Recommended Reading
from Bruce
William Saletan: Russians used the same social media tactics that worked for Trump. (Slate)
To believe that the Russian influence campaign had no impact, you'd have to believe that Trump won the election by going around promoting leaks that moved nobody. You'd have to believe that elections aren't affected by hundreds of operatives, tens of thousands of social media accounts, hundreds of thousands of followers, and hundreds of millions of exposures. You'd have to believe that the $5 million Trump spent on digital ads in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida tipped the election, but the $1.25 million spent by one Russian organization in a single month, much of it aimed at Florida and other "purple states," made no difference.
Josh Marshall: Why The Trump/Russia 'Skeptics' Are Wrong (TPM)
Far more likely, in typical Trumpian fashion, he made it known to his various favorites and toadies what he wanted done and they went ahead and did it. Remember that in the Trump moral universe, what helps Trump is right and vice versa. There's no moral compass beyond pure self-interest. That's the Trump pattern. If he didn't touch the third rail himself, he knows his cronies probably did. And that explains all the obstruction from pretty much day one.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now (NY Times)
Our democracy is in serious danger. President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.
Erin Kelly: Ebooks are not 'stupid' - they're a revolution (The Guardian)
The head of publisher Hachette has claimed ebooks are a failure - but as an author and a reader, they've completely changed my life.
Dale Berning Sawa: "My best photograph: Mars rover Curiosity's shot of the hill she'll never climb" (The Guardian)
'The mountain in the distance is her goal but we don't think she'll get to the top. It's going to take her another five years just to get to the bright rock formation below'.
Hadley Freeman: Gay men are winning this year's Winter Olympics - and making it a joy to watch (The Guardian)
Eric Radford is the first voluntarily out gay man to win a gold medal, while Adam Rippon and Gus Kenworthy have achieved other firsts on the slopes.
Steven Pinker: The media exaggerates negative news. This distortion has consequences (The Guardian)
Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will make us think that it is.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Snicker - someone needs a basic math course
Predator is an idiot, but we already knew that:
The president's numbers don't quite add up, though, which suggests the troubling possibility that he may not have thought this plan through carefully before announcing it. Few if any schools employ 250 or more teachers, which is how many you'd need in order to reach the minimum goal of 100 armed individuals at a carry rate of 40 percent. (In fact, if we're using 100-150 armed guards as the baseline for a safe school, you'd probably want many more than 150 armed teachers, given that the guards would be doing full-time guarding whereas the teachers would have to split their time between security work and regular teaching. You'd probably need something in the neighborhood of 400 to 20,000 armed teachers per campus, in my opinion, to reach the right level of coverage.) It also seems unlikely that there are any schools at which 40 percent of teachers would be trained, "highly adept" ex-military weapons experts, but … hey, I just write down what he says, I don't decide whether it makes sense. (It doesn't.)
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
Starman
Reader Suggestion
AR-15's
I saw this in one of Rachel Maddow's tweets:
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
TRUMPS ENVIR0NMENTAL DESTRUCTION PLAN.
THE FASCISM OF THE NRA.
THE DONALD TRUMP TAX SCAM!
ANOTHER REPUG IDIOT!
"RENDER UNTO CAESAR."
MARCO MUCKS IT UP.
Republicans Suck - YouTube
THEY ARE RUNNING SCARED.
HE MADE HIS CHOICE. SO BE IT.
REMEMBER THE BRAVE SCHOOL KIDS.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
'Parks and Recreation'
Amy Poehler
The NRA thanked the spokeswoman who repped the gun-lobbying org at CNN's town hall Wednesday about the Florida high-school massacre by tweeting a GIFof Amy Poehler's character from NBC sitcom "Parks and Recreation" saying "Thank you."
But the team behind the popular show, in no uncertain terms, told the NRA it was way out of bounds.
On Twitter, Michael Schur, creator of "Parks and Rec" and an outspoken proponent of gun control, tweeted a request to the NRA to remove the image. "Hi, please take this down," he tweeted Wednesday. "I would prefer you not use a GIF from a show I worked on to promote your pro-slaughter agenda."
Schur added: "Also, Amy isn't on twitter, but she texted me a message: 'Can you tweet the NRA for me and tell them I said f- off?'" Schur's post had more than 50,000 retweets and 188,000 likes within nine hours.
Nick Offerman, who played Ron Swanson on "Parks and Rec," also laid into the NRA and Loesch. The actor-comedian tweeted at them: "@NRA @DLoesch our good-hearted show and especially our Leslie Knope represent the opposite of your pro-slaughter agenda - take it down and also please eat s-." He ended his post with an emoji of the U.S. flag.
Amy Poehler
Apologizes For Interesting Interviews
Quincy Jones
Legendary music producer Quincy Jones apologized Thursday for some recent interviews, which included salacious gossip and shade thrown at fellow celebrities.
He did not, however, seem to suggest any of his statements were untrue.
In case you missed them, the pair of supremely entertaining interviews with GQ and Vulture revealed Jones to be arguably the most connected man in Hollywood history. The guy seemed to have anecdotes about virtually everyone. Highlights included spicy tidbits about Prince's feud with Michael Jackson, Jones's brief relationship with Ivanka Trump and a purported sexual encounter between Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor.
His remarks clearly rubbed a few people the wrong way. On Thursday, he tweeted that, after an intervention from his four daughters, he realized he should apologize. "I have LEARNED MY LESSON," he wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.
Jones seemed to regret dissing colleagues the most. "When you've been fortunate enough to have lived such a long & crazy life (& you've recently stopped drinking-three years ago!), certain details about specific events (which do NOT paint the full picture of my intentions nor experiences) come flooding back all at once," he wrote in the statement. "Even at 85, it's apparent that 'wordvomit' & bad-mouthing is inexcusable."
Quincy Jones
Fires Back
'The Simpsons'
Simpsons showrunner Al Jean was not impressed when on Thursday while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Ted Cruz invoked the cartoon to try and make a point.
While speaking at the Washington, D.C., conference, the Texas senator said, "I think the Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson and Republicans are happily the party of Homer and Bart and Maggie and Marge," according to reporters in attendance.
Not long after, Jean quipped via Twitter, "Ted Cruz says Maggie Simpson would vote for him. I think Ted's the one who could use a pacifier in his mouth."
The Simpsons has taken numerous shots at politicians through the years, including one in particular back in 2000 when the show predicted Donald Trump would be an awful president someday.
'The Simpsons'
At Risk Of Dissolving
Coral Reefs
Coral reefs could start to dissolve before 2100 as man-made climate change drives acidification of the oceans, scientists said on Thursday.
Acidification will threaten sediments that are building blocks for reefs. Corals already face risks from ocean temperatures, pollution and overfishing.
"Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century," the Australian-led team of scientists wrote in the U.S. journal Science. "Net dissolving" means reefs would lose more material than they gain from the growth of corals.
Carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas, forms a weak acid in water and threatens to dissolve the reef sediments, made from broken down bits of corals and other carbonate organisms that accumulate over thousands of years, it said.
The sediments are 10 times more vulnerable to acidification than the tiny coral animals that also extract chemicals directly from the sea water to build stony skeletons that form reefs, the study said.
Coral Reefs
Doubles Down
'Great American Patriots'
Donald Trump (R-Abomination) defended the National Rifle Association, Americans biggest gun lobby, saying it was led by "great people" who would "do the right thing" as he intensified his support for arming school teachers.
The US president-for-now said "attacks would end" if around a fifth of America's teachers were armed with concealed weapons and trained how to use them.
Wayne LaPierre (R-Draft Dodger), chief executive of the NRA, last night offered free firearms training to schools to stop the "evil that walks among us".
Mr Trump's enthusiasm for arming teachers was a response to America's worst ever high school shooting.
Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: "What many people don't understand is that the folks who work so hard at the NRA are Great People and Great American Patriots."
'Great American Patriots'
'Legacy Media'
NRA
National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch said Thursday that the media exploits mass shooting to capitalize on ratings.
