2/. Bob Lefsetz on Democrats.....and if you are a [D], you need to read this.....
I’m sick and f*cking tired of the Democrats trying to put a positive spin on the election of Donald Trump. Saying he didn’t win by a majority, didn’t win by that much, pointing to minor victories in Congress and the states… The Democrats got their ass SPANKED! And this spin is just further evidence how out of touch the DNC, elected officials and left wing commentators are. If you can’t admit your faults, if you can’t analyze your loss, how in the hell are you going to adjust for changing conditions and succeed the next time around?
Yes, when it comes down to the issues, most people are aligned with the left. They want abortion rights. They want the protection of the rights of minorities. But those weren’t the foremost issues in the election.
Have you ever been broke? I have, and when that’s the case money is all you can think about, 24/7. Anyone who romanticizes the life of a starving artist has never been one. You can’t even create, you’re so freaked out. And my worst times were when the economy was considered to be raging. But not for me!
So the stock market is up. You can point to the increase in jobs, how America is doing better harnessing inflation than the rest of the world. And that does nothing for me when I go to the market and I see the high prices. And when I mention this, you don’t acknowledge my pain, you just tell me I’m wrong and to get over it. That’s a winning strategy?
3/. Tom Tomorrow takes us on a bumpy ride......
4/. Are you easily depressed? Worried about the future? Well don't read this.....
Yes, we have a disaster. No, there are no surprises. Trump is sporadically dysfunctional more than ever, and this will continue to worsen. The establishment and its media managers are unable to face reality. Luckily, we now have a term for this: sanewashing.
Trump, like most people with severe narcissistic personality problems combined with evolving dementia, is cyclical in his dysfunctionality, with rational days and irrational ones. It is essential to remember that they focus exclusively on their perceived status. That is the reason that they create chaos.
In highly structured organizations, it is easy to create chaos if you have a powerful position. Intelligent high-level managers learn to use chaos as a strategy to stimulate change while enhancing their power. https://medium.com/future-search/why-trump-is-irrelevant-823d302603b1
6/. If you read that Comcast is selling MSNBC, and that Rachel Maddow has just had a massive pay cut, this story from Thom Hartmann won't sound alarmist.....
Have you heard that Comcast is planning to sell MSNBC? Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy it? Will America’s media landscape soon resemble those of Hungary and Russia?
Without the rightwing media juggernaut, Donald Trump probably wouldn’t be president next year and wouldn’t have won in 2016. That said, the progressive media landscape looks like it might be about to get a whole lot worse.
Comcast, which owns NBC and its subsidiaries CNBC and MSNBC (among other media outlets) announced this week that they’ll be spinning off MSNBC (among others) next year.
And the consequences are already showing up. It was reported this week that Rachel Maddow just took a substantial annual pay-cut because of the uncertain future of the network.
7/. Bob Lefsetz on MSNBC.....his conclusion - it needs to change.....
This resonated with me as we haven't watched the channel since the election......
We are sick of politics on TV, it's just opinion from the same old tired pundits they trot out to comment on every outrage......just sick of it....
“MSNBC’S Audience Sliced in Half as Viewers Flee Post-Election”: https://t.ly/cNh0b
What is MSNBC for?
The day after the election I tuned in MSNBC and it was the same as it ever was, you’d think nothing had changed, it was the usual suspects railing against Trump and the Republicans. I switched stations and haven’t been back since.
It’s not a news organization. There are almost no reporters. You can’t seem to tune in without them quoting the “New York Times” or the “Wall Street Journal.” Even Rachel Maddow does this, and she’s the most credible star they’ve got!
As for Lawrence O’Donnell… This guy has got a chip on his shoulder, no one on the other side can ever do anything right. He’s a nitpicker. He refuses to see the forest for the trees.
Which is what the Democrats were forced to do after Election Day. But not MSNBC!
Everybody needs to pivot. Did you read today’s “New York Times” article on Southwest Airlines?
