Mark Morford: Meanwhile, Trump intensifies groping of America (SF Gate)
We have gone from a deeply civilized, hugely successful, beautifully historic presidential administration marked by tremendous grace and calm wisdom, to a bullying sh-t-show run by a bloviated, tiny-brained reality TV man-child who doesn't give a damn about what his army of confused, poorly educated protest voters might have wanted, but very much adores all those violent, misogynist white supremacist sociopaths who would gladly lead us all into the pits of hell.
Timothy Snyder: A Yale history professor's powerful, 20-point guide to defending democracy under a Trump presidency (Quartz)
5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.
Sonny & Cher were an American pop music duo, actors, singers and entertainers made up of husband-and-wife Sonny and Cher Bono in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple started their career in the mid-1960s as R&B backing singers for record producer Phil Spector.
Cherilyn Sarkisian first met Salvatore Bono in a Los Angeles coffee shop in November 1962, when she was sixteen. Eleven years her senior, Bono was working for record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. Through Bono, Cher started as a session singer, and sang backup on several of Spector's classic recordings, including "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" by The Righteous Brothers and Darlene Love's "A Fine, Fine Boy". In the composition by Darlene Love, the listener can clearly hear Cher and Sonny close to the mic (along with Love, who recorded her own backing vocals).
With Bono continuing to write, arrange and produce the songs, the couple's first incarnation was as the duo "Caesar and Cleo". They received little attention, despite releasing some singles in 1964: "The Letter", with Vault Records, and "The Letter", "Do You Wanna Dance" and "Love Is Strange", with Reprise Records.
Source
Mark. was first and correct with:
American pop duo Caesar and Cleo, huh. A wild guess: Sonny and Cher.
Alan J answered:
Sonny & Cher.
David of Moon Valley wrote:
oh jeez...sonny and cher?...really?! Hokey Smokes.....
gene said:
Sonny & Cher
Jim from CA, retired to ID, responded:
Sonny & Cher
Barbara, my roommate from the Pepperdine days, replied:
The answer is Sonny and Cher.
Deborah said:
That's Sonny and Cher. I enjoyed their music and TV show, back in the day. I'm still a Cher fan; she's timeless and (thanks to plastic surgery) ageless.
Freeze warning in effect with rain arriving later today. Yes, it's indoor activities season in NorCal.
I found this one at the Lincoln Cathedral while walking around in Lincoln, UK a week or so ago...it's the second station of the cross inside the great cathedral itself....never has anything ever been so profound to me inside a church quite like this one....
and Thank You for keeping me simultaneously informed and entertained day after day! I Really Appreciate what you do, for all of the days in a row and time you have put in doing this! Great Job!
Patriot Act NSA Spying Unconstitutional Section 215 National Security Letters Must End
My name is Marc Perkel and I have decided to announce that I will not comply with the so called "Patriot Act" laws requiring me to disclose information about my customers. If I receive a national security letter I will immediately photograph it, post it online everywhere I can, and then make a video of me burning it. I will then await my arrest. If you want to put me in jail then come get me mother fucker.
Decades has started showing the original
Rowan & Martin Laugh-In at midnight on the East Coast (9pm on the left coast). Tonight's episode held up quite well.
Tonight, Thursday:
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'Big Bang Theory', followed by a FRESH'The Great Indoors', then a FRESH'Mom', followed by a FRESH'Life In Pieces', then a FRESH'Pure Genius'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Octavia Spencer and Travis Scott.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Stephen Fry and Lukas Graham.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'Thursday Night Football', then pads the left coast with local crap and maybe an old 'Dateline'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are Robert De Niro and Pharrell Williams.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Taraji P. Henson, Lola Kirke, Bret Baier, and Abe Cunningham.
Scheduled on a FRESHCarson 'The Scab' Daly are Damien Chazelle, Black Lips, and Sean Teale.
ABC starts the night with 'Toy Story That Time Forgot', followed by 'Shrek The Halls', then a FRESH'The Great American Baking Show', followed by a FRESH'Notorious'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Kimmel are Jennifer Aniston, Tom Ford, and Frenship.
The CW offers a FRESH'DC's Legends Of Tomorrow', followed by a FRESH'Supernatural'.
Faux has the FRESH'Taraji's White Hot Holidays', followed by a FRESH'Pitch'.
MY has an old 'The X-Files', followed by another old 'The X-Files'.
