Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Kavanaugh Will Kill the Constitution (NY Times)
The legitimacy of the Supreme Court is on the line.
Richard Wolffe: "The madness is pouring out of the White House now, for all to see." (The Guardian)
An anonymous New York Times op-ed by a senior Trump administration official and an explosive new book reveal just how bad things are around the US president.
Greg Sargent: Trump's paranoid rage is getting worse. But the White House 'resistance' is a sham. (Washington Post)
… Trump absolutely does have "first principles," and these are precisely the problem. Among them are racism and white nationalism; the prioritization of self-enrichment over all else, even extending to a total lack of concern about foreign sabotage of our democracy, simply because he was its beneficiary; and the corrupt, intertwined convictions that law enforcement is merely an instrument of his political will and that he and his cronies should be protected from institutional accountability at all costs, no matter what damage is done along the way.
Paul Waldman: Trump's dipping approval is putting Republicans in dangerous territory (Washington Post)
"We're doing a great job," said President Trump yesterday in a surprise endorsement of his own success. "The poll numbers are through the roof. Our poll numbers are great. And guess what? Nobody is going to come close to beating me in 2020 because of what we've done." Though Trump can always be counted on to testify to his unblemished record of winning, it was odd he chose to focus on poll numbers right at the moment, because one place they are not going is "through the roof."
Jonathan Chait: Bernie Sanders's BEZOS Bill Would Hurt the Working Class, Not the Rich (NY Mag)
The imagined positive effects of the new law would be ineffectual. "Companies that raise wages would have to do so for all workers in particular job categories, not just those who receive public benefit," the CBPP analysis points out. "That would be more expensive to companies than paying the tax penalty." As the Center notes, there are several ways to encourage higher wages for low-income workers that, unlike this one, would work. If the goal is to punish companies for paying workers too little, raising the minimum wage (which Sanders also supports) is a more effective tool.
Mary Beard: Criminal Offences (TLS)
A lot of women MPs (and not just women) have put a lot of effort into making "upskirting" a crime - and I applaud them (or most of me does). I certainly have no doubt that - whether driven by misogyny, or by the most tawdry kind of playground bullying - it is something that the world would be a lot better off without, and that a lot of hurt can be caused with it. That said there is a little bit of me that wonders about a growing tendency to make everything we disapprove of a criminal offence, as if that was the only way of stopping (or diminishing) it.
Mary Beard: A tribute to David Watkin (TLS)
My friend David Watkin died [Aug 31]. He was a clever architectural art historian (of the neo-classical above all), a generous, kind and funny man, an enemy of some of my best mates, a working class lad who spoke posh, and (he would know that I would say this) a frightful old conservative.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Audience Anecdotes
• Ben Hecht once went to see a talented fighter named Al Singer, whose opponent was a fighter of little talent named Kid McGirk. During the fight, Mr. Singer kept battering Kid McGirk, but never managed to knock him out. Kid McGirk was clearly outclassed, and the crowd knew it-they kept booing him throughout the fight. After the fight, the referee told the audience that Kid McGirk wanted to speak to them. Kid McGirk began, "Ladies and Gentlemen," and the crowd booed. He continued: "I wanna tell you that I got an announcement to make. That tonight was my last fight." The crowd kept on booing. Kid McGirk then said, "I'm glad you liked my fight tonight b'cuz it's my last fight, see? I've had a wonderful time fighting for you people and I've always appreciated it." As Kid McGirk spoke, the booing slowly diminished in intensity. He then said, "So I wish t' take his occasion t' t'ank you for having been such a fine public and having been so good to me." At this point, the booing had completely stopped. Kid McGirk then ended with, "I have only the memories of the finest time to take back home with me and I want to thank the public for everything they done for me." Now, cheering began. The entire audience began to applaud and cheer for this outclassed fighter whom they had been booing earlier. Al Singer had failed to knock Kid McGirk out, and so had the audience.
