Happy Valentines Day folks......
1/ Coming up to 2016, Hillary is as close to already nominated as anyone's going to get.....but what's worrying a lot of her potential supporters are the advisers her campaign is hiring.....same old tired people, flawed message and Hillary needs to kindle some enthusiasm if she has any hope against a "corporate" Republican like Jeb Bush.....
Having read this excellent story by Bill Curry, it's clear the Democrats need a debate on policies that mean something if they are ever going to inspire their base....
For all you political junkies, and especially "progressives"....
Hillary Clinton (Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri/Photo montage by Salon)
Take a moment to ponder our major parties at the dawn of the 2016 presidential election. The GOP race is as crazy and crowded as a Black Friday at Wal-Mart, while the Democrats’ contest is, to quote Leonard Cohen, as dead as heaven on a Saturday night. It’s only partly due to their very different circumstances.
Hillary Clinton’s lead within her party bests that of any non-incumbent since Dwight Eisenhower, and maybe ever. Her Democratic support tops off at over 60 percent; her toughest opponents barely crack double digits. In a Fox News poll, Jeb Bush squeaks past Rand Paul by 15 percent to 13 percent.
If Hillary’s crowned, too bad for her. She’s caked in rust. She botched last year’s rollout of her latest memoir, as when she told Diane Sawyer she and Bill left the White House “dead broke.” When Jon Stewart asked her how she’d fix foreign policy she replied, “We have not been telling our story… we did a much better job back in the Cold War.” Translation: a little programming upgrade for Radio Free Europe and we’re fine. By the end she’d made history: the first candidate ever to lose a book tour.
The difference between the parties goes way beyond the relative size and strength of their fields. Republicans are now in their fourth decade of an often bitter and very public war over ideas. It’s led by think tanks and wealthy funders—yes, the Kochs—but lately two leading presidential candidates, Bush and Paul, have been in the thick of the fight.
Democrats don’t engage in that kind of public debate, not even after a public whipping. Their think tanks are fewer in number and not nearly as well-funded. Those they have enjoy less status within their party and less access to its leaders, who’d rather spend their time and money kibitzing with pollsters and media consultants about “message.”
2/ Wow. WOW!
I hadn't seen this excerpt from "The Newsroom" and it's amazing.....they put a scientist from the EPA on the show and ask him some questions about a climate report, and the answers are nothing like you might imagine. The reality is you won't ever, ever see this on TV in a news format because of the message, and it takes a fictional news show to tell it like it is.....
Four minutes of what has been fact checked to be pretty close to the truth......and it ain't pretty......
I watch too much TV drama, so I can say this with a degree of certainty: It's rare that climate change comes up. (Television news programs also contain "tepid" coverage, in general, according to watchdog group Media Matters). That's why it was so weird/exciting for this climate reporter when global warming received its very own subplot on Aaron Sorkin's HBO drama The Newsroom over the last two episodes.
3/ Funny ad - the fact climate change is real and man made seems to be sinking in, and with the disinvestment campaign gathering steam Big Oil is getting on the defensive - have a look at this absurd one minute ad they put out for Valentines day......
Big Oil would like you to know: Bill McKibben is evil and your punk friends want you to break up with your coal-fired girlfriend.
With the fossil fuel divestment movement gaining momentum and Global Divestment Day(s) coming up this Friday and Saturday, dirty energy’s devoted spin doctors are throwing desperation punches. This misinformational video, from the conservative Environmental Policy Alliance, wants you to believe that breaking up with the fossil fuel industry this Valentine’s Day will leave you in a cold, dark cave with no clothes or gadgets.
4/ The always insightful Frank Rich with his observations on the Brian Williams kerfuffle this week.....
Let's talk about the Brian Williams scandal. You've been watching him close-up and from a distance for some time. What do you think happened here?
I know and like Brian Williams. He also has better comic chops than anyone who’s ever read the news on network television. But I don’t know him well enough to know what happened here. He owes his viewers a detailed explanation, not just a correction, retraction, or an apology — particularly one as disastrous as the paragraph he slipped into the middle of the Nightly News last week. It was that bit of abject spin, with its all-too-artful use of the word conflate and its invocation of the “fog of memory,” that turned what might have been a one-off, one-week story about a squirm-inducing bit of braggadocio into an epic mess. Instead of taking responsibility for his own actions, he patted himself on the back by attributing his “mistake” to his own selfless “effort to honor and thank a veteran.” A story that had been on the bottom of page B10 in the Times leapt to above-the-fold status on the front page overnight. As the press critic Jay Rosen has written, instead of adding more fog to what happened, Williams should have been out front re-reporting his own story, “interviewing the military veterans who can help him correct his faulty account” — as well as his own NBC News colleagues who were with him on that fateful helicopter ride — rather than leaving that responsibility to every other news outlet, blogger, and amateur sleuth in the nation.
Do you think NBC's handling of it has been appropriate?
A better question might be: Could NBC’s behavior possibly have been more disastrous?
A better question might be: Could NBC’s behavior possibly have been more disastrous?
5/ I know the measles vaccine issue is last weeks news, but although there is no debate about the science of vaccination, what the revolt against this from the left and the right is really about is the loss of faith in our institutions.....noone believes the official line, because of all of the lies that have come before.....
Here is an intelligent discussion on Bill Maher last week, and after Maher introduces the subject listen to the first panelist.....very intelligent, and it kind of opens your eyes....
The full discussion [which is quite good] is 12 minutes, but the first 2 minutes are excellent....
Bill Maher jumped right into the vaccine issue on the Real Time panel tonight, and added onto his long, long history of pretty strong skepticism on vaccine science. Mediaite chronicled Maher’s history of questioning vaccines, even saying at one point, “I would never get a swine flu vaccine or any vaccine.”
Tonight Maher said quite strongly, “I’m not an anti-vaxxer.” However…
He still insisted he’s an “anti-flu shot guy” and has some serious problems with how the media coverage of anyone remotely questioning vaccines is basically “shut the fuck up” and “don’t ask any questions.” Guest Marianne Williamson agreed with Maher that it’s offensive to be called “anti-science” or “kooks” just for their skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry.
Maher also shot down any comparisons between vaccine skepticism and global warming denialism. There’s pretty definitive science, he said, about the planet, whereas the human body is constantly changing and the medical industry “has had to retract a million things.
6/ The best fails of 2014 from TwisterNederland.....12 minutes of pain, stupidity, drunks and potential emergency room visits......
There are three amazing bits where idiots set themselves on fire.....
7/ This story continues and expands on the theme touched on in Maher's discussion - the crisis of authority in this country.....it's a little scary how nobody believes corporate bullshit any more, except of course the stupids....
A very good article....
Glenn Beck, Rand Paul, Jenny McCarthy (Credit: Reuters/AP/Chris Keane/Ed Reinke/Fred Prouser/Photo montage by Salon)
One of the central characteristics of our age – which those of us with fancy educations often call the postmodern era, although even that term is starting to feel old – is a widespread crisis of authority. It isn’t quite true that nobody believes in anything and nobody trusts the experts, as in the rootless world of moral relativism feared by conservatives. It’s more that everybody gets to pick their own beliefs, their own experts and their own evidence. This is something like the crisis of meaning that Nietzsche foresaw when he pronounced that God was dead, but he was only half right. The old God whose judgment everyone in the Western world feared is gone, all right – but he has divided and multiplied, like cancer cells, into an endless pantheon of new gods.
It’s entirely expected for somebody with my media platform to rage against right-wing kooks on television — or right-wing kooks in elected office, for that matter — who claim that climate change is a hoax or that vaccinating children against preventable diseases is dangerous and unnecessary. I agree that those people are deluded or misinformed, and in the case of climate denial they are serving as the agents of larger and darker powers. But those issues are not the same, no matter how closely they have become linked in the liberal and conservative hive-minds. For one thing, anti-vaccine sentiment is found across the political spectrum, although it’s most common among the libertarian-minded right and the anarchist-minded or New Agey quadrants of the left. Attempts to cram the vaccine issue into the binary discourse of partisan politics or the “culture war” are intellectually lazy, and misrepresent its true significance. Furthermore, the dangers of climate denialism are many orders of magnitude worse than the dangers of anti-vaxxer hysteria, which feels like one of those sideshow issues in American politics that’s really about something else.
What links the anti-vaccine movement to climate denialism — and to many other things that may appear unrelated — is that both are manifestations of the crisis of authority. As represented by people like Glenn Beck and Rand Paul, they also display that crisis in its relatively new and intriguingly crazy right-wing costume. Know-nothing congressmen and vapid TV hosts stand courageously against the pointy-headed Ph.D. elite:
8/ John Oliver's back after his three month hiatus, and his first piece of comedic journalism was on Big Pharma.....a wonderful, informative and above all funny 16 minutes.....
