Since it’s Saturday, I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about my pal Dennis Hartley who’s been holding down Saturday nights here at Hullabaloo for the last 18 years. I’ve actually known Dennis since I was a teenager and we were growing up in Fairbanks Alaska. We (mis)spent some of our 20s in San Francisco whiling away hours and hours in the fantastic repertory movie theaters that were numerous in all the big cities in those days. (This was before you could pretty much find every film ever made just by asking Mr Google.) In those days they had film addict types curating the bookings, which changed every day, and you could see classic film programs, foreign films and offbeat independents on huge screens in big, old movie palaces any day of the week. We devoured them. It was an incredible education in the art of film. Dennis went on to pursue a career in comedy and radio in Seattle and I ended up in LA working in the movie business but we’ve stayed in touch and Dennis has remained a film hound on a level I couldn’t keep up with. His personal collection is probably bigger than most film schools at this point.
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Thank you once again for your support for this old blog this year. I am so very grateful for all my readers and truly appreciate those of you who are able to put a few bucks in the kitty. It means everything, especially in tough times like these. So they managed to avoid a shutdown at the last minute and everybody got to go home for Christmas. But their hiccup at the end exposed the glaring fact that the Republican legislative majority is going to be an even worse shitshow than we might have thought. We knew they’d be incompetent and extreme. But I don’t think any of us understood that Elon Musk would be the new leader of the party and would take to his massive platform to threaten Republicans with his massive fortune. But it was entirely predictable that the Freedom Caucus weirdos would just say no. They always do. Apparently, they were finally able to appease President Musk and his assistant Donald Trump with a promise to raise the debt ceiling while simultaneously making massive cuts to the safety net: House Republicans have a new plan for their agenda next year — one that might even satisfy tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Happy Solstice! I thought I’d whip up a wintry mix of (literally) cool tunes to celebrate the shortest day of the year (buck up, little camper…we’ll start gaining daylight tomorrow). So for a much-needed mental health break…turn off the news, fix yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate (or kick it up a notch), dim all the lights, cozy up in front of the fireplace (real or virtual), don your favorite noise-cancelling headphones and (if I may quote from a Styx song) let the melody just drift your cares away.
Christmas Lights at the zoo! I had no idea this was a thing. I might just go check out the LA Zoo lights this weekend. It looks magical.
That came after his earlier endorsement and a flood of criticism. Then the VP-elect also endorsed German neo-fascists and threatened a woman who works for a think tank called The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He may think his sarcasm masks the fascism but he’s wrong. This is unamerican, obviously. These are the people who will be running our country for the next four years openly aligning with Nazis and deploying Nazi tactics. By the way, the man who ran his car into that crowd in Germany is a big fan of Elon Musk: Taleb A. apparently shared the resentment of conspiracy ideologists and agitators such as the US podcaster Alex Jones or the British right-wing activist Tommy Robinson. The entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has increasingly openly expressed his sympathies for right-wing parties, was also one of his role models: “If you listen to someone like Tommy Robinson or even Elon Musk, and even if you are ignorant of the process of Islamization, you will think that they are both conspiracy theorists,” said A. in an interview.
Well, it’s been one heck of a year. ::shaking head:: Although I love getting those end-of-year postcards from folks, I’ve never managed to make them. Instead of recounting my familial adventures and emotional trials and tribulations, I thought I could at least step back and reflect on some professional endeavors over the last year, many […]
After a long day on the golf course and a big dinner with his other new best billionaire pal Jeff Bezos, Little Donny was very happy indeed. Everybody loves him. All the fancy ladies in their glittery gowns want to take their picture with him and all the important men want to bow down to kiss his tiny ring. Meanwhile, his bestest friend, the richest man in the world, told all the bad people to shut down the government so America can be great again. And they did! He is the luckiest boy ever. The End
Ok sure. I’m not sure that an immigrant can be in the line of succession but I’ve never heard otherwise. But why would Musk want such a thing? He can run the country just by pulling Trump’s strings and shitposting on his personal social media platform. Why would he want to do all that dirty work? Just give it Marjorie Taylor Green or some other MAGA cultist and have them do his bidding. I must admit that I’m a little bit surprised that it’s gone so far off the rails already. It’s not even Christmas! This morning Trump is saying that he wants to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, which is actually a great idea. If that were to happen the Democrats would have to help because his Republican zealots will never vote for it. The big question right now is whether they will do it. I’m torn. It would be great if we could eliminate the debt ceiling. Democrats have been for that ever since the Republicans decided to use it as a weapon to threaten government shutdowns which they did even when Trump was president. (The Democrats never do that.) But should they help the Republicans get over this hump right now?
Once more, many thanks for your contributions to the Happy Hollandaise fundraiser so far. I am so grateful for all who come here every day to read our work and for those of you who support it. Merci beaucoup! When we say these are turbulent times, the only comfort is that the US isn’t the only place it’s happening. While it’s true that few countries have a freak show like the Musk administration, all the leading democracies are under strain. The danger, of course, is that with the whole world under such strain, it’s possible that things could go sideways very quickly. The Wall St Journal reported this over the weekend: One lesson from an unprecedented year of elections around the world is that voters in industrialized countries are particularly unhappy, ready to boot unpopular leaders out of office and making it more difficult for politicians in power to enact bold programs of change. Rarely have the rich world’s political leaders been so widely disliked. No leader of an industrialized country other than tiny Switzerland has a positive rating, according to a survey of some 25 democracies by pollster Morning Consult.
Here’s the poll: A majority of Americans oppose Donald Trump’s plans to use the U.S. military to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to instruct the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and to pardon rioters charged with breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a nationwide Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. Even larger majorities of Americans oppose Trump’s plans to jail reporters for writing stories he doesn’t like and having police use force against anti-Trump protests. The survey of 1,251 Americans was conducted weeks after Trump’s victory and sought to examine public sentiment about positions espoused by the president-elect that challenge democratic principles and strain constitutional norms, as well as views on the legitimacy of American elections after Trump’s win. Trump has claimed a broad mandate for his proposals and has selected cabinet secretaries and other executive branch officials who have expressed eagerness to carry them out.