On this week's Al Franken podcast, his guest is Melanie Sloane, the former but longtime Executive Director of CREW, Citizens for Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog group on government accountability. She also has served as counsel for the House Judiciary Committee.
What Al writes about the show is -- "This week The Al Franken Podcast reveals that there is corruption within the Trump Administration. You heard me – corruption! And lots of it! Veteran DC watchdog Melanie Sloan takes us through the shocking details. It seems that Trump, his family, and the lowlife grifters populating his administration are not just incompetent, they’re crooked too! Venal, lazy, and stupid is no way to go through life, son. Unless you’re a Trump, a Kushner, or a Trump administration official. Fascinating, disgusting, and kid friendly!"
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Around when I was perhaps in the third grade, I remember reading in class about the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. It's where prehistoric animals got trapped, and then other of their fellow creatures would see them struggling and easy prey -- and going in to get them, they in turn would get caught. Only the lucky few got out. The site was discovered in 1901, with excavations beginning in 1913. Though I wasn't big dinosaur fanatic as a kid, I was nonetheless seriously impressed. Even at that age, I thought it was remarkable that one of civilization's great archeological locales was in the middle of the (then) third largest city in the United States. When I came to Los Angeles for graduate school at UCLA, there was a small handful of places I wanted to see. Disneyland, of course was one. A movie studio was another. I think Catalina Island may have been up there. And I really couldn't wait to see the La Brea Tar Pits. Time passes. Several decades, as it happens. And during all that time, I never went to the La Brea Tar Pits. I passed by it a hundred times. I thought about going regularly. It's next door to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which I don't love but I'm a member of and go to periodically. But for reasons I can't explain, I'd never gone to the La Brea Tar Pits. Until yesterday! Whatever the reasons I never had gone before, I finally got fed up and set aside a day, bought my ticket online, and went -- finally. O huzzah! Afterwards, I was talking with a friend who had a somewhat similar situation, and he was extremely disappointed by the experience. Coming from New York and having seen the Natural History Museum, he found the museum there almost nothing. I felt differently. I grew up going to the Field Museum of Natural History there, and it's impressive (though a bit dry) in it's own right, but I still was thrilled to be at the La Brea Tar Pits. It's not that it's a great museum -- it's not -- but that's not the point. It's that it's one of the great archeological sites in the world that's located in a major city. And it was a joy being there. Actually, the site is divided into two parts -- the George C. Page Museum, which they charge for, and the Tar Pits area with the excavation areas which is free. The Museum is fairly small and, no, not impressive, but the history of what's their is wonderful, and so is what they display. For instance, I enjoyed stopping by their Fossil Lab where a lot of the research is open to the public, and you get to watch the scientists at work, studying the material unearthed on the grounds. There were some pleasant displays and short movies, though a lot of it seems more focused on kids. (They have a longer 3-D movie, but I passed on that.) However, the reconstruction of prehistoric animals is what stands out. One of the more surprising skeletons is Harlan's Ground Sloth. We think of sloths and small, sort of cuddly creatures. They have have been cuddly, up to a point, but back in prehistoric days, the sloth was anything but small. My favorite was the Columbia Mammoth. The bones are all from fossils discovered on the grounds, though not from the same animals. The tusks however were added separately. I wasn't sure what the difference was between a mammoth and mastadon. It turns out that the latter is small and more compact. Bizarrely, though the Page Museum has its own collection that covers over five million artifacts, some of what was on display there the day that I went was part of a traveling exhibition -- from the Field Museum of Chicago!!! (Not most of what was on display, and not the Columbia Mammoth above.) The outside grounds are really the historic site. There's nothing overly majestic about it -- most of the pits, in fact, have been mostly-covered up over time, though you can still see the a bit of the tar still seeping through, with occasional methane bubbles. (By the way, it's not actually tar. It's asphalt, which is a natural material. Tar has additives, but it's the name that stuck over the decades. Brea means "tar" in Spanish.) New pits crop up all the time, though. One area was such that they had to carve out the "tar" and what was caught in it, and then crated. The crates have been moved to the Project 23 area, which is where the work reclaiming the fossils takes place. Currently, the part of the grounds where most of the active excavating is going on is Pit 91. The bulk of what has been found there is fossils from Sabre-Tooth Cats and what they call ancient horses. As I said, the La Brea Tar Pits (and its adjoining Page Museum) is most definitely not a great exhibition. What it is, however, is a historic part of civilization. And for that reason I had a wonderful time. I wish there was more, but I was not let down after waiting to get there since I was eight years ago -- and driving by it regularly for decades. I have no idea why I waited -- in one regard it's like any sites that are famous in a city, but second nature to those who live in their midst because "they're just there" and a part of your daily life -- but I wanted to go. And continued to want to go. But didn't. Until I did. Finally. And was thoroughly glad for it. I don't know what Trump said.
