Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): 12/29/24

Thursday, January 02, 2025

The next James Bond?

Supposedly, there are 25 actors who could take over the role of James Bond. The list is a joke especially since it includes the looks-challenged Aaron Taylor-Johnson who demonstrated last month that people do not want to pay money to see him in a movie.

There are three on the list that might be able to pull it off. Theo James is one. I like him. I'd put him third on the list.

Second?

Taron Egerton. He is good and he's good looking. Some might feel that he's too tied to KINGSMEN in the public mind. My only concern over those three films is that he was only in two. Remember, he ditched the series after the second film. If he signs on for James Bond, he'd be required to be in probably at least five films. If he's not up to that, he shouldn't be cast.

Who I would go with?

Oliver Jackson-Cohen. I first saw him in the 2013 DRACULA series. But he's been strong in everything, including INVISIBLE MAN.

Henry Cavill's not among the 25. Of the 25 listed, I'd go with Oliver Jackson-Cohen.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, January 2, 2025. Another year over, a new one beginning, Chump and Marjorie Taylor Greene join FOX "NEWS" in getting the new year off with big lies, and much more.

Let's start with this.

An e-mail to the public account noted that -- a Diana Ross doll. That's so cute. I knew of the 1977 Mego doll and the 2003 Mattel one. Did not know of this 1968 Ideal doll. If you've got $2,500 for doll spending, it's available on EBAY. The e-mailer noted the doll and also asked if the first snapshot of the year could get off "on a good note with Diana Ross' 'If We Hold On Together'?"

Absolutely.

If we hold on together . . . The manta for the next four years.

The year got off to a bad start with yet another mass shooting, with FOX "NEWS" misreporting and all the MAGA idiots in Congress rushing to the wrong conclusion. Josh Fiallo (THE DAILY BEAST) notes:

An erroneous Fox News report about the New Orleans terror attack sparked a rash of anti-immigrant comments from MAGA before a U.S. Army veteran was identified as its suspect.

Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were among the Republicans who rushed to link the mass killing—which left 15 dead and dozens injured on Wednesday—to the southern border.

“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Trump posted at 10:48 a.m. to Truth Social. “Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department. The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”

That post, which was screenshotted and shared by Vance on X, came mere minutes after Fox News incorrectly reported that the truck driven by the suspect had crossed into Texas from Mexico two days prior.

Fox News retracted its reporting by noon, however, after other networks—including the right-wing Newsmax—confirmed the truck involved entered the U.S. from Mexico on Nov. 16 and was driven by a man with no connection to Wednesday’s attack.

Officials said later in the afternoon that it had no evidence tying the attack to the border. The FBI said the terrorist was 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Texas native who spent eight years in the military. He allegedly gained access to the Ford pickup truck using Turo, an app that works similarly to Airbnb for renting vehicles from private owners.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other MAGA idiots took to Twitter to slam the 'immigrant' who, in fact, was not an immigrant. Of Shamsud-Din Jabbar, ALJAZEERA notes:

The FBI identified the suspect as 42-year-old Jabbar, who served in the US military between 2007 and 2020. He also deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010.

He graduated from Georgia State University in 2017 earning a degree in computer information systems.

The FBI said an ISIL (ISIS) flag was found in the vehicle used in the attack. The bureau is trying to determine if Jabbar was associated with any “terrorist” organisations.

New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno said the suspect was dressed in full military gear and police had described his acts as intentional.

Again. Not an immigrant. But facts never matter to FOX "NEWS" or to MAGA. Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) explains:

In response to the devastating vehicle-ramming attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) insinuated that the Biden administration's border policy was to blame — all of which appear now to have jumped the gun.

"Terrorist attack in NOLA similar to the one in the German Christmas market," Greene wrote on X of the incident, which has left 10 dead and dozens more wounded. "What did we expect would happen with wide open borders and millions of gotaways? The problem is no one trust the FBI under the current leadership, so everyone is questioning every detail they can find in their own. What an absolute disaster America is in."

Greene followed this up with another post, in which she said, "New Orleans terrorist attacker is said to have come across the border in Eagle Pass TWO DAYS AGO!!! Shut the border down!!! Who did our government bomb lately that is taking it out on innocent Americans?"

Authorities have now confirmed that the suspected perpetrator of the attack, 42-year-old military veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, had an ISIS flag affixed to the truck used to carry out the massacre, and they believe he may not have acted alone. However, Jabbar was a U.S. citizen born in Texas, casting doubt on Greene's immediate suspicion the attack was enabled by weak border security.

I think we need to join Elaine in pondering "Did all that bleach damage Marjorie Taylor Greene's brain?" However, I understand Marjorie was never all that smart to begin with. In fact, I think the footage below of Marjorie in 4th grade makes that clear.