“How Southwest Airlines Lost Its Groove”
Free link: https://t.ly/pqVhh
If you keep doing the same thing and expecting to win…you’re going to lose. Maybe the hard core will stand by you, but how many hard core MSNBC fans are there, who want to spend time in this reality distortion field.
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/11/27/msnbc/
8/. This is really funny....from Jimmy Kimmel live.....Aunt Chippy.....
9/. Interesting story......the problem is doctors overbook patients so there's always
a backup.....efficient for them, so inefficient for us......
Deana Hendrickson sometimes feels daunted by the demands of the medical system. “Every body part has a doctor,” she lamented. “I hate it.”
Ms. Hendrickson reeled off a long list of her health care providers: a primary care doctor; a cardiologist, because she has mild heart disease and a concerning family history; a lung surgeon and a pulmonologist who oversee an annual scan because of her family history of lung cancer.
Plus an ophthalmologist, a gynecologist, a urologist, a podiatrist, a gastroenterologist — “and I just came back from the dentist.”
She estimates that with scans, imaging and tests, she spends two dozen days a year engaged with some sort of provider. Most of them, she added, practice in Santa Monica, Calif., where she used to live, now an hour’s drive from her home.
10/. Texas is losing OB-GYN's because of the draconian laws on
abortion......do they care? Of course not....
Eight months after the fall of Roe v. Wade, Vanessa Garcia lay on a hospital table in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, as a technician performed an ultrasound. Garcia had given birth to two children with no complications, but her third pregnancy seemed alarmingly different. The ultrasound revealed that her placenta was covering her cervix—a condition, known as placenta previa, that heightened her risk of hemorrhage or preterm birth.
Garcia was referred to a maternal-fetal expert at D.H.R. Health Women’s Hospital, in Edinburg, Texas, and began going in for weekly ultrasounds. She approached the visits as an opportunity to catch a glimpse of her daughter, whom she had named Vanellope. Before driving to appointments, she got in the habit of drinking half a gallon of water, hoping that it would contribute to a clearer image. During scans, she gazed at the monitor, watching raptly when Vanellope lifted her hand to her eyes, as if gently rubbing them
11/. I wish this was funny.....
12/. Skim through the comparisons of what you can do with 348 billion, and read after the picture of MAGA and Musk......most interesting.
Last week, in the wake of favorable election results and a boom in the price of Tesla stock, Elon Musk’s net worth hit $348 billion. Numbers this large tend to fade into meaninglessness, so far outside of normal human experience that people have no real way to grasp their size. How can we think of a single person worth $348 billion? John D. Rockefeller’s net worth peaked at an estimated $1.4 billion in 1937. That would be about $30 billion today—less than 9% of Musk’s net worth. Rockefeller, however, lived in a time when the total US economy was much smaller. His peak net worth was estimated to represent 1.5% of total US gross domestic product. Today, Elon Musk’s net worth represents close to 1.3% of total US GDP. Even accounting for the growth of the US into the richest nation in the history of the world, Musk’s personal portion of our economy is approaching that of the man who has symbolized plutocracy for the past century.
13/. There's a European campaign to limit cruise ship calls in some ports......like Venice, Barcelona and now Marseille.
The cruise lines have long since destroyed the Caribbean, but Europe is fighting back.
So did Key West, and they passed a law restricting Cruise ships four years ago but DeSantis overruled them.
The power of the dollar.....
Few people know the sea better than Guillaume Picard. He grew up on a boat moored in the port of Hyères in southern France after his parents left 1960s Paris. His first job was on a sailing boat. Then he spent 30 years in the merchant navy before becoming a commercial captain, ferrying tourists and containers across the Mediterranean for more than two decades.
Now aged 65, his grey hair in a ponytail, it is with no small note of sadness that he says, increasingly, it is the land that calls him. “To be completely honest, I want to go to sea less and less,” he says. “I go hiking a lot in the mountains with my wife, and we’ve found an environment that is much more preserved. The mountains are beautiful wherever you go.”
Picard’s beloved sea is being destroyed, he believes, by something uncomfortably close to home: cruise ships. Fifteen years ago they were a rare sight in Marseille. Now, France’s second city is one of Europe’s busiest cruise ports. Last year, 2.5 million passengers stopped off, according to the port authority, a million more than the year before.
14/. This kind of ties into the first story......how America has become stupid.....
Angus Peterson in his book, Edge of Collapse says 56% of Americans are functionally illiterate. That’s not a particularly bold revelation. I don’t think it’s new either. What has drastically changed is the amount of information that is disseminated visually and aurally. There are seven big media companies: Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony, and Amazon. They are predominately producing film, music, and T.V. for entertainment. Social networking outlets like Facebook, Threads, Blue sky, X, and Video hosting outlets like Tik Tok, and You Tube are short videos clips of often silly, superficial giggle fodder. Almost all news, events, information and factual material is spoon-fed to us by these sources, dumbed down and simplified for digestion by folks with an 8th grade education
https://medium.com/@janslort/civilization-the-last-page-10-4a84be7c78ba
15/ One for Mount Dorans......
The Nextdoor link is below if you are on their list, and the comments to this are really interesting.
A massive NO to more development.
So, what did everyone get out of meeting on Thursday for the Round Lake Road flooding? It was very informative. Devo (Engineer that did the study) right out said there is only one solution and that is the natural waterflow from Newar Nursey and everything in-between needs to go to Amos Lake and if that means the county needs to acquire the property to make that happen then they need to do that as it is the only solution. Also he said that Timberwalk drainage system should never of been permited or allowed the way it was submitted and built. His words not mine. I did find it comical that a lady asked a question at the end, and Campione said there were strict rules on allowing people to talk but then said she would answer any questions after the meeting. What is the difference between asking them in front of everyone or one on one? Is it they do not want on tape? I mean, aren't these meeting tapes? Just my curiosity. I also sent het an email asking who is paying for the water to be pumped from the corner of Round Lake and Wolfbranch. Here is her response to me.
Dear Lee Ann, The owner of that property (Richland Communities) offered to pump to their land - which is a part of where Lake Amos is located. They have used their own equipment. They have no relationship with Timberwalk or Dewar Nursery. Due to the proximity of this problem to their land, and the acknowledgment that the natural flow ends up on a portion of their property, they have an interest in assuring that any long term solutions to accommodate natural flow to Lake Amos reflect a reasonable flow rate and volume that does not exceed what is legally allowed to be discharged from lands upstream of their property. When they offered to help, they simply said they wanted to be good neighbors and alleviate stress on residents while the county found short and long term solutions to chronic flooding at the intersection of Round Lake/Wolf Branch. They understood they would ultimately be the recipient of stormwater from properties upstream. Regards, Leslie
I then asked her what Richland Communties is wanting to do with this vast amount of property, and have they applied for any permits or zoning? I then also asked what name the property of this Richland Communties is under in the Property Appraisers Website as I do not see any Richland Communties (I could be wrong let me know if I am guys).
I have received no answer to these questions. Not sure about you guys but I find it comical that we as tax payers are to believe we have a Corporation that owns massive acreage right in our backdoor (knowing he is going to build on it) and he did this out of the kindness of his heart. I feel like that is a slap in our faces. I mean, do they think we are to believe this, or do they think we are just stupid???? A pure example of The Good Ole Boy Sysytem.
BTW the question the lady asked is could we stop anymore building around here due to all these problems. She was told there are strick laws on a moratorium from the State. She did not ask for a moratorium she asked for the growth and more houses to stop being allowed. Of course Campione twisted the question so she would not have to answer the real question. The County and city can stop the growth where there's not a concrete building on every piece of green land we have or trying to shove making Mount Dora another Orlando that none of the residents want. Only ones wanting this massive building in our area are the county and city commissioners not the people who actually live here. They could care less what we think or what it does to our lives. They will do what they want. This problem flooding on Round Lake and Wolfbranch has been going on for years and has gotten worse especially since Timberwalk went in and they chose to ignore. They are only addressing now cause they have to and homeowners are going after them.
