Good stories this edition, but you should definitely read #3.....excellent. And no apologies for three Jon Stewart's.....he was on form this week......
1/ Paul Krugman with an excellent column on how facts [you know, reality] have become irrelevant in rightwingworld and the lies keep being hammered home by conservative media, led by Fox News.
It's truly sobering that you can have a conversation with a Foxbrain and nothing you say will ever sink in......
It’s now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record. You might expect this to be a politically important milestone. After all, climate change deniers have long used the blip of 1998 — an unusually hot year, mainly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific — to claim that the planet has stopped warming. This claim involves a complete misunderstanding of how one goes about identifying underlying trends. (Hint: Don’t cherry-pick your observations.) But now even that bogus argument has collapsed. So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?
Of course not. Evidence doesn’t matter for the “debate” over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around “debate” because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it’s not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it’s hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it’s unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.
Before I get into that, let me remind you of some other news that won’t matter.
First, consider the Kansas experiment.
2/ And on the same theme, Fox News ate a ration of shit for the comments of one of their idiots for labeling some European cities Muslim "no-go" zones.....of course Jon Stewart had a delightful time with this story and Fox's feeble attempts to apologise.......
The second part of the seven minutes was Aasif Mandvi on a trip to Alabama to look into that state's bill to make sure Sharia law will never affect Alabama....it's very good, but there's one joke in here that's hysterical....a "fall off your chair" moment...
Jon Stewart was absolutely floored by the multiple apologies Fox News issued after some incorrect claims about Muslim no-go zones. He asked, “How bad does bullshit have to smell before the odor is detected by people who love on a mountain made of that substance?”
Stewart learned it was in response to some pretty ridiculous musings about Birmingham being “totally Muslim”. Stewart mockingly said it’s not just limited to England, and warned of creeping Sharia law in the United States.
In fact, correspondent Aasif Mandvi went to Alabama, where they’re pushing legislation to ban Sharia law, in spite of that not being a threat to the state of Alabama in the slightest
3/ A thoughtful story about the Democratic Party, and it's resistance to change........almost an ode to the memory of the once vibrant Dems, who are led by people who can't or won't adapt or admit the centrist policies of Republican Lite aren't appealing..........
For anyone interested in politics.......
Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid (Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Joshua Roberts/Photo montage by Salon)
As a wise man once said, never underestimate the capacity of an entire social order to commit suicide. The Democratic Party’s old order is doing it now. It may seem strange but make no mistake, the Democrats’ leaders are already unconscious. If they don’t wake up soon, they’ll go the way of the Whigs. If progressives don’t wake up now, they’ll go with them.
I’ve argued that progressive political movements died at the hands of their leaders; that their death is what caused the political collapse we errantly term “partisan gridlock”; that progressives need a timeout from electoral politics; and that both Democrats and progressives are best served by a return to a more arms-length relationship.
Progressives have long cohabited with Democrats. The relationship, while abusive, is hard for them to quit. Starting over is always scary, and building movements is hard even in good times, so the temptation is strong to keep on doing what they’re doing. Besides, how can you tell the Democrats are really dead? You can’t call in a coroner or poke them with a stick. It’s simple, really. All you have to do is look.
Life is change and these Democrats never change. It’s like watching “Groundhog Day” but without laughs, a love interest or a learning curve. Democrats in Congress ran the same race in 2014 they ran in 1994, lost badly, and then reelected all their leaders. Obama handled the budget this year the same way he does every year, with the same result. Hillary Clinton is poised to run the same awful race in 2016 she ran in 2008.
4/ I love these.....NFL Bad Lipreading.....to see these hulking brutes babble baby talk, strange stuff and just plain out there conversation is hysterical....and it's all perfectly synched.
And the irony is if you watch a lot of sports TV you are used to the moronic garbage they say, so this is an improvement to the usual platitudes.....four very funny minutes.....
5/ Ladies - how would you like the label "America's Worst Mom"? You may remember a story a year or so ago that was written by Lenore Skenazy about how she let her 9 year old son ride the subway home from school, and the flak she got from all sides accusing her of being a bad parent to calls to have her son taken away.
The problem is the media and social media, because when something happens in the country of 315 million people, the news portrays it as if it's going to happen to YOU tomorrow! Remember Halloween? When in the 80's a pyschopath in Iowa or some BFE state put a razor blade in an apple, and gave it to a trick-or-treater and it made instant national news? The next year no kid, nationwide, was allowed to go out on Halloween unaccompanied.....
If you are a helicopter parent or even a grandparent, you might want to read this if you don't want your kid to grow up a weenie.....
The damning criticism she endured, including a threat of arrest for child endangerment, intensified
her desire to encourage anxious parents to give their children the freedom they need to develop
the self-confidence and resilience to cope effectively with life’s many challenges.
Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother of two, earned the sobriquet “America’s Worst Mom” after reporting in a newspaper column that she had allowed her younger son, then 9, to ride the subway alone.
One result was the publication in 2009 of her book “Free Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts With Worry).” A second result is theFree Range Kids Project and a 13-part series, starting Thursday on Discovery Life Channel, called “World’s Worst Mom.” In it, Ms. Skenazy intervenes to rescue bubble-wrapped kids from their overprotective parents by guiding the children safely through a sequence of once-forbidden activities and showing their anxious parents how well the children perform and how proud they are of what they accomplished.
The term “helicopter parents” applies to far more than those who hover relentlessly over their children’s academic and musical development. As depicted in the first episode of the series, it applies to 10-year-old Sam’s very loving mother who wouldn’t let him ride a bike (“she’s afraid I’ll fall and get hurt”), cut up his own meat (“Mom thinks I’ll cut my fingers off”), or play “rough sports” like skating. The plea from a stressed-out, thwarted Sam: “I just want to do things by myself.”
6/ Did you watch the State of the Union? Did you stay up for the "Republican" response from Joni Ernst? There were actually 5 "Republican" responses, and Jon Stewart has an amusing time going through them.....five minutes.....
Jon Stewart tonight dived into the multitude of State of the Union responses last night, asking rather exasperatedly, “How many fucking people are at this tea party?” He figured that since Joni Ernst was a tea party darling, there wouldn’t be an official tea party response. Well, there was.
Oh, and that’s not even counting the responses byRand Paul and Ted Cruz.
Stewart was mostly bored by Ernst’s response and said her speech felt more like “an application essay to Nostalgia University.” And he had some tough words for Paul, a doctor and United States senator, over calling anyone else an elitist.
But it was Cruz messing up his address that earned an “Implode-y” award from Stewart for making his official State of the Union response “look like a ransom video” or porno.
7/ Which leads on to Bill Maher, who with relish goes through the GOP lineup of 2016 Presidential nominees......one of his better ones, he's having fun.....five bitchy minutes.....
Bill Maher tonight made it easier for big-name GOP donors looking for candidates to back by presenting a “billionaire buyers guide” for which of the “corporate ass-lickers” running for president is the right choice for them.
He ran the gamut from Rick Perry to Mitt Romney and everyone in between. For example, Maher played up “asshole” Ted Cruz who likes the Keystone XL pipeline because “he also oozed down from Canada to Texas.”
Maher didn’t have much to say about Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee, but he had a lot to say about Dr. ben Carson. He told the former neurosurgeon, “You’re an insane paranoid liar who will say absolutely anything, or as Fox News puts it, ‘When can you start?’”
8/ A sickening story from the Times on how federal funds are being used for animal experimentation on behalf of Big Ag, specifically the meat producers like Cargill. Animals are being abused and almost tortured to produce more "efficient" meat sources, and the federal gub'ment is complicit. It's an excellent illustration of how institutions that are supposed to protect us are corrupted by politicization and regulatory capture.
If you are sensitive, don't read this.......
There are, however, some complications.
Pigs are having many more piglets — up to 14, instead of the usual eight — but hundreds of those newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over. Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed.
Then there are the lambs. In an effort to develop “easy care” sheep that can survive without costly shelters or shepherds, ewes are giving birth, unaided, in open fields where newborns are killed by predators, harsh weather and starvation.
9/ Larry Wilmore has taken over the Colbert spot on Comedy Central, and has started off well.....he's different, but quite amusing.....here he looks at Cuba and the "normalising" of relations. Seven pretty amusing minutes....
Though Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore is somewhat excited about the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba — Cigars! Lots of them! — he’s not sure how the entire thing happened.
After a quick explainer from correspondent Ricky Velez about the history of Cuba-U.S. relations (it involves Magneto), Wilmore discovered that in the current state of Cuba, families receive one chicken a month, which is “horrible” compared to the American bounty of the KFC Double Down: “I mean here we used chicken as bread!”
And after listening to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) explain the regime’s oppressive history, Wilmore said he understood why there was so much resistance to the idea. “I mean, we don’t like doing business with countries that don’t have free speech or elections,” he conceded. “Unless they’re making our iPhones.”
10/ "American Sniper" is the new movie from Clint Eastwood that has been lionised by the right wing media as an amazingly good film, but it just shows how the narrative is more important than the content......let Matt Taibbi [and incidentally every other movie critic] tell you why this is a lousy movie.....
Bradley Cooper in 'American Sniper.' Warner Bros
I saw American Sniper last night, and hated it slightly less than I expected to. Like most Clint Eastwood movies – and I like Clint Eastwood movies for the most part – it's a simple, well-lit little fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie that serves up a neatly-arranged helping of cheers and tears for target audiences, and panics at the thought of embracing more than one or two ideas at any time.
It's usually silly to get upset about the self-righteous way Hollywood moviemakers routinely turn serious subjects into baby food. Film-industry people angrily reject the notion that their movies have to be about anything (except things like "character" and "narrative" and "arc," subjects they can talk about endlessly).
This is the same Hollywood culture that turned the horror and divisiveness of the Vietnam War era into a movie about a platitude-spewing doofus with leg braces who in the face of terrible moral choices eats chocolates and plays Ping-Pong. The message of Forrest Gump was that if you think about the hard stuff too much, you'll either get AIDS or lose your legs. Meanwhile, the hero is the idiot who just shrugs and says "Whatever!" whenever his country asks him to do something crazy.
Forrest Gump pulled in over half a billion and won Best Picture. So what exactly should we have expected from American Sniper?
11/ The oligarchs of the world were in Davos, Switzerland this week and Jon Stewart of course had pithy words for them, especially considering the subject under discussion......seven very good minutes....
Jon Stewart treaded familiar waters Thursday evening with his monologue skewering JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and AIG’s Steve Miller, but he reserved his strongest ire for all the hypocrites at Davos who unite to fight climate change while indulging in luxury.
“I wish there was one perfect fact to explain the kind of event the World Economic Forum really is,” he said, after describing the conference as “Monsters of Money.” The perfect fact? 1,700 private jets were reportedly used to ship all the important people out to Switzerland.
“That’s why the 2015 forum is brought to you by ‘SkyBidet,’” he snarked. And after learning that climate change would be a big topic at this year’s conference, he tore into the attendees’ likely mentality: “‘Can you believe how much climate we changed?’”
And it gets worse, Stewart said, when you realize another conference topic, “when juxtaposed with the world’s largest fleet of private jets, seem achingly lacking in awareness”: Global inequality.
“Oh yes. Global inequality,” he concluded. “It’s actually the in-flight magazine of the 1,700-strong Davos jet fleet.”
12/ If you are interested in the cruise industry, you may be interested in this seven minute video about concept ships, none of which will ever be built unless an eccentric billionaire takes an interest......
I like the one with the airport on the top deck....wow......
13/ An almost despairing story about how the worlds oceans are screwed........we think the seas are invincible, but between all of the nasty things we do to the oceans and the rise in temperature due to CO2, it's ain't looking good folks.....
"Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down marine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning," the authors explain. "Human harvesters have also been a major force of evolutionary change in the oceans and have reshaped the genetic structure of marine animal populations. Climate change threatens to accelerate marine defaunation over the next century. The high mobility of many marine animals offers some increased, though limited, capacity for marine species to respond to climate stress, but it also exposes many species to increased risk from other stressors."
And no, this isn't just some "Save the Whales" crap: This will hurt us, too. "Humans are intensely reliant on ocean ecosystems for food and other ecosystem services. We are deeply affected by all of these forecasted changes," the authors note.
Timeline (log scale) of marine and terrestrial defaunation.Source: Science
Even worse news: Despite the grim conclusion of the scientists involved in the study, at least there's some good news: The oceans aren't nearly as fucked as terrestrial habitats!
14/ The Quantum of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's new ship had a rocky introduction but as with most problems are gradually getting resolved.....here is a review from one of the later cruises in January.....I read quite a few of them, but this is the fairest and most literate one.....
Quantum offers a lot - and has room for improvement too.
Sail Date: January 2015
Destination: Eastern Caribbean
Embarkation: Bayonne (Cape Liberty)
We just returned from an 8 night Cruise on RCI's Quantum of the Seas. It is a beautiful ship and our party of 10 had a wonderful time. However, there are a few bugs to work. Some highs and lows are outlined below.
15/ Another story on how the honey in your pantry probably isn't honey....it's been filtered and all of the pollen taken out....
Go to your food cupboard, and look at the honey in there - if it's a commercial brand, it ain't honey. Real honey will say so....unfiltered, contains pollen etc. The FDA has no standards for pollen content for honey, so if the label says "meets FDA standards", you know it's garbage....
I put the last story we did on honey on the Publix website, and the response back to me from the Publix spokesperson was classic PR bullshit......
The next time you find yourself in the honey aisle of your grocery store, debating between a pricy premium, artisanal honey and the store-brand nectar contained in a plastic bear, you might want to think twice before choosing based on price.
That’s because a searing investigation of the honey market by Food Safety News found that 76% of all honey bought at grocery stores were treated with a process called “ultra-filtration,” which removes not only impurities like wax, but also all traces of pollen. And of the types of brands at grocery stores, the ones that were far-and-away the most likely to be ultra-filtered were generic brands.
There are issues with ultra-filtration in general. Many believe that pollen, and other so-called “impurities,” are actually beneficial to human health, and make honey a better choice than rival sweeteners like sugar. And there doesn’t seem to be any serious benefit to the process; it’s expensive and doesn’t significantly improve shelf-life, even though some manufacturers claim it does
But according to FSN, the biggest reason to avoid ultra-filtered honey is that pollen is the only sure-fire way to trace the source of honey to a geographic location. As a result ultra-filtered honey is often used to mask the shady origins of certain kinds of honey, especially Chinese honey, which is subject to heavy import tariffs on account of its frequent contamination by heavy metals and illegal antibiotics. Chinese honeymakers ultra-filter their honey, and then ship it through byzantine paths, to sneak their sham product onto American grocery shelves without being hit with a tariff.
16/ The slimy, evil corrupt piece of shit you elected Governor is in trouble, and it's his fellow Republicans that are pissed at his latest treachery......great column from Greg Maxwell in the Orlando Sentinel......
If someone accused Rick Scott of being a liar who abused the power of his office, I wouldn't normally call that big news.
I might just call it Tuesday.
Scott, after all, is one of the least popular governors in Florida history. And he's been dogged by critics since the day he stepped in office.
But the latest accusations against Scott aren't coming from longtime critics. They're coming from one of Florida's top law-enforcement officials — a respected veteran who worked closely with the governor for the past four years.
And that, my friends, is a big deal ... and why Scott now has a full-fledged scandal on his hands.
For those who missed it, the former head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement — 35-year-veteran Gerald Bailey — has started spilling the beans.
Bailey portrays Scott and his staff as a group of unethical, hard-core politicos who would go to great lengths — willing even to fabricate a criminal investigation — to get themselves out of a jam.
The question now is: Who is going to demand answers and accountability?
17/ This may, possibly, hopefully but who knows be the next "Breaking Bad".....or at least it's being hyped as such.....
"Better Call Saul" is coming on AMC Feb. 8th.......set yer DVR folks.....
Extended Trailer: Better Call Saul
Season 1, Episode 1
Take a look at AMC’s new series Better Call Saul with this extended trailer. Don’t miss the two-night series premiere of Better Call Saul, Sun., Feb 8 at 10/9c and Mon., Feb 9 at 10/9c.
Todays video - for guys - get the new Patriots Cialis Inflate-a-Ball........very funny commercial......
Todays guy joke
A young man moved out from home and into a new apartment.
He went proudly down to the lobby to put his name on his mailbox.
While there, a stunning young lady came out of the apartment next to the mailboxes, wearing only a robe.
The man smiled at the young woman and she started up a conversation with him.
As they talked her robe slipped open and it was obvious that she had nothing else on. The poor kid broke into a sweat trying to maintain eye contact.
After a few minutes, she placed her hand on his arm and said,
"Let's go to my apartment, I hear someone coming".
He followed her into her apartment, she closed the door and leaned against it, allowing her robe to fall off completely.
Now nude, she purred at him, "What would you say is my best feature?"
Flustered and embarrassed, he finally squeaked,
"It's got to be your ears".
Astounded and a little hurt she asked,
"My ears, look at these breasts, they are a full 38 inches and 100% natural.
I work out every day and my ass is firm and solid. I have a 24 inch waist.
I work out every day and my ass is firm and solid. I have a 24 inch waist.
Look at my skin, not a blemish anywhere.
How can you think that the best part of my body is my ears?"
How can you think that the best part of my body is my ears?"
Clearing his throat, he stammered,
"Outside when you said you heard someone coming, that was me".
Todays philosophical jokes
Todays married guy joke
After being married for thirty years, a wife asked her husband to describe her.
He looked at her for a while, then said,
"You're an alphabet wife..... A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K."
"You're an alphabet wife..... A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K."
She asks ..."What the hell does that mean?"
He said, "Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful, Elegant, Fabulous, Gorgeous, and Hot".
She smiled happily and said ...
"Oh, that's so lovely, but what about I, J, K?"
He said, "Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful, Elegant, Fabulous, Gorgeous, and Hot".
She smiled happily and said ...
"Oh, that's so lovely, but what about I, J, K?"
He said, "I'm Just Kidding!"
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