Today’s News — 3/19/2019



Today’s Hot Headlines

Zero Hedge: Boeing/FAA Saga is a Perfect Microcosm Of Our “Twisted, Broken Culture”

American Greatness: How a McCain Associate Helped Advance the Russian Collusion Narrative

Hollywood Insider: Warner CEO Kevin Tsujihara to Exit as Studio Chief

Business Insider: How Elizabeth Holmes Convinced Powerful Men onto Theranos Board

Washington Times: Supreme Court Upholds ICE Detention Without Bail

New York Times: How California’s Biggest Utility Overlooked Wildfire Risks [Keep scrolling]

Hot Air: Baltimore Mayor Resigns from Board that Paid Her $500K for Books

MSNBC: How Jared and Ivanka Might Be More Dangerous than Trump

Vogue: Opening of Gender Bending Fashion Show at Boston Museum Of Fine Arts

LA Times: Why Do Republicans Still Back Trump? [Subject of Today’s News Spotlight below]

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AI Fun with Dick and Jane

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How this post came to be. Saw this promo from the wrecked icon called the New Yorker and was reminded of a post put up here some months ago: Why didn’t I crop out the squatting woman? Truth in advertising.  That’s not true, actually. In fact, it’s a lie. I wouldn’t have stumbled on this lovely screenshot if it weren’t for an image I’d used in a Facebook post some days before: You won’t believe this, but while Iwas posting the pic just above, my wife showed me her ROFL pic from the The Babylon Bee… …Which is obviously directly relevant to the rantings of the Glasser person who thinks everything Trump has ever done or will do is a mortal sin against the Manhattan scripture called The New Yorker. Don’t get me wrong. I used to love The New Yorker. Then they surrendered it to the Smart Women, under the subscription-shrinking stewardship of Tina Brown, whose legacy has led gradually to the dollar-a-copy pitch shown in the first graphic above. Today’s mag looks a like the old one, but tha...
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Questions about ‘The Paper Symphony’

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I’ve been at sixes and sevens about this post since I knew I had to do it. Even had a hard time picking the leadoff graphic. This one does convey the idea of questioning the decision by a great man of senior years. But this one introduces the notion that Philip Glass’s principled stand is one that has been sponsored by indolent dilettantes who didn’t give a fig about the Kennedy Center during the decades in which it has been literally falling down. Falling down. Along with all the forms of high art the Kennedy’s were trying to inspire with a facility for culturally significant performances by the nation’s most gifted artists. Interesting and ironic that they choose the 87 years Philip Glass to deliver their most stinging blow against the unspeakable privately financed renovation of the crumbling building and its wayward preoccupation with niche artistes. Am I getting ahead of myself here? Did you miss the story when it broke? Lawrence O’Donnell, the left’s fantasy Dean of Jeffersonian ...
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The Obvious Comparison Dems Refuse to Make

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  HINT: It’s more than flashy hair. President John F. Kennedy now resides in a curious limbo. He was briefly the face of the Democrat Party as it wanted to see itself in the post-WWII era. In hindsight he was an anomaly in the party’s history. Before JFK, the most prominent Democrat Presidential contenders teetered between the crude (Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Harry Truman, Al Smith) and the unashamedly elite (Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, Rutherford B. Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Adlai Stevenson). JFK was an interesting hybrid of both. Like Al Smith, he was a Roman Catholic, like FDR a graduate of Harvard College. His lineage also had its disreputable side, with a family fortune reputedly acquired by bootlegging during the Great Depression. Backed by that fortune, he became famous and successful at an early age but was criticized as callow and rumored to be a philanderer in his first years in the Senate. When he became a presidential candidate, he was a clear brea...
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Seventh Heaven for Hamilton

