This White House proposal to regulate social media moderation could be one of the bloated, mangy shitgibbon’s mock-charges (via MIT Technology Review):
The news: A draft executive order would give the FCC oversight over how social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter moderate their sites, according to CNN, which obtained a copy. Dubbed “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship,” the order calls for the FCC to develop new rules to define when the law protects tech firms’ decisions to take down content—and when it doesn’t. It also demands that the Federal Trade Commission take those new rules into account when investigating potential malpractice by companies.
The politics: This represents a major escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against social- media firms, which he claims are biased against conservatives (despite a lack of evidence), and would be a vast expansion of the FCC’s responsibilities.
There’s a sound argument that Big Tech needs regulation to prevent bad things, such as social media being weaponized to subvert democracy or platforms chewing up user data to become marketing panopticons. But that’s not what this is about.
The proposed oversight is theater in response to made-up conservative grievances, like Trump-supporting clowns Diamond & Silk’s claim that Facebook was shadow-censoring them, which a Congressional hearing revealed was based on the sister-grifter duo’s ignorance about how user settings work. And Trump’s own periodic squealing about Twitter interfering with his follower count, which happened to coincide with Twitter’s occasional purges of bot accounts.
Anyhoo, let’s hope this is much ado about nothing. The last thing we need is that moron all up in the tubes. Speaking of moronic, Trump staged a taxpayer-funded MAGA rally in Pittsburgh a while ago and said an appallingly stupid thing about wind power:
“Some day the environmentalists are going to tell us what’s going on with that. And then all of the sudden it stops — the wind and the televisions go off.”
Jesus take the wheel.
catclub
daft, not draft.
can you imagine how the GOP would react if Obama’s FCC started regulating private companies for political content?
Baud
Does this mean the pie filter will be unlawful?
A Ghost To Most
More bullshit from the Supreme Bullshitter.
It is to laugh.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Absolutely(IANAL).
trollhattan
Remember when they were all up in arms about how Obama was going to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (when he, himself had never mentioned it)?
Good times.
the Conster
@catclub:
You can say that about the first day of Trump’s term when he was already in violation of the emoluments clause.
Baud
There’s no way to get there from the statute as written. Facebook v. FCC will be a short court decision.
Litlebritdifrnt
His comments on wind power are just so mind numbingly stupid and show his complete ignorance as to how power is stored. (But then again all of his comments show his complete ignorance as to how anything works, tariffs, trade, climate change, you name it). These new rules are also mind numbingly stupid, what ever happened to the Republican’s mantra of a “free market” taking care of things and the Government should not regulate private businesses. Oh yeah, Trump and his delicate fee fees happened.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
When pies are outlawed only outlaws will have pie.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
Have you seen who they’re letting be judges these days?
Yutsano
@catclub: Once again for the people in the back:
IOKIYAR.
Thanks to the media, this will always be true.
NotMax
Topically related: How to Stop Amazon, Apple, or Google From Listening to Your Smart Speaker Recordings.
Yeah, link is to Slate but that doesn’t impact the meat of the info being passed along.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So all of sudden the Right is fans of big government over private enterprise.
We will know when Climate Change is undeniable when the Right accuses science of not tell them about global warming. .
Baud
@TenguPhule:
By the time this gets to court, those judges aren’t going to want to give Elizabeth Warren’s FCC this power.
randy khan
As someone who works with (not for) the FCC, I can say with near certainty that Chairman Pai will have exactly no interest in doing this, in part because his order eliminating the network neutrality rules says the FCC has no authority to adopt rules governing the Internet and he doesn’t want to undermine that order or its rationale.
And since the FCC is an independent agency, not part of the Executive Branch, he can’t actually make them do anything.
This, by the way, is one benefit of the Administration’s lack of interest in governing – the FCC is being run by people who are close to being libertarians, and they really don’t like the idea of content regulation.
Baud
@randy khan:
Agreed. But there will be a lot of money wasted on a rulemaking.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
I nominate this as a new entry.
?BillinGlendaleCA
When I drive to Joshua Tree(or Red Rock), I pass though an area with lots of windmills. It’s always windy there, so it’s going to stop being windy? I’m confused again.
randy khan
@Baud:
People in my office will be very happy about that part.
