Blergh

I'm sorry to hear that President Carter is no more! However, I'm thankful that he'll be spared being vulnerable to #45- and, among many other things I'm thankful for is that he used some of his very last energies as centenarian to have voted for Vice-President Harris in spite of having barely gotten through Mrs. Carter's funeral! RIP, President Carter and I pray you enjoy the reunion with Mrs. Carter!

I want to start out this post by stating that I want all of us in the Forum to stay civil and agree to disagree as long as possible and I hope that no one will loathe me for what I am about to post but I have this strong belief that I must post the following that has eaten at me for quite sometime. Let me preface this by stating that I am in FULL agreement that #45 and his MAGA followers are the primary ones who made what happened happen in the same was as the invading Ottoman Turks overruning the Byzantine Empire's capital city of Constantinople are the primary ones responsible for fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. However, just as whoever the individual was who left a single side gate open in the Constantinople city walls contributed to its fall so I believe it's necessary to mention what I believe are the Democratic Party's contributing factors in the mess we're currently in. I'm old enough to remember President Richard Nixon's Resignation in 1974. In spite of his appointed (but not Electorally or Popularly elected) Vice President Ford's sweeping pardon of Nixon immediately after becoming the new US President , I and so many of my family and peer groups believed that it would be impossible for the Republican Party to regain any power in the foreseeable future due to the Watergate Scandal having tainted the upper ranks so badly. If someone had suggested that President Nixon's wife Pat had run for ANY political office after this, I wouldn't have been surprised or upset had the Democratic Party laughed that suggestion out of the room. Now, some Republicans might have tried to counter via their beliefs that Nixon HAD done some good via visiting the People's Republic of China in 1972 and having the US troops getting pulled out of Vietnam but I'm quite sure others would have easily said that those credits wouldn't have been enough to have countered the massive debits and it would have been in everyone's better interests to do their best to put Watergate behind by not bestowing ANY member of the Nixon family any political power. Still, even though nothing WAS done to restore any political power to any member of the Nixon family, I have to admit that I didn't think it would be so easy for the Republican Party to resume Presidential power after President Ford's defeat by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976. Yet, along came Governor Ronald Reagan (and his wife Nancy) who did their best to play down any and all ties to the Nixons in their campaigns and I firmly believe that THAT was a contributing if not deciding factor in how Governor Ronald Reagan was voted in as the US President after President Carter in 1980- just six years after Nixon's Resignation. Alas, President William Jefferson Clinton had quite a few adultery accusations in his Presidency from the start. OK, IF he had just put that behind and not attempted to keep fooling around after getting caught and just concentrated on doing his duties, I would have been OK with that. But he kept digging himself (and ultimately the entire Democratic Party) deeper and deeper. Then after all the denials and all the 'define what 'is' is'etc. , he FINALLY admitted that he HAD had dubious ties with a Miss Lewinsky in 1998. I felt very humiliated and that my trust had been misused after having defended him on countless occasions and I would have LOVED it had Vice-President Gore and other Democratic Party high officials had ACKNOWLEDGED how President Clinton had duped and misused our trust just to keep from being criticized for his tawdry deals. I firmly believe that had Vice President Gore done that (and spelled out that he'd serve as Vice-President until January 20,2001 because that's what the US American voters had decided )but that his friendship with President Clinton was OVER, I firmly believe that Vice President Gore not only would have won the majority of Florida Electoral votes but also his home state of Tennessee Electoral votes (and therefore would unquestionably WON the 2000 Presidential Election against Governor George W. Bush). Yes, I DID vote for Vice-President Gore in spite of his refusal to acknowledge much less call out how President Clinton had humiliated their supporters and the entire US nation (instead of calling President Clinton 'the greatest President of the 20th Century' AFTER all this happened) but ONLY because I believed that he was the better choice over Governor Bush. However, I could understand why so many OTHER onetime Democrats felt unable to resist the temptation to dump Vice-President Gore after he refused to call out President Clinton. OK, after ALL this happened and the Yellow Dog Rural Democrats became an endangered species with rural Electoral Districts going red like a measles-plague, IMO, the SMART thing for the Democratic Party to have done would have been to have hit the ground running and sought out the voters in these rural districts and not flinched if they told them that they were DONE with the Clintons- regardless of how some folks in the Democratic party believed everyone should be eternally grateful to them despite their humiliating us. Alas, the Democratic Party TOTALLY ignored the lesson of how the Reagans gained the US Presidency a mere six years after Nixon's Resignation. Yep, before President Clinton had even finished his Presidency, when Mrs. Clinton decided that SHE wanted to become a Senator of the Great State of New York instead of telling her tell that to the Marines, the Democratic Party big wigs put their energies behind her campaign despite her having only moved there months