Today is Tuesday, January 16, 2024.   One day after the expected win of the repugnican frontrunner in the Iowa caucus, news of New Hampshire canceling the Republican debate has just gotten out.  Supposedly, it was the former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, who declined to participate in any more debates unless they include former president Donald Chump or President Biden.   As a result, the debate, which Manchester television station WMUR and ABC News were hosting at St. Anselm College, was canceled.   It was canceled this evening.  

This latest development in the hot and heavy presidential race was reported in an online article for The Washington Post by Maegan Vazquez entitled “ABC cancels New Hampshire debate after Haley, Trump decline to participate.”

An ABC spokesperson said in a statement, “Our intent was to host a debate coming out of the Iowa caucuses, but we always knew that would be contingent on the candidates and the outcome of the race.  As a result, while our robust election coverage will continue, ABC News and WMUR-TV will not be moving forward with Thursday’s Republican presidential primary debate in New Hampshire.” 

The second debate, to be hosted by CNN at New England College, is scheduled in less than a week.

In a statement, Haley indicated, “We’ve had five great debates in this campaign.   Unfortunately, Donald Trump has ducked all of them.  He has nowhere left to hide. The next debate I do will either be with Donald Trump or with Joe Biden.  I look forward to it.”

Tweeting on Tuesday the real reason as to why Haley doesn’t want to participate in another debate, repugnican candidate Ron DeSatan said that Haley was too “afraid to participate in the remaining debates.” 

As you know, Dump has consistently refused to attend any GOP presidential debate this cycle for fear of sounding like a jerk.   A debate with Biden onstage will not take place until the general election season. 

Writing on his ridiculously named Truth Social platform, Dump congratulated himself as he always does, saying, “The public knows who I am [boy, do they ever!] & what a successful Presidency I had.”  Only his loyal dim bulb cultists would agree with that absurd claim!   Again, the real reason he won’t participate in these debates is because he can’t deal with spontaneity and he knows he can’t verbalize anything without murdering the language.

Last week, Haley expressed frustration about having debates without Dump onstage and said she would wait until the Iowa caucuses to decide about engaging in New Hampshire debates.   I’m just wondering why it took Haley all of this time to mention this now.  Is she afraid of something also in this regard?    She knows she would have to endure criticism from everyone there on stage for her rising poll numbers and that she would have to be on guard.

Haley plugged away at Dump for not being there to debate her and the other candidates.   So let’s see if this will ever change with the current frontrunner.

As for that repugnican frontrunner, where was he after his unsurprising Iowa win?    He was actually in our fair city attending the penalty phase of a civil defamation lawsuit stemming from E. Jean Carroll’s claims he sexually attacked her in a department store dressing room in 1996.  Trump was there in the courtroom to stare down his accuser.    An online Associated Press article about the day’s proceedings appears today by Michael R. Sisak, Larry Neumeister, and Jake Offenhartz entitled “Trump leaves court before attorney tells jury he tried to destroy columnist’s reputation.”

So today the defendant in this civil case shook his big head in disgust as the judge in his New York defamation trial told would-be jurors that another jury had already decided that the former president sexually abused a columnist in the 1990s.  He left as the coward he is after opening statements were read by Carroll’s lawyer accused him of using “the world’s biggest microphone” to destroy her reputation.

During his time in the Manhattan federal courtroom, Dump’s inept lawyers first protested the trial itself, saying he wasn’t being given a fair shake by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan and claiming that it was inappropriate for the trial to occur before appeals were resolved over legal issues.

Then, the big toddler expressed his displeasure with the whole proceeding through his transparent gestures.  For purposes of this trial, it had already been determined at one last year that Dump “did sexually assault Ms. Carroll,” Judge Kaplan said, prompting the former president to shake his head from side to side.  He was sitting at the defense table, flanked by his attorneys, about a dozen feet from Carroll and her legal team.  They didn’t appear to speak or make eye contact.

After Dump left the courtroom, opening statements began, with attorney Shawn Crowley saying on Carroll’s behalf that Mr. Trump must be held accountable for statements he made after she said publicly for the first time in a 2019 memoir that Chump had sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room a quarter century earlier. 

This is when Crowley said that the former president “used the world’s biggest microphone to attack Ms. Carroll, to humiliate her” and to “tear her reputation to shreds.”

The lawyer said Dump launched verbal attacks over four days in June 2019, accusing Carroll of being a liar. ”He said this from the White House . . . where presidents have signed laws, declared wars, and decided the fate of the nation.”

Crowley then told jurors their job was to answer the question: ”How much money will it take to get hIm to stop?”   I’m hoping they will grant Carroll $10 million or more.   Much more! 

