Archive for 2020

APPLAUSE LINE AT WOKE 2020 OSCARS: Speech Is ’45 Sec More Than Senate Gave John Bolton.’

Related: Live Blog of the 92nd Academy Awards — The Super Bowl of Hollywood but Far Less Entertaining.

UPDATE: Obama-Produced Film Wins Oscar, Producer Quotes Communist Manifesto In Acceptance Speech. Obama Praises.

Earlier: Former Obama and Hillary advisors are writing actors’ award speeches.

More: Joaquin Phoenix wins Best Actor for Joker — and goes full-on PETA in his acceptance speech:

“I’ve been a scoundrel in my life,” he said. “I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with. Many of you in this room have given me a second chance.”

He also spoke in-depth about “the distressing issues we’re facing” including gender, equality, racism, animal rights and environmental issues.

“We’ve become very disconnected from the natural world,” he said. “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives first we steal the baby and then we take her milk that’s intended for the calf and we put it in our coffee.”

Phoenix was instrumental in the Golden Globes ceremony going vegan this year, an issue he and wife Rooney Mara champion, Page Six reported.

As Greg Pollowitz tweets, “these f*cks don’t want you to drink milk or eat meat and they’re quoting from the communist manifesto while taking private planes to film movies in New Zealand so they don’t have to pay union rates in California.”

As Robert Conquest’s first law of politics states, everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

(Updated and bumped.)

OPEN THREAD: Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed. Roger, ready to thread out!

SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: Joe Biden calls a woman at one of his events a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.” Is this what he was talking about?

[John] Wayne appeared in 180 movies over 50 years, and who knows what they called him in all of them? But it seems at least as likely that Biden is thinking of a different film: Pony Soldier, a 1952 western from director Joseph M. Newman starring Tyrone Power as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “Pony Soldier,” in the context of the film, is a Native American nickname for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and although no one calls Power a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” a chief does say, “The pony soldier speaks with a tongue of the snake that rattles,” which isn’t far off:

Is that the scene—filtered through Joe Biden’s memory of his brother’s memory of an old Western—that inspired Joe Biden to call a young woman at one of his events a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” nearly 70 years later? We may never know, but one thing is certain: For Democrats who want to nominate a presidential candidate with a vast library of half-remembered old Westerns floating around in their brains, there’s only one choice.

Well, that’s what a Democrat presidential candidate wants to hear from Slate(!) on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

Related: Metaphor alert: The power is out at Joe Biden’s hotel in New Hampshire.

THAT WHOLE IMPEACHMENT SCHEME WENT SWIMMINGLY, DIDN’T IT? Post Impeachment, a Key Republican Suburban Area Rallies Around Trump. “Voters in the populous, heavily Republican suburbs west of Milwaukee did not entirely embrace Donald Trump in 2016. They do now. . . . Yard signs have been flying off the shelves in the county Republican Party’s headquarters in a strip mall near a vegan food supply store. More than 150 people showed up for a State of the Union watch party on Tuesday night, applauding and cheering in a giant hall. And volunteers like Diane Schlosser, a 63-year-old homemaker, have been walking in off the street to sign up.”

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Inventive Aussies stuck on coronavirus cruise ship in Japan get their wine club to bring them two cases of booze delivered by DRONE.

WHO chief expresses concern over coronavirus spread from people with no China travel history.

Crew member found dead on cruise ship where dozens tested for coronavirus.

Coronavirus: China’s death toll rises to 908 as confirmed cases exceed 40,000.

Briton infected seven with coronavirus: New cases linked to businessman returning from Singapore.

UK facing ‘major outbreak’ of coronavirus as disease spreads, expert warns.

Wuhan coronavirus kills 97 more people in one day as death toll tops SARS.

Briton in French Alps may have spread coronavirus to others across Europe.

Hong Kong: Nine members of the same family test positive for coronavirus after sharing hotpot and barbecue dinner.

Luxury cruise ship diverted to Fremantle from Singapore amid coronavirus fears.

‘Crisis mode’: Coronavirus disrupts the heart of electronics manufacturing in China.

Take off that facemask: You’re not protecting yourself from coronavirus.

Most ASU students studying in China return home over novel coronavirus fears.

China’s Shenzhen denies blocking Apple supplier Foxconn from resuming production.

Opinion: We will survive coronavirus, but are we prepared for the next health crisis?

Coronavirus is the biggest market threat right now, Wall Street bull Ed Yardeni says.

Coronavirus is airborne, Chinese officials confirm.

WENT TO THE MEMORIAL FOR THE LATE MICHAEL SILENCE, journalist/blogger extraordinaire and major mover of the Tennessee blogosphere. He will be missed. It was nice to see his wife and daughter, and to catch up with some other folks. Congressman Tim Burchett showed up, too, which was nice.

THREAD:

DID YOU MISS ME? For those of you who wondered why I wasn’t posting this past week, it was because I was in Puebla, Mexico, on a church mission trip for construction work and evangelism. Considering all the good things that happened last week, maybe I should leave more often (don’t answer that!).