Patterico's Pontifications

5/14/2021

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:49 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Hello! The weekend is upon us. Here are a few news items to chew over. Please feel free to share anything that you think might interest readers. Make sure you include links.

First news item

CDC eases mask requirements:

[T]he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased mask-wearing guidance for fully vaccinated people…allowing them to stop wearing masks outdoors in crowds and in most indoor settings.

“Today is a great day for America,” President Joe Biden said…

“If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask,” he said, summarizing the new guidance…

The guidance still calls for wearing masks in crowded indoor settings like buses, planes, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters, but it will help clear the way for reopening workplaces, schools and other venues — even removing the need for social distancing for those who are fully vaccinated.

Clearly, businesses will not have a uniform response to new guidelines.

The conservative approach by the CDC is raising questions.

Also, not all experts agree that lifting mask requirements is a good thing:

100 epidemiologists are in the no column as well:

In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year. Just 5 percent said people would no longer need to wear masks indoors by this summer. In large crowds outdoors, like at a concert or protest, 88 percent of the epidemiologists said it was necessary even for fully vaccinated people to wear masks. “Unless the vaccination rates increase to 80 or 90 percent over the next few months, we should wear masks in large public indoor settings,” said Vivian Towe, a program officer at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

[Ed. My 2 cents: just go get the vaccine so we can be done with this pandemic already.]

Second news item

Deal struck? Not so fast:

The top Democrat and Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee struck a deal to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, breaking a months-long logjam between House leaders about how to structure the independent panel.

House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and the panel’s ranking Republican, Rep. John Katko of New York, announced on Friday they had reached an agreement for the panel that would be modeled after the 9/11 Commission. The House could vote on it as early as next week.
After the agreement was announced Friday, it was not clear whether House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy — who has been fighting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the proposal — would sign off on the deal, as he said he was still reviewing it.

MAGA Republicans still living in their MAGA bubbles of delusion:

Third news item

Better late than never:

The head of America’s second-largest teachers’ union is calling for all public schools to open five days a week this fall, pushing forcefully for in-person learning over the uneven progress made by the Biden administration.

“There is no doubt: Schools must be open,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a speech Thursday on how she believes schools can reopen safely amid the pandemic.

“Given current circumstances, nothing should stand in the way of fully reopening our public schools this fall and keeping them open,” Weingarten said. “The United States will not be fully back until we are fully back in school. And my union is all in.”

Fourth news item

It won’t stop the baby-killing but Planned Parenthood finally admits that Margaret Sanger is a problem :

Up until now, Planned Parenthood has failed to own the impact of our founder’s actions. We have defended Sanger as a protector of bodily autonomy and self-determination, while excusing her association with white supremacist groups and eugenics as an unfortunate “product of her time.” Until recently, we have hidden behind the assertion that her beliefs were the norm for people of her class and era, always being sure to name her work alongside that of W.E.B. Dubois and other Black freedom fighters. But the facts are complicated.

Sanger spoke to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan at a rally in New Jersey to generate support for birth control. And even though she eventually distanced herself from the eugenics movement because of its hard turn to explicit racism, she endorsed the Supreme Court’s 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, which allowed states to sterilize people deemed “unfit” without their consent and sometimes without their knowledge — a ruling that led to the sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the 20th century.

The first human trials of the birth control pill — a project that was Sanger’s passion later in her life — were conducted with her backing in Puerto Rico, where as many as 1,500 women were not told that the drug was experimental or that they might experience dangerous side effects.

We don’t know what was in Sanger’s heart, and we don’t need to in order to condemn her harmful choices. What we have is a history of focusing on white womanhood relentlessly. Whether our founder was a racist is not a simple yes or no question. Our reckoning is understanding her full legacy, and its impact. Our reckoning is the work that comes next.

Fifth news item

Debt ceiling? What’s that??:

In fact, the Democratic majority says it has no intention of negotiating with Republicans bent on slashing spending as a condition for avoiding default after the July 31 deadline. Democrats say they won’t haggle with the minority party over the faith and credit of the United States, citing lessons from the presidency of Barack Obama. The diametrically opposed views heading toward a cutoff point that regularly vexes Washington could become highly consequential as Congress labors to cut bipartisan deals on a host of issues. Moreover, the standoff may set up a major confrontation in summer or early fall between a GOP settling back into fiscal hawkishness and a Democratic Party that believes ignoring Republican demands is the only way to avoid a fiscal crisis as the national debt tops $28 trillion. Republicans’ official party position “doesn’t matter to me,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “We don’t negotiate on the debt ceiling.”

Sixth news item

Hmm, human rights and/or clean energy?:

[N]ew research suggests that much of that work could rely on the exploitation of the region’s Uyghur population and other ethnic and religious minorities, potentially tainting a significant portion of the global supply chain for a renewable energy source critical to combating the climate crisis.

The report published Friday — titled “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labor and Global Solar Supply Chains” — presents evidence of a troubling reality: that components for clean energy may be created with dirty coal and forced labor…

Allegations have been raised before that forced labor in Xinjiang has been used to produce polysilicon, a key component for making solar panels. But this latest research indicates that the practice is also used in the mining and processing of quartz, the raw material at the very start of the solar panel supply chain.

“The global demand for solar energy has encouraged Chinese companies to go to great lengths to make our climate responsibility as inexpensive as possible,” the report states, “but it comes at great cost to the workers who labor at the origin of the supply chain.”

About the Uyghurs:

Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed…

The data adds to mounting evidence of coercive fertility policies in Xinjiang, including first-person accounts of forced sterilisation or birth control, and leaked policing data on the internment of women for violating family planning regulations…

The Chinese government denies allegations of mistreatment, genocide and crimes against humanity, saying many of its policies – including the mass detention network it says includes vocational training centres – are anti-terrorism efforts. It says birth control is entirely the choice of individuals and there is no agency interference. This claim has been contradicted by women who claim they were coerced into sterilisation or contraception.

Seventh news item

Cheney to Tapper:

Telling CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” that there are “more members who believe in substance and policy and ideals than are willing to say so,” Cheney cited the impeachment vote earlier this year, in which she was one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to hold Trump accountable for the Capitol riot.
“If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives,” she said. “And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”

Eighth news item

Because it’s going to take a helluva lot more than a free Krispy Kreme to get enough people vaccinated:

To the many propositions that governments have used to try to bolster slumping demand for the coronavirus vaccine, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio raised the ante considerably on Wednesday, announcing that the state would give five people $1 million each in return for having been vaccinated as part of a weekly lottery program.

The lottery, whose legality could raise questions, will be paid for by federal coronavirus relief funds, Mr. DeWine, a Republican, said during a statewide televised address.

The first of five weekly drawings will be held on May 26, according to Mr. DeWine, who said that Ohio Lottery would conduct them.

“I know that some may say, ‘DeWine, you’re crazy!’ ” Mr. DeWine said on Twitter. “‘This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.’ But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic — when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it — is a life lost to COVID-19.”

We shouldn’t, but apparently, we do:

We shouldn’t have to bribe to vaccinate. And while people can do what they want with their own bodies, that doesn’t include the right to carry a deadly disease into public spaces. The way to get people vaccinated should be simply to require vaccination or documented medical exemption in order to return to schools, businesses, and crowded public spaces.

Note: West Virginia and Detroit are already paying people to get vaccinated, and Maryland and News Jersey are also offering incentives for residents to get the Covid vaccine.

Ninth news item

Golden state nightmare:

With little notice, California on Saturday is increasing early release credits for 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, as it further trims the population of what once was the nation’s largest state correctional system.

More than 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017.

That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.

More than 10,000 inmates convicted of a second serious but nonviolent offense under the state’s “three strikes” law will be eligible for release after serving half their sentences. That’s an increase from the current time-served credit of one-third of their sentence.

The same increased release time will apply to nearly 2,900 nonviolent third strikers, the corrections department projected.

Note: The changes were approved this week by the state Office of Administrative Law, with little public notice. They were submitted and approved within a three-week span as emergency regulations.

Motivating the drastic decision: According to officials, to “increase incentives for the incarcerated population to practice good behavior and follow the rules while serving their time” so they can get out sooner. Also, it would reduce prison populations, which would then allow Gov. Newsom to fulfill his promise to close a second prison.

Miscellaneous

Book recommendation: Old Bones by Preston and Child. An engrossing mystery about an archeologist and historian searching for the rumored “Lost Camp” of the Donner Party. Based on the real-life events of 1847 in which a group of pioneers out of Missouri resorted to cannibalism when they found themselves snowbound and stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains because they left the wagon train and took an unsure shortcut.

A few vacation photos:

IMG_4085

IMG_3845

IMG_4348

Have a good weekend!

–Dana

221 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Hello. Happy Friday.

    Dana (fd537d)

  2. Color is a record, black and white is art.

    nk (1d9030)

  3. I guess you weren’t a fan of TCM’s attempt to colorize movies, nk.

    norcal (01e272)

  4. Color is a record, black and white is art.

    “Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.”

    Dave (1542be)

  5. Different thing, and it was not particularly important to me, but you’re right, to the degree that I cared I thought it defined “hillbilly”.

    nk (1d9030)

  6. Sigh. At least Dana knows what I meant.

    nk (1d9030)

  7. Book recommendation:

    Just finished:

    The British Are Coming, the first volume of a trilogy on the Revolutionary War by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson, whose trilogy on the US Army in WWII was (rightly) highly acclaimed. This book features the same riveting narrative style, and covers the first two years of the war, up to the battles of Princeton and Trenton. The focus is almost entirely on the military campaigns (the drafting and passage of the Declaration of Independence takes up about half a page) but there is an entire chapter on Franklin’s arrival and reception in France. The tragic character of Benedict Arnold (who was, without question, the most daring and competent American general early in the war), Washington’s early mistakes, and the ambivalent British commanders (none of them were enthusiastic about waging a war of conquest against America) are all vividly described.

    Before that:

    Introduction to Climate Science by Andreas Schmittner (Oregon State University). This is an open-source (i.e. free) online science textbook, not a popularization. As such, it covers a lot of the nitty-gritty quantitative analysis of how climate measurements and models. Anyone with some basic preparation in STEM should be able to easily understand it, and even those without should be able to follow the discussion if they’re sufficiently interested. Some of the material (on thermodynamics and radiation) overlap with classes I teach, and these subjects are clearly and accurately presented. The core of the book is not in any way a sermon, but a carefully constructed scientific argument leading to a fairly conservative conclusion – the Earth’s climate is changing, and it’s likely that we are responsible for a significant portion of the change. There are two chapters at the end authored by social sciences, one (which I found informative) on externalities related to carbon generation and the economics of carbon tax schemes, and another (which I found out of place) on the ethics of climate change (i.e. a sermon). But as an exposition of the state of the art in climate science, I thought the book as a whole was excellent. (I recommend avoiding the downloadable files and reading the web-based version; some figures don’t display properly in any of the downloadable versions)

    Dave (1542be)

  8. Dana; nice pix. B/W work well w/lighting.1st is favorite- looks like Mars on a wet day.

    _____

    @2/@3.I guess you weren’t a fan of TCM’s attempt to colorize movies, nk.

    Actually, it was Ted Turner and Turner Entertainment which really pushed colorizing his library of b/w films in the 80’s, before TCM actually went on the air. It was a very nasty corporate fight at the time, too. One group was quite strong about not tampering w/t WB b/w films as art; the other said it was a business decision to revive and revamp a dead product for modern audiences to make a buck. The film that was supposed to make the breakthrough was: Yankee Doodle Dandy. Was involved w/t marketing in 1986 [- wrote the ad for it- and not pleased about it so my views were known.] The colorization was weak by today’s standards, too– and the infighting was very intense over releasing it. Some big names came out against it. But then, the market spoke; it was a curiosity at first but the bottom line was it never caught on and the b/w version held firm.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  9. Currently on the ground in the school system:

    Our students have the option to return almost full time, slightly more than half have, with slightly less than half remaining on distance learning.

    Masks have not been a problem (which is surprising) social distancing has (which is not surprising).

    There is very very much less drama and far fewer discipline issues than there are when the full population is on campus.

    Teachers report that the students are completing work faster than normal and they are doing a lot of hands on projects.

    Testing is not going to be useful this year. We have to do some kind of testing, but it isn’t the normal statewide testing, so we can’t use it for year on year comparisons and it’s kind of a waste of time.

    Base on my experience of how parents are handling covid testing for their kids, the covid numbers almost certainly aren’t accurate for kids and teens. When a student is sick they have the option of either getting tested and coming back when they are cleared or staying out for ten days and doing distance learning, none of them are getting tested unless they get really really sick and in 95% of the cases, if a student is home sick, they are out for 10 days and the parents don’t get them tested.

    Some districts are opening vaccine clinics for students 12-16 to make the vaccine easily accessible to the students.

    We have nearly reached the end of this year of weirdness. Plans for next year are that as long as things don’t take a sharp turn for the worse over the summer, schools will open normally in the fall.

    And that’s the news from the my corner of the education field.

    Nic (896fdf)

  10. Our students have the option to return almost full time, slightly more than half have, with slightly less than half remaining on distance learning.

    How do you handle that? Is classroom instruction broadcast?

    Dave (1542be)

  11. Nice photos Dana Adams.

    mg (8cbc69)

  12. May I suggest listening to Van Morrisons new album.
    You people won’t like that he is not woke.

    mg (8cbc69)

  13. RIP Spencer Silver, inventor who made the Post-it Note stick (80).

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  14. Personally, I wouldn’t trust the CDC to tell me if it was daytime outside.

    nk (1d9030)

  15. The CDC is making it quite easy for us to identify the “Papers, please” proponents in our society. They want vaccine passports to ensure those without masks are truly vaccinated.

    If you wanted to know how Iran was going to repay Israel for Israel’s repeated attacks on Iran’s nuclear weapons complex, now you know. Iran has released its proxies in Gaza and the West Bank. This will end poorly for the Arabs in those areas. They may want to rethink their allies as Iran doesn’t really care about them, or Arabs in general. One only has to watch Iranian-backed Shia militias rape and kill Syrian Arabs to know Iran is just using them to attack Israel.

    Sanger was a ghoul and so are her acolytes in Planned Parenthood. I hope black and other minority women realize PP is there to cull the population of minorities. Don’t believe any of the other crap that spews from their press releases.

    Hoi Polloi (b28058)

  16. Oh, come on! The new war in Israel is all Netanyahu. He provoked it. To stay in power and out of prison. 100%.

    He ramped up the land-stealing in Jerusalem and got his Orthodox loonies to go around lynching Palestinians. The Palestinians defended themselves, the Israeli military retaliated, Hamas stepped in, and it escalated.

