1/ The excellent Frank Rich with his wisdom on the big news of the week.....
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 recent wave of departures from the Trump administration, Democrat Conor Lamb’s apparent victory in the Pennsylvania special election, and the Stormy Daniels scandal.
The exodus from the Trump administration continues this week with Rex Tillerson at the State Department, followed out the door by the department spokesperson who described the White House’s actions a little too bluntly, and with more moves expected. What is going on here?
Trump’s top appointees, exemplified by the Cabinet, are in their jobs for only three reasons: to demolish the federal government; to spend taxpayers’ money on luxury travel and office refurbishing; and to toady to the president in public and obey his policy whims in private. Tillerson is out because he succeeded in only the first of these by decimating the State Department. His successor, Mike Pompeo, will not make Tillerson’s mistake. He’s the very model of a heel-clicking Vichy Republican.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli
2/ The SNL cold open with Rex Tillerson [John Goodman], Jeff Sessions [Kate McKinnon] and Bill Hader
as the Mooch......a really good one, five minutes....
to shout that President Donald Trump “is a moron” on national TV.
“It’s just crazy how one day you’re the CEO of Exxon, a $50 billion company, and the next day you get fired by a man who used to sell steaks in the mail,” Goodman’s Tillerson tells “Anderson Cooper” (Alex Moffat) before crushing the drinking glass in his hand.
“Call Jurassic Park, ’cause the Rex-y’s loose!”
It was the second week in a row that the cold open featured a spoof Cooper program, this time examining the Trump administration firings.
3/ Bill Maher with a "New Rules" that should be required watching for all Democrats....a classic pissed off
Maher.....a wonderful five minutes...
Bill Maher had some tough words for Democrats during his Friday night show.
He began by demanding they “support the very important part of their coalition––other Democrats” and slammed Conor Lamb, who pulled off a narrow victory in the Pennsylvania special election, for publicly distancing himself from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
4/ Seth Meyers from Thursday night with an exceptionally funny "A Closer Look".....a great nine minutes....
Robert Mueller, the special counsel, subpoenaed documents from the Trump Organization on Thursday, indicating that his investigation could be narrowing in on the president. Kimmel and Seth Meyers reacted with their own brands of sardonic glee.
“Special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, making it the first time Mueller demanded documents directly from Trump’s businesses. You think Trump’s businesses keep records? The Trump University textbooks were just Wikipedia pages printed out and stapled together.” — SETH MEYERS
5/ The viral New Yorker cover.....hmmm....the lips!
6/ A story from Rolling Stone that should alarm you - what Trump's cabinet flunkies are doing to our gub'mint......wrecking it.
We Americans are on our own, and what we saw Sunday night from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos during the '60 Minutes' interview was only a reminder.
I worry less about Kim Jong-Un than I do Betsy DeVos. The North Korean dictator, for one, doesn't have dominion over the educational futures of nearly 51 million elementary and secondary students and countless more in college. Barring a nuclear attack, of course, the wealthy charter-school champion is poised to play a much larger role than Kim will in determining the future of United States. The sophomoric invective he directs at us pales in comparison to the utter disrespect that President Trump demonstrated by nominating her to lead the Department of Education in the first place. To build a United States government of the worst people, one must not merely be amateurish. It requires a special hatred for America to form a kakistocracy.
7/ A very good Sam Bee on Trump [of course] and Conor Lamb....a decent five minutes....
Samantha Bee welcomed the narrow victory of "illegitimate Kennedy child" Conor Lamb in a special congressional election in Pennsylvania on the latest episode of Full Frontal.
Bee noted that the Democrats failed to even field a candidate in the previous two congressional elections held in Lamb's district, which President Trump won by close to 20 points in 2016. "I'm really enjoying this radical new Democratic strategy called trying," Bee quipped. "It really makes you wonder: What if we keep trying?"
Though Lamb appears to be a highly conservative Democrat who agrees with Trump on multiple issues, Bee chose to focus on what she sees as the upside of his win.
8/ If you read they New York Times like I do, this story will interest you....it says the conservative columnists the Times has are phony.....interesting, and might just be true.....
The New York Times editorial page has come in for a great deal of criticism since it fell under the leadership of James Bennet, previously editor at the Atlantic, in March 2016.
Most recently, new hire Bari Weiss linked to a fake Twitter account as virtually her only evidence in a column devoted to the supposed epidemic of totalitarianism sweeping US universities. (FYI: There is no such epidemic.)
Before that was the controversy over hiring, and then quickly firing, Quinn Norton, who is friends with a Nazi. There was the controversy over hiring Bret Stephens, a climate denier and Woody Allen apologist. There was the controversy over the op-ed/press release by Erik Prince of the security contractor Blackwater.
And so on. David Uberti at Splinter has a nice rundown of the various fights, along with some trenchant critique.
9/ Stephen Colbert tries to fill all of the US Government positions....first he interviews a nerd, then he goes into the field at the National Mall.....amusing, vintage Colbert....nine minutes...
Last night Stephen Colbert showed more from his recent trip to D.C., wherein the Late Show host attempted to fill all the vacant positions in the federal government.
Colbert spoke with Partnership for Public Service CEO Max Stier about all these vacancies and whether he sees the government as “half-empty” or “half-full.”
After trying to find out whether there were any vacancies in “the Deep State,” Colbert offered himself up as a potential candidate and walked through some of the questions, like whether he’s smoked marijuana in the past few years.
But then he went out himself to find candidates for positions like Director of the National Drug Control Policy, Ambassador to South Korea, NASA administrator, and Director of the U.S. Marshals Service.
10/ A new music video from Above and Beyond - "Always" with Zoe Johnston....shot in some snowy mountains with incredibly beautiful scenery.....lovely song too....
11/ Jane Mayer [who wrote the definitive story on the Steele dossier in DDD last week] on the golden shower video.....it could be Trump's visit to Las Vegas that got confused with Russian hookers in Moscow.........
A new book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn includes information about Donald Trump’s visit to a night club that was later shuttered for its sexually explicit theatre shows.
Of all the allegations about Donald Trump contained in the ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s infamous “dossier,” the most notorious remains a secondhand report that Trump consorted with prostitutes in 2013 while staying in the Presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, in Moscow, and that, at his request, the prostitutes urinated on a bed in which President Barack Obama and his wife had previously slept.
Early last year, when this allegation became public, along with much of the rest of the dossier, Trump denounced it as “crap” compiled by “sick people.” Since then, the allegation has remained uncorroborated, a fact that has given ammunition to those who want to dismiss the entire dossier as a fabrication.
12/ Jimmy Kimmel went to a youth hostel in Los Angeles, and had two students compete for a luxury suite instead of a bunk bed.....sounds exploitative, but it's an amusing six minutes....
13/ What a good idea.....oops of course I meant really bad, terrible idea....
If Mark Zuckerberg and a janitor who works at Facebook’s headquarters each received a speeding ticket while driving home from work, they’d each owe the government the same amount of money. Mr. Zuckerberg wouldn’t bat an eye.
The janitor is another story.
For people living on the economic margins, even minor offenses can impose crushing financial obligations, trapping them in a cycle of debt and incarceration for nonpayment. In Ferguson, Mo., for example, a single $151 parking violation sent a black woman struggling with homelessness into a seven-year odyssey of court appearances, arrest warrants and jail time connected to her inability to pay.
Across America, one-size-fits-all fines are the norm, which I demonstrate in an article for the University of Chicago Law Review. Where judges do have wiggle room to choose the size of a fine, mandatory minimums and maximums often tie their hands. Some states even prohibit consideration of a person’s income. And when courts are allowed to take finances into account, they frequently fail to do so.
Other places have saner methods. Finland and Argentina, for example
14/ Book review.....
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK
What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America
By David Cay Johnston
306 pp. Simon & Schuster. $28.
What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America
By David Cay Johnston
306 pp. Simon & Schuster. $28.
It takes a brave writer, in 2018, to attempt a book about Donald Trump’s presidency. During his one year in the White House, Trump has so thoroughly warped the space-time continuum of our news cycle that it seems preposterous that any words about his presidency, slapped between covers, won’t have been overtaken by events by the time they appear in print.
Yet there are routes to staying power. One comes from Michael Wolff, whose jaw-dropping (and thinly sourced) tales of White House dysfunction in “Fire and Fury” cost Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime Svengali, both his media platform and his billionaire patron. Another successful approach is provided by David Frum, whose elegantly written jeremiad “Trumpocracy”will give future historians ample evidence that not all Republicans fell in line behind their party’s president.
