1/ Where the the Democrats went wrong across the country, losing not only the Presidency but also elections at every level in 30+ states.....Sean McElwee has some observations in Salon.....
Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton; Paul Ryan (Credit: AP/Reuters/Chris Keane/Rick Wilking/Mary Altaffer/Photo montage by Salon)
To an extent that is rarely true of an opposition party, Democrats can claim a mandate of resistance. Donald Trump lost the popular vote by a large margin, he’s incredibly unpopular and the Republicans have broken norms around using any tools available to gum up the opposition party’s agenda. In a welcome development, Democrats have largely avoided their classic debate about whether they should throw women or people of color under the bus in order to remain electorally competitive (though some pieces in this genre have slipped through).
But while “resistance” is a welcome posture for Democrats, it’s one that very few have clearly defined. Most autopsies have focused on Hillary Clinton’s campaign failures and messaging, but these are ancillary to the more structural failures of the Democratic Party over the last few years and offer only limited help to understand what’s coming next. Next week, I’ll discuss some principles for Democrats going into the future. But before Democrats can go forward, it’s worth understanding what’s been going wrong.
Mistake 1: Focusing on Perception, Not Power
Throughout Barack Obama’s time in office, Democrats have proved incapable of fighting back against Republican subterfuge because of their commitment to “respectability politics.”
2/ Steve Carrell and Kristen Wiig give the Golden Globe award for the best animated film, but their two minute intro was hilarious.....
At tonight’s Golden Globes, Kristen Wiig and Steve Carrell presented the award for Best Animated Film. In their intro, they each recalled their stories of seeing their first animated movies. As we’ve come to expect from the two of them, the stories aren’t what you might picture.
3/ The crisis we rarely hear about.....opioids across America, fueled by the drug companies who pump these pills out to anyone because they are "legal".....a Times special report, with some excellent photographs.....
Katie Harvey of Marblehead, Mass., displays a tattoo next to track marks. The tattoo represents her goal to break free of
Opioid addiction is America’s 50-state epidemic. It courses along Interstate highways in the form of cheap smuggled heroin, and flows out of “pill mill” clinics where pain medicine is handed out like candy. It has ripped through New England towns, where people overdose in the aisles of dollar stores, and it has ravaged coal country, where addicts speed-dial the sole doctor in town licensed to prescribe a medication.
Public health officials have called the current opioid epidemic the worst drug crisis in American history, killing more than 33,000 people in 2015. Overdose deaths were nearly equal to the number of deaths from car crashes. In 2015, for the first time, deaths from heroin alone surpassed gun homicides.
And there’s no sign it’s letting up, a team of New York Times reporters found as they examined the epidemic on the ground in states across the country. From New England to “safe injection” areas in the Pacific Northwest, communities are searching for a way out of a problem that can feel inescapable.
4/ The liberal redneck muses on Barack Hussein Obama.....quite an amusing three minutes from Trae Crowder....
Trae Crowder, “The Liberal Redneck,” took a break from “sh*tting (his) pants in abject terror” over Donald Trump to appreciate the outgoing president, Barack Obama.
Crowder admits he liked Obama, “everybody’s gun-hating Muslim from Kenya,” from the beginning.
“I loved his message, his ideas — he was different, he was young, he was cool, he was funny,” Crowder said. “Most importantly of all, to me, he was an unparalleled expert at pissing off sh*tty white people.”
Crowder considers himself a connoisseur of the art of pissing off sh*tty white people, saying he likes to sit around in a Colin Kaepernick jersey listening to the Dixie Chicks and watching YouTube videos of Tim Tebow’s failures.
“When it comes to pissing off sh*tty white people, Barack Hussein Obama is a first-ballot hall-of-famer,” Crowder said. “He changed the game. Ain’t nobody done it like he done it — nobody.”
5/ A Facebook posting and comments that you will find difficult to believe.....note - lots of expletives....
Man celebrating vote to repeal Obamacare learns he is on Obamacare.
6/ Bill McKibben in the Boston Globe imploring Democrats not to blow their only opportunity to regain power.....
ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Representative Keith Ellison and Senator Bernie Sanders.
It demonstrates that an honest, bold message, paired with a leader who passes the authenticity test, can move young people into political action. And that should thrill Democrats. Broken as the party is at the moment, demographics means that, indeed, young people are the future. And cynical as they are about politics, they are not lost to the party.
