1/ Watching the news of thousands of protesters forcing the cancellation of a Trump event in Chicago, hearing that Trump has created a "protester intelligence group" to root out demonstrators, hearing his rhetoric about how to treat anyone disrupting his events....it's really, really not funny any more. This is getting serious: he has woken rage in a very dangerous segment of our society and we don't know where this will end.....
Matt Taibbi writes in this excellent story about people who have endorsed Trump, and where this might be going.
Just like the right wing crazies buy guns because Obama was coming for them, liberals might want to think about quietly stockpiling some weapons and ammo.....
Earlier this week, an African-American protester was sucker-punched by a 78-year-old man in a cowboy hat at a Trump rally in North Carolina. The video went viral, and reporters later tracked down John McGraw, the red-faced Trumpthusiast who'd thrown the punch. McGraw explained why he'd belted Rakeem Jones:
"Number one, we don't know if he's ISIS," McGraw said.
One has to commend the Inside Edition reporter doing the interview for not bursting out laughing, or dropping to the ground in shock, at this moment. McGraw went on:
"The next time we see him, we might have to kill him," he said. "We don't know who he is. He might be with a terrorist organization."
That same night, Trump told Anderson Cooper he wasn't backing down from his plan to bar all Muslims from entering the country. "I think Islam hates us," he said, adding, "It's very hard to separate because you don't know who is who. We have to be very vigilant."
These episodes are like a child's game of "telephone," only played with bone-ignorant adults. The game starts when Trump personifies "Islam" under one label, apparently not realizing that this represents an awesomely diverse collection of people who collectively represent about a quarter of the world's population.
2/ Had to put this column from Thomas Friedman in DDD just for the title - "Only Trump Can Trump Trump".....but the article is more than just a snappy headline - it's a very good analysis of the Trump phenomenon, and also discusses his next moves after he gets the nomination....
Most interesting.....
Donald Trump is a walking political science course. His meteoric rise is lesson No. 1 on leadership: Most voters do not listen through their ears. They listen through their stomachs. If a leader can connect with them on a gut level, their response is: “Don’t bother me with the details. I trust your instincts.” If a leader can’t connect on a gut level, he or she can’t show them enough particulars. They’ll just keep asking, “Can you show me the details one more time?”
Trump’s Republican rivals keep thinking that if they just point out a few more details about him, voters will drop The Donald and turn to one of them instead. But you can’t talk voters out of something that they haven’t been talked into.
3/ Very funny ad for Trump from SNL......"Racists For Donald"......one minute of hilarity.....
This week’s Saturday Night Live followed up its Trump-centered “campaign coverage” of the 2016 presidential race with another shot at Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, this time in the form of a dead-on campaign ad parody. The spot rolls out looking like every other slice-of-America campaign spot, and even though it telegraphs the reveal, the gag pays off because the execution is so spot-on.
4/ Democrats should be worried - the same dynamic that fuels Trump is fueling Bernie Sanders - disgust with the elites and the screwing of the middle class, and Hillary represents the elites no matter how hard she tries to copy Bernies policies....
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton (Credit: AP/Stephen B. Morton/Carlos Osorio/Gerald Herbert/Photo montage by Salon)
It was easy to laugh at that gruesome Republican debate on Thursday night. Easy and fun! At least for a while. We laughed in incredulity; we laughed in horror. We laughed because there is some statistical possibility that one of those four men on that stage in Detroit will end up becoming president of the United States, and because the only one of them who remotely resembles a decent and normal human being is a notorious union buster and foe of reproductive choice who opposes raising the minimum wage and used to work at Lehman Brothers, the most notorious failed bank of the 2008 collapse. We did not laugh at John Kasich. We sighed and we swooned, because he would be a pretty bad president but that’s no longer the relevant standard. Compared to those other guys, Kasich is Mother Teresa wrapped in puff pastry and drizzled with Oscar Wilde. He probably means well, after his own limited fashion, and he does not resemble the Lizard Man of Zanth (Trump), the birthday clown with piles of bodies in the basement (Cruz) or Little Marco, who will say anything and do anything in service of his brilliant plan to win the nomination by continually finishing third.
5/ We have a new DDD favorite comedian - Samantha Bee.....here she nails the Republicans and Trump.....an excellent seven minutes in two parts...
Samantha Bee (Credit: TBS)
“Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee on Monday night staged a vigil for the recently deceased GOP.
“The death throes started Thursday morning, when the Republican establishment suddenly woke up and realized Donald Trump was doing to their brand what his asshole son does to real elephants,” Bee led off.
Bee said Mitt Romney’s G-rated roast (“Mitt-tervention”) of Donald Trump in Utah last Thursday “served as a donation, in kind, to the Trump campaign.”
“With all due respect, sir,” she continued, “the last time you tried to stand between a charismatic guy and the White House, you got beat like a Muslim girl at a Trump rally.”
