"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
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.
"FRICKIN’ HOLY MARY MOTHER OF GOD! JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH! POPE PAUL VI AND ALL THE SAINTS! AND DEAR GOD WHY ARE ALL THESE WOMEN IN EXPENSIVE ULTRASUEDE DRESSES RUNNING UP AND DOWN THE AISLES SCREAMING THEIR FOOL HEADS OFF???!!!!!"
Shit overflowing.
"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 ..."
RIP Amara Renas and all the other unknown women and men and children. May you haunt our collective memory forever.
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."
"Basically, amoral social climber from poor background seduces poor factory girl, gets her pregnant, wants to marry a rich socialite and so kills poor factory girl by smashing her in the head with his tennis racket and dumping her body in a lake, fakes a canoe accident, trips self up by being basically an idiot, dies in electric chair after mercy is refused by Governor Charles Evans Hughes."
"Thieves' Highway is a classic Noir tale of truckers and apples and greed and sex and San Francisco and California and highways and death."
"There's a lot more than just smiles to recommend this one–ts droll English humor, its glimpse at fashions and designs and trends of 1968, the fantastic acting of everyone, including the performance of Bob Newhart, whose movie outings are often forgotten, the sarcastic wit and the satire–it's a long list and will need a second viewing to get it all."
"It's well worth a challenging read-and-think on everyone's part at this particular moment in the country and society."
"Instead of "Thank you for your service," try, "We're sorry you had to expend your blood, sweat, tears and toil to clean up our monumental failings." Every time you meet one of the dwindling numbers of WWII veterans (and those of all the other magnificent little American wars we've fallen into), keep your mouth shut and your brain focused on peace. These "Greatest Generation" folks answered the bell and won the fight. We might not be as blessed next time."
"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?"
"What's our death toll up to in this week's boutique pay lots of money and die fashionably sweepstakes? 19?"
"The information presented is stark and perhaps unsettling."
Immoral, indecent, inhumane. ... We are running concentration camps and human beings are dying.
"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."
"The film itself is fairly representative of the period and shows how far ahead of her time Garbo was ... that she could shine in spite of rather stilted dialogue, in a non-native language shows just how great an actor she was at the height of her career. It wasn't bad, and I might have another look under certain conditions, but I probably wouldn't buy it for the DVD collection, unless Criterion gets hold of it."
"DEEPLY OFFENDED that a child refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance bc freedom is all about mandatory loyalty oaths."
100 years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns along the 440-mile line stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea fell silent. The war started 1 August 1914 just as German Chancellor Otto von Bismark once famously predicted around 1884, by "some damned fool thing in the Balkans;" in this case, the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, a city of agony in the 20th century). But on 11 November 1918, it was finally "all quiet on the Western Front."
In the next few days, there will be much remembrance of the events of 100 years ago—the end of World War I. Not as much in the U.S., where World War I is like the Korean War, a largely forgotten conflict, even though 115,516 Americans died between 1917-1918, along with over 320,000 sickened, most in the influenza epidemic of 1918.
A message in a bottle on the roof of a Goslar, Germany, cathedral was found by the grandson of the writer. An authentic lesson...
"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,...
I pretty much wish I had remained disconnected from FB while also being innovative enough to stay connected to the real people in my life without Facebook's corrupting middle man kleptocracy. I sense that there is another housecleaning coming; my involvement will need to be further curtailed. I'm thinking of what we can do next ... there are far better possibilities, surely, than this unholy mess of greed and venality.
Fact/gut check: Arming 20% of the nation's teachers would result in an army of over 640,000 men and women, as many as… Posted by...
Every single day is a new low. How low can we go? There is no bottom. So pretty goddamned low. Shithole low.
[Once again, my conscience overflows and will not give me rest without giving vent to something political/religious. So… Posted by Steve Pollock on Friday, January...
The story is sordid and long, but the details were made clear by Matt Viser's excellent Globe piece. To wit: Lorenzo sold the Donald the Eastern Shuttle for an overvalued $365 million (if DT had created a brand-new shuttle from the ground up with brand-new planes, not old worn-out 727s, estimates were that he could have done it for $300 million.) Of course, the money was all borrowed. It was 1989; Eastern (and Continental) were already almost dead from Lorenzo's sledgehammer and the economy was tanking. Pan Am 103 was bombed, the first Gulf War was about to begin. It was incredibly bad judgement to overpay a bunch of other peoples' money for something that was guaranteed to tank.
There's this thing that has been closely guarded for going on 40 years in 2018. It's my secret. So as it hits its 40th birthday in our new year, I decided it's time to tell the world.
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.
Why? Because, as reporter Anne Kingston notes, women are "female reproductive vessels" and not human beings. And because Long Dong Silver has always, and will always, get a free pass. And both of these are realities for reasons which surpasseth understanding.
Nazis are just "the normal people next door" and nothing bad should happen to either them or the New York Times for pointing this out, says The New York Times.
Look, give me an early Dec. 14 birthday present and make some calls. To put it bluntly, you ain't gonna like what… Posted by...
The Diddler’s Club What we learned this week: • Al Franken is the latest member of the “People Who Diddled People Who Didn’t Want...
In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War...
In which we in the future answer “Letters to the Editor” of the Chicago Tribune written during the past that was called World War...
Not surprised. Grieved. Shell-shocked. But not surprised. Worst death toll yet in Orlando, five in a domestic in hometown Roswell, another one averted in...
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,...
[Fair warning: Not a happy or basset-y post. (Didn’t help my, shall we say, outlook on life, that our water heater failed and flooded...
I was the first registered Republican in my family. I cast my first vote in a presidential election for Ronald Reagan, the second for...
“The whole world is watching what we do here. We’re going to win or lose this war depending on how we do this.” Ali...
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced that Germany will join the U.S., Israel and other countries in a «boycott» of the upcoming United Nations...