Mini-media reviews

Robin and I watched the first season of Goliath together, and liked it very much. We managed to view about 2 episodes of the second season, and it was totally different and quite off-putting. We won't watch it. There will be a third season, say the papers. Unless they change writing staff and show-runner we probably won't watch that.

I watched Infinity War for the first time the other day. There was nothing appealing about it, and I wish I hadn't.

I watched the first season of Bosch. It was good. The first few episodes were slow, but the plotting was far above average. I feel bad for the lead actor, whose job is to play a stone-faced cop. He's good at stone-faced, but there's an extra level that great actors have, where they play stone-faced but you still know what they are thinking. This guy's not QUITE there. I will watch the second season.

Trevor Noah, Son of Patricia. He is exactly the kind of comic I like, doing exactly the kind of comedy I adore, and doing it well. This special was extraordinary, and his closing sketch about the N-word was masterful.

I've been watching too much media, but you need to do something when you can't sleep...

Shutdown ahead: thoughts

Trump's deal-making is legendary for its intransigence - the taking of unreasonable positions and the refusal to budge, the use of lawyers and overwhelming force to encourage people to believe that he won't budge.

The most recent temporary spending bill was all of that - a reasonable compromise from the Senate, heading to the House for confirmation, and a sudden overwhelming antipathy from Trump demanding a 5 billion dollar segment of Wall. The Republican House crumbled.

Come the new year, the new Congress is seated. The newly Democratic House is (I suspect) likely to pass the same bill the previous Senate approved, and send that to the new Senate. Which will have the unenviable choice of being MORE Republican than the previous.

What will that Senate do? Will it suddenly NOT pass the bill it passed last year? Will it try to change that bill (and fail to get cloture, which it will try to blame on Democrats in both the House and Senate)? Will it pass it and dare the President to sign?

If the President doesn't sign, what then?

My premise started by saying that the President has a lifetime history of unreasonable intransigence. What then, indeed?

More on l'Affaire Russe

Interesting article.

"In his only interview with the media about those connections, Boyarkin told TIME this fall that he was in touch with Trump’s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in the heat of the presidential race on behalf of the Russian oligarch. “He owed us a lot of money,” Boyarkin says. “And he was offering ways to pay it back.”"

http://time.com/5490169/paul-manafort-victor-boyarkin-debts/