Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Cases for Public Investment (NY Times Blog)
The point is that perfectly standard, mainstream economics makes a powerful case for (much) more infrastructure spending. And this needs to be said often.
Peter Robinson: "Henry Rollins: 'Morrissey is no longer on my kill list'" (The Guardian)
Returning to the UK on a spoken word tour, the DC punk talks being gagged by beauty, the US Congress's similarity to penguins, and people who deserve to be set on fire.
Froma Harrop: Don't Bury Our Cities in Megatowers (Creators Syndicate)
Many longtime residents of San Francisco, Miami and other hot U.S. cities complain of "Manhattanization" when developers put up 20- or 30-story apartment complexes. In Portland, Oregon, they're debating the wisdom of 40 stories.
Lindy West: My thank-you letter to an abortion doctor (The Guardian)
Abortion providers in the US risk death to help women. It's time to #ShoutYourAbortion and thank them for giving us the right to steer our own lives.
Life after the Ashley Madison affair (The Guardian)
It's six months since hackers leaked the names of 30 million people who had used the infidelity website Ashley Madison. Resignations, divorces and suicides followed. Tom Lamont sifts through the wreckage.
Helen Pearson: "The Life Project: what makes some people happy, healthy and successful - and others not?" (The Guardian)
The factors that most affect our life chances are revealed as the first group of British babies followed in a remarkable cradle-to-grave study turns 70.
Eva Wiseman: Is the Kesha case a hangover from the 1970s? (The Guardian)
For women working in the music industry, there are still areas that have not changed for decades.
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Academy Awards 2016
Guess The Winners
DJ Useo wins with 5 outta 7!
Best Picture: "The Big Short"
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Revenant"
Best Actress in a Leading Role: Brie Larson, "Room"
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Sylvester Stallone, "Creed"
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Alicia Vikander, "The Danish Girl"
Best Director: Alejandro G. Inarritu, "The Revenant"
Best Original Score: "Hateful Eight"
Dale (who 'won' last year) had 4 outta 7.
Movie: Spotlight
Actor: Leo
Actress: Brie - Really good!
Supporting Actor: Rocky
Supporting Actress: Kate
Director: McCarthy
Original Score: "The Hateful Eight"
Marty had 4 outta 7.
Best Picture - "The Big Short"
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Matt Damon, "The Martian"
Best Actress in a Leading Role - Brie Larson, "Room"
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Sylvester Stallone, "Creed"
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Alicia Vikander, "The Danish Girl"
Best Director - Alejandro G. Inarritu, "The Revenant"
Best Original Score - "Hateful Eight"
Joe S had 3 outta 7.
Best Picture - "Revenant"
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Leonardo DiCaprio, "The Revenant"
Best Actress in a Leading Role - Saoirse Ronan, "Brooklyn"
Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies"
Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Kate Winslet, "Steve Jobs"
Best Director - Alejandro G. Inarritu, "The Revenant"
Best Original Score - "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.
Lois Of Oscarland had 2 outta 7.
Best Picture: Mad Max, because it was that rarest of rarities, a remake that was not only better than the original, but actually GOOD.
Best Actor: Matt Damon, because he made intelligence cool again! And he had to science the shit out of it!
Best Actress: Brie Larson, because she deserves it on account of her parents naming her after a cheese.
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo, because his name rhymes with "buffalo", and besides...HULK SMASH!
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel McAdams, because...I saw her in the Robert Downey Jr. "Sherlock Holmes" movies, so there!
Best Director: George Miller, because he had the balls to remake Mad Max, knowing that Mel Gibson was alive and running free somewhere.
Best Score: Hateful Eight, because I haven't seen it but hope with all my heart that there is a "Love Theme From The Hateful Eight".
Thanks, Dale, Lois, JoeS and DJ Useo!
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
BadtotheBoneBob Suggests
The Who
Tho Who hits 50 at The Joe in Detroit (Nice photo gallery)
BadtotheBoneBob
Thanks, B2tBob!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
AYATOLLAH HOLE!
FEEL THE WARM!
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
GIRL SCOUT COOKIES ARE EVIL!
TROUBLE IN HELL!
'SUPERPREDATORS'.
POT POWER.
THE MUCK SHOVELER!
"WHEN FASCISM COMES TO AMERICA IT WILL BE WRAPPED IN A FLAG AND CARRYING A CROSS."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The kid brought home a cold last week - seems to be my turn now.
