Joe Bob Briggs: Let's Make Up Some Unenforceable Laws, Come On, It'll Be Fun (Taki's Magazine)
I think the real reason in all these cases is more sinister. I think they're saying, "We don't like things as they are, and so we'll make it really, really expensive for certain people to enforce their rights. We'll make them fight every day for what should be rightly theirs for free. We'll take away their birthright. We'll screw with their businesses and screw with their wombs and screw with their assumptions about what the courts have guaranteed them, and some of them will give up, and some of them will make mistakes, and we'll just make sure they have many bad days, and eventually they'll get tired of fighting with us and we'll get a team of brutal lawyers to take them down and put them in their place."
Paul Waldman: Republicans were right about Trump the first time (Washington Post)
…what jumps out when you look back at the comments from 2016 is how right the Republican critics who would later line up behind Trump were about him. They proclaimed him immoral, a pathological liar, a narcissist and a demagogue. They warned that his fanboy obsequiousness toward Vladimir Putin would warp American foreign policy. They called him ignorant, unserious, and unworthy of the Oval Office. All of that has been proven beyond any doubt. And when they attacked Trump, they were making an implicit argument about themselves. I am not like him, they wanted us to believe. If I were given power, I would wield it with honor, dignity, and integrity. Trump then gave them a test, a chance to demonstrate whether that was true. And they failed.
Alexandra Petri: Impeachment ends on a cliffhanger (Washington Post Satire)
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.): In conclusion, there are two worlds you can live in. In the America where I live, the president is not supposed to do any of this. The testimony of these brave individuals, who did not come here in a partisan way but because they were subpoenaed, will be taken in the appropriate spirit. The Senate will hold the president accountable. The process will work, and the people whom we have seen showcased this week will continue to feel happy and safe in a country that is based on a great idea.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.): Now who's living in a fantasy world?
Jonathan Chait: Trump Defenders Confused by Use of Synonyms (NY Mag)
In recent days, Democrats have begun describing President Trump's demands that Ukraine discredit his domestic opponents as "bribery." Conservative media has excitedlyseized on the new terminological emphasis as proof that the substantive case against his conduct has fallen apart.
This American author, among the most popular authors in recent US history, was born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien in New Orleans. By what name is this writer-of-books better known?
Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien, October 4, 1941) is an American author of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotic literature. She is perhaps best known for her series of novels, The Vampire Chronicles, revolving around the central character of Lestat. Books from The Vampire Chronicles were the subject of two film adaptations, Interview with the Vampire in 1994, and Queen of the Damned in 2002.
Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life there before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Catholic family, but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, Rice published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Several years later she distanced herself from organized Christianity, citing disagreement with the Church's stances on social issues but pledging that faith in God remained "central to [her] life." However, she now considers herself a secular humanist.
Rice's books have sold nearly 100 million copies, placing her among the most popular authors in recent American history.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Anne Rice.
Randall wrote:
Anne Rice
Cal in Vermont said:
Anne Rice. Who wrote Christian fiction and erotic fiction. Hmm.
Dave responded:
Ann Rice. We have her to "thank" for the vampire film craze that disgraced movie screens for 15 years or so.
Photo: Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise earning their (well deserved) Golden Raspberry awards (for worst screen couple) in the disgusting 1994 film, "Interview With a Vampire."
Amazingly, neither actor was nominated for the Worst Actor Razzie, where Kevin Costner prevailed with his lazy performance in "Wyatt Earp." However, the competition was fierce for Worst Actor with the usual suspects like Macaulay Culkin, Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis earning nominations.
John I from Hawai`i says,
"Anne Rice."
Roy the Libtard Snowflake Never Trumper in Tyler, TX replied:
I do not know exactly how or why I remember this (but then, at my age, there's a lot of stuff I can't explain), but that gal with a man's name is the famed author of a lot of vampire stuff. It's Anne Rice, of course!
Micki said:
Anne Rice. It should be a crime to do that to a child.
Rosemary in Columbus wrote:
Anne Rice
Daniel in The City answered:
Anne Rice
DJ Useo replied:
Well-played, M. You stumped me completely.
Joe S responded:
Wow! Anne Rice.
I did not know that. And I never would have guessed it.
mj took the day off.
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BttbBob has returned to semi-retired status.
~~~~~
• A bad review can give birth to a good joke. David Woods and Jon Haynes make up the anarchic theatrical group known as Ridiculusmus, although it used to have more members. In 1993, critic John O'Mahony was very impressed with Mr. Woods, and he wrote about him, "He transforms every bit-part into a central character, while showing up the paucity of talent in the rest of the group." For years after the review appeared, whenever Mr. O'Mahony saw the group, Mr. Woods would be genial - but nervous - and the other members of the group would glower at Mr. O'Mahony and hiss at him. By the way, the group now consists of just two people, but that has nothing to do with Mr. O'Mahony's review. The two remaining members do work well together. Mr. Woods says, "I think we complement each other." Mr. Haynes adds, "Some like his exuberance. Others prefer my intensity. And a lot don't like either of us." At the very beginning of their careers, they had a comedy venue called the Tomato Club. They invited bad comedians to perform, and they gave audience members overripe tomatoes to throw at the bad comedians. With good reason, Mr. Haynes is concerned about critical notices: "Critical success would upset our equilibrium. Who can we bribe at the [British newspaper] Guardian to give us a one-star review?"
• Elaine May went backstage to see Dudley Moore after a Broadway performance of Beyond the Fringe and told him, "I loved the show." When Mr. Moore, who was in a mood for receiving lots of reassurance, asked her if she had really loved the show, Ms. May, who was not in a mood for giving lots of reassurance, replied, "No."
Death
• British comedian Stephen Mangan started out studying law, then switched to serious acting, and finally started performing comic roles. He read many, many biographies of theatrical actors such as Ellen Terry, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Henry Irving, etc., and he says, "As a 16-year-old, all I wanted was to be living in digs in Darlington, heading off to do the matinee of Charley's Aunt." But he instead studied law, although at school he was around many, many "people who flipped their capes over their shoulders and said, 'I'm going to become an actor.'" Still, when he graduated, he was too afraid to take a chance on theater, and he says that it seemed that he would become "a disgruntled lawyer, a slightly bitter bloke with the world's largest theatrical biography collection." However, his mother died from cancer at age 45, and Mr. Mangan's priorities immediately changed. "From that moment, I heard the clock ticking," he says. "You think, God, if that's how long I've got, why not try and do it?" He tried it, and he succeeded at it.
• Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, "The honest truth is, for a comedian, even death is just a premise to make jokes about." For example, Mr. Seinfeld telephoned fellow comedian George Carlin a few days before Mr. Carlin died of a heart attack. And of course, Mr. Carlin made jokes about death. Journalist Tim Russert and musician Bo Diddley had recently died, and Mr. Carlin said, "I feel safe for a while. There will probably be a break before they come after the next one. I always like to fly on an airline right after they've had a crash. It improves your odds."
• Groucho Marx got a lot of letters in his old age, but he reasoned that he got so many letters because two of his famous comedian brothers, Chico and Harpo, had died before he did. If they had lived, they would have received many of the letters. Groucho was a skeptic concerning the afterlife. Before Chico and Harpo died, they made a promise to Groucho, who explained, "They said they'd get in touch with me if there were a hereafter." So what happened? Chico died in 1961, Harpo died in 1964, and in an interview with movie critic Roger Ebert in 1970, Groucho said, "I never heard a word. Not a godd*mn word."
If you want to re-visit the segment where Rachel Maddow shared the impeachment needlework she received, you, like I, can bookmark and watch this 3:45 minute video snippet over and over and over again and feel total joy on each viewing!
CBS begins the night with a FRESH'NCIS', followed by a FRESH'FBI', then a FRESH'NCIS: The 3rd One'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Paul Rudd and Adrienne Warren.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Kathy Bates and Billy Eichner.
NBC starts the night with a FRESH'The Voice', followed by the FRESH'Dolly Parton: 50 Years At The Opry'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Sen. Bernie Sanders, Katherine Langford, and Gary Vaynerchuk.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Oscar Isaac, Casey Wilson, and Jon Pardi.
Scheduled on a FRESHLilly Singh are Jillian Bell and Utkarsh Ambudkar.
ABC opens the night with a FRESH'The Conners', followed by a FRESH'Bless This Mess', then a FRESH'mixed-ish', followed by a FRESH'black-ish', then a FRESH'Emergence'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Laura Dern, Andrew Yang, and Bishop Briggs.
The CW offers a FRESH'The Flash', followed by a FRESH'Arrow'.
Faux has a FRESH'The Resident', followed by a FRESH'Empire'.
MY recycles an old 'Chicago PD', followed by another old 'Chicago PD'.
AMC offers the movie 'Elf', followed by the movie 'Elf', again.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 23-Homestead
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 24-Renaissance Man
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 25-Endgame, Pt. 1
[9:00AM] STAR TREK: VOYAGER - SEASON 7 - EPISODE 26-Endgame, Pt. 2
[10:00AM] ALIEN (1979)
[12:30PM] ALIENS (1986)
[3:30PM] AVP: ALIEN VS. PREDATOR (2004)
[5:30PM] PREDATOR (1987)
[8:00PM] TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
[11:00PM] TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
[2:00AM] ERASER (1996)
[4:30AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 10 - EPISODE 12-The Doctor Falls (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Real Housewives Of OC', then another FRESH'Real Housewives Of OC', another 'Real Housewives Of OC', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
FX has the movie 'Kingman: The Golden Circle', followed by the movie 'Kingsman: The Golden Circle', again.
