The Crime Of Opinion

During the run up to the 2024 Presidential election, a lot of dire predictions were made about what life would be like in America under a second Donald Trump term. Everything Trump would do with unchecked power was outlined in Project 2025.  

A lot of overreaction, an exaggeration, you know? Surely America would not descend into totalitarian facism so easily because of one man.

Surely our fundemental rights would not be trampled like that. 

People yanked off the streets just for expressing an opinion? That's not America. 

That cannot and would not happen here. 

It won't be THAT bad, right?

Yeah, about that...

Rumeysa Ozturk would like a word with you.  

Fulbright scholar Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national working on her Ph.D at Tufts University. She is here legally under a student visa.  

Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted off the street by dark garbbed men into an unmarked van.   

The men who bore no insignia on their "uniforms" were agents of ICE.

As you know, ICE has been tasked by Donald Trump to remove anyone and everyone who is in the country illegally. 

But isn't Ozturk here legally.

Yeah, about that...

 A year ago, Ozturk penned an opinion piece for The Tufts Daily with three other students calling on the school’s president to engage with pro-Palestinian protesters and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

College students all across the nation have been encouraging their institutions to do that.  

Currently Rumeysa Ozturk is cooling her heels in an ICE detention center for illegal aliens. 

But isn't Rumeysa Ozturk here legally under a student visa?

Yeah, about that...

Her student visa was revoked because of her acivities that align themselves with the Hamas terrorist group.  

The ring wing  nutcases of the MAGA faithful have been doing this awhile, conflating support for Palestinians as support for Hamas.  

And opposition to Israel's policies of bombing the shit out of Palestinians as anti-Semitism.  

When asked about the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson held to the party line that people who are guests in America who support terrorism should expect their invitation to be withdrawn and deported. 

The only evidence we have of Rumeysa Ozturk being "pro-Hamas" is a newspaper opinion piece in support of Palestianians not have the shit bombed out of them by Israel.

So to make sure we understand what is going on here:

Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted off the street.

She is being held in a prison.

For expressing an opinion. 

OK, but this us an overreaction to something that happened to one person, right?

Yeah, about that...

Mahmoud Khalil who was here legally on a green card would like a word with you. 

About his own abduction/arrest....

For expressing an opinion.  

It won't be THAT bad, right?

Yeah, about that....

It is that bad. 

Rumeysa Ozturk who was here legally and is now in a prison for expressing an opinion was not safe.

And neither are any of us. 

Having an opinion can be a crime in Trump's America. 

But I'm here legally so I'm safe.

If Trump and his cronies don't like what you have to say, they will find a way. 

Bananaless On Saturday

 

Yes, we have no bananas... on a Saturday.

Sorry, dudes but it's been kind of a hard week and I just don't have the bananas for blogging.

I am, sad to say, bananaless.

I think I'm gonna call it a weekend and I'll be back here on Monday.

Remember to be good to one another.   

Your Friday Video Link: MAGIC!!

The topic of today's edition of Your Friday Video Link is MAGIC!!!

What we have first is a classic display of the cup and ball trick, ye olde shell game!

Magician Paul Gertner shows how it's done. Or rather, he doesn't.  

The next magic trick involves a shot glass, a gullible mind and a hat. 

From Cheers, here is the late great Harry Anderson as "Harry the Hat" as he uses "magic" to score free drinks out of an unsuspecting Cliff Clavin. 

Hypocrisy of Merit

 So a few words on the scandal de jour in the Trump administration, the so called "Signalgate".  

Long story made short, a group of high level Trump stooges were making war plans on a public use app called Signal and we know this because someone invited a journalist to the discussion. 

Emojis posted after the strikes on Yemen were completed.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, was witness to a discussion that one would assumes should've been confidential on planning for military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. 

In the days that followed, the response has been largely predictable: lies, deflection and blatant hypocrisy.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth immediately said Goldberg was making all this up. 

Despite someone in the White House confirming yep, that chat took place all right.

Goldberg has copies of the texts.

Then Hegseth attacked Goldberg's character as a liar and perpertrator of hoaxes against Donald Trump and that there was no discussion of any "war plans". 

Goldberg releases the entire text chain including Hegseth providing very detailed accounts of which military forces would be used, what missles would be fire and what boats and planes trhey would be fired from and the exact timetable all this shit would go down....  you know, war plans, motherfucker! 

Accusations are made challenging the veracity and viability of The Atlantic. Trump said the usual "it's a failing magazine no one reads anymore" blah blah blah. (For Christ's sake, Donnie, come up with some new material, why don't ya?) 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson dismissed the whole with "all I see here are high level officials doing their jobs".  Avoiding the point that we shouldn't be "seeing" officials sharing confidenrtial and possibly even classified information on a public texting platform.   

Jesse Watters at Fox News said it was nothing more than a "whoopsie".  Watters offered up, "Do you know how you try to set up a text group to make plans for a party and someone accidentally includes someone who didn't want to invite to the party? It was a mistake. Sometimes those happen."

Well, that's true. In this case, the mistake to include Jeffrey Goldberg in the text chat was made by national security adviser Mike Waltz.   

But once THAT mistake was made, it's everything else that follows that is cause for major concern. 

Why were these high level officials with access to sophisticated tools used by the Pentagon using Signal in the first place? 

And it's Pete Hegseth's extraoridinary level of detail on giving information on the attack on Houthi targets in Yemen on that platform is most egregious.  

By the way, one of the participants in the chat was in Russia at the time. I suppose Putin would've had an interest in this conversation. 

While Republicans, MAGA loyalists and the Fox "News" echo chamber go out of their way to  gaslight and spin this debacle, let's not think for a single goddam second that if ANYTHING like this had happened under Biden or Obama, these same people would be blood red with apolectic rage demanding heads to roll and charges filed. 

The current Trump regime has been browbeating everyone with it's roll back of DEI and putting people in place based on "merit".

Merit is not on display with the poor decisions reflected in that chet or the responses to it since then.

Just hypocrisy.   

Betty Boop Gets a Musical

About a week ago, I began getting videos on my Tik Tok For Your Page featuring scenes from a musical's curtain call.

That musical is Boop!

Boop! is based on Betty Boop who was the star of several animated shorts back in the 1930's. The show made its pre-Broadway debut at the CIBC Theatre in Chicago, Illinois on November 19, 2023.  

And it has now found it's way to Broadway.   

Boop! began preview performances on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre on March 11, 2025, and is set for an official opening on April 5.

From just the clips I've seen, Boop! looks like a colorful spectacle and a lot of fun, something I wouldn't mind seeing myself.  

This show stars Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop and if you never heard of Jasmine before, well, she is new and originated the role in Chicago and by all accounts is fantastic in the role of Betty.  

But just who the heck is Betty Boop? 

We all know the iconagraphy, from posters to semi-truck mudflaps.  

Betty Boop began life as a cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. Her first appearance, Betty was an anthropomorphic French poodle but eventually evolved into a full on human female woman person of the opposite sex.

And how! 

A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper girl, Betty Boop just oozed sex appeal, embracing her female sensuality freely as a single free spirit. 

Until the Hays Code spoiled all our fun. 

Next up is from a 1933 Betty Boop cartoon that tells a condensed and somewhat twisted version of Snow White.  In the middle of the cartoon we have Cab Calloway singing St. James Infirmary Blues. 

The Hays office for the Motion Picture Production Code (along with the National Legion of Decency) led changes to make Betty Boop more demure and domesticated, reducing her to the role of a spinster housewife or a career girl in a longer skirt.  

There have been various efforts to revive Betty Boop in animation or as a comic strip but mostly Betty is known by her image, a doe eyed short skirted that reflexes sexiness and innocence at the same time.

I hope Boop! does well.  From the clips I've seen, I think it certainly stands a chance. And make Betty Boop popular again near a century since her debut. 

Tuesday TV Touchbase: My Life Is Murder and Poker Face

 So what happened to Monday?

An unfortunate bout of gastrointestinal affliction knocked me out for a loop over the weekend and left me both physically and mentally wobbly to write anything. 

This particular bout was not as intense as what occured in December (as recounted here) and all the elements of gastrointestinal affliction are also possible side effects of Mounjaro.  