NotMax
The entire brouhaha is chasing a phantom ‘problem.’
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: Then I will be an outlaw because I shall make PIE! it’s in my name, the way it’s spelled not the way it’s pronounced..
germy
No, when the wind stops and the windmills go still (immediately shutting down our electrical grid) all the people who quit SoulCycle will be required by law to return, and their exercise will power the backup generators.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
There’s also a thing called a power grid that allows power generated in one place to be transmitted elsewhere. The wind may die down in one place, but it will pick up somewhere else, and the grid will shift the power around. You need some excess capacity to make that work, but it does work.
Baud
@randy khan:
Heh $$$
Mnemosyne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Wind starts up, wind stops. You can’t explain that.
TenguPhule
I want a second opinion about this timeline. This can’t be the right one.
Baud
The Day the Wind Stopped will be the title of my dystopian sci-fi book.
germy
@NotMax:
It’s a great technique for avoiding responsibility for real problems.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Aren’t you supposed to be making apple pie right now?
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Don’t you mean a Phantom Menace?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: He drinks.
Betty Cracker
We’ve weathered two and a half years with a know-nothing buffoon and his pack of low-quality hires running the country. Many terrible things have happened, but we’ve been sorta lucky on the foreign affairs front. Looks like that luck is about to run out, fellow citizens. What’s happening in Hong Kong, India and Russia would be alarming under any circumstances — it’s even more so with these idiots at the helm.
TenguPhule
@Baud: Too late! Somebody already beat you to it.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Should I know who this person is?
Betty Cracker
@TenguPhule: I found that utterly unsurprising.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I hold no brief for Orange T but what can he or any American president do about India’s own goal?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@randy khan: I love the way he thinks he can order anyone to do anything. He is king.
Baud
@TenguPhule:
Haha. And it looks like it was some wingnut.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Professional golfer. Old white guy.
germy
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Don’t forget Korea!
rikyrah
Today:
LOWE’S lays off 1000
SEAR’s/K-MART closes 26 stores
CVS expansion to slow
WALGREENS to close 200 stores
PIZZA HUT closing 500 locations
Trump’s economy is FAILING.
— TommySaltyDog (@TomRoyActor) August 8, 2019
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am, but it’s too late in the day to start now. I’m also supposed to be making pesto. I bought a lug (half-lug) of peaches at Costco and I’m going to make spiced peaches and can them. Probably tomorrrow. The pies should be the first thing I do when I get up tomorrow so the house doesn’t get too hot. It’s trying to be summer here. 82 right now, which is a good reason not to cook anything. I’ll set up some fans tomorrow and open the windows to get the hot air outside and the cool air inside while I’m doing it tomorrow. I think I’ll get up early.
bemused
The wind and the televisions go off. I can’t even…
The only benefit of the doubt I might give him is that he forgot he wasn’t at a rally talking to his bonehead maga fans. Nah, he always knows more than the experts.
opiejeanne
@Roger Moore: Agreed. It’s excellent.
TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
I fail to see how this is a bad thing. //
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: It’s free on Kindle. I realize that does not indicate the quality of the book, but it does suggest a less than great experience might be the result.
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat:
I think, once upon a time, an American president would cajole a bunch of India’s friends and trading partners, to speak informally and diplomatically to the Indian government, to try to dissuade them. In short, use America’s soft power. I know, I know, I know ….. that’s so 20th century. And even then, we often just sent in the Marines (or the Argentines) to kill ’em all.
But at least sometimes, we used soft power to convince other countries that they were doing idiotic things. Those were the days.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Once upon a time we used to sanction countries behaving badly.
geg6
That was less than 3 miles from my house and my office. Ugh, I felt the bad vibes all day and, apparently, so did Mother Nature because it’s been foggy and raining all day. Anyway, he was at the not-yet-completed Shell cracker plant. Which is right next to both the Shippingport nuclear plant, which is being shut down, and the Bruce Mansfield coal-fired plant, which is also slated to shut down this year. And the asshole is taking credit for the cracker plant, even though it’s been in the works for almost a decade. It’s just that Shell finally quit being coy and announced it would be building it on the site of the old St. Joe Lead plant a couple of years ago. All of which is downriver from the American Bridge and J&L Steel mills and upriver from the Republic Steel plant, all of which have been closed for decades and most of which have been torn down. And yes, I grew up in a industrial wasteland where, apparently, the pollution seems to have poisoned an awful lot of the people here and given them and their progeny brain damage enough to be enthusiastic MAGAts. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah:Who could have known that reducing labor supply by declaring a war on immigrants and increasing tariffs would cause the market to contract? Everyone who took Econ 101. We are being ruled by idiots.
RSA
This is great news. John Cole, I am going to hold you personally responsible for any stupid comment I write on this blog.
cmorenc
Ancient parable updated to current times:
“Seven wise men cannot catch up to the false, toxic utterances of one prolific, malevolent fool with a megaphone.”
NotMax
@rikyrah
List of the latest round of Sears/Kmart closures.
Raven, if you’re happen to be reading, yours is on the chopping block.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: India has always rejected foreign help in Kashmir. I doubt any American President could have stopped it. Abrogation of article 370 has been a Sangh dream since Kashmir signed articles accession to join the Indian union. Bill Clinton could not stop Vajpayee from making India a declared nuclear power.
ETA2: But I get it, Orange T won’t even make the perfunctory noises that a head of state should make in condemning this power grab.
ETA: I think it is going to be ultimately self-defeating and I don’t approve.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: He could refrain from musing on camera about nuking Afghanistan and lying about being invited to mediate the dispute. I don’t think even a competent American president could fix the problem, but an idiot can always make things worse.
waspuppet
They decided to make it an executive order because even Moscow Mitch said The Make Sure Russia Can Throw the 2020 Election Act would be a hard sell.
RAVEN
@NotMax: Craftsman tools moved to Lowes.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: True that.
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat:
I didn’t mean “foreign help”. Rather, trading partners and allies suggesting/explaining that it was an unwise thing to do (this latest craziness). And sure, maybe the BJP is undeterrable. But parties of government inevitably must temper their worst tendencies, esp. when all their close foreign counterparts suggest it.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: Sanghis are true believers. I don’t have the confidence you do in the butcher of Godhra or his government.
ETA: Modi was a Sangh pracharak, who abandoned his wife to pursue Sangh goals in politics. I don’t think things like trading partners are going to deter him or Amit Shah.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
My adult nephew works at a Walgreens in the Chicago area. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that his won’t be one of the stores that gets closed. ?
cintibud
Wow. I await the day that Trump tells NASA to launch a manned mission to the Sun. “They’ll go at night!”
This timeline sucks
TenguPhule
Another day, another shooting.
Burnspbesq
@Baud:
That depends on your definition of “waste.” I, for one, don’t define Randy getting a weekend house down on the Chesapeake as waste.
NotMax
@geg6
Can’t recall the name of the old movie at the moment, which was set in Pittsburgh. Anyway, the scene takes place in the stately home of a (IIRC) steel company magnate (dialogue paraphrased).
Out of town guest: Your curtains are so white! I always heard the air here was sooty.
Lady of the house: Nonsense. That’s all a myth spread by those jealous of our city’s success.
Housemaid (whispering into guest’s ear): She has us change the curtains three times a week.
NotMax
@RAVEN
Since Black & Decker bought Craftsman things just ain’t been the same.
misterpuff
@TenguPhule: Because John Daly got to play cart golf and (probably) get to cheat almost as much as POTUS.
zhena gogolia
Asha Rangappa
Verified account
MattF
He’s channelling Bill ‘nobody understands the tides’ O’Reilly– so, now, nobody understands wind, either. It just comes and then just goes. And, I guess, steals jobs from coal miners.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: This was big news out here last night, they were still withholding the name of the officer last night; not for family notification, but for the safety of the family. That seemed odd, since the perp was killed.
NotMax
@misterpuff
“A hole in zero? Um, okay, whatever you say, Mr. President.”
Baud
LOL
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
The only John Daly I have ever heard of is long dead. He was a newscaster in the early days of television and host of the game show “What’s My Line?” This was in the 1950s.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Please get a cancer screening on your next doctor’s visit. It’d be a shame you lose you to wind cancer.
*slams head into table*
MattF
@Baud: Remind me… Wasn’t there some sort of… unpleasant… economic event near the start of Obama’s first term?
Sab
@RAVEN: They are also at Ace and Menards
geg6
@NotMax:
TBH, that was way before my time. The pollution in the air wasn’t all that bad when I was a kid in the mid-to-late 60s. But the ground everywhere was full of awful stuff. And the rivers! You never went into them when I was young. The air and the rivers are better now, but the soil in certain places is truly frightening. And don’t get me started on the manmade lake not far from the new plant that First Energy/Duquesne Light hid for years where they dumped all the coal ash.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
We were chatting about him here only the other day.
Trivia: He was originally from South Africa.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: IIRC, it’s the sound of the windmills that cause cancer according to Trump. Didn’t hear a thing.
Baud
@MattF:
Just before the start of his term IIRC.
laura
@?BillinGlendaleCA: perp was in a motorcycle gang accd’g to the San Francisco Chronicle.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@laura: Thanks, that would make sense.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Sorry. It’s hard to keep the details of all the stupidity straight at times.
Get a ummm….noise cancer? screening?
germy
John Daly (the golf pro trump fan) is such an odd looking dude. Bright pink face, white cotton candy hair. He looks like a dollar store knockoff counterfeit of a trump doll.
Mike in NC
Didn’t Fat Bastard once declare that windmills caused air pollution, similar to what Saint Raygun said about trees?
NotMax
@Baud
Yup. Remember McCain announcing a suspension of his campaign in order to to rush back to D.C. to feign being involved in doing something?
Jay
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato:
Yup, noise cancer.
Baud
@Jay:
One of the prison guards, I’d assume.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Could be someone at the hospital where he died. He died an hour after he was found.
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC: Trees cause air pollution? Exactly how out of his mind was St. Ronnie?
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Must have missed that thread. Yes, in the back of my mind, I had known that he was South African by birth.
I always found him elegant and charming on “WML?” He always wore a dinner jacket (as did the male panelists) and just came across classy as hell.
germy
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: Tomato Ketchup is a vegetable.
JPL
@Mike in NC: Windmills cause cancer also and kill birds. Someday folks will thank the asshole for ridding us of them.
or what Bill said
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
True. I guess I was more inclined to believe a guard would be on 4chan than a hospital worker.
germy
TenguPhule
@Jay: Cardiac Arrest is not normally the cause of death from being hanged.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
Acid rain, to be precise, IIRC.
Very.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Indeed. Classy, erudite and possessed of a wickedly sly sense of humor as often demonstrated on that show.
Yellowdog
@germy: That was an extremely depressing episode of Black Mirror.
TenguPhule
@germy: Sounds like Epstein really was just as surprised by his suicide as the rest of us.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne: I remember Henry Morgan being snippy with some other panelists. These old shows, sometimes all sorts of tensions were right beneath the surface.
Frankensteinbeck
@mrmoshpotato:
Ronnie’s administration was when Cleek’s Law because official Republican policy. His whole schtick was binding the plutocrats and racists together under the banner of ‘fuck anything those n-loving liberals want.’ Well, okay, combined with ‘It is now socially unacceptable to accuse a white person of racism.’
BC in Illinois
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Tomato is a fruit.
Tomato Ketchup is a smoothie.
Roger Moore
@laura:
Yeah, most people don’t have a rifle handy in their vehicle for when they want to start a shootout with police. Given that the guy was a felon and couldn’t legally own the gun, and that his truck was going to be impounded, I would guess he was afraid of what else would turn up when the police did a thorough search.
germy
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
As good a president as he was an actor. Barely.
;)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: So says Trump.
(Link shows video of Trump saying this, it’s closed captioned and no sound.)
Jay
Gwen Snider is Uncivil also has a thread up on how Nazis are radicalizing a new generation online.
Searcher
@TenguPhule:
Are you familiar with the Mandela Effect? There’s current a particularly widespread case of it going on, with a large number of people remembering different points of history differently, eg, whether the North or South won the War of Northern Aggression, whether the Second Amendment guaranteed the right to personally own weapons of mass destruction or the right to vote, which side the US fought on in World War II, etc etc.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. We all know about our nation’s famous fields of ketchup plants.
