"a three-hour tour"

 

This is a report of the news story I noticed earlier this week, in Market Watch, online.

Bond billionaire Bill Gross allegedly blasted the 'Gilligan's Island' theme on loop during dispute with neighbors

by Shawn Langlois

     Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of two obscenely wealthy neighbors whose outsized bank accounts can't buy a peaceful co-existence in one of America's highest-priced ZIP Codes.

On one side, there's Pimco's retired bond billionaire Bill Gross and his $1-million outdoor sculpture.  On the other, tech entrepreneur Mark Towfiq, who claims Gross's 22-foot long installation and protective netting are blocking his multimillion-dollar Laguna Beach, California, view.

According to the Los Angles Times, this squabble is just another in a long line of bitter standoffs leading to multiple legal actions and police calls to the pair of Orange County mansions.

     In one funny twist, though it's rather doubtful that Towfiq and his wife are laughing, Gross's efforts to torment his neighbors allegedly included blaring the theme song to "Gilligan's Island" on a loop.

...In a lawsuit of his own against Gross, Towfiq and his wife claimed that they have had to take refuge twice in either a hotel room or with relatives to escape the music from next door.  And in an application for a temporary restraining order, Towfiq cited a text message allegedly sent to him by Gross:  "Peace on all fronts or we'll just have nightly concerts big boy."

______________________________________

     That is weird.  These people have so much money, they could be anywhere in the world doing anything, and they're -- bickering with their neighbors??

     A glass sculpture -- outdoors?

          And it occurs to me, with all that chaos and back-and-forth:  I hope they don't have a dog or a cat, because that nonsense could scare them.  And also what about the household help?  What are they going to think?

     Has there always been this amount of craziness in the world, or is it something about the 21st Century?

-30-

crazy that the U.S.

 

1962

2020

Reader Comments in The Guardian 7 hours ago:

--------------- Crazy that the US could be brought to its knees by a crooked gameshow host.  Crazy.

-------------- "Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Monday night set the battle lines for how the Supreme Court should consider post-election lawsuits that could determine the outcome of the presidential race."

     If the US Supreme Court should be seen to subvert the free and fair electoral process in the incumbent and the Republicans' favour, then in that instance America takes a very dangerous step toward a dangerous and terrible future.

_________________________

headline in the Los Angeles Times, October 26:

Investor Bill Gross accused of blaring 'Gilligan's Island' song on loop to torment neighbor

_________________________

...a parallel universe?

-30-

record albums

 

I have certain record albums I like to play from You Tube when I'm doing certain tasks.

For laundry-vacuuming-weekly-cleaning, it's

the Court and Spark album by Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell Hits album

and

Moondance, "full album" by Van Morrison.

In that order.

For bringing in groceries and putting them away, it's a Janet Jackson album.

     The six albums (all available on You Tube) that form the solid quality core of her work are --

Control

Rhythm Nation

Janet (1993)

The Velvet Rope

All for You 

Unbreakable.

I work my way through those, and then start over with Control again.

----------------------------------------

When I was a little kid in early grade school, the record albums I had were "Peter Pan" (sung by Mary Martin, who was Larry Hagman's mom) and "The Sound of Music."

     Seeing The Sound of Music in the theater as a first-grader was a transformative experience.

-30-

well my, my, my

 

On You Tube there is a scene from In the Heat of the Night (1967 film).  The video is about 9 minutes long, or 12....

     It reminds me of a police-station scene in 1981's Body Heat.  Tension, hiding underneath calm exterior:  a similar energy--social and situational "negative ions," being carefully managed.

title of the video:

In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Clip 1

uploader:  lucylovesonline

___________________________________

-30-

they call me Mr. Tibbs

 

The 1967 film In the Heat of the Night was directed by Norman Jewison, who also directed

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Fiddler on the Roof

Jesus Christ Superstar

and

Moonstruck, among others.

------------------- [excerpt about the novel, from The Noir 'net / Eric B. Olsen] ------------ Author John Ball had the concept for his original novel in 1933, but felt that the timing wasn't right.  "The climate was such that I couldn't have written it then," he reflected.

