Happy New Year folks!
1/ Bill Moyers with another excellent story - the plutocrats are winning, and here is how they're doing it....lobbyists, and secrecy....
(Credit: CBS)
In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.
Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation’s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.
What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for fifteen years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn’t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.
2/ "The Sound Of Silence" was a great song from Simon and Garfunkel, but this version sung by Disturbed [ a metal band] is a superwow....powerful, and moving. The singer looks like Henry Rollins, but he has the most incredible voice......
A wonderful three minutes.....
3/ We are a de facto oligarchy, and the Times spells out how the .01% are concentrating wealth at the very very top - they are cheating the system, and gutting the IRS....
This is a serious, heavyweight story that may do some good....who knows.....
For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System
That Saves Them Billions
The very richest are able to quietly shape tax policy that will
allow them to shield billions in income.
Louis Moore Bacon, shown with his wife, Gabrielle, is the founder of a highly successful hedge fund and a leading contributor to Jeb Bush’s Super PAC. Among his homes is one on Robins Island, off Long Island.
WASHINGTON — The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested millions in art — and millions more in political candidates.
Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back.
With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.
4/ My favorite cartoonist - Tom Tomorrow - with his two part "Year In Review"......wryly amusing....
These year in review cartoons get longer every year, and I’m still barely just able to scratch the surface. Feel free to add your highlights and lowlights of 2015 in comments
5/ Is your brain Republican or Democrat? Take this quite interesting test, and find out.....
I took it and I think it was correct, but I'm not saying my percentages!
6/ What would a DDD be without a Trump story, so here is Matt Taibbi with a very savvy article.....
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
It started out as a joke: Donald Trump running for president! What better way to spoof the thinness of the Republican field than to shove a bombastic reality star with orange hair, a sixth-grade vocabulary and no behavioral filter onto the debate stage with the likes of Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Scott Walker and Lindsey Graham? The only thing more perfect would have been to add a head of lettuce and Koko the signing gorilla to round out the candidate slate.
Trump seemed like a perfect foil in particular for Jeb Bush, a hesitating, gelatinous aristocrat who lacked the cocksure brainlessness the previous Bush used to sell himself as a "regular guy." In an era when Republican voters were more distrustful than ever of the Same Old Politics, stiff, birthright-bearing Jeb was exactly the wrong candidate for the party elders to back.
http://www.rollingstone.com/
7/ An in depth look at the ratings problem with the Colbert late night show - it's too easy to blame Colbert for turning off Republican viewers because the real story is more complex.....an interesting discussion....
(Credit: AP/Greg Allen)
Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” keeps slipping in the ratings. In November, it even fell behind Seth Meyers who comes on an hour later than him.
My Salon colleague Sophia McClennnan suggested when Colbert slipped to third that it might have something to do with a Republican audience having problems with complex satire. While it’s true that Colbert does get a little more advanced than the silly games you see on other shows, I would also propose that hosts Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel are giving dumb Americans exactly what they want: pre-digested content that says nothing and doesn’t make anyone mad.
Bill Carter, who has chronicled late-night brilliantly in books and in the New York Times for years, has a new Hollywood Reporter piece examining Colbert’s problem and what some have called the panic inside CBS.
8/ This is one of the most surreal ads you will ever see, but it's very successful - for Hendricks Gin......30 amusing seconds.....and yes you will watch it twice....OK OK you will probably do stop action to see the bizarre backgrounds and creatures....
It will remind you of the Monty Python spots, but with a MUCH bigger budget!
9/ Another quiz about current affairs......on this one I got 9 out of 11, so have a go at this.....
Test Your Savvy About 2016 With a Quiz
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF DEC. 31, 2015
Those of us engaged in columny usually settle for writing about what has already happened. But today, let’s not follow the easy course. Instead, take my quiz of what’s to come in the year ahead and see if we think alike.
10/ It's almost beyond belief that almost 50% of Americans and an entire political party stoutly deny climate change is happening, but as this article points out....it's REALLY starting to kick in now....
But it's also becoming clear that there's no stopping it - the money, power and vested interests blocking any action to mitigate the damage are too great.....so welcome to 2 degrees C by 2050.....which will be awful enough....
The level of denial is simply appalling. It appears increasingly unlikely that humanity will prove capable of confronting and addressing the self-destructive climate-change catastrophe that it has created.
