Recommended Reading
from Bruce
HENRY ROLLINS: LET'S INVADE CANADA (LA Weekly)
Give me a minute before I explain to you that our invasion and occupation of Canada is a mission that cannot wait. Operation Maple Dawn Cobra Thunder must go hot ASAP.
Scott Burns: The Missing Bullet Holes Problem (AssetBuilder)
An anecdote from World War II tells us a lot about why most of what passes for investment data is wrong.
David Weigel: It's Insane, This Guy's Sketch (Slate)
The anti-nostalgic joys of With Bob and David.
Chuck Norris: News About Food Consumption Trends You Won't Find Depressing (Creators Syndicate)
New research analyzing 26 studies conducted in Europe, involving 150,278 people, is further proof that there is definitely something to the notion of a connection between food and mood.
Lucy Mangan: A constitutional crisis is coming, we just need to be patient (Telegraph)
The EU situation is ripe for a constitutional crisis, or there's always the chance that the Prince of Wales could go rogue.
Robbie Collin: "Donald Sutherland: 'I hadn't even heard of The Hunger Games'" (Telegraph)
How the rabble-rousing rebel hero of Seventies film became the terrifying despot of 'Mockingjay.'
Robbie Collin: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 review: 'scorchingly tense'" (Telegraph)
After the subterranean sluggishness of the last film, too thinly spun out from the first third of Suzanne Collins's final book, Mockingjay - Part 2 returns the series to its characteristic high gear.
Suzanne Moore: Don't think you're superior to me because you're not on Facebook (The Guardian)
It's time to understand that social media, for all its performance aspect, isn't the binary opposite to real life. It is real life.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
IN MEMORIAM.
THE REPUGS ARE SCARED SHITLESS!
MY GOD IS BETTER THAN YOUR GOD!
FOR THE LOVE OF A DOG.
"MISTER PEABODY'S COAL TRAIN HAS HAULED IT AWAY"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly overcast and windy, but no rain.
Added another new over-the-air channel, Heroes and Icons.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Governors Awards
Oscar voters on Saturday gave honorary awards to three movie veterans, including director Spike Lee, at a gala event that shone a spotlight on Hollywood's drive for diversity amid its glitzy awards season.
Along with Lee, whose films include "Malcolm X" and "Do the Right Thing," the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave its Governors Awards for film achievement to "Singing In the Rain" actress Debbie Reynolds and Gena Rowlands, a champion of independent film and star of "The Notebook."
The Governors Awards annually is one of the academy's key events ahead of the Oscars, the film industry's top awards given out in February. Hollywood A-listers including Meryl Streep and Denzel Washington turned out.
Reynolds, who was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award for her charitable work, was unable to attend due to recent surgery.
The Oscars will be given out in Hollywood on Feb. 28, 2016.
Governors Awards
Performed Free Concert
Jimmy Buffet
The rain didn't stop Jimmy Buffet from performing at the opening of the Margaritaville Beach Resort, his new $150 million attraction that features nearly 350 rooms, eight bars and a spa.
By the time Buffett took the stage at 4:30 p.m. Saturday for his free concert, it was already 5 o'clock somewhere. Buffett joked that he finally got to play the iconic Bandshell, one of the few remnants of old Hollywood.
The Bandshell, built in the 1970s, will feature local music several nights a week, but is now run by Margaritaville.
The Miami Herald reports the city contributed more than $20 million to the project and is hoping it will transform the area into a more sophisticated vacation escape with a Caribbean-themed vibe.
Jimmy Buffet
Replaces 2 Episodes Tonight
CBS
CBS is swapping out episodes of two prime-time series on Monday night because of sensitivity concerns following the deadly Paris attacks.
The network said Sunday it will replace an episode of the new series "Supergirl" that was supposed to deal with a bombing. In its place will be an early Thanksgiving episode in which Kara's character suspects her foster mother disapproves of her new role as a superhero.
The network is also shelving an episode of "NCIS: Los Angeles" about recruitment of young women by the Islamic State group. It will be replaced by an episode concerning a missing woman.
Television networks usually scour their schedules in the event of major tragedies to scrub out material that might trigger bad memories for viewers.
CBS
Future Uncertain
White Deer
Hundreds of ghostly white deer roaming among overgrown munitions bunkers at a sprawling former Army weapons depot face an uncertain future after living and breeding largely undisturbed since the middle of last century.
The white deer - a genetic quirk that developed naturally on the 7,000-acre, fenced-in expanse - have thrived, even as the depot itself has transitioned from one of the most important Cold War storehouses of bombs and ammunition to a decommissioned relic.
Now, as local officials seek to put the old Seneca Army Depot up for bids next month, there is concern that the sale could also mean the end of the line for the unusual white deer. A group of residents dedicated to saving the animals has proposed turning the old depot into a world-class tourist attraction to show off both its rich military history and its unusual wildlife. The Nature Conservancy also is looking at options for preserving the largely undeveloped landscape.
The white deer owe their continued existence to 24 miles of rusting chain-link perimeter fencing that went up when the depot was built in 1941, capturing several dozen wild white-tailed deer in the area's extensive woodlands. The white deer are natural genetic variants of the normal brown ones. They're not albinos, which lack all pigment, but are leucistic, lacking pigment only in their fur.
The depot, completed a month before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, provided for the ordnance storage needs of the nation for 60 years. It covered an area larger than the city of Syracuse, 40 miles to the northeast, and stored bombs and ammunition in 500 steel-and-concrete bunkers called igloos.
