1/ If you travel abroad and get into conversations with educated people who find out you're American, the theme is pretty consistent - what is wrong with your country? How do you explain the madness that has gripped our political systems, and made half of America not just science deniers but fact deniers to sane people?
This is an interesting article, almost a short essay, but it's relevant if you are going to Europe, or even Canada.....gives you a script for the inevitable questions.....
Joni Ernst (Credit: AP/Charlie Neibergall)
This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.
In my long nomadic life, I’ve had the good fortune to live, work, or travel in all but a handful of countries on this planet. I’ve been to both poles and a great many places in between, and nosy as I am, I’ve talked with people all along the way. I still remember a time when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world for way too many reasons to go into here.
That’s changed, of course. Even after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I still met people — in the Middle East, no less — willing to withhold judgment on the U.S. Many thought that the Supreme Court’s installation of George W. Bush as president was a blunder American voters would correct in the election of 2004. His return to office truly spelled the end of America as the world had known it. Bush had started a war, opposed by the entire world, because he wanted to and he could. A majority of Americans supported him. And that was when all the uncomfortable questions really began.
2/ For those of you who like living in Florida, but dislike the stupidity and corruption of our politics, the environmental degradation and the overall weirdness of this state, i.e. Floriduh, watch this seven minute Jon Stewart and think how the rest of the country perceives us.......it's actually very funny indeed - he's on great form.....
His guest after the segment was Marco Rubio, and there is a one minute clip of his reaction to Stewart's mockery of Floriduh.....
Jon Stewart‘s guest on tonight’s Daily Show was Senator Marco Rubio, so Stewart devoted the entire first segment of the show to shitting all over his home state of Florida.
Stewart opened by tackling how some Florida counties are preventing all marriages from going forward because gay marriage is legal. He mockingly said that Florida obviously cares about a “strict preservation of gender role” like how it’s men who are supposed to spray water at women to get them wet, not the other way around.
He rattled off a list of “Florida man” stories to show just how crazy the state is, like how one reptile store owner was arrested for beating his employees with a lizard. Stewart kept gleefully mocking Florida before saying, “Up next, I’ll be joined by the senator from Florida, Marco Rubio.”
3/ We read some depressing stuff in the course of putting DDD together, but this just about takes the cake. It's a story about Exxon Mobil's blueprint for the future, and their corporate goals for the next decades.
Are they diversifying, investing in solar and wind? Nope - they're doubling down on oil and gas, basically saying screw you - our business plan is to wreck the planet.
Why is this so depressing? It comes from the realisation the most powerful corporations in the world have decided they have the clout and the unlimited funds to ruin the world, and they will probably get away with it long enough to put us way past the tipping points that matter.....
“We dare you to stop us”: Inside big oil’s sinister plan to derail the anti-carbon movement
Rather than retreating, Exxon and other companies are going on the offensive as mankind hangs in the balance
(Credit: Shutterstock)
This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Around the world, carbon-based fuels are under attack. Increasingly grim economic pressures, growing popular resistance, and the efforts of government regulators have all shocked the energy industry. Oil prices are falling, colleges and universities are divesting from their carbon stocks, voters are instituting curbs on hydro-fracking, and delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Peru have agreed to impose substantial restrictions on global carbon emissions at a conference in Paris later in the year. All this has been accompanied by what might be viewed as a moral assault on the very act of extracting carbon-based fuels from the earth, in which the major oil, gas, and coal companies find themselves portrayed as the enemies of humankind.
Under such pressures, you might assume that Big Energy would react defensively, perhaps apologizing for its role in spurring climate change while assuming a leadership position in planning for the transition to a post-carbon economy. But you would be wrong: instead of retreating, the major companies have gone on the offensive, extolling their contributions to human progress and minimizing the potential for renewables to replace fossil fuels in just about any imaginable future.
That the big carbon outfits would seek to perpetuate their privileged market position in the global economy is, of course, hardly surprising. After all, oil is the the most valuable commodity in international commerce and major producing firms like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell regularly top lists of the world’s most profitable enterprises. Still, these companies are not just employing conventional legal and corporate tactics to protect their position, they’re mounting a moral assault of their own, claiming that fossil fuels are an essential factor in eradicating poverty and achieving a decent life on this planet.
