1/ Paul Krugman on Flint, Michigan and the Republican ideology that allowed this to happen. It's just as bad although less obvious in every Red state.....the recent water bill allows more pollution of the everglades, and the Republicans just passed a bill allowing fracking in a state with water problems already.....
In the 1850s, London, the world’s largest city, still didn’t have a sewer system. Waste simply flowed into the Thames, which was as disgusting as you might imagine. But conservatives, including the magazine The Economist and the prime minister, opposed any effort to remedy the situation. After all, such an effort would involve increased government spending and, they insisted, infringe on personal liberty and local control.
It took the Great Stink of 1858, when the stench made the Houses of Parliament unusable, to produce action.
But that’s all ancient history. Modern politicians, no matter how conservative, understand that public health is an essential government role. Right? No, wrong — as illustrated by the disaster in Flint, Mich.
2/ The wonderful Tina Fey does a wicked Sarah Palin again on SNL. and Daniel Hammond nails Trump.....a funny four minutes....
This week’s Saturday Night Live packed a huge punch right from the start, and not just because Rhonda Rousey is hosting this week. Shining comedy star and SNL alum Tina Fey returned to send up former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin‘s endorsement of Donald Trump earlier this week.
3/ Are you aware, dear reader, that 17% of the overall US budget is spent on the military, and 57% of the discretionary spending? This is as much as the next 10 countries combined, but part of the reason we are hemorrhaging money on the military is projects like this monster, the F-35 fighter jet.
A very good article in the Times, which includes an 8 minute video on Stealth technology....
By the time the F-35 program is fully up and running — with an American fleet of more than 2,400 planes planned by the late 2030s — projected total costs will exceed $1 trillion. One billion dollars will be needed just to pay for the highly advanced pilot helmets, running to $400,000 apiece. And though champions of the supersonic F-35 hail it as the ultimate sky fighter for the 21st century, skeptics ask if it is worth all the money and effort, or even if it will prove as effective in its mission as David’s little stone was in its day.
To put it mildly, the Joint Strike Fighter is a complex piece of machinery. History suggests that the more intricate a device is, the more ways there are for things to go wrong. Lt. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan, the Air Force officer in charge of F-35 development, stands firmly by the program, but he acknowledged to Retro Report that the plane’s initial design may have been overambitious and thus trouble prone.
Red flags went up even before the Pentagon awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin in October 2001. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’s research arm then known as the General Accounting Office, cautioned that assorted technological problems raised the specter of cost overruns, performance failures and production delays. All those fears were borne out. The project is seven years behind schedule, costs have soared, and eyebrows arched higher after a prototype was outmaneuvered by an older F-16 in a mock dogfight early last year.
4/ I don't often put pictures of wildlife in DDD, but this image of a nesting falcon in a tree is remarkable.....
5/ Bernie Sanders is great with the media, doesn't take any bullshit and stays on message no matter what. Watch this delicious six minute interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, and cheer when appropriate!
During an on interview on This Week, Bernie Sanders had to deal with some seriously weak interview questions. The interviewer, Martha Raddatz brought up an allegation that Sanders’ surging campaign has been “unsettling the markets.” That accusation is as ridiculous as it sounds.
Here is how the interview went.
Martha Raddatz:
“Senator Sanders, you said something to your supporters yesterday that caught my ear, you quoted with pride a Wall Street Journal article calling you a viable candidate, saying it appears that we are making Wall Street a little bit nervous and that’s a good thing. The article was quoting Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman who said the markets are unsettled because of you, a slowdown in China and geopolitical risks. You’re laughing, but I want to know why is it a good thing that the markets are in turmoil? People have their pension funds in the market? Lots of middle class people have their 401(k)s invested in stocks. It’s not just Wall Street. Everybody is affected by this.”
6/ An SNL skit that hits home......how the white guys get nominated for the Oscars.....and when you watch note the black actor's face who should have got the nom.....four edgy minutes.....
Saturday Night Live just slammed the Oscars, parodying this year's all-white slate of acting nominees with a sketch in which the fictional "Screen Guild Awards" honor white men for meaningless achievements on screen.
White dudes in increasingly marginal roles score all the nominations — from a librarian named Dave who cuts off Thurgood Marshall in the middle of a speech about racism, to a character titled "white man with camera" who walks into the middle of a movie about African warlords.
All the while, their black colleagues shoot them dagger-like glares.