earlier from Washington,D.C. and Arkansas. While my US Southern rural state got ignored and its Democratic representatives had little if any support by the national Democratic Party (which seemed to throw up its hands and write it off as doomed to be Republican from then on), I witnessed countless fundraising mailings for the two Senatorial campaigns of Mrs. Clinton for New York State. OK, everyone ready to boo and hiss at me for not believing that Mrs. Clinton was every bit as perfect and wonderful as the mailings claimed, fine. However, let's not overlook that from 2001 to 2009 guess what then-New York State resident became a registered Democrat for the only time in his adult life? That's right the one whose name I loathe having to read or type that begins with T and ends with P that I term #45! And guess who #45 invited to his wedding to Melania (whose invitation got accepted)? Yep, Former President and the-then Senator Clinton! I am aware that Mrs. Clinton has since claimed that she only accepted the invite because she and the Former President wanted to hob-nob with the hoity toities (in contrast to her claiming how she otherwise identified with the proletariat) . One may interpret said claim how one wants. However, it also is public record that #45 made some donations to the then-Senator Clinton during her time in the Senate before making a $100,000 [one hundred thousand Dollar] donation to the Clinton Foundation in 2009. I'm going to avoid speculating on cause and effect here (and whether there might have been any link to why serious accusations towards #45 during those years went unaddressed by the authorities). However, I'll put it this way: if it turns out that those who truly believe that the future #45 paid out these monies and extended that wedding invite to the Clintons with ONLY the expectation of Mrs. Clinton uttering the words 'thank you' and nothing more in return,it wouldn't surprise me if at least some of them might have also made hot cocoa for Santa and waited up for Santa to consume it. I'll also forgo going into detail about how both Former President Clinton and #45 seemed to have visited the late Mr. Epstein's island. If that's the case, I'm not so sure that the Clintons and #45's didn't rub shoulders besides at #45's 3rd wedding. OK, now we get to the nitty gritty! 2016! While so many think the former Secretary of State was needlessly dissed for not having the emails on the proper secured server, I find it hard to believe that someone with decades of governmental experience wouldn't have known that it was vital to SECURE emails from public servers and wouldn't have considered asking for help from government computer geeks employed for the purpose. However, I also think one issue that REALLY needs to be mentioned, despite decades of political experience and marriage, Mrs. Clinton chose the still-legal spouse of former Representative Anthony Weiner as her campaign manager instead of telling Ms. Abedin that she'd need to FINALIZE the divorce before she could consider hiring her then choosing the 2nd most qualified candidate for the campaign manager's position. Oh, and BTW, several of Mrs. Clinton's emails were found on Representative Weiner's server so either he hacked them [which I never heard her claim] OR she sent them to him despite him having been convicted of crimes. Then, as per wiki leaks, someone in her campaign suggested that the best strategy to get rid of the most extreme Republican candidates was to elevate them as the Pied Piper in media so Mrs. Clinton could then take them down Yep, thanks to someone in the campaign suggesting this and Mrs. Clinton and the other Democratic big wigs refusing to denounce this as a potential strategy, #45 appears to have been had more of a spotlight shone on him with the Democratic party's blessing! Did no one read the OUTCOME of the what happened with the Pied Piper of Hamelin? Instead of going away because he didn't get paid, he instead lured the city's children to an unknown fate! Yep, IOW they seemed to have believed that somehow someone like #45 would have been shamed with the spotlight being shone on him instead of REVELLING in the spotlight and using it to his advantage! ARRGGH!! OK, I'll skip over how Mrs. Clinton seemed to have been steamrollered over other viable candidates who may have been willing to think outside the box (including Senator Sanders who, in spite of actually saying he didn't believe her not to be the 'lesser of two evils' at the Democratic convention, still got dissed by Mrs. Clinton for,it seems, not kowtowing to her fast enough). Yes, readers I literally held my nose and voted for Mrs. Clinton because I DO believe she's the lesser of two evils and she was willing to at least pay lip service to being fair to others regardless of ethnicities,etc. So WHY am I mentioning ALL the above? I HAPPILY voted for Vice-President Harris and REALLY wanted her to the next US President but believe she got cheated via (among other things) the Democratic party having wasted WAY too much time and energies having elevated the Clintons instead of telling them 'Thanks for the good stuff you did but you two are ALBATROSSES to us so stay away from political offices from now on and BYE!' after January 20,2001. BTW, I wholeheartedly agree that #45 is blatantly worse and deserves condemnation,etc. for his actions. However, just because Former President and Former Secretary of State Clinton's respective actions 'haven't been as bad/are not so bad' as #45's that doesn't mean that said actions were good! Of course, #45 MAGA and their supporters in the Republican party and their allies deserve the BULK of the condemnation. However, if we are to move forward, we need to know what we (the Democratic Party) did wrong so we can learn from it and AVOID EVER doing it again- just like that the city of Constantinople would have needed to have avoided leaving the small side gate open in the walls for the marauding Ottoman Army to have overrun the city and Empire!

