Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La-la, how the life goes on
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La-la, how the life goes on
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The blech was a nice touch.
D.C. Metropolitan Police told TPM that a fire at a homeless encampment had been extinguished with no injuries reported.
Steve Bannon fell asleep while smoking â again?!
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Reminds me of a time in high school, in my bedroom, cranking this song on headphones. Didnât realize how loudly / badly I had been singing along with the Beatles until I saw my dad in the doorway, doubled over laughing.
MemoriesâŚ
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So far, Trump hasnât made any public utterances since his video calling for calm (but which also failed to address the insurrection, impeachment or Bidenâs legitimate win). It would appear that Kushner and Cipollone have done an effective job of convincing Trump that any public utterances that spread disinformation or fail to acknowledge Bidenâs win (and his own lies) will be fuel for right wing extremists which could result in more violence. That would boomerang against Trump and result in his conviction in the Senate and more trouble in the courts post-term.
He appears focused on pardons. There is a pay to play scheme afoot as reported by the NYT so I suspect most of the pardons will be given to corrupt folks who paid their way. There should be a separate investigation as to the legality of such actions (seems like bribery to me). However, Iâm not yet getting the sense that self-pardons or pardons of the family or the rioters are on the list. I think Cipollone (and before him, Barr) have told Trump repeatedly that a self-pardon will be challenged and may not be enforceable. Trump knows that means conservative judges wonât uphold it. Trump hasnât yet sought a resignation for pardon deal from Pence. Either Pence is unwilling to do so, or Trump feels that resignation and acceptance of pardon would be a sign of weakness and acknowledgement of guilt which will undercut his power base in the GOP. He could give people like Steve Bannon a pardon. Not sure if Rudy gets one. Not sure about the family either. Their actions are too closely intertwined with what Trump may be investigated for post-teem.
The worst set of pardons he could grant, imho, would be pardons of the rioters. I believe that if he does he will be convicted in the Senate. However, the cost to the country of such pardons would be higher than even a self-pardon, which is why I worry about that possibility. Trump has been adamant about burning everything to the ground if he doesnât get his way, and excusing white nationalists from seditious acts would be the ultimate last act of a Manchurian POTUS that would have long lasting effects on the nation. So while Iâm cautiously optimistic that the remaining pardons will be merely corrupt and not necessarily treasonous, I canât say it with confidence. In addition to possible violence, Iâm looking at whether he pardons any of the MAGA mob.
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Word is it is possibly a homeless encampment that suffered the fire.
Oh, and Stephen Miller called in sick todayâŚ
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First sentence, fuel for right-wing violence is exactly what T rumpp wants, and to that end, i personally donât think Kushner or Cipollone are capable of that much cause/effect forethought.
Second sentence, i also donât think the trial in the senate has even registered in the Dotardâs mind yet. He is incapable of thinking that deep. He lives only for immediate gratification, and he is aware that his time is running out. Anything after Wednesday is an afterthought.
Other than that, though, everything else you suggest, i think youâre spot on.
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Are Lindsey Grahamâs pants on fire again?
Yeah but that wasnât Lucasâ original vision. Everythingâs being retconnedâincluded much of the retcon!
Plus, I know Boba Fett, and Donaldâs no Boba Fett.
Good idea to snuff out the chance of a second bumâs rush.
You know how it is, life is what happens when youâre making other plans.
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Officials Say Capitol Evacuation, Lockdown Due To Fire Blocks Away
Oh, ok. I was seriously wondering what a fire block was, maybe some sort of anchor (âanchors awayâ)? Guess âLockdown Due To Nearby Fireâ would have been too hard to typeâŚ
Saw this today, wonder if true?
Havenât looked it up, anybody ever hear about this?
ETA: Looks like it was a matter of the prisoners hadnât physically received the pardons yet, when Grant got into office, but later granted the same oneâs pardons:
Ulysses S. Grantâs first clemency decision, on his third day in office, was to revoke two pardons granted by Andrew Johnson. Both men challenged Grantâs power to do so, and lost their case in federal court. A central passage in a judicial opinion read:
âIf the president can arrest the mission of the messenger went the messenger has departed but ten feet from the door of the presidential mansion, he can arrest such mission at any time before the messenger delivers the pardon to the warden of the prison.â
The fact that âthe presidentâ - in this case - meant two different presidents (Johnson and Grant), and the fact that - in this case - the warden had actually received the pardons but simply stuck them in his desk for a while, did not matter. The pardons had not actually been placed in the hands of Moses and Jacob DePuy, so the two men stayed in prison and were pardoned (by Grant) laterâŚ
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Donât worry. These right-wing nut jobs are cowards. I donât think weâll see anything. Certainly not for the inauguration - thereâs too much firepower there for the cowards to face.
