1/ The always excellent Frank Rich on Trump, the media and Russia.....
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: Trump’s press conference, BuzzFeed, and Bill O’Reilly’s settlement.
Near the end of Donald Trump’s press conference yesterday, Trump was asked if he could “stand here today, once and for all, and say that no one connected” to him or his campaign “had any contact with Russia leading up to or during the presidential campaign.” He tried to avoid the question at the podium, and the press chased him to ask again at the elevator. Is this a sign that Trump’s Russia evasions and broad denials will eventually run out of steam?
Let’s not pretend we don’t know what is happening here. There is evidence that Donald Trump and his administration-in-formation are partially, perhaps wholly, beholden to the Kremlin and/or those Russian oligarchs in its thrall. This is why Trump refused to answer that question about contacts with Russia during the campaign — and why he’ll lie about it when he finally feels he must muster some kind of answer. His symbiosis with Russia is also why he will never release his tax returns, for what other reason could there be at this point except that they reveal the Russian financial ties he denies? After all, we already know the other embarrassments contained in those returns — that he hasn’t paid taxes for years, that he practices no actual philanthropy, and that his businesses are in a perennial waltz with bankruptcy, fraud, and failure.
2/ The wonderful Sam Bee takes a scalpel, no a hatchet to KellyAnne Conway, the Trump enabler......a great seven minutes, and very funny.....
Last night, Samantha Bee used her show on TBS to highlight the achievements of “Donald Trump‘s omnipresent spokes-cobra,” Kellyanne Conway. Bee jokingly showed a mock-up of Conway on the cover of Pussy-grabber Enabler Monthly and rolled her eyes at Conway’s pivots away from tough questions to applause, but it was her slam of CNN’s Chris Cuomo that is flying under the joke radar today.
Bee showed a clip of Conway telling Cuomo during a recent New Day appearance, “You just want to argue with me!”
Cuomo responded, “Not at all. I love you, Kellyanne, and you know it! … You are welcome any time to come on New Day. I’ll make your coffee myself!”
“For more about Kellyanne and Chris’ torrid affair, you can read my erotic novelization, This Just In,” Bee deadpanned as the cover to a paperback romance featuring the pollster and the anchor flashed across the screen behind her.
3/ Bernie Sanders put in an amendment to a Republican bill last week to allow drug importation from Canada, and it had 12 Republican Senators in favor.....but guess what - 13 Democrats voted it down. If you ever wonder why there is no hope for this country, this truly symbolizes it - when it comes down to it it's all about the money in our oligarchy.....
It’s not often that a late-night procedural vote on a non-binding amendment to a non-binding budget resolution becomes the source of red-hot intra-party conflict. But that’s what is happening today as the word spreads that 13 Senate Democrats voted against a Bernie Sanders/Amy Klobuchar amendment encouraging importation of prescription drugs from Canada, while 12 Republicans voted for it.
The vote was actually one to waive a point of order against the Sanders-Klobuchar amendment for being non-germane to the bare-bones budget resolution it sought to amend. So the 46–52 margin by which it failed was actually 14 votes short of what the sponsors needed for success. Thus it failed like the other 16 amendments voted on during the Kabuki theater of the budget resolution “vote-a-rama,” a high-speed series of votes engineered by Senate Democrats to get Senate Republicans on record for casting unpopular or party-dividing votes.
4/ Jimmy Kimmel updates his "man in the street" interviews on Obamacare....an amusing three minutes....
With all the talk going on about repealing and replacing Obamacare — more appropriately known as the Affordable Care Act — it can be easy for some people to be confused about the terminology surrounding complicated healthcare legislation.
But as Jimmy Kimmel showed Tuesday night, some people seem to think there’s a difference between Obamacare and the ACA (this was a similar joke that Alec Baldwin made in-character during last weekend’s SNL, too). The Jimmy Kimmel Live team hit the streets to ask people which one they support as a matter of personal preference.
“So, do you support Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act?” asked the interviewer over and over again.
5/ The erudite Benjamin Studebaker on the same subject - how some Democrats are neoliberals who reject the progressive agenda - the legendary John Lewis and Cory Booker among them.....
Cory Booker, John Lewis, and Discrimination-Only Democrats
by Benjamin Studebaker
In the last week, two news stories have caught my eye:
- Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) attempted to draw praise from Democrats when he broke with Senate norms and testified against Jeff Sessions. Yet that very same day, he voted against legislation which would have enabled Americans to purchase less expensive Canadian medicine.
- Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) claimed that the president elect is “illegitimate”, drawing the standard Trump Twitter response. Liberal media outlets immediately began publishing posts lionizing Lewis as a civil rights hero, as if this made him immune from criticism concerning his congressional record. In the past, Lewis has misled the public about Bernie Sanders’ policies and record as an activist.
