Enemies Of America

 As you know, whenever I write a post about Donald Trump, there is a sacred screed that I include in virtually every one of these posts.  

All bubble-blowing babies will be beaten senseless by every able-bodied patron in the bar.

NO, not THAT sacred screed.

THIS one!  

Let's all recite it together. 

Donald Trump is a  lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, sociopathic, dishonorable, treasonous, gutless, moronic, heartless, soulless, slimy, loathsome, vile, incompetent, psychotic, crooked, disgusting, reprehensible, revolting, horrible, malicious, obnoxious, hateful, narcissistic, small-minded, despicable god damn, motherfucking piece of shit!

Amen! 

For today's sermon, my children, I want to focus on the word "treasonous".

"Treason" is a word that gets tossed around a lot.   Mostly by Donald Trump.

Here is the basic formula der Führer applies to the word "treason".

• You say something bad about Donald Trump.
• Trump equates saying something bad about Trump has saying something bad about America.
• Saying something bad about America means you are an enemy of America. 
• Being an enemy of America is an act of treason.
• Ipso facto: being mean to Trump is treason.

What is the definition of treason other than hurting Li'l Donnie's widdle feelings?  

Treason is the crime of betraying your country, government, or sovereign, especially by trying to overthrow the government or helping its enemies.  

Consider that last part: "helping it's enemies".  

Would it be a given that helping an enemy of America would be an act of treason?

And who, pray tell, is are the enemies of America?

Anyone who is not acting in the best interests of the United States. 

Keeping all of that in mind, let's consider the following sequence of events.

Donald Trump makes a deal with Russia to purchase diesel fuel purportedly to offset the rising cost of diesel in the United States.

This is illegal.  There are various laws, rules and sanctions in place forbidding anyone from buying fuel from Russia.

These various laws, rules and sanctions are in place to address Russia's assault on Ukraine. 

Points of order that all of us out here understand: 

• The war between Russia and Ukraine began when Russia attacked Ukraine.
• The war between Russia and Ukraine continues because Russia won't stop attacking Ukraine.

Vladmir Putin is of the mindset that Ukraine belongs to Russia and it's Ukraine's fault the war continues because it keeps fighting back against Russia.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is irked that the war between Russia and Ukraine continues because Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy won't make a deal.  

Zelenskyy would very much like to make the following deal: 

• Russia stops attacking Ukraine

Putin's idea of a deal is as follows:

• Let Russia destroy Ukraine.
• Ukraine needs to be cool with that.

Now most the world looks at this mess and sees what most intelligent people see: one country attacking another country.

And most of the world comes to the same conclusion: that is wrong.

And most of the world figures it would be a good idea to help the country being attacked anyway we can.

And hence we get the various laws, rules and sanctions in place forbidding anyone from buying fuel from Russia.

Because Russia would take that money and buy more missiles and tanks and shit to attack Ukraine.

And what Russia doesn't use in Ukraine, that can go towards helping another country with their own intractable war.

Wanna guess what that country is? Here's a hint: it begins with the letter "I" and ends with "RAN".  No fair peeking.  

So Donald Trump makes a deal to buy diesel fuel from Russia because diesel fuel costs too damn much.

Point of order: the reason diesel fuel costs too damn much is because of the war that Donald Trump started with Iran. A war that won't end because Trump says Iran won't make a deal.

Iran would very much like to make the following deal: 

• The United States stops attacking Iran. 

Trump's idea of a deal is as follows:

• Let the United States destroy Iran.
• Iran needs to be cool with that.

By the way, guess where Iran gets it's shit from to keep fighting back against the United States. I'll give you a choice:

• IKEA (some assembly required) 
• Dollar General stores (they're everywhere!) 
• Russia 

Yes, the answer is Russia. (I gave you a little hint a few paragraphs back.)   

Are we sensing a pattern here?

Let's go back to the definition of treason.

Treason is the crime of betraying your country, government, or sovereign, especially by trying to overthrow the government or helping its enemies.  

Donald Trump's actions are doing fuck all to help Americans.

• Our goddam grocery prices are UP!
• Our fucking gas prices are UP!
• Our frickin' unemployment is UP!
• Our collective blood pressure is UP! 
• We are all FED UP with all this bullshit! 

On the other hand, Donald Trump's actions are a boon to a man who is actively working against the interests of the United States. 

Li'l Donnie has always leaned towards Putin.  Trump once stood on a stage next to Putin and took Putin's word over facts given to him by his own government.

One of the few people who had a shot at possibly reminding Li'l Donnie that Putin is not really his friend but our enemy was Sen. Lindsey Graham.  

But then Graham died and the only voice in his ear talking to him about Vladmir Putin is...  Vladmir Putin.  

Congress in a rare overwhelmingly bi-partisan move passed the Lindsey Graham Russian Sanctions Act, a bill designed to impose steep tariffs on countries that import large amounts of Russian oil and energy products and was promoted as way to halt the flow of funds fueling Putin’s four-year war against Ukraine. Trump signed the bill into law.

Several congressmen speculated that Trump would ignore the law.

And sure enough...

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order to suspend that law "in the national interest".

Why it's in our national interest to aid a war mongering dictator attack a sovereign nation and it's democratically elected government?

That stupid diesel deal that Trump thinks will lower diesel prices?

Point of order: the diesel we'll get from Russia in one month  will supply approximately half of the diesel the United States uses in ONE day. 

Who cares? Trump looks like he's doing something about high diesel prices.  Bonus points if it helps his good buddy Putin get some extra dough to end that pesky war with Ukraine which Trump thinks is Zelenskyy's fault.  Because that's what Putin wants Trump to believe. 

Donald Trump has done more to help Vladmir Putin than he has for most of the citizens of the United States.

And why is this? Because.... and say it with me: 

All bubble-blowing babies....

NO, not THAT one! THIS one!  

Donald Trump is a  lying, petulant, bullying, unintelligent, sociopathic, dishonorable, treasonous, gutless, moronic, heartless, soulless, slimy, loathsome, vile, incompetent, psychotic, crooked, disgusting, reprehensible, revolting, horrible, malicious, obnoxious, hateful, narcissistic, small-minded, despicable god damn, motherfucking piece of shit!

Amen! 

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Thanks to Politico.com for the cartoons.  

Star Trekking: Star Trek - The Original Series - Season Two - Part Two

And we're back with more Star Trekking, my weekly blog berth for my Star Trek fandom.  

This is week two of our look back at season 2 of Star Trek, the original series.

These posts are not meant to be objective or comprehensive.

The criteria are as follows:

• I watched it 
• I remember I watched it
• I enjoyed it when I watched it 

For this week's post let's start with "The Doomsday Machine".

The Enterprise Is running down mystery: a trail of destroyed planets, entire Star systems, reduced to rubble.   

What destroyed them and why?

And where did it get to?

While on the prowl for this unknown "planet killer", the Enterprise detects a distress signal from the USS Constitution*, adrift in space, severely damaged.

*The Constitution is a sister ship to the Enterprise so the special effects crew can save some money on designing a new ship and just bust out a spare Enterprise kit, relabel it and mess it up a bit.  

Kirk, Scotty, McCoy and a salvage crew beam over to find the ship occupied by one person, the ship's commander Commodore** Matt Decker.  

**Why is this dude a "commodore" and not a "captain"? I have no idea but it will allow Decker to pull rank later and I'm getting ahead of myself.

Decker is distraught and traumatized as he tearfully relates his encounter with the large space faring engine of destruction.   

DECKER: We tried to contact Starfleet. No one heard. No one! We couldn't run.

KIRK: What happened to your crew?

DECKER: Oh, I had to beam them down. We were dead. No power, our phasers useless. I stayed behind, the last man. The Captain, the last man aboard the ship. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? And then it hit again and the transporter went out. They were down there, and I'm up here.

KIRK: What hit? What attacked you?

DECKER: They say there's no devil, Jim, but there is. Right out of hell, I saw it.

KIRK: Matt, where's your crew?

DECKER: On the third planet.

KIRK: There is no third planet.

DECKER: Don't you think I know that? There was, but not anymore. They called me. They begged me for help, four hundred of them. I couldn't. I couldn't.