    Israel has always been an apartheid, theocratic, militarized, socialist, police state. With Netanyahu it became corrupt too.

    nk (1d9030)

  17. We need to cut off every penny of military and economic aid to Israel. Enough is enough!

    nk (1d9030)

  18. Students for Trump founder John Lambert sentenced to 13 months for posing as lawyer
    ……..
    John Lambert, 25, pretended to be Eric Pope of the Manhattan-based firm Pope & Dunn. He falsely claimed to be a graduate of NYU Law School with a finance degree from the University of Pennsylvania and 15 years of experience in corporate and patent law.

    The baby-faced scammer from Tennessee admitted to running the racket from 2016 to 2018, which targeted people who had little or no experience seeking legal advice. Victims sought Lambert’s help through the freelancing website Upwork. He earned at least $46,654 through the legal advice he was totally unqualified to give.

    Judge Valerie Caproni called Lambert “a cold-blooded fraudster who cared not a whit about the victims of his fraud.”
    ……….
    Lambert grabbed headlines during the 2016 presidential campaign for the group he founded with classmate Ryan Fournier at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C., in 2015. Their Students for Trump group ran a Twitter account featuring photos of bikini-clad women and pictures of themselves at political events.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  19. Since Dave is recommending books, I’ll add three of my own: The Atkinson WW II trilogy is indeed very good, though it only covers the North Africa and European theaters. (One minor annoyance: the chapter titles are literary, rather than descriptive, so you sometimes have to hunt for a particular passage. As a result, my three have dozens of Post-its marking passages I know I will want to read again.)

    Recently I finished McWhorter’s “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue”, which describes how a proto-Germanic language lost its genders and almost all its case endings to become English. The book was challenging in places, but great fun.

    Yesterday’s Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” arrived. I have just read the first chapter, but am greatly impressed so far. One interesting tidbit: He says he wrote two long articles with criticisms of some environmental alarmists and then asked them, before he finished the book, if they had any disagreements with his arguments. He claims none of them did.

    (Incidentally, I bought that book and another from Barnes and Noble, rather than Amazon, as part of my very small protest against Amazon’s censorship of “When Harry Became Sally”.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  20. Jenner says she didn’t vote in 2020. But records show she did
    Republican gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner told CNN this week that she never voted for president in the November 2020 election and opted to golf instead because she “couldn’t get excited” about the dozen measures on the California ballot. For someone seeking support in the upcoming recall, it was a head-turning statement.
    ………
    “I didn’t even vote,” Jenner told (CNN’s Dana) Bash in a wide-ranging interview at her home in Malibu. “Out here in California, it’s like, why vote for a Republican president? It’s just not going to work. I mean, it’s overwhelming.”
    ……….
    “It was voting day, and I thought, the only thing out here in California that I worry about, which affects people, is the propositions that were out there,” Jenner said. “And I didn’t see any propositions that I really had one side or the other. And so it was Election Day. And I just couldn’t get excited about it. And I just wound up going to play golf and I said, eh, I’m not doing that.”
    ………
    Her claim to be a non-voter in that seminal 2020 election was baffling for a gubernatorial candidate trying to establish her political credibility, especially since records show she did participate in the contest. And it remains unclear why her statements conflict with the records.

    Some political insiders speculated the candidate, speaking off the cuff, may have wanted to distance herself from Trump on CNN. Or that she possibly couldn’t keep her elections straight.
    ………
    ……… [W]hen asked to select a replacement candidate should the recall succeed, registered voters prefer more experienced GOP candidates over Jenner. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and former 2018 Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox each have 22 percent support from registered voters, while former Rep. Doug Ose has 14 percent. ……..

    Jenner, meanwhile, is far behind at 6 percent in the first major poll since she announced her candidacy in late March.
    ………
    There are a lot of things that Caitlyn Jenner can’t keep straight.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  21. There are a lot of things that Caitlyn Jenner can’t keep straight.

    Yup. He doesn’t remember.

    At age 25, it could have been “gender dysphoria”. At age 65 it’s senile old coot and he’s pushing 72 now. But as long as he’s got Kris Jenner to provide him with wardrobe, make-up artists, and the best publicists in the world, the Kardashian show will go on.

    nk (1d9030)

  22. There are some movies that work better in black-and-white, but I prefer the rest colorized.

    My mantra for the last several weeks has been “just get the damn vaccine”. It should be a civic duty.
    Here in WA State, Inslee said he’ll drop the 4-phase plan after at least 70% have had their first shots. We’re close at 57%.
    Our church is keeping its 50% capacity limit per state mandate but our pastor just lifted the mask requirement for the vaccinated (and which assumes our Baptist church members are honest enough to abide by an honor system).

    Paul Montagu (26e0d1)

  23. AP made it well know that IDF destroyed the building where they have their Gaza bureau, but they neglected to mention that they shared that structure with a Hamas intelligence operation that occupied several floors of said 14-story building, which means they also neglected the war crime that Hamas committed, embedding military infrastructure in a civilian facility.

    Conricus called the building a legitimate military target, saying it contained Hamas military intelligence. He said Hamas may have calculated that by placing their “assets” inside a building with news media offices in it “they probably hoped that would keep them safe from Israeli attack”.

    Al Jazeera also carried a report on the strike on its English-language website.

    It quoted journalist Safwat al-Kahlout as saying: “I have been working here for 11 years. I have been covering many events from this building, we have lived personal professional experiences. Now everything, in two seconds, just vanished.”

    Asked why the entire building was destroyed, Conricus said there was no way of destroying only the Hamas targets. Those, he said, “occupied several floors in the building…. it was deemed necessary to take down the whole building.”

    Paul Montagu (26e0d1)

  24. @ Jim Miller,

    Recently I finished McWhorter’s “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue”, which describes how a proto-Germanic language lost its genders and almost all its case endings to become English. The book was challenging in places, but great fun.

    Hey, I’m listening to McWhorter’s Talking Black, Talking Black. This too has its challenging moments.. The book is about Black English, its formation, history, and current place in American culture as seen from the perspective of a black linguist who really knows his stuff.

    Dana (fd537d)

  25. Her claim to be a non-voter in that seminal 2020 election was baffling for a gubernatorial candidate trying to establish her political credibility, especially since records show she did participate in the contest.

    Here is the document they referenced:
    https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000179-5e2b-d7df-a37d-ff6bd5e50000

    It will be interesting if Jenner continues the argument that Jenner didn’t vote. Was a fraudulent ballot turned in? Who knows. But it should be high profile enough to normalize the question of ballot security.

    BuDuh (9c4e29)

  26. Time, I think we had an unfinished dialog before I had to tend to other chores. I don’t recall exactly what we were discussing. I didn’t want you to think I abandoned or conversation, even though it seems that I did. :-/

    Anyways, if you recall it and you were waiting on me, please give me an update. If it wasn’t that important then I am ok with that too. Thanks.

    BuDuh (9c4e29)

  27. Our church is keeping its 50% capacity limit per state mandate but our pastor just lifted the mask requirement for the vaccinated (and which assumes our Baptist church members are honest enough to abide by an honor system).

    My parish now does its 5:30 pm Saturday mass and 8:00 am Sunday mass indoors in the church, but our 10:00 am and noon Sunday masses are held outdoors on the field of our school. Our pews in the church are blocked off to have about 30% capacity, and I am worried that after a year of online masses that attendance won’t climb much higher than that even after restrictions are loosened. I don’t know if we have modified any mask regulations just yet; our website still says that masks are required indoors.

    JVW (30a532)

  28. We need to cut off every penny of military and economic aid to Israel. Enough is enough!

    Kevin Williamson addresses that argument:

    Most people think of U.S. military aid to Israel as Washington doing Jerusalem a favor — the truth is almost exactly the opposite.

    It is important to understand that there is really no U.S. military aid to Israel. Of course there is, on paper, just under $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. Why provide aid to a country that is, as Kristof correctly notes, affluent? Because aid to Israel isn’t aid to Israel — it is corporate welfare for U.S.-based military contractors, which is where the money ends up. Joe Biden, of all people, should know this: He worked for the administration that set up the current system.

    JVW (30a532)

  29. The much better looking Dana should have quoted more from The New York Times:

    When federal health officials said on Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear masks in most places, it came as a surprise to many people in public health. It also was a stark contrast with the views of a large majority of epidemiologists surveyed in the last two weeks by The New York Times.

    In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year. Just 5 percent said people would no longer need to wear masks indoors by this summer.

    In large crowds outdoors, like at a concert or protest, 88 percent of the epidemiologists said it was necessary even for fully vaccinated people to wear masks. . . . .

    They acknowledged that many Americans would not want to continue to wear masks — and that many have already stopped.

    Wearing masks “will be a need, which is a very different question than how long will it continue to occur,” said Sophia K., an epidemiologist at the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council. “I expect that most people will refuse to wear masks, even in public, by the end of 2021, whether there is still a pandemic or not.”

    The left, of course, have been pro-choice on exactly one thing, and some are demanding some form of vaccine passports. Yes, I’ve been vaccinated, but I’ll lay in Hell before I carry around my immunization records; if anyone asks to see it, I will tell him to go get f(ornicated).

    It has always been more important to fight tyranny than the virus.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  30. @20

    nice case study in how we dismiss voter fraud

    dude says he/she didn’t vote, but records say otherwise

    conclusion: he/she must be lying or mistaken… because hey there couldn’t be any other possibility!

    not saying jenner isn’t lying or too dense to remember

    JF (e1156d)

  31. JVW wrote:

    Our church is keeping its 50% capacity limit per state mandate but our pastor just lifted the mask requirement for the vaccinated (and which assumes our Baptist church members are honest enough to abide by an honor system).

    My parish now does its 5:30 pm Saturday mass and 8:00 am Sunday mass indoors in the church, but our 10:00 am and noon Sunday masses are held outdoors on the field of our school. Our pews in the church are blocked off to have about 30% capacity, and I am worried that after a year of online masses that attendance won’t climb much higher than that even after restrictions are loosened. I don’t know if we have modified any mask regulations just yet; our website still says that masks are required indoors.

    That’s a valid concern, and our pastor has been working on the same thing. He’s in his 80s, and has been very concerned about the ‘pandemic’ — I hate that word — since day one. Last Sunday we had the biggest turnout, other than for Easter, that I’ve seen since we were so graciously allowed to return to Mass, but we’re still not back to where we were before the hideous overreaction to the China virus.

    We’ve been having Mass outdoors every time the weather has allowed. It’s been unseasonably cool in the Bluegrass State — I want my global warming back! — for a month now, and with Mass at 9:00 AM it has been pretty chilly in the mornings.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  32. JF wrote:

    nice case study in how we dismiss voter fraud

    In 2008, there were 57 entire precincts in Philadelphia in which Republican presidential nominee John McCain did not receive a single vote, not even one. In 2012, there were 59 entire precincts in which Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney did not receive a single vote, not even one.

    But the Democrats have controlled Philly for time out of mind; George VI was still King of England when the last Republican mayor left office, so naturally, there were no investigations, even though the notion that a major party presidential candidate wouldn’t get even a single vote, for two elections running, in dozens of precincts seems almost impossible. Democrats at the state level certainly don’t want any investigations, either, because without the city, Republicans carry all statewide elections.

    Joe Biden carried Pennsylvania by 81,660 votes; he carried Philadelphia by 471,050 votes. In related news, with 192 homicides in 133 days, Philadelphia is on track for 527 murders in 2021, which would blow the previous record out of the water.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  33. 22. There are some movies that work better in black-and-white, but I prefer the rest colorized.

    The problem in attempting that, even with increasingly better digital colorization technologies, is the lighting used when shooting the original print of the film. The imagery changes. Parallel issues surface when pan-and-scan is used dealing with aspect ratio differences; letterboxing and all that.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  34. Trump voter in Colorado faces stunning voter fraud allegations
    ……….
    ……….A Donald Trump supporter is accused of casting an illegal ballot for his dead wife — whom he’s also accused of murdering. The NBC affiliate in Denver reported:

    Barry Morphew, who is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of his wife who remains missing, is now accused of submitting a ballot for her in the November presidential election. Suzanne Morphew was last seen in May 2020, and while she has not been found, the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) announced earlier this month the arrest of her husband Barry and said they believe Suzanne is no longer alive.

    According to the local reporting, last October, Barry Morphew also allegedly submitted a ballot on behalf of the wife he allegedly killed. Her ballot was submitted without a signature — a requirement in Colorado’s vote-by-mail system — but it did include his name as a witness.

    According to the arrest affidavit, asked why he submitted the ballot for his missing-and-presumed-dead wife, Barry Morphew said, “Just because I wanted Trump to win…. I just thought give him [Trump] another vote.”

    He added, according to the affidavit, that he believed “all these other guys are cheating.”
    …………

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  35. JVW (30a532) — 5/15/2021 @ 9:10 am

    We’re also giving over a billion a year to Egypt, all originally stemming from the Camp David Accords, to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel. The peace has been kept, so the deal is still working and serves as a template for future peace accords, if the fatally deficient Palestinian leadership would figure it out.

    Paul Montagu (26e0d1)

  36. Jenner obviously is uninterested in being governor. This just a way for the Jenners/Kardashians to keep their name in the news.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  37. 32, TDIK, what did Trump pull in those districts in ’16 and ’20? Remember McCain and Romney were particularly repellant to working class, presumably black voters (though Romney pulled 20% of 18 to 29 yrs old black men, it might be a bad poll or an over sample of military age fearful of sequestration RIFs or swing area voters, much like the 2004 polls that had Bush 43 with 40% of the hispanic vote).

    urbanleftbehind (15cc37)

  38. Memo to God:

    We pay them not to fight, and they ignore us and fight. Arabs and Jews have been running this scam on the world while hurting each other for 2,000 years. And had the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs arrived just a few hours earlier, there would be no ‘middle east.’

    Cauterize the wound: next time, aim better. Downside: so we’d lose a few crumbling pyramids and some old churches. Upside: vaporizing the whole lot of the rodents and rascals… while digging up some fresh oil fields.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  39. But how much oxygen has Jenner sucked away from Faulconer and Cox? Faulconer has a decent income tax reduction plan that warrants consideration.

    urbanleftbehind (15cc37)

  40. Semi good news in South Carolina, where the in-the-bag Trump edged out the looney tune. McKissick’s anti-democratic mentality was made clear last year when he canceled the South Carolina GOP primary.