Regardless of how Zefferilli pressed forth for her to show more flesh than she was comfortable with (which does deserve the condemnation,etc.), I hope Miss Hussey was able to take comfort that in her multifaceted portrayal of Juliet that she was able to get so many viewers of all ages empathize if not identify with this doomed teen couple's struggle and angst despite the costumes and late Elizabethan dialect Moreover, her performance opened people's eyes to WHY Shakespeare's plays and sonnets have been classic literature for centuries instead of just dismissing them as boring antiques! I hope her family was supportive of her in her twilight. RIP, Miss Hussey.

OK, I know it would have derailed the whole movie. However, re Christmas with the Kranks (2004): After spending the first half of the movie having to deal with a bunch of REALLY nosy neighbors who refused to MOTB re them opting not to have a splashy Christmas display due to now being empty nesters, Luther and Nora and FINALLY being on the verge re having these noseys accept if not like them opting to skip the crass outdoor displays, instead, they TOTALLY cave and eat MAJOR crow. ..all because their daughter decides at the very last minute to have a spur-of-the-moment visit with them and drops the hint that she had bragged to her fiance about how the Krank parents had ALWAYS had splashy Christmas yard displays. Yes, rather than just pipe up to her 'TOO BAD! Your bragging's on you!You'll just have to tell him that it's NOT HAP'NIN this year! We'll meet you at the Miami Airport and we'll have the meet-and-greet THERE and celebrate in the hotel lobby before we go on our CRUISE!' , instead they not only trashed their own cruise and blew last minute megabucks on junk but showed their daughter and ALL the noseys that they'll ALWAYS jump through their hoops instead of staying true to their individuality and just letting ALL the above stew in their own! BOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! P.S. I hope Enrique the fiance saw what a spoiled ,entitled and ungrateful person their daughter was and DUMPED her before marrying her since his life would be a nightmare constantly jumping through her hoops like her parents had done their whole lives!

One of the more touching reflections from The Waltons had to do with Grandpa recalling the wonder of getting his 1st Christmas orange as a child and from that, believing that he'd NEVER be poor again which had sustained him through many tough times thereafter! Peppermint sticks and shiny pennies were fine but they didn't reflect the awe of how special Christmas oranges were for so many folks for generations! Yeah, an LHTOP missed opportunity.