Leave it to Spock to suss out some deets on what Decker and his ship encountered.

SPOCK: She was attacked by what appears to be essentially a robot, an automated weapon of immense size and power. Its apparent function is to smash planets to rubble and then digest the debris for fuel. It is, therefore, self-sustaining as long as there are planetary bodies for it to feed on.

DECKER: That thing is on the way to the heart of our galaxy. What are you going to do about it?

MCCOY: We're going to do is get you back to the Enterprise.

DECKER: Oh, no, I stay here. I'm not leaving my ship!

KIRK: There's no ship to leave. It's a dead hulk! We'll take her in tow. I'll stay onboard and get her ready. You go back to the Enterprise with the doctor and let him help you.

DECKER: It's just that I, I, I never lost a command before.

Is it too much of a spoiler to say that Decker will soon aim to get a command back.

The planet killer is located and the Enterprise moves towards it. Refusing to sit this out quietly, Decker rushes to the bridge and assume command with a new plan.

Instead of shooting the planet killer with phasers from the Constitution, he will now shoot it with phasers from the Enterprise.  

Yeah, it's not much of a plan, I know.

By the way, Kirk's still stuck on the Constitution. Transporter problems, wouldn't you know.  

All Decker accomplishes is get the planet killer's attention and just a glancing power blast from the machine is enough to incapacitate the Enterprise.

Good job breaking it, Decker! 

That's enough koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs to convince Spock to relieve Decker of command. 

Leaving the bridge, Decker steals a shuttle (seriously, no one ever thinks to lock these things) and flies it down into the great machine, intent to blow it up from the inside.

It doesn't work.

But it's not a bad idea. It just needs a bigger bang.

Kirk decides to ram the Constitution down this planet killer's throat.  If Scotty can get those damn transporters back on line.

But he better hurry. The planet killer is swinging around for another go and this time, the Enterprise will not survive.  

Long story made short: the Constitution goes boom inside the planet killer and it goes dead.

And Scotty beams Kirk out of there with a split second to spare.

A lot of classic Trek Tropes at work here:

• the transporter doesn't bloody work when you want it to but it will work when you need it to if you're in the opening credits.  KIRK:  Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard...
• Scotty wrench wrangling in a Jeffries tube banging out a last minute miracle.
• The "bad admiral" (in this case "commodore") who is bat shit crazy but usurps power to make everyone's life hell.

FUN FACT: the producers had hoped to get film noir legend Robert Ryan to play Decker but he was "unavailable" (or IMHO, "too big a name to do your little science fiction make believe show").  

ANOTHER FUN FACT: the character of Will Decker in Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the son of Matt Decker.  

AND THIS FUN FACT: Dave-El does not know what the word "FUN" means.  

"The Doomsday Machine" did not receive an onscreen follow up in any incarnation of a Star Trek TV show or film.  But the Star Trek: TNG novel "Vendetta" depicts the original Planet Killer as a prototype for a weapon designed to combat the Borg.  

Several media outlets rank "The Doomsday Machine" among the top all time episodes of Star Trek.  

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After last week's post led us to explore Vulcan sex habits with "Amok Time", this week we get another peek into Vulcan culture as Spock is reunited with his parents in  "Journey to Babel"

Enterprise is transporting Federation ambassadors to a conference on the planet Babel to discuss the admission of the Coridan system into the Federation. 

Among the ambassadors include Andorians and Tellarites and representing the planet Vulcan is Sarek.  Joining Sarek is Amanda, "she who is my wife."  

Sarek and Amanda are Spock's parents.  

There's a lot going on:

• Spock teaches McCoy the Vulcan salute.

• Things are frosty between Spock and Sarek. Seems the father did not approve of his son's Starfleet career aspirations.  
• There are efforts by Kirk and McCoy to get Amanda to cough of some goss on Spock's childhood to embarrass  Spock.  Spock refuses to be taken down by any awkward tales of his childhood. 

• Relationships within the ship are super tense and culminates in an ambassador being murdered.
• Things are tense outside in space where a mysterious space craft is following the Enterprise.
• Sarek has a medical condition that is threatening his life. McCoy can fix it but needs a blood transfusion from Spock.

