hey, EZ, enjoy the week off! your efforts with the PS the last 4 yrs have brought us [me] a lot of thoughtful opinions, well- [and sometimes poorly-] spoken commentary, and good, clean fun. the PS is can't-miss for me every Tues & Thur.
One small but illustrative example. When trump went to the Federal Reserve to pose as a builder and bully Mr Powell, he told lies about the cost of the building and the causes for cost increases. Mr. Powell politely refuted them. One media outlet. "President and Fed chief bicker over cost of building.' Another "Trump and Powell spar over ..." Repeated ad nauseam in other media. Bickering, sparring, etc., imply a dispute between two opinions. They do not adequately convey truth countering lies--the case almost every time Agent Orange opens his mouth.
The media continues to sanewash and kowtow to Trump. A fair reporting would be closer to "Trump tries to use lies and intimidation to pressure Fed chief into lowering rates"
I liked that clip too of Powell correcting Trump on the cost. And, yet, I gotta say, $2.5 billion seems like an awful lot to renovate one building! I mean, a billion here, a billion there, at a certain point, you start talking about real money.
Google tells me that the pretty new African American Smithsonian museum on the Mall, including "exhibit installation," cost about a fifth of that, for a new building by a fancy architect with a similar square footage (in the 400,000 area). I'm not persuaded that incantation of the mantra "asbestos" -- harmless and effective if left undisturbed -- is sufficient to explain it.
I'm a big fan of the sort of cost-cutting that doesn't involve firing lots of people but rather says, in response to someone's idea that we ought to do some costly project that doesn't seem super necessary, uh, how about it's fine, how about we just not do that? Local governments and school boards always hankering to build expensive new buildings could certainly use a dose of that attitude in my view.
Hey maybe trump could cut a few more weekend trips to Mar a Lago, promise not to hold any more parades, NOT goldplate his freebie plane and not use taxpayers money to visit his golf clubs? Betcha every penny musk "saved", trump has tried to spend.
But taxing it to death would work. Just give cigarettes a federal tax of $5 each, to be paid at the factory & the number of smokers will decline to well under 1% of the population. That would be a tax of $100 per pack. After a year, make it $20 per cigarette, which would end smoking, period!
Also require it on all smokes imported from other countries, make it a felony for Indian reservations to get cheaper smokes & also raise the tax on cigars, pipe tobacco & loose tobacco to the equivalent of $5 a cigarette.
Also outlaw the importation of vaping devices & vaping liquids & give any of them made in this country a tax of $1000 per vaping device & $100 per gram of the vaping liquids.
What would happen is all the tobacco factories would shut down, they would sell their trademarks & machinery to China, where they still smoke like crazy, but also pass a law banning the importation of any tobacco from China, with the penalty of one year in prison for every single cigarette brought into the country illegally!
", make it a felony for Indian reservations to get cheaper smokes" yeah let's see if we can fuck the Native Americans who are just trying to survive any further.
GSC - Native American Reservations are meccas for smokers who buy their cigs cheaply because of no taxes. I don't know what the stats are on smoking amongst Native Americans when compared to others, but the Native American nations makes TONS of money selling cigs to those who come from off the reservations. This would be a SIGNIFICANT revenue loss to their tribes (and not necessarily increase their own consumption of cigs).
Here me out on this. If the government was (and still is) willing to bail out the banks and large corporations (even when it is self-inflicted) during harsh economic times why not just pay the Indian reservations not to sell tobacco products? Don't we already pay farmers - with large corporate farms receiving the vast share - not to grow crops?
There are things called laws of unintended consequences. I am not a smoker. But how far should government go to protect people from themselves? Let's ban McDonalds. Fried foods, fat, grease- it's bad for people and we have an epidemic of fat kids in this country. Oh, that's right- tax it to death and people will quit. I have no problem with limiting it because it affects even those that don't smoke and selfish clods discard butt's anywhere they wwant.But I don't like the idea of government benefitting from something they don't think people should be doing.
People need food. But they can live and would live better without McDonalds. I agree with your point that cigarettes aren’t needed. But I consider it hypocritical to collect taxes on them even for your idea to tax them out of existence. It will never happen anyway. The tobacco industry will lobby heavy against it and it will turn into a rights issue. Remember, I don’t smoke.
Everyone commenting here seems to have missed my point, which I thought I had made clear in my original post, but I will reiterate: I don’t give a flying fuck about the health risks. It’s the POLLUTION. And I’m not talking about discarded butts; I’m talking about the toxic, acrid, noxious, nausea inducing fumes that nicotine addicts spread and force non-smokers to languish amid and endure. This is not a matter of government being a nanny to adults who take assumed risks; it is about protecting the public from the reckless abandon of others. A coprophagiac is free to wallow in and consume as much fecal matter and excrement as he pleases, but he does not have a right to go around flinging it at others. Do you not see the difference there?
If cigarettes were up for approval from the FDA today, they would never be approved. But the horse is already out of the barn. Nicotine is more addictive than heroin and is very difficult to stop smoking. My mother died from lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking. I always hoped the United States would outlaw them, but they provide extraordinary revenue to all taxing bodies. What if you can be grandfathered in if you currently smoke and you can continue to do so until they kill you. Non-smokers would be prohibited from ever smoking (I need to work out the details of how that would work). I do not want another family to have to see their love ones suffer and die from lung cancer.
I know it sounds like a good idea, but it just wouldn't work, because there would always be children who would see the remaining smokers using them & want to try it.
No, taxing them into total irrelevance is the easiest way to go. If the Chinese & others want to keep killing themselves with them, let them!
My grandmother was carrying a basket of laundry upstairs when she lost her balance and fell. When they checked to see what had caused her to fall, they found she had lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain. It killed her less than a month later.
altho i'm not a big fan of taxes -most amt to govt confiscation of the fruits of personal effort, to be ill-spent - i think you're on to something with taxation as a solution to smoking.
i do disagree on infringing on the Indians' right to sell smokes on the reservation at whatever price they want to sell. it's a sovereignty issue. we euro-americans have been stomping on Indian rights ever since we/they first landed on the shores of what is now the US. i'm willing to accept flaws in this smoking tax regime to respect sovereignty of Indian nations.
and i'm not so sure about trying to shut down vaping too, at least right away - it appears vaping is less dangerous than smoking. here's from perplexity.ai: 'Smoking is clearly more harmful than vaping, though vaping is not without serious health risks. Multiple reputable health authorities—such as Johns Hopkins Medicine, the CDC, and the NHS—state that while vaping exposes users to fewer toxic chemicals than smoking, it still delivers harmful substances and health risks, especially for youth and non-smokers.'
i'm not defending vaping - i'm supporting prioritizing.
When I was a kid my parents both smoked and bought cigarettes by the carton. Taxes have increased exponentially since then. Mom quit smoking (for health, not tax reasons) but my 89-year-old father continues to smoke to this day (with freakishly healthy lungs - doctor hates that). He buys by the pack now due to the cost, but still smoking. Addiction is real for sure and the taxes haven't fixed that. I absolutely support taxing smoking to death but don't know if it will change anything for the addicted. I can only hope that high cost keeps new smokers from starting.
Only billionaires could afford to smoke if cigarettes were taxed at $20 a cigarette. Even at $1 a cigarette, at least 95% of smokers would quit or severely cut back on it.
Your comment gave me flashbacks to sitting in the car with all the windows rolled up as my parents puffed away in the front seat. I'm getting queasy just from the memory of it...
<shudder> I have those nasty memories too. From the time I was toddler I complained about the smoke. Asthma, frequent ear infections, etc were my childhood. When I was about 11 my parents stopped smoking in the house and my life improved immensely. My dad still smokes in the garage and gets panicky about the door being open while he's out there because he understands that the house is a much more pleasant place without smoke in it - and will garner a better price when he's gone than if it was yellow and stinky.
One of my earliest childhood memories was from when I was about three, we were driving back home from the Illinois Railway Museum and my dad threw a cigarette out the driver’s side window and it re-entered through the back window and set a towel on fire. Fortunately nothing tragic ensued, so we all kind of remembered this event with a kind of hearty bemusement.
