1/ The always excellent Frank Rich is back after a long holiday with his insightful comments on the news........
This week - "American Sniper", the Koch brothers and Hillary Clinton.......
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: the American Sniper debate and the Koch brothers' bankrolling of the Republican Party.
Clint Eastwood's American Sniper just completed its second weekend as the No. 1 movie in the country, and, with the attendant controversy drawing in the likes of Michael Moore, Newt Gingrich, John McCain (not to mention Howard Dean, Seth Rogen, and even Noam Chomsky), it looks to be one of the rare war movies that is both a commercial success and a political flashpoint. Why has American Sniper created such a storm when so many other Iraq and Afghanistan war movies have not?
The tumult surrounding American Sniper is in many ways more interesting than the film itself. Its record-shattering box-office performance — not only crushing all previous Iraq War films but also all of its Oscar competitors — is a testament to brilliant under-the-radar marketing by Warner Bros., a vacuum of mainstream entertainment for red-state cineplex audiences not exactly pining to see Birdman or The Grand Budapest Hotel, the steady ascent of Bradley Cooper, and the passing of time since the height of the Iraq War, from which America officially withdrew more than three years ago. Plus, Chris Kyle’s story is powerful, whatever one’s moral judgment about his wartime role as a sharpshooter, even if it is somewhat clunkily and repetitively told by Eastwood. Would that this movie were as taut as Million Dollar Baby and as moving as Flags of Our Fathers, the World War II film that is in some ways Sniper’s thematic companion piece in the Eastwood canon.
2/ The President gave a rousing SOTU speech two weeks ago, giving Democrats new hope and really pissing off Republicans.....but was it genuine populism coming from a certified centrist? Or just another speech, while the real Obama goes his merry way.....straight down the middle......
Most interesting story from Bill Curry in Salon......for you political junkies.....
Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren (Credit: AP/Reuters/Bob Strong/Junko Kimura-Matsumoto/Charles Dharapak/Photo montage by Salon)
Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech capped an epic political makeover. In two months he went from the living avatar of the political and economic establishment to a self-styled populist scourge. It’s as if he walked into a plastic surgeon’s office after Election Day and said “make me look like Bernie Sanders.” No president has ever tried to alter his image so drastically or so fast. I wonder if he’ll pull it off.
His campaign began emphatically on Nov. 5. Instead of the ritual submission the media demands of defeated party leaders, Obama used his post-election press conference to renew his vow to enact substantial immigration reform by executive order. Days later, he announced a major climate accord with China and finally came down foursquare for net neutrality.
These were big moves, but Obama was just warming up. In December, he announced the surprising end of our miserably failed Cuban trade embargo. Earlier this month, he unveiled a bold bid to make community college free for millions of students all across America.
Still not impressed? On Tuesday night he called for paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, a minimum wage hike and a tripling of the child tax credit to $3,000. He’s also pushing a $500 “second earner” tax credit and wants to give college students up to $2,500 apiece to help with expenses. The best part is how he’d pay for it all, mostly by taxing big banks, raising capital gains rates and closing loopholes that allows rich heirs to avoid capital gains taxes altogether.
A not-so-subtle shift in tone followed. Gone, for now, is Obama the ceaseless appeaser. He’s been replaced by a president with a more combative stance, as befits a true people’s champion. At times on Tuesday Obama even seemed to taunt his tormentors.
3/ Todays guy video.....watch this insane skier go down a mountain like a bat out of hell......amazing, and the final minutes are incredible. Sorry for the hyperbole, but for a normal skier to do this stuff would mean the emergency room.......
You might not know who Candide Thovex is now, but trust me, by the time you finish this article, you will probably be more than a little in awe of him. His latest video is averaging 1.5 million hits a day and counting since going live last week. It could easily bethe single best action spots video we’ll see all year.
