Category: Other

I don’t know why, but unflattering reviews of Saltburn have stirred my ire. Let me say from the outset that Saltburn was a fantastic movie, and I was particularly taken by the performance of Barry Keoghan. Indeed, the only reason I streamed the film is because I noticed that Keoghan was in it, and the only reason I know of the actor is because of his role in The Banshees of Inisherin. Even though he was a supporting actor in the Irish-centric movie, he outshone the main characters. (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were fine, but nothing in their performances was memorable, given that the movie was literally about two feuding men and fingers in an ass — that’s all you need to know.) Needless to say, Keoghan’s role as Oliver Quick in Saltburn was even more captivating. This guy can f***ing act! I have a relatively simple test for determining the greatest of an actor, and it is this: Do I believe him (in his role)? Has he convinced me (as his character)? Whatever the role — major or minor and beyond the words spoken — this is what I ask myself. Movie critics almost unanimously give Keoghan the praise he’s due despite some who generally panned the movie.

Also, let me say that I’m terrible at watching movies; I rarely see the plot twists coming. Although with Saltburn, I had a sense of what was in store once Oliver started evincing his true nature. But the subtleties that professional movie critics pick up on are usually lost on me. For example, when Oliver throws the mourning stone into the waterway, but it lands on a ledge instead, missing the water, it did not occur to me at the time that Oliver was lying about his father’s death. Maybe I’m just too obtuse to apprehend the foreshadowing, symbolism, and other theatrical storytelling devices in real-time. I like to watch a movie as it’s presented, uncritically, and then I ruminate on its “meaning” to the extent there is such a deeper message afterward. But it would seem that critics are particularly annoyed by the movie’s commentary — or lack thereof — on classism as it keeps coming in review after review. One critic I read was offended — for lack of a better word — that the classism storyline was underdeveloped or muddled. And this is where I start to get aggravated. (One critic said he was bored and confused by the movie. I think that the last thing a critic who pans a movie should do is claim to be confused. Saltburn was not at all a complicated movie to understand. In fact, except for the anticipated plot twist — as every thriller must eventually reveal — the film was rather straightforward in its telling. I could not fault someone for thinking that a movie like Inception as being a bit confusing — another one of my favorite movies — but Saltburn was not an incoherent piece of work. Perhaps critics who are so easily confounded should find another line of work.)

It seems all too often that critics are looking for the writer or director to produce some metaphysical masterpiece or reveal some earth-scattering and, heretofore, never-conceived trenchant secret of human nature. And I’m not sure why a writer or director is expected to create an exhaustive and critical exploration of a topic because it shows up in a movie. In this case, one of the subject matters in Saltburn was the rich “versus” the poor. (I have “versus” in quotes because I’m not convinced the movie should have been interpreted strictly as a competition between the two groups, as classism connotes.) True, a movie’s writer presumably includes dialogue and creates scenes with a specific purpose in mind, but critics often fail in their attempts to extrapolate more meaning than what the writer or director presents on the silver screen. In Saltburn, critics focused too much on the importance of the rich versus the poor storyline. While classism was a significant aspect of the film, it was a backdrop to its primary and more prominent themes: Obsession and desire. The objects of Oliver’s obsession and desire were both Felix and his family’s wealth. To what extent love and money were Oliver’s motivations from the very start of his encounter with Felix, or if they were something that Oliver developed over time, remains unknown. That is to say, was Felix a mark from the start? It is this open question that arguably lends to Saltburn’s mystique. (And unlike the Talented Mr. Ripley, Saltburn was edgier; Tom was a schoolboy compared to Oliver.) Classism is merely the stage on which the conflict must occur. If Filex and Oliver were both poor or rich, the movie would simply be a flat, obsessive love story turned tragic. A clash of the classes is incidental to the storytelling; it is not the story itself. If it were, I would expect a fuller exploration of the subject by the writer, but it’s not, and critics who think it is are reaching too far for somthing that is not supposed to be there.

