1/ Andrew Sullivan on our American tribal political culture, and how polarized we are.....insightful as usual....
Minds will not be changed. Photo: Getty Images
It was entirely a coincidence that I found myself reading Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American Mind in the same week that Brett Kavanaugh was credibly accused of sexual assault in his teens, and Ian Buruma lost his job as editor of The New York Review of Books, after publishing an essay by a man credibly accused of 23 separate instances of sexual abuse, but cleared of all criminal charges. And the book does not, of course, address the specifics of either case. But it’s a sharp analysis of the toxic atmosphere in which our current debates take place, a reminder that it is close to impossible, in this polarized climate, to deal with the specifics and complexities of each scandal from a non-tribal perspective.
2/ Bill Maher on the Times story impugning Rod Rosenstein, where he discussed the 25th Amendment.....Maher dissects Trump's mental illness.....some zingers, but also some serious stuff...
Before closing his show Friday night, Bill Maher presented the case why President Donald Trump has “narcissistic personality disorder” in the wake of the latest New York Times bombshell report.
It was reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made an attempt to organize the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment against the president during the fallout of his firing of FBI Director James Comey. Rosenstein had also suggested to secretly record Trump in the process.
3/ Paul Krugman with a column on tariffs and explains why Trump has unleashed wholesale corruprion.....
President Trump has imposed tariffs, seemingly on whim, on about $300 billion worth of imports
In normal times, Donald Trump’s announcement of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, bringing us closer to an all-out trade war, would have dominated headlines for days. Things being as they are, it was a below-the-fold story, drowned out by all the other scandals underway.
Yet Trump’s tariffs really are a big, bad deal. Their direct economic impact will be modest, although hardly trivial. But the numbers aren’t the whole story. Trumpian trade policy has, almost casually, torn up rules America itself created more than 80 years ago — rules intended to ensure that tariffs reflected national priorities, not the power of special interests.
You could say that Trump is making tariffs corrupt again. And the damage will be lasting.
4/ Sam Bee on the Kavanaugh nomination....a passionate and funny five minutes.....
5/ David Brock was a friend of Kavanaugh and a senior Republican strategist, so this blistering story is a surprise....he hates him....
And that's why I want to tell any senator who cares about our democracy: Vote no.
6/ Samantha Bee on single payer health care vs Fox News's version.....an amusing five minutes....
7/ Guess the proportion of homes flooded in the Carolinas with flood insurance.....there are millions of homes with flood damage, but only 335,000 houses have coverage which means 60? 70? 80? percent of houses will get no insurance payouts....
Floodwaters inundated Lumberton, N.C., on Tuesday after Hurricane Florence.
Millions of people in the Carolinas are at risk of their homes flooding because of
Hurricane Florence. Only about 335,000 homes in the two states have flood insurance.
The math is simple, and the result is ugly: Many people affected by the storm are going to have to pay for repairs to their damaged homes out of their own pockets.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because the same thing happened last year after Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston and, to a lesser extent, after Hurricanes Irma in Florida and Maria in Puerto Rico.
Standard homeowners’ insurance does not cover flooding, but coverage is available from the federal government. Anybody can buy it, but not many do. If the National Flood Insurance Program worked as intended, more people would have coverage. But it doesn’t work as intended.
8/ Seth Meyers on Trump's visit to Florence, NC to survey the flood damage. He seemed to enjoy himself....
President Donald Trump’s “super weird” visit to North Carolina on Wednesday to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Florence prompted Seth Meyers to remind his “Late Night” viewers of one thing.
Meyers noted how Trump reportedly told one man who’d found a yacht washed up against his home in the aftermath of the storm: “At least you got a nice boat out of the deal.”
“This is the guy, that right there, is the guy who gets to pick our next Supreme Court justice,” said Meyers. “A man who thinks that legally speaking, if a boat shows up on your lawn, you get to keep it.”
9/ The excellent Tom Tomorrow.....
10/ Stephen Colbert gives us a preview of the Kavanaugh hearings next week.....and how Trump gets his instructions for making policy.....a very good 8 minutes....
11/ You may have read of the hog farm lagoons in North Carolina overflowing and spilling the disgusting waste into rivers and the water supply.....what you don't know is that the largest hog producer Smithfield Foods is owned by the Chinese Government who buys the pork from the NC farmers, but leaves the environmental mess for us.....
