Day: February 21, 2020

In a chat with The Wall Street Journal‘s Tunku Varadarajan, Clint Eastwood has distanced himself from Donald Trump and allied himself with Michael Bloomberg.

Excerpt: “’The politics [have] gotten so ornery,’ Eastwood says. He approves of ‘certain things that Trump’s done’ but wishes the president would act ‘in a more genteel way, without tweeting and calling people names. I would personally like for him to not bring himself to that level.’ As he drives me back to my hotel, he expresses an affinity for another former mayor: ‘The best thing we could do is just get Mike Bloomberg in there.'”

Will Team Bloomberg make a political ad about this endorsement? Probably within 24 hours. Less?

Earlier today in Times Square, Rei Ami and her Bear & Owl management team (including Jett Wells) celebrated the launching of a huge digital billboard. Top Row: Gavin Pomerantz (Bear & Owl Mgmt), REI AMI (artist), Theo Feldman (Bear & Owl Mgmt.) Bottom Row: Sky McElroy (Bear & Owl Mgmt), Ryan Schwabe (mastering engineer for the song), Tom Michel (a.k.a. “Hazey Eyes”, Bear & Owl client), Jett (Bear & Owl mgmt.)

Three years ago my “U-turn the Titanic and head back to the iceberg” idea was dismissed by DimitriL:

“It likely wouldn’t have been feasible to get back to the iceberg,” he wrote. “Reports state that Titanic was going fast enough after it sideswiped the iceberg that it took a few miles to come to a complete halt. Even if they could’ve turned around (with a half-mile turn radius), they would have had to slowly backtrack in the dark with no radar. Doubtful.”

But my other suggestion still holds water. “If the crew had thrown the large banquet tables from the first-class dining room into the sea they could have been used as rafts for those who couldn’t fit into the lifeboats,” I pointed out. “The Titanic’s first-class area was full of wooden furniture that would’ve floated. Tables, bedframes, armoires, bureaus, etc.

Original post: “If the Titanic had turned around and sailed back to the fatal iceberg before stopping engines, a couple of hundred passengers could have been ferried from the sinking ship to the iceberg to wait it out until the Carpathia arrived. Yes, it would have been cold sitting on the iceberg but they would’ve survived.”

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There’s nothing raw or natural or bracing about Call of the Wild, trust me. It’s a synthetic heartwarmer from top to bottom. Mostly “set” in the Alaskan wilderness described long ago by Jack London, it’s a cloying, patronizing, family-friendly CG-dog movie shot on Los Angeles-area sound stages.

If there was ever a film destined to receive a 20%-or-lower rating from Rotten Tomatoes, this was it. And yet, believe it or not, it currently has a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes — technically a failing grade but at the same time too kind.

Out of 110 RT critics, roughly 70 gave it a pass. In some cases because they sensed that families and their kids will flock to Call of the Wild this weekend, and they don’t want to sound like grouchy grumps. Many of these wave-it-on-through types are whores and cowards — no balls, no honesty, not much of a soul.

In the lead-up to the 1972 Democratic convention a loose coalition of moderates against the front-runner George McGovern emerged — they were dubbed “Anybody But McGovern.” In order to prevent a catastrophic Trump victory next November, left-moderate activists need to come together under a new banner — “Anybody But Bernie.”

Does anyone remember the smear slogan that Republican ratfuckers used against McGovern in the general campaign — “Acid, Amnesty and Abortion“? That will seem like chickenfeed compared to what the Trump machine will use in a few months against harumphy Bernie. They will slice and dice his ass into sashimi.

The Washington Post‘s Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima, Michael Scherer and Sean Sullivan, posted at 1:16 pm: “U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Presuming this information is valid, why would Vladmir Putin want to help Sanders? Let’s see, hold on, don’t rush me…uhm, could it be that Putin wants useful idiot Trump to win another term, and has calculated that Sanders is the easiest guy to beat from Trump’s perspective? I don’t want to go out on a limb but…

Clarifying: Putin doesn’t want Sanders to be elected President — he just wants Sanders to win the Democratic nomination.

Remember that earlier this week “a senior U.S. intelligence official said that Russia had ‘developed a preference’ for Trump in the 2020 campaign,” according to the Post. This assessment hugely pissed off Trump, resulting in him “lambast[ing] his acting intelligence director, Joseph Maguire, and DNI staff for sharing that information with lawmakers, believing that Democrats would use it to hurt Trump in the election,” the Post has reported.