• Anna Pavlova danced "The Dying Swan" thousands of times, but occasionally she was not pleased with the audience's always thunderous applause. After one performance that did not reach her own high standard, she was very angry about the applause and complained, "How dare they applaud like that. I know I danced badly. It is no compliment to an artist. I shall lose all my standards, if people aren't more discriminating."
• Press agents used to do wild things to get their clients' names in the newspapers. Operatic tenor Leo Slezak once read in a newspaper that he always sang in public in bare feet. One audience that had read the same newspaper article became angry because he sang before them while wearing patent leather shoes.
• Julia Neilson (1868-1957) enjoyed playing Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Once, after she spoke these lines from the Epilogue-"If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not"-a voice came from the balcony, "Me first, please, Miss!"
• Whenever Fred Astaire was ready to shoot a big dance number for one of his films, word would go out across the studio, and lots of people would come around to watch the dancing. Anthony Perkins was doing a Western while Mr. Astaire was filming Funny Facewith Audrey Hepburn, and he remembers lots of gunslingers watching the filming of "Clap Yo' Hands."
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
The flag as a snot rag!
Holy crap! Not only were they moving sheeple around behind Predator to get the right expressions and amount of blondness, check out the woman RIGHT BEHIND Predator using the American flag to wipe her nose!
Dear Miss Manners: What's The Proper Way To Wipe Your Nose On A Flag At A Trump Rally? - Wonkette
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHERE THERE'S SMOKE THERE'S FIRE.
IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT NOW!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
If you've ever thought about sending Marty a donation this would be an excellent time.
Facebook To Restore Centerfold
Burt Reynolds
Facebook is apologizing to its users for aggressively removing Burt Reynolds's iconic 1970s Cosmopolitan centerfold shot from posts.
A spokesperson for the social networking site has apologized via a statement today after several users complained that the photo was taken down from tribute posts honoring Reynolds, who died on Thursday at 82.
The company has a "no nudity" policy, but Facebook said the photos of Reynolds were "mistakenly removed." The images are now being restored to user walls.
"It does not break our standards and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused," the statement read.
The 1972 image shows a naked Reynolds posing on a bearskin rug with his arm strategically covering his genitals. The photo marked the first time Cosmo has featured a nude man as its centerfold.
Burt Reynolds
Moonves Obsessed With Ruining Career
Janet Jackson
One thing that allies and critics of Les Moonves, the CEO and chairman of CBS, agree on is that he tends to remember who his enemies are, and exact revenge on them on his terms. From actors to entertainment lawyers, people who ended up on the wrong side of Moonves would often become his target for years after they upset him.
Although Moonves is embattled and likely to be ousted from CBS amid sexual harassment allegations (reportedly with a significant severance payment) following an investigation by The New Yorker, many women and men whom I contacted about Moonves' conduct were reluctant to speak to me, even when I told them they could speak off the record.
One target of Moonves' ire and vengefulness, according to multiple sources, was Janet Jackson.
Jackson became a years-long fixation for Moonves after the so-called "wardrobe malfunction" of 2004, when her breast was exposed for nine-sixteenths of a second after Justin Timberlake tore a piece of fabric off her bustier during their Super Bowl halftime performance. CBS and MTV (a subsidiary of Viacom, the parent company of CBS at the time), which produced the halftime show, faced a torrent of criticism and a $550,000 Federal Communications Commission fine.
Moonves, however, was convinced it wasn't a malfunction, but rather an intentional bid to stir up controversy. Moonves has been open about the fact that the incident caused him embarrassment, and he told sources who spoke to me that Jackson, in his mind, was not sufficiently repentant.
Janet Jackson
Brooklyn Nine-Nine Actor
Dirk Blocker
Actor Dirk Blocker urged fans to shun products made here as a way to protest the caning of two women yesterday ordered by the Terengganu Syariah Court for their engaging in same-sex relations.
The case has put Malaysia under the global spotlight for its laws against consensual sexual activities between adults and for the corporal punishment imposed.
"Boycott Malaysian products until the government there stops torturing people for living their lives," Blocker wrote on his Twitter page.