According to NBC News, “When he inked his 100th new judge in early 2023, President Joe Biden was outpacing former President Donald Trump at putting judicial nominees on the federal bench. But as he enters his fourth year in office, Biden and the Democratic-led Senate have fallen behind the speed at which Trump and the GOP-controlled chamber were churning out new judges. To date, Biden has secured 166 confirmed judges — 126 on district courts, 39 on appeals courts and one on the Supreme Court. At this juncture, Trump had secured 187 confirmed judges — 133 on district courts, 50 on appeals courts, two on the Supreme Court and two on the U.S. Court of International Trade. Biden will need to steer 68 more judges through the Senate this year to catch Trump’s four-year total. Democrats have a 51-49 majority in the chamber and have enjoyed broad party unity behind Biden’s nominees, even winning some Republican votes for many of them.”

Honestly! We are so f***ing screwed. Dumbass Democrats are leading us right into the collapse of our democracy. I have been incredibly critical of the Democratic Party because it seems entirely unwilling and unable to fight! They fail to fight against traitor trump. They fail to fight against the RepubliKKKlan Party. Democratic Senators, in particular, are unable to coordinate themselves to accomplish the most significant task of their office: Confirm Democratic-appointed judges to the federal bench. Getting the most judges placed in the federal judiciary nominated by a Democratic president is the singular critical task of any administration. But I guess — unsurprisingly — Democrats are f***ing up this basic mission. I have spent years railing against traitor trump’s incompetence, and here we have Biden and dumbass Democrats evincing the same (or worse) level of incompetence when it comes to confirming lifetime judges. It is incomprehensible to me that after the midterm elections, when Democrats gained a seat in the Senate, confirmations have slowed down! Un-f***ing-believable! Only dumbass Democrats could pull off this level of ineptitude. I expected nothing less. Welcome to stupid America. We are doomed! Mark my words, f***tards!

From CNN, “Anxiety mounts every day that a full-scale Middle East war could erupt from the flames of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. ‘We feel and we’re afraid of it,’ Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week. ‘We don’t want any escalation in the war. … We don’t like a regional war because it’s dangerous to everybody. Dangerous to Lebanon, dangerous to Israel and to the countries surrounding Israel,’ he said, adding, ‘A regional war is bad for everybody.’”

Christ! If I have to read one more MSM article trying to wish us into a wider regional war, then I’m going to lose my f***ing G.D. mind! Every f***ing day, these idiot political pundits and “experts” keep turning up the fear factor that the Israel-Hamas war is suddenly going to engulf us all. F***ing non-sense. Look, morons! No country in their right mind — including Iran — is going to pick a fight with Israel and her allies (e.g., the U.S.). The militaries of these Middle Eastern countries are notoriously bad — just f***ing awful. By comparison, they’re ill-trained and ill-equipped. And they know it!

Have you seen these soldiers “march” on parade? They are ridiculous, and I’m not sure how to describe it. They “march” as if they’re running in place, but they “run” with a “stride” whereby they kinda jump and alternate bringing up their knees to their chest. It’s awkward looking, and they can’t seem to coordinate their movements, so they all “march” to a slightly different beat. Or they (unnecessarily) swing their arms wildly, also out of sync with each other. An army that can’t march correctly, can’t f***ing fight. I learned that in the first and second Iraqi wars. Armies in Muslim countries are pathetic. This is why these people resort to terrorist attacks and guerrilla warfare tactics because, as a military unit, they are unable to coordinate their marching, let alone their fighting.

This is why Israel can conduct successful attacks inside Lebonan and Syria, and these countries can’t do a f***ing thing about it. They dare not retaliate. So, Lebonan and Syria just have to live with Israel’s impunity to act. The I.D.F. and the U.S. would destroy these nations’ military forces in a New York minute. Given the extreme volatility of Muslims in the Middle East, a country on the losing side of a fight would descend into even greater turmoil, and the government regime would be toppled a la the Arab Spring. So, stop with the hand-wringing! This war will remain contained to Israel, Hamas, and these fringy terrorist groups annoying the rest of the world as usual. The fighting will eventually burn itself out.

