Are you brave enough to read #5? Good luck.....
1/ Thomas Frank is the author of a wonderful book "What's The Matter With Kansas", and many more. He is a seasoned observer of the political scene, and looks at how the President is trying to have it both ways, talking about inequality but subtly shifting the conversation to "opportunity". The allows the system, rigged in favour of the 1% and the 0.1% to continue because now the fault lies with the upwardly mobile striver - didn't make it? Must have been a character flaw.
Frank takes us through the hope that elected Obama, that he would change things but how the reality is that all of his appointments to key positions are insiders, the same Washington toadies....
It's all consolidating at the top folks - the elites and the oligarchs want ALL our money.....
There is no meritocracy: It’s just the 1 percent, and the game is rigged
The game is rigged: We elected Obama to hold the 1 percent accountable. So why are they still running everything?
(Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin/Salon)
The big news after President Obama’s State of the Union address in January was that he didn’t really talk about the issues of inequality that everyone expected him to talk about. Instead, he shifted the “conversation,” as we call it, toward the subject of opportunity. He shied away from the extremely disturbing fact that when you work these days only your boss prospers, and brought us back to the infinitely less disturbing fact that sometimes poor people do get ahead despite it all. In a clever oratorical maneuver, Obama illustrated this comforting idea by referencing the success stories of both himself—“the son of a single mom”—and his arch-foe, Republican House Speaker John Boehner—“the son of a barkeep.” He spoke of building “new ladders of opportunity into the middle class,” a phrase that has become a trademark for his administration.
The problem, as Obama summed it up, is that Americans have ceased to believe they can rise from the ranks. “Opportunity is who we are,” he said. “And the defining project of our generation must be to restore that promise.”
The switcheroo was subtle, but if you’ve been paying attention you couldn’t miss it: These were almost precisely the words Obama had used the month before (“The defining challenge of our time”) to describe inequality itself.
Well, the Democratic apparat heard it, and as one body did they sway and swoon. This was a move of statesmanlike genius, they said. “Opportunity” and social mobility are what Americans have always liked to hear about, they declared; “inequality” sounds like a demand for entitlements—or something much worse. “What you want to do is focus on the aspirational side of this,” said Paul Begala in a typical remark, “lifting people up, not on just complaining about a lack of fairness or inequality.”
If you’re in the right mood, you might well agree with him.
2/ Frank Rich with his insightful look at the weeks two big stories.....
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: Putin's ominous move to claim Crimea, the state of American populism, and Rupert Murdoch going off the rails.
Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reclaimed Crimea as part of Russia, celebrating with a chest-thumping address at the Kremlin, in which he denounced Western opposition to his actions and justified them on historical grounds. Many commentators are concerned that Putin may be contemplating a further takeover of Southeastern Ukraine and possibly even a challenge to the sovereignty of the NATO-aligned Baltic republics. Mitt Romney took a lot of heat in 2012 for saying Russia was"our number-one geopolitical foe." In retrospect, was he right? And what more, if anything, can Obama do about it?
Of course the president can and will beef up the weak, previously announced sanctions, as indeed the White House is already indicating. John Cassidy at The New Yorker has it right when he calls for the U.S. to tighten the screws on all the Russian oligarchs who are “buying up houses in Kensington and apartmentsoverlooking Central Park” (not to mention Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and the Upper East Side). But Putin will not reverse himself on Crimea, and guess what? We may have to live with that, and we may have to live with a stormy U.S. relationship with a swaggering nationalistic Russia for years to come. But that is not the same thing as a new Cold War — the communist Soviet Union is dead, unbeknownst to the likes of John McCain, and so is its old nuclear arms race with the U.S. Should Putin now move to seize Lithuania and Latvia, as those on the American right promoting a new domino theory would have it, no doubt America will respond with far stronger measures, including some kind of military involvement, as Biden was implying during a visit to Eastern Europe today. But few believe that Putin is that mad.
3/ Bill Maher has some serious and stern advice for Democrats - win the word game. A fairly muted Maher, but still a good five minutes of intelligent humour.....and look at the last line in this excerpt - funny!
