1/ The excellent Frank Rich with his take on the political stories of last week......Obamacare, GM's recall and the horrible Sheldon Adelson......
Hopefully not expecting a surrender
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 Obamacare's success means for the president and the GOP, what the GM recall scandal says about American industry, and Republican presidential hopefuls court the dark lord of Vegas.
Six months ago, the Obamacare insurance exchanges began their official rollout with a government shutdown and a protracted website failure. Yesterday, the president announced that the Affordable Care Act's open-enrollment period had exceeded its goals, with at least 7.1 million Americans signing up. Obamacare has been the single most divisive issue in American politics since it was signed into law in March 2010. Is that period coming to an end? And has the president won?
It will not stop being a political issue until the end of the midterms, of course, because the Republicans have no other issue to run on this year — and Obamacare-bashing, like Obama-bashing in general, revs up its base. And the GOP will do well in the midterms, too — not because of the Affordable Care Act, per se, but because the Republican base (white, male, old) turns up in off-year elections and much of the Democratic base (the new America that is inexorably supplanting the GOP base) hibernates until presidential election years. After the midterms, Obamacare will be vastly diminished as a political issue except on the hard right, which, after all, still doesn’t like that government “health-care takeover” called Medicare either. (The new Paul Ryan budget released this week, among its other indignities, calls for replacing Medicare with a voucher system that would destroy it.) Even now the ACA isn’t wildly unpopular — the country is split 49/48 in its favor according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll — and it will gain in popularity as it takes root among those Americans who needed it and now have it. In that important sense — as policy, not politics — the president may well have won, though we won’t know for sure for several years.
Meanwhile, it’s fascinating to see how those on the right are trying to deal with defeat by yet again trying to dispute hard statistics — claiming that the 7.1 million enrollment number is a fraud.
2/ One of the bonuses of not doing a DDD for a week is the wealth of material - here's a second Frank Rich column on this week's news - Stephen Colbert replacing Letterman, President Obama and LBJ's legacy, and the Jebster - will he run?
Future and past.
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: how Letterman and his new replacement can still matter; Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Carter rush to embrace LBJ; and what Jeb Bush's comments say about the GOP and immigration.
CBS just announced that Stephen Colbert will take over Late Show when David Letterman retires at the end of 2015. Letterman is the longest-running host in the history of late-night, but he was only rarely a ratings king and the desk-and-guest talk-show is hardly the cultural epicenter it once was. Does Letterman's departure still matter? And will Colbert be a worthy successor?
Letterman’s departure, though inevitable, certainly matters to those of us who have long admired him and still do. Hell, I still miss Carson, whose weird mixture of midwestern eccentricity, wry disengagement, clownish daring, and brilliant comic timing found their only late-night heir in the equally brilliant and mercurial Letterman.
3/ The religious right went crazy over the "Noah" movie, but their objections were it wasn't literal enough to the book of Genesis. Needless to say Jon Stewart had a wonderful time with this!
Four most amusing minutes.....
For years, conservatives have been demanding more religious content from Hollywood. But now that Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is a bona fide box office hit, many are not sure they like what they see. Last night, Jon Stewart took on some of the Noah “haters,” who he suspect did not even “see the fucking movie” in the first place.
Pundits like Glenn Beck and Fox News’ resident priest are extremely disappointed in the film, especially the fact it uses the word “creator” in place of “God.”
“If only someone in the Noah film, maybe someone like Noah’s son, Ham, said something clear and unequivocal like, quote, ‘My father said there can be no king. The Creator is God,’” Stewart said, reading from an NBC News article on the film. “That would clarify –- Oh, right. They didn’t see the fucking movie.”
But what’s even worse than (not) leaving out the word ‘God?’” Dispensing with the ending that people like The Five’s Dana Perino remember so well from childhood in which “everybody lives happily ever after.”
“Everybody? Nobody lives!” Stewart said. “Everybody is one family and two of every animal! Everybody else drowned!”
