N.Y. Post‘s Ebony Bowden: “An articles of impeachment accusing President Trump of ‘inciting an insurrection‘ have been drafted by House Democrats in the wake of the deadly Capitol siege and will be formally introduced on Monday, according to reports.
“The document, which has over 150 sponsors, accuses Trump of violating his Constitutional duty by encouraging a crowd of his supporters to fight the vote to certify Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
“In all of this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transfer of power, and imperiled a coordinate branch of government,” the document reads.
It is the second time that Congress has moved to impeach Trump. He was impeached by acquitted at trial by the Senate last year after he was accused of improperly pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden.
Let’s change this question to “which director had the hottest run of any length…who enjoyed the greatest cavalcade of grand-slam films, whether it was four or six or even ten?”
The answer in this instance would be Howard Hawks and his nine-year, nine-film run of one bull’s-eye after another…it began in 1938 with Bringing Up Baby and ended in 1946 with Red River (even if that classic western wasn’t released until ’48).
The rundown: Bringing Up Baby (’38), Only Angels Have Wings (’39), His Girl Friday (’40), Sergeant York (’41), Ball of Fire (’41), Air Force (’43), To Have and Have Not (’45), The Big Sleep (’45 and ’46) and Red River (shot in ’46, released in ’48).
If you want to be strict and keep it to four, I would say that Stanley Kubrick‘s Paths of Glory (’57), Spartacus (’60), Lolita (’62) and Dr. Strangelove (’64) was an extraordinary run.
It would appear that Ashli Babbitt, who was killed two days ago while trying to climb through a smashed Capitol Hill window during the big riot…it would seem she overdid the zeal. Babbitt was a rightwing fanatic who bought Trump’s stolen-election bullshit hook, line and sinker. In the sense of “those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” Babbitt died unluckily but, in a sense, appropriately. By her own hand, I mean.
I certainly have no sympathy for her — a married resident of Ocean Beach, an ex-Air Force veteran and the CEO of Fowler’s Poll Service & Supply, an allegedly struggling outfit based in Spring Valley. Babbitt died a true believer in rightwing horseshit. She may have been a decent person to know and work with, but she walked right in and reaped the whirlwind, and now she sleeps with the fishes. Hollywood Elsewhere sheds not a tear.
Babbitt had a complex history and had coped with her share of detours and speedbumps. She wasn’t always a Trump nutbag, for example. She was reportedly an Obama supporter before switching her loyalty to Trump in ’16 because she hated Hillary Clinton so much. Plus she was possessive and had a temper. And her corresponding intensity led to embracing unambiguous attitudes and beliefs.
Two occupiers enjoying temporary triumph — Richard “Bigo” Barnett, 60, of Gravette, Arkansas sitting at Nancy Pelosi‘s desk during Wednesday’s Capitol hill riot, and poet David Shapiro smoking a cigar at the desk of Columbia University president Grayson Kirk during a student takeover on 4.30.68. Shapiro went on to teach at Columbia. What kind of a future will Barnett encounter, I wonder? Besides death, I mean.
Richard “Bigo” Barnett at Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
David Shapiro sitting at desk of Columbia University president Grayson Kirk.
There was this late-night robbery scene in a Sopranos episode. Christopher Moltisanti was one of the burglars, and he explained to the other guy that they needed to leave a brown torpedo on the rug as a kind of calling card.
I remember thinking to myself “gee, Frank Sinatra and the Ocean’s11 guys didn’t do this when they knocked off those five casinos.”
Probably the all-time worst Dept. of Education secretary in U.S history, not to mention one of the least knowledgable during the confirmation hearing. And now Betsy Devos has resigned over Trump’s instigation of yesterday’s chaos. DeVos to Trump: “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation.”
“Blue Hands,” the title of an L.M. Kit Carson screenplay, is one of my all-time favorites. The sound of it, I mean. The attitude is so cool and just right.
The script was some kind of hipster crime thing with a surreal edge. (It ended inside a department store with several circus animals running around loose.) The hands of Riggers, the main protagonist, were robin’s egg blue. I can’t recall if it was a birth defect or tattoo, but it was just a bit that Carson threw in — the plot didn’t turn on his hands and no other characters made a big deal out of them.
I read “Blue Hands” in ’87 or thereabouts. Over the last three decades and change I’ve been hoping the title would be used by some other film or TV series or whatever…nope.
Please share other great movie titles for films that were never made.
Speaking of hands I’ve always been grateful to my parents and grandparents that mine were never clammy or sweaty. Okay, they were occasionally moist or damp during my early childhood, I’ll admit, but now in my mid-autumnal years they’re always bone dry. Few things are more unwelcome than shaking or holding a clammy hand.
During my young-buck days I also used to have trouble with women who had pink or orange toes (or heels). I would say to myself “wow, she’s really pretty and nice but what’s with the toes?” Not their fault, of course, but I always found this to be a hurdle. I would never admit this to the woman in question, of course.
Over the last couple of years we’ve all seen some fairly amazing film stock transformations on YouTube. Rickety old silent films shot at 18 fps uprezzed to an almost video-like clarity via 4K 60fps HDR with motion interpolation and added sound.
It’s obvious that uprezzing and colorization techniques have vastly improved over the last two or three years. I really wouldn’t mind re-watching a few 20s classics if they were properly uprezzed. Like Metropolis was a year or two ago.
