Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Anna Livsey: "Liam Neeson says harassment allegations are now 'a witch-hunt'" {The Guardian)
Hollywood A-lister suggests the treatment of some celebrities, such as Garrison Keillor, has been excessive.
Catherine Deneuve says men should be 'free to hit on' women (The Guardian)
French actor signs open letter that claims 'witch-hunt' in wake of Harvey Weinstein scandal poses threat to sexual freedom.
Marc Dion: Trump's Greatest Generation (Creators Syndicate)
I believe the newspaper columnist's job is to take a step to the side, to take a look at things from an angle, to maybe even sneak around behind an issue and get a look at it from the back. In that spirit, what if the election of Pres. Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to America?
Matthew Yglesias: Tuesday's DACA negotiation stunt showed how dangerously we've lowered the bar for Trump (Vox)
He remembers names (that are written on placards) - congratulations, America!
Josh Marshall: Thoughts on Shithole and Racist Xenophobia At the Heart of Trumpism (TPM)
Speaking of whole classes of people, specifically people of color, as basically garbage - is not only disgusting but entirely of a piece with the campaign President Trump ran in 2016 and the policies he is implementing as President today.
Elise Foley: Dick Durbin Was In The Room And Confirms Trump Made 'Shithole' Comments (Huffington Post)
"He said these hate-filled things and he said them repeatedly."
Cameron Joseph: Fears Of A Democratic Midterm Wave Are Already Costing GOP In Key Races (TPM)
Amidst growing signs of a potentially huge Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections, a raft of key Republican would-be candidates are deciding to stay onshore rather than risk drowning in its undertow.
Cameron Joseph: It's Like Donald Trump Is Trying To Lose Florida (TPM)
President Trump's comments about "shithole countries" like Haiti could hurt him most severely in his winter home of Florida, a state that's also home to a large Haitian community. And it's just the latest time he's singled out a key voting bloc to antagonize in the state.
Ellin Stein: In Paddington 2, Hugh Grant Gives the Year's First Oscar-Worthy Performance (Slate)
His movie-stealing turn has already been nominated for a BAFTA. Why shouldn't an Oscar nomination be next?
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
People from shithole countries
a Janet find.
NOT that the WH is as depicted but that his presence in it turns it into an outhouse; just as the way he uses the Oval Office turns it into a toilet.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda (& Janet)!
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
NETAN-WHO-WHO?
"SHITHOLE COUNTRIES."
SHITHOLE PRESIDENT.
"YESTERDAY WAS A BIG GOOD DAY…"
PLAYING GOLF.
BOOM!
HOW'S YOUR 'SHITHOLE' DONALD?
'HOW'S YOUR SHITHOLE DONALD?' PART TWO.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The skunk is back.
Legendary Musician
Eric Clapton
Rock legend Eric Clapton has revealed that he is going deaf. In a recent interview on BBC Radio 2's "Steve Wright in the Afternoon," the award-winning guitarist spoke about how both his hearing loss and tinnitus - a hearing disorder that can cause high-pitched ringing in the ears - are affecting his career.
"I mean, I'm going deaf, I've got tinnitus, my hands just about work," he said. "I mean, I'm hoping that people will come along and see me just because, or maybe more than because I'm a curiosity. I know that is part of it. It's amazing to myself that I'm still here."
However, Clapton explained that he fully intends on continuing to perform. "I'm still going to work, I'm doing a few gigs, I'm doing a show in Hyde Park in July," he said. "You know the only thing I'm concerned with now is being in my 70s and being able to be proficient."
Eric Clapton
Puerto Rican Astronaut
Joe Acaba
The first astronaut of Puerto Rican heritage reached out Friday to schoolchildren on the hurricane-bashed island.
Flying aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba fielded questions from students at the Puerto Rico Institute of Robotics in Manati. One student asked how Puerto Rico looked from space after Hurricane Maria struck in September. Acaba said the first thing he noticed was the lack of lights, making the island almost impossible to see at night.
Acaba, a former school teacher, is supposed to return to Earth at the end of February. He arrived at the space station a week before Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, already reeling from Hurricane Irma.
The astronaut's parents were from Hatillo, Puerto Rico, and moved to the U.S. He was born in Southern California and grew up there, but has lots of relatives still in the U.S. territory.
Technical difficulties with the institute's Skype connection ate up nine minutes of the 23-minute conversation. Acaba switched between English and Spanish in answering students' questions, ranging from his experience as a teacher to daily life aboard the orbiting outpost. He assured the students that the drinking water - recycled from the six-man crew's urine - actually tastes great and is as natural as it gets. As for sleeping, he said he's getting some of the best sleep of his life.
Joe Acaba
Files To Run For US Senate
Chelsea Manning
Chelsea Manning, a transgender former U.S. Army soldier imprisoned for seven years after being convicted of leaking classified military documents to WikiLeaks, has filed papers to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland as a Democrat.
According to a Federal Election Commission filing, Chelsea Elizabeth Manning filed her candidacy papers on Thursday. Manning is challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, also a Democrat, who is running for his third term.
The primary election for the 2018 Maryland senate race will be held on June 26, 2018.
Manning was convicted in 2013 by a military tribunal under the Espionage and Computer Fraud and Abuse Acts for releasing over 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks. At the time, Manning was a 22-year-old United States Army private named Bradley Manning, and she served seven years of a 35-year sentence. President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence to time served as one of his final acts in office.
Manning has long maintained that she leaked the documents in order to spark public debate. In an exclusive 2017 interview with ABC's Juju Chang for a special edition of Nightline, Manning said, "My intention was to draw attention to this … and do the right thing."
Chelsea Manning
Donates Salary
Mark Wahlberg
Mark Wahlberg found himself at the center of a burgeoning controversy when it was reported he received 1,500 times more money than his All the Money in the World costar Michelle Williams for the film's reshoots. Now, the actor is trying to make amends.
Mark Wahlberg and his agency, William Morris Endeavor (WME), announced a collective donation of $2 million to Time's Up to be made in Williams' name.
"Over the last few days my reshoot fee for All the Money in the World has become an important topic of conversation," he said in a statement released to press on Saturday. "I 100 percent support the fight for fair pay and I'm donating the $1.5M to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams' name."
"The current conversation is a reminder that those of us in a position of influence have a responsibility to challenge inequities, including the gender wage gap," WME added. "In recognition of the pay discrepancy on the All the Money in the World reshoots, WME is donating an additional $500,000 to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams' name, following our $1 million pledge to the organization earlier this month. It's crucial that this conversation continues within our community and we are committed to being part of the solution."
The Time's Up Legal Defense Fund was established to provide legal support for women and men who have experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault, or abuse in the workplace or in pursuit of their careers. As of the publication of this article, no donation in the previously announced amount had been listed on the GoFundMe page under Williams' name.
Mark Wahlberg
Fossil Fuels Blown Away
Wind
New onshore wind and solar energy projects are set to deliver electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels plants, with other green technologies also rapidly gaining a cost advantage over dirty fuels, a report published Saturday said.
According to a new cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), within two years "all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels".
It expects renewables will cost between three and 10 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) by 2020, while the current cost spectrum for fossil fuel power generation ranges from five to 17 US cents per kWh.
Continued technological advancements are not the only factor helping drive down prices. The report found that the market was becoming more competitive and a number of experienced project developers had emerged in the sector.
The best onshore wind and solar PV projects are expected to deliver electricity for three US cents or less by next year.
Wind
Family Planning
HHS
Teresa Manning, the Health and Human Services official who oversaw family planning programs and was critical of birth control and abortion, has left HHS, the agency confirmed.
Politico, citing two sources familiar with the situation said Manning was fired, although HHS said she resigned on Friday. Manning, who in the past has dubbed contraceptives as "anti-family" and once worked for the pro-life National Right to Life Committee and the Family Research Council, was appointed by President Trump in May to the role of deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Population Affairs. Part of her role included overseeing $286 million in Title X family planning funds, intended to provide various family planning services to low-income individuals.
An HHS spokesman said in a statement, "Teresa Manning resigned her position as the deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Population Affairs. HHS would like to thank her for her service to this administration and the American people.
Taking Manning's place as acting deputy assistant secretary in that role is Valerie Huber, who joined HHS last summer. Huber is a longtime proponent of abstinence-only education programs.
Manning was formerly an adjunct professor at George Mason University's law school in Northern Virginia. In 2015 she lost a lawsuit against the University of Iowa's law school over her claim that she was passed over for a job because of her political views. Manning gained attention for controversial remarks in the past.
HHS
Porn Star
$130,000 Payment
President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) personal lawyer brokered a $130,000 payment to a porn actress to prevent her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump met Stephanie Clifford, whose goes by the name Stormy Daniels in films, at a golf event in 2006 - a year after Trump's marriage to his wife, Melania. According to the Journal's report, Clifford began talking with ABC News in the fall of 2016 for a story involving an alleged relationship with Trump, but reached a $130,000 deal a month before the election, which prevented her from going public.
Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen arranged for the payment through Clifford's lawyer, Keith Davidson, the Journal reported.
Clifford had also been in discussions with the online magazine Slate, The New York Times reported Friday. Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, told the Times that Clifford had told him she had an affair with Trump.
Just days before the 2016 election, the Journal published a story stating that the National Enquirer - run by David Pecker, a fervid supporter of Trump - had paid $150,000 to silence former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal about a sexual relationship she allegedly had with Trump a decade ago.
$130,000 Payment
Canceled Visit
London
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Buffoon) offered a classically Trumpian explanation for why he canceled his upcoming trip to the U.K.: the construction of a new U.S. embassy in the British capital represents a bad deal, and he wants nothing to do with it.
"Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for 'peanuts,' only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars," he tweeted late Thursday. "Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!"
While he's correct that the construction of the new building was an unusually costly undertaking, most of his assertions, including placing the blame on President Barack Obama, majorly miss the mark, and lack decades of nuance and historical context.
The decision to move the embassy from London's Grosvenor Square actually took place during President George W. Bush's tenure, though construction on the new site, located across the Thames river in an area called the Nine Elms Opportunity Zone, began in 2013.
The current embassy's location in a busy square makes it difficult to secure, and attempts to do so weren't popular with the neighbors. The U.S. spent £8 million (about $11 million) on security upgrades following the September 11, 2001, attacks, because local residents protested having to live near what they felt was a terror target.
London
Supermassive Black Hole
'Double Belch'
Scientists studying a supermassive black hole around 800 million light-years from Earth say they caught it 'belching' - blasting out jets of bright light - after ingesting hot gas.
The team, led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers, was fortunate to catch the black hole in the act, as the action has rarely been seen before as a result of gas feeding. They also saw a remnant of a previous black hole belch, which occurred around 100,000 years before the second.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with observatories in Hawaii and New Mexico, were used to make the observation.
"Black holes are voracious eaters, but it also turns out they don't have very good table manners," said the study's lead author, CU Boulder Assistant Professor Julie Comerford, during a news conference on Jan. 11, according to Space.com. "We know a lot of examples of black holes with single burps emanating out, but we discovered a galaxy with a supermassive black hole that has not one but two burps."
The team presented its rare findings in a paper published in TheAstrophysical Journal.
'Double Belch'
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