sure, but we are definitely going to find out.....
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
For years, if not decades, blue America’s poll-watching worrywarts have wrung their hands about their party’s “culture war” problem. And not without reason. The urban, liberal college graduates who dominate the Democratic political class have distinct cultural sensibilities and social-policy preferences when compared to the middle-age, working-class rust belters who often play kingmaker in the Electoral College. Progressive ambition plus right-wing demagoguery has been a formula for electoral backlash more than once in modern history.
2/. Tom Tomorrow in a somber mood......
3/. The New Right is moving to the American west, and not everyone is happy about it.
Interesting Hunter S. Thompson-ish article about the players in this fringe but very affluent group....
The buffalo were grazing by the highway on the outskirts of the richest county in the richest country in the history of the world.
It was a clear morning in the Tetons, and with binoculars it was possible to see all the way across the valley known, since prehistory, as one of the most secure and comfortable little basins in all of the Mountain West—named, for one of the first white trappers to winter there, Jackson’s Hole. The landscape may have looked like wilderness to the caravanning tourists in $200,000 Sprinter vans and thousands more in athleisure who now flood Teton County year-round. But it is also a kind of hyperreality of money—tens of thousands of acres and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of conservation easements—in what may be the world’s most unequal political jurisdiction. Above the ospreys and eagles, there was a constant traffic of small jets and private aircraft, humming into and out of a town that has become a modern refuge for people with remote jobs and portfolios fattened by one of history’s great asset bubbles, many of them driven to the Northern Rockies by a worry or wariness that the rest of America is on its way toward environmental, political, or economic breakdown. Or some combination of the above.
4/. Lots of stories and speculation Trump is toast, but as this story rightly says the
base is still there, crazier than ever.....so who knows?
Republicans are lining up for the presidential primary like it’s 2015. Donald Trump was essentially in the 2024 race since he left the White House, but didn’t officially announceuntil a week after November’s midterms, where he led his party to squander any strategic structural advantage they might have had. It was little quiet, but Nikki Haley last week jumped in—albeit with “no clear rationale” for doing so—while entrepreneur and Fox News fixture Vivek Ramaswamy, who fashions himself as an anti-“woke” crusader, announced a long shot bid Tuesday on Tucker Carlson’s show.
5/. Chauncey De Vega on the MSM's obsession with white working class voters.....[main stream media]
Institutions are like people. They have personalities, histories, memories, cultures, ethics, desires, relationships, emotions, dreams, and habits. And like people, institutions also have addictions and compulsions.
The American mainstream news media has been addicted to stories about the so-called "white working class" for more than seven years – and it shows few signs of wanting to recover and heal. This addiction began in earnest during the Age of Trump and in response to what the mainstream news media and its gatekeepers saw as fascinating "human interest stories" about 'forgotten white Americans" in rural red state America and their love for Donald Trump.
6/. Michael Moore with his personal memories of President Carter......a wonderful piece, well
worth your time and quite moving.........
Dear President Carter:
I know you told me to call you Jimmy, but I couldn’t then. And I can’t now.
In 2004, you invited me to sit next to you in the presidential box at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. It was truly one of the great honors of my life. It also did you no favors, and in that moment I wondered why would you want to suffer the attacks for placing beside you the person who just a year earlier was booed off the stage at the Oscars for dressing down the commander in chief as a war criminal on the fifth night of the Iraq War.
But you didn’t care about the political reaction to you cozying up to me, the backlash you’d get from the 70% of the American public who supported the invasion of Iraq. You weren’t offended by me who had stood in front of a billion people stating that we were being lied into this war, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, that we would find zero weapons of mass destruction, and that thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were about to die
.https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/dear-president-carter?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=320974&post_id=105279953&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
7/. Tom Tomorrow has been watching Congressional hearings....
8/. A lunatic Trump appointed judge is poised to take down medical abortions -
Ron Wyden says just ignore his ruling.....which is a dangerous path to go down.....
One Democratic senator has a solution for the problem of the lone extremist judge in Texas who could take the option of abortion medication away from all Americans: Ignore him. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) spoke on the Senate floor recently, and made that case. Through what Wyden deems “court-washing,” Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a “lifelong right-wing activist, a partisan, an ideologue, an antiabortion zealot who was handpicked by Donald Trump and the Federalist Society to pretend to be an impartial judge on the bench,” will try to claim the power to put a national injunction on the use of mifepristone. That’s the abortion drug used in about 50% of abortions, one that has proven safe and effective for decades.
9/. You don't hear climate change denial any more, do we?
It's now obvious to even the stupidest Republican....
Cherry blossoms in Washington DC have started to bud, and could break a three-decade record for early blossoming. Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/ReutersParts of Texas, Arkansas, Ohio and Maryland, along with New York, are all recording their earliest spring conditions on record
Blooming daffodils in New York City. Leaves sprouting from red maples in North Carolina. Cherry blossoms about to bud in Washington. Record winter warmth across much of the eastern US has caused spring-like conditions to arrive earlier than ever previously recorded in several places, provoking delight over the mild weather and despair over the unfolding climate crisis.
In New York, one of several US cities to experience its warmest January on record, spring conditions have arrived 32 days before the long-term normal, which is its earliest onset of biological spring in 40 years of charting seasonal trends by the National Phenology Network.
10/. Weekend Update #1.....just OK.....
Weekend Update #2.....much better.....
11/. Paul Krugman explains the truth behind the media hype on Social Security and Medicare....
The G.O.P. response to President Biden’s truthful statement that some Republicans want to sunset Medicare and Social Security has been highly gratifying. In other words, the party has reacted with sheer panic — plus a startling lack of message discipline, with both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley saying that actually, yes, they do want to privatize or “reform” Social Security, which is code for gutting it.
Now Republicans are talking about slashing “woke” programs like Medicaid and food stamps. It’s going to be fun when the party realizes who depends on these programs and how popularMedicaid, in particular, is even among its own voters.
12/. A crisis is brewing in The Villages - Vanity Fair with a look at the most successful community in the country.....
The eventual result was the Villages, a series of interconnected housing developments—the “villages” themselves—marketed as an all‑inclusive lifestyle that redirected retirement from senior community centers to senior‑ centered communities. Year after year over the past decade, the Villages landed among the fastest growing regions in the United States. In 2010, the Census Bureau estimated that about 86,000 people lived in the area. By 2020, the population neared 130,000. More than 7 in 10 of those residents are aged 55 or over, the largely inflexible minimum age required to own a home in one of the villages. Most of the Villages is contained within Sumter County, where, in 2003, 21.3 percent of its population were baby boomers. In 2019, 42.8 percent were, the third‑highest percentage of any county in the United States. The Villages grew so fast that, in the past two censuses, it helped Florida’s center of population stop moving toward Miami and start moving back toward Sumter County.
13/. After the article above came out about The Villages, residents had some comments about it....
Not very articulate, are they?
14/. Toon about the MSM missing the
real stories.....
15/. There's a food crisis in the UK, but it's not just Brexit - it's Big AG.....UK version....
Empty fruit and vegetable shelves in a north London supermarket. Photograph: James Veysey/REX/Shutterstock
16/. The Mediterranean diet is the one.....
In the 1950s, researchers from across the globe embarked on a sweeping and ambitious study. For decades, they scrutinized the diets and lifestyles of thousands of middle-aged men living in the United States, Europe and Japan and then examined how those characteristics affected their risks of developing cardiovascular disease.
17/. Like documentaries? Have a look at this list of good ones from Vanity Fair.....
Not so long ago, even the world’s best documentaries didn’t do big business. They were considered stodgy, like the vegetables you had to eat as a kid so you’d be allowed dessert. But all that changed in the streaming era, when juicy nonfiction has become one of the most-watched genres. True crime, cult exposés, celebrity profiles, nature frolics, and gripping digests about piping-hot controversies routinely rank among Netflix and Hulu’s most-watched films, and documentarians like Michael Moore, Alex Gibney, and Laura Poitras are as famous to cinephiles as any other director. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/02/best-documentaries
Today's medical joke....
Might take a few seconds...
Stanley died in a fire and his body was burned pretty badly.
The morgue needed someone to identify the body, so they sent for his two best friends, Cooter and Gomer. The three men had always done everything together. Cooter arrived first, and when the mortician pulled back the sheet, Cooter said, 'Yup, his face is burned up pretty bad. You better roll him over.'The mortician rolled him over and Cooter said, 'Nope, ain't Stanley '
The mortician thought this was rather strange. So he brought Gomer in to confirm the identity of the body.
Gomer looked at the body and said, 'Yup, he's pretty well burnt up. Roll him over..' The mortician rolled him over and Gomer said, 'No, it ain't Stanley '
The mortician asked, 'How can you tell?'
Gomer said, 'Well, Stanley had two assholes.'
'What? He had two assholes?' asked the mortician.
'Yup, we never seen 'em, but everybody used to say:
'There's Stanley with them two assholes.'
Today's guy joke....
A horse and a chicken are playing in a meadow. Suddenly the horse falls into a mud hole and starts sinking. He tells the chicken to go and get the farmer to help pull him out to safety. The chicken runs to the farmer, but the farmer can't be found.
So he drives the farmer's Mercedes back to the hole and ties some rope around the bumper. He then throws the other end of the rope to his friend and drives forward saving the horse from sinking.
A few days later, the chicken and horse are playing in the meadow again, and the chicken falls into a mud hole. The chicken tells the horse to go and get some help from the farmer. The horse says: "I think I can get you out."
So he stretches over the width of the hole and says: "Grab hold of my 'thing' and pull yourself up."
The chicken does this and is pulled to safety. Moral of the story: If you are hung like a horse, you don't need a Mercedes to pick up chicks
Today's Indian joke....
A woman from New York was driving through a remote part of Arizona when her car broke down. An American Indian on horseback came along and offered her a ride to a nearby town.
She climbed up behind him on the horse and they rode off. The ride was uneventful, except that every few minutes the Indian would let out a Ye-e-e-e-h-a-a-a-a!' so loud that it echoed from the surrounding hills and canyon walls.
When they arrived in town, he let her off at the local service station, yelled one final 'Ye-e-e-e-h-a-a-a-a!' and rode off. "What did you do to get that Indian so excited?" asked the service-station attendant. "Nothing," the woman answered "I merely sat behind him on the horse, put my arms around his waist, and held onto the saddle horn so I wouldn't fall off."
"Lady," the attendant said, "Indians don't use saddles."
Oh Lordy.....
A frog goes into a bank and approaches the teller. He can see from her nameplate that her name is Patty Whack.
"Miss Whack, I'd like to get a $30,000 loan to take a holiday." Patty looks at the frog in disbelief and asks his name. The frog says his name is Kermit Jagger, his dad is Mick Jagger, and that it's okay, he knows the bank manager.
Patty explains that he will need to secure the loan with some collateral.
The frog says, "Sure. I have this," and produces a tiny porcelain elephant, about an inch tall, bright pink, and perfectly formed.
Very confused, Patty explains that she'll have to consult with the bank manager and disappears into a back office.
She finds the manager and says, "There's a frog called Kermit Jagger out there who claims to know you and wants to borrow $30,000, and he wants to use this as collateral." She holds up the tiny pink elephant. "I mean, what in the world is this?"
(You're gonna love this.)
The bank manager looks back at her and says, "It's a knickknack, Patty Whack. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone."
(You sang it, didn't you? Yeah, I know you did.)
Never take life too seriously…
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