The Florida House o’ Reps is currently debating a gun reform bill that passed the Florida Senate earlier. Provisions include raising the minimum age to purchase rifles to 21 and a ban on bump stocks. The bill includes some funding for the very dumb (NRA-approved) idea of putting MORE guns in schools by arming educators, but it limits the scope of that potential catastrophe by excluding classroom teachers.
Much like in present-day America, Republicans control the house and senate in Florida as well as the executive mansion. The senate bill passed very narrowly, and wingnut lawmakers who voted for it are feeling the heat. Via Politico Florida:
TALLAHASSEE — Roughly a dozen Florida state senators who supported a sweeping gun control bill Monday have received small jars of tar and feathers at their offices from unknown senders.
“They are tiny jars full of feathers with poop emojis in them,” said state Sen. René García, a Hialeah Republican who supported the bill. Garcia sponsored an amendment that watered down a provision to train and arm school staff, including teachers. The proposal was compromise language needed to secure a narrow 20-18 vote out of the Senate.
Tallahassee is abuzz this morning with talk that the powerful National Rifle Association is going after bill supporters now that it’s clear the Republican-controlled Legislature is moving quickly to pass gun reforms.
But the group’s top Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, said the organization was not behind the jars.
“First I’m hearing of it,” she said.
I believe Hammer — the jar of tar and feathers decorated with poop emojis is too subtle for a blood-thirsty ghoul like her; she would have gone for a dead fish wrapped in newspaper.
Anyway, I don’t know how this vote will shake out. That it’s taking place reminds me of a Samuel Johnson quote: it’s like a “dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
Open thread.
Elizabelle
Gunshine State. I am so using that.
At first, I thought you got Daisy a new boxer companion … whether it prefers walking 4 footed or 2 footed.
rikyrah
They think that the kids are playing with them. They are not. Don’t two step the kids and think that it’s gonna be ok. It’s not.??
The Dangerman
WTF is a poop emoji IRL? I know the digital version.
Come on, Florida; shock me.
TenguPhule
Speaking of bad votes, The Senate looks to pass another gutting of Dodds-Frank soon.
Its almost like they’re trying to blow up the US economy.
Corner Stone
Speaking of lying liars and the dumbass lies they try to tell:
US vs. Canadian readout on the Trump/Trudeau call. Latter references Canada’s “serious concern” about steel and aluminum tariffs, which @WhiteHouse readout excludes.
CNBC Kayla Tausche twit
The link has pics of the two statements.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Of course they are
Corner Stone
@TenguPhule:
How else are the super wealthy supposed to reclaim the small amount of capital and assets they already do not own? That’s their money, dammit, and they deserve it back!
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
I do believe that is a noble GSP investigating a squirrel or such. Florida Republicans, not so noble as a good dog. Probably lousy dancers, also, too.
rikyrah
Maddow’s opening segment had a number of follow the money stories. The money doesn’t lie.
Mnemosyne
I got into a long Facebook argument about representation of the disabled in “The Shape of Water” and have now realized that I’m dealing with people who have a very different interpretation of the (admittedly subtle) revelation at the end than I do. Their interpretation is, of course, wrong. ?
TenguPhule
@The Dangerman:
Florida Man: Hold my beer while I run to get more.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: Its like they’ve forgotten everything that happened between 2000 and 2008.
RedDirtGirl
@TenguPhule: Some might call it Disaster Capitalism.
Tom
@TenguPhule: More like never understood it in the first place.
catclub
I know how that quote starts.
Never mind that Billy Graham knew his daughter was the best evangelist in the family.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll let you know the correct interpretation when I do. :-)
I’m WAY behind on movies! The only major Oscar contenders/winners I’ve seen so far are: “Dunkirk” (hated), “Darkest Hour” (meh), “I, Tonya” (loved) and “Three Billboards” (mixed feelings).
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
what revelation? she was found in a basket floating by the reeds – just like Moses. (who also had a speech impediment!)
It is all suddenly very fishy.
TenguPhule
And in news that will surprise nobody here, Ben Carson has discovered that running HUD is harder then brain surgery. Because actual thinking and rational decision making are required.