4/ After you read the above story stay away from sharp implements for a while....but to recover watch this three minute CBS news report of a young boy, a $20 bill and a soldier.....keep some tissues handy......a NICE story....
As part of our continuing series “On the Road,” Steve Hartman has an update on the story of Myles Eckert, who gave his newfound fortune away to U.S. soldier. The 9-year-old didn’t realize his investment in kindness would yield such a great return.
5/ The Keystone pipeline has become THE environmental issue du jour, with the Republican Congress passing bills to get it built, and the President vowing to veto the bill.....but it's an illusion, a sideshow to distract us all. Big Oil is using back doors to get the shale sands oil to market, and so even if the Keystone isn't built the Alberta oil will still be flowing down to Texas for refining and shipment to China.
Read the following two stories from the Times, and just realise we are up against the most powerful and ruthless corporations on the planet, and whatever they want, they get.
He met with State Department officials to get a Keystone update; because the pipeline would cross the U.S.-Canada border, the department has to do a review, which it has done several times, always coming down in favor of the project. In several speeches, Rickford talked up the close energy relationship between the United States and Canada, noting that Canada sends three million barrels per day to America — more than Venezuela and Saudi Arabia combined. He mentioned Canada’s new pipeline safety law. He said he thought the Keystone XL pipeline should be approved, which is essentially what Canadian officials have been saying for the past six years.
Then on Wednesday, Rickford went to Texas for two days. This is the part of his trip that really caught my attention. His main focus in Texas was on two new Canadian-controlled pipelines that became operational in mid-December. One is called the Flanagan South pipeline, which cost $2.8 billion. It covers nearly 600 miles, from Pontiac, Ill., to Cushing, Okla. The other pipeline, called the Seaway Twin, runs an additional 500 miles, from Cushing to Freeport, Tex., where the refineries are. It cost $1.2 billion. Guess where some of the oil that is going to run through those pipelines is coming from? Yep — the tar sands of Alberta.
WHILE the ire of environmental activists remains fixed on the Keystone XL pipeline, a potentially greater threat looms in the proposed expansion of Line 61, a pipeline running the length of Wisconsin carrying tar sands crude. The pipeline is owned by Enbridge, a $40 billion Canadian company, which has been responsible for several hundred spills in the past decade, including one in 2010 near Marshall, Mich., reportedly the largest and most expensive inland oil spill in American history.
Enbridge is seeking to increase Line 61’s capacity threefold, making it a third larger than the projected Keystone XL. The last real line of defense against this expansion is an obscure zoning committee in Dane County, Wis., which is scheduled to meet on Jan. 27 to decide whether to attach conditions to Enbridge’s permit for a new pump station. Voting to do so would risk a lawsuit from Enbridge, which maintains that the county has no legal right to impose such conditions.
While the fight over Keystone XL has involved millions of dollars in advertising, the arrests of many activists outside the White House and the direct engagement of President Obama, Enbridge’s plans have received little national attention. This is a glaring example of how environmental policy with transnational impacts can be pushed at the state level without attracting great scrutiny.
6/ A good Bill Maher on the NYPD and their hissy fits......tells it like it is.......five pretty good minutes....
Bill Maher ended his show tonight with a New Rule directed at the police, the New York police in particular. He went off on the NYPD for “throw[ing] a tantrum” at Mayor Bill de Blasio and asked when they started “suffering from PMS.”
Maher repeatedly clarified that he supports the police, but he’s a little annoyed that “New York’s whiniest” engaged in a slowdown because they felt “unloved” by their mayor.
He tied this into a broader theme of police officers as these ‘infallible” forces that will justify anything as “by the book.” Maher suggested they should “get a new book,” pointing to cases like Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. And the way some police unions have been particularly ardent about defending the cops struck Maher as the same kind of “union bullshit” that explains why people hate unions in the first place
7/ And Tom Tomorrow has a wonderful cartoon on the same subject - the NYPD.......
8/ The wheel turns......there is a bipartisan attempt in Congress to declassify 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 report which allegedly shows links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 attackers......
It is a fact that one of the most extreme Muslim governments in the world is Saudi Arabia, basically run by a monarchy but heavily influenced by the Wahabi Salafi form of Islam, which is at the crazy end of the Muslim faith. I have not taken much of an interest in 9/11 conspiracy theories, but I do believe there are a lot of weird things that happened that day, and don't believe the "official" story for one moment.......
