Yesterday was Vincent Van Gogh's birthday

Vincent Willum van Goth (March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890), was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art.

In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life.

As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transfered to London.

He turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium.

He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents.

His younger brother, Theo, supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily.

In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin

His friendship with Paul Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor, when in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear.

He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Remy.
After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Olse near Paris.
he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet.

His depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver.
The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs - probably stopped by his spine.
He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed.
The doctors tended to him as best they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe.
The following morning Theo rushed to his brother's side, finding him in good spirits.
But within hours Vincent began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound.
He died in the early hours of July 29.
According to Theo, Vincent's last words were, "the sadness will last forever."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh





"Was Van Gogh Killed? New Research Says He Was Shot"

According to the groundbreaking research of Pulitzer Prize winning biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the painter didn't shoot himself, he was killed.
In an article published in the December, 2014 issue of Vanity fair, Naifeh and White Smith claim that Van Gogh was accidentally shot by a man called Rene Secretan, who broke a lifetime of silence after seeing Vincent Minnelli's van Gogh biopic "Lust for Life" (1956), in which the painter is depicted as killing himself in the woods surrounding the French town of Auvers, just outside Paris.

Secretan confessed he had led a gang of teenage hoodlums who enjoyed getting drunk and bullying the tortured artist.
Although he never admitted to having shot van Gogh, Secretan did declare that he used to dress up as Buffalo Bill and brandish a malfunctioning pistol he got from the keeper of the Ravoux Inn, where the painter lived.

According to Naifeh and White Smith, two days before van Gogh's death, a stray bullet shot from afar hit the painter in the abdomen while he was out in the fields of Auvers.
Because it didn't hit his vital organs, it took over 29 agonizing hours to kill him.
None of the reports of his death mention the word suicide, only that he had "wounded himself."
No one admitted to having found the gun, and the doctors could not really make sense of his wounds.

To read more, Google:
"Was van Gogh Killed? New Research Says He Was Shot"
(December 2014 issue of Vanity Fair)

The 75-Year-Old Book That Drives Our Politics

Who.What Why.org
March 30, 2018


Be it privatizing the Veterans Administration, railing against "socialized medicine," gutting the Environmental Protection Agency, or trying to starve public education, the proponents of these ideas all seem to be beholden to the work of Ayn Rand.

Rand's novel, "The Fountainhead" was published 75 years ago this month, after being turned down by 12 publishers.

Yet for people like Paul Ryan, Stephen Miller, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Peter Thiel, it might as well have been a briefing paper published this morning.

Even though Bill Buckley kicked Rand out of the conservative movement in the late 1950s,
at a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, Paul Ryan declared, "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."

Yaron Brock, the president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Jeff Schechtman's guest on this week's 'WhoWhatWhy' podcast, thinks that "The Fountainhead" is the classic American novel, and that Rand's ideas are at the core of American and Western civilization.

More:
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/03/30/the-75-year-old-book-that-drives-our-politics/

What's your favorite gangster movie?

Name a song with "Baby" in the title

Be My Baby - The Ronettes

Scott Pruitt's Proposed EPA Science Changes Would Put Americans at Risk

Union of Concerned Scientists
March 20, 2018

PRUITT'S PROPOSED SCIENCE CHANGES ARE A BETRAYAL OF HIS RESPONSIBILITIES, WOULD PUT AMERICANS AT RISK


WASHINGTON -- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to announce a new proposal soon to radically limit the types of science that the EPA can use in developing public health and environmental protections.
This proposal appears to be similar to the changes that would have resulted from last years
H.R. 1430, a bill sponsored by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith that was highly criticized by scientific organizations.
These changes would make it much harder for the agency to carry out it's mission of protecting public health, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Below is a statement by Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS.

