Recommended Reading
from Bruce
EMILY COCHRANE: Paul Ryan Deletes Tweet Lauding a $1.50 Benefit From the New Tax Law (NY Times)
Speaker Paul D. Ryan faced a backlash on Saturday after he pointed to a secretary's $1.50 weekly increase in take-home pay as a sign of the Republican tax plan's success.
"A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year," Mr. Ryan posted on Twitter, sharing an Associated Press report about paycheck increases under the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul.
Froma Harrop: Big Pharma May Own Washington, but It Doesn't Own Amazon (Creators Syndicate)
The partners say they will use technology to simplify the delivery of health care. And they insist the new system will improve the services available to employees. The beauty of this corporate trio's gambit is they are bypassing the politicians. Their aim is to "disrupt" the forces that saddle them with exorbitant prices. "The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Warren Buffett, Berkshire's fabled CEO, stated with trademark simplicity.
Froma Harrop: What Americans Sacrificed for Modest Economic Gain (Creators Syndicate)
So what have Americans given up for this kind of economic growth? They've been held back from fully participating in the booming green energy economy - a Trumpian payoff to the fossil fuel interests. Their health coverage is in jeopardy, and in coal country, so is their health. Meanwhile, the country's precious (and priceless) natural heritage is being sold off piece by piece.
Ted Rall: Democrats Could Lose Again This Fall (Creators Syndicate)
People hate Trump. Yet Democrats have good cause for concern. Americans vote their pocketbooks, and their wallets are feeling better than they have in a long time.Unemployment hasn't been this low since 9/11 - to the point that employers are complaining about labor shortages. Consumer confidence hasn't been this high since Bill Clinton was president. Most people don't own stocks, but the Dow is soaring - and that's usually better for jobs than the other way around. Fuel prices have been lower. Like it or not (I don't), the GOP's tax bill is becoming more popular.
Lenore Skenazy: The Fakest of Fake News (Creators Syndicate)
"Dear News Media: Yesterday while jogging, I noticed a squirrel on my neighbor's lawn. I got to my driveway, and there he was again. I am positive he was plotting to bite my calf, leave me for dead and use my sneakers to make a vacation home. Please warn other citizens!" That's about the caliber of the Facebook posts by moms convinced their kids were almost sex trafficked from the grocery. It's bad enough that these are shared thousands of times, but must the news media treat them as anything other than attention-starved fantasies?
Extraordinary Black And White Portraits Of '60s and '70s Celebrities Taken By David Bailey (Design You Trust)
After having been fashion photographer, John French's, assistant, David Bailey begins the 1960s with a contract with Vogue and rapidly becomes a leading figure of the Swinging London scene, chronicling the unrestricted existences of models and musicians.
Willie Muse: 5 Disney Movies As Seen From a Different Perspective (College Humor)
NSFW language.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD took the day off.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Dear old Dad was pleased the 'Iggles' won (although he'd have been much happier if it'd been his 'Stillers').
'Coco' Sweeps
Annie Awards
Pixar's Coco swept the 45th Annie Awards, winning 11 trophies at the annual ceremony honoring the year's best in animation.
As expected, the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tale was dominant at the Annies, held Saturday night at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles. In addition to best animated feature, Coco won for its direction (director Lee Unkrich and co-director Adrian Molina), best writing, voice acting (Anthony Gonzalez), music, animated effects and character animation.
The strong showing only reinforces Coco as the favorite at the Oscars.
The Breadwinner, directed by Nora Twomey and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, won for best independent animated feature. Twomey, whose movie is about an Afghan girl growing up under Taliban rule, is the first solo woman director to win the award.
Annie Awards
Awards Season
Directors Guild
The fantasy romance "The Shape of Water" added another key prize in its awards season run with Guillermo del Toro's win at the Directors Guild Awards Saturday.
"The Shape of Water," about a mute woman who falls in love with an underwater creature, has emerged as the awards season front runner with a Producers Guild Award and a leading 13 Academy Award nominations.
He won out over fellow directors Greta Gerwig ("Lady Bird"), Martin McDonagh ("Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Christopher Nolan ("Dunkirk") and Jordan Peele ("Get Out"), although Peele did win the prize for first-time feature film for his blockbuster horror film.
Other winners Saturday included Matthew Heineman for the documentary "City of Ghosts," Jean-Marc Valle for "Big Little Lies," Reed Morano for "The Handmaid's Tale" and Glenn Weiss for directing the 89th Academy Awards.
The Directors Guild Awards serve as a reliable predictor for who will eventually win the best director prize at the Academy Awards. Last year, "La La Land" helmer Damien Chazelle won both prizes. This year, all but McDonagh are nominated in the category (Paul Thomas Anderson took the fifth Oscars spot for directing "Phantom Thread").
Directors Guild
Hasty Pudding Man of the Year
Paul Rudd
Actor and screenwriter Paul Rudd picked up his 2018 Man of the Year award from the nation's oldest collegiate theatrical organization at Harvard University on Friday night.
Rudd received the Hasty Pudding honor during a black-tie event. The Boston Globe reported the actor was celebrated in a roast that targeted his "dad face" and his past as a bar mitzvah DJ.
Hasty Pudding said it chose the "Ant-Man" star because his career has spanned many genres, from indies to mainstream films, from heartfelt comedies to superheroes.
Actress Mila Kunis was celebrated as Woman of the Year on Jan. 25, the same day the 223-year-old group, known for comedic revues that feature men in drag playing female characters, said it would allow women to join its cast, starting next year.
Kunis, who has spoken out against sexism in the entertainment industry before, said she was "honored" to have been part of the program during its "year of change."
Paul Rudd
University of Iowa
Tom Brokaw
Longtime NBC journalist Tom Brokaw has given the University of Iowa thousands of documents spanning his career, and they're now available to the public.
The collection includes a notebook with interview questions for Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and press badges from Saudi Arabia and the 1992 Republican National Convention. A daily planner holds handwritten notes such as "call Bill Gates."
Some of the donated photos show Brokaw standing in front of plumes of smoke in New York on Sept. 11. A baby-blue book has a copy of transcripts from President Richard Nixon's famous White House Tapes. Brokaw said it's stained from reading transcripts while eating fried chicken made by his longtime wife.
"This (collection) really does represent his career, his life and personal life as a whole," said Greg Prickman, head of special collections at the university's Main Library.
The former "NBC Nightly News" anchor donated the items to the school in 2016 and it's been organized and archived by special collections over the past year. The collection was made available to the public on Thursday, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported .
Tom Brokaw
Republican Nominee
Illinois
A neo-Nazi Holocaust denier is set to become the Republican nominee for a congressional seat in Illinois, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Sunday.
The prospective candidate, Art Jones, is not a steadfast supporter of the Republican president. Ten months ago, in remarks filmed at a neo-Nazi retreat in Kentucky, he ranted about how Donald Trump had "surrounded himself with hordes of Jews including a Jew in his own family, that punk named Jared Kushner".
"I'm sorry I voted for the son of a bitch, pardon my English," Jones said, to applause. "I really am. I'm sorry I paid $180 out of my own pocket for three big banners that said 'President Trump, build the wall'."
Nonetheless, Jones is now the sole Republican candidate for the third congressional district of Illinois, which includes part of Chicago and is so heavily Democratic that no other GOP candidates decided to run.
In 2016 Jones was taken off the ballot in the same district, after none of the voter signatures he needed to qualify were found to be valid, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Illinois
Count Marks Sharp Drop
Monarch Butterflies
The number of monarchs wintering in California has dropped to a five-year low, despite more volunteers counting more sites in search of the orange-and-black insect that is arguably the most admired of North American butterflies, a report said on Friday.
The latest tally of 200,000 monarchs in forested groves in California's central coast has dropped from the 1.2 million counted two decades ago, indicating the number of butterflies found west of the Rocky Mountains, or the so-called western population, continues to sharply decline, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation said in a report.