How do the plants know if their yield should or shouldn’t have high fructose corn syrup?
SiubhanDuinne
Hottest August 13th on record here. It’s only 99° where I am, but has breached triple digits in other parts of metro Atlanta. (We’ve had other days with 100°-plus temps, of course. Just not this particular date.)
West of the Rockies
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I don know, the whole “theory of wind” idea is bananas anyway. Where’s the evidence that air suddenly decides it’s gonna start moving to create “wind”?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@BC in Illinois: I am just repeating what the government said in the 1980’s.
Searcher
@germy: So suddenly when a rich white guy dies in prison, they make a federal case about it?
Mandalay
@Betty Cracker:
Even with a competent president there is little the USA could do to help in any of those disputes. And it would take an act of extraordinary stupidity – even by the standards of this administration – to materially affect events.
And as a related matter, international companies have already made their positions crystal clear with respect to autonomy of Hong Kong: – they will grovel to China the moment their sales are threatened:
– Swarovski apologizes for implying Hong Kong is independent from China.
– Versace, Givenchy and Coach Apologize to China.
But when it comes to giving a tongue bath, nobody outdoes the Japanese. From Asics:
Mmmm! That Chinese revenue may be drenched with blood and shit, but it sure tastes good!
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Actually, been done: Nausicca–Valley of the Wind. (A fantastic Miyazaki anime.)
mrmoshpotato
@Frankensteinbeck: Glad I was preoccupied with Tonka trucks during those years.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato:
They’re ‘Merican plants so of course they have HFCS.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@West of the Rockies: Yup, like the tides; “You can’t explain that.”.
NotMax
@germy
That was probably on “To Tell the Truth.” Henry Morgan’s thing was being snippy and he was for a time persona non grata on the networks until the producers of TTtT put their feet down and insisted he be a regular on the panel. And when Goodson & Todman spoke back then, network execs trembled.
Mr. Snippy (well, more Mr. Quippy) on “What’s My Line” was Bennett Cerf. the camaraderie and humor of that old game show holds up pretty well all these decades later.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: Unpleasant economic event was 2008. Obama was sworn in Jan 2009. Time machine was not yet up and running.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mandalay:
China, also Russia, but China especially, are a global threat to democracy as we know it. The new threat that the US and it’s democratic allies should be combating global authoritarianism, corporate profits be damned.
I’ve voiced these fears here before, but China worries me. Their Belt and Road initiatives around the world are eroding American soft power (when we haven’t done it ourselves). They’re actions are more or less non-hostile now, but what’s to stop them from engaging in the same gunboat diplomacy/Cold War bullshit the West did much of the 19th and 20th centuries? Or even worse, undermine democracy and export their own form of government here and abroad?
West of the Rockies
@MattF:
Yeah, but that was the Democrats fault.//
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I loved it! Never a big fan of Dorothy Kilgallen (she gave off a kind of Maureen-Dowd vibe), but she was smart — and I admired Arlene Francis and adored Bennett Cerf. And Fred Allen’s lugubrious, hound dog face never failed to convulse me.
Remember the great feud between Kilgallen and Jack Paar? At one point he cracked a line about her “Novocain lipstick” and I still think it’s the most perfect description I’ve ever heard.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You’re telling me that I bought foreign ketchup the other day?!
Well that’ll have to go! Maybe I should cut out any nutrition and start dipping fries in corn syrup.
Roger Moore
@BC in Illinois:
I don’t think that one’s going to fly. AFAIK, Nix v Hedden is still good law, so tomatoes are legally vegetables.
sdhays
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But what is catsup?
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: @SiubhanDuinne:
My childhood is flashing before my eyes.
ETA: No love for Kitty Carlisle?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s the ‘Merican Way.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
This youngin’ can attest to that.
germy
@NotMax: I remember Henry Morgan snarling at someone (I thought it was Bennet Cerf) for taking too long to finish an anecdote. An awkward moment.
I remember James Thurber, in one of his letters, saying that the odor of the college magazine sticks to humorists like Morgan like the lint on their blue serge suits. (Morgan was a young whippersnapper to him.)
