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I just watched a thing on  CNN, which does not make me happy.  We’ve got a guest  staying with  us at the moment, and he watches pretty  much nothing but the news.  I decided long ago that watching the news was not  the best way to get the news.  Not that my way – to see what people are posting on Facebook and, if it’s an interesting story, follow the links.  Then, it’s into the fray  with  the  comments, and you will gradually gather information because there’s always somebody ready  to  rebut anything you say- is totally  foolproof.  There is all  sorts of confirmation bias, and an inherent selectivity in the range of acceptable opinions because, of course, I  don’t have  many Trumpeteers among my friends.
So, like I  say, it’s a flawed system, but it’s better than CNN, and no  doubt a kajillion times better than Fox.

Anyway, this particular scene happened on CNN, so they  are the object of  my  derision this evening.  The announcer was saying “Police had to dodge things being  thrown by the crowd,” and the filmed footage clearly showed a bunch  of police beating up a single individual.  It was  like every single  sentence  she was saying was in direct contradiction to the picture on  the  screen.
There are two takeaways from this:  1. the news people lie, like all the time, and 2. it’s a lot better  with  the sound off.

I used to have a theory, which I’m pretty  sure now was bullshit, that when enough people moved into the mega-rich class due to talent (sports, music, art), supreme beauty (films, modeling), or blind luck (lottery winners), then the world might change for the better because they do not come from a culture of economic entitlement, they do not necessarily have the ‘go for the throat’ business sense of the real magnates, and maybe they’d do good things for humanity.

There are two things wrong with the theory.  One is that as soon as people get a bit of money, they start to think like rich people, and they spend all their time plotting to make even more money, and figuring out how to pay zero taxes on what they have. Trickle down never actually works because nobody who’s got money wants to let any of it trickle  down, and that’s just as true of the nouveau riche as any other.

The other is that even though athletes may make tens of millions of dollars a year, and some leading actors get millions of dollars per movie, they are still not at the top levels of money mountain, they are not the ones who actually control  governments.

Anyway, Kylie Jenner.  Forbes recently said she’s on track to be the world’s youngest self-made billionaire ever.  First of all, social media erupted in indignation over the term ‘self-made.’  She’s rich because her older step-sister (I’ve never watched  the show.  I  think that’s the relationship.) made a video of herself boinking her boyfriend and somehow it got  ‘leaked,’ and then they had a reality show.  I guess Kylie has added to that with a cosmetics line, or a clothing line, or something like that, but I’m quite surprised that she’s worth a billion dollars.

It’s no skin off my nose, I don’t necessarily  believe she’s evil  just because she’s rich, and not using her wealth to make the world a better place, but the thing that weirds me out is this:  there are actually people sending her  donations so she can get past the billion dollar mark.  Again, if people want to send her money, that’s their business and no affair of mine, and it fits in  with her family business model, but damn: that’s fucked up.

Remember in ‘Love, Actually’ how rude and dismissive and condescending and sleazy President Billy Bob Thornton was?  Well, Trump just beat him all  to hell.
First off all, it’s very rude to be late.  Nobody wants to have to wait for you.  If you’ve got a scripted, staged TV moment and you deliberately leave your host/hostess standing there looking like an idiot on TV, that’s a power trip.  That’s a head game.  That’s a dick move.  And Trump did it twice, first to Theresa May, and then to the Queen.  He kept the Queen waiting, and standing.  Now, I’m not a huge fan of the royals, but that’s just not a nice thing to do to anybody, especially a 90 year old woman.  And then he walked in front of her, as if she were the Prime Minister of Montenegro or something.
Then there was his interview with the Sun.  The Sun.  The newspaper best known for its page 3 girls.  It’s like the Twitter of newspapers,  so I suppose it fits.  Anyway, he said (I paraphrase, but this was the gist) “Theresa May is fucking Brexit up because she  won’t listen to me, smartest man in the world, and if she continues fucking things up we’re done with you guys, we can do business with Europe,  and Boris Johnson would really make a much better Prime Minister.”
Then he said it was fake news.
But the Sun taped the interview.
He did say it, every word.

Now, I hate defending Theresa May even more than I hate defending the Queen, but that’s just rude.

‘Unbelievable’ is not a word that can be credibly used any more when you are talking about  the lengths Democrats will  go to to fight against progressives.  They will spend all their money, they will support Republicans, they will lie, they  will cheat, they will steal, I’m pretty  sure they have even  murdered  on occasion.
They do not view progressives as a separate wing of their party.  They view progressives as the enemy.  More enemy than the Republicans.

Nonetheless, what’s happening in New York’s 14th congressional district comes as a surprise.  After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley, who’s been in congress for 20 years and did not become a visible force against war, or for the environment, or for prosecuting bankers, or anything, really, and beat him even though he outspent her ten to one, I  thought it was over.  It was supposed to be over.
But it’s not.  Here’s the deal:  Crowley was also endorsed by something called the ‘Working Families Party.’  After the election, the WFP called Crowley up and said “Hey, sorry you lost, but now we’re endorsing Ocasio-Cortez, would you mind striking your name from the ballot,” and Crowley said no.

Now, Ocasio-Cortez and the WFP are both saying this is a slimy bit of skullduggery on the part of Crowley, and Crowley is saying it’s a mere technicality, he can’t legally get off the ballot, and he will support Ocasio-Cortez.
I hope he’s telling the truth, but the record of old Democrats in these cases is not good, so I don’t blame Ocasio-Cortez for being skeptical, and outraged.  If he is sincere, he will make it very clear to the public that  he is not  a candidate.  If he’s not sincere, well, fuck him.  She is the Democratic party candidate.

Because Sam had shitty grades in biology, chemistry, physics and math, my summer educational plan has been to only allow him to download films that have a connection to biology, chemistry, physics and/or math.  I’m going to stick it out through the summer, at least, because I’m stubborn that way, but it’s not proving to be very effective.

We’ve watched a couple, but the problem is that any film I  recommend he is automatically against, and he’s really stretching the definitions (We watched ‘Everest’ because, of course, you have to take physics into account while climbing mountains.)  Tonight, we watched ‘The Martian,’ which I consider a great movie, but we had to wait until after the football to start it (Congratulations to Croatia!), and then he kept saying ‘can I just go to bed now?’ even though I know damned well if we were watching some stupid thing with Liam Neeson chasing bad guys around Paris, he’d be perfectly happy to stay awake.  So, we eventually did stop the film  and I’ll force him to watch the end of it later, but instead of sparking his interest in science, it’s making movie-watching into a chore.

I will hone the technique as I go, but if I wasn’t making him watch films he doesn’t want to watch (which he just doesn’t want to watch because he knows I  want him to watch them), he’d just be in his room, scrolling through his phone for messages and not reading books, which I also find frustrating.

Kids.  What can you do?