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Hard to say. Boba Fett surviving the sarlacc pit was written into several books that were released when Lucas still owned the franchise. And he was on set for much of the shooting of The Mandalorian (and is apparently taking a much bigger creative role in Season 3, if reports are to be believed). And, finally, Lucasâ original vision of the franchise has changed rather dramatically since he started writing The Empire Strikes Back. The New Hope was largely based on The Hidden Fortress a film by Akira Kurosawa (Lucas himself as said as much on multiple occasions), and it didnât have 2 sequels, let alone 3 prequels. And from that perspective, there was no reference to Boba Fett at all in the New Hope, though, Lucas did âretconâ the character, with no lines, into one of the added scenes when he digitally remade the movie.
So even Lucas retconned his own stuff.
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Well, that was EU which was never officially canon, like Luke having a wife and Han and Leia having a son and daughter. And his being on set and supposedly having some say in The Mandalorian doesnât change his original vision nearly 40 years prior where Fett dies. Iâm not knocking bringing him back, mind you, as I think it played well in Season 2 and made sense, or retconning in general, just saying that itâs definitely a retcon many years after the fact.
The only retcons I mind are ones that are either easy, lazy and convenient and completely change and diminish previous storylines, such as bringing back Palpatine in the sequel trilogy, or ones that make no sense and create discontinuities, like Luke turning into a self-pitying hermit who watches the galaxy get swollen up by the First Order in TLJ while doing nothing about it until itâs almost too late. That was just lazy storytelling. Palpatine died, period.
The sequel trilogy should have been about rebuilding the Jedi and Republic so they could take on and defeat the First Order and several force users who had trained as Jedi under Luke but went to the dark side and were inspired by Sidious, who was DEAD, and not the lazy and silly mish-mash of the two previous trilogies where a single super force user with minimal training along with a ragtag force of fighters takes on a resurgent Sidious and his Empire 2.0, which were somehow able to survive and become even more powerful undetected and unopposed over 30 years.
What The Mandalorian is actually doing is retconning this retcon so it all makes sense again.
And btw, itâs A New Hope, not The New Hope. 
The sequel trilogy was a hot mess in just about every way, IMO. For me personally, they served no useful purpose. They largely just tried to regurgitate some concepts from the first trilogy with new trappings and in a much more superficial way.
Precisely. I mean, how did we get from the Republic has won, the Empire has been defeated and the Emperor destroyed, to yeah, okâŚnow we are right back where we started just with guys wearing red now. Maybe the reforming of the Republic fails, or some other power takes over the defeated Empire, butâŚthere is a crap ton of story telling right there! And itâs just skipped over. Did Luke set up an academy to train new Jedi (apparently he did) and fail? Well, thatâs a crap ton of story telling too, not a 5 minute flash back scene.
OTOH, The Mandalorian has been a raging success. Great story lines, lots of homage to past stories and characters. An easy to absorb continuity that doesnât stress the galactic level shifts, but hints and them and easily melds its storyline into them. (Jedi are coming back, in bits and pieces. The Empire is defeated, but far from gone. The Republic is trying to rebuild, but clearly has a LONG way to go)
And generally, speaking based on the last season of Clone Wars and the 2 seasons of the Mandalorian, and the announced future projects, I am relatively optimistic about the direction the Star Wars Universe is going.
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Yep, exactly. Disney made the mistake of hiring talented outsiders to not just produce and direct but write the sequels, as opposed to people whoâd already worked in Lucasfilm and cared about continuity and what made Star Wars âsenseââor at least required them to work closely with them and be subjected to story vetting by them.
Sounds kind of authoritarian and anti-creative, but thereâs an âethosâ or âfeelâ to SW that you have to respect and follow or else it gets weird and loses that whole SW quality. Same for all other franchises like Star Trek, Dr. Who or The Expanse (which if you havenât seen it and like Sci-Fi I highly recommend even though itâs totally different from SW).
Thankfully theyâve brought all future SW projects under the wing of the Lucasfilm Story Group and required that it make SW sense again, while still being fresh and surprising and fun. Thereâs something like 10 or 12 projects in development right now, films, live action and animated series, plus books, comics and video gamesâeven LEGO, which Iâve ignored so farâspanning all SW eras, including prior to the prequels. Mandoâs just the first outcome of this, but there are so many to come. Itâll be like the MCU (which I find boring, simplistic and repetitive), only with more depth and feel in story and character development.
The big question, of course, is what happens when it all starts pushing against the sequels. Will they retcon them out of canon, which thereâs been talk of (and which I think would be wrong and lazy)? Or will they somehow find a way to âframeâ them such that they make more sense and donât seem as dorky and forced? I mean, why were Ahsoka, Grogu, Mando and his friends, Ezra, Thrawn, Sabine, Hera, etc., totally absent from and not referenced in the sequels, only Luke, and a bitter, defeated and silly Luke at that? What the hell happened in-between to make this so?
Squaring that circle well would be a stroke of genius and at least partially salvage the sequels, and represents THE big challenge for Lucasfilm. I hope they donât take the easy way out by retconning the sequels out of the continuity. Theyâre a royal mess but theyâre canon and should be left as such and cleaned up properly. I have ideas about how to do that but Iâm not on the team so my ideas are irrelevant. My guess though is that theyâll do something broadly similar. Itâll require certain âtricksâ but ones that have already been foreshadowed and made canon in previous works.