4/ Fight your way through what looks like economic jargon - Paul Krugman explains why the CD you have at the bank is earning you less than 1% and interest rates are so low, and have been for a long time - the oligarchs want it that way. Since Wall Street and the Treasury are controlled by the elites, this is the way it is......
Note the title of this column - "Oligarchs and Money"
Econonerds eagerly await each new edition of the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook. Never mind the forecasts, what we’re waiting for are the analytical chapters, which are always interesting and even provocative. This latest report is no exception. In particular, Chapter 3 — although billed as an analysis of trends in real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates — in effect makes a compelling case for raising inflation targets above 2 percent, the current norm in advanced countries.
This conclusion fits in with other I.M.F. research. Last month the fund’s blog — yes, it has one — discussed the problems created by “lowflation,” which is nearly as destructive as outright deflation. An earlier edition of the World Economic Outlook analyzed historical experience with high debt, and found that countries that were willing to let inflation erode their debt — including the United States — fared much better than those, like Britain after World War I, that clung to monetary and fiscal orthodoxy.
But the I.M.F. evidently doesn’t feel able to say outright what its analysis clearly implies. Instead, the report resorts to euphemisms that preserve deniability: the analysis “could have implications for the appropriate monetary policy framework.”
So what makes the obvious unsayable? In a direct sense, what we’re seeing is the power of conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom doesn’t come from nowhere, and I’m increasingly convinced that our failure to deal with high unemployment has a lot to do with class interests.
First, let’s talk about the case for higher inflation.
5/ Climate change has become a political hot button, but as this very good article points out it's physics, not politics. I suppose the bedrock issue is if Republicans acknowledge CC is real, they would have to do something about it which will not please their masters, the energy barons like the Koch Brothers.
This is a primer for all the nasty things that will happen if we ignore the problem for another 15/20 years. My opinion is I think the timing is more urgent than 15 years, but whatever......
A Gallup poll has found that only 35% of Americans are concerned about climate change, and that proportion is barely up from the previous year.
Climate change has become a partisan issue in the US, such that a majority of Democrats is worried about it but only 29% of independents and only 16% of Republicans! The youth are more concerned than their elders.
The American public is reacting to climate change as though it were a lifestyle or culture wars issue, such as gay marriage or marijuana legalization.
They don’t seem to realize that the laws of physics don’t respect party affiliation. If you put 32 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as human beings are currently doing by burning coal, oil and natural gas, then you will cause massive climate change.
6/ "Years Of Living Dangerously" is a nine part series about climate change that debuts this week on Showtime - as a teaser they have put the first episode on youtube free.....so here it is - one hour. Go on - figure out how to use your smart TV, and watch this one.......
Look at the producers.....Ahnuld.....and James Cameron, director of the Terminator series, Alien[s], Titanic and Avatar......
Looking for something inspiring to watch tonight instead of Game of Thrones? Check out this sneak peek of Years of Living Dangerously, which will premiere on Showtime on Sunday, April 13 at 10 p.m. Years Of Living Dangerously is a nine-part series produced by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Weintraub, along with former 60 Minutes producers, who have 18 Emmys among them. Showtime and the producers were gracious enough to provide the first episode in full on YouTube.
Once you see it, I bet you'll want to sign up for Showtime to see the rest of the series this spring. (Yes, it's on Showtime, which not many households or establishments subscribe to. But wouldn't you like to support the network that hosts such an important series about climate change?)
7/ Sean Hannity has perhaps the stupidest Fox News show, and here he proves it with a moralistic tirade about spring breakers, giving his panel of guests a chance to bemoan the scantily clad twerkers on the screen......hypocritical bastards all of them, giving Jon Stewart an opportunity to nail them......a good one, six minutes......
Jon Stewart took on Sean Hannity (deemed “America’s oldest hall monitor”) Wednesday night for his week-long coverage of the dangers of spring break, which Stewart described as the “f*cking weirdest week for TV I’ve ever seen.” He said it was basically an excuse for Fox to show “wildly inappropriate T&A footage” whilst featuring people condemning it.