    Paul Montagu (26e0d1)

  41. Israeli airstrike levels high-rise building that housed media

    ‘An Israeli airstrike that obliterated a 12-story Gaza City building that housed offices for The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets sparked an outcry from press advocates on Saturday, with AP leadership calling it an “incredibly disturbing” development in the conflict.’ -source, Associated Pre… =BOOM=

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  42. Leana Wen and others are misinterpreting the CDC’s actions. This isn’t about trust. It’s about risk.

    Herd immunity is composed of those fully-vaccinated and those fully-recovered. When that herd is large enough, there are fewer sources of potential infection, and fewer new hosts to infect. At some point each infected person successfully infects far less than one person on average and the pandemic portion of the outbreak ends.

    We are now at the point where those with a Covid immune response are someplace between 60-80% of the population, depending on what the actual fully-recovered percentage is (the KNOWN cases are over 10%). The CDC is saying that this is enough for there to be minimal risk for immunized people.

    UNimmunized people proceed at their own risk, and if they want to lie about their status, fine, but they are trying to lie to God not their fellows.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  43. @Dave@10 It’s still zoom broadcast for half the period, then there are projects/activities/homework for the other half of the period. The kids at school spend their other half of the period with teacher interaction, some group work, hands on projects, etc while the zoom kids do independent work.

    Nic (896fdf)

  44. But how much oxygen has Jenner sucked away from Faulconer and Cox?

    It’s more “How badly has Jenner polluted the recall issue itself?” by turning a political matter into a joke. The Democrats and the media (birm) are playing her up intentionally and denigrating the whole issue that way. The only other people they highlight are the Trumpist kooks.

    Faulconer is being ignored because he doesn’t fit the narrative.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  45. I’ve been following the hosts series on uses of deadly force and thought I’d add a link to an article that contains a link to police dashcam footage from Lompoc, CA (Lom-poke is how we were taught to pronounce it). The footage is of a man who a 911 caller identified as possibly carrying a firearm. Its night time and dark. The subject has charged police with a knife in a previous interaction, but its not known if the police were aware that this was the same young man that charged police a month earlier. https://www.noozhawk.com/article/lompoc_police_release_9_1_1_call_videos_krys_ruiz_shooting
    In one of the videos the man can be seen maybe 25 yards from the officer out in a brushy vacant lot, he very briefly raises both hands appears not to be holding a weapon in either hand, he then seems to internally say “bleep it” and he runs at the officers and achieves a very bad result.

    I’m asking how many people after seeing the videos think the young man’s family gets a payout.
    I live in the southern part of the county and am curious to see how you all think about the pressure to payoff the family of this man whose decision re: path of egress, seems ill-advised.
    Personally am thinking the City of Lompoc will pay some amount in order to avoid the costs of defending a lawsuit and if so, I think it will be a mistake.

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  46. But then, the market spoke; it was a curiosity at first but the bottom line was it never caught on and the b/w version held firm.

    Only a few movies still persist in colorized form, generally when the B&W format wasn’t particularly apt. “It’s a Wonderful Life”, for example. Something like “Casablanca” or “Citizen Kane” just doesn’t work in color.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  47. Because aid to Israel isn’t aid to Israel — it is corporate welfare for U.S.-based military contractors, which is where the money ends up.

    This is true for all military aid to anyone. It’s all in the form of product coupons.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  48. Israeli airstrike levels high-rise building that housed media

    As Paul pointed out upthread, the building also housed Hamas’ intelligence operation. Presumably in different offices.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  49. Faulconer is being ignored because he doesn’t fit the narrative.

    Faulconer is being ignored because he doesn’t have the name ID of either Jenner of Cox.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  50. The World Trade Center on 9/11 housed a CIA intelligence operation. It’s all pretext. The point of bringing the war to the enemy is to inflict a high cost on the enemy. And that’s on top of the Israelis not wanting the Palestinians to ever own anything more permanent than tents and cardboard boxes.

    nk (1d9030)

  51. SteveG, interesting story and I have no idea if settling the suit is good or bad. I think these days, the notion that refusing to settle will deter the long line of lawyers happy to take their shot is probably not a sound one.

    But those cops who were working night shift for a department that doesn’t issue body cameras were ill-served by their leadership. Dash-cams aren’t going to show the officer’s perspective. Some old-timers feel they should be trusted enough to not be monitored, but cameras settle a lot of complaints in the officer’s favor, and part of the reason is an officer who is being recorded, and isn’t an idiot, will behave as professionally as he can. They are actually improved.

    There’s a more cynical reason cops should want bodycams. Instead of just paraphrasing what you thought happened, you can just write in your affidavit “At second 10:23 on my bodycamera file 2341234 Mr. Smith said, quote ” bla bla bla .” not one time did something justified with that language go to trial.

    I can’t imagine having to shoot somebody at work and then hoping the world takes my word for it, when there’s a way to have the truth of the situation. It’s not perfect… cameras might not capture it all. But 99% of the time it’s pretty clear. Any cop out there without a camera shouldn’t buy their own (where they control the data). They should transfer. The one plus for average cops these days is agencies are getting a little desperate to attract talent.

    Dustin (4237e0)

  52. Space Force CO Who Got Holiday Call from Trump Fired Over Comments Decrying Marxism in the Military
    ………
    Lt Col. Matthew Lohmeier, commander of 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, was relieved from his post Friday by Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command, over a loss of confidence in his ability to lead……..

    “This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
    ……..
    Earlier this month, Lohmeier, a former instructor and fighter pilot who transferred into the Space Force, self-published a book titled “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.”
    ……..
    Lohmeier sat down last week with L. Todd Wood of the podcast “Information Operation,” hosted by Creative Destruction, or CD, Media, to promote the book. He spoke about U.S. institutions, including universities, media and federal agencies including the military, that he said are increasingly adopting leftist practices. These practices — such as diversity and inclusion training — are the systemic cause for the divisive climate across America today, he said.
    ………
    Lohmeier told Military.com he had consulted with his chain of command, public affairs and legal counsel about his plans to publish a book and its contents.

    “I was apprised of the option to have my book reviewed at the Pentagon’s prepublication and security review prior to release, but was also informed that it was not required,” Lohmeier said in an email.

    “My intent never has been to engage in partisan politics. I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically non-partisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history,” he said.
    ………

    Lohmeier advised any new service member, from enlisted to officer, to reject critical race theory if they see it being taught in the ranks, because it too is a form of extremism by the definitions outlined in DoD Instruction 1325.06, “Handling Dissident and Protest Activities Among Members of the Armed Forces.”

    (Jim Golby, a senior fellow at Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin and an Army veteran) said Lohmeier’s advice to the junior ranks potentially undermines good order and discipline, or DoD policies aimed toward diversity and inclusion. “Or maybe both,” he said.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  53. @24 Dana, Thanks for the tip on McWhorter’s Talking Black, Talking Black.

    I’m putting that in my “to listen” stack, which is much smaller than my “to read” stack.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  54. DCSCA wrote:

    22. There are some movies that work better in black-and-white, but I prefer the rest colorized.

    The problem in attempting that, even with increasingly better digital colorization technologies, is the lighting used when shooting the original print of the film. The imagery changes. Parallel issues surface when pan-and-scan is used dealing with aspect ratio differences; letterboxing and all that.

    In Casablanca, shot in black-and-white, Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine looks at Major Strasser’s dossier on him and asks, “Are my eyes really brown?”

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  55. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/15/2021 @ 11:42 am

    As Paul pointed out upthread, the building also housed Hamas’ intelligence operation. Presumably in different offices.

    If it’s going to exist at all this is the only way to do it. The alternative is for the US to give a country money to buy military assets from France/Russia/China/etc. Even better is to give them equipment that needs consumables only produced in the US. Then encourage a country that spent money with a competitor to pick a fight.

    frosty (62629e)

  56. @34 weird that a guy who murders his wife wouldn’t respect voting laws

    it sorta taints that murder, he could do better

    JF (e1156d)

  57. Lori Lightfoot’s constituent wrote:

    And that’s on top of the Israelis not wanting the Palestinians to ever own anything more permanent than tents and cardboard boxes.

    In 2005, Arial Sharon ordered the complete evacuation of all Israelis from Gaza, turning it over to the Palestinians to do with as they would. Gaza is somewhat resource poor, but it does have what are arguably the best beaches on the Mediterranean coast, and could have been made into a true tourist Mecca for all of Europe. With the ability to govern themselves, the Palestinians had every opportunity to show that they could be prosperous and peaceful.

    Instead they turned it into what President Trump accurately described as another [insert slang term for feces here]hole ‘country,’ using it as a launching pad for rocket attacks against Israel, rocket attacks that they know are going to bring retaliation many times worse upon them.

    Imagine what would have happened if the Palestinians had turned Gaza around, and converted it into a peaceful place. The Israelis would have been under tremendous pressure to simply return Judea and Samaria to the Arabs, the Palestinians having ‘proven’ themselves worthy partners for peace. The Israelis would have voted in someone other than a hard-liner, because they want the endless strife over.

    Gaza is like North Philadelphia, a fetid and festering sewer, where the gang bangers run things, and the ‘civilians’ refuse to help the police, instead providing shelter and concealment for the very people terrorizing their neighborhoods.

    You cannot coexist with cockroaches.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  58. @48. the building also housed Hamas’ intelligence operation

    Actually,’Paul’ was simply relaying a dispatch to Reuter of what the Israelis said to them. Why believe Bibi’s Israelis? What is it they say- the first casualty of war is truth.

    @50. Which tower?

    You ever been inside the WTC complex? You have any idea how many offices, if not floors, in that complex were leased by city, state and Federal agencies? You ever eaten or shopped there?

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  59. Two great events to look forward to in the 21st century:

    1. The discovery of life on Mars baffling religious zealots on Earth;
    2. The complete and total destruction of the entire Mideast:

    ‘temporary inconvenience; permanent improvement.’

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  60. The Israeli government says the building contained Hamas military intelligence assets. We have called on the Israeli government to put forward the evidence. AP’s bureau has been in this building for 15 years. We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building. This is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.

    https://blog.ap.org/announcements/ap-statement-on-destruction-of-gaza-bureau

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  61. If there were no technological problems with colorizing movies, should it be done?

    Put another way, if movies such as Casablanca had been shot in color at the time, would you have a problem with them?

    I wouldn’t.

    norcal (01e272)

  62. 61. If there were no technological problems with colorizing movies, should it be done?

    No. Especially if wasn’t the intent of the filmmaker. ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virgiia Woolf? is a good, ‘modern’ example. Nichols was given the opportunity to shoot it in color or b/w and chose b/w by intention to add to the grittiness of the film and the intense lighting as well. ‘Fail-Safe’ is a similar example.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  63. Time, I think we had an unfinished dialog before I had to tend to other chores. I don’t recall exactly what we were discussing. I didn’t want you to think I abandoned or conversation, even though it seems that I did. :-/

    Anyways, if you recall it and you were waiting on me, please give me an update. If it wasn’t that important then I am ok with that too. Thanks.

    BuDuh (9c4e29) — 5/15/2021 @ 8:55 am

    I’m 100% certain of 2 things
    1. We were talking about something interesting.
    2. You took a pause to take care of real life business.

    I can’t remember what it was either. Not that it wasn’t important or interesting, just been that kind of day. When it comes to you (or me) let’s dive back into it.

    Also, hope whatever you had to do turned out well.

    Time123 (c9382b)

  64. Dana, love the pics.

    Time123 (c9382b)

  65. @61. Would you clean the Mona Lisa of centuries of lacquer and assorted goo? OTOH, The Last Supper was cleaned and restored which revived much of the fresco color muted by centuries of soot and gunk.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  66. But the Democrats have controlled Philly for time out of mind; George VI was still King of England when the last Republican mayor left office, so naturally, there were no investigations, even though the notion that a major party presidential candidate wouldn’t get even a single vote, for two elections running, in dozens of precincts seems almost impossible.

    From what I recall when i looked into this in 2016 the precincts in question were pretty small, and there were rural precincts that went the other way.

    If the GOP thought that fraud had occurred they could investigate.

    Time123 (c9382b)

  67. Every time Bibi fires off one of those “Israeli” Iron Dome missiles, they hear ‘ka-ching’ at Raytheon, USA.

    ‘In July 2014 it was announced that Raytheon will be the major U.S. partner in co-production of major components for the Iron Dome’s Tamir intercepting missile. Raytheon Missiles & Defense is headquarted at 1151 E. Hermans Road. Tucson, AZ 85756.’ -source, wikimideastscammers.perpetualwar.com

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  68. nic,

    A neighbor, who was a principal and chose to return to the classroom (less bureaucratic headaches), retired last year and is now working with the local university to supervise teacher trainees. As a favor to her former principal, she subbed at an elementary school this week. She had to physically go to the classroom for one student and simultaneously teach him and the 28 students online. Another neighbor with three kids (elementary), has one kid going in-person 4 days week + 1 day online, another kid going M-T, Th-F with Wednesday online, and the third kid is 4 days online + 1 day in-person. The district here has let teachers set up their individual schedules and offer whatever in-person and online line class days that work for them. Obviously, it’s a nightmare for parents with more than one kid, especially when one considers drop-off and pick-up, daycare, afterschool daycare, and home demands.

    Dana (fd537d)

  69. Thank you, Time123. I have a bunch of color photos too, but BW is much more interesting to me.

    Dana (fd537d)

  70. DCSCA wrote:

    Would you clean the Mona Lisa of centuries of lacquer and assorted goo? OTOH, The Last Supper was cleaned and restored which revived much of the fresco color muted by centuries of soot and gunk.

    Alas! The Last Supper is not a fresco, water-soluble paint on wet plaster, but an oil and tempera work, over white lead, on a dry wall. This leads to greater depth possible in the image, but is far more vulnerable to the passage of time. Due to the methods used, a variety of environmental factors, and intentional damage, little of the original painting remains today despite numerous restoration attempts, the last being completed in 1999.

    I’ve had the good fortune to visit Santa Maria delle Grazie. The refectory wall on which the painting was done was sandbagged and thus saved the painting when the church was hit by bombing in World War II. The refectory is kept cool, with the lights low, and flash photography is forbidden.

