Oh my sweet and fluffy Lord.

The Crepes of Wrath

I'll be all around on teevee. I'll be everywhere. PBS. NPR.  NY Times.  TED Talks.  Meet the Press.  Aspen Institute.  Davos.  Everywhere.

Wherever you can look -- wherever there's a fight over how to pronounce charcuterie or soppressata -- I'll be there.

Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there, penning maudlin columns about the lack of civility on Both Sides.

I'll be in the way op-ed columnists scold Liberals about their tone when they're mad.

I'll be there in the way pundits laugh when an orange racist rage monster and his army of fascist zombies stomp democracy to bits because it does not materially affect them one bit, and when those pundits are yucking it up about how great their investments are doing and how they can finally pay off their vacation home in Montauk, I'll be there, too...

Fired FBI chief James Comey used his private Gmail account hundreds of times to conduct government business -- and at least seven of those messages were deemed so sensitive by the Justice Department that they declined to release them.

Our house adjoins the open space and the fires burned down our back hill to w/in 15 feet of our house.

The winds are back today whipping up the ash and hotspots. I just got  a call that there is more smoke in our canyon, another flare-up from the wind, so I guess there's good reason we're still under evacuation.

"The White House is looking for ways to remove an enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. in order to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to two senior U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the requests."

For a TLDR of the whole article, the Trump administration wants to hand over a US green card holder to the Turkish government so that the Turkish government doesn't come down to hard on Saudi Arabia of the Khashoggi killings.  This is the same guy that Michael Flynn was allegedly paid $15 million to kidnap for the Turkish government.

"The lack of content in the attacks on her is disturbing to me and seems personal."

Two stores opened in MA today, both out in the central/western part of the state.  The first person to purchase was the Mayor of Northampton who swears it was just for historical purposes.

There are statements like this which I find very odd and a bit clueless...

If you've ever felt Thompson a bit much to read on his own, "Freak Kingdom" makes a handy and stabilizing companion text

I never felt that at all.  But this is a quote from the Salon journo.

The writer says this..

I read in Umberto Eco's "Ur-fascism," writing as an Italian who grew up in the 1930s during fascism, that fascism is messy totalitarianism, which is why it's so dangerous to America. It's the step that you cross over to, where suddenly what was going wrong in democracy becomes state-sanctioned authoritarian violence. And we've crossed that step a lot of times in American history, and we're at that point again. Eco gives his list of 14 features of fascism. And for him to say it's messy, it has no ideology, that it's about the cult of the central figure, it's about speaking for the group instead of the people who are victimized by the group, to read that and to look back at what Thompson was writing about and to see the word "fascism" repeated in his writing. When he says the central bent of the Hells Angels -- and I'm misquoting it -- was fascistic; they were violent men who didn't want to reason with you, they wanted to abuse anyone who had less power. That's a very American trait. We see it right now. It's happening, sadly and ridiculously, over and over again. To look back and hear him articulating it was, for me, terrifying but also invigorating

I've taken a few day trips where I won't bring my phone.  Same thing, mostly refreshing, somewhat inconvenient.  Has anyone here disconnected for more than a day or two? Hard to do if you have family or work obligations/expectations to be available.  

(I include the latter because some 2.5 million British and Commonwealth military personnel were ultimately deployed against the very game but otherwise decrepit Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey, and 10% of them never returned home from a vast theatre of war that British military historians have sometimes diminutively dismissed as "the Sideshow." The Turks themselves, having foolishly disdained the wiser course of neutrality in Oct. 1914 to instead hastily join what proved to be the losing side, suffered 1.3 million dead, wounded and missing in their valiant but forlorn attempt to fend off the mighty British Empire.)

An estimated 20 million people, including nearly 8 million civilian noncombatants, died in what was wistfully hoped to be "The War to End All Wars," rather than the mother of them all. Another 20 million were wounded or missing.

"To understand why the U.S. fought in 1917, begin by considering the outcome if the United States had not fought. Minus U.S. reinforcements on land and sea, it's difficult to imagine how the Allies could have defeated a Germany that had knocked revolutionary Russia out of the war.

"By the summer of 1917, the Western Allies had exhausted their credit in U.S. financial markets. Without direct U.S. government-to-government aid, they could not have afforded any more offensives in the West. The exhausted Allies would have had to negotiate some kind of settlement with Central Power forces occupying almost all of what is now Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic republics in the east; most of Romania and Yugoslavia in Southern Europe, as well as a bit of Italy; and almost all of Belgium and most of northeast France.

"Even if the Germans had traded concessions in the West to preserve their gains in the East, the kaiser's Germany would have emerged from such an outcome as the dominant power on the continent of Europe. The United States would have found itself after such a negotiated peace confronting the same outcome as it faced in 1946: a Europe divided between East and West, with the battered West looking to the United States for protection. As in 1946, the East would have been dominated by an authoritarian regime that looked upon the liberal and democratic Anglo-American West not just as a geopolitical antagonist, but as an ideological threat."

In the United States, which entered the conflict belatedly, the First World War became much more unpopular after the fact than while it was being waged. And our resultant rejection of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and our subsequent disengagement and isolationism from our allies, had profoundly serious consequences 20 years later for not only our own country, but for the entire world as well.

It was not a terrible movie.  Not great, not even that good, but not terrible.  For perspective at almost the same time another animated film was released that made reasonable money, SPACE CHIMPS.

Space CHIMPS was not a better movie but it was advertised.  Our movie was released without a dollar of advertising because the guy, mentioned in the Slate link, had just spent all the money and hoped with a wide release in might get word of mouth.  It did.  Sort of.  It became sort of famous for being the biggest flop in history.  Really.  In history.  One of the late night shows, Letterman I think even did a segment about it.  