"In those days civil rights were unheard of, and I wasn't a good enough writer to do the idea justice."  

In fact, Ball had an undistinguished career as a writer of various types of action novels when his first Virgil Tibbs book was submitted to Joan Kahn, the legendary editor at Harper & Row.  She made extensive notes and had the author rewrite over and over again, forcing him to follow her meticulously thought-out plot, character, and dialogue enhancements.

     The book went on to win the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America.  Reviews of the novel were glowing, suggesting that Tibbs might be worthy of acceptance into the pantheon of Great Detectives.  

When the second novel was submitted, Kahn again suggested major changes and rewrites, only to have Ball refuse to do them. 

 After all, he claimed, he'd already won an Edgar, had great reviews, and sold motion-picture rights for a ton of money, so he didn't really need her help.  

Needless to say, the second book, and the handful that followed, were critical and commercial failures, and Ball is remembered today only for that first book and the brilliant film made from it. --------------------- [end, website excerpt]

____________________________

-30-

talk to me Joe Biden

 

Yesterday I was studying the beginning of John Ball's novel, In the Heat of the Night.

     The word "against" appears in three consecutive sentences.

------------- [excerpt from the novel] -----------

A few unshaded street lamps in the main business area pushed hard shadows against the closed stores, the surviving movie theater, and the silent gas stations.

At the corner where the through highway crossed at right angles, the automatic air-conditioner in the Simon Pharmacy was on, its steady throb purring against the silence of the night.

Across the street the one patrol car that the Wells police department kept out all night was pulled up against the curb.

_________________________

I think the author did this purposely, setting up tension in his description.

     Against, against, against.  The seemingly quiet small town has interior pressures....

---------------- The novel had a movie based on it (1967) and a TV series, also, which ran from 1988-1995.

-30-

talk to me Harry Winston

 

Marilyn Monroe; Jane Russell

   in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"

At the end of last week, these songs were running through my head on a loop...

...But square-cut or pear-shaped

These rocks don't lose their shape

Diamonds are a girl's best friend...

and

...'Cause you've got - personality,

Walk, personality

Talk, personality

Smile, personality...

When I woke up yesterday it was --

Start spreading the news

I am leaving today

I want to be a part of it

New York, New York

These vagabond shoes

They are longing to stray

Right through the very heart of it

New York, New York...

(OK, stop.)

     I miss Chris Matthews so much.  No one on You Tube to talk to me about politicians' words.

     So last night I had to listen to an actual politician speak his words.  Video titled,

Biden Delivers Remarks in Ohio | NBC News

There were videos on there of him talking in other states, too -- I picked Ohio because I was born there and lived there until I was 14.

Candidate Biden didn't yell or turn cartwheels or mock people or put on a reality show.  He just talked.  Mentioned building high-speed rail....

     That works all right for me.  I don't need to hear any "hellfire and brimstone."

___________________________

     Today where I live the sky is gray from horizon to horizon, the air is cool, and the ground is wet from early-a.m. snow.  (Too early!  No no!  We don't want it!)

     It's a good day to be cozy by a window with a blanket and a mystery.

-------------- [excerpt] -------------

CHAPTER 1

At ten minutes to three in the morning, the city of Wells lay inert, hot and stagnant.  Most of its eleven thousand people tossed restlessly; the few who couldn't sleep at all damned the fact that there was no breeze to lift the stifling effect of the night.  The heat of the Carolinas in August hung thick and heavy in the air.

     The moon was gone.  A few unshaded street lamps in the main business area pushed hard shadows against the closed stores, the surviving movie theater, and the silent gas stations.  

At the corner where the through highway crossed at right angles, the automatic air-conditioner in the Simon Pharmacy was on, its steady throb purring against the silence of the night.  

Across the street the one patrol car that the Wells police department kept out all night was pulled up against the curb. ----------------- [end, excerpt:  In the Heat of the Night.  Written by John Ball.  Published by Harper in 1965.]

