Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Alexandra Petri: It is very difficult to get the train to stop (Washington Post)
I am so tired. The train is very, very urgent. It is moving a man's career forward. It is very difficult to get the train to stop. The presumption is that the train will not stop. The presumption is that you will be a scream thrown on the tracks. That it will require a great many of you to be thrown onto the tracks before the train will grind to a halt. It can never be just the one; it must be several at once. Someday we will know the precise conversion. We will tell them: Do not bother unless there are 20 others like you, because the train will continue, and you will be crushed.
Kate Riga: Former Kavanaugh Classmates, Clerks Retract Their Support For Him (TPM)
Two of Kavanaugh's law school classmates, Michael Proctor and Mark Osler, wrote to say that they are "withdrawing their support" due to Kavanaugh's behavior during his testimony before the committee. "Under the current circumstances, we fear that partisanship has injected itself into Judge Kavanaugh's candidacy," they wrote. "That, and the lack of judicial temperament displayed on September 27 hearing, cause us to withdraw our support." Three of Kavanaugh's former law clerks, Will Dreher, Bridget Fahey and Rakim Brooks, also wrote the committee to temper their previous statements of support with qualms stemming from the accusations of sexual misconduct and assault.
Helaine Olen: Brett Kavanaugh's lies are part of the Republican ecosystem (Washington Post)
Brett M. Kavanaugh is a liar. He has fudged the truth (either provably or almost certainly) on everything ranging from slang in his high school yearbook to documents stolen from Senate Democrats during the George W. Bush years. We can come up with all sorts of theories about why Kavanaugh does this. But his personality is secondary to a bigger issue: Kavanaugh's tall tales are part of a larger ecosystem. The Republican Party, as part of its quest for power, has been waging a battle with the truth for decades.
Greg Sargent: Trump's disgusting attack on Christine Ford cannot be wished away (Washington Post)
Big, career-defining votes occur in a complicated context, involving all kinds of considerations of how they will impact the country. Trump has made it inescapable that confirming Kavanaugh means "ripping the country apart," as Flake put it. Trump has now confirmed to the nation that he will do all he can to make this so, deliberately. This is now an unavoidable consequence of voting for Kavanaugh, one that Trump created, and no one who wants to avoid that outcome in good faith can pretend otherwise.
Helaine Olen: Donald Trump's grotesque fraud (Washington Post)
It is the Trump administration that is seeking to make staggering cuts in social safety-net programs, such as Medicaid and food stamps, which is the only help available for people who hit a rough patch or are mired in poverty. At the same time, it is the Trump family - and no doubt many other families - who seek to skip out on paying taxes, money that can be used to help those who lack their financial advantages. That too many Americans tacitly accept this reality allows frauds such as Trump to flourish.
Jonathan Chait: Here Is Every Trump Administration 'Response' to the Report Trump Is a Crook (NY Mag)
Last night, the New York Times published a lengthy exposé devastating the entire foundation of Donald Trump's public persona, by showing that he received tens of millions of dollars in support from his father, and participated in tax fraud to help evade gift taxes. You'd think the Trump administration would prepare a detailed response to the serious and novel accusation that the president is a crook. Instead it has offered up a series of non-denial denials: …
Matthew Yglesias: Seriously, we need to see Donald Trump's tax returns (Vox)
And as a brilliant ProPublica exposé published a couple of days before the Times's investigation showed, the IRS has been starved of resources in recent years, making it even harder for them to catch rich tax cheats. This was not, to be clear, a case of austerity imposed by budgetary necessity. The IRS believes that business owners like Trump illegally underpay taxes by about $125 billion per year, based on macroeconomic estimates. Investing in catching those tax cheats would pay off easily, but congressional Republicans haven't wanted to do it because, arguably, they think it's good that rich business owners are able to get away with cheating on their taxes.
Paul Waldman: We knew Trump was incredibly corrupt. Turns out he may also be an epic tax cheat. (Washington Post)
Just imagine for a moment if a story like this one - detailing years of tax fraud - came out about Hillary Clinton. The Republicans who mounted seven separate Congressional investigations of Benghazi would be making it rain subpoenas. What are they planning to do about evidence that Trump has committed tax fraud - and the very real possibility that he still is? Not a thing.
