1/. The editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, with a withering editorial on Trump.....I have never read anything like it.....wonderful....
The media, the opposition, the resistance, and indeed the rest of the Free World are playing by outmoded rules of engagement with regard to the man in the White House. The thing is, you cannot rise above Donald Trump, you cannot go under him, and you cannot engage him in a conventional way. Before he became president, you could basically ignore him—he was a local joke, after all. Now that he’s commander in chief, you must resist him, with everything that is in you and in every way you can. As anyone who has followed his jerry-rigged career from the 1980s onward will tell you, Trump just drags you to the bottom of the pond every time. Decades ago, he was a short-fingered vulgarian tooling around town in a mauve stretch limo, reeking of Brut. In those days, competitors, subcontractors, politicians, and wives were the ones who found themselves mired in the Trump muck. Now it is the country that’s up to its knees in it.
2/. The wonderful Samantha Bee on the horrid toxic garden gnome Jeff Sessions......five very amusing minutes....
Samantha Bee isn’t buying Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “folksy bullshit.”
On Wednesday’s broadcast of “Full Frontal,” Bee broke down Sessions’ testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee over his alleged contact with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Compared to Comey Day, Sessions-palooza was a Southern fried snoozefest,” said Bee.
She then accused the AG of suffering from “selective amnesia.”
“Aw, shucks, look at me, I’m too cute to be a dad-blamed perjurer,” she said, mimicking his voice.
3/. A long but intelligent analysis of the present state of the Democratic Party, and what it has to do to win - by James Kwak....
If you like logic and clear thinking, this is for you.....
The Importance of Fairness: A New Economic Vision for the Democratic Party
By James Kwak
A lot has been written recently about the direction of the Democratic Party. This is what I think.
I have been a Democrat my entire life. Today, the Democratic Party matters more than ever because it is the only organization currently capable, at least theoretically, of preventing the Republicans from turning the United States into a fully-fledged banana republic, ruled by and for a handful of billionaire families and corporate chieftains, with a stagnant economy and pre-modern levels of inequality. Yet I cannot find anything to disagree with in Senator Bernie Sanders’s assessment:
“The model the Democrats have followed for the last 10 to 20 years has been an ultimate failure. That’s just the objective evidence. We are taking on a right-wing extremist party whose agenda is opposed time after time and on issue after issue by the vast majority of the American people. Yet we have lost the White House, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, almost two-thirds of the governors’ chairs and close to 900 legislative seats across this country. How can anyone not conclude that the Democratic agenda and approach has been a failure?”
4/. Bill Maher on coal vs retail, and the stupidity of Trump......one of his better ones....four pretty good minutes....
“Make America shop again”: Bill Maher takes on the decline
of big box stores and the rise of coal mines
The "Real Time" host said that President Trump should be focusing on jobs at Kohl's, not the coal mines
Amazon’s impending acquisition
“Americans no longer shop ’til they drop,” Maher said Friday night. “They click ’til they’re sick.”
This abrupt change in the way Americans shop has endangered shopping malls and put some big box stores out of business.
“The jobs we’re losing aren’t in coal, they’re at Kohl’s,” Maher said.
Americans haven’t heard a peep from Trump on the changing retail industry. His focus seems to be on coal miners and truck drivers.
“What is this fetish Trump has with coal miners? Do they have a pee tape on him?” Maher asked his audience. “Why do Trump and his fans care so much about some jobs and not at all about others. We know that coal mining is 95 percent male and 95 percent white, but I’m sure that’s not it.”
5/. Andrew Sullivan on the mentally ill Trump..... and how incredibly dangerous he is....
Let me put this as simply as I can. After firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians, the president is now openly smearing and threatening to fire his successor as most prominent investigator, special counsel Robert Mueller. There is no question about the motive behind all this, because Trump has told anyone within hearing distance or access to a television that he fired Comey to kill a vital and important investigation into Russian interference in our elections, which yesterday Putin all but admitted: “They meddle in all other countries’ affairs, what did they expect?” For good measure, Trump is now openly arguing through surrogates that Mueller is acting in bad faith, pursuing a “witch hunt,” and should be fired if his investigation gets anywhere near the president.
Every now and again, you have to take a moment, stop being distracted by the constant breaking news, and let all this sink in.
6/. Seth Meyers with a 12 minute riff on Trump's and Session's troubles last week......a very good 12 minutes....
Few are more informed about the Russia investigations than the late-night hosts who spend every night telling jokes about the matter.
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers traces this whole mess back to Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmation hearing before the judiciary committee, when he provided a false answer to a question from Sen. Al Franken. Meyers played the Jan. 10 clip — made famous because of Sessions’ worried look after his response — to refresh his audience’s memory.
“Look at that face,” Meyers said Tuesday night. “That’s a face of a man immediately regretting the words he just said. That’s the same face Sessions would make after saying, ‘Well, Mr. LeBron James, I do believe I can beat you one-on-one and I am willing to bet my life savings.'”
During Tuesday’s testimony, Sessions told the Senate intelligence committee in a fiery opening statement that he was prepared to defend his honor from “scurrilous innuendo.”
“That’s right, Sessions is defending his honor from scurrilous innuendo,” Meyers said. “There is nothing more southern than scurrilous innuendo.”
7/. Great story from the Times - read it and tell me it's wrong....
Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich
When I was growing up, my mother would sometimes threaten my brother and me with elocution lessons. It is no secret that how you talk matters a lot in a class-saturated society like the United Kingdom. Peterborough, our increasingly diverse hometown, was prosperous enough, but not upscale. Six in 10 of the city’s residents voted for Brexit — a useful inverse poshness indicator. (In Thursday’s general election, Peterborough returned a Labour MP for the first time since 2001.)
Our mother, from a rural working-class background herself, wanted us to be able to rise up the class ladder, unencumbered by the wrong accent. The elocution lessons never materialized, but we did have to attend ballroom dancing lessons on Saturday mornings. She didn’t want us to put a foot wrong there, either.
8/. Stephen Colbert on Fox New's decision to drop their slogan "fair and balanced".....a funny three minutes....
It’s the end of an era at Fox News as the right-wing cable network has decided to abandon its longtime slogan, “fair and balanced.” Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s “The Late Show,” addressed this change during his monologue Thursday night.
“Fox News is droppings its ‘fair and balanced’ slogan,” the comedian informed his audience. “I assume because they finally watched themselves.”
“According to a Fox insider, the slogan was dropped because the phrase had been mocked,” he added.
Colbert, looking guilty as hell, then put his finger on his lip as if he just got caught doing something wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed to the cameras.
9/. Looks like a great idea!
Don't laugh. You're just upset that you didn't think of this great invention. And you know that you are going to forward this on...
10/. The tiny home movement has been all over the news, but I wonder if it's a way for the oligarchs to condition us into accepting the crumbs they are leaving us...."be happy with your 400 sq. ft." as they squeeze the middle class dry. This story is a dose of reality about living in a small space....
What No One Ever Tells You About Tiny Homes
My husband and I share a 492-square-foot apartment in Cambridge, Mass. We inhabit a “micro apartment,” or what is sometimes called a tiny house. This label is usually proudly applied to dwellings under 500 square feet, according to Wikipedia. We are unwittingly on a very small bandwagon, part of a growing international movement.
But deep inside the expensive custom closets and under the New Age Murphy beds, the pro-petite propaganda has hidden some unseemly truths about how the other half lives. No one writes about the little white lies that help sell this new, very small American dream.
Here, on the inside, we have found small not so beautiful after all. Like the silent majority of other middling or poor urban dwellers in expensive cities, we are residents of tiny homes not by design, but because it is all our money can rent.
Tiny houses are booming.
11/. The wonderful Above and Beyond with another acoustic song "I Can"t Sleep", live at Porchester Hall In London.
12/. And to continue the corporate goal of giving us diminished expectations, how about some pink slime? They are now saying it's good for you......
Times - be ashamed!
Of all the gross-out stories about food that have broken the Internet in recent years — maggots in mushrooms, “wood chips” in shredded cheese, bug bits in chocolate bars — nothing has captured the public imagination more than “pink slime.”
Before 2012, the makeup of ground beef was a bit of a don’t-ask, don’t-tell situation. But that year, ABC News ran a series of stories on lean, finely textured beef — the industry term for pink slime — and the process by which a South Dakota plant called Beef Products Inc. added it to ground beef to lower its fat content. This week, ABC is being taken to trial in a multibillion dollar lawsuit by the plant arguing that the story was defamatory.
The story certainly crushed sales. Beef Products Inc. says that it not only lost $1.9 billion in the wake of the news coverage, but that it was forced to close three of its four plants and had to lay off some 700 workers.
I’ll leave it to the jury to determine whether or not the ABC story was fake news. But the truth about pink slime is that, despite its unappetizing name, it’s entirely safe to eat. More than that, it is an affordable source of lean meat for low-income Americans, and stigmatizing it hurts people who rely on it for protei
13/. A good movie you haven't heard about....."Gemini"
Lola Kirke as Jill LeBeau in "Gemini"(Credit: SXSW Film Festival)
Aaron Katz’s “Gemini,” which played last night at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinemaFest, begins with the familiar turned upside down. Long palm trees passing roots up through an azure sky. Desolate saxophone notes weaving through a perseverating synthesizer and rapidly tapping, tapping, tapping drum machine. You know what you know before you know it — or you think you do — and what you know begins with the trees, the sky, the rhythm: This is Los Angeles, the beginning of a modern noir murder mystery.
The film doesn’t waste any time telling you who’s in danger. The sun sets and the camera takes us inside a red parked car. A phone rings. An angry man asks for Heather. She’s not there. “Tell her I know what’s up,” the man, who we learn is Heather’s ex-boyfriend, says. And then, “Tell her to fuck off and I’m going to fucking murder her.”
14/. The Times's list of the best 25 movies since 2000......I've only seen four of them.....
We are now approximately one-sixth of the way through the 21st century, and thousands of movies have already been released. Which means that it’s high time for the sorting – and the fighting – to start. As the chief film critics of The Times, we decided to rank, with some help from cinema savants on Facebook, the top 25 movies that are destined to be the classics of the future. While we’re sure almost everyone will agree with our choices, we’re equally sure that those of you who don’t will let us know.
Todays Will Rogers jokes
Will Rogers, who died in a 1935 plane crash, was one of the
greatest political sages this country has ever known.
Some of his sayings:
1. Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.
2. Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
3. There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.
4. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
5. Always drink upstream from the herd.
6. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
7. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.
8. There are three kinds of men:
The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
9. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
10. If you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.
11. Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back.
12. After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring.
He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
ABOUT GROWING OLDER...
First ~Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know 'why' I look this way.
I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren't paved.
Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.
Sixth ~ I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it's such a nice change from being young.
Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.
Tenth ~ Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft.
Today it's called golf.
And, finally ~ If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old.
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