To your earlier point, I wonder how many wildfires have been caused by someone tossing a lit cigarette from their car window, all because they couldn’t be bothered to snuff it out in the ashtray that every car had back in the day…
I think I'm on the side of "let voters decide" when it comes to convicted felons being eligible for office. Age and residency restrictions are objective and fair, but making felons ineligible opens up the possibility of a corrupt regime getting a formidable opponent convicted on some trumped up charges or under a questionable law to make them ineligible. And ultimately, the people deserve the leaders they choose, if they want one with 34 felony convictions and other indictments, they/we should learn a hard lesson in consequences.
It's highly unlikely they would fake up criminal charges against an opponent, as they then are going to take a chance on a jury verdict.
We've seen many juries find people not guilty on fraudulent charges. The most recent was in New York City, where that crackpot Manhattan DA charged a man working at a CVS with killing a shoplifter, who attacked the employee. He was found Not Guilty last week by a jury that spent a whole 20 minutes deliberating.
There was another one in Manhattan with a small store owner charged with killing an armed robber & he was rapidly found Not Guilty by a jury.
Even federal prosecutors, who are responsible for the saying "they could indict a ham sandwich", have discovered juries that found politicians here not guilty.
So I want a flat out Constitutional Amendment ban on anyone convicted of a felony from any elective, appointive or civil service job, even if later pardoned.
In the current system, yes, it's not easy to do that, but if we're thinking long term, foundational principles of a country, one hallmark of a totalitarian regime is jailing political opponents. It's not too big of a stretch to imagine some patriotism law under which speaking out against the president is a felony. Then you could find a district with a loyal population and a loyal judge. Charge your opponent under that law in that district and voila - your opponent is no longer eligible to run. Just look at Trump's recent wins in courts, it's not that farfetched.
I wish I could share your optimism, but once upon a time it was inconceivable to think the president could be immune to prosecution. They conjured up an exception out of thin air. I can totally see the SCOTUS saying that criticizing the president impedes his ability to protect the country and is therefore treason and not subject to 1'st Amendment protection. They've issued much more insane rulings of late.
I’m not arguing with you. But it’s a depressing thought, though unfortunately true. I haven’t checked a fantasy. Opposing candidates praise each other for being good honorable people, they are simply at odds on politics and how to get things done. But I doubt I will see it in my lifetime and definitely not under the current federal dictatorship.
While Colbert is very clever and charming, I find the attacks on the president and his supporters ultimately depressing because it reminds me how bad things have gotten. Unfortunately Colbert is preaching to the choir. Also, us older folks tend to go to bed early. If Colbert was on late morning, I would be much more likely to tune in.
I thought Colbert was great on his “Colbert Report” program on Comedy Central in which he parodied blowhard right wing radio and cable news hosts. That’s why I’ve always considered his “Late Show” incarnation to be an inferior step down; in essence, he dropped the irony of “Colbert Report” (which was his genius), and became, instead, a straight political pontificator and gasbag. All in all, a disheartening diminution.
You know, I haven’t checked another thought I have yet to see anyone comment on. What will CBS show in that time slot, old reruns of CSI? I know that streaming and DVRs have changed the viewing habits of many. I have two sisters that rarely watch anything other than the news that they haven’t first recorded. Many young people don’t even bother with the old networks. But I don’t think they are quite yet dead.
JB : “I 100% oppose gerrymandering. Legislative districts should adhere to both the Federal and Illinois Voting Rights Acts, and I support redistricting reform that advances fairness and removes politics from the process.” He also endorsed the creation of an independent commission to oversee map-drawing, arguing that politicians should not control district boundaries for partisan gain.
Actually, candidate Pritzker said he favored an independent bipartisan commission to draw Congressional districts. But Governor Pritzker has somehow managed to forget all about it. Except when he hypocritically spoke out condemning plans for legislative germandering in Texas.
You mentioned eating popcorn with a spoon. Reminds me of my mom telling me about the first time she had pizza. She was at an Italian friend’s house in the ‘40s and asked for a fork and knife. They all had a good laugh.
Apparently in Italy it is the norm for personal pizza to be served uncut and then eaten with a knife and fork!
That also reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where George starts eating candy bars with a knife and fork. He then ridicules for people using their hands ("How do you eat it? With your *hand*? ha!") Then the trend picks up, with people using a spoon to eat m&ms out of a bowl and then Elaine sees this in public and yells "Has the whole world gone mad!!?? What is WRONG with you people!!!??"
For gerrymandering, I don’t begrudge states having representation that doesn’t match the population if the districts look like regular shapes like squares. Not to pick on Illinois too much, but a few years ago I checked the congressional map for my Naperville congressman and found that it went (narrowly) to the Wisconsin border. That has practical ramifications. I had wanted to visit the office, but it was miles and miles away from me.
I don’t think there are any states that have representation that doesn’t match the population where the districts look like regular shapes like squares.
In a redistricting a couple of decades ago, the district line literally wove back and forth across our very short street to put all of us Democrats in one district and all the Republican voters in another. - The notions of contiguity and previously established boundaries (such as county lines or city boundaries) were completely thrown out of the car window to be run over by a semi.
I know that Stephen Colbert’s fans feel stung, and understand the allure of ascribing his cancellation to sinister forces, but last week’s “South Park” season premiere should lay to rest the suspicion that Colbert’s axing was a political move, rather than strictly business.
The South park episode came after Paramount paid them $1.5 billion. I flat out guarantee you, Paramount execs had heart attacks when they saw it.
Colbert was not losing $40 million a year for them, at worst, he broke even. It was 100% political & part of the deal to have the FCC approve the takeover deal between Redstone's Paramount & Ellison's Skydance.
That episode was over the top. I think the main theme was Matt and Trey thumbing their noses at Paramount. The Trump stuff was a means to that end. Basically daring them to cancel them for political reasons.
But they are still shown on Paramount who want something from the FCC. We don't know the details of the contract and whether they could still get the full amount if dropped.
I may be wrong but I think the Paramount deal with Eric Trump's doppelganger is done (shortly after after the firing of Colbert). Anyway the contract with the South Park is in large part for their 20 year back catalogue, which can be shown ad infinitum on streaming services, unlike the topical Colbert monologues (e.g.)
What does the FCC have to do with it? I thought the “Colbert as martyr” theory held that, Trump couldn’t take Colbert’s criticism of him, Paramount wanted to kowtow to Trump, and Paramount wasn’t going to tolerate any criticism from one of its employees, so they axed him. Money had nothing to do with it, and it was all just a cave to brazen corruption and authoritarianism. So do you think that Trump and Paramount were pleased by the South Park treatment?
Timing is EVERYTHING!!! South Park had JUST signed a great big contract with Paramount before the show aired. I suspect some folks in the corner offices of Paramount are snarling into their catered lunches.
Rarely does a week go by when I draw a blank at one or more of the visual jokes. This week, its the urinals and the dog butler. Shouldn't there be a way for us humor-challenged readers to "get the joke?"
As near as I can tell, there apparently is a restroom in Denmark in which images of hot women are positioned over the urinals to make it appear that they are tantalized by the penises that they are leering over. But what guy wants a hot chick to watch him taking a leak? I know I wouldn’t.
If they’re judging them, it would appear, by my sights, that their adjudications are yielding an emphatic “yea”. They certainly don’t seem to be repulsed (well, maybe the one on the right).
There is another problem with this concept that I thought of, if I could get a bit clinical. As any male knows, the ability to urinate comfortably kind of requires penile flaccidity, and the function can be very difficult to do when in an aroused state. Although it wouldn’t be an issue for me now, I could imagine a younger, much more virile version of myself (say, the 20 year old me) approaching those urinals and achieving such an instantaneous and complete “standing Hampton” (in the parlance of Sammy Hagar) that I would be unable to to complete the business that I was in the restroom to tend to in the first place. Not very well thought out.