Testimony will begin on Wednesday when Carroll is expected to take the witness stand.

Trump did not attend the previous trial in the case last May, when a jury found he had sexually abused Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.  

As expected with this trial, Dump is appealing and hasn’t paid any of that award, though he placed $5.5 million in escrow to cover the verdict and other costs in the event he loses his appeal.  One issue that wasn’t decided in the first trial was how much Dump owed for comments he made about about Carroll while president.  That will be the new jury’s only job. 

The malignant liar still maintains after being judged a sexual abuser that he doesn’t know Carroll, 80, that he never met her at the Bergdorf Goodman store in midtown Manhattan in spring 1996, and that she made up her claims in order to sell her book and for political reasons.    All lies, in my opinion.    Who the hell would believe him now?  What political reasons did she have for accusing him of sexual battery?    Maybe she just disliked him for being who he is, not for his political beliefs. 

So that’s the top news stories so far.   I have to report that I was typing the blog with Atticus sleeping next to the keyboard and the computer monitor.    He’s that small that he fits in between both items on the desk.   What was so amusing about him sleeping here was his paw falling on the keyboard and accidentally touching certain keys which I had to delete, so if there are some errors in this blog, you’ll know why. 

Today I took slices of my banana nut bread to my ladies at the Austin Street Diner who were there – surprisingly – since it was flurrying when I went out.  The ground was also very slick and I wasn’t wearing boots, so I was afraid of slipping and sliding on the slushy pavement.    So I was surprised to meet three of the women at the eatery at 10:45.    The only one who was not there was “Carol.”  

Later I drove to the Kew Gardens Cinema to see Poor Things starring Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo.  Elliot wisely stayed home.   Before I could use the car, I had to wipe the snow off the windshield and rear window.  

But it was worth it since I enjoyed the film enormously.  There were only two other people in the theater so I had my pick of seats.   The film, I learned, was based on Alasdair Gray’s acclaimed 1992 novel, and it was directed by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos whose earlier films The Lobster and The Favourite were very well received, with the latter earning several Oscar nominations.  

This film is a bizarre and twisted take on the Frankenstein myth and it stars a wonderful Emma Stone as the childlike ward of disfigured surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), Bella Baxter, who she refers to as “God” throughout her stay with the lonely physician.   Soon a medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) is recruited to Godwin to chronicle Bella’s physical and mental development.   As it turns out, Bella committed suicide by hurling herself off a bridge while pregnant.  It is Godwin who recovers her body and replaces her brain with that of her unborn but still alive baby.  Thus Bella has the body of a young woman but the mind of a tottering toddler.   Therefore, there are early scenes with Bella tottering like a child around Godwin’s house and throwing tantrums and crashing dishes to the floor.  Soon she quickly develops into a mature woman, with a burning curiosity about the world around her, all the while discovering her own sexuality and sensuality.    Bella eventually becomes engaged to Max, but craves independence and is lured into a life of travel and adventure by the cad Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who takes her on a grand cruise.   But Wedderburn who is so much more experienced than her finds that Bella is not easily tamed, and her insatiable curiosity and her relentless naiveté, coupled with her aching compassion, find the pair pitching up at a snowy Paris where Bella’s life takes a very sharp – and quite dark – turn that will change her forever. 

I won’t reveal what that turn is since it would spoil the untold stunning delights of this gorgeous, evocative, and sometimes quite shocking piece of modern cinema.  Lanthimos creates a world that is richly detailed, bursting with vivd color (although the film opens its account in moody monochrome) and populated in places by grotesques living side by side with the innocent and the exploited. Through all of this marches Stone’s Bella, wide-eyed and innocent, a human blank slate but learning the ways and wiles of the world and always managing, often entirely inadvertently, to turn them to her advantage.  Ruffalo also shines as the sleazy Wedderburn who is debased by Bella’s physical flourishing and becomes an enraged, jealous suitor when she leaves him.  Dafoe is also at his best as the troubled surgeon, a man who has himself become a monster thanks to his ghastly childhood.  But this is Stone’s film, a role she embraces fearlessly, hurling herself into some outrageous and explicit set pieces with gusto.

By the way, there are many scenes of carnal delight here, and this is not a film for everyone.   There are quite a number of lighthearted scenes dotted throughout the movie and there are scenes that many might find infuriating and, at places, hard to watch.    But I thoroughly enjoyed it nevertheless.  

The ride home was quite dicey since the windshield was glazed over and my visibility was reduced.    Thank God I got home without getting into any accidents. 

The weather forecasted tomorrow is supposed to be only in the 20s.   Brrr!

Stay safe and be well. 

Here is the sleeping little Atticus.

I don’t know why he’s so zonked here.   Do you?