By the way, since March 4th, I have lost 17 pounds. 

I've still got a long, long way to go to be completely rid of 2 humans worth of weight but hey, a win is a win.

Enough of all that. Let's talk television.

I recently finished up season 4 of My Life Is Murder, the New Zealand set murder mystery season starring Lucy Lawless (Xena Warrior Princess) as Alexa Crowe, Down Under's answer to Columbo with a long coat and short amount of patience.  

The 4th season ended with a rare 2 parter that found Alexa accused of murdering the man who killed her police officer husband. Alexa is such a recalcitrant, grumpy gus that it seems quite possible she did it.  (Spoiler: she did not.) 

As I end one crime series, I pick up another one as I begin to catch up on season 1 of Poker Face. Created by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion), the series stars Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman with the uncanny ability to tell when people are lying.  

After solving the murder of her best friend, Charlie is forced to go on the run from the murderer's father who has promised deadly retribution against Charlie. 

The series works like Columbo in that we see from the beginning how the murder is commited and who done it and it's up to Charlie to make the pieces fit and it's usually some otherwise irrelevant damn thing that otherwise no one cared about.  

Poker Face is a lot of fun seeing how the pieces of a puzzle come together and Natasha Lyonne's Charlie is a distinctive and engaging character.  

Still a bit wobbly from the gastrointestinal affliction so that's all I've got today.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.   

Doctor Who Is Classic: The Horns of Nimon

It's time for another edition of Doctor Who Is CLASSIC  where I post about Doctor Who episodes from the classic era.

On March 2nd, I did a post about the episode "The Creature From the Pit".  Today's post is from the same season featuring "The Horns of Nimon".  

 

Welcome to the planet Skonnos, once the center of a might space empire.

These days... eh, not so much.

The leader of Skonnos is Donald Trump Soldeed, an ignorant blowhard who promises to Make America Skonnos Great Again with the help of Elon Musk the Nimon.  

The Nimon resides in a labyrinthine Power Complex and Soldeed promises that the Nimon will restore Skonnos to it's former glory and all the Nimon asks for are sacrificed fired federal employees young people and hymetusite crystals.

This is the mess that the Doctor, Romana and K-9 have wandered into. 

They've got to save those kids and figure out what the Nimon wants with those crystals. They doubt it has anything to do with any actual benevolence towards Skonnos.

The Nimon is part of a large parasitic race who travel via artificial black holes between planets.  

They go to a planet, drain it of all power and resources, then move on to the next one. The Nimon refer to this as the Department of Government Efficiency "the Great Journey of Life". 

They are now abandoning the distant Planet Crinoth to take over Skonnos. The crystals power their black hole tunnel.

The people are snacks.

The Doctor has his hands full trying to save a planet that has been sold a vision that there's an easy route to good times again. 

Education Time

"The Horns of Nimon" is an analogue of the Classical Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. 

There are several allusions to the original myth: 

• the name of the planet Skonnos is close to Knossos
• the Anethans, like the ancient Athenians, are sent to die in a Labyrinth
• the eponymous bull-headed Nimon is based on the Minotaur

Like many stories of the classic era, "The Horn of Nimon" could benefit from some judicious editing eliminating some dull stretches due to meeting the mandated 4 half hour episode structure.  

Lalla Ward is great as Romana whose patiences is constantly challenged by the sheer stupid incompetence of MAGA the people of Skonnos. And she's rocking a pretty gorgeous ensemble in the process.

Props to Graham Crowden and his scenery chewing turn as Soldeed. 

Connection to Modern Who

In the 11th Doctor episode "The God Complex", the beast that stalks the inhabitants of the space time hotel prison is identified as being from a species that is distantly related to the Nimon.   

"The Horns of Nimon" was the last episode of the 17th season of Doctor Who. But it wasn't supposed to be.  The six part "Shada" written by Douglas Adams was curtailed due to a technicians strike against the BBC.   

The show marked the departure of producer Graham Williams. With the next season (18), John Nathan Turner would take the helm as the producer of Doctor Who. 

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NEW Doctor Who is coming April 12th and that will be followed by the return of Doctor Who is NEW!