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ‘Murrican! Say it right, you elitist snob.
billcinsd
@mrmoshpotato: They give off carbon dioxide that can form carbonic acid
Mandalay
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Fine words. Now state what the United States could or should actually do with respect to internal disputes in Russia and China.
Be very specific.
germy
Odd clip of Dorothy K.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW8qFj1G5j0
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, of course, I loved her. But she was a regular panelist on “To Tell the Truth,” not “What’s My Line?” (although she might have been a guest panelist on WML after Kilgallen died).
Litlebritdifrnt
I was in Hong Kong with the RN from 86-88. I was specifically tasked with typing many of the documents that laid out the preparations for the turnover. I remember an Admiral saying to me at the time ” You don’t have to worry about when China takes over Hong Kong, you have to worry about when Hong Kong takes over China”. Since the turnover China has relaxed many of its regulations because it knew it could not stop the “free” people of Hong Kong traveling to China and telling people there about their freedom of movement. Chinese people are now much more free to travel overseas and therefore absorb the freedoms of the west. This protest is the beginning of something more significant. JMHO.
Just One More Canuck
@TenguPhule: only a good guy with a pie can stop a bad guy wth a pie
mrmoshpotato
@billcinsd: Damn trees – stealing all our oxygen and polluting the air with CO2.
TenguPhule
@Mandalay:
Trump: Hold my diet coke. I got this.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
I thought you guys were talking about both.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: At least its not gravy and cheese curds.
mrmoshpotato
@Just One More Canuck: Oh if only we had mass pieings in this country…
germy
Not all of Cerf’s humor has aged well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgDbgVYwKMo
In contrast to Robert Benchley, who wrote humor in the ’20s and ’30s without being offensive.
mrmoshpotato
@TenguPhule: Or universal healthcare!
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: That would be great, but China is going to do it’s whatever to stop the uprising.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Even as a kid found something offputting about Kilgallen. Her suicide was a Big Story at the time. BTW, the 1955 season only is available on Prime.
WML? ran from 1950 to 1967, if y’all can believe it. Nice touch was that on the final program the mystery guest was – John Charles Daly, who switched voices back and forth as host and ‘guest.’ Story is that had always been the emergency back-up plan should a mystery guest fail to show up and a substitute couldn’t be rounded up in time.
And for those who never saw him, yes, the immensely talented Fred Allen’s physiognomy makes Walter Matthau look like George Clooney. Ears large enough to pick up transmissions from Tierra del Fuego. ;)
different-church-lady
@NotMax: 1948: “In the future, society will be run by huge mega-corporations who will oppress citizens by the use of listening devices that monitor every word uttered in every home.”
2018: “Hey, sign me up for that!“
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Carlisle always struck me as being too, too affectedly elegant and fragile, like a Dresden figurine. Worked on the show as a counterpoint to Betsy Palmer, though.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
To be fair, in 1948, they didn’t appreciate having universal access to animal videos.
Jay
Baud
@Jay:
Who knew there were good people in the Hamptons?
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: To answer your question from the other day, we just visited the UK, Ireland and Norway with Viking Ocean Cruises. I’d rate them a 10 out of 10 on everything. We used Viking River Cruises for a tour of Christmas Markets of Germany in 2015 and that convinced us they were top of the line.
Jay
NotMax
@Baud
Silly Baud. That’s what newsreels were for.
:)
Dan B
@geg6: The pollution was equal opportunity all iver the country. We lived in a house next to th Ohio Blue Tip Match Company. The backyard ended in an eight foot tall red chain link fence. Beyond that was 150 acres of cinders – zero plants. Across the street in the woods were the “match ponds” where the pollution was dumped. They were three different shades of blue. My brother’s long haired dog got into one once. He was black and brown on top and bright blue on the bottom. It was worse in Arkansas when he got into the waste pile behind the huge chicken hatchery. The dog loved it!
sdhays
@Litlebritdifrnt: That would have been pre-Tiananmen.
The British have their part of the mess of Hong Kong politics (as all colonists do in their former colonies). There never was “democracy” in Hong Kong – I’ve had the legislative elections process explained to me several times and I still don’t understand it. It’s as if someone looked at the American Electoral College and said, “This is fantastic, but way too simple and easy to comprehend and enfranchises way too many people and applies only to the executive”. And Britain didn’t even have the current Rube Goldberg “democracy” set up until it became clear that the handover was actually going to happen and democracy in Hong Kong was going to be Beijing’s problem and not London’s. So since the handover, the tension between the expectation of democracy and Beijing’s complete opposition to it has been slowly building.