The Havard Crimson writes, “Growing plagiarism allegations plagued the final weeks of former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s tenure, setting the stage for her resignation Tuesday afternoon. The allegations — many of which are individually minor but span Gay’s entire academic career — cast scrutiny on her scholarship. Many within and without the University have argued that she ought to be held to the same standard as Harvard’s own students and faculty and called for her resignation. … The new claims involve Gay’s 1997 Harvard dissertation and one previously unaddressed academic article — ‘The Effect of Minority Districts and Minority Representation on Political Participation in California,’ published in 2001 by the Public Policy Institute of California — in which Gay used a description of the Voting Rights Act which closely mirrored a description in a 1999 book by David T. Canon. But Canon, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Free Beacon that he is ‘not at all concerned about the passages.’ ‘This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism,’ he said. … Following an independent review, the Corporation announced that though instances of improper citations had been identified in Gay’s scholarship, they did not violate Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”

And then from the AP, “Reviews by Harvard found multiple shortcomings in Gay’s academic citations, including several instances of ‘duplicative language.’ The university concluded the errors ‘were not considered intentional or reckless’ and didn’t rise to misconduct. But the allegations continued, with new ones as recently as Monday. … Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort against Gay, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote ‘SCALPED,’ as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans and also used by some tribes against their enemies.”

As someone who has written countless research papers at university and a dissertation for my doctoral work, this plagiarism “scandal” intrigues me. First, I should note that these “charges” of plagiarism are being ginned up by a right-wing racist troll (Rufo). I find it rich that conservatives, who are hostile to learning and enlightenment, think they understand the scholarly process. They, like the rest of their brethren moronic base, apprehend nothing. Conservatives and the conservative hoards of zombie followers (RepubliKKKlans, MAGA morons, evil evangelicals, and QAnon kooks) are too f***ing dumb, which is why they’re always so offended by smart people and aggrieved because they were at the bottom of their class in high school or community college, or they are dropouts altogether and never succeeded at much in their lives. So it’s ironic that these people should nitpick claims of “plagiarism” against a real scholar and the world’s best university.

In short, plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work or idea as your own. Failing to credit someone’s work can be overt or subtle, and the subtle form of plagiarism is difficult to detect and unintentionally avoid. (And it’s not always obvious where someone else’s idea ends and a researcher’s new idea begins or where a similar theory overlaps. A researcher can arrive at the same idea as someone else but may not know it. Is that person plagiarizing?) Nonetheless, overt or direct plagiarism is rather easy to catch. Anyone who has run their paper through Turnitin understands the score they receive is based on matching phrases and sentences to existing works. Exact matches better be in quotation marks and accompanied with a citation. And near matches should also include a citation. And, ideally, the amount of “matching” — even if adequately sourced — should be relatively minimal compared to the rest of your work since a research paper is supposed to be mostly your ideas and your wording, not so heavily based on others. It would appear that Dr. Gay was a bit sloppy in this regard, which is why her allegations of plagiarism (“duplicative language”) were not considered intentional and egregious misconduct.

According to ABC News, “A Nevada judge was attacked Wednesday by a defendant [Deobra Delone Redden, 30] in a felony battery case who leaped over a defense table and the judge’s bench, landing atop her and sparking a bloody brawl involving court officials and attorneys, officials and witnesses said. In a violent scene captured by courtroom video, Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus fell back from her seat against a wall and suffered some injuries but was not hospitalized, courthouse officials said.” The question is this: Do you want to be that stereotypical guy who gives ammunition to racists, or do you want to fly above the hate? The pictures hold the answer.

In an excellent piece from The New Republic, Brynn Tannehill writes:

Which is to say, an unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism. Another 29 percent are OK with it as long as it doesn’t directly affect them (though I expect a lot of them are going to unexpectedly get their faces eaten by leopards). And of the remaining 28 percent who don’t like it, Trump’s approval ratings within the GOP as president suggest that most who don’t like what he is saying will pull the lever for him anyway in November 2024. … Some might point out that only 28 percent of U.S. voters are registered as Republicans. True, but Republican-leaning independents constitute another 17 percent, and actual swing voters are relatively rare. So the best-case scenario is that only 14 percent of voters are really dedicated to installing a fascist dictatorship. However, history tells us that that is a sufficient critical mass to send a country spinning into horror. … Which leaves us where we are today. One party is dedicated to bringing about a dictatorship that plans to seize power for “a generation or two,” purging society of the enemies that are purportedly destroying the nation from within. The other party is a vaguely center-left coalition, too weak to bring about effective change because the country’s Constitution and societal fragmentation make it politically and legally impossible. … As bad as this is, I haven’t even gotten to the really depressing part. Most people assume that if fascism came to America, we would recognize it as individuals and refuse to go along with it. In reality, very few people are directly affected by living in an authoritarian country; life is mostly “boring and tolerable” for the majority. “Yes,” most people would say, “but if asked to do things I know were wrong, I would refuse to comply. Because I’m an American, and I know better.” Except, we’re already testing this every day in red states, and failing miserably [i.e., abortion rights in Texas]. … Ultimately, when the power of the state comes to bear on people, including Americans, the vast majority will not do the right thing. Most (sane) people admire Martin Niemöller, but when confronted with the reality of how fascism corrupts ordinary men, almost no one emulates his willingness to do the right thing by defying the state. When Trump takes power and turns the full might of the government against anyone who might resist, the guardrails of individual conscience will evaporate faster than a snow flurry in hell [emphasis added].