Western monarchs are born on milkweed plants in such states as Arizona, Idaho, Utah and Washington before embarking on a seasonal migration to California.
The annual count in California, done at the end of autumn by dozens of volunteers and scientists, last saw a severe low in 2012, with 144,812 butterflies across 136 sites, she said.
In another troubling trend, the 200,000 butterflies found in the 2017 survey stemmed from monitoring of 262 sites, which were even more sites than were tracked the previous year when 300,000 monarchs were counted, Jepsen said.
Monarch Butterflies
Producing More Marijuana Than It Can Consume
Oregon
Oregon is producing three times more marijuana than it can consume with "formidable" amounts now ending up on the black market, officials have warned.
US Attorney Billy Williams told law enforcement representatives from across the US on Friday that the state, where recreational cannabis use is legal, had a serious overproduction problem.
Mr Williams said officials needed a "bottom-line answer" on how much excess marijuana was being produced and how much of it ends up on the black market.
In a local newspaper column last month, the attorney warned huge surpluses were attracting criminal networks, causing money laundering and drug violence.
Authorities in 16 other states have reported seizing marijuana produced in Oregon, while postal agents have intercepted more than 2,600 pounds of cannabis (1,179kg) and $1.2m (£850,000) in associated cash.
Oregon
New Official
EPA
The husband of a former member of Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) household staff has suddenly ratcheted up his career to become an official of the Environmental Protection Agency. He's just the latest Trump family connection to land a job in the administration.
According to a memo obtained by Politico, Steve Kopec of New Jersey joined the EPA's Region 2 office in New York as a special assistant in December.
The home improvement contractor brings skills regarding "customer service," "organizational efficiencies" and "team building," according to the memo from the Region 2 administrator, but, apparently, no expertise on the environment. He's providing "support services," according to the EPA. His salary is around $66,000, according to a Politico source.
Kopec, who used to run his home improvement business, Steve's Tools in Motion, from his Jersey home, is married to Dagmara Kopec, who used to work in the Trumps' New York home, Politico reports. Both are from Poland.
Workers suspected of lacking qualifications for positions in the Trump administration are not unheard of. In December, Matthew Spencer Petersen, a Trump nominee for a lifetime seat in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, struggled to answer basic questions about law during his Senate confirmation hearing. He later withdrew his name from consideration.
EPA
Weekend Box Office
"Jumanji: Welcome the Jungle"
The heir to "Titanic" is ... "Jumanji: Welcome the Jungle"? For the first time since James Cameron's 1998 disaster epic, a December release has topped the weekend box office in February. Seven weeks after first opening in theaters, Sony Pictures' "Jumanji" again took the top spot at the North American box office with an estimated $11 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
On a sluggish Super Bowl weekend, that was good enough to surpass last week's no. 1 film, "Maze Runner: The Death Cure." The third installment in the YA trilogy slid 58 percent in its second week with $10.2 million in ticket sales. Though "The Death Cure" is behind the pace of the first two "Maze Runner" films, it's made $142.9 million overseas, including an international-best $35.2 million this weekend.
The Helen Mirren-led haunted-house horror film "Winchester" was the sole new wide release on a weekend that Hollywood typically cedes to football. The poorly reviewed Lionsgate-CBS Films release, about the true-life tale of the 19th-century heiress Sarah Winchester, opened with $9.3 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final three-day domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," $11 million ($12.6 million international).
2. "Maze Runner: The Death Cure," $10.2 million ($35.2 million international).
3. "Winchester," $9.3 million.
4. "The Greatest Showman," $7.8 million ($16.2 million international).
5. "Hostiles," $5.5 million.
6. "The Post," $5.2 million ($10.3 million international).
7. "12 Strong," $4.7 million ($2.9 million international).
8. "Den of Thieves," $4.7 million ($6.5 million international).
9. "The Shape of Water," $4.3 million ($4.4 million international).
10. "Paddington 2," $3.1 million ($2 million international).
"Jumanji: Welcome the Jungle"
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