Just have time today for a short dump today…

• Eric Levitz says that for Trump, the biggest problem with the proposed strategy for fighting ISIS is not that it's not a good strategy but that it sounds too much like Obama's.
• Daniel Larison predicts what will come of Trump's second foreign trip. Most likely, he'll piss off some of the foreign leaders he missed on his first visit.
• Marie Brenner on the creepy/scary relationship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn. It's all about destroying people you perceive, rightly or wrongly as a threat to you.

I continue to be fascinated that in his tweets, Trump seems to think that one of the worst things you can say about someone — an insult that discredits whatever they say — is that their business is not doing well. He also continues to usually be wrong on how well these businesses are doing. He tweeted that CNN's ratings were "way down," which is not so. But even if it were true, is this the wisest point of attack by a man whose approval ratings are down? And a man with so many failed businesses to his name? I do not get it.

The posting of an image of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup is a good indicator that the guy who runs this blog is busy today — maybe even because someone is paying him to write something for them and it's gotta be in real soon. There will therefore limited posting on this blog and you'll have to look elsewhere for your utter trivia, your plugs for Frank Ferrante, your remembrances of Huell Howser and your articles about Donald Trump doing things which any Republican would have insisted was criminal and/or a sign of bad moral fiber if done by a Democratic president. Mark will be back with full force blogging when the workload lessens. So sorry.

As I've mentioned here before, I'm a big fan of Big Daddy, a band dedicated to the premise that the only good music is fifties music. So when they encounter a tune recorded in the sixties, seventies, eighties or later, they put it right by rearranging it into the style of a fifties song. If you search on this site for "Big Daddy," you'll find many examples of them doing this.

In 1992, they got a lot of Beatles fans mad at them by doing this to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album some hold as sacred. If you feel that way, you might not enjoy today's video link here. It's 38 minutes of them in concert around that time performing selections from their version of Sgt. Pepper. I'm pretty sure I was in the audience for this and I think it's terrific…

Here are some statistics on how Americans order their steaks. The trouble with this kind of thing is that the way some of us order our steaks is not the way we prefer our steaks. In most restaurants, I find I have to order a little rarer than I want to get what I want. And of course, you can always send back a steak that's undercooked and ask that they give it a little more time on the grill but you can't send back an overcooked piece of meat and ask that they subtract some of the cooking.

Also, since my gastric bypass surgery eleven years ago, I have to keep in mind that in most restaurants, I'm ordering what I'll eat half of now and eat the rest of, later or the next day. If I get my steak cooked to the rarest level that I find acceptable, then the leftovers are still fine when I reheat and they cook a bit more.

• If I were president with 39% approval and 47% for impeaching me, I too would try to convince people the press was not to be believed.

Jon Delfin sent this link to a really short clip of a baby lion trying to roar…

So many interesting articles today that you get another one of these…

• Robert W. Merry, editor of The American Conservative, smells failure in the air for the Trump Administration and thinks that will lead to the country moving to a hard-left Liberal trend. Before you get all excited about this, remember that Mr. Merry's idea of Liberal Takeover is probably that we keep the Minimum Wage.
• William Saletan says that Trump is doing his darnedest to destroy Obamacare and sell the idea that it's a failure. Well, we knew that but Saletan thinks the idea here is to get people to not compare "Trumpcare" to the Affordable Care Act but to compare it to an alternative of nothing.
• That's because, as Tara Golshan notes, Obamacare is still way more popular than the Better Care Reconciliation Act. I suspect it always will be.
• Kevin Drum offers a primer on the five basic forms of health care — Socialist, Single-Payer, Multi-Payer, Subsidized Private and Private. There's a lot of discussion out there from people who think one of these is the only one that can possibly work but it's worth noting that all five exist in the United States and some of them have been around for a pretty long time.
• Joe Conason says Trump and Newt Gingrich should stop trying to discredit Special Counsel Robert Mueller. You know, the only reason you try to discredit someone in his position is that you're expecting him to uncover something you'd rather not have uncovered.

And as with most days in the last year or three, it's a very good day to not be Chris Christie. When the careers of some politicians end, they don't seem to know it. This guy has to know.

Sir Ian McKellen and Cookie Monster explain what it is to resist something. See if you can resist watching…

I was in Las Vegas over this past weekend, seeing shows and visiting friends, losing a whopping $7.00 on Video Poker and spending a fair amount of time in the room working on scripts. I still have scripts in urgent need of completion so I'll tell you about my trip in the days to come. Right now, here's some of what's in the news…

• As Kevin Drum notes, the new Republican/Trump line on their Health Care Plan is that Obamacare was a failure because though it drastically reduced the number of uninsured in this country, it still left some people uncovered. So that's why we need their new plan which will leave more people without insurance. I don't know what the endgame is on this or even if they're thinking one move ahead of what they say today. I guess it'll be something like, "Well, yes, there are more millions more uninsured now that our plan is in place but all those people chose not to buy insurance so we don't have to think about them."
• In a very long article, Frank Rich compares Trump in his current scandals to Nixon in the thick of Watergate. I was hesitant about that comparison but Rich finds a lot more common points than I'd imagined. In the end though, it all comes down to whether a Republican Congress is even going to acknowledge wrongdoing on the part of a Republican President.
• Jonathan Chait has an update on the unfolding scandal of Russian collusion. How amazing to see people who felt Benghazi had to be investigated over and over because those damned GOP-led hearings kept concluding Hillary was innocent, keep insisting it's wrong to even look into these allegations.
• And the latest Big Lie that the Trump administration is pushing is that millions of illegal voters are the reason Trump lost the popular vote that he really won. So we need to pass strict laws that just coincidentally would make it harder for non-white people to vote.
• Ezra Klein discusses how Donald Trump has diminished America's morality and sense of decency. As he notes, "The party that tried to impeach Bill Clinton to protect family values has embraced the position that it does no good to publicly discuss the [current] president's routine violations of basic decency."
• And as the Fourth of July is upon us, Jesse Berney assesses the state of patriotism in a country with Donald J. Trump in the White House.

