1/ Frank Rich with a major story on race relations, and the root causes of violence. He goes into the history of the race riots since the 60's, and draws parallels between them all. This is an essay on America's disgraceful record on race, and I recommend it as an in-depth look at our history so we can understand the present.....
As some 37,000 fans streamed into Camden Yards for the Orioles–Red Sox game on the last Saturday evening in April, things were getting out of hand in Baltimore. The peaceful protests of the day were spiraling into bitter confrontations. Outside the stadium and nearby, rocks were being hurled at police and through store windows. If you’d caught these fast-breaking developments online, you might have been tempted, as I was, to flip on CNN. Cable news may not have a reliable nose for news, but it can be counted on to bear witness whenever it smells blood.
I should have known better. This was the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., and the network was giving it four hours of undivided attention. Government potentates, media folk, and a modest bounty of show-business celebrities were busy posing on the Washington Hilton’s red carpet on their way to the ballroom. The news happening 40 miles up the road might as well have been in Kazakhstan. CNN didn’t cut away to on-the-ground coverage or offer the obligatory split screen. There were, however, frequent glimpses of the anchor Wolf Blitzer at a prime table down front.
Yet, if you chose, as I did, to monitor these annual revels with one eye while following the Baltimore action on Twitter, you got both up-to-the-second snapshots of the latest urban battleground and a wide shot of the cultural chasm separating official Washington from modern America’s repeated eruptions of racial unrest. That chasm is nothing new. What made this particular instance poignant was the presence in the ballroom of our first African-American president, the Magic Negro who was somehow expected to relieve a nation founded and built on slavery from the toxic burdens of centuries of history
2/ Tom Brady [Taram Killam] and "deflategate" on SNL.....a funny one....three minutes....
Despite the fact that he received a four-game suspension for maybe deflating a few footballs, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (as played by Taram Killam) somehow can get away with anything.
And here he is on SNL’s Weekend Update, turning Colin Jost into a puddle of goo and reminding us all of why we’re supposed to like him: because all he does is “want what’s best for the team and America and all of you.” Also, he knew the question you were about to ask. Because his favorite Make-A-Wish children already asked him about it.
Tom Brady. So charming. So beautiful, so perfect, so charming.
3/ Human beings and especially Americans are optimists, and I would guess most people are waiting for the economy and their finances to return to "normal", like they were in the early 2000's.....but what if there is no going back, and this era of a broken middle class and misery for the working poor is the new normal?
This is an "oh shit" story.....from the economist Tyler Cowen in the NYT......
It is hard to avoid the feeling that our current economic problems are more than just a cyclical downturn. We know that the economy has gone through some bad times. But what exactly are we experiencing?
One relatively optimistic view is that observed deficiencies — like slow growth in real wages and the overall economy, persistently low interest rates and low levels of labor participation — are merely temporary. In this view, these problems will dwindle after manageable problems like high levels of public or household debt have been reduced.
Another commonly heard view is that we made the mistake of letting the last recession linger too long, allowing some of its features to became entrenched. That analysis suggests that if we correct past policy errors, whatever they may have been, an underlying normality will re-emerge.
4/ We are all waiting [well readers of DDD anyway] for Steven Colbert to take over from Letterman, but in the meantime here is a most amusing speech Colbert did for the students of a North Carolina University last week.....full of pithy advice, and jokes......about 12 minutes....
“I hope you find the courage to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, and then please, expect as much of the world around you. Try to make the world good according to your standards.”
Those were some of the words of wisdom uttered by comedian Stephen Colbert during his commencement address to the graduates of North Carolina’s Wake Forest University on Monday.
In his address, Colbert, who left the “The Colbert Report” last year and will take over the “Late Show” later this year, spoke to the graduates about change and the unknown -- both things, he noted, he’s intimately familiar with.
“I just spent many years learning to do one thing really well. I got so comfortable with that place, that role, those responsibilities, that it came to define how I saw myself; but now part of my life is over,” he said. “It’s time to say goodbye to the person we’ve become … and to make some crucial decisions in becoming who we’re going to be. For me, I’ll have to figure out how to do an hour-long show every night. And you at some point will have to sleep. I am told the Adderall wears off eventually.”
5/ John Oliver with another excellent piece of comedic journalism, this time on the economics of chicken farming and how the Big Ag corporations abuse their farmers.....it will make you laugh in parts, and make you really angry in others.....a good 17 minutes....