4/ I am no great fan of the last decade of Israeli policy, with it's repression of the Palestinians, the steady encroachment of the settlements and the creation of the Gaza hellhole but choose to believe it's what right wing governments do - screw the weak and powerless, just like ours does. The Palestinians aren't saints either, with a split government of incompetents and would-be terrorists, which makes it easy for the Israeli right wing to continue to harass them......
But Netanyahu may have made a serious mistake this time by agreeing to speak before Congress as a deliberate "fuck you" to the President.....
Benjamin Netanyahu, making friends and influencing people (Reuters/The Atlantic)Benjamin Netanyahu believes he has just one job, and that is to stop Iran from getting hold of nuclear weapons. He might argue that this description of his mission as Israel’s prime minister is too limiting, though such an argument would not be particularly credible. Israel’s very existence, he has argued, consistently, and at times convincingly, is predicated on stopping Iran, a country ruled by a regime that seeks both Israel’s annihilation and the means to carry it out.Netanyahu’s options are limited. A country possessing scientific knowledge, material resources, and the will to cross the nuclear threshold is very difficult to stop. One way for Netanyahu to stop Iran, or to slow down its progress toward a bomb, would be to launch a preventative attack on its nuclear facilities. He has threatened to do so (credibly, according to officials of the Obama administration) but he has not yet done it, perhaps because American warnings against such a strike have been dire; perhaps because he understands that such an attack might not work; or perhaps because he is by nature cautious, despite his rhetoric.
Whatever the case, the only other way for Netanyahu to stop Iran would be to convince the president of the United States, the leader of the nation that is Israel’s closest ally and most crucial benefactor, to confront Iran decisively.
5/ National Geographic with a beautiful five minute tour of our world and the animal life in it, from the land to the sea.....wonderfully done, with some beautiful music too.....
A warm, fuzzy feel good video.....
6/ Good grief. Here is a list of 10 foods that we eat in the US that are banned in many other countries, real places like the EU, Canada, Australia and even Israel who have versions of the FDA that aren't run by industry toadies. Scary stuff......
You read these lists and say "this won't hurt me", but it's not just one time - it's cumulative over years and years, so if you want to stay healthy and out of the clutches of the medical system, watch what you eat......
Americans are slowly waking up to the sad fact that much of the food sold in the US is far inferior to the same foods sold in other nations. In fact, many of the foods you eat are BANNED in other countries.
Here, I’ll review 10 American foods that are banned elsewhere.
Seeing how the overall health of Americans is so much lower than other industrialized countries, you can’t help but wonder whether toxic foods such as these might play a role in our skyrocketing disease rates.
BANNED FOODS
#1: Milk and Dairy Products Laced with rBGH
Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is the largest selling dairy animal drug in America. RBGH is a synthetic version of natural bovine somatotropin (BST), a hormone produced in cows’ pituitary glands. Monsanto developed the recombinant version from genetically engineered E. coli bacteria and markets it under the brand name “Posilac.”
It’s injected into cows to increase milk production, but it is banned in at least 30 other nations because of its dangers to human health, which include an increased risk for colorectal, prostate, and breast cancer by promoting conversion of normal tissue cells into cancerous ones. Non-organic dairy farms frequently have rBGH-injected cows that suffer at least 16 different adverse health conditions, including very high rates of mastitis that contaminate milk with pus and antibiotics.
Where it’s banned: Australia, New Zealand, Israel, EU and Canada
“According to the American Cancer Society, the increased use of antibiotics to treat this type of rBGH-induced inflammation ‘does promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the extent to which these are transmitted to humans is unclear,’” the featured article states.
7/ OK - this you CAN eat - fun little video about how to make the perfect cheese sandwich.....five minutes......Mary cooked one of these, and it was superdelicious....a "wow".....
How this genius chef breaks down the surprisingly simple process behind this delectable delight is phenomenal. Seeing as how this easy process flew under our radar for so long, we wondered what else we may not know about one of America's classic meals.
