1/ Timothy Egan with a good column from the Times on what is now painfully apparent - this country is split into tribes, living in different realities.....
I never cared for the “melting pot” metaphor, in part because it treats a nation of immigrants like a stew with all the cultures cooked out of it. Nor was I a fan of “gorgeous mosaic,” which sounds fine coming from a kindergarten teacher but is flat as a political rallying cry.
I prefer “the American experiment.” It’s just as inartful, yet closer to the truth. The audacious idea that people from all races, ideologies and religious sects would check their hatreds at the door after becoming citizens is our sustaining narrative.
Within our borders, Protestants don’t fight Catholics, Sunnis don’t go after Shiites, Armenians share neighborhoods with Turks, and a family that can trace much of its ancestry to slavery occupied a White House built in part by slaves.
But that tenuous construct is breaking apart.
2/ And if you wonder why this country is disintegrating, it's because the Trump base is living in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.....here is a story from HuffPo on a typical day of "Fox And Friends". on the day Manafort was charged.....it's incredible reading.
And if you don't watch Fox News [just "normal" media] you probably haven't heard Hillary Clintons' name mentioned for months......but Fox News is obsessed with her, probably because the Trump base hates her with such a passion they just keep at her to keep the adrenaline working in those simplistic brains....
In the age of “FAKE NEWS,” it can be difficult to know whom to trust and what to believe. To get the real story surrounding Monday’s biggest news story — the federal charges against former Donald Trump campaign staffers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates — we decided to watch two straight hours of “Fox & Friends,” the fair-and-balanced Fox News morning show hosted by Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, three decent Americans simply searching for truth.
Here’s our running diary.
7:02 a.m. EDT: OK, it seems like this indictment thing might be a big deal. Doocy called the potential indictments their “top story,” and Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins said that the network has “teams all over this town [Washington] to see what happens.”
3/ Joy Reid on the phony Clinton Uranium One "scandal".....why don't more journalists go after these Republicans like Reid does?
A very satisfying two minutes....
At the end of President Trump's multiple Sunday morning tweets about a "Witch Hunt for evil politics" by Democrats, in which he mentioned a series of supposed misdeeds by 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including "the Uranium to Russia deal," Trump said the "the facts are pouring out" about "GUILT by Democrats/Clinton" and urges somebody to "DO SOMETHING!" On her Sunday morning MSNBC show, Joy Reid did something, and she couched it as a series of "fact-based questions" for her guest, Republican strategist and Washington Examiner contributor Jennifer Kerns.
4/ Sam Bee on General John Kelly......not a very nice man.....an excellent five minutes....
Samantha Bee says it's time for the public to stop putting its faith in "kind of okay white people" because "they are not gonna save us, they are into it."
Of course, Bee was referring to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
On Wednesday's "Full Frontal," Bee slammed Kelly over his attempt to explain his view of the Civil War, in which he said Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was an "honorable man."
5/ And if you ever have to get into a discussion with a Republican about the Uranium One issue, here are the facts....
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The conservative media sphere, fueled by an orchestrated White House public relations campaign, has a theory for the biggest legal and national security question facing Washington, and it has nothing to do with the Trump-Russia scandal.
Instead, it has to with a thoroughly debunked and verifiably false charge: that Hillary Clinton gave Russia “20 percent of our uranium” as secretary of state.
Trump made that claim early on in his time in office to defend himself against charges that he would be too soft on Russia. Now he and his allies have brought it back to muddy the waters during the roughest patch of his presidency.
6/ A good Bill Maher "New Rules", and Bill goes for the "pretend" patriots.....not a bad one....
Bill Maher has torn into the concept of “fetish patriotism” and the people who wrap themselves in the flag without knowing what it actually represents.
On Friday’s “Real Time,” the host likened it to the way President Donald Trump had turned the NFL protests against police brutality and racial injustice “into a patriotism pissing match.”
“The nerve of these young black men kneeling while an ‘American Idol’ runner-up sings the ‘bombs bursting in air’ song,” he sarcastically said. “How dare you exercise your freedoms while we’re honoring them.”
“This impulse to tell people not to protest against the police, not to question the generals, this is not American,” Maher added. “And that is the problem with all the fetish patriotism. It starts with goosebumps, but it ends with goose steps.”
7/ The billionaire Tom Steyer made this one minute ad and bought time on "Fox And Friends,", so you know the idiot saw it.....excellent. Don't we wish there were more "good" billionaires....
8/ Seth Meyers on the Monday after the indictments.....yes it's a few days old, but you learn more watching him than you do watching the so-called news....
9/ Jeff Goodall in Rolling Stone on the coal industry and Trump and Pruitt's futile attempts to revive it....excellent article....
Pacificorp's 1,440-megawatt coal-fired power plant.
I wrote my first story about the coal industry back in 2001, published a book called Big Coal in 2006 and have been following the industry ever since. And if there's one central truth that I've learned during that time, it's this: Virtually no coal industry leader, lobbyist or hack politician believes coal has a future in America. Everyone else knows it's a dead industry walking. The only question now is how much money they can extract, and how much damage they can do to our health, our economy and the climate, before Big Coal sinks into the tar pit of history.
10/ Live in an area prone to flooding? John Oliver explains the corrupt system of flood insurance that lets you stay there.....one of his wonderful comedic reporting pieces....17 minutes....
John Oliver turned to a puppet seagull to help him break down the devastating problems of the U.S. government’s federal flood insurance program.
The “Last Week Tonight” host offered a detailed report about how the National Flood Insurance Program actually hurts the most vulnerable of flood-prone homeowners.
“Essentially, a government program that was supposed to help people in flooded homes is sometimes trapping them inside them indefinitely,” Oliver said.
He then conversed with a Tostitos-obsessed puppet seagull to drive the point home.
11/ And actual data showing how divided we really are.....fascinating....
One of the most interesting poll results was that 55% of Liberals say that knowing a person voted for Trump would affect the way they viewed them....
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US politics has gone in some pretty strange directions lately. But now the Pew Research Center has come along to try to make sense of just what Americans are thinking, with a new edition of its study of Americans' political typology — its first since 2014.
Pew's analysis stands out from standard polls because it doesn't simply sort Americans by demographic factors like age, race, and gender, and instead finds divisions within political parties that don’t fall along typical lines. To them, it’s not all about Hillary voters versus Bernie voters, or Trump populists versus establishment Republicans — what people actually believe creates divisions that are more complicated than that.
Instead, in surveys this summer of about 5,000 people, Pew asked respondents several ideological questions, and then used statistical techniques to try to figure out the clearest way to divide respondents’ views into a series of coherent groups.
12/ A good, really good three minute Jimmy Kimmel segment where he gets parents to tell their kids their Halloween candy is gone....LOL funny....
Jimmy Kimmel Live! continued to torture children across the country with its hilarious seventh installment of "Hey Jimmy Kimmel I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy Video," inviting parents to fake-out their kids and film the results. Guest host Jennifer Lawrence unveiled the latest compilation on Thursday's episode.
13/ Thomas Edsall with a great column from the Times......Senators like Corker and Flake are sounding the alarm, but the base doesn't want to hear it....
Last year, as it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination, analysts on both the right and the left speculated that millions of regular Republicans would be repulsed by his ethnonationalism and misogyny.
Writing in the Washington Post in August of 2016, Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, warned:
Republicans running for election this year have watched the wheels coming off the Trump Train with increasing alarm. How can Republican candidates in down-ballot races survive such a calamitous nominee at the top of their ticket?
Come Election Day, however, Republican voters did not abandon their party. The Republican share of the electorate grew slightly, from 32 percent in 2008 and 2012 to 33 percent in 2016, and Trump carried these voters 11 to 1.
This pattern has continued into the present and shows no signs of letting up.
Todays video - "The Gunfighter", a superb short film [7 minutes] about a gunfighter in a bar......you have to see it to appreciate the genius behind this.....very amusing indeed....
Todays lawyer jokes
A mother and son were walking through a cemetery, and passed by a headstone inscribed "Here lies a good lawyer and an honest man."
The little boy read the headstone, looked up at his mother, and asked "Mommy, why did they bury two men there?"
Question: Why are lawyers buried in deeper graves than other folks?
Answer: Deep down, they're much nicer people.
Answer: Deep down, they're much nicer people.
A woman went to her doctor for advice. She told the physician that her husband had developed a penchant for anal sex, and she was not sure that it was such a good idea.
The doctor asked, "Do you enjoy it?"
She said that she did.
He asked, "Does it hurt you?"
She said that it didn't.
The doctor then told her, "Well, then, there's no reason that you shouldn't practice anal sex, if that's what you like, so long as you take care not to get pregnant."
The woman was mystified. She asked "You can get pregnant from anal sex?"
The doctor replied, "Of course. Where do you think attorneys come from?"
An attorney was sitting in his office late one night, when Satan appeared before him.
The Devil told the lawyer, "I have a proposition for you. You can win every case you try, for the rest of your life. Your clients will adore you, your colleagues will stand in awe of you, and you will make embarrassing sums of money. All I want in exchange is your soul, your wife's soul, your children's souls, the souls of your parents, grandparents, and parents-in-law, and the souls of all your friends and law partners."
The lawyer thought about this for a moment, then asked, "So, what's the catch?"
It seemed that the son of a Spanish lawyer graduated from college and was considering the future. He went to his father, who had a very large office, and asked if he might be given a desk in the corner where he could observe his father's activities. He could be introduced to his father's clients as a clerk. This way, he could decide on whether or not to become a lawyer.
His father thought this to be a splendid idea, and this arrangement was set up immediately. On his son's first day at work, the first client in the morning was a rough-hewn man with calloused hands, in workman's attire, who began the conversation as follows: "Mr. Lawyer, I work for some people named Gonzales who have a ranch on the east side of town. For many years I have tended their crops and animals, including some cows. I have raised, the cows, tended them, fed them, and it has always been my understanding and belief that I was the owner of the cows. Mr. Gonzales died and his son has inherited the farm, and he believes that since the cows were raised on his ranch and fed on his hay, the cows are his. In short, we have a dispute as to the ownership of the cows."
The lawyer said, "I have heard enough. I will take your case. DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE COWS!"
After the tenant farmer left, the next client came in. A young, well-dressed man, clearly a member of the landed class. "My name is Gonzales. I own a farm on the east side of the town," he said. "For many years, a tenant farmer has worked for my family tending the crops and animals, including some cows. The cows have been raised on my land and fed on my hay, and I believe that they belong to me, but the tenant farmer believes that since he raised them and cared for them, they are his. In short, we have a dispute over ownership of the cows."
"I heard enough. I'll take your case. DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE COWS!"
After the client left, the son came over to his father with a look of concern. "My father, I know nothing of the law, but it seems to me that we have a serious problem regarding these cows."
"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE COWS!" said the lawyer. "The cows will be ours!"
Question: Why don't lawyers go to the beach?
Answer: Cats keep trying to bury them.
Answer: Cats keep trying to bury them.
Todays joke for the ladies
When my friend's hubby went to the men's room in the Schiphol Airport located in Amsterdam , he saw a fly and did his best to 'wash' it down the drain .... but failed. He figured the fly had super glue foot pads!
Now he knows why it was there, and stayed there.
Who says you can't potty train a man?
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