Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: A Little Balance in the House (Creators Syndicate)
We, the people, dammit. We are sometimes hard to look at, but we are the many-headed god to whom the big gods bow. In the most recent elections, the pundits say, Democrats "took back" the house. But if you want to know the truth of it, it was just good old tax-paying, tattooed, truck-driving us bringing a little balance back to things. Because we do that, we, the people.
Ted Rall: Why Are the Police Caught Flat-Footed by Right-Wing Extremism? Because They Are Right-Wing Extremists. (Creators Syndicate)
Considering that the right is responsible for 3 out of 4 political terrorism-related deaths, the police are failing to do their job of protecting the public from the biggest threat. (The other 1 out of 4 are almost all attributable to radical Islamists. In the U.S., the political left hardly ever kills anyone.) Turning a blind eye to right-wing violence isn't new. "Law enforcement's inability to reckon with the far right is a problem that goes back generations in this country," Janet Reitman wrote in The New York Times, referencing the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Mark Shields: The Remaining Election of 2018 (Creators Syndicate)
After the failed U.S.-organized invasion of Fidel Castro's Cuba, President John F. Kennedy rightly took responsibility: "Victory has 1,000 fathers, but defeat is an orphan." After his GOP lost 30 House seats in 2006, President George W. Bush accurately described the defeat as a "thumpin'." Then we have President Donald Trump's unapologetic spin after the GOP lost more House seats - probably three dozen - than in any election since the rout following Watergate. He called it "an incredible day" for the Republican Party for "significantly beating expectations in the House."
Froma Harrop: Democrats Need an Immigration Policy Fast (Creators Syndicate)
Listen to how Canada's minister of immigration, Ahmed Hussen, responded to a convoy of Haitians headed toward the Quebec border: "We don't want people to illegally enter our border, and doing so is not a free ticket to Canada. We are saying, 'You will be apprehended, screened, detained, fingerprinted, and if you can't establish a genuine claim, you will be denied refugee protection and removed.'" See? No attacks on the Haitians' character. No racial smears. Hussen's message was clear. In no uncertain terms, Canada's immigration laws would be enforced. And that's a big reason Canada's large immigration program is less controversial than ours.
Susan Estrich: The Age Problem (Creators Syndicate)
It's against the law to discriminate in employment. As an old lawyer, I firmly subscribe to the canon of young doctors and old lawyers. And old legislators, some of the time. Nicholas Pelosi would the King of the Hill, and no one would be commenting on his clothes. It should be called Obama-Pelosi Care. But Nancy Pelosi's still 78, an old House Speaker who needs some youthful consorts, or whatever it is appropriate to call them. I call them candidates.
Hadley Freeman: "Mister Rogers: the quiet revolutionary of children's TV" (The Guardian)
For 33 years, a man in a cardigan brought a gentle thoughtfulness to US TV show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Now a film about it is breaking records. Hadley Freeman talks to the director - and shows the original TV series to her children.
Lenore Skenazy: About Those Halloween Horror Stories (Creators Syndicate)
Alas, no surprise here: A 5-year-old Galion, Ohio, boy who tested positive for methamphetamine after trick-or-treating was not given drug-laced candy by a stranger, the police now report. Instead, his father has been charged with possession of meth and drug tampering.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Sometimes Arnold Schwarzenegger says exactly the wrong thing; sometimes he says exactly the right thing. When he met Dino De Laurentiis, who produced the Schwarzenegger movie Conan the Barbarian, Mr. Schwarzenegger was shocked that Mr. De Laurentiis was such a small man, so he asked, "Why does such a little man like you need such a huge desk?" His agent later told him, "That was the worst thing I ever heard anybody say when he's trying to get a job." One time when Mr. Schwarzenegger said exactly the right thing was when he was hit with an egg while he was campaigning for governor of California. He said, "That guy owes me bacon."