There is also a government website that shows how much your doctor made from the pharmaceutical industry......
Click on the link i
f you’d like to see how much payment your doctors have received from pharmaceutical manufacturers
-
check here:
"Drug companies are a bit like high-school boyfriends," Oliver said. "They're much more concerned with getting inside you than being effective once they're in there."
As Oliver notes, large drug companies appear more interested in selling you their current line of drugs than developing new, more effective ones. Oliver points to one study that found major pharmaceutical companies spent more than $24 billion in 2012 just on marketing to physicians — convincing your doctor to prescribe you their drugs — and another revealing that 9 out of 10 companies spent more on marketing than on researching new drugs in 2013.
Granted, these companies need to turn a profit in order to invest in new research, but Oliver points out that the problems trickle down to the consumer, who is barraged with drug ads telling them to "ask your doctor."
"Drug companies know that doctors hold all the real power in the prescription drug business," Oliver said. If pharmaceutical companies can get the doctors on their side, they can start making real money. Unfortunately, this leads to pharmaceutical reps going to great lengths to get doctors to sell their drugs, whether this means free lunches or huge speaking fees.
9/ The excellent Naomi Klein on why lower oil prices could actually be good for the climate change movement......
I wrote a column [in 2007] and the headline was “Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms.” It was about the fact that the turmoil in the market that was linked to the invasion of Iraq, which had sent oil prices soaring, was leading to the boom that was happening with the Alberta tar sands. Calgary is ground zero for those profits. We had known for a long time that there were vast oil deposits in northern Alberta, but those oil deposits weren’t counted toward the global fossil fuel reserves because they were considered uneconomic. It wasn’t that they discovered oil in Alberta in 2003, it was that when oil prices were $30 a barrel it didn’t make sense to count it, because it costs so much to dig it up.
What’s been striking to me is understanding that it really kind of makes sense why, despite all of the consciousness-raising around climate change that has taken place over the past decade — An Inconvenient Truth, the IPCC winning the Nobel Prize, all of these various moments — why this hasn’t translated into action. It’s because we have been working against the titanic power of enormous profit that comes with oil at such a high price. Because that kind of pricing, with oil at $100 per barrel, it makes people crazy. It’s irresistible. So, even as we’ve had scientists raising the alarm, we’ve been barreling down the wrong road. We’ve been barreling into extreme energy, drilling in the Arctic, tar sands, fracking. And this is all linked to high prices.
Now, we find ourselves in this kind of reprieve. It’s not permanent. What goes down can go back up, and will go back up. But I think what this has given us is a little bit of breathing room, because suddenly a lot of these projects that we’ve been working so hard to stop, many of them are shutting down on their own. I mean, not completely, but a lot of investors are pulling their investments out of tar sands, or suspending their investments because it’s so expensive. There’s less of a push for Arctic drilling. That’s a context in which it’s easier to win political victories.
10/ The most disgusting news last week was ISIS burning the Jordanian pilot alive.....but burning people alive isn't unknown in this country - there were many cases of "spectacular lynching" in the South....
Yes, ISIS Burned a Man Alive: White Americans Did the Same Thing to Thousands of Black People
The United States practiced a unique cultural ritual that was as least as gruesome as the "medieval" punishments meted out by ISIS against its foes.
ISIS burned Muadh al Kasasbeh, a captured Jordian fighter pilot, to death. They doused him with an accelerant. His captors set him on fire. Muadh al Kasasbeh desperately tried to put out the flames. ISIS recorded Muadh al Kasasbeh's immolation, produced a video designed to intimidate their enemies, and then circulated it online.
ISIS's burning alive of Muadh al Kasasbeh has been denounced as an act of savagery, barbarism, and wanton cruelty--one from the "dark ages" and not of the modern world.
American Exceptionalism blinds those who share its gaze to uncomfortable facts and truths about their own country.
For almost a century, the United States practiced a unique cultural ritual that was as least as gruesome as the "medieval" punishments meted out by ISIS against its foes.
What is now known as "spectacular lynching" involved the ceremonial torture, murder--and burning alive--of black Americans by whites. Like ISIS's use of digital media to circulate images of the torturous death of Muadh al Kasasbeh by fire, the spectacular lynchings of the black body were shared via postcards and other media.
The burned to death images of the black body were a form of mass culture in 19th- and 20th-century America.
11/ And for more on the Jordanian story, have a look at a wonderful Jon Stewart smackdown of Fox News, dissecting their love of the King of Jordan compared to the President.....seven very good minutes....
Jon Stewart kicked off tonight’s Daily Show not by addressing the big news (well, not directly), but by calling out the hypocrisy of one of his favorite targets: Fox News.
You see, Fox really praised King Abdullah of Jordan for how he’s combating the threat from ISIS, and asking why President Obama can’t be more like him.
And Stewart couldn’t help but find it amusing and weird that Fox is asking “why can’t Obama be powerful Muslim king,” because, well, they don’t like Obama acting like a king or acting too deferential to radical Muslims.
Stewart mocked how Fox News singles out the king of Jordan, the military dictator of Egypt, and the crazy leader of Russia as people Obama isn’t as tough as. He said if Obama was really more like them, “pretty sure I’d know the first place he’d shut down…”
12/ Guy video - a one minute clip of a freight train in New Brunswick ploughing through a pile of snow at 60mph.....very cool, listen to those diesels! Ahooooooggggghah!
Winter brings with it lots of snow. Sometimes you play in it, sometimes you build with it, and sometimes a train can just barrel right through gigantic piles of it with no problem.
And that recently happened in Canada, and the whole thing was captured all on video.
A train was plowing its way through a snowy Canadian landscape recently, and in the video you can see the train getting completely enveloped in the slow as it plows through.
13/ Calvin Harris and Elle Goulding with "Outside" - the video is about trailer park losers and rejection, but the best is the riff that runs through the song.....grabs you as well as Ms. Goulding's pipes.....what a voice.....
"Outside" is the fourth single from Motion, Harris's latest full-length. It's about decaying relationships, with Goulding singing lines like, "Fire's out, what do you want to be?" The video takes this to the extreme, finding both Harris and Goulding in (separate) relationships that are rapidly imploding: there's fighting, screaming, hair-tearing, and crockery throwing.
Towards the end of the song, Goulding and Harris seem to develop special powers, and Harris stops the plates flying towards him in mid-air and Goulding keeping a motorcycle suspended above her. Outside seems like the safe place to be.
14/ Excellent column from Timothy Egan in the Times, following up on the dietary supplement industry, and their protector in the US Senate, Orrin Hatch of Utah.....remember there is no guarantee whatever the herb or vitamin you are buying contains what it says it is.....
Do what I did - go to a health food or place that carries organic stuff, buy it and when you are home do some research on the web.....I found a review site that said what I bought was real, and although I'm sure it's more expensive than the shit GNC sells at least you know it's genuine.....
SALT LAKE CITY — One pill makes you smarter. One pill makes you thin. One pill makes you happy. Another keeps you energized. And so what if tests conducted by scientists in New York and Canada have found that the substances behind these miracle enhancements may contain nothing more than powdered rice or houseplants. If enough people believe they’ll be healthier, well, it’s a nice racket.
Nice, to the tune of $13 billion a year in sales. And here in Utah, which is to the dietary supplement business what Northern California is to marijuana, a huge industry has taken hold, complete with a network of doctors making unproven claims, well-connected lobbyists and entrenched politicians who keep regulators at bay.
15/ A Bill Maher "New Rules" where he basically shoots fish in a barrel, i.e. takes Madame Palin apart.....five very funny minutes....
Bill Maher ended his show tonight finally talking about Sarah Palin‘s rambling Iowa speech that was the final straw for many Republicans and conservatives. But Maher had just one question for them: “What took you so long?!”
Maher mocked the revelation as an “emperor has no clues” situation and asked Republicans why they took so long, saying, “The rest of us have been watching this dog eat grass for seven years!”
However, while Maher was glad that many conservatives are finally admitting Palin “is a crazy person,” he said they should maybe consider what else they’ve been “wrong” about, like climate change or trickle-down economics.
Todays video - the Emma Stone lip-synch battle with Jimmy Fallon is the video of the year for me.....I've seen this at least five times, and it just keeps getting better......
Todays sensitive husband joke
Todays taxi driver joke
A man walks out to the street and catches a taxi just going by.
He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, "Perfect timing. You're just like Frank."
Passenger: "Who?"
Cabie: "Frank Feldman... he's a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time."
Passenger: "There are always a few clouds over everybody."
Cabbie: "Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone, and danced like a Broadway star. And you should have heard him play the piano! He was an amazing guy."
Passenger: "Sounds like he was somebody really special."
Cabbie: "Oh hell there's more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order, and which fork to eat it with. And he could fix anything---. Not like me -I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, he could do everything right."
Passenger: "Wow, some guy then."
