The Wit(ness)less Path

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Evidentialism isn’t much on karma, but it fully embraces the concerto of circumstance. And today’s  was a doozy.

On the same day at the witness-less impeachment of Donald Trump whimpered to its inevitable euthanasia, the Iowa Caucuses kicked off a year of primaries, presidential puffery and, eventually, an actual vote to do something Nov. 3. Oh, and Rush Limbaugh has lung cancer (apparently that 30 years of hot air Rush spewed was carcinogenic). Image result for rush limbaugh"

Now that’s a confluence of events: One party will acquit its leader while another will appoint a new prosecutor. All while the war’s most inaccurate reporter rots from the inside. Say this for the upcoming presidential election: It will be the most honest in modern political history.

Doubt it? Love him or loathe him, does anyone truly feel like they don’t know who Donald Trump is? Are his supporters hard to distinguish? Are there really any on-the-fencers left in America? If so, what the fuck have you been doing for four years? Read something.

The Left, meanwhile, is harder to read; is Bernie a socialist? Will Warren really stick it to the .01%? Could the billionaire sniping between Michael Bloomberg and Trump get any better? (Trump accused Bloomberg of demanding boxes for debates. “The president is lying,” Bloomberg responded in a release. “He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”)Image result for bloomberg trump"

Despite the differences on the Left, they do all share a through-line: All promise to have the spine to bitch-slap Trump. Democratic voters also have a singular though-line: Someone who will bitch-slap Trump.

Which is why Democrats should actually celebrate the vote the Senate took last week to bar any witnesses in the impeachment trial.

Consider, for a moment, the firmament the GOP would have claimed if it had allowed witnesses. Senators could have argued (however speciously) that the trial was a fair proceeding, complete with evidence and witnesses. Neither, however, amounted to enough to warrant removing the president, they would argue. Soak it in enough politispeak, and it may even sound legitimate.

Now, however, Republican Senators have to sell America on the impartiality of a witness-less trial. A much harder stretch, even when playing to dimwits. Like the jurors in the O.J. verdict and the lawmakers who voted to invade Iraq, there are names listed specifically behind these actions. We can decide if there will be a day of reckoning.Image result for oj verdict iraq"

A day after the Senate vote to ban witnesses, a wily hacker, presumably Democrat, massaged the Wikipedia entry on http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/deb-newman-200/ The United States Senate to read this:

The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives ― the lower chamber ― comprised the legislature of the United States. It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.

After the hack, Wikipedia quickly took down the entry and restored the original, perhaps one of the first times Wiki has publicly made an entry inaccurate.

But the point was made. For three years, we have lied to ourselves about what would move the political needle: The Muller report? Nope. Ukraine? Next. Political assassinations? You’ll have to do better than that. The only thing that’s going to remove Trump is an overwhelming electoral loss. And even that may be disputed (the guys contested an election he won, for god’s sake).

The results in Iowa will do more than pick a first-round winner. When it and 49 others states have run their preliminary 5ks, they will give us a clearer picture of who we are as Americans. Are half of us flat-Earthers? Anti-vaxers? Half of us believe you’re in a cult. The other half think you’re too hard on the Kool-Aid. We’ll see in less than a year.

If we choose it, impeachment starts now. But make no mistake: We will sleep in beds we made.

 

 

All Hail Concusso, the God of Football!

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In honor of the holiest of all Sundays, a FactSlap Super Bowl edition:

  • The first Super Bowl game was played on January 15, 1967, as a playoff between the AFL and NFL champions. The game was called the “World Championship of Professional Football.” Image result for The first Super Bowl game was played on January 15, 1967,"
  • No network footage exists of Super Bowl I. Apparently it was taped over for a soap opera. Image result for 1967 soap opera"
  • At every Super Bowl, two Lombardi trophies are present in the unfortunate event that one is accidentally destroyed in the celebrations.Image result for two Lombardi trophies"
  • Super Bowl day is the second-largest U.S. food consumption day, following Thanksgiving.
  • Mike Ditka and Tom Flores are the only two men to win a Super Bowl both as a player and a coach.Image result for Mike Ditka and Tom Flores"Image result for Mike Ditka and Tom Flores"
  • Each Super Bowl trophy is handcrafted by Tiffany & Co. master artisans at their workshop in Parsippany, New Jersey, and is valued at $12,500.
  • The lowest amount of points scored in a Super Bowl is 3, scored by the Dolphins in Super Bowl VI.
  • Each Super Bowl trophy takes approximately four months and 72 man-hours to create.
  • The name ‘Super Bowl’ came from AFL founder and Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt. He had jokingly referred to the proposed interleague championship as the “Super Bowl” after seeing his daughter playing with a toy called a Super Ball. The ball is now on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.Image result for super ball"
  • The original Super Bowl XXXVI logo was re-designed following the September 11, 2001 attacks.Image result for The original Super Bowl XXXVI logo"
  • The Minnesota Vikings have played in four Super Bowls, but has never led a Super Bowl for even a single second.
  • Chuck Howley, the MVP winner from the 1971 Super Bowl, is the only player from a losing team to be named MVP.Image result for Chuck Howley, the MPV winner from the 1971 Super Bowl"
  • The last true day game (one which ended before local sunset) was Super Bowl XI in January 1977.
  • In 1978, both Randy White and Harvey Martin were co-winners of the MPV award.Image result for Randy White and Harvey Martin"
  • The only player to win a Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal was Bob Hayes. He won the 100m at the 1964 Olympic Games, and was part of the winning Dallas Cowboys team of 1972.Image result for Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal was Bob Hayes"
  • The record crowd at a Super Bowl game was 103,985 in 1980 at the Rose Bowl stadium.
  • In what is now known as the Philly Special, during the 2018 Super Bowl Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Nick Foles caught a touchdown pass, and became first player in Super Bowl history to both throw and catch a touchdown.

Putting out Fire with Gasoline

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Netflix is a data-driven dance floor, an algorithmic treehouse . The company  monitors the viewing habits of its 158 million subscribers so closely that it not only knows what you watch, but when you watch it, how much of it you watch, the trends that are most likely to hook you —  even the thumbnail images most likely to convince you to watch a new series. Its breadth is both impressing and daunting.

Don’t F**k With Cats is a case in point: Netflix has analyzed the data and deduced that what the world needs more than anything  is a true crime documentary series about obsessive internet users and cats.

What a genius move. What a home run. What a no-fail combination of everything that everyone likes, bundled up together in perhaps the most high-profile film about cats ever made (besides Lion King).Image result for the lion king"

The story of Don’t F**k With Cats doesn’t really matter; you’d watch it even if you thought – as I initially did – that it was going to simply be an America’s Funniest Home Videos compilation of cats clawing people to shreds during attempted baths.

However, the masterstroke here is that the narrative is simply unbelievable. And – this should be said upfront – it’s incredibly upsetting. This aspect can’t really be overstated. There are moments that are viscerally harrowing. The story begins with a video uploaded to YouTube that graphically depicts the torture and murder of two small kittens. You don’t see the video – or any subsequent similar videos – in the documentary, but there are plenty of Grizzly Man-style reactions nevertheless. One is by a senior police officer who ends up reduced to tears. It is a violently distressing display of human depravity. If you’re even slightly queasy about this sort of thing, I’d seriously recommend giving it a pass.

Nevertheless, the story is incredible. An anonymous user uploads the kitten video, and it appalls a group of Facebook users so strongly that they use every tool at their disposal to track him down. They parse the video frame by frame for something – anything – that will give them a clue to the killer’s whereabouts. Plug sockets and cigarette packets are scrutinized. A specific blanket is tracked down through eBay. The expertise of an incredibly niche online vacuum cleaner forum is consulted. Metadata is cross-referenced with Google Maps. This is the hive mind at its most clever.

One key member – a woman named Deanna Thompson – is the de facto narrator of the series. As you’d expect from someone as Very Online as her, she’s incisive and witty, and quick to pull the threads together in a dynamic way.Image result for don't fuck with cats"

But that’s arguably the biggest problem with the series. This is a show with a jokey title and a self-aware narrator that splashes around in some of the worst human behavior imaginable. As soon as the horror of the cat videos subsides, we’re off on a wild goose chase of reverse image searches, Google Street View sweeps and fake identity databases. And then we learn who the murderer is, and that his murders are about to escalate beyond cats. We meet the family of his victim, and the lurching duality of the series threatens to become almost untenable.

Still, it is beautifully presented and the final episode includes a flourish of bow-tying not seen since the climax of The Usual Suspects. But it still makes me deeply uneasy that a man who committed an awful crime purely to gain notoriety has now been dragged out of obscurity to be celebrated in a buzzy Netflix show. At least Don’t F**K With Cats’ filmmakers are aware of this. Hives are just too riveting — even malformed one — to look away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpdHMaccjw4