1/ This is a controversial story......it's based on a poll that runs Trump against Clinton again.....
Are American voters actually just stupid? A new poll suggests the answer may be “yes”
ABC News poll suggests that if we ran the election all over again, Trump would still win — by more. What gives
(Credit: Getty/Mark Wallheiser/Drew Angerer)
Are tens of millions of Americans really this stupid? If the findings from a new ABC News poll are any indication, then the answer is yes:
There’s no honeymoon for Donald Trump in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll but also no regrets: He approaches his 100th day in office with the lowest approval rating at this point of any other president in polls since 1945 — yet 96 percent of those who supported him in November say they’d do so again today. . . .Among those who report having voted for [Trump] in November, 96 percent today say it was the right thing to do; a mere 2 percent regret it. And if a rerun of the election were held today, the poll indicates even the possibility of a Trump victory in the popular vote among 2016 voters.
This is despite all the lies Donald Trump has told and all the campaign promises he has betrayed
2/ A very good Seth Meyers "A Closer Look" and he examines Trump's first 100 days....a very amusing 10 minutes, funny and clever.....well worth watching....
Seth Meyers took ‘a closer look’ at Trump’s first 100 days
As President Donald Trump approaches his 100th day in office, just about the only accomplishments he can point to were achieved with executive orders. So, Seth Meyers wondered, what did Trump think of executive orders when President Obama was in the White House?
“Claiming you’ve been a good president just because you signed a lot of executive orders makes no sense,” the Late Night host said. “But don’t just take it from me, take it from this guy,” he added before playing clip after clip of Trump essentially calling Obama lazy for taking action without Congress.
“It is at this point like a law of physics. For every Trump action, there is an equal and opposite Trump clip,” Meyers said.
3/ The master, Frank Rich with his thoughts on Trump's first 100 days....
The Failure of Trump’s First 100 Days Is a Win for America
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 100th day looms.
This weekend marks the end of President Trump’s first 100 days — a chance to evaluate not only his progress (or lack thereof), but how the nation will change under a Trump administration. What are the early signs of the changes he’s brought to Washington, to our understanding of politics and political journalism, and to our sense of civic engagement?
As someone is writing every ten minutes now, Trump’s first hundred days have been marked by no major achievements beyond the successful nomination of a Supreme Court justice.
4/ This new Heineken ad is amazing......it's still an ad, made to sell beer but it's really good.....four minutes.....
In the commercial, strangers, with starkly diverging political opinions, meet up — a transgender woman and a man who doesn’t believe in trans rights, a feminist and an anti-feminist, a climate change denier and a fervent believer — each not knowing the beliefs of the other. They get to know each other, casually, as they build bar stools and a bar together.
By the end of the tasks, their political beliefs are revealed in a projected video and they have the option to either stay, have a beer and discuss, or leave. Each person decides to stay and the couples open up to each other about their experiences and how it led them to their political stances. The ad attempts to send the message: whether one’s views are far right or far left, there is humanity.
5/ An excellent story from The Week about how the global elites are going to get a huge surprise - the people are angry, and they are too blind to see it.
Wait for the French election on May 10th....the pundits are predicting the country will rally round Macron, but according to this article we might expect Marine le Pen to be the next Trump....
The global elite think they're sitting pretty. How wrong they are.
Democrats keep telling themselves that Hillary Clinton "really" won the 2016 election (or would have, had it not been for interference by Vladimir Putin and James Comey). Republicans keep patting themselves on the back about how much power they now wield at all levels of government. And centrists throughout the West are breathing a sigh of relief about Emmanuel Macron's likely victory over the National Front's Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election on May 7.
You can almost hear the sentiments echoing down the corridors of (political and economic) power on both sides of the Atlantic: "There's nothing to worry about. Everything's fine. No need for serious soul searching or changes of direction. Sure, populism's a nuisance. But we're keeping it at bay. We just need to stay the course, fiddle around the edges a little bit, and certainly not give an inch to the racists and xenophobes who keep making trouble. We know how the world works, and we can handle the necessary fine tuning of the meritocracy. We got this."
And why wouldn't they think this way? They are themselves the greatest beneficiaries of the global meritocracy — and that very fact serves to validate its worth. They live in or near urban centers that are booming with jobs in tech, finance, media, and other fields that draw on the expertise they acquired in their educations at the greatest universities in the world. They work hard and are rewarded with high salaries, frequent travel, nice cars, and cutting-edge gadgets. It's fun, anxious, thrilling — an intoxicating mix of brutal asceticism and ecstatic hedonism.
6/ Ingrid Michaelson with "Girls Chase Boys". Remember the Robert Palmer video "Simply Irresistible"? This is a modern day version of that, with a gender flip......so there's lots of, ahem, shall we say "lads" in makeup and scanty clothes.....
Ladies - a music video for you!
The video is an homage to Robert Palmer's 1988 classic "Simply Irresistible." Whereas that video features a be-suited Palmer crooning in front of a group of heavily made-up, scantily-clad ladies, Michaelson's begins with the singer performing in front of an equally made-up, scantily-clad group of guys. Soon enough, women join in for some up-close shots of butt-grinding, the men's shirt's come off and everyone seems to be having a grand old time dancing to Michaelson's upbeat jam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
And gentlemen - here is the original "Simply Irresistible", with 13 supermodels......
7/ Matt Taibbi with the latest Trump appointee.....he joins a long list of corrupt and venal scum. This is the true tragedy of this Administration - these people are looting and pillaging our money, backed by the power of the state.....scary stuff...
In early 2007, a group of Morgan Stanley bankers bundled a group of subprime mortgage instruments into a package they hoped to sell to investors. The only problem was, they couldn't come up with a name for the package of mortgage-backed derivatives, which they all knew were doomed.
The bankers decided to play around with potential names. In a series of emails back and forth, they suggested possibilities. "Jon is voting for 'Hitman,'" wrote one. "How about 'Nuclear Holocaust 2007-1?'" wrote another, adding a few more possible names: Shitbag, Mike Tyson's Punchout and Fludderfish.
Eventually they stopped with the comedy jokes, gave the pile of "nuclear" assets a more respectable name – "Stack" – and sold the $500 million Collateralized Debt Obligation with a straight face to the China Development Industrial Bank. Within three years, the bank was suing a series of parties, including Morgan Stanley, to recover losses from the toxic fund.
The name on the original registration document for Stack? Craig S. Phillips, then president of Morgan Stanley's ABS (Asset-Backed Securities) division. Phillips may not have written the emails in question, but he was the boss of this sordid episode, and it was his name on the comedy-free document that was presented to Chinese investors.
8/ Thomas Frank with a warning to the Democratic Party - you need to change.....
Excellent article....
T
he tragedy of the 2016 election is connected closely, at least for me, to the larger tragedy of the industrial midwest. It was in the ruined industrial city of Cleveland that the Republican Party came together in convention last July, and it was the deindustrialized, addiction-harrowed precincts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that switched sides in November and delivered Donald Trump to the Oval Office.
I am a midwesterner too, and I like to think I share the values and outlook of that part of the country. I have spent many of the last 15 years trying to understand my region’s gradual drift to the political right. And I have spent the last three weeks driving around the deindustrialized midwest, visiting 13 different cities to talk about the appeal of Donald Trump and what ails the Democratic Party. I met labor leaders and progressive politicians; average people and rank-and-file union members; senior citizens and Millennials; sages and cranks.
9/ Amazingly enough the Simpsons are still going, and here they skewer Trump's first 100 days in a very amusing 2 minutes.....
The Simpsons celebrate President Donald Trump's big accomplishments from his first 100 days in office – lowering his golf handicap, increasing his Twitter followers, making it legal to shoot hibernating bears – in a hilarious and depressing new short.
The clip opens with scenes of West Wing chaos as Sean Spicer dangles from a rope in the Briefing Room and Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon strangle each other. Meanwhile, Trump lays in bed and scrolls through his phone, as the tiny dog disguised as his hairpiece resettles on his head. When an aide brings him a bill designed to lower taxes just for Republicans, the President groans, "Can't Fox News read it and I'll watch what they say?"
Trump then turns on the TV where new Supreme Court Justice Ivanka Trump is sworn in as Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dragged out
10/ This country is changing quicker than you think....what this article in Bloomberg doesn't mention is all the jobs that are lost, and often reasonably paid jobs....
Retailers Are Going Bankrupt at a Record Pace
Department stores, electronics sellers, and clothing shops are most at risk.
Retailers are filing for bankruptcy at a record rate as they try to cope with the rapid acceleration of online shopping.
In a little over three months, 14 chains have announced they will seek court protection, according to an analysis by S&P Global Market Intelligence, almost surpassing all of 2016. Few retail segments have proven immune as discount shoe-sellers, outdoor goods shops, and consumer electronics retailers have all found themselves headed for reorganization.
11/ A cartoon from the past.....[or is it?]
12/ Tom Tomorrow on the United incident.....
13/ "The Handmaids Tale" is on Hulu, and it's a vision of Trump's and Pence's America....
The promise of a "new normal," spoken by an apparatchik of a totalitarian theocracy – it's chilling, and like so many other scenes in The Handmaid's Tale, Hulu's 10-episode adaptation of Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopian classic, it stays with you in part because it doesn't feel unfamiliar enough. Like the book, the series – starring Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, and Alexis Bledel, and which begins streaming on April 26th – takes place in the former United States now known as Gilead. A surveillance state with Puritanical roots, the nation has responded with violence to plunging birth rates caused by environmental crisis. Fertile women such Moss's Offred and Bledel's Ofglen are captives, forced to bear children on behalf of the barren wives of the ruling class. For them, voluntary intimacy remains forbidden, as are books. Conversation is largely scripted. "Praise be" greets all news of the war's success; "under his eye" is a form of parting.
From the moment it was published 35 years ago, The Handmaid's Tale has been eerily prescient.
Todays farmers jokes....
Farmers can be really wise. They learn a lot by making their living from the land, or from raising livestock on their property. Here is some wisdom from the farm.
- “Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.”
- “Keep skunks, lawyers and bankers at a distance.”
- “Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.”
- “A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.”
- “Words that soak into your ears are whispered…….not yelled.”
- “Meanness don’t just happen overnight.”
- “Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.”
- “Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.”
- “It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.”
- “You cannot unsay a cruel word.”
- “Every path has a few puddles.”
- “When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.”
- “The best sermons are lived, not preached.”
- “Most of the stuff people worry about, ain’t never gonna happen anyway.”
- “Don’t judge folks by their relatives.
- “Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.”
- “Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.
- “Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t bothering you none.”
- “Timin’ has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.”
- “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.”
- “Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
- “The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.”
- “Always drink upstream from the herd.”
- “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.”
- “Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.”
- “If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.”
- “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God.” “Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.”
Todays golf joke
This threesome is at a public course and the starter comes over and says, “Do you mind if this rabbi plays with you?” They say, “No problem.” The rabbi walks up on the tee with banged-up clubs, a tattered golf bag and a yarmulke instead of a golf hat — but then proceeds to shoot a 69.
At the end of the round one of the other players asks, “Rabbi, how did you get so good?”
“You have to convert to Judaism,” he answers. So, a year goes by and the same three guys arrange to play with the rabbi again. He shoots another 69, but they all still shoot in the 90s. At the end of the round, one says: “Rabbi, I don’t get it. We all converted like you said, but you still shot 69 and we all still shot in the 90s. What’s wrong?”
“What synagogue did you get converted at?” the rabbi asks earnestly.
“Temple Beth Shalom,” they answer in unison.
“Oh no,” says the rabbi. “Temple Beth Shalom? That’s for tennis!”