BUT...

• Kirk is attacked by an Andorian who brutally stabs him, leaving him out of commission and Spock in command.

Spock will not relent his command responsibilities to participate in the medical procedure that will save his father.

His very human mother Amanda is kind of pissy about this.

• She married a Vulcan.
• She lives on Vulcan.
• She's been impregnated by a Vulcan.

Does she not understand how Vulcans work? 

Kirk convinces Spock he's OK enough to resume command so Spock will do McCoy's medical thing to save Sarek.    

Kirk is NOT that OK and promised McCoy he would step aside once Spock was in sickbay to help his dad. 

BUT....

This is when the mysterious ship that's been shadowing the Enterprise opts to attack. 

Long story made short: the attacking ship is destroyed, the conspiracy against the Federation is exposed (the "Andorian" who attacked Kirk was not an Andorian) and Sarek survives his operation. 

Which leads to a very amusing exchange.

AMANDA: And you, Sarek. Would you also say thank you to your son?

SAREK: I don't understand.

AMANDA: For saving your life.

SAREK: Spock acted in the only logical manner open to him. One does not thank logic, Amanda.

AMANDA: Logic, logic! I'm sick to death of logic. Do you want to know how I feel about your logic?

SPOCK: Emotional, isn't she?

SAREK: She has always been that way.

SPOCK: Indeed? Why did you marry her?

SAREK: At the time, it seemed the logical thing to do.

I've always loved that last line from Sarek.

Not to be outdone, McCoy gets to take charge over Kirk and Spock. Past being able to fake being well, Kirk is getting wobbly.

KIRK: Bones. (starts to collapse.) No, no, I'm all right

(McCoy helps him onto a bed.)

MCCOY: If you keep arguing with your kindly family doctor, you're going to spend your next ten days right here. If you co-operate, you'll be out in two.

SPOCK: Doctor, I'll return to my station now.

MCCOY: You are at your station, Mister Spock.

KIRK: Doctor McCoy, I believe you're enjoying all this.

SPOCK: Indeed, Captain. I've never seen him look so happy.

MCCOY: Shut up. (to Kirk) Shh. Shh! (to camera) Well, what do you know? I finally got the last word.

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I actually came late to this next particular episode, having missed it in the perpetual reruns of my youth: "Obsession" 

Captain Kirk's current crisis is informed by his past.

Eleven years prior while serving on the USS Farragut, Kirk had an encounter with an alien entity, a cloud like being capable of inflicting painful death.  

The entity killed the ship's captain and most of the crew. Over the intervening years, Kirk has been weighed down by guilt.  Not just guilt over having survived but also guilt about his hesitation before firing on the creature.  

Guilt feeds into anger and obsession.  When the creature returns and begins killing again, Kirk is determined to track down the creature and kill it once and for all.  

Kirk is a ball of tension and frayed nerves, losing his temper and lashing out at the crew. He keeps pushing the ship and the crew past their limits to track the creature and ultimately destroy it.  This is Kirk's driving purpose and nothing else matters.  

Encounters with the entity have not gone well with members of the Enterprise crew winding up injured or dead.

Spock and McCoy are both very concerned about the captain's extreme behavior, the consequences to the ship and to the crew and begin to speculate on his fitness for command.

Mind you, Kirk is not under an enemy's mental control or replaced by a shapeshifter or a multiversal doppelganger.

Captain James T. Kirk is in fact Captain James T. Kirk and he's dealing with some shit.  And admittedly not dealing with it very well.  

It seems Spock and McCoy are not the only ones wondering what's going on with Kirk,  

Captain's log, stardate 3619.6. One of the men in critical condition, the other is dead. And I, I am now even more convinced that this is not only an intelligent creature, but the same which decimated the crew of the USS Farragut eleven years ago in another part of the galaxy. 

Both Spock and McCoy are doubtful of this, and I sense they also doubt my decision to stay and fight the thing. Why am I keeping the ship here?

Long story made short: Kirk is able to corner the creature into a trap and set off a bomb to finally destroy it.

But the real battle all along was with himself and his decade plus guilt over what happened with the Farragut and it's crew.  