7/ An analysis of highs and lows from the awards show......Jimmy Fallon was one of the lows.........Meryl Streep was the high! A really bitchy article [delicious], and below is Streep's speech...
This image released by NBC shows Meryl Streep accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017. (Paul Drinkwater/NBC via AP)(Credit: AP)
It takes a truly poor Golden Globes host to make a person miss Ricky Gervais.
This is said in full acknowledgment of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s tag team magnificence in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Nothing compares. And in light of Meryl Streep’s eloquent, fiery criticism of the president-elect delivered during her acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille Award on Sunday, to have had them as ringmistresses of the 74th Golden Globes show could have made it a night for the ages.
Instead, we got Jimmy Fallon.
Missing Gervais is no snub to Fey and Poehler, understand. Rather, it’s meant to fully convey what a plummeting disappointment “The Tonight Show” host was because I’m referring to the Gervais that hosted the Globes for the fourth time. The one who strutted out midway through 2016’s self-congratulatory booze fest and pleaded to be euthanized. “Kill me,” he said, speaking for most of the audience watching at home.
Meryl Streep's speech at the GG.....six excellent minutes.....things you might like to say about Trump, but much more articulate!
8/ An edgy cartoon from our local artist Taylor Jones....
9/ One potential advantage to Democrats could be our soon to be former First Lady - most interesting story from the Times on Michelle Obama and her future....
On Jan. 20, Michelle Obama will hand her home over to a man who rose to power in part by spreading lies about her husband and intends to pulverize much of his work. If presidential tradition and her own recent conduct are any guide, she will carry herself through inauguration morning with quiet calm and few hints of what she is really thinking. After Donald J. Trump recites the oath of office, a helicopter — no longer called Marine One, because the president will not be on board — will lift the Obamas into new lives.
Soon after, Michelle Obama will have a choice to make: Should she start — or rather, resume — speaking in public with her fuller voice?
10/ Animal courtships, performed by humans.....I know it sounds weird as it's an ad for condoms, but it's a beautifully done two minutes of modern dance....
Who knew animal mating rituals could be so romantic?
In the video above (which is really an ad for the condom brand brand Sagami Original Condoms), dancers perform the courtships of six different animals on busy streets.
The result, entitled “Act of Love,” is a graceful and goofy waltz that illustrates the wild world of animal love: birds cuddle, flamingoes flock and crabs waddle in sync, side-by-side.
11/ Rachel Maddow with a report last week on the Russian Intelligence statement from Trump - rare for our spineless media, she exposes his lies and called them just that.....lies....a great four minutes....
Fridays
’s broadcast of The Rachel Maddow Show, host Rachel Maddow tore into the statement released by President-elect Donald Trump following his briefing with intelligence leaders earlier today over Russia meddling in the election.
What really got the MSNBC host’s blood boiling is that it was apparent that “our new president will flat out lie to us.” Her basis for that statement was over Trump’s declaration following the meeting that Russian efforts to interfere “had no effect on the outcome of the election.”
As Maddow pointed out, the declassified version of the report that was publicly released after the meeting said no such thing. She then let loose with a blunt assessment of what Trump did with his statement.
“He put out a written statement about what he learned in the briefing,” she stated. “And he blatantly, and overtly, bluntly, simply lied about what is in this report. Right before this report got publicly released so we could check ourselves and see that he was lying.”
She added that she doesn’t “get weirded out” that much by the news but “this puts a shiver down my spine.”
12/ I think I can guarantee you have never heard of this guy, the former mayor of Mumbai, but read this story and wonder if he has been reincarnated in our own Donald J. Trump.....fascinating....
As I watched Donald J. Trump campaigning, I thought, I’ve seen this show before. It was in the 1990s in Bombay (now called Mumbai). And the man playing the Trump part was Bal Keshav Thackeray, the leader of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, who rode to power on a wave of outrageous stories, bluster, lies, bigotry and showmanship. He died in 2012 after ruling — and ruining — the city I grew up in. The road to understanding Mr. Trump might just lie through understanding Mr. Thackeray, and what became of Bombay.
Mr. Thackeray, who founded his Shiv Sena party in 1966, began his career as a political cartoonist. He had a gift for outrageous parody. His own appearance was a caricature of a Bollywood guru: In his later years, he took to wearing dark shades, an orange robe and a necklace of holy beads, holding a Cohiba in one hand and a glass of warm beer in the other. His party workers, his ministers and the press referred to Mr. Thackeray as “The Supremo.”