I’ve said this before (and I realize it’s a deeply unpopular opinion in film-dweeb circles) but I would definitely rent 60fps versions of classic studio-era films from the’30s, ’40s and ’50s. (I might even buy them.) I’m not certain that a 60fps version of Only Angels Have Wings would be the same thing as a 60fps with motion interpolation (or motion flow) but even if it is, I like how faster frame rates make old films look. You suddenly don’t feel as if you’re looking at films that were shot 80 or 100 or 120 years ago. They feel more immediate.
Do I watch older films with motion flow on my own TV? No — TV motion-flow technology is too primitive and fake-looking. But I’m persuaded that there’s an intriguing middle ground between the 24 fps original and what could be rendered with a proper 60 fps uprez treatment.
Kayleigh McEnany‘s White House statement about yesterday’s Capitol Hill invasion reeked of lies and hypocrisy. The after-stench was suffocating.
Wednesday’s violence, she said, was “appalling, reprehensible and antithetical to the American way. What we saw…was a group of violent rioters undermining the legitimate First Amendment rights of the many thousands who came to peacefully have their voices heard in our nation’s capital. Those who violently besieged our capital are the opposite of everything this administration stands for”….full stop.
Trump inspired and orchestrated yesterday’s chaos. The Capitol marauders exactly and precisely carried out what Trump wanted to see happen. In his video message he called the rioters “very special” and said “[I] love you.”
Final KM line: “Those who are working in this building are working to ensure an orderly transition of power.” Starting today, she meant. Biden had clearly won the election by 11.6 or thereabouts. Trump called it a fraudulent non-win from the get-go, and is still calling it that.
McEnany and her homies don’t show up until 2:40. Listen to the cacophony of questions starting at 4:40…hilarious.
Yesterday President-Elect Joe Bidensaid that “the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect the true America…do not reflect who we are…America is so much better than what we’ve seen today.”
Everyone knows Joe was blowing smoke when he said this, at least to some extent. Yesterday’s marauding animals definitely represented an unfortunate strata of American society…a side that many of us routinely turn away from in disgust or avoid thinking about whenever possible, and which we’re unfortunately stuck with save for the grand solution of green re-education camps.
The Capitol Invaders didn’t represent HE’s America, I can tell you…the mostly decent, responsible, tax-paying, Criterion Channel-watching, Italian-shoe-wearing, well-educated or at least “curious and trying to keep up” Americans, but the invading animals definitely represented those odious motherfuckers known on this site as Bumblefucks.
Yes, the Capitol police acted like soft stooges with the Trump mob, who wanted to rough up Mike Pence for being loyal to the Constitution rather than The Beast. If the rioters had been African American there would have been some shooting and a helluva lot more arrests — for sure, no debate. But that aside, how did yesterday’s chaos turn into a referendum on American racism? It was about stupidity and dad jeans and bad teeth…about the submentals, the scurvies, the Trump scum, the dregs, the wretched refuse, the castaways, the lowest of the low if you don’t count the homeless.
Gene Seymour on Facebook, posted yesterday: “My friend Charles Taylor speaks with characteristic passion: ‘You know what chaps my ass? For four years, we’ve all been listening to these J.D. Vance morons saying we had to understand that Trump appealed to people who felt they had lost their country, felt looked down on by elites. And those of us saying ‘no, they hate America, they are essentially fascists’…we’ve been told we’re being hysterical, that we’re making the matters worse, that we have to reach out to these people.
“‘But if you believe in what America is supposed to stand for, you don’t want to reach out to white supremacists, and you don’t want to reach out to people who have no interest in how a constitutional democracy works. You want to minimize them, disempower them. Which would not be anti-democratic but pro-democratic because it would stop minority rule, which is what the GOP has handed to these yahoos.
“‘I am a northeasterner who, like anyone who grew up loving rock ‘n’ roll, has a love for many parts of Southern culture in my bones. I know how, when my ex and I announced we were honeymooning in Nashville and Memphis, many Boston friends said, ‘WHY?’ as if we were going to wallow in a pig trough for two weeks. I hate that.
“‘But I see no reason NOT to look down on people who are willfullystupid, proudly bigoted, who have no knowledge of how the country they profess to love works, and noshame at their ignorance. A democratic republic cannot admit their kind of stupidity and bigotry without poisoning itself.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in calling on Vice President Pence, an obsequious coward if anyone ever saw or smelled one, to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Orange Plague from office. Pelosi has also left the door ajar regarding impeaching Trump a second time.
Realistically? Impeachment could happen in the Democrat-controlled House, of course (“If [Trump] wants to be unique and be doubly impeached, that’s kind of up to him and his cabinet,” Pelosi said), but the best we can probably hope for is Congressional censure. That plus the tacit understanding all around that Trump is not to be consulted or even spoken to about anything between now and 1.20.21.
This isn’t just a post-coup-attempt rage rant on the part of Schumer and Scarborough and everyone else — this is real. Yesterday tore it. Trump has to be ejected from office or at least neutered right now…okay, that won’t happen. He at least has to be re-impeached…ugghh, some in Congress will hesitate or delay or whatever. Then he atleast has to be officially censured.
Banning Orange Plague from Facebook and Instagram means absolutely nothing with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey having restored Trump’s ranting and lying rights this morning…nothingatall. Twitter needs to flatline his ass until the end of his term (noon on 1.20.21)…no ifs, ands or buts.