Just so you know, by the way: I don't post these links because I think they will contribute in even a microscopic way to bringing down the Trump administration. I think the Trump administration will bring down itself. I just post things because I find them interesting. And maybe some of this will help us all maintain our equilibrium, especially when we encounter — as I did at the Vegas airport — someone who thinks our country is being saved from the certain doom of Gay Marriage, saving the environment and more people being able to afford to see a doctor.

The New York Times has a profile of Joe Sinnott, who has been working in comic books, mainly as an inker, for a long, long time. It's mostly about his embellishment of the Sunday page for the Spider-Man newspaper strip, which is far from his most important work even if it is his most current. But hey, any reason to salute Joe is fine with me. Wonderful man, wonderful talent.

I received two interesting e-mails about the late Huell Howser, who did a cheery TV show for PBS, running around and interviewing people. This one is from Darryl Musick and the "Philippe's" of which he speaks is a great downtown restaurant that makes terrific French Dip sandwiches. They claim that the founder of their establishment invented the French Dip sandwich — maybe so — and it's exactly the kind of place I would have expected Huell Howser to frequent. Here's Darryl…

Your story about Mr. Howser reminds me of a few times we'd run across him, not taping his show, but just having lunch at Philippe's.

The first time we met him there, we'd just finished and I stood up to go, turned towards the door, and literally ran into the man as he was walking by. I stopped, just for a second as the recognition hit and before I could do anything more, he stuck out his hand and said "Hi, I'm Huell Howser."

My wife said, "Oh, I wish I had my camera."

"Don't worry, I have one in the car. I'll be right back," he said.

He was and had the lady at the newstand take our picture. This was the pre-digital era so he took our address and said he'd send it to us. He did, along with a nice letter about how it was so nice to meet us at Philippe's.

Great story. And yeah, Mr. Howser was just the kind of guy to do something like that. Meanwhile, here's a message I received from Brian Stanley…

I don't know if you knew or cared but as an animation fan you might find this interesting:

A few years ago there was a new animated version of Winnie the Pooh where much of the plot revolves around the terrible evil monster Pooh and his friends mistakenly believe took Christopher Robin. As one of the few "grown up laughs" in the film, the big brute shows up after the credits, but of course he's super-enthusiastic and friendly. He's even fascinated when he falls in the large hole that was dug for him.

Despite all the available actors who could've done a fine job, I think you can guess from the title of this e-mail who the producers thought would be perfect for that. I believe it's his only film role.

Yeah. The friendliest guy on television. I wonder if there's a place these days for a guy like that.

A sea turtle yawning…

Ray Arthur reads this blog and writes me from time to time, sometimes about his old profession of working for a Film Commission, which means he helped arrange for TV shows and movies to be shot on location. Just got this from him…

Just saw your recent Huell Howser article. I assisted on three shows when I was Film Commissioning: Trona Pinnacles, Burro Schmidt Tunnel, and I can't remember the third. I'll attest that he was as nice and professional in person as he was on film (tape).

I remember two interesting off camera things about Huell. He had requested two Comp. Motel rooms. When we told him that we had arranged rooms at the EconoLodge he thanked me and said that was fine but was there any chance for an upgrade to one of the hotels, but not pushy at all, just, if you can. I couldn't help thinking that he thought, "This guy's really literal. I should have said 'Hotel.'"

And the second thing was the Mayor at that time wanted to give him a City Proclamation at the next Council Meeting while he was in town and Huell said, "Please thank the Mayor and please find a way to get me out of that. I feel so self conscious with those things." I explained to the Mayor that due to Huell's scheduling conflicts he would be unavailable but was very grateful for the invitation. Then we went to a restaurant in the next town for dinner.

Thanks, Ray. Always nice to hear that someone's on-camera character isn't at odds with their off-camera character. I used to watch Howser and get swept up in his enthusiasm for that week's topic. I'd hate to think his wasn't genuine.

Charlie Rosen's Broadway Big Band — with vocalist Alan H. Green — makes the Cole Porter tune "Too Darn Hot" even hotter…

MAD magazine has been bashing Donald Trump pretty hard lately.  Once upon a time, its founding publisher — the late William Gaines — announced he wanted to cut back on jokes about Richard Nixon not because Nixon didn't deserve it but because Gaines thought too many other worthy subjects were being ignored.  I don't think Gaines actually believed that.  What I heard from insiders was this: That the magazine — which then went to press two or even three months before the date an issue would reach newsstands — was having trouble writing Nixon jokes that might still be relevant 60 or 90 days later. But Gaines did say what he was quoted as saying.

I see people on the 'net quoting Gaines to argue that the magazine is overdoing it with anti-Trump material. Well, maybe — but that seems to be true of just about everyone who's any good and deals in topical humor. I don't know how it's humanly possible to be a good topical humorist today without treating Trump like the greatest embarrassment ever.

MAD isn't even new to the Trump-ridiculing business. As Snopes just noted, back in 1992 — before Colbert or Meyers or Bee or Oliver or any of them — they were going after the guy. The only notable spoofs before that I can think of would be Phil Hartman's impressions on Saturday Night Live…which Trump was an extremely bad sport about.