1/ John Oliver has done an "epiphany-like" comedic reporting segment on Ivanka and Jared, and if you are like me and haven't really focused on these two except for the hope that they are sane, you need to watch this. It's 22 minutes, but very insightful and I guarantee you will think differently when you hear their names after you watch this.....
Truly excellent....
John Oliver
Comedian, John Oliver dedicated his most recent episode of Last Week Tonight to a takedown of Jared and Ivanka Trump. The presidential daughter and son-in-law are widely seen as moderating influences in the White House and have soothed the jangled nerves of liberals worried about an erratic Donald Trump.
Oliver pointed out, however, that there really wasn’t much evidence for any of those beliefs, playing a clip of Ivanka telling CBS’s Gayle King that “My father agrees with me on so many issues, and where he doesn’t, he knows where I stand,” she declined to elaborate. “I think most of the impact I have over time most people will not actually know about.”
“Oh, well, that’s convenient!” said Oliver. “So we should just give her credit when good stuff happens, and blame others when bad stuff happens? That’s not a job description of a political adviser, that’s a description of an Old Testament God. And that answer there enables you to project whatever you want onto her based on secondhand rumors and assumptions.”
2/ The Republican plan to repeal Obamacare may be a little delayed, but it is still in motion.....Paul Krugman tells us how with his column in the Times....
Imagine a man who for some reason is determined to stuff a balloon into a box — a box that, aside from being the wrong shape, just isn’t big enough. He starts working at one corner, pushing the balloon into position. But then he realizes that the air he’s squeezed out at one end has caused the balloon to expand elsewhere. So he tries at the opposite corner, but this undoes his original work.
If he’s stupid or obsessive enough, he can spend a long time at this exercise, trying it from various different angles, and maybe even briefly convince himself that he’s making progress. But he’s kidding himself: No matter what he does, the balloon isn’t going to fit in that box.
Now you understand what’s happening to G.O.P. efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
3/ Bill Maher with his opening monologue.....a decent one....five good minutes..
Bill Maher
Real Time” was back on Friday, and host Bill Maher took a bit of time out from his usual President Donald Trump-bashing to giggle about disgraced former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
Calling O’Reilly’s forced departure the end of an era and a “settlement” by Fox News, Maher said the last straw for the embattled network was when a black woman employee emerged, saying “O’Reilly used to call her ‘hot chocolate’, which I find shocking. Fox News hired a black woman?” Maher joked. “There was universal condemnation. Even Sean Spicer said, “Come on, even Hitler didn’t call black women ‘hot chocolate’.””
So O’Reilly’s out, but who’s still copacetic at Fox News, mused Maher? Sean Hannity. “Amid all the troubles over there,” said Maher, “I want you to know Hannity remains completely free of any sex scandal. Unless you count the nightly blowjob he gives to President Trump.”
4/ An amusing segment from the "Daily Show".....Trevor Noah theorises Trump is always high.....
Trevor Noah thinks its strange that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is vehemently against the legalization of marijuana, especially if you consider the “Daily Show” host’s theory that the president is always high.
Noah provided very convincing evidence for his theory during Thursday night’s episode in recognition of 4/20, also known as “Weed Day,” where advocates celebrate the unofficial marijuana holiday.
The comedian also admitted to being high when he came up this idea, but he insists his video footage of President Donald Trump only strengthens his argument.
5/ Interesting article from Molly Worthen about how our "alternative fact" environment has it's roots in the evangelical Christian movement.....where you have to believe in some really dumb stuff to be a part of it....
THE arrival of the “post-truth” political climate came as a shock to many Americans. But to the Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, charges of “fake news” are nothing new. “The deep distrust of the media, of scientific consensus — those were prevalent narratives growing up,” she told me.
Although Ms. Evans, 35, no longer calls herself an evangelical, she attended Bryan College, an evangelical school in Dayton, Tenn. She was taught to distrust information coming from the scientific or media elite because these sources did not hold a “biblical worldview.”
“It was presented as a cohesive worldview that you could maintain if you studied the Bible,” she told me. “Part of that was that climate change isn’t real, that evolution is a myth made up by scientists who hate God, and capitalism is God’s ideal for society.”
Conservative evangelicals are not the only ones who think that an authority trusted by the other side is probably lying. But they believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural human aversion to unwelcome facts a special power on the right. This religious tradition of fact denial long predates the rise of the culture wars, social media or President Trump, but it has provoked deep conflict among evangelicals themselves.
6/ Billionaires are working to colonise Mars, but as Bill Maher says in a really good "New Rules" - how about us here first!
On the eve of Earth Day, Bill Maher had some choice words for the media’s obsession with the planet Mars. Calling “red the new green,” Maher said we should “f**k Mars!” Maher spent his New Rules segment tearing apart billionaires like Richard Branson, who he mockingly quoted as saying “I am determined to be a part of starting a population on Mars,” and then showed a photo of Branson doing water sports with a nude model.
“Everyone has to shut up about Mars and how cool it would be to live there,” Maher continued, then referred to films like “The Martian” with Matt Damon (whose only food on Mars, noted Maher, was “sh**t potatoes”), and criticized wealthy entrepreneurs for romanticizing the red planet while ignoring our own. He also showed his disdain for President Trump’s plan to chart a space course for Mars, costing ridiculous amounts of money.
7/ A very well written article that tries to reason why climate change is largely ignored by the majority of people, and it's because the slowness of the climate changing gives us time to adapt to "nuisance flooding" as they call it now, and extreme heat has become days you don't go out.....
Quite fascinating, and depressing too - it's pretty clear nothing is going to be done about our climate till it's too late.....
Our Climate Future Is Actually Our Climate Present
How do we live with the fact that the world we knew is going and, in some cases, already gone?
We seem able to normalize catastrophes as we absorb them, a phenomenon that points to what Peter Kahn, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, calls “environmental generational amnesia.” Each generation, Kahn argues, can recognize only the ecological changes its members witness during their lifetimes. When we spoke recently, Kahn pointed to the living conditions in megacities like Kolkata, or in the highly polluted, impoverished areas affected by Houston’s oil refineries, where he conducted his initial research in the early ’90s. In Houston, Kahn found that two-thirds of the children he interviewed understood that air and water pollution were environmental issues. But only one-third believed theirneighborhood was polluted. “People are born into this life,” Kahn told me, “and they think it’s normal.”
8/ Good story about how to lower the cost of drugs.....but the solution is here already - just send your prescription off to one of the many Canadian websites [I use CanadaDrugs.com] and they will fill your prescription....
One of Donald Trump’s few universally welcomed campaign promises was to do something about the prices of pharmaceutical drugs. Most Americans recognize that prices are too high, and are bothered by the rise of pharmaceutical price gouging: the giant price increase for decades-old drugs and devices by the likes of Martin Shkreli with Daraprim or Mylan with the EpiPen. But what few people realize is that the president already has the power to do something about drug prices if he really wants to. If Mr. Trump wishes to show he’s serious about his populist promise, the place to start is by declaring war on the price gougers.
The key power is found in the “import relief” law — an important yet unused provision of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 that empowers the Food and Drug Administration to allow drug imports whenever they are deemed safe and capable of saving Americans money. The savings in the price-gouging cases would be significant. Daraprim, the antiparasitic drug whose price was raised by Mr. Shkreli to nearly $750 per pill, sells for a little more than $2 overseas. The cancer drug Cosmegen is priced at $1,400 or more per injection here, as opposed to about $20 to $30 overseas.
9/ But once you get your prescriptions filled, do you actually need the drugs? The answer is that you need to take control of your own health, and don't let the medical - industrial complex run your body into the ground....
The point of prescription drugs is to help us get or feel well. Yet so many Americans take multiple medications that doctors are being encouraged to pause before prescribing and think about “deprescribing” as well.
The idea of dropping unnecessary medications started cropping up in the medical literature a decade ago. In recent years, evidence has mounted about the dangers of taking multiple, perhaps unnecessary, medications.
Deprescribing will work only if patients also get involved in the process. Only they can report adverse effects that they sense but that are not apparent to clinicians. And they need to be comfortable weaning from or dropping drugs that they are accustomed to and believe to be helpful.
Yet an increasing number of Americans — typically older ones with multiple chronic conditions — are taking drugs and supplements they don’t need, or so many of them that those substances are interacting with one another in harmful ways. Studies show that some patients can improve their health with fewer drugs.
10/ This is a social media story, and quite fascinating.....
How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life
As she made the long journey from New York to South Africa, to visit family during the holidays in 2013, Justine Sacco, 30 years old and the senior director of corporate communications at IAC, began tweeting acerbic little jokes about the indignities of travel. There was one about a fellow passenger on the flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport:
“ ‘Weird German Dude: You’re in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.’ — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals.”
Then, during her layover at Heathrow:
“Chilly — cucumber sandwiches — bad teeth. Back in London!”
And on Dec. 20, before the final leg of her trip to Cape Town:
“Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
Todays video - our favorite dog clip.....one minute....
Todays golf jokes
Ten Best Caddy ResponsesNumber :10Golfer: "I think I'm going to drown myself in the lake."Caddy: "Think you can keep your head down that long?"Number : 9Golfer: "I'd move heaven and earth to break 100 on this course."Caddy: "Try heaven, you've already moved most of the earth."Number : 8Golfer: "Do you think my game is improving?"Caddy: "Yes . . . . You miss the ball much closer now."Number : 7Golfer: "Do you think I can get there with a 5 iron?"Caddy: "Eventually."Number : 6Golfer: "You've got to be the worst caddy in the world."Caddy: "I don't think so . . . .That would be too much of a coincidence."Number : 5Golfer: "Please stop checking your watch all the time. It's too much of a distraction."Caddy: "It's not a watch - it's a compass."Number : 4Golfer: "How do you like my game?"Caddy: "It's very good - but personally, I prefer golf."Number : 3Golfer: "Do you think it's a sin to play on Sunday?Caddy: "The way you play, it's a sin on any day."Number : 2Golfer: "This is the worst course I've ever played on."Caddy: "This isn't the golf course . . . . We left that an hour ago."And the Number : 1 . . . . Best Caddy Comment:Golfer: "That can't be my ball, it's too old."Caddy: "It's been a long time since we teed off, sir."
Todays Trump jokes
What is Donald Trump telling all his supporters? Orange Is The New Black.
Trump: "Foreign Policy?, if you mess with the United States, there will be hell toupee."
How is Donald Trump going to shut down the Department of Education? By renaming it Trump University.
What did Donald Trump say to the birthday boy? "Let me see your birth certificate".
If minorities have the race card and women have the gender card, what do rednecks have? The Trump Card
Why shouldn't Donald Trump rag on illegal immigrants? Because an undocumented worker has been living on his head for the past 2 decades!
If you're black you literally have to be a brain surgeon to get a Trump cabinet post.
What does Melania see in Donald Trump? "Ten billion dollars and high cholesterol!"
Now that Macy's has severed ties, with Donald Trump, how can the average American look like the President? By hunting and killing their own hair piece.
Why is Donald Trump always seen with Melania? Because all his other wives support Hillary.
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