-30-

"but we are not helpless"

 

from The Guardian

"US election:  Rudy Giuliani's daughter endorses Joe Biden"

------------------- [from the article] ------------ Rudy Giuliani's daughter has endorsed Joe Biden for president in an essay for Vanity Fair, writing that in this historic election "none of us can afford to be silent".

     ...Caroline Giuliani writes that since childhood she has engaged in debates with her father about LGBTQ rights, policing and other issues.

"It felt important to speak my mind, and I'm glad we at least managed to communicate at all.  But the chasm was painful nonetheless, and has gotten exponentially more so in Trump's era of chest-thumping partisan tribalism.  

I imagine many Americans can relate to the helpless feeling this confrontation cycle created in me, but we are not helpless.  I may not be able to change my father's mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office."

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is a personal lawyer to Donald Trump and has been one of the president's loudest endorsers, whether during the Russian investigation, the president's impeachment or the coronavirus crisis. ...

"If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor who became the president's personal bulldog has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with 'yes-men' and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power," his daughter writes.

"We have to stand and fight," she argues.  "The only way to end this nightmare is to vote.  There is hope on the horizon, but we'll only grasp it if we elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."

______________________________

-30-

undertow

 

I was trying to contemplate and write about a feeling I get once in a while, which I can't name or really describe.  Cannot pinpoint.

     There's a book I have somewhere--the author talks about a feeling of "slippage."  Thinking of the uneasy feeling I get when hearing certain narratives, I keep coming back to that word, slippage.  Even though I can't explain it.

I can think of three times in my life I've had this sense of slippage:  uneasiness, uncertainty.  Like--what am I getting into, here?  It's kind of like I feel there's some problem, something not quite on the up-and-up, but don't know what it is.

1.  Long time ago, when I was just a few years out of college, someone told me a bunch of stuff, and when I got home I felt kind of funny.  Like I was being pulled down, and must try to find solutions for unsolvable problems.  Not depressed--just--like something was off, and I didn't know what.

2.  During the past week, when I watched The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, and Life with Judy Garland.  During both of these films, as I mentioned here yesterday, I "would get an uneasy feeling...like I was being dragged into something negative and dangerous."

3.  A few years ago, reading parts of a book by J.D. Vance online.  Just--I don't know....

______________________

Some Reader Comments under an interview with Mr. Vance that I could kind of relate to:

~  Superficially, a friendly and sympathetic portrait.  But the undertone makes it clear that Vance is an opportunistic chameleon.

~  Yes, I came away with the same impression.

~  You hit the nail on the head.  The equivalent of an ambitious Celt negotiating with Romans, utterly self serving and opportunistic.

~  Mr. Vance is very coy.  His behavior in this interview replicates his calculated, faux humility in an interview by Brian Lamb on C-Span when the book was first published.  Living in Columbus is hardly moving back to [Appalachia].  He will soon run for public office.

-30-

pack up your troubles, come on get happy

 

____________________________________

Sid Luft; Judy Garland

Yesterday's blog post here had two minor difficulties--somehow the print got big and I don't know how to make it go back.

It does that sometimes.  I don't know how to avoid it or fix it.  (Just so Readers understand:  I'm not trying to "yell" in my blog by having big letters...)

The other thing--ever since seventh grade when they taught us about drugs in science class, I have thought the word was 

"barbituates."

As it turns out, there's another "r" in there:

barbiturates.

     (Still doesn't look right to me! LOL)  

Anyway, in my line of work I don't have to refer to "barbituRates" very often, or maybe never, so--it'll be OK...

_______________________________

 

Watching (listening to) movies about Judy Garland's life and Marilyn Monroe's life, the narrative of "pills to help her sleep at night and pills to help her wake up in the morning" is--practically identical in both.

What did I notice about the Judy Garland movie?

It seemed like--when she wasn't working, she wanted to be working.  And when she was working, she didn't always want to come in to work.

     Her third husband with whom she had her longest marriage (13 years), Sid Luft, was a bit of a unique character.  He seemed like the best one.  But somebody needed to get the money organized.

During the movie, I would get an uneasy feeling at times -- like I was being dragged into something negative and dangerous.