Via FYNYT.
catclub
@TenguPhule: The motto for all people planning stupid financial things that will blow up in a few years:
IBG-YBG.
I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.
No Drought No More
The 1950’s and 60’s Ozzie and Harriet TV show had in it a character named ‘Thorny’, who lived next door to the Nelsons. No one knew what Thorny did for a living, and no one cared, either. God knows why, but for some reason Sam Nunford reminds me, not of Thorny himself, but what Thorny’s younger brother would have looked like. The pressure is getting to all of us, I guess.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
A fellow Fenimore Cooper hater/Mark Twain fan found this phrase in one of Twain’s many anti-Cooper essays that seems apropos:
randy khan
The White House Office of Special Counsel has found that Kelly Anne Conway violated the Hatch Act twice during the Alabama Senate campaign. Sadly, the punishment will be determined by the President. (I just had a bad thought about what kind of punishment he might prefer. {Ignore that.})
Kelly Anne was a bad girl
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
You will probably have mixed feelings about The Shape of Water, too. It’s a weird mix of whimsy and gore, but that’s Del Toro for you. I liked it, but I know that some people hated it for the same reasons I liked it.
No Drought No More
By the early 1960’s, ugly rumor had it that Harriet dropped the ‘T’ in his name whenever she was alone with Thorny.
catclub
Slightly OT: If your first name begins with ‘M’ and your last name is Barry, becoming mayor might be a bad choice. another version of nominative determinism?
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
?
But, seriously, some people missed all of the hints and setup that make that final moment make sense.
japa21
@TenguPhule: Not sure how he could discover that, since the only part of his running HUD so far has consisted of gutting its most worthwhile programs and buying overpriced furniture for his office.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: SO stealing that!
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
They are? How are they going to get it past a Democratic filibuster?
Chip Daniels
Does the Redstate Strike Force have an alibi?
Jars of shit sounds like their M.O.
Roger Moore
@japa21:
Maybe that part of the job has been harder than he thought. After all, who knew that buying furniture could be such a PR nightmare?
Spanky
@randy khan: Already been hypothesized.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: Rotating tag nominee?
Dopey-O
Details! I want DETAILS!!!
Chip Daniels
@TenguPhule:
They haven’t forgotten.
Banks may have been bankrupted in 2008, but the bankers made out like…banksters
Libraryguy
Hi Betty, I wrote back to you earlier – I suspect the spam filter ate it again!
Joyce H
If I were a teacher, I would resign the day after my governor signed legislation approving arming teachers. Because such a piece of legislation has one, and only one, purpose. From the moment that bill is signed, ANYTHING gun related that happens in a school is the fault of the faculty.
Gun rampage and none of the teachers chose to be armed? Then it’s their fault, they should have had guns. Teacher with weapon responds and is killed? Her fault, she didn’t train properly. Teacher responds and kills the gunman after several fatalities? His fault, he wasn’t fast enough. Teacher shoots a student walking into the school with body armor and two assault rifles before the rampage can begin? MURDERER – the poor kid just wanted to show his cool stuff to his friends.
And that’s just the mass shooter scenarios. Locker broken into and teacher’s gun stolen and used to hold up a store – teacher’s fault, should have had the gun on them. Football player overpowers little old French teacher and takes her gun to shoot his girlfriend? Teacher’s fault, should have had the gun properly secured.
Again, once armed teachers become a permissible thing, EVERY gun incident in school will be their fault, whether they’re armed or not.
eemom
@Betty Cracker:
Why so? Very interested, because I personally thought it was WAY overrated. The ideas it purported to take on were interesting, but the story and in particular the characters were pure Hollywood drek. All the depth of a mud puddle.
Best thing about it was the billboards, and the fact that they’re being copied IRL. LOVED how they were used in your neck of the woods to sneer at lil Marco, NRA Playmate of the Month.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
I think it was joel hanes who found that quote, FWIW. Sometimes I forget how many essays Twain wrote about his hatred for Cooper’s writing, but it was a LOT.
(Twain uses Cooper as his “what not to do” example for young writers.)
Kelly
I just saw a picture of Mueller target Rick Gates. I’m creeped out by how closely he resembles me at that age right down to the small gray patches on his beard.
boatboy_srq
Who does it include? Administrators? Cafeteria workers? Janitorial staff? Librarians? Teaching assistants? Principal? Not convinced any of them would be any less “catastrophic” in their firearms usage than the folks in the classrooms.
VeniceRiley
@Mnemosyne: I called Shape of Water a “Live action version of Iron Giant, with nudity, sex and romance thrown in.” but there is a scene by scene dual videos splitscreen comparison of TSOW with SPLASH going around FBook that is hilarious to me.
Oh, Betty. I love I, Tonya too!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Heh heh, The Gunshine State. That’s right up there with “gundamentalists”.
Poop emojis? Why not just send jars of feather and real poop? *That* would get their attention.
lamh36
What started as a viral photo of a lil Black girl staring up in awe at the new portrait of Forever FLOTUS Michelle Obama’s has come full circle…
then the family released a video of the lil girl talking bout how much she loved FLOTUS…
and today…this:
Awww…baby girl and her family met Michelle O!!!
Like I said before…love or hate the pic…representation matters!!
https://twitter.com/cindy_52s/status/971079271560220675?s=21
boatboy_srq
@Joyce H: You’ve just described the sum total of Randian Libertarianism. It all boils down to “you should have selected better, wealthier, whiter parents with better genes and a more resilient portfolio.”
Mary G
The kids are not going away:
If the Florida legislature thinks this bill will shut them up, they are sadly mistaken.
Frankensteinbeck
@Joyce H: and @boatboy_srq:
If this is the bill I saw the excerpt from, it allows people who work at the school to volunteer (approved by the sheriff’s office) to be special school marshals. They have to meet a pretty stringent set of gun training requirements to qualify.
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck: I would not be surprised if Schumer and Gillibrand favor it for NY banks ( but am not certain by any means). They might get past a Democratic filibuster by finding 8 Democrats in favor.
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
why not send tar in the jars?
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
And they might fly to the moon if they flap their arms hard enough. I guess anything is possible, but Democrats have been hardcore in blocking horrible Republican crap bills this session.
GregB
Stop Hammer-time.
Mnemosyne
@VeniceRiley:
Meh. People are actually taking that seriously, believe it or not, and think TSOW has the exact same plot as Splash, not just a few subplot similarities.
(The movie that actually ripped off the plot of Splash is The Little Mermaid. Mermaid saves boy from drowning and then comes up on shore to meet him? Mermaid is confused by human customs? She gets her tail forced back essentially through magic? 100 percent ripped off.)
And I get irritated with the whole “it’s not original!” thing. There is no such thing as an “original” story. None. Get Out is The Stepford Wives with Black people, so don’t come telling me it’s so much more original than that rip-off of Splash that won Best Picture.
“Originality” is overrated. What’s important is what you do with the premise to bring something new to it, not that it’s a premise that’s never been done before.
/soapbox
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Oh, Parker got to meet Forever FLOTUS! (h/t rikyrah). So cute, I can hardly stand it!
danielx
@Corner Stone:
Got that right. How are they supposed to sleep at night, knowing that their right to plunder the public weal untrammeled has been in question?
Swine.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: I approve this soapbox rant.
I was listening to movie soundtracks and one had 23 the other 21 tracks, I started wondering if all movies have the same number of soundtrack cuts.
zhena gogolia
@lamh36:
As I said in the last thread, I’m ready for Michelle Obama to be decreed queen with absolutist powers. We’ve tried “democracy” and see how it ended up.
frosty
@Yutsano: So how do we get new rotating tags anyway? Lots of good candidates and some others we should dump.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
“I, Tonya” is next on our catch-up list, love everything about the concept and cast and that the actual Tonya was at the Golden Globes (was she at the Oscars? I only watched it in bits).
“Lady Bird” shall remain my fav regardless. As the mother of a recently teen girl, you MUST see it.