    The feeling there is unique. We’ve all seen images of the painting dozens of times, but being there, you know that you are in the same room as Leonardo da Vinci was 525 years ago. That personalizes it in a way I can’t really describe.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  71. #51 Dustin
    Thanks for the great response. I had not thought of the perspective you brought on body cameras and report writing. I’d wear one for that reason alone. I also cannot comprehend University Police working

    The dashcams do show the momentum of the man who got shot.
    He was hit by 4 shots, at least one was fatal and he still maintained a fairly fast forward momentum.
    But the officers are fortunate that his momentum carried him into the frame. If he would have dropped and died 10 feet further back this might have left enough room to blame the officers

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  72. @70. Right- not a fresco; my error; I was there when they were ‘restoring’ a section on the right side and they’d disasembled part of the scaffolding as they were moving on to another part and you could see the difference in color tones from the old w/t restored area. Frankly, the section they were working on looked better restored from a colour POV so it was being done right. But did take a pix, no flash.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  73. I meant to write: I cannot comprehend University police working without body cameras in this climate

    steveg (ebe7c1)

  74. @70, That personalizes it in a way I can’t really describe.

    Depends on your POV; by the time we got to the LS we’d been dragged through so many goddamned churches, chapels and cathedrals across Europe they all began to look alike. Still nothing topped Notre Dame and Stonehenge– you could still walk through Stonehenge then as well; security was minimal back in the 60s an 70s at many places. In the Louvre, you could still touch many of the marble Michelengelos and they had the Mona Lisa on a wall in a room under a low light with one velvet rope line in front of it, one guard and a small barrel barometer on a table next to it. No pix- you had yo buy a slide. Sad so many places are bloced off now or under bulletproof shields as the acts of vandalism and terror rose in the 70s and 80s.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  75. @69. B/w is a wonderful medium to work with. You pix are digital of course– back in the more tactile darkroom and film days you could really work an image.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  76. The dashcams do show the momentum of the man who got shot.
    He was hit by 4 shots, at least one was fatal and he still maintained a fairly fast forward momentum.
    But the officers are fortunate that his momentum carried him into the frame. If he would have dropped and died 10 feet further back this might have left enough room to blame the officers

    steveg (ebe7c1) — 5/15/2021 @ 3:20 pm

    I agree they are fortunate as much as captured as is. My opinion on your original question is to go ahead and decline to settle unless it’s apparent wrong was actually done. I don’t really think this is going to stem the litigation. To folks who are on the other side if this, it’s hard to accept, even with all the facts showing what that situation shows. There will only be more force, more non-compliance, more anger, as we tear the country down day by day (sorry if I sound like a downer).

    Dustin (4237e0)

  77. 61. If there were no technological problems with colorizing movies, should it be done?

    No. Especially if wasn’t the intent of the filmmaker

    No argument if that was the intent, but what about movies where color wasn’t even considered due to cost?

    I would posit that the vast majority of the movies up until the late 50s were not black and white because it was the filmmakers intent they be that way, but because color was too expensive.

    I’ve watched many, many films on TCM the last six months. I think I would have enjoyed them more if they had been in color.

    norcal (01e272)

  78. DCSCA wrote:

    @70, That personalizes it in a way I can’t really describe.

    Depends on your POV; by the time we got to the LS we’d been dragged through so many goddamned churches, chapels and cathedrals across Europe they all began to look alike. Still nothing topped Notre Dame and Stonehenge– you could still walk through Stonehenge then as well; security was minimal back in the 60s an 70s at many places. In the Louvre, you could still touch many of the marble Michelengelos and they had the Mona Lisa on a wall in a room under a low light with one velvet rope line in front of it, one guard and a small barrel barometer on a table next to it. No pix- you had yo buy a slide. Sad so many places are bloced off now or under bulletproof shields as the acts of vandalism and terror rose in the 70s and 80s.

    I have pictures of armed guards by the Arch of Constantine.

    It’s underappreciated, but the most beautiful church in Italy is the Chiesa di San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. Doesn’t look like all that much of a much on the outside, but the inside is spectacular.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  79. Faulconer is being ignored because he doesn’t have the name ID of either Jenner or Cox.

    Yet he is the only recall candidate who can win. The press is doing its level best to convince voters it’s a silly exercise being run by crazy people. The L.A> Times has stopped talking about the recall, but has 4 stories today about Governor Newsom’s bag o’ billions.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  80. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”

    Wait, I thought that command-directed inquiries made it had for people to get a fair shake, since the investigators might not want to run afoul of the boss.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  81. [If] Casablanca had been shot in color at the time,

    It would not be the movie it is.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  82. 1. The discovery of life on Mars baffling religious zealots on Earth;

    Frankly, it would make me more certain of God. Life from nothing is a miracle beyond compare. Even harder on Mars. However, I doubt there IS life on Mars. It takes a lot more than just some water.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  83. Yet he is the only recall candidate who can win.

    Well, that’s only true if you’re talking about the recall candidate field, not the issue of whether Newsom will be Governor.

    There are 2 issues on the ballot, tangentially connected:
    1. Voting to recall Newsom, which has a zero percent chance of passing.
    2. If #1 ended up with a result that a majority voting for a recall, again no chance, then the second issue is relevant, where the vote amongst a sea of loons would matter…but it won’t, so it doesn’t.

    So, the only candidate that will win is Newsom, that’s just the reality in California. In a few years a normal election will occur, and some other democrat will take over for Newsom. That Newsom is bribing the public is obvious and that’s just going up his numbers above the 60% level. Support for the recall is currently at 36%, the highest since polling started. It’s just not going to happen.

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0)

  84. Birthrates in Xinjiang fell by almost half in the two years after the Chinese government implemented policies to reduce the number of babies born to Uyghur and other Muslim minority families, new research has claimed…

    It’s also falling in other parts of China, where the government doesn’t want it to. They have not released the result of their Census.

    INCREASING TYRANNY DEPRESSES THE BIRTH RATE

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  85. Trump’s “dawn of a new Middle East” looks pretty much like the old Middle East. Of course, Trump was never interested in dealing the Palestinian issue, given the number of failures in the past. The Abraham Accords were photo ops giving the illusion of progress, since the agreements were with non-frontline Arab states with limited influence.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  86. Biden revokes Trump order to punish statue vandals

    Mr Trump issued the order amid last year’s social justice protests as statues were being defaced or toppled.

    Mr Biden also rescinded Mr Trump’s plans for a sculpture garden to honour American heroes.

    And he canned a 2019 proclamation that sought to bar entry to immigrants who could not afford health insurance.
    ………
    On Friday, Mr Biden also scrapped his predecessor’s orders taking aim at social media “censorship” and for all US foreign aid to be branded with a logo reflecting “the values and generosity of the American people”.
    >>>>>>>>>

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  87. Maricopa County has a strong response to the Cyber Ninja “audit”.

    Paul Montagu (26e0d1)

  88. 80 Wait, I thought that command-directed inquiries made it had for people to get a fair shake, since the investigators might not want to run afoul of the boss.

    Having seen my share of these type of things, basically, it’s a post hoc rubber stamp for the IG to tell the Chief of Staff, “Yeah, the termination was justified.” But they have to go through the process just to ensure that it wasn’t for retaliatory purposes of any kind.

    He’s already been removed from command and his career is dead. When these things happen to a unit commander, it’s ultimately a question of whether they’re going to stick him in a hole in the Pentagon to ride out the string, or discharge him entirely.

    Factory Working Orphan (f916e7)

  89. @78.Was clearing some family slides taken at Buckingham Palace and Windsor and it astonishes me how lax the security was at the time compared to now– gates wide open, police at ease, sure- the ‘Redcoats’ were on guard but it was chiefly ceremonial. An almost ‘welcoming’ atmosphere. It’s rather sad to how that has evaporated.

    @82. Expect it to be there; or remains there of. Spawned by comet ice. “Zone of life” – follow the water. Bill Anders said it best; were not as important as we make ourselves out to be on this ‘dinky little planet.’

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  90. @77. No argument if that was the intent, but what about movies where color wasn’t even considered due to cost?

    It would have been lit differently for color- certainly couldn’t use chocolate syrup as blood for a color reel. Look at the Wizard of Oz and compare the lighting from the first half into the technicolor part. Props and people reflect the light differently in b/w vs color – certainly the earlier color. Colorizing a finished b/w film is more complicated than it seems. Welles opposed an effort to colorize Citizen Kane because he intended it to be filmed in b/w and shownas such.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  91. INCREASING TYRANNY DEPRESSES THE BIRTH RATE

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c) — 5/15/2021 @ 7:11 pm

    This is often true, but not in the Mao era. He was as tyrannical as they come. He encouraged Chinese to have many children, and they obliged him. Mao thought more people would make China more successful. The one child policy was a corrective reaction to Mao’s stupid policy.

    norcal (01e272)

  92. There are 2 issues on the ballot, tangentially connected

    Yes, obviously. I lived there for 65 years. But Newsom is not a “recall candidate”, so my statement stands.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  93. So, the only candidate that will win is Newsom, that’s just the reality in California.

    No, Newsom is not a candidate. What you mean to say is that the recall will fail, and given the way the media is portraying it: Crazy Kardashians and/or crazy Trumpies versus the Horn of Plenty you are probably correct. My statement about them totally ignoring the only credible alternative is an acknowlegement of that (and damn their eyes).

    The fix is in. Newsom is disliked by many Democrats and a moderate Republican WOULD have a chance if the media wasn’t such lying sacks of spit.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  94. When these things happen to a unit commander, it’s ultimately a question of whether they’re going to stick him in a hole in the Pentagon to ride out the string, or discharge him entirely.

    Didn’t happen that way to the commander of the Covid-boat. But then that was judged to be a political hatchet job, and Democrat administrations never do that.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  95. Every time Bibi fires off one of those “Israeli” Iron Dome missiles, they hear ‘ka-ching’ at Raytheon, USA.

    You would rather the ka-ching was in China? Why do you hate the USA so?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  96. @95. ROFLMAOPIP Ahhhh yes;yes, indeed… – W.C. “Bibi”

    US weapons ‘full of fake Chinese parts’
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/...

    Thousands of United States’ warplanes, ships and missiles contain fake electronic components from China, leaving them open to malfunction, according to a US Senate committee.

    ‘War Is Business & Business Is Good’

    https://tbunews.com/war-is-business-business-is-good

    Trump says US ‘foolishly spent $7 trillion in the Middle East …

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-says-us-foolishly...

    “Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.” – Larson E. Whipsnade [W.C. Fields]

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  97. The World Trade Center on 9/11 housed a CIA intelligence operation.

    And had that CIA office been directing thousands of missiles be fired at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, and had bin Laden given advance warning sufficient to evacuate the twin towers before the planes hit, I’d have been a lot more sympathetic to his position.

    And that’s on top of the Israelis not wanting the Palestinians to ever own anything more permanent than tents and cardboard boxes.

    Sadly I suspect that may describe Bibi’s view. On the other hand, since 1947 there have three serious offers of mutual sovereignty, all by Israel, all rejected out of hand by the Palestinians without so much as a counter-offer.

    lurker (59504c)

  98. Cool story (possibly pay-walled) about Dick Van Dyke, still going strong at age 95 (with a wife half his age…), and about to receive a Kennedy Center honor:

    “He makes people happy,” says Chita Rivera, a friend since they co-starred on Broadway in “Bye Bye Birdie” in 1960. “His job in this life is to make a happier world.”

    “He sets off endorphins,” says comedian Jim Carrey, who started watching Van Dyke as a boy in Canada and has incorporated some of his physical bits into his work. “If you can live a life and your name sets off endorphins, and people feel generally better when they hear your name than they did before they hear your name, that’s amazing.”

    There was no plan. There was no backup plan. There was only a poor kid from Illinois who never took a dance lesson, dropped out of high school and, after a decade of bouncing between radio and television gigs, had the good fortune of being handed scripts that were so sharp a club sandwich could have delivered the punchlines. Except that last part is a lie. Words on a page don’t come to life on their own. [Carl] Reiner called Van Dyke the “most gifted performer I ever worked with” for a reason. The star could play a suburban husband, a frazzled employee or a gregarious party host without changing his tie. He had elastic limbs, perfect timing and the looks of a leading man.

    “There’s a little Laurel, of Laurel and Hardy, in him. A little Cary Grant in him. A little Astaire,” says Norman Lear, the “All in the Family” creator. “I can’t think of another Dick Van Dyke.”

    Dave (1542be)

  99. Jan. 6 attack

    An unarmed insurrection against the country with the most powerful military in the history of mankind?

    If only it was that easy there would never be dictators.

    BillPasadena (5b0401)

  100. Newsom is disliked by many Democrats…….

    The polling sure doesn’t show that, nor do party registrations. And I haven’t seen any Faulconer commercials yet. Newsom’s polling isn’t underwater like Gray Davis’s was, and Democratic Party registrations far outnumber Republicans.

    Outside of a major scandal (a la Cuomo) I don’t see the recall gaining any traction. Newsom is lucky the recall qualified with the pandemic in remission, a large budget surplus (which must be returned to taxpayers after a certain proportion is set aside to schools and a budget reserve), and federal largesse.

    Under normal circumstances a “moderate Republican” can’t win in California because of the jungle primary and the fact the California Republican Party is as hardcore as any state party today. So while this is Faulconer‘s best chance, I don’t see it happening.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  101. Also, if Newsom is so disliked, why hasn’t a major Democratic candidate emerged to oppose him?

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  102. An unarmed insurrection against the country with the most powerful military in the history of mankind?

    If only it was that easy there would never be dictators.

    They obviously expected they could intimidate lawmakers into letting Trump stay in power. Many were talking about executing legislators in public. It’s possible they might have hanged Mike Pence on the gallows outside if he (and the other targets of Trumpite wrath) hadn’t been whisked away to safety.

    Republicans (with reason) fume about the way that leftists use riots to intimidate government and business into doing what they want. Some Trumpites have vowed to “fight back” with the left’s own tactics. But when they did try violence to overturn an election, the highbrow Trumpites started saying it was absurd to think that some “unarmed” “patriots” (who injured 138 cops with metal poles, fence stakes, baseball bats, their own tasers, etc.) were doing anything more than exercising their First Amendment rights. (And that the riot couldn’t possibly have increased the GOP servility to Trump.)

    A disproportionate number of the rioters had police or military training. An active-duty Marine was recently charged. Trump and his minions had previously boasted that they had the police and the military and the people with guns on their side. “Civil war” was trending on Parler right after Trump told his supporters “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.” (Which is also when the mass movement of people from the Ellipse to the Capitol began.)

    We heard Trump say that the military would follow his orders regardless of legality. We know that shortly after the election he removed several senior DOD officials and replaced them with loyalists. We know that he tried to pressure civilian officials into turning the election his way — and that the GOP at various levels has punished people who didn’t go along. We don’t know what Trump might have done in an effort to dragoon the military into doing his will, but we know that Liz Cheney was so worried about what she was seeing that she orchestrated the statement signed by numerous military officers assuring the country that they would not interfere with an election.

