Trump’s second term agenda

Serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) has made all manner of statements about what he wants to do if he should be re-elected in November. But while he was erratic and chaotic during his first term, there is a well-organized group that is working to create a detailed agenda that will provide a blueprint that they want him to implement. It is called Project 2025 and it calls for the steady dismantling of many of the checks and balances that prevent ideologues from using the government as if it were a private company run by a CEO who can make unilateral decisions that will affect the entire population.

On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looks at who is behind Project 2025 and what they seek to achieve. It is not good.

The surge of the Reform party in the UK

That the Conservative party under the leadership of Rishi Sunak is in deep trouble leading up to the elections on July 4th is well known. But this week brought even more bad news for them with a new poll that suggested that the upstart Reform party under the leadership of political gadfly and provocateur Nigel Farage, has just barely edged ahead of them. This article looks at history of this party and what this swing towards them might mean.

Needless to say Farage, who has targeted to Conservative party since both appeal roughly to the same sections of the electorate, has seized on this latest poll to declare that his party now forms the opposition, not the Conservatives. His goal seems to be to attract disgruntled Conservative voters to vote for Reform. However, that risks splitting the right wing vote and giving an opening for Labour and Liberal candidates to squeak past them to win marginal seats.

In the third of his commentaries on the election, Jonathan Pie looks at the Reform party and its leader.

Trump’s post-conviction incoherent rant

The day after his conviction on 34 criminal counts, serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) gave a typically rambling and incoherent press conference at which he recycled the usual litany of grievances and falsehoods. He left without taking any questions, showing how nervous he is about the implications of the verdict.

Jimmy Kimmel gave a pretty good rundown of the day’s events.

One point that Kimmel made bears emphasizing. When politicians are in deep trouble, a common ploy is to have a press conference with their partner by their side to show their loyalty. This is especially the case if there is sexual infidelity involved. And yet, Melania Trump has maintained total silence before, throughout, and after the trial and never showed up even once during the proceedings. What does it say that she cannot be bothered to put out even a pro forma statement of support?

This cartoon illustrates how far we have entered uncharted waters with a person who not only is openly contemptuous of truth and the rule of law but has managed to get so many leaders of his party to be complicit in his actions.

The story behind Airplane!

Airplane! (1980) is one of the funniest films ever made. While it was clearly a parody of the disaster films that were a popular genre at that time (in addition to parodying iconic scenes from other films) I was not aware that the film was so closely based on an actual 1957 film titled Zero Hour, with many scenes lifted entirely from that older film as setups for the newer film’s jokes.

Zero Hour is a thriller about a passenger flight that turns dangerous when the crew is felled by food poisoning, leaving traumatized war pilot Ted Stryker (Dana Andrews) as the only man on board able to land the plane. The film was written by Arthur Hailey, who was also behind the Airport movies that were also part of the inspiration for Airplane!. ZAZ actually bought the rights to Zero Hour, which allowed them to literally remake a great number of scenes — they didn’t just use the script, but copied staging, camera angles and everything. And it’s all used as the lead-in for a great many of the comedy’s most well-loved jokes.

You can see this similarities in this comparison of scenes from the older black-and-white film and the new one.

Key actors like Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, and Peter Graves had, prior to Airplane!, mostly played serious roles in dramatic films. The Airplane! creators exploited this fact and told them to say their lines as if this were a serious film, so that their deadpan delivery made it even funnier.

If you have never seen Airplane!, you have missed a treat, though there are a couple of jokes in scenes involving children that nowadays would not have been made, and rightly so.

Here’s the trailer.

Senator Robert Menendez must be really stupid

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart looks at the corruption trial of New Jersey senator Robert Menendez and his wife Nadine on charges that in his capacity as a senator, he did favors for individuals in exchange for bribes. Officials who raised their home found gold bars and stacks of cash all over the place.

As Stewart says, this shows that Menendez is kind of stupid to indulge in this kind of cartoonish corruption when he could learn from his colleagues in Congress how to make much more money such as using their access to inside information to make highly profitable stock trades with no risk of being arrested.

Biden-Trump debates arranged

In a surprise development yesterday, Joe Biden and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) have agreed to two debates, one on June 27 hosted by CNN and the other on September 10 hosted by ABC. Both will start at 9:00 pm (ET). I say ‘surprise’ not because I did not think it would happen but because they came together so quickly, when usually these negotiations are quite protracted over all manner of details, such as who will host, the moderators, the venues, the format, and so on.

There will be no audience at the debates. This is a good thing. Audience reaction is very distracting. To take part, a candidate must get at least 15% in four national polls, a bar that is high enough to likely rule out third party and independent candidates.

SSAT’s acceptance of CNN and ABC as hosts signals a capitulation on his part since he has constantly whined about how they are biased against him. He must think that he will be so good in the debates, or is so desperate, that he can accept any terms.
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Kristi Noem’s disastrous book tour

As if her story about shooting her pet puppy Cricket was not bad enough, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is also under fire for a false story about meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Jordan Klepper weighs in.

In China, a zoo has apologized for dyeing two dogs black and white in order to fool visitors into making them think they were pandas. It struck me that this may be a good strategy for dogs to avoid Killer Noem.