I’m not sure what you mean by “beginning of something significant”, but if you mean something broader in China, I really, really doubt it. Xi has been consolidating his control of the CCP and all levels of government, and democracy isn’t exactly at the height of its credibility as a stable governing mechanism right now. The best result I see is Beijing cutting Carrie Lam loose as a scapegoat, but strongmen aren’t typically inclined to even give in that much. I seem to recall Xi’s mentor in ’89 was one of the reformers who lost; he clearly went in a different direction and I’m really worried about what lessons he learned on June 4.
I have family in Hong Kong, and I’m pretty concerned. We were thinking of visiting next year, but almost certainly not now.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Come on, like any of us would be surprised to find out the dude was murdered. He knew way too much about way too many powerful people, and I ain’t talking about Bill Clinton. The problem is going to be narrowing down the suspects.
Just One More Canuck
@mrmoshpotato: back in 2000 our prime minister (Chrétien) took a pie in the face at an agricultural fair – as the RCMP was hauling the guy away, Chrétien joked about ‘you guys have a funny way of serving pie’
Dan B
@geg6: My mother worked in the steel mills in the early 40’s when the streetlights were on all day. Akron was a welcome relief. Theair just smelled terrible.
Kathleen
@MattF: “The Failure to Forg March The Banksters”, episode 4,756 of How The Black Democrat Guy Disappointed Me.
Mike in NC
@germy: The now defunct Mad Magazine used to poke fun at those old TV game shows. Bennett Cerf was satirized as Bennett Smirk, a dirty old man. I’m old enough to remember Orson Bean, who later became father-in-law to still dead Andrew Breitbart.
Dan B
@mrmoshpotato: St. Ronnie was half right (or less). The SoCal chaparral release oils that, combined with fog produce a light smog. I don’t believe it had the toxic impact of auto exhaust. He would have loved to eliminate the EPA but James Watt did enough harm.
Kathleen
@NotMax: I just finished a book about the murder of Dorothy Kilgallen and her investigation of JFK’s murder.
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC:
He’s still alive. He was in Being John Malkovich. I was so jealous of a classmate because she was on the show and got to meet him. I had a huge crush.
I didn’t know about the Breitbart connection.
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC:
Wild:
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
And now he’s married to the mom from The Wonder Years.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Still alive; went full tilt rabid right wing late in life.
J R in WV
@NotMax:
Easier method: Don’t buy “smart speakers” in order to be private.
Will read the article, tho.
JoeyJoeJoe
Since windmills were mentioned, I’ll add this clip from Futurama:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PmDVHs-juPo
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Pretty sure you are not the one that is cofuzled. That honor goes to the moron in our house, in the office with the golden throne.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
When one has confused toilet with throne and really has no idea there is a difference…….
J R in WV
@RAVEN:
Craftsman tools were sold to Lowes, and I think so were Kenmore appliances. Randian owner got desperate, still can’t believe Randian management techniques could destroy a great retail empire in no time.
Set up all the various department managers in each store in cut-throat competition with one another. Oops!
Skepticat
@cintibud:
If only we could fit him onboard. After a hard day of work and tRumpisms, this made me laugh. The vodka helped. It might be funnier if not so true.
Jay
Jay
@J R in WV:
Don’t forget:
1) sell off all the real estate holdings,
2) to yourself,
3) rent the floorspace back,
4) at 5 times the cost,
5 = Profit!!!!!!!
Jay
Always be Grifting.
Dan B
@sdhays: Also the 70th anniversary of the PRC is October 1st. Xi will want the disturbance over and the aftermath cleaned up before then. Embarrassment is a large issue in Chinese culture.
Ryan
If Trump adopted the homage “Everything Trump touches turns to s***,” he’d realize this was a bad idea and likely to backfire.
Tehanu
@J R in WV:
Feckin’ idiot. Competition between your group and some other group is fine in limited situations with strict rules. Cooperation within your group is what makes your group out-compete the other group.