"Administrator Pruitt's changes could bar studies that use personal health data and confidential business information from even being considered in EPA policymaking - restricting EPA's work on everything from air pollution to pesticides and making the enforcement of laws like the Clean Air Act nearly impossible.
Companies could evade accountability for the pollution they create by declaring information about their pollution a 'trade secret.'
This approach has long been pushed by powerful lobbies like the tobacco industry as a way to prevent the federal government from acting on the best available science.
Fortunately, this nonsensical and dangerous proposal has never been able to make it out of Congress, but Pruitt seems intent on imposing it anyway."

More:
https://www.ucsusa.org/news/press-release/pruitt-epa-science-proposal#.WrwBSHY5mTM

Role of Judges in Hiding Trump Activities Helped Pave the Way for Eventual Victory

Who.What.Why.org
March 20, 2018


New revelations show that Donald Trump's path to the presidency might have been much more difficult - if a panel of judges had acted differently in 2011.

Documents released by a federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday, March 9, but thus far not reported, demonstrate that a panel of judges in 2011 blocked the release of extremely damaging information about then real estate mogul Donald Trump to the late "Village Voice" reporter Wayne Barrett, who was then working for the "Daily Beast."

Those documents, if they had been released at the time, would have shown that Trump was accepting financing from a company that was headed by a convicted felon.
Doing so knowingly is criminal fraud under federal banking laws.

The felon was Felix Sater, who has in recent months become a constant figure in the media highlight.
However, the real import of Sater, and who knew what about him, was lost for years as a result of that 2011 court decision, and benefited Trump's chances tremendously.

More:
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/03/20/role-of-judges-in-hiding-trump-activities-helped-pave-way-for-eventual-victory/

Today is Carl Reiner's birthday

Carl Reiner was born March 20, 1922 in The Bronx, New York City.
In 1950, he was cast by Max Leibman in Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows," appearing in skits while also working alongside writers such as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon.

Starting in 1960, Reiner teamed up with Mel Brooks as a comedy duo on "The Steve Allen Show"
Their performances on television and stage included Reiner playing the straight man in
"2000 Year Old Man"
Eventually, the routine expanded into a series of 5 comedy albums, with the last album in the series winning a Grammy Award for Spoken Comedy Album.

On "The Dick Van Dyke Show,' he began his directing career.
His first feature film was an adaptation of Joseph Stein's play, "Enter Laughing," (1967), which, in turn, was based on Reiner's semi-autobiographical 1958 novel of the same name.

Balancing directing, producing, writing, and acting, Reiner has worked on a wide range of films and television programs.

Films from his early directing career included "Where's Poppa?" (1970), "Oh God" (1977), and "The Jerk" (1979).

Reiner is the author of several books, including his 2004 memoir "My Anecdotal Life:A Memoir"
and novels, such as his 2006 novel "NNNNN: A Novel" and "American Film."

Carl Reiner's great tweet today about Shitler

Twitter
March 20, 2018
Carl Reiner
(@carlreiner)


"Hour by hour, minute by minute, lie by lie, payoff by payoff, illegality by illegality, sexual harassment by sexual harassment, by coming to light, assures us that Donald Trump will soon reap his just desserts, which may include impeachment"

(15 hours ago)

https://twitter.com/carlreiner

Today, St Paddy's Day, is also Kurt Russell's birthday - Your favorite Kurt Russell movie?

Do you have a movie suggestion or two in honor of St. Paddy's Day?

- The Commitments is a 1991 Irish-British-American musical comedy-drama based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Roddy Doyle.
Set in the northside of Dublin, the film tells the story of Jimmy Rabbitte, a young soul music fanatic who assembles a group of working-class youths to form a soul band called The Commitments.
All the band members actually play their respective instruments, except for trumpeter Joey "The Lips" Fagan.
Singer Andrew Strong, son of Irish singer Rob Strong, plays the lead singer Declan "Deco" Duffe.
He was only 16 when filming began, and he has a great voice
The three female back-up singers all have great voices too.
It's a truly great Irish movie!

- The Matchmaker is a 1997 romantic comedy set in Ireland starring Janeane Garofalo.
Also in the cast are David O'Hara, Milo O'Shea and Denis Leary.
I highly recommend this very funny movie, and St. Paddy's Day is the perfect time to watch it on Netflix.