In July 2013, Larry Pope, the CEO of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in America, was called to testify before a U.S. Senate committee about the pending sale of his company to a Chinese conglomerate now known as WH Group. The $7.1 billion purchase, the largest-ever foreign takeover of its kind, had attracted concerns. The Chinese pork manufacturer had a checkered health record, allegedly feeding its hogs illegal chemicals, and Smithfield had a long history of environmental problems at its farms, including a $12 million fine for several thousand clean-water violations. But the worries did not stop there. The Chinese government had a track record of using nominally private entities as proxies for state power. “To have a Chinese food company controlling a major U.S. meat supplier, without shareholder accountability, is a bit concerning,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. “A safe and sustainable food supply is critical to national security. How might this deal impact our national security?”
12/ Love a good magician, and this guy just won "America's Got Talent".....four minutes, and an amazing card trick....
Ellen DeGeneres was at a loss for words after being wowed by the talents of self-taught magician Shin Lim, who won Season 13 of “America’s Got Talent” Wednesday.
Lim dazzled “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” audience Friday, enlisting the host and fellow guests Beth Behrs and Wanda Sykes in a card trick similar to the one that helped him sweep to victory Wednesday. Later in the show, Lim left DeGeneres speechless ― a task undoubtedly more challenging than it looks, given the comedian’s chatty persona ― with an all-new, mind-blowing illusion that appeared to have him swapping a card out of her mouth.
13/ Climate change and North Carolina.....a disaster from hurricane Florence, two years after the horrible flooding from hurricane Matthew.....
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Florence’s rain came down in sheets ― unrelenting, and for days on end.
The water inundated homes, many still boarded up from Hurricane Matthew two years earlier. It swallowed farm operations, killing millions of chickens and turkeys and overflowing open pits full of hog feces. It flooded coal ash ponds, sending the toxic byproduct of burning coal into area waterways. The smell of human waste tainted neighborhoods; in the small town of Benson, 300,000 gallons of raw sewage spilled into the streets.
On Friday, Charlotte-based Duke Energy reported that a dam containing a lake at one of its power plants in Wilmington had been breached by floodwaters, potentially spilling coal ash from a nearby dump into the Cape Fear River.
Many parts of North Carolina are still unnavigable, with entire stretches of highway turned to rivers. Rural roads have been washed out.
14/ If you have the time, see how many of these "best of" movies you have seen....
THE BEST FILMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, ACCORDING TO CRITICS
Todays golf jokes
RULE CHANGES IN EFFECT FOR GOLFERS AGE 65+:
Rule 9.k.34(a): If a tree is between the ball and the hole, and the
tree is deemed to be younger than the player, then the ball can be
moved without penalty.. This is so because this is simply a question
of timing; when the player was younger, the tree was not there so the
player is being penalized because of his age.
Rule 1.a.5 - A ball sliced or hooked into the Rough shall be lifted
and placed on the Fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried
or rolled into the Rough with no penalty. The senior player should not
be penalized for tall grass which ground keepers failed to mow.
Rule 2.d.6 (B) - A ball hitting a tree shall be deemed NOT to have hit the tree.
This is simply bad luck and luck has no place in a scientific game.
The senior player must estimate the distance the ball would have
traveled if it had not hit the tree, and play the ball from there.
Rule 3.B.3(G) - There shall be no such thing as a lost ball. The
missing ball is on or near the course and will eventually be found and
pocketed by someone else, thereby making it a stolen ball. The senior
player is not to compound the felony by charging himself with a penalty
Rule 4.c.7(h) - If a putt passes over a hole without dropping, it is
deemed to have dropped. The Law of Gravity supersedes the Rules of Golf.
Rule 5. - Putts that stop close enough to the cup that they could be
blown in, may be blown in. This does not apply to balls more than
three inches from the Hole. No one wants to make a mockery of the game.
Rule 6.a.9(k) - There is no penalty for so-called “out of bounds.” If
penny-pinching golf course owners bought sufficient land, this would not occur.
The senior player deserves an apology, not a penalty.
Rule 7.G.15(z) - There is no penalty for a ball in a water hazard, as
golf balls should float. Senior players should not be penalized for
any shortcomings of the manufacturers.
Rule 8.k.9(S) - Advertisements claim that golf scores can be improved
by purchasing new golf equipment. Since this is financially
impractical for many senior players, one-half stroke per hole may be
subtracted for using old equipment.
Please advise all your senior friends of these important rule changes
and keep multiple copies in your golf bag. Those not following the
rules need to be provided a copy.
Golf is.... above all.... a game of integrity.
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