The New York Times needs to do better with their Trump and election coverage

The Times is held to a high standard and they are failing. They failed in 2016 by over-hyping the Clinton emails and they’re doing it again by attacking Biden’s age. They’re pouting because he hasn’t given them an interview.

Republicans lie about their position on abortion

I’m not going to argue with these folks on Twitter. I won’t change their mind and they won’t change mind. The 15 week limit does have some public support. However,

  1. There are17 red states with abortion bans much stricter than 15 weeks. I don’t see how anyone can say that 15 weeks is the Republican position. See the chart linked to below
  2. There is majority support for opposing the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This contradicts the support for 15 week limits.
  3. The bottom line is that the Republican politicians are lying about their abortion positions because they know they are not popular.

States where abortion is legal, banned or under threat.

Putting Trump in jail will help him

I agree with Judge Merchan. Fines do not change Trump’s behavior. Trump should not be allowed to keep violating the gag order.

However, if Trump is put in jail (where he definitely belongs), then the focus will shift to whether he belongs there instead of the crimes he is charged with. Trump will act like he is the victim.

The judge is in a no-win situation. He can tolerate intolerable behavior from Trump or help him by taking the attention away from the charges. There is no good solution.

Restored Mexican films

Powerhouse Indicator Films has recently released two Mexican films from the 1960s on Blu-ray.

The Bat Woman

The Panther Women

I have them but haven’t watched them yet. I have seen prior releases of both films and they are minor but entertaining.

Holy bikini-clad Batwoman! Archive saves Mexico’s scorned popular films

UCLA Permanicia Voluntaria

Powerhouse has also released several Santo films which I will post about later.

Daniel Kramer photographs are on two great Bob Dylan album covers

PopSpots by Bob Egan – the Bringing It All Back Home Cover

Covers: We’ve Only Just Begun

I’m not a Carpenters fan but the origin story for “We’ve Only Just Begun” is cool.

Tweets and video about a man who lives in a Boeing 727

Tweets and YouTube videos about the film Casablanca

There’s also a fine book about it:

The New Republic on the 100 most significant political films

This is an excellent list and The Battle of Algiers is a worthy #1. Two lesser-known films I recommend are #29, The Great McGinty and #30 Gabriel Over the White House. Gabriel is a really unique film. I don’t agree with a lot of what it says but it’s well worth watching.

I can’t believe this really happened

I had to read Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy in high school. I thought it was terrible and full of implausible plot developments.

I wrote a paper in school parodying it. In the book, a character is stung by an adder and dies at a very convenient moment. In my paper, I had someone get hit by a meteorite which I thought was equally plausible. I wrote that people were more concerned about getting the blood off the meteorite than they were about the victim.

Yesterday, I read that someone really did get hit by a meteorite.

One other note on the book. In Thomas McGuane’s The Bushwhacked Piano, there’s a character named Egdon Heath. Hardy’s book is set in Egdon Heath. I have always wondered if this was because McGuane loved Hardy or hated him.