Playbook: "President Joe Biden just signed the first BFD of his administration -- a massive Covid relief bill to boost the fortunes of everyday Americans. But you barely heard a peep about it from his own administration on the Sunday shows. Yes, Biden is hitting the road this week to sell the package. But on his way out the door, he skipped a major audience on Sunday -- a day many people will actually sit back and watch something of substance, hence the gangbuster ratings for CBS' 60 Minutes."

Ms. Grossman died on Thursday at her home in the Bearsville section of Woodstock, N.Y., not far from the house where the photograph was taken. She had long been a fixture in Woodstock, operating a recording studio, a theater and other businesses there after her husband died of a heart attack at 59 in 1986. She was 81.

One of Bob Dylan's most important early albums, "Bringing It All Back Home" from 1965, has the kind of cover that can strain eyes and fuel speculation. It is a photograph of Mr. Dylan, in a black jacket, sitting in a room full of bric-a-brac that may or may not mean something, staring into the camera as a woman in a red outfit lounges in the background.

Ammon Bundy Arrested for Failure to Appear in Court

March 16, 2021 at 4:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 110 Comments

"Ammon Bundy, who was to go on trial after being charged with trespassing in the Idaho Statehouse last year, was arrested Monday after he refused to wear a mask in court," CNN reports.

"According to Ada County Sheriff spokesperson Patrick Orr, the Idaho Supreme Court has a mask mandate for anyone entering a courthouse, but when Bundy showed up Monday morning for the first day of his jury trial he wouldn't wear one and was denied entry."

And it's FINALLY going up in October.  Unless it's delayed.   Again.  By some stupid shite like the Space Farce.

Who Would Believe Me?

March 23, 2021 at 9:05 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 51 Comments

"Facing more than $1.3 billion in liabilities over her post-election conspiracy theories, lawyer Sidney Powell told a judge that the defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against her earlier this year should be dismissed because `no reasonable person' would believe that her well-publicized comments about an international plot against former President Donald Trump were `statements of fact,'" according to Law & Crime.

That set her off.  Sewing is one of her passions and she is very good at it.  She has decided to make it her mission to teach me how to sew between May 23rd and 28th.

Just used some stimulus money to buy a sewing machine.

The worst part here is the changes to the certification rules the rest is just going to make people more determined to vote.

And as a bonus it will probably become the primary argument to pass HR1.  Against all odds.

Sweeping changes to Georgia elections signed into law

Good luck.

Following passage of President Joe Biden's relief plan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement where she "called upon the Chairs of the Committees of Jurisdiction to work with their Republican counterparts to craft a big, bold, transformational infrastructure package."

Sound like the first line of a joke but it's not

Market Manipulation Chatter Rises as Digital Art Scene Explodes

(Bloomberg) -- A digital artwork by Beeple set auction records Thursday when it sold at Christie's for a mind-bending $69 million.

Arkansas near-total abortion ban certain to face legal showdown
The bill does not include exceptions for rape and incest.

He is right. The US can't get anything done because we're too busy with tribalism, wokism, and just plain hating "the other."

It's why my sister lives in China with no intention of returning to this country. When she first moved there, it took 9 hours to get from Nanjing to Beijing by train. You can now make the trip in 3.5 hours. China has the largest network of high speed trains in the world. Number of high speed trains in the US. Zero.

How Trump's team amassed a $1 trillion war chest for Biden to deploy
Despite concerns that markets will be flooded with new U.S. government debt, the Treasury might not have to change its borrowing plans much at all.

Trump was supposed to be a political Godzilla in exile. Instead, he's adrift.

Even allies say the president is lacking an apparatus and direction as he sorts out just what he wants to do in his post-presidency.

"Biden and his fellow Democrats hope to expand the definition of infrastructure beyond existing transportation architecture to include items aimed at tackling climate change and its effects, echoing the $2 trillion, 10-year `Build Back Better' proposal floated during his campaign."