Movie actor Ewan McGregor's wife is a French woman named Eve (pronounced Ev) Mavrakis. One result of this is that their daughter's first words were in French, not English. Therefore, Mr. McGregor decided to learn more French; otherwise, when his daughter grew up and argued with him, he might not understand some of the words she used. By the way, when Mr. McGregor got married in France, one of the few French words he knew was "oui," which he spoke when prompted. Also by the way, Mr. McGregor, who played a younger Obi-Wan Kanobi in the prequel Star Wars movies, slept on Star Wars sheets when he was a kid.
John Dexter used to produce operas in Paris, although he spoke English and a young woman would translate his comments so that other people could understand them. Occasionally, Mr. Dexter would become really angry and curse people in English, and the young woman would diplomatically translate his comments. However, Mr. Dexter knew enough French to be aware of what the young woman was doing, so he would order her, "Tell them what I really said."
Italian is rich in invective, and conductor Arturo Toscanini made rich use of it when he wanted to criticize a musician or a singer. Once, he was heaping Italian invective upon a musician when he realized that the musician did not understand Italian and so did not understand what he was saying. Because his knowledge of English was limited, Mr. Toscanini was forced to tell the musician, "You bad, bad man."
The TV crime drama series Dragnet is known for the phrase, "Just the facts, ma'am." Actually, those words were not said all that often in the early days of the series. However, satirist Stan Freberg recorded a parody of the show ("St. George and the Dragonet"), in which he used the phrase. Dragnet creator, writer, and star Jack Webb liked the parody so much that he began to write that phrase more often into the script.
The Great Society, a rock 'n' roll band out of San Francisco, wrote a song about comedian Lenny Bruce called "Father Bruce." It included these lines: "The word to kill ain't dirty, but you use a word for lovin', and you end up doin' time."
Jeff Stone, an outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, once played for a while in Latin America, and when he returned to the United States, he left his TV behind. Why? He explained, "All the programs were in Spanish."
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Trudeau!
Watch this 2:20 clip of Trudeau at the memorial ceremony. He closes the umbrella! But Donnie was afraid to come out.
Weather as his excuse
I think he's too exhausted to go--the old stamina is used up from all the love-me rallies and jet lag. Daily Beast say there is heavy rain at the site, but rain won't make him melt! The old man can't physically do it! He's breaking down!
Daily Beast article lead off:
President Trump has called off a planned visit to a U.S. military cemetery outside Paris due to bad weather. The White House said Saturday that Chief of Staff General John Kelly and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford will visit the Aisne-Marne American cemetery instead after Trump canceled the trip due to "scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather."
Well, he tweeted...
He didn't speak, but in between insulting his buddy Macron, Predator had time to say not one word about the deaths, not one word about the devastating loss, but to blame California for not managing its forests correctly.
Another of those cases where not saying anything would have been better than what he said.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
TINY HANDS, LITTLE BRAIN AND BIG MOUTH!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Raccoons bowling on the roof again.
Slams 'Heartless' Tweet
Katy Perry
Katy Perry slammed Donald Trump (Grabby Grifter) over the president's "heartless" response to the California wildfires.
As a trio of wildfires scorched thousands of acres of land, forced evacuations and killed at least nine people, Trump took to Twitter Friday night to blame the blazes on California's forest management.
Trump's insensitive response toward the disaster was immediately met with ire on social media, including from the Witness singer.
"This is an absolutely heartless response. There aren't even politics involved. Just good American families losing their homes as you tweet, evacuating into shelters," Perry wrote while subtweeting Trump.
The singer added, "There's a lot of unknowns tonight
but what we do know is we are here for you and as a community we will help in any way possible. Immense gratitude to all the brave first responders out there putting their lives on the line for so many families."
Katy Perry
Walk O' Fame
Sarah Silverman
Sarah Silverman received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Friday.
And in the comedian's later appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher," she used the accolade to highlight the rise in anti-Semitism in America since President Donald Trump entered the White House.
"In a time... where anti-Semitic crime is up 57 percent since this douchebag has taken office, it is not lost on me that I am very lucky that I get a star and I don't have to sew it on my clothes," said the host of Hulu's "I Love You, America."