Stewart mocked all the supposed revelations Fox discovered about spring break, like the fact that young people get really drunk and horny and that only bad parents let people go on spring break. Funnily enough, plenty of people Hannity’s panel went on spring break, to which Stewart said, “So what kind of shitty parents let their kids go to spring break? Oh right, your shitty parents!”
But there was one piece of analysis that really stuck out for Stewart: Bob Beckel saying that he knows cocaine, he’s used cocaine, and on spring break they’re only selling the bad cocaine. Stewart explained, “Stay in school! Get better parents! And don’t go to spring break. But if you do, bring your cocaine from home.”
8/ Charles Blow is angry - he lists all of the outrageous things we should be protesting that are chipping away at our economic lives, but also wonders where are the signs of anger from the mass of the American people. Why aren't they getting it?
An excellent, passionate column from the Times, but you read this and wonder if the mass of apathetic, under informed voters deserve what's coming to them because they are letting the elites and the oligarchs win - from the angry old white people voting against their own interests [R], to the minorities, women, and the young not bothering to vote at all [D]. By the time they wake up it will be too late.......
Voter apathy is a civic abdication. There is no other way to describe it.
If more Americans — particularly young people and less-wealthy people — went to the polls, we would have a better functioning government that actually reflected the will of the citizenry.
But, that’s not the way it works. Voting in general skews older and wealthier, and in midterm elections that skew is even more severe.
As David Wasserman wrote on the Cook Report last year:
“Voters under the age of 30 were 19 percent of all voters in 2012, but just 12 percent of all voters in 2010. Likewise, voters 65 and up were 17 percent of all voters in 2012, but 21 percent of all voters in 2010. Herein lies the biggest danger for Democratic candidates in 2014.”
Now we hear murmuring that Republicans hold a slight advantage going into 2014, not strictly because that’s the will of the American people, but because that may well be the will of the people willing to show up at the polls.
There is an astounding paradox in it: too many of those with the least economic and cultural power don’t fully avail themselves of their political power. A vote is the great equalizer, but only when it is cast.
The strategy here is simple: Break the spirit. Muddy the waters. Make voting feel onerous and outcomes ambiguous. And make it feel like a natural outgrowth of tedium and bickering, and not a well-funded, well-designed effort. Make us subsist on personality politics rather than principled ones.
The greatest trick up the sleeves of the moneyed and powerful is their diabolical ability to render themselves invisible and undetectable, to recede and operate behind a front, one relatable and common. Our politics are overrun with characters acting at the behest of shadows.
These are the politicians to whom we have become accustomed — too much polish, and too much beam — which is precisely the reason they should warrant our suspicion and not our trust, the way one cannot trust a cook with pots too pretty and not burned black on the bottoms.
And yet too many people shrug or sleep when they should seethe.
9/ This is different - Jimmy Kimmel show got the well known [?] rapper Wiz Khalifa to "sing" one of his "songs", and got three sign language ladies to sign the rap "lyrics"......actually quite amusing, and the "song" is fun too.....four minutes......
This rapper is a hoot!
Wiz Khalifa and Jimmy Kimmel may have made history last night.
Even though Khalifa claimed he's taken part in a sign language rap battle before, this night was still unique. As Khalifa spit some raps, three sign language interpreters take turns firing off his words in ASL.
The entire event made for some pretty crazy dance moves and what must be the most unique rap battle anyone has seen in a while.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
10/ Read this story from Salon after the Blow column - America is going down fast in the world rankings of how normal people live their lives - it's called livability, and we are not doing well by any measure and yes this analysis is part subjective but it feels true.
But who knows this isn't really the greatest country on earth? Only 18% of Americans own a passport so haven't been out of Merika to see any foreign country, and the media is well controlled by large corporations who constantly pound away at how the US is #1, the best in the world......
But the worst of it is where this is going.....read the quote from Chris Hedges below - I have highlighted it. Think it can't happen? Think again......
Truly an excellent article......
..............................
So, what of the U.S? In terms of happiness, we rank 17th, trailing neighboring Mexico.
