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from Bruce
Timothy B. Lee: The election probably wasn't hacked. But Clinton should request recounts just in case. (Vox)
Earlier this year, US intelligence agencies blamed the Russian government for leaking emails stolen from senior Democrats in an attempt to influence the US election. We also know that someone - likely the Russian government - tried to hack voting infrastructure in Ukraine to change the outcome of the election there.
2016 National Popular Vote Tracker (Political Report)
Hillary Clinton leads the popular vote by more than 2 million votes.
John Swaine: Jill Stein raises over $2m to request US election recounts in battleground states (The Guardian)
Green party presidential candidate seeks donations to fund efforts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin over 'compelling evidence of voting anomalies.'
Tom Danehy: There's a chance Trump might be OK, but Tom tells us we should probably count on the fact his hair will never grow back (Tucson Weekly)
Unemployment is half what it was when Barack Obama first took office. The stock market is up 150 percent. Gas is under $2 a gallon, more Mexican citizens are leaving the U.S. than are entering it illegally, the housing market is coming back, and wages are rising. And yet a whole lot of old white people think we're heading in the wrong direction. Idiots.
Barbara Kingsolver: Trump changed everything. Now everything counts (The Guardian)
Millions of Americans are starting to grasp that we can't politely stand by watching lives and liberties get slashed beyond repair. What are you going to do?
Jonathan Jones: Norman Rockwell's Statue of Liberty can point Trump towards decency (The Guardian)
Rockwell's painting was positioned behind Donald Trump's head as he met Obama in the White House. But this isn't trolling - it's a reminder to Trump that America is the land of the free.
Suzanne Moore: Don't fall for the new hopelessness. We still have the power to bring change (The Guardian)
The left's response to Trump and Brexit feels like a surrender to the cycle of history. But nothing is a foregone conclusion.
Michael Dirda: The man who brought humanist values - and 'Civilisation' - to a mass market(Washington Post)
In 1969 the BBC aired a 13-part documentary entitled "Civilisation: A Personal View."
Max Nelson: THE INTRUSION ARTIST (Public Books)
By the late '50s, when he was already widely considered one of France's finest filmmakers, Robert Bresson would confess in interviews that he hardly ever went to the movies. There was something about how people behaved in front of the camera that repelled him and that he had lost the power to block out.
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took the day off.
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Christmas Card Designs
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN DICTATORS.
IT'S MORE LIKE AN OPEN SEWER!
WALKING IT BACK.
"ARE THERE STILL PEOPLE THAT THINK THAT TRUMP IS LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE GUY?"
WHY DOES CALIFORNIA TAKE SO DAMN LONG?
"…BUT NOW THEY LOOK LIKE FAT, DUMB RACISTS."
TWO MORE BEARS RESCUED.
STAYING SANE.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Really tired, but the damn dishes are done!
Architect Picked for Prado Museum Expansion
Norman Foster
British architecture superstar Norman Foster has been selected to renovate a 17th century building for an extension to Madrid's famous Prado museum, it said Thursday.
Foster in a joint project with Spain's Carlos Rubio will refurbish the Hall of Realms, not far from the main museum in the centre of the Spanish capital. The project is estimated to cost around 30 million euros ($32 million).
In a statement, the museum said Foster and Rubio's proposal "respects and values what is already there, adjusting it to the necessities of our times."
The Hall of Realms is one of the only remaining buildings from the Buen Retiro Palace, commissioned by Spain's King Felipe IV as a second residence, and pre-dates the Prado Museum itself which opened in 1819.
Once Spain's Army Museum, the Prado acquired the building last year with the aim of increasing its exhibition space.
Norman Foster
The Cost for Protecting? Yuge!
Jet-Setting President-Elect
As the soon-to-be first family sat down in Florida for their Thanksgiving feast, they were watched over by the core part of their new extended family - a contingent of at least 150 Secret Service personnel.
And when Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) gets sworn in as president on Jan. 20, that contingent will balloon to more than 920 Secret Service agents and support personnel in Washington and his hometown, New York.
Right now, the cost to taxpayers is more than $2 million a day, the documents show, a number that is sure to increase whenever the president or the first lady travels - or when the threat level rises.
