Ron Ecker

And born with a tattoo of Nixon on his back. I wonder what the Incas thought of that.

I've often wondered how to describe Roger Stone's head. You've sent me to the dictionary.

Jim, I'm sort of in a second childhood. When I was too young to drink, I would lie about my age. Now I'm so old I'm lying about my age again, especially when I drink.

I'm old enough to remember watching Roy Cohn whisper in Joe McCarthy's ear in the Army-McCarthy hearings, and heard Army attorney Robert Welch famously ask McCarthy, ""At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Those theatrics landed Welch the role of the judge in "Anatomy of a Murder." But he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor? Come on. Did they have no sense of decency?

Perhaps my favorite Pacino reaction is when he first sees Michelle Pfeiffer in "Scarface." I had the same reaction.

I may have missed it. I think I screamed and left before the movie was over.

All I know about Bezos is that back sometime in the 90s when I first got on the Internet and learned about online trading, I thought about buying some Amazon stock (being a book lover). If I had bought that stock back then, today I might could be a member of the Power Elite.

Any number of Pacino's reactions are great in Dog Day Afternoon.

FWIW I remember Pacino saying that one of his best acting moments in any movie was his reaction to the discovery, right from the horse's mouth, that Fredo had betrayed him. (Then he gives Fredo the kiss of death.) As for Bening, she's going to make a new movie titled Old Movie Stars Don't Die at the Academy Awards.

It's certainly possible, but there is at least one other person he listens to. It might not always be the same person, depending on Trump's lucidity at the time. But you may remember when he stood beside Putin and said without shame that he couldn't see how Putin was involved in meddling in the 2016 election (since Putin denied it). Then a few days later in the Oval Office he read a statement in which he said he had misspoken, that he meant to say he COULD see how Putin was involved. It was astonishing (and obviously, of course, a ridiculous lie to claim he misspoke), and you could see that he hated to say what he was reading. Someone made him do that, and it certainly wasn't Putin.

I wouldn't doubt that Trump killed the DOJ's Uranium One investigation (whether there's anything to that "scandal" or not). Can't have anything that might be a bad reflection on Russia (such as taking some of our uranium). It could make Putin mad.

With Dubya we were living under a theocracy. We just couldn't do anything about it. I mean, how do you stop God from talking to him?

I think Chirac misunderstood. Bush was talking about Cheney.

Paul Wolfowitz, #2 man at the Pentagon, was holding a meeting there on 9/11 when they turned on the TV and saw that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. This #2 man at the Pentagon later said in an interview, "There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was."

I'm not familiar with Timber Sycamore, and am certainly no expert. It's just my impression that the neocons found out that their conquest of the Middle East (I believe the PNAC euphemism was "spreading the zones of democratic peace") was not as easy as they thought after getting their "new Pearl Harbor." So who benefited at all from the new Pearl Harbor? I would say no one at all except for the usual suspects, the MIC. Oh, and eventually Iran, since we've pretty well laid the groundwork to make Iraq an Iranian client state.

Where we need a regime change is here in the United States.

IMO that whole Conquest of the Middle East agenda was neocon New American Century hogwash. Yeah, Iraq was supposed to be just the first step. Funny how it ended there. We've really conquered Syria, haven't we? I remember speculation that Saddam's WMDs were buried in Syria. Well, why didn't we invade Syria and find out? We were supposed to invade it anyway according to the neocon manifesto. Everything just sort of stopped with Iraq. A case perhaps of biting off more than you can chew. And whatever happened to that war being paid for with Iraqi oil? That's what that neocon sleazebag Paul Wolfowitz told us while combing his hair with his spit.

My only objection to all that was one line of dialogue that was totally unnecessary and by itself made the movie not suitable for "family" viewing. Of course I use the word "family" as I knew it way back when. All I have to do nowadays is watch cable shows like Ray Donovan and see how today's parents and their kids talk to each other around the dinner table (F this and F that) to know that my idea of "family" is very obsolete.

It was Stone and screenwriter Zachary Sklar or their staff who found among Lansdale's papers at the Hoover Institute a claim check from the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, where JFK stayed the night before his death.There was no identifying mark on the claim check. They drew no conclusion but wrote "it is fascinating to find he was in Texas that very week" (having retired from the Air Force on November 1 and driving by way of Texas to visit a son in Arizona). (From JFK: The Book of the Film, p. 183).

Which unfortunately isn't good advice for a writer. Pitch a screenplay to a producer, and he or she will want to know what the message is. That's my experience anyway. Like "Your story is real clear, but what what are you trying to say?" Or "why do you think this story needs to be seen?" (How about, "To entertain?")

Which is all beside the point. Stone wasn't making a porno flick. If Shaw was a "sexual deviant," one of the characters could inform us he was a sexual deviant. Who would need to see it?

It seems obvious that the U.S. strategy was to distract the Iranian people from their protests against the Iranian regime. Since Trump has said we're not looking for regime change in Iran, he clearly wanted the Iranian people to get behind their regime 100 percent. Mission accomplished. The man is a genius.

When did Trump promise this? i completely missed it.

I wonder if the strike is what woke up John Bolton to testify if subpoened. I know Bolton is a war hawk but I don't think he's stupid. He may see this as another "drug deal" but far worse than holding up aid to Ukraine.

I had never heard of him. Anyway isn't it a military custom to replace one dead general with another one? (I saw something just yesterday about some guy stepping out of this general's "shadow," but I didn't catch the name, as if it makes any difference.)