Speaker Nancy Pelosi: I'm still not willing to accept the results of an election over three years ago and need to mount a half-assed impeachment attempt. Can you help me?
FOX has a new hit show, 9-1-1-: LONE STAR. This is a spin-off of the existing hit 9-1-1 and Ryan Murphy has created a new show that is actually superior to the original. The humanity and connection the characters share is more upfront and immediate. It helps that Rob Lowe anchors the show. He's providing a warm and layered performance that also banks on audience appreciation of his many roles in the past. Liv Tyler could have been a silent movie star. More than almost any other actress working today, Liv can fill empty spaces with meaning. Her character is created in the body, not in the dialogue. (More than almost any other actress? Ryan Murphy's other favorite actress Jessica Lange excels at this.) Jim Parrack may be new to some (TV viewers may remember him from TRUE BLOOD) but between his acting and some strongly written scenes, Judd is someone you feel you know and that you like.
The entire cast -- including Sierra McClain, Ronen Rubinstein, Natacha Karam, Brian Michael Smith, Julian Works and Rafael Silva -- is effective and comes off real.
In the last 20 years, TV has seen many 'franchises.' That would include assorted LAW AND ORDERs, CSIs, NCSIs. As a general rule, none of the spin-offs or relocated shows was ever better. They never improved. This was most obvious with CSI: CYBER. Hard to believe, but, yes, there was worse than LAW AND ORDER: TRIAL BY JURY.
How bad was CSI: CYBER?
We reviewed CSI.
We reviewed CSI NYC:
We reviewed CSI MIAMI.
But even heartless us took a pass on CSI: CYBER out of pity for the cast. James Van Der Beek came the closest to achieving on that show. Which is really sad to say when you grasp that Patricia Arquette was in the cast. Which is very, very sad to say when you grasp that this was Patricia Arquette's follow up to winning a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. Shirley MacLaine always jokes about how she followed up her Academy Award win (for Best Actress) with a role in CANNONBALL RUN II. As bad as that might be, we think Patricia following up with CSI: CYBER was even worse.
Operator: 9-1-1. What is your emergency?
John Kerry: I am John Kerry.
Operator: And how is that an emergency, sir?
John Kerry: I have endorsed Joe Biden for the presidential nomination and he's cratering. I feel I may have to give up all my lucrative, big money speeches to corporations and step down from the Bank of America.
Operator: 903-233-5500.
John Kerry: What is that?
Operator: The direct number to Neimen Marcus. They have people who handle champagne problems.
With the success of 9-1-1: LONE STAR, Ryan Murphy might be thinking about other spin-offs and, if he handles it well, this could be a major television franchise. Clearly, there is a need for operators to address emergencies. Look at the politics alone. Jonathan Turley, a legal expert, warned repeatedly that the House of Representatives was not doing enough with their impeachment move. He wasn't listened to. Would Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have listened if a 9-1-1 operator had given her the same advice?
Probably not. She probably would have just snapped, "I don't talk to staff!" You know, like she did to then-White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
What about John Kerry who flew into a panic on Sunday? From today's "Iraq snapshot:"
[. . .] Jonathan Allen (NBC NEWS) overheard John on a phone call on Sunday. From NBC NEWS:
Former Secretary of State John Kerry — one of Joe Biden's highest-profile endorsers — was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid "the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole."
Sitting
in the lobby restaurant of the Renaissance Savery hotel, Kerry was
overheard by an NBC News analyst saying "maybe I'm f---ing deluding
myself here" and explaining that to run, he'd have to step down from the
board of Bank of America and give up his ability to make paid speeches.
Kerry said donors like venture capitalist Doug Hickey would have to
"raise a couple of million," adding that such donors "now have the reality of Bernie."
Asked
about the call later Sunday, Kerry said he was "absolutely not"
contemplating joining the Democratic primary race. He reiterated the
sentiment in a tweet later, saying "any report otherwise is f---ing (or
categorically) false." Minutes later, he deleted the tweet and reposted it without the expletive.