ETA “Lady Bird” is still playing at Tower Theater, which is featured in a couple exterior scenes in the movie, giving it a meta feel. The recently departed Russ Solomon had his first record racks in dad’s drug store in the theater building and a flagship Tower Records store across the street, later.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
On another topic, I saw a preview of A Wrinkle in Time. It’s really good, but it’s definitely directed at kids and families whereas Black Panther is about adults and adult concerns.
The young actress who plays Meg reminded me of my older niece. It may have been the glasses. ?
danielx
@Frankensteinbeck:
Supposedly there are some red state Dems who are willing to brave the wrath of Warren. One might suspect this is because there are bank lobbyists (you know, bankwhores) lining up to give their potential opponents wads of cash for their 2018 campaigns. Not me, you understand, but some people.
Fuck them, both Dems supporting this preposterously bad legislation and the banks and their enablers.
ETA: must get back to work, this is raising my blood pressure.
Mary G
@lamh36: That video of the dance party is adorable!
rp
@Mnemosyne: Isn’t Splash a ripoff of the original Little Mermaid story? (or is that the joke?)
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
Originality is a tough question in storytelling, because too much repetition is dull and requires no skill, while on the other end literally nothing is completely new. Throw in that if you did somehow throw in something completely new, nobody would like it because we take in stories within a framework built by thousands of years of literature. End your book with incoherent word salad and pretentious academics will be drooling over you for the next two hundred years, while teenagers throw the book across the room in disgust and adults who didn’t get it assigned in school say ‘Come on, no one would write a book that stupid.’ I find that what works best is to make sure that the creation is stamped clearly with the creator’s individual sensibilities and imagination. Shape of Water certainly qualifies there.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
They probably do, since most Hollywood movies have about the same number of sequences to get to 2 hours.
lamh36
@Mnemosyne: I figured the film would be marketed different…cause of the source material
Leto
@TenguPhule: I posted this down below, but it’s also relevant to what you said about “blowing up the economy”. Charles Pierce had a great 3 part series (from 2012) on the Post Office, what it means to us, and what Republicans did to it in an act of sabotage, that’s still relevant today. The Post Office Is Not an Other. The Post Office Is Us.
Mnemosyne
@rp:
Ding ding ding. ?
@Frankensteinbeck:
Exactly. “Originality” is overrated. Jordan Peele took a premise from Ira Levin, who took it from mythology (evil sorcerers controlling people’s actions with magic). The “originality” came in how each of them used that premise to examine the social issues of their day in very different ways based on their own lives and experiences.
El Caganer
@Frankensteinbeck: I read that there are 64 votes for the bill, but I don’t know who the Democrats are.
Frankensteinbeck
@El Caganer:
If there are 64 votes for the bill, I want to know more about the bill. Democrats are not big on banking deregulation these days. Whether or not the bill is bad in final decision, there is more here than meets the eye.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
It’s a kids’ book with kid protagonists, so they kept it at that level. It’s definitely being heavily marketed to girls of all colors and ages — it would be a good one to take your nieces above the age of about 8 to see.
(There are a few scary parts, but the most “violent” action is when a bully gets a basketball to the face.)
ETA: Also, it’s a multiracial/multicultural cast, not a majority-Black cast. And you will want to have babies with Chris Pine after seeing him play the most awesome dad in the world. ?
Betty Cracker
@eemom: In addition to the problems you named, I found Dixon’s redemptive arc — and everything related to it, including Willoughby’s saintliness — preposterous.
@trollhattan: “Ladybird” is definitely on my list!
boatboy_srq
@Frankensteinbeck: …so, what happens after all three who meet the criteria are cleared?
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Didn’t Splash steal pretty much everything from Hans Christian Andersen in the first place? Disney’s The Little Mermaid was only stealing it back.
Frankensteinbeck
@boatboy_srq:
If they volunteered and the sheriff wants them to, they get to be armed while working at the school and are allowed to defend it from shooters. It is, make no mistake, a stupid-ass idea. It’s just a different stupid-ass idea than the ‘arm teachers’ idea people are thinking it is.
les
@Chip Daniels:
I thought of them too; but isn’t it the Red States Trike Force?