John Oliver has a message for lawmakers: It's time to stand up for the rights of chicken farmers or forever be branded a "chicken fucker."
On his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," Oliver shined a spotlight on the plight of the American chicken farmer. While chicken is one of the nation's best-selling foods, the chicken farmers are getting paid, well, chickenfeed.
The segment explained how many of the farmers are poor because of "contract farming" practices in which they are responsible for all the expenses of running the farm, but the big poultry companies actually own the chickens -- the one part of the business that makes money.
As a result, many chicken farmers are living below the poverty line. When confronted with that fact, an industry lobbyist tried to parse words.
"Which poverty line are you referring to? Is that a national poverty line? Is that a state poverty line?” National Chicken Council spokesman Tom Super asked in "Cock Fight," a Fusion documentary.
6/ The TPP trade deal is slithering through Congress and I'm not clear what's happening with it or if the opposition, led by Elizabeth Warren, has a chance of defeating this corporate giveaway but it's pretty clear it has the full weight of the combined oligarchs behind it. This is a test - the TPP Bill will show if there still some semblance of democracy left in this country, or are we already a full scale plutocracy.
Note folks - if the TPP passes, we're screwed.....the middle class is doomed, and the bottom half of the country will be starving. The one thing the oligarchs might have missed is that if the stupids ever wake up and realize how bad they will be getting hosed, they will be even angrier than they are now and they have a lot of guns. But I think they are relying on their stupidity, and they might be right.....
Paul Krugman with an excellent column.....
One of the Obama administration’s underrated virtues is its intellectual honesty. Yes, Republicans see deception and sinister ulterior motives everywhere, but they’re just projecting. The truth is that, in the policy areas I follow, this White House has been remarkably clear and straightforward about what it’s doing and why.
Every area, that is, except one: international trade and investment.
I don’t know why the president has chosen to make the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership such a policy priority. Still, there is an argument to be made for such a deal, and some reasonable, well-intentioned people are supporting the initiative.But other reasonable, well-intentioned people have serious questions about what’s going on. And I would have expected a good-faith effort to answer those questions. Unfortunately, that’s not at all what has been happening. Instead, the selling of the 12-nation Pacific Rim pact has the feel of a snow job. Officials have evaded the main concerns about the content of a potential deal; they’ve belittled and dismissed the critics; and they’ve made blithe assurances that turn out not to be true.
7/ I felt a little guilty laughing at this, but it's so incredibly awkward and inherently silly, it's very funny. Louis CK pretends he has a black accent for five years in order to keep his job.....a five good minutes from SNL.....
Louis C.K., Leslie Jones ("Saturday Night Live")
Almost as if to prove that he actually suffers from the “mild racism” he confessed to in his monologue, Louis C.K. joined Leslie Jones for a skit entitled “This is How I Talk,” in which Louis is caught mocking his boss at the Sprint store and finds the most awkward way possible to avoid being fired.
In a season in which the live sketches have paled in comparison to their pre-taped counterparts, this was a rare exception — though it’s not surprising, given that it plays more like a sequence from “Louie” than a traditional “Saturday Night Live” sketch.
8/ Matt Taibbi on Jeb Bush, the Iraq war and the shameless, pandering media.....his point is well taken - everyone in the know with an ounce of intelligence in 2002 knew the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq was ludicrous, but noone in the serious media called them on it.......just went along with the BS stories.
My biggest disappointment? When Colin Powell lied to the UN....I expected more from him.....
Anyway, excellent political reporting from Matt Taibbi.....
Would Jeb Bush have invaded Iraq like his brother, George W.? His stumble to answer lit a media frenzy. Alex Wong/Getty
So presidential hopeful Jeb Bush is taking a pounding for face-planting a question about his brother's invasion of Iraq. Apparently, our national media priests want accountability from leaders on this issue.
One of the first "gotcha" moments of the 2016 presidential race came about as follows: Reporters following Jeb Bush on a pre-announcement campaign tour smartly decided to badger him about his position on the Iraq invasion. "Knowing what he knows now," they asked, would he have done the same thing as his brother?
Jeb's answer was characteristically Bushian: yes, no, and maybe. Bush III somehow hadn't prepared for the one question he was most absolutely certain to face the moment he decided take a step in the direction of the White House.
It was a little bit like invading a country and having no plan at all for what you do after you seize the capital. In other words, the kind of thing that should disqualify a person not just from the presidency, but maybe also from having a driver's license. George W. specialized in these jaw-dropping oversights, and it seems his brother might have a similar talent.