White Deer
Boosting Profits
Big Pharma
In recent days, the largest U.S. managers of private prescription drug benefits have cut off at least eight pharmacies that work closely with drugmakers, intensifying scrutiny of a system that helps inflate drug prices, officials at the benefit managers told Reuters.
The terminations come from payers who together manage drug benefits for more than 100 million Americans, and they follow disclosures by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc in late October that one pharmacy accounted for about 7 percent of its sales.
"What we had not been aware of, until really the last year, was these type of pharmacies that have a really high proportion of sales from a drugmaker and it was not out in the open," Everett Neville, senior vice president of supply chain at Express Scripts Holding Co said in an interview.
The actions are being felt by drugmakers that have come to rely on hefty price hikes to boost profits. Valeant's closely-linked pharmacy, Philidor Rx Services, pressed insurers to pay for expensive Valeant treatments even though much cheaper generic alternatives were available.
Big Pharma
About 1,500 Resign
Mormons
About 1,500 Latter-day Saints have submitted letters of resignation from the Mormon Church to protest a new policy barring children of married same-sex couples from being baptized until they are adults, movement organizers said on Sunday.
More than 1,000 people gathered on Saturday near the Salt Lake City headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to protest the policy they see as discriminatory and harmful to families, with many standing in long lines to submit their resignations, they said.
Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints approved the policy this month. It added same-sex marriage to acts considered to be a renunciation of the Mormon faith and thus subject to church discipline, including excommunication.
The new church policy bars children of gay married couples from being baptized in the faith until they turn 18, leave their parents' home and disavow same-sex marriage or cohabitation.
Mormons
Uneasy Truce
Maine
Eighty-one years after a neglected tribal water supply caused a devastating outbreak of typhoid fever and a century after the state outlawed spearfishing of the salmon that fed their ancestors, Native American tribes who trace their history back millennia say their trust in the government of Maine is at an all-time low.
What has long been an uneasy peace between the state government and the tribes who desire sovereignty has degraded with clashes on issues ranging from fishing rights to new casinos - a dispute so vitriolic that Gov. Paul LePage (R-Pendejo) withdrew an executive order that sought to promote cooperation between the two sides and some of the tribes abandoned their seats in the legislature.
"This marriage between the tribe and the state is little more than a shotgun wedding between unwilling partners," said Fred Moore, the chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point. "There's always value in reconciling, but that requires both sides to want to come to the table."
The state's recognized tribes - the Passamaquoddies, the Penobscot Nation, Aroostook Band of Micmacs and the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians - are only a small portion of the state's population, about 8,000 people from a total population of about 1.3 million. Their legislative representatives are permitted to introduce bills, but their votes are not counted. And doubts linger about whether they will participate in Maine's coming legislative season after the last one proved tumultuous.
In April, LePage rescinded a 2011 order directing state agencies and departments to create policies recognizing the sovereignty of the tribes, among other things. His spokesman said efforts to collaborate and communicate with the tribes were "unproductive" and state interests were not being respected.
Maine
Religious Insanity
Iran
Iranian women who fail to wear the veil when driving will have their cars impounded for a week and are likely to be fined, police warned Sunday.
In the past week, about 10,000 motorists have received warnings, with 2,000 facing further action for breaking "social norms", but the new measure to confiscate cars will come into force nationwide.
Deputy police chief Said Montazer-ol-Mehdi said officers had been authorised by prosecutors to take such steps.
If traffic police spot an unveiled woman driver or passenger, "their car will be taken to a police compound for a week", he said, according to the official IRNA news agency.
When in public, all women in the Islamic republic, including foreigners, are required to wear at least a loose scarf, known as hijab, which covers the hair and neck.
Iran
Weekend Box Office
'Spectre'
The box-office duo of James Bond and Charlie Brown again dominated North American movie theaters over the weekend, while Angelina Jolie Pitt's "By the Sea" made barely a ripple.
Sony's "Spectre," the 24th Bond installment and last week's top film, took in $35.4 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. Daniel Craig's fourth Bond film has most flexed its muscles abroad, where the majority of its $500 million-plus two-week global haul has come from. It got a boost, too, over the weekend in China, where it debuted with $48 million - the best opening for a 2-D, U.S. release in China, Sony said.
Of the new releases, the Christmas comedy "Love the Coopers" - a family holiday gathering directed by Jessie Nelson and starring an ensemble including Diane Keaton and Alan Arkin - fared the best. It took in $8.4 million for CBS Films.
Warner Bros.' Chilean miner drama, "The 33," earned a middling $5.8 million. Though the 2010 disaster, which trapped 33 miners underground, riveted the world for 69 days, moviegoers showed little interest in a dramatized version of the event starring Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips.
Universal Pictures considerably scaled back the release of the poorly reviewed "By the Sea," a marital drama starring Jolie Pitt and Brad Pitt. Playing in just 10 theaters, it made only $95,440. The third film directed by Jolie Pitt, who also wrote the script, "By the Sea" was made for a modest $10 million, so it won't hurt Universal much, but proved surprisingly unappealing to moviegoers despite starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Spectre," $35.4 million ($152.6 million international).
2. "The Peanuts Movie," $24.2 million ($2.5 million international).
3. "Love the Coopers," $8.4 million.
4. "The Martian," $6.7 million ($5.3 million international).
5. "The 33," $5.8 million.
6. "Goosebumps," $4.7 million ($2.4 million international).
7. "Bridge of Spies," $4.3 million ($1.2 million international).
8. "Prem Ratan Dhan Payo," $2.4 million ($31 million international).
9. "Hotel Transylvania 2," $2.4 million ($8.9 million international).
10. "The Last Witch Hunter," $1.5 million ($5.2 million international).
'Spectre'
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