The dog butler is referencing Alfred, Batman's loyal personal assistant who was always very proper and professional, but in this case he is a dog who probably destroyed one of Batman's slippers in the process of delivering them (since dogs love chewing shoes).
Whenever anyone talks about Prohibition I always think of The Thin Man. The book was written during Prohibition but the movie came out in 1934. Not much smoking, but man, they could suck down the cocktails. ( and look good doing it)
Watch almost any other movie made from the 30s to the 90s & everyone is smoking.
And I mean every single adult in the movies, unless it was a screwball comedy.
Big Tobacco paid them to smoke & continues to do so, even though they signed an agreement not to pay anyone to smoke in movies or TV, but you still see them lighting up in movies!
I was trying to remember scenes of smoking in The Thin Man and all I could remember were the cocktails. But it is weird to watch how much smoking there was back then. No one gets murdered with marble ash trays these days!
I believe I read once that a tobacco company offered Gene Roddenberry a hefty sum if he agreed to have the crew of the Starship Enterprise smoke on the original Star Trek series. He was tempted by the money, but ultimately wisely decided that such an unhealthy habit would undermine the show's credibility and be out of place in the idealized Twenty-third Century he was creating. Thank goodness! That anachronism alone might have prevented Star Trek's unforeseen, extraordinary 59-year longevity.
I was unaware of this, but yeah, that decision by Gene was a stroke of business genius. It also reminds me of how bizarre it is to see spaceship crew members in the 1979 movie “Alien” liberally puffing away.
I think it largely waned in the '90s. What you saw in the '80s, though, was the odd insertion of a character smoking, but just once. Chevy Chase smokes just once in Fletch -- out of the blue, he has a cigarette while investigating the house in Utah. I just saw an old Gene Hackman movie, Target, where he smokes on the plane. I think it was the only time he smoked in the movie. In War Games, Dabney Coleman lights up once in the infirmary where they're holding Matthew Broderick. I had a hunch that it was part of a product placement strategy that suggested smoking was something one could do in moderation and indoors, and it's fine and normal. Hazy smoke-filled rooms, overflowing ashtrays, and characters smoking constantly -- none of that would be a good sell.
Yes, I’ve noticed in many movies where a lead or major character is briefly seen smoking just one time. I never understood it. In the 1977 “Suspiria”, Suzy Banyon is seen taking a few drags after being attacked by the bat, pretty late in the film. Also in ‘77 in “Smokey and the Bandit”, Burt Reynolds is glimpsed smoking in a shot so quick you might miss it (and I think I did the first two dozen or so times that I saw the movie). Most of the characters in “Reservoir Dogs” smoke all throughout the movie, but Joe Cabot doesn’t….except in one brief shot.
Oh boy, that was a different time, when a drinking problem was lack of stamina. I love that first scene at the "gin mill." Nora: "Nick, how many drinks have you had?" Nick: "This will make six martinis." Nora: "Leo, bring me five more martinis. Line them right up here."
I recently watched The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould. I had read the book by Raymond Chandler, my favorite mystery writer, but had never seen the movie. In the movie, Philip Marlowe is depicted as a chain smoker. That aspect of the movie made it difficult to watch.
That's a really interesting movie, an unusual take on the material, but I dig it. Updated to the '70s but with Gould's Marlowe clinging awkwardly to manifestations of Chandler's world -- the suits (on the beach, even), the '40s Lincoln, the cigarettes -- Altman uses anachronism (and, let's say, unconventional casting) to amplify the original's sense of Marlowe as a man out of place and out of time, a medieval knight thrust into a world of modern depravity. The big difference is that Chandler's Marlowe was slick -- a snappy dresser, facile, with the sang froid and sprezzatura we expect from the lone wolf, world weary cynic-with-a-heart genre p.i. Chandler more-or-less invented. Gould's Marlowe, by contrast, is smart but not slick, decidedly uncool, which emphasizes the disconnect between Marlowe's values and his times, now yet more cynical and decadent. He mumbles, bumbles, gets pushed around. His catchphrase is "It's okay with me." But it isn't really, as the shock ending that departs dramatically from the novel, reveals, to strong effect.
I sent an email to that address to stop those magazines (while earlier calling for the same reason) and received a reply that said I had already been put on the no send list due to my prior call but would continue to receive the magazines at no cost. The reply came two days later, so it works! Thanks for the heads up.
First of all. EZ, enjoy your vacation. You have earned it though you will leave a large hole in my week. Second, a hearty congratulations on your tirade toward Alden Capital. Sometimes polite just doesn’t cut it. I haven’t checked it out, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if they were a major contributor to the orange stain’s wants or if he had a stake. Even if the above isn’t true, what is more important than informing the public? I have a feeling this is more than merely about the bottom line, which is bad enough.
Eric - I acknowledge and recognize that gerrymandering of legislative districts is a disservice to our society, but it very sadly is one of the ways the political games are played today, and it would therefore be political suicide for either side to unilaterally disarm with regard to gerrymandering. And it is for that reason have a very rational argument against the Illinois Supreme Court doing the right thing and addressing gerrymandering in Illinois.
But... I believe you are missing the central thrust of the Tribune editorial on this subject. They were calling out the rank hypocrisy of Pritzker speaking out against gerrymandering in a red state when he presides over textbook gerrymandering in the state over which he is the executive, and as Governor has totally forgotten about his statements as candidate supporting an independent bipartisan commission to determine legislative boundaries. That is pure textbook hypocrisy.
(I must also take issue with your premise that the Tribune editorial is somewhat right of center, although it is completely understandable that your perspective is tilted when you live in a bright blue state where everything left of center appears to be the norm. When I first moved to Illinois in 2006 I was aghast to find out that I automatically became a criminal for possessing handguns which were patently unconstitutionally prohibited in Evanston and Chicago, and also that people here thought that places that allowed constitutional conceal and carry were the Wild West when in fact Illinois was the outlier even among bright blue New York and California as the sole state in the entire US to constitutionally prohibit lawful conceal and carry. I know - likely the great majority of my fellow PS readers were very happy that Illinois stood alone so far to the left on this, but I'm simply using it as an example how Illinois in general, and Chicagoland in particular are far outside the mainstream of our society, and that's why things on the left appear to be in the middle to people here.)
And with that I wish you a very relaxing and well deserved vacay!
But, David, it wasn't "patently unconstitutional" in 2006 when you moved here. The Heller decision - in which for the first time SCOTUS determined that *individual* ownership of firearms could not be prohibited - was not decided until 2008. (And the only way Scalia could justify such ruling in Heller was to conveniently ignore the first clause of the 2nd Amendment - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . . "). So gun ownership was NOT "patently unconstitutional" in Chicago and Evanston when you moved here. No such individual right to gun ownership was determined *until* that 2008 (and very poor) decision.
Hi Jay - Thank you for your comment, but I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on this. The Miller decision way back in 1939 specifically ruled that the right to own and bear a firearm was not limited to membership in a militia.
I don't believe the Heller decision created any new right, but simply explicitly recognized our right to carry firearms that has always existed under the Second Amendment. But, it does as your comment reflects, make for a good constitutional debate.
But it was shocking for me to learn that I was in criminal violation of the law in Evanston simply for owning my handguns, and that my new hometown was a bit to the left of Berkeley!
Hey Garry - You are absolutely correct on that. But the Heller and subsequent closely related Moore decisions were the basis for the subsequent McDonald decision that required Illinois as the sole outlier in the US to finally have conceal carry law. Even so, Illinois conceal carry creates a complex and expensive ($350) process to obtain a license.
"Even so, Illinois conceal carry creates a complex and expensive ($350) process to obtain a license."
To which I say, good. It's also not technically illegal to own automatic weapons, but onerous and expensive enough to deter all but the most committed to go through with it. And in the 91 years since those regulations went into effect, the incidence of death, injury, and crime involving machine guns has become nearly non-existent.
To those who argue the only effective way to combat gun violence is with more armed people, I would say the regulation of automatic weapons has proven that isn't the only option.
Good morning John - I fully acknowledge that most of the people on the PS would be very happy with a firearm ban, something to which I am diametrically opposed. It is exceedingly rare that there is violent Firearms crime committed by people who lawfully own firearms. But, when punks on the street are routinely caught in illegal possession and carry of firearms, there are rarely any real consequences. Witness the shootout between two groups of people, one on the street and one inside a house a couple years ago where then Cook County attorney Foxx declined any prosecution because she deemed them to be "mutual combatants". Enforcement of our current laws would make a huge dent in violent firearms crime, but people on the left oppose this as racist because blacks would be disproportionately incarcerated because they distortionately commit violent crime.
My challenge on firearms to my friends on the left Is to join me in supporting strong penalties for straw gun purchasing - 5 years mandatory minimum first offense with it doubling for every successive offense. And similar mandatory minimum incarceration for use of a firearm in a crime, and even a mandatory minimum incarceration for Illegal possession and carry. Remove the criminals from the streets who illegally use and carry firearms, and word will also spread very quickly that there are real consequences for people illegally carrying guns.
The point here is everyone arguing apples and oranges. A lot of people are arguing against points that no one is making. It seems like the argument is about banning guns of all types for anyone other than law enforcement or the military. But in most cases it's just not true. Most people, even in your bright blue Illinois, are not arguing for a total ban. Gun nuts want no regulations or restrictions of any kind. I own a handgun myself. But I see no particular reason for people to carry around anything they like all the time. Like it or not, there are those that should not be allowed to have them or carry them. Do you, like myself, probably live in a place where people for the most part get along with each other and don't point guns or anything else at each other? Guess what- there are places called big cities where they do. Laws don't discriminate between those places and ours. So if you and I can carry whatever they want, so can they. Don't even start with the argument that under regulations, only criminals can have them. The argument sickens me and has nothing to do with reality. Criminals break all kinds of laws. That's why they are called criminals. Should we get rid of murder and drunk driving laws because people are doing it anyway? My point is this. There is a middle ground between total banning and no regulations whatsoever. If people are going to argue about this, at least they should argue the same thing.
Hi Laurence - Thanks for your reply. You make some valid points- I may differ with you on some of them, but I do agree there is a middle ground we should be seeking. And yes, not everyone should be able to own firearms. People with mental health issues and people with violent crime convictions are at the top of that list. But I believe a key that is presently missing is better enforcement of our existing laws and greater consequences for the many people who now illegally possess and use firearms. Word on the street travels very quickly, and serious consequences do indeed change behavior.
Thank you for your confirmation. You also make some good points. But it’s an oversimplification of the problem. When a lot of people think about guns, they think of shootouts in the old west, a story that is mostly Hollywood fiction. Or it’s all about street gangs and the fight for turf and selling drugs. Did you read the story yesterday about the man that killed his daughter-in-law because she wanted to divorce his son? We not only need to deal with sensible regulation, we need to deal with why people shoot each other. I still remember the story from Park Forest about the homeowner that shot the guy whose dog peed on his carefully manicured lawn. Like it or not, laws and enforcement need to deal with reality.
David - I'm going to respectfully disagree right back at 'cha.
Miller's core holding held that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear a sawed-off shotgun, because such a weapon had no “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.” The Court explicitly tied the Second Amendment right to arms that would be useful in the context of a militia; and the implication was that this left open the possibility that private gun ownership could be restricted if the weapon lacked military or militia utility, and suggested the right was collective, not individual.
Heller, on the other hand, held, for the first time, that the Second Amendment protects an *individual's* right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia, particularly for self-defense in the home. This broke from Miller, as Scalia's opinion reinterpreted the Second Amendment as protecting individual rights, and disavowed the collective-right/militia-based reading that underpinned Miller. It rejected the idea that the right could be limited only to militia use.
Heller departed significantly from Miller. While Miller could be interpreted to allow extensive federal regulation - even prohibition - of certain arms not tied to militia activity, Heller established that individual self-defense — not militia service — is the core protected purpose of the Second Amendment. The question had been open up until the Heller decision in 2008.
John, you are correct and I was mistaken. I went back and read he Miller summary, and found that the ruling was just as you said. In my defense, I believe that the right to private firearms ownership was already being respected in our country....except for Illinois until the Heller decision.
It's not hypocritical at all. Both sides engage in political gerrymandering to the maximum extent permitted by law. *However*, the norm was that you only did it every ten years, after the census. Everyone held to that norm. Now, Texas proposes to violate that norm by redistricting again in the middle of that ten years to attempt to squeeze out more Republican seats in advance of the mid-terms. It's the sort of move that we saw in relation to the filibuster -- one side gets rid of it for x, the other side gets it rid of it for y, etc., until both sides tacitly agree not to push it further. This is the same "going nuclear" sort of dynamic. If one side changes the rules for itself, the other side would be foolish, politically moronic suckers of epic proportions, not to do likewise. As soon as I heard about what Texas was proposing to do, I thought, well, blue states should get ready to do likewise and call their moves in each case the "Texas Redistricting Act."
As for principle, I don't like political gerrymandering, and if there is one side that dislikes it more, it's the Democrats. I would heartily endorse a truce that forbid it. In the meantime, you play by the rules you have and foregoing an advantage taken by the other side on principle is merely stupid. It's entirely consistent to say, "In my view, the rule should be x, and I extend an open invitation to the other side to make it x, but so long as it's y, we're going to play by y, just as hard as they do." The Tribune editorial didn't seem to get this, which is what made it absolutely infuriating.
ah, yes, the [Democratic] Peoples Reublic of Evanston - my home for 30 yrs from the mid-'80s.
interestingly, evanston's electoral politics were center-right when i moved there [its politics having nothing to do with my new choice of residence.]. the swing to far left occurred over the ensuing ~20 years - which would have been when david moved in.
i'm not sure all what forces caused this to happen. doubtless the leftiness of The Academy [i.e., N'western U] had a significant impact. some of the forces were positive - evanston became a welcoming community for GSMs [gender & sexual minorities] and mixed-race couples.
i'd be curious to see a scholarly analysis of how and why this transition happened over those 20 yrs.
It is undeniably a very beautiful place - we lived across the street from Lighthouse Beach. To this day my wife still misses walking to the shops on Central Street and to the movie theater downtown. But the taxes, increasing crime and overall craziness compelled my wife and I upon retirement to escape to our current Nirvana of immensely lower taxes but yet with a much higher level of services and much lower crime.
it's quite sad that the leadership - both the city and the K-12 school district - have led the city down into a far-left morass. i loved Evanston, loved living there. my kids, who all went to D65 schools and ETHS - are fiercely proud of Evanston and their upbringing there.
and altho i would grant to anyone who claimed that many of Evanston's great qualities of life remain - we still visit regularly with old Ev friends, despite our move out of state - the net cost benefit has gone way negative.
hey, EZ, enjoy the week off! your efforts with the PS the last 4 yrs have brought us [me] a lot of thoughtful opinions, well- [and sometimes poorly-] spoken commentary, and good, clean fun. the PS is can't-miss for me every Tues & Thur.
One small but illustrative example. When trump went to the Federal Reserve to pose as a builder and bully Mr Powell, he told lies about the cost of the building and the causes for cost increases. Mr. Powell politely refuted them. One media outlet. "President and Fed chief bicker over cost of building.' Another "Trump and Powell spar over ..." Repeated ad nauseam in other media. Bickering, sparring, etc., imply a dispute between two opinions. They do not adequately convey truth countering lies--the case almost every time Agent Orange opens his mouth.
Nothing Trump hates more than someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about correcting him in public. Like Anthony Fauci.
The media continues to sanewash and kowtow to Trump. A fair reporting would be closer to "Trump tries to use lies and intimidation to pressure Fed chief into lowering rates"
I liked that clip too of Powell correcting Trump on the cost. And, yet, I gotta say, $2.5 billion seems like an awful lot to renovate one building! I mean, a billion here, a billion there, at a certain point, you start talking about real money.
Google tells me that the pretty new African American Smithsonian museum on the Mall, including "exhibit installation," cost about a fifth of that, for a new building by a fancy architect with a similar square footage (in the 400,000 area). I'm not persuaded that incantation of the mantra "asbestos" -- harmless and effective if left undisturbed -- is sufficient to explain it.