7/ If you had any curiosity about what and who is behind the disgusting Ted Cruz's rise in the polls it is, of course, billionaires. Great story identifying his backers....the four billionaires who own him.....
DARREN MCCOLLESTER VIA GETTY IMAGES
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four of America's wealthiest businessmen laid the foundation for Ted Cruz's now-surging Republican presidential campaign and have redefined the role of political donors.
With just over a week until voters get their first say, the 45-year-old Texas senator known as a conservative warrior has been ascendant. The $36 million committed last year by these donor families is now going toward television, radio and online advertisements, along with direct mailings and get-out-the-vote efforts in early primary states.
The donors' super political action committees sponsored two weekend rallies in Iowa featuring Cruz and conservative personality Glenn Beck. The state holds the leadoff caucuses on Feb. 1.
The long-believing benefactors are New York hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, Texas natural gas billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks, and private-equity partner Toby Neugebauer. They honed their plan to help Cruz before he began his steady rise in polls — even before he announced his presidential bid in March.
8/ This is clever. Climb Mount Everest in 3D HD, going up the path most climbers take. When you get to the top you can do a 360 of the breathtaking view......
Very cool indeed......and you can appreciate the sheer insanity of daring to climb this colossus....
9/ The excellent James Kwak in the Baseline Scenario with intelligent discussion on where the Democrats are today, and what this election could mean for the future of the Party.
Whether you like what he says or not, every Democrat should read this - it's time to make a stand.....
The Future of the Democratic Party
What liberals can learn from conservatives
The future of the Democratic Party is the theme of the lead article in yesterday’s New York Times. The story more or less writes itself: you have Hillary Clinton, the face of the moderate Democratic establishment (and the spouse of the man who created it), versus Bernie Sanders, a socialist, in a battle most people thought she would have wrapped up months ago.
A lot of liberals like me spend our time wondering what the conservatives have done right—and why we can’t do it ourselves. The financial crisis and Great Recession should have debunked the ideology of deregulation, reinforced growing feelings of economic insecurity, and made people recognize the importance of the social safety net. Instead, we got the Tea Party and the most conservative Congress in living memory.
Seen in the broader sweep of history, conservatives have been relentlessly pushing the nation’s political agenda to the right on most issues (gay rights being almost the only exception), even as public opinion on most social and economic issues remains largely unchanged. Marco Rubio—just four years ago a darling of the Tea Party—is now the last hope of the Republican “moderate” establishment: what other proof is needed of the success of conservative ideology? Sure, extremism makes it hard for Republicans to win presidential elections. But although Democrats have won four and a half out of the past six contests, the result has been lower taxes on the wealthy, smaller government, no progress on climate change or gun control, and a solidly conservative federal judiciary.
So why can’t we do the same?
10/ Bernie's ad in Iowa....truly a wow, made your jaded scribe's heart flutter a little.....one wonderful minute.....
11/ Twenty photos of scenes mashed together......surreal and provocative!
Art-director Stephen McMennamy was inspired by Instagram to make a series of bizarre mashups. They look photoshopped, but they are only two pictures pasted together seamlessly. The creator says that often it was only a matter of adjusting the size of the images. In any case, these “combophotos” as he calls them will mess with your head and maybe give you something to think about. Maybe it will inspire you to create some art of your own.
FRENCH FRY CIGARETTES?
What is worse for your health, eating french fries or smoking? Which would be harder to give up?
12/ Another excellent article on the election race from Robert Reich - he analyses the races in the term of the deep anger many Americans feel about a corrupt system,.....read the excerpt below....
If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, and who understand that the political-economic system is rigged against you and in favor of the rich and powerful, what are you going to do?
Either you’re going to be attracted to an authoritarian son-of-a-bitch who promises to make America great again by keeping out people different from you and creating “great” jobs in America, who sounds like he won’t let anything or anybody stand in his way, and who’s so rich he can’t be bought off.
Or you’ll go for a political activist who tells it like it is, who has lived by his convictions for fifty years, who won’t take a dime of money from big corporations or Wall Street or the very rich, and who is leading a grass-roots “political revolution” to regain control over our democracy and economy.
13/ Florida, the state that's first in line for the effects of climate change has two senior climate deniers representing it.....our abysmal corrupt Governor, and one of our two US Senators Marco Rubio.......Marco is actually aggressive in his denial.....Scott pretends it isn't real.....
