If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
A "good job" according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976.
Shit overflowing.
"The attraction here isn't really the cultural relic/curiousity value, it's the variation of the old man meets woman, they hate each other, they clash with sparkling dialogue and then end up together 'til death they do part. This bit has been done to death in Hollywood's 100+ year run, but it can be freshened and redeemed if the scriptwriter is up to the job."
"Born Yesterday is pretty fabulous. At least until it sinks in that it's just as applicable today (especially today!) as it was in 1950. In that year, it could have been warning against the House Un-American Activities Committee, which ultimately wrecked lives, but failed. But today, the movie is depressing when you realize that Broderick Crawford's Harry Brock is in charge of the country, the Senate and the judiciary and is sitting in the White House tweeting."
"Senate Republicans are setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the republic itself. I'm not naive enough to think they would hold Democratic presidents to the low standard they've applied to Trump, but all future presidents will be able to point to Trump to justify ..."
Tragically brilliant.
"Regardless of whether you saw it then as scandalous that such perversions were being exhibited in public theaters or whether you see it now as being stereotypical, offensive and overly focused on white, male, straight actors and queer panics and Italian stereotypes, to wit ... offensive!! ... there is much to actually be loved here."
"... this is probably the granddaddy of all product placement movies, far more egregious than even Joan Crawford's conspicuous scattering of Pepsi bottles in Strait Jacket ..."
"The songs and dances, Shirley MacLaine and Cita Rivera, et al, were great; it's just the stuff in between that is less than satisfying."
"The bonuses here are George Kennedy as a farmhand foreshadowing by 22 years Billy Bob Thornton in 1996's Swing Blade ("I like them French fried potaters."), all the Pepsi placement, and Lee Majors in pre-Six Million Dollar Man mode, along with his very hairy chest, fluffily rising and falling just before the axe falls."
"Regardless of whether you saw it then as scandalous that such perversions were being exhibited in public theaters or whether you see it now as being stereotypical, offensive and overly focused on white, male, straight actors and queer panics and Italian stereotypes, to wit ... offensive!! ... there is much to actually be loved here."
"Not only is it hilarious, it has fabulous midcentury (ugh, that word) interiors, jokes only librarian/book/research nerds understand, an awesome supporting cast including EMERAC and Kate gets to get blotto and talk about the "Mexican Avenue Bus" (the Lexington Avenue Bus, that is)."
"It's well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone's part at this particular moment in the country and society."
"You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language."
"Insane levels of fear and control and succumbing to terror. We are a nation which is perhaps the most fearful of all countries."
"Many states whose sovereignty is threatened are now finally waking up to the danger. But is it perhaps already too late to do anything about the seemingly over-mighty corporations?"
"It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy. For if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. ..."
"An American gentleman . . . likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves."
I just caught this from two years ago on The Guardian‘s website. Two years behind, that’s about my speed. But it is a fascinating...
"DEEPLY OFFENDED that a child refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance bc freedom is all about mandatory loyalty oaths."
"Fentanyl's potency has « transformed the global trafficking — and policing — of narcotics."
Here are a few Original Originalist quotes worth Originally quoting, from a few of our first Original Founders:
"On every airline flight, a crew member talks to passengers in the exit rows to see whether they can, as Federal Aviation Administration regulations specify, “pass expeditiously through the emergency exit” if needed. Given how passengers have grown in inverse proportion to the spaciousness of airliner seats, anything like “expeditious” evacuation of an entire airliner seems doubtful."
[Edited two days later to fix some typos and unclear, stream-of-consciousness-type unclear phrases.] During the recent effort to rename the Russell Senate Office Building,...
On 1-Jun-1945, six weeks after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, new U.S. President Harry Truman convened a meeting to update the status on and...
Of COURSE we had to watch some Joan tonight. Not taking time to behold the wonder that is our patron saint, Lucille LeSueur, would...
A Democratic Socialist explains «what Democratic Socialism actually is»: Not just a return to the halcyon days of the New Deal. “I’m a staff...
"There is a discrete left-opportunist trend that seeks to throw all developments in Cuba post-1959 into the dustbin and forget about it. This does as little for us as the right-opportunist line; both fail to grasp the full reality of revisionist corrosion and capitalist restoration in Cuba, although one cloaks itself in stultified theory."
Back in 2014, I included a chapter in my book detailing Bill Schock's war experiences as they related to his reporting on the crash of Braniff International flight 250 in 1966.
«This is Bill’s final column» out of countless ones he wrote over 71 years for the Falls City Journal. With this column, he said...
I have been attempting to read «Michael Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History» since it came out in 2000. Instead, I've read «William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich» twice. Nothing wrong with anything I've read of Burleigh's work; quite the contrary. In fact, it has to do with how big the book is; the first edition is 950-plus pages and weighs a ton and I've had hand/wrist problems since, well, 2000. And I have Rise and Fall on Kindle.
Rep. Larson Slams GOP for Labeling Medicare and Social Security 'Entitlements' Congressman John Larson (D-Conn.) scolded Republicans in a fiery speech on Thursday, criticizing...
Want to know what words were recorded in dictionaries for the first time ever in the year you were born? Kinda… Posted by Steve...
Finally, I have an identity. I am a "Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement." Strong. Thermal Emission. Velocity… Posted by Steve Pollock on Monday, March 19,...
[Scenes from old age (level 54 edition)] From “Mail Call Three” episode of M*A*S*H (S6,E20; 1978, when I was 15), Radar complaining about his...
#ArmMeWith … so many other things than a Glock. Posted by Steve Pollock on Saturday, February 24, 2018
This is our reality … (another in a series): Posted by Steve Pollock on Tuesday, February 20, 2018
[Yeah, it's long and snarky. Yes, again. Read and think or move along.] A teacher's perspective: This is our reality,… Posted by Steve Pollock...
Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.
“Antonio: ‘Mark you this, Bassanio, The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with...
So let's see if I've got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.
Peckerwoods! What we learned this week: • Comedian Louis CK and Crusading Crazy Ass Roy Moore were accepted into that venerable old boy’s club,...
“I always knew I loved Maureen O'hara. Now I know why, thanks to this clipping from 1945.”
“I always knew I loved Maureen O'hara. Now I know why, thanks to this clipping from 1945.”
William Bradley’s ‘The Dawn of ‘Just Me’: Zack Snyder’s Neoliberal Superheroes’, just published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, contains a telling paragraph,...
From longtime favorite strip, "Piranha Club," (still known as "Ernie" in Scandinavia), a 'toon from October 1999 that I… Posted by Steve Pollock on Thursday,...
In Palestine “On the rock-strewn hills I heard The anger of guns that shook Echoes along the glen. In my heart was the song...