     Got that same "dragging" feeling periodically during The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe.  Her mother!  What an awful person.  And then you stop yourself because it's like, well--she had mental health issues and so we don't judge her behavior too much because she can't help it.  We give her empathy...

     But it struck me, for a crazy person, seemed like she was somehow always perfectly lucid, logical, and mentally organized whenever she saw a chance to sabotage and verbally "stick the knife into" her daughter.  She was covert--she'd pretend to go along being reasonably nice, and then she'd "pounce."

     I was starting to get really irritated with Susan Sarandon, the actress playing the part!  haha

     (My dad said when he saw Gaslight, he wanted to punch Charles Boyer.  I guess it must run in the family...)

-30-

I don't mean rhinestones

 

_______________________________________

Ella Fitzgerald; Marilyn Monroe

Recently I saw a movie about Judy Garland's life, and then I watched one about Marilyn Monroe.

____________________________

[Life with Judy Garland:  Me and My Shadows, 2001.  TV miniseries based on a book written by Judy's daughter Lorna Luft.

The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, 2015.  Made-for-TV movie.]

____________________________

     Both of these actresses loomed influentially over American popular culture in the years before I was born, and during my lifetime, beginning in childhood, an awareness of who they were grew in my mind as naturally as learning to count, or skip rope.

"If happy little bluebirds fly

Beyond the rainbow,

Why, oh why can't I?"

"A kiss on the hand may be 

Quite continental,

But diamonds are a girl's best friend!"

After seeing these two movie biographies back-to-back, I noticed something I had never thought about before--how similar their personal lives were.  Their struggles:

marriages that tanked

job attendance issues

weird moms

barbiturates and amphetamines

...and what I can only describe as an inability to be happy and enjoy some peace.  Like -- perpetual, ongoing discontent, or something.

Lotta drama.

Their lives ran parallel to each other, in the era.  Until I watched these biographical movies, I had never thought of Judy and Marilyn at the same time -- like, together...

Judy Garland (Frances Gumm) was born in 1922; Marilyn (Norma Jeane Mortenson) in 1926.

Marilyn Monroe died in 1962; Judy in 1969.

I remember news of Judy Garland's passing:  in the car with my mom and dad going somewhere, or coming back--and I was asking, Why did she die?  What happened?  Why?  What was wrong?  I can't really recall what kind of answers I got.  I just had a sort of strong feeling of emptiness and shock, that "Dorothy" from The Wizard of Oz could die.

     Both Monroe and Garland died from overdose of barbiturates.

     Judy Garland was married five times; Marilyn, three.

One You Tube Comment under the Monroe movie read,

"She needed help, not husbands."

     Marilyn Monroe's first marriage was kind of an arrangement.  With no father, and a mother who was in and out of mental health facilities, she grew up in the care of other families.

     When she was barely 16, the family she was living with was moving out of state due to the dad's job transfer, and at 16 it was not legal, or something, for her to live on her own, and she would have had to go and live in an orphanage.

     So the mother of the family she lived with encouraged her to marry the 21-year-old neighbor, who was an acquaintance of the young Marilyn.

     (Yikes.)

_____________________________________

Marilyn Monroe's other two husbands were

big-time baseball player Joe DiMaggio (1954-1955), and

big-time playwright Arthur Miller (1956-1961).

-30-

"I'll see myself out"

 

     When I read Comments "BTL" (below-the-line) on Guardian articles, I always kind of enjoy the pictures they paint; the moods they create.

        Periodically there will be a Comment where the person is being humorously droll--humor where some readers might say, "ha-ha," while others might possibly groan a little bit.  Then, after the main part of the Comment, the writer will have typed in, "I'll see myself out."

     That cracks me up.

     Recently there was a variation:

"I'll get me coat."

4 Reader Comments / Guardian

Love the cinema.  Watching at home comes nowhere near.  I buy a Limitless pass and go dozens of times a year.  Also love listening to the buzz of everyday life outside.  The only time I'll wear ear pods is down the gym.

I hate seeing people wandering along a crowded street buried in their phone!  To me it looks like giving yourself a disability.  Ditto cyclists with headphones on!

     ----- Cyclists with headphones on may be a self curing problem!

In Dreams breaks every "rule" of the pop song.  It not only has no chorus or any kind of solo but is more like a string of verses each set to a different chord sequence.  It's like walking through a set of rooms, each more epic and splendorous than the previous.  It's not alone (Bohemian Rhapsody maybe?) but wow.

-30-

riders on the storm

 

The Doors

Chapter Two of Pope Francis's new encyclical is titled "strangers on the road" -- my memory went right to --

Riders-on-the-storm, bahm, bahm...

____________________________

__________________________

The Pope's Chapter Three is "vision of an open world."

-------------- [excerpt / summary] --------- ...The spiritual stature of a person's life is measured by love, which always "takes first place" and leads us to seek better for the life of the other, far from all selfishness.  The sense of solidarity and of fraternity begin within the family, which are to be safeguarded and respected in their "primary and vital mission of education."

     The right to live with dignity cannot be denied to anyone, the Pope again affirms, and since rights have no borders, no one can remain excluded regardless of where they are born.   

     In this perspective the Pontiff also calls us to consider "an ethics of international relations", because every country also belongs to foreigners and the goods of the territory cannot be denied to those who are in need and come from another place.  

Thus, the natural right to private property will be secondary to the principal of the universal destination of created goods.  The Encyclical also places specific emphasis on the issue of foreign debt:  subject to the principal that it must be paid, it is hoped nonetheless that this does not compromise the growth and subsistence of the poorest countries.

____________________

__________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

-- The Atlantic

(continued)

...If he Election Night results get changed because of the ballots counted after Election Day, you have the basic ingredients for a shitstorm."

     There is no "if" about it, I said.  The count is bound to change.  "Yeah," the adviser agreed, and canvassing will produce more votes for Biden than for Trump.  Democrats will insist on dragging out the canvass for as long as it takes to count every vote.  The resulting conflict, the adviser said, will be on their heads.

"They are asking for it," he said.  "They're trying to maximize their electoral turnout, and they think there are no downsides to that."  He added, "There will be a count on Election Night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent--pick your word."

The worst case for an orderly count is also considered by some election modelers the likeliest:  that Trump will jump ahead on Election Night, based on in-person returns, but his lead will slowly give way to a Biden victory as mail-in votes are tabulated.  

Josh Mendelsohn, the CEO of the Democratic data-modeling firm Hawkfish, calls this scenario "the red mirage."  

The turbulence of that interval, fed by street protests, social media, and Trump's desperate struggles to lock in his lead, can only be imagined.

-30-

strangers on the road

 

He was dangerous before and the steroids will make him even more so.

~ internet comment

______________________________

Chapter Two of the Pope's encyclical has the title, "strangers on the road" (which somehow reminds me of a song by The Doors).

[excerpt from the short summary]

     ...The Pope emphasizes that, in an unhealthy society that turns its back on suffering and that is "illiterate" in caring for the frail and vulnerable, we are all called--just like the Good Samaritan--to become neighbours to others, overcoming prejudices, personal interests, historic and cultural barriers.  

We all, in fact, are co-responsible in creating a society that is able to include, integrate and lift up those who have fallen or are suffering.  Love builds bridges and "we were made for love", the Pope adds, particularly exhorting Christians to recognize Christ in the face of every excluded person.

[end, excerpt / encyclical, chapter 2 summary]

_____________________________

_________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...Trump was panicked enough by the blue shift in somebody else's election to fabricate allegations of fraud.

In this election, when his own name is on the ballot, the blue shift could be the largest ever observed.  Mail-in votes require more time to count even in a normal year, and this year there will be tens of millions more of them than in any election before.  

Many states forbid the processing of early-arriving mail ballots before Election Day; some allow late-arriving ballots to be counted.

Trump's instinct as a spectator in 2018--to stop the count--looks more like strategy this year.  "There are results that come in Election night," a legal adviser to Trump's national campaign, who would not agree to be quoted by name, told me.  

