1/ Frank Rich with his political wisdom....a very good one this week.....
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: Roy Moore’s victory in Alabama, the fate of the Graham-Cassidy health-care bill, and Trump’s (likely) crash course in Puerto Rico.
The runoff in the Alabama Senate primary has played out as a proxy fight for Donald Trump’s base, with Trump and Mike Pence throwing their weight behind Luther Strange, and Steve Bannon (and the U.K.’s Nigel Farage) campaigning for his opponent, Roy Moore. What should we take from Moore’s victory?
As the news of Moore’s victory hit last night, the Times tweeted that the results had delivered “a blow to President Trump.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Both of the GOP primary candidates were far to the right, and both were full-throated Trump supporters.
As the news of Moore’s victory hit last night, the Times tweeted that the results had delivered “a blow to President Trump.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Both of the GOP primary candidates were far to the right, and both were full-throated Trump supporters.
2/ You either love Larry David [Curb Your Enthusiasm], or you don't......I don't but I can appreciate the genius behind this sketch with Seth Meyers and his writers.....9 minutes you will love, or hate.....good luck!
Larry David joins the Late Night With Seth Meyers writing staff in a 10-minute sketch where the Curb Your Enthusiasm star brings all his quirks to a pitch meeting.
The sketch plays out like a scene from David's beloved – and returning – HBO comedy series, with David continually disrupting the writers' meeting, whether it's arriving late due to a "historic urination," his inability to find a comfortable chair or his questioning why the meeting goes from writer to writer clockwise instead of counterclockwise.
When the meeting finally gets underway, David interrupts the pitches or questions their humor, but when it's his time to pitch, he gets testy with the late-night host after an assistant brings Meyers a tea.
"The pitch is sacrosanct. You don't interrupt pitches under any circumstances," David tells Meyers.
3/ Andrew Sullivan with his weekly column.....even though you might not like his conclusions, he has really interesting ideas.....
There’s one little problem: Graham-Cassidy.
He’s back! That’s my view, anyway, of the abrupt shift in the president’s polling numbers. Just a week or so ago, RCP’s poll of polls had 39 percent of Americans approving of Trump’s job performance, with 56 disapproving; now it’s 41 approving and 56 disapproving. Gallup had him at 36/59; now it’s 39/55. Nate Silver had him at 37/57 as September arrived; now it’s 40/54. It’s not a massive turnaround, but this is the first time Trump has had a real bounce from his otherwise relentless descent in popularity since his inauguration. Yes, it’s still pretty bad for a president at nine months. But, yes, this bump is also meaningful. Some are attributing it to hurricanes (not implausible). My gut tells me it’s the small but telling deal with Chuck and Nancy.
4/ A Bill Maher "New Rules" that's quite thoughtful.....and funny of course....four minutes....
Bill Maher ended his show Friday night by saying the reason President Trump gets along with “Chuck and Nancy” so well is because he’s a “city mouse” who works well with other city mice.
A ‘consummate New Yorker” like Trump, Maher said, doesn’t fit in with people like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence.
As Maher put it, Trump may be an “asshole,” but he’s not a “hick.” He argued that all of Trump’s supporters across middle America don’t realize they’ve been conned.
5/ Matt Taibbi on the madness of the Republican party under Trump.....you can tell Taibbi had fun writing this one....
Steve Bannon and Donald Trump
As delicious as it was to watch the mainstream Republican Party crushed under the weight of its own internal contradictions during the 2016 campaign season, a new horror show could be even better. In a special Alabama Senate race going on now, we can watch Donald Trump chewed to bits by his own base.
6/ John Oliver, Trump and the NFL.....a funny three minutes....
John Oliver criticized President Trump Sunday on Last Week Tonight for his controversial remarks calling on NFL owners to fire players who protest during the pre-game national anthem.
Trump, during an Alabama rally on Friday, asked the crowd, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners when someone disrespects our flag to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now'? Out. He's fired!"
Oliver fired back, in a reference to a viral photo of then-candidate Trump hugging the American flag during an October rally, "Putting aside the free speech implications there, how is kneeling in front of a flag more disrespectful to it than grinding it against your gnarled old boner?"
7/ An insightful Paul Krugman column.....the Republicans have lied about every policy they have for the last decade, so now when it comes to governing they are caught in their own web.....
On Saturday pretty much the entire medical sector — groups representing doctors, hospitals, and insurers — released an extraordinary open lettercondemning the Graham-Cassidy health bill. The letter was written in the style of Emile Zola’s “J’accuse”: a series of paragraphs, each beginning with the bolded words “We agree,” pointing out the bill’s many awful features, from the harm it would do to people with pre-existing conditions to the chaos it would cause in insurance markets.
It takes a truly terrible proposal to elicit such eloquent unanimity from organizations that are usually cautious to the point of stodginess. So how did Republicans come up with something that bad, and how did that bad thing get so close to becoming law? Indeed, it still has a chance of being enacted despite John McCain’s “no.”
The answer is that Republicans have spent years routinely lying for the sake of political advantage. And now — not just on health care, but across the board — they are trapped by their own lies, forced into trying to enact policies they know won’t work.
8/ Seth Meyers on Trump's response to the disaster in Puerto Rico.....three minutes...
Seth Meyers is not impressed by President Trump's belated response to the hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico. And the late-night TV host is not mincing words on the matter.
On Tuesday night's edition of "Hey!," a recurring segment on "Late Night," Meyers took Trump to task over
a series of tweets Monday in which he appeared to blame Puerto Rico for its current situation.
9/ Seeing Melania speak is kind of painful, and I wasn't quite sure why.....but this article spelt it out for me....interesting.....
On Wednesday, Melania Trump gave a speech before a luncheon gathering of United Nations spouses, addressing cyberbullying and child advocacy. As usual, her look, affect, and performance conveyed infinitely more than her brief scripted speech ever could. Melania, in fact, is beginning to seem like an increasingly powerful — albeit unacknowledged — expression of all the madness swirling around the current administration.
At the U.N., Melania took the podium in an eye-straining vivid-fuchsia Delpozo dress, distinguished by gigantic puffy sleeves and belted snugly — like many of her outfits — just beneath the bosom.
10/ An interesting story on how religious and ultra-conservative leadership can destroy an entire state's economy.....just like Kansas, Texas's growth has stopped.....
Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of Republicans....
AUSTIN, Tex. — Call it the season of Texas’ discontent. Of course there was Hurricane Harvey, which blasted the coastline, leaving cities flooded and an estimated $180 billion in damage. But Harvey is just the headline.
There’s also the dysfunctional, ideologically driven State Legislature, which spent the last weeks of this year’s session debating, of all things, who gets to use which bathroom. Then there’s the oil and gas sector, which, as it has so many times before, expanded into a bubble and then, as global energy prices sank, popped, taking thousands of jobs with it.
Texas’ woes are interconnected.
11/ This little story just illustrates how evil and corrupt this administration is....beyond disgusting....
The head of George Washington carved into Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. (Jim Mone/AP)
Long before the Trump administration rescinded a ban on the sale of disposable water bottlesin select national parks, the Interior Department was aware of a report from the National Park Service that the program worked.
The report was quietly made public at the end of the day Friday after organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for its release. In 2011, the parks initiated a water bottle sales elimination program to reduce pollution and the costs of recycling plastic. It resulted in yearly savings of up to two million water bottles, according to an estimate in the report, and “demonstrates the commitment of the [National Park Service] to environmental stewardship.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/26/the-national-park-service-showed-that-its-bottled-water-ban-worked-then-lifted-it/?utm_term=.16681cc5cbac
12/ A pretty good list of the 25 best TV shows of the last 16 years......how many have YOU seen? One notable omission on this list would be "Breaking Bad", but they have done a good job otherwise......
It's said we live in the era of peak TV — a golden age of golden ages where prestige is often as important as ratings. Sure, we've got reality shows about nude dating and people who make semi-inedible cakes. But we've also got some of the most well-produced, most thoughtful, most engrossing and most expensive weekly and streamable series ever created.
This decade, in particular, has offered a bumper crop of picks from HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Showtime, basic cable and, yes, even those old-fashioned big networks. Scifi, fantasy, spy thrillers and historical dramas have risen to the top, though single-camera sitcoms haven't lagged far behind. Throughout, production values have never been higher, scripts have never been more well-written and performances by talented actors have never been more three-dimensional. Honestly, it's almost too much to deal with at times.
To help you make sense of it all — and wear a hole into your sofa — we've collected the best (and only the best) intelligent, gripping works available on your HD idiot box. Dig in.
Todays video - Holy tamole.....a three minute compilation of actual tornados destroying houses, cars and everything in their path.....some of this video shot [I think} by the lunatics that chase these storms.....
Truly amazing.....
Todays spiritual joke
A Troubled World!
As I was coming home and worrying about all the stuff going on in my life, my family's lives, my friends' lives, and what's happening in Washington, Moscow, North Korea, the Middle East,
Hillary Clinton's scandals, Donald Trump, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, the downgrading of our military, the terrorists infiltrating our border, the illegals, the refugees, and how our country is rapidly losing its sanity and its Christianity.
Then I saw a yard sign that said:
NEED HELP?
CALL JESUS
Out of curiosity and desperation, I called the number.A Mexican with a leaf blower showed up.
Todays engineer joke
I called an old friend who is a retired Professor of Engineering and asked what he was doing.
He replied that he was working on: "Aqua-thermal-surfactant treatment of ceramics, aluminum, and steel under a constrained environment."
I was impressed.
However, upon further inquiry, I learned that he was washing dishes with soap & hot water under his wife's supervision.
Todays male joke
Male SELF EXAMINATION FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE....It takes less than 15 seconds..
If you are male and over 60 yrs old, you SHOULD take this Alzheimer's Test
How fast can you guess these words and fill-in the blanks?
How fast can you guess these words and fill-in the blanks?
1. _ _NDOM
2. F_ _K
3. P_N_S
4. PU_S_
5. S_X
6. BOO_S
Answers:
1. RANDOM
2. FORK
3. PANTS
4. PULSE
5. SIX
6. BOOKS
You got all 6 wrong...didn't you?
The good news is:
You do NOT have Alzheimer's.
You are a pervert.
You do NOT have Alzheimer's.
You are a pervert.
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