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Opinions in the Shorts: Vol. 321

La La Land was the big winner at the Golden Globes. We saw it several days before the awards. Fun movie. Thumbs up! I hope to see Hidden Fences next.

Meryl Streep caused much stir at the Golden Globes. To me, wrong time, wrong place – especially because she got the stage for lifetime achievement.

Different things on my plate at the moment that is standing in the way of my visits. 😦

I continue to read about the interrelationship between science and religion. I’m enjoy examining the bibliographies to see if they list authors I’ve read. A smile verifies that I selected the right people in my self-guided journey.

College football’s national championship game was quite the encounter. Congratulations Clemson!

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Countdown is on toward Inauguration Day, and I am confident the partisans are thrilled.

David Brooks made the statement below in early September. In light of the election results and the post-election analysis of who voted for whom, Brooks was spot on.

Politics is catching up to social reality. The crucial social divide today is between those who feel the core trends of the global, information-age economy as tailwinds at their backs and those who feel them as headwinds in their face.

I’m against the waiver for James Mattis for Secretary of Defense. I see 3 Democrats were against granting the waiver. The difference between me and them is that they would vote for the waiver if it involved one of their own while I would stay the same.

Confirmation hearings of Cabinet members are predictably more about partisanship rather than fitness.

Some wonder how long will it take for Democrats today to adopt the behaviors of Republicans of yesterday. Others say one doesn’t have to wait because they already have.

President Obama’s Five Faults of the Week
My Bengals not making the NFL playoffs
Snow when you don’t want it
The Dow not breaking 20,000
Alabama losing to Clemson
Trump-Putin bromance

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To lead you into this week’s dose of satirical headlines, The Onion lists the 2017 agenda for Congressional Republicans.

Weekly Headlines from The Onion (combos welcome)
Man Not Accepting Any More Television Recommendations At This Time
Exciting New App Allows Users To Be Pawns In 26-Year-Old CEO’s Little Game
5-Year-Old Stares Longingly Down Garbage Chute
Darkness Engulfs Man Who Brightened Touch Lamp One Tap Too Far
Pumpkin Seeds Saved, Dried, Roasted, Salted, Offered, Refused, Tossed
Fisher-Price release new utero fetal activity gym

Interesting Reads
Growing crops in cities
Hospital-borne infections
Chickens are smart
Camera technology and film-making
Fossils in the trees
The largest maritime evacuation ever (much larger than the Titanic)

Last week’s song received many kind words, so here’s one more from Al Stewart to send you into the weekend. In the words of Garrison Keillor, Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

31 thoughts on “Opinions in the Shorts: Vol. 321”

  1. As much as I love her as an actress, I also thought Streep’s comments were inappropriate for the moment. Aside from the fact that Hollywood is generally detached from reality, she should have just accepted her award graciously.
    The BCS championship game was amazing. One of the best.
    We saw Manchester By The Sea last week. Very well acted but definitely not a comedy.

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  2. New man app allows users to time fetal television activity. (my combo). I agree on Streep. He performance was a major pandering to the audience. My opinion of the Congress remains the same, all partisanship no constituent service. I think Obama is at fault for even having confirmation hearings. Great post, Frank.

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  4. No splats today but a couple ouches, one from the Atlantic article on hospital-borne infections (mirrored recently in a lengthy Consumer Reports article), the other from the Onion headline “Exciting New App Allows Users To Be Pawns In 26-Year-Old CEO’s Little Game,” which hits too close to home to be funny as Inaguration Day looms near.

    Also two smiles, first that you’ve been picking the right authors for your science and religion journey, and second for your salute to Clemson University for their game-for-the-ages NCAA Football Championship win, albeit not shared by the Alabamians jumping off piers after the game.

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  6. Nice to come back with Al Stewart again. Well played Frank. Hidden Figures – I really enjoyed it from beginning to end. I have no earthly idea why it took so long to honor these women in this way. La La Land…enjoyed it…couple of songs STILL in my head…it was the ending that let me down. No spoilers here though! The Bengals – look at it this way…they didn’t lose in the first round. Clemson – congrats in a v-e-r-y entertaining game indeed.

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  8. I enjoyed La La Land–it was a fun homage to old movie musicals. There are so many movies I want to see, but we’ve been very busy–Hidden Figures is one, but now Patterson is out, and I’ve been waiting to see it. Maybe we’ll try to squeeze in two next week. 🙂

    DT has made it so “the rules” do not apply.In this case. He has no qualifications for being president. I think Meryl Streep used the platform she had to call him out. It’s going to be four long years of protest.

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      • Fences was very good. Very powerful performances. I mentioned it in a post. It’s very much like the stage play–August Wilson also wrote the screen play–and not really “opened up,” but I liked it that way.
        Yes, I think much depends on Congress.

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  9. Trump is the most over-rated President-Elect. I think what people say about him is a disgrace. So sad. He’s so misunderstood. That’s because he can’t articulate a complete thought or convey actual meaning in his words. He’s verbally disabled and has such empathy for the other verbally disabled billionaires in the world. He would never make fun of anyone similarly disabled. It’s WRONG.

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    • Brenda,
      And Good Morning to you on this fired-up day! 😉 His inability to deliver a complete, coherent thought without being bombastic is interesting … and he sounds so scripted when reading aloud. … Sadly, many support him no matter what he says – even when he contradicts himself.

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      • It is sad. Sad how much attention he is getting. Sad how many in the media construe everything he does in a positive light. The only thing we could do to stop him would be to turn our shoulders. Stop clicking on Trump stories. Refuse to read his tweets.

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        • I’m not sure I agree with your statement about the positive light from the media. After all, his constituency buys into whatever he says, and if pressed by the media, he scolds them, which his constituents also accept. A very weird situation of limited accountability at best.

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        • I agree with you. My main point was that Trump seems to love attention, of any flavor, good or bad. The only thing to do then, is to take attention away from Trump and his family. If people stop reading every little thing about him, then the media will move on to more popular subjects and stop covering his silly middle-of-the-night tweets. As for Trump’s ability to control how the press behave, that is frightening. That is tipping the scales toward totalitarianism.

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  11. Interesting collection, Frank. Mattis is part of front page news for tomorrow’s Sunday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as they focused on our local Scaife Foundation, a hard right foundation that supported Mattis along with 24 other Trump transition team members with substantial grants.

    I disagree about Meryl Streep – I thought she had something important to say and did so in an eloquent manner, straight from the heart – how can that be more offensive or inappropriate than the constant negative Twitter stream from the President-elect? We now live in a time of extreme politicization – politics is no longer a separate conversation, if it ever was.

    Thanks as always for such good food for thought, Frank. And now “Time Passages” will be running through my head 🙂

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    • Lynn,
      Interesting about your local Scaife Foundation (something I didn’t know – but realize those groups are quite prominent). Personally, I have a difficult time correlating Streep’s speech and Trump’s tweets.

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  12. I’m going to miss Obama. I’m going to miss Obama. I’m going to miss Obama.

    I clicked my snow shoes thee times (it snowed a TON in Portland this week and it hasn’t gone away because of temps WAY below normal! Global climate change, take a bow), and I’m still in freaking OZ. What gives? 😐

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