LAST POST OF 2025

 We could write some pablum about the end of the year and hopes for the future. But it doesn't really amount to a hill of beans. Most new year's resolutions do not last until February. 

So let's do what we like. It is our blog after all. 

What Rumpole is reading and watching. 

We loved Song Sung Blue. A great cast. Great performances, and a movie that takes a sharp turn when you least expect it. Less so Marty Supreme. A great concept, but everyone's heart throb Timothy Chalamet just doesn't pull it off. Don't miss the first and go to the second if you have nothing better to do. 

We are absolutely loving 1929- Andrew Ross Sorkin's recounting of the 1929 stock market crash. You know a book is great when it's a historical accounting of a well-known event, and you know what happens, and it still reads like a thriller. Don't miss this book. 

And how about Richard Nixon, The Life, by John Farrell? A great biography that covers the same ground with a fresh perspective. There is so much good in Nixon, his desire to serve, becoming the Republican's leading voice on civil rights in the 1950's, when southern democrats controlled the senate and filibustered every attempt at a civil rights bill until Nixon, as Vice President, maneuvered around the filibuster and got Ike's bill through. There's a fresh perspective on the Alger Hiss -Whitaker Chambers confrontation in the HUAC* that enthralled the nation. And a new recounting that congressman Nixon had lost the support of both parties as he was in the middle of his investigation of Hiss, and risking his career, pushed on alone, until he exposed Hiss as a spy. And there is this great exchange during a congressional hearing: 

Nixon: Where did you go to College?

Hiss: John Hopkins and Harvard, and I believe you attended Whittier College. 

Hiss was an urbane, educated member of the eastern elite. He was a protege of Felix Frankfurter at Harvard Law school, and a polished Assistant Secretary Of State during World War II. And he was a Soviet spy, who nearly escaped exposure but for Nixon. 

Anyway, it's a great read. 

Miami Canes v. Ohio State. Tough game to call. Late money has flooded in on Canes, dropping the line from Miami +9.5 to Miami +7.5. The O/U is 40. We think we will stay away from this, but if we had to, it would be Ohio State and under. 

Oh yeah.....Happy New Year and all that. See you in 2026.