"That includes investments in electric vehicle charging stations, zero-emission buses and zero-carbon electricity generation by 2035, and directing dollars to minority neighborhoods and contractors, part of a pledge to increase racial equity."

"Democrats have signaled they want to invest billions in creating and refurbishing affordable housing in any package and expand broadband internet access to all Americans, particularly in rural communities."

Probably half of cell phone activity.  No one will notice.

Associated Press: "Conservative lawmakers in Utah have fired another salvo in their longtime campaign against online porn with a new requirement that all cellphones and tablets sold in the state automatically block pornography in a plan that critics call a significant intrusion on free speech."

"Mr. Blum is eyeing a European capital, a posting that could pave the way for the 87-year-old Ms. Feinstein to leave the Senate."

March 16, 2021 at 6:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 40 Comments

"I'm perfectly willing to divide it equally between Republicans and Democrats, and so it will be up to them if they want it. If they don't, we'll just have it on the Democratic side. But I think enough of them would like to have it on both sides."

-- Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), as quoted by Bloomberg, on what will happen with earmarks if Republicans choose not to engage with the appropriations process.

Today

March 17, 2021 at 11:47 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 23 Comments

Jake Sherman reports that the House Republican Conference has voted to reverse its internal ban on requesting earmarks.

I confess I never heard of the Trump Worlds Fair

Open Secrets: "After years of dark money overwhelmingly boosting Republicans, this marks the first presidential election cycle where dark money benefited Democrats. That's a continuation from the 2018 midterm elections when Democrats benefited from more dark money than their Republican counterparts at the federal level for the first time since Citizens United."

Key takeaway: Democrats and their aligned causes took in and spent $514 million in dark money, while Republicans took in and spent $204 million.

The City of Ash Flat brought home a national title following the results of the National Rural Water Association's best tasting water competition.

The results, announced in late February, placed the City of Ash Flat third in the Best Water in the USA competition during the Great American Water Taste Test held by the National Rural Water Association. This followed just weeks after Tracy Breckenridge, Water and Sewer Superintendent for the city, was presented with an award for first place for Best Tasting Water by the Arkansas Rural Water Association in January.

It really is good.  As good as anything MARVEL.  And it really is a completely different movie.  Which is weird because it tells basically the same story just in a way you understand and care about.   And at 4 hours with "chapters" it's almost like a limited series.  I'm only about 1/4 through.
It's weird to see it in the old fashioned tv format. Square.  I read that is actually IMAX format.  This would be something in IMAX.  
Also it's rated R.  Very unusual for a big budget superhero movie.

Variety

It takes an extraordinarily diverse skill set to direct a great comic-book movie. You've got to be a visual-effects wizard; a maestro of story and pace; a popcorn humanist who can find the relatable dimension of a bunch of freaks in capes and breastplates and spandex; and enough of an artist to tie the whole thing together into an indelible Big Vision. It's no wonder that in the years since Hollywood got eaten alive by comic-book culture, the superhero movies that have achieved a genuine sweeping transcendence can just about be counted on one hand: "The Dark Knight," "Spider-Man 2," "Black Panther," a few others.

To that hallowed list I would now add "Zack Snyder's Justice League," the thrillingly restored four-hour-long director's-cut version of the 2017 DC Comics extravaganza. The new movie -- and make no mistake, it really is a new movie -- is more than a vindication of Snyder's original vision. It's a grand, nimble, and immersive entertainment, a team-of-heroes origin story that, at heart, is classically conventional, yet it's now told with such an intoxicating childlike sincerity and ominous fairy-tale wonder that it takes you back to what comic books, at their best, have always sought to do: make you feel like you're seeing gods at play on Earth.

A wax replica of former President Donald Trump currently being housed at Louis Tussaud's Waxworks in San Antonio had to be moved to storage because visitors kept punching it in the face, the San Antonio Express reports.