I'm a big fan of the sort of cost-cutting that doesn't involve firing lots of people but rather says, in response to someone's idea that we ought to do some costly project that doesn't seem super necessary, uh, how about it's fine, how about we just not do that? Local governments and school boards always hankering to build expensive new buildings could certainly use a dose of that attitude in my view.
Hey maybe trump could cut a few more weekend trips to Mar a Lago, promise not to hold any more parades, NOT goldplate his freebie plane and not use taxpayers money to visit his golf clubs? Betcha every penny musk "saved", trump has tried to spend.
Outlawing smoking won't work.
But taxing it to death would work. Just give cigarettes a federal tax of $5 each, to be paid at the factory & the number of smokers will decline to well under 1% of the population. That would be a tax of $100 per pack. After a year, make it $20 per cigarette, which would end smoking, period!
Also require it on all smokes imported from other countries, make it a felony for Indian reservations to get cheaper smokes & also raise the tax on cigars, pipe tobacco & loose tobacco to the equivalent of $5 a cigarette.
Also outlaw the importation of vaping devices & vaping liquids & give any of them made in this country a tax of $1000 per vaping device & $100 per gram of the vaping liquids.
What would happen is all the tobacco factories would shut down, they would sell their trademarks & machinery to China, where they still smoke like crazy, but also pass a law banning the importation of any tobacco from China, with the penalty of one year in prison for every single cigarette brought into the country illegally!
Totally with you on this one my friend! (I never claimed to be a libertarian.)
", make it a felony for Indian reservations to get cheaper smokes" yeah let's see if we can fuck the Native Americans who are just trying to survive any further.
Why do you want to poison the Indians?
What did they ever do to you?
They already have lower life spans than the rest of the country, due to their poverty!
GSC - Native American Reservations are meccas for smokers who buy their cigs cheaply because of no taxes. I don't know what the stats are on smoking amongst Native Americans when compared to others, but the Native American nations makes TONS of money selling cigs to those who come from off the reservations. This would be a SIGNIFICANT revenue loss to their tribes (and not necessarily increase their own consumption of cigs).
Tough shit if they lose that revenue! Selling poison isn't good business practice.
Here me out on this. If the government was (and still is) willing to bail out the banks and large corporations (even when it is self-inflicted) during harsh economic times why not just pay the Indian reservations not to sell tobacco products? Don't we already pay farmers - with large corporate farms receiving the vast share - not to grow crops?
There are things called laws of unintended consequences. I am not a smoker. But how far should government go to protect people from themselves? Let's ban McDonalds. Fried foods, fat, grease- it's bad for people and we have an epidemic of fat kids in this country. Oh, that's right- tax it to death and people will quit. I have no problem with limiting it because it affects even those that don't smoke and selfish clods discard butt's anywhere they wwant.But I don't like the idea of government benefitting from something they don't think people should be doing.
Totally different.
You must eat to live, no one needs tobacco to live!
Plus government wouldn't benefit very much, because extremely high taxes on tobacco would mean the end of the usage of tobacco!
People need food. But they can live and would live better without McDonalds. I agree with your point that cigarettes aren’t needed. But I consider it hypocritical to collect taxes on them even for your idea to tax them out of existence. It will never happen anyway. The tobacco industry will lobby heavy against it and it will turn into a rights issue. Remember, I don’t smoke.
Everyone commenting here seems to have missed my point, which I thought I had made clear in my original post, but I will reiterate: I don’t give a flying fuck about the health risks. It’s the POLLUTION. And I’m not talking about discarded butts; I’m talking about the toxic, acrid, noxious, nausea inducing fumes that nicotine addicts spread and force non-smokers to languish amid and endure. This is not a matter of government being a nanny to adults who take assumed risks; it is about protecting the public from the reckless abandon of others. A coprophagiac is free to wallow in and consume as much fecal matter and excrement as he pleases, but he does not have a right to go around flinging it at others. Do you not see the difference there?
If cigarettes were up for approval from the FDA today, they would never be approved. But the horse is already out of the barn. Nicotine is more addictive than heroin and is very difficult to stop smoking. My mother died from lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking. I always hoped the United States would outlaw them, but they provide extraordinary revenue to all taxing bodies. What if you can be grandfathered in if you currently smoke and you can continue to do so until they kill you. Non-smokers would be prohibited from ever smoking (I need to work out the details of how that would work). I do not want another family to have to see their love ones suffer and die from lung cancer.
I know it sounds like a good idea, but it just wouldn't work, because there would always be children who would see the remaining smokers using them & want to try it.
No, taxing them into total irrelevance is the easiest way to go. If the Chinese & others want to keep killing themselves with them, let them!
My grandmother was carrying a basket of laundry upstairs when she lost her balance and fell. When they checked to see what had caused her to fall, they found she had lung cancer that had metastasized to her brain. It killed her less than a month later.
Tobacco is a plague on the world.
altho i'm not a big fan of taxes -most amt to govt confiscation of the fruits of personal effort, to be ill-spent - i think you're on to something with taxation as a solution to smoking.
i do disagree on infringing on the Indians' right to sell smokes on the reservation at whatever price they want to sell. it's a sovereignty issue. we euro-americans have been stomping on Indian rights ever since we/they first landed on the shores of what is now the US. i'm willing to accept flaws in this smoking tax regime to respect sovereignty of Indian nations.
and i'm not so sure about trying to shut down vaping too, at least right away - it appears vaping is less dangerous than smoking. here's from perplexity.ai: 'Smoking is clearly more harmful than vaping, though vaping is not without serious health risks. Multiple reputable health authorities—such as Johns Hopkins Medicine, the CDC, and the NHS—state that while vaping exposes users to fewer toxic chemicals than smoking, it still delivers harmful substances and health risks, especially for youth and non-smokers.'
i'm not defending vaping - i'm supporting prioritizing.
When I was a kid my parents both smoked and bought cigarettes by the carton. Taxes have increased exponentially since then. Mom quit smoking (for health, not tax reasons) but my 89-year-old father continues to smoke to this day (with freakishly healthy lungs - doctor hates that). He buys by the pack now due to the cost, but still smoking. Addiction is real for sure and the taxes haven't fixed that. I absolutely support taxing smoking to death but don't know if it will change anything for the addicted. I can only hope that high cost keeps new smokers from starting.
Only billionaires could afford to smoke if cigarettes were taxed at $20 a cigarette. Even at $1 a cigarette, at least 95% of smokers would quit or severely cut back on it.
Your comment gave me flashbacks to sitting in the car with all the windows rolled up as my parents puffed away in the front seat. I'm getting queasy just from the memory of it...
<shudder> I have those nasty memories too. From the time I was toddler I complained about the smoke. Asthma, frequent ear infections, etc were my childhood. When I was about 11 my parents stopped smoking in the house and my life improved immensely. My dad still smokes in the garage and gets panicky about the door being open while he's out there because he understands that the house is a much more pleasant place without smoke in it - and will garner a better price when he's gone than if it was yellow and stinky.
One of my earliest childhood memories was from when I was about three, we were driving back home from the Illinois Railway Museum and my dad threw a cigarette out the driver’s side window and it re-entered through the back window and set a towel on fire. Fortunately nothing tragic ensued, so we all kind of remembered this event with a kind of hearty bemusement.
To your earlier point, I wonder how many wildfires have been caused by someone tossing a lit cigarette from their car window, all because they couldn’t be bothered to snuff it out in the ashtray that every car had back in the day…
I haven’t checked the numbers, but I’d bet that they’re responsible for a lot of wildfires, which is another reason they should be outlawed.
I think I'm on the side of "let voters decide" when it comes to convicted felons being eligible for office. Age and residency restrictions are objective and fair, but making felons ineligible opens up the possibility of a corrupt regime getting a formidable opponent convicted on some trumped up charges or under a questionable law to make them ineligible. And ultimately, the people deserve the leaders they choose, if they want one with 34 felony convictions and other indictments, they/we should learn a hard lesson in consequences.