"I don't know if that's gallows humor or just like it's funny 'cuz it's true humor," she added.
Sarah Silverman
Found
Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen has been found after his son Charlie Sheen feared he had gone missing in the devastating wildfires in Southern California.
The former Two and a Half Men star shared on social media on Friday that he had been unable to reach his father and mother Janet since 30,000 homes in the Point Dume area of Malibu were evacuated.
"I cannot get ahold of my parents Martin and Janet Sheen," Charlie, 53, wrote on Twitter. "They are in the group, at the staging ground near Zuma Beach. If anyone has eyes on them, please let me know that they are safe and sound in the middle of this horrific scenario."
Hours later, Martin spoke to U.S. news network Fox 11, and revealed he and his wife were safe and well.
"We evacuated early this morning from Point Dume around 9:30, and we've been here ever since. Emilio, Ramon, Renee, Charlie... we're fine," the 78-year-old assured his four children. "We're at Zuma Beach and will probably sleep in the car tonight. We're just fine and hope you guys are, too."
Martin Sheen
Charged After Brawl
George Lopez
Comedian George Lopez is being charged with misdemeanor battery after getting into a fight with a man at a Hooters restaurant last month, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports. The incident occurred on Oct. 14 in New Mexico, where Lopez was filming the upcoming faith-based movie Walking With Herb.
TMZ.com obtained cellphone video footage of the incident this week, which shows Lopez attempting to snatch a cellphone from a man who verbally provoked him. "Here comes my boy, George. Jorge Lopez," the man says, before Lopez is shown grabbing the back of the man's neck. "He's a bad-ass - look at him, he wants to fight me, he wants to fight me!"
According to TMZ.com, the man had been baiting Lopez all evening, frequently yelling "MAGA" and making pro-Trump comments. However, the man gave police a different story. According to the police report obtained by the Sun-News, the man claimed that he was only trying to get a photograph with the star and made the comments in an attempt to get Lopez to smile for the camera.
The man said Lopez grabbed the cellphone, videotaped his crotch area, and then deleted the video. After waiting for Lopez by the entrance to the restaurant, he confronted the comedian as he attempted to leave. Lopez later admitted that he reached for the man's cellphone and then grabbed him, saying he believed the man was waiting for him by the front of the restaurant "to get him upset on camera because of his 'MAGA' statements."
Lopez has been a vocal critic of President Trump. In July, he pretended to urinate on Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a bottle of water. Lopez certainly isn't the only one who has made headlines at Trump's star: Someone placed a golden toilet next to the star with a tank that read "Take a Trump," while others have scribbled expletives on the star. One person even smashed it with a pickax.
George Lopez
Sexual Violence As A Weapon Of War
Nobel Peace Prize
The decision to award the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege - two campaigners against sexual violence in war - has rightly been hailed as a much-needed signal that the international community recognises the severity of this problem in an increasingly conflict-ridden world.
Violence against women has been a topic engaging feminist legal scholars and international lawyers for a long time. A sustained feminist advocacy emerged around widespread reports of sexual violence experienced by women during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early 1990s.
This culminated in the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002, whose statute enables the prosecution of a range of sexual harms.
So giving this prestigious prize to two frontline human rights activists does highlight the growing global recognition of the widespread and endemic sexual harms women suffer during wartime. But despite this welcome recognition - and the widespread reporting of sexual violence incidents in conflict - the international legal system lacks a binding convention on the prohibition of violence against women. There is therefore a gap between symbolism and legal reality.
Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work in relation to her experience as a Yazidi-Kurdish woman who had survived sexual violence and assaults - including numerous rapes and prolonged sexual enslavement at the hands of Isis in northern Iraq in 2014. In 2016 she became UN goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking, using her appointment to raise awareness of the trafficking of women before the United Nations Security Council.
Nobel Peace Prize
Defends Lethal Experiments On Dogs
Robert Wilkie
Robert Wilkie, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, pledged Friday to continue allowing researchers to conduct ultimately lethal experiments on dogs, nearly eight months after Congress passed a measure to hinder the practice.
"I am going to do everything possible to make sure our veterans come first," Wilkie said at a National Press Club event in Washington, D.C.
Included in the massive government spending bill passed in March was a provision barring the department from using dogs in any experiment unless the specific objectives of the study can only be met through canine testing. Even then, the secretary must directly sign off on all canine experimentation.
Wilkie said he would continue to authorize animal testing "until somebody tells me that that research does not help" lead to medical advancements for humans.
The dogs are killed at the end of the studies.
Robert Wilkie
Democratic Republic of Congo
Ebola
The current Ebola outbreak in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the worst in the country's recorded history, with 326 confirmed and probable cases, resulting in 201 deaths, the country's health ministry said.
Ebola virus disease, which causes an often-fatal type of hemorrhagic fever, is endemic to the region. It's the 10th outbreak the Democratic Republic of the Congo has seen since 1976, the year that scientists first identified the deadly virus near the eponymous Ebola River.
The outbreak is also the third most severe in the recorded history of the African continent, following 28,652 cases in the 2013-2016 outbreak in multiple West African nations and 425 cases in the 2000 outbreak in Uganda, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The outbreak has been heavily concentrated in the northeastern province of North Kivu, where about half of all cases have been recorded in the conflict-torn city of Beni, which is home to 800,000 people. People have also been infected in neighboring Ituri province.
North Kivu and Ituri are among the most populous provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and share borders with Uganda and Rwanda. They are also awash with violence and insecurity, particularly in the mineral-rich borderlands where militia activity has surged in the past year, all of which complicates the response to the outbreak.
Ebola
What Does It Look Like?
Sadness
Feelings of sadness or anxiety might be linked to increased "chitchat" between two areas of the brain, a new study suggests.
In the study, published today (Nov. 8) in the journal Cell, a group of researchers listened in on electrical conversations in the brain - in other words, the signals that brain regions send to one another. When a person is feeling down, they found, the communication increased between brain cells in two specific regions of the brain involved in memory and emotion.
It's unclear whether this increased brain communication is a cause or an effect of a bad mood, the researchers noted. However, the findings allowed them to home in on the part of the brain where the action is.
What is clear, however, is that anxiety, depression and mood have physical manifestations in the brain. "For many patients, it is very important to know that when they are feeling depressed, it is due to something measurable and concrete within their brain," said co-senior study author Dr. Vikaas Sohal, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. "For some patients, this can provide important validation and remove stigma, empowering them to seek appropriate treatment."
The researchers carried out the study using a technique called intracranial electroencephalography (EEG). As the word "intracranial" implies, the method involves implanting electrodes or wires inside the skull - in and on the brain. These implanted electrodes record the electrical activity of brain cells (in other words, record their communication).
Sadness
Three Species In One
Burket's Warbler
A Pennsylvania birder spotted the bird of a lifetime in his backyard this past autumn - it was a hybrid of three species across two genera in a single bird. He'd found a three-in-one warbler.
Birder Lowell Burket knew something strange had arrived at the bird-watching spot on his property this past May. The bird looked like a hybrid well-known among birders, called the Brewster's warbler, which is a mix between the golden-winged and blue-winged warbler. But it sang like a bird from a different genus, called the chestnut-sided warbler, and had a twinge of the chestnut-sided's signature red patch on its side.
Burket observed the bird a few times and eventually emailed Cornell researchers.
Toews paid Burket a visit. They successfully caught the bird in a net and took a blood sample before letting it free. Toews ran an analysis of the bird's mitochondrial DNA, and found what he was looking for - a Vermivora warbler mother - he presumed a golden-winged warbler - had mated with the chestnut-sided warbler. But when he shared his results with his colleagues and Twitter followers, they asked him to keep going.
Further testing revealed that Toews' Twitter followers were right: The mother was a hybrid herself. Burket's bird was thus three species and two genera in a single bird. As far as Toews could tell, it was the first record of an interspecies hybrid reproducing with a bird from a different genus, according to the paper.
Burket's Warbler
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