Ha ha.  Very funny.

The Other Terrible Movies That Deserve Disaster Artist-Style Biopics

Delgo isn't so much a terrible movie as it is an exceptionally unfortunate one. This animated-action-adventure-romantic-comedy fantasy film about colonialism and bigotry (for children, mind you) didn't just bomb upon its release in December 2008--it bombed so hard that it set records. For years, Delgo had the distinction of having the worst opening weekend performance at the box office ever, grossing just $511,920 at 2,160 theaters across the country

But my proposed "based on a true story" drama about Delgo wouldn't dwell on the film's failures. Instead, it would start several months after the film's disappointing reception at the box office, picking up the story in the summer of 2009, with the release of another, much more promising movie on the horizon: James Cameron's Avatar. A handful of critics took note of a few visual and thematic similarities between Delgo and Avatar at the time, prompting Fathom Studios to release a statement that they were considering suing.

The thing about AVATAR is very true.  check out the side by side images

Many many similarities.  Which I suppose were totally accidental.  Oddly enough.  I worked on it for three years and I can swear AVATAR was never mentioned.  And I'm assuming Cameron plagiarize either.

The Price of Everything -- a dizzying, disorientating documentary about the art world
Nathaniel Kahn's film is both sobering and hilarious

    If personal collectors increasingly outbid museums and galleries, so what (asks the film)? Public viewing facilities are cemeteries anyway: most of their aesthetic citizenry is buried underground. And aren't personal collectors keeping art's value high, where it should be? Or -- back to Oscar -- do we just mean art's price?

A prominent figure in the film is Larry Poons, who rhymes with Koons but is his opposite. Rural and reclusive, quaint and pottering, he paints gigantic, serial canvases with exquisite neo-impressionist daubs. His work is Monet's waterlilies gone contemporary. But by the end even he has segue'd from Monet to Money. Hung in New York, he clinks champagne glasses with those about to be his tyrant-paymasters. He is a half-forgotten name (by some) now remembered. He is probably ruined -- with riches -- for life.

President Trump, in his first attempt at bipartisanship since last week's election, endorsed a bill Wednesday aimed at reducing some prison sentences and better preparing inmates for life after incarceration.

This morning he screeched

"The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess," he tweeted on Thursday morning. "They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts." He added, without providing evidence, that Mueller's team was "screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want," and called the investigators "thugs," "a disgrace to our Nation," and "highly conflicted."

Tomorrow?

Like Honig, former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman suggested that if Trump has learned anything about Mueller's recent moves, it'd likely be from defense lawyers whose clients have been ensnared in the investigation. Goldman, who worked on mob-related cases in the Southern District of New York, speculated that the president may know in advance that "indictments are coming, probably tomorrow." The special counsel's office has a pattern of releasing indictments on Fridays.

Dubai police take delivery of first training Hoverbikes

Those numbers may not be all that impressive, but this is a motorcycle that flies and is actually for sale right now! Also, in the past year they have increased the top speed from 45 mph, and the cruise time from 20 minutes. Hoversurf is hard at work on more efficient battery and propulsion systems. The Hoverbike S4 is supposed to feature a ducted fan system which not only will deliver more lift for less energy, but is quieter and safer than having carbon fibre propellers spinning just a few feet from the rider (Some images show safety cages around them most do not)

When I was he told me the story.  Earlier today his grandson, my nephew, was apparently laying in bed with his girlfriend and son who is almost three.

That's when his gun, which for some reason no one can figure out he was carrying on his hip, slipped out of the holster.  At which point the almost three year old grabbed and shot his mother in the leg.  She is ok.  After being airlifted to Springfield to keep her from bleeding out.

I feel unable to add any editorial comment here.  Just had to share.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA), who served as staff attorney to the late Congressman Leo Ryan (D-CA), survived the assassination of her boss by cultists when they tried to leave with people who wanted out of Jonestown. She was shot five times, and still carries bullet fragments in her body from that awful day.

Leo Ryan is one of only two members of the U.S. House to have been killed in office, and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1983 on the 5th anniversary of his assassination.

I wonder if there could be a political message here.

I was invited.  Which sort of surprised me.  And I am curious to see if or to what extent the Trump love has cooled.

I have internally vowed to start no arguments.  That will be way easier than it might have been before the election.  I feel much less moved to argue about it with them.  

Who is right will be clear soon enough.

Tho the world may well have exploded by Thanksgiving.

Alex Gibney's Showtime documentary series is all about Donald Trump, even when it's saying that it's about Watergate, Iran-Contra or various Bill Clinton scandals.
There's a timer ticking on Showtime's Enemies: The President, Justice & The FBI.

The four-part documentary series is effectively a three-part overture directed by Jed Rothstein and leading up to a feature-length conclusion from Alex Gibney, a fourth part that, in the 97-minute version sent to critics, promised to be "updated to reflect current events unfolding in DC." Gibney doesn't require a finite resolution of Robert Mueller's investigation into various nooks and crannies of the Donald Trump presidential campaign and administration, but with that pivotal fourth episode set to premiere on December 9, there's plenty of room for Gibney's argument and its conclusions to evolve.

Special counsel Robert Mueller just filed a new and extensive motion that is being kept under seal for the grand jury, according to Politico reporter Darren Samuelsohn.

The reporter posted a screen capture from the update showing Mueller made the November update as part of "Case Name: In re: Grand Jury Subpoena." It explained, "The following transaction was entered on 11/20/2018 3:49:22 PM EST and filed on 11/20/2018."