He was a master of the art of the outrage, of politics as performance. He would castigate his opponents as “vampires,” “a sack of flour” and various untranslatable epithets like calling South Indians “yandu-gundus.” Periodically, he would express admiration for Hitler, immediately attracting thousands of news pages of free publicity.
13/ Watch this heartwarming little satirical video about a worthy cause.....a millennial somewhere needs your help.....a wryly amusing three minutes....
Millennial International is a sponsor based program designed to help Millennialslive the lives they portray on social media...
14/ A really different version of "Bohemian Rhapsody", played on a fairground organ.......interesting how one mouths the words in your head from this music....well I did anyway.....a lovely four minutes......
Bohemian Rhapsody Will Never Be Heard The Same Way Again…
Since its release, the song has been covered in just about every possible way imaginable. Whether it’s acapella, or piano, or even bluegrass, you name it, it’s been done. But have you ever heard this song played back on a 100-year-old Fairground Organ. Chances are that you haven’t, but that’s about to change and for the better, might I add! What you’re about to watch is the aforementioned get played back on the aforementioned instrument. It’s beautiful and if you’re like me and have a fear of all things circus/clowns/fair etc, quite creepy. Nevertheless it is simply beautiful. Don’t believe me? See for yourself!
15/ A climate crisis you haven't heard of - a huge swath of Southern Africa is in the midst of a historic drought, and millions of people are slowly starving....Nicolas Kristof from the Times with this story, which starts with a Times Video [seven minutes].....heartbreaking....
I met Ranomasy at an emergency feeding station run by Catholic nuns who were trying to save her baby. Ranomasy had carried Tsapasoa 12 hours on a trek through the desert to get to the nuns, walking barefoot because most villagers have already sold everything from shoes to spoons to survive.
“I feel so powerless as a mother, because I know how much I love my child,” she said. “But whatever I do just doesn’t work.”
The drought is also severe in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and a related drought has devastated East Africa and the Horn of Africa and is expected to continue this year. The U.N. World Food Program has urgently appealed for assistance, but only half the money needed has been donated.
The immediate cause of the droughts was an extremely warm El Niño event, which came on top of a larger drying trend in the last few decades in parts of Africa. New research, just published in the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, concludes that human-caused climate change exacerbated El Niño’s intensity and significantly reduced rainfall in parts of Ethiopia and southern Africa.
16/ Some media items:
If you are totally over our corporate media's version of so-called news, give "Vice News" a try on HBO at 7.30 pm weekdays......it looks, feels and sounds like real news.....recommended by your scribe!
Want to watch a wonderful movie to take you out of your funk? "Hell Or High Water", on Amazon for $4.99.....exciting, amusing, and listen for the zingers.....one of the best movies out there.....
"Manchester By The Sea" has been critically acclaimed as an acting tour de force.....it's true, and it features a leading man [Casey Affleck] who is full of pain and how he affects everyone around him......you will never see better performances from some incredible actors!
But after you watch it you just want to slit your wrists.....a downer, but great performances.........
Todays video - an Honest Trailer for a classic movie "The Princess Bride".....which contains the line "My name is Inigo Montoya - you killed my father - prepare to die...."
Honest Trailers, the YouTube channel from Screen Junkies that recreates trailers of beloved movies with the addition of some all-too-true quips, has finally gotten around to creating one for “The Princess Bride.”
It was worth the wait.
Todays medical joke
A woman and a baby were in the doctor's examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in for the baby's first exam.
The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his weight, and being a little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed.
'Breast-fed,' she replied.
'Well, strip down to your waist,' the doctor ordered.
She did. He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and rubbed both breasts for a while in a very professional and detailed examination.
Motioning to her to get dressed, the doctor said, 'No wonder this baby is underweight. You don't have any milk.'
I know,' she said, 'I'm his Grandma.
Todays Irish Nuns joke
A car full of Irish nuns is sitting at a traffic light in downtown Dublin, when a bunch of rowdy drunks pull up alongside of them.
"Hey, show us yer teets, ya bloody penguins!" shouts one of the drunks.
Quite shocked, Mother Superior turns to Sister Mary Immaculata, and says, "I don't think they know who we are; show them your cross."
Sister Mary Immaculata rolls down her window and shouts, "Piss off, ya fookin' little wankers, before I come over there and rip yer balls off!"
Sister Mary Immaculata then rolls up her window, looks back at Mother Superior, quite innocently, and asks, “Did that sound cross enough?”
Todays birthday joke
|
No comments:
Post a Comment