Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Tom Danehy: Tom goes off on Day of the Dead, but really just wanted an excuse to tell you about Pop Warner football (Tucson Weekly)
Have you ever come across something in your community of which you were previously unaware and then, with a little digging, found that it has not only been around for a long time, but it has its own little thriving sub-society? And no, I'm not talking about soccer. I've always known it was there; I just didn't care.
Lucy Mangan: How doctors 'empowered' my dad (The Guardian)
As a hospital visit shows, his views are probably not what the NHS had in mind when it thought up 'collaborative care plans.'
Christina Cauterucci: James Deen's Alleged Assaults Were Ignored, Laughed Off by Casts and Crews (Slate)
Since Saturday, when porn actress and writer Stoya tweeted that she was raped by porn hero James Deen, four more adult film performers have come out against him with allegations of sexual assault.Ashley Fires and Tori Lux detailed Deen's violent sexual advances behind the scenes at porn studios in two Daily Beast posts on Monday. Today, Amber Rayne and Kora Peters tell their stories: two thoroughly disturbing accounts of Deen crossing the line from consensual, professional sex into rape while filming on set.
Amanda Hess: James Deen Was Never a Feminist Idol (Slate)
Women cast the porn star-now accused of sexual assault-in their fantasies. They can just as easily cast him out.
Robert Evans, Anonymous: 5 Things You Learn As A Sex Trafficking Victim In The USA (Cracked)
Last year we wrote an article with a woman who spent her childhood and early adulthood as a sex slave in the United States. It was horrifying and depressing and, for some reason, a bunch of readers declared our source a fraud. Their arguments boiled down to, "There's no way this kind of shit happens today!" Well, it not only goes on, it's common.
Suzanne Moore: The Pirelli calendar's feminist makeover is nothing but lip service (The Guardian)
A few beautiful shots of 'real women' and we're supposed to forget about a fashion industry selling anorexia and self-hatred to our young girls.
Rory Carroll: "Isabel Allende: 'Few couples survive the death of one child, let alone three'" (The Guardian)
After years of exile, novelist Isabel Allende found sanctuary in a rock-solid marriage. Now alone for the first time in 27 years, she reflects on loneliness, her fears for South America - and why living longer means making more mistakes.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
David
Thanks, Dave!
The Flooded Apartment
DJ Useo
Hey Marty,
After paying somebody to move our furniture
from the two severley affected rooms, I got an
urgent vmail Tuesday asking me to "get over
here right away, we need you to move the furniture
out of the living room so that the weatherization
people can replace the air conditioner, they need to
get to the patio."
The air conditioner isn't anywhere near the patio.
And nothing regarding when they will fix the floor.
Thanks for your continued support.
The Useo's
Jeez, that sucks!
All too happy to post your gofundme request.
Hope some good things come your way!
Please keep us updated.
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
SMASH THE FASCIST BASTARDS LIKE YOU WOULD AN EVIL INSECT!
WHERE ARE THE WMD?
HUMAN SUICIDE.
TELL IT LIKE IT IS. IT'S CHRISTIAN TERRORISM!
BERN IT UP!
THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR DIE!
"…AN ASS-LOAD OF GUNS."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Got a very sweet Christmas card from the 'parking lot concierge' at the laundromat.
Archives Acquired by Library of Congress
Ernie Kovacs
The Library of Congress, in its latest step to preserve the work of great entertainers, has acquired a collection of kinescopes, videotapes and home movies featuring comedian Ernie Kovacs and his wife, singer-actress Edie Adams, it was announced Thursday.
The library purchased the comprehensive collection, which includes more than 1,200 audiovisual items, from Josh Mills, the president of Ediad Productions and Adams' son. The price was not disclosed.
Kovacs was renowned for his innovative, surrealistic and out-of-the-box television comedy, while Adams had a successful career on the big and small screens and on Broadway and was memorable in a series of sultry cigar commercials ("Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"). They often worked together.
The Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams Collection includes videotape masters of all eight of Kovacs' 1961-62 monthly ABC specials and 35 episodes of Take a Good Look, his 1959-61 ABC quiz show; 35mm kinescopes of 74 episodes of Kovacs' 1956 NBC morning show; original 16mm elements of Kovacs' silent-movie spoof, "The Mysterious Knockwurst," made in 1953 for his CBS morning show; and videotape masters of all 21 episodes of Here's Edie, Adams' 1962-64 ABC sketch-comedy show.