It's highly unlikely they would fake up criminal charges against an opponent, as they then are going to take a chance on a jury verdict.
We've seen many juries find people not guilty on fraudulent charges. The most recent was in New York City, where that crackpot Manhattan DA charged a man working at a CVS with killing a shoplifter, who attacked the employee. He was found Not Guilty last week by a jury that spent a whole 20 minutes deliberating.
There was another one in Manhattan with a small store owner charged with killing an armed robber & he was rapidly found Not Guilty by a jury.
Even federal prosecutors, who are responsible for the saying "they could indict a ham sandwich", have discovered juries that found politicians here not guilty.
So I want a flat out Constitutional Amendment ban on anyone convicted of a felony from any elective, appointive or civil service job, even if later pardoned.
Maybe a compromise, such as requiring 20 (or more) years since the conviction, plus specifying which felonies lead to a lifetime ban.
Nope, a forever ban for any felony! They can't be trusted, period!
In the current system, yes, it's not easy to do that, but if we're thinking long term, foundational principles of a country, one hallmark of a totalitarian regime is jailing political opponents. It's not too big of a stretch to imagine some patriotism law under which speaking out against the president is a felony. Then you could find a district with a loyal population and a loyal judge. Charge your opponent under that law in that district and voila - your opponent is no longer eligible to run. Just look at Trump's recent wins in courts, it's not that farfetched.
No such law could be passed with the 1st Amendment in effect. Even this current rotten to the core SCOTUS would never allow such a law!
I wish I could share your optimism, but once upon a time it was inconceivable to think the president could be immune to prosecution. They conjured up an exception out of thin air. I can totally see the SCOTUS saying that criticizing the president impedes his ability to protect the country and is therefore treason and not subject to 1'st Amendment protection. They've issued much more insane rulings of late.
Utterly absurd! Treason is actively helping an enemy during a war according to the Constitution.
If only that ban were in place in 2024!!! - The whole world would be a happier, more peaceful and kind place.
I’m not arguing with you. But it’s a depressing thought, though unfortunately true. I haven’t checked a fantasy. Opposing candidates praise each other for being good honorable people, they are simply at odds on politics and how to get things done. But I doubt I will see it in my lifetime and definitely not under the current federal dictatorship.
While Colbert is very clever and charming, I find the attacks on the president and his supporters ultimately depressing because it reminds me how bad things have gotten. Unfortunately Colbert is preaching to the choir. Also, us older folks tend to go to bed early. If Colbert was on late morning, I would be much more likely to tune in.
I thought Colbert was great on his “Colbert Report” program on Comedy Central in which he parodied blowhard right wing radio and cable news hosts. That’s why I’ve always considered his “Late Show” incarnation to be an inferior step down; in essence, he dropped the irony of “Colbert Report” (which was his genius), and became, instead, a straight political pontificator and gasbag. All in all, a disheartening diminution.
You know, I haven’t checked another thought I have yet to see anyone comment on. What will CBS show in that time slot, old reruns of CSI? I know that streaming and DVRs have changed the viewing habits of many. I have two sisters that rarely watch anything other than the news that they haven’t first recorded. Many young people don’t even bother with the old networks. But I don’t think they are quite yet dead.
They'll show old MyPillow infomercials (I'm only half-joking)
JB : “I 100% oppose gerrymandering. Legislative districts should adhere to both the Federal and Illinois Voting Rights Acts, and I support redistricting reform that advances fairness and removes politics from the process.” He also endorsed the creation of an independent commission to oversee map-drawing, arguing that politicians should not control district boundaries for partisan gain.
Actually, candidate Pritzker said he favored an independent bipartisan commission to draw Congressional districts. But Governor Pritzker has somehow managed to forget all about it. Except when he hypocritically spoke out condemning plans for legislative germandering in Texas.
You mentioned eating popcorn with a spoon. Reminds me of my mom telling me about the first time she had pizza. She was at an Italian friend’s house in the ‘40s and asked for a fork and knife. They all had a good laugh.
Apparently in Italy it is the norm for personal pizza to be served uncut and then eaten with a knife and fork!
That also reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where George starts eating candy bars with a knife and fork. He then ridicules for people using their hands ("How do you eat it? With your *hand*? ha!") Then the trend picks up, with people using a spoon to eat m&ms out of a bowl and then Elaine sees this in public and yells "Has the whole world gone mad!!?? What is WRONG with you people!!!??"
yes-been our experience -but loved the stuff there-an always individual never shared.
For gerrymandering, I don’t begrudge states having representation that doesn’t match the population if the districts look like regular shapes like squares. Not to pick on Illinois too much, but a few years ago I checked the congressional map for my Naperville congressman and found that it went (narrowly) to the Wisconsin border. That has practical ramifications. I had wanted to visit the office, but it was miles and miles away from me.
I don’t think there are any states that have representation that doesn’t match the population where the districts look like regular shapes like squares.
sad but true. i think the only requirement is that the USHoR districts be 'compact & contguous', right?
contiguous has meaning in this contect; 'compact' does not.
In a redistricting a couple of decades ago, the district line literally wove back and forth across our very short street to put all of us Democrats in one district and all the Republican voters in another. - The notions of contiguity and previously established boundaries (such as county lines or city boundaries) were completely thrown out of the car window to be run over by a semi.
I know that Stephen Colbert’s fans feel stung, and understand the allure of ascribing his cancellation to sinister forces, but last week’s “South Park” season premiere should lay to rest the suspicion that Colbert’s axing was a political move, rather than strictly business.
The South park episode came after Paramount paid them $1.5 billion. I flat out guarantee you, Paramount execs had heart attacks when they saw it.
Colbert was not losing $40 million a year for them, at worst, he broke even. It was 100% political & part of the deal to have the FCC approve the takeover deal between Redstone's Paramount & Ellison's Skydance.
It was Shari Redstone kissing Trump's ass to make David Ellison happy, plain and simple.
That episode was over the top. I think the main theme was Matt and Trey thumbing their noses at Paramount. The Trump stuff was a means to that end. Basically daring them to cancel them for political reasons.
After they has a $1.5 billion deal. Also they are on cable and not subject to the FCC.
But they are still shown on Paramount who want something from the FCC. We don't know the details of the contract and whether they could still get the full amount if dropped.
I may be wrong but I think the Paramount deal with Eric Trump's doppelganger is done (shortly after after the firing of Colbert). Anyway the contract with the South Park is in large part for their 20 year back catalogue, which can be shown ad infinitum on streaming services, unlike the topical Colbert monologues (e.g.)
Yeah, because no one in their right mind would want to rewatch Colbert’s monologues.
What does the FCC have to do with it? I thought the “Colbert as martyr” theory held that, Trump couldn’t take Colbert’s criticism of him, Paramount wanted to kowtow to Trump, and Paramount wasn’t going to tolerate any criticism from one of its employees, so they axed him. Money had nothing to do with it, and it was all just a cave to brazen corruption and authoritarianism. So do you think that Trump and Paramount were pleased by the South Park treatment?
Timing is EVERYTHING!!! South Park had JUST signed a great big contract with Paramount before the show aired. I suspect some folks in the corner offices of Paramount are snarling into their catered lunches.
Rarely does a week go by when I draw a blank at one or more of the visual jokes. This week, its the urinals and the dog butler. Shouldn't there be a way for us humor-challenged readers to "get the joke?"
As near as I can tell, there apparently is a restroom in Denmark in which images of hot women are positioned over the urinals to make it appear that they are tantalized by the penises that they are leering over. But what guy wants a hot chick to watch him taking a leak? I know I wouldn’t.
Or are they judging said penises?
If they’re judging them, it would appear, by my sights, that their adjudications are yielding an emphatic “yea”. They certainly don’t seem to be repulsed (well, maybe the one on the right).
