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America The Current Situation

“Totally under control”: The documentary and comic on the Trump administration’s disastrous response to COVID-19

Promo poster for the documentary “Totally Under Control”: “The truth will make you sick”

Totally Under Control is the name of two recent works:

  • A new documentary film that was released yesterday, and
  • a print comic and motion comic.

While they were created by completely unrelated teams, both are about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, and both take their name from a statement by Donald Trump made on January 22, in which he downplayed the novel coronavirus:

“We have it totally under control.”

The Totally Under Control documentary film

I’m watching the Totally Under Control documentary as I write this post, and I’ll write more later. In the meantime, here’s some information and links.

Here’s the trailer for the documentary:

The film is currently available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.

Here’s a review of the documentary by Breakfast All Day:

And here’s an interview with the documentary’s directors, Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger with DP/30, David Poland’s YouTube channel where he interviews movie-makers:

The latest episode of the Daily Beast’s podcast, The New Abnormal, features an interview with director Alex Gibney about the film, how he made it, and what he learned in the process.

You can get it via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other sources.

The Totally Under Control comic

Insider posted the comic on September 14th. You can read it online…

Comic panel: Donald Trump speaking at a podium in Davos — “We have it totally under contro;. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

…or you can watch it in motion comic form below:

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America The Current Situation

CAPTCHA of the day

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America The Current Situation

“The Simpsons” presents 50 reasons to NOT vote for “Covigula”

The upcoming “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons features this segment listing 50 reasons to NOT vote for Trump, and believe me, there are plenty more, including his profiting off the Secret Service, and having taxpayers cover the $100+ million costs of his 250+ days of golfing.

Here are some stills from the segment:

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Music

Mash-up of the day: Buffalo Springfield and Young MC — “Stop and Bust a Move”

Mash-up expert Bill McClintock took Buffalo Springfield’s 1966 anthem, For What It’s Worth and Young MC’s 1989 dance floor-filler (and one of my favorite accordion karaoke numbers) Bust a Move — both tunes with a I-IV chord progression — and melded them into this hybrid musical gem:

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America The Current Situation

Don’t call today “Columbus Day”. Call it “Canadian Thanksgiving” instead.

Because Trump’s base instinct is make things generally worse, his White House issued a Columbus Day proclamation that is just as bad as you’d expect.

An excerpt:

Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy.  These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions.  Rather than learn from our history, this radical ideology and its adherents seek to revise it, deprive it of any splendor, and mark it as inherently sinister.  They seek to squash any dissent from their orthodoxy.  We must not give in to these tactics or consent to such a bleak view of our history.  We must teach future generations about our storied heritage, starting with the protection of monuments to our intrepid heroes like Columbus.  This June, I signed an Executive Order to ensure that any person or group destroying or vandalizing a Federal monument, memorial, or statue is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I have also taken steps to ensure that we preserve our Nation’s history and promote patriotic education.  In July, I signed another Executive Order to build and rebuild monuments to iconic American figures in a National Garden of American Heroes.  In September, I announced the creation of the 1776 Commission, which will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and honor our founding.  In addition, last month I signed an Executive Order to root out the teaching of racially divisive concepts from the Federal workplace, many of which are grounded in the same type of revisionist history that is trying to erase Christopher Columbus from our national heritage.  Together, we must safeguard our history and stop this new wave of iconoclasm by standing against those who spread hate and division.

Call it Indigenous People’s Day instead. Adam “Adam Ruins Everything” Conover explains in a segment titled Christopher Columbus Was a Murderous Moron:

From Vox, here’s a more serious take on why the U.S. celebrates the so-called “Columbus Day”:

College Humor explains “Columbusing”, which is when you “discover” something that’s already been there and isn’t actually new, but you act as if it is:

Instead, just say “Happy Thanksgiving”. After all, today, the second Monday in October, is Thanksgiving in Canada:

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America The Current Situation

The UK government writes off Orange Julius Caesar, tells its ministers to make nice with Biden

Photo: “The orange wanker’s a write-off”. Domenic Raab and Boris Johnson are literally talking behind Donald Trump’s back.

For more, see:

For U.S. readers: “No 10” is the colloquial name for 10 Downing Street, the London address for the UK Prime Minister’s office.

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America The Current Situation

There’s already a “Mike Pence and his fly” costume for sale

You’ve got to hand it to Spirit, the company that specialized in those Halloween costume pop-up stores. They’re pretty good at taking a meme or popular phenomenon and turning it into a mass-producing costume in almost no time at all.

Now it’s Yandy’s turn — they’re the “sexy costume” people — to make the “Sexy Mike Pence” costume, despite the phrase being a contradiction in terms. Remember “Sexy Ken Bone” from the previous election?