1/ John Oliver looked at the Republican Healthcare bill last night, and if you are a little unsure of what's in it this 18 minute piece of brilliant comedic reporting will tell you.....this is one of his best segments yet.....amusing and very informative....
Courtesy of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver
John Oliver compared the GOP's recently unveiled Obamacare replacement plan to an unwanted Pirates of the Caribbean sequel on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. "The American Health Care Act: You may not have wanted it. It looks awful. But it's here anyway. Try to think of it as the legislative equivalent of "Pirates of the Caribbean 5: The Curse of Johnny Depp Getting Divorced and Needing the Money."
2/ The Trump administration and the crazy himself are masters of throwing out bright shiny objects for the media and us dupes to swoon over.....but look what they are doing while we are distracted. This is going to be a very sick [physically] country in a decade or so.....
WASHINGTON — Giants in telecommunications, like Verizon and AT&T, will not have to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that their customers’ Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released.
Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will not be punished, at least for now, for not collecting extra money from customers to cover potential losses from certain kinds of high-risk trades that helped unleash the 2008 financial crisis.
These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times.
3/ This is amusing.....three minutes from Conan.....
Conan O’Brien imagines hilarious phone calls between Trump and Obama
Conan O’Brien leaked phone conversations between President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama on his TBS show Tuesday night. The audio recordings may have been made up, but the dialogue was eerily realistic.
The first phone call seemingly took place right after Trump announced to the worldthat his predecessor had wiretapped him. Trump apologized to Obama for having to investigate him, even though the former president insisted that he did not order surveillance of Trump.
“But you know I didn’t do that,” Obama said.
“I know, but we still have to investigate it, otherwise it’ll look like I’m just mentally unstable,” Trump responded.
4/ More on the DeVos clan and how they want to make this country a religious state.....scary stuff - they have the money to do it, plenty of allies and they're not afraid to use their clout and money....
Good article in Rolling Stone by Janet Reitman.... Betsy Devos at her confirmation hearing for Education Secretary in January 2017.
A few weeks after September 11th, 2001, with the nation reeling from the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., about 400 or so of the country's leading Christian conservative investors convened at the luxury Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. They were there for the 17th annual meeting of the Gathering, a four-day, invitation-only philanthropic and networking event for the Christian donor class, whose members often describe themselves, simply, as "believers." The perks awaiting them in their off hours included a 27-hole golf course, nine crystalline swimming pools and a luxury spa. At dusk, the ruddy hues of the desert rippled across the stone patios where, warmed by fire pits, some of the most important funders of Christian charity, and the Christian right, sipped cocktails and talked about expanding the Kingdom of God.
5/ A pretty good SNL sketch - "The Translator" with Scarlett Johanssen.....a decent five minutes of Trumpy jokes.....
Kind of a sister sketch to the Tom Hanks' "Black Jeopardy" segment last fall, this has a conceit so great it's shocking that it hasn't been done before: What if your dog could talk, and you absolutely hated what came out of its mouth?
Part of the comedy comes from the simple conceit of having a creature that has silently watched you at your worst suddenly able to reveal all your secrets. But the other part comes from not wanting to hear a particular point of view that conflicts with your own. Hearing Max the pug praise the rising stock market is funny enough. But Max pointing out his owner's hypocrisy over reproductive rights after having him fixed is a pretty brilliant way to point out how Americans in 2017 talk over rather than to one another.
6/ In case you didn't know [95% likely] there is a nasty little war going on in South Sudan, with tens of thousands of people dying....
An excellent photo essay from the Times, showing the horror that is passing unnoticed in our Trump obsessed media....
War Consumes South Sudan, a Young Nation Cracking Apart
Women waiting in the early morning at a water collection point in a camp for displaced people in Bentiu, South Sudan, last month. War has driven millions from their homes.
YAMBIO, South Sudan — Simon Burete was weeding his peanut field a few weeks ago when he saw smoke coming from his house. He ran as fast as he could.