Very good story from Newsweek......
About 2.4 million people in the Miami area live less than 4 feet above the high-tide line, and the ocean is expected to rise between 6.6 and 30 feet by 2100. Eighty-four years is a long time, but water doesn’t rise like that all at once. It is already happening. Inch by inch, the slow inundation of Miami has begun, affecting infrastructure and life in one of the world’s sexiest cities.
Some Florida neighborhoods regularly get flooded streets during rainstorms; some even have large fish thriving in ponds that were once lawns. JOE RAEDLE/GETTY
South Florida business leaders and even many local Republican politicians are no longer in climate change denial. Now, deep in the fine print of resolutions and memoranda being passed around among the various task forces in the area, one sees the mantra “Elevate. Isolate. Relocate.” Abandonment of some parts of the community to water is now accepted as unavoidable. Even the most conservative estimates assume that a percentage of the next generation of Floridians will become internally displaced Americans, climate change refugees.
While panicking Miami policymakers are contemplating dire climate-related matters like the possibility of relocating people and infrastructure, Florida’s two presidential candidates are silent. Senator Marco Rubio and former Governor Jeb Bush have ignored the problem. Bush has no constituents to answer to anymore, but Rubio does. On the campaign trail, he brushes off questions about climate change by saying, “I’m not a scientist.” His silence is a stark contrast to the deeds of Florida’s senior senator, Bill Nelson, a Democrat and former astronaut. Last year, Nelson held a rare Senate field hearing in Miami Beach on sea level rise, and he frequently speaks about the issue on the Senate floor.
Todays video - the wonderful Mrs Brown with "The Misunderstanding"......two funny minutes....
Todays golf joke
David Feherty does a standup show that is quite spectacular. It's all about his life in golf, the drinking and lots of stories about life on the tour. Here's one of his stories:
It was back in the 70s and a soon-to-be prominent golfer (Ray Floyd) was playing at Augusta for his first Masters. Back then the players could not bring their own caddies but had to use one of the locals.Floyd told the caddy master he wanted a big fellow who could handle his bag, but who also would keep quiet, no advice needed.
The caddy who was assigned Floyd said, "Hello Mr. ...........".Floyd said "Hello." And followed that with, "That's the last I want to hear from you."
Everything went well until the 10th hole when Floyd pushed his drive into the right trees on the par 4. After surveying the scene he said out loud, "I'm going to hit a low fade out through that opening to carry and land mid green and then roll over the crest down near the hole."Surprisingly he pulled it off exactly and turned to his caddy and said, "How's that?"The caddy spoke for the first time and said, "That wasn't your ball."
Todays marrieds' joke
A police officer pulls over a speeding car.
The officer says, I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir."
The driver says, "Gee, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating."
Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: "Now don't be silly, dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control."
As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, "Can't you please keep your mouth shut for once?"
The wife smiles demurely and says, "You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did."
As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, "Darn it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?"
The officer says, I clocked you at 80 miles per hour, sir."
The driver says, "Gee, officer I had it on cruise control at 60, perhaps your radar gun needs calibrating."
Not looking up from her knitting the wife says: "Now don't be silly, dear, you know that this car doesn't have cruise control."
As the officer writes out the ticket, the driver looks over at his wife and growls, "Can't you please keep your mouth shut for once?"
The wife smiles demurely and says, "You should be thankful your radar detector went off when it did."
As the officer makes out the second ticket for the illegal radar detector unit, the man glowers at his wife and says through clenched teeth, "Darn it, woman, can't you keep your mouth shut?"
The officer frowns and says, "And I notice that you're not wearing your seat belt, sir. That's an automatic $75 fine."
The driver says, "Yeah, well, you see officer, I had it on, but took it off when you pulled me over so that I could get my license out of my back pocket."
The wife says, "Now, dear, you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving."
And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, "WHY DON'T YOU PLEASE SHUT UP??"
The officer looks over at the woman and asks, "Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?"
"Only when he's been drinking."
The wife says, "Now, dear, you know very well that you didn't have your seat belt on. You never wear your seat belt when you're driving."
And as the police officer is writing out the third ticket the driver turns to his wife and barks, "WHY DON'T YOU PLEASE SHUT UP??"
The officer looks over at the woman and asks, "Does your husband always talk to you this way, Ma'am?"
"Only when he's been drinking."
Todays newspaper jokes
