A Few Things for Thursday

 Is there any doubt Russ Vought is the very worst and rottenest person in D.C.?

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A Few Reads for Tuesday

 Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene Graham Nordone, was appointed to serve out the remainder of her late brother's term.

Snip:

The Graham children grew up in a one-room house behind the Sanitary Café, a combination bar, pool hall and liquor store their parents operated in Central, South Carolina. Nearly a decade apart in age, the siblings forged a tight bond from the start. It was Lindsey who first taught her to spell her name, incorrectly as it turned out. Although her birth certificate reads “Darlene”, she continued to spell it with an I. He also taught her to ride a bike, running alongside her and shouting: “Keep pedaling!” After their parents died, Graham returned to college but spent the weekends visiting his sister, she recalled in interviews.

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I am obviously no fan of Trump, but this woman has no business diagnosing him since she isn't qualified to do so and has never examined him personally.  Those books were piled up in an awkward position given where his chair was, so of course he grabbed the book in an awkward way.

He embarrassed himself by not reading the book at all but going through a stream-of-consciousness adlib with Usha Vance.

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Sunday on the Obituary Pages

 This  week proved a busy one for deaths of notable or notorious people.  

Perhaps the most shocking was the unexpected death of South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who at 71 was the same age as I am.  He died late last night of an apparent heart attack, later amended to a ruptured aorta.  He had just returned from a trip to Ukraine.  He just turned 71 two days prior, having been born on July 9, 1955.

Graham had once been a big critic of Donald Trump back when both of them were seeking the 2016 presidential election, but he ultimately became a giant ass kisser to Trump.  Not to mention a flagrant hypocrite, for Graham was one of the people responsible in "trying" then-president Bill Clinton over a bunch of politically motivated bullshit.  I have a long memory, and nothing Graham would or could ever do would ever erase the travesty in which he played a major role.  He was one of the "prosecutors" in the Senate "trial," as I recall.  The whole thing was bullshit, rammed through by a lame duck Congress in 1998-1999 after the Republicans lost seats in Congress.  Newt Gingrich was forced out of Congress as a result of the losses, but Tom DeLay decided to throw a hissy fit and forced through the ridiculous Articles of Impeachment.

After the impeachment debacle, Graham ended up inheriting Strom Thurmond's Senate seat, and there he would stay until he dropped dead.

Graham, prior to his political career, had a long career in the military including being involved in military law and had been a judge advocate.  He had a law degree from the University of South Carolina.  According to his Wikipedia bio, he had a rather tough early going losing both parents when in his early twenties and was able to be his sister's legal guardian thanks to having enrolled in the ROTC.  After law school, he embarked on his military career and then was elected in state  and  national office.

Snip:

As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Graham had a central role during Trump’s second term as Republicans pushed major legislation on party-line votes while holding a narrow 53-47 majority in the chamber.

Under South Carolina law, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster will appoint a temporary replacement for Graham, who was seeking a fifth term in November.

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Actor Randolph (given first and middle names Randy DeRoy) Mantooth, 80, known best for his role in the 1970s drama Emergency!, died on July 9.  He died at a hospice facility after years of ill health.

Hollywood Reporter:

Mantooth was just getting started as a contract player at Universal when he was hired in 1971 to play Gage opposite Kevin Tighe as his partner, Roy DeSoto, on Emergency!, created by Dragnet legend Jack Webb and Robert A. Cinader.

When he was told he was going to play a paramedic, the first thing Mantooth said was, “What the hell is a paramedic? At that time, there were only [a handful] in all of California,” he told Amy Harrington in a 2013 interview for the TV Academy Foundation website The Interviews.

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The show was credited with the growth of paramedic services in North America, which were all but non-existent at the time it premiered.  That is really an achievement that a television show could have that much impact.

Fun fact about him:  He lived in 24 states before he turned 18, thanks to his father's job.

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Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, 75, known for many hits in the late 1970s through the 1980s, had passed away on July 6.  She died in a hospital in Portugal.  She had been suffering from some serious intestinal issues.

There must have been some kind of trend "back in the day" when singers, in recognition of Rod Stewart's huge success despite or because of possessing a croak of a voice, decided, intentionally or not, to copy his "technique."  Tyler was one of them.  Kim Carnes ("Bette Davis Eyes") was another.  I first heard of Tyler when she recorded "It's a Heartache," a song that became a massive worldwide hit in 1977-1978.  

Snip:

In May, Tyler had been rushed to hospital in Faro, Portugal, for emergency intestinal surgery and placed in an induced coma to aid her recovery.

