Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Everybody Hates the Trump Tax Plan (NY Times Column)
Ordinary families would be big losers, and even C.E.O.s aren't showing much love.
Josh Marshall: Don't Be So Quick To Expel Roy Moore from the Senate (TPM)
Having said all this, I'm not saying definitively that it would be wrong to expel Moore. What concerns me is that it is being treated as a simple and obvious expedient when it is, in fact, a completely unprecedented move and highly questionable in terms of the precedent it sets regardless of Moore's past crimes. The party at issue here isn't Moore. It's Alabama voters. The polls released since this scandal broke do not show them in a very good light at all. But voters have a perfect right to be terrible.
Suzanne Moore: Should sexual harassers Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK be given a second chance? (The Guardian)
Sadly, history tells us they will be.
Leigh Blickley: "'Wonder' Makes A Case For The Classic Tear-Jerker" (Huffington Post)
Is it mawkish? Maybe. But the Jacob Tremblay film seems to have arrived in the nick of time.
Anna Smith: How movies brought polyamory into the mainstream (The Guardian)
Non-monogamous relationships used to be portrayed as disastrous in film. But with Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, is there a shift towards greater acceptance?
Interview by Sarah Moroz: "Raymond Depardon's best photograph: a prisoner jogging in endless circles" (The Guardian)
'He had requested to stay in solitary confinement. The netting up above is there to stop escapes by helicopter.'
Anna Smith: Brie Larson's Basmati Blues and other lost movies A-listers wish had stayed buried (The Guardian)
Films that actors make before they find fame can come back to bite them years later, as Larson discovered when the trailer for a rice-based romcom she filmed in 2012 was met with derision.
Drake threatens fan after spotting him groping women (The Guardian)
Rapper stopped a performance in Sydney after seeing an audience member "touching girls."
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Presenting
Michael Egan
replied:
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In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Diaper Don?!
OMGosh--savaging Donnie Jr AND giving us his great nickname!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE GODFATHER.
TRUMPS RACIST FRIENDS.
"TAKE A KNEE MY ASS"
"WELL, HE'S GOT TROUBLE…"
SUPER CAR!
THE STORMER TROLL ARMY.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cloudy but seasonal.
Scraps Media Rules
FCC
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to scrap rules that prohibited companies from owning multiple news sources in a single region.
Commissioners moved to eliminate the rules on a 3-2 vote, overriding objections that the move would clear the way for greater consolidation in a media industry that is increasingly dominated by a handful of large players.
"We have paved the way for a new crop of media broadcast empires," said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who voted against the move, adding that doing away with the rules would "amplify the influence of a small number of companies".
The vote did away with a rule prohibiting an entity from owning both a newspaper and a TV or radio broadcast station in a single market. It also jettisoned a rule prohibiting ownership of multiple TV broadcast stations in areas with fewer than eight independent stations.
Critics of industry consolidation have flagged a pending deal that would allow Sinclair Broadcast Group to acquire Tribune Media - a merger that would put the media giant's content before some 72 per cent of American households across 108 different markets, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
FCC
Not On Your Side
Nationwide Insurance
A couple who say they were handcuffed for hours in a police patrol car after their hibiscus plants were confused for marijuana are suing the police and an insurance company.
Edward and Audrey Cramer say in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that a Nationwide Insurance Co. agent investigating a fallen tree at their Buffalo Township home sent photos of their flowering plant to police. The lawsuit alleges that Buffalo Township police officers with assault rifles went to their home on Oct. 7 to investigate.
Audrey Cramer, 66, said she was partially dressed when she went to the door and police would not let her put on pants before she was handcuffed.
Edward Cramer, 69, said he returned home a half-hour later to find his wife in the back of a police cruiser and officers pointing guns at him. He also was placed in the cruiser despite trying to convince the officers the plants were hibiscus, not marijuana.
"They actually ignored me," he said. "They wouldn't even listen. I said, 'I can show you pictures on the internet.'"
Nationwide Insurance
Fox "News" Viewers Demand
Shepard Smith
Fox "News" viewers are calling for a TV anchor to be fired because he debunked an erroneous conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton.
Shepard Smith, who has been at Fox for more than two decades, discredited the theory which his own network has branded the Clinton uranium "scandal" in a five-minute segment.
Fox "News", as well as President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Corrupt) and his allies, have suggested for months that donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to the approval of a deal by the State Department and the Obama administration which allowed a Russian company to purchase a Canada-based mining group with operations in the US.
Trump claimed it was "Watergate, modern-age" and former White House advisor Sebastian Gorka said it was equivalent to the Julis and Ethel Rosenberg spying case in the 1950's which saw the couple convicted of committing espionage for the Soviet Union.
Proponents of the wholly false theory, which has been exposed as incorrect by various fact-checkers, claim that nine people involved in the deal made donations to the Clinton Foundation which add up to more than $140 million. They say Ms Clinton in exchange approved the sale to the Russians - a "a quid pro quo".
Shepard Smith
10,744 More Records Released
National Archives
The National Archives on Friday released 10,744 FBI records - some that have never been previously disclosed - related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
It's the fifth release of Kennedy assassination records so far this year.
The National Archives said 8,336 documents are being released in their entirety and 2,408 are released with limited redactions. A total of 144 records are being released for the first time.
Most of the collection comprising about 5 million pages of records has been released to the public, but some documents have been withheld over the years to protect individuals, intelligence sources and methods and national security.
The latest documents are being released according to a law that President George H.W. Bush signed Oct. 26, 1992. That law required all records related to the assassination be released within 25 years, unless the president says doing so would harm intelligence, law enforcement, military operations or foreign relations.
National Archives
Biggest Liar the White House Has Ever Seen
T-rump
When it comes to corrupt administrations, presidential historian Robert Dallek says Trump's administration is close to the top of the list, Vox reports.
"What makes it particularly distressing is the view that this is not an aberration but rather the 'new normal,'" Dallek wrote for the Guardian before delving into the numerous times America's democracy has been questioned in the past.
The White House has had scandals for years. One of the most notable scandals was Nixon's Watergate, which resulted in a U.S. president resigning for the first and, so far, only time in history. There was also the 1921 Teapot Dome scandal, in which Warren G. Harding's administration came under fire, as Dallek told Vox. This scandal involved the lease of Navy petroleum reserves in California and Wyoming for extremely low rates to private oil companies with no competitive method of bidding. According to Britannica, the culprit was Albert Bacon Fall, the Secretary of the Interior for Warren G. Harding.
Still, amid all of the corruption that has occurred in the White House, the dishonesty committed by Donald Trump (R-Crooked) and his cabinet is nothing to ignore. Trump runs the Trump International Hotel in DC, which brought into question whether he was violating the emoluments clause. A lengthy investigation has delved into the allegations that numerous members of the Trump administration may have gone on extravagant vacationswith taxpayers' money. Former campaign chair Paul Manafort was indicted, and there's a possibility that other members of Trump's administration will be indicted in the near future.
Dallek told Vox that the most unique thing about Trump's corruption is the president's complacency: "Often you see a lot of corruption result from a lack of oversight, but I think this administration is quite different in that Trump really sets the tone for all this. He encourages it, really."
T-rump
School Cancels Muslim Speaker
Bristol, Connecticut
A school has reportedly cancelled a planned speech about Islamafter a teacher organising the talk received threats.
A teacher at Northeastern Middle School in Bristol, Connecticut, had invited a local Muslim woman to speak about her faith and sent a note to parents informing them of the event.
The letter, which was posted online, introduced the speaker as a New York City native who resided in Connecticut and had founded an organisation devoted to "empowerment of Muslim women".
But the speech was cancelled after the teacher received threats, NBC Connecticut reported.
In a statement to NBC, Bristol Public Schools superintendent Susan Kalt Moreau said despite the cancellation "there was an outpouring of support for bringing a speaker in to support our curriculum which includes religions of the world".
Bristol, Connecticut
How Melting Will Affect Specific Cities
Glaciers
Scientists can now evaluate how much an individual glacier or ice sheet melting will contribute to rising sea levels in port cities around the world, according to new research.
Climate scientists have said for decades that human-caused global warming causes ice to melt that in turn will raise global sea levels, and in recent years scientists have made increasingly precise projections about how individual cities will be affected. Global sea levels may rise by more than six feet by 2100, according to research published in the journal PNAS.
The new study, published by NASA researchers in the journal Science Advances, expands on that research with a demonstration of exactly which melting glacier or ice sheet causes sea levels to rise in a given city. An easily digestible platform to evaluate individual cities around the globe allows users to explore those inputs individually and aggregated.
New York, for instance, will be most affected by the northeastern part of the Greenland ice sheet, which will generate about 28% of the city's sea level rise due to melting glaciers and ice sheets (warmer temperatures also expand water, generating higher water levels).
The distribution of rising sea levels will have profound implications for the future of human development along coastlines around the globe, with some scientists say coastal cities like Miami could be uninhabitable by the end of the century without dramatic action to stem greenhouse emissions.
Glaciers
British Explorer Rescued
Benedict Allen
A British explorer has been evacuated from the jungles of Papua New Guinea after being reported missing during an expedition to reach a remote tribe.
Benedict Allen, 57, struck out into the jungle three weeks ago without a mobile phone or GPS unit.
Mr Allen was meant to begin his journey home on Sunday but missed his departure to Hong Kong, where he was due to give a talk to the Royal Geographic Society.
He was trying to reach the Yaifo, who he described on his blog as "one of the last people on the entire planet who are out of contact with our interconnected world".
He added: "Last time, the Yaifo greeted me with a terrifying show of strength, an energetic dance featuring their bows and arrows. On this occasion who knows if the Yaifo will do the same.
Benedict Allen
Cocky Pilot
F-18
The US Navy was left red-faced Friday after a pilot painted an enormous outline of a penis in the sky using the condensation trails from his multi-million-dollar warplane.
Residents of the town of Okanogan, in the western state of Washington, had been stunned to see the F-18 jet scrawling the phallic symbol on Thursday, and several photos quickly circulated online.
Navy officials acknowledged one of their crews was behind the stunt, saying the aircraft "left a condensed air trail resembling an obscene image to observers on the ground."
"The actions of this aircrew were wholly unacceptable and antithetical to Navy core values," Lieutenant Commander Leslie Hubbell, a spokeswoman for the Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, said in a statement.
Photos of the sky drawing in question can be seen at: http://u.afp.com/4j7F
F-18
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