9/ And in case you don't think Matt Taibbi is serious enough, here's Paul Krugman NYT columnist on the same subject - how we were lied into Invading Iraq, and everyone in power knew the excuses were complete BS....
Surprise! It turns out that there’s something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.
But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false. The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.
The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
10/ An amusing look at how to become gluten free.......if you want to have a diet regimen that makes you healthier[?] and more powerful, become gluten intolerant! Six minutes of lessons.....
There's a British expression called "taking the piss" out of something......and this video is an excellent example of this.....
If you’ve felt left out by the gluten-free trend, never fear—you too can learn to be intolerant. Intolerant of gluten, that is.
“Being gluten intolerant is the hottest eating trend in the New Age community since we found out that we don’t have to eat animals,” says comedian JP Sears in the latest episode of his YouTube series Ultra Spiritual Life. “Gluten is the new animal that you don’t have to eat.” The diet fad is the latest practice to get the satirical treatment from Sears, who has mocked people who use ayahuasca, the process of picking a guru, and other facets of the spiritual life.
11/ This is amusing - how to decode conservative phrases.......
Right Wing Catch Phrases Translated
Activist Judge: Any judge attempting to protect the rights of minorities or the disadvantaged, particularly homosexuals
Alternative Energy Resources: deregulated federal parks, forests and wilderness areas and any other new place to explore for oil
Bible based: Anything in the Bible supporting the right-wing agenda
12/ The beautiful and talented Taylor Swift with an amazing video, almost a mini sci-fi film......look at all of the talent in this four minute song "Bad Blood".....well not really a song, more like a Quentin Tarentino tribute.....
A pretty unique music video, borderline movie trailer for a movie that will win "Best Costumes and Make Up" awards.....
Taylor Swift premiered her star-studded, futuristic, neo-noir video Sunday night at the Billboard Music Awards after a highly publicized teaser campaign on her social media sites. As promised, Selena Gomez, Kendrick Lamar, Jessica Alba, Lena Dunham, Ellie Goulding, Hayley Williams and others in Swift's circle appeared in the dark, action-packed video. After Swift (as Catastrophe) and Gomez (as Arsyn) engage in a high-flying martial arts display, Gomez kicks Swift through a window and sends the singer falling onto a car.
From there, the scene shifts to Swift's cohorts, all dressed in black, training Mission Impossible-style, before Swift takes on Karli Kloss in a vicious kickboxing match. Jessica Alba proceeds to rides motorcycles with Swift in a nod to sci-fi classic Tron (with cameos from Mariska Hargitay and Cindy Crawford) before a girl gang, led by Swift, walk in slow motion in front of post-apocalyptic, city-on-fire visuals.
13/ Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald with a critique of the piece of shit you elected Governor.......Hiaasen hates him almost as much as I do....
BY CARL HIAASEN
Gov. Rick Scott removed his Harry Potter invisibility cloak and flew to Washington the other day.
There he begged for billions of federal dollars from a person he is suing, Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Burwell patiently listened to the governor and, predictably, sent him back to Florida with nothing.
Last summer the feds informed Scott that the government was phasing out a fund that reimburses local hospitals for taking care of low-income patients, basically replacing it with an expanded version of Medicaid.
At first Scott was in favor of the Medicaid move, even though it was a tangent of Obamacare. Then the governor changed his mind. Later, as an afterthought, he sued Burwell and the HHS.
The state Senate supports Medicaid expansion; the House doesn’t. Tallahassee has been paralyzed by the dispute.
In a snit, the House packed up and adjourned the session early, leaving Florida with no budget. Leaders in the Senate were furious.
Remember, these are all Republicans, ripping at each other like addled meerkats.
And where was the newly reelected Republican governor, leader of the party?
Gone is where he was — jetting to crucial functions such as the grand opening of a Wawa gas-and-convenience store in Fort Myers and the debut of a humongous Ferris wheel in Orlando.
It’s impossible to imagine any of the fully functioning governors in Florida’s past — Lawton Chiles, Bob Graham, Jeb Bush, to name a few — vanishing from Tallahassee during a Code Red meltdown of the Legislature.
But Scott isn’t a functioning governor. He is the emptiest of empty suits — no talent for leadership, no muscle for compromise, no sense whatsoever of the big picture.