A&E has 'The First 48', followed by a FRESH'The First 48', then a FRESH'Nightwatch', followed by a FRESH'Gangland Undercover'.
AMC offers the movie 'Inside Man', followed by the movie 'The Italian Job'.
BBC -
[6:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 11-Chain of Command (Part 2)
[7:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 12-Ship in a Bottle
[8:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 13-Aquiel
[9:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 6-The Doctor's Daughter
[10:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 8-Silence in the Library-Part 1.
[11:00AM] DOCTOR WHO - SEASON 4 - EPISODE 9-Forest of the Dead-Part 2 .
[12:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 15-Tapestry
[1:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 16-Birthright (Part 1)
[2:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 17-Birthright (Part 2)
[3:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 18-Starship Mine
[4:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 19-Lessons
[5:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 20-The Chase
[6:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 21-Frame of Mind
[7:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 22-Suspicions
[8:00PM] THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)
[10:30PM] THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)
[1:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 22-Suspicions
[2:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 15-Tapestry
[3:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 16-Birthright (Part 1)
[4:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 17-Birthright (Part 2)
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - SEASON 6 - EPISODE 18-Starship Mine (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has 'Million Dollar Listing LA', another 'Million Dollar Listing LA', followed by a FRESH'Million Dollar Listing LA', then a FRESH'Top Chef', followed by a FRESH'Watch What Happens Live'.
Comedy Central has 'Futurama', another 'Futurama', 'Tosh.0', another 'Tosh.0', 'Amy Schumer: Mostly Sex Stuff', and 'Trevor Noah: African American'.
Scheduled on a FRESHThe Daily Show is DJ Khaled.
Scheduled on a FRESH@Midnight are Ali Siddiq, Nate Fernald, and Erica Rhodes.
FX has the movie 'Ice Age: Continental Drift', followed by the movie 'Hotel Transylvania'.
History has 'Pawn Stars', another 'Pawn Stars', followed by a FRESH'Alone', then another FRESH'Alone', followed by a FRESH'The Selection: Special Operations Experiment'.
IFC -
[6:00AM] NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
[8:45AM] BRAVEHEART
[12:45PM] THE THIN RED LINE
[4:30PM] THE LAST SAMURAI
[8:00PM] INCEPTION
[11:15PM] INCEPTION
[2:30AM] TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY
[5:30AM] STAN AGAINST EVIL-Dig Me Up, Dig Me Down (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[6:35AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-His Two Right Arms
[7:10AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-The Good-Time News
[7:45AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-What Is Mary Richards Really Like?
[8:20AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Who's in Charge Here?
[8:55AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Enter Rhoda's Parents
[9:30AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-It's Whether You Win or Lose
[10:05AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Rhoda, the Beautiful
[10:40AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Just Around the Corner
[11:15AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-But Seriously, Folks
[11:50AM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Farmer Ted and the News
[12:25PM] The Mary Tyler Moore Show-Have I Found a Guy for You
[1:00PM] Outrageous Fortune
[3:00PM] Law & Order-Sisters of Mercy
[4:00PM] Law & Order-Silence
[5:00PM] Law & Order-Working Stiff
[6:00PM] Law & Order-Prince of Darkness
[7:00PM] Law & Order-Consultation
[8:00PM] Law & Order-Right to Counsel
[9:00PM] Law & Order-Night and Fog
[10:01PM] Law & Order-Promises to Keep
[11:02PM] Law & Order-Hubris
[12:03AM] Law & Order-Whose Monkey Is It Anyway
[1:04AM] Law & Order-Sunday in the Park With Jorge
[2:05AM] Rectify-Pineapples in Paris
[3:07AM] Rectify-Physics
[4:09AM] Outrageous Fortune (ALL TIMES EST)
SyFy has the movie 'Resident Evil: Afterlife', followed by the movie 'Maleficent'.
TBS:
Scheduled on a FRESHConan are T.J. Miller, Anna Camp, and the Lemon Twigs.
Actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling place their handprints in cement during a ceremony in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese theatre in Hollywood, California U.S., December 7, 2016.
Photo by Mario Anzuoni
A public interest group urged U.S. officials on Wednesday to free up Washington landmarks for thousands of people planning protests around the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
The Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund said the National Park Service had handed over control of sites such as the Lincoln Memorial to the private committee overseeing Republican Trump's inauguration.
The move had left at least a dozen protest groups without prime venues, a violation of Americans' constitutional rights, fund officials said.
The National Park Service "has done a massive land grab inhibiting all those who want to exercise their right to free speech," Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a co-founder of the fund, said at a news conference.
National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst said agency rules in place since 2008 give an inaugural committee preferential access to some public areas along Pennsylvania Avenue, the National Mall and surrounding land.
People carry flags and effigies during a protest prior to the season opening of the famous Milan 'La Scala' opera house with the original two-act version of the opera 'Madame Butterfly' by Giacomo Puccini, in Milan, Dec. 7, 2016.
Photo by Matteo Bazzi
Asian countries dominated the top places in a key survey released Tuesday of high-school skills, but the report criticised science teaching in many countries.
The PISA survey of 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies found that the quality of science lessons was more important than equipment or even staffing levels.
Where once Finland led the way in educational excellence, Singapore is now the example to other countries, the report said.
The five top-performing countries in the PISA tests, which were carried out in 2015, were Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Taiwan and Finland.
Canada was seventh on the list, well ahead of the United States, which ranked 25th among OECD countries.
A military prison psychologist has refused to recommend that Chelsea Manning's gender be changed to female in her Army service record, complicating the transgender soldier's quest to wear a feminine hairstyle at the men's prison where she is serving a 35-year sentence for leaking classified information, according to a court document.
Manning's American Civil Liberties Union lawyers disclosed the decision in a filing Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The document says the chief of the Mental Health Division at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, prison declined Manning's Nov. 4 request to update her gender in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System. The filing says Manning made the request "based on her having achieved stability in her female gender."
The document doesn't say why psychologist Ellen Galloway refused. Army spokesman Wayne Hall declined to comment Tuesday, citing medical privacy laws.
The court document filed Monday is a status report from both sides on Manning's lawsuit seeking a court order allowing her to wear her hair longer than 2 inches, the maximum length prison standards allow for men.
In the report, Manning's lawyers say a new Army policy enabling soldiers to officially change genders does not provide a way for Manning to do so unless she is released, so that she can obtain the required documents, or receives transgender surgery.
A view of a mural at a street in Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 7, 2016. The mural is depicting evolution from artisit's point of view, from an ape to a man carrying an explosive belt and an assault rifle.
Photo by Wael Hamzeh
A judge on Wednesday cleared the way for Montana's medical marijuana dispensaries to re-open after a three-month hiatus by ruling that a drafting error in a voter-approved ballot initiative should not delay the measure's implementation.
District Judge James Reynolds of Helena ruled the error that pushed back the effective date of a key portion of the initiative until July 1 should not keep very ill patients from accessing the drug immediately.
"The folks that are maybe the most in need are the least able to provide, to grow their own," Reynolds said in making his ruling. "I think speed is more important than niceties."
The initiative approved by voters last month struck down a law passed by the Montana Legislature in 2011 that limited medical marijuana providers to three patients each. The three-patient limit took effect Aug. 31 after a five-year court battle, forcing the closure of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state and leaving thousands of registered users without providers.
The authors of the ballot measure, the Montana Cannabis Industry Association, had intended for the three-patient limit to be struck down immediately upon passage of the initiative.
Thousands of migrating geese have died after taking refuge from a snowstorm in toxic mine waters in the western United States, mine officials have said.
As many as 10,000 snow geese descended on the abandoned open Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana on November 28 and since then several thousand have perished, said Mark Thompson, environmental affairs manager for Montana Resources, which jointly manages the pit with the Atlantic Richfield Company.
Thompson told the Montana Standard Tuesday that mine workers tried to prevent the huge flock from landing on the water -- which contains sulfuric acid and heavy metals -- by using noise makers, spotlights and other methods but failed to scare them all off.
He described the pit's 700-acre (280-hectare) lake as "white with birds" when the flock landed on the water.
Since then, area residents have found dead birds in parking lots, in front of a casino, on the roadside and outside town. Thousands more are estimated to have died in the lake according to drone and flyover footage, officials say.
A blind woman visits the art exhibition 'YTURRALDE: Cartographies of the sublime' at the University of Valencia, Spain, Dec. 7, 2016.
Photo by Kai Foersterling
When you sign up for a Wells Fargo account, you're required to sign an arbitration "agreement" giving up your right to sue the company, and requiring you to have your case heard by an arbitrator paid for by -- and dependent on -- Wells Fargo instead.