To reduce Hoback's documentary to simply a whodunit investigation of QAnon, though, would be to ignore the dizzying number of things Into the Storm is attempting. Yes, it's a basic primer on the unsupportable nuttiness that helped power Donald Trump, launched thousands of amateur sleuthing YouTube channels, spawned the ugliest insurrection in recent American history and left countless families estranged. At the same time, it's a complicated, globe-trotting thriller about the increasing hostility among three very odd men; an origin story for fledgling political voices like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert; and occasionally even a thoughtful treatise on absolute free speech and its discontents. It's a piece of absurdist prankster journalism and a detour into speculative reality so silly it's almost like '50s sci-fi.

What I did not know was that the entire thing, Army McCarthy hearing, was because Cohn was mad the Army would not give his boyfriend special treatment.  That not only was McCarthy clearly aware of this but the senate committee was too.

There was amazing archival footage of them making gay jokes.  There was discussion of fairies.  On tv.

 I never was aware of this being the central issue of the hearings and I definitely never saw video of the senate getting big laughs with fairy jokes while Cohn sat there squirming.  But it was right there on WIKI

In 1953, McCarthy's committee began inquiries into the United States Army, starting by investigating supposed Communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth.[6] McCarthy's investigations were largely fruitless, but after the Army accused McCarthy and his staff of seeking special treatment for Private G. David Schine, a chief consultant to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and a close friend of Cohn's who had been drafted into the Army as a private the previous year, McCarthy claimed that the accusation was made in bad faith.[7]

This part alone is worth watching the doc.

STARZ has been on a tear lately.  The excellent series Luminaries would end tonight but they moved it to next Sunday so this premier could replace it.

I am really ticked off. I've been in quarantine since Feb 2020. I have avoided Dr offices and the like for over a year. But I had to go to the dentist last Tuesday. I started feeling sick Thursday morning. I have absolutely no doubts that I was infected there. I have had no contact with any humans for months except my wife. She is fanatical about taking precautions and mask wearing. Plus she got her first Moderna over a week before.

I am afraid I am not going to survive this. I have too many adverse health conditions

"On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter's gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime."

"But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale... The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter's ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime."

"The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident... The incident did not result in charges or arrests. But the alleged involvement of the Secret Service remains a mystery."

San Francisco Chronicle (SFGATE.com) | March 25, 2021
Southwest pilot on hot mic goes on expletive-laden rant against the Bay Area - "'F--k this place, goddamn liberal f--ks. F--king weirdos, probably driving around in f--king Hyundais, f--king roads and s--t that go slow as f--k.' [San Jose Int'l control tower informs pilot that he's on a hot mic.] 'You don't have balls unless you're f--king rolling coal, man, goddamn it.'"

No doubt, it's a great public relations coup for Southwest Airlines, which is only the dominant air carrier at the Bay Area's Oakland Int'l and San Jose Int'l airports, and further maintains a substantial presence at San Francisco Int'l as well.

This guy will be lucky if the FAA doesn't bring the hammer down on him and suspend his license. Per agency regs, pilots are prohibited from engaging in extraneous conversations while the aircraft is either taxiing at the airport or is below 10,000 ft. altitude on either departure or approach. (I listened to the audio at ATC archives. The offensive comments can be found at 20:52 of the audio. It sounds like he was on the ground at SJC, awaiting permission to depart.)

As for his job - well, Southwest has fired pilots for lesser infractions.

Republican Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson Thursday evening signed a sweeping anti-transgender bill into law. The ACLU says the legislation is "illegal."

In a statement denouncing the new law the Human Rights Campaign says it "bans transgender women and girls from participating in sports (including extracurricular and school sports at the elementary, middle, high school and collegiate level) consistent with their gender identity."

Governor Hutchinson, who is term limited and cannot run again next year, may be weighing a White House run, some have suggested.

He could be a real threat.  He has really raised his profile since Covid and his anti Trump stuff.