Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: How Democrats Can Deliver on Health Care (NY Times Column)
The most dramatic example of how this can be done is New Jersey, where Democrats gained full control at the end of 2017 and promptly created state-level versions of both the mandate and reinsurance. The results were impressive: New Jersey's premiums for 2019 are 9.3 percent lower than for 2018, and are now well below the national average. Undoing Trumpian sabotage seems to have saved the average buyer around $1,500 a year. Now that Democrats have won control of multiple states, they can and should emulate New Jersey's example, and move beyond it if they can. Why not, for example, introduce state-level public options - actuarially sound government plans - as alternatives to private insurance?
'I made a tremendous difference': Trump heaps Thanksgiving praise on himself (The Guardian)
Asked what he was thankful for this year, Trump cited his "great family" … as well as himself. "I made a tremendous difference in this country," he said. "This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office and you wouldn't believe it and when you see it, we've gotten so much stronger people don't even believe it."
Greg Sargent: Another judge just blocked Trump. His ruling contains a warning. (Washington Post)
We are now learning that the troops President Trump sent to the southern border are already being brought home, even as the first migrants in the "caravan" begin to arrive. In case you doubt that this whole exercise was a campaign stunt, note that since the election, Trump himself has gone oddly quiet about what he previously claimed was a national emergency. But make no mistake: The legal battle over the fates of those generally seeking asylum here is very much alive, and the long-term stakes are very high.
Sam Wasson: "Some Like It Hot: How to Have Fun" (Criterion)
Most great movies are great, as their admirers show us, because they contain hidden multitudes. These great movies, they are palimpsests, rich in layered meaning and subtle complexity. "Look again," we're told (and tell each other). "There's even more in there the second time around." We revisit these great movies over and over, and each time we do, we are amazed to discover in them something new and marvelous, and just when we're certain the great movie's many marvels have all been discovered, we find ourselves older, our perspectives another year matured, and the great movie looks, incredibly, even wiser than before; it has actually gotten better. Criticism is to these movies what light is to a prism. Some Like It Hot is not one of these movies.
Mary Beard: Unconditional Offers (TLS)
There have been some very odd objections to the new "fashion", so we are told, of universities making school students "unconditional offers" (ie offers of a place that is not conditional on them getting certain A level, or IB, or other grades). Now we all know the rather gloomy, financial, state of affairs that underlies this practice: funding now depends to a very great extent on bums on seats, and if you can get a student bum on your university seat, rather than on that of the university down the road, you have come out ahead. But some of the objections are rather terrifying.
Mary Beard: Echo Chambers (TLS)
People often talk of Twitter as an echo-chamber; a bit of an oversimplification , to be sure, but you know what they mean.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
• Alexander the Great claimed to be the son of Zeus, the Greek god who was married to the goddess Hera. Alexander once wrote his mother, Olympias, and began his letter, "King Alexander, son of Zeus Ammon, greets his mother Olympias." His mother wrote back, "My son, please don't say such things. Don't slander me, or bring charges against me before Hera. She really will have it in for me if you admit in your letter that I'm her husband's lover!"
• Once a mother, always a mother. Sculptor Louise Nevelson was justly proud of her son, Myron "Mike" Nevelson, who was also a sculptor. A friend of Mike's once heard him on the telephone talking to his mother. The middle-aged sculptor said, "Yes, Mother. Yes, I've eaten. I had lunch. I have eaten, Mother."
• When Marc Cherry, the openly gay creator of TV's Desperate Housewives, came out to his mother, she told him, "Well, I'd love you even if you were a murderer." This line was so funny that he wrote it into the series.
• Actress Noreen Nash, one of the stars of the movie Giant, found it easy to decide to give up shooting on location. After shooting a movie, she returned home and discovered that her two-year-old son barely knew who she was.
• When Twyla Tharp was young, her mother drove her hundreds of miles to music and dance lessons. Once, her mother estimated that during Twyla's youth, she had driven young Twyla 30,000 miles to her lessons.
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Reader Comment
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Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
TRUMP IS NUTS!
"THE THREAT TO YOUR 'WAY OF LIFE' IS THE WAY YOU ARE LIVING IT."
CAPITALISM MUST GO!
THE STUPID FASCISTS ARE AT IT AGAIN.
GOOD NEWS!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny and seasonal.
Heaven's Door Whiskey
Bob Dylan and Jimmy Fallon
On Thursday's episode of The Tonight Show, Bob Dylan made his first late-night appearance in over three years - but it wasn't anything like you'd expect.
In the two-minute segment, Dylan takes host Jimmy Fallon to a private performance by the Big Apple Circus. They watch the acrobats from the stands as they sip Dylan's new whiskey line, Heaven's Door. It all seems a bit abstract and surreal, especially as the music legend is noticeably mute the entire time and Erik Satie's "Gymnopédie No. 1? plays in the background.
