This is probably not so but I keep thinking that the reason the Republican Health Care Bill is so utterly terrible is so Donald Trump can step in and say, "Wait! I promised the American people we would not cut Medicaid and that everyone will have great, affordable healthcare and I cannot allow this!"
Then they'll improve it a little. Instead of being really, really, really, really bad, it will just be really, really, really bad. They'll still cut Medicaid but maybe by a few million less. Trump will then proclaim it a great bill that fulfills all his promises and he, of course, is a hero…and a lot of people will believe this when he signs the damned thing. We're actually to the point in this country when they might be able to get away with this for a while.
As he expected, John Oliver is being sued by the main coal mining company that he blasted in this week's episode of Last Week Tonight. You can read the complaint here and while I'm no lawyer, it does seem written by an attorney who was thinking, "This'll never stand up but the old man is furious, he wants it done and I'm being paid well so…" It sounds like the complaint Trump's lawyers whipped up when Bill Maher suggested Trump's father was an orangutan.
I just looked up that suit, by the way, because I wasn't sure if it was an orangutan or a baboon. It was an orangutan but I noticed this in the articles about the suit being dropped: "Michael Cohen, a lawyer for Trump, is playing down the move, saying 'the lawsuit was temporarily withdrawn to be amended and refiled at a later date.'" I believe that's lawyer-talk for "We had a losing case but we don't want to admit it."
Back to Mr. Oliver and the Coal Baron: Good for John Oliver. More journalists — and that's what he is, no matter how he professes to be just a comedian — should be doing stories that make big companies angry enough to file lawsuits. And I'm surprised they didn't directly sue the guy in the squirrel suit.
Comic-Con International is now less than a month away. Please do not ask me if I can get you passes, no matter how many terminally-ill children you promised.
Also do not ask me if I can help you get some panel added to the schedule. That ship has sailed. Invariably though, I hear from someone days before the con who wants to know how they can get a big room to promote their latest project. The program guides have already been printed and they just now realized the utter necessity of doing a panel, preferably in one of the larger halls on Saturday afternoon.
I will be on or hosting 13-14 panels, several of them about Jack Kirby. When you add in planned meals with friends and business associates, business meetings, interviews, presenting the Bill Finger Award, signing copies of the new edition of Kirby, King of Comics and other obligations, my personal schedule for the 4.5 days (including Preview Night) is at 25 items. If I can figure out when to add "Sleep" somewhere in there, it will be at 26.
The full Programming Schedule will be online for your inspection two weeks before the con. We're not supposed to reveal a lot before then but folks keep writing me to ask if there'll be some sort of memorial for my beloved Carolyn Kelly. There will be a panel about her, her father and her father's possum on Friday morning at 10:30.