stories for free at 1 or 2 websites. One thing I noted early on, was most fiction at the website was set in generic locations. In my stories, I’m always setting scenes somewhere*. Which led to me getting a comment that said something like “I came here to read ** fiction and this author is giving me lessons in geography and how to use plastic explosives.”
*- My espionage novel set mostly in the Middle East and Europe also contains a scene set in Fort Scott Kansas. Without using Google or Wikipedia, how many of you even know where in Kansas Fort Scott is?
@Bill: Bill, honest to god I couldn’t find Kansas on a map. This says nothing about Kansas and everything about me. I couldn’t find Vermont or New Hampshire or Wyoming or South Dakota either….
@Monala:
No, it’s a parody I made. Last week I created a graphic template for fake Trump tweets (people at other forums have told me they can spot how it doesn’t look quite like a real tweet), and the idea for this particular fake tweet (like the jigsaw puzzle joke I posted a few weeks ago) came from an old blonde joke. Blonde jokes often translate quite nicely into Trump jokes, but without the sexism (which makes them kind of karmic, in my view).
@wr:
But the Americans who become miserable and desperate will be the correct ones, so balance will have been restored. Remember, omelets and eggs donchaknow?
On weekends I tend to cook and work, or try to work, on my writing, and also to rest (when?), so I tend not to post here much (though I still read most comments).
I mention this, because would have made more sense to post this Saturday:
I don’t see how Biden and the Democrats can avoid packing the Court.
The consensus here tends toward eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, should the Democrats take the Senate, else Biden won’t be able to get anything done.
By the same token, he may need to pack the Court in order that what gets done stays done, at least for a while.
I also don’t see how either party can plan on a longer span than two years for now, and into the foreseeable future.
A Notorious COVID Troll Actually Works for Dr. Fauci’s Agency:
@Kylopod:
What gives your fake tweet away as invented is that the spelling, syntax, grammar, and punctuation are far too good to be Trump’s. To wit: He’d have said that “nobody knows more geography than me.” He’d have neglected the comma after “for example.” Probably he’d have misspelled “capitals.”
And…you forbore to strew random uppercase initial letters throughout the tweet, as in “nobody knows more Geography than me.”
@KM: Many of us raised Baptist grow up believing in a theological construct identified as “the age of accountability.” It provides a more satisfying answer for preachers to give to the mom who asks “will I see my baby (who died of SIDS or whatever) in heaven” than “I don’t know, but God is just and loves both you and your baby so when you get to heaven you’ll understand whatever has happened and it’ll be okay.” (And I have to admit that I appreciate the paucity of the second answer–which is part of the reason I didn’t become a preacher even though one friend of our family recommended me to Prairie Bible Institute. But I digress…) The “age” theology, for those not in the know of fundie lore, speculates (“postulates” seems to generous to me, but again…) that until some undisclosed and highly flexible age, children are granted some sort of preset salvation from the dangers and pain of eternal fire so that children who die before whatever age that age is (usually dependent of the circumstances and the grief of the parents) are granted eternal life in heaven based on the mercy and suffering of Christ–our redeemer and model for how we are to live our lives, love our neighbors, befriend and care for our strangers, widows, and orphans, and offer forgiveness for the sins of others. (Mileage on this whole last part may vary according to road conditions, operator skill, and all the other usual considerations.)
More mainline denominations navigate the same problem with baptism, first communion, and confirmation classes which are thought–by at least some theologians and pastors that I have met–serve to either validate or void the original baptism-by-proxy deal depending on the decision of the confirmand. (The child being baptized on the basis of the statement of faith of the parents, guardians, Godparents, etc.–which also serves to explain why us fundies see infant baptism as “unbiblical” and fraudulent.)
The reason I bring this up is to note that fundie/evangelicals have really painted themselves into a corner on this whole abortion thing. Sadly, given that our theology is the one, true, and only legitimate interpretation available (doctrine of the excluded middle and all that…), by opposing abortion, we must acknowledge that we believe that it is better to bring all children into a temporal life that will end up with condemnation to hell for the vast majority of them (“many are called, but few are chosen” after all) to an eternity of suffering in hell than to permit them to go straight to the eternal joy of rest and peace with Our Father. A friend of mine from high school used to make this argument while he was a pastor (he left both his faith and his calling, sadly–at least to me, your mileage is free to vary) just to watch heads explode.
Is it any wonder that we don’t like to think through what our “faith” actually means and how it works. I’d rather simply ask my pastor to do my thinking for me, too.
@gVOR08:
Let me know how that works out for them, m’kay?
@sam:
Your link doesn’t work for me. The article at the DB is, however, fascinating. It will be interesting if Streiff/Crews loses both his jobs as a result of this.
ETA: Redstate appears to have wiped Streiff from its slate, or at least taken down his articles. His name remains on the masthead.
@KM: I’m not sure that I care which one touches the electric panel–in my apartment it’s a breaker box, though, as much as I am confident that one can repair whatever problem there is and the other is likely to kill himself. (But not me, because I’m staying away from both of them. 😀 )
@Kingdaddy:
Truthiness truthily truthed.