There is another problem with this concept that I thought of, if I could get a bit clinical. As any male knows, the ability to urinate comfortably kind of requires penile flaccidity, and the function can be very difficult to do when in an aroused state. Although it wouldn’t be an issue for me now, I could imagine a younger, much more virile version of myself (say, the 20 year old me) approaching those urinals and achieving such an instantaneous and complete “standing Hampton” (in the parlance of Sammy Hagar) that I would be unable to to complete the business that I was in the restroom to tend to in the first place. Not very well thought out.
some could be laughing at what they're seeing.
much more likely judging than tantalizing, i believe.
The dog butler is referencing Alfred, Batman's loyal personal assistant who was always very proper and professional, but in this case he is a dog who probably destroyed one of Batman's slippers in the process of delivering them (since dogs love chewing shoes).
What am I missing in the “Somewhere in Denmark” picture?
Guys taking a leak?
Whenever anyone talks about Prohibition I always think of The Thin Man. The book was written during Prohibition but the movie came out in 1934. Not much smoking, but man, they could suck down the cocktails. ( and look good doing it)
Watch almost any other movie made from the 30s to the 90s & everyone is smoking.
And I mean every single adult in the movies, unless it was a screwball comedy.
Big Tobacco paid them to smoke & continues to do so, even though they signed an agreement not to pay anyone to smoke in movies or TV, but you still see them lighting up in movies!
I was trying to remember scenes of smoking in The Thin Man and all I could remember were the cocktails. But it is weird to watch how much smoking there was back then. No one gets murdered with marble ash trays these days!
I just saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon where he rolled a cigarette & put it into his mouth, but never did actually smoke it.
I believe I read once that a tobacco company offered Gene Roddenberry a hefty sum if he agreed to have the crew of the Starship Enterprise smoke on the original Star Trek series. He was tempted by the money, but ultimately wisely decided that such an unhealthy habit would undermine the show's credibility and be out of place in the idealized Twenty-third Century he was creating. Thank goodness! That anachronism alone might have prevented Star Trek's unforeseen, extraordinary 59-year longevity.
I was unaware of this, but yeah, that decision by Gene was a stroke of business genius. It also reminds me of how bizarre it is to see spaceship crew members in the 1979 movie “Alien” liberally puffing away.
I think it largely waned in the '90s. What you saw in the '80s, though, was the odd insertion of a character smoking, but just once. Chevy Chase smokes just once in Fletch -- out of the blue, he has a cigarette while investigating the house in Utah. I just saw an old Gene Hackman movie, Target, where he smokes on the plane. I think it was the only time he smoked in the movie. In War Games, Dabney Coleman lights up once in the infirmary where they're holding Matthew Broderick. I had a hunch that it was part of a product placement strategy that suggested smoking was something one could do in moderation and indoors, and it's fine and normal. Hazy smoke-filled rooms, overflowing ashtrays, and characters smoking constantly -- none of that would be a good sell.
Yes, I’ve noticed in many movies where a lead or major character is briefly seen smoking just one time. I never understood it. In the 1977 “Suspiria”, Suzy Banyon is seen taking a few drags after being attacked by the bat, pretty late in the film. Also in ‘77 in “Smokey and the Bandit”, Burt Reynolds is glimpsed smoking in a shot so quick you might miss it (and I think I did the first two dozen or so times that I saw the movie). Most of the characters in “Reservoir Dogs” smoke all throughout the movie, but Joe Cabot doesn’t….except in one brief shot.
Oh boy, that was a different time, when a drinking problem was lack of stamina. I love that first scene at the "gin mill." Nora: "Nick, how many drinks have you had?" Nick: "This will make six martinis." Nora: "Leo, bring me five more martinis. Line them right up here."
I recently watched The Long Goodbye, starring Elliott Gould. I had read the book by Raymond Chandler, my favorite mystery writer, but had never seen the movie. In the movie, Philip Marlowe is depicted as a chain smoker. That aspect of the movie made it difficult to watch.
That's a really interesting movie, an unusual take on the material, but I dig it. Updated to the '70s but with Gould's Marlowe clinging awkwardly to manifestations of Chandler's world -- the suits (on the beach, even), the '40s Lincoln, the cigarettes -- Altman uses anachronism (and, let's say, unconventional casting) to amplify the original's sense of Marlowe as a man out of place and out of time, a medieval knight thrust into a world of modern depravity. The big difference is that Chandler's Marlowe was slick -- a snappy dresser, facile, with the sang froid and sprezzatura we expect from the lone wolf, world weary cynic-with-a-heart genre p.i. Chandler more-or-less invented. Gould's Marlowe, by contrast, is smart but not slick, decidedly uncool, which emphasizes the disconnect between Marlowe's values and his times, now yet more cynical and decadent. He mumbles, bumbles, gets pushed around. His catchphrase is "It's okay with me." But it isn't really, as the shock ending that departs dramatically from the novel, reveals, to strong effect.
Benedict Cumberbatch wanted to be authentic in Powr of the Dog and smoked real cigarettes. He smoked so much he made himself sick.
I sent an email to that address to stop those magazines (while earlier calling for the same reason) and received a reply that said I had already been put on the no send list due to my prior call but would continue to receive the magazines at no cost. The reply came two days later, so it works! Thanks for the heads up.
The Tribune 'too liberal'. I am still laughing.
Soon they'll be targeting those pinko commies in the John Birch Society...
I wonder what "personal liberties and free markets" could mean! Clearly hit has nothing to do with this slide to the right...
First of all. EZ, enjoy your vacation. You have earned it though you will leave a large hole in my week. Second, a hearty congratulations on your tirade toward Alden Capital. Sometimes polite just doesn’t cut it. I haven’t checked it out, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if they were a major contributor to the orange stain’s wants or if he had a stake. Even if the above isn’t true, what is more important than informing the public? I have a feeling this is more than merely about the bottom line, which is bad enough.
Eric - I acknowledge and recognize that gerrymandering of legislative districts is a disservice to our society, but it very sadly is one of the ways the political games are played today, and it would therefore be political suicide for either side to unilaterally disarm with regard to gerrymandering. And it is for that reason have a very rational argument against the Illinois Supreme Court doing the right thing and addressing gerrymandering in Illinois.
But... I believe you are missing the central thrust of the Tribune editorial on this subject. They were calling out the rank hypocrisy of Pritzker speaking out against gerrymandering in a red state when he presides over textbook gerrymandering in the state over which he is the executive, and as Governor has totally forgotten about his statements as candidate supporting an independent bipartisan commission to determine legislative boundaries. That is pure textbook hypocrisy.
(I must also take issue with your premise that the Tribune editorial is somewhat right of center, although it is completely understandable that your perspective is tilted when you live in a bright blue state where everything left of center appears to be the norm. When I first moved to Illinois in 2006 I was aghast to find out that I automatically became a criminal for possessing handguns which were patently unconstitutionally prohibited in Evanston and Chicago, and also that people here thought that places that allowed constitutional conceal and carry were the Wild West when in fact Illinois was the outlier even among bright blue New York and California as the sole state in the entire US to constitutionally prohibit lawful conceal and carry. I know - likely the great majority of my fellow PS readers were very happy that Illinois stood alone so far to the left on this, but I'm simply using it as an example how Illinois in general, and Chicagoland in particular are far outside the mainstream of our society, and that's why things on the left appear to be in the middle to people here.)
And with that I wish you a very relaxing and well deserved vacay!
But, David, it wasn't "patently unconstitutional" in 2006 when you moved here. The Heller decision - in which for the first time SCOTUS determined that *individual* ownership of firearms could not be prohibited - was not decided until 2008. (And the only way Scalia could justify such ruling in Heller was to conveniently ignore the first clause of the 2nd Amendment - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . . "). So gun ownership was NOT "patently unconstitutional" in Chicago and Evanston when you moved here. No such individual right to gun ownership was determined *until* that 2008 (and very poor) decision.
Hi Jay - Thank you for your comment, but I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on this. The Miller decision way back in 1939 specifically ruled that the right to own and bear a firearm was not limited to membership in a militia.
I don't believe the Heller decision created any new right, but simply explicitly recognized our right to carry firearms that has always existed under the Second Amendment. But, it does as your comment reflects, make for a good constitutional debate.