Well, according to Wikipedia, "Cooked bread and cheese is an ancient food, according to food historians, popular across the world in many cultures; evidence indicates that in the U.S., the modern version of the grilled cheese sandwich originated in the 1920s when inexpensive sliced bread and American cheese became easily available.
8/ A pretty good Jon Stewart on the media frenzy over "blizzardgate" in the northeast.....of course we're used to this in Florida, just watch your TV when a depression forms off the African coast - "Killer Storm Coming!"
Quite funny.....about nine minutes......and by the way more snowy weather coming next weekend!
Jon Stewart recapped the media coverage of “Blizzapocalypsegeddon 15″ tonight and how New York avoided the worst of it. But that didn’t stop a lot of pretty overhyped coverage from NYC, including the interesting new tactic of having anchors running shows from their cars. But, Stewart said, “when there’s innovation in the field of newsgathering, we look to CNN for its worst iteration.”
Last night Don Lemon was in CNN’s “blizzardmobile,” which Stewart found a little odd, considering that NYC warning about non-emergency vehicles staying off roads. Stewart mocked the ridiculousness of the whole affair and even got in a pretty stinging dig at Lemon’s recent reporting.
And then The Daily Show went all-out mocking CNN by having Jordan Klepper do all sorts of news coverage in a car and on a bike. He interviewed a man on the street while driving down the road, talked about ISIS while on a sled, and even assembled a political panel… in the passenger seats of the car.
9/ This is what real winter looks like.....you may have seen some of these snow and ice fails before, but this video sets them to some rather nice classical music.....three minutes of why we live in Florida.....
10/ You may have read how the Koch Brothers are planning to spend almost a billion dollars on the 2016 election, but most of the stories focus on the Presidential election and ignore the real stories - the right wing oligarchs intend to take over the statehouses, the judiciary and even municipalities so they can make more profits by suppressing regulations and dissent. They are ruthless and relentless, they are playing the long game and in the way are bumbling Democrats and other relatively sane people, i.e. noone with the power to stop them.
Think we are going to get anything done about climate change? Dream on, and enjoy your Social Security and Medicare while you still have it, which won't be for long......
Scott Walker, David Koch, Chris Christie (Credit: AP/Reuters/Mark Humphrey/Brendan Mcdermid/Rich Schultz/Photo montage by Salon)
Besides our learning that one of the nation’s most valuable properties is outrageously vulnerable to attack, the biggest news on Tuesday probably came from the Koch brothers, who are reportedly planning to organize and spend nearly $1 billion (that’s billion, with a b) on the 2016 election. As the New York Times and Politico both noted, that figure would be significantly more than either the Republican or Democratic parties spent in 2012. At least in terms of financial power, it would potentially turn the Koch brothers into the most significant third party in U.S. politics since the days of Bull-Moose. Even if we assume that, like early reports of an NFL contract, the number is inflated for purposes of hype, it is still a lot of money.
Of course, this is far from the first time the Kochs have promised to man liberty’s ramparts, checkbooks in hand. In advance of the 2012 election, for example, they made a lot of noise about wielding their largess. And subsequent reports, which found them to have raised more than $400 million to defeat President Obama, proved they were not bluffing. Yet despite all that, 2012 ended up being quite a good year for Democrats — so good, in fact, that it ledsome observers to conclude that the effects of outside spending in American elections are overrated.
11/ A Republican strategy for 2016? Pretend to care about the middle class, and I'll bet a large proportion of the idiots will believe it......
Bill Maher in one of his more serious "New Rules".....still plenty of jokes, but there is an edge to this one......maybe because he's pissed of with the hypocrisy of it all.....
The Republican party has started to focus on middle class economics more this week, but Bill Maher ended his show tonight by calling them hypocrites for suddenly caring about this issue. Because this focus, Maher said, is “the new bullshit” on the right.