Aww, I always liked the haunting Vienna Boys' Choir version (with Greer Garson narrating) of 'Little Drummer Boy' but ranking up there has to be the Bob Seger version with him because one can imagine that the protagonist had had a tough life yet considered meeting the Baby Jesus as an orphan boy to have been a highlight AND had survived to adulthood! Anyway, I always liked that song and consider it a highlight of my Christmas celebrations [small voice. .maybe not]

Deep in a remote part of the steep Peruvian jungle, there's an extraordinary body of water called Shanay-timpishka ['boiled by the heat of the sun' in the local indigenous language]which eventually flows into the main headwater stream of the Amazon River. Anyway, it's better known by its nickname of 'The Boiling River' since the last four miles of its nine mile course, the water has temperatures up to 203 Fahrenheit or 95 Celcius which means that no fish can live there and it's deadly for anyone to fall in it! It's also hundreds of miles from the nearest magma deposit so scientists still aren't sure WHY this section of river is so scalding hot. Lastly, it was in such a remote spot that it was unknown to anyone besides the indigenous communities until as recently as the 2010's- yes even with all those visual and heat detecting space satellites orbiting the Earth! Alas, the surrounded forest is in danger of being clearcut for lumber so that can't be helpful to the riverbed's stability.

I took Mama to her fave restaurant for Christmas Dinner and was happy that they not only had her fave dishes but they all doted on her- treating her like a queen! Then, to top it off, on the way back to the house, I turned on my radio (which usually plays Classic pre-90's Rock) and what did that station play but my fave pop holiday tune of all time- The Ronnettes version of 'Sleigh Ride'(1963)- and thankfully Mama enjoyed it (which I can't always count on since her music salad days were in the 1940's) ! Yeah, nothing big or splashy but it's been nice that the two of us have gotten to spend today together and we each enjoyed our presents!

OK.

I'm somewhat surprised that no one on Walnut Grove seemed to get an orange on Christmas Day! Folks on both sides of the Pond from the mid-19th through mid-20th centuries would save up to pool their resources so their children would get ONE fresh orange in the toe of their Christmas Stockings- and for many of those children (outside places like Florida and California), that would be the ONLY fresh orange they'd get the entire year so they looked forward to them (and often their mothers would insist on them saving the peels so she could make orange marmalade from them). Just wondering.

And the laws stating that knowingly having sexual encounters with someone underage who cannot legally give consent due to not being considered an adult in the eyes of the law are also 'not hidden'- and it's entirely the responsibility of the technical adults to protect any minors discovered in their vicinity from anything criminal from happening until the minors can transported to a safe place!

FWIW, if Mr. Jackson HAS been paying support for his pre-school daughter in spite of his estranged wife Ms. Turner-Smith's claims, he and/or his legal team could easily produce receipts of payments to disprove those allegations regardless of whatever else may be alleged re why their union went asunder. I always say LISTEN to each side carefully (regardless of one's previous personal likes or dislikes re the parties in question) - then apply the Judge Judy rule of re which side makes sense and which side DOESN'T and if it doesn't make sense, then it's a lie!

But ML was alive during that 1993 one-shot narration while Charles Ingalls had been deceased for 91 years! However, at NO point in the series did anyone allude to Pa's eventual passing- even though Mrs. Wilder wrote all those books decades afterwards and wouldn't get her own reward until over a half-century after his demise.

^

In addition to ignoring the issues of the Panama Canal Treaties of 1977 which both our nations signed and agreed to abide by and the internationally recognized sovereignty of the nation of Panama over the area once known as the Canal Zone, I hope someone points to #45 (in front of a live video feed) that the Canal is not only showing its age but it can no longer pin having an endless water supply to keep safely floating the ships traversing it. Yes, back in 1914, there were constant monsoons that virtually shut down the construction of the Canal until someone got the idea of damming all that extra fresh water into something called Gatun Lake which could be used to ensure that the Canal would have an endless supply to maintain its locks. No one back then imagined that one day in the future, despite the Isthmus being between two oceans that the rains wouldn't be so abundant and that, in the last few years, the Canal has had to bar some of the larger and heavier vessels due to there being too little water to safely operate. But, of course, too many folks surrounding #45 would rather plug their ears and hum than to consider the existence of climate change despite what virtually anyone looking outside a window can see for themselves unless they'd opt to be willfully ignorant so they don't have to admit there's an issue that needs to be dealt with if not tended to.

Names can have some unexpected origins. Take for example of the time when the Phoenicians decided to explore and set up trading ports on the Mediterranean's western most extreme landmass now known as the Iberian peninsula. Anyway, at that time (c. 800 BC) the place was covered by a very thick and dense forest which was teeming with rabbits. So many rabbits that they termed the area 'land of rabbits'. ..which,as per most scholars would become the root for the name of the eventual nation of Spain!

Sorry about that. Well, FWIW, why didn't the Sultan set him up in a townhouse.N/M

Yeah, if any alleged adult at that shindig had had any decency, they'd have had that underage child sent home in a cab as soon as she was spotted (as would have been the case for that girl left in Mr. Polanski's company at Jack Nicholson's abode). Alas, nothing jaded and indifferent so-called adults appeared to have been at both places.

Actually, my fave character has always been. ..Alice- even as a kid! I suppose I liked the idea of having a quirky but heart-of-gold live-in referee housekeeper around. However, I always thought it was a bit unfair that Alice was never seen to eat meals en famille with the rest of the Bradys -except perhaps for a midmorning coffee with Carol or when they were all on vacation. Yes, it was a big boon to the family dynamics that they took her with them on vacations (and that would be the only waking hours when Alice wasn't seen in her uniform- except for the occasional bowling night dates with Sam the Butcher). . Although, I wonder if Alice might have preferred to have been left solo to tackle big cleaning projects without worrying about anyone interrupting or messing things up at Casa Brady. Oh well. .

Never saw that series but I have to admit that I'm impressed that they gave the character of the female djini's name as EDEN. Now, of course, as a given name it can be used for either gender. However, what's cool is that it seems they saluted the legendary star Barbara Eden (born 1931) of the classic TV sitcom I Dream of Jeanie (1965-1970) by bestowing her performing surname to that character. Oh well, N/M and thanks for straightening me out, @Spartan Girl .

7 days?! That's a tiny fraction of how long it would have taken for any hapless pedestrian to have been hospitalized had that thrown chair from 6 floors above injured them- to say nothing of said chair possibly KILLING a pedestrian had that landed on them and their loved ones' lives NEVER being the same! Does anyone truly believe that had this been a non-celeb who'd been convicted of throwing that chair that they'd have only gotten that pittance of a wrist-slap regardless of their sobriety or lack thereof? Oh, and I'm not also overlooking those fans who eagerly overlooked that crime (along with his vile racist slurs being caught on tape) to pay monies to pack his live-action concerts thereafter! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've said what I've said about my theory of Cousin Oliver's blood bond to Carol and everyone can decide for themselves whether or not my theory has credence. Moving on. . Did anyone else watching the Wedding Pilot believe (as kids) that Mike and Carol had been needlessly harsh to their kids and deserved to guilt trip themselves from enjoying their first (and last?) chance of privacy at their honeymoon hotel? Oddly enough, I recall siding against the Brady parents after the Tiger-Fluffy Chase Fiasco. However, does anyone else as an adult have since come to believe that Mike was right to chastise the boys for not having secured Tiger in their car during the wedding [e.g. having a leash tied to the inside door handle] if not have had them leave him home in the first placeand that Carol shouldn't have felt guilty for telling her daughters to 'stop that SCREAMING!' since it wasn't helping anything regardless of their feelings for their one-episode feline. ..and that the Brady parents SHOULD have done their best to enjoy their privacy in the honeymoon lodge? Of course, even if one's stance about whether or not the Brady parents had been right or wrong earlier hadn't changed, it's hard to imagine any viewer over twelve not wondering where all NINE humans as well as their canine and feline companions were supposed to sleep in that honeymoon suite with just the ONE bed! It was a bigger than usual bed but it couldn't have held all eleven lodgers so my guess is that some if not all the Brady kids (and Alice) wound up sleeping on the floor !