History has 'The Curse Of Oak Island', followed by a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island: Digging Deeper', then a FRESH'The Curse Of Oak Island', followed by a FRESH'Kings Of Pain'.
IFC -
[6:00A] The Three Stooges - Fright Night
[6:15A] The Three Stooges - A Pain in the Pullman
[6:45A] The Three Stooges - Woman Haters
[7:15A] Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
[9:45A] Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
[12:15P] Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
[2:30P] Face/Off
[5:30P] Hancock
[7:30P] X-Men: The Last Stand
[10:00P] Hancock
[12:00A] Face/Off
[3:00A] Hancock
[5:00A] X-Men (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:00am] M*A*S*H
[6:30am] M*A*S*H
[7:00am] M*A*S*H
[7:30am] M*A*S*H
[8:00am] Legends of the Fall
[11:00am] Dances With Wolves
[3:00pm] Criminal Minds
[4:00pm] Criminal Minds
[5:00pm] Criminal Minds
[6:00pm] Criminal Minds
[7:00pm] Criminal Minds
[8:00pm] Criminal Minds
[9:00pm] Criminal Minds
[10:00pm] Criminal Minds
[11:00pm] Criminal Minds
[12:00am] Criminal Minds
[1:00am] Criminal Minds
[2:00am] Criminal Minds
[3:00am] Hap and Leonard: Mucho Mojo - Ticking Mojo
[4:00am] Hap and Leonard: Mucho Mojo - Holy Mojo
[5:00am] Hap and Leonard: Mucho Mojo - Bad Mojo (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 1', followed by the movie 'Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows: Part 2'.
TBS:
On a RERUNConan (from 11/28/18) it's Conan Without Borders: Japan.
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee on Monday unveiled a "Contract for the Web" to halt "misuse" by governments, companies and individuals, bringing several capitals and tech titans like Google aboard.
"If we don't act now -- and act together -- to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering" its potential for good, Berners-Lee said in a statement from his World Wide Web Foundation.
Credited with laying the groundwork for the web -- the universe of multimedia webpages accessible via the internet -- in 1989, the computer scientist has since last year been developing the so-called Contract for the Web.
His unveiling of the final document Monday comes as government, business and civil society leaders gather in Berlin for the four-day UN Internet Governance Forum.
Berners-Lee said his contract, developed in cooperation with dozens of experts and members of the public, is "a roadmap to build a better web".
Only five known copies of the Gettysburg Address bear Abraham Lincoln's handwriting. One sits beneath the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, for much of the year, in a vault where the humidity and temperature are tightly controlled.
But on June 15, 2018, those two weathered pages could be found in Glenn Beck's office.
"Are they requiring you wear gloves?" Beck, the conservative radio host, asked an archivist who worked for a museum run by his charity, Mercury One. "That's so stupid."
It turns out that the document memorializing Lincoln's famous speech on Nov. 19, 1863, never should have been sent to the Mercury Museum in Irving, Texas, according to a report by a government watchdog released Friday.
Illinois investigators said the presidential library's former executive director, Alan Lowe, had rushed to lend the document to Beck on less than two weeks' notice, calling it an unusual and risky move that put the artifact in danger. They also faulted Lowe and the museum's former chief operating officer for letting Beck's charity pay for their plane tickets and hotel stays in Texas when they traveled to the Mercury Museum.
It's official. New York's iconic Paris Theatre will remain Manhattan's last single-screen movie palace for a long time to come. Netflix has confirmed that it has closed an extended lease agreement to keep the theater open. Netflix would not disclose the length of the agreement; Deadline revealed on November 14 that the deal it was signing with the Solow Family that owns the prime real estate is for 10 years. The theater shuttered in August when the lease with City Cinemas expired, and Netflix surprisingly drew a temporary reprieve to show its awards season film Marriage Story by New York director Noah Baumbach.
Netflix disclosed it will use the theater for special events, screenings, and theatrical releases of its films. Translation: Netflix has secured a prime and prestigious beach head theater in New York, as it continues to persuade elite filmmakers to make their prestige films for the streaming service, preceded by a theatrical release. Netflix earlier bought an ownership stake in The Egyptian in Los Angeles, another storied movie theater, and these are two impressive houses to be able to dangle before directors like Alfonso Cuaron, Baumbach and Martin Scorsese. Latter's Netflix film, The Irishman, is currently playing in The Belasco Theatre on Broadway but I hear it might well eventually find its way into The Paris at some point.