Ernie Kovacs
Memoir Coming In 2017
Sen. Al Franken
Sen. Al Franken has a book deal for a memoir that will cover his career from "Saturday Night Live" to his years in Washington.
Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the Minnesota Democrat's book is scheduled for 2017 and is currently untitled.
Franken has written a handful of bestselling political humour books, including "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" and "Lies And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."
He has joked that the new book would be a "psychological thriller" about his experiences in the Senate.
Sen. Al Franken
Honored By AARP
Michael Douglas
An emotional Michael Douglas said Thursday that surviving his cancer scare several years ago gave him new vitality as he settles into his senior years.
Douglas, 71, spoke about his health at an AARP luncheon celebrating the Academy Award-winner's storied career and said: "It's good to be alive."
Douglas had his own celebrity cheering section as he was given AARP's "Movies for Adults Lifetime Achievement Award."
Besides his wife, fellow Oscar-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, his "Ant-Man" co-star Paul Rudd, his "Fatal Attraction" co-star Glen Close, Blythe Danner, David Hyde Pierce, Zac Posen and Jann Wenner attended.
Close joked: "I love Michael so much that I stopped coloring my hair so I can look like him."
Michael Douglas
Russian TV Host
Pavel Lobkov
A well-known Russian television host announced live on air that he is HIV-positive, an unprecedented revelation in a country with rising infection rates but where HIV/AIDS remains a largely taboo subject.
Pavel Lobkov, a presenter on the independent TV station Dozhd and a former news anchor on state television, made the announcement during a show on Tuesday evening, on World Aids Day.
He is the first Russian public figure to openly declare himself HIV-positive.
Russia has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, with around 1,000 new cases diagnosed each month and a total of almost a million people known to be infected, with the real total likely to be much higher.
Lobkov is known for being outspoken. He was fired from the state NTV channel in 2012 -- a move he said was prompted by his attendance of opposition demonstrations against Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency.
Pavel Lobkov
NRA Wins Again
$enate
A polarized Senate voted Thursday against expanding background checks for more gun purchases, rejecting the proposal a day after the latest U.S. mass shooting left 14 people dead in California.
Thursday's mostly party-line 50-48 vote, which followed the Senate's defeat of other firearms curbs, underscored that political gridlock over the issue remains formidable in Washington, even amid a rash of highly publicized U.S. shootings and last month's terror attack in Paris.
The background check measure, co-authored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., was the same proposal the Senate rejected in early 2013, just months after 20 children and six educators were shot to death at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
In that roll call two years ago in a Democratic-controlled Senate, the effort fell five votes short of the 60 needed to overcome opponents' tactics aimed at derailing it. The plan was strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association.
$enate
War Criminals Reunite
US Capitol
Full of humor and praise, former resident George W. Bush (R-Artiste) and his vice president, Dick Cheney (R-Haliburton), reunited at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to unveil a marble bust of Cheney.
At a ceremony also attended by Vice President Joe Biden and Republican leaders of Congress, the 43rd president and 46th vice president used their rare joint appearance to reflect on the past, not dwell on the present.
George W. Bush joked that upon learning of the event, his father, former President George H.W. Bush, "perked up, and he said, 'send my best regards to old iron-ass." That's an apparent reference to revelations in a new biography of the older Bush in which he questioned Cheney's influence over George W. Bush and referred to Cheney as an "iron-ass."
As Cheney smiled, Bush called his father's remark a "badge of honor" and said he had "asked me to give you his heartfelt congratulations and thanks for selfless service."
US Capitol
Voids Telescope Construction Permit
Hawaii Supreme Court
A long-awaited Hawaii Supreme Court ruling Wednesday invalidating a construction permit for what would be one of the world's largest telescopes represents a major setback for the $1.4 billion project on a mountain astronomers tout for having perfect star-gazing conditions.
The ruling is a victory for protesters who say they are fighting the project to curb development, preserve Native Hawaiian culture and protect the Big Island's Mauna Kea, a mountain many consider sacred.
