So.  Apparently, Nancy Pelosi is “winning” on the Wall, encrusted as it is in the big government shut down.  Of course she is.  The Wall is a stupdifying idea, something a more adroit politician could back track to some grand “border security” premise.  It is sort of baked into the cake. And always begs the question… posed, it seems, by Ann Coulter:

She continued, declaring that Trump has “screwed up” in the first two years of his presidency by not getting the wall built, adding that now “with three seconds on the clock, he’s finally throwing the ball.”

Didn’t he just have a Republican Congress that was apt to do something of his bidding?  Maybe not really… as their checklist amounted to a tax cut and Judicial appointments.

But be that as it may, looming ahead:  Who the heck are the Democrats going to nominate in 2020?

Giving the trajectory of the party on foreign policy, somewhat in reaction to Trump’s various isolationist impulses as too his tie in with Russians… I think the Democrats oughta draw the contrast and nominate…

As everyone thinks along these lines… but more logically…

Joseph Lieberman.

Particularly — as befitting the current needs of the Democratic party — if he has a sex change operation, but if he just wants to go in drag that’ll work out well too.

His running mate can be Michael Bloomberg, obsessed as he is with everyone’s dietary habits in drinking big sodas, appears to slide into that major issue that concerns at least a chunk of leftwing commentators right now… how the President deals with the government’s shut down in shutting down culinary service to cater the college football champion meeting…

(In drag?)

It looks like Harry Reid has endorsed Mitt Romney for a 2020 run…

A number of ways you can look at this.  We’re in line with Bill Maher’s re-calibrated “If I knew what was coming, I’da supported Romney” revisionism.  We’ve got the two party duopoly and the interchange of a “Third Way” “No Labels” gambit, replete with the big .  Heck, maybe he’s wary of the “creeping socialism”, and is of that type of post-politicians who sought third party alternatives to William Jennings Bryan in 1896 or the Liberty League with the rise of FDR.

Or… maybe… It’s the big Mormon Conspiracy to take over America!

… and then…

That conspiratorial tome I was looking at a few months ago, prophecyzing the Romney Presidency of 2016… (and I think then the anti-Christ?) maybe it was just 4 years too early.

I read a list for the end of the year of pop culture happenings in 2018… they riff on the big pop cultural happenings as being the blockbuster movies of Crazy Rich Asians and Black Panther, and then…

Healy I wonder if President Trump and Republican leaders watched “This Is America” or parts of Beyoncé’s Coachella performance, or understood what “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” were saying about America in 2018. These moments were about nonwhite artists, characters and concerns rising as defining moments in the culture at a time when white identity politics is defining the presidency. And here is Trump, congratulating Roseanne Barr for supporting him on “Roseanne.”

Flegenheimer What ever happened to that show?

And Welcome to Hell.  I don’t know. A simple thought experiment: Trump calls up Beyonce and congratulates her for an upstanding performance.  Or the producers of Crazy Rich Asians.  At best they’ll just give them the same performance the producers of Hamilton (the great progressive celebration of a proto-supply sider) gave Vice President — a hectoring lecture.  Nay: he’ll stick to congratulating the celebrities who want him… Roseanne, Kanye West…

Going back a few years, I wonder if the lack of success of the Ghostbusters movie was foretelling the lack of success of Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Or if the wires of the Beyonce Superbowl appearance and its mark on popular culture — as particularly publicized and promoted — were somehow crossed… if when Blink 182 overtook everyone on the charts if that foretold a frat-boy nostalgia aesthetic in our culture as run in to the election or to future Kavanaugh support?  Is this what the reviewers are getting at?

Healy Our colleague John Koblin nailed it. ABC wanted to cater to “white working-class” Trump supporters. I interviewed her in March about the changes in her character to make her a Trump supporter. She erupted at me and the ABC publicist tried to shut me down.

In the interview I heard from her she slashed away at the idea a bit, claiming the big political take-away for the show was that half the country voted for one candidate and the other the other, and that was it.  As it were, the cultural reviews of the show were mind numbing — pointing out the inconsistency of voting for Trump when holding to this or that view, as though support for a politico is ever consistent for lay people.  And I couldn’t tell if the complaint for John Goodman’s character’s attitude toward the “non gender conforming” kid was that they wanted less nuance and a more evil foil or –? …

Rogers Roseanne is performing in my Indiana hometown this spring. Suffice it to say conservative America is ready to forgive her.

Well, it was a good show while it lasted.  I am puzzled by the line of commentary…

Sure.  Are they willing to forgive Louis CK, though?

Flegenheimer It just speaks to Trump’s ability / insistence to nose into any moment. It seems like big cultural happenings are so often processed, in part, through a prism of: How will Trump involve himself — or, possibly, screw things up?

I’m not sure Roseanne Barr didn’t screw it up all by herself, and the reportage doesn’t just get absorbed to “over there”.

Welcome to Hell.

Sticking to this claim:

They’ve allowed their tool to be used by a foreign nation to subvert democracy and seek to suppress African-American votes.

Leave aside issue number one — where I have seen it explained that no, facebook didn’t sell private data to corporate interests– they gave it away —

And except for the implied suggestion for the problem the NAACP head has to issue number two — leaving aside issue 3 on the lack of a diverse corporate culture and its blind spots, etc…

We come back to the problem of the Russian trolls and their army of Black Nationalist

— or whatever we can call it —

facebook pages spouting Russian propaganda to “suppress the vote” —

presumably suppressing Hillary Clinton’s vote by arguing against her to part of the Democratic base?…

and, I suppose if we’re looking at this from the vantage point of that which cost Hillary Clinton the election — her one percent losses in WIMIPA — hm… a concerted effort centered around Detroit’s inner city? —

And herein lies the problem…
… for a show that inserted the Green Party presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate into coverage of the Presidential debates…

… And here it’s worth looking at the rhetoric of the vice presidential candidate they so-championed…

— the party ticket who, according to the infamous “pee tape” report (is that what I should call that thing?) made some juants over to Russia …

Or we can go to Colin Kaeperneck and his non voting stance, seeing the two candidates of Trump and Clinton as just running around debating who’s less racist…

Because the Russian troll army, such as it is, is essentially aping the rhetoric of such figures, amplifying their message to the degree they can…

“suppressing the vote” (whatever that means) against Hillary Clinton…

And if we kick their facebook pages out because it’s aping Russian propaganda, they would indeed by racist…

… or sweeping about too suspiciously for content…

Biden / Romney 2020!!!

Um.  Er.

Theoretically, Biden is “in the lead” for the 2020 Democratic primary presidential ticket, so say national polls.  Then again, Joseph Lieberman was at this point rolling into 2004, and everyone knew not to take that seriously.  The problem this time out is…

… and maybe it’s the same problem as with 2004?…

… only more so because it seems that everything requires a whole lot of media oxygen,

Maybe even hitting around Iowa…

such that Beto O’Rourke is currently in third place in these “presidential sweepstakes?”…

And there’s this idea drifting around the Internet (floated by a longtime Republican operative, no less): a bipartisan fusion ticket pairing Biden with Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney, the last Republican presidential nominee before Trump.

The metamorphosis of politics, which once had Biden as a creature of 80s conservative tilting Democratic Politics — a big drug warrior and getting the tough on crime — evolving to the point where had he gone in for 2016 he’d have had his best bet arguing a point to the left of Hillary on foreign policy (as he arguably was within the Obama administration)…

… and then again, as arguably in some manners Trump was — though in places (would Trump have voted for the Iraq War?)…

Now he’s the last best shot for a Bloombergian third way, as against the encroaching Socialists of that young woman who won a House seat in New York City and that there Bernie Sanders…

… himself in second place in the Democratic Primary because… who the hell else does anyone know?

As per Romney — doesn’t the dude want to be president?
Or is he running for Senator of Massachusetts again, and as such trimming politics to …

“Unity”?

Actually, doesn’t Romney want to be a Republican?

And what of a Kennedy echo “torch has been passed to a whole new generation?”

I say Jay Inslee for President.  Just because… oh, why the hell not?

I suppose it’s not worthwhile to try to take some kind of side in …

Bill Maher slams down Stan Lee!

I suppose we can draw up a list of “comic book movies”.   Road to Perdition, Ghost World, American Splendor…

Josie and the Pussycats.

I’m bailing as I go ahead and look up a list on google and find this…

“America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie, I guess,” Maher wrote about the cultural icon responsible for many of Marvel’s most popular superheroes in comic books and movies. Lee’s team at POW! Entertainment quickly fired back at the late-night host, calling his words about man “frankly disgusting.”

Bill Maher going a faux high-brow route, and he will end up having a point.  Except a bit misplaced — unless he really hates the influx of comic book movies (he claims not to) and / or really is hearing a lot more than I heard on eulogies to Stan Lee.  One bit of fascination is that we see comic books themselves become subservient to the Hollywood productions, Stan Lee is thought of here in terms of the movies.

I’m agnostic on Stan Lee,” Maher said. “I don’t read comic books, I didn’t read them as a child. What I was saying is, a culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb (explicit) culture. And for people to get mad at that just proves my point.”

When first I heard Bill Maher had some snotty things to say about Stan Lee, I was thinking “Oh, so he’s siding with Ditko and Kirby”, but it’s clearly not.

Marvel interjects that “He taught kids how to read and…”  hm… them flawed human nature?  Oh, within bounds, I suppose.

Curious as to whether Maher said anything about the recently deceased Bush, I don’t see anything right off the bat, but I do see the “post Trump whitewashing” effect — coming together most forcefully in a post-dated claim that if he knew what was to come next, he’d have supported Romney in 2012 — so… this does suggest a retrofitting of… I suppose all past presidents.