"There's an expectation in the country that there will be winners and losers called.  

If the Election Night results get changed because of the ballots counted after Election Day, you have the basic ingredients for a shitstorm."

-30-

he's just in the mood to run in the nude

 

When I was reading NASCAR comments on You Tube I came across several where people were decrying some race announcer saying, "boogity boogity boogity."

Thought, "Where have I heard that word?" 

Or -- non-word.  All I could think of was,

...Oh yes they call him the Streak

(Boogity, boogity)

He likes to turn the other cheek

(Boogity, boogity)

He's alwayas makin' the news

Wearin' just his tennis shoes

Guess you could call him unique...

"The Streak" -- February 1974 -- a song written, produced, and sung by Ray Stevens.  The album was titled Boogity Boogity.  The song was a major international hit -- reaching #1 on Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the UK Singles Chart.

     Internet research allowed me to learn:  announcer Darrell Waltrip would say, at green-flag time, "Boogity, boogity, boogity -- let's go racing, boys!"

     I found an interview on You Tube where he said the catch phrase was indeed lifted from "The Streak" -- and Ray Stevens is a friend of his.

     Waltrip says, "A lot of people like it, and a lot of people don't like it.  It's hard to please everybody."

     (If you go on You Tube to listen to "The Streak," select the video that says 'original.')

__________________________

__________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...Trump, in other words, has created a proxy to distinguish friend from foe.  Republican lawyers around the country will find this useful when litigating the count.  Playing by the numbers, they can treat ballots cast by mail as hostile, just as they do ballots cast in person by urban and college-town voters.  Those are the ballots they will contest.

The battle space of the Interregnum, if trends hold true, will be shaped by a phenomenon known as the "blue shift."

Edward Foley, an Ohio State professor of constitutional law and a specialist in election law, pioneered research on the blue shift.  He found a previously unremarked-upon pattern in the overtime count--the canvass after Election Night that tallies late-reporting precincts, unprocessed absentee votes, and provisional ballots cast by voters whose eligibility needed to be confirmed.  

     For most of American history, the overtime count produced no predictably partisan effect.  In any given election year, some states shifted red in the canvass after Election Day and some shifted blue, but the shifts were seldom large enough to matter.

Two things began to change about 20 years ago.  The overtime count got bigger, and it trended more and more blue.  In an updated paper this year, Foley and his co-author, Charles Stewart III of MIT, said they could not fully explain why the shift favors Democrats.  (Some factors:  Urban returns take longer to count, and most provisional ballots are cast by young, low-income, or mobile voters, who lean blue).  

During overtime in 2012, Barack Obama strengthened his winning margins in swing states like Florida (with a net increase of 27,281 votes), Michigan (60,695), Ohio (65,459), and Pennsylvania (26,146).  Obama would have won the presidency anyway, but shifts of that magnitude could have changed the outcomes of many a closer contest.  Hillary Clinton picked up tens of thousands of overtime votes in 2016, but not enough to save her.

The blue shift has yet to decide a presidential election, but it upended the Arizona Senate race in 2018.  Republican Martha McSally seemed to have victory in her grasp with a lead of 15,403 votes the day after Election Day.  Canvassing in the days that followed swept the Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema, into the Senate with "a gigantic overtime gain of 71,303 votes," Foley wrote.

It was Florida, however, that seized Trump's attention that year.  On Election Night, Republicans were leading in tight contests for governor and U.S. senator.  As the blue shift took effect, Ron DeSantis watched his lead shrink by 18,416 votes in the governor's race.  Rick Scott's Senate margin fell by 20,231.  By early morning on November 12, six days after Election Day, Trump had seen enough.  

     "The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged," he tweeted, baselessly.  "An honest vote count is no longer possible--ballots massively infected.  Must go with Election Night!"

Trump was panicked enough by the blue shift in somebody else's election to fabricate allegations of fraud.

