Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Helaine Olen: A $31,000 dining room set for Ben Carson? Typical Trump administration behavior.(Washington Post)
It seems that hardly a week can go by without Trump administration officials demonstrating that when it comes to frivolous spending on the government dime while the populace is told to make sacrifices, Marie Antoinette was a rank amateur.
Paul Krugman: Trade War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing (NY Times Blog)
So we can't "win" a trade war. What we can do is start a cycle of tit-for-tat, and when it comes to trade, America - which accounts for 9 percent of world exports and 14 percent of world imports - is by no means a dominant superpower.
Paul Krugman: The Macroeconomics of Trade War (NY Times Blog)
Add in the fact that other countries would retaliate - they're already drawing up their target lists - and the fact that we'd be alienating key allies, and you have a truly terrible, dumb policy idea. Which makes it quite likely, as I see it, that Trump will indeed follow through.
Gail Collins: A Trump Fawners Almanac (NY Times Column)
Sycophancy isn't as easy as it looks.
Garrison Keillor: What's that shaking in my pocket?
There is a power imbalance between the president of the United States and me, and so I am loath to criticize him lest he smack me down. Same with my mayor and city council, who could, if I offended them, send dump trucks full of snow and make a mountain at the end of my driveway and I might spend hours shoveling it and then collapse with a major coronary. So I am going to write about telephones instead. With all due respect to you in the telephone industry.
Jonathan Jones: BBC looks beyond the west to retell the story of civilization (The Guardian)
Civilisations - note the plural - reworks the classic 1969 TV series into a truly global history of art.
Guy Lodge: Jennifer Lawrence: the fascinating subversion of Hollywood's sweetheart (The Guardian)
Lawrence tests her star quality again with Red Sparrow - the latest unconventional move for an actor toying with public perception.
Oscars 2018 predictions from our film critic Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
Will The Shape of Water and Three Billboards dominate at the first post-Weinstein Academy Awards? Our chief critic makes his picks.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
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
THE DICTATOR.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
March 5th is a sad day in these parts -
Bartcop died 4 years ago on this date.
And, thanks to the always fabulous
Michael Dare, we're
reminded that John Belushi also died on 5 March, in 1982.
Tough Impersonation
Alec Baldwin
Actor Alec Baldwin called into a radio station Friday pretending to be President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) scarfing down a "gigantic piece of chocolate cake."
It was the latest blast in a bitter feud between Trump and Baldwin. On Friday, Trump blasted Baldwin's career as "mediocre" and his impersonation of the president as "terrible." Baldwin shot back, saying he planned to "hang in there for the impeachment hearings ... You know. The good stuff."
Baldwin conceded that the "Saturday Night Live" crew may be creating its weekly sketches, including Trump impersonations, "by the seat of our pants."
"We're doing our civic duty," he added. "We're doing the best we can with what we have. Here we have this guy who is probably the greatest presidential impersonator we've ever seen in history."
When Baldwin, impersonating Trump, was asked if the president should be blasting the actor instead of running the country, he said: "I got this. I'm the president. I won. I'm a multi-tasker. I've always done lots of things. I've always had five or six girlfriends at a time."
Alec Baldwin
Charity Covers Entire School District's Lunch Debt
Philando Castile
Two years after he was fatally shot by a police officer in Minnesota, Philando Castile is still helping students afford lunch.
A charity created in Castile's honor has paid off the lunch debt for every student in the 56 schools in the St. Paul Public School District, including the school where Castile worked as a cafeteria supervisor.
"That means no parent of the 37,000 kids who eat meals at school need worry about how to pay that overdue debt," a charity organizer wrote on the "Philando Feeds the Children" fundraising page.
Castile had worked as a cafeteria supervisor at the J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School in St. Paul for two years at the time he was killed.
Families said students at the school took his death especially hard.
Philando Castile
Corrects Fox
Navy
The US Navy has corrected a Fox "News" contributor who said special operations forces were not able to penetrate President Donald Trump's Mexico border wall prototypes.
Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich claimed that "Special Forces operatives and members of our Navy SEAL community were asked to try and breach the wall prototypes and they could not do it."
The Navy's Sea, Air and Land (Seal) Teams were not involved in testing the prototypes, the armed forces branch confirmed to the San Diego Tribune.
Ms Pavlich was dragged on social media, with many experts saying that Seal teams could breach the 30ft-high concrete and steel prototypes if given the right tools.
She was partially correct about one matter - the prototypes have undergone about three weeks of testing in January by US military and US Customs and Border Patrol officials to see whether people could enter the US through the wall designs illegally.
Navy
Votes For Public Media
Switzerland
Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a proposal that would have cut taxpayer funding to public broadcasters, after a campaign that stirred debate about the media's role in fostering national unity.
The "No Billag" initiative -- a reference to the Billag firm that collects the media licensing fee -- divided Switzerland on political and generational lines.
But 71 percent voted "no" to the proposals, according to official results published by the Swiss news agency ATS.
Rejection of the initiative was "a strong sign for the public service and for private regional radio and television," said the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SSR) director Gilles Marchand.
Turnout reached 54 percent, nearly 10 percent above the recent average for such votes in Switzerland.
Switzerland
Mistreated By US Army
Bomb-Sniffing Dogs
Bomb-sniffing dogs were mistreated by the US Army after returning from duty in Afghanistan, according to an official report.
The canines which saved countless lives between 2010 and 2014 were not given proper care and attention, left in kennels for nearly a year and possibly even put down.
Several dogs had to be rescued by the soldiers they served with during Operation Enduring Freedom.
There was also no screening of people who offered to adopt the animals, according to a report from the US Department of Defense's Inspector General.
The Army allowed one dog described as having canine PTSD and another which may have received bite training to go to families with children.
Bomb-Sniffing Dogs
Week Of Anarchy
White House
The god of giant metaphors struck on Friday. Winds of 65mph battered Washington, uprooting trees, cutting power to nearly half a million people and forcing the federal government to close. Donald Trump had to change his travel plans and fly via Dulles airport, where one plane had such a bumpy descent that, the pilot said, pretty much everyone on board threw up.
It was the apt end of a week that left the president, Lear-like, all but abandoned in a raging storm. Hope Hicks, an aide so close that she has been described as a surrogate daughter, became the fourth communications director to leave his administration. Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, was stripped of high-level security clearance amid revelations about potential conflicts of interest. The king himself fulminated on topics from gun control to trade tariffs, leaving courtiers scrambling to offer reassurances about his state of mind.
There has been disarray in the White House before but this time, observers said, the checks and balances that have provided a modicum of restraint appear to be crumbling, leaving Trump isolated, angry and ready to lash out. It is, they fear, not inconceivable that the world's most powerful country is now being guided by instinct, by impulse, by whim and by mood swing.
"This feels like it's turned a corner and not for the better for the White House," said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist, once press secretary to Vice-President Dan Quayle.
"As layers of this onion - the people who have seniority, who he listens to and who hopefully can talk him down - unpeel, there are fewer and fewer people to do that, which means he can operate on his gut, and he doesn't have the experience to do that."
White House
US Utilities
Coal Ash Dumps
Major utilities have found evidence of groundwater contamination at coal-burning power plants across the U.S. where landfills and man-made ponds have been used for decades as dumping grounds for coal ash, according to data released by plant owners under a Friday deadline.
Heightened levels of pollutants - including arsenic and radium in some cases - were documented at plants in numerous states, from Virginia to Alaska.
The Environmental Protection Agency required the plant owners to install test wells to monitor groundwater pollution as a first step toward cleaning up the sites.
The future of that effort was cast into uncertainty Thursday when the Trump administration announced it intends to roll back aspects of the program to reduce the industry's compliance costs by up to $100 million annually.
"There's no dispute that the underlying groundwater is being contaminated. We see that clearly," said Duke University professor Avner Vengosh, who researches the effects of coal ash and has reviewed some of the new data. "The real question is whether it's migrating toward people or wells next to (coal plants)."
