1/ Where is Trump going on January 20th? Not to Mar-A-Lago to live if the City of Palm Beach has anything to do with it....there are
seriously wealthy "old money" people who will nail him legally if he tries to reside there....
Trump at Mar-a-Lago in January 2000. Photo: Getty Images
In November 2019, President Trump announced he was moving his permanent residence from his tower in Manhattan to his resort at Mar-a-Lago for reasons that seemed pretty straightforward: He was reluctantlycoughing up millions in state and local taxes to declare residence on an island on which he is despised. On the island of Palm Beach, Florida, at least there is no state tax.
2/ Hilarious....30 seconds....
3/ Thomas Edsall with a nerdy and thorough examination of how our politics is broken and will be for a
long time....this is a seriously depressing column....
The turbulence that followed the Nov. 3 election has roiled American politics, demonstrating an ominous vulnerability in our political system.
Donald Trump used the 41-day window between the presidential election and the Dec. 14 meeting of the Electoral College to hold the country in thrall based on his refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory and his own defeat.
Most troubling to those who opposed Trump, and even to some who backed him, was the capitulation by Republicans in the House and Senate.
4/ You can't unsee this one....
5/ The election was a relief in that we got rid of Trump, but in other ways it was a disaster for Democrats....the Guardian on how
Republicans have cemented power for at least a decade in Republican and swing states, including of course Florida.
While the world focused on the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November, some of the most consequential contests were in state legislative races between candidates many have never heard of.
State lawmakers have the authority to redraw electoral districts in most US states every 10 years.
6/ Melissa Villasenor on SNL with her Dolly Parton schtick....an amusing three minutes....
7/ Thomas Friedman in the Times with an excellent suggestion for Joe Biden - use Kamala Harris to
repair the damage done to rural America....
I was speaking recently to Matt Dunne, founder of the Center on Rural Innovation, which promotes digital economic development in small-town America, and he was telling me about a Vermont community near his home with a great public library: “You could drive by on any Sunday and the parking lot would be full,” he said. “There was just one problem: The library was closed on Sundays.”
The parking lot was full of cars with kids doing their homework and adults doing their office work — using the wireless connectivity spilling out of the empty building because their rural homes lacked high-speed broadband.
8/ Ever fly into St Barts? This is the view from the cockpit....2 minutes....
9/ Matt Taibbi on how Democrats have totally screwed up the Covid relief bill negotiations....you don't get this POV from our media....
A senior Democratic congressional aide is irate tonight.
“The Democrats,” the aide seethed, “have just done the worst negotiating in modern history.”
At issue: a pair of new Covid-19 relief bills, just submitted by a bipartisan group of Senators. Republican Senator Susan Collins gushed that a“Christmas Miracle” allowed the two parties came together on the twin bills, which the press describes as totaling $748 billion and $160 billion, respectively. “Bipartisanship and compromise is [sic] alive and well in Washington,” clucked West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin.
10/ "Tape Face" on America's Got Talent.....really, really good...three minutes....
11/ Fascinating story about how the ruling class in this country still support Trump - it's the money he has given them, and the power.
You don't often hear what the wealthy think, but this article rings true.
A long read, deep background with insight on why the top sliver [the 0.1%] love Trump....
Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of future Presidents, was the eight-time club champion on the golf course at the Round Hill Club, one of eight country clubs in Greenwich, Connecticut. Bush was a staunch believer in standards; he required his sons to wear a jacket and tie for dinner at home. He was tall, restrained, and prone to righteousness; friends called him a “Ten Commandments man.” In the locker room at Round Hill, someone once told an off-color joke in front of his fourteen-year-old son, George H. W. Bush, and Prescott stormed out, saying, “I don’t ever want to hear that kind of language in here again.”
12/ Now available at the Post Office....
13/ If you ever have to talk to a QAnon person, the Guardian tells you how to
try to deal with them.....interesting....
Unless you’ve been on a silent retreat for the past year, you will have almost certainly heard the rumours – that the pandemic is an elaborate hoax, or that the virus was created as a Chinese weapon, or that dangerous elites are trying to kill off the elderly and to establish a new world order, or that the symptoms are caused by 5G.
It is troubling enough to see these ideas on social media. But when you are hearing them from your family, your friends, or a casual acquaintance, it is even harder to know how to respond.
14/ Tom Tomorrow....
15/ Quite remarkably wonderful dance routine in the classic swing mode....whatever that is....this is just an amazing three minutes....
16/ In all the frenzy of this election season the news about the climate has more or less vanished, but here with
a summary of where we stand is Bill Mckibben with a good column from the New Yorker....
I’ve been writing this column for almost a year now, trying to shine a light on many of the climate crisis’s facets. Once in a while, it’s important to pull back and try to put it all in perspective. Now is such a time: this month marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate summit; we’ve more or less survived the Trump Administration, with an incoming Administration promising a new approach; and we’re less than a year away from what will be the next great global climate meeting, in Glasgow, Scotland.
17/ Cleverly done - Trump's concession speech....one minute....
18/ Matt Taibbi with a horror story of how student debt has economically crippled many
Americans with debt that never goes away....
Whether it’s CNBC telling us what issues mattered to the young in the presidential election, or Yahoo! Finance telling us the big winners in the 2020 election were “young people and student voters,” or Forbes telling us “young people with student loan debt have a harder time reaching financial milestones,” the student loan controversy is almost universally presented as a “youth” issue.
This is the first of many deceptions baked into coverage of one of the more misunderstood and misreported issues of our time. Student loans matter to older people, too. In fact, that’s the problem. They matter far too much, to too many older people.
19/ SNL with a brand new Cable channel - Sportsmax.....fairly amusing, 3 minutes....
20/ Toon....
21/ Movie review - Wonder Woman 1984....Vox likes it....out in theaters
and HBO on Christmas day...
22/ The incredibly beautiful and talented Taylor Swift with her new video "Willow"....amazing what an unlimited budget will do....
23/ John Oliver has had a homo-erotic comedy thing with Adam Driver this year, and Driver called in to his show to
abuse him verbally....it's weird, but really funny if you like John Oliver's humour...
24/ Do you have Hulu? You probably don't know they have a lot of movies.....
When a lot of people think of Hulu, they might think of it as the best streaming service for current television, with a few of their original shows thrown in for good measure. That’s a shame: Film lovers still don’t really utilize the service’s surprisingly deep library of movies, all free to subscribers. As we have with Netflix and Amazon, we’re hear to provide a service — a regularly updated list of the best movies you can watch on Hulu right this minute. Get started.
25/ NYMag rates the best movies of 2020.....many you haven't heard of either....
“Why don’t all movies just come out online?” they asked in those B.C. (before COVID) years. “Who needs movie theaters?” they wondered. Then, in 2020, when the theaters shut down and the films came out online, many of those same people wondered, “Hey, what happened to all the movies?” We live in a world of many truths. One is that, with just about everything consigned to a streaming or on-demand release, there was an incredible bounty of films this year — smaller films, in some cases, but certainly more diverse in style, tone, subject matter, story, and origin. The other is that movies still, in many ways, need movie theaters, lest they sink into the all-consuming swamp that is content online, failing to raise the attention of its intended audience — or any audience, really.
Today's classic video - have another look at the Jimmy Fallon/Emma Stone LipSync contest......still a wow......
Today's little Johnny joke
A teacher asks the kids in her 3rd grade class: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Little Johnny says: "I wanna start out as a Fighter Pilot, then be a billionaire, go to the most expensive clubs, find me the finest whore, give her a Ferrari worth over a million bucks, an apartment in Copacabana, a mansion in Paris, a jet to travel throughout Europe, an Infinite Visa Card, and all the while banging her like a loose screen door in a hurricane."
The teacher, shocked, and not knowing what to do with this horrible response from little Johnny,
decides not to acknowledge what he said and simply tries to continue with the lesson.
decides not to acknowledge what he said and simply tries to continue with the lesson.
"And how about you, Sarah?"
"I wanna be Johnny’s whore.
Today's canine joke...
A man had just settled into his seat next to the window on the plane when another man sat down in the aisle seat and put his black Labrador Retriever in the middle seat next to the man.The first man looked very quizzically at the dog and asked, why the dog was allowed on the plane.The second man explained, "That he was from the Police Drugs Enforcement Agency and that the dog was a 'sniffing dog'.""His name is Sniffer and he's the best there is. I'll show you once we get airborne, when I put him to work."The plane took off, and once it has levelled out, the Policeman said, "Watch this."He told Sniffer to search.Sniffer jumped down, walked along the aisle, and finally sat very purposefully next to a woman for several seconds. Sniffer then returned to his seat and put one paw on the policeman's arm.The Policeman said, "Good boy," and he turned to the man and said, "That woman is in possession of marijuana, I'm making a note of her seat number and the authorities will apprehend her when we land.""Gee, that's pretty good," replied the first man.Once again, the Policeman sent Sniffer to search the aisles.The Lab sniffed about, sat down beside a man for a few seconds, returned to its seat, and this time he placed two paws on the agent's arm. The Policeman said, "That man is carrying cocaine, so again, I'm making a note of his seat number for the police.""I like it!" said his seat mate. The Policeman then told Sniffer to search again.Sniffer walked up and down the aisles for a little while, sat down for a moment, and then came racing back to the agent, jumped into the middle seat and proceeded to Poop all over the place.
The first man was really disgusted by this behaviour and couldn't figure out how or why a well-trained dog would behave like that. So he asked the Policeman, "What's going on?"The Policeman nervously replied, "He's just found a bomb."