Cabbie: "He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made mistakes, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never argue back, even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! I never knew him to make a mistake! No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman."
Passenger: "An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?"
Cabbie: "Well. I never actually met Frank. He died, and I married his wife.
He gets into the taxi, and the cabbie says, "Perfect timing. You're just like Frank."
Passenger: "Who?"
Cabie: "Frank Feldman... he's a guy who did everything right all the time. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happened like that to Frank Feldman every single time."
Passenger: "There are always a few clouds over everybody."
Cabbie: "Not Frank Feldman. He was a terrific athlete. He could have won the Grand Slam at tennis. He could golf with the pros. He sang like an opera baritone, and danced like a Broadway star. And you should have heard him play the piano! He was an amazing guy."
Passenger: "Sounds like he was somebody really special."
Cabbie: "Oh hell there's more. He had a memory like a computer. He remembered everybody's birthday. He knew all about wine, which foods to order, and which fork to eat it with. And he could fix anything---. Not like me -I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Frank Feldman, he could do everything right."
Passenger: "Wow, some guy then."
Cabbie: "He always knew the quickest way to go in traffic and avoid traffic jams. Not like me, I always seem to get stuck in them. But Frank, he never made mistakes, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never argue back, even if she was in the wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished too. He was the perfect man! I never knew him to make a mistake! No one could ever measure up to Frank Feldman."
Passenger: "An amazing fellow. How did you meet him?"
Cabbie: "Well. I never actually met Frank. He died, and I married his wife.
Todays golf jokes
A husband and wife are on the 9th green when suddenly she collapses from a heart attack!
"Help me dear," she groans to her husband.
The husband calls 911 on his cell phone, talks for a few minutes, picks up his putter, and lines up his putt.
His wife raises her head off the green and stares at him.
"I'm dying here and you're putting?"
"Don't worry dear," says the husband calmly, "they found a doctor on the second hole and he's coming to help you.
"Well, how long will it take for him to get here?" she asks feebly.
"No time at all," says her husband. "Everybody's already agreed to let him play through."
___________________________
A gushy reporter told Phil Mickelson, "You are spectacular; your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What's your secret?"
Mickelson replied, "The holes are numbered."
___________________________
A young man and a priest are playing golf together. At a short par-3 the priest asks, "What are you going to use on this hole, my son?"
The young man says, "An 8-iron, father. How about you?"
"Help me dear," she groans to her husband.
The husband calls 911 on his cell phone, talks for a few minutes, picks up his putter, and lines up his putt.
His wife raises her head off the green and stares at him.
"I'm dying here and you're putting?"
"Don't worry dear," says the husband calmly, "they found a doctor on the second hole and he's coming to help you.
"Well, how long will it take for him to get here?" she asks feebly.
"No time at all," says her husband. "Everybody's already agreed to let him play through."
___________________________
A gushy reporter told Phil Mickelson, "You are spectacular; your name is synonymous with the game of golf. You really know your way around the course. What's your secret?"
Mickelson replied, "The holes are numbered."
___________________________
A young man and a priest are playing golf together. At a short par-3 the priest asks, "What are you going to use on this hole, my son?"
The young man says, "An 8-iron, father. How about you?"
The priest says, "I'm going to hit a soft seven and pray."
The young man hits his 8-iron and puts the ball on the green.
The priest tops his 7-iron and dribbles the ball out a few yards.
The young man says, "I don't know about you, father, but in my church, when we pray, we keep our head down."
___________________________
Police are called to an apartment and find a woman holding a bloody 3-iron standing over a lifeless man.
The detective asks, "Ma'am, is that your husband?"
"Yes" says the woman.
"Did you hit him with that golf club?""Yes, yes, I did." The woman begins to sob, drops the club, and puts her hands on her face.
"How many times did you hit him?"
"I don't know -- put me down for a five."
____ _______________________
A golfer teed up his ball on the first tee, took a mighty swing and hit his ball into a clump of trees. He found his ball and saw an opening between 2 trees he thought he could hit through. Taking out his 3-wood, he took a mighty swing. The ball hit a tree, bounced back, hit him in the forehead and killed him.
As he approached the gates of Heaven, St. Peter asked, "Are you a good golfer?"
The man replied: "Got here in two, didn't I?
___________________________
The bride was escorted down the aisle and when she reached the altar, the groom was standing there with his golf bag and clubs at his side.
She said: "What are your golf clubs doing here?"
He looked her right in the eye and said, "This isn't going to take all day, is it?"
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