We find ourselves languishing for the very fact we have allowed corporate America to hijack the entire Republican Party, and some parts of the Democratic Party. This influence has bought corporations and the rich a rigged tax code that has redistributed wealth from the middle class to the rich over the course of the past three decades. This lack of shared prosperity and opportunity has retarded our social progress.
America’s rapid descent into impoverished nation status is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world’s top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains — none of them high-speed — are running off their tracks.
With 95 percent of all economic gains funneled to the richest 1 percent over the course of the last decade, and a tax code that has starved the federal government of revenues to invest in public infrastructure, America will be a country divided by those who have and those who have not. InThe World As It Is, Chris Hedges writes, “Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods, and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty.”
This week the Republican Party rolled out its 2014 Ryan budget. Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that under the Ryan budget, ”[affluent] Americans would do quite well. But for tens of millions of others, the Ryan plan is a path to more adversity.”
11/ Take a memo - don't ever fly into Birmingham, England in the winter. This is a video of crosswind landings and takeoffs by commercial jets that will make you thankful you weren't on those planes! Quite a few aborted landings too, and you can see why......it's eleven minutes and strangely hypnotic, because these are commercial flights with real passengers........
Some landing and take-off highlights in awkward wind conditions at BHX this winter (a record winter for stormy conditions in the UK). Note the frequent flexing of the planes' wings in response to the turbulence.
Of the five "missed approaches" shown, three diverted to other airports, two were "go arounds" and landed successfully on second attempt.
Of the five "missed approaches" shown, three diverted to other airports, two were "go arounds" and landed successfully on second attempt.
12/ Coldplay is a British band that have had some major hits, and this song "Midnight" is from their new album.....it's almost surreal, like spa music with an undercurrent, and the video is kind of spooky, all in black and white overexposed.....
13/ What a commercial! Shell Oil has made a two minute ad for Ferrari lovers, using classic race cars shot on roads all around the world......very cool.....and the best thing about it is hearing the sound of those engines at 11,000 rpm.....wow.....
14/ Floriduh is one of the most corrupt states in the country - everything the Florida legislature does benefits one of "the boys" or corporations with lobbyists feeding the scum money......now they are going after the mentally ill, cutting funds and sending them into the prison system and hospitals.....what bastards.
Fred Grimm: A sneaky vote against mental-health care
BY FRED GRIMM
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
No one called Judge Leifman.
That's all you need to know about Florida Senate Bill 7122, one of those phantom pieces of legislation that seem to glide inexorably toward passage without the usual committee stops, without much scrutiny from lawmakers or input from experts.
It was as if the bill has been guided by the hand of God. Either that or the Senate president's office, whichever force might be more beholden to the for-profit hospital lobby.
SB 7122 would radically alter — make that devastate — emergency mental health treatment in Florida by cutting the guaranteed flat fee now paid to the non-profit Crisis Stabilization Units that handle mental health emergencies, based on each unit's bed capacity.
Instead, the guaranteed reimbursement would be based on 25 percent of a CSU's bed capacity. The balance of the money would be calculated by the number of patients CSU might admit against whatever money the Department Children and Families has left in its mental health budget. Of course, much of that money would then be diverted to hospitals, including for-profit hospitals who dearly want to snag a chunk of the $61 million the state now pays out each year for CSU interventions.
The senators who passed this out of committee last week — with a very sneaky vote — didn't bother consulting with Miami-Dade County Administrative Judge Steve Leifman, an odd oversight considering he's chairman of the state Supreme Court’s Task Force on Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues, special adviser to the Supreme Court for criminal justice and mental health issues and chairman of Miami-Dade courts committee on mental health (just to mention a few of the items on his daunting list of credentials.)
No one in Florida matches Leifman's experience when it comes to getting the mentally ill off the streets and out of jail cells and into the mental health system.
15/ Stephen Colbert has had a very good week, with his apointment to replace Letterman and his feud with Bill O'Reilly giving him a funny ongoing target to nail, as he does in this four minute clip......
After he got his coy reaction to the news that actual Stephen Colbert will be taking over The Late Show from David Letterman next year out of the way, the character Stephen Colbert moved on to more important matters — namely, his escalating feud with “Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly. Colbert played the Fox News host’s latest rant against him before assuring O’Reilly that he’s not some master “deceiver.”