"Many in legacy media love mass shootings," Loesch said after walking on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to a standing ovation. "I'm not saying you love the tragedy, but you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold."
Her comments echoed a video that NRATV released Wednesday, which slammed the mainstream media for being the "casting call for the next mass shooting." Loesch also said she is debuting a one-hour show on NRATV next month to combat the mainstream media.
Loesch said it's not up to the NRA to protect children from gun violence.
NRA
The Lie Spreads
'Crisis Actors'
It happens in the wake of almost any tragedy serious enough to make the national news: Conspiracy theories circulate claiming that it didn't really happen, or that it was staged to advance a political agenda, or that the witnesses and family members seen sobbing on television are actually actors. In the wake of the mass killing at a Florida high school last week, it happened again - this time, spread by an aide to a state legislator who emailed a Tampa Bay Times reporter to pass along a tip that "[b]oth kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis when they happen."
The "kids" referred to by Benjamin A. Kelly, a district secretary for Republican state Rep. Shawn Harrison, were two survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting who were interviewed on CNN. Kelly was promulgating a notion as cruel as it is implausible: The people on television you see grieving? Actors paid to show up and look sad.
Kelly was fired hours later, while apologies and condemnationsflew, but he's far from the only one propagating the idea that the students demanding new gun-control regulations aren't real. He directed the Tampa Bay Times to a video uploaded to YouTube showing school senior David Hogg in a local news report from California that supposedly proved that he's a paid actor. The person in the video is Hogg, but the story is from last summer when Hogg was visiting friends - Hogg told CNN his family moved to Florida from California - but that hasn't stopped the report from becoming the top trending video on all of YouTube.
Kelly was joined by other members of the GOP. Former congressman and CNN contributor Jack Kingston questioned the legitimacy of the students' efforts and suggested they might be either paid by billionaire Democratic donor George Soros or members of the protest group antifa. Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe issued a statement that used scare quotes around "students," apparently as a way to call their authenticity into question. Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and entertainer Ted Nugent, who visited President Trump in the White House last year and is a National Rifle Association board member, have also signaled their suspicions that something is amiss with the student activists.
The group questioning the legitimacy of the school shooting survivors is not the first in the Republican mainstream to embrace conspiracy theories. Trump and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.,have both done interviews with "Infowars," the most popular conspiracy site on the internet. "Infowars" host Alex Jones helped invent and spread the story that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was staged to advance a gun-control agenda in which "crisis actors" took the roles of grieving parents and the dead children never existed.
'Crisis Actors'
Crackdown On 'Bot' Accounts
Twitter
Twitter announced Wednesday a crackdown on accounts powered by software "bots" which can artificially amplify a person or cause and which have been accused of manipulating the social network during the 2016 US election.
The San Francisco messaging platform said the move was intended to rid the service of spam-spewing automated accounts, and not aimed at people using the service according to the rules.
"These changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter -- including elections in the United States and around the world," Twitter developer policy lead Yoel Roth said in a blog post.
The move was the latest by Twitter to enforce rules aimed at curbing disinformation, propaganda and provocation.
Since the 2016 election, Twitter and others discovered how "bots" had been used to sow political divisions and spread hoaxes.
Twitter
First National Bank
Omaha
The nation's largest privately-owned bank says it will stop producing credit cards for the National Rifle Association in response to customer feedback.
The Nebraska-based First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract to issue the group's NRA Visa Card, spokesman Kevin Langin said in a statement.
"Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA," Langin said.
Langin declined to say when the contract would expire and would not elaborate on what sort of feedback the company had received. The company released the same statement dozens of times on Twitter in response to other users who called on the company to sever its ties with the NRA. Some users who identified themselves as customers pledged to take their business elsewhere.
The announcement came after the progressive news website ThinkProgress listed the bank as a company that supports the NRA. ThinkProgress noted that First National Bank offered two NRA cards with a $40 bonus and touted it as "enough to reimburse your one-year NRA membership!"
Omaha
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