We start today with two quotes - one on the Republican Party nationally, and the other an illustration of the craziness of Florida under Rick Scott.......
As Congress takes a month off, we are left with political gridlock and chaos......the quote below is about the Republican party....read the last line.
Gail Collins, in the Times, imposed some intellectual order on all this by pointing out that the key line is between the Senators who want to run for President in 2016-Paul, Rubio, Cruz-and everyone else. That makes a little more sense than pretending that the G.O.P. is having a serious internal debate about foreign policy or the budget, let alone about a vision of government or citizenship. It just doesn't fully encompass the chaos. The Republican Party has not embarked on a grand civil war, with battle lines drawn and generals appointed. It's more like one of those fights in a cartoon, with characters jumping into a swirl of limbs and dust and cowboy hats. It is a rolling ball of cheerful hate, careening downhill, uprooting trees and legislative priorities, heedless of where it, or the country, is going.
The second exerpt from an editorial in the Times - whatever your views on whether this man should have been executed [which he was on Monday night], Florida has chosen to ignore the law to curry political favour from the hard right. We also see this in Florida's rejection of $51 billion in Obamacare funding to expand Medicaid to almost a million people, some of whom will die without insurance.
This is our corrupt, immoral Governor and insane Republican Legislature at work......
We live in one of the stupidest states folks.....
Florida Ignores the Supreme Court
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: August 4, 2013
John Errol Ferguson is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Monday in Florida. Mr. Ferguson, who brutally murdered eight people in 1977 and 1978, has sat on Florida’s death row for 34 years. Doctors long ago gave him a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He believes, among other things, that he is the “Prince of God” and that he is being executed because he “can control the sun.”
The Florida Supreme Court found that he was competent to die, but only by applying a test for mental illness that the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected. A federal appeals court upheld the sentence, relying largely on a federal law that requires a significant degree of deference to state court rulings. Apparently it wasn’t even enough that one of the federal court’s judges found the test Florida applied to be “patently incorrect.”
1/ A new Frank Rick major article is a treat for us, because he writes truth to power as he does with this story about the deep and unshakeable corruption in Washington. If you want to know how the oligarchy we live in works, and the way the lobbyist elites have a grip on our system with both Republicans and Democrats, start with this article.
Rich mentions some books to read as well, and I am reading one of them - "The Unwinding" by George Packer.......
The Stench of the Potomac
Washington may be a dysfunctional place to govern, but it’s working better than ever as a marketplace for cashing in. And that’s thanks, more than anything, to the Democratic Establishment.
You’d think that the market for Washington-bashing would be saturated by now. Not counting the nightly Comedy Central duo, four anti-Washington television shows were showered with Emmy nominations last month. Apocalyptic anti-Washington books with titles like It’s Even Worse Than It Looks and Throw Them All Out have become our daily bread in the Obama years—although none of them matches Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer’s Truman-era Washington Confidential, an enormous best seller in 1951 and forever to be cherished for describing the town (my hometown, I must disclose) as “the nation’s Forest Lawn, where is sunk its priceless heritage, killed by countless generations of getters and gimme-ers.”
Such bile never goes out of fashion. This is proving the summer of This Town,Mark Leibovich’s jaundiced take on “America’s gilded capital,” which leapt up the best-seller list the week of its publication, where it’s poised to end Sheryl Sandberg’s lock on No. 1. As if to ratify its relevance, its release was greeted by a new NBC News–Wall Street Journal poll in which Congress’s approval rating fell to an all-time low (12 percent) in that survey’s history, raising the prospect that it could flatline to zero if the government shuts down come fall. Though President Obama’s rating (45 percent) wasn’t stellar either, do pity John Boehner, who would have been the most unpopular man in America had the field not included Edward Snowden and George Zimmerman, the only names that polled worse.
Leibovich’s survey of the swamp on the Potomac during the Obama years would be worth reading just to see him torture David Gregory of NBC News, whose naked ambition has so riled the locals you wonder if Marion Barry might be held in higher regard. But the humor of This Town is spiked with mortality. It opens in June 2008 with the invitation-only Kennedy Center memorial for Tim Russert, the departed unofficial mayor of what Leibovich calls the Club—the “spinning cabal of ‘people in politics and media’ ” that rules Beltway society. The book closes late last year, with a Christmas fête convened by the town’s unofficial king and queen, Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, at their Georgetown manse. In Leibovich’s telling, this A-list holiday gathering was more funereal than the Russert funeral.
2/ John Oliver on the Daily Show wants "The Donald" to run for President again in 2016.......a funny three minutes......
John Oliver just wants everyone to wait two more weeks before talking about the 2016 election, which is a mere three years away. Soon, Jon Stewart will be back and he can deal with all of this "will they or won't they" nonsense.
Alas, Oliver probably won't get his way since speculation has already reached a mini fever pitch. Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are all considering making a run, which naturally makes us wonder who the fourth horse of the apocalypse will be.
But at least in the case of Donald Trump, Oliver was enthusiastic: "Do it. Look at me... do it. I will personally write you a campaign check now on behalf of this country, which does not want you to be president, but which badly wants you to run."
3/ Paul Krugman nails it again......the once proud Republican Party has been reduced to a fantasy world for idiots and bigots, but it's dangerous for all of us because they are refusing to do their jobs......
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Republicans Against Reality
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 4, 2013 1099 Comments
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Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Republican No-Shows in the Budget Wars(August 4, 2013)
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Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.
Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week.
First, House leaders had to cancel planned voting on a transportation bill, because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details. Don’t cut you, don’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.
Then House leaders announced plans to hold a votecutting spending on food stamps in half — a demand that is likely to sink the already struggling effort to agree with the Senate on a farm bill.
Then they held the pointless vote on Obamacare, apparently just to make themselves feel better. (It’s curious how comforting they find the idea of denying health care to millions of Americans.) And then they went home for recess, even though the end of the fiscal year is looming and hardly any of the legislation needed to run the federal government has passed.
In other words, Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk.
How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in evaluating one of Mr. Ryan’s plans, came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”
What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away
4/ The excellent Chris Rock with a four minute riff on gun control....sounds like this was right after the school shootings in Connecticut......one of our best comedians.....
Note - salty language!
5/ Frank Rich with his weekly commentary on the news.....he gives us the backstories........
This week Bradley Manning is convicted.....Obama wants a "Grand Bargain" with the Republicans, and Christie and Ryan fight......
Every week, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Bradley Manning gets convicted, Obama offers a "grand bargain," and Chris Christie and Rand Paul exchange blows.
Yesterday, Private Bradley Manning was convicted on multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act (which could result in 136 years of prison) but was found not guilty of the most serious charge against him, "aiding the enemy." What do you make of the verdict?
What matters here is not that Manning was found guilty of leaking — which he admitted to and will not get anything like 136 years for — but that he was found not guilty of “aiding the enemy.” That “not guilty” is a good thing, but it doesn’t mitigate the reality that “aiding the enemy” was a bogus and dangerous charge in the first place. The fact that the government would even pursue it is chilling to a free press. Under the prosecution’s Orwellian logic, essentially any classified information given by a whistle-blower to a journalistic outlet (whether WikiLeaks or the Times, which published Manning-WikiLeaks revelations) amounts to treason if “the enemy” can read it. Well, the enemy, whomever it may be at any given moment, can read anything it wants on the Internet, the government can (and does) stamp its every embarrassing action “classified,” and so almost any revelatory investigative reporting on national security (the Pentagon Papers, the Abu Ghraib revelations, you name it) could in principle lead to the death penalty (even if that punishment wasn’t sought in the Manning case). That’s a powerful deterrent, clearly designed to stop whistle-blowers, reporters, and news organizations from taking the risk of uncovering government misbehavior. It’s a particularly devastating blow at a time when investigative journalism is shrinking anyway because of the financial woes of the news business.
6/ A very good Steven Colbert, where he looks at the efforts of the large corporations like McDonalds to deflect the efforts of the workers trying to raise the minimum wage......7 minutes.....
I don't think it's funny that McDonald's "employee budgeting" website suggests that workers can live without heat and need to get a second job. But to watch Colbert nail them to the wall in the way only he can while making me laugh — priceless!
7/ Another Republican problem is their candidates for high office - remember Herman Cain? Anyway Reince Priebus has threatened to disallow NBC and CNN to carry the Republican primary debates because they are preparing docs on Hillary Clinton.....but that's not the real reason! Read on......
Republicans’ desperate plan to hide its clowns
Party begs for fewer primary debates, so candidates won't embarrass themselves on TV anymore. It will backfire
BY ALEX PAREENE
TOPICS: OPENING SHOT, 2016 ELECTIONS, REPUBLICAN PARTY, PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, REINCE PRIEBUS,NBC, CNN, HILLARY CLINTON, EDITOR'S PICKS, MEDIA NEWS, POLITICS NEWS
Mitt Romney and Rick Perry speak during a Republican presidential debate, July 8, 2013. (Credit: AP/Chris Carlson)
Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, has told NBC and CNN that they will not be allowed to have any Republican presidential debates in 2016 if they go ahead and air planned films about Hillary Clinton, who will likely be the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That is the reason he gave them, at least, but it is not the actual reason Priebus wants to not have any debates on those two channels. The real reason, everyone knows and sort of acknowledges, is that debates were a disaster for the party in 2012, an endless circus made up entirely of clowns on a national tour of shame.
These debates were on TV, people watched (and mocked) them, and the real candidates, the ones the money people were counting on to win the stupid race, were forced to say unacceptable things to appeal to raging loons. Furthermore, the serious candidates looked less serious simply by sharing a stage with Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. So: Fewer debates, next time, is the plan, and these Hillary movies are a convenient reason to cancel on two of the big networks. (Do you know how I know that the Hillary Clinton movies aren’t the real reason? Media Matters’ David Brock would also like the networks to cancel these movies, because, let’s be honest, they probably won’t be entirely flattering.)
8/ "America's Got Talent" occasionally gets some talented people.....and this is one singing group that stunned the panel, which includes Howard Stern no less. Watch the beginning to see how the three singers met......
Quite good, five minutes.......
9/ A "60 Minutes" interview with a young man with an IQ of 170......a fascinating 13 minutes, with a look at a young genius. The only problem with this interview is Morley Safer, who appears to be 120 years old......but despite him it's really interesting......
There is speculation that Jacob Barnett, a 14-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome, may be smarter than Einstein and there is even talk of the possibility of him winning a Nobel Prize one day.
Barnett enrolled at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis at the age of 10 and is currently a Master’s student, on his way to earning a PhD in quantum physics. He is a published scientific researcher and his IQ of 170 is believed to be higher than that of Albert Einstein and he asserts that one day he may disprove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
All of this flies in the face of early assessments. Diagnosed with moderate to severe autism at the age of 2, his parents were told by doctors that he would likely never learn to talk or read and would forever be unable to manage basic daily activities.
You can watch his interview with 60 minutes’ Morley Safer below:
10/ Need a hip replacement? Think about going to Europe and having it done.....
In Need of a New Hip, but Priced Out of the U.S.
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | Published: August 3, 2013
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Michael Shopenn, who has an artificial hip, on Copper Mountain in Colorado. Joint replacements have grown sharply.
Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
If you have considered a joint replacement, which factors have influenced your decision about whether to have one?
WARSAW, Ind. — Michael Shopenn’s artificial hip was made by a company based in this remote town, a global center of joint manufacturing. But he had to fly to Europe to have it installed.
Mr. Shopenn, 67, an architectural photographer and avid snowboarder, had been in such pain from arthritis that he could not stand long enough to make coffee, let alone work. He had health insurance, but it would not cover a joint replacement because his degenerative disease was related to an old sports injury, thus considered a pre-existing condition.
Throughout this article, readers have shared their experiences by responding to questions on joint replacements and health care. Comments are now closed, but you may explore the responses received. I will write a follow-up article about your comments on Monday, Aug. 5.
— ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, REPORTER
Desperate to find an affordable solution, he reached out to a sailing buddy with friends at a medical device manufacturer, which arranged to provide his local hospital with an implant at what was described as the “list price” of $13,000, with no markup. But when the hospital’s finance office estimated that the hospital charges would run another $65,000, not including the surgeon’s fee, he knew he had to think outside the box, and outside the country.
“That was a third of my savings at the time,” Mr. Shopenn said recently from the living room of his condo in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t happening.”
“Very leery” of going to a developing country like India or Thailand, which both draw so-called medical tourists, he ultimately chose to have his hip replaced in 2007 at a private hospital outside Brussels for $13,660. That price included not only a hip joint, made by Warsaw-based Zimmer Holdings, but also all doctors’ fees, operating room charges, crutches, medicine, a hospital room for five days, a week in rehab and a round-trip ticket from America.
“We have the most expensive health care in the world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best,” Mr. Shopenn said. “I’m kind of the poster child for that.”
As the United States struggles to rein in its growing $2.7 trillion health care bill, the cost of medical devices like joint implants, pacemakers and artificial urinary valves offers a cautionary tale. Like many medical products orprocedures, they cost far more in the United States than in many other developed countries.
Makers of artificial implants — the biggest single cost of most joint replacement surgeries — have proved particularly adept at commanding inflated prices, according to health economists. Multiple intermediaries then mark up the charges. While Mr. Shopenn was offered an implant in the United States for $13,000, many privately insured patients are billed two to nearly three times that amount.
An artificial hip, however, costs only about $350 to manufacture in the United States, according to Dr. Blair Rhode, an orthopedist and entrepreneur whosecompany is developing generic implants. In Asia, it costs about $150, though some quality control issues could arise there, he said.
So why are implant list prices so high, and rising by more than 5 percent a year? In the United States, nearly all hip and knee implants — sterilized pieces of tooled metal, plastic or ceramics — are made by five companies, which some economists describe as a cartel. Manufacturers tweak old models and patent the changes as new products, with ever-bigger price tags.
11/ Wow....a one minute Japanese commercial for Sapporo Beer......maybe one of the most expensive commercials ever made.....incredibly elaborate......love the drums.....
12/ Fascinating story about a clinic in Oklahoma that posts it's prices for surgery....which is unheard of in our broken, dysfunctional medical system.....
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is an ambulatory surgical center in Oklahoma City owned by its roughly 40 surgeons and anesthesiologists. What makes it different from every other such facility in America is this: If you need an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction, you will know beforehand — because it’s on their Web site — that it costs $6,990 if you self-pay in advance. If you need a tonsillectomy, that’s $3,600. Repair of a simple closed nasal fracture: $1,900. These prices are all-inclusive.
Keith Smith, the co-founder of the center, said that it had been posting prices for the last 4 of its 16 years. He knew something was happening, he said, when people started coming from Canada. “They could pay $3,740 for arthroscopic surgery of the knee and not have to wait for three years,” he said. Then he began getting patients from elsewhere in the United States and began to find out — “I get 8 or 10 e-mails a week” — that he was having an effect on prices far away. “Patients are holding plane tickets to Oklahoma City and printing out our prices, and leveraging better deals in their local markets.”
The Oklahoma City TV station KFOR, which ran a story on the Surgery Center on July 8, said that several other medical facilities in Oklahoma are now posting their prices as well.
KFOR’s story has been picked up by news outlets around the United States. Clearly what the Surgery Center has done is resonating.
On NewChoiceHealth.com, which compares prices offered by different facilities in the same city, Smith’s prices are consistently the cheapest or near it in Oklahoma City. Several hospitals charge $17,200 for laparoscopic hernia repair — for which Smith charges $3,975. A gallbladder removal is $24,000 at some hospitals in the city; it’s $3,200 at the Surgery Center. His prices are better in part because ambulatory surgical centers are cheaper than hospitals (for many reasons), but also there’s a virtuous circle here. He can post his prices because they are good ones. And they are good because he’s chosen to compete on price.
13/ Lady Gaga is due to release some new material, but here is one from a couple of years ago you may have missed - "Judas". Why the religious right didn't go berserk at this video is a mystery, as it's certainly blasphemous, with footwashing, crown of thorns and a pistol that will surprise you.....
A little OTT, but Gaga is wonderful in her excesses......love the makeup......
14/ This is the "Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care" story of the week......we are killing our sea creatures with pollution, but will anything get done in Florida to stop this? Of course not - Rick Scott and the Republican legislature don't care about the environment.....they really, really don't.....
Deaths of Manatees, Dolphins and Pelicans Point to Estuary at Risk
Rene Aldrin Capulong for The New York Times
In Merritt Island, Fla., biological scientists use nets to capture and record data on fish. More Photos »
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: August 7, 2013
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MELBOURNE, Fla. — The first hint that something was amiss here, in the shallow lagoons and brackish streams that buffer inland Florida from the Atlantic’s salt water, came last summer in the Banana River, just south of Kennedy Space Center. Three manatees — the languid, plant-munching, over-upholstered mammals known as sea cows — died suddenly and inexplicably, one after another, in a spot where deaths were rare.
Multimedia
A year later, the inquiry into those deaths has become a cross-species murder mystery, a trail of hundreds of deaths across one-third of the Indian River estuary, one of the richest marine ecosystems in the continental United States.
Along 50 miles of northern estuary waters off Brevard County and the Kennedy space complex, about 280 manatees have died in the last 12 months, 109 of them in the same sudden manner as the Banana River victims. As the manatee deaths peaked this spring, hundreds of pelicans began dying along the same stretch of water, followed this summer by scores of bottlenose dolphins.
The cause continues to evade easy explanation. But a central question is whether the deaths are symptoms of something more ominous: the collapse of the natural balance that sustains the 156-mile estuary’s northern reaches.
“We may have reached a tipping point,” said Troy Rice, who directs the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, a federal, state and local government partnership at the St. Johns River Water Management District.
Mr. Rice’s fear, widely shared, is that an ecosystem that supports more than 4,300 species of wildlife — and commercial fisheries, tourism and other businesses generating nearly $4 billion annually — is buckling under the strain of decades of pollution generated by coastal Florida’s explosive development.
The evidence of decline is compelling. In 2011 and 2012, unprecedented blooms of algae blanketed the estuary’s northern reaches for months, killing vast fields of underwater sea grass that are the building blocks of the estuary ecosystem. The grasses are breeding grounds for fish, cover from predators, home to countless creatures at the bottom of the food chain and, not least of all, the favorite menu item of manatees.
The sea grass has largely been supplanted by macroalgae, fast-growing seaweeds that clump into huge mats that drift free in the waters. And the character of the estuary is changing: already, algae-eating fish like menhaden are significantly increasing, Mr. Rice said.
Leesa Souto, a conservation biologist who heads the Marine Resources Council, a nonprofit group devoted to protecting the estuary, quoted one expert as saying that the loss of grasses destroyed the habitat for 1.4 billion immature fish.
“We fear the fishery collapse may be forthcoming as these missing juveniles will never reach adulthood two or three years from now,” she wrote in an e-mail.
The scope and suddenness of the algae blooms took scientists by surprise, but their source is no secret: off Brevard County, the estuary is badly overloaded with nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient found in fertilizers, rotting organic matter and human and animal w
15/ We went to see "Wolverine" last weekend. It was a tossup between "2 Guns" and the Superhero dud, and we should have seen "2 Guns".......
Wolverine was awful.......but if you can't get into "Elysium" tomorrow, try this - a decent review in the Times, and Denzel is always cool.......
Big bangs and fast talk are the name of the genre game in “2 Guns,” a slick, slippery thriller that taps into the anarchic playfulness that made the best American action flicks of the 1980s and ’90s pop. Directed by Baltasar Kormakur, riffing on the cheerful irreverence of Shane Black and the hyperbolic style of Tony Scott, the movie turns on a pair of seemingly bad guys who may be good. A reissue of the five-part comic series on which it’s based sets the scene nicely: “Two guys walk into a bank. It goes badly.” It does in the movies as well, although now the duo spring off the page courtesy of Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, one of the better odd couples to bond and bicker since Mel met Danny.
A smooth operator, Bobby (Mr. Washington), and a fast talker, Stig (Mr. Wahlberg), are the resident ebony-and-ivory tag — but are they cops or are they robbers? Stig certainly sounds like a nod to Riggs, the funny, frantic cop played by Mel Gibson in the “Lethal Weapon” series, as does Stig’s jokey yammering, military-honed skill set and concern for animal welfare. (Mr. Wahlberg has the sweet appeal of the young Mr. Gibson if none of the unnerving dangerousness.) In Steven Grant’s original comic, Stig is called Steadman, and Bobby looks like a California surfer complete with a blond flop and goatee. The casting of Mr. Washington, augmented with a fully upholstered chin, underscores the “Lethal Weapon” connection even if he sexes up the joint in a way that Danny Glover’s family man never could.