2016
Oscar Winners
Joins Protest Outside Los Angeles Cathedral
Mark Ruffalo
Hours before the 88th Oscars were set to start, the Spotlight team of actor Mark Ruffalo, director-cowriter Tom McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer joined a protest outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. They stood with members of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, outside the cathedral calling for the names of pedophile priests to be released.
Ruffalo confirmed on Twitter on that he participated in the protest, tweeting, "Standing with the survivors of Priest sexual abuse!"
Spotlight follows the Boston Globe investigative journalists who uncovered the Catholic church scandal of priests involved with child molestation. The film has earned Ruffalo an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor as well as five other nominations, including best picture, best director and best original screenplay. On Saturday, it took home five trophies at Film Independent's Spirit Awards, including best feature.
SNAP is also hosting a viewing party for the Oscars at the Next Door Lounge, at 1154 North Highland Avenue, in Hollywood.
Mark Ruffalo
MSNBC Parts Ways
Melissa Harris-Perry
MSNBC has parted ways with host Melissa Harris-Perry after she complained about pre-emptions of her weekend program and implied that there was a racial aspect to the cable-news network's treatment, insiders at MSNBC said.
Harris-Perry refused to appear on her program Saturday morning, telling her co-workers in an email that she felt "worthless" to the NBC-owned network. "I will not be used as a tool for their purposes," wrote Harris-Perry, who is African American. "I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [NBC executives] or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back."
The rebuke, which became public when it was obtained by the New York Times, has triggered discussions involving the network, Harris-Perry and her representatives about the terms of her departure, said people at MSNBC, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks with Perry have not been finalized.
Harris-Perry, a professor at Wake Forest University, joined MSNBC four years ago at a time when the network was attempting to graft its opinionated evening programs onto its daytime schedule. While such evening hosts as Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow have proven relatively popular, the liberal-talk format was unsuccessful during the lighter-viewed daytime hours.
Melissa Harris-Perry
Congresswoman Quits
Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post on Sunday to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, following months of rising tensions within the group.
"I think it's most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander in chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment," Gabbard, a U.S. representative for Hawaii, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Gabbard, one of five vice chairs, and her committee colleagues have butted heads over a thin debate schedule in the months leading to Democratic voting contests for the party's nomination, with Gabbard calling for the group to add more debates to the calendar.
Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz issued a statement accepting Gabbard's resignation, calling her a friend and praising the active-duty veteran for her service in the armed forces.
Democratic National Committee
Ethnicity Matters
T-rump
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) is trying to deflect attention from a class-action civil lawsuit involving the former Trump University by pointing to the ethnic background of the judge in the case.
Asked on "Fox News Sunday" what U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel's ethnicity has to do with the lawsuit against him, Trump replied: "I think it has to do perhaps with the fact that I'm very, very strong on the border, very, very strong at the border, and he has been extremely hostile to me," Trump said.
According to the California class-action complaint in front of Curiel, a one-year apprenticeship that Trump University students were promised ended after students paid for a three-day seminar. Attendees who were promised a personal photo with Trump received only the chance to take a photo with a cardboard cutout. And many instructors were bankrupt real estate investors.
Trump specifically railed against the judge in the case, and at one point noted the judge's Hispanic ethnicity.
Trump claimed the case should have been thrown out years ago, "but because it was me and because there's a hostility toward me by the judge - tremendous hostility - beyond belief." He then noted, as an aside: "I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine. He's Hispanic - which is fine."
T-rump
Limiting Doctors' Speech
Florida
As a pediatrician, Dr. Judith Schaechter can ask parents of her patients all sorts of questions regarding their safety and well-being: what the child eats, whether there's a backyard pool and whether the child gets enough sleep.
Yet the question of whether there is a gun in the home is generally off limits. A Florida law bans routine gun questions even though eight children or teenagers are killed every day in the U.S. with guns, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors such as Schaechter believe a discussion about guns is essential to child safety.
Schaechter is among thousands of physicians, medical organizations and other groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union that challenged the law, formally called the Firearm Owners Privacy Act, in a lawsuit known popularly as "Docs vs. Glocks." The law, passed in 2011 amid strong support from the National Rifle Association, is the only one of its kind in the nation, although similar laws have been considered in 12 other states, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The legal battle, which has raged since the law's inception, is a clash between the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms, amid a national discussion about the role and availability of weapons across the U.S.