After growing up in a council house in Skewen, south Wales, Tyler went on to sell millions of records, and top charts around the world - including in the US and UK - and receive an MBE in the late Queen Elizabeth's final honours list.

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UK-born actress Joanna Pettet, 83, died on July 7.  She was known for roles on both television and the big screen.  She was in the film Casino Royale with David Niven and in the 1966 film The Group.  

The article notes she died exactly 31 years after her son had died.

Snip:

Joanna Jane Salmon was born in London on Nov. 16, 1942. After her father, Harold, a British Royal Air Force pilot, was killed during World War II, her mother, Cecily, remarried and settled in Montreal.

Joanna took the surname of her stepfather and had $1,000 with her when she moved to New York at age 16. “I thought it would last me up to two years,” she said in a 1967 interview. “I’d never really fended for myself before and didn’t realize how fast money could go. The whole nest egg was gone in three months.”

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Actress Antoinette Bower, 93, died in April, but her death was announced yesterday.  She was featured on television programs like Star Trek and Twilight Zone as well as films.

More;

Antoinette Alexandra Jane Bower was born to a German mother and English father on Sept. 30, 1932, in Baden-Baden, Germany.

Educated in England, she was a field language supervisor and welfare counselor in the late 1940s with the United Nations’ International Refugee Organization, which assisted millions of people left homeless across Europe and Asia following World War II.

Bower rejoined her family in Canada in 1953 and in Toronto landed a job with the fledgling Canadian Broadcasting Corp., where she worked in public affairs, wrote scripts and conducted interviews on live TV. She also did some acting, appearing in a 1958 TV adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart and in 1959 on the syndicated series Hudson’s Bay.

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Recently a morbid guidepost on Mount Everest, so-called "Green Boots," has been identified, and there is a movement to engage in a high-risk operation to remove his remains from the mountain.

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Senator Mitch McConnell denies he is dead, but he won't be returning to the Senate anytime soon.

 

Crater Lake (part 2) and Upper Rogue River

 Here are more photographs I took of my latest trip to Crater Lake and later to upper Rogue River.  I adjusted the photographs of the lake to make sure they are the sapphire blue the lake is in real life.

Mt. Thielsen

The Rogue River 

Crater Lake National Park Photos 1

 Here are a few pictures I took at Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon today, including a couple of them from the historic lodge:

A Few Reads for Tuesday

 Conspiracy theorists are hard at work trying to figure out whether Senator Mitch McConnell is still alive or dead, more or less.

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In real obituary news, actress Louise Lasser, 87, best known for her role in the 1970s  cult television soap opera parody Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, died of natural causes yesterday at her New York home.

She was also known as Woody Allen's second wife before they divorced and he became infamous for poaching long-term girlfriends' adopted daughters and marrying them.  Louise was more age-appropriate, but that was a different era.  She was in a number of her ex's movies during that time.

Snip:

Louise Jane Lasser was born on April 11, 1939, in New York. Her father, S. Jay Lasser, was a renowned tax expert who wrote the book Everybody’s Income Tax Guide. Though Lasser studied political science at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, she couldn’t resist the lure of the stage, joining the school’s musical productions alongside the likes of Margo Howard and Stuart Damon. 

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Even though Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (aka MH2) was popular and critically acclaimed, I have yet to see it.  I have been wanting to get the DVD boxed set of the show, but I never got around to it.

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A Few Reads for Monday

 Obit:  On June 22, ten days after his Good Morning World co-star Ronnie Schell passed away, Joby Baker, 92, had died.  He had been long married to Andre Previn's ex-wife, Dory, until she died in 2012.

Baker was also featured in Elvis Presley travelogues, er, movies and in the Gidget films.

His death was announced Saturday.

Snip:

Joseph Baker was born in Montreal on March 26, 1934. After his mother died when he was a toddler, his father — who had affectionally nicknamed him “Jobela” — took him to live in Oahu, Hawaii.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, Baker escaped injury in the immediate aftermath when the house he was living in was hit by friendly fire. He and his stepmother quickly left the islands, taking the RMS Aquitania with thousands of other evacuees to San Francisco, he recalled in 2022.

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He later left acting to sculpt and paint full time.  This is a site featuring a few of his works.

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Is Mitch McConnell dead or isn't he?  There are a shit ton of rumors circulating that he is indeed "brain dead," but it doesn't explain why his wife, Elaine Chao, took a trip to China on official business.

Adam Mockler: