JOKER - watched it last night *SPOILERS*

It is a great performance by Joaquin Phoenix. The scene on the stairs didn't end as I had thought from the previews but then that was the characters life. It sets up a sequel but I don't know if Phoenix can physically do that from what I've read.

Though it was a slow build it didn't seem like a 2 hour movie. Very well done. I see that two screenwriters are separately nominated for the Oscar which I don't really understand.

I love movies done back in a time. The cars amaze me in that that many are still running.

The De Niro effect. My big takeaway from it was that it reminded me of "Taxi Driver" at least the main character. It also had a "King of Comedy" element to it.

Social statements
1. One person with a hair trigger with one gun with a hair trigger can do a lot of damage
2. Mental health and the social support structure. I've worked in that field and meds these days are much better and much more available.
3. Is the character a Trump type follower that the media tells us they are (frustrated always losing left behind picked on) or is he The Narrator from "Fight Club" (that's the name of Ed Norton's character) OR is he something else ? I guess this had class struggle as a main theme. I may need to watch it again.

It was great seeing Marc Maron in a big movie like this.

Kirk Douglass and John Wayne

Notice how Kirk uses his his voice to dominate the conversation.

Let's name this

Democracy Now! this morning- China Coronavirus SARS and HIV

Democracy Now! this morning

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, they covered up. I mean, this is typical, what I’ve seen every time in China, every outbreak I’ve been in there, is that — you know, outsiders don’t understand. China really has two governments that run in parallel. One is the official government, with people with titles, you know, minister of whatever. And the other is the party, the Communist Party. And one trumps the other, and that’s the Communist Party. And it’s essentially kind of a shadow government, in the sense that not everybody knows who the party official is in charge of X, Y or Z. But the mode of the party is to always strive for stability. And that’s the most common word in the Chinese political lexicon, you know, “stability,” “stability.” So nothing can rock the boat. Nothing can upset the order of society.

Well, what’s upsetting to order of society more than an epidemic? And so the initial response of party officials whenever there’s an outbreak is to stifle it as quickly as possible and stifle all news and information about it and spend as much time arresting, as I wrote about several weeks ago when this was first starting, that they were spending more energy arresting people for talking about this epidemic — almost all of them healthcare workers, by the way — than they were in dealing with it and confronting it. So, by the time they actually put out honest numbers and actually start telling the world the true toll, we’re several weeks in, and we have a huge problem on our hands. And then, now they’re just racing to keep up. The Hong Kong University has a spectacular team of epidemiology statisticians, who’ve been through SARS, been through bird flu, on and on down there, and they’ve been analyzing the numbers of cases and reports through a variety of means. And they’ve shown the underreporting rate is pretty consistently by more than 50% — in fact, considerably more — so that they say this currently reported toll total of about 17,000-and-change cases in mainland China, actually, that’s the number it probably was about 10 days ago. And the true number at this moment is significantly larger.


LAURIE GARRETT: Well, when you ask, “Why did SARS end?” you know, you get different answers. In China, one of the most common responses is to say, “Because the weather changed,” as if the virus somehow was related to cold weather, and that as summer approached and it got hotter, the virus disappeared. That makes no sense to me biologically at all. It may make sense in terms of surfaces. Certain cooler surfaces may harbor virus longer than a hot surface. But other than that, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

What I observed was that China basically stopped it by doing a massive fever and quarantine program across the entire nation. So it was brought to a stop by a level of vigorous and robust action. But, you see, they’re doing the same thing now. And as I mentioned before, it’s all based on fever checks, and we now know this virus can spread from people who don’t have fevers. So, they’re building a policy that biologically is flawed, won’t work. So, when people ask me, “Where is this all going?” I say, “Look, this is much worse than SARS.” It is not as terrifically dangerous as a virulent flu epidemic. But it’s far more dangerous than anything we’ve seen on our horizon since the arrival of HIV.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/7/laurie_garrett_china_coronavirus_response

Navy Deploys Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead on Sub For First Time

I don’t know if this has gotten much attention here. Heard a great discussion about it on Democracy Now this morning.

Navy Deploys Low-Yield Nuclear Warhead on Sub For First Time

The Pentagon said it has deployed a new submarine-launched nuclear warhead for the first time as the Navy seeks to counter Russia’s war chest of smaller tactical nukes.

The Pentagon’s confirmation Tuesday follows a controversial move last week to ease restrictions on the use of land mines, which are banned by more than 160 nations. The Trump administration in recent weeks has been setting the foundation to boost U.S. weapon arsenal in a race against Russia and China.

The W76-2 may have a yield of less than 10 kilotons, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in January. By comparison, the “Little Boy” bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II yielded roughly 15 kilotons.

“The idea that ‘low yield’ nuclear weapons bolster deterrence is based on the illusion of usability,” Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Obama administration, said on Twitter today. “But a decision to use nuclear weapons of any kind is the most existential decision any leader can make; none have since 1945. We need to keep it that way.”



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-04/pentagon-deploys-new-lower-yield-nuclear-warhead-on-submarine

LMAO Trump is totally squashing Limbaugh's triumphant return

After the cancer announcement on Monday and the ridiculous medal award on Tuesday Rush was scheduled to return today.

I happened to be in my car I tuned in. The local radio station had ABC News speech lead in coverage.

I don’t know maybe Rush was back, maybe not. I know all his listeners around here were dying to hear him crow.

Kirk Douglas has passed at 103 years old.

Getting link.

Hollywood Icon Kirk Douglas Has Died At 103

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adambvary/kirk-douglas-spartacus-dies

Kirk Douglas, the last leading man of Hollywood's Golden Age and best known for his title role in 1960s Spartacus, died Wednesday, his family announced. He was 103.

“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” his son, actor Michael Douglas, said in an Instagram post. “To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”


No cause of death was given.

Born Issur Danielovitch Demsky on Dec. 9, 1916, to Russian Jewish immigrants in the small town of Amsterdam, New York, Douglas served in World War II in the US Navy before parlaying early success on Broadway (and a friendship with Lauren Bacall) into his wildly successful film career. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Douglas cut a striking figure as the prototypical male movie star — unabashedly handsome, with a barrel chest, bright smile, deep gravely voice, and trademark cleft chin.

****SOTU Speech thread 2 **** we have "CRIMINALLY abiding" people.

Thread 1
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=12951095

****SOTU Speech thread **** let's get this ----storm in one place.

Nancy is laughing, nodding her head, and spitting nails at this.
Pence looks like a cardboard cut out.

Oh yeah....the 2012 REPUBLICAN Iowa caucus

In 2012, it was the Republican caucus that was a mess. Back then, Mitt Romney was named the winner of the caucuses by eight votes — a narrow victory, yes, but still a victory for the favorite to be the Republican nominee.

Except eight days after that New Hampshire win, we found Romney actually finished second in Iowa. The Iowa GOP announced, 16 days after the caucuses, that Rick Santorum had actually finished first — by 34 votes. But even that result was tinged by uncertainty:

Eventually, amid pressure, the party decided to just declare Santorum the winner in a statement released just before midnight on a Friday night — prime news-dump time.

“To clarify conflicting reports and to affirm the results released Jan. 18 by the Republican Party of Iowa, Chairman Matthew Strawn and the State Central Committee declared senator Rick Santorum the winner of the 2012 Iowa Caucus,” the party wrote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/04/iowa-second-caucus-debacle-eight-years/