Poor Marjorie. It did not, in fact, get better.

"Why don't you just leave? Nobody wants you here!" is what Lauren Boebert said to her in the ladies' room. Now we get why Marjorie hates the world. With that haircut in high school, you know everyone mocked her. And told her that she looked like Glenn Close's ugly brother.

Meanwhile, the war between MAGA and Elon Musk continues into our new year. Sara Pequeño (USA TODAY) observes, "While everyone else was enjoying the holiday week, the MAGAverse was imploding over a debate on H-1B visas, a program often used by tech companies to recruit high-skilled workers to the United States. Incoming president Donald Trump even weighed in on the conversation, siding with tech bros Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over members of the party who want to see a stop to all forms of immigration." Mary Papenfuss (INDEPENDENT) reports:

Donald Trump’s one-time White House strategist Steve Bannon warned Elon Musk Tuesday that he and other MAGA diehards are going to “rip your face off” unless Musk smartens up and stops pushing visas for skilled foreign workers to take good-paying tech industry jobs away from Americans.

He instructed Musk to “sit back and study” to understand MAGA’s - and what supporters believed was Trump’s - America First stance to keep U.S. jobs for Americans.

“They’re recent converts,” Bannon said Tuesday on his War Room podcast, referring to Musk and other tech-world Trump supporters.

“We love converts,” Bannon noted. “But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.”

If you missed it, Elon Musk kicked off this new year accusing US President Joe Biden of treason. No, he doesn't understand the term. None of the ass hair they moved to his scalp to cover his bald head contained brain cells so he's still just as stupid as he always was. And Elon himself could never be accused of treason because he's not a citizen. You can't be a citizen of three countries -- that's a Multi-National Corporation, not a person. Elon was born in South Africa and raised there, fleeing only when apartheid started to crumble. He also claims Canadian citizenship via his racist and repulsive mother. And he thinks his money bought him US citizenship.

Speaking of money, as we've long noted, Donald Chump doesn't have any. He's been living on bank loans and that's the main reason he's refused to pay the money the civil court has ordered him too. Alex Henderson notes:

Historian/author Timothy Snyder discussed Trump's relationship with Musk in an interview with The Guardian published on New Year's Day 2025. And Snyder emphasized that there will be negative repercussions for Trump if he is too reliant on Musk during his second term.

Snyder told The Guardian, "I think we overestimate Trump, and we underestimate Musk. People can't help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn't. He's never really had money. He's never even really claimed to have money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money. But he's never been able to pay his own debts."

The historian/author continued, "He's never been able to finance his own campaigns. Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump's campaign, essentially."

People say Elon Musk is the real president. Maybe. But I can't help thinking he's actually Chump's john -- Donald as the cheap hooker turning tricks -- or maybe Elon is Donald's pimp?

2024 is over. Tabitha picked the biggest losers for 2024.

THE NEW REPUBLIC selected Donald Chump as Scoundrel of 2024. Jeffrey St. Clair (COUNTERPUNCH) offered "Sound Grammar: the Best Jazz Recordings of 2024."

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT offers "Year in Review: The Visuals" and "2024 in Review: Gabrielle Gurley" JEZEBEL offered "Jezebel’s Top 24 Stories of 2024" and LGBTQ NATION provided "Record number of anti-trans bills introduced just before 2025."

Here?

2024 end of the year pieces: Rebecca's "sexiest men of 2024," Ann's "2024 in film (Ann and Stan)" and Stan's "2024 in film (Ann & Stan)," Mike's "Idiot of the Year," Ruth's "Ruth's Media Report 2024." "2024 in books (Martha & Shirley)," Kat's "Kat's Korner: 2024 in music" and our "2024: The Year of Betrayal From Inside The Left."

The following sites updated:

Monday, December 30, 2024

I hate Tony Stark

I was never a fan of Iron Man -- not even in the comic books. He was annoying. Especially in the movies. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR goes to how disgusting Iron Man's Tony Stark truly was.

Yes, he packs it in and caves to the government even when Steve (Captain America) is fighting for what's right and what the Avengers should stand for.

But do we get what a true asshole Tony Stark is?

I could do twenty pages just about his attack on the Scarlet Witch. However, let's instead focus on Sam. Sam will be the new Captain America whenever that film comes out; however, in this film he was Steve's sidekick the way Rhodey was Tony's sidekick.

Captain America is in a plane and you've got Tony and Rhodey following. Sam follows to help Captain America elude the two. Tony tells Vision to take Sam out.