In the award-winning hit US sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Blocker plays the character of Hitchcock, one of several inept police officers working the day shift in the fictional New York police precinct.
Yesterday, two women found guilty for attempted lesbian sex were publicly caned six times at the Terengganu Syariah Court as around 100 people watched the punishment.
Dirk Blocker
Officially Extinct In The Wild
Blue Macaw
In the animated film "Rio," a Spix's Macaw named Blu flies all the way from Minnesota to Rio de Janeiro because he's the last living male of his species and that's where Jewel, the last living female, lives. Blu and Jewel ultimately fall in love, have a baby and the movie ends happily - with the hope that the literal lovebirds can save their species. In the real world, however, Blu would've been too late.
A new study by BirdLife International, a global partnership of conservation organizations that strive to conserve bird species around the world, reveals that in recent years several bird species have lost their fight for survival. And sadly, one of those species is the beautiful Spix's Macaw. The species is now considered extinct in the wild, although some of the birds survive in breeding programs.
While the vast majority of bird extinctions in recent centuries have occurred on isolated islands, five of the eight highlighted by this study occurred in South America - four in Brazil alone - a tragic statement on the impact of deforestation in that part of the world.
While three other bird species named in the study- the Cryptic Treehunter, the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner and the Poo-uli, formerly of Hawaii -have now succumbed to that fight, there is still hope for a number of bird species that the report reclassifies as Critically Endangered.
And at the very least, in the case of the Spix's Macaw, children for generations to come will still be able to derive joy from their unique beauty - albeit in animated form.
Blue Macaw
Administration Plans To Detain More And For Longer
Children
The Trump administration said Thursday that it plans to withdraw from a court settlement that protects migrant children from being kept in detention centers under inhumane conditions and for more than 20 days.
If the government is successful, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be able to run more family detention centers without obtaining state licenses, a requirement of the settlement, and more children will be kept in prison-like facilities for the duration of their immigration proceedings, which can last up to a year.
The government has plans to oversee new detention centers that could hold 12,000 more immigrants and has outlined new regulations that it claims preserve the "relevant and substantive terms" of the agreement. But experts say that ditching the 1997 Flores settlement, the result of a lawsuit surrounding the maltreatment of migrant children, will cause serious psychological and physical trauma for detained children.
The government is saying, "'We don't really want to treat children humanely,'" said Bridget Cambria, an immigration lawyer who has represented detained families. "'We want to subject them to the harshest rules we can.'"
There are only three family detention centers in the U.S., and states won't issue licenses to build more of these facilities because they violate child welfare laws, according to Cambria. "Their lives become a prison schedule," she said of kids locked up in family detention centers. "They don't act like children anymore. They act like prisoners.... They check in and are given a number and a badge."
Children
Men Forced To Make Way
Rally
Men shown on camera standing behind Donald Trump (R-OfPutin) during a rally were forced to make way for a line of smiling women, footage has showed.
In a campaign-style rally in Montana on Thursday evening, in which the US president railed against the media, Hillary Clinton, and the prospect of impeachment, young women were seen telling three men to make way so they could stand in their place.
One man who was visible over Mr Trump's right shoulder was approached by a young woman in a black dress about 50 minutes into the president's speech.
After speaking together for a few seconds, the man walked out of shot, while the woman stood smiling in his place.
The man, who failed to return, had earlier been caught on camera appearing to react in disbelief after Mr Trump claimed it was harder to win the electoral college than the popular vote.
Rally
Science Proves?
'Most Sound-Minded'
Excerpts from Bob Woodward's upcoming book, Fear, claim that White House chief of staff John Kelly described President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Crooked) as "unhinged" and "an idiot."
An op-ed by an anonymous senior official published in The New York Times on Wednesday said Trump's instability has prompted talk among Cabinet members of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
But a guest on Fox News said Trump - a self-described "stable genius" - was of sound mind. Gina Loudon, a member of Trump's "media advisory board" and author of the book Mad Politics, told Fox News host Sean Hannity:
"My book actually uses science and real data and true psychological theory to explain why it is quite possible that this president is the most sound-minded person to ever occupy the White House."