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
GOD, no. Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid is one truly weird and fucked up piece of literature. Not in the ‘violence and cruelty’ way I was expecting, either. Once you get past the transformation scene it goes a completely different direction than the Disney movie, with the mermaid living as the prince’s (possibly sexual) pet, until he marries some other woman and the moral is that what the little mermaid REALLY wanted all along was an immortal soul.
boatboy_srq
@Frankensteinbeck: My point is that between the exclusions, the qualifications and the vetting process, there will probably be just as many qualified participants as there were SNAP/unemployment/medicaid recipients who failed their drug tests. Which will make this bill not only a colossal waste of time, energy and resources but pointless thanks to the response rate.
Frankensteinbeck
@boatboy_srq:
Oh! Yes, I completely agree. The list of requirements was really strenuous. It seemed like a total fig leaf that won’t have any real effect on anything.
Leto
@Mnemosyne: While I absolutely loved Black Panther, I thought the story arc mirrored The Lion King. Of course there’s plenty of stories of king dies, unfit ruler takes over, true heir comes and reclaims throne, but that one jumped out at me.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Andersen was a really weird dude with some bizarre religious hang-ups, to say the least.
Mary G
@danielx: These are the Democratic Senators who support the bank bill, so it’s definitely going to pass. They say they have been negotiating for four years and a bunch of them are even co-sponsors of the bill. Schumer says he’s personally against it, but won’t tell other Democrats to vote no, because they are worried about the midterms. Republicans are trying to pick off some more moderates to make it a slam dunk.
Jon Tester (D-MT)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Dean Heller (D-NV)
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Doug Jones (D-AL)
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
I admit I don’t remember much of either Andersen’s story or Splash. I stand corrected,
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
Of course, The Lion King is Hamlet with animals and fewer Oedipal longings, so …
(Seriously, Pumbaa and Timon are Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, but it’s a kids movie, so they get a happy ending.)
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
Dean Heller (NV) is a Republican, not a Democrat.
Fair Economist
@Mary G: Heller is a Republican. There are 10 Democrats on the list, so it’s a squeaker for cloture – there need to be no defections and either McCain or Cochran has to show up for the vote. Still an opportunity to pressure Senators on the list, especially those from Virginia.
(not actually familiar with the bill, so *maybe* it’s not so bad)
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s a slightly less bad idea because it doesn’t put an armed teacher in every classroom. But I don’t see how armed marshals will work any better than an armed policeman on campus.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie there. I got about a quarter of the way into his collected short stories, and gave up. They were just so screamingly dull. Hardly any of them were stories in a conventional sense, and after you got past the first few they became all about religion. Usually religion as the only defense from nihilism. Everything sucks, but that doesn’t matter because loving God is the only important thing anyway. The Match Girl is pretty typical. Snow Queen (which is nothing like Frozen) and Tinderbox are decent stories, but then you have real oddities like a ‘story’ that is just an incredibly long list of scenes Andersen hopes someone will paint or write as a play for him, or the story that traces a brother and sister growing up together until she’s old enough for them to get married, or the one about the proud pin that has actiony things happen but doesn’t have any consistent direction and stops without resolution. The only morals he seems to preach are ‘Worship God’ and ‘If you’re too proud, you might not love God enough so that’s bad.’
EDIT – @Mnemosyne:
And Hamlet is the story of Amleth from the Gesta Danorum with less randomness or Saxo Grammaticus’s issues about women.
Yutsano
@Mary G: Flaw in your list: Heller is not a Dem.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
“The Ugly Duckling” is Fuck all you small-town assholes who didn’t recognize my genius!
Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales are also pretty messed up, but I at least felt like I had fair warning for those.
Applejinx
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Good pick. Who could possibly have cast the shadow of a doubt. Yay team.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
2016 is done. Get over it.
Leto
@Mnemosyne: And with catchier tunes: Hakuuna matata… what a wonderful phrase..
It’s a Disney movie, so everyone but the villain will have a happy ending.
