Last week started with a corpse dumped in Central Park, soon included lies about a near helicopter crash, exposed the reality of someone's service records and revealed a cross-dresser -- were we following the US campaign for president or binging on ORPHAN B LACK: ECHOES?
Sadly, it was the political campaign.
Yes, the sy-fy classic ORPHAN BLACK is back as the spin-off ORPHAN BLACK ECHOES. The main character Sarah Manning and her clones aren't with us. But her daughter Kira (now played by Keeley Hawes) is and she's an middle-aged scientist. Clones aren't the issue this go round. Kira's researching things like organ transplants and is successful in her use of 3-D printers to harvest new ones. She's married to another scientist, Dr Eleanor Miller (played by Rya Kiblstedt) and they have an adult son Lucas (Jaeden Noel). Meanwhile, the seemingly unconnected Lucy (JESSICA JONES' Krysten Ritter) wakes up in some secretive lair and escapes. She doesn't know what's going on but she manages to fight off the men a corporation determined to recapture her keeps sending. And in her searching for answers, she turns up Jules (Amanda Fix) who she insists is her.
She's right. Sort of. Jules is Lucy. So is Eleanor. All three are print outs. Eleanor developed dementia and died. Grieving the loss, Kira decides to break her own ethical code and print out a human being on the 3-D printer. She eventually ends up with Eleanor. Eleanor doesn't know she's a print out or that she died. The corporation Eleanor works for knew what she was doing, what she thought she had kept hidden, and they're thrilled because this is what the Elon Musk like Paul Darros (James Hirovuki Liao) has wanted all along -- to be able to 3-D print humans.
Back during the days when ORPHAN BLACK, the original, was airing new episodes, that would have been a lot to take in and process. But since the emergence in the political world of the creature known as Donald Trump, the world has changed so much.
It's 2024 and Donald Trump is running for president.
That sentence? Kind of sounds like recap Kyle Reese should be offering right before we all get attacked for the first time in a movie.
But that ominous sentence is factual: Trump is back. And he's brought of crowd of crazies with him.
No, not just the MAGAs -- mentally stunted creatures allergic to democracy and soap -- but new terminators like Robert Kennedy Jr, JD Vance and Jill Stein.
Where to start?
Let's start with the Jill Stein liars. Are they going to vote? The Green Party has a mere 320,000 members nationally. That's one of the reason that they're a national joke. If you're not laughing, you may need a comparison. In Arizona alone, the Republican Party has 1.4 million registered voters and in Massachusettes the Democratic Party has 1.4 million registered voters. In each state, both the Democratis and the Republicans have over four time as many registered voters than the Green Party has in all of the United States.
Jill self-presents as the nominee of the Green Party. Though the anti-vaxer has been their nominee two times previously does not mean she's the nominee. She probably will be. The Green Party meets at the end of the week and will decide their nominee at the party convention. It'll be less embarrassing this year because it will all be held online.
But the votes in the general election will still be embarrassing. The most votes she got in any of her previous tries was 1.4 million. If that seems like a lot to you, you must be a loyal viewer of crackpot YOUTUBE programs like STATUS COUP NEWS. 1.4 million votes? In 2020, Joe Biden won the presidential election by garnering over 81 million votes.
That year, by the way, the Green Party got less than 500,000 votes.
We'll address the futility and fraudulence of Jill's latest vanity run next weekend if she's made the party nominee.
But fraud? That brings us to Robert Kennedy Junior who will use anything and everything to garner attention -- even harnessing the D-celeb Jerry Van Dyke-like appeal of his wife Cheryl Hines.
Well . . .
His third wife. His second wife? WIKIPEDIA explains:
On April 15, 1994, Kennedy married Mary Kathleen Richardson aboard a research vessel on the Hudson River.[322] They had four children. On May 12, 2010, Kennedy filed for divorce from Mary. On May 16, 2012, Mary was found dead in a building on the grounds of her home in Bedford, New York. The Westchester County Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide due to asphyxiation from hanging.[323] Later it was reported that Mary had seen Kennedy's personal journal from 2001, in which he recorded sexual encounters with 37 different women.[324]
Wow. Most people, people with compassion and a conscience, would have packed in public life after that. Not Junior.
He's bound and determined to drag the family name through the mud. So last month, when VANITY FAIR reported that he'd sexually harassed a baby sitter and eaten a dog, Junior rushed forward to insist that, no, he hadn't eaten a dog. Last week, he was back in the news due to a bear cub. Junior's story is that he was in upstate New York, a woman in a car ahead of him hit a bear cub. Junior pulled over and it was dying so he tossed it in his car with the plan to skin and cook it. But, being a socialite, his schedule was heavy and he had to head into NYC for a dinner engagement. That ran late and he had to hit the airport so what to do with the dead or dying bear cub in his car? Well it was just a skip and jump from Central Park. People were being injured and harmed on new bike paths and Junior had an old bike in his car as well so why not dumb the bear in Central Park with a bike and make it look like a biker ran over the cub?
Junior, the man whose cheating killed his second wife, isn't much for remorse or responsibility so he finds the bear cub story funny. The rest of us? We're aware that you can't dump a dead animal in Central Park. That's illegal. You also can't stage a crime scene. Also illegal.