14/ The dead, pestilent hand of the disgusting Rick Scott has affected Florida in more ways than you think.....look what has happened at our favorite Water Board, friend of Niagara, the St. Johns Water Management District. Some of the Board dared to deny a water use permit, so Scott fired them all and replaced them with rubber stamps.
Enjoy your water Mount Dora and Lake County - it's not going to last very long....
Things are getting downright weird at the St. Johns River Water Management District, and each eyebrow-raising event — and the list is growing — raises new concerns about the region’s future water policy, indeed its water supply.
First, after a series of moves by the water district administration that actually broke from the historically passive rubber-stamping of every water permit request — the denial of a small one for Sleepy Creek Lands, aka Adena Springs Ranch, notable among them — the executive director and four of the district’s top managers were suddenly shown the door. They resigned, of course, but no one is pretending it was voluntary.
Then, when it became apparent the purge was orchestrated out of Tallahassee by Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Jon Steverson, with at least approval from Gov. Rick Scott’s office,
15/ Movie review - "Mad Max - Fury Road". this is a review from the New Yorker for this incredible movie which I saw this week in 3D......it's the ultimate movie for guys, with astonishing action, surreal vehicles, ultra violence and some scenes that will make you gag.....but in a good way. When you see it appreciate the moviemaking skills of the Director George Miller, because one of the factoids about this movie is all of the action is real - no CGI [computer generated imagery]. They built all of the incredible trucks and tankers and blowed them up/crashed them for real. The stunts are all real. Amazing.
The review in the New Yorker is great, and I can personally recommend the movie but for lads only, don't take a lady - most women will hate it even though there is some hype about this being a "feminist" movie, but I think this is movie marketing to try to get women to see it - Charlize Theron is the star and the female hero....
Here is the amazing trailer.....remember to see it in 3D!
Todays video - Poo Pourri did a special Christmas ad for their great product.....Santa's on the loo, and gets caught.....very funny, and borderline disgusting......but Poo Pourri really works - a "must have" for your guest bathroom!
Todays golf joke
This guy brings his best golf buddy home, unannounced, for dinner at 6:30 after golf. His wife screams her head off while his friend sits open mouthed and listens to the tirade.
"My bloody hair and makeup are not done, the house is a f****** mess, the dishes aren't done. Can't you see I'm still in my f****** pyjamas and I can't be bothered with cooking tonight! Why the f*** did you bring him home unannounced you stupid idiot?"
"My bloody hair and makeup are not done, the house is a f****** mess, the dishes aren't done. Can't you see I'm still in my f****** pyjamas and I can't be bothered with cooking tonight! Why the f*** did you bring him home unannounced you stupid idiot?"
"Because he's thinking of getting married."
Todays Mensa joke
Several of the Mensa members went out for lunch at a local cafe.When they sat down, one of them discovered that their salt shaker contained pepper, and their pepper shaker was full of salt.How could they swap the contents of the two bottles without spilling any, and using only the implements at hand?Clearly -- this was a job for Mensa minds.
The group debated the problem and presented ideas and finally, came up with a brilliant solution involving a napkin, a straw, and an empty saucer.They called the waitress over, ready to dazzle her with their solution."Ma'am," they said," we couldn't help but notice that the pepper shaker contains salt and the salt shaker contains pepper."
But before they could finish .......... the waitress interrupted. "Oh -- sorry about that." She leaned over the table, unscrewed the caps of both bottles and switched them.
There was dead silence at the Mensa table.
Todays Jewish joke
A Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim, and a Jew were in a discussion during dinner.
Catholic: "I have a large fortune....I am going to buy Citibank!"
Protestant: "I am very wealthy and will buy General Motors!"
Muslim: "I am a fabulously rich prince.... I intend to purchase Microsoft!"
They then all wait for the Jew to speak....
The Jew stirs his coffee, places the spoon neatly on the table, takes a sip of his coffee, looks at them and casually says: "I'm not selling."
A bonus joke - the Apple Watch
A Navy pilot walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman.
He gives her a quick glance then casually looks at his new Apple watch for a moment.
The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"
No,” he replies, “I just got this state-of-the-art Apple watch, and I was just testing it.”
The intrigued woman says, “A state-of-the-art watch? What’s so special about it?”
The pilot says, “It uses alpha waves to talk to me telepathically.”
The lady says, “What’s it telling you now?”
Well, it says you're not wearing any panties.”
The woman giggles and replies, “Well it must be broken because I am wearing panties!”
The pilot smirks, taps his watch and says, “Darn thing’s an hour fast.”