“The GOP’s final death rattle came that night” at the Republican debate or, as Bee called it, Republicans’ “regular fight club meeting.”
6/ And on the same theme Bill Maher had one of Adolf Hitler's speeches translated, and it sounds eerily like Trump! Two disturbing but very amusing minutes.....
“Real Time” host Bill Maher last night went to the trouble of having one of Hitler’s speeches “translated” to English in order to contextualize Donald Trump’s idiosyncratic, KKK-endorsed hate-speech.
Since Trump entered the race in August, it has been widely re-reported that he at one time kept a volume of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet by his bed, which, according to his ex-wife Ivana, he would occasionally thumb through.
7/ It's a given that the media refers to Evangelicals as a "normal" group of Americans, but there's never any discussion of their beliefs....this is one of the first stories I've seen that calls them out and discusses their brand, and that's what it is - a very profitable brand.....
Evangelicals are hurting the GOP: The movement is now synonymous with bigotry and abject stupidity
Republicans have long sought the vote of Christian fundamentalists. This election cycle they may prove a liability
(Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid/Vibe Images via Shutterstock/Photo montage by Salon)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure.
Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity.
Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, Evangelical Christianity is now distinctive—and widely despised.
8/ The comedy never ends - the Daily Show put an ad together for "Trump Dick".....one amusing minute.....
Today, the people over at The Daily Show dug up an old commercial for Trump Steaks, one of the many old business ventures of Trump’s that didn’t take off nearly as well as his bid for the presidency. Daily Show alum John Oliver even mentioned Trump Steaks in a recent roast of the mogul, so the topic has been getting some play this week.
9/ Not sure if you realize it yet, but the planet is screwed....and the real problems will be sooner than you think.....
A very good story by Bill McKibben, one of the climate change movements founders and leaders....
DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES/FILE 2015
A view of the Kronebreen Glacier in northern Norway.
By Bill McKibben MARCH 05, 2016
That’s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we’re doing all we can to avoid. And it’s important because most of the hemisphere has not really had a winter. They’ve been trucking snow into Anchorage for the start of the Iditarod; Arctic sea ice is at record low levels for the date; in New England doctors are already talking about the start of “allergy season.”
10/ Bill Maher with one of his best "New Rules".....there are at least five or six zingers you will LOL at.....five minutes of really edgy and amusing jokes......
One of the
Tonight, the New Rule was as follows:
You can’t spend the first half of a debate bitching about how immigrants are ruining the country and the second half on the uplifting stories of your immigrant parents.
He went on to point out how all of the candidates talk about their immigrant family members when they’re not talking about building walls.
11/ Maureen Dowd from the Times can be wickedly relevant when she's on form, as she is in this column......excellent.....
WASHINGTON — HERE’S why the Trump campaign is wicked fun:
I watched Donald Trump in New York for decades, as a bachelor swanning, a party fixture mingling, a master of bling and bluster.
I went with him on his art-filled plane in 1999 as he dipped his toe in the presidential pool and saw him shyly approach his first political rope line, even as he bragged that other candidates didn’t draw as many cameras or have a supermodel by their side.
So I can assure you of two things. No one is more shocked at how far, how fast, Trump has come than Trump.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/
12/ Every now and then we share a video of the truly insane at work - this one is of Danny MacAskill riding his bicycle on the rooftops of Gran Canarias, doing things that would give you and I a heart attack......over and over.....four amazing minutes.....
Danny MacAskill goes rooftopping on a bike in Grand Canaria, the second most populous island of Spain’s Canary Islands.
13/ Carl Hiaasen reams our oozing pus-filled wart of a Governor and how the slimy, corrupt asshole isn't dealing with the Lake Okeechobee crisis.....of course it's Obama's fault.....
As a devastating deluge of polluted water darkens two coasts of Florida and threatens their tourist economies, Gov. Rick Scott is once again a flaky phantom.
Billions of gallons spiked with agricultural waste is being pumped daily from Lake Okeechobee toward the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, browning the blue coastal waters, choking sea grass beds and crippling small businesses that depend on a healthy marine ecology.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the discharges are necessary because the water in Lake Okeechobee is too high and the old Hoover dike is too weak. Gov. Scott says it’s all President Obama’s fault for not rebuilding the dike, which is absurd.
Scott, who aspires to be a U.S. senator, either has no clue how the appropriations process works, or he’ll simply say any brainless thing to duck responsibility.
A brief civics lesson for our dim and furtive governor: The president cannot write a check for major capital projects. Congress is in charge of funding, and Congress happens to be controlled by the Republicans.
Being a Republican himself, Scott should fly straight to Washington and persuade his colleagues to rebuild the lake dike and fund a flow-way to the Everglades for the excess water.
Why hasn’t that happened? One reason is that Scott has even less clout with Congress than he does in Tallahassee.