Vision sends a flare/bolt after Sam who realizes what's happening and dodges it. It hits Rhodey who falls to the ground in an Iron Man suit. Tony's raging and whining and when Sam lands, Tony knocks him to the ground. Sam almost got Rhodey killed!

Later, because Tony's betrayed the whole team, Sam's in a prison cell when Tony comes to get information about where Steve's headed. Sam asks about Rhodey and Tony's still blaming him.

That's why Tony Stark was always garbage. Nothing was ever his fault in his mind.

Rhodey fell because he was hit with the bolt/flare from machine Vision. If Sam hadn't dodged it, that would have been him on the ground. No matter who would have ended up on the ground, Tony ordered Vision to send the flare/bolt.

What happened to Rhodey was on Tony's hands, no one else.

He's a prig who never takes accountability. Easily the most disgusting character in MARVEL.

In terms of the films? I think Elizabeth Olsen and Scarlet Witch are pathetic.

They need to recast that role going forward because Elizabeth needs to stick to playing snively cry babies. She has no backbone.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, December 30, 2024. MAGA rumbles with their billionaire bosses.

David McAfee (RAW STORY) reports:

Elon Musk on Sunday asked for "more positive" content to be posted to the social media network he owns, resulting in some reminders about his own negative attitude at times.

Musk, the richest man in the world and an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, took to X to say, "Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform."

As the war on the right that he started continues, Elon now tries to offer a new spin to his remarks as he prays to himself that he can fool and control MAGA again:

Elon Musk admitted that the H1-B visas are “broken” and floated a potential fix as he sought to cool a raging civil war within the MAGA base over the immigration program for highly skilled foreign workers.

Just a day after vowing to “go to war on this issue” and telling detractors to “F— yourself,” Musk, the world’s richest man, acknowledged some of the criticisms of the program getting abused and argued that the US should make it more costly to hire foreigners.

“Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” Musk wrote on X late Saturday in response to a thread claiming H1-B visas were being used to hire low-wage programmers and developers.

If you rested over the weekend and avoided the news, this may be new to you. Here's some commentary that took place on the topic.

Friday night, Ruth expalined "The Chump has hit the fan:"

Did you notice? We are still over 24 days or so before Convicted Felon Donald Chump is sworn in and reoccupies the White House and he is floundering, staggering around like a dying corpse. Chump's betrothed Elon Musk and maid of honor Vivek Ramaswamy have been in the news for their insulting attacks on American workers and insisting that immigrants need to be brought into this country because American workers do not have the skills (Mr. Musk) and they watch the wrong T.V. programs (Miss Ramaswamy). They are now being savaged by many MAGA voters. Brad Reed (RAW STORY) reports:

MAGA influencer Laura Loomer appeared on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast on Friday to warn President-elect Donald Trump against letting X owner Elon Musk into his administration.

In an interview with Bannon, Loomer charged that Musk had major conflicts of interest and said that it could turn into a major scandal if Trump keeps him in his inner circle.

"I am simply trying to warn the Trump administration about something that is going to blow up in their face," she said. "And it actually has the risked of getting President Trump impeached in his second term if the Democrats take back the House and are able to spin and create a narrative that... they are enriching themselves in the Trump administration. I'm trying to warn them about a serious issue on the horizon."

Monica Sager (NEWSWEEK) adds:

In a stream of posts on the alt-tech social platform Gettr, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon warned that billionaire Elon Musk's "true colors" are showing with the ongoing debate about the H-1B visa program.

"True Colors Shining Through," Bannon captioned a post that included an Axios article about how a "MAGA Civil War" has broken out "over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class."

[. . .]

Bannon has previously called Musk a "stone-cold liar" and said "his paymasters" are from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), referencing the billionaire's extensive business ties to the East Asian nation.

Bannon had also said that Tesla was Musk's only thing "of real value," adding that Musk "uses it for margin loans." Those criticisms came in 2023 before Musk was publicly a leading Trump supporter.

Former U.S. House Representative Joe Walsh has weighed in, "And you are right -- Musk & Ramaswamy are being eaten right now by an intolerant, nationalistic mob that they played a large role in helping to create. They both deserve to be eaten by their mob." So that is a non-MAGA Republican take.

Musk exploded and raged on Twitter. Then someone emerged on Twitter to defend him -- someone most believe was Musk himself trying to pretend to be someone else. Most who believe that it was really Elon includes Elon's daughter Vivian Wilson.

As for Vivek, Ann noted:

What makes someone trash? Maybe insulting their own country. Take this:

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a close Donald Trump ally tasked with helping to dismantle the federal government, is facing scorn from both sides of the aisle for saying America has a culture problem — it focuses on prom queens and sports over math and science — and that's why tech companies hire more people from India and China.

Don't remember hearing that kind of talk from him when he was trying to get the Republican Party's presidential nomination. He lost. Now he's going to let the country know what he really thinks of it.

He's upset, it turns out, because in the 90s America watched Saved By The Bell. Huh?

No, it doesn't make sense but what also doesn't make sense is that I never watched Saved By The Bell and I'm not the only one who didn't watch. It was probably a popular show but it did not grip me.

He's angry because -- look at him -- he can't do a single push up but America, he insists, glorifies cheerleaders and football players.

Poor little nerd. Someone gave him an atomic wedgie and it traumatized him for life.

Vivek Ramaswamy's stupidity saves him to a degree. It's hard to rage against a hate merchant when they're also offering bad pop cultural references that don't mean -- even on the most basic level -- what they claim. Or does no one get that Ross was the Urkel of FRIENDS and Ross got Rachel and well as good paying jobs?

As the war on the right that Elon started continues, Elon now tries to offer a new spin to his remarks as he prays to himself that he can fool and control MAGA again:

Elon has created a nightmare for Donald Chump. It's harming the brand, the message and the cohesion. It's even left the professional liars at FOX "NEWS" scrambling.Corbin Bolies (THE DAILY BEAST) notes:

The Fox & Friends Weekend hosts tried their best on Sunday to make sense of the MAGA mess over H-1B visas last week, but even they admitted Donald Trump’s flip-flop on the program “left a lot of people confused.”

Hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy, Charlie Hurt, and Will Cain reflected on the online meltdown over the visas, which are backed by close Trump allies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The issues, they said, were in abuses of the system that prioritized cheaper labor over Musk-type prodigies.

Even they couldn't make sense of him. But who could? The man who brought hate merchants back to Twitter and allowed Tweets endorsing the lynching of Black people and Tweets calling for the murder of gay people and Tweets where Maga's proclaimed that they were going to go into Target and shoot it up, this man or 'man' couldn't then handle when he was on the receiving end of what he'd done to others. And did you notice? His pep squad -- Matt Taibi, Glenneth Greenwald and the others -- didn't object. It was censorship, they insisted, pre-Musk when Twitter banned people for hate speech. Over the weekend as Musk banned people for being critical, the fake asses said nothing. Not one word.

The MAGA meltdown comes at a bad time for Donald Chump. Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) observes:

At a time when Donald Trump's inner circle should be working on getting his Cabinet nominees primed for getting Senate approval, now time is being spent tamping down on a foreign worker controversy that has riled the president-elect's base forcing him to have to weigh in.

At the center of the controversy are comments made by Trump advisors Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk about America needing more H-1B foreign specialty workers which has erupted into a war with Trump's MAGA base that had been promised "America First" policies.

He's not even sworn in and already Chump has to address one brewing scandal after the other. Let's wind down with this from Michael Albert (ZNET):

Donald, the idiot, the madman, the consummate cowardly thug is preparing to unleash shock and awe to paint his agenda onto the American and the world stage such as we have never seen before. Day one, two, three…infinity. He will attempt to unleash the hounds of horror. Why?

To impose his horrendous agenda—of course. But what’s his rush? To embrace MAGA ever more intimately and to draw those who inhabit its fringes to its center. To instill well beyond MAGA’s fringes futility so debilitating that we either shut up and hunker down to protect ourselves or we kiss up and hope for a few goodies while others suffer. You doubt this prognosis? Okay, suppose we get oil madness, high waters rising, storms beyond measure, deportations beyond counting, gilded billionaire enrichment, intensified austerity, gutted regulations, fascist retooling of government, international mayhem, and vengeful repressive violence not by shock and awe but by slow boiling in a monstrous kettle. How different is that in the end?

What’s the alternative? Resistance. And what is that? It is saying no by every effective means one can employ. It is no longer laughing and winking. No longer denying what this thug is all about. No longer shrugging it off. It is telling the truth to all in range, so all souls can hear it, openly, loudly, no sugar coating—and trying to act on it.

When someone with the steering wheel of a gargantuan tank revs the motor and hollers I am going to drive this wonderful magnificent machine upside your head, does it make sense to assume that he doesn’t mean it? That he is just joking? Is it sensible to predict that he won’t be able to aim it? Is it wise to say that someone else, something else, is going to stop him? Or to suppose he is just going to run over a neighbor. For those reasons should we not read the news today and instead return to dressing this morning, and tomorrow morning, and the next and the next, preparing each day for familiar life and familiar life only as if there is no tank? There is no emergency? Does it make sense, even, to list reasons why others won’t resist and then proclaim that because they’re not going to resist you won’t either? Maybe it does make some limited kind of sense, but will it stop the tank?

The following sites updated: