Make sure you look at #11.....important!
1/ Frank Rich on last weeks news.....excellent as always...
Trump declaring an emergency at the southern border. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, Republican senators standing up to Trump, Beto O’Rourke’s presidential announcement, and the national fascination with the college admissions scandal.
The struggle between the White House and an empowered Congress has spread to the Senate — and to congressional Republicans — who have voted down Trump’s national emergency declaration and U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen. Is this about Congress trying to reclaim its position as a coequal branch of government, as some Republicans claim, or is the party turning against Trump?
Republicans in general, who continue to give Trump a 90 percent approval rating, and the Vichy Republicans in Congress in particular, have not remotely turned against their dear leader.
2/ I love Bill Maher.....here he calls out Dems for being frightened of tough and/or stupid questions.....five good minutes....
Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by tearing into Democrats for not going on Fox News, even deciding not to let Fox News host any debates.
He told the party to “grow a pair” and play an away game, saying, “You want to be in the big leagues but you refuse to ever play an away game? You don’t like the questions that Fox News might ask so you’re deciding to not take any questions at all? How very Trump of you.”
3/ Andrew Sullivan on the power of the Israeli lobby.....it's frightening....
Rep. Ilhan Omar during a news conference on prescription drugs in January. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Let’s get this out of the way first: Using the phrases “all about the Benjamins” and “allegiance to a foreign country” when referring to the Israel lobby in D.C., as freshman Democratic representative Ilhan Omar recently did, is anti-Semitic. It should be possible to criticize Washington’s relationship with Israel without deploying crude and freighted language like this. But it got me wondering: Is it possible to write honestly about the Israel lobby’s power in D.C. without using any anti-Semitic “tropes” at all?
The basic facts are not really in dispute. A very powerful lobby deploys the money and passions of its members to ensure that a foreign country gets very, very special treatment from the U.S. Many of its supporters are Evangelical Protestants who want to accelerate the Second Coming.
4/ They ran a rerun of the Matt Damon SNL show from last year this last Saturday, and Trump apparently watched it and went berserk....calling for an investigation into why they are allowed to make fun of him. It's the "Wonderful Life" takeoff, and it's truly one of their best....and when you watch it you can see how it got under this asshole's skin.....an excellent six minutes....
5/ This is the Jane Mayer story from the New Yorker with the full scope of the way Fox News owns Trump, and basically runs the country....
In January, during the longest government shutdown in America’s history, President Donald Trump rode in a motorcade through Hidalgo County, Texas, eventually stopping on a grassy bluff overlooking the Rio Grande. The White House wanted to dramatize what Trump was portraying as a national emergency: the need to build a wall along the Mexican border. The presence of armored vehicles, bales of confiscated marijuana, and federal agents in flak jackets underscored the message.
But the photo op dramatized something else about the Administration. After members of the press pool got out of vans and headed over to where the President was about to speak, they noticed that Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, was already on location.
6/ Yup....driven on all of them, and this is the way they are!
7/ An excellent article that poses the question "why can't policies that a bipartisan majority of Americans agree on ever get through our government"?
Good question, depressing answer.....
We are told that America is divided and polarized as never before. Yet when it comes to many important areas of policy, that simply isn’t true.
About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leaveattracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.
The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large
bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these.
8/ Sam Bee on Tucker Carlson.....very amusing....five minutes....
9/ If you are like me you are probably already sick of the Dems race for the 2020 candidate, but this is an excellent story from
Rolling Stone on NOT picking the safe candidate.....and Beto is a safe candidate just like Biden....
There is a powerful pull to the idea of electability, especially in a year when Democrats are desperate to dethrone Trump. But history tells us that the candidates we perceive to be electable rarely result in Election Day victories.
Back in mid-December, before setting out on his vision-quest road trip, Beto O’Rourke held one last town hall as El Paso’s three-term congressman. By then, he had already seen himself rapidly become the Democratic establishment’s dream candidate for president after narrowly losing his U.S. Senate challenge to Ted Cruz — “He’s Barack Obama, but white,” one big donor gushed to Politico. And then, just as quickly, he’d watched his voting record (more conservative than many Democrats) and “bipartisan” rhetoric undergo a level of harsh scrutiny he hadn’t experienced while running in Texas. So he couldn’t have been surprised at the question a reporter posed that day: Are you a progressive?
10/ A millennial job interview.....two minutes, and I know it's not as bad as this....or is it?
11/ For anyone in their 60's and beyond this may be the most important story you will ever read. A researcher has discovered a link between an over the counter supplement and stopping the development of Alzheimers. You will ask why haven't we read about this before, but think about it - if a $15 bottle of a supplement will help you, it completely cuts out the medical-industrial's profits from treating the disease. Indeed, since this article was published in Fortune Magazine last month I am expecting lots of spin to come "disproving " the supplement....but read it - make up your own mind, and if you are like me and Mary you will be ordering your pills ASAP.
Don't wait for your doctor to tell you about this - they won't.
In a small lab in Jackson Hole, Wyo., 65-year-old Paul Cox believes he’s closing in on a treatment that might prevent Alzheimer’s disease. And ALS. And a host of other neurodegenerative diseases, for that matter. Cox, we should point out, isn’t a neurologist. He isn’t a physician of any kind. He doesn’t work at a big drug company or an academic medical center or a government laboratory. His ideas come from so far outside the mainstream of neurological research that you might think he’s crazy or deluded or worse. But then, some very credible people think he might be on to something big—which might make the improbable, quixotic story you are about to read one of the most important as well.
12/ Melanie [and her sister?] paid a surprise visit to the Colbert show.....hilarious....six minutes...
Laura Benanti returned to the Late Show on Friday to reprise her role as Melania Trump and talk about the body double conspiracy.
The theory — which posits Melania is a fake — gained so much steam, even President Donald Trump felt the need to reply earlier this week.
13/ Umair with an article titled "Do Americans Know How Much Trouble They're In"? A good summary of our dysfunction....
President who invokes absolute authority to…pardon himself. An ambassador to Germany who declares he wants to…topple the German government. Senators — the most powerful people in democracy, save the President — knocking on the door of a “detainment center”, looking for kids separated from their parents, only to be denied by guards who…laugh at them contemptuously, call the police, and have them shooed away like nobodies.
Do Americans understand how much trouble they’re now in? How grave the threat to America’s constitutional democracy, its civil society, its place in the world, and its ongoing survival is? Now. When I ask this question, you’ll protest: “Of course I do!” (or perhaps “You’re overstating it!!”, in which case the answer is already…no.) But I don’t mean you, yourself. I am asking you to ask yourself about everyone else, perhaps the mythical average American.
14/ Interesting article about kicking your screen addiction.....good one!
My name is Kevin, and I have a phone problem.
And if you’re anything like me — and the statistics suggest you probably are, at least where smartphones are concerned — you have one, too.
I don’t love referring to what we have as an “addiction.” That seems too sterile and clinical to describe what’s happening to our brains in the smartphone era. Unlike alcohol or opioids, phones aren’t an addictive substance so much as a species-level environmental shock. We might someday evolve the correct biological hardware to live in harmony with portable supercomputers that satisfy our every need and connect us to infinite amounts of stimulation. But for most of us, it hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve been a heavy phone user for my entire adult life. But sometime last year, I crossed the invisible line into problem territory.
15/ The 50 best TV shows on Netflix.....you might want to save this one....
We’ve already broken down the 100 best movies that you can watch on Netflix right now, but maybe you don’t like movies? Maybe you’re in the mood for a new TV series to binge or a classic you haven’t seen in a generation? A lot of people would rather spend hours or even days with the same characters in a TV series, and Netflix has one for every mood. Here are the 50 best TV shows you could binge right now, updated regularly as new shows enter and old shows leave. Watch all 50 and report back! https://www.vulture.com/
16/ Movie review....."Us", directed by Jordan Peele.....a scary one!
But if his latest film proves nothing else, it’s that Get Out was not a fluke and the former sketch comedian is not a horror-movie dilettante — as if that really needed confirming. And while this story of a family who find themselves staring down homicidal dopplegängers has its share of laugh-out loud moments, the man has doubled down on the sharp-shock intensity. Us is terrifying. It is extraordinarily made, impeccably composed and paced, completely in control of how out of control it gets and genuinely seat-soiling scary.
Todays video - funny commercials....
Todays retiree joke
This is what all of us 70+ to 80+ year olds have to look forward to!!
This is something that happened at an assisted living center. The people who lived there had small apartments but they all ate at a central cafeteria. One morning one of the residents didn't show up for breakfast so my wife went upstairs and knocked on his door to see if everything was OK. She could hear him through the door and he said that he was running late and would be down shortly, so she went back to the dining area.
An hour later he still hadn't arrived so she went back up towards his room but found him on the stairs. He was coming down the stairs but was having a hard time. He had a death grip on the hand rail and seemed to have trouble getting his legs to work right.
She told him she was going to call an ambulance but he told her no, he wasn't in any pain and just wanted to have his breakfast. So she helped him the rest of the way down the stairs and he had his breakfast.
When he tried to return to his room he was completely unable to get up even the first stair step so they called an ambulance for him.
A couple hours later she called the hospital to see how he was doing.
The receptionist there said he was fine, he just had both of his legs in one side of his boxer shorts.
I am sending this to my children so that they don't sell the house before they know all the facts.
Todays puns
1. A man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation for a local swimming pool. So I gave him a glass of water.
2. I went to a really emotional wedding the other day. Even the cake was in tiers.
3. I was getting into my car the other day and a man said 'Can you give me a lift?' I said 'Sure, you look great, chase your dreams, go for it!'
4. My wife and I were happy for 20 years. But then we met.
5. The thing about dwarfs and midgets is that they have very little in common.
6. How do prisoners call each other? On their cell phones!
7. Did you hear about the man who lost his entire left side in an accident? He's all right now.
8. Claustrophobic people are more productive thinking outside the box.
9. People who lack the patience for calligraphy will never have properly formed characters.
10. What happened to the rich guy with the double chin? He made a four chin.
11. The stripper was getting tired of the same old thong and dance.
12. Waking up this morning was an eye-opening experience.
13. I tripped over my wife's bra. It seemed to be a booby trap!
14. She had a photographic memory but never developed it.
15. My math teacher called me average. How mean!
16. Sleeping comes so naturally to me, I can do it with my eyes closed.
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