    When Trumpites dismiss 1/6 as a mere tragicomedy in which some buffoons got a bit carried away, I have to doubt their good faith.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  103. Gaetz equates sex trafficking investigation with earmarks in Ohio speech

    Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican (Insurrectionist) mired in controversy, told a crowd of Republican activists Saturday that sexual misconduct allegations involving him are as benign as legislative earmarks.

    “I’m being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors,” Gaetz said at the Ohio Political Summit, a gathering sponsored by the Strongsville GOP in suburban Cleveland. “Yet, Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors, through earmarks, and everybody knows that that’s the corruption.”
    ………
    An audience of at least 400 in person and others online turned out for the event, billed as a major forum ahead of the 2022 midterm election. A dozen or so guests trickled out after hearing from conservative commentator Candace Owens, who spoke before Gaetz, who delivered the final speech of the afternoon. But Gaetz received a standing ovation from those who stayed, and a dozen or so others lingered afterward for autographs and selfies.

    Several Republican candidates for governor and U.S. House and Senate, had planned to address the crowd but backed out in recent days. Representatives from their campaigns declined to say why on the record, but all of them had committed before Gaetz was added to the program. Another scheduled keynote speaker, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. (Insurrectionist) didn’t show.
    ……….
    ………. Strongsville is the center of Ohio’s 16th congressional district, represented by Anthony Gonzalez, one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. The Ohio Republican Party, nudged along by the Strongsville GOP, has called on Gonzalez to resign. Here, many people believe the lie that the last election was stolen. (“Trump Won,” read a bumper sticker in the parking lot.)
    ………..
    “Ending child exploitation remains one of my top policy initiatives in Congress,” Gonzalez, alluding to the controversy surrounding Gaetz, tweeted during the event. “Anyone engaged in these heinous acts needs to be held accountable and taken off the streets.”
    >>>>>>>>>>

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  104. Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0) — 5/15/2021 @ 6:51 pm

    There are 2 issues on the ballot, tangentially connected:

    1. Voting to recall Newsom, which has a zero percent chance of passing.

    Near zero, not zero, especially this far out. Say less than 5%

    2. If #1 ended up with a result that a majority voting for a recall, again no chance, then the second issue is relevant, where the vote amongst a sea of loons would matter…but it won’t, so it doesn’t.

    So, the only candidate that will win is Newsom, that’s just the reality in California.

    They’re not taking any chances. No Democrats are running in the replacement election – no well known Democrats at any rate.

    Because if somebody whom people wanted to be Governor ran, people might be tempted to vote to recall the Governor.

    In a few years a normal election will occur,

    No, the next year.

    The recall election in November, and the primary in June and general election/runoff in November.

    and some other democrat will take over for Newsom.

    He’s not term limited. He ws elected the first time in 2018.

    That Newsom is bribing the public is obvious and that’s just going up his numbers above the 60% level. Support for the recall is currently at 36%, the highest since polling started. It’s just not going to happen.

    It doesn’t look that way.

    But a first past the post single election is the only way for certain people to win.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  105. ‘You left us’: Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean slams Trump in expletive-laden message
    ……..
    “We are now and always have been on our own. So glad he was able to pardon a bunch of degenerates as his last move and s— on us on the way out,” Nordean said in an expletive-laden message about the former president. “F— you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone.”
    ……..
    Prosecutors say Nordean, along with other Proud Boys members, planned to push through police barricades and force themselves inside the building that day. Nordean, the self-described “sergeant-at-arms” of the Proud Boys’ Seattle chapter is facing several charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting.

    In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors detailed communications sent through the instant messaging app Telegram that they say show additional evidence that Nordean and other Proud Boys members conspired to breach the Capitol. Prosecutors included the anti-Trump diatribe in which Nordean seemed to acknowledged he and others are facing criminal charges because they followed Trump’s lead.

    “I’ve followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all. Yes he woke us up, but he led us to believe some great justice was upon us…and it never happened,” Nordean wrote on Jan. 20, after Proud Boys members were charged, “now I’ve got some of my good friends and myself facing jail time cuz we followed this guys lead and never questioned it.”
    ………

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  106. https://nypost.com/2021/05/15/professor-allegedly-fired-for-reading-racial-slur-from-mark-twain-book/

    Read Mark Twain’s freedom loving writings to your students to get them to think is an offense worthy of firing according to those indoctrinated by CRT. Our indoctrination systems must be rebuilt from the ground up.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  107. https://www.theepochtimes.com/company-defies-michigan-governors-order-to-shut-down-oil-pipeline_3813898.html

    Leftist politicians trying to create an economic and energy crisis.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  108. https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/rebekah-jones-the-covid-whistleblower-who-wasnt/

    Propaganda that was pushed by the left and the MSM to try and destroy Governor DeSantis. Some here even pushed this BS.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  109. https://reason.com/2021/05/12/did-covid-19-leak-from-a-wuhan-lab/#comments

    People finally asking the obvious questions and beginning to do the research into possible causes. Doubt we’ll ever get the truth.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  110. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/05/crt-little-league-style.php

    More CRT indoctrination even in our children’s sports.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  111. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/05/15/the-fbi-finally-admitted-what-we-all-knew-about-the-2017-attack-on-the-gop-congre-n2589500

    How did the FBI ever claim that a premeditated attack on Republican congressmen would be classified as “suicide by cop?” Is this how they claim that the majority of attacks are done from radicals on the right?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  112. https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2021/05/14/arizona-attorney-general-to-biden-fire-kamala-as-border-czar-now-n389993

    Our border states are in a constant state of invasion, but the federal government continues to ignore the issue with full support from the pravda media.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  113. Radegunda (aea52f) — 5/16/2021 @ 10:32 am

    They obviously expected they could intimidate lawmakers into letting Trump stay in power.

    Trump was thinking the rally would intmidate the Republicans (but he needed more than all Republicans!) TO CERTIFY that he won, mzaybe if Mike Pence reversed the default – and remember Mike Pence didn’t tell Trump no until the latest possible moment. H was also counting on a delay, which could be done by making multiple objections, which would give Giuliani and company enough time tp get some states to replace their electors. Never mind that this strategy has got errors of both fact and law. Trump was not counting on violence – he didn;t need violence to get the Republican conference to depose Liz Cheney. A big difference is deposing Liz Cheney didn’t violate their oath of office.

    The planners of the raid were trying to force Congress to recess – which wouldn’t give Trump another term. I think the true purpose was probably to get Trump to reverse his decision not to declare martial law.

    Many were talking about executing legislators in public.

    And Mike Pence.

    It’s possible they might have hanged Mike Pence on the gallows outside if he (and the other targets of Trumpite wrath) hadn’t been whisked away to safety.

    I think Mike Pence would actually have had to step outside and gone near the gallows.

    Mike Pence was not whisked away. It was considered too dangerous by the Secret Service for him to leave the Capitol grounds. Someone hostile might be at the exit to the tunnel. Besides, he had a job to do. But his family didn’t leave either.

    some “unarmed” “patriots”

    We have to ponder why in fact, none of them were armed with firearms, even though many of them had firearms training and owned guns.

    To avoid getting killed? To avoid being sent tp jail for a long time? It’s an argument that this was, in a way, kabuki theater – they were looking to disrupt the proceedings and/or to get Trump to declare martial law.

    A disproportionate number of the rioters had police or military training. An active-duty Marine was recently charged. Trump and his minions had previously boasted that they had the police and the military and the people with guns on their side. “Civil war” was trending on Parler right after Trump told his supporters “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength.”

    He was talking about political weakness or strength = stubbornness.

    (Which is also when the mass movement of people from the Ellipse to the Capitol began.)

    Those are basically not the people who stormed the Capitol. Thise people went directly to the Capitol.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  114. We heard Trump say that the military would follow his orders regardless of legality.

    ???

    When did we hear that? I think Trump was convinced quite the opposite.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  115. Liz Cheney: punch line.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/weekend-update-liz-cheney-on-the-republican-party-snl/vi-BB1gMxSw

    ‘How sweet it is!’ – Jackie Gleason

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  116. We know that shortly after the election he removed several senior DOD officials and replaced them with loyalists.

    More likely, for the purpose of getting his orders to withdraw from Afghanistan not sabotaged. These were all civilian positions.

    We know that he tried to pressure civilian officials into turning the election his way

    Yes he did,and failed in every case just about. I think some Michigan officials tried to reverse their certification. The question is would such an attempt, if tried, completely fail in 2024?

    and that the GOP at various levels has punished people who didn’t go along.

    Some have tried to. They are not in a position to punish them.

    In Georgia, the state legislature passed a law removing some power from the Secretary of Sate and oresumably they don;t want him re-elected next year. In some other states laws have been passed or proposed, putting strong legal penalties on election officials for violating some sate election rules.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/us/politics/republican-voting-bills-poll-workers.html

    …Republican lawmakers in Texas, following in the footsteps of their counterparts across the country, are pressing forward with a voting bill that could impose harsh penalties on election officials or poll workers who are thought to have committed errors or violations….

    …More than two dozen bills in nine states, either still making their way through legislatures or signed into law, have sought to establish a rash of harsh new penalties, elevated criminal classifications and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who are found to have made mistakes, errors, oversteps and other violations of election code, according to a review of voting legislation by The New York Times.

    The infractions that could draw more severe punishment run the gamut from seemingly minor lapses in attention or innocent mistakes to more clearly willful actions in defiance of regulations. In Texas, taking any action that “would make observation not reasonably effective” for a poll watcher would carry new penalties. In Florida, failing to have an election worker continuously supervise a drop box would result in major fines. Willfully flouting new laws, like ones in states including Iowa and Texas that ban sending absentee ballots to voters who have not requested them, would also lead to tougher penalties….

    ….
    With the threat of felonies, jail time and fines as large as $25,000 hanging over their heads, election officials, as well as voting rights groups, are growing increasingly worried that the new penalties will not only limit the work of election administrators but also have a chilling effect on their willingness to do the job.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  117. 116. Saturday Night life is limiting itself to safe subjects, like the vaccine rules, or Liz Cheney being unpopular in the Republican Party. They hinted they wanted to make what would surely have been an anti-Israel joke.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  118. We don’t know what Trump might have done in an effort to dragoon the military into doing his will, but we know that Liz Cheney was so worried about what she was seeing that she orchestrated the statement signed by numerous military officers assuring the country that they would not interfere with an election.

    It wasn’t military officials, it was an Op-ed published in the Washington Post by 10 former United States Secretaries of Defense and Liz Cheney may not have been the person who organized it.

    I think some vague statement also came from high military officials.

    There was the same worry on the part of Kissinger and Schlesinger when Nixon neared impeachment.

    When Trumpites dismiss 1/6 as a mere tragicomedy in which some buffoons got a bit carried away, I have to doubt their good faith. We heard Trump say that the military would follow his orders regardless of legality.

    When did we hear that? I think Trump was convinced quite the opposite.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  119. When Trumpites dismiss 1/6 as a mere tragicomedy in which some buffoons got a bit carried away, I have to doubt their good faith.

    It was a tragicomedy but it wasn’t that some people carried away.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  120. Biden administration funded the missiles hitting Israel.

    Also, Biden administration (and all others for 70 years) are funding the missiles hitting the West Bank.

    One is more direct though, guess which?

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0)

  121. Under normal circumstances a “moderate Republican” can’t win in California because of the jungle primary and the fact the California Republican Party is as hardcore as any state party today. So while this is Faulconer‘s best chance, I don’t see it happening.

    You cannot call the Trump era “normal circumstances”, nor can you use the electoral history of people like Cox to judge how moderates would fare. CA’s electorate is not monolithic, although its press and TV are, even in many “red” areas.

    Schwarzenegger won re-election in 2006 by 18%. Whitman was doing OK until some last minute smears, and trouble with the hard right. She lost by a much as Arnold won by. After that the GOP candidates were subjected to a press blackout and/or press attacks (as we see today) and they never stood a chance.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  122. How Palm Beach is preparing for a possible Trump indictment

    Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., have actively prepared for the possibility that Manhattan District Attorney CY VANCE could indict former President DONALD TRUMP while he’s at Mar-a-Lago, according to two high-ranking county officials involved in planning sessions.
    ……….
    An obscure clause in Florida’s statute on interstate extradition gives Gov. RON DESANTIS the ability to intervene and even investigate whether an indicted “person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement officials from another state — which means that as Mar-a-Lago prepares to close down for the season and Trump relocates to Bedminster, N.J., it isn’t just the Florida heat he’s leaving behind: He could lose a key piece of political protection.

    “The statute leaves room for interpretation that the governor has the power to order a review and potentially not comply with the extradition notice,” says JOE ABRUZZO, clerk of the Circuit Court of Palm Beach County, the official who would be in charge of opening a potential fugitive-at-large case.

    One wrinkle to Abruzzo’s potential role in all of this: He is a former close associate of President JOE BIDEN’S younger brother, FRANK. Abruzzo tells Playbook that despite his friendship with the Biden family, “the full extent of the law will be followed and carried out appropriately, without bias.”

    If an indictment comes down while Trump is in Bedminster for the summer, this could all play out very differently. New Jersey’s extradition statute is similar to Florida’s, giving the governor the power to investigate an out-of-state warrant. But its governor is Democrat PHIL MURPHY, who is no fan of Trump’s, and would not likely intervene to stop Trump’s extradition. In the event of an indictment, Trump’s lawyers could also negotiate a condition of surrender, which could cut local law enforcement out. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  123. Newsom has some issues that would be terrible scandals for a Republican, such as “behested donations” to charity, where he basically lists charities that his supporters ought to donate to.

    The $1-million donation came as the COVID-19 crisis was unfolding, a charitable gift given on behalf of Gov. Gavin Newsom last year. But unlike with other so-called behested payments, philanthropic contributions made at the request of an elected official, the source of the donation was concealed in public disclosures required under a state law meant to ensure transparency and limit undue influence in government.

    The seven-figure gift was made from a donor-advised fund, a type of charitable giving account offered by some nonprofit foundations and for-profit investment firms that provides more generous income tax deductions and anonymity. The practice of routing behested payments through such accounts is little known, even to the most seasoned political insiders, but it is raising concerns with government watchdogs who say it allows unidentified donors to avoid scrutiny when making charitable contributions on behalf of politicians with whom they may be trying to curry favor.

    Under California law, when an elected official or someone acting on their behalf asks that a donation of $5,000 or more in cash or services be directed to a nonprofit or government agency, that contribution is considered a behested payment and must be reported to the FPPC. There is no limit on how much can be donated by organizations or individuals at the behest of an elected official, another aspect of the practice that has drawn criticism from open government groups.