Maher first took a dig at Sarah Palin, who addressed the issue in her rambling Iowa speech(leading Maher to ask, “If Sarah Palin suffers a stroke, how will we know?”), before going after the general GOP for prioritizing this issue and attacking the Democrats for making it worse. Maher sarcastically cried, “Those damn Democrats! Always fighting the Republican party’s efforts to stick up to the little guy.”
Because to Maher, the GOP just has no shame and is only cynically “pretending to care” about this issue.
12/ Todays music video - Walk The Moon with "Shut Up And Dance"......a word to describe this one would be "charming", a fun video, a catchy song and a sense of humour too......not bad at all....
13/ This is an interesting column from Leonard Pitts - we are so used to the stupidity and blatant lying on Fox News that we are inured to it, but last week the British and the French [who have sane news outlets] were outraged at Fox, and embarrassed them bigtime.
When the Prime Minister of Britain called one of their moronic talking heads "a complete idiot" it gets everyone's attention......
Tucker Carlson said on Fox that more children die of bathtub drownings than of accidental shootings. They don’t.
Steve Doocy said on Fox that NASA scientists faked data to make the case for global warming. They didn’t.
Rudy Giuliani said on Fox that President Obama has issued propaganda asking everybody to “hate the police.” He hasn’t.
So maybe you can see why serious people — a category excluding those who rely upon it for news and information — do not take Fox, well … seriously, why they dub it Pox News and Fakes News, to name two of the printable variations. Fox is, after all, the network of death panels, terrorist fist jabs, birtherism, anchor babies, victory mosques, wars on Christmas and Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. It’s not just that it is the chief global distributor of unfact and untruth but that it distributes unfact and untruth with a bluster, an arrogance, a gonad-grabbing swagger, that implicitly and intentionally dares you to believe fact and truth matter.http://www.nationalmemo.com/
Really Good TV
14/ Mary and I just finished watching "The Fall" with Gillian Anderson, and we both found it completely riveting......it's on Netflix streaming, and is 17 episodes....
As a side note Jamie Dornan who plays the killer has just been announced as the lead in the upcoming movie "50 Shades Of Grey".....
Gillian Anderson in "The Fall" (Credit: BBC Two)
“The Fall,” a BBC Two and Netflix coproduction, was just released for American audiences on Netflix’s streaming platform. Whereas Britishers watched the series one episode at a time, week to week, Americans have always received “The Fall” in big gulps—first, five episodes from the first season, and now six from the second season.
It might be the ideal way to watch the show. “The Fall” is a moody, deliberate story of a serial killer, less invested in the cat-and-mouse chase than in studying the characters doing the chasing. The full story of “The Fall,” first episode to 11th, has spanned the time frame of just a few weeks—meaning that the six episodes of the second season, airing weekly, span more time for the viewers than they do for the characters. Where other shows take on a case each week—from discovery to investigation to trial, in a quick 42 minutes—“The Fall” has been focused on the same criminal for more than 11 meditative hours.
It’s a choice that sets “The Fall” apart—one that leads to the series’ celebrated deconstructions and inversions, its subtle dismantling and rearranging. “The Fall” is not a crime drama like other crime dramas, but it uses what the viewer expects of crime dramas to its advantage—creating, as a result, a story that has much more resonance than an average crime drama. The lacunae of “The Fall”—found in long scenes that unflinchingly portray the entirety of an interrogation, or tracking shots that capture not just a crime scene but the details of the work of the people whose job it is to clean up a crime scene—is where the unsettling implications of the show are born.
15/ I have watched two episodes of "Black Mirror" on Netflix, the first [Prime Minister] was totally gross but hypnotic and the second [bicycles and the Game Show] was amazing, but I will definitely see all six of them.....
However.... be warned - not for everyone......read this first and see if you fancy it........
