Fractured Friday

This is a satellite image of our new nemesis, Hurricane Dorian.  I swear I thought it was a cartoon of our old nemesis Trump.  The shiny dentures, the orange skin...

Don't expect anything coherent.  It's been a tough week.

We got to see video of a woman named Diana Sanchez giving birth in her Denver jail cell on July 31, 2018.  Yes, there was a camera in the cell.  She screamed and begged for help and someone brought her a sanitary pad.  Everyone else was gathered around the monitor, cheering her on.  No, Joe Arpaio does not run this particular facility, but if the voters of Maricopa County decide to let bygones be bygones, he could be running theirs again by 2021.

See what I mean?

Kay "Poison" Ivey, governor of Alabama, is sorry she got caught wearing blackface for a skit at Auburn University in 1967.  This is apparently some rite of passage for Southerns which I was unaware of.  There's video, if you're interested.  She won't resign, because Northam didn't.  Also she is a horrible woman and this will enhance her redneck standing.

I have never understood the adage about rats leaving a sinking ship.  Unless they could get into a lifeboat, where would they go?  Rats are not stupid.  That being said, Madeleine Westerhout is leaving her job at the White House.  Who is she?  Apparently she was Trump's Rose Mary Woods, but with a better rack.  The announcement says she quit, and also that she was shown off the property by big men with shoulder holsters, which doesn't sound like farewell-party-and-cake.  We now wait for her book, or her new job at Fox, or her Sunday interview(s).  Meanwhile, James Mattis will Face the Press this weekend for the first time since his quit-firing, which should be fun.  Clear the Twitter servers!

Boris Johnson rode into the Palace of Westminster on a white horse and sent Parliament home.  This is true except for the horse part.  Determined to ram Brexit through by Halloween (who picked that date?), the prime minister elected by a few thousand Tories has suspended government by the people elected by millions of voters.  Back in the 1970s, when Spain's newborn democracy was threatened by a right-wing coup, King Juan Carlos was instrumental in thwarting it.  Just saying.  To put that another way, has Queen Elizabeth ever lied to the people?  Has BloJo ever done anything else?  The problem with monarchs is that they're unelected.  The good thing is, they don't have to be re-elected, so they don't give a shit about politics.  Maybe I'm not understanding your system, but if you Britons ever have to choose...

Trump has cancelled a trip to Poland he didn't want to make anyway, because of Hurricane Dorian.  (MESSAGE:  HE CARES.)  Pence will go instead.  This is a mistake; Pence is much better at faking empathy.  On the other hand, he's less likely to make with the Polish jokes.  Trump will weekend at Camp David, which he hates because FDR never installed a golf course, for some reason.  And maybe the hurricane will do enough damage to his Doral Resort and Golf Club ("convenient to the airport and highway") to solve its bedbug problem.  World leaders have fingers crossed.

Every week Joe Biden inserts his foot in his mouth.  Either he's calling segregationist senators very fine people or he's scrambling his war stories.  I believe a small patch of brown liquid (possibly creosote) would be better than Trump, but with so many fine Democrats to choose from, is this the best we can do?  Ideally Warren will hang him out to dry at their first "debate" encounter and Sanders will remember he isn't really a Democrat, but Biden's continuing lead in the polls is troubling.  We absolutely cannot fuck this up.

Jack Dorsey had his Twitter account hacked.  He is the CEO of Twitter.  #HowDoesItFeel

And now, because it's my blog, a couple of movie-related comments.

In The Blue Gardenia, Raymond Burr plays a character named Harry Prebble.  In The Bad and the Beautiful, Walter Pidgeon plays a character named Harry Pebbel.  Different writers, different studios.  Inside joke?

Why did the studios keep casting British actors as American southerners?  With the exception of Vivien Leigh, they were uniformly awful:  Leslie Howard, Claude Rains, Charles Laughton, Sydney Greenstreet, Wilfred Hyde-White.  Good actors, never got within a hundred miles of any kind of southern accent.  I would like an explanation.  Please.