“You know that Bill O’Reilly and I have a mutual appreciation society,” Colbert told his audience. “I admire Bill, and so does he.” On O’Reilly’s charge that he’s the “darling of the far-left internet,” Colbert had only to point to the #CancelColbert campaign to demonstrate why that may not be entirely true.
“But if I thought for even one second that something I said hurt Papa Bear’s feelings, then I too am hurt. And to be honest, a little turned on.” After showing the portion of O’Reilly’s segment in which he called Colbert a “deceiver,” the host assured him that he has it all wrong. “I agree with every single word you’re saying, even if those words don’t agree with each other.”
16/ Movie review - Jim Jarmusch is a cult movie maker, and has made a vampire movie with a twist - the blood drinkers are art afficionados. "Only Lovers Left Alive" stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, and looks very interesting as a character study, not a traditional vampire saga.....
With their finely chiseled clavicles and cheekbones, their nocturnal habits and exquisite taste, Adam and Eve are about the coolest couple you could imagine. (They are played by Tom Hiddleston andTilda Swinton, which definitely helps.) Adam lives in a vast apartment in the picturesque ruins of Detroit, surrounded by vinyl records and vintage guitars acquired by an eager young gofer named Ian (Anton Yelchin). Eve haunts the alleys of Tangier, speed-reading old books in every known language and lingering in an all-night cafe with Christopher Marlowe, who still regrets, five centuries after the fact, not receiving proper credit for Shakespeare’s plays.
It is part of the conceit of “Only Lovers Left Alive,” Jim Jarmusch’s latest slow-burn celebration of art, style and aimless conversation, that old Kit Marlowe (a marvelously grizzled John Hurt), one of the original literary outlaws, is alive and well, if a bit weary. Dwelling in a city associated with latter-day writer-renegades like William S. Burroughs and Paul Bowles, Marlowe is Eve’s confidant and mentor. He also supplies her with human blood, since both of them are vampires.
Atmospheric trailer......and don't worry, there are vampire teeth in the movie.....
Todays video - one of the shows I regret not following is "The Newsroom", with Jeff Daniels as an acerbic, intelligent news anchor who in this show grills politicians like they do in Europe, at least on British TV. Here is a three minute sampling of some classic scenes.....
Have you watched this David Gregory? George Stephanopoulos? Chris Wallace?
Todays pharmacist joke
A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, "I'd like to buy some cyanide.The pharmacist asked, "Why in the world do you need cyanide?
The lady replied, "I need it to poison my husband.
The pharmacist's eyes got big and he explained, "Lord have mercy! I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband, that's against the law. I'll lose my license! They'll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide. Just get a divorce!"
The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife.
The pharmacist looked at the picture and said, "You didn't tell me you had a prescription."
Todays prostitution joke
Two prostitutes were riding around town with a sign on top of their car which said:
Two Prostitutes - $50.00.
A policeman, seeing the sign, stopped them, and told them they'd either have to remove the sign or go to jail.
At that time, another car passed with a sign saying: "Jesus Saves."
One of the girls asked the officer, "How come you don't stop them?"
"Well, that's a little different," the officer said. "Their sign pertains to religion."
The following day the same police officer noticed the same two hookers driving around with a large sign on their car.
He figured he had an easy arrest until he read their new sign:
Two Fallen Angels
Seeking Peter -- $50.00
Seeking Peter -- $50.00
Todays Jewish joke
The Chinese guy buys 25 bras.
He returns a few days later and this time orders fifty.
The Jewish owner tells him that they have become even harder to get and charges him $60.00 each.
The Chinese guy returns a month later and buys the store's remaining stock of 50, and this time for $75.00 each.The Jewish owner is somewhat puzzled by the large demand for black size 38 bras and asks the Chinese guy, "...please tell me - What do you do with all these black bras?"
The Chinese guy answers: "I cut them in half and sell them as skull caps to Jewish men for $200.00 each."
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