But it was shocking for me to learn that I was in criminal violation of the law in Evanston simply for owning my handguns, and that my new hometown was a bit to the left of Berkeley!
Heller was never about the right to carry a gun, it was about the right to have one in your own home to protect yourself.
Hey Garry - You are absolutely correct on that. But the Heller and subsequent closely related Moore decisions were the basis for the subsequent McDonald decision that required Illinois as the sole outlier in the US to finally have conceal carry law. Even so, Illinois conceal carry creates a complex and expensive ($350) process to obtain a license.
"Even so, Illinois conceal carry creates a complex and expensive ($350) process to obtain a license."
To which I say, good. It's also not technically illegal to own automatic weapons, but onerous and expensive enough to deter all but the most committed to go through with it. And in the 91 years since those regulations went into effect, the incidence of death, injury, and crime involving machine guns has become nearly non-existent.
To those who argue the only effective way to combat gun violence is with more armed people, I would say the regulation of automatic weapons has proven that isn't the only option.
Good morning John - I fully acknowledge that most of the people on the PS would be very happy with a firearm ban, something to which I am diametrically opposed. It is exceedingly rare that there is violent Firearms crime committed by people who lawfully own firearms. But, when punks on the street are routinely caught in illegal possession and carry of firearms, there are rarely any real consequences. Witness the shootout between two groups of people, one on the street and one inside a house a couple years ago where then Cook County attorney Foxx declined any prosecution because she deemed them to be "mutual combatants". Enforcement of our current laws would make a huge dent in violent firearms crime, but people on the left oppose this as racist because blacks would be disproportionately incarcerated because they distortionately commit violent crime.
My challenge on firearms to my friends on the left Is to join me in supporting strong penalties for straw gun purchasing - 5 years mandatory minimum first offense with it doubling for every successive offense. And similar mandatory minimum incarceration for use of a firearm in a crime, and even a mandatory minimum incarceration for Illegal possession and carry. Remove the criminals from the streets who illegally use and carry firearms, and word will also spread very quickly that there are real consequences for people illegally carrying guns.
The point here is everyone arguing apples and oranges. A lot of people are arguing against points that no one is making. It seems like the argument is about banning guns of all types for anyone other than law enforcement or the military. But in most cases it's just not true. Most people, even in your bright blue Illinois, are not arguing for a total ban. Gun nuts want no regulations or restrictions of any kind. I own a handgun myself. But I see no particular reason for people to carry around anything they like all the time. Like it or not, there are those that should not be allowed to have them or carry them. Do you, like myself, probably live in a place where people for the most part get along with each other and don't point guns or anything else at each other? Guess what- there are places called big cities where they do. Laws don't discriminate between those places and ours. So if you and I can carry whatever they want, so can they. Don't even start with the argument that under regulations, only criminals can have them. The argument sickens me and has nothing to do with reality. Criminals break all kinds of laws. That's why they are called criminals. Should we get rid of murder and drunk driving laws because people are doing it anyway? My point is this. There is a middle ground between total banning and no regulations whatsoever. If people are going to argue about this, at least they should argue the same thing.
Hi Laurence - Thanks for your reply. You make some valid points- I may differ with you on some of them, but I do agree there is a middle ground we should be seeking. And yes, not everyone should be able to own firearms. People with mental health issues and people with violent crime convictions are at the top of that list. But I believe a key that is presently missing is better enforcement of our existing laws and greater consequences for the many people who now illegally possess and use firearms. Word on the street travels very quickly, and serious consequences do indeed change behavior.
Thank you for your confirmation. You also make some good points. But it’s an oversimplification of the problem. When a lot of people think about guns, they think of shootouts in the old west, a story that is mostly Hollywood fiction. Or it’s all about street gangs and the fight for turf and selling drugs. Did you read the story yesterday about the man that killed his daughter-in-law because she wanted to divorce his son? We not only need to deal with sensible regulation, we need to deal with why people shoot each other. I still remember the story from Park Forest about the homeowner that shot the guy whose dog peed on his carefully manicured lawn. Like it or not, laws and enforcement need to deal with reality.
Very reasoned comments my friend.
David - I'm going to respectfully disagree right back at 'cha.
Miller's core holding held that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear a sawed-off shotgun, because such a weapon had no “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.” The Court explicitly tied the Second Amendment right to arms that would be useful in the context of a militia; and the implication was that this left open the possibility that private gun ownership could be restricted if the weapon lacked military or militia utility, and suggested the right was collective, not individual.
Heller, on the other hand, held, for the first time, that the Second Amendment protects an *individual's* right to possess firearms unconnected with service in a militia, particularly for self-defense in the home. This broke from Miller, as Scalia's opinion reinterpreted the Second Amendment as protecting individual rights, and disavowed the collective-right/militia-based reading that underpinned Miller. It rejected the idea that the right could be limited only to militia use.
Heller departed significantly from Miller. While Miller could be interpreted to allow extensive federal regulation - even prohibition - of certain arms not tied to militia activity, Heller established that individual self-defense — not militia service — is the core protected purpose of the Second Amendment. The question had been open up until the Heller decision in 2008.
John, you are correct and I was mistaken. I went back and read he Miller summary, and found that the ruling was just as you said. In my defense, I believe that the right to private firearms ownership was already being respected in our country....except for Illinois until the Heller decision.
It's not hypocritical at all. Both sides engage in political gerrymandering to the maximum extent permitted by law. *However*, the norm was that you only did it every ten years, after the census. Everyone held to that norm. Now, Texas proposes to violate that norm by redistricting again in the middle of that ten years to attempt to squeeze out more Republican seats in advance of the mid-terms. It's the sort of move that we saw in relation to the filibuster -- one side gets rid of it for x, the other side gets it rid of it for y, etc., until both sides tacitly agree not to push it further. This is the same "going nuclear" sort of dynamic. If one side changes the rules for itself, the other side would be foolish, politically moronic suckers of epic proportions, not to do likewise. As soon as I heard about what Texas was proposing to do, I thought, well, blue states should get ready to do likewise and call their moves in each case the "Texas Redistricting Act."
As for principle, I don't like political gerrymandering, and if there is one side that dislikes it more, it's the Democrats. I would heartily endorse a truce that forbid it. In the meantime, you play by the rules you have and foregoing an advantage taken by the other side on principle is merely stupid. It's entirely consistent to say, "In my view, the rule should be x, and I extend an open invitation to the other side to make it x, but so long as it's y, we're going to play by y, just as hard as they do." The Tribune editorial didn't seem to get this, which is what made it absolutely infuriating.
ah, yes, the [Democratic] Peoples Reublic of Evanston - my home for 30 yrs from the mid-'80s.
interestingly, evanston's electoral politics were center-right when i moved there [its politics having nothing to do with my new choice of residence.]. the swing to far left occurred over the ensuing ~20 years - which would have been when david moved in.
i'm not sure all what forces caused this to happen. doubtless the leftiness of The Academy [i.e., N'western U] had a significant impact. some of the forces were positive - evanston became a welcoming community for GSMs [gender & sexual minorities] and mixed-race couples.
i'd be curious to see a scholarly analysis of how and why this transition happened over those 20 yrs.
It is undeniably a very beautiful place - we lived across the street from Lighthouse Beach. To this day my wife still misses walking to the shops on Central Street and to the movie theater downtown. But the taxes, increasing crime and overall craziness compelled my wife and I upon retirement to escape to our current Nirvana of immensely lower taxes but yet with a much higher level of services and much lower crime.
it's quite sad that the leadership - both the city and the K-12 school district - have led the city down into a far-left morass. i loved Evanston, loved living there. my kids, who all went to D65 schools and ETHS - are fiercely proud of Evanston and their upbringing there.
and altho i would grant to anyone who claimed that many of Evanston's great qualities of life remain - we still visit regularly with old Ev friends, despite our move out of state - the net cost benefit has gone way negative.
David -
Would you care to disclose in which state you live? I'm guessing TX or CO.
I believe David has indicated that he lives in Minnesota.