Booker and Lewis are often portrayed as if they were radical progressive or left wing figures because of the strong public stances they have taken and continue to take on racial issues. But this activism on race and social issues belies a creeping disinterest in much of the rest of the left’s platform–Booker and Lewis don’t seem to care about tuition-free college or single payer healthcare. Indeed, Booker doesn’t even believe in lowering drug prices by exposing the American pharmaceutical industry to Canadian competition. What’s going on here?
6/ This six minute segment is why Samantha Bee is the edgiest comedian we have - a biting piece on Trump and the golden shower issue.....
(Credit: YouTube/TBS)
The intelligence reports that were leaked Tuesday offered a comedy gold mine. And on Wednesday night, “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee took advantage of the insanity of Donald Trump’s press conference, and the unverified intelligence reports into his involvement with Russia to highlight “what history books will call the end of the free press.”
“There’s a high probability this story is bullshit, but the fact that it’s ‘plausible’ bullshit is a terrifying statement about what our nation has come to,” Bee said, noting that “We absolutely believe that Donald Trump is petty enough to hire someone to take a wizz in a bed his predecessor sat in.”
The comedian noted that what’s in the report would, if true, “be a capital offense.”
7/ Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State would be a disaster for the environment - Bill McKibben explains why....
In one of the futile demonstrations that marked the run-up to the Iraq war, I saw a woman with a sign that read “How Did Our Oil End Up Under Their Sand?” In nine words she managed to sum up a great deal of American foreign policy, back at least as far as the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and helped toss the Middle East into its still-boiling cauldron.
If the Senate approves Rex Tillerson after his testimony on Wednesday, they’ll be continuing in that inglorious tradition – in fact, they’ll be taking it to a new height, and cutting out the diplomats who have traditionally played the middleman role.
Rex Tillerson – who has literally spent his entire working life at Exxon – is big oil personified. It’s like appointing Ronald McDonald to run the agriculture department (which is certainly a possibility, since that job is still unfilled).
8/ In the same stream, SNL's cold open featured Alec Baldwin as Trump, giving his first press conference......not their funniest, but still pretty good as it skewers the orange one....seven minutes.....
Alec Baldwin mercilessly mocked Donald Trump over the Russian golden shower scandal with a long list of peeing puns on Saturday Night Live
Over at SNL Saturday, Alec Baldwin took another spin around the set as Donald Trump, and after he took his turn speaking at a spoof replay of last week’s presser, it was all yellow. In his now-iconic portrayal of president-elect Donald Trump, Baldwin is spot on. When a reporter asks him to comment on his “pee pee party” scandal in Russia, Trump replies, “I’m not talking about the pee pee, because it didn’t happen, and it wasn’t as cool as it sounds!” Refusing to outwardly discuss the event in question, when Trump supposedly hired prostitutes to urinate on a bed that the Obamas had slept in in a posh Moscow hotel (as noted in a British intelligence document released by Buzzfeed last week and picked up and run with by many news organizations – excluding this one), he said, “I want to talk about what’s really important: jobs! I’m going to create a steady stream of jobs…this country will be literally showered with jobs…’cause I’m a whiz at jobs.”
9/ The wonderful Michelle Obama was on Jimmy Fallon, and did a funny skit writing thank you notes.....a wonderful four minutes....she's a natural!
First lady Michelle Obama was Jimmy Fallon’s sole guest on Wednesday’s edition of “The Tonight Show,” where she cheerfully bid farewell to eight years in the White House and surprised thankful Americans leaving her emotional farewell messages.
Obama revealed to Fallon that the final days of her husband’s presidency has “been surprisingly emotional for all of us in ways that we didn’t expect.”
“I didn’t think it was going to be that emotional,” she admitted to Fallon.
10/ George Lakoff is a linguist, and in this fascinating interview he dissects what happened this election and why Trump won......a long one, but very insightful.....
George Lakoff (Credit: Simon & Schuster/Bart Nagel)
George Lakoff didn’t start off in the world of politics. He was a founding father of cognitive linguistics, starting with his 1980 book, “Metaphors We Live By“ (co-authored with philosopher Mark Johnson). The book showed how immediate, concrete experience — bodily orientation, physical movement, and so on — structures our understanding of more complex and abstract experiences via “conceptual metaphors” such as “Consciousness Is Up,” “Love Is a Journey,” etc.
Facing the rise of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and bewildered by how he and other liberals could not make logical sense of conservative ideology (what do gun rights, low taxes and banning abortion have in common?), Lakoff found an answer in conceptual metaphors derived form two contrasting family models explicated by Diana Baumrind as authoritarian (“strict father” in Lakoff’s terms) and authoritative (“nurturant parent”), as described in his 1996 book, “Moral Politics.” His 2004 book, “Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate,” drew on a wider range of cognitive science and gained a mass audience, but failed to fundamentally change how liberals and Democrats approach politics, as was richly illustrated by the recent election of Donald Trump.
11/ There's a pretty good documentary about the legendary Daft Punk on Showtime, and watching it brought back this live session at the Grammy awards, with Pharrell, Stevie Wonder and Daft Punk with "Get Lucky"......
Daft Punk performs onstage during the 56th GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center on January 26, 2014 in Los Angeles, California.