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  Lewis Hamilton wins Seventh World Championship at Formula 1 Grand Prix in Turkey: A stunning drive from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the Turkish Grand Prix gave him his 10th victory of the season – and, more crucially, saw him claim the seventh drivers’ title of his career, to equal the record of Michael Schumacher, as Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel completed the podium after a thrilling race in Istanbul. Hamilton had started the race in sixth, risen to third midway through the first lap and then dropped back to sixth by the end of Lap 1 after an error at Turn 9. But a decision to change his intermediate tyres just once saw Hamilton drive a masterful race to claim victory by over 25 seconds from Perez. The win alone was enough to claim championship #7, but it was even more assured after a disastrous race for Valtteri Bottas - the only man who could have stopped Hamilton winning the title today - who spun six times en route to a P14 finish.
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Tell me I’m making it all up for myself

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Haven’t been here for a while. Cooling my heels on maybe half a dozen posts for which I have content materials assembled and the writing just awaiting the typing I don’t feel like doing against the relentless pass rush of AutoCorrect/AI. Stranded, I guess. My principal emotion is akin to what I felt back in 2019, when I took a year off from this site because who can write about dread every day? Like then, my mind is telling me the Dark Age is upon us because we don’t deserve to be saved from the fate our enemies intend for us. They’re brain-damaged sociopaths; a near majority of us are just brain-damaged. Good guys and bad guys both done in by appalling lack of education and undeveloped consciousness skills at foreseeing consequences from a Universe-of-One perspective. I don’t like gas prices at the pump, I don’t like the way Trump talks so mean, and the Iran thing I just don’t get, so I won’t vote this time. Fine. We get what we deserve as a nation. That’s the real American Way. No ot...
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The Graying of a Boy

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The Mark Hamill thing. A matter of puzzlement to many people. I have an idea about what’s going on with him, which I’ll explain because I’m thinking most people are just chalking it up to projected career disappointments. Which is part of it but not all of it. I know that the language issues surrounding the topics I’ll be touching on are prohibitive, since words no longer mean what they used to, but I’m just laying it out here and everyone is free to take it or leave it as they choose. There’s an easy answer and a deeper answer. The easy answer is just scratching the surface but should show the value of common sense in a long-distance analysis like this. Easy? For Hamill, Trump is a stand-in for Harrison Ford. Looked them up. Ford is 6’1”. Hamill’s bio claims 5’9” or 5’10” though  the claim is challenged by those who say he’s more like 5’7” give or take. It’s not political, the Trump hatred. Not really. The TDS mania that pervades Hollywood was an attractive nuisance just waiting f...
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I volunteer to stand before the Reich Commission

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R. F. Laird of Yardarm University “University of California-Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich proposed the radical idea for a post-election commission to censor speech and name and shame every public figure who supported President Donald Trump’s rise to power. He wrote on Twitter over the weekend that “when this nightmare” — or Trump’s presidency — “is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.” In response to the tweet, several Twitter followers agreed and even raised the stakes of his proposal. “I am thinking more of using the postwar Nuremberg Trials as a template,” one Twitter user wrote, speculating that criminal trials should be in order. “Felonies were committed as were treasonous behaviors. The guilty should be arrested, tried, convicted and f...
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More things nobody wants to talk about

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Judge Tiffany Baker-Carper Why would I lead off a story about a controversial judge with a picture of her all dolled up for a social occasion? To get it out of the way. Yes, she’s a good-looking, shapely young woman. That’s not the issue, which is not personal but systemic on the face of it. If she made a grave misjudgment because the situation was over her head, the first appropriate question is not what kind of terrible person is she, but rather why was she on the bench in the first place?  Here’s the story as reported yesterday by the Gateway Pundit: FTA: <<The pedophile, Daniel Spencer, was convicted in April 2025 of traveling to meet a minor for sex following an undercover sting operation. Despite the State Attorney’s Office recommending he be held without bond pending sentencing, Judge Baker-Carper allowed Spencer to remain free, citing his lack of violent criminal history and prior compliance while on bond. Weeks later, on May 19, 2025, Spencer and his wife, Chloe Spen...
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