Written by Blake Masters, who embellishes the tricky story with generous repartee, the movie opens with Stig and Bobby edging around a Texas town and then settling into a diner for some breakfast and banter. An irrepressible flirt, Stig plays with a pretty waitress, but it’s soon clear that his heart belongs to Bobby. (Unlike in the “Lethal Weapon” series, there isn’t a dead wife or a living brood to bring anyone down.) Across from the diner there’s also a tiny bank that Bobby and Stig plan to relieve of $3 million belonging to Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos), the head of a Mexican drug cartel who, in turn, has recently relieved an associate of his head.
Cool trailer......
16/ Good TV
This looks interesting - "Broadchurch", on BBC America.....it actually started last night but the first episode is repeated Friday [tomorrow] at 11pm so you can catch up, and continues every Wednesday at 10pm.......
“Broadchurch” comes to BBC America on Wednesday, riding a wave of good tidings. The ratings in Britain this spring were very strong — just shy of what “Downton Abbey” earned in its first season — and the reviews were rhapsodic. Fox announced last week that it would develop a version of the show, even though the original is getting its own highly publicized American run.
All of those positive vibes are in sharp contrast to the content and tone of the eight-episode series, a murder mystery set and filmed on the rugged coast of southern England. It’s a pre-eminent example of what could be called the new International Style in television drama: a moody, slow-moving, complicated crime story with damaged heroes and not much redemption to go around. It joins a roster of morbid whodunnits like “Top of the Lake” and “The Killing” — which, like “Broadchurch,” center on dead or missing children — as well as “The Bridge,” “The Fall,” “Rectify” and “Hannibal.” Murder, we moaned.
“Broadchurch” stands out among this crowd for a couple of reasons. One is that it manages to supply the fashionable existential dread while also providing a solid, Agatha Christie- or Dorothy Sayers-like mystery plot that proceeds at a deliberate pace through a cloud of plausible suspects with a minimum of confusion. The show’s writer, Chris Chibnall, has worked on densely plotted series like “Doctor Who” and “Law & Order: UK,” and that craftsmanship is probably responsible for a large measure of its popularity.
More important, though, is the lift provided by the performers playing the odd-couple lead detectives. David Tennant, a former star of “Doctor Who,” portrays Alec Hardy, newly arrived in the seaside town of Broadchurch and carrying the usual baggage: a botched case that derailed his career and a serious health problem (which entails a lot of needlessly distracting point-of-view camerawork). Hardy is both pre-emptory and tentative, a hard boss and a wounded bird, and while there’s not a lot of depth to the character, the accomplished Mr. Tennant is typically fun to watch, casting dark stares and anxious glances with equal dexterity.
While Mr. Tennant is the marquee name, “Broadchurch” really belongs to Olivia Colman, an actress known for her roles in British comedies like “That Mitchell and Webb Look,” “Rev.” and “Twenty-Twelve.” She plays Ellie Miller, the local detective for whom the story is a series of reversals and crises: pushed into secondary status by the arrival of Hardy, she then discovers that the child found dead on the Broadchurch beach is a good friend of her son’s.
"Broadchurch" trailer....looks moody.....
Todays video - a rerun but it's even funnier the second [or third] time.....
I thought this video might be a little naughty [as in politically incorrect], but I am assured by a teenage family member and Mary that it's just really funny.......so here is a black inner city substitute teacher who has trouble with white peoples names......3 minutes......
Note he uses the phrase "insubordinate and churlish"......it's clever too......
Todays philosophical jokes
EIGHT THOUGHTS TO PONDER:
Life is sexually transmitted.
Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.Men have two emotions : Hungry and Horny. They can't tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in
the hospitals, dying of nothing.
All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention
to criticism.
In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
Life is like a jar of Jalapeno peppers--what you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
- - - and as someone recently said to me:
"Don't worry about old age--it doesn't last that long."
Todays eccentric jokes
To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity...In the Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write ' For Marijuana.Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is 'To Go'.Sing Along At The Opera.Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't AttendTheir Party Because You have a headache.When Leaving the Zoo, Start Running towards the Parking lot,Yelling 'Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!'Tell Your Children Over Dinner, 'Due To The Economy,We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.'Pick up a box of condoms at the pharmacy,go to the counter and ask "Where's the fitting room."
Todays relationship jokes
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