15/ Let's hope so!
TALLAHASSEE BEWARE: ONE MONTH ON FROM PARKLAND, SOUTHEAST FLORIDA HAS AWAKENED POLITICALL
Y
Southeast Florida is more distant from the seat of power in this state than any other part of Florida. That distance has through the years created an indifference, an ignorance and perhaps a total disinterest in what happens in state government. The metropolitan area stretching from Jupiter to Florida City is the most unique part of the state – culturally it’s more New York than Florida and years ago Bob Graham, who hails from Miami Lakes talked about a Cincinnati effect where Floridians would be more engaged in the politics of where they came from our family from and would eventually be buried in those places. But as time has gone on areas of the state, particularly southeastern Florida have developed a unique identity, almost hyper-local. The combination of hyper-local thinking and the “Cincinnati effect” meant that state politics and government was largely ignored, even giving local representatives much autonomy on how they voted.
16/ So many movies.....so little time.....
Are you confused with the choice available? Because the Times has compiled the 100 best movies on Amazon Prime.....next we need Netflix....
The 100 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video
MARCH 9, 2018UPDATED MARCH 16, 2018
As Netflix pours more of its resources into original content, Amazon Prime Video is picking up the slack, adding new movies for its subscribers each month. Its catalog has grown so impressive, in fact, that it’s a bit overwhelming — and at the same time, movies that are included with a Prime subscription regularly change status, becoming available only for rental or purchase. It’s a lot to sift through, so we’ve plucked out 100 of the absolute best movies on Prime right now, to be updated as new information is made available.
Todays toilet joke
I was in a public toilet and had just sat down, when I heard a voice from the next cubicle, he said “Hi!, how are you?”
Embarrassed, I said, “I’m doing fine”.
The voice said “So what are you up to?”.
I said, “Just doing the same as you, sitting here!”.
From next door, “Can I come over?”.
Embarrassed, I said, “I’m doing fine”.
The voice said “So what are you up to?”.
I said, “Just doing the same as you, sitting here!”.
From next door, “Can I come over?”.
Annoyed, I said, "rather busy right now”.
The voice said, “Listen, I will have to call you back, there’s an idiot next door answering all my questions"
The voice said, “Listen, I will have to call you back, there’s an idiot next door answering all my questions"
Todays Southern jokes
THE TOP 3O THINGS THAT YOU’LL NEVER HEAR A SOUTHERNER SAY:3O . When I retire, I'm movin' north.29. I'll take Shakespeare for 1000, Alex.28. Duct tape won't fix that.27. Come to think of it, I'll have a Heineken26. We don't keep firearms in this house.25. You can't feed that to the dog.24. No kids in the back of the pickup, it's just not safe.23. Wrestling is fake.22. We're vegetarians.21. Do you think my gut is too big?20. I'll have grapefruit and lettuce instead of biscuits and gravy.19. Honey, we don't need another dog.18. Who cares who won the Civil War?17. Give me the small bag of pork rinds.16. Too many mounted deer heads detract from the decor.15. I just couldn't find a thing at Wal-Mart today.14. Trim the fat off that steak.13. Cappuccino tastes better than espresso.12. The tires on that truck are too big.11. I've got it all on the C: DRIVE.10. Unsweetened tea tastes better.9. My fiancee, Bobbie Jo, is registered at Tiffany's.8. I've got two cases of Bottled Water for the Super Bowl.7. Checkmate.6. She's too young to be wearing a bikini.5. Hey! Here's an episode of "Hee Haw" that we haven't seen.4. I don't have a favorite college team.3. You Guys.2. Those shorts ought to be a little longer, Betty Mae.1. We have too many guns now, why do I need another one?
Todays old dog joke
An old Doberman starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.The old Doberman thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep trouble now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old Doberman exclaims loudly,"Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?"Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees."Whew!," says the panther, "That was close! That old Doberman nearly had me!"Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes.The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"Now, the old Doberman sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?," but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old Doberman says ......"Where's that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!"Moral of this story...Don't mess with the old dogs... Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery! BS and brilliance only come with age and experience.
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