At least 2,000,000 times, Wells Fargo employees were pressured -- on pain of termination and lifelong blacklisting from the finance industry -- into opening fake accounts in their customers' names. These accounts existed solely to accrue fees, which, in many cases, made their customers overdrawn (or simply generated suspicious seeming queries against their credit records), and when that happened, their credit records were dinged, which can cost you a job, a loan -- even your house if you can't refinance your mortgage.
Now those millions of defrauded people are trying to sue Wells, and Wells is arguing that the binding arbitration agreements on accounts that you didn't open are also binding -- that by having your signature forged on a fraudulent application, you waived your right to sue.
What's worse? Courts are buying it.
In dismissing one large case seeking class-action status in California, a federal judge ruled last year that it was not "wholly groundless" that customers could be forced to arbitrate over accounts they had never agreed to. That case is now being settled, according to legal filings.
The Eiffel Tower is seen from the Montparnasse Tower, as Paris suffers a pollution spike, Dec. 7, 2016. Paris' Police authority is again cracking down on the city's rocketing air pollution with a 24-hour traffic-regulating scheme that aims to halve the day's emissions from road vehicles.
Photo by Francois Mori
The massive Greenland ice sheet has melted away at least once during the last 1.4 million years, according to a study published on Wednesday, raising fears that manmade climate change could provoke dangerous sea levels.
Bedrock samples retrieved through more than three kilometres (two miles) of ice reveal for the first time that the island's surface was exposed directly to the atmosphere in the not-so-distant past.
It may have been a single period of up to 280,000 years, or several shorter ones, researchers reported in the journal Nature.
But either way the evidence shows that the island was largely ice-free.
"Unfortunately, this makes the Greenland ice sheet look highly unstable," said lead author Joerg Schaefer, a palaeoclimatologist at Columbia University in New York.
A visitor and an employee dressed as Snegurochka (Snow Maiden), the granddaughter of Ded Moroz (Russian equivalent of Santa Claus), pose for a picture inside an upside down house, constructed as an attraction for local residents and tourists and located at the Royev Ruchey Park of Flora and Fauna in the suburbs of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Dec. 7, 2016.
Photo by Ilya Naymushin
A New Zealand man of Asian descent had his passport photograph rejected when facial recognition software mistakenly registered his eyes as being closed.
Richard Lee's attempt to renew his passport was blocked after he submitted the picture to an online passport photo checker run by New Zealand's department of internal affairs.
The automated system told the 22-year-old engineering student the photo was invalid because his eyes were closed, even though they were clearly open, according to a copy of the notification posted on social media site Facebook.
Up to 20 percent of passport photos submitted online are rejected for various reasons, an Internal Affairs spokesman said.
"The most common error is a subject's eyes being closed and that was the generic error message sent in this case," he said.
The Christmas market at the Gendarmen Markt square is illuminated with hundreds of lights in Berlin, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016.
Photo by Markus Schreiber
It's safe to say that humans have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. Scientists recently discovered that all objects on Earth created by people adds up to an astoundingly large figure.
How large? According to a new study, the estimated mass of every bit of urban and rural infrastructure, every vehicle and machine, every device and construction on land, sea and in the air, every piece of technology, and all the garbage in landfills, is approximately 30 million tons.
All of these objects are collectively known as Earth's "technosphere." Distributed evenly over the planet's surface, the technosphere would translate into about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) for every 11 square feet (1 square meter), the researchers said.
The appearance of the technosphere is linked to a newly-described geological age called the Anthropocene - a period defined by humanity's reshaping of Earth - which extends from the 1950s to the present.
Unlike Earth's biosphere - the parts of the planet that sustain life - the technosphere does a poor job of recycling the materials that make it up. Instead of breaking down and refueling growth, elements of the technosphere simply take up more space in landfills.
Migrating Cranes flock to the Hula Lake conservation area, north of the Sea of Galilee, northern Israel, Dec. 7, 2016. About 42,500 cranes are in Hula Lake conservation area today. More than half a billion birds of some 400 different species pass through the Jordan Valley to Africa and go back to Europe during the year.
Photo by Ariel Schalit
You have reached the Home page of BartCop Entertainment.
Do you have something to say?
Anything that increased your blood pressure, or, even better, amused or entertained?
Do you have a great album no one's heard?
How about a favorite TV show, movie, book, play, cartoon, or legal amusement?
A popular artist that just plain pisses you off?
A box set the whole world should own?
Vile, filthy rumors about Republican hypocrites?
responded:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