Bingo! Basically, it’s what I’ve been saying for years. This sh*t-for-brains country is going to unwittingly fall into fascism because people are bored, stupid, and don’t care. And it doesn’t take that many to lead us into an American dictatorship. Indeed, I will go one step further than many authors and pundits who are raising alarm bells by saying fascism in America is guaranteed! Traitor trump is sure to win (with only a plurality of the vote), but no one believes me. And people simply just don’t f***ing care. F***tards of America are pathetic, apathetic, and just too f***ing G.D. stupid to keep their democracy. How many times must I say it? Oh, well. You heard it here first. Welcome to stupid, stupid America. The end is here; you just haven’t realized it yet.

According to the Texas Tribune, “Federal regulations do not require emergency rooms to perform life-saving abortions if it would run afoul of state law, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent hospitals guidance, reminding them of their obligation to offer stabilizing care, including medically necessary abortions, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). ‘When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted,’ the guidance said. … ‘We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child,’ Englehardt wrote. ‘EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt Texas law.’”

Then according to the AP, “Thousands of women stocked up on abortion pills just in case they needed them, new research shows, with demand peaking in the past couple years at times when it looked like the medications might become harder to get. … Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use. … ‘People are looking at looming threats to reproductive health access, looming threats to their reproductive rights, and potentially thinking to themselves: How can I prepare for this? Or how can I get around this or get out ahead of this?’ said Dr. Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the letter’s authors.”

Why do I highlight these two stories? For one, they were both published within a day of each other, and, second, they evince a nation wherein women are continuing to lose their bodily autonomy. Texas, especially, is bending over backward to ensure no women can get an abortion, particularly in an emergency. Oh, well. And I love how women are stocking up on abortion pills, expecting the worst. It’s probably a good thing since abortion pills will soon be outlawed once SCOTUS rules on a case before them this year. Mark my words! But the primary reason I bring these two articles together to opine is this: No one cares! I’ve said this repeatedly until I’m blue in the face. No! One! F***ing! Cares! Oh, sure, some care. Those in emergency rooms and requesting abortion pill prescriptions care, but they are a minority. The vast majority don’t care. How can I be so sure? How can I say this with conviction? Look around. What do you see? Nothing! Again, I say: Unless and until women take to the streets to demand their rights back, unless and until women and those men who support women’s rights engage in civil disobedience like those in the 1960s demanding civil rights for Black Americans, and unless and until women and men get serious about ousting RepubliKKKlans from political office — rather than implying voting on abortion protection ballot measures and constitutional amendments — then Americans are not serious about protecting women’s rights. I don’t see a large-scale, nationwide outcry. I see some protests. I see some people showing up to the polls to pass specific measures in specific states to protect the right to choose. But I don’t see anything that approaches en-mass movement. And I certainly don’t see the American voter holding the one and only party that wants to take women’s rights back to the 1850s. Instead, I see the RepubliKKKlan Party gaining more seats (e.g., in the U.S. House). It’s as if f***tard Americans don’t believe RepubliKKKlans when they say they’re not done with restricting women’s rights. I don’t know what it will take for idiot Americans to wake up or to convince them. Perhaps Americans are completely incorrigible. Perhaps America is beyond saving at this point, and the lack of urgency to push back against women losing the right to healthcare is emblematic of a hopeless nation. Oh, well. No one cares because abortion rights are always someone else’s problem. Welcome to stupid America!