Let's not overlook the confusion that got sewn for those viewing ML's closing narration celebrating Mrs. Wilder's eventual publication of works that would still be popular in contemporary (early 1980's) times as evinced by the uncredited Landon daughter running in said library to pick this out. I'm sure the bulk of viewers knew that ML not only played Charles but also produced, direct and wrote the bulk of the series' episodes. Hence, no surprise he used all that behind-the-scenes clout to permit himself to do said narration. However, ML's narration didn't once say 'I'm Michael Landon' before the 'blah blah blah'. Hence, it's probable that at least some younger and/or naive viewers might have wondered if this meant that somehow Charles Ingalls himself was narrating Mrs. Wilder's and the Little House tomes eventual fates. .having somehow lived to the age of 153 yet still vocally sounding as though he was at least a century younger!

Hearkening back to President Lincoln. .. It's well known that he was born in a tiny log cabin in Kentucky in 1809 but by the time anyone actually tried to seek it out (after his assassination), they found a ramshackle ruined cabin in a spot in the vicinity where it was believed to have stood. .so an exhibitor wasted no time dismantling that particular cabin to exhibit in the latter part of the 19th century. Guess who else had been born in a log cabin in Kentucky? The Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 1808 in a spot about 100 miles from the US President's possible birthplace. Anyway, it soon came to pass that someone got the idea of displaying these two cabins side by side. Since these two cabins were on tour, they had to be taken apart then put back together quite a few times but, as anyone who has ever played with Lincoln logs knows, it's not so easy to keep track of WHICH logs go into which parts of a cabin,etc.- and no one had thought to actually MARK the individual logs before taking them apart the first time. Anyway from 1906 onward, the cabin that has been claimed as the purported birthplace of Abraham Lincoln has had a permanent home sheltered beneath a much larger building in the style of Greek temple. The irony is that it's a virtual certainty that at least SOME of its logs came from Jefferson Davis's birthplace log cabin!

Both Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) had rather . ..complicated bonds with their respective original families. President Lincoln had grown up destitute and had been somewhat neglected after his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln's death when he was about nine and felt his father Thomas (1778-1851) had considered him little more than a workhorse. However, he supposedly was instantly charmed by his stepmother Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln (1788-1669). Whatever the future President's feelings were, he did not heed the summons to his father's deathbed in 1851 and, for whatever reasons, never introduced his own sons to their paternal grandfather or stepgrandmother even when they lived in Springfield, Illinois about 90 miles away from the elder Lincolns' home in Coles County. As for Mary Todd Lincoln? She had been born into a very wealthy Lexington, Kentucky family and one of fourteen children sired by Robert Smith Todd (1791-1849)but also had lost her own mother Elizabeth Parker Todd (1794-1825) when she was only six. Alas, she did not get along with her stepmother Elizabeth Humphries Todd (1800-1874) who Robert married the next year and didn't always have the smoothest dealings with her many half-sibs by the 2nd Mrs. Todd. Three of Mrs. Todd's sons would join the Confederate Army and two of her daughters would marry Confederate generals while Mary was the First Lady of the United States which was at war with the Confederate States! Kentucky itself had become a Border State which meant that they technically stayed part of the Union but allowed slaveholders to legally keep their slaves- as long as they went to the nearest county courthouse and swore an Allegiance oath to the United States! Well, few of the Todd half-siblings bothered with that.Amazingly enough President Lincoln tried to keep peace with his in-laws -including his Confederate supporting stepmother- and sibs-in-law- to the degree of even inviting Mary's half-sister Emilie Todd Hardin (1836-1930) to the White House shortly after losing her husband who'd been a Confederate general. Of course, after President Lincoln was assassinated, Mary not only flatly refused to venture back to her home state of Kentucky but she refused to have anything more with her stepmother or those half-sibs who'd been Confederates- believing them to have contributed to the President's death via having supported the opposing government! There was a popular saying about the egos of the Kentucky Todds in the 19th century. 'God spelled His Name with one 'd' so that's why the Todds spelt their name with two d's!'