"Literally, liberals' heads are going to explode at what you just said," Hannity replied.
'Most Sound-Minded'
Global Warming Hikes Risk
Landslide Tsunamis
With a wave runup of nearly 200 metres, the tsunami that ripped through an Alaskan fjord in 2015 was one of the largest ever documented. But with no-one killed, it almost went unnoticed.
It was triggered by a massive rockfall caused by melting of the Tyndall Glacier, which experts say has given them the clearest picture to date of landslide-generated tsunamis.
With global warming causing glaciers to shrink at an unprecedented rate, there is an increased risk of tidal waves triggered by the collapse of rocky slopes weakened as ice retreats, a study in Scientific Reports said Thursday.
"As glaciers thin around the world, they are modifying their landscapes dramatically. In the case of Taan Fjord, the result was a massive tsunami," said Dr Dan Shugar, assistant professor of Geoscience at the University of Washington Tacoma and co-author of the report.
The tsunami generated a wave runup, the maximum vertical extent of wave uprush on a beach, of 193 metres (633 feet).
Landslide Tsunamis
Plan to Bring Back
Extinct Ice-Age Horse
A team of scientists in Siberia is hopeful that a mummified 40,000-year-old baby horse can provide critical genetic material for cloning the extinct ice-age species.
But experts told Live Science that they are skeptical that the scientists will be able to find viable DNA on the body at all, let alone overcome the enormous challenges of cloning a species that's been extinct for millennia.
The preserved foal's body was discovered in August and was excavated from melting permafrost in the Batagaika crater in Yakutia, a region in eastern Russia. Researchers working with the frozen remains recently toldThe Siberian Times that they are investigating whether the remains will yield living cells that could be used to clone the ancient baby horse.
According to The Siberian Times, one of the scientists involved in the analysis of the mummified horse is Woo-Suk Hwang, a stem-cell researcher and cloning pioneer from South Korea. Hwang, a former professor at South Korea's Seoul National University, came under fire in 2006 for falsifying data, and was convicted three years later of bioethical violations and embezzlement, Nature reported in 2009. He now helms Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, a South Korean company that researches and performs animal cloning - primarily dogs, Live Science previously reported.
Scientists from Russia and South Korea - including Hwang - are already collaborating in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth, and they are now exploring the possibility of extracting living cells from the preserved horse, which could potentially be used to create a clone, Hwang told The Siberian Times.
Extinct Ice-Age Horse
In Memory
Bill Daily
Bill Daily, the affable TV actor who starred as Major Roger Healey in "I Dream of Jeannie" as well as on "The Bob Newhart Show," died Sept. 4 in Santa Fe, N.M., his son J. Patrick Daily confirmed. He was 91.
The longtime Albuquerque resident was a staple on series of the 1960s through 1980s. He appeared as Bob Newhart's pilot neighbor Howard Borden on "The Bob Newhart Show" and as psychiatrist Dr. Larry Dykstra on "ALF."
On "I Dream of Jeannie," he co-starred with Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden on all five seasons of the NBC sitcom as Captain and then Major Healey, the best friend and fellow astronaut to Hagman, who at one point steals Jeannie but later returns her to her master.
In 1980, Daily briefly had his own TV series, "Small & Frye," but it lasted only three months. A longtime magic fan, he hosted several magic specials.
His other TV appearances included "Bewitched," "Love Boat," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and "Love, American Style," as well as recurring roles in the 1980s on "Aloha Paradise" and "Starting from Scratch."
He returned for several "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Bob Newhart Show" reunion specials in the 1980s and '90s. Daily also served as director of the New Mexico Film Commission in the late 1980s.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Daily was raised in Chicago and started out doing stand-up and announcing at a Chicago TV station.
He is survived by his son J. Patrick Daily, a key grip for motion pictures.
Bill Daily
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