    Newsom is getting donations that skirt this law.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  124. We heard Trump say that the military would follow his orders regardless of legality.

    ???

    When did we hear that? I think Trump was convinced quite the opposite.

    Right here:

    Donald Trump says he would have no problem getting the United States military to execute his orders, even ones that might be illegal under international law.

    “If I say do it, they’re gonna do it,” Trump said. “That’s what leadership is all about.”

    Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden said last Friday that if a President Trump were to order the killing of terrorists’ families, as he has said he would do, the military would be obliged to disobey.

    Asked what he would do if the military disobeyed, Trump seemed to think that would not be an issue.

    “They’re not gonna refuse me. Believe me,” Trump said,

    Haven’t you noticed that Trump sees his will as the highest standard of right and wrong? Didn’t you hear him say that Article II permits him to do “whatever I want as President.” Or that ‘When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total‘”

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  125. Biden revokes Trump order to punish statue vandals

    Rip, do you think that vandals should go unpunished?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  126. And that’s on top of the Israelis not wanting the Palestinians to ever own anything more permanent than tents and cardboard boxes.

    That’s not true.

    The building did house building a Hmmas office, the home of a top Hamas official, and also al Jazeera TV, but in the past Israel has destroyed just one floor in a building or just an apartment.

    It also held the offices of the Associated Press I think, Reuters. which suspects it might have been a target.

    As in all such cases, Israel, which has hacked into the telephone system of Gaza for along time, gave (an hour) notice by telephone, and the first missile was a “tap on the roof” – a strike designed not to harm, that looks a little like a first approximation, that is designed to get people to evacuate immediately.

    On some TV news shows they just showed the building collapsing as if that would have killed everyone in it.

    Israel also destroyed some place that Hamas people were meeting, but that also killed civilians.

    The press is also complaining that they were misled that Israel was going to invade. That appears to have been done to separate the Hamas military from their civilian population. Many of them went into tunnels, hoping to kill or capture one or more Israeli soldiers coming in, and others set up positions near the border. That enabled Israel to shell and bomb them without killing civilians.

    Israel has reportedly turned down an Egyptian proposal of a one year truce, said to have been accepted by Hamas. That would be because of reasons like 1) they don’t trust them 2) they’re not finished degrading Hamas’ capabilities or whatever is their goal or 3) they don’t want Iran to have the atom bomb the next time this breaks out.

    Major media are trying to find ways this broke out by accident, and/or as a culmination of a series of escalations. The fact ism this is all the fault of Hamas. Perhaps their purpose was to ensure that Netanyahu doesn’t lose his job, which Hamas and Iran might have been worried about.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9) — 5/15/2021 @ 1:34 pm

    Gaza is like North Philadelphia, a fetid and festering sewer, where the gang bangers run things, and the ‘civilians’ refuse to help the police.

    No, the gangbangers are the police.

    You cannot coexist with cockroaches.

    With cockroaches, yes. Cockroaches don’t bite or bring disease, but the problem is they get into the food, and can also stain things.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  127. Liz Cheney: punch line.

    SNL hasn’t been funny for a while.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  128. Teacher abuses vaccinated student.

    What are the school’s rules? Believe it or not, when government drops a rule that does not impose a new one.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  129. 123.

    Donald Trump says he would have no problem getting the United States military to execute his orders, even ones that might be illegal under international law.

    Not the same ting as something that violated U.S. law or the constitution.

    Trump said that on or right before March 3, 2016 and he was clearly talking about things like possible torture or killing the families of terrorists.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  130. Also, Biden administration (and all others for 70 years) are funding the missiles hitting the West Bank.

    One is more direct though, guess which?

    Colonel Klink (Ret) (1367c0) — 5/16/2021 @ 11:34 am

    Are you equating Israel and a terrorist organization such as Hamas?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  131. What are the school’s rules? Believe it or not, when government drops a rule that does not impose a new one.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/16/2021 @ 12:07 pm

    Pretty sure abusing a student is against the school’s rules. But the indoctrination runs deep so you never know.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  132. 9. Nic (896fdf) — 5/15/2021 @ 12:47 am

    in 95% of the cases, if a student is home sick, they are out for 10 days and the parents don’t get them tested.

    The test is probably unpleasant, inconvenient, and might lead to restrictions on the parent(s)

    The tests also probably do not distinguish between asymptomatic, mild, serious or severe cases, but a positive is a positive and all are treated identically.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  133. Trump was thinking the rally would intmidate the Republicans (but he needed more than all Republicans!) TO CERTIFY that he won, mzaybe if Mike Pence reversed the default

    “Intimidate” is the key word. Do you think it’s no big deal for the president to summon an angry mob to intimidate legislators into keeping him in power?

    We have to ponder why in fact, none of them were armed with firearms, even though many of them had firearms training and owned guns.

    We know that some were warning others that carrying firearms might be counterproductive (this time)–it being illegal in DC. And we might consider the likelihood that they expected sheer numbers, plus the other weapons some of them brought — and their willingness to fight their way through a police line — to be sufficiently intimidating to unarmed legislators. Michael Fanone said he wondered if he should try to use his firearm while he was being attacked by Trumpers, but he calculated that it would increase the likelihood that the mob, even more enraged, would kill him any way they could — since they had the numbers.

    He was talking about political weakness or strength = stubbornness.

    What makes you certain that’s what he really meant when he said “fight like hell”? What kind of purely “political strength” could have been applied at that point in time, when the votes had been cast and protests raised and court cases heard, and when it was well known that Trumpers didn’t like the result?

    If he didn’t want the mob to be violent, why did he dither so long in sending reinforcements to the police? Why did he not call his mob off until things were winding down anyway (since the mob’s targets had been evacuated)? Why did he praise the mob afterward? Has he ever spoken a word of disapproval of the violence?

    Those are basically not the people who stormed the Capitol. Thise people went directly to the Capitol.

    How do you know? Are you trying to argue that Trump did nothing to incite the mob?
    Trumpite intellectuals have used timelines and distance — and reflexively repeated Trump’s throwaway reference to being “peaceful” — in an effort to disprove that Trump’s words could have had any part in inciting violence. But Trump summoned the mob there in the first place for a “wild” protest. Social media records demonstrate that Trumpers took him to mean they should “make it wild.” Parler records also show that certain statements by Trump early in his hour+ speech were followed immediately by Trumpers saying it was time to storm the Capitol, and cellphone data show that people were in fact going from the Ellipse to the Capitol long before his speech was finished. (And many were no doubt listening to the rest of his speech on their phones.)

    As for those who supposedly went directly to the Capitol and not the Ellipse: Why were they there? Who had been telling them every day that a terrible crime was being committed against them and it had to be stopped?

    The efforts to absolve Trump of responsibility for the riot fall apart under the weight of facts and logic.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  134. You cannot call the Trump era “normal circumstances”, nor can you use the electoral history of people like Cox to judge how moderates would fare. CA’s electorate is not monolithic, although its press and TV are, even in many “red” areas.

    When I said “normal circumstances” I meant pre-Trump. The California electorate is even more monolithic now than in the past. As of February 2021, the Democratic/Republican/Decline to State registrations are 46/24/24. In the 2005 recall election, the breakdown was 42/35/18. Source. Republicans have never been more than 39% of the electorate for the past twenty years.

    The California Republican Party is more interested in ideological consistency than winning elections. Schwarzenegger had 100% name ID and celebrity status but was not an ideological Republican. In a jungle election with a very unpopular governor, it was easy for him to dominate, especially given the dislike of traditional politicians at the time.

    Faulconer (or any “moderate”) couldn’t win the endorsement of the CRP today or yesterday. They would be run out of the convention. It’s not the media, it’s the message.

    Rip Murdock (663335)

  135. 31. The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9) — 5/15/2021 @ 9:29 am

    It’s been unseasonably cool in the Bluegrass State — I want my global warming back! — for a month now

    Here too, but I;m all right with the lower temperatures.

    I guess it’s due to China burning more coal, which puts more soot into the atmosphere, thus cooling the planet..

    https://www.reuters.com/article/china-coal/chinas-coal-consumption-seen-rising-in-2021-imports-steady-idUSL3N2L12A9

    BEIJING, March 3 (Reuters) – China’s coal consumption is expected to continue rising in 2021 despite Beijing’s pledges to boost the use of clean energy and curb greenhouse gas emissions, the China National Coal Association said on Wednesday.

    China, the world’s biggest coal consumer, saw overall consumption of the fossil fuel increase by 0.6% in 2020 from a year earlier to around 4.04 billion tonnes, according to Reuters’ calculations based on official data

    It’s reducing coal consumption that raises temperatures. It could take 20 years of decreases to get a net decrease.

    That’s why there were record temperatures in the 1930s.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  136. @Sammy@135 Yep, it can be all of those things. However, because they aren’t getting their kids tested, our numbers for kids and covid are likely to be inaccurate.

    Nic (896fdf)

  137. NJRobb – Assuming the NJ stands for New Jersey, can you tell us anything about why the death toll from the pandemic is so high in New Jersey? (Almost 3,000 per million)

    Did Governor Murphy botch the state’s response? Did many people there refuse to follow the Golden Rule, and protect each other? Is there anything in the geographical pattern of deaths within the state that would give us a hint?

    (For the record: If you look at state data at, for instance, the Worldometers site, you can find a state to illustrate almost every political argument. And a fair amount of evidence that how bad the pandemic has been in a state is partly due to factors beyond the control of elected officials.

    One pattern is obvious: The denser the state, the worse the death toll. And the more connected to the outside world, the worse, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. That Oregon has so far done better than Washington (my home) may have more to do with the fact that Washington’s biggest airport, SeaTac, has 5 times as much traffic as Portland International, than with anything the two governors did.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  138. Radegunda (aea52f) — 5/16/2021 @ 12:31 pm

    “Intimidate” is the key word. Do you think it’s no big deal for the president to summon an angry mob to intimidate legislators into keeping him in power?

    Trump was hoping to intimidate them politically and greatly exaggerated the numbers who were there (or maybe he just can’t count)

    We have to ponder why in fact, none of them were armed with firearms, even though many of them had firearms training and owned guns.

    We know that some were warning others that carrying firearms might be counterproductive (this time)–it being illegal in DC.

    That means that they didn’t expect to overthrow the government.

    He was talking about political weakness or strength = stubbornness.

    What makes you certain that’s what he really meant when he said “fight like hell”?

    https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6

    And again, most people would stand there at 9:00 in the evening and say, “I want to thank you very much,” and they go off to some other life, but I said, “Something’s wrong here. Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened.” And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

    He was speaking about himself.

    What kind of purely “political strength” could have been applied at that point in time, when the votes had been cast and protests raised and court cases heard, and when it was well known that Trumpers didn’t like the result?

    Trump was treating this like an open question.

    If he didn’t want the mob to be violent, why did he dither so long in sending reinforcements to the police? Why did he not call his mob off until things were winding down anyway (since the mob’s targets had been evacuated)? Why did he praise the mob afterward? Has he ever spoken a word of disapproval of the violence? He never actually sent anything at all. It was lower officials who did. I don’t think he expected a mob to go in because he planned to speak at the Capitol rally, which did take place but it was mostly anti-vaxxers who spoke. He praised the mob quite obviously, in order to get them to leave.

    Those are basically not the people who stormed the Capitol. These people went directly to the Capitol.

    How do you know?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/us/capitol-riot-funding.html

    Keith Lee, an Air Force veteran and former police detective, spent the morning of Jan. 6 casing the entrances to the Capitol….By noon, he was reporting that “backup” was already arriving, bypassing the Trump speech and rally. The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were among the groups that went directly to the Capitol.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/12/us/capitol-mob-timeline.html

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  139. @130. SNL hasn’t been funny for a while.

    ROFLMAOPIP

    Elon Musk’s ‘SNL’ Blasts Off With a 33% Jump in Early TV Ratings

    http://www.thewrap.com/elon-musk-snl-big-tv-ratings

    ‘Elon Musk’s ‘SNL’ Blasts Off With a 33% Jump in Early TV Ratings SpaceX founder sends sketch-comedy show’s Nielsen numbers into orbit’| May 9, 2021

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  140. Are you trying to argue that Trump did nothing to incite the mob?

    Not with his words earlier that day. Nor could these words of his have possibly done it.

    It didn’t happen that way.

    Trumpite intellectuals have used timelines and distance — and reflexively repeated Trump’s throwaway reference to being “peaceful” — in an effort to disprove that Trump’s words could have had any part in inciting violence. But Trump summoned the mob there in the first place for a “wild” protest. Social media records demonstrate that Trumpers took him to mean they should “make it wild.”

    I think Trump was roped into this thing, but he had no idea what would actually happen. He planned to speak at the Capitol. Now how and when that was cancelled is very important. (some say he just lied to the crowd. But there really was a peaceful protest scheduled.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20210106005050/https://wildprotest.com.

    And that rally even took place, albeit dominated by anti-vaxxers.

    And Trump didn’t say “make it wild” A month before he tweeted “will be wild”

    Parler records also show that certain statements by Trump early in his hour+ speech were followed immediately by Trumpers saying it was time to storm the Capitol, and cellphone data show that people were in fact going from the Ellipse to the Capitol long before his speech was finished. (And many were no doubt listening to the rest of his speech on their phones.)

    But the thing is, I think he was used. If he part of a conspiracy, it would have been more than his words. I doubt he was aware of the exegesis his words were being subjected to. This whole thing was being done around Trump by some of his “supporters” – maybe in an effort to get him to reverse his decision not to declare martial law. But Trump wasn’t foolish enough to try that.

    As for those who supposedly went directly to the Capitol and not the Ellipse: Why were they there? Who had been telling them every day that a terrible crime was being committed against them and it had to be stopped?

    That’s correct. But he didn’t incite anyone that morning.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  141. Trump was hoping to intimidate them politically

    What do you mean by “intimidate them politically” when the actual political process was already played out? Does your understanding of “politics” include a raging mob fighting through a police line, breaking into the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” talking about “civil war” and what to do to “traitors”?
    Legislators were in no doubt about the political wishes of the Trumpers. The Trumpers’ effort to intimidate legislators into following their wishes was not a purely political act — unless your understanding of “politics” includes physical intimidation.

    but I said, “Something’s wrong here. Something’s really wrong. Can’t have happened.” And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.

    He was speaking about himself.

    So you’re reading “We” as the royal “we”? And “you” as a poetic term for “I”? I Trump was speaking merely about what he was going to do, why do he summon people there and tell them to “march” to the Capitol? Why the heck was he speaking to them anyway?

    Trump was treating this like an open question.

    i.e.: “Maybe you can all go scare lawmakers into doing what I want”? What do you think (or “know”) he really had in mind.