I don't know if it was even Trump who said anything. I don't know what the whistleblower heard. I don't know what country is involved. I don't know what foreign official is involved. I don't know what the Inspector General investigated. I don't know what the Inspector general found. I think I know a lot about each of these things -- but I don't actually know for absolute certain. What I do know -- in fact the only thing that I do know for absolute certain -- is that the Trump White House is going to incredible, unprecedented lengths to circumvent a law designed to protect the U.S. and is trying to ensure that whatever the whistleblower heard and whatever the Inspector General investigated and determined was "credible" and of "urgent concern"...is blocked and not heard. I would suggest that to a totally independent, objective observer that would not come across as seeming like a good thing for the White House. I would also suggest that if what the whistleblower heard was not credible and not of urgent concern and was just a big -- oh, gosh, what was the phrase? -- "nothing burger" that Trump and the White House would have absolutely no problem letting the story be made public. And conversely, I would suggest that if what the whistleblower heard was totally credible and indeed of the most urgent concern, then Trump -- indeed any president -- would demand the story be made public for the security of the country, that whole "to preserve, protect and defend the United States" oath thing. Unless, of course, well...it was about someone he wanted to preserve, protect and defend even more than the United States. Finally, I would suggest that there is only one person who Trump ever wants and has ever wanted to preserve, protect and defend. Period. And that includes if it came down to Don Jr., Eric, Jared, Melania, Tiffany, Baron and even Ivanka -- or himself. The truck would roll over them so fast you wouldn't be able to get the license plate. So -- what actually happened? I don't know. But I suspect we all do. And with Rudy Giuliani just admitting on CNN last night about his efforts with the Ukraine in his crash-and-burn "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!" moment, I suspect one more thing -- that this will all come tumbling out like a breached dam and end up just as badly for thems trying to hide it as it did for Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessup. Yes, "...the Movie." Recently I've started posting videos of the very odd, but (to me) extremely funny faux-interview show Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifinakis. Well, it turns out that they've turned this strange idea into a feature film. It's playing a few theaters -- I passed one in Westwood that shows it on the marquee -- but for the main will begin streaming on Netflix, starting Friday. And from the trailer it not only looks like there are some very funny things in it -- it's too hard to know if it will hold up as a movie -- but almost more notably has a seriously impressive cast. Here's the trailer -- After posting my article yesterday morning about the "conversation" with my friend who kept avoiding answering, a actual friend called me later saying that while he had read articles about Corey Lewandowski's testimony at the House Judiciary Committee the day before, he wishes he had seen video of it, on which the article was of course based. So, here is Rachel Maddow's news story about it all, and a lot of his galling avoidance of testimony -- Ahoy, mateys, today is the beloved holiday -- Talk Like a Pirate Day. Whenever the gala day comes around, it always gets me to think about the quite-wonderful video I've posted here before, Ahaarrrr. This is one of my favorite videos I've ever tracked down. It's a little British film, 13-minutes long, which I came across back in 2010 and have been passing it around since -- mostly to friends of my who do voice-over work, on either side of the microphone. Oh, boy howdy, do they ever empathize with it... I don't know much about its history or the wonderful creative mind behind it, Jonathan Kydd, who wrote and stars in the short film (impressively, as both the voiceover artist and the director! Even more impressively, I didn't even realize that the first half-dozen times I watched it). But it did win the (Mid Ulster) Critics choice at the DIY Festival LA. As it happens, I also know very little about that festival -- other than that sentence I just typed. Checking a bit further, I note on the iMDB that Mr. Kydd deservedly has had a long career with a great many acting credits -- not shockingly, most over the past 20 years in voiceover work, notably eight Harry Potter video games, as well as the Toy Story That Time Forgot video. And for the animated series, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, he provided the voice of Paddington. But yes, mixed in among that and especially before getting involved with voiceover acting, he has also done a good deal of live-action, on-camera TV work. As the description below says, this is indeed the voice over session from hell. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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