Meanwhile, the New York Police Department is already handling external security at Trump Tower, the president-elect's Manhattan home base, at an estimated cost of $1 million per day.
The Trumps' trip to Florida wound up being a compromise on both sides, a Homeland Security official familiar with the operation told NBC News.
The cost to U.S. taxpayers? Seven million dollars, the official said.
Jet-Setting President-Elect
Becomes Cyber Education College
Bletchley Park
It was once the home of Britain's codebreakers during World War Two. Now more than 70 years later, Bletchley Park is preparing to host the UK's first national college of cyber education, with a first intake of students starting in September 2018.
Work is under way to revamp several derelict buildings on the site where mathematician Alan Turing cracked Nazi Germany's "unbreakable" Enigma code.
The new school for 16- to 18-year-olds, which will sit beside the historical attraction and the National Museum of Computing, will take 100 students in its first year. Forty percent of their curriculum will consist of cyber studies.
The plan for the school, which will be part publicly and part privately funded, was unveiled by Qufaro, which calls itself a not-for-profit body formed by cyber security experts, as part of an initiative to establish a UK national cyber security hub.
Bletchley Park
Abortion Rate Lowest Level In Decades
CDC
The number and rate of abortions tallied by federal authorities have fallen to their lowest level in decades, according to new data released Wednesday.
The latest annual report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, incorporating data from 47 states, said the abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. That is down 5 percent from 2012, and is half the rate of 25 recorded in 1980.
The last time the CDC recorded a lower abortion rate was in 1971, two years before the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that established a nationwide right for women to have abortions. Abortion was legal in some states at that time.
The CDC tallied 664,435 abortions in 2013 from the 47 states, down 5 percent from 2012 and down 20 percent from 2004. The CDC does not receive abortion data from California, Maryland and New Hampshire - and thus its total is less than the widely accepted current estimate of more than 900,000 abortions per year in all 50 states.
The CDC report suggests there are several factors behind the abortion decline, including a sharp drop in adolescent pregnancies, expanded coverage of contraception costs by health care plans, and increased use of effective, long-lasting contraceptive methods such as intrauterine devices and hormonal implants.
CDC
New GOP Majority
Iowa
For years, Iowa's divided Legislature shielded the state from a wave of Republican-backed laws that restricted abortion access around the country.
But a new GOP majority will take control in January, meaning nearly a dozen abortion-related bills could soon be on the table, and Democrats will be unable to block them by vote for the first time in a decade.
"With these changes in Iowa, this can be when we start to really see a lot of abortion restrictions fly through the Legislature," said Elizabeth Nash, a policy analyst with the Guttmacher Institute, a national organization that supports reproductive health and rights.
It's been nearly 20 years since the GOP controlled both state chambers and the governor's office. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has said he opposes abortion in general.
Iowa was one of at least three states where voters turned the government completely Republican in the Nov. 8 election. The GOP widened its hold on governorships and maintained a majority in Congress, in addition to gaining the power of the presidency with Donald Trump (R-Grifter).
Iowa
Priest With Political Ambitions
Rwanda
A Catholic priest who planned to return to Rwanda to register an opposition party and run for president in 2017 was barred from boarding a flight to Kigali on Wednesday, he and his supporters said in a statement.
Father Thomas Nahimana, 45, who left Rwanda 11 years ago saying he feared for his safety, and three others in his team were stopped from boarding a connecting flight in Nairobi, they said.
Nahimana's planned return was less than a year after a referendum approved a constitutional change to let President Paul Kagame stay on until 2034, if he wins elections.
Kagame's government has been praised for transforming a nation that was torn apart by genocide in 1994, but it has also faced criticism from international rights groups and Western donors for stifling free speech, a charge it denies.
The Rwandan Catholic church has said Nahimana does not represent the church's position.
Rwanda
Biblical Disease
Armadillos
Leprosy often evokes images of biblical times: colonies of infected patients quarantined and covered in sores. Seen as something exclusive to the past, the disease has largely faded into history, which is likely why doctors were confounded when a Texas man was recently diagnosed with it.
Mel Riser, of Austin, visited 15 doctors and neurologists before they were able to diagnose the reason for his numbness, growing blindness and the red spots on his body.
Leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, is a chronic infection caused by bacteria. The bacteria affects the skin and mucous membranes, causing skin lesions and growths, numbness, blindness, paralysis and severe pain. Because the bacteria grows slowly, symptoms can appear up to 10 years after the disease is contracted. Once untreatable and stigmatized, the disease is now treatable with proper medication and disability can usually be avoided if the disease is caught early enough.
Doctors believe Riser contracted leprosy from armadillos, known carriers of the disease, while working for NASA on Florida's Merritt Island. In 2015, 178 new cases of leprosy were reported, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Seventy-two percent, or 129, of those cases came out of Texas, New York, Florida, Hawaii, California, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Twenty-one cases were reported in Texas in 2015 and 17 have been reported so far this year. An estimated 180 people in the state are currently undergoing treatment for the disease.
Armadillos
The Real Reason?
Viking Raids
For all their infamous raiding and plundering, the Vikings who attacked from Scandinavia might have been just a bunch of lonely-hearted bachelors, new research suggests.
During the Viking Age, which archaeological discoveries and written texts suggested lasted from about A.D. 750 to 1050, shipborne crews from Scandinavia went "viking" - that is, they started raiding. However, the causes of these invasions remain uncertain.
Previous research suggested a wide range of potential triggers for the Viking Age. One scenario hinted that warm climates led to better harvests and thus larger populations, and that such big groups felt compelled to raid. Another cited innovations in sailing technology, such as the additions of keels and sails to Scandinavian longships.
However, scientists have argued that such explanations are not especially convincing because they raised questions as to why Scandinavians did not respond in other ways to such triggers. For example, if the trigger for the raids was "innovations in sailing technology, why did Scandinavians elect to go raiding rather than focusing their efforts on peaceful trade?" said senior study author Mark Collard, a biological anthropologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Now, researchers suggest a new twist on an ancient explanation: Scandinavian practices that led powerful men to monopolize women also might have led to significant pools of unwed men. Many of these single men, looking for marriage, might have gone on raids to gain status, wealth and captives, and thus go on to secure brides and concubines of their own.
Viking Raids
Unearths 7,000 Year Old City
Egypt
Egypt has unearthed a more than 7,000-year-old city and cemetery dating back to its First Dynasty in the southern province of Sohag, the Antiquities Ministry said on Wednesday.
The find could be a boon for Egypt's ailing tourism industry, which has suffered endless setbacks since an uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but remains a vital source of foreign currency.
The city likely housed high-ranking officials and grave builders. Its discovery may yield new insights on Abydos, one of the oldest cities in Ancient Egypt, the ministry said in a statement.
Experts say Abydos was Egypt's capital towards the end of the Predynastic Period and during the rule of the first four dynasties.
The discovery was made 400 meters away from the temple of Seti I, a New Kingdom period memorial across the Nile from present day Luxor.
Egypt
In Memory
Florence Henderson
Florence Henderson, widely known for her role as The Brady Bunch matriarch Carol Brady, has died. She was 82.
Born in Dale, Indiana to farmer Joseph Henderson and his wife Elizabeth, Henderson was the youngest of 10 children.
After graduating from Indiana's St. Frances School in 1951, Henderson went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. In January 1956, she married Ira Bernstein, whom she shared four children with -Barbara, Joseph, Bob and Elizabeth - but later divorced in 1985.
Prior to scoring her leading role on the 1969 sitcom The Brady Bunch, which propelled her to international stardom, Henderson starred on the Broadway stage - Wish You Were Here (1952), Fanny (1954) and The Girl Who Came to Supper (1963) - and appeared in guest roles on multiples TV series and films, including being the first woman to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1962.
Henderson starred in every episode of all five seasons of the family comedy series, and later appeared as Carol Brady in spinoffs The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, The Brady Girls Get Married, The Brady Brides, The Bradys and The Brady Bunch Movie.
In 1987, Henderson wed Dr. John George Kappas, whom she remained married to up until his death in September 2002.
Other notable roles include The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, season 11 of Dancing with the Stars, and her hosting duties on Retirement Living TV's The Florence Henderson Show from 2008 until her death. She earned her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996.
The actress is survived by her four children.
Florence Henderson
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