Mary G
@Yutsano: @Fair Economist: @Fair Economist: OK, my face is red. All the articles I read said that 12 Democrats are signed on, but no one listed them all, so I compiled that from a bunch of different articles and got a bit confuzzled along the way.
They all say Republicans are courting moderate Democrats because they want to run up the score, but your describing it as a squeaker makes more sense.
The cloture vote was 67-32, so plenty of Ds voted to go ahead and debate and vote on the bill.
I went to senate.gov and this is who voted yes:
Bennet (D-CO)
Carper (D-DE)
Coons (D-DE)
Donnelly (D-IN)
Hassan (D-NH)
Heitkamp (D-ND)
Jones (D-AL)
Kaine (D-VA)
King (I-ME)
Manchin (D-WV)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Nelson (D-FL)
Peters (D-MI)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Warner (D-VA)
So the fence-sitters are Carper and Coons from Delaware, a bank-loving state, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Bill Nelson, Jeanne Shaheen, and Dana Stabenow.
So people who live in Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Florida, and Michigan need to get on the phone.
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
Sorry, we can’t hear you clearly when you’re wearing a giant bird suit to commemorate the moment when a bird descended from heaven and marked the junior senator from Vermont as messiah.
Because that’s a thing that you people literally do.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
Filibuster is still in effect for legislation, isn’t it?
Mary G
@efgoldman: Cloture already passed, so that avenue is a dead end.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mary G:
And since that’s odd, I want to know what’s actually in this bill.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
I think there are two big differences between Black Panther and stories like the Lion King. One, which is slightly less important, is that most of those stories involve the usurpation happening during the transition, so the rightful prince never gets a chance to take his father’s throne. Obviously, Black Panther doesn’t follow that version of the story.
More importantly, it also gets the story balance very different. In the Lion King, to use your example, the usurpation happens relatively early in the story, and the majority of the story is about Simba making the friends he needs to return and reclaim his rightful place. Black Panther spends much more of the story setting up the conflict and very little on T’Challa doing stuff leading up to his return. It gives Black Panther a very different feel from other stories with a similar plot outline.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Why does anyone else even try?
JR
@Mnemosyne: Better than this underappreciated playwright.
Mary G
@Frankensteinbeck: Evidently the Democrats on the banking committee feel they got a lot of good concessions. From CNN:
I still think it’s all about November and being able to point to a bipartisan bill.
ETA: I do like the free credit freezes thing. I got a call from a bank saying they had turned down a credit card application from someone who had all my information but wasn’t using my address. I had to pay $20 to each of three bureaus to freeze my credit, because it was a phone call and not a letter.
Ruckus
@Leto:
I think the post office was the trial balloon of their over all plan to eliminate government altogether. That way the rich can buy whatever/whomever they want. And get away with it.
Betty Cracker
@Mary G: Vox has a decent explainer on it here. TL;DR: It could be a lot worse, but there’s plenty for Democrats to dislike about the bill. I plan to urge my senators to vote no.
Leto
@Roger Moore: True! It was more that I came away from BP with a, “I know I’ve seen this story before”. Not saying that’s bad (as nothing’s truly original), but more of me trying to place it. LK was a first pass (a number of similarities but a lot of striking differences), though after discussing it with friends we came up with some anime comparisons, and Mneos hit the nail with Hamlet.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: “Splash” itself was “E. T.” as a romantic comedy. It was part of a big wave of movies with the “E. T.” plot–ordinary person befriends fantastical creature, introduces it to human culture, has to rescue it from cruel scientists who want to do bad things to it for science. That was the main function of scientists in movies for several years.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
The Shape of Water has an interesting take on the “evil scientists” thing, but I don’t want to wreck it for anyone.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
This does not sound like a bill I’m going to wail and moan that Democrats helped pass. It’s a little beyond me whether it does good or harm overall. It’s certainly not ‘gutting Dodd-Frank.’
Leto
@Ruckus: After laughing at Al Gore over “inventing the internet”, they probably figured that most people were sending correspondence by email, and who even uses the post office when we have those wonderful private enterprises of FedEx and UPS? It was a trial balloon to see if the general public even cared, but it fit into their larger plans of trying to show government incompetence to help explain the dismantling of the very institutions they were sworn to protect. Fuckers. All of them.