@CSK:
Capitols. Everyone knows the word is “Capitols.” 😉
@CSK:
Sorry about that. Looking at the source, I see “http:/https:” as the link header. My bad. Mr. Bluster’s link works.
Re streiff from Twitter:
Oliver Darcy
@oliverdarcy
New: After @lachlan ‘s report, NIH spox says, “NIAID first learned of this matter this morning, and Mr. Crews has informed us of his intention to retire. We have no further comments on this as it is a personnel matter.”
@sam:
I wonder if he’ll get booted from Redstate as well.
@Kathy:
I think it would humorous if Trump and McConnell got to seat whoever at great political cost, including McConnell’s senate majority and personal seat and then, in February and March, Justices Thomas (72) and Alito (70) suddenly came down with some need to spend more time with their families. (I understand Breyer is 82.)
@Joe:
It would be. But I fear the reality is at least a decade more of each.
What the rush to get a third Trump nomination confirmed does show, however, is the GOP expects trump to lose the election. If they were confident in a win, they’d play the statesmanship card and urge the King of the Covidiots to wait until after the election to submit a nomination, and for the next Congress for confirmation.
Just thought I’d mention that the quality of the articles and commentary on this site have been even better than their usual high standard the last few days. I appreciate all the authors–yes, even (especially) James who is probably the most reasonable “conservative” (small-c deliberate) writer I’m aware of and who gamely responds politely to a whole commentariat that disagrees with him. And the commentators–with a few notably trollish exceptions I am not aware of any other site with such a high proportion of thoughtful, powerful, and (generally) respectful responses. As the emotional impact and stakes–somehow–keep getting higher the debate here is simply extraordinary. So thanks to all of you for the breath of sanity and reasonable debate in an otherwise insane political landscape.
@CSK:
Probably to eliminate date/time evidence that he was doing this while working on taxpayer’s time and money which is even more indefensible.
@sam:
Something, something, deep state, huh?
it’s not hypocrisy
This has probably already been posted, but if not, it’s a slate article about how the problem isn’t that McConnell is a hypocrite, the problem is that he insults and degrades us when he looks America in the eye and tells obvious lies.
French actor Michael Lonsdale has passed away at 89.
Lonsdale worked frequently for legendary film director Francois Truffaut. One of their collaborations was The Bride Wore Black. A film I liked very much but I was always puzzled by how Lonsdale’s character was supposed to die from his being locked in a closet.
Michael Lonsdale was a character actor. A film that featured him in an important role, was The Day of the Jackal where he plays the French police inspector who is assigned the job of stopping an assassination of Charles DeGaulle. DOJ was an excellent film and partly due to his acting.
His most famous casting was that of Hugo Drax, the villain in the James Bond movie Moonraker. Unfortunately Moonraker is one of the worst James Bond movies. Lonsdale had a good line (James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season.) or two in that fiasco.
I also remember Lonsdale as the abbot in The Name of the Rose where he worked alongside F Murray Abraham, Christian Slater, and Sean Connery.
RIP Michael Lonsdale
*- Before Lonsdale was cast, Stewart Granger quit the production, James Mason turned down the role and supposedly Louis Jordan and Peter Cushing were considered for it.
@Bill: For me, my associations with Lonsdale are much more about his work with Resnais, Truffaut, Robbe-Grillet and the other Nouvelle Vague masters than with Bond…
Speaking of Bond villains, they did manage to land Louis Jourdan for what is an even worse movie than Moonraker, Octopussy.
@Scott:
That could well be. On the other hand, at least some of Streiff’s pieces can be found through links on other sites, which clearly establish that he was posting at Red State during working hours on weekdays.
Funny thing is, Streiff is one of those people who was contemptuous of Trump before Trump became the candidate in 2016, and thereafter became quite obsequious toward him.
All the conservative websites, including Hot Air (and, of course, Red State) are assiduously ignoring this development. I wonder why.
In addition to the (comparatively) large ad buy the Trump team has made in NH (~$9.5 million), they keep sending surrogates here, and Trump recently held a rally in Manchester.
What on earth is going on here? Pence will be here tomorrow.
There are only two polls (both UNH, and very old polls) that have ever shown Trump leading here, and even *those* were within the MOE. Most polls have shown Biden leading, some by as much as 13 points, but recently by as little as 3 points.
Is this a battleground state? I’m mystified and am getting a bit weirded out by it.
@Joe: HL92 has said a number of times that he believes Thomas will stay in his seat until he dies, and I suspect that’s probably accurate. I don’t see him relinquishing his seat, and certainly not for any noble gesture.
In a country that can produce this, there’s still hope. September 21, yeah.
@wr:
Of course Lonsdale’s french work is more notable. Unfortunately I never saw any of it (Or just don’t remember. I saw 3 or 4 other Truffaut movies) with the exception of The Bride Wore Black.
I think Octopussy was a middling JB film. Moonraker and Die Another Day are the worst. SPECTRE and Diamonds are Forever only slightly better. The Man with the Golden Gun would rank with the worst except for Christopher Lee and the film’s great locations.