The whole thing ends with Dylan mysteriously disappearing and Fallon wondering whether it was all just a dream. "What was in that whiskey?" he asks.
Dylan launched his Heaven's Door whiskey earlier this year. "We both wanted to create a collection of American whiskeys that, in their own way, tell a story," he explained in a statement at the time. "I've been traveling for decades, and I've been able to try some of the best spirits that the world of whiskey has to offer. This is great whiskey."
Bob Dylan and Jimmy Fallon
Helped Baby Seal
Kaley Cuoco
Kaley Cuoco took some time out of her Thanksgiving celebrations to try to aid a young seal that appeared to be in distress.
The "Big Bang Theory" star said in an Instagram post Thursday that she and husband Karl Cook were at his family's beach house in California when she "came across a baby seal who was obviously lost and in pain."
She called the hotline for the Santa Barbara-based Channel Island Marine & Wildlife Institute, and though she worried no one would be able to respond because of the holiday, multiple volunteers came to the beach.
"I'm thankful these gracious people left their thanksgiving plans to help an animal in need," Cuoco wrote in the post, which included a video showing the seal and the volunteers.
The group's website makes it clear that Cuoco did the right thing by calling in experts rather than attempting to intervene herself. CIMWI's guide on helping stranded marine mammals notes that laypeople who see a wild animal they think needs help should keep a safe distance and note the animal's physical condition, characteristics and location, and then call for aid.
Kaley Cuoco
Blasts
Fox Rupert NewsHillary
Hillary Clinton issued a stinging critique of the U.S. news media in an interview with The Guardian published Friday - but she saved her harshest words for President Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) favorite cabler, Fox News.
"You watch Fox News, it's always, 'Something terrible is about to happen,' 'Something terrible did happen,' 'These people are doing all these awful things,'" the former Democratic presidential nominee told the paper.
"It is totally divorced from reality, but it is superb propaganda," Clinton said. "I don't know the best way to puncture that. You have to hope that reality catches up with politics and entertainment at some point."
Citing research on fascism by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Clinton compared Trump to authoritarian leaders abroad, describing him as someone who "craves dominance" and attacks those news outlets that challenge his assertions.
"Now [Trump] doesn't attack Fox News, because they're like a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and the Republican Party now. So he attacks the press and the broadcast media that raise questions about him, that don't give him fidelity and loyalty," she said.
Hillary
Double Dipper
Bill Shine
Bill Shine received an $8.4 million severance package upon leaving his post as co-president of Fox News Channel in May 2017, according to a financial disclosure form he filed upon entering Donald Trump's (R-Inadequate) White House as deputy chief of staff for communications. The document was released to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, a day after Thanksgiving.
Shine, who officially began working in the White House on July 5, will also receive a bonus and options of about $3.5 million from 21st Century Fox both this year and next year.
That means that Shine will be paid simultaneously by both the White House and the parent company of Fox News, a network that has had close ties to the Trump administration. The severance agreement expires on May 1, 2019.
Shine signed his financial disclosure form on Oct. 9, after receiving a 68-day extension. According to a background briefing given at the White House in the spring of 2017, new hires have 30 days to complete the financial disclosure form, though they're entitled to two 45-day extensions.
Shine, who joined Fox News in 1996, received a $1,460,000 salary from the company, according to the form.
Bill Shine
Suspends Saudi Weapon Export Approvals
Denmark
Denmark has suspended future approvals of weapons and military equipment exports to Saudi Arabia in response to the killing of a dissident Saudi journalist and the kingdom's role in the conflict in Yemen, the Danish Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
Germany has already suspended issuing future weapons export licenses and has moved to halt all arms sales, while France said on Monday said it will decide soon on sanctions over Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last month.
Saudi Arabia is one of the world's biggest weapons importers. It heads a military coalition fighting in a civil war in Yemen in which tens of thousands of people have died and caused a major humanitarian catastrophe.
"With the continued deterioration of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, we are now in a new situation," said Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen in a statement.
Meanwhile, U.S. President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Catamite) on Wednesday praised Saudi Arabia for helping to lower oil prices but pressure intensified for the United States to impose tougher sanctions on its Middle East ally over Khashoggi's murder.
Denmark
'Preening, Clueless Clown'
Foreign Leaders
A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post says that Donald Trump's (R-Inept) statement earlier this week in response to the murder of United States-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabian agents has only made foreign leaders - especially those leaders of authoritarian regimes - see Trump as a laughingstock, easily manipulated by flattery.
In the statement issued Tuesday, as CNN reported, Trump said that the U.S. will do nothing beyond already-imposed sanctions against 17 individual Saudis in response to the October 2 slaying of Khashoggi. The Central Intelligence Agency has concluded with "high confidence" that Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally ordered the murder of the journalist, per a separate CNN report. Khