Lobenthal.com

After Fox paid 3/4 of a billion to Dominion it couldn’t afford another mega law suit, but Maria — and, of course, her Big Daddy Trump–apprently had other ideas.

must be pulled down, repurposed, or drastically resized by the next Democratic president.

Our democracy is under siege–the fascistic, traitorous Supreme Court majority leading the way– and our cultural aspirations are degraded beyond recognition.

You can be sure that the right-wing political operatives on the court will tell that next Democratic president that (s)he’s not allowed to alter Trump’s monument to erection folly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama and the Democrats had fought for Merrick Garland’s nomination?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Biden and the Democrats had fought for Supreme Court reform?

It’s past time, btw, for more lower-court judges to speak out against the outrageous overreach of the current Supreme Court majority–like the Hawaii Supreme Court did recently.

The most extensive film record–unfortunately without any dancing–dates from February 1936, when David O. Selznick brought Adele to Los Angeles film a test for Dark Victory, which wasn’t actually filmed for two more years.

The test was restored recently by the Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Curator Catherine A. Surowiec explains that Adele was considered the role of heroine Judith Traherne’s friend, novelist Alden Chase, played by Ann Andrews on Broadway when Tallulah opened in it in 1934. In 1936, Bette Davis was not yet cast as Judith. Selznick was intent on Garbo, for whom he had bought the screen rights. He eventually sold the property to Warner Brothers.

Adele performs a scene, but first sings an except from Gershwin’s “‘S Wonderful.” This clip is fascinating and I sent the link to a number of people. Laura Jacobs had thoughts:

“Her voice isn’t big. It won’t boom. It’s intimate, close to the vest, and her pitch is perfect. Adele Astaire is singing “S Wonderful,” a song she introduced in the premiere production of Funny Face, on Broadway in 1927, and she reminds us that back in the day, yes you had to hold a note but no you didn’t need to belt it.  Adele Astaire, and Mary Martin and Gwen Verdon after her—these women warbled. And as any birder can tell you, the charm of the warblers knocks out the bigger birds. It’s all about inflection, the eyes, and the timing. In other words, a poetic poise. I keep looking for Fred in Adele’s face, and can only find it in her forehead. Which must mean it was something about their mind–body connection. Sister and brother, their expression emerges from a still place and never strays far from it.  Which is why people always say that any still frame of Fred Astaire dancing is elegant. In this video Adele sings her song sitting on a couch, where there can be no hyperbole. Such feathered containment, lifted by breezes, is what makes both Adele and Fred so wonderful.“

Btw, Adele studied voice with Estelle Leibling, who coached many great opera divas and even taught voice to the teenaged Meryl Streep!

There is almost no film record of Adele Astaire, Fred’s older sister, and perhaps his greatest partner. There‘s a snippet with Fred and Marilyn Miller, when all three starred in the musical Smiles in 1930, amazingly enough not a big hit—perhaps too lavish an embarrassment of riches?  In this tongue-in-cheek vignette, Miller and the Astaires high step onstage, arms linked, but then Florenz Ziegfeld greets them by saying, “I don’t need my $10,000 a week dancers.” They apologize and retreat back to the wings. “Wrong foot, Adele,” he says, “wrong foot. Smile!”

There’s also a snippet with Fred from 1942, by which time Adele had retired into matrimony in Ireland. She and Fred were hosting service men at the Red Cross canteen in London. The troops want them to dance, but Fred protests that they haven’t worked together in 20 years (actually 10). “None of that old stuff,” Fred chides her humorously, when she flicks her leg in a back kick that seems to peer over the shoulder of her 1920s fame. Note how a great dancer can recreate a theatrical era with one simple step!

In the real world, not the fantasy reality conjured by Trump and the GOP, it was acknowledged that Nepal’s glaciers were now dangerously unstable due to global warming.

Then Musk and DOGE arrived, both of whom, including the great environmentalist–so the corporate media has claimed for years–Elon himself, consider global warming a hoax.

As Jeremy Konyndyck, president of Refugees International, tweets:

“DOGE famously used keyword searches for terms like “climate” to terminate federal grants.

Among the victims: a collab between USAID and NASA for flood prediction, early warning, disaster readiness, glacier inventories, and mapping dangerous glacial lakes…

…in Nepal.”

Not only America’s survival, but the human species’, is on the line.

So could the Democrat establishment please take a broader view and stop trying to sandbag–out of sheer pique–its own victory?

Trump’s pocket Nuclear Regulatory Commission responds to his democidal Executive Order and is moving to increase the allowable level of radiation to which the public will be exposed. Across the nuclear board, all safety precautions will be weakened. Btw, this is straight out the Project 2025 doomsday charter, which the corporate media allowed Trump to pretend to disavow.

Women and children are most at risk of increased cancer due to the increased exposure.

Public comment to the proposed rule change ends August 31. Go to ProtectBetter.org (set up by Physicians for Social Responsibility) for more information about how to protest this monstrous assault on the public health.

NOT to play defensive.

He shouldn’t expect any gratitude from them, however.

against the Democratic party itself.

Remember, these are the same Democrats who orchestrated the party’s defeats to Trump in 2016 and 2024.

Thus the constant attacks on fellow Democrats instead of against Trump and his fascist GOP.

His decision to meet secretly with Kushner has backfired so spectacularly that he now apparently thinks it’s time to double down on punching leftward. Could someone please tell Jeffries that he should be criticizing Trump and the GOP rather than his fellow Democrats? But it’s clear, once again, that the corporate Democrat establishment would rather lose than support truly progressive candidates.

The council is now stocked with Trump deputies (stooges) who are now trying to rewrite the council’s charter to cripple. its ability to extend protections to historic sites.

Trump is never interested in preservation, only in pillaging and destruction.

Village Preservation has a portal on its web site that will allow you to contact your elected represendtadtives to register your dissapproval.