@Kathy:
Well, no, not necessarily–it means they think they might lose. It was the same with Kavanaugh in 2018. They actually ended up expanding their Senate majority, so if they’d waited, they’d have had an easier time pushing him through. They just didn’t know in advance what the outcome of the election would be, so they weren’t going to pass up an opportunity they knew might slip out of their hands. The same is true right now: they may well see Trump as an underdog (as the conventional wisdom does), but the main thing is simply that they don’t know. It isn’t necessarily evidence that they’re outright throwing in the towel with regard to Trump’s reelection. Indeed, just as was the case with Kavanaugh, they may even see it as an opportunity to boost their electoral chances by revving up the base.
@Bill:
The most heartening thing about the story you linked too is that the gators were not killed, yay. Nice that they are caught by trappers and sent to a farm. I imagine there are quite a few crowded Alligator farms in FL.
@CSK:
Well, Red State didn’t do a very good job of concealing Streiff’s stuff. It’s all here:
http://www.redstate.com/Streiff/
@gVOR08:
Jewish: Kagan, Breyer
Protestant: Gorsuch
Catholic: Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Sotomayor …. AC Barrett?
The hostile minority radical Right takeover continues …
@al Ameda:
Barrett is an ultra-devout Roman Catholic.
on personal COVID-19 news (still negative), the outbreak of sanity I reported last week lasted just two days. By Friday mom was pressuring me to attend the midday meal my sister in law was hosting.
She went and I didn’t. The bottom line, though, is that she told me I’m way more exposed at the office and when out shopping. No to the second, yes to the first. But if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, and working from home, though eminently feasible, is not an option because idiot bosses. In any cae, if I’m exposed already, I should not add yet more exposure to possible contagion.
Next, the coworker who tested positive on Sept. 2nd, has tested negative from a sample taken Friday. He’s coming back tomorrow. I think he should wait another week and do another test, just to make sure. In any case, I talked to his supervisor and threatened to cut off their daily meal allowance from petty cash if I see him wearing the face mask in any but the proper way even once (I lack the authority, but I can be very stubborn).
It’s not easy staying uninfected in a pandemic with so much effort to propagate the virus in the name of “normalcy.”
ON other things, I had one of my weird food ideas over the weekend. I’d been looking at recipes for Shepherd’s pie (there are many variations), and I thought:
ground beef
peas
onions
tomato pure
paprika
Worcestershire
mixed dried herbs (aka fine herbs)
All cooked and topped with mashed potatoes (from a mix; making them from scratch is too much work), and then placed in the oven for 30 minutes.
It came out a lot better than I expected, even though I forgot to get more milk, so I had to make a smaller amount of mashed potatoes than I wanted.
Next time, I want to add some celery
Autumnal Equinox arrives at 8am central time in the Northern Hemisphere of Planet Earth tomorrow September 22.
Leaves are falling all around
It’s time I was on my way
Thanks to you I’m much obliged
For such a pleasant stay
But now it’s time for me to go
The autumn moon lights my way
For now I smell the rain
And with it pain
And it’s headed my way
@Bill:
Moonraker is by far my favorite Bond movie. It’s not the best from any rational standpoint, but it has a chase scene featuring a gondola (boat) and a fight in a gondola (enclosed ski lift). Alas, the gondola trifecta would be completed in A View To A Kill, where there is a fight in the gondola of a blimp, which is my second favorite.
I will admit that gondola ranking is not the most traditional way to rank James Bond movies, but it is fitting for the wonderful absurdity that was the late Roger Moore era.
AVTAK also had a cheesey Duran Duran theme song which was repurposed and orchestrated and appears in about a dozen points in the movie with different moods — melancholy minor key, triumphant horns, a love theme…
And this scene: https://youtu.be/043WEs_6TAo
But, it fails to capture the absurdity of Moonraker. And not enough gondolas.
(As an aside, Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye uses its theme even more egregiously than AVTAK, including as a doorbell. Completely ruins that movie for me)
You are waaaayyyyy overthinking this. It’s a way of thinking that embraces cognitive dissonance. They are “pro-life” until they aren’t. How many of them hate abortion until they need one? I posted an article a while back about anti abortion folks in the waiting rooms of abortion clinics to get, you guessed it, an abortion. How many of these people who get all teary eyed at the idea of the “genocide of black babies” have ever uttered the words “Black Lives Matter” after George Floyd’s death? Philando Castille’s? John Crawford’s? Tamir Rice’s? Trayvon Martin’s? Walter Scott’s? How many watched those snuff films and said, “He should’ve done what he was told!”? They loooooovvve them some capital punishment. They love their tools of death. They love their “stand your ground” laws and the idea that they can kill with legal impunity.
One can dress it up in all the flowery language one wants, but in the end it all comes down to one simple fact: They are full of shit.
@Just Another Ex-Republican: Well, that kind of shit just has to end right here and now. 😉
@Jen: Ask yourself this: Why are they spending so much money in a state that has only 4 electoral votes?
Because they’re stupid.
@Kathy: Mmmm…..shepherd’s pie. Comfort food. I like to add corn AND peas, and a big ol’ honkin thick layer of mashed taters, with that wonderful “melted to almost crisp” cheddar cheese on top.
Guess we know what I’m making tonight. 🙂