In an episode of the TV show Extras, Ian McKellen explains his acting method.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
In an episode of the TV show Extras, Ian McKellen explains his acting method.
Barack Obama spoke about the need for bipartisanship when he came into office in 2008 and the Republicans used that desire to thwart his election platform goals though Democrats had big majorities in both houses of Congress. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom. I was more cynical. I think he and Democrats used that bipartisanship ploy to escape having to follow through on their promises.
That scenario is being played out again. Joe Biden also made a big song-and-dance about wanting bipartisanship and now Republicans are whining that they need to be part of any policy decisions, although they and Trump gleefully rammed through their massive tax cuts for the rich and other moves while thumbing their noses at the Democrats. Ten Republican senators have demanded, in the name of bipartisanship, that Biden take seriously their ridiculously low offer of a $600 billion stimulus package which is much less than the $1.9 trillion that Biden has proposed. As part of their bipartisanship gambit, Republicans are now also shedding copious crocodile tears over the deficit, the very thing they cavalierly dismissed when their tax cuts for the rich sent it skyrocketing.
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I have had conversations with friends in Sri Lanka who ask me about the vaccines. They particularly want to know if I am going to get the vaccine and when I tell them that of course I will as soon as I become eligible, they are relieved because that country seems to be awash with all manner of false information that is scaring the hell out of people, such as that wearing masks can cause you to get sick and that the vaccine can give you HIV and even alter your DNA. This makes them apprehensive and I try my best to assure them that these stories are all false.
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Continuing my quest to amass evidence that cartoonists are fond of the name Bob.
A friend of mine asked me for my opinion about board books marketed for toddlers with titles like Quantum Physics for Babies and Quantum Entanglement for Babies that her niece was thinking of buying for her child.
You can see the books here.
Jane Mayer is an excellent reporter for the New Yorker magazine who has been following the career of Mitch McConnell for a long time. She has a new article examining his recent moves that seem to involve a distancing from Trump. The headline says that McConnell has dumped Trump but that was written just after he spoke in the Senate on January 6th saying that the election results should not be overturned. Since then, McConnell has edged back to Trump again.
Just a couple of days ago I was reading how Trump had managed, after many, many top lawyers had refused his offers to become part of his legal team, to get a couple of reputedly competent lawyers to represent him during his impeachment trial where the oral arguments start on February 9th. Then news comes today that they too have bailed out.
The ability of Republican senators who plan to acquit Donald Trump at his upcoming impeachment trial to pretend to have weighed the case on the merits has been endangered by the mass resignation of Trump’s legal team at the weekend.
…But the trial schedule, and its substance, have been thrown into doubt with the departure of five lawyers on Trump’s defense team – apparently the entire team. The resignations were first reported by CNN, which said the lawyers and Trump disagreed over strategy.
A Trump spokesperson told the New York Times that there had been a strategy disagreement but denied it was over Trump’s insistence that his defense center on the wild, false accusations of election fraud that he has been peddling for months.
…The departure of Bowers and Deborah Barberi, two South Carolina lawyers, was described by a source familiar with the situation as a “mutual decision”.
Three other lawyers associated with the team, Josh Howard of North Carolina and Johnny Gasser and Greg Harris of South Carolina, also parted ways with Trump, another source said.
Joe Biden has issued Executive Orders mandating that masks must be worn in a wide variety of venues.
Under the executive order, Biden is directing departments and agencies under his jurisdiction “to immediately take action to require people in federal buildings or on federal lands, on-duty or on-site federal employees, and on-site federal contractors to wear a mask and maintain physical distance,” according to the White House.
But the order also requires masks on various modes of public transportation, including trains, airplanes and intercity buses. And it’s that provision, attorneys who have challenged mask mandates in the past say, that could be the most vulnerable to a legal challenge.
Samantha Bee says that it is not a good thing that people tend to only get enthusiastic about efforts to save cute species and ignore the ones that are not as photogenic. She makes a convincing case for why we should care about the ugly ones too.
I, like so many people, have become used to using videoconferencing. This recent cover of a New Yorker magazine captured how someone can use the limited frame of the Zoom window to show oneself to best effect with the least effort.