This is not the outcome that distributors of prestige theatrical fare not at Netflix was hoping for, as it remains to be seen if there will be room for anything but Netflix fare on the marquee. But this prime space was dead as a movie theater. How did this reprieve happen? I hear the secret weapon here was Scott Stuber, who in addition to overseeing the feature slate as head of Netflix's film program, has also put to work his statesman skills honed over years at Universal Pictures and other venues where he brokered deals and courted talent. After years of a contentious relationships between Netflix and the major theater chains, Stuber has become Netflix's theater whisperer. Just as he led the negotiations with AMC and Cineplex to show Scorsese's The Irishman (those talks didn't work out), I'm told he put a lot of time into attempting to change the Solow Family's plan to turn the space on W 58th and Fifth Avenue into a medical clinic. It makes one think that if anyone can end the stalemate between Cannes and Netflix, it will be Stuber.
Thieves have stolen antique jewellery worth up to a billion euros from a German museum in what could be the largest art theft in history.
The intruders cut the electricity to Dresden's Green Vault Museum in the early hours of Monday morning, newspaper Bild reported.
They were then able to get inside by breaking in through a window, the paper said.
They stole mostly jewellery, diamonds and gems, leaving behind bulky objects such as vases and paintings, Bild reported.
The newspaper said the heist could be the largest post-war art theft in history. The previous largest is thought to have occurred in 1990 with thieves escaping with $300m of item from a museum in Boston.
Google fired four employees for what the technology giant said were violations of its data-security policies, escalating tension between management and activist workers at a company once revered for its open corporate culture.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google sent an email describing the decision, titled "Securing our data," to all employees on Monday, according to a copy of the document obtained by Bloomberg News. The company confirmed the contents of the memo but declined to comment further.
Some Google staff have been protesting and organizing in the past two years over issues including the company's work with the military, a censored search service in China and its handling of executives accused of sexual harassment.
"With these firings, Google is ramping up its illegal retaliation," according to a statement from workers who are organizing at the company. "This is classic union busting dressed up in tech industry jargon, and we won't stand for it."
In recent weeks, some workers have cited management moves -- such as implementing a tracking tool on employee's web browsers and hiring a consulting firm known for anti-union work -- as attempts to curb activism. The company has denied those charges.
After generations of storing their food in handmade cellars dug deep into the permafrost, growing numbers in Alaska's far-north now find their cellars filling up with water and blood.
Dozens of the naturally refrigerated food shelters exist underneath the region's mainly Inupiat whaling villages, where many rely on hunting and fishing to eat.
But now climate change and other modern factors are forcing changes to an ancient way of life, rendering traditional storage methods dangerously unreliable.
Ranging from small arctic root cellars to spacious, wood-lined underground chambers, ice cellars are typically stocked with vast amounts of whale, walrus, seal and caribou.
These chambers, usually built 10 to 12 feet below the surface, have long been used to age subsistence food to perfection and ensure a steady supply during the sparser months, which is critical for survival.
Researchers in Hungary have published the exciting new claim that they've discovered a new subatomic particle, but it's nowhere near time to start talking about Nobel Prizes as CNN (and now everyone who syndicates them) has done.
Since 2015, the team at the Institute of Nuclear Research (Atomki) and the University of Debrecen claims to have spotted a mysterious correlation between pairs of subatomic particles in their particle accelerator in Hungary. The observation stands in stark contrast with theoretical prediction, and could be the signature of a previously unobserved force of nature. But, like all controversial new results, this one will require further vetting and independent confirmation before it becomes gospel.
The new results now on the arXiv physics paper server seems to be another hint of this particle's existence with a new and improved setup. This time, they struck a tritium target-basically very heavy hydrogen-with the proton beam, watched it suck up a proton and turn into a heavy form of helium, then decay. Once again, they saw a spike in the electron-positron pairs, this time at 115 degree separation.
This is exciting stuff! But no, it's not a Nobel-worthy discovery yet, because that's not how particle physics works. Independent teams must now dive in and try and reproduce this results to ensure there weren't any experiment-specific sources of error producing the signal. Physicists are taking the claim seriously, though. The NA64 experiment at CERN found no evidence of the decay last year, though their search continues. Other upcoming searches are underway or proposed.
I don't mean to rain on the parade-it would obviously be a huge deal if scientists discovered a new fundamental force. But strong claims require strong evidence, including, most importantly, independent verification from other particle physics experiments.
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responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