14/ I forced myself to watch Voldemort for three minutes of "Morning Joe" video.......
HOW DID THIS CARICATURE OF A HUMAN win two terms? Must be Floriduh.....
Scott dodged the question, opting instead for some mumbo jumbo about his constituents in Florida being a melting pot.
“I want you to answer the question!” Joe Scarborough pressed. “Do you personally think that Islam is a religion that hates America?”
As soon as the Governor began to respond again in terms of his homestate — clearly avoiding any semblance of an answer to what should be an easy question — Brzezinski can be heard telling the Morning Joe producers, “Wrap it.”
“No, no. That’s not answering any questions,” said Brzezinski sharply. She ended the interview immediately, and when Rick Scott attempted to speak again, it became clear his mic had been shut off.
Back from commercial, Brzezinski stated to the viewers, “That’s just not what we do on our show.” Watch the above awkward exchange from MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
15/ Our beautiful Florida coastline is in real trouble, but as the master George Carlin used to say "nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care"....the government YOU elected....
Central Florida's Indian River Lagoon, North Florida's Apalachicola Bay and a trio of coastal estuaries in South Florida are in the throes of ecosystem collapses that threaten sea grass, fisheries, recreation and local economies.
What's to blame? A historic toll of chronic pollution and crippled drainage has been compounded by drought in recent years and El Niño downpours this winter.
The troubled environments are far apart, but their stories are similar and even intertwined.
16/ A treat - Netflix just released season 4 of "House Of Cards", but before you watch it read this synopsis from the Times of previous episodes.....
The third season of “House of Cards” ended practically in midsentence, with President Frank Underwood calling after his wife, Claire, as she walked out of the White House and, seemingly, away from their marriage and political partnership.
The fourth season, which went live on Netflix on Friday, picks up where that charged moment left off, while also continuing to follow Underwood as he campaigns for re-election.
Before settling into another binge-fest, here are a few talking points to keep in mind about some of the show’s key characters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/
Todays video - classic Bud Lite commercials
The sea shell......
Clothing drive.....
Todays old guy joke
Two old guys, one 84 and one 87, were sitting on their usual park bench.
The 87 year old had just finished his morning jog and wasn't even short of breath.
The 84 year old was amazed at his friend's stamina and asked him what he did to have so much energy.
The 87 year old said, "Well, I eat rye bread every day. It keeps your energy level high and you'll have great stamina with the ladies."
So, on the way home the 84 year old stops at the bakery. As he was looking around, the lady asked if he needed any help.
He said "Do you have any Rye bread?"
She said, "Yes, there's a whole shelf of it. Would you like some?"
He said, "I want 5 loaves."
She said, "My goodness, 5 loaves ... By the time you get to the 3rd loaf, it'll be hard"
He replied, "I can't believe it! Everybody knows about this shit but me."
Todays postman joke
After 35 years, mailman George decides to retire. On his last day, he makes his usual rounds.
When he arrives at the first house, the whole family comes out, congratulates him, and sends him on his way with a tidy gift envelope.
At the second house, they present him with a box of fine cigars. The folks at the third house hand him a selection of terrific fishing lures.
At the next house, he is met at the door by a strikingly beautiful woman in a revealing negligee. She takes him by the hand and leads him up to the bedroom, where she blows his mind with the most passionate sex he has ever experienced.
When done, they go downstairs, where she fixes him a giant breakfast. As she pours him a cup of coffee, he notices a dollar bill sticking out from under the cup's bottom edge.
"All this is just too wonderful for words," he says, "but what's the dollar for?"
"Well," she says, "last night, I told my husband that today would be your last day and that I wanted to do something special for you. I asked him what to give you. He said, 'Screw him. Give him a dollar.' But breakfast was my idea."
When he arrives at the first house, the whole family comes out, congratulates him, and sends him on his way with a tidy gift envelope.
At the second house, they present him with a box of fine cigars. The folks at the third house hand him a selection of terrific fishing lures.
At the next house, he is met at the door by a strikingly beautiful woman in a revealing negligee. She takes him by the hand and leads him up to the bedroom, where she blows his mind with the most passionate sex he has ever experienced.
When done, they go downstairs, where she fixes him a giant breakfast. As she pours him a cup of coffee, he notices a dollar bill sticking out from under the cup's bottom edge.
"All this is just too wonderful for words," he says, "but what's the dollar for?"
"Well," she says, "last night, I told my husband that today would be your last day and that I wanted to do something special for you. I asked him what to give you. He said, 'Screw him. Give him a dollar.' But breakfast was my idea."
Todays guy golfer joke
This is one of the Alien Kidnappers who are kidnapping golfers.
Female aliens are invading the earth and kidnapping sexy, good looking men, who are great golfers.
You, personally, are not in any danger.
I just emailed you to say "Goodbye."
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