1/ Kate McKinnon as Hillary, at the piano, sings Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".....see if you can keep from tearing up.....wonderful....
2/ Matt Taibbi.....a must read.....one of our smartest political commentators lets us know how, where and when the Democrats and elites got it all so wrong....it's a combination of a clueless Democratic party, media blindness and ignoring the real pain of the white middle class.....
President Trump: How America Got It So Wrong
Journalists and politicians blew off the warning signs of a Trump presidency – now, we all must pay the price
Donald Trump enters the White House as a lone wrecking ball of conspiratorial ideas, a one-man movement unto himself who owes almost nothing to traditional Republicans.
Tuesday, November 8th, early afternoon. Outside the Trump Tower in Manhattan, a man in the telltale red Make America Great Again hat taps me on the shoulder.
"You press?" he says, looking at a set of lanyards around my neck.
I nod.
"F**k yourself," he says, thrusting a middle finger in my face. He then turns around and walks a boy of about five away from me down Fifth Avenue, a hand gently tousling his son's hair.
This was before Donald Trump's historic victory. The message afterward no doubt would have been the same. There's no way to overstate the horror of what just went down. Sure, we've had some unstable characters enter the White House. JFK had health problems that led him to take amphetamine shots during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan's attention span was so short, the CIA had to make mini-movies to brief him on foreign leaders. George W. Bush not only didn't read the news, he wasn't interested in it ("What's in the newspapers worth worrying about?" he once asked, without irony).
3/ Bill Maher with an excellent New Rules - "We're Still Here"......five very good minutes.....
On Friday night, Bill Maher called on Hillary supporters to resist the urge to flee the country in the wake of Trump’s election.
Maher called on liberals to ‘join the resistance’ and make sure that ‘jubilant Trump supporters’ know, ‘we’re still here.’
Maher likened to America’s dividedness today to having a roommate you hate.
“Roommates can move out, patriots can’t,” Maher said. “America needs you, more than ever. Right here with me and the rest of the resistance until we can figure out how to really make America great again and don’t ever let them forget: We’re still here.
4/ Benjamin Studebaker takes a step back, calmly and dispassionately, to figure out where the left goes from here.....
How the Left Can Survive Under Trump
by Benjamin Studebaker
Over the last few days, many people have been panicking about what Donald Trump might do as president. There is a lot of fear. Because most commentators and academics are deeply hostile to Trump, many people writing about this are still deeply emotionally shaken by the result. This has tended to color the analysis and produce polemics. So today I want to take a step back and try to calmly, rationally assess what kind of threat Trump poses and what opportunities he creates. In this post we’ll focus on the threats, and in the next one we’ll talk about the opportunities
On the internet, many Trump supporters like to refer to him as “God Emperor”. They depict him as a heroic imperial figure:
Trump is a right nationalist, and during the campaign he said many things that seemed to evoke troubling periods in recent human history.
5/ Light relief - some funny roadside signs....
6/ The title of this very good story is:
Heaven help us — George Carlin was right: Donald Trump is America
As a wise comedian says, we must own Trump — he didn't fall from the sky and, yes, he is a reflection our nation
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a campaign rally at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2016, in Eau Claire, Wis.(
George Carlin was a master comedian, which is to say he was more than funny: He possessed a genius insight into human nature and the workings of our society. Carlin was perhaps most famous for his standup routines on topics such as the foolishness of believing in God, the “seven dirty words” and the folly that is national or ethnic pride.
But during a long career that contained many gems, Carlin made an observation that is especially insightful for describing this political season and Election Day.
Carlin said the following:
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.”
7/ Paul Krugman with a "mea culpa", and he thinks about where we go from here.....
So what do we do now? By “we” I mean all those left, center and even right who saw Donald Trump as the worst man ever to run for president and assumed that a strong majority of our fellow citizens would agree.
I’m not talking about rethinking political strategy. There will be a time for that — God knows it’s clear that almost everyone on the center-left, myself included, was clueless about what actually works in persuading voters. For now, however, I’m talking about personal attitude and behavior in the face of this terrible shock.
First of all, remember that elections determine who gets the power, not who offers the truth. The Trump campaign was unprecedented in its dishonesty; the fact that the lies didn’t exact a political price, that they even resonated with a large bloc of voters, doesn’t make them any less false. No, our inner cities aren’t war zones with record crime. No, we aren’t the highest-taxed nation in the world. No, climate change isn’t a hoax promoted by the Chinese.
So if you’re tempted to concede that the alt-right’s vision of the world might have some truth to it, don’t. Lies are lies, no matter how much power backs them up.
8/ With the Trump victory it's pretty clear we will not only tear up our climate accord, but will go backwards with CO2 emissions.....this will just about guarantee the planet will be toast in 100 years or so, and because of the acceleration of sea level rise and the degradation of the oceans and extreme weather our way of life will be under severe pressure much faster than you think. Being in my 60's the mantra was "yep it's coming, but we won't be here to see it".
Guess what - if we live for another 20 years, we WILL see it.....we are seeing the effects of a 1.1 degree rise right now....
Anyway a very good article from Rolling Stone on why the Republican party denies the science of global warming.....