Sean Fennessey: "The Horror Oscars: The Best Scary Movies of Every Year Since 1978's 'Halloween'" (The Ringer)
Horror movies are almost always passed over come Oscar season. It's time to correct that sin.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Who knows
Who knows what Trump is capable of...?
Hi, Marty! Two years ago, right before the 2016 general election, if anyone would
have told voters that Russia was going to hack into our computer systems, interfere
with our election and put Trump in office as the POTUS and, worst of all, that most
people would simply shrug it off and accept the results as legitimate, no one would
have believed it!
BartcopE! posts links every day about what an unstable, borderline(?) psychotic
Trump really is, but most Americans don't seem to believe that, either. I think it's
entirely within the realm of what is technically possible for Trump to attempt to
control Americans by sending some sort of mind-controlling/subliminal program or
messages via their phones. Instead of laughing it off, I think people should
consider it seriously, esp. since they weren't given any way to 'opt out'! If you
suddenly begin feeling very sympathetic towards Trump, Kavanaugh, or any Repub
candidate right before the upcoming mid-terms, ask yourself 'why?'
Meanwhile, on the brighter side of the news, here's a suggestion: Faulkton, a tiny
town of around 700 up in north/central SD, commissioned an Australian artist named
Guido Van Helton to paint one of their city silos and the result is pretty amazing!
You can watch this short video about the project that features the artist and see
the mural from all four sides:
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Jay Leno attended Emerson College, where he was a mediocre student at best. However, one semester he surprised his parents by getting straight A's. This is what happened: For one semester only, Emerson College implemented a "progressive" idea - it let students grade themselves. Mr. Leno recognized an opportunity when he saw it, and he put himself on the dean's list. The next semester, Emerson College reverted back to its old system of grading, and Mr. Leno received his usual D's and F's. His father asked, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?" - and Mr. Leno said that his courses were harder this semester than last semester.
• What counts as a good education varies from culture to culture. The white American settlers once took some youths of the Six Nations and gave them an eduction, then returned them to the Native Americans. However, the Native Americans were dissatisfied because the youths knew nothing about hunting and trapping, or about making war. Therefore, the Native Americans approached the white settlers to say that if the whites should give them some youths to be educated, they would make sure the youths learned the important things in life.
• When soccer superstar Julie Foudy was ready to attend college, she had scholarship offers from several universities, including Stanford and North Carolina. Stanford was expensive - $20,000 a year - and Ms. Foudy was offered only a partial scholarship of $2,000 a year to go there. North Carolina was much less expensive; in fact, when the North Carolina coach visited her, he said, "How would you like for us to save you $80,000?" (Ms. Foudy ended up going to and graduating from Stanford anyway.)
• Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller's father is a university physics professor. As such, he knows to take a look at the big picture. Whenever Shannon was upset because she didn't get a high enough score on a chemistry test, he would ask her a few questions to test her knowledge, If she knew the answers - she usually did - he would tell her, "So you forgot a few things for one hour, but you told me everything you were supposed to know. What's important is that you learned the material."
• When he was ready to enter junior high school, Eric Gregg, who was later to be the third black umpire in the major leagues, looked at the school in his neighborhood in inner-city Philadelphia. He decided that the school was "nothing but a dead end," and he decided that he wasn't going there. Therefore, completely on his own, he faked an address and attended a much better junior high in another neighborhood, riding city buses by himself to get to the school for classes.
• King Wej was depressed and unable to enjoy life, so he said to Si-tien, a Buddhist priest, "I am troubled, I am pained, and nothing gives me pleasure. What shall I do?" Si-tien took King Wej to see King Hsu, who sat on his mat, talking, smiling, laughing, eating, and drinking with other people. Si-tien then told King Wej, "Sit down near him, and do as he does. Joy is something to be learned."