Bill Maher thinks the Democrats need to up their game if they want a chance of winning midterms, and the answer lies in one word: phrasing. See, Republicans are very good at the phrasing game, as Maher explained, taking things like “estate tax” and “poor people” and changing them into the more politically-friendly “death tax” and “takers.” So Maher said the Democrats need to embrace the same tactic, like renaming food stamps “Christ coupons” or an abortion as a “natal do-over.”
Maher joked the GOP is so obsessed with selling ideas like the rich shouldn’t pay taxes and black people shouldn’t vote that eventually they’ll just rename slavery as a way of fighting back against “race-based freedom quotas.”
He credited the right for being unified on almost everything, because once the “feces throwers on hate radio” start saying something, everyone in the GOP starts listening. So Maher gave the Democrats some suggestions, including pot legalization being touted as “creating green jobs” and branding solar energy as a way for America to “invade the sun and take its oil!
4/ Interesting article from Salon about the meat industry in the US, and how the market is dominated by four corporations, Tyson Foods being the biggest. The author makes the point that small farmers in rural America are in trouble because of the monopoly power of these giant companies, who grind the farmers profit margins down while entrenching their power through lobbyists and political clout.
Oh and by the way - unless you are buying your protein intelligently, you are eating their chemical and drug laden meat. That's how bad the market is.......
(Credit: AP/Chitose Suzuki)
The dark secrets behind America’s meat industry are enough to make us sick – and according to journalist Christopher Leonard, that’s only the start of it. Our health, the well-being of animals and large swaths of rural America are all under threat by America’s monopolized meat industry, Leonard says, and the full extent to which it’s taken over should be making us a lot angrier than it is.
“It’s been very telling to me how bothered consumers are when they learn how this industry really operates,” Leonard told Salon.
“The Meat Racket,” Leonard’s new exposé, lays it all out on the chopping board: how virtually all of our meat is produced by the same four companies, led by Tyson, how those companies manage to keep the farmers who raise their chickens under crippling debt while ensuring that poultry prices stay high, and how the only real choice left for the consumer is to either partake or opt out of meat altogether.
Leonard spoke with Salon about how he brought these heavily guarded secrets to light, and explained why those who would defend the industry are apologists for a system gone wildly awry. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
First, could you tell us a little bit about your relationship to the meat industry? How were you able to get this inside view of what’s going on in Tyson’s boardrooms?
I’ve been a business reporter in the Midwest for about 10 years. I covered agribusiness for the Associated Press, and before that, I worked at smaller newspapers. And in that role, I kept kind of bumping up against the industrial meat system. I wrote my first story about Tyson foods in 1999 for a newspaper, and the more I encountered this system, the more I became fascinated with it. It’s a remarkable experience to walk into one of these giant factory farms and see 75,000 chickens on the ground in front of you.
But the seeds for this book really came in 2004, when I went down to this little town of Waldron, Arkansas, to report on chicken farmers down there. And I was just absolutely stunned by just how much power Tyson had over these farmers, and how powerful it was in this little town. And I wanted to find out how we got to this point, where these companies can act like virtual dictators in these towns where they operate, where they have regional monopolies.
5/ Hmmmm........according to a team of scientists at NASA Goddard Center our civilization is only a few decades away from collapse.....and it's not only climate change, but the strains put on our resources.
Not sure if this article is deliberately overstated to get us to wake up, but the part about the Elites rings true, and there is a lot of logic in their conclusions. It's also the first story I have seen that ties all of the moving parts together - climate, agriculture, overpopulation, energy and water. Another first - it gives dates.....
Think about this - if everyone on Earth, all 7 billion of us, had the same standard of living as America/Europe we would need five planets to keep up with the demand......then read the story.....
NASA Study Concludes When Civilization Will End, And It's Not Looking Good for UsImage Credit: AP
Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? Too bad it's not going to for much longer. According to a new study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center scientists,l explains that modern civilization is doomed. And there's not just one particular group to blame, but the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society.
Analyzing five risk factors for societal collapse (population, climate, water, agriculture and energy), the report says that the sudden downfall of complicated societal structures can follow when these factors converge to form two important criteria. Motesharrei's report says that all societal collapses over the past 5,000 years have involved both "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity" and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]." The so-called Elite population restricts the flow of resources accessible to the Masses, accumulating a surplus for themselves that is high enough to strain natural resources. Eventually this situation will inevitably result in the destruction of society.
Elite power, the report suggests, will buffer "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners," allowing the privileged to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe."
Science will surely save us, the nay-sayers may yell. But technology, argues Motesharrei, has only damned us further:
6/ "McConnelling" is a new verb, and let Jon Stewart tell you what it means in this four minute clip. Jon really gets into this one, one of his funniest......
Don't watch the first video unless you are a diehard fan of the ugliest man in the Senate, the lidless turtle Mitch McConnell - go to the second video with Jon......
By taking the first 12 seconds or so of the ad, which consists of three consecutive awkward smiles from the candidate, and replacing the generic backing track with literally any song, The Daily Show was able to create something that made Stewart laugh uncontrollably.
From Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” to The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes,” the show presented some of their favorite versions of the ad before issuing the challenge to viewers to create and share their own using the hashtag #McConnelling.
7/ "We Are From The Future", an unusual seven minute vision of [I think] how technology can and will save us.....it's also spectacularly visual, astonishing images set to haunting, beautiful music. Quite different, and very "new-agey" cool indeed.....
"Greetings... We are from the future. Everything is going to be alright. The future is a beautiful place ... But you will need some training in order to inhabit it.
In the future - technology evolves faster than any human mind can think. When the singularity occurred. We became like gods - able to create entire worlds in the blink of an eye.
Every thought had drastic immediate impact. All of our dreams became a reality - but so did our nightmares. The future became a battle of ideas. We had to learn to direct our minds - to prevent dark psychological forces - from destroying all of us. Now with every new world we create, we summon the sacred imperative of mind... "Let there be Light."
In the future - technology evolves faster than any human mind can think. When the singularity occurred. We became like gods - able to create entire worlds in the blink of an eye.
Every thought had drastic immediate impact. All of our dreams became a reality - but so did our nightmares. The future became a battle of ideas. We had to learn to direct our minds - to prevent dark psychological forces - from destroying all of us. Now with every new world we create, we summon the sacred imperative of mind... "Let there be Light."
8/ Republicans now have an approved plan for birth control, a little controversial but the only family planning approved by the Republican Party.....two amusing minutes.....
PlanGOP is the only Republican approved form of birth control.
Director and writer Rod Blackhurst and Josh Murphy created this great piece of political satire which presents a family planning option that Republicans are sure to wish was a real product.
With PlanGOP, Republican couples can determine if their unborn child exhibits any signs of liberal leanings, intelligence, compassion… if so, parents can “opt-out,” or “discontinue.”
9/ A topic we see or hear discussed only rarely, actually very rarely, is overpopulation. The planet has 7 billion hungry people, but in America the only mention of this issue is in the context of crazy religious loons making poor black and minority have babies they can't afford and don't want. This is Bill Maher, the serious sociologist interviewing Alan Weisman.....
An excellent, fascinating eight minutes.....
Bill Maher says you aren’t an environmentalist unless you care about overpopulation
OK, so the green movement needs to get away from the words“environment,” “Earth,” and “planet,” but TV host Bill Maher has a fantastic point (for once): If you care about sustainability — hell, if you care about the future at all — you should be seriously worried about overpopulation.
Maher spoke with Countdown author Alan Weisman in an insightful, much-needed conversation. “This is a topic most environmental groups won’t touch,” Weisman began. (We will!)
Weisman noted that Iran has the best family planning programs in history, with free birth control and premarital classes that teach just how frickin’ expensive it is to raise a kid. Plus, women are encouraged to stay in school, which delays parenthood. (As Maher says, “Education is the best contraception.”) Watch — it’s eight minutes worth seeing:
10/ There are stupid states, and then there's Mississippi, run by religious wackos, bigots who think they are still slave owners and IQ deficient idiots. Think that's a little OTT? Read this sorry tale.......
Should a woman be prosecuted for giving birth to a stillborn baby?
Photo by Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images
In 2006, Mississippi teenager Rennie Gibbs gave birth to a little girl, Samiya. She was a month premature and arrived with an umbilical cord around her neck, stillborn. Shortly thereafter, Gibbs was indicted for murder—"depraved heart murder," to be exact—and has spent the past seven years fighting for her freedom. This is all because a highly controversial medical examiner named Steven Hayne discovered traces of a cocaine byproduct called benzoylecgonine in Samiya's blood and decided that it must have been the cause of death. (No actual cocaine was found in Samiya's body.) Nina Martin of ProPublica reports on the case, putting it in context with the larger nationwide push to hold women, especially young women of color, criminally accountable for failing to produce a live baby when they give birth.
There's no doubt that Gibbs took cocaine during her pregnancy. But, as Martin reports, the case against Gibbs for "unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously" killing her baby—as the indictment reads—appears to be more political than scientific. The defense has hired a number of expert witnesses who say that the likeliest cause of death is "umbilical cord compression," with one forensic pathologist concluding, "It is impossible to conclude from the very small amount of benzoylecgonine that the stillbirth was caused by cocaine toxicity." In addition, the defense argued, in motions to dismiss the case, that there is no evidence linking cocaine use during pregnancy with "serious fetal harms, birth defects, or serious long-term physical or developmental impairments," much less directly causing stillbirth. (This comes from research by Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrician and researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.) Using cocaine during pregnancy can cause placental disruption, but it didn't in this case.
11/ OH NO - not another cute animal video!!! Eeeek!
Actually this one is funny, and set to music....two minutes.....
Some dogs experience separation anxiety when their owner leaves them home alone.
Not this one.
After its owner leaves, this pooch heads straight for a bed it isn't allowed on to have a playful romp. A video of the delightful doggy disobedience, shot via a hidden camera, captured the entire scene, from the dog's initially hesitant approach to the full-on canine bliss a short time later. While the dog engages in its antics, a cat looks on at the display disapprovingly.
12/ Another story about our corrupt, disgusting criminal Governor.....and yet he is getting better in the polls because he has started Koch funded ads emphasising his poor upbringing - BS.....
This story is about how his assets are supposed to be in a blind trust while he is Governor, but aren't......
Gov. Rick Scott
Photo: Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel
Photo: Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel
Over the last 15 months, Gov. Rick Scott and his wife, Ann, through various entities, made more than $17 million selling hundreds of thousands of shares of Argan Inc., a publicly-traded company whose subsidiary, Gemma Power Systems, does business in Florida.
The Scotts’ Argan profits were magnificent, more than quadruple their investment.
Gov. Scott’s blind trust sold 140,976 of those Argan shares worth $2.54 million on Dec. 20, 2012. After the sale, the blind trust retained more than 520,000 Argan shares worth $9.43 million.
You aren’t supposed to know that. Gov. Scott isn’t supposed to know it either.
Not long after taking office in 2011, Scott put his personal portfolio of stocks including Argan, bonds and other financial assets into the blind trust that’s managed by others. The idea was to eliminate any appearance of a conflict of interest between the governor’s financial assets and his official duties by “blinding” him – and the public – to the nature of his vast holdings.
Yet an investigation by BrowardBulldog.org has found that the governor’s blind trust, and Florida’s qualified blind trust law, have been ineffective. They have not prevented public disclosure of Gov. Scott’s personal riches.
13/ Lorde is a gifted singer, and in this low key single "Royals" she shows her excellent voice very well.
Listen to the lyrics - the song is about class, growing up poor, alienation and trying to find a way out through boxing [I think]. Anyway, it must strike a chord with the young, because this has 231 million hits.....
14/ Wes Anderson is a Director's movie director, meaning he is revered in the industry for complex, visually compelling movies that appeal to anyone who loves the cinema, as opposed to lots of stuff "blowed up good, blowed up real goooood"...... A new movie from him is an event and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" in theaters is, according to this review, wonderful. Great cast.
You can also have the DDD opinion as we saw it yesterday in Winter Park, and it was excellent.....and if you are going to go, watch the two minute appreciation below - it will enhance your "viewing experience"....
It’s a tough choice, but if I had to pick the most Wes Anderson moment in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” it would be the part when inmates escape from a prison using tiny sledgehammers and pickaxes that have been smuggled past the guards inside fancy frosted pastries. This may, come to think of it, be the most Wes Anderson thing ever, the very quintessence of his impish, ingenious and oddly practical imagination. So much care has been lavished on the conceit and its execution that you can only smile in admiration, even if you are also rolling your eyes a little.
“The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Mr. Anderson’s eighth feature, will delight his fans, but even those inclined to grumble that it’s just more of the same patented whimsy might want to look again. As a sometime grumbler and longtime fan, I found myself not only charmed and touched but also moved to a new level of respect.
There is no doubt that Mr. Anderson possesses a distinctive sensibility and a consistent visual style, and that instead of striking out in new directions, he tends to embroider and elaborate on familiar themes and pictorial habits. You will see many of them here: static, densely packed, fussily composed frames; traveling shots in which the camera glides alongside the characters like a low-flying bird; action sequences that refuse the usual digital hocus-pocus in favor of the older, artisanal magic of stop-motion animation, matte paintings and rear projection. You will also meet eccentric characters possessed by a kind of madcap melancholy, soulful and silly in equal measure. Some of them are played by actors you have seen elsewhere in the Anderson oeuvre, including Bob Balaban, Tilda Swinton and of course (albeit briefly) Owen Wilson and Bill Murray.RE
Grand Budapest Hotel trailer.....
A two minute appreciation of why Wes Anderson's films are so appealing visually.....it's very simple.....
Todays video - the BBC production of "Animal Crackers", the one that stars with "Nighttime, Daytime"......a really good oldie.......
Todays Philosophical jokes
Confucius Say. It's ok to let a fool kiss you, but don't let a kiss fool you.
Confucius Say. A kiss is just shopping upstairs for downstairs merchandise.
Confucius Say. It is better to lose a lover than love a loser.
Confucius Say. Man with a broken condom is called a Daddy
Confucius Say. A kiss is just shopping upstairs for downstairs merchandise.
Confucius Say. It is better to lose a lover than love a loser.
Confucius Say. Man with a broken condom is called a Daddy
Confucius Say. A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts.
Confucius Say. Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, and you lose interest.
Confucius Say. Viagra is like Disneyland ... a one hour wait for a 2-minute ride.
Confucius Say. Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, and you lose interest.
Confucius Say. Viagra is like Disneyland ... a one hour wait for a 2-minute ride.
Confucius Say.
A joke is like sex. Neither is any good if you don't get it.
Todays British joke
His Lordship was in the study at Downton Abbey when the butler approached and coughed discreetly.
"May I ask you a question, my Lord?"
"Go ahead, Carson" said his Lordship.
"I am doing the crossword in The Times and I have found a word I am not too clear on"
"What word is that?" said his Lordship.
"Aplomb" my Lord.
"Now that's a difficult one to explain. I would say it is self assurance or complete composure"
"Thank you, my Lord, but I'm still a little confused".
"Let me give you an example to make it clearer. Do you remember a few months ago the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived to spend a weekend with us?"
"I remember the occasion very well , my Lord. It gave the staff and myself much pleasure to look after them."
"Also", continued the Earl of Grantham, " do you remember Will plucked a rose for Kate in the rose garden? "
"I was present on that occasion, my Lord, ministering to their needs"
"While plucking the rose a thorn embedded itself in his thumb very deeply"
Carson replied, "I witnessed the incident, my Lord, and saw the Duchess herself remove the thorn and bandage his thumb with her own dainty handkerchief."
"That evening the prick on his thumb was so sore, Kate had to cut up his venison from our own estate, even though it was extremely tender."
"Yes my Lord, I did see everything that transpired that evening."
"The next morning while you were pouring coffee for Her Ladyship, Kate enquired of Will with a loud voice," "Darling, does your prick still throb?
And you, Carson, did not spill one drop of coffee!
Now that is aplomb!"
Todays medical joke
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