Coal Ash Dumps
So Sad
Mnuchin
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (R-Oligarch) doesn't want you to see what happened when he spoke at the University of California, Los Angeles on Monday.
The Burkle Center for International Relations invited Mnuchin to speak with "Marketplace" public radio host Kai Ryssdal for an open discussion on the Trump administration, its policies and the U.S. economy at the university. The public event went so poorly, however, that Mnuchin asked UCLA not to publish any video of it, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
But with so many people in attendance - at least 400, according to the Los Angeles Times - video of the treasury secretary dueling with the crowd inevitably leaked.
"Marketplace" published a full audio recording and transcript of the discussion, in which the audience can be heard hissing and criticizing the secretary.
Many people can be heard hissing at the treasury secretary during the event, while others yell loudly at him. Campus police officers arrested three people, two students and a former student, who loudly denounced Mnuchin during the event.
Mnuchin
Weekend Box Office
'Black Panther'
Wakanda's reign shows no signs of waning. "Black Panther" is king of the box office for the third straight weekend.
The release from Marvel and Disney brought in $65.7 million domestically this weekend, easily outpacing new releases "Red Sparrow" and "Death Wish," according to studio estimates Sunday.
"Black Panther" has now grossed $500 million domestically after three weeks of release. It's the third fastest film to reach the $500 million plateau.
Fox's "Red Sparrow," featuring Jennifer Lawrence as a Russian ballerina-turned-super-spy, earned $17 million in its first weekend.
Another new release, "Death Wish," MGM's reboot of the Charles Bronson action franchise starring Bruce Willis, was third with $13 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers also are included. Final three-day domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Black Panther," $65.7 million.
2. "Red Sparrow," $17 million.
3. "Death Wish," $13 million.
4. "Game Night," $10.7 million.
5. "Peter Rabbit," $10 million.
6. "Annihilation," $5.6 million.
7. "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," $4.5 million.
8. "Fifty Shades Freed," $3.3 million.
9. "The Greatest Showman," $2.6 million.
10. "Every Day," $1.5 million.
'Black Panther'
In Memory
Roger Bannister
Roger Bannister, who as a lanky medical student at Oxford in 1954 electrified the sports world and lifted postwar England's spirits when he became the first athlete to run a mile in under 4 minutes, has died at 88.
Bannister died Saturday in Oxford, the city where he accomplished the feat many had thought impossible. He had been slowed in recent years by Parkinson's disease and, before that, an ankle shattered in a 1975 auto accident.
On a typically cool, wet and blustery English day in May nearly 64 years ago, Bannister put on his spikes and ran four laps around a cinder track in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, for one of the defining sporting achievements of the 20th century.
The image of the young Bannister - head tilted back, eyes closed and mouth agape as he strained across the finishing tape - captured the public's imagination, made him a global celebrity and boosted the morale of Britons still suffering through austerity measures.
Bannister soon retired from competition and went on to a long and distinguished career in medicine, and his mark was broken over and over again, with the world record for the mile now at 3:43.13. But he was a national hero to the end.
Bannister was born on March 23, 1929, in the London borough of Harrow. At the outbreak of World War II, the family moved to the city of Bath, where Bannister sometimes ran to and from school.
His passion for running took off in 1945 when his father took him to a track meet at London's White City Stadium, built to host the 1908 Olympics. He resolved to take up running seriously at Oxford.
Bannister was chosen Sports Illustrated's first Sportsman of the Year in 1954.
Later, as chairman of Britain's Sports Council from 1971 to 1974, he developed the first test for anabolic steroids. In 2012, he edited the ninth edition of a textbook on nervous-system disease.
He said his most treasured trophy was the lifetime achievement award he received in 2005 from the American Academy of Neurology. He was knighted for his medical work in 1975.
Bannister married Moyra Jacobsson, an artist, in 1955. They had two sons and two daughters and lived in a modest home minutes from the track where he made history.
Roger Bannister
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