Make sure you watch the CNN report on lobbying #7.....very good indeed.....
1/ Frank Rich looks at the rise and fall of two Governors - Christie and McDonnell.......he cuts through all of the noise and finds the facts about these two fallen idols.....
Also see who he thinks will benefit from the Christie debacle......scary!
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: What the twin scandals of Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie mean for the GOP, and a look at the Oscar nominees.
Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were indicted yesterday for accepting and attempting to conceal $140,000 in loans and gifts (among them private-jet trips and wedding catering) in exchange for helping a shady Richmond-based businessman curry political favor and push a non-FDA-approved “dietary supplement.” McDonnell's scandal helped Democrats sweep Virginia's 2013 elections. What is the political fallout of the former First Couple's indictment and will it lead to more?
It was just a little over four years ago that the simultaneous election of McDonnell and Chris Christie to the governorship in two states along the northeastern corridor — the purple Virginia and blue New Jersey — heralded the arrival of a pair of dream presidential contenders for the GOP: relatively moderate, bipartisan-minded exemplars of good governance rather than ideological warfare. In McDonnell’s case, the moderation was a bit of a stretch: He’s the governor schooled at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network University (since rebranded as Regent), whose tenure became synonymous with “transvaginal ultrasound wands” after he endorsed the idea of inflicting them on women seeking abortions. He’s also the governor who left any mention of slavery out of his declaration of Confederate History Month because he wanted to focus only on issues that he “thought were most significant for Virginia.” Now he will also be known for his close association with Rolex, Ferrari, Oscar de la Renta, Armani, Louis Vuitton, Bergdorf, and all the other aspirational brands that he and his wife were able to harvest with the aid of a sugar daddy seeking a gubernatorial blessing for a pseudo-pharmaceutical product that sounds suspiciously like snake oil.
McDonnell has a better chance of landing in prison than the White House.
2/ Bill Maher with his five minute closing segment, and he is in a more serious mood in this one - still funny, but with some good points....especially Rush Limbaugh's decor sense......
Bill Maher is getting tired of conservatives touting their masculinity while dismissing liberals as pussies and pansies, and in his show-ending New Rule Friday night, he said that Democrats need to stop letting Republicans claim that “they’ve got the big balls” because, as Maher put it, being a bully is not a real masculine value.
Maher was spurred on by conservatives piling onPresident Obama for saying he wouldn’t let his hypothetical son play football because of how dangerous it is, because apparently “any critique of our holy religion football is blasphemy… and brain injuries are fun.”
Maher trashed all the “non-serving chicken hawks [who] see themselves as the tough guys” when really, he said, they have all the bluster of a “blogger in his bathrobe.” He said Republicans have gone from Teddy Roosevelt‘s “speak softly and carry a big stick” to Chris Christie‘s “speak loudly and be a big dick.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/
3/ I read this column about our food supply from Mark Bittman in the Times, and just sighed, because even though we all know everything he says is true, it will never change. There's too much money to be made from making Americans unhealthy by persuading time and dollar pressured people into eating junk, which is chemical laden McFood.
In fact, if I was paranoid I would say there is an alliance or "understanding" between Big Ag and the Medical Industry [pharma, hospitals, doctors and insurance companies].
Big Ag makes us obese and sick by supplying cheap garbage food, and the medical industry makes beaucoup dollars treating the results.....and so the wheel turns.......well maybe a teensy bit paranoid....
The relatively new notion that around a third or more of the world’s population is badly (“mal”) nourished conflates hunger and diet-spawned illnesses like diabetes, both of which are preventable.
Both result from a lack of access to quality food, which in turn can result from a lack of money. No one with money starves, and the obesity-diabetes epidemic afflicts predominantly people on the low end of the income scale. With money comes good food, food that creates health and not “illth,” to use John Ruskin’s word. With a lack of money comes either not enough food or so-called empty calories, calories that put on pounds but do not nourish.
This is made very clear in Oxfam’s “Good Enough to Eat” index, a snapshot of the state of eating in 125 countries released last week. The index attempts to determine the best and worst countries in which to eat, by measuring levels of undernourishment and underweight in children; asking “do people have enough to eat?”; measuring costs of food versus other goods and services, to see whether food is affordable; looking at the diversity of people’s diets and the availability of safe water; and monitoring diabetes and obesity levels to learn whether the diets are healthy.
The results for the United States make a fine case for American exceptionalism, though not in the way chauvinists will find pleasing.
We rank first in food affordability; food is cheap compared with other things we buy, and prices are relatively stable. We also rank highly (4th) in food “quality,” which is measured by (potential) diversity of diet, though access to good water is shockingly low (tied for 41st, about a third of the way down the list).
Then the hammer falls: When it comes to healthy eating as measured by diabetes and obesity rates, we’re 120th: sixth from the bottom, better off only than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Fiji and our unlucky neighbor Mexico. (Canada fares a little better; it’s 18th worst.) We’re also in a tie (with Belarus and other powerhouses) for 35th in “enough to eat.” Really.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine having a food supply as abundant as ours and doing a worse job with it. There are reasons for this:
4/ Ahoooooogah! Men with red blood in your veins! Spring for one of these bad boys.......two exciting minutes of high T.......
5/ Hmmmm.......maybe you have to be paranoid to survive our medical system. One of the largest hospital chains in the country has quotas for doctors to pressure people into hospital admissions, especially for Medicare patients.
This is more evidence you cannot trust the medical system to do what's best for you - they often do what's best for revenues instead, so take charge of your treatments as best you can - you can't blindly believe your doctor.....
Hospital Chain Said to Scheme to Inflate Bills
By JULIE CRESWELL and REED ABELSONJAN. 23, 2014
Anne McQuary for The New York Times
Every day the scorecards went up, where they could be seen by all of the hospital’s emergency room doctors.
Physicians hitting the target to admit at least half of the patients over 65 years old who entered the emergency department were color-coded green. The names of doctors who were close were yellow. Failing physicians were red.
The scorecards, according to one whistle-blower lawsuit, were just one of the many ways that Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain based in Naples, Fla., kept tabs on an internal strategy that regulators and others say was intended to increase admissions, regardless of whether a patient needed hospital care, and pressure the doctors who worked at the hospital.
This month, the Justice Department said it had joined eight separate whstle-blower lawsuits against H.M.A. in six states. The lawsuits describe a wide-ranging strategy that is said to have relied on a mix of sophisticated software systems, financial incentives and threats in an attempt to inflate the company’s payments from Medicare and Medicaid by admitting patients like an infant whose temperature was a normal 98.7 degrees for a “fever.”
The accusations reach all the way to the former chief executive’s office, whom many of the whistle-blowers point to as driving the strategy.
For H.M.A., the timing could not be worse. Shareholders recently approved the planned $7.6 billion acquisition of the company by Community Health Systems, which will create the nation’s second-largest for-profit hospital chain by revenue, with more than 200 facilities. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
While the lawsuits against H.M.A. provide a stark look at the pressure being put on doctors and hospital executives to emphasize profits over their patients, similar accusations are being raised at other hospital and medical groups as health care in the United States undergoes sweeping changes.
6/ Other countries do safe driving videos sooooooooo much better than the US......consider this one minute anti-speeding ad from New Zealand.....and wait for the end.....wow........
The New Zealand Transport Agency has released this brilliant anti-speeding public service announcement for television that takes a spine-tingling approach to the subject.
After citing fatality statistics for speed-related crashes, the agency notes that “Most road users recognize the risks of driving at speed and support police enforcement of the speed limit. But these statistics show that drivers don’t always practice this when driving: speed is still a contributing factor in 20% of all fatal and serious injury crashes on New Zealand roads.”
7/ Anderson Cooper 360 did a fifteen minute segment on how much time politicians spend fundraising, and how corrupt the system is. The piece is also a bit of an eye opener, because the image I had of the scum in Congress was them constantly begging for money, but as Cooper points out they also play the threat game with corporations - pay up, of we will pass a bill to cost you plenty.....
It also opens and closes with footage of Florida's own Governor Voldemort in Washington getting funding to keep himself in office for a second term......don't worry, he comes across as the disgusting slimeball he truly is.....
A very interesting clip, and well worth watching......
8/ I don't often read David Brooks in the Times as he is so often dead wrong on social issues, but in this column he may have it right - how do we deal with grieving and people's loss? His advice may surprise you.......
Tragedy has twice visited the Woodiwiss family. In 2008, Anna Woodiwiss, then 27, was working for a service organization in Afghanistan. On April 1, she went horseback riding and was thrown, dying from her injuries. In 2013, her younger sister Catherine, then 26, was biking to work from her home in Washington. She was hit by a car and her face was severely smashed up. She has endured and will continue to endure a series of operations. For a time, she breathed and ate through a tube, unable to speak. The recovery is slow.
The victims of trauma, she writes in a remarkable blog post for Sojourners, experience days “when you feel like a quivering, cowardly shell of yourself, when despair yawns as a terrible chasm, when fear paralyzes any chance for pleasure. This is just a fight that has to be won, over and over and over again.”
Her mother, Mary, talks about the deep organic grief that a parent feels when they have lost one child and seen another badly injured, a pain felt in bones and fiber.
But suffering is a teacher. And, among other things, the Woodiwisses drew a few lessons, which at least apply to their own experience, about how those of us outside the zone of trauma might better communicate with those inside the zone. There are no uniformly right responses, but their collective wisdom, some of it contained in Catherine’s Sojourners piece, is quite useful:
Do be there. Some people think that those who experience trauma need space to sort things through. Assume the opposite. Most people need presence. The Woodiwisses say they were awed after each tragedy by the number of people, many of whom had been mere acquaintances, who showed up and offered love, from across the nation and the continents. They were also disoriented by a number of close friends who simply weren’t there, who were afraid or too busy.
Anna and Catherine’s father, Ashley, says he could detect no pattern to help predict who would step up and provide the ministry of presence and who would fumble. Neither age, experience nor personal belief correlated with sensitivity and love.
Don’t compare, ever. Don’t say, “I understand what it’s like to lose a child. My dog died, and that was hard, too.”
9/ Have you ever worked for a large corporation, and been on a corporate conference call? If so, this will ring every bell in your work psyche as it depicts a typical conference call - live!
Very clever, and painfully true but amusing.....four minutes......
10/ The food stamp program was cut in November, and food banks are bracing for more demand when yet more cuts are made to programs when Congress gets around to finally passing the Farm Bill.
What bastards they are - the theory is that cutting food stamps will motivate the "takers" to get off their couches and get jobs, ignoring the fact that the majority of people who benefit from SNAP and the other programs are children, the elderly, single mothers and people in low wage jobs like WalMart. This is the "punish the poor" attitude of the right wing.....
Food Banks Anticipate Impact of Cuts to Food Stamps
By RON NIXONJAN. 21, 2014
WASHINGTON — Late last year, staff members at the Capital Area Food Bank here began fielding requests for larger deliveries from the dozens of soup kitchens and food pantries that it supplies as more and more people showed up seeking help.
The food bank said it was not unusual to see a surge before Thanksgiving or Christmas. But this time the lines were caused not by the holidays but by a $5 billion cut to the federal food stamp program that took effect in November when a provision in the 2009 stimulus bill expired.
Now the food bank, which provided about 45 million pounds of food last year, says it is preparing for even greater demand as Congress prepares to cut billions of dollars more from the food stamp program, which is included in a farm bill that has yet to pass. About 47 million Americans receive food stamps.