What makes "Obsession" work is less the conundrum of how to find and stop the cloud entity and more about Kirk's very human need for redemption and retribution balanced against his responsibilities as captain to protect his ship and his crew.  

This episode poses an interesting challenge for the erstwhile infallible Capt. Kirk, a threat not from out there but from within.

Next up is the pièce de résistance of vintage Star Trek, "The Trouble With Tribbles"  but you know what, this post has gone on long enough.

We will pick up with the Tribbles on next week's Star Trekking.

Until then, remember to be good to one another and to live long and prosper.  

Thanks again to  Chrissie's Transcripts Site for the script excerpts.   

Movie Time: Bloody Pit of Horror

We continue our desperate drive towards the dire dreaded date with destiny known as Halloween.

And hand in hand with that we continue our morbid march through movie monstrosities of questionable quality and taste.

Last week's movie was pretty damn bad.

This one may be worse, folks! 

It's... Movie Time!  

Mama Mia! Guardati dagli orrori d'Italia! 

Yes, beware the terrors of Italy as we journey down the corridor of time to 1965 to descend to the depths of unspeakable danger and death to be found in the....Bloody Pit of Horror!

The movie begins with an ending. A red garbed figure is led down into a dungeon in shackles. 

This is the vile fiend known as the Crimson Executioner and he is to be condemned to the same fate experienced by his victims.

His crime: having a private torture chamber. Torture is fine if you're doing it for the government or better yet, the church. But on your own time? That's frowned upon.

The Crimson Executioner is placed in an iron maiden and the door is slowly pushed closed as dozens of sharp spikes plunge into his flesh and he slowly and painfully bleeds out in his coffin of torture and death.

Centuries later....

The place: an ancient Gothic castle, a large and foreboding edifice located in the desolate Italian countryside.

The players:  

• writer Rick
• publisher Daniel Parks
• secretary Edith
• photographer Dermott 
• five young models who don't get names

The players have come to the place, presuming the castle to be deserted, to use it as a location to shoot pictures for a horror photo novel.

But the place is not deserted as it is occupied by one more player to our dread and diabolical scenario.  

The master of the castle, former actor Travis Anderson.  

Recognizing Edith as his former fiancée, Anderson reluctantly agreed to let the group stay in his castle with one very crucial condition: stay out of the dungeon.   

But there's some really cool scary shit down there, perfect for getting some great photos of scantily clad models reacting in terror to instruments of torture.

So the gang heads down there anyway.

Which pisses off Anderson something fierce.

He succumbs to madness as he does the mask of... The Crimson Executioner.  

Check out the unit on that guy! 

Look, it's not that I want to look at the Crimson Executioner's junk but it's right there.  

Anyway, the Crimson Executioner scampers around the castle cornering the hapless interlopers into various death trap torture devices.  

Like the dude chained to a bed while a rack of sharp nails slowly descends from above.

Or the woman who is tied up in a spider web to be consumed by a giant spider that is mostly assuredly not a giant rubber prop but a legitimate monster of death.  

Basically, Anderson traps everyone in various devices designed to inflict slow torturous death on his victims.

Much like the O.G. Crimson Executioner in the movie's prologue, Anderson will meet his end on a torture device known as the  "Lover-of-Death" which inflicts the victim with poison for a slow and agonizing death

Only Ricky and Edith survive this escapade of terror in this... Bloody Pit of Horror. 

The "Hey, Isn't He Related To...?"  Dept.

The role of Travis Anderson, the new model Crimson Executioner was played by Miklós Károly "Mickey" Hargitay, a Hungarian-American bodybuilder and alleged actor.  

Mickey and Jayne 

Mickey married actress Jayne Mansfield and became the adoptive step father of Jayne's daughter, Mariska Hargitay, the same person who plays Olivia Benson on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.   

Where she investigates sex crimes that frequently involve torture dungeons not unlike those used by the Crimson Executioner.

Plot twist: Mariska grew up thinking Mickey was her biological father, not discovering until her  twenties that her biological father is Nelson Sardelli, Brazilian-born singer, actor, and comedian of Italian descent

I know this is a lot for a side quest but I think this is more interesting than the movie subject of today's post.