-30-

"dark clouds cover the world"

 

Pope's encyclical, Chapter One, Vatican News summary --

------------- [excerpt]----------- ...The document reflects on the many distortions of the contemporary era:  the manipulation and deformation of concepts such as democracy, freedom, justice; the loss of the meaning of the social community and history; selfishness and indifference toward the common good; the prevalence of a market logic based on profit and the culture of waste; unemployment, racism, poverty; the disparity of rights and its aberrations such as slavery, trafficking....  

     It deals with global problems that call for global actions, emphasizes the Pope, also sounding the alarm against a "culture of walls" that favours the proliferation of organized crime, fueled by fear and loneliness.  [end, excerpt] -----------

_____________________________

     I'm not sure I'm understanding specifically that last part -- I don't think the Mob was organized because of fear and loneliness. -- Or -- well -- maybe, in a way.  And perhaps the Pope is speaking about crime in general, not the Mafia.  

In America when you say "organized crime" it means the mafia, but maybe it doesn't mean that in Italy.  (They don't call it "the Mafia," they just call it "our relatives" - no, only kidding....)

     You know, most of the stuff in the summary makes sense, but some of the phrasing is a little bit awkward to an English-speaking American ear.  According to online info, he writes the encyclical in Latin.  (Deep tradition.)  And so, translating from an ancient dead language into modern-day English, some phrases are going to come out seeming a little bounced.

_________________________

_________________________

     On You Tube, I found some documentaries and videos about NASCAR.  History and culture of this sport are pretty fascinating.  

     Part of that is the way the story is told.

     A well-told story:  that's the key.

A channel called Company Man has a video about NASCAR -- it discusses how the racing has changed over the years:  more safety precautions, the Car Of Tomorrow, stages, The Chase -- scroll down to Comments, and it's -- colorful.  The new drivers have no personality, can't work on their own cars, the races are too boring, and some seething rage over something called "boogity boogity"...

__________________________

_______________________________

"The Election That Could Break America"

written by Barton Gellman

The Atlantic

(continued)

...In part, Trump's hostility to voting by mail is a reflection of his belief that more voting is bad for him in general.  Democrats, he said...at the end of March, want "levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."

Some Republicans see Trump's vendetta as self-defeating.  "It to me appears entirely irrational," Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, told me.  "The Trump campaign and RNC and by fiat their state party organizations are engaging in suppressing their own voter turnout," including Republican seniors who have voted by mail for years.

But Trump's crusade against voting by mail is a strategically sound expression of his plan for the Interregnum.  The president is not actually trying to prevent mail-in balloting altogether, which he has no means to do.  

     He is discrediting the practice and starving it of resources, signaling his supporters to vote in person, and preparing the ground for post-Election Night plans to contest the results.  It is the strategy of a man who expects to be outvoted and means to hobble the count.

Voting by mail does not favor either party "during normal times," according to a team of researchers at Stanford, but that phrase does a lot of work.  Their findings, which were published in June, did not take into account a president whose words alone could produce a partisan skew.

Trump's systematic predictions of fraud appear to have had a powerful effect on Republican voting intentions.  In Georgia, for example, a Monmouth University poll in late July found that 60 percent of Democrats but only 28 percent of Republicans were likely to vote by mail.  In the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, hundreds of thousands more Democrats than Republicans have requested mail-in ballots.

Trump, in other words, has created a proxy to distinguish friend from foe.  Republican lawyers around the country will find this useful when litigating the count.  Playing by the numbers, they can treat ballots cast by mail as hostile, just as they do ballots cast in person by urban and college-town voters.  Those are the ballots they will contest.

The battle space of the Interregnum, if trends hold true, will be shaped by a phenomenon known as the "blue shift."

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fratelli tutti

 

"All mankind are brothers and sisters" says the Pope in his encyclical.

It has eight chapters.

Chapter One:  dark clouds cover the world

Chapter Two:  strangers on the road

Chapter Three:  vision of an open world

Chapter Four:  heart open to the world

Chapter Five:  better politics

Chapter Six:  dialogue and friendship

Chapter Seven:  renewed encounter

Chapter Eight:  religion and fraternity

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     Basically, it's "Be nice; don't kill people" but with more words.

     In this document, the Pope comes out against the death penalty.

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