The timing of this move by some brave politicians is the interesting bit - the Muslim faith and some of it's more extreme views are being questioned as never before, so the lingering doubts about 9/11 are resurfacing, and now we have tons of oil the Saudi's haven't got the clout they used to have.....
William Kratzke/AP; Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
The lead author of the Senate’s report on 9/11 says it’s time to reveal what’s in the 28 pages that were redacted from it, which he says will embarrass the Saudis.
A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers.
“This may seem stale to some but it’s as current as the headlines we see today,” Graham said, referring to the terrorist attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris. The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security. But as chairman of the Senate Select Committee that issued the report in 2002, Graham argues the opposite is true, and that the real “threat to national security is non-disclosure.”
Graham said the redacted pages characterize the support network that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, and if that network goes unchallenged, it will only flourish. He said that keeping the pages classified is part of “a general pattern of coverup” that for 12 years has kept the American people in the dark. It is “highly improbable” the 19 hijackers acted alone, he said, yet the U.S. government’s position is “to protect the government most responsible for that network of support.”
The Saudis know what they did, Graham continued, and the U.S. knows what they did, and when the U.S. government takes a position of passivity, or actively shuts down inquiry, that sends a message to the Saudis. “They have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.”
By the way, did you know George Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, was on the board of the company that provided security for the World Trade Center, and the company is owned by W's cousin? Thought not......
Bush served on the board of Securacom (since renamed Stratesec). The chairman of the board of Stratesec is Wirt D. Walker III, a cousin of Marvin and George W. Bush. Securacom had contracts to provide security for Dulles International Airport (the airport from which American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, originated) and the World Trade Center in New York. Securacom's backers include a number of Kuwaitis through a company called KuwAm Corp (Kuwaiti-American Corp.). Stratesec also has Saudi investors. Walker also serves as a managing director of KuwAm, which maintains offices within the Watergate complex along with Riggs Bank, on whose board Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, sits. Saudi Princess Haifa al Faisal, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar, used a Riggs account to funnel money to Omar al Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, two Saudi students in California associated with two of the 911 hijackers.
I have a feeling the 9/11 story is going to resurface soon.......
9/ Justin Bieber stars in a Calvin Klein commercial, so SNL made some Bieber commercials of their own.........three very amusing minutes.....
In a devastating takedown of his ridiculous Calvin Klein ads on Saturday night's episode, SNL cast member Kate McKinnon manages to make him look even more clueless than the original photo shoot (along with some help from cast member Cecily Strong as model Lara Stone):
It's a hilarious series of non-stop jabs at Bieber, who was recently accused of super-obvious Photoshop overcompensation in a set of underwear ads that showed the pop star with some improbable enhancements to every muscle on his body (and, you know, his crotch):
In a devastating takedown of his ridiculous Calvin Klein ads on Saturday night's episode, SNL cast member Kate McKinnon manages to make him look even more clueless than the original photo shoot (along with some help from cast member Cecily Strong as model Lara Stone):
10/ Some of you may remember Robert Crumb, the legendary underground comix cartoonist from the 70's.....his work is definitely an acquired taste, but it's 70's counterculture at it's best.
Here is his response to the killings at Charlie Hebdo.......not like the spineless wimps at Sony......a little rude....
11/ Some good news......the "war on drugs" may have reversed itself, and we may be on the way to a saner drugs policy.....great article from Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone.....
The conservative wave of 2014 featured an unlikely, progressive undercurrent: In two states, plus the nation's capital, Americans voted convincingly to pull the plug on marijuana prohibition. Even more striking were the results in California, where voters overwhelmingly passed one of the broadest sentencing reforms in the nation, de-felonizing possession of hard drugs. One week later, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD announced an end to arrests for marijuana possession. It's all part of the most significant story in American drug policy since the passage of the 21st Amendment legalized alcohol in 1933: The people of this country are leading a dramatic de-escalation in the War on Drugs
November's election results have teed up pot prohibition as a potent campaign issue for 2016. Notwithstanding the House GOP's contested effort to preserve pot prohibition in D.C., the flowering of the marijuana-legalization movement is creating space for a more rational and humane approach to adjudicating users of harder drugs, both on the state level and federally. "The door is open to reconsidering all of our drug laws," says Alison Holcomb, who led the pot-legalization push in Washington state in 2012, and has been tapped to direct the ACLU's new campaign against mass incarceration.