Florida
Stamp Of Approval To Trump
Jean-Marie Le Pen
French far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, kicked out of his own party for xenophobic and anti-Semitic comments, has given controversial US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump the thumbs up.
"If I was American I would vote for Donald Trump... may God protect him," tweeted the fiery 87-year-old founder of the National Front, now led by his daughter Marine.
Le Pen was booted out of the party after a bitter feud with his daughter over his continued inflammatory, racist and xenophobic comments while she tries to polish the FN's image to lure voters.
Last year he rehashed familiar comments about Nazi gas chambers being a "detail" of history and said France should get along with Russia to save the "white world".
He has also in the past declared the races are not equal and said in 2014 that Ebola could clear up Europe's immigration problem "in three months".
Jean-Marie Le Pen
America's Passion
Guns
A rifle as new state symbol. A bill that lets young children use handguns under supervision. As mass shootings shatter lives, the fascination with firearms among many Americans shows little sign of fading.
Over the past week, two gunmen killed at least nine people in unrelated rampages in Michigan and Kansas.
Add to that the death in Indiana of a father who was accidentally shot by his six-year-old son who found a loaded revolver lying around and pulled the trigger.
Senators in Tennessee -- in a near unanimous vote -- designated a rifle that is said to be capable of destroying commercial aircraft as an official state symbol.
The .50-caliber Barrett, manufactured in the southern state, joins a range of other Tennessee state symbols. These include the mockingbird as "official state bird" and the raccoon as "official wild animal."
Guns
Weekend Box Office
'Deadpool'
Marvel's antihero blockbuster "Deadpool" continued to dominate North American movie theaters over the weekend, earning an estimated $31.5 million in its third week and besting newcomer "Gods of Egypt," according to comScore estimates Sunday.
The total domestic haul for 20th Century Fox's comic book adaptation starring Ryan Reynolds as Marvel's foul-mouthed mercenary now stands at $285.6 million, making it the third highest-grossing R-rated film behind "American Sniper" and "The Passion of the Christ."
Lionsgate's "Gods of Egypt" featuring Gerard Butler as a rebellious Egyptian god debuted in second place with $14 million. The film, which reportedly cost $140 million and also stars Brenton Thwaites and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, is Hollywood's first major flop of the year.
Other newcomers that failed to topple "Deadpool" this weekend included the feel-good Olympic tale "Eddie the Eagle" in fifth place with $6.3 million and the heist romp "Triple 9" in sixth place with $6.1 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Deadpool," $31.5 million ($40.2 million international).
2. "Gods of Egypt," $14 million ($24 million international).
3. "Kung Fu Panda 3," $9 million ($4.5 million international).
4. "Risen," $7 million.
5. "Eddie the Eagle," $6.3 million.
6. "Triple 9," $6.1 million ($450,000 international).
7. "How To Be Single," $5.2 million ($6.1 million international).
8. "The Witch," $5 million.
9. "Race," $4.3 million.
10. "The Revenant," $3.8 million ($14.1 million international).
'Deadpool'
In Memory
Frank Kelly
Irish actor Frank Kelly, best known for playing a foul-mouthed priest with a fondness for the catchphrase "Feck! Drink! Girls!" in the series "Father Ted," died Sunday. He was 77 and had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.
Despite being a gracious, posh-accented veteran of the Dublin stage, Kelly's irreverent portrayal of Father Jack Hackett lived on long past the show's run from 1995-98. The public embraced the chance to watch the gentle parody of the Roman Catholic Church and his irreverent character.
Kelly got his big break with a role escorting Michael Caine's character out of prison in an uncredited role in "The Italian Job," in 1969. He later appeared in "Hall's Pictorial Weekly," a 1970s political satire, the drama series "Glenroe," and the soap opera, "Emmerdale."
But he is best remembered for this role as Father Jack, who lives on the fictional Craggy Island together with two other luckless priests and their housekeeper. Father Jack makes no attempt to hide his disdain at his fellow priests, and the lampooning of all things Catholic helped the show win multiple BAFTA awards.
Kelly died 18 years to the day after the character who played Father Ted Crilly, Dermot Morgan, died shortly after the end of filming of the third and final season.
Kelly had suffered from Parkinson's but was determined to keep working.
"I've been working as an actor for over 50 years, and a shaky hand certainly won't stop me," he told Irish broadcaster RTE.
Frank Kelly
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