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: The Asgard half of Thor: Ragnarok was basically the same story too, coming from the same studio just a few months earlier–including the way the usurper is a previously unknown relative who reveals the sins of the hero’s father. But the details were all different, to the point that it doesn’t immediately jump to mind as the same plot. (For one thing, when Thor gets deposed, the POV follows him for the whole other subplot of the movie, whereas T’Challa vanishes from the narrative for a little while–that’s a big difference.)
Leto
@Mnemosyne: January Jones reprised her Mad Men season 1-3 role. Directing must have been: do what you did for those first three seasons. Perfect!
Leto
@Matt McIrvin: Ah, true! Wonder if they’re setting up a general theme in the MU with this? Also wonder how it will relate to Thanos/Ghamora in the upcoming Infiity Crisis 2 part series.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s not the end of the world, but there are definitely some troubling provisions, such as less oversight on foreign banks and higher size thresholds for financial institutions to be subject to anti-discrimination regulations.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
Yes. I don’t know how big a difference those actually make, though. We’re into the ‘only an expert knows if this is huge or tiny’ weeds.
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: And there was a whole “sins of the father” thing going on in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 as well, though it wasn’t the true king/usurper plot. If there’s one thing Hollywood loves, it’s daddy issues (Iron Man has them up the wazoo).
Elizabelle
Jane Mayer was on Fresh Air w Terry Gross today. Missed most of it, but sounded very worthwhile.
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m not sure why any Democrat would sign on to any bill at this point, unless it’s the “All Dogs Are Good Dogs Act of 2018” variety. They are sure to be screwed one way or the other. Do the red state D’s think they will be pilloried less for helping banks loosen regulations?
Libraryguy
@Leto: It’s so depressing, especially when you remember the Postal Service’s history of providing unionized, stable, middle-class employment for POC and women. It could be so much more if Republicans didn’t have a permanent screw-them-all mentality about government services.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: …And some of those details of Splash also came from Hans Christian Andersen’s original “The Little Mermaid,” though the Disney movie changed a lot.
(Weird Disney trivia: the reason the Song of the South-themed flume ride at the Disney parks is called “Splash Mountain” is that Michael Eisner had vague ideas of using the name to cross-promote Splash, even though they’re completely unrelated. It never came to much, though.)
Mnemosyne
@Leto:
?? January Jones is not in The Shape of Water.
Fair Economist
@Frankensteinbeck:
To give some idea of what’s going on, the current threshold for significant banks is $50 billion. Even Barney Frank thinks that is too low. The current bill raises it to $250 billion – which Frank thinks is too high. So, probably bad overall, but not an outrage, and there are provisions in it which will benefit small (mostly rural) banks by cutting the amount of reporting they have to do to offer mortgages. So, overall bad – and opposed by the majority of the Dem caucus – but I can see a minority of reasonable Democratic Senators might decide it was good for their states and/or election campaigns.
This is the kind of caucus-splitting bill which is almost inevitable when the other side controls Congress.
@Mary G: I count 10 of the Democrats supporting the bill in election races this year, so electoral concerns (money, smear ads, or “getting something done”) are a big part of the influences.
Yutsano
@Fair Economist: The majority of the Democratic Senators voting for it also have large rural areas that would benefit from the community banks getting some breathing room. The Senators from Delaware are in the Biden banking trap since that’s about the only industry there.
Fair Economist
@Corner Stone:
Based on the high percentage of Senators up for election this year supporting the bill, yes. They may be mistaken, but they think that.
Roger Moore
@Leto:
Getting back to the comments about originality vs. reuse, I think the big thing is that there are fewer and fewer basic plots the higher and higher a level you look at. If you want to abstract it far enough, you can make even very different stories look similar. People who like looking at archetypes have even gone so far as to claim there are only 7 basic plots, though this winds up doing crazy things like lumping all comedies as having the same basic plot.