The leaves came off the last trees — a crabapple, a willow and a hardy Norway maple — during the first week of December this year, surely the latest I can remember seeing leaves on trees since we moved to the Philadelphia area 18 years ago. But it’s not just that.
A rhododendron bush beside the house has huge blooms ready to burst open, the white petal tips pushing out of their scaly looking egg-sized buds. And our garden is still boasting a surprisingly fast-growing crop of chard, sweet kale and perhaps most surprisingly, tall fava bean plants that, while they didn’t produce any beans this year, saute up to make a beautiful doumiao — one of my favorite Chinese vegetable dishes.
On a micro level, it is nice to be able to harvest fresh veggies pest-free from our garden a few days before the new year (and, judging by the 10-day forecast, well into 2016!), thanks to our not having had one below-freezing day yet this fall and winter, and only a few nights when the temperature dipped into the high 20s, not enough to kill hardier vegetables like kale and chard. But viewed through a climate-change lens, this is pretty scary.
Nobody can tell me that climate change is a hoax.
11/ Another decentish movie, "The Revenant" directed by Alejandro Inarritu - not great, but if you like the premise of extreme violence and hardship you'll enjoy it.........
In “The Revenant,” a period drama reaching for tragedy, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the mountain man Hugh Glass, a figure straight out of American myth and history. He enters dressed in a greasy, fur-trimmed coat, holding a flintlock rifle while stealing through a forest primeval that Longfellow might have recognized. This, though, is no Arcadia; it’s 1823 in the Great Plains, a pitiless testing ground for men that’s littered with the vivid red carcasses of skinned animals, ghastly portents of another slaughter shortly to come. The setting could not be more striking or the men more flinty.
“The Revenant” is an American foundation story, by turns soaring and overblown. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Birdman,” “Babel”), it features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors, none more diligently committed than Mr. DiCaprio, and some of the most beautiful natural tableaus you’re likely to see in a movie this year. Partly shot in outwardly unspoiled tracts in Canada and Argentina, it has the brilliant, crystalline look that high-definition digital can provide, with natural vistas that seem to go on forever and suggest the seeming limitless bounty that once was. Here, green lichen carpets trees that look tall enough to pierce the heavens. It’s that kind of movie, with that kind of visual splendor — it spurs you to match its industrious poeticism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/
Todays video - magic tricks and professional golfers....three great minutes....what's not to like!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NIZ_bmCP7GQ
Todays hand job joke
An elderly golfer comes in after a good round of golf at a new course and heads straight to the bar/restaurant area of the club house. As he passes through the swinging doors, he spots a sign hanging over the bar that reads:
COLD BEER: $5.00
HAMBURGER: $10.00
CHEESEBURGER: $15.50
CHICKEN SANDWICH: $18.50
HAND JOB: $250.00
HAMBURGER: $10.00
CHEESEBURGER: $15.50
CHICKEN SANDWICH: $18.50
HAND JOB: $250.00
Checking his wallet to be sure he has the necessary money, the old golfer walks up to the bar & beckons to the exceptionally attractive female bartender who is serving drinks to a couple of sun-wrinkled golfers.
She glides down behind the bar to the old golfer. “Yes?” she inquires with a wide, knowing smile. “May I help?"
The old golfer leans over the bar & whispers, “I was wondering young lady, are you the one who gives the hand-jobs around here?”
She looks into his wrinkled eyes & with a wide smile purrs, “Yes sir, I sure am.”
The old golfer leans in even closer & into her left ear says softly:
“Well then, be sure to wash your hands real good, because I want a cheeseburger.”
Todays Mensa jokes
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are the winners:
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid
7. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and
cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering
how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absent mindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Todays Wild West joke
A tough old cowboy from Montana counseled his granddaughter that if she wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a
pinch of gun powder on her oatmeal every morning.
The granddaughter did this religiously until the age of 103, when she died.
She left behind 14 children, 30 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, 25 great-great-grandchildren, and
a 40-foot hole where the crematorium used to be.
This year, Christmas Eve feels more like the tropics for much of the East Coast. Here, Timmy McGovern dressed as Santa Claus walks along the beach passing out candy canes and posing for pictures with beach-goers on Dec. 21, 2015 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
