Posted on 08/25/2019 5:58:47 AM PDT by NOBO2012
I see that the Danish Prime Minister placed a call to President Trump shortly before he left for Europe, possibly in an effort to smooth over the kerfuffle she created by her rude response to the President’s off-handed comment about buying Greenland.
My sister had a better idea: we trade the Danes Greenland for Puerto Rico. That way the Danes will have someplace warm to go in the winter when there’s only 6 hours of sunlight in Denmark and we’ll have someplace America’s Green New Deal crowd can go to observe the melting of glaciers. And they can stay there and help Greenlanders cope with the trauma of coming out from under the deep freeze.
90% of islanders interviewed fully accept that the climate crisis is happening, with a further 76% claiming to have personally experienced global heating in their daily lives…
I’m sure that is scary but I fail to see how “global heating” can be a bad thing in a cold, dark barren place like Greenland.
“The island faces some of the most acute social issues in the world with high levels of alcoholism and historically disproportionate rates of suicide.”
You sure wouldn’t want to disturb that delicate social order.
Anyway, I think this swap would make the Danes feel better as they’ve regretted selling us the then Danish West Indies islands for $25 million ever since they did so in 1917. We certainly don’t want to give back the U.S. Virgin Islands, but I think Puerto Rico is a good substitute.
Denmark would get an island more suited to the EU as PR is already seriously inclined towards socialism and we get a place where the Destination America channel can start a new show: Buying Greenland.
Quaint 2-story for sale in historic fishing village with indoor plumbing. Lighting optional.
How is this anything but a win-win for everyone?
And just to sweeten the deal we’ll throw in Geraldo!
I swear, President Donald J. Trump really is some kind of Very Stable Genius.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D
NO! We want Greenland for its beauty and its resources - send the green new dealers to someplace they will be familiar with like PR which is a hellhole of Liberal creation - they can all sweat together with the former natives of Greenland.
Looks like a Thomas Kinkade print.
It is my fervent prayer that the Danish and Puerto Ricans get so offended they agree to the deal.
OK, then how about we swap Hawaii for Greenland?
$2 billion won’t do it. $2 billion wouldn’t even pay for the Trump hotel.
If it were a Kinkade print, it would be twilight and there’d be candles glowing in the windows. One art critic said Kinkade’s twee cottages all looked like they were ablaze on the inside.
I just want to see GREENland match its name, like it did in the good old days.
I was never a fan of Kinkade’s paintings, but I read an interview he gave regarding his “painter of light” status.
He said that when he was a child his mom worked late. After walking home past houses with lights on and families together, he would come home to his dark empty house. He longed to be greeted by family and light. He painted what he desired but never had.
He spins a very charming tale, doesn’t he? I went to school with him, junior high and high school, and was at his home many times. His mom was divorced and raising three kids on her own, but they weren’t deprived or poor. His mom worked for the county and got home each evening by 5:30 p.m. Frankly, Tom would have preferred that she come home later! He was busy fooling around and learning to paint and sculpt. He left home at the first opportunity, heading to Berkeley then dropping out to do backgrounds for a cartoon feature in Hollywood. He was a bit of a wild man. In his heart of hearts he may have been a devout Christian, but that whole religious thing was used mainly for marketing. Have you read about the times he was arrested for DUI and his many misbehaviors in Las Vegas? (He stood on his seat and hollered, “Codpiece! Codpiece!” from the audience during a Sigfried and Roy performance. Another time he relieved himself on a statue of one of the Seven Dwarves at Disneyland.) And the details of his death are somewhat squalid.
U B Genius!
Heck, just give them PR and Jerry with nothing in return.
True, there’s no way of knowing if I’m making it all up. But I assure you it’s true. You can probably find the info on the DUIs and other public episodes online. In any case, if you like his work, that’s just fine. We all need art and inspiration in our little lives. Many of my favorite writers, artists and composers are / were disreputable people I wouldn’t care to meet.
Greenland for Puerto Rico, and we throw in the US Virgin Islands (we bought those from Denmark a century ago, to begin with)
Anyway the firm specialized in helping mega-wealthy clients avoid estate taxes by setting up irrevocable insurance trusts equal to their net worth, which funded legitimate charitable orgs, many of them faith based which gave them big tax deductions and it did help legitimate charities, but the trusts also purchased huge life insurance policies for the donor – the rich person’s and also equal to their net worth, the proceeds of which are not taxable to the beneficiaries – the rich person’s heirs, i.e. no estate taxes but lots and lots of legal fees.
Some of the firm’s clients had names that would be recognizable to some, one was a retired PGA golfer with a son who was also a well know PGA golfer, another was country music star of some fame and a middling sit-com actor and one was the “painter of light”. Others were what I’d call “old money” from old money Baltimore families and the Maryland and DC and N. Virginia horsey set. From my experience, the “old money” folks were polite and respectful, even engaging and down to earth, while what could be called the new moneyed and the celebrity types were a whole different type – all full of themselves.
I sometimes answered the phone and one day got a call from a certain “painter of light” who demanded I put him through to the senior partner. I very politely and professionally explained the senior partner was out of the office but was expected back in about an hour and that I would take a message and have his call returned as soon as possible. With that he went off on me, cursing at me in a really un-hinged manner, told me I was lying and was incompetent and demanded to be connected, etc., and then, yes he did go there - he said, “I’m really important, I’m (said his name) and, “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!!”
Actually at the time I didn’t know who he was.
I tried my best to calm him down and assuring him I’d make sure “senior partner” returned his call. FWIW this was before everyone carried cell phones and while “senior partner” did carry a beeper, he was very clear that we should never page him unless the office was of fire or something equally dire.
So painter guy called me a rhymes with witch and hung up and called back a minute later, getting one of the paralegals who also answered the phone and after she told him the same as I had, he cursed her out similarly. He called back a few more times. I wasn’t sure but he sounded a bit drunk to me, and if not drunk, certainly very nasty and rather unhinged. He called back a few more times before giving up. When senior partner got back to the office and saw all the messages, he rolled his eyes and went upstairs to his office, mumbling something like “like I really need to deal with this A-H today”.
One of the other paralegals told me who he was and why everyone cringed when he called as he was so nasty, verbally abusive and how one time he called one of the paralegals a racial slur (and she was white FWIW). It was so bad the office staff had a nickname for him – “the painter of darkness” and Thomas Kin-racist”.
Shortly after this I began to see his “paintings” for sale everywhere including the Robert Kincaid stores at all the malls and my SIL even bought one, I think from QVC. Personally I find them hideous and schlocky and overly sentimental dreck and not fine art, but understand why some people like them. Some folks even love Bob Ross and his happy little trees. But I was never able to look at a Kincaid without thinking of the nasty and boorish man behind them.
Oh and FWIW, I also learned that most of the paintings being sold, including the one my SIL bought and paid way too much for IMO, her foolishly believing it was fine art and would increase in value, but wasn’t likely even painted by him.
Kinkade's production method has been described as "a semi-industrial process in which low-level apprentices embellish a prefab base provided by Kinkade."[16] Kinkade reportedly designed and painted all of his works, which were then moved into the next stage of the process of mass-producing prints. It is assumed he had a hand in most of the original, conceptual work that he produced. However, he also employed a number of studio assistants to help create multiple prints of his famous oils. Thus while it is believed that Kinkade designed and painted all of his original paintings, the ones collectors were likely to own were printed factory-like and touched up with manual brush strokes by someone other than Kinkade.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kinkade
And yes, what Blurb2350 said is well documented.
I never liked his work, I agree with your assessment of it. I wasn’t ever a fan, just thought that his interview gave a sweet image. It sort made his work less insipid to me.
Yuck. I totally fell for it, I wish I were not so gullible. It often doesn’t occur to me that people might lie. I tend to take people at face value.
I heard Dave Ramsey say that more money just makes you more of what you already are. If you are generous, you get more generous. If you are miserly, you get more miserly. Tom K must have been nasty and arrogant before wealth.
A shame he was such an insufferable, uncouth ass. I always kind of liked some of his work. I’m originally from western MD, so I always enjoyed his winter/Christmas scenes.
And there is nothing wrong with taking people at face value. Sometimes the people we admire for their artistic work fall short of our expectations of who they are or were as people. Some of the great artists and musicians, political and military leaders were and are very flawed individuals. OTOH, I think we need to not idealize the person just because we may like their work.
I heard Dave Ramsey say that more money just makes you more of what you already are. If you are generous, you get more generous. If you are miserly, you get more miserly.
I once worked with a guy who had a side job working for a very high end catering company. This catering company catered a lot of high end parties and events in and around the Baltimore and DC area, sometimes in private homes.
I found it interesting what he told me about getting a glimpse into the wealthy set and about the old vs. new money set.
He told me that in the homes of the “old” money, the oriental carpets were often faded and well worn, the upholstery likewise and the china, well a lot if it was very old and often showed signs of cracks and sometimes not all of the chairs in the dining room were perfect matches and the artwork on the walls, appearing a bit dingy from years and years of candle light and oil lamps and cigar and cigarette smoke, were originals. But when he was working an event in one of these homes, he always knew he and his co-workers would be tipped well and treated with appreciation.
OTOH when he went into a home where everything was brand spanking new, very matchy-matchy he could nearly always tell he’d make little in tips and be treated like crap.
Yep, he — or, rather, his staff — churned out his paintings on high-tech printers. For an extra fee, collectors could have versions that had been enhanced with a few brushstrokes — “the light” — applied by an assembly line of painters. At the height of his popularity, work was begun on a planned community to be inhabited by his many admirers. It was a bunch of cookie-cutter saccharine-style houses, winding streets, a central cobblestoned plaza with Victorian bandshell, etc. I know several spec homes were built, and a few were sold to Kinkade fans. He faced a huge number of lawsuits from franchise owners who lost their shirts because they were unable to unload his schlock at the mandated prices while knockoffs were being peddled on eBay for pennies on the dollar.
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