12/ Fake books for the subway.....Presidential edition.....an amusing three minutes.....
Fancy some light, fake reading in advance of Donald Trump’s inauguration?
Scott Rogowsky of the YouTube series “Running Late” issued his latest video showing the host perusing falsely titled books on the subway.
These tomes from the “Unpresidented Edition” include Trump’s “How to Succeed in Business without Paying Your Contractors” and Mike Pence’s “Prejudice & Prejudice.”
13/ Another excellent column from Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald, on the green slime disaster that Rick Scott and the Republicans won't fix, because Big Sugar owns them.....
The paid soldiers in Gov. Rick Scott’s war on the environment are aligning to block state efforts to purchase any farm lands south of Lake Okeechobee, which means Floridians can look forward to more summers of slime.
Nightmare algae blooms, vile and job-killing, are destined to be one of Scott’s legacies. Next June, when the St. Lucie estuary again turns puke-green and the oyster beds die, the light-footed governor will be nowhere in the vicinity.
Neither will the tourists.
The blooms are caused by billions of gallons of fresh water that are pumped from Lake O during the rainy season. Loaded with phosphorus and other pollutants from surrounding areas, the lake discharges are mainlined toward both Florida coasts, bringing ruin to saltwater habitats.
Senate President Joe Negron, who lives in Stuart — basically Slime Central — wants the Lake O outflows diverted, cleaned in reservoirs and sent south to the Everglades.
The plan, supported by many scientists and conservation groups, would require purchasing 60,000 acres from agriculture. Only eight years ago, U.S. Sugar embraced such a concept, calling it a “monumental opportunity to save the Everglades” and struck a deal to unload 187,000 acres.
14/ For you movie buffs - Rolling Stone's collection of the 50 best movies coming in 2017, all with trailers....
Looks like some great films to see this year.....
Todays video - a helmet cam of a Yamaha super bike being chased by cops.....wow.....
Todays geezer joke.....
Robert, 85, married Susan, a lovely 25 year old...since her new husband is so old, Susan decides that after their wedding she and Robert should have separate bedrooms, because she is concerned that her new but aged husband may over-exert himself if they spend the entire night together.After the wedding festivities Susan prepares herself for bed and the expected knock on the door. Sure enough the knock comes, the door opens and there is Robert, her 85 year old groom, ready for action.They unite as one... Allgoes well, Robert takes leave of his bride, and she prepares to go to sleep.After a few minutes, Susan hears another knock on her bedroom door, and it's Robert, Again he is ready for more 'action'.Somewhat surprised, Susan consents for more coupling. When the newlyweds are done, Robert kisses his bride, bids her a fond good night and leaves.She is set to go to sleep again but, aha you guessed, it Robert is back again, rapping on the door and is as fresh as a 25 - year - old, ready for more 'action'. And, once more they enjoy each other.But as Robert gets set to leave again, his young bride says to him, 'I am thoroughly impressed that at your age you can perform so well and sooften. I have been with guys less than a third of your age who were only good once. You are truly a great lover, Robert.'Robert, somewhat embarrassed, turns to Susan and says: 'You mean I was here already?'
Todays Russian joke
Yossel Zelkovitz worked in a Russian pickle factory. For many years, he had a powerful, almost uncontrollable desire to put his penis in the pickle slicer.Unable to stand it any longer, he finally sought professional help from the factory psychologist.After six months of intense therapy, however, the frustrated therapist gave up. He then advised Yossel to go ahead and do it, otherwise he would probably never have any peace of mind.The next day Yossel came home from work very early. His wife, Sacha, became alarmed and wanted to know what had happened.For the first time, Yossel tearfully confessed to her his tormenting desire to put his penis in the pickle slicer. He went on to explain that today he finally went ahead and did it, and he was immediately fired.Sacha gasped and ran over to her husband. She quickly yanked down his pants and shorts only to find a normal, completely-intact penis.She looked up and said, "I don't understand. What about the pickle slicer?"Yossel replied, "I think she got fired, too."Todays Jewish jokeMan's best friend.
A Jewish man was leaving a convenience store with his espresso when he noticed a most unusual Italian funeral procession approaching the nearby cemetery.A black hearse was followed by a second black hearse about 50 feet behind the first one.Behind the second hearse was a solitary Italian man walking a dog on a leash.Behind him, a short distance back, were about 200 men walking single file.
The man couldn't stand the curiosity. He respectfully approached the Italian man walking the dog and said: "I am so sorry for your loss, and this may be a bad time to disturb you, but I've never seen an Italian funeral like this. Whose funeral is it?""My wife's."
''What happened to her?"
"She yelled at me and my dog attacked and killed her."He inquired further, "But who is in the second hearse?"
The Italian man answered, "My mother-in-law. She was trying to help my wife when the dog turned on her."A very poignant and touching moment of Jewish and Italian brotherhood and silence passed between the two men.The Jewish man then asked "Can I borrow the dog?"The Italian man replied, "Get in line."
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