• Rabbi Stephen S. Wise knew a couple who had gotten their son accepted into an excellent boys' school before he was even born. Rabbi Wise asked what they would have done if they had had a girl, but they assured him that they had considered that and had also applied for their child's admission into an excellent girls' school.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Presidential Alert
I forgot to remove the battery from my phone before 2pm
the damn alert showed up I refused to acknowlege it
I cleared the display 3 times then I turned it off/on
voila, it went away.
Damn that was close, I didn't want to have to buy a new phone!
Some (really pissed) Guy
Thanks, Guy!
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE PHONY!
THE UNITED STATES OF DEATH.
DEATH TO ALL CORPORATIONS!
THE CRIMINAL PRESIDENT.
KAVANAUGH WORKS FOR SATAN!
A KAVANAUGH SUPPORTER
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
No rain. Sigh.
Arrested At Protest
Amy Schumer
Actress-comedian Amy Schumer was arrested and detained in Washington, D.C. ,Thursday as thousands of people descended on the Hart Senate Office Building to protest the possible appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, per MSNBC.
Holding a "We Believe Anita Hill" sign, Schumer joined others in condemning Kavanaugh, whose nomination has intensified an already-polarized Senate over sexual assault accusations and a subsequent FBI report that the Senate is in the process of reviewing before a key cloture vote on Friday. "I think we're going to get arrested," Schumer said in a video to a protester's daughter on Twitter.
Thirty minutes later, a police officer asked Schumer, "Do you want to be arrested?"
"Yes," she replied.
Earlier in the day, Schumer spoke to protesters alongside Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and model-activist Emily Ratajkowski. "That's what we're going to do: We're going to keep showing up and no matter how this goes, they cannot keep us down," Schumer told the crowd. "We will win. A vote for Kavanaugh is a vote saying 'Women don't matter.' Let's stay together. Let's fight. Let's keep showing up."
Amy Schumer
'Hillary and Clinton'
Laurie Metcalf
Laurie Metcalf is set to play a version of Hillary Clinton alongside John Lithgow as the ex-president in a new play, Hillary and Clinton, by Tony nominee Lucas Hnath that will focus on the 2008 presidential campaign.
According to an announcement released on Thursday: "In Hillary and Clinton, Lucas Hnath examines the politics of marriage, gender roles, and the limitations of experience and inevitability in this profoundly timely look at an American dynasty in crisis."
Hnath's last play, A Doll's House, Part 2, was a critically acclaimed comical sequel to Henrik Ibsen's 1879 portrait of marriage, A Doll's House, which starred Metcalf as Nora in "a performance exquisitely poised between high comedy and visceral angst…" as stated in the New York Times review. The description of Hnath's new play also seems to imply that it won't be a straightforward retelling of a historical moment. Although not much else is known, the press release states:
Metcalf, a two-time Tony Award winner and three-time Emmy Award winner, starred on Broadway in Three Tall Women this past season and most recently had returned to TV to reprise Aunt Jackie, the role that made her a household name, in the panned reboot of Roseannethat came under fire due to Roseanne Barr's inflammatory comments. A spinoff of the show, The Connors, will return without Barr and include John Goodman, Sara Gilbert and Metcalf.
Two-time Tony Award winner and six-time Emmy Award winner Lithgow was also recently on Broadway in his one-man show, John Lithgow: Stories By Heart.
Laurie Metcalf
'Genius Grants'
MacArthur Foundation
A violinist who organizes concerts for the homeless, a professor whose research is being used to increase access to civil justice by poor communities and an activist pastor are among this year's MacArthur fellows and recipients of so-called genius grants.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Thursday named 25 people , including academics, activists, artists, scholars and scientists, who will receive $625,000 over five years to use as they please.
The Chicago-based foundation has awarded the fellowships each year since 1981 to people who have shown outstanding talent to help further their creative, professional or intellectual pursuits. Potential fellows are brought to the foundation's attention by an anonymous pool of nominators. Those selected are sworn to secrecy until their names are announced.
Fellow Gregg Gonsalves, 54, is a global health advocate and assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University. A longtime HIV/AIDS activist, his work focuses on the use of quantitative analysis and operations research to improve responses to global public health challenges. He co-founded the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale to advance human rights and social justice perspectives in public health and legal research and teaching.