Regarding his role in Bloody Pit Of Horror, Hargitay admitted he "wasn't any more of an accomplished actor than a taxi driver", but thought he still provided a good performance in the film.

Yeah, about that.

While torturing his victims, Hargitay has the Crimson Executioner jumping up and down like a kid on Christmas morning. The way he runs around his dungeon, scurrying from victim to victim with unrestrained glee, it was hard to take him seriously.  

Yeah, he's a sadist who gets off on the pain of others but come on. For all the terror experienced by his victims, this Crimson Executioner is more camp than cruel.  He is less the master of this Bloody Pit of Horror and more it's court jester.  

Next week on Movie Time, the movies ain't getting any better.

We've got a sex crazed serial killer on the loose in a movie written by the co-creator of Doom Patrol and Guardians of the Galaxy.

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Tomorrow, we're going Star Trekking as I continue to explore the 2nd season of Star Trek.

Your Friday Video Link: This (Non) Sporting Life Edition

Boy, there's a LOT of sports going on! 

NFL and college football is underway! 

College basketball and the NBA are starting up! 

Major league baseball is in it's post season, winding towards the the World's Series.

And the league that melds baseball with musical theater recently brought it's season to a close with the Banana Bowl! 

Members from every team in the Banana Ball League joined together for an original song called "Look What We Made".  

Do we counting dancing as a sport?

It's my blog, my rules and I say we do. And we dance! 

From Dancing With the Stars, it's Guillermo Rodriguez and pro Witney Carson performing a Salsa to “Tití Me Preguntó” by Bad Bunny.

Sadly, Guillermo and Whitney did not make the cut and were eliminated this week.

Guillermo was robbed! 

Whitney was robbed!!

AMERICA WAS ROBBED!!!

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Next up is a song suggested by son Dean and friend Jan so...

"Don't fuck it up! Don't fuck it up!"

Here's "Sports Anthem" by Mutant Ninja Sex Turtle!

Goddammit! "I FUCKED IT UP!"

That's Ninja Sex Party!

Finishing off our sports themed edition of Your Friday Video Link, here's Garfunkel and Oates with "Sports! Go Sports!"

Yay for sportsball! 

And that's quite enough of that.  

Tomorrow it's Movie Time and after that Star Trekking on Sunday! 

No sports!! 

Remember to be good to one another.

And may you sportsball team be victorious in sports! 

Dave-El's Spinner Rack: Justice League and Other Stuff

OK, I've got more of my most recent batch of new comics from Acme Comics.

I will admit I did not have Batman and Lex Luthor in a buddy cop adventure on my DC Comics bingo card.

But that's where we are with Justice League Knight Vision Special #1.

In the aftermath of the DC KO event, all the heroes and villains who fought in the tournament received prophetic visions of the future.

All except Batman and Lex Luthor.  Then at the end of Justice League Unlimited#21, the two received a shared vision that brings them to Slaughter Swamp outside Gotham City to confront weapons dealers.    

Not just any old guns but high tech alien weapons from the homeworld of Darkseid, Apokolips.

And the procurer of those weapons is not ordinary Mafia thug but long time Justice League enemy Prometheus.

Prometheus may be only be one man but thanks to his augmented helmet, he can download whatever he needs to know to defeats his enemies.  

His base of operations, the reality warping House of Secrets, provides a challenging battleground for Batman and Lex Luthor and their only hope of survival and escape is to work with each other. 

Which is tricky when dealing with two Type A alpha males who insist on being in charge.  

Over in Justice League Unlimited#22-#23, the fallout from DC KO and Absolute Power continue to cause problems.  

The amnesty program to bring in erstwhile super villains into the Justice League is causing friction within the team and out in the world.

The World Court, Interpol and half the United Nations are all in a tizzy of a snit that the already oversized and over powered Justice League Unlimited is recruiting villains to their ranks.

The aftermath of DC KO did not eradicate the threat of Darkseid but only delayed his ultimate quest for power and domination over all reality.

Batman insists the amnesty program is needed to meet the threat.

Others in the League are not so sure.  

Meanwhile out in space, a contingent of the League is dealing with the loss of the Justice League Power Bank.    

I can't believe I got so far into this story arc before I realized writer Mark Waid assembled the Justice Gang line up from the 2025 Superman movie: Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Mr. Terrific.  

The power bank contains all the powers of the Justice League previously absorbed by Amazo during the Absolute Power event.  

The power bank gets busted open on an alien planet where Mr. Terrific re-absorbed all the super powers into himself while he becomes like unto a god or something.

Back on Earth, building tensions finally snap.

A group of the villains working under the amnesty plan don't trust the heroes who have them on a short leash.

A group of heroes are also distrustful of the core group of Leaguers overseeing the amnesty program.  

And there's a 3rd group, Batman and the Leaguers who are committed to him and the plan.

Paranoia and anger are running rampant and threaten to jeopardize the Justice League and it's mission to fortify Earth against Darkseid's return. 

Rounding out today's post is a book called Next Level One Shot#1.   

Next Level is DC's new publishing initiative to set up new titles and new storylines throughout the DC Universe. 

I asked Jermaine why this was in my pull box at Acme Comics. He made his pitch that the book was really good and to trust him.

The man is running a comic book store, not a library. 

Fine, Jermaine, you made a sale.  

The issue focuses on Deadshot, erstwhile Batman villain and a cohort of the Suicide Squad and the Secret Six.  

It's been a long while since I last followed the exploits of Floyd Lawton and his nihilist perspective on life and death.

Deadshot is on a mission to get to whoever is behind a wave of mutated zombie clone dog soldiers who are part of some larger conspiracy that's working with and/or against the metahuman community. 

I'm not sure I followed everything that happened in this issue and I am not necessarily motivated to follow any of the various titles spinning out of this book.  Limited time and coin, my friends.

But it was good spending time with Deadshot again.  

Next week: DC is trying this ONE MORE DAMN TIME! 

Legion of Super Heroes#1

Kimberly Guilfoyle: The LEGend Continues To Fall

 

A blog post I wrote back in July 2018, Kimberly Guilfoyle: Fall of a LEGend has had an inexplicably long life, frequently appearing among my Top 10 most viewed posts over the last EIGHT (?!?!) years.  

As of today, it's sitting at #1.

No doubt fueled by Kimberly Guilfoyle's notoriety surrounding the recently exposed alLEGed scandal and her subsequent resignation as the United States' Ambassador to Greece, no doubt tarnishing her LEGacy.

Well, never let it be said that I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You Inc. doesn't know which side of the digital toast is getting buttered so here we are with....

Kimberly Guilfoyle: The LEGend Continues To Fall

Here's a LEG up on what's going on with  Kimberly Guilfoyle.

In the run up to her being confirmed to be as Ambassador to Greece, Guilfoyle alLEGedly solicited bribes from a Trump donor named Eric Deters to pay off her $100,000 American Express bill.

Well, I says alLEGedly but the screen captures of her texts with Deters seem to be LEGitimate and pretty straight up about what she was trying to do.

In returns for such largesse, Guilfoyle promoted herself to Eric Deters as a LEGitimate point of access to all sorts of levers of power within Trump world.   

Now Donald Trump will put up with a lot but ilLEGally seeking personal profit from a position of government power and influence? Only Trump is allowed to do that.

So with a word from der Führer,   Kimberly Guilfoyle has resigned as Ambassador to Greece, a sad denouement to the LEGacy she began building during her LEGendary run on Fox News.  

Her LEGal team is trying to preserve her LEGacy by claiming Deters owed her money and she was trying to collect it but I'm not sure she has a LEG to stand on.

Eric Deters has his own thoughts about that which he expressed in an interview on CNN.  “Well, I’m going to be suing those lawyers, that law firm, and Kimberly Guilfoyle here in Kentucky. It’s gonna be fun.  I do not owe any money to Ambassador Guilfoyle, and that’s why I’m going to sue ’em for defamation.”

Is this the end of the LEGend of Kimberly Guilfoyle? Or is determined to prove herself too LEGit to quit and persevere and redeem her LEGacy?

If there are any developments in the ongoing tale of Kimberly Guilfoyle's LEGend, I will be sure to give you a LEG up on what will be I'm sure her LEGitimate efforts to save her LEGacy.