Each episode of “Black Mirror” — named for the way our screens look while powered down — paints a different nightmarescape of a future gone technologically awry. In one episode, for example, a woman uses a mail-order kit to create a golem of her deceased boyfriend using his social-media profiles. Another follows an obnoxious cartoon character as he becomes a powerful political figure after performing a series of public stunts. Still another imagines a post-peak-oil future, wherein people generate energy and currency by pedaling on stationary bikes, and the only escape from the drudgery is reality-show fame. The show feels like required viewing for our always connected, device-augmented lives.
Despite all the recent hype, “Black Mirror” isn’t a new show at all. Its first season was broadcast in Britain in 2011, but it’s enjoying a new surge of interest in the United States since it began streaming on Netflix in December. It wasn’t widely advertised; its growing popularity is fueled by references to it on Twitter and Facebook, screenshots posted to Tumblr and the like.
Todays video - a supercut of female heroes being as mean as males......hmmm....Helen Mirren with a machine gun! Sweet.....
Decades of film history in just a few big explosions and a hail of gunfire. Nice!
There's some of the best-known action heroines from cinematic history, like xenomorph-destroying Ellen Ripley in the Alien trilogy and Terminator 2: Judgment Day's Sarah Connor. But it also features scenes from films as diverse as The Matrix, Thelma & Louise, Sin City, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and True Romance. Turns out ladies have range. The full credit list is on her Vimeo page, where Darko explains that she deliberately left out super-powered female characters and explains why she left out various other movies.
Action movies are usually pretty formulaic and sexist when it comes to their treatment of women, so kudos to Darko for subverting traditional gender roles in film.
Todays Scottish joke
Cost of Scottish Dental Treatment
A Glasgow man phones a Dentist to enquire about the cost for a tooth extraction.
"£85 pounds for an extraction, sir" the dentist replied.
"£85 quid! Huv ye no'got anythin' cheaper?"
"That's the normal charge," said the dentist.
"Whit aboot if ye didnae use any anaesthetic?"
"That's unusual, sir, but I could do it and would knock £15 pounds off."
"Whit aboot if ye used one of your dentist trainees and still without any anaesthetic?"
"I can't guarantee their professionalism and it'll be painful. But the price could drop by £20 pounds."
"How aboot if ye make it a trainin' session, ave yer student do the extraction with the other students watchin' and learnin?"
"It'll be good for the students", mulled the dentist. "I'll charge you £5 pounds but it will be traumatic."
"Och, now yer talkin' laddie! It's a deal," said the Scotsman. "Can ye confirm an appointment for the wife next Tuesday then?"
Todays blonde joke
A man got on a bus with both of his front trouser pockets full of golf balls and sat down next to a beautiful blonde.
The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets.
Finally, after several curious glances from her, he announced,
The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets.
Finally, after several curious glances from her, he announced,
"It's golf balls."
The blonde continued to look at him for a very long time, thinking deeply about what he had said.
After several minutes, not being able to contain her curiosity any longer, she asked,
"Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?"
The blonde continued to look at him for a very long time, thinking deeply about what he had said.
After several minutes, not being able to contain her curiosity any longer, she asked,
"Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?"
Todays ISIS joke
A large group of Isis fighters in Iraq are moving down a road when they hear a voice call from behind a sand dune: "One Marine is better than ten Isis fighters".
The Isis commander quickly orders 10 of best men over the dune where a gun battle breaks out and continues for a few minutes, then silence.
The voice once again calls out: "One Marine is better than one hundred Isis 'S.O.B.'s'".
Furious, the Isis commander sends his next best 100 troops over the dune and instantly a huge gun fight commences. After 10 minutes of battle, again silence.
The voice calls out again: "One Marine is better than a thousand Isis fighters."
The enraged Isis commander musters 1,000 fighters and sends them to the other side of the dune. Rifle fire, machine guns, grenades, rockets and cannon fire ring out as a terrible battle is fought ..... then silence.
Eventually, one badly wounded Isis fighter crawls back over the dune and with his dying words tells his commander, "Don't send any more men ... it's a trap. There's two of them."
Bradley Cooper in 'American Sniper.' 