Another of this year's recipients is Matthew Aucoin, a 28-year-old composer, conductor and artist-in-residence at the Los Angeles Opera. Aucoin composes instrumental works, ranging from pieces for solo performers to compositions for chorus and orchestra. His operatic work "Crossing," which drew from Walt Whitman's diary entries during his Civil War work tending to wounded soldiers, premiered in 2015.
MacArthur Foundation
Invites 900
Recording Academy
The Recording Academy has invited 900 women and/or people of color under the age of 39 to join as voting members, based on the recommendation of its Task Force on Diversity & Inclusion formed earlier this year.
The move is an effort to diversify its voting membership in the wake of the fierce criticism the Academy received earlier this year in the wake of outgoing chairman Neil Portnow's ill-phrased comment to a Varietyreporter that female executive and musicians need to "step up" in order to receive equal recognition, and the low percentage of female and minority 2018 Grammy winners. Portnow announced late in May that he will step down from his post next year.
The invited individuals are described as "music creators, including vocalists, songwriters, instrumentalists, producers and engineers"; the move was first reported by Billboard. The Academy says it has also diversified the composition of its Nominations Review Committees, the 16 committees that select the final Grammy nominations in specialized categories. The Nominations Review Committees are now 51% female and 48% people of color; in 2017 they were 28% female and 37% people of color, according to the report.
Similarly, the eight National Governance Committees, which oversee such areas as membership and advocacy, raised their numbers of female members to 48% and people of color to 38%, up from 20% and 30%, respectively.
The Recording Academy says its total membership, including voting and associate members, is 22,000, of which 33% are female; however, just 21% of the 13,000 voting members are female. It added that 55% of the voting membership identifies as white, 28% as people of color and 17% declined to disclose.
Recording Academy
Reporter Defamation Case
Tennessee
Tennessee's Supreme Court took up the question Thursday of whether a reporter can be sued for defamation when reporting fairly and accurately on a public proceeding.
Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk is suing a Nashville investigative reporter over 2016 stories on a lawsuit Funk claims accused him of soliciting a bribe, extortion and blackmail.
At issue is whether reporting accurately on the lawsuit protects Phil Williams, or whether that's unimportant if Funk's attorney can show Williams harbored ill will against the official.
Funk's attorney, John Enkema, told the justices on Thursday they should uphold more than 100 years of precedent in which Tennessee courts have taken into account a reporter's personal feelings when judging whether a news report is defamatory.
Ron Harris, representing Williams and WVTF-TV station owner Scripps Media, argued the reporter's mindset is irrelevant in a defamation case.
Tennessee
Apologizes For Cringeworthy Performance
Alex Trebek
"Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek apologized on Wednesday for his heavily criticized - and at times bizarre - performance as a moderator for the Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate earlier this week.
Trebek raised eyebrows Monday night for making jokes and speaking at length about his own political opinions during a 45-minute debate in Hershey between Gov. Tom Wolf (D) and his Republican opponent Scott Wagner.
The 78-year-old TV icon said in a statement Wednesday that he was "naive" and had "failed to recognize the seriousness of the event for the voters."
"I thought that as moderator, I was to provide a certain light-hearted approach while still being able to challenge the candidates on their record or positions," Trebek wrote. "I didn't realize I was to ask a simple question and then let the gentlemen go at each other."
"I offer my sincere apologies to the people of Pennsylvania, a state I dearly love," he added.
Alex Trebek
$100,000 Meteorite
"Edmore"
A meteorite worth about $100,000 has been used as a doorstop at a Grand Rapids farm for years.
Geology Professor Mona Sirbescu of Central Michigan University first identified the 22.5-pound chunk of iron as more than just a doorstop when the owner asked her to look at it earlier this year. Although many people had asked her to examine rocks in the past, this time was different.
"I was exhilarated," Sirbescu said.
When the Grand Rapids man bought his farm in the Edmore area in 1988, the previous owner told him that the doorstop was a meteorite from the 1930s.
The meteorite is the sixth-largest found in Michigan.
"Edmore"
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