1/ An important story from Matt Taibbi on student debt, and how it's strangling an entire generation of young people....this piece will be guaranteed to raise your blood pressure after you read how with the collusion of the government nasty corporations are scamming students.....
This country is now truly Amerika - what better way to control college students, potential protesters against a corrupt system, than to put them in massive never-ending debt. Just disgusting.....
On a wind-swept, frigid night in February 2009, a 37-year-old schoolteacher named Scott Nailor parked his rusted '92 Toyota Tercel in the parking lot of a Fireside Inn in Auburn, Maine. He picked this spot to have a final reckoning with himself. He was going to end his life.
2/ Alec Baldwin as Trump visiting Paul Manafort.....the SNL cold open.....a hilarious five minutes
Trying to get clean was at the center of “Saturday Night Live’s” cold open, as Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump ended up naked in a shower with his now-indicted former campaign manager, Paul Manafort (Alex Moffat).
They get their backs scrubbed by an eager Kate McKinnon as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Beck Bennet’s Mike Pence (wearing a suit because he’s not “married to water”). Baldwin’s Trump, meanwhile, wants to make certain Moffat’s Manafort isn’t wearing a wire.
It’s too late, the “president” concedes, to help Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinsteinextricate himself from a burgeoning sex harassment and assault scandal. “What an idiot that Harvey Weinstein is,” Baldwin tells Moffat. “He could have gotten away with it all if only he had gotten himself elected president.”
3/ A cartoonist and Trump.....
4/ The Miami Herald with a longish story on what happened in Puerto Rico and why it is still in chaos on the island.....
Jorge Márquez, the mayor of Maunabo, Puerto Rico, one of the first places on the island to be hit by Hurricane Maria
Omaya Sosa Pascual Center for Investigative Journalism
The blame for the unsatisfactory response, the Miami Herald and Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism found, lies with bureaucracies that were unprepared for a collapsed communications system and overwhelmed by the logistical challenges of aiding an island left with no corner unharmed. Even the White House appeared indifferent to the needs of 3.4 million American citizens 1,000 miles from its shores.
5/ "Weekend Update" on SNL with the Trump brothers....a painfully funny three minutes....painful because their stupidity might actually be true.....
6/ A Paul Krugman column on the Republican 'tax plan".......another way to say con job.....
It really is amazing to watch this chaotic horror show play out at the highest levels of a great nation’s government. But I guess this is what you have to expect when you hand over the reins of power to a con man, whose whole career has been based on convincing naïve marks that he’s a brilliant deal maker, but turns out to have no idea how to actually govern.
Oh, wait — did you think I was talking about Donald Trump? I’m talking about Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, an obvious phony who nonetheless convinced the rubes — that is, much of the news media and the political establishment — that he was a brilliant fiscal expert. What we’re witnessing now is the end of the charade, the political equivalent of what happened when graduates of Trump University tried to get some value in return for their money.
7/ The wonderful Tom Tomorrow.....he's right on with this cartoon.....
8/ Bill Maher with a non-political and quite funny "New Rules".....on toxic male laziness, and Baby Driver [the movie].....five decent minutes....
9/ The excellent Andrew Sullivan with his weekly column in New York Magazine, and this is a particularly good one.....but not good news for Democrats despite the great result from the Virginia race this morning....yes it's a big win, but the underlying problem is what do Democrats stand for and that's not been resolved....
There was a giddiness in D.C. this week, as the fantasy of removing Trump by impeachment seemed marginally less fantastic. I do not begrudge this excitement for a millisecond. God knows we could do with some cheer. Hope also came from the latest polls, which show Trump sliding ever more deeply in public esteem. FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls now shows Trump near record lows: 38.0 percent approval with 56.4 percent disapproval. Gallup now has his disapproval around 60 percent. The possibility that the various hoodlums, sleaze merchants, and swamp creatures involved in Trump’s campaign might have witlessly talked to a wired Papadopoulos for the last few months is straight out of House of Cards. In D.C., we cannot get enough of this.
But on Fox, none of this was happening at all. And next Tuesday, we will get a dose of outside-the-bubble political reality. Ed Gillespie and Ralph Northam will be duking it out in the Virginia governor’s race in an evenly balanced, but Democratic-trending, state. It has morphed into a real-life test of how strong Trumpism will be in 2018, how effective the Democrats are as an alternative, and the future of the country. I don’t know what the result will be. But it is not looking good — for the Democrats or the country as a whole.
10/ Trevor Noah on the Daily Show on the Senate hearings about social media......
One of his better ones, but also check out Senator Al Franken.....five amusing minutes....
Trevor Noah on Thursday looked at the congressional testimonies of executives and lawyers from major social media companies. They have been called this week to account for the role of their organizations in spreading foreign-sponsored disinformation.
“Well, this is really depressing — both for America and for Russian spies. Because in the old days, espionage meant using exploding pens and poison-tipped umbrellas. Now they have to use the same tool as your divorced aunt.” — TREVOR NOAH
11/ A most interesting story from Jill Fillpovic in the Times about the changing image of what it means to be a man in America today, and how Trump represents endangered white males......she has some very good points, and guys - you need to read this....is this you?
Donald Trump is a new kind of old-school American man. In some ways, he’s a throwback to days when authority and power were exclusively white and male by definition, when displays of masculine entitlement were overt and unapologetic. But he’s also a thoroughly modern man-child, the kind of overgrown adolescent you expect to find on internet forums dedicated to video games or anti-feminism: a tweeter of juvenile threats, a crass name-caller, an id unrestrained. Trump-style masculinity, in other words, is less John Wayne and more Tucker Max — and a revealing insight into American male anxiety.
American manhood is reshaping itself in two opposing directions, and both archetypes are ones we’ve never seen before. If Barack Obama embodied the new ideal of the progressive man — a hands-on dad and a self-identified feminist married to a high-achieving woman who was once his boss, who is also well mannered and protective of his family — then Mr. Trump is his antithesis, an old-school chauvinist embracing a new code of adolescent anarchy. He is a paradigm of feckless male entitlement, embracing male power while abnegating the traditional masculine requirements of chivalry, courtesy and responsibility.
12/ An amusing two minute Bill Maher segment titled "I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true"....
13/ I think we [60% of America] all realize Trump is a clueless narcissistic crazy, but in quiet ways he truly is destabilizing the world because of his stupidity and ignorance. Thomas Friedman points this out in his column on Niger, and the reality of Africa.....
It is easy to ignore the recent story of four U.S. servicemen killed in Niger, the giant state in central Africa, because the place is so remote and the circumstances still so murky. That would be a mistake. Niger highlights a much larger problem — just how foolish, how flat-out dumb President Trump is behaving.
Trump is a person who doesn’t connect dots — even when they’re big, fat polka dots that are hard to miss. Rather, he thinks inside narrow little boxes built from his own simplistic impulses and applause lines — and that tendency is leading us into a web of contradictions abroad. Niger is a perfect example.
I know something about Niger because I did a documentary there last year for National Geographic’s “Years of Living Dangerously” climate series and wrote several columns abou
14/ November and December are "king tide" months in South Florida, and finally, finally it's sinking in that the water is
a'comin......
Remember folks - Mount Dora is 160 feet above sea level!
Las Olas Boulevard, Ft. Lauderdale
It was one of those clear, cool, dry autumn days that remind us why we live in South Florida. Not hint of rain, which made the sandbags along the storefronts seem as misplaced as snow shovels.
But rain is no longer a prerequisite for flooding in the 2400 block of East Las Olas Boulevard, a small commercial strip amid one of the most coveted waterfront neighborhoods in South Florida.
Sandbagging thereabouts has become a fall ritual. Rain or shine. Merchants worried that this week’s high tides, conspiring with a full moon, would once again inundate their little stretch of Las Olas and bring canal waters lapping at their doorways.
By now, these freaky rainless floods have lost their novelty.
Todays video - Ahooooooogah! Watch the Nevada land speed being broken at 277 mph by some crazy Swedes......
Todays Irish joke
An Irishman was standing at a bar and a beautiful woman was beside him, so he leans over and says,
"You remind me of my little toe."She replies, "What? You mean I'm small and cute?"He says, "No. I'll probably bang you on the coffee table later when I'm drunk."
Today's Little Larry jokes
A new teacher was trying to make use of her psychology courses. She started her class by saying, 'Everyone who thinks they're stupid, stand up!'
After a few seconds, Little Larry stood up.
The teacher said, 'Do you think you're stupid, Larry?'
'No, ma'am, but I hate to see you standing there all by yourself!'
Larry watched, fascinated, as his mother smoothed cold cream on her face.
'Why do you do that, mommy?' he asked.
'To make myself beautiful,' said his mother, who then began removing the cream with a tissue. 'What's the matter, asked Larry 'Giving up?'
The math teacher saw that Larry wasn't paying attention in class.
She called on him and said, 'Larry! What are 2 and 4 and 28 and 44?'
Larry quickly replied, 'NBC, FOX, ESPN and the Cartoon Network!'
Larry's kindergarten class was on a field trip to their local police station where they saw pictures tacked to a bulletin board of the 10 most wanted criminals.
One of the youngsters pointed to a picture and asked if it really was the photo of a wanted person.
'Yes,' said the policeman. 'The detectives want very badly to capture him.'
Larry asked, "Why didn't you keep him when you took his picture ? "
Little Larry attended a horse auction with his father.
He watched as his father moved from horse to horse, running his hands up and down the horse's legs and rump, and chest.
After a few minutes, Larry asked, 'Dad, why are you doing that?'
His father replied, 'Because when I'm buying horses, I have to make sure that they are healthy and in good shape before I buy.
Larry, looking worried, said, 'Dad, I think the UPS guy wants to buy Mom ..... '
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