1/ Up to 35% of this country are die hard Trump supporters, and they think he's doing just fine - they're impervious to facts, logic and good taste and it's a waste of time to even try to discuss Trump with them....a good article from Jeremy Binckes in Salon....
A year ago, in the wake of President Donald Trump's stunning election win, you couldn't swing a dead cat in the Rust Belt without hitting a Trump supporter who understood the president-elect's flaws, but insisted on giving him a chance to follow through on his campaign promises. Over the next 365 days, reporters visited and re-visited so-called Trump country — even as support for him dwindled in those areas — searching for the reasons why people continued to pledge their support for making America great again.
A new Politico Magazine profile of die-hard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pa — the heart of Trump country — suggests that Trump's most fervent fans haven't swayed in their support, even as the president continues to break (or forget) his promises. Here's one Johnstown, Pennsylvania, native, telling a Politico reporter why he liked Trump.
“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”
2/ Bill Maher with one of his better "New Rules"......very funny indeed with some great zingers.....six excellent minutes....
HBO host Bill Maher - screenshot
Real Time” host Bill Maher checked in on how key members of President Donald Trump’s administration were faring on Friday night.
And the comedian wasn’t happy with what he found.
“They call Jared Kushner ‘Trump’s boy wonder’ because what anyone sees in him, boy, really makes you wonder,” joked Maher, as he evaluated what Trump’s son-in-law has accomplished with his wide portfolio of responsibilities.
“He’s done nothing,” Maher summarized.
3/ Andrew Sullivan does something rare for a political writer - he admits he was wrong!
Unusual.......and what he was wrong about was the election results from last Tuesday so it's good news.....
I was wrong! Thank God Almighty, I was wrong!
You probably felt the same thing I did last Tuesday night: a euphoric whiplash as deepening dread turned suddenly into a wave of intense relief in the off-year results from Virginia. I’m still riding it. I hope you are too. Almost every surprise since last November has been a soul-crushing one. I feared yet another one. But Tuesday night’s string of decisive victories by Democrats dispelled the gloom and was the first time since Trump’s election that hope appeared a little more realistic than despair. So let’s take a moment to soak it in.
But I do owe you an account of why and how I misjudged this one, and failed to see the glimmer of dawn on the horizon.
4/ Republican excuses for Roy Moore......
5/ An excellent Trevor Noah piece on the election results and the real winner - Karma.......five good minutes....
Ralph Northam’s victory over Ed Gillespie for governor in Virginia headlined a triumphant election night for many Democrats. But Trevor Noah saw beyond the voting results.
“You know who really won big in last night’s elections? Karma,” the host said on “The Daily Show.”
Noah proceeded to highlight races in which “incumbents were defeated by the very things they were being dicks about.”
They included Republican John Carman, who lost his freeholder’s seat to Democrat Ashley Bennett in Atlantic County, New Jersey. Carman had posted a meme to Facebook during January’s Women’s March asking, “Will the Women’s March protest be over in time for them to cook dinner?” Angered by the move and Carman’s refusal to apologize at a meeting, Bennett decided to run ― and won.
6/ Stephen Colbert looks at the election results from a different but just as funny angle....
On Wednesday night, Stephen Colbert celebrated the Democratic victories in various elections throughout the country.
“Well folks, one year ago today, Donald Trump was elected president,” Colbert began. “Yesterday, Democrats commemorated this anniversary by kicking Trump’s ass, using his arch enemy: the popular vote.”
The Late Show host began listing some of the more notable races, including Democrat Phil Murphy‘s victory in the New Jersey gubernatorial race.”
“A sad day for Chris Christie… so a day for Chris Christie,” Colbert quipped.
7/ It just goes on and on and on.....now they are going to be drilling in the wildest, most natural place in the country.....an excellent Times pictorial review of this coming disaster in Alaska.....
8/ A great John Oliver piece on Trump's memory.....a very funny three minutes.....
With the Mueller investigation closing in on various associates of President Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief has been fielding questions regarding his relationship with former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos. Trump has downplayed Papadopoulos’ role, calling him a “low level volunteer” in an Oct. 31 tweet.
On Friday, when asked about a meeting last March involving his campaign advisers where Papadopoulos was present, Trump ― despite having “one of the great memories of all time” ― couldn’t remember much about it.
9/ Bill Maher with his opening monologue on the news of the week, including the crazy child molestor Roy Moore.....a good five minutes...
Bill Maher has dissected why a Republican official’s Bible-themed defense of Alabama Senate nominee Roy Moore doesn’t work.
On Friday’s “Real Time,” the comedian ridiculed Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler for likening allegations levied against Moore of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old when he was in his 30s to the Biblical tale of Joseph and Mary.
“Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter,” Zeigler had told The Washington Examiner. “They became parents of Jesus.”
“Using Jesus to justify child molestation?” Maher said. “Even the Catholics went, ‘Tried it, doesn’t work.’”
10/ "At least if Trump goes Pence is normal" is a comforting thought......"no he isn't" says Timothy Egan in his Times column. A stupid religious wacko.....
With Donald Trump in Asia plugging his golf resort and telling his hosts “I never knew we had so many countries,” the leaderless United States has had a week to try out President Mike Pence. Make that Pastor Pence.
It’s not a problem that Pence is a sycophant in chief, perhaps the greatest bootlicker to take up residence at the Naval Observatory. His little stunt, on Trump’s orders, of flying halfway across the country to walk out on peopleexercising their First Amendment rights at a football game cost taxpayers a pile. So. Veeps are expected to be slavish.
Nor am I overly troubled that Pence reportedly calls his wife Mother or refuses to dine with a woman alone who is not Mom. (Angela Merkel, bring your chaperone.) Ronald Reagan called his wife Mommy.
The big problem with Pence is the vast empty space between his ears and the articulation of thoughts formed in that space.
11/ Jimmy Kimmel is brilliant - here he rebrands Obamacare as "Trumpcare", and shows a commercial to get "the base" to sign up at healthcare.gov.....very cleverly done, three minutes..........
Jimmy Kimmel is trying to mess with the minds of President Donald Trump’s supporters ― but it’s for a good cause.
On Tuesday’s broadcast of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, the comedian asked his viewers to sign up for “TrumpCare.” It wasn’t a backtrack for Kimmel, whose young son’s congenital heart defects inspired his personal campaign against GOP proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
Instead, he was simply directing people to the Healthcare.gov website so they could enroll in Obamacare, which remains in operation due to Republicans’ repeated failure to scrap it.
Kimmel presumably thought that by pretending Trump was behind the plan, his base would back it.
12/ And the following night he shows some postings and tweets from Trump supporters thanking him for supporting the President.....amazing - the power of TV on the stupid. Two minutes....
On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmelcontinued his push for folks to sign up for healthcare at healthcare.gov, or as he’s been calling it “Trumpcare.”
“Last night, I encouraged people, even liberals who don’t like [Donald] Trump, to think about signing up for Trumpcare, at the very least, take a look at it,” Kimmel said. “I will say some of the people with whom I’m typically at odds on social media actually had some positive things to say.”
Kimmel then read comments from Trump supporters on social media who offered the host praise.
Anastasia on Facebook wrote, “Got to respect Jimmy for keeping an open mind. Goes a lot into healing the divide.” Rinah wrote “I applaud Jimmy for this.”
13/ "On the table the brain appeared normal" is the title of this Times story,and of course you have to read it.....they don't say whose brain it is till near the end, and you have to click a link to find out. Fascinating....
BOSTON — The brain arrived in April, delivered to the basement of the hospital without ceremony, like all the others. There were a few differences with this one — not because it was more important, but because it was more notorious.
It went to the lab outside the city, instead of the one in Boston, where most of the examinations are performed these days, because it was less likely to attract attention that way. Instead of being carried in through the service entrance, it was ushered in secretly through the underground tunnel system. The brain was given a pseudonym, and only three people knew how to identify it.
