Film review: Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

I recently stumbled across this highly enjoyable film. I had never heard about it before even though it has a stellar cast, and only decided to watch it because it was described as a comedy that was quirky and witty. The description was accurate. It is a film with good writing and excellent performances from all the actors. I am surprised that I missed hearing about it when it was first released and that it did not make a bigger impact.
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The whole sordid Falwell saga laid bare

The website Politico has done a deep dive into all the nefarious things that Jerry Falwell engaged in while president of Liberty University. It is quite astonishing. He managed to avoid oversight by his supposed bosses on the Board of Trustees by forcing out of the board and his administration those who were not loyalists who raised concerns that his behavior was not consistent with the highly puritanical code demanded by the university of its students, faculty, and staff.
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Delusional Donald’s dubious logic

Here is a tweet from Delusional Donald on November 11, 2020.


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The Four Seasons debacle reveals a lot about Trump

The people in Trump World are either evil or incompetent or both. While there may have been some exceptions to this rule early on in the administration when people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that he was actually interested in being a serious president, now that he has been revealed to be dangerous delusional sociopathic narcissist, such people have either left or been fired and the ones still supporting fit almost perfectly into those two categories.

I am a fan of puzzles and I must say that I am still struggling to understand how in the world Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giluliani ended up holding what Trump tweeted was a “Big press conference” in the back lot of a landscaping company. Over at MSNBC, Chris Hayes tries to make sense of it, saying that it is emblematic of the incompetence that has characterized Trump’s entire life. I tend to agree that in this case, incompetence wins out, since evil makes no sense.
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Entitled no more?

After Ivanka and Jared Kushner moved to Washington DC in January 2017, they enrolled their children in Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School. But three weeks ago on October 19, they transferred them to Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in suburban Maryland. They claimed that they were doing this because Berman was holding in-person classes, which of course is what the Trump has been advocating for all schools. But now it is revealed that the move was necessitated by Milton asking them to remove their children after complaints from other parents.

Why? Because Jared and Ivanka were not complying with the safety guidelines required of all members of the families at all times, even when they are off campus.
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Trump’s false promises to uncover truths

Trump and his allies are digging in their heels, claiming that their investigations will prove that there was massive fraud and the election was stolen from them.They are refusing to concede, even though late last night the other news outlets joined AP and Fox in calling Arizona for Joe Biden, confirming his total of 290 EVs. AP and Fox had called it as early as the night of the election but the other news outlets held back, giving the Trump camp a slim hope that they could retain a state that had long been considered reliably Republican. Now not only has Biden won it, but its two senators are also Democrats.
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Time is rapidly running out for Q and QAnon and Trump

I am curious as to what is going to happen to the QAnon movement now. As readers know, these are people who think that there is someone at the top levels of government with high-level security clearance (possibly Donald Trump himself) who uses the pseudonym Q to drop hints as to what is going on behind the scenes. As a result, QAnon followers believe that the top echelons of the Democratic party consist of pedophiles, sex-traffickers, and even those who eat children and that Trump has a plan to flush out and arrest them in a spectacular denouement. They have been eagerly waiting for this moment. And waiting. And waiting. But like Godot (or perhaps more appropriately, Guffman), Q has so far not revealed themselves and the prediction have so far failed to materialize.
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Another day, another dismal record

Yesterday the US saw a sharp rise in covid-19 daily cases to 144,270 and hospitalizations to 65,368 (both records) and another sharp rise in the seven day average of deaths to 1,421. At this rate, we are looking at more than 300,000 deaths by the end of the year.

The trend shows all the signs of the early stages of exponential growth and if nothing is done soon, the impact will be devastating. It is unconscionable that not only is Trump not doing anything, he is not allowing Biden’s task force (that is refreshingly comprised of leading scientists and infectious disease experts) to get important information, and many Republican governors are following his lead of being cavalier about mandating basic precautions.
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Et tu, Fox News?

Trump and his supporters continue to be in denial that he has lost the election and claim that the election was stolen from him, despite the almost complete absence of evidence. As is usually the case, the losing side is looking around for the villains who contributed to this situation and they have taken aim at Fox News, despite the fact that the network has long been been a faithful mouthpiece for Trump, with their talk shows giving him complete freedom to utter nonsense and amplifying his efforts to spread hate and division. Fox viewers were the largest part of Trump’s support, dwarfing in numbers other Trump-supporting outlets like One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart.

What has specifically earned their recent ire is that Fox News, along with the AP, were the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden, doing so late on Tuesday night itself. That call, though it did not put Biden over the top of 270 electoral votes, still brought him to 264, close enough that it was all over bar the shouting, since it was expected that Nevada with its six EVs would go for Biden too. That would make all the other as yet uncalled races in Pennsylvania and Georgia moot.
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