1/ Frank Rich on the implications of Moore's defeat for Republicans.....the master of political commentary with his insights.........
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: the stunning outcome of the Alabama Senate race and its potential effects on American politics.
In an election that had forecasters puzzled, Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore last night, reducing GOP’s Senate majority to one vote. What do you take away from the results in Alabama?
I am one of those pessimists who thought Moore would eke it out in Alabama. How happy I am to be wrong! I am also one of those optimists who firmly believes that Donald Trump will look for a White House exit before the end of his first term — whether he’s done in by the Robert Mueller investigation, a desire to rescue his family business and the two relatives in gravest legal jeopardy (son Fredo and son-in-law Jared), or his diet of junk food and Diet Coke. That optimism is bolstered by yesterday’s Alabama vote.
2/ And some great comedy from Weekend Update [SNL]....an amusing five minutes....
Saturday Night Live‘s pre-Christmas, post-Roy Moore Weekend Update sent off the would-be Alabama senator and accused mall troll with one of the faux news desk’s best lines of the night: Noting that Doug Jones will be the state’s first Democratic senator in over 20 years, co-anchor Colin Jost quoted Moore. “Gross. Over 20 years?”
After the joke settled in, Weekend Update had other topical gifts to deliver, including the strong voter turnout in Alabama among black women. Explaining that Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez tweeted “Black women led us to victory and we can’t take that for granted,” co-anchor (and newly appointed co-head writer) Michael Che offered a sly, skeptical and perfectly delivered, “Mmmm, but I bet you will.”
3/ This is the viral Times story that details Trump's routine: TV habits, diet and how he is managed by the White House staff.....scary and depressing to be reminded that this dysfunctional cretin is the actual President.....
Amerika elected one of their own....
WASHINGTON — Around 5:30 each morning, President Trump wakes and tunes into the television in the White House’s master bedroom. He flips to CNN for news, moves to “Fox & Friends” for comfort and messaging ideas, and sometimes watches MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” because, friends suspect, it fires him up for the day.
Energized, infuriated — often a gumbo of both — Mr. Trump grabs his iPhone. Sometimes he tweets while propped on his pillow, according to aides. Other times he tweets from the den next door, watching another television. Less frequently, he makes his way up the hall to the ornate Treaty Room, sometimes dressed for the day, sometimes still in night clothes, where he begins his official and unofficial calls.
As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land much as he did the night of his stunning victory over Hillary Clinton — as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur.
4/ SNL's cold open, with Trump and the gang decorating the Christmas tree......not the funniest, but maybe the most biting Alec Baldwin Trump yet....
Seven minutes.....and Scarlett Johansen is Ivanka....
Saturday Night Live kept their recent trend going by mixing politics with the festivities of the holiday season.
Tonight’s cold open showed Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump again as he delivers a Christmas address from the White House. After bragging about the push for tax reform and his victory in the culture wars, Trump dedicates his Christmas tree to all of the allies and enemies who met their political demise during his presidency. Trump makes it all official by having his staff bring him ornaments to represent these “haters and losers.”
Kellyanne Conway is the first to join the president, and she presents him with a bauble that has James Comey‘s face on it. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is up next with bulbs to represent Anthony Scaramucci and Sean Spicer, and Mike Pence gave Trump an ornament in honor of Michael Flynn.
Jeff Sessions concludes the visitations by providing an angel for Trump to put atop the tree…and also mark the imminent firing of Robert Mueller. While all of this is happening, Omarosa Manigault is banging on the White House windows, begging Trump to take her back one last time.
5/ One of these days [maybe even next week] we will see the news Robert Mueller has been fired........Andrew Sullivan with some insights on the coordinated right wing media attacks on Mueller.....excellent commentary...
Patience, I guess. Patience.
On my iPhone, which I’m trying not to look at, I have three sites tucked away to check when I’m having a bad Trump day. There’s the Gallup approval chart, FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, and Real Clear Politics’ graphic of Trump polling. They sit there like little squares of visual Xanax whenever the anxiety of living in a country run by a delusional rage-aholic gets a bit too much. And they’re all looking good. Squinting at Nate’s blurry orange and green, it looks to me as if the gulf between approval and disapproval is widening still further. Around 20 points this week. Twenty! RCP — a little less smoothed-out — shows an even starker low. And then Virginia and now Alabama. And the Democratic flood of potential candidates for 2018, especially women. And that moment Drudge (peace be upon him) called “Brokeback Virginia” when the crusty old bigot, Roy Moore, rode in on a horse to his electoral defeat, looking about as comfortable as I would be, perched up there, cowboy boots akimbo. If it weren’t all so tragic, we’d be laughing our asses off.
And yet this still feels like a phony oasis. A huge majority of Republicans stuck with Moore and Trump last Tuesday.
6/ Sometimes it's worthwhile to read stories written by historian, who can put todays events in perspective. This story about the Koch brothers and their drive to take us backwards is most illuminating, and details the challenges we face......
But it's also heartening to read this after Doug Jones's victory.....maybe we can win....
The Republican Party's "tax reform" bill has passed both chambers of Congress. After differences between the House and Senate version are worked out, it will likely soon be signed by President Donald Trump. This legislation is more than a grotesque effort to take money from the poor and working class and give it to the very richest Americans and corporations. In reality, it is an effort to wholly remake American society by undoing the social progress of the New Deal, the Great Society and the civil rights movement.
This effort has been met with surprisingly little resistance from the American people.
Why?
Unlike the Republicans and movement conservatives, the Democratic Party is terrible at translating complex questions of public policy into simple narratives that evoke emotion and, in turn, action from the American people. Moreover, while the Republican Party systematically works to roll back the 20th century by eliminating programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act -- with the apparent goal of creating a Malthusian dystopia -- many prominent Democrats and other liberals are instead obsessed with enforcing purity tests for sexual harassment within their own party
7/ Jimmy Kimmel with a one minute riff on magazine stories about Trump......funny....
8/ Sigh.....the Times has put together a map of how Republicans in different parts of the country feel about climate change.....
Over the past two decades, Republicans have grown increasingly doubtful about climate change, even as Democrats have grown increasingly convinced that it’s happening and is caused by humans. But recent research published in the journal Climatic Change reveals greater nuance in partisan climate opinions across the country.
9/ If you take a regular prescription medication this article might be useful - and it might save you money.....
The generic version of Crestor — rosuvastatin — cost Patrik Swanljung of Anacortes, Wash., about $38 less when he
bought it through a website rather than using his health insurance. Consumers are finding that they can sometimes save money on their
drug costs by not using their insurance.
Having health insurance is supposed to save you money on your prescriptions. But increasingly, consumers are finding that isn’t the case.
Patrik Swanljung found this out when he went to fill a prescription for a generic cholesterol drug. In May, Mr. Swanljung handed his Medicare prescription card to the pharmacist at his local Walgreens and was told that he owed $83.94 for a three-month supply.
Alarmed at that price, Mr. Swanljung went online and found Blink Health, a start-up, offering the same drug — generic Crestor — for $45.89.
It had struck a better deal than did his insurer, UnitedHealthcare. “It’s completely ridiculous,” said Mr. Swanljung, 72, who lives in Anacortes, Wash.
10/ And on the same subject, if you know of someone who is taking lots of drugs get them to read this, if the side effects from the polypharmacy will still let them focus.....
New word - polypharmacy....
There’s a growing problem of the elderly taking too many prescription drugs
Consider it America’s other prescription drug epidemic.
For decades, experts have warned that older Americans are taking too many unnecessary drugs, often prescribed by multiple doctors, for dubious or unknown reasons. Researchers estimate that 25 percent of people ages 65 to 69 take at least five prescription drugs to treat chronic conditions, a figure that jumps to nearly 46 percent for those between 70 and 79. Doctors say it is not uncommon to encounter patients taking more than 20 drugs to treat acid reflux, heart disease, depression or insomnia or other disorders.
Unlike the overuse of opioid painkillers, the polypharmacy problem has attracted little attention. But some doctors are working to reverse the trend.
At least 15 percent of seniors seeking care annually from doctors or hospitals have suffered a medication problem; in half of these cases, the problem is believed to be potentially preventable. Studies have linked polypharmacy to unnecessary death. Older patients, who have greater difficulty metabolizing medicines, are more likely to suffer dizziness, confusion and falls. And the side effects of drugs are frequently misinterpreted as a new problem, triggering more prescriptions, a process known as a prescribing cascade.
11/ A heartbreaking video....one painful minute....
A video of an 11-year-old boy from Knoxville, Tennessee talking about bullying was taken down from his mother's Facebook page Monday after going massively viral, Deadline reported. The video, featuring Keaton Jones, was viewed over 20 million times on Facebook before disappearing.
The clip, filmed and posted to Facebook over the weekend by his mother Kimberly Jones, showed Keaton devastated and crying while describing several experiences of bullying he suffered from other kids at school. He said children made fun of his nose and called him ugly, insulted him for not having friends and even poured milk on him one day during lunch.
12/ Some of the small shit the Trump cabinet is up to is especially vicious.....good story from Benjamin Studebaker.....
Trump Plans to Let Restaurateurs Confiscate Employees’ Tips
by Benjamin Studebaker
I had the misfortune of reading about a newly proposed Trump administration regulatory change. These regulatory changes happen constantly, but most of them fail to draw the heavy press and public attention that say, net neutrality has and does. It seems these regulations are least likely to get attention when the groups they harm are small and economically and politically weak. This latest regulation hits tipped employees especially hard, and its design is insidious and deeply misleading. Here’s how it works.
As it presently works, employers are prohibited from confiscating the tips of employees.
13/ The TV critic of the Times with a look at Trump's TV habits.....quite good....
Because President Trump has said he is a reader — big-league reader, reads documents, the best documents — I hope that he is reading this, and not, say, watching a “Fox & Friends” recording on the gigantic flat-screen TV that he had installed in the White House dining room, even though he says he rarely watches.
We need to talk about the president’s TV habit. The one he doesn’t have.
14/ The elephant sketch from the Carol Burnett show......remember this was a live broadcast in front of a live audience, and Tim Conway refuses to let the sketch continue till he tells his elephant stories....a hysterically funny four minutes....
15/ This is the beginning of [financial] life unravelling in South Florida.....will take a while, but so it begins. Moodys credit agency will be factoring in climate change to credit rating, which will mean higher interest rates for municipal bonds, borrowing etc.
Watch for banks not giving 30 year mortgages in South Florida next.....
Waiting to address climate change could cost taxpayers in coastal cities — particularly in highly vulnerable Florida — in a way that not even the most progressive resiliency planners have considered.
Leaving the growing risk of rising seas unaddressed is going to hurt municipal and government credit scores, says the bond rating agency Moody’s in a new report. That means that cities or states now ignoring the issue could face higher interest rates when they borrow money down the road. And, according to long-term climate projections, they will need to borrow a lot of it — hundreds of millions, maybe billions — for civil works projects that will be needed to keep sea level rise from inundating streets, homes and businesses in Florida in coming decades.
Guess who is going to pick up that extra cost of those bonds? Taxpayers.
So far, some South Florida counties and cities, which have already invested in or are planning projects to adapt to the threat of rising seas, are making moves to offset what amounts to a hidden cost of climate change. Miami Beach has famously invested nearly half a billion dollars in pumps and road raising, and Miami voters just approved the $400 million Miami Forever bond to address issues like sea level rise.
Good ad from Sweden....
Todays blonde joke....
Todays blind man joke
No comments:
Post a Comment