    Re: the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers: Did Donald J. Trump’s words up to 1/6 have nothing to do with their presence in DC and their actions that day? Which is what Trumpite intellectuals are trying to argue. They also choose to disregard the evidence that many people did in fact “march” from the Ellipse to the Capitol in time to participate in the break-in, and that Trumpers did in fact interpret Trump’s words as a signal to “take the Capitol.”

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  142. On the one hand, Trump apologists say it’s absurd to use the word “coup” (or attempted coup) in connection with 1/6. On the other, some Trump apologists, including a Trumpist official, have been saying Maybe it’s time for a real military coup here in America!

    On the one hand, Trumpers claim they really, really want “election integrity.” On the other, some of them are giving up on elections as the way to work their will.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  143. One weird thing about the pro-coup theme among the Trumpists: Since 2016 they’ve been saying that Trump truly represents “the people” against “establishment elites.” But what if the clear majority of “the people” vote against Trump? (How many coastal elites are there, really?) Well then, the people are wrong, and the guys with guns need to do what’s in the people’s best interest.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  144. Mr Finkelman wrote:

    Gaza is like North Philadelphia, a fetid and festering sewer, where the gang bangers run things, and the ‘civilians’ refuse to help the police.

    No, the gangbangers are the police.

    A matter of semantics, I suppose. What gets me is that The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed super-soft-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner for re-election.

    The left see mass incarceration as a problem; I say that the problem is that not enough are locked up.

    You cannot coexist with cockroaches.

    With cockroaches, yes. Cockroaches don’t bite or bring disease, but the problem is they get into the food, and can also stain things.

    For most people in Strawberry Mansion and Kensington, the roaches just get into the food and stain things, but for a growing number of the neighborhood residents, that stain is the red of blood running in the streets.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  145. Republicans weigh in on Liz Cheney and direction of GOP — CBS News poll
    ………
    (Republicans) still very much want their party to show loyalty to Mr. Trump and adhere to the idea that President Biden didn’t legitimately win.
    ………
    Eighty percent of Republicans who’d heard about the vote agree with Cheney’s removal — they feel she was off-message, unsupportive of Mr. Trump, and that she’s wrong about the 2020 presidential election. To a third of them, and most particularly for those who place the highest importance on loyalty, Cheney’s removal also shows “disloyalty will be punished.”
    ……..
    Republicans say that Mr. Trump himself represents their views just as well as they think the party does; it’s a personal connection to him we’ve seen for years. Today, loyalty also means they specifically want the party to follow more of the former president’s examples across a range of items, including economics, issues of race and immigration, how to treat the media, using power and leadership, generally.
    ……..
    Excerpts from the survey:

    ……..
    Regardless of who you wanted to win, do you consider Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020
    presidential election – that is, that Biden was the choice of more voters, with more legally-cast votes, in enough states to be elected – or not?

    Yes, I consider Biden the legitimate winner 33%
    No, I do not consider Biden the legitimate winner 67%

    Right now, how important is it that Republican elected officials or candidates do the following ?
    (Very Important/Somewhat Important)
    Support claims of election fraud in 2020 37%/31%
    Agree with you on economic policies 58%/34%
    Agree with you on culture and values 50%/40%
    Support the ideas of QAnon 9%/20%
    Propose legislation on important issues 73%/23%

    Do you think Donald Trump generally represents your views…
    All the time . . 17%
    Most of the time 48%
    Some of time . . 27%
    Almost never … .4%
    Never ……….. 3%

    What does Donald Trump represent to the Republican party right now? Should the party follow more of his example on. (Yes only)
    Economic issues….89%
    Leadership ……..80%
    Using power……. 70%
    Race issues……. 73%
    Immigration issues 88%
    How to treat liberals…..69%
    How to treat the media… 77%
    ………

    It’s hard to expect the Biden Administration to act bipartisan when the opposition party tried to thwart his election and the opposition rank and file don’t think he is the legitimate President, and one-third think it’s very important/somewhat important that Republican candidates support the ideas of Qanon.

    Rip Murdock (80e6b4)

  146. @77. I’ve watched many, many films on TCM the last six months. I think I would have enjoyed them more if they had been in color

    Color vs. b/w was a factor in studio production budgeting– and they were churning out a helluva lot of films per month back then if you read some of the studio production schedules from the 30s/40s/50s era – including shorts, newsreels and so forth. The availability of raw film stock -especially during war years– was a factor, too; thee was a shortage. Your same argument could be made for sound; it was a technology issue as well. And by 1949, film faced the real threat: television. Hence investing in lavish color productions [like The Robe] and remaking earlier b/w productions into updated color films [Ben-Hur, Ten Commandments, etc.,]in Cinemascope, Cinerama etc., was a motivator to compete w/t b/w boxes in the home to get butts into theatre seats. It’s actually a fascinating corporate struggle that went on. The technologies surrounding color development and use were really an issue, too. The early color film deteriorated and was quite brittle; the cameras were few, very bulky, costly, and the lighting elements were a PITA, hence occasionally loaned/leased between competing studios. The issue of pan-and-scan was more of a stickler than color vs., b/w productions when film packages were leased for broadcast television. As for “enjoyment,” the ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ fiasco pretty much said it all. Colorizing the original just made it looked cheesy; In b/w, it looks and flows as intended.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  147. https://www.outkick.com/boy-scouts-now-looking-to-add-a-blm-diversity-badge/

    More social justice indoctrination ruining what used to be a respectable place to raise young men. Now it’s to brainwash them.

    NJRob (447189)

  148. More social justice indoctrination ruining what used to be a respectable place to raise young men.

    If only we could have had Donald Trump as president, he would have rid us of that plague.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  149. some want to discuss issues

    others want to discuss an ex-president, like all the time nonstop

    JF (e1156d)

  150. If only we could have had Donald Trump as president, he would have rid us of that plague.

    He did more for black people than Abraham Lincoln.

    Dave (1542be)

  151. 149. Most television programs stayed in black an white till 1965. The Munsters till 1966. People used to be used to seeing things in Black and white – and not everybody had color televisions.

    Still pictures in newspapers stayed black and white till way longer. Some pictures printed still are.

    The Wall Street Journal for many years, limited itself to line drawings.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  152. Radegunda (aea52f) — 5/16/2021 @ 1:26 pm

    i.e.: “Maybe you can all go scare lawmakers into doing what I want”? </i?

    He was trying to scare legislators polltically.

    <i? What do you think (or “know”) he really had in mind.

    He had no viable options but he was being lied to by some supporters that he had. That’s important. Trump was being given false hope.

    I think Trump was told that if he could get only another day or two of delay, they could get some states to send in other electors. And that they were close to doing it. None of that was true. None of that was legally possible either.

    Re: the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers: Did Donald J. Trump’s words up to 1/6 have nothing to do with their presence in DC and their actions that day?

    Trump set the table, but he didn’t get the meal he expected.

    Which is what Trumpite intellectuals are trying to argue. They also choose to disregard the evidence that many people did in fact “march” from the Ellipse to the Capitol in time to participate in the break-in, and that Trumpers did in fact interpret Trump’s words as a signal to “take the Capitol..

    The whole march is a red herring. And yes, Trump’s words were being interpreted, but it was not a natural interpretation nor one he likely intended.

    On Jan 8 a tweet that he was not going to be present at the inauguration was interpreted as a call to disrupt the inauguration, and it got Trump banned from Twitter. Do you think Trump was actually sending such a dog whistle?

    Trump was far too friendly to people who were up to no good.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  153. It is possible maybe for a Republican to thread the needle on Trump but not on whether the election was stolen by the creation of millions of fake ballots for Joe Biden.

    Or whether the next election will be conducted properly.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  154. others want to discuss an ex-president, like all the time nonstop

    JF (e1156d) — 5/16/2021 @ 3:42 pm

    When said ex-president continues to be a cult leader behind the scenes, and who said just two weeks ago that henceforth the 2020 election will be known as the “BIG LIE”, you’re damn right I’ll discuss him.

    norcal (01e272)

  155. The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9) — 5/16/2021 @ 1:55 pm

    What gets me is that The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed super-soft-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner for re-election.

    Bad ideas have consequences.

    The left see mass incarceration as a problem; I say that the problem is that not enough are locked up.

    Yes. And now to get back to where we were before, more people than otherwise will need to be locked up.

    Unless intense probation – with occasional 3-5 day stints in jail – as in Hawaii

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii%27s_Opportunity_Probation_with_Enforcement

    can mitigate that.

    Or unpaid community service – along with some paid people so the offenders acan see they are paying a fine.

    For most people in Strawberry Mansion and Kensington, the roaches just get into the food and stain things, but for a growing number of the neighborhood residents, that stain is the red of blood running in the streets.

    If there’s blood, they are not cockroaches. They are bedbugs. Which were gotten rid of by DDT.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  156. @149 Thanks for shedding some light on the scene (no pun intended), DCSCA.

    I understand that colorizing them doesn’t work very well, but what if?

    What if those movies HAD been shot in color? Don’t you think they would be more enjoyable?

    Hypothetical question, which I know you aren’t fond of.

    norcal (01e272)

  157. So you’re reading “We” as the royal “we”? And “you” as a poetic term for “I”? I Trump was speaking merely about what he was going to do, why do he summon people there and tell them to “march” to the Capitol? Why the heck was he speaking to them anyway?

    It’s not really the roal “we’ but he’s identfying him with them, anyway. And you = I.

    He wanted people because he thought hundreds of thousands (wrong number) of demonstrators would sway Congress, or at least the Republicans.

    No, his strategy didn’t make any sense.

    He was being lied to.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  158. Of movies had been made in color they would be watched more, that’s all.

    Some people just won’t watch a black and white movie.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)

  159. @161 Not just watched more. Enjoyed more.

    norcal (01e272)

  160. https://notthebee.com/article/this-exchange-between-a-hamas-supporter-and-a-jewish-speaker-sums-up-whats-happening-in-israel-today

    Student on an American campus calling for the extermination of all Jewish people.

    What are they doing at these institutions?

    NJRob (99b600)

  161. Mr Finkelman wrote:

    The left see mass incarceration as a problem; I say that the problem is that not enough are locked up.

    Yes. And now to get back to where we were before, more people than otherwise will need to be locked up.

    Unless intense probation – with occasional 3-5 day stints in jail – as in Hawaii

    The cause is that too many judges mete out light sentences, the prosecutors responsible for agreeing to dramatically reduced charges in exchange for guilty pleas, and the parole officials who release convicted criminals early are not being held accountable for the crimes the bad guys commit when they could, if properly sentenced for past crimes, still be in jail.

    If a bad guy commits a 10-year felony, but the judge only sentences him to two years, should not that judge be held accountable for any crimes the bad guy commits within the ten years he could have been locked up?

    If a criminal commits a five-year felony, but the prosecutors allow him to plead down to something that puts him behind bars for only a year, should not those prosecutors be held accountable for any crimes that criminal commits when he’s out on the streets in years 2 through 5, when he should still be behind bars?

    If a convicted criminal sentenced to eight years in prison is instead released from jail after just four years, should not the parole and probation officials who took the decision to let him out early — assuming that they had any discretion, of course — be held accountable for any crimes that felon committed during the time he could still be in prison?

    If we started doing that, we’d see criminals locked up for their full sentences, and the crime rate would drop.

    The Dana in Kentucky (e9cac9)

  162. Woohoo! CNN doc, ‘Radical Rebellion’ kicking modern conservative ideologue ass and naming names!!!

    Welcome to 1964– in HDTV!

    Glorious!

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  163. @159. Well, anything filmed then in the color technology of the day would have to be restored given how they stored reels differently, film density and such– over then than now as the color fades overtime w/heat and light issues. Similar issues w/old videotape as well. It’s an expensive rocess to conserve these things as well. Even recent films from the 1970s and early 80s are having to being restored and better conserved due to color fade issues. But a Casablanca would look different as would Citizen Kane or most of the WW2 era films simply due to the lighting contrasts if filmed in color from the start. I expect the next step will computerization and CGI creations to be creating films with Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks in a whole new film and it will look seamless in the next decade or two- bt that will likely involve estate nd gal issues as well. They did some great TV commercials in the 80s a 90s [Coke- Hershey] smoothly inserting old film stars in w/living people.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  164. ‘Frankenstein monster!’ LOL

    Oh my. ‘Goldwater, Birchers…’ looks like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria has been plagiarizing DCSCA’s posts as he put together his ‘Radical Rebellion’ doc on the sources of the Republican Party’s rage. 😉

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  165. “If we started doing that, we’d see criminals locked up for their full sentences, and the crime rate would drop.”

    The United States already has the highest prisoner population in the world per capita.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  166. The left see mass incarceration as a problem; I say that the problem is that not enough are locked up.

    Not so. They simply feel that the wrorg people are locked up. Similarly, they aren’t actually against the death penalty, it’s just that they would impose it on different crimes.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  167. “Student on an American campus calling for the extermination of all Jewish people.

    What are they doing at these institutions?”

    The interaction here happened 11 years ago, if you read the article.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  168. He did more for black people than Abraham Lincoln.

    He gets those presidents mixed up. What he meant to say was he did more for black people than George Washington.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  169. “Similarly, they aren’t actually against the death penalty, it’s just that they would impose it on different crimes.”

    Who would I impose the death penalty on, Kevin?

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  170. The United States already has the highest prisoner population in the world per capita.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b) — 5/16/2021 @ 5:51 pm

    Yes, and a good percentage of them are in for drug offenses. We eventually saw the insanity of Prohibition. When will we see how stupid Prohibition 2.0 is?

    norcal (01e272)

  171. blm-diversity-badge

    For what? Having 3 black friends? Learning a handshake? Reading “Soul on Ice?”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  172. Who would I impose the death penalty on, Kevin?

    Hedge fund managers. In your heart you know I’m right.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  173. “Hedge fund managers. In your heart you know I’m right.”

    Man you have some funny preconceptions.

    This is why I don’t support the death penalty: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/15/dallas-prosecutor-disbarred-black-murder/

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  174. Castro, the Soviets, the Chinese, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Mihn, Kims I-III — all had no issue with the death penalty. Even less strident folks would have no problem with offing slumlords or other economic oppressors.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  175. But, ‘thulu, you are not all leftists.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  176. As far as that Dallas case, it wasn’t about the death penalty. They had life sentences, which may have made their cases less interesting to those who would otherwise help.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  177. “But, ‘thulu, you are not all leftists.”