“We are going to increase our efforts to get more donations and try to serve as many people as possible, given our resources,” said Nancy E. Roman, executive director at the food bank. “But make no mistake, if the food stamp program is cut, we’re going to see much longer lines of people seeking help with their food budgets, and we can’t help them all.”
For those readers here in Lake County who want to help your neighbors get enough to eat, the most valuable way you can help is to give to "Lake Cares", our local food bank which is struggling to feed thousands of people who need assistance. It's run by volunteers, and all of your donations are used to purchase food.
Their website is below, and they take credit cards. They need your help folks.....
11/ The British press has a knack for headlines that grab you, and this is a classic.......
It's how a small ship on the way to the breakers yard went adrift in a storm, and according to Lloyds of London has probably sunk. But that doesn't stop the British media, and what a delicious headline.....
Ghost ship full of cannibal rats could be about to crash into Devon coast
By Plymouth Herald | Posted: January 23, 2014
Comments (43)
There are fears a ghost ship full of diseased cannibal rats could be about to crash into the coast of Devon or Cornwall.
The abandoned Lyubov Orlova has been missing since it cut adrift while being towed from Canada nearly a year ago.
The 40-year-old liner has been driven across the Atlantic by high winds and is thought close to the UK shore.
Based on emergency beacons activated last year aboard the ship, it is feared the 40-year-old Yugoslavian liner registered to Russia could crash into the shore of Devon, Cornwall, Ireland or Scotland
12/ And continuing the British theme, a company in the UK has made some amusing London Tube signs, in the same typeface and font as the real ones.....
Quintessential British humour......
13/ And some British ska music too - this is "DJ Fresh VS Jay Fay Feat. Ms Dynamite - 'Dibby Dibby Sound".....it's an amusing video, with the ultimate "tower of power" house in a suburban neighborhood, with a musical mailbox and dogs with speakers......and the car! The car!
The music is an acquired taste, but what the hell......
14/ Remember the Matrix? And the sequels? Here's an "Honest Trailer" for the series, a tongue in cheek appreciation for this 90's groundbreaking movie. And the awful sequels.......three minutes.....
15/ One step forward, one step back......some of the non-energy corporations are realising that business as usual isn't going to be as easy in the future with the effects of climate change impacting their bottom lines, which is one of the only ways to get their attention.
It's a start, a small step forward, but it will have to get major legs to get any influence in our political system, because the energy companies own Washington.....
The step back is that the EU, mentioned in the story, has abandoned it's emissions standards due to pushback from it's corporations.....
.
Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change
By CORAL DAVENPORTJAN. 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.
Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.
“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”
Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact oclimate change.
Some tycoons are no longer listening
Todays video - five minutes seeing what it's like to fly in an RAF fighter jet........basically for guys, but if you like flying it's pretty cool.....
Not many of us have what it takes to be a fighter pilot - stomach and nerves of steel, lightning fast and the apparently obligatory cut-glass English accent.
So this video is closest we're likely to get - a backseat ride in an RAF Typhoon on an ultra-low level mission over the stunning scenery of the Lake District and the Welsh valleys.
And it is incredible....
Todays newspaper jokes
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Todays cowboy joke
A guy walked into a crowded bar, waving his model 1911 Colt .45 caliber pistol with an 8 round magazine, and yelled, "Who in here has been screwing my wife?"
A voice from the back of the bar yelled back,
"You're gonna need more ammo!"
Todays wisdom joke
In a recently held linguistic competition held in London and attended by
supposedly the best in the world, Samsundar Balgobin, a Guyanese man, was the clearwinner with a standing ovation which lasted over 5 minutes.
The final question was: How do you explain the difference between COMPLETE and FINISHED in a way that is easy to understand.
Some people say there is NO difference between COMPLETE and FINISHED.
Here is his astute answer -
When you marry the right woman, you are COMPLETE.
When you marry the wrong woman, you are FINISHED, and when the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are COMPLETELY FINISHED!!
He won a trip to travel the world in style and a case of 25 year old rum.
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