But to the audience, the details are important. We don’t lump together all tragedies as being fundamentally the same, because we care what the hero’s tragic flaw is and how it brings about his doom. It’s fine to keep retelling the same basic stories because they say something true and essential about human nature, and retelling them with different details lets new audiences experience those truths in a form that’s compelling to them. There is apparently something compelling about the disinherited prince fighting to recover his birthright that speaks to people, which is why the same story line keeps popping up again.
Yutsano
@Fair Economist: Dumb question: Is this just in the Senate right now?
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: It’s not like banks are hurting and in desperate need of regulatory relief either. The senate isn’t debating guns or immigration because the Senatortoise from KY thinks this bill is a higher priority. I’d rather see a united minority against anything these ghastly fuckers try to do. But maybe the more feral House is going to make a hash of it, and then the Democrats can unite to oppose whatever hairball that body coughs up. We shall see!
Baud
@Fair Economist:
The two most powerful lobbies we never talk about are real estate agents and car dealers. If community banks/credit unions are anywhere in that league, then it probably does behoove red or purple state Dems to try to help them out.
Roger Moore
@Libraryguy:
Of course the Postal Service has also played a huge role in supporting the kind of small towns and rural areas that are supposed to be the home of the Republican base. People living in Manhattan are going to have practical options for how to get letters and packages delivered if the Post Office shuts down; people living in Ekalaka, MT not so much.
VeniceRiley
@Mnemosyne: wow. whatever. But the copying extends beyond story to staging and design choices, lighting and …
nevermind. I just found it funny. No going on Jihad or anything. But get down with your super serious thoughts about story and film art.
Fair Economist
@Baud:
Increased mortgage availability already will have the real estate lobby pushing for this bill.
Fair Economist
@Yutsano: Not a dumb question. This bill is just in the Senate. The House has worked on a Dodd-Frank “reform” (=repeal in that case) bill but not produced anything. How Ryan will approach this is unclear. My bet is he’ll try to pass it with only moderate changes, because he’ll want something passed and his paymasters know that if this doesn’t pass, the next Dodd-Frank reform, in a D Congress, will be friendlier to consumers and less so to big banks.
Baud
@Fair Economist: I suspect these local lobbies are pretty strong in Virginia, since both Kaine and Warner are supporting this bill, and I think Virginia is more of a light blue than purple these days.
Corner Stone
@Fair Economist: Somebody needs to grab them by their blueballs and inform them they are getting the anvil dropped on them if they waffle. What does this benefit any red state? Banksters are coastal elites!
Corner Stone
Cohn is out. Good.
Gin & Tonic
@Corner Stone: Trouble is, you know that anyone who leaves the administration now will be replaced by someone worse.
Corner Stone
@Gin & Tonic: Who cares? Cohn was there when Trump wants tariffs. Put Ivanka in his spot, same outcome.
Mnemosyne
@VeniceRiley:
Keep reading. We’re having a really cool discussion about story with bestselling YA author Frankensteinbeck!
(He’s the author of the Don’t Tell My Parents… series.)
chopper
great, cause teachers shouldn’t have guns but gym teachers and driving instructors and speech therapists should. makes sense to me!
Mnemosyne
@VeniceRiley:
Also, too, I think people online are mistaking a director/production design team’s saying, Hey, it would be pretty fun to put a visual tribute to “Splash” in here since we have all of these lab scenes with actual story decisions. Which is why it turned into a discussion of story.
PaulWartenberg
Gary Cohn is fleeing for his life.
We need a new thread.
VeniceRiley
@Mnemosyne: When discussing YA, my ONLY interest is if the professional organization solves their #MeToo conventions problem; and if publishers solve their “too many toxic men in management” problem.
Mnemosyne
@VeniceRiley:
It’s funny, but I’ve noticed that every conference I go to has an explicit, written anti-harassment policy that every attendee must agree to (by checking a box) before they can finish registering.
Of course, I only attend knitting and romance novel conferences, which are 80
percent women. ?
(Okay, to be fair, I think the Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference also had an explicit anti-harassment policy.)
Mnemosyne
@VeniceRiley:
(And in case it’s not clear, I’m casting shade on the YA publishing world, not on you.)