12/ Remember the negative review of the Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's latest ship, crossing the Atlantic from the shipyard to NYC in the last DDD? It gets worse......here is a fair-minded customer with a lengthy but understandably negative tale of the misadventures on the Quantum, now in regular service out of Bayonne till it goes to China......
This is a new experience for RCCL, delivering ships that aren't ready....when I worked for the company we brought out 25 + brand new ships for both Royal and Celebrity including the Voyager class, Radiance class, Millennium class and the "monster" - Oasis of the Seas, and apart from one minor hiccup [Radiance hotel service, which was quickly fixed] the execution of launching new ships was close to flawless. It was hairy at times, but "get 'er dun" or the Scandanavian equivalent was the mantra and the passengers never noticed, or at least forgave some of the last minute shit that happens.
This is different......I wonder what the hell happened.......
Not Ready for Prime Time
Sail Date: January 2015
Destination: Eastern Caribbean
Embarkation: Bayonne (Cape Liberty)
My wife and I have been cruising with a group of friends (three professional couples) for about six years now, but some of us used to be in the cruise business, so we have an insider's perspective. We also know as passengers that there are good and bad in every cruise (put 4,000 in a small space - try to feed them and keep them entertained for a week or more - not so simple). So this should not be considered a nit-picky review. But holy moly, the Quantum of the Seas was not ready to sail. We spoke with many passengers, and some of them started a conversation by causally asking "So, how do you like the ship?" Not wanting to be overtly negative, I would respond with something like "It's not my favorite," at which point they would inevitably spill their guts about the long litany of the same problems we were all experiencing. In some strange way, it was bonding. But I would have preferred a different camaraderie. I will format this review in a daily log approach, which I hope will capture the feel of this experience the best.
This is the link to the Cruise Critic website of passengers who sailed on the Quantum in case you want to keep reading.......more of the same stories, I'm afraid......
13/ I know this was probably true for Lake County, but the whole of Central Florida? Even with the Disney jobs and the huge hospitality business? Wow......
Nearly half of Central Florida households on financial edge
Nearly half of all households in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties struggle to cover the basics of food, shelter, medical care and transportation — putting them one missed paycheck or one unexpected bill away from financial free fall, new research shows.
The figure is triple the number state researchers previously assumed.
The study was commissioned by United Ways in six states, including Florida, and conducted by Rutgers University. Researchers found 203,000 households in Central Florida's tri-county region in which workers earn more than the federal poverty limit yet live on the edge of bankruptcy, eviction or homelessness.
The situation puts the economy as a whole at risk, officials said.
14/ OMG....I am never eating these again.......six "foods" Big Ag bets we don't notice what the ingredients are.....
The story is written in a lively style - it's witty, informative and has a few rude words too.....
We're all cynical grown-ups here. We know that the food we buy at the grocery store isn't made by a kindly old man on a farm.
But still, we like to think that what comes in the package bears at least some vague resemblance to what's on the label. Instead, a little bit of digging reveals downright soylent green-like horrors.
#6. "Crab Meat"
Long ago, man decided that the delicate, tasty flesh of bottom dwelling sea bugs was a luxury item and we should all be so lucky to eat it--even if the animal itself had been feeding off of discarded boots and laserdisc porn sunk to the bottom of the sea. For this reason, crab continues to be a delicacy that costs a fuckton more than, say, the pulverized, rubbery remains of a bunch of random fish.
15/ Todays music video - Sia....."Chandelier"......a fabulous song, and an amazing video as well......it's a very young girl in a leotard dancing in a shabby apartment. The song has it's own Wikipedia page, and the video has had 466 million hits......
The music video for "Chandelier" was released on 6 May 2014. It features Maddie Ziegler, a young dancer.[52] Ziegler was personally asked by Sia to appear in the video via Twitter.[53] The video was directed by Sia and Daniel Askill,[54]and was choreographed by Ryan Heffington.[55] Ziegler shared her thoughts about the dance moves to New Yorkmagazine:[53]
In the video, Ziegler wears a blonde Sia wig. Throughout the clip, Ziegler dances in a deserted apartment "while spinning, kicking, leaping, crawling, falling, twirling and hiding herself behind window drapes".[54] An alternative one-take version of the clip was released in June 2014.[56] The choreography was praised by media outlets; an editor from The Guardian wrote that Ziegler "dances with such impressive flexibility".[56] Nolan Feenay from Time magazine commented that the dance moves in the "Chandelier" music video could be the best dance routine of 2014.
16/ Our schools in Lake County are a disgrace, and Lauren Ritchie has written an excellent column on why the funding for the schools is always less than we need. She gives detail on how the state allocates funds to all of the counties, and [I would guess] none of you know how this is done - I know I didn't.
Read it - you will be disgusted. If you are a Republican, it will confirm the gub'mint doesn't work. If you are a progressive, it's confirmation of how the right wing legislature has screwed us all.....
The chicken-and-egg conundrum came up last week at a meeting of the Founders Club of Lake County, which is a Republican group, although not officially affiliated with the party.
Everyone seemed to agree that improving schools should be a top priority so that Lake can attract industry.
Then County Commissioner Leslie Campione raised a question: Which can practically be done first — improving schools or attracting development?
The question is valid because of the unfair way the state Department of Education calculates how much money each county should get per student. Lake would have to move the proverbial mountain to get enough money to improve schools without more industry. That's because counties with enviable industrial and commercial development typically get the most bucks per kid.
Wait! You say you thought that the state counted noses and then gave each district the same amount for each? Hahaha. Dream on. Lake ranks 64th of the 67 counties in the amount that the state hands out per student.
Here's how the arcane system works: Lake and the rest of the counties are required by law to hand over school property taxes to the state. This year, it's about $10.6 billion total.
Then, the DOE starts its nefarious calculations taking into account the local tax base, the supposed varying education costs, the varying costs of living and the varying costs of education due to rural counties with dispersed student populations.
Todays video - a TED talk on hidden mysteries of the natural world.......some incredible photography......the presenter is a bit dour, but the images are incredible.....
Todays Australian joke
Three friends married women from different parts of the world.
The first man married a Greek girl. He told her that she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.
The second man married a Thai girl. He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn’t see any results but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done and there was a huge dinner on the table.
The third man married a girl from Australia. He ordered her to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed and hot meals on the table for every meal. The first day he didn’t see anything, the second day he didn’t see anything either but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye. His arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher.
He still has some difficulty when he urinates.
Todays Little Johnny joke
The teacher asked class to use the word "fascinate" in a sentence.
Molly put up her hand and said, "My family went to my granddad's
farm, and we all saw his pet sheep. It was fascinating".
The teacher said, "That was good, but I wanted you to use the word
"fascinate, not fascinating".
Sally raised her hand. She said, "My family went to see Rock City
and I was fascinated".
The teacher said, "Well, that was good Sally, but I wanted you to use
the word fascinate".
Little Johnny raised his hand.
The teacher hesitated because she had been burned by Little Johnny before.
She finally decided there was no way he could damage the word
"fascinate" so she called on him.
Molly put up her hand and said, "My family went to my granddad's
farm, and we all saw his pet sheep. It was fascinating".
The teacher said, "That was good, but I wanted you to use the word
"fascinate, not fascinating".
Sally raised her hand. She said, "My family went to see Rock City
and I was fascinated".
The teacher said, "Well, that was good Sally, but I wanted you to use
the word fascinate".
Little Johnny raised his hand.
The teacher hesitated because she had been burned by Little Johnny before.
She finally decided there was no way he could damage the word
"fascinate" so she called on him.
Johnny said, "My aunt Carolyn has a sweater with ten buttons, but
her tits are so big she can only fasten eight!"
The teacher sat down and cried.
her tits are so big she can only fasten eight!"
The teacher sat down and cried.
Todays anti-terrorist joke
Airport Screening Results
| December 2013 Statistics On Airport Full Body Screening From CATSA : | |
| Terrorists Discovered | 0 |
| Transvestites | 133 |
| Hernias | 1,485 |
| Hemorrhoid Cases | 3,172 |
| Enlarged Prostates | 8,249 |
| Breast Implants | 59,350 |
| Natural Blondes | 3 |
It was also discovered that 308 politicians had no balls.
Thought you'd like to know.
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