"Atomic Blonde"

Saw "Atomic Blonde": LOVED IT! Like a garish, amped-up version of Deutschland 83, with amazing fight choreography and serious style.

Caveat Emptor

Man sues Republican National Committee and others, accusing them of fraud and racketeering, for raising money by promising to repeal Obamacare, when they knew damn well they couldn't. He wants his donations back. Good luck with that:

A retired attorney in Virginia Beach is so incensed that Republicans couldn’t repeal the Affordable Care Act that he’s suing to get political donations back, accusing the GOP of fraud and racketeering.

Bob Heghmann, 70, filed a lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court, saying the national and Virginia Republican parties and some GOP leaders raised millions of dollars in campaign funds while knowing they weren’t going to be able to overturn the law also known as Obamacare.

The GOP “has been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters and contributors as well as some Independents and Democrats,” the suit said. Racketeering, perhaps better known for use in prosecuting organized crime, involves a pattern of illegal behavior by a specific group.

Shrkeli, Convict

Ultra-special Alt-Right snowflake is convicted. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

Businessman Martin Shkreli, once dubbed the “most hated man in America” for raising prices for critical drugs, was found guilty Friday of two counts of securities fraud and one of conspiracy in a federal court in Brooklyn.

The baby-faced and gutter-mouthed 34-year-old, often known as "Pharma Bro,” had been charged with eight counts of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit both securities and wire fraud. He was acquitted of five of the charges, including the most serious, which allowed Shkreli and his defense team to claim victory.

Prosecutors claimed that Shkreli ran what was effectively a Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors by exaggerating his own credentials – for example, claiming that he attended Columbia University. He used their money to capitalize a new drug company, Retrophin, which he then looted to pay them back, they alleged.

Shkreli was acquitted on the charges relating to Retrophin, but convicted of making fraudulent misrepresentations regarding two hedge funds he ran.

Power

For a lark, J. put his Tesla Model X into Ludicrous Mode for maximum possible acceleration (I heard 0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds, or about 0.86 g).

I felt the blood drain out of my hands, and felt a surge of blood from the front of my brain to the back. I wondered for a second if I was going to stroke out. And we even ended early, reaching only 50 mph.

These are race car accelerations! Still, the challenging roller coasters can reach 4g, and fighter pilots have worse to deal with. But for a civilian car, quite a shock!

I need aspirin....

Angelyne's Real Identity Is Finally Solved

This is fascinating! She was one of the candidates in the 2003 CA Gubernatorial Recall Election (which I ran in as well):

"This one," he said, pointing at a 1967 Monroe Senior High School sophomore from the San Fernando Valley, third from right, "is Angelyne." A schoolgirl with hooded eyes and long center-parted locks, in a button-down white shirt and tie, stared out across half a century. "Also known as Renee Goldberg."

The Hollywood Reporter has since independently confirmed this is Angelyne's real identity with public records and family members. Far from the archetypal transplant-with-a-dream, as she has tacitly long alluded, she's the locally raised daughter of Holocaust survivors, a Jew who has found refuge in shiksa drag. It's a fascinating, only-in-L.A. story of identity, history and a symbiotic yearning both to be forgotten and to be famous.

...Copies of immigration, marriage and death records pointed to a cloaked prehistory of Renee Tami Goldberg (originally Ronia Tamar Goldberg), which seems to reveal the trauma Angelyne had both emerged and escaped from. She was born in Poland on Oct. 2, 1950, the daughter of Polish Jews who'd met in the Chmielnik ghetto during World War II — they were among 500 to survive out of a population of 13,000, the rest sent to death at Treblinka. According to the documentation — obtained from the International Tracing Service, established by the Red Cross as an archive of Nazi crimes — her parents, Hendrik (aka Heniek or Henryk) Goldberg and Bronia (aka Bronis) Zernicka, endured unimaginable horrors at a series of concentration camps, first together at Skarzysko, where prisoners' main job was to make munitions, and then apart at the 20th century's most infamous hellscapes, including Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.

...They boarded a ship leaving Haifa for New York and settled in L.A.'s Fairfax District. Her father worked as a tool-and-die mechanic. Then, in 1965, her 44-year-old mother died of cancer. Goldberg was 14.

The next year Hendrik (now Henry) remarried another Holocaust survivor, a seamstress divorcee named Deborah, and Goldberg acquired a younger stepsister, Norma. She and her father moved from the Westside to Panorama City, deep in the San Fernando Valley, where she'd begin high school and Henry and Deborah would run a strip-mall liquor store in nearby Van Nuys. She'd have a brief marriage to the son of a Beverly Hills executive, living in Hollywood with him. Goldberg's paper trail ends with their divorce in 1969.

...Angelyne had single-handedly created and then inhabited a modern myth of L.A.: the platinum blond bombshell in the bright pink Corvette forever circumnavigating the city, seeking to enchant by dint of her sheer superficial glamour. It had the aesthetic power and emotional resonance of genuine performance art, Marina Abramovic by way of John Waters, particularly as she kept on rambling around the city over the decades while she aged.

A Few Political Buttons

I found the Kennedy button in 1976: jarred loose after helping move a desk to a new location.

“Alt-Right” Activists Decide To Pick Up Some Extra Cash

“Alt-Right” activists charter a boat to disrupt migrant rescues in the Mediterranean, and get caught trafficking migrants:

The members were stopped in and deported from a sea port in the self-declared Turkish state of Northern Cyprus Thursday after spending two days in detention for document forgery and potential human trafficking of 20 Sri Lankan nationals who were aboard the C-Star, the campaign’s ship. Turkish Cypriot authorities deported nine crew members, including the ship’s captain and a German “second captain” believed to be neo-Nazi Alexander Schleyer. The authorities also transferred the director of the company that owns the ship, Sven Tomas Egerstrom, to Greek-controlled Cyprus for further questioning.

Watch Your Trampoline

Tucson, AZ.

Time For Ballet Class!

I knew Andrea Blankstein briefly when she was a girl. Now she teaches (with performances):

Napa

Joe Arpaio, Convict

Time to break out the pink underwear and prepare a cot in the hot Arizona sun! Sleazeball Joe Arpaio is now a convict:

(CNN)The lawman who once boasted he was "America's toughest sheriff," could find himself behind bars after a federal judge found him guilty of criminal contempt on Monday.

Former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio was accused of violating a court order in a racial profiling case by continuing patrols targeting immigrants. US District Court Judge Susan Bolton handed down her verdict in court papers signed on Monday.

Bolton wrote that Arpaio knew of the court order and what it meant for his department's policy of detaining immigrants to turn them over to federal immigration authorities. But the evidence showed "a flagrant disregard" for the order, Bolton wrote.

"Not only did defendant abdicate responsibility, he announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise," Bolton wrote.

The Best Picture of a Microburst Ever Taken

So good!:

The image speaks for itself; it is an astounding shot of the microburst at the exact moment it crashed down from the heavens — 4:34 PM Mountain Daylight Time on Wednesday, over El Paso. The local National Weather Service office found itself in the bull’s eye, with one meteorologist scrambling up to a nearby mountain to snap some other shots of the colossal downburst.

The photo above, captured from a plane by El Paso resident Alfredo Maldonado, is gorgeous; it shows the rush of air dropping to the ground and fanning out in all directions. “I was flying from El Paso to Denver,” Maldonado said. “The flight was on time. It was smooth — no turbulence whatsoever, no wind, no rain.”

But just a few miles away, Maldonado spotted what appeared to be a plume of “water dumping from the sky.”

“I had never seen something so isolated,” he said. His children had the window seat, but he immediately thought to snap this picture — and the weather community is extremely glad he did.

“Just seeing the raw power of Mother Nature was incredible. We could see what almost looked like little waves or ripples where it was hitting the ground,” Maldonado said. “It’s been rainy for the past week, which is always a relief in the desert. Usually we can see where the storms are hitting, and some have flash floods, so these are known to come with force, but this one looked different.”

Microbursts are so dangerous. I recall reading about an airliner takeoff in Tucson in 1976. A microburst hit the runway during takeoff roll. The airliner couldn't gain altitude at first in the downdraft, and actually hit power lines. Then it reached the edge of the downdraft, with its curlicue of rising air, and was saved.

California's National Day of Dance - July 29, 2017

California's State Capitol building in Sacramento, west steps:

Good Day Sacramento:




Videos of Kamila Emilia (KESFit):





Part 2 of video.


Dolly Rizzo's The Majestic Ones



Link to video.

Marc with Kamila.

Mooch, We Hardly Knew Ye!

Watch For Children

He's Mavericky Like That!

The moment John McCain voted 👎 pic.twitter.com/ehivwkJVd4

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) July 28, 2017

I wondered when John McCain voted to allow Senate debate to start the other day whether he planned to sink the ship in a spectacular fashion. I recall seeing commentary that opening debate might be a Pyrrhic victory for the Republican party. Indeed, that proved to be the case:

Video of the vote, tweeted by entrepreneur and activist Michael Skolnik, shows McCain walking to the front of the Senate floor before his name is called, stretching out his hand, pausing and saying “No” loudly enough for all to hear. His colleagues gasp, and some applaud as he makes his way back to his chair.

So, What New Surprise Will Mitch McConnell Pull Out of His Ass?

Getting ranker by the day:

The drama -- Republican senators imploring their own colleagues across the Capitol to vow that they would not pass the bill they are about to pass -- crystalized the remarkable dissatisfaction and deep reservations that Republican members feel about weakening Obamacare and threatened the prospect of providing a long-awaited legislative victory to the party and President Donald Trump.

"Go Republican Senators, Go! Get there after waiting for 7 years. Give America great healthcare!" Trump tweeted late Thursday.

After a phone call with House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson said they had received the reassurances they needed and would vote yes.

But McCain was uncharacteristically silent as he left the Senate chamber.

Ivanka the Complicit

I find it amazing that any living soul was ever so stupid as to think Ivanka could influence her dad. That's not how it has ever worked:

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant in New York, said he heard from Republicans, Democrats and independents after Trump’s stunning victory who were hopeful about Ivanka Trump’s influence.

“They all had wishful thinking,” he said. “It was a nice wish but there appears to be no history for this. When has a first daughter influenced anything? It’s absurd. Americans are hopeful people and very naive...She has no influence.”

The Largest Bait-and-Switch in U.S. History

It's astonishing. The Senate Republicans have set themselves up for the largest bait-and-switch in U.S. history. There won't be a conference. Any fool should be able to see it:

A senior Democratic aide told TPM that these expectations and assurances are worthless.

“No matter what McConnell says—and what the Freedom Caucus is saying now—once a skinny bill leaves the Senate, the House can take it up and pass it,” the aide said. “There is nothing Senators who had hoped for another bite at the apple can do about it.”

Once the train has left the station, the aide added, more grim possibilities present themselves. “They could use this vehicle to bring full-blown Trumpcare back to life, with all of the Medicaid cuts and other policies that moderate Republicans in the Senate claim to oppose, and here too there is almost nothing they can do.”

This news came as a shock to some lawmakers.

“Say what?” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said, clearly taken aback at the news the House could vote on the bill as early as Friday. “Come again?”

Asked if he thinks the bill could become law or is merely a vehicle to get to conference, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) frowned. “If you pass a bill,” he began, before trailing off. He then admitted, “I haven’t thought it through.”

Man Stands Trial For Homeless Woman's Death

Last August, a homeless woman was murdered at the Broadway/Highway 99 underpass. A man is now standing trial for that murder.

I was always bothered by that underpass, so never walked Bella there. I was creeped out enough walking her through the neighboring X St./Highway 99 underpass. Something about the unusually-large number of homeless people in the area, the darkness, the distances, and the many hiding places. Not as warm and cozy as the underpasses under the W-X freeway.

Not that any of that matters much when dealing with a murderer:

By Aug. 1, 2016, Brownlee was “fed up” with his living situation, he told detectives. He was unable to get a job. Police chased him from sleeping spot to sleeping spot. The streets were filled with heroin addicts and prostitutes. His mental health was suffering.

After an argument with his girlfriend that evening, he said, he was wandering along Broadway when he spotted Brandow rustling through her belongings at her camp.

“I snapped,” he said, and began strangling her. Once he saw Brandow’s eyes roll back in her head and her body go limp, “I basically panicked and just took off,” he said.

He was silent about the crime until Sept. 18, he said, when he told a friend, LaShon Mitchell, that he had killed a woman “by the freeway.” He told her he wanted to confess, in part to get off of the streets.