From Salon, “Poor, pitiful conservatives: How the right’s counterfeit victimhood narratives harm all of us. Right-wing victimology isn’t just irritating and childish. It’s also a dangerous incitement to violence. … But victimhood, real or imagined, has also come to assume a central role in social, political, and cultural discourse in the U.S. A victim sensibility seems clearly to be on the rise across the political spectrum, especially on the right. But while real people are victimized in the real world all the time, not all victimization stories are the same. Some are counterfeit.  … While it may be true that conservatives suffer genuine victimization by virtue of jobs moving overseas, wages stagnating, communities fragmenting, health care becoming unaffordable, a perceived increase in crime and growing wealth inequality, it is also transparently false that these sources of legitimate suffering reflect a plot by liberal elites to ‘replace’ them. … So there is no equivalence or symmetry between the ways that the right and left make claims of counterfeit victimization. Broadly speaking, progressives have identified with victims and fought to defend and care for them. Modern conservatives like Trump and Carlson, however, are basically propagandizing when they position themselves and their audiences as injured parties in order to justify anti-democratic and xenophobic measures aimed at seizing, holding and expanding their power. Their aim isn’t to defend victims, but to stir up a mob that they hope will get rid of the democratic norms that currently provide some restraint against their political aims.”

Has the broader public not figured this out yet? I did … eight years ago because I’m not a f***ing G.D. moron. The reason traitor trump has been and continues to be so popular is that he’s spent the last eight years whining, b*tching, complaining, bellyaching, lamenting, and gripping about everything f***ing thing from windmills to NATO to water pressure to democracy and the American Constitution. But whatever! America has degenerated into one giant b*tch session and is now composed of a citizenry aggrieved by every f***ing thing that they disagree with or by situations in which they didn’t get their way. Again, as I’ve been saying for years now, traitor trump is the mirror held up to all Americans, and the people fell in love with the reflection. Welcome to stupid America, an ugly image only conservatives could love!

According to Politico, “Donald Trump is making serious headway with a bloc of the GOP that’s among the most skeptical of his 2024 bid: Republican senators. … That success winning over the Hill GOP was hardly guaranteed — and comes just three years after Trump mounted a public campaign to overturn his 2020 loss that’s gotten him indicted on dozens of criminal charges. But a combination of behind-the-scenes courtships like that of Hoeven and the growing feeling of inevitability that Trump will win the nomination is peeling off Republican senators who might otherwise have longed for a new, less divisive standard-bearer. These days, many in the GOP see only upside to early support for Trump.” I’ve said this a gazillion times before: There is no such thing as never-trumpers. They simply do not exist because all RepubliKKKlans fall in line no matter what. If RepubliKKKlans must choose between traitor trump and democracy, then they’ll pick traitor trump every single f***ing time. Eh, whatever! None of this matters anymore. People are morons. America is a nation of f***tards. People don’t care. Welcome to stupid America! The end is here.

According to CNN, “Maine pitched the 2024 election into deeper chaos and constitutional confusion Thursday by becoming the second state to throw Donald Trump off the ballot over the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot. The move from the Maine secretary of state — following a similar decision from the Colorado Supreme Court earlier this month — worsened a growing crisis for Trump’s campaign and strengthened the rationale for the US Supreme Court to take up the issue, arising from the 14th Amendment’s ‘insurrectionist ban.’ It has already exacerbated the havoc already surrounding the election and could cement ever wider national divides. The increasing uncertainty urgently needs a resolution, with Iowa poised to kick off voting in the Republican nominating race on January 15 and other key ballot deadlines looming. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, paused her decision pending a potential appeal in state court, which Trump’s team said they intend to file.”

There is no sense in pouring on accolades for this no-brainer decision since SCOTUS will undo all of this progress. They’ll undo Colorado’s and Maine’s decisions because this is a pro-insurrectionist SCOTUS. Strike that, actually: This is a pro-insurrectionist country. This nation of f***tards loves their insurrectionists — from the Civil War to January 6. And the remaining 55 percent that aren’t explicitly pro-insurrectionist are at least, in part, insurrectionist-curious. Whatever! Nothing matters anymore because no one f***ing cares! All this makes traitor trump more popular because I’m surrounded by morons. Morons everywhere, everywhere morons! As I said before, SCOTUS is going to turn the 14th Amendment from the anti-insurrectionist amendment into the pro-insurrectionist amendment because I live in stupid f***ing hell, and people just don’t care about their democracy. Mark my words, morons. Mark them well. Idiot Americans are missing the more significant anti-democracy movement plaguing countries worldwide. We like to think we’re immune from this trend when, in fact, we’re the ones setting it. Welcome to stupid America, where democracy dies!