    All leftists aren’t Stalin, Pol Pot, or Kim Jong Un.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  178. “As far as that Dallas case, it wasn’t about the death penalty. They had life sentences, which may have made their cases less interesting to those who would otherwise help.”

    Does your faith in the death penalty require third parties to catch the wrongly convicted?

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  179. Does your faith in the death penalty require third parties to catch the wrongly convicted?

    Obviously the first or second parties failed to prevent the wrongful conviction, so yes. DO you argue that third parties should not intervene (I don’t think that’s what you are saying, but you phrased it oddly).

    Do I think that prosecutors who do this kind of thing should be penalized with more than disbarment? Yes, that too. They should serve all the years that their victims did, sequentially.

    My point was that being hanged in the morning focuses everyone’s mind wonderfully, and a life sentence is more like “when we get around to it.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  180. BTW, I am convinced that the death penalty was mortally wounded by “Perry Mason” in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Here were 200+ defendants, all obviously guilty and headed for the gas chamber (which was rather active at the time) and yet Perry proved they were ALL innocent!

    Fiction? Sure. But also sucessful propaganda.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  181. All leftists aren’t Stalin, Pol Pot, or Kim Jong Un.

    Some are. And I know leftists who have no problem with that Castro did.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  182. “Obviously the first or second parties failed to prevent the wrongful conviction, so yes. DO you argue that third parties should not intervene (I don’t think that’s what you are saying, but you phrased it oddly).”

    Even better, don’t have a death penalty at all, and then we don’t risk executing an innocent person. It’s an article of faith on the right (See KY Dana’s original post) that criminals have it too easy. There’s constant pressure to expedite executions.

    “They should serve all the years that their victims did, sequentially.”

    This will never happen. It’s a struggle to to even get something like disbarment done.

    Davethulhu (6ba00b)

  183. He had no viable options but he was being lied to by some supporters that he had. That’s important. Trump was being given false hope.

    The whole march is a red herring. And yes, Trump’s words were being interpreted, but it was not a natural interpretation nor one he likely intended.

    Trump was far too friendly to people who were up to no good.

    Shorter Sammy: Nothing bad is ever Trump’s fault. If he says things that sound bad and have predictably bad results, that’s because people misinterpreted him.

    And I still haven’t seen a convincing explanation for why “trying to scare legislators polltically” — with the angry mob he summoned to DC for a “wild” protest and instructed to “fight like hell” and “take back our country with strength” — should be viewed as a perfectly normal part of the political process. Unless you believe that the normal political process should come down to who brings the scariest mob to town.

    Radegunda (aea52f)

  184. https://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Revolution-Marxisms-Conquest-Unmaking/dp/1737067323?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1619792093&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=insta0c-20&linkId=593e2b13e17eeaa997b12bc853f1b922&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

    Wow. Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier was a space force commander fired by our leftist government for calling out Marxism in the military and now his book is #1 on Amazon. Talk about the Streisand effect.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  185. Radegunda,

    It is truly baffling how otherwise reasonable people can’t see what Trump did to incite the attack on the Capitol. If his speech isn’t enough of a clue, look at the context both before and after the event. What did Trump say and do?

    norcal (01e272)

  186. @188. You musta missed CNN’s ‘Radical Rebellion’ broadcast this evening.

    It’s all there nd well presented.

    He is “you.”

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  187. He gets those presidents mixed up. What he meant to say was he did more for black people than George Washington.

    Heretic!

    Trump is never wrong; his words are the axioms on which all reality and truth are based.

    Dave (1542be)

  188. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/05/16/biden-revokes-trump-border-policy-welcomes-migrants-without-means-health-care/

    The 2019 order denied visas to those seeking entry into the U.S. who were deemed a “financial burden” on the health care system. Biden, in a proclamation announcing the rollback, said the policy did not “advance the interests” of the nation.

    The Trump order did not apply to immigrants who already live in the U.S. or to lawful permanent residents, refugees, asylum-seekers or children.

    Biden has rolled back a number of Trump-era immigration policies in his first few months in office, moves that some say have contributed to a surge in migrants at the southern border, including border wall construction, increased interior enforcement and the Migrant Protection Protocols, which kept migrants in Mexico while they awaited their hearings.

    What’s the goal?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  189. https://www.jns.org/opinion/ap-al-jazeera-and-the-mainstream-media-are-tools-in-hamass-war-against-israel/

    In the current conflict being waged between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria—and even within fully Israeli-controlled cities, including Lod, Akko, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and others—the media has been intentionally painting pictures of the war designed to paint Palestinians as innocent victims. Indeed, it has been purposefully mis-framing the events that led up to the ongoing full-scale hostilities.

    According to the media, this war started initially because the Israel Police employed crowd-control measures near a gate outside the Old City of Jerusalem, where innocent Muslim penitents were gathering after their daily Ramadan fast. Reports to this effect made little mention, if at all, of the rioting taking place there, night in and night out.

    Next, the media made it sound as though Arabs had no choice but to riot when Israeli courts were moving to evict Palestinians from homes in eastern Jerusalem and handing those houses over to hardline Israeli settlers. It is of little interest that the neighborhood in question, Sheikh Jarrah, is the site of the tomb of the ancient Jewish high priest, Simon the Righteous; that the homes in question were owned by Jews for generations; that the Arabs living in them are squatters; and that the case had been in court for more than 30 years.

    The straw that clearly broke the Palestinians’ back, however—and led to all-out war—was when Israeli law enforcement ostensibly “stormed” the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. It didn’t matter that Israeli police officers entered the compound to dispel a violent Arab riot, which included the throwing of rocks and hurling of Molotov cocktails at defenseless Jewish worshipers in the Western Wall plaza some 70 feet below.

    Suddenly, an annual parade by Israelis on “Jerusalem Day” was portrayed as an act of aggressive nationalism. And when Arabs rioting on the Temple Mount—Judaism’s holiest site beyond any dispute, even among Muslims—set a tree ablaze with fireworks illegally lit while Jews were having a concert at the Western Wall, many media outlets spread images of Jews “celebrating the burning of Al-Aqsa.”

    Worse, these outlets have been attempting to disingenuously link up the Palestinian cause with the sentiments that have fueled the Black Lives Matter movement—a movement that similarly justified rioting in urban centers.

    NJRob (d445a7)

  190. Tom Cotton: “Is there anything more Orwellian than Facebook’s “independent oversight board,” stocked with left-wing academics, deciding issues of free speech?”

    What jumps out at me is the misuse of the term “Orwellian” (and also the basic confusion over how free speech works). Orwell’s biggest fear was an all-powerful totalitarian GOVERNMENT, like the one that would have the power to overturn the decisions of private companies to set their own community standards….and exercise their own freedom of speech and freedom of association. Last I checked Facebook belongs to its shareholders….not its users. Users sign a contract to abide by the Terms of Service. Facebook has the right to enforce those Terms of Service. This new rhetoric against “Big Tech” sounds like the confused Right’s version of the Fairness Doctrine….that we are OWED the goods and services of Facebook and Twitter. What ever happened to conservative belief in the free market? I get that FB should be more transparent and consistent with how it polices its content…..and that the private sector cannot produce a competitor over night….but it is Orwellian to demand that the government exercise more power to control speech on the internet. Trump has many ways to get his evidence-free message about stolen elections out….and his persistent need to publicly settle grudges….it’s just sad that the GOP has become so confused over core principles it used to defend……

    AJ_Liberty (a4ff25)

  191. AJ_Liberty (a4ff25) — 5/17/2021 @ 5:44 am

    Great post.

    Freedom is Slavery.

    Ignorance is Strength.

    Dave (1542be)

  192. @193 right, except facebook is a creation of section 230

    a law government passed when half the people still didn’t know what the internet was

    JF (e1156d)

  193. JF, that’s not even remotely accurate.

    Time123 (80b471)

  194. What ever happened to conservative belief in the free market?

    It went away when they didn’t like what people wanted to do with their freedoms.

    Time123 (80b471)

  195. JF, good background on section 230 below. It’s written in a snarky way. I wish it wasn’t because the information is good, and I think people would be more open to it if they didn’t feel insulted by the tone. But it’s the best round up i’ve found.

    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml

    Time123 (80b471)

  196. @198 i’ve read that before

    it’s referred to precisely cuz it’s snarky

    but thanks, i guess you were trying to bolster my point

    “Once again, I must inform you that you are very, very wrong. There is nothing in Section 230 that applies solely to big tech. Indeed, it applies to every website on the internet and every user of those websites. That means it applies to you, as well, and helps to protect your speech. It’s what allows you to repeat something someone else said on Facebook and not be liable for it. It’s what protects every website that has comments, or any other third-party content. It applies across the entire internet to every website and every user, and not just to big tech.”

    i didn’t want to do it in a snarky way, but it’s your link

    JF (e1156d)

  197. “….it’s just sad that the GOP has become so confused over core principles it used to defend……”

    Shorter: conservative whine; bitter dregs.

    ____
    Prince Harry faces backlash in the U.S. after calling U.S. First Amendment ‘bonkers.’ …

    news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-faces-backlash…

    Prince Harry is facing a backlash from US first amendment campaigners after he called the constitutional rule “bonkers”.

    Memo to Harry:

    ‘Heir and a spare’ would not amuse the Crown. If this was 1521 and not 2021:

    A. You’d have been either imprisoned in the Tower of London by your grandmother or beheaded by now.
    B. Your spouse ‘disappeared’ to one of Her Majesty’s rum islands in the West Indies
    C. Your kid[s] bobbing for farthings at the bottom of the Thames.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  198. Shorter Sammy: Nothing bad is ever Trump’s fault. If he says things that sound bad and have predictably bad results, that’s because people misinterpreted him.

    Even shorter: If only Trump knew!

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  199. A Republican congressman who denied there was an insurrection and likened Capitol rioters to tourists was photographed barricading the chamber doors against them
    ……..
    Rep. Andrew Clyde said during a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that it was a “bald-faced lie” to call the riot an insurrection. He said the riot, in which hundreds of Trump supporters breached the Capitol, resembled a “normal tourist visit.”

    After Clyde’s comments, a photographer shared a photo he had taken of Clyde using furniture to barricade the House against rioters trying to force their way in to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. ……
    …….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  200. What’s the goal?

    Appeasing the left wing of his party by reflexively opposing anything Trump. What they are missing is that their victory was mostly due to Trump’s behavior, not Trump’s policies. Many who normally would have voted for the policies could not abide the man.

    The only question in the midterms is whether the GOP will be running on policy, or on devotion to Trump.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  201. After Clyde’s comments, a photographer shared a photo he had taken of Clyde using furniture to barricade the House against rioters trying to force their way in to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. ……

    So, he’s a hero?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  202. After Clyde’s comments, a photographer shared a photo he had taken of Clyde using furniture to barricade the House against rioters trying to force their way in to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. ……

    So, he’s a hero?

    No, he is a hypocrite and liar.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  203. It applies to Facebook, but saying I Facebook is a creation of 230 is wrong.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  204. Franklin Graham worries Trump too old to run in 2024
    …….
    Graham told “Axios on HBO” that a Trump comeback would be difficult because of his advancing age and eating habits.

    ““I think for him, everything will depend on his health at that time. If he still has energy and strength like he does. I don’t.”

    “You know the guy does not eat well, you know, and it’s amazing the energy that he has.”

    “He’s lost weight, fifteen pounds, Maybe. So he might be in good health and in good shape. I don’t know.”

    Trump would be 78 in 2024, the same age as Joe Biden in 2020.
    ……..
    If Trump runs again it will make it easier for DCSCA, all he has to do is recycle his Biden old age comments. 😉

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  205. https://www.foxnews.com/world/spanish-politician-suspended-by-twitter-after-saying-a-man-cannot-get-pregnant

    Yeah no. Twitter and Facebook are ubiquitous in society and are a public forum. These types of evil decisions show they are trying to control minds, not inform or educate them.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  206. @208. Franklin Graham??? ROFLMAOPIP

    You musta missed CNN’s ‘Radical Rebellion’ broadcast last evening as well. It pretty muh spelled out everything quite well. Graham’s another bible-thumping fart in windstorm just like Falwell was; part of the problem, not the solution.

    It’s not about Trump. It’s about the 74-plus million. They’ll find another vessel.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  207. @209, I think they’re trying to make money.

    Time123 (89dfb2)

  208. No, he is a hypocrite and liar.

    According to your article, he mentioned that he helped with the barricade during the same hearing where he described what he witnessed. The photo doesn’t amount to proof of hypocrisy since he already said exactly what the photo showed.

    A better photo would have been one that showed the “Insurrectionists” beating through the barricade. Since that didn’t happen, we are left with his eyewitness testimony, backed in part by a photograph, and nothing to contradict his statement.

    The article did have another fact-check refuting his claim that no guns were confiscated. Apparently there was one gun somewhere on the Capitol grounds.

    The Theodore and Amos from The Apple Dumpling Gang would have been more organized.

    BuDuh (6e84bc)

  209. – “The”

    BuDuh (6e84bc)

  210. @212

    A better photo would have been one that showed the “Insurrectionists” beating through the barricade. Since that didn’t happen,

    here’s you go.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/956842958/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-security-at-the-capitol-on-january-6

    Time123 (89dfb2)

  211. Before I check out the link, Time, is it photos that are associated with Clyde’s barricade?

    BuDuh (b50d8a)

  212. I looked anyways and it does appear to be the same barricade. Thanks, Time.

    BuDuh (b50d8a)

  213. BuDuh, Sorry, I hadn’t realized you were talking specifically about his barricade. My link isn’t Germaine to your comment. Sorry.

    Time123 (ea2b98)

  214. Actually it sort of is, Time. One of the photos in your link shows people’s eyeballs poking around behind some holes in the doors that were barricaded. It doesn’t change my opinion that the Congressman’s opinion that it was more of a haphazard mob than an insurrection is an honest perspective from someone who was there.

    BuDuh (04d806)

  215. @207 unspeakably horrible

    the perp was wearing an ankle monitor, probably cuz keeping him in the slammer instead is being too hard on crime, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, blah blah blah

    there are commenters here who get their thrills spewing that crap

    a 4 year old paid the price

    JF (e1156d)

  216. 201. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/17/2021 @ 9:27 am

    If only Trump knew!

    Half the time things happen without the connivance of the man at the top. Did Nixon order the Watergate break-in?

    What Trump did (make up or collect and repeat more than improbable stories about the 2020 election) and what he wanted to do (slow down the certification by Congress, followed by ???) wasn’t good but he wasn’t responsible for the storming of the Capitol. And certainly not by his public acts, like a speech which did not cause it.

    Sammy Finkelman (51cd0c)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.1634 secs.