Other than that, the brain came alone and disconnected from its past, unattached to its celebrity. The sordid details of the man’s rise and fall, the speculation over what went wrong, the debate over justice — all that was left behind for others to assess.
It was just a brain, not large or small, not deformed or extraordinary in appearance, an oblong and gelatinous coil weighing 1,573 grams, or about three and a half pounds, just carved from the skull of a 27-year-old man.
14/ Seth Meyers lets some ladies on his staff tell some jokes he can't.....and there is a special guest too [Hillary].......four minutes.....
During an appearance on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Hillary Clinton took a moment to mock Fox News and its obsessive coverage of her.
The former secretary of state has teased the cable news network before, recently telling a crowd in Washington D.C. that Fox News apparently thinks she’s the one who currently lives in the White House.
On Wednesday, Meyers mentioned that koala bears were in danger of extinction in some parts of Australia.
“Fox News think that’s my fault,” Clinton joked.
15/ Lucien Truscott in Salon with a story titled "WTF is wrong with rich people?" A good rumination on the pathology of being rich.....
I live in Sag Harbor, New York, out on the East End of Long Island in the Hamptons. The village of Sag Harbor was founded in 1707, and the house I rent is a Saltbox built in 1703. Just down the street is the Egyptian Revival Old Whaler’s Church, built in 1844. It’s a beautiful wood-frame clapboard structure. Hell, everything is beautiful out here — East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Southampton, Amagansett, the potato fields and beaches of Sagaponack — driving around here, you can’t go around a bend without seeing something that takes your breath away.
So naturally, the Hamptons have attracted a lot of rich people. The place is lousy with them. Hedge funders behind 15-foot-high hedges. Billionaires in their Spaceship-Modern architectural wonders along the ocean. Plain-ass old millionaires just down the street in mini-McMansions created by obnoxiously adding onto little houses like the one I live in. Fortune 500 presidents and directors striding around the links out at The National, the oldest golf course in America. Just a couple of months ago, they were cheek by jowl in their mega-yachts tethered to the docks down in the harbor along Bay Street.
Todays video - A wonderful clip from the TV show "The West Wing", where President Bartlett [Martin Sheen] schools a religious radio show host on the Bible.....four excellent minutes, worth watching again.
Todays religious joke
A Priest was about to finish his ten-year tour of duty and was leaving his Mission in the jungle where he has spent years teaching the natives about the Bible and Christian values, in their own language, when he realizes that the one thing he never really taught them was how to speak English.He reasons that the most efficient way to encourage the tribe to learn would be to give a crash course to the smartest man in the village and to leave an English Bible with him. So he takes the chief, whom he had befriended, for a walk in the forest. He points to a tree and says to the chief, "This is a tree."The chief looks at the tree and grunts, Tree."The Priest is pleased with the response.They walk a little further and he points to a rock and says, "This is a rock."The chief looks and grunts, "Rock."The Priest was getting quite enthusiastic about the results when he hears a rustling in the bushes.As they peek over the scrub bushes, they see a couple of natives in the midst of heavy sexual activity.The Priest is really embarrassed and flustered. Not knowing what else to do he quickly says, "Man riding a bike."The chief looks at the couple briefly, pulls out his blowgun and kills them both right in front of the Priest.The Priest goes ballistic and yells at the chief that he has spent years teaching the tribe the virtues of Christianity, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and how to be civilized and kind to each other. So how on God’s green Earth could he kill these people in cold blood that way?And the chief replies, "My bike."
Todays Lone Ranger joke
The Lone Ranger and Tonto set up camp for the night in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, both men fell sound asleep.Some hours later, Tonto wakes the Lone Ranger and says, 'Kemo Sabe, look towards sky, what you see? '
'The Lone Ranger replies, 'I see millions of stars.''What that tell you?' asked Tonto.The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute then says, 'Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.What does it tell you, Tonto?''You dumber than buffalo shit. It means someone stole the tent.
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