He and his wife, Angelina, had enjoyed years of peace, he farming the fields, she selling the produce in the market. They were poor but welded to each other. Just that morning, they had talked about walking into town to buy their first mobile phones.
But as Mr. Burete made it back to the house, out of breath, red dirt still stuck to his knees, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His wife was lying on the floor, burned to death in a rampage by government forces.
“I used to call her akara-ngba,” he said, which means in the Zande language “the last word on beauty.”
He could barely choke out the words.
South Sudan’s war and its full ugliness are engulfing new, previously peaceful areas of the nation, spelling horror for the victims and signifying something deeper: This country is cracking apart.
7/ The beautiful Scarlett Johanssen as Ivanka....a two minute commercial from SNL.....very good....
Scarlett Johansson appears as Ivanka Trump in a mock ad on Saturday Night Live.
On last night’s SNL, Scarlett Johansson played Ivanka in a TV spot that mimicked the Calvin Klein “Obsession” ads of the ’90s, complete with glam filters and sotto voce voiceover. Her “new fragrance”, called “Complicit”, was created for just for Ivanka: “A feminist, an advocate, a champion for women,” the commercial asks. “But, like, how?”
SNL has made fun of Ivanka Trump before, but never in a sketch solely about her behavior, politics, and failure to speak out against the president when his actions seem to go against her proclaimed feminism. Before her father was elected, Ivanka spoke out for paid family leave and the rights of women at work — especially as she is a businesswoman and mother herself — but has recently been silent on these issues while her father chips away at progress made on these issues.
8/ John Oliver took on the Jeff Sessions / Russia connection in this excellent nine minute comedic reporting segment.....
John Oliver
Late night veteran John Oliver opened up Last Week Tonight on Sunday going after Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The comedian skewered the former Alabama Senator for his Russia ties and the self-inflicted wound of failing to disclose his meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Oliver took issue with Sessions seemingly bringing up his non-involvement with Russia unasked.
“There is an obvious problem there,” noted Oliver. “He just implicated himself out of the blue, which should have been immediately suspicious.” The comedian suggested that Sessions immediate reaction after the claim suggested he knew he had erred.
“it looks like he’s about to loosen his collar and audibly say the word ‘gulp.'”
9/ This picture and the controversy around it has been cited as the way women are unfairly treated in the media. Really? Here we have 60 Black University Presidents, dressed to the nines, meeting with the President of the United States and there's Kellyanne on the sofa....
Sorry - looks like LRWT to me.... (Credit: Donald Trump/ Twitter) 10/ One SNL skit you may not have seen was the Jeff Sessions/Al Franken "Weekend Update" appearance on SNL.....a very good four minutes....Kate McKinnon is wickedly funny as the weasel.....
Alec Baldwinmade headlines earlier this week when he declared that he may soon retire his beloved Donald Trump impression on Saturday Night Live, in no small part because the president’s continued “lack. . .of sportsmanship” has sucked the fun out of the job: “The maliciousness of this White House has people very worried,” Baldwin said. “Which is why I’m not going to do it much longer, by the way.”
You know who is still having a blast playing a politician on S.N.L., though? Kate McKinnon, that’s who. You can almost feel the joy radiating from her in the above clip from this weekend’s show, which marks the third time the sketch series’s M.V.P. has strapped on a white wig and a thick Southern drawl to play Jeff Sessions. Her first appearance as the attorney general was brief and largely overshadowed by the return of Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer; her second was a perhaps overly complicated, Forrest Gump-inspired bit that cast McKinnon’s Sessions in the title role.
It has long been obvious to anyone following health policy that Republicans would never devise a workable replacement for Obamacare. But the bill unveiled this week is worse than even the cynics expected; its awfulness is almost surreal. And the process by which it came to be tells you a lot about the state of the G.O.P.
Given the rhetoric Republicans have used over the past seven years to attack health reform, you might have expected them to do away with the whole structure of the Affordable Care Act — deregulate, de-subsidize and let the magic of the free market do its thing. This would have been devastating for the 20 million Americans who gained coverage thanks to the act, but at least it would have been ideologically consistent.
But Republican leaders weren’t willing to bite that bullet. What they came up with instead was a dog’s breakfast that conservatives are, with some justice, calling Obamacare 2.0. But a better designation would be Obamacare 0.5, because it’s a half-baked plan that accepts thelogic and broad outlineof the Affordable Care Act while catastrophically weakening key provisions. If enacted, the bill would almost surely lead to a death spiral of soaring premiums and collapsing coverage. Which makes you wonder, what’s the point?https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/opinion/a-bill-so-bad-its-awesome.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad 12/ The Baseline Scenario is an economic blog that looks at issues in depth.....you have Krugman's opinion piece above, here James Kwak looks at the facts...
After the dangerous clown show that has been the Trump White House, it’s comforting to return to some good, old-fashioned conservative policymaking: bashing the poor to cut taxes on the rich. I’m talking, of course, about the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Health care financing can sometimes seem like a complicated topic. Adverse selection, risk adjustment, blah blah blah. But it’s easy to understand the American Health Care Act or, as it is sure to be known, Trumpcare. In the medium term, financing policies have little effect on the price of health care. At most we can hope to “bend the [long-term] cost curve.” So health care policy essentially comes down to a single question: Who pays?
Let’s start with the most fundamental element of the Republican plan, the one most near and dear to Paul Ryan’s heart, the principle that has kept the conservative coalition unified since 1994: cutting taxes on the rich. Trumpcare willeliminate virtually all of the taxesthat Obamacare introduced to expand health care coverage, including the Medicare surcharges that only apply to high earners: 0.9% on earned income and 3.9% on investment income. That in itself is a 16% cut in taxes on investments for a class of people who make lots of money from investments.https://baselinescenario.com/2017/03/07/soak-the-poor-feed-the-rich/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BaselineScenario+%28The+Baseline+Scenario%29 13/ Do you still have hope for our planet? Then don't read this story from the Times on how Big Ag companies like Cargill have started cutting down the Amazon forests again...We are so screwed....
Smoke wafts skyward in a forest in Brazil
COLONIA BERLIN, Bolivia — A few months ago, a representative from Cargill traveled to this remote colony in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands in the southernmost reaches of the vast Amazon River basin with an enticing offer.
The American agricultural giant wanted to buy soybeans from the Mennonite residents, descendants of European peasants who had been carving settlements out of the thick forest for more than 40 years. The company would finance a local warehouse and weighing station so farmers could sell their produce directly to Cargill on-site, the man said, according to local residents.
One of those farmers, Heinrich Janzen, was clearing woodland from a 37-acre plot he bought late last year, hustling to get soy in the ground in time for a May harvest. “Cargill wants to buy from us,” said Mr. Janzen, 38, as bluish smoke drifted from heaps of smoldering vegetation.
I have been trying to write this for a while, but the morphine and lack of juicy cheeseburgers (what has it been now, five weeks without real food?) have drained my energy and interfered with whatever prose prowess remains. Additionally, the intermittent micronaps that keep whisking me away midsentence are clearly not propelling my work forward as quickly as I would like. But they are, admittedly, a bit of trippy fun.
Still, I have to stick with it, because I’m facing a deadline, in this case, a pressing one. I need to say this (and say it right) while I have a) your attention, and b) a pulse.
Soon after being confirmed as the new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt said this to a conference of conservative activists:
“I think people across the country look at the EPA the way they look at the IRS.”
Pruitt’s remark makes clear the sort of people he’s listening to and aims to serve. Corporate polluters look at the EPA the same way corporate tax cheats look at the IRS — as the enemy.
Regulation can be burdensome even for good companies trying to do the right thing.
But for those dumping waste into rivers or spewing toxins in the sky, the slightest shadow of oversight is threatening and therefore despised, for obvious reasons.
The good people of Flint, Michigan, whose tap water turned undrinkable, likely hold a different view of the EPA than, say, coal lobbyists. If you live in Flint, you might wish the agency were stronger, not weaker.
A few days after his wife disappeared in a kayaking accident, a Bar Harbor man answered his door to find two grim faced Harbor Master officials:
"We're sorry Mr. Flynn, but we have some information about your wife."
Cedric Flynn asked "Tell me, did you find her?"
One officer said, "We have some bad news, some good news and some really great news,"
Fearing the worst...Flynn said..."Give me the bad news first."
"We're sorry to tell you that this morning we found your wife's body in the Bay."
"Lord sufferin' Jesus!" exclaimed Flynn..."what could possibly be the good news?"
The officer continued, "When we pulled her up, she had 12 of the best looking Atlantic Lobsters that you've ever seen clinging to her...haven't seen lobsters like that since the 60's. We think you're entitled to a share of the catch."
Stunned, Mr. Flynn demanded, "If that's the good news, then what's the great news?"
The officer replied, "We're gonna pull her up again tomorrow."
Todays guy joke Todays weeks worth of jokes
MONDAY
The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex.
Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family's status, she consulted the family doctor.
The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms.
Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the mother told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms.
The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother, saying,
'Oh Mom! You don't have to worry about that! I'm dating Susan!'
TUESDAY
A man went to church one day and afterward he stopped to shake the preacher's hand.
He said, 'Preacher, I'll tell you, that was a
damned fine sermon. Damned good!'
The preacher said,
'Thank you sir, but I'd rather you didn't use profanity.'
The man said, 'I was so damned impressed with that sermon I put five thousand dollars in the offering plate!'
The preacher said, 'No shit?'
WEDNESDAY
Brenda and Steve took their six-year-old son to the doctor.
With some hesitation, they explained that although their little angel appeared to be in good health, they were concerned about his rather small penis.
After examining the child, the doctor confidently declared, 'Just feed him pancakes. That should solve the problem.'
The next morning when the boy arrived at breakfast, there was a large stack of warm pancakes in the middle of the table.
'Gee, Mom,' he exclaimed. 'For me?'
'Just take two,' Brenda replied. 'The rest are for your father.'
THURSDAY
One night, an 87-year-old woman came home from Bingo to find her 92-year-old husband in bed with another woman..
She became violent and ended up pushing him off the balcony of their 20th floor apartment, killing him instantly.
Brought before the court, on the charge of murder, she was asked if she had anything to say in her defense.
'Your Honor,' she began coolly, 'I figured that at 92,if he could screw, he could fly.'
FRIDAY
A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa .
'The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. However, there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?'
After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said,
'Wedding Cake.'
SATURDAY
Bob, a 70-year-old, extremely wealthy widower, shows up at the Country Club with a breathtakingly beautiful and very sexy 25-year-old blonde-haired woman who knocks everyone's socks off with her youthful sex appeal and charm and who hangs over Bob's arm and listens intently to his every word. His buddies at the club are all aghast.
At the very first chance, they corner him and ask, 'Bob, how'd you get the trophy girlfriend?'
Bob replies, 'Girlfriend? She's my wife!'
They are knocked over, but continue to ask.'So, how'd you persuade her to marry you?'
'I lied about my age', Bob replies.
'What, did you tell her you were only 50?'
Bob smiles and says, 'No, I told her I was 90.'
SUNDAY
Groups of Americans were traveling by tour bus through Holland.
As they stopped at a cheese farm, a young guide led them through
the process of cheese making, explaining that goat's milk was used.
She showed the group a lovely hillside where many goats were grazing.
'These' she explained, 'Are the older goats put out to pasture when they no longer produce.'
She then asked, 'What do you do in America with your old goats?'
A spry old gentleman answered, 'They send us on bus tours!
(Credit: Donald Trump/ Twitter)
Outstanding! I appreciate the effort you put into your blog, David. Nicely done.
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