Congressman Trey Gowdy yelled at Rod Rosenstein about the length of the Mueller investigation yesterday, using several naughty words while doing it - oh my, what a real manly man he must be!
He's also as dumb as a brick and disingenuous with it ...
I'm very happy to see such a liberal Democratic Socialist win a primary. This puts the lie to the idea that Democrats have to move to center/right in order to win votes. She is for housing as a human right, a ban on assault weapons, Medicare for all, the abolition of ICE, working to fix climate change, and many other good things. Here's what she has at her site on women's reproductive rights ...
Reproductive freedom is especially essential for all individuals of marginalized genders, including cisgender women and trans people. Alexandria does not accept any federal, state or local rollbacks, cuts or restrictions on the ability of individuals to access quality reproductive healthcare services, birth control, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, or medically accurate sexuality education. This means open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion, birth control, and family planning services, as well as access to adequate, affordable pre- and post-natal care, for all people, regardless of income, location or education.
[...] The church has been accused by critics for years of shielding alleged perpetrators from harsh punishment, and the Vatican — which rebuffed a request from the United States to drop Capella’s diplomatic immunity and have him prosecuted in a U.S. court — is under pressure to handle the case with transparency. Several pool reporters were permitted in the courtroom, where three judges also heard testimony from a Vatican police investigator, who described several dozen examples of child pornography found on Capella’s electronics ...
We will recall that when this came up, the Vatican sucked their child pornographer back to Vatican City instead of allowing him to be prosecuted in the countries (the US and Canada) where he had committed his crimes ... Amid Pornography Case, Vatican Recalls Priest From Washington Embassy.
Pope Francis also recalled another Vatican diplomat, one who was being investigated for the sex abuse of children in both Poland and the Dominican Republic, instead of allowing him to be prosecuted by civil authorities, refusing to extradite him ... Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski’s Extradition Declined: Former Papal Nuncio Accused Of Sex Abuse Remains In Vatican. That guy, Wesołowski, who was held on very loose house arrest in Vatican City, never made it to trial but was found dead in his room.
But back to child pornographer Monsignor Capella. At his Vatican trial he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of €5,000 ($5,800) .... Vatican ex-diplomat sentenced to five years on child pornography charges. This may sound like the Vatican is really doing its job of cracking down on the bad guys within its ranks, but let's look closer.
For some perspective, think back to 2013 when Catholic priest Shawn Ratigan was found guilty by civil authorities in Missouri of child pornography. His case was somewhat different, but he was sentenced under federal law to 50 years in prison ... Kansas City priest sentenced to 50 years in prison for child porn.
And one has to wonder how Capella will serve five years in a prison setting when Vatican City has no prison .... he will spend his five years, apparently, in his makeshift jail cell. Usually people convicted of crimes that call for prison in Vatican City are inprisoned by Italy. Why not this guy? ... How Does Vatican City Deal With Criminals?
Finally, why hasn't he been defrocked? At the end of his trial he said that he believed what he had done was just “a bump in the road of my priestly life”. Just wondering who would want as their priest a man who had collected images, videos, and comics of child porn, sharing them with his buddies online.
Before there was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, there was the Buffalo Springfield. I saw them once at the state fair. Here's one of their songs: Bluebird. I like the banko part at the very end best ...
Paul McCartney on Carpool Karaoke with James Corden in Liverpool. I was a total fan of the Beatles from when I was about 12 years old. Hearing their old songs still takes me right back to a time when I was naive and hopeful about life and the future.
a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The film is directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, and stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther, alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis.
In Black Panther, T'Challa is crowned king of Wakanda following his father's death, but his sovereignty is soon challenged by a new adversary who plans to abandon the country's isolationist policies and begin a global revolution.
I've been looking forward to seeing this movie since the film version of the character of the Black Panther was introduced in Captain America: Civil War (2016), but the Black Panther's homeland, Wakanda, has always been a part of the Marvel Universe, as that's where the extraterrestrial metal, vibranium, that comprises Captain America's shield, can be found. Here's a video showing his introduction in the Captain America movie ...
The plot: the Black Panther movie begins where the earlier film ended, with T'Challa taking part in a ritual to formally become king of Wakanda after his father's death. His first effort as king is to track down Ulysses Klaue, a South African black-market arms dealer who has stolen vibranium from Wakanda (which the evil Ultron used to make his new body, but that's another movie ;). While trying to do this, he encounters someone he hadn't known existed, a cousin who challenges him for his throne and also challenges his very idea of Wakanda's fated place in, and duty to, the rest of the world.
The film has been extremely popular and I myself really liked it and definitely recommend it. Here;s the beginning of a review in The LA Times ...
We didn't know we'd been yearning for it until it arrived, but now that it's here it's unmistakable that the wait for a film like "Black Panther" has been way longer than it should have been.
On one level this is the next-in-line Marvel Universe story of the ruler of the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda who moonlights as a superhero and has to contend with threats and problems both internal and external.
But "Black Panther," as co-written and directed by Ryan Coogler and starring a deep bench of actors of color, is an against-the-grain $100-million-plus epic so intensely personal that when the usual Marvel touchstones (Stan Lee, anyone) appear, they feel out of place.
A superhero movie whose characters have integrity and dramatic heft, filled with engaging exploits and credible crises all grounded in a vibrant but convincing reality, laced with socially conscious commentary as well as wicked laughs that don't depend on snark, this is the model of what an involving popular entertainment should be. And even something more ....
Here's a trailer ...
Now looking forward to Avengers: Infinity War which the Black Panther foreshadows and in which he appears ...
I'm going to try to build a little enclosure for Yoda the kitten. Right now she's always in her "Wabbitat" except when I take her out to eat and play. She's so small and fast that I'm afraid I might not be able to catch her for her medicine or that I might step on her. So I sent for an assemble-able thingy. Here's someone who made a video of how to put it together. She has pet rats - so cute. When I was in college we had a pet rat named Ratso :) ...
Here is a pretty good examination from the PBS NewsHour of the whole recent sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church in Chile, the pope's involvement, and this police raid ...
The Catholic church cannot be trusted to actually hold accountable abusers and those who cover it up. We will have to count instead on civil governments to prosecute these people. To make this possible, statutes of limitation have to be relaxed ... as it now stands, the Catholic church spends a ton of money fighting against this happening ... Catholic Church spent $2M on major N.Y. lobbying firms to block child-sex law reform
The Catholic sex abuse problem will never go away as long as the church refuses to allow married men and women to be priests. I'm not saying that celibacy causes pedophilia. What I am saying is that any institution that promises to enforce lifelong celibacy in its employees is bound to attract a higher than average percentage of emotionally/sexually disturbed job seekers.
I think my cat Thor may be dead. Since I've been taking care of the sick kitten I haven't been able to spend as much time with the outdoor cats. I think Thor was getting sick for a while, but I just didn't notice. I noticed about a week and a half ago that he seemed under the weather. The next day he didn't come to eat the once-a-day canned food snack, which he loved and normally never missed. That was a Saturday and that night I found him and tried to feed him but he wouldn't eat. Because the vet was not open then and because I don't have a car, and because I was worried about the cost of an emergency place, I did the expedient thing - I decided to wait until Monday to decide what to do But I never saw him again. He has disappeared and I think he's crawled off somewhere to die :(
He lived here for the last four years, after appearing in the yard one spring as a kitten with his two sisters. He was very sweet and affectionate. I will really miss him.
I keep a small pile of songs on my computer desktop that I can listen to over and over without getting tired of them. A few songs by The Cars are in the pile, plus some Moody Blues songs, and some songs by the Beatles. And of course this song by Captain Hook. It took me a long time to memorize all the words :) ...
We had a vet appointment yesterday for Yoda. She's had a cough lately and so they did an x-ray and it turns out she has pneumonia. Now she has to get a slimy raspberry flavored liquid antibiotic for two weeks. She's pretty perky, considering. Still hoping she may get adopted from the vet place, but that wouldn't happen as long as she's sick, so still hoping and waiting.
a 2018 science fiction psychological horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of military scientists who enter "The Shimmer", a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating landscapes and transmogrifying creatures.
I had read the book a while ago (posted about it here), which won the 2014 Nebula Award for Best Novel. The movie changes the story quite a bit but, especially going more towards horror than straight SF, but it was still worth a watch, with lots of nice special effects. Here's a trailer ...