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For all you perverts that come her for the Kimberly Guilfoyle posts, thanks for propping up my blog numbers but c'mon, this blog has so much else to give.  

Tomorrow: comic books! 

The day after that, Your Friday Video Link merges SPORTS with MUSIC! 

On Saturday, the weekly Movie Time post looks at an old Italian horror film where scantily clad woman are tortured in an ancient castle. You Guilfoyle pervs might like that one, maybe? 

But I don't want my LEGacy as a blogger to be known for Kimberly Guilfoyle LEG posts.  

The Envy Of the World

 One of the hot button issues for this year's mid term elections is the status of health care, our access to it and our ability to afford it.

You may hear Democrats propose Medicare for all or some form of single payer health insurance.

This causes Republican to get their knickers in a knot, defiantly opposing any such plan like they have in Great Britain or Canada or dozens of other civilized countries around the world.

Republicans will protest "American health care is the envy of the world and going to a system like Canada will result in crowded waiting rooms and long waits for service."

Last week I had occasion to be caught up in the machinery of "the enny of the world" and spent nearly a whole day in a crowded waiting room with a very long wait for service.

First of all, it was not for me. My father in law John had a medical emergency and had to go to the hospital. Mandy, my brother in law's wife, had taken him there at 10:00 AM.  She stayed with him as long as she could but had to attend to her husband who was having his own medical problems to deal with.  

So I took up the baton at 2:30 PM.  

John had two interruptions in his wait, one for an X-Ray and another for a CT scan.

Otherwise we wiled away the hours in the waiting room of the envy of the world. 

It felt like we were in some kind of over crowded bus station is some third world country.  

Sitting on one side of us was a wizened old woman, small and frail, hunched over in a chair, frequently hacking up something into a bag and incessantly moaning for someone to help her. 

I'm sure she took some comfort in that she was receiving medical care from the envy of the world. Poor woman could be stuck in Canada where their health care system would leave her  hunched over in a chair, frequently hacking up something into a bag and incessantly moaning for---oh, wait a minute.

On the other side of John and I was a young man, his breath coming in gagged gasps and gulps, pleading for help that wasn't coming.  

A male would be patient staggered into the men's room near where we were sitting. A moment later, another man went in and came back out to ask if anyone worked there could help, there was man lying on the bathroom floor.

A security person opened the men's room door and I heard him say, "Dude, you can't lay on the bathroom floor like that."

I'm gonna hazard a guess it wasn't exactly this guy's idea of a good time. 

A nurse happened by and told the security guy, "We need to help this man."  

The hapless patient was helped from the floor into a wheel chair and was brought out of the rest room to receive immediate medical attention a spot to wait in the crowded waiting room.

Surrounded by these huddle masses yearning to be able to breathe and be relieved of their afflictions, my father in law missed few opportunities to remind me of his displeasure with these circumstances.

If I had a nickel for everytime he said "This is ridiculous", well, I wouldn't be rich but damn, that would be a lot of nickels.

John has been to me a mostly affable individual but in this situation, he was hardly that at all.  It was like dealing with an irritable toddler.

Except the irritable toddler was not wrong.

Periodically to appease my father in law, I would get up and chat with somebody.

The people I spoke with were very kind and patient... and absolutely useless. God bless 'em but they were overwhelmed with whatever was going on beyond those waiting room doors. 

Such is the burden of working for a health care system that is the envy of the world.

Eventually, John got to meet with a doctor at 6:30 PM.  Yes, 8 and a half hours after his arrival, he was finally getting a consult with a doctor about the dang problem that brought him there to the envy of the world.  

After getting a handle on what might be wrong with him and what he needed to do next, John was discharged at around 8:00 PM.  

I had to get firm with him about trying to discharge himself before the hospital staff came around with the paperwork.  That was not fun.  

Our exit took us through the waiting room that 8:00 PM still looked like some kind of over crowded bus station is some third world country.  

The wizened old woman was still out there, sitting under a blanket. She may have been dead for all I knew.

Finally at rest in the embrace of the envy of the world.  

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There's more to the story of my father in law's medical emergency but that is a tale for another time.