Jonathan Allen heard him but John wants to lie and pretend he didn't say it. Just like all the pretense and lies he told about the medals (again, see the ABC NEWS report). John's a liar. We're not married to him, we don't have to believe his lies.
Where do you start with that? How about John's laughable claim that he could be elected president. Yes, yes, he ran in 2004 and lost. We're not talking about that. We're not even talking about the fact that the votes in Ohio that year might have been stolen. See Mark Crispin Miller's "None Dare Call It Stolen" (HARPER'S) for that.
We're not even talking about how John himself said the vote was stolen but refused to fight what he saw as theft. From Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman's "What John Kerry definitely said about 2004’s stolen election and why it's killing American democracy" (FREE PRESS):
In recent days Mark Crispin Miller has reported that he heard from Kerry personally that Kerry believes the election was stolen. The dialog has been widely reported on the internet. Kerry has since seemed to deny it.
We have every reason to believe Miller. His recent book FOOLED AGAIN, has been making headlines along with our own HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008.
As in his campaign for president, Kerry has been ambivalent and inconsistent about Ohio's stolen vote count. Soon after the presidential election, Kerry was involved in a conference call with Rev. Jesse Jackson and a number of attorneys, including co-author Bob Fitrakis. In the course of the conversation, Kerry said "You know, wherever they used those [e-voting] machines, I lost, regardless if the precinct was Democratic or Republican."
Kerry was referring to New Mexico. But he might just as well have been talking about Ohio, where the election was decided, as well as about Iowa and Nevada. All four of those "purple" states switched from Democratic "blue" in the exit polls as late as 12:20am to Republican "red" a few hours later, giving Bush the White House.
A scant few hours after that, Kerry left tens of thousands of volunteers and millions of voters hanging. With Bush apparently leading by some 130,000 votes in Ohio, but with a quarter-million votes still uncounted here, Kerry abruptly conceded. He was then heard from primarily through attorneys from Republican law firms attacking grassroots election protection activists who dared question the Ohio outcome.
In the year since that abrupt surrender, Theresa Heinz Kerry has made insinuations that she thought the election might have been stolen. But there has been no follow-up.
Now we have this report from M. C. Miller that Kerry said he knew the election was stolen, and then denied saying it. Coming from Kerry, the inconsistency would be entirely consistent.
Yes, all of that is bad. But we're actually talking about 2006, the moment that John's big mouth got him into trouble and ensured that he would have no luck pursuing the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008. Don't remember that? Johanna Neuman and Richard Simon (LOS ANGELES TIMES) reported:
When the dust clears after election day, 2006 may be remembered as the year of the offhand remark. In what he said was a joke gone awry about the Iraq war, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) this week became the second would-be presidential candidate -- after Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) -- to see his hopes dimmed because of a botched or unscripted comment. Appearing Monday at a Democratic rally in Pasadena, Kerry told college students that they needed to study hard and try to do well in school because “if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
As other Democratic candidates quickly shied away from appearances with Kerry, who as the party’s 2004 presidential nominee emphasized his military service, he issued a written apology late Wednesday “to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.”
He made that comment October 31, 2006. As noted in that day's snapshot, the White House immediately called him out and demanded that he apologize.
Yet he wants to pretend like that did not happen? He thinks he can run after that?
John's told so many lies over the years. He's even lying and claiming Jonathan Allen is lying. He's like Donald Trump, apparently, insisting the press is lying all the time. He did that to ABC NEWS back in 2004, remember? He wanted to tell the world that in 1971 he did not throw his medals and that he never did. Then ABC NEWS got hold of a taped interview from 1971 where John claimed he threw medals -- including the Bronze Star.
What did John call that taped interview? A myth? A lie.
John lies a lot.
Ryan Murphy might want to consider a 9-1-1 DC where a number of operators could help politicians who struggle with their jobs and the truth. We're sure the phones would never stop ringing. And, if 9-1-1: LONE STAR is any indication, there's plenty of life in the franchise.