1/ Now this is interesting - the more education Republicans have, the less they believe in climate change....it sounds counterintuitive, but it's all about tribalism and the facts be damned....!
the warmest period in recorded history and that humans are the dominant cause of the
to the American public.
Climate change divides Americans, but in an unlikely way: The more education that Democrats and Republicans have, the more their beliefs in climate change diverge.
This chart , based on a Gallup surveyfrom March 2015, demonstrates this relationship clearly. About one in four Republicans with only a high school education said they worried about climate change a great deal. But among college-educated Republicans, that figure decreases,sharply, to 8 percent.
This relationship persists even when pollsters pose different kinds of questions about climate change – when Republicans are asked if they believe global warming “will never happen,” if they think it poses “a serious threat to way of life in your lifetime” or if it is caused by “natural changes in the environment.”
This may seem counterintuitive, because better-educated Republicans are more likely to be aware of the scientific consensus that human activity is contributing to climate change. But in the realm of public opinion, climate change isn’t really a scientific issue. It’s a political one.
Even though better-educated Republicans may have more exposure to information about the science around climate change, they also have more exposure to partisan messages about it. And communications research says that matters more.
2/ The Republican tax plan is a vicious and cruel joke.....good column from Paul Krugman...
One thing you can count on in 21st-century U.S. politics is that Republicans will lie about taxes. They did it under George W. Bush, they did it under Barack Obama and they’re still doing it under Donald Trump.
Yet this time is different. It’s not just that the lies have gotten even more brazen. There’s now a combination of incoherence and rage that we, or at least I, haven’t seen before. These days, they can’t even seem to get their fake story straight — and they literally start yelling obscenities when someone tries to point out the facts.
G.O.P. lies about taxes generally involve two issues: who is hurt or helped by tax changes, and what these changes will do to the budget.
3/ Like your movies familiar? Then you'll like this parody of a "Heist" movie, with every cliche cleverly portrayed by this talented cast.....an amusing five minutes....
Heist films are rather notorious for featuring the same cliché collective of quirky characters. And the “Ocean’s” film franchise cemented a lot of these heist stereotypes in stone ― the British wise guy, the tiny acrobat, the hacker, the explosives guy.
“The Heist” is a comedy short directed by Luke Harris, and written by Kevin Tenglin and Dafna Garber. But they don’t stop at just classic heist characters, they assembled some of the most stereotypical film characters of all time.
4/ Interesting story on climate change and capitalism......and how we can't change our planet's impending doom without changing the very nature of our economy.....which ain't going to happen....
Even casual readers of the news know that the earth is probably going to look very different in 2100, and not in a good way.
A recent Times opinion piece included this quotation from the paleoclimatologist Lee Kump: “The rate at which we’re injecting CO2 into the atmosphere today, according to our best estimates, is 10 times faster than it was during the End-Permian.”
The End-Permian is a pre-dinosaurs era of mass extinction that killed 90 percent of the life in the ocean and 75 percent of it on land. It is also called the Great Dying. Although those who write about environmental change like to add notes of false personalization around this point — “My children will be x years old when catastrophe y happens” — there is really no good way of acclimating the mind to facts of this magnitude.
However, the cause of the disaster that, by all indications, we are already living through should be clearer. It is not the result of the failure of individuals to adopt the moralizing strictures of “green” consciousness, and it is a sign of just how far we have to go that some still believe reusable shopping bags and composting (perfectly fine in their own right) are ways out of this mess.
5/ A good four minute video of an iPad magician [WTF?] on the Ellen show.....amazing stuff....
6/ Are the Republicans trying to make the next generation into serfs? Matt Taibbi has the details of the student loan provisions in the new Republican tax bill.....amazing....
The headline in the New York Times seemed sympathetic: "The House Just Voted To Bankrupt Graduate Students".
The piece by Erin Rousseau, a graduate student at M.I.T., detailed an insidious little virus buried in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, just passed by Republicans in the House. The law would repeal section 117(d)(5) of the tax code, which exempts graduate students' tuition waiver from taxation.
In the case of M.I.T. grad students like Rousseau – who work as teachers or lab assistants – the new law would tax over $50,000 of tuition they don't actually pay. It would increase such students' taxable income from the area of $33,000 to over $80,000. In most cases, that would add about $10,000 to their annual tax burden.
Getting already-struggling students to cough up $10,000 more would pay for the big-ticket item in the Trump tax plan: a reduction in the corporate tax rate to a flat 20 percent, down from a top rate of about 35 percent.
Getting already-struggling students to cough up $10,000 more would pay for the big-ticket item in the Trump tax plan: a reduction in the corporate tax rate to a flat 20 percent, down from a top rate of about 35 percent.
The reduction in the top corporate rate is more or less totally symbolic already. It's a fraud.
7/ Net neutrality and what the Trump led FCC is trying to do to the internet is appalling, and yet people have no idea what's coming as this issue is woefully underreported. As this story in the Times says it might be up to the Courts to save us....
Ajit Pai
Back in 2005, a small phone company based in North Carolina named Madison River began preventing its subscribers from making phone calls using the internet application Vonage. As Vonage was a competitor in the phone call market, Madison River’s action was obviously anticompetitive. Consumers complained, and the Federal Communications Commission, under Michael Powell, its Republican-appointed chairman, promptly fined the company and forced it to stop blocking Vonage.
That was the moment when “net neutrality” rules went from a mere academic proposal to a part of the United States legal order. On that foundation — an open internet, with no blocking — much of our current internet ecosystem was built.
On Tuesday, the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, announced plans to eliminate even the most basic net neutrality protections — including the ban on blocking — replacing them with a “transparency” regime enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. “Transparency,” of course, is a euphemism for “doing nothing.”
8/ The NFL is in trouble....about bloody time is my opinion......
A few weekends ago, at a seersucker-in-November southern horse-racing event I attended with some lovely and friendly people who will nevertheless be the first ones taken out when the revolution comes, a family friend, an older white man, asked me what I, the one sportswriter he knew, thought of the kneeling NFL players. I told him that while I stand for the anthem myself, I supported the players’ right to express themselves politically and encouraged him to worry less about the kneeling and more about what the players were trying to say. He snorted and said he was done with the NFL until “they stand their ass up.” We then drank some bourbon and found something else to talk about.
9/ The above story makes this "NFL - Bad Lipreading 2017" all the more enjoyable.....an amusing four minutes....
10/ Interesting story from Rolling Stone on why Trump hates the intelligence agencies.....because they know what he's done.....duh!
President Trump has been on an extended trip to Asia that’s taken him to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Despite his handlers, and the phalanx of high-priced lawyers paid to represent him in the Russiagate investigation, and White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly's best efforts to contain him, sometimes President Trump just can't help himself. Thus it was, during an extended, highly scripted Asia tour – perhaps jet-lagged and sleep-deprived, or maybe just feeling ornery – that Trump boarded Air Force One for a flight to Hanoi and, well, just let loose. The leaders of America's spy agencies, including the CIA and the FBI? They're liars, leakers and political hacks, he proclaimed.
11/ Above and Beyond, live at Porchester Hall with "You Got To Go'......if you like jazz, a full orchestra including a harp and some beautiful singing.....this is for you....
12/ Do you go to a dermatologist? If so you might want to read this so you can protect yourself from the latest medical scam. Mary has actually been to one of the offices mentioned, Advanced Dermatology in Maitland and can verify this story.....
Protect yourself folks....
John Dalman had been in the waiting room at a Loxahatchee, Fla., dermatology clinic for less than 15 minutes when he turned to his wife and told her they needed to leave. Now.
“It was like a fight or flight impulse,” he said.
His face numbed for skin-cancer surgery, Mr. Dalman, 69, sat surrounded by a half-dozen other patients with bandages on their faces, scalps, necks, arms and legs. At a previous visit, a young physician assistant had taken 10 skin biopsies, which showed slow growing, nonlethal cancerous lesions. Expecting to have the lesions simply scraped off at the next visit, he had instead been told he needed surgery on many of them, as well as a full course of radiation lasting many weeks.
The once sleepy field of dermatology is bustling these days, as baby boomers, who spent their youth largely unaware of the sun’s risk, hit old age. The number of skin cancer diagnoses in people over 65, along with corresponding biopsies and treatment, is soaring. But some in the specialty, as well as other medical experts, are beginning to question the necessity of aggressive screening and treatment, especially in frail, elderly patients, given that the majority of skin cancers are unlikely to be fatal.
13/ Just another day in Amerika.....
Cops abuse senior couple mistaking hibiscus for marijuana
Trained drug detection officers in Pennsylvania couldn’t tell the difference between hibiscus plants and pot plants
A Buffalo Township, Pennsylvania couple has filed a lawsuit against township police and an insurance company in the wake of a misbegotten drug raid that netted only hibiscus plants.
Edward Cramer, 69, and his wife, Audrey Cramer, 66, were quietly enjoying their golden years this fall when they called their insurance company about a neighbor's tree that had fallen on their property. That's when things started going wacky.
The insurance company, Nationwide Mutual Insurance, sent its local agent, Jonathan Yeamans, to the Cramers' place, but Yeamans apparently had more than insurance claims on his mind. According to the lawsuit, Yeamans surreptitiously took photos of flowering hibiscus plants in the backyard, then sent them to local police as evidence of an illegal marijuana grow.
Todays video - a guy on a football bus nails over a dozen accents.....wow....
Todays Harley - Davidson joke
An inventor of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, Arthur Davidson, died and went to heaven.
At the pearly gates, St. Peter told Arthur, "Since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is, you can hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."
Arthur thought about this for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God."
St. Peter took Arthur to the Throne Room and introduced him to God.
God recognized Arthur and commented, "Okay, so you were the one who invented the Harley Davidson motorcycle?"
Arthur said, "Yep, that's me."
God said, "Well, what's the big deal in inventing something that's pretty unstable, makes noise and pollution, and can't run without a road?"
Arthur was apparently embarrassed, but finally he said, "Excuse me, but aren't you the inventor of the woman?"
God said, "Yes.."
"Well," said Arthur, "professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your invention too:
1. There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusions;
2. It chatters constantly at high speeds;
3. Most of the rear ends are too soft, and wobble too much;
4. The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust;
5. And the maintenance costs are enormous!"
2. It chatters constantly at high speeds;
3. Most of the rear ends are too soft, and wobble too much;
4. The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust;
5. And the maintenance costs are enormous!"
"Hmmmmm, you have some good points there," replied God, "hold on."
God went to His Celestial supercomputer, typed in some key words and waited for the results. The computer printed out a slip of paper and God read it.
"Well, it may be true that my invention is flawed," God said to Arthur, "but according to these statistics, more men are riding my invention than yours."
Todays taxi joke....
A cabbie picks up a Nun......She gets into the cab, and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won't stop staring at her.
She asks him why he is staring.
He replies: 'I have a question to ask you but I don't want to offend you..'
She answers, 'My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive.'
'Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.'
She responds, 'Well, let's see what we can do about that:
#1, you have to be single and
#2, you must be Catholic.'
The cab driver is very excited and says, 'Yes, I'm single and Catholic!'
'OK' the nun says. 'Pull into the next alley.'
The nun fulfils his fantasy, with a kiss that would make a hooker blush.
But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.
'My dear child,' says the nun, 'why are you crying?'
'Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess, I'm married and I'm Jewish.'
The nun says, 'That's OK. My name is Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party'
