1/ Frank Rich on the news of the week......insightful as always.....
Brothers in arms. Photo: AP/REX/Shutterstock
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: Trump’s listening sessions with the families of mass-shooting victims, the meaning of Mueller’s latest indictments, and lessons of Black Panther’s box-office success.
2/ Stephen Colbert with a wonderful 12 minutes on Trump's solution for guns in schools, and the Marco Rubio meeting.....he was on form for this one....
Stephen Colbert criticized President Trump's plan to arm schoolteachers in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting on Thursday's Late Show.
"The national conversation continues to be how to keep our children safe from gun violence," Colbert said. "Everyone acknowledges this is a crisis – from the president to the Republican Party to the NRA – every option is on the table … except fewer guns."
The host then poked fun at Trump's reliance onthe "I hear you" memoat a White House gathering of Parkland victims as well as asking his audience for suggestions on how to curb gun violence. "Donald Trump actually does have a suggestion to deal with the number of guns: He wants more of them," Colbert added. "Yes, just arm the teachers. I'm sure it's in the school budget. Sorry your school can't afford enough copies of To Kill a Mockingbird but, good news, we're giving you something that could kill any bird."
3/ Andrew Sullivan on the opiod epidemic that is crushing rural America and the middle class. He looks at not just the what [is happening], but the why, and it's frankly kind of scary. Remember last weeks story about how we are in the middle of a collapse of American society? This is another view on our slow moving disaster.....an excellent essay.
It is a beautiful, hardy flower,Papaver somniferum, a poppy that grows up to four feet in height and arrives in a multitude of colors. It thrives in temperate climates, needs no fertilizer, attracts few pests, and is as tough as many weeds. The blooms last only a few days and then the petals fall, revealing a matte, greenish-gray pod fringed with flutes. The seeds are nutritious and have no psychotropic effects. No one knows when the first curious human learned to crush this bulblike pod and mix it with water, creating a substance that has an oddly calming and euphoric effect on the human brain. Nor do we know who first found out that if you cut the pod with a small knife, capture its milky sap, and leave that to harden in the air, you’ll get a smokable nugget that provides an even more intense experience. We do know, from Neolithic ruins in Europe, that the cultivation of this plant goes back as far as 6,000 years, probably farther. Homer called it a “wondrous substance.” Those who consumed it, he marveled, “did not shed a tear all day long, even if their mother or father had died, even if a brother or beloved son was killed before their own eyes.” For millennia, it has salved pain, suspended grief, and seduced humans with its intimations of the divine. It was a medicine before there was such a thing as medicine. Every attempt to banish it, destroy it, or prohibit it has failed.
The poppy’s power, in fact, is greater than ever. The molecules derived from it have effectively conquered contemporary America.
4/ Amy Chua in the Times on our destructive politics, and she has a theory that is quite interesting, if a little challenging. See if you agree....
By now we all understand that America is in the grip of political tribalism. We lament and condemn this phenomenon even as we voraciously engage in it. But by fixating on the symptoms, we remain blind to the root causes. America is being ravaged by predictable, destructive political dynamics that follow from the combination of democracy and a market-dominant minority.
Most Americans assume that democracy and free markets go hand in hand, naturally working together to generate prosperity and freedom. For the United States, this has largely been true. But by their very nature, markets and democracy coexist in deep tension.
Capitalism creates a small number of very wealthy people, while democracy potentially empowers a poor majority resentful of that wealth. In the wrong conditions, that tension can set in motion intensely destructive politics.
5/ If you live in Lake County, your State Senator is Dennis Baxley. This is a 2 minute interview he had with Alexandra Jaffe of HBO's Vice News as part of a report on Parkland [full clip below].....it's two minutes of solid denial of a gun problem, and a flat out refusal to do anything about it.....
Gary McKechnie [D] is running against this moron ......donate now......we have to get this asshole out of office.
One of those gun-rights defenders, GOP state Sen. Dennis Baxley, told VICE News that he opposes any restrictions on assault weapons — the kind of gun used by the Stoneman Douglas shooter, a 19-year-old former student at the school. "You can't just make policy that doesn't work," he told VICE News. "It's the mindset that's the issue," not the weapon.
When asked why Floridians should have the right to buy AR-15s, Baxley said he wanted to focus on cultural issues. "Spoons are used to eat stuff to kill yourself with obesity, but we're not picking up spoons to get rid of obesity," Baxley added.
When a VICE News correspondent noted that spoons aren't used to commit mass murder, Baxley said, "I understand where you're coming from, and I wish that would solve your problem. It won't."
6/ John Oliver is back after a two month break, and delivers a scathing indictment of Trump's foreign policy, or the lack of it......an excellent 19 minutes of comedic reporting...
John Oliver and Last Week Tonight returned from its winter break Sunday to deliver a scathing look at Donald Trump's foreign policy (or lack thereof) and how the world views it, from vacant ambassadorships in crucial nations to an "America First" mandate that alienates allies.
Oliver quickly ran down Trump's list of international follies – the "shithole countries" remark, retweeting British hate groups, angering South Korea and making false statements about Germany – before examining what exactly is the Trump administration's foreign policy.
"The rest of the world continues to exist whether Trump acknowledges it or not," Oliver said.
7/ Paul Krugman with a column on what is truly at stake in our political system......very good indeed....
On Wednesday, after listening to the heart-rending stories of those who lost children and friends in the Parkland school shooting — while holding a cue card with empathetic-sounding phrases — Donald Trump proposed his answer: arming schoolteachers.
It says something about the state of our national discourse that this wasn’t even among the vilest, stupidest reactions to the atrocity. No, those honors go to the assertions by many conservative figures that bereaved students were being manipulated by sinister forces, or even that they were paid actors.
Still, Trump’s horrible idea, taken straight from the N.R.A. playbook, was deeply revealing — and the revelation goes beyond issues of gun control. What’s going on in America right now isn’t just a culture war. It is, on the part of much of today’s right, a war on the very concept of community, of a society that uses the institution we call government to offer certain basic protections to all its members.
After several months off, the irascible Brit returned to the desk of Last Week Tonight for its fifth season premiere. He began by addressing the “heartbreaking events” of Parkland, Florida, wherein a MAGA hat-wearing 19-year-old armed with a legally purchased AR-15 assault rifle targeted the students and faculty of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, taking 17 lives in a hail of gunfire.
“These events are now so familiar, we basically automatically know how each side will play out: ‘thoughts and prayers,’ ‘fuck your thoughts and prayers,’ ‘it’s a mental health problem,’ ‘yeah, but it’s also a gun problem,’ and then someone says ‘now’s not the time to talk about gun control,’ and then everybody moves on until it inevitably happens again,” said Oliver.
He added: “But this time felt slightly different because when the ‘now’s not the time’ argument came out, the kids from that school said, ‘You know what? Yes it f#cking is.’”
10/ A beautiful song from Above and Beyond, Live at Porchester Hall......soft, wistful and for me one of the best from this live performance. It uses all three of the singers, violins, a harp, a trumpet and even a broom.....wonderful!
11/ Nicolas Kristof on the poisons we are unwittingly ingesting every day.....we need to protect ourselves from Big Food and the Chemical industry folks....
What Poisons Are in Your Body?
Our bodies are full of poisons from products we use every day. I know – I’ve had my urine tested for them. But before I get into all that, let’s do a quick check for poisons that might be in your body.
Choose all the products you have been exposed to in the past month
To call Annihilation writer-director Alex Garland the thinking geek's new sci-fi guru is probably to jinx his box-office chances. Look where thoughtfulness got Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. But Garland is the real-deal for generating rattling tension and mind-blowing mojo. Annihilation, an eco-thriller based on the first book in the acclaimed Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, gives Garland a shot at stretching the cerebral and scare muscles he flexed so brilliantly in his 2015 directing debut, Ex Machina, a fierce and acidly funny take on artificial intelligence that asked provoking question about what defines humanity or lack of same.
The provocations have intensified but the laughs are few inAnnihilationsince its five female protagonists are playing a deadly game. A dynamite Natalie Portman, radiating ferocity and feeling, stars as Lena, an ex-Army biologist on an expedition into the "Shimmer," an overgrown, undulating forest located in Florida (but shot in the U.K.) that seems to be infecting everything it spreads its spores on. The government has cordoned off the space, known as Area X, but who are the Feds kidding. The Shimmer is threatening to shim on inhabited areas and it means business. The trip is organized by Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh, making sanity look anything but). No one came back from the last trek, except for Lena's husband Kane (Ex Machina's Oscar Isaac in superb form). Kane has showed up at home after a year looking the same but acting body-and-spirit snatched. Lena wants answers.
"Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl."
The priest asks,"Is that you, little Dominic Savino?"
"Yes, Father, it is."
"And who was the girl you were with?"
"I can't tell you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation."
"Well, Dominic, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later so you may as well tell me now.
Was it Tina Minetti?"
"I cannot say."
"Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?"
"I'll never tell."
"Was it Nina Capelli?"
"I'm sorry, but I cannot name her."
"Was it Cathy Piriano?"
"My lips are sealed."
"Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?"
"Please, Father, I cannot tell you."
The priest sighs in frustration. "You're very tight lipped, and I admire that. But you've sinned and have to atone. You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. Now you go and behave yourself."
Joey walks back to his pew, and his friend Franco slides over and whispers,
"What'd you get?"
"Four months vacation and five good leads."
Todays Wal-Mart joke
So I finally landed a job as a Wal-Mart greeter, which is a good find for many retirees. Unfortunately I lasted less than a day.
About two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into the store with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance. Per my greeter training manual I said pleasantly, “Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart.” “Nice children you have there. Are they twins?”
The ugly woman stopped yelling long enough to say, “Hell no, they ain’t twins. The oldest one is 9, and the other one is 7. Why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just stupid?”
So I replied, “I’m neither blind nor stupid, madam. I just couldn’t believe someone slept with you twice. Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.”
My supervisor said I probably wasn’t cut out for this line of work.
Todays guy joke
True Golf Buddies…
A guy brings one of his golf buddies home unannounced for dinner at 6:00, after enjoying a day of golf.
His wife screams her head off while his buddy sits at the kitchen table, open mouthed, listening to the tirade.
"My hair and makeup are not done, the house is a mess and the dishes are still in the sink. I’m completely exhausted! I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Can't you see I'm still in my damn pajamas? I can't be bothered with cooking tonight! Why the F did you bring him home without letting me know ahead of time, you inconsiderate birdbrain!?"