The Nextdoor post....
And here is the map of tiny Lake Amos....
16/. Bob Lefsetz likes this British show "Sherwood".....
Trailer: https://t.ly/2cKBr
You’re going to want to watch this show.
Unfortunately there are only two episodes of the second season available, but boy did they entrance me.
It’s kind of like pornography, you know it when you see it, you know it when you experience it, your focus starts to narrow, the rest of the world is excluded, you’re all in, invested, it’s not so much that the story is real as you want to believe it is real, this is what you’re looking for, top flight entertainment.
Now there was a previous season… All about the end of mining in Nottinghamshire. What do people do when all the jobs go away?
But even more it’s about the people themselves, their relationships.
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2024/11/20/sherwood-season-2/
17/. This looks good!
What more can be said about the worst natural disaster of our lifetimes? The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, caused by an earthquake (the third-most powerful in history) off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, affected 14 countries around the Indian Ocean basin and killed more than 225,000 people. As an incomprehensibly massive event that occurred before smartphones were ubiquitous, the tsunami is very well documented and yet not: the mess of scrambled pictures has been picked over many times.
Tsunami: Race Against Time, a four-part documentary that flies by, reshapes the catastrophe into an anthology of gripping stories, capturing the carnage and stirring, moving tales of survival. The contemporary footage – walls of water silently approaching beaches, torrents raging through buildings, people hurt or dead in the aftermath – has been painstakingly resourced and expertly linked together, but it’s the testimonies of the survivors that stick.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/25/tsunami-race-against-time-review-a-gripping-moving-look-at-the-worst-natural-disaster-of-our-lifetimes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
18/. New on Netflix in December......
The holidays are upon us and, with them, comes a sleighful of new offerings on Netflix. In addition to the streamer’s sexier seasonal movies like Hot Frosty and The Merry Gentlemen, as well as Sabrina Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas special, this month will bring potentially more family-friendly films, such as That Christmas, from romantic comedy master Richard Curtis. Also tucked beneath the tree is Mary, a new retelling of the original Christmas tale; a holiday-themed installment of The Great British Baking Show; and back-to-back NFL games airing on Christmas Day.
19/. I've watched two of these.....really intense!
Welcome to the Sisterhood – equal parts nunnery, finishing school, psychic gymnasium and political thinktank. Run by wise older ladies decked out in austere black, educating impulsive young women to become the sage leaders of the future, its project is to nurture a heroine who can run the Sisterhood’s home planet, as well as all the neighbouring ones. It might just save humanity.
In 10 millennia’s time, the Sisterhood will become the Bene Gesserit, a band of women with formidable mind-control abilities who feature in Frank Herbert’s 1965 book Dune and its film adaptations: Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling and Léa Seydoux played BG members in the Denis Villeneuve movies. Dune: Prophecy – a six-part drama inspired, vaguely controversially, not by Herbert’s own canonical writing, but by a spin-off book co-written by his son Brian in 2012 – provides the Bene Gesserit’s foundation story.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/18/dune-prophecy-review-a-bracingly-different-sci-fi-dominated-by-women-at-every-level?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Today's oldies joke
An elderly gentleman goes for a check-up.
After his exam the doctor said to the to the old fella, "You appear to be in good health.
Do you have any medical concerns you would like to ask me about?"
"In fact, I do," said the old man. "After I have sex I am usually hot and sweaty, and then, after I have it with her the second time,
I am usually cold and chilly."
After examining the old man's elderly wife, the doctor said, "Everything appears to be fine.
Do you have any medical concerns that you would like to discuss with me?" The lady replied that she had no questions or concerns.
But the doctor then said to her: "Your husband had an unusual concern.
He claims that he is usually hot and sweaty after having sex with you the first time, and then cold and chilly after the second time. Do you know why?" "Oh that crazy old bastard, she replied. "That's because the first time is usually in August, and the second time is in January...".
Today's LOL Joke
Chaim Mendelsohn had to take his 52 Packard in for repairs at Shelly’s Service Station on the corner of New Lots and Hinsdale.
Shelly couldn't do it while he waited: so, as he didn't live far, he said he would just walk home.
On the way home he stopped at Kugel’s hardware store, and bought a bucket and a gallon of paint.
He then stopped by Goldstein’s kosher butcher shop, and picked up a couple of chickens and a goose that his wife, Ida had ordered.
However, struggling outside the store he now had a problem. - how to carry his entire purchases home. While he was scratching his head he was approached by a little old lady who told him she was lost. "Can you tell me how to get to 580 Chester Street?" she asked.
"Well, “ said Chaim, “as a matter of fact, my house is very close to there.
I would gladly walk you, but I can't carry this lot."
“Why don't you put the can of paint in the bucket,” suggested the little old lady, “carry the bucket in one hand, put a chicken under each arm and carry the goose in your other hand?'
“Why, thank you very much,” he said and proceeded to walk the old girl to her destination.
On the way he said. “'Let's take my shortcut and go down this alley. We'll be there in no time.”
The little old lady looked him over cautiously then said, “I am a lonely widow without a husband to defend me.
How do I know that when we get in the alley you won't hold me up against the wall, pull up my skirt, and have your way with me?”
“Oy givolt, are you crazy!”, Chaim said. “I'm carrying a bucket, a gallon of paint, two chickens, and a goose.
How in the world could I possibly hold you up against the wall and do that?”
“Well, if you WERE to do such a thing,” the old lady replied with a flirtatious smile, “you would set the goose down, cover him with the bucket, put the paint on top of the bucket, and I would hold the chickens.”
Today's UK joke.....
An American photographer on vacation, is inside Westminster Abbey taking photographs, when he notices a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that reads '£10,000 per call'.
The American, being intrigued, asks a Vicar, who is walking around, what the telephone is used for.
The vicar explains that it is a direct line to heaven and that for £10,000 you could talk to God.
The American thanks the vicar and goes on his way.
Next stop is in Lincoln
There, at the cathedral, he sees the same golden telephone with the same sign under it. He wonders if this was the same kind of telephone he saw in London and he asked a nearby cleric
what its purpose was.
Again he is told that it is a direct line to heaven and that for £10,000 he can talk to God.
'O.K., thank you,' said the American.
He then travels to York, Durham and Liverpool.
In every Cathedral he sees the same golden telephone, with the same '£10,000 per call' sign under it.
The American, upon leaving the north of England, decides to travel to Scotland to see if the Scots
have the same phone.
He arrives in Glasgow, and again, as he enters Glasgow Cathedral then St Andrews cathedral, there is the same golden telephone, but this time the sign under it reads '50 pence per call.'
The American is a bit surprised so he asks an attending priest about the sign.
"Reverend, I've travelled all over England and I've seen this same golden telephone in many churches.
I'm told that it is a direct line to heaven.
But in England the price is £10,000 per call. Why is it only 50 pence here?'
The priest smiles and says,
"You're in Scotland now, son .... it's a local call."
Today's zoo joke
A man and his wife were spending the day at the zoo.
She was wearing a loose fitting, pink dress, sleeveless with straps.
He was wearing his usual jeans and T-shirt.
As they walked through the ape exhibit, they passed in front of a large, silverblack gorilla.
Noticing the wife, the gorilla went crazy.
He jumped on the bars, and holding on with one hand and two feet he grunted and pounded his chest with his free hand.
He was obviously excited at the pretty lady in the pink dress. The husband, noticing the excitement, thought this was funny.
He suggested: "Now maybe pucker your lips and wiggle your bottom, see what that does."
She played along and the gorilla got even more excited, making noises that would wake the dead.
The husband then suggested she let one of her straps fall to show a little more skin.
She did... and the gorilla was about to tear the bars down.
"Now..... show your thighs and sort of fan your dress at him," he said.
This drove the gorilla absolutely crazy and he started doing flips.
The husband smiled sweetly at his wife as he opened the cage door and shoved her in.
"Now tell him you have a headache"..