Illegal? Donald Trump. The convicted felon. He wants to invade the Oval Office and destroy the country. The crooked Supreme Court has acted as his own PAC fiance committee with their rulings to help him stay out of the big house and steer him into the White House.
With Kamala Harris now the Democratic Party nominee, Donald's freaking out. One poll after another shows that the race is now competitive. Jared Gans (The Hill) noted last Tuesday:
Harris and Trump are nearly tied in the national polling average tracked by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, with Trump winning 47.1 percent support, and Harris at 47 percent. Trump initially was up by more than 6 points when Harris declared her candidacy following Biden’s decision to leave the race.
Some polls are even giving her a clear advantage. For example, Joe Sommerlad (Independent) noted Wednesday:
Kamala Harris appears to be pulling ahead of Donald Trump in presidential election polling for the first time, with the Democrat taking a three-point lead over the Republican former president in a new survey.
A poll for NPR, PBS and Marist published on Wednesday places the Vice President on 51 per cent of the vote overall, compared to Trump’s 48 per cent, and comes after her choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate was met with an overwhelmingly positive response.
Donald is freaking out. And that led to him inviting the press on Thursday to participate in a farce. He could get network airtime and they and their questions could be ignored.
On MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell rightly called out the infomercial that was passed off as news.
Donald is clearly bothered by the enthusiasm for a President Kamala Harris. He also appears to be suffering from senility. At 78, he is now the oldest person to run for president on one of the two major political parties. And it really shows.
The infomercial including him repeatedly attacking Kamala. At one point, he revealed that former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown shared with him, on a near helicopter crash, that Kamala was a real piece of work. Brown immediately denied it -- that he'd trashed Kamala to Donald, that he'd been on a helicopter with Donald, that he'd ever waste his time sharing confidences with Donald.
And Willie (who we both know) was telling the truth. As Ruth noted Saturday, turns out there was a rough helicopter ride but it wasn't with Willie Brown and Kamala Harris was never mentioned. Nate Holden -- a California politician who is, like Willie Brown, African-American -- came forward to say he was the person that the feeble minded Donald had mistaken for Willie Brown.
That was just one of his many misstatements. Domenico Montanaro (NPR) explains, "A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That’s more than two a minute. It’s a stunning number for anyone -- and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world."
The only thing sadder than Donald is the fat, Spanx wearing rolly-polly he picked to be his running mate: JD "Skidmarks" Vance. Stocky and chubby though he may be, he's got more hate in his body than cellulite -- which is really saying something. He sports homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and, yes, stupidity.
JD dispatched his wife to the press in order to lie last week. She insisted that when JD (repeatedly) attacked people without children, he was just joking. Right. She lies so well she could be the next Donald Trump.
Big-boy Skidmarks puts the ox in oxymoron and nox in obnoxious. Christopher Wiggens (THE ADVOCATE) reports:
The United States Secret Service says that a Wednesday publicity stunt by Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance, the Republican nominee for vice president, involving Air Force Two did not violate security measures. The incident, which unfolded at a Wisconsin airport, garnered attention for what some called creepy and weird stalker behavior.
The situation began when Vance walked off former President Donald Trump’s campaign plane and headed straight toward Air Force Two. The two campaigns were holding dueling events in Eau Claire.
Vance, flanked by aides and Secret Service agents, sauntered to reporters assembled for the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz. Vance said he just wanted to see his “future plane.”
Stalker is how he came off. The massive amount of eyeliner he wears does not make JD any less scary. And, it now turns out, JD wears more than just eyeliner. A photo emerged this weekend of him in drag from his Yale Law School days.
Ladies and gentleman, a picture of JD Vance in drag while attending Yale Law School. ⬇️
— Justice Horn (@JusticeHorn_) August 11, 2024
I don’t share this to shame those who do drag, but rather to shame those who attack drag while having a history of enjoying the art form themselves. 👠pic.twitter.com/6oIbmbprYL
The photo appears to reveal a 28-year-old JD Vance donning drag. The photo's 12 years old.. We note both facts before someone tries to insist it's some crazy youthful thing.
Who is JD Vance?
It's the question that Donald Trump apparently never asked when that Mother Tucker Carlson insisted Donald make Vance his running mate.
JD spent last week trying to trash Tim Walz. Walz retired from the National Guard after serving 24 years. He listed his last rank on his official biography. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to do. By retiring, or in retiring, his rank was dropped to his previous rank.
This had JD and other MAGA droppings insisting "stolen valor!"
Like when JD presents himself as a Marine who served in Iraq?
If you missed it, Brianna Kellar told the truth about Skidmarks on CNN noting "We have, as you introduced him [Vance], as a combat correspondent which is what his title was. But when you dig a little deeper into that, he was a public affairs specialist, someone who did not see combat, which certainly the title of 'combat correspondent' kind of gives you a different impression."
Oh, the twists and turns and there are 84 left until the election. But only two more episodes before ORPHAN BLACK ECHOES wraps up. It'll have to work real hard in its final episodes to match the drama of the 2024 presidential election. Then again, if Donald dumps JD from the ticket, ORPHAN BLACK ECHOES should probably just throw in the towel and admit defeat.