The court ruled that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources should not have issued a permit for the telescope before a hearings officer reviewed a petition by a group challenging the project's approval.
"Quite simply, the board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit before the request for a contested case hearing was resolved and the hearing was held," the court's 58-page opinion said. "Accordingly, the permit cannot stand."
Hawaii Supreme Court
Escorted From Event
James Cromwell
Actor James Cromwell was one of two people escorted from an upstate New York business event for protesting an award given to an energy company.
The Times Herald-Record of Middletown reports that the 75-year-old actor whose work includes "Babe" and "L.A. Confidential" was removed from the Tuesday night event in New Windsor when he and Pramilla Malick began heckling the award presented to CPV Valley Energy Center.
Cromwell and Malick say the company's natural gas-fired electricity plant being built in a nearby town is a dangerous polluter threatening the environment and the people living there. Cromwell lives in an adjacent town.
Cromwell was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for 1995's "Babe," which ends with his farmer character telling the film's porcine star, "That'll do, pig. That'll do."
James Cromwell
Radiation Spreads
Fukushima
Radiation from Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster has spread off North American shores and contamination is increasing at previously identified sites, although levels are still too low to threaten human or ocean life, scientists said on Thursday.
Tests of hundreds of samples of Pacific Ocean water confirmed that Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes more than four years after its meltdown, said Ken Buesseler, marine radiochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Trace amounts of cesium-134 have been detected within several hundred miles (km) of the Oregon, Washington and California coasts in recent months, as well as offshore from Canada's Vancouver Island.
Last year, Woods Hole reported detectable radiation from about 100 miles (160 km) off the coast of northern California, and in April radiation was found off Canada's shores.
The latest readings measured the highest radiation levels outside Japanese waters to date some 1,600 miles (2,574 km) west of San Francisco.
Fukushima
Ex-Husbands' Permission
Saudi Women
For the entirety of a woman's life in Saudi Arabia, she is legally considered a minor under the care of men. Though women still need a man to drive their car or to give them permission to travel outside the country, the oil-rich beneficiary of billions in American military hardware will now grant some women more autonomy over their lives.
Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry will begin issuing family identity cards to divorced and widowed women, Reuters reports. Previously, only men had access to the cards, which allowed them to handle everything from medical records to school enrollment for all members of their family. Women who are married or single still can't get the cards, and wives can rarely initiate divorce proceedings.
Because women in Saudi Arabia are legal wards of men for their entire lives-typically a husband, father, or brother-those whose guardianship has been passed to a man no longer present in their lives, either by death or divorce, are left with few options.
After a divorce, a woman's guardianship stays linked to her ex-husband. While the divorced man can remarry and go about his life, his ex-wife still must go to him for approval when making decisions for herself or her children. If the man refuses to cooperate or denies permission for a child's school enrollment or health care, the woman's only recourse is to take him to court. According to local paperAl Riyadh, this was a factor in the government's change of policy: Family status disputes account for nearly two-thirds of all cases in Saudi Arabia's strained court system.
As the only nation that requires women to be accompanied by men at all times and bans women from getting behind the wheel, Saudi Arabia is often regarded as one of the most oppressive countries for women, ranking in the bottom 10 percent in the World Economic Forum's 2015 global gender gap report. But rights activists say the new ID card rule is an important step toward empowering women-and far more valuable than a driver's license.
Saudi Women
Pakistan Wants It Back
Koh-i-Noor Diamond
A Pakistani attorney said on Thursday he has filed a court petition seeking the return of the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond Britain forced India to hand over in colonial times.
Once the largest known diamond in the world, the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor is one of the Crown Jewels. It is set in a crown last worn by the late mother of Queen Elizabeth II during her coronation.
Attorney Jawaid Iqbal Jafree filed the court petition naming Queen Elizabeth II as a respondent on Wednesday in the eastern city of Lahore. The application asks that Britain hand back the diamond, now on display in the Tower of London.
India also has made regular requests for the jewel's return, saying the diamond is an integral part of the country's history and culture.
Britain's then colonial governor-general of India arranged for the huge diamond to be presented to Queen Victoria in 1850, during British colonial rule.
Koh-i-Noor Diamond
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