One day in 2009, Henry Waxman, the Democratic congressman representing Santa Monica and Malibu, paid a visit to one of his Republican counterparts, a ruddy-faced Texan named Joe Barton. After Democrats had won back the House of Representatives the previous year, Waxman staged an intraparty coup and seized the chairman's gavel of the Energy and Commerce committee, which oversees most legislation on the environment. He vowed to address what he saw as the gravest threat facing the planet: climate change. As an opening gesture, Waxman approached Barton, the committee's top Republican, about finding a way to work together on the new legislation.
9/ Escape from the politics....watch a young lizard escape from a snake pit..... you'll be rooting for the lizard.....an exciting three minutes....
This scene from the season premier of Planet Earth II might be the most intense nature sequence ever filmed.
10/ One of our nations wise men Garrison Keillor with a pithy and sanguine WaPo column, titled -
Trump voters will not like what happens next
So he won. The nation takes a deep breath. Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president. We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. We liberal elitists are wrecks. The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped. Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.” It just doesn’t chant.
The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now. They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls. It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch. The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out. They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.
11/ Funny but serious.....Samantha Bee with a great post election segment ....eight passionate minutes.....
Samantha Bee gives a monologue the day after the 2016 election, November 9, 2016.
Samantha Bee compared the election of Donald Trump to the "democratic equivalent of installing an above-ground pool" in a scathing, but hopeful election night recap on Full Frontal Wednesday.
After cheekily taking blame for the outcome – noting a bad luck streak that included appearing on an episode of Law and Order right before it was canceled – Bee focused on the demographic breakdown of 2016 voters, specifically the significant number of white men and women who voted for Trump. "I don't want to hear a goddamn word about black voter turnout – how many times do we expect black people to build our country for us?" Bee cracked.
Despite Bee's disappointment and anger, she closed out her recap noting several historic down-ballot races, such as the elections of Ilhan Omar, the first Somali-American legislator, Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina senator, Kamala Harris, the first Indian senator – and California's first African-American senator – and Illinois Senator-elect, war hero Tammy Duckworth. "I like that congress is starting to look more like this and less like this," Bee joked, showing a picture of white, male congressional stalwarts. "Then let's get off the floor and get busy – especially you, white women. We've got some karma to work off."
12/ Michael Moore's five point plan for the aftermath of the election.....in full here:
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.
2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.
3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.
4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You're fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above). Let's try to get this all done by noon today. -- Michael Moore
13/ A great John Oliver "normal" segment of comedic reporting on multi-level marketing, aka pyramid schemes.....very good indeed, about 17 minutes.....
“Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver on Sunday shined a spotlight on the predatory infrastructure of multilevel marketing (MLM) schemes like nutrition supplement company Herbalife.
In 1985, facing criticism for overstating the product’s health benefits, Herbalife founder Mark Hughes was summoned before a Senate subcommittee to answer to health experts — about whom he later asked, “If they’re so expert in weight loss, why were they so fat … ?”
And as ABC News discovered in its 2014 investigation into the company, independent distributors still overinflate Herbalife’s health benefits. Undercover cameras at a training session in New York caught one distributor claiming Herbalife allowed her to become pregnant for the first time at age 40.
14/ Jim Gutenberg with a story from the Times on the complete failure of our media to not only not seeing this coming, but reinforcing the "it's in the bag for Hillary" mantra....
All the dazzling technology, the big data and the sophisticated modeling that American newsrooms bring to the fundamentally human endeavor of presidential politics could not save American journalism from yet again being behind the story, behind the rest of the country.
The news media by and large missed what was happening all around it, and it was the story of a lifetime. The numbers weren’t just a poor guide for election night — they were an off-ramp away from what was actually happening.
No one predicted a night like this — that Donald J. Trump would pull off a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and win the presidency.
The misfire on Tuesday night was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media.
15/ Honest Trailers does "Lord Of The Rings".....these are really funny, but this one is particularly good....four minutes.....
16/ This is really interesting - it's a 14 question quiz from PBS to see how well informed you are......I think I can guarantee you won't get 100%.....it's a tough quiz....
Why are American voters so angry?
Much of this anger seems to stem from the economy; more than three-quarters of Americans rate the economy poorly, according to the CNN poll. Anger about the economy has played a leading role in the 2016 race, whether it’s workers losing jobs to trade and globalization, college graduates suffocating under the weight of student loan debt or families struggling after the Great Recession.
We teamed up with Jim Stone, author of “Five Easy Theses: Common-Sense Solutions to America’s Greatest Economic Challenges,” to see how informed you are about the economic challenges America faces — and whether your anger is based on the facts.
Todays video - "Die Meyers", a German trapeze couple.....quite amusing.....
Todays husband joke
A husband went to police station to report his missing wife:Husband : I've lost my wife, she went shopping yesterday and has still not come home.Sergeant : What is her height ?Husband : Oh, 5 something . . .Sergeant : Build?Husband : Not slim, not really fat.Sergeant : Colour of eyes?Husband : Never noticed.Sergeant : Colour of hair?Husband : Changes according to season.Sergeant : What was she wearing?Husband : Dress/suit/blue jeans -- I don’t remember exactly.Sergeant : Did she go in a car?Husband : Yes.Sergeant : What kind of car was it?Husband : 2015 Corvette Stingray 3LT with the Z51 Performance Package, shark grey metallic paint, with the 6.2 litre V8 engine with Direct Injection generating 460 HP. 8-speed paddle-shift automatic transmission, and GT bucket seats. At this point the husband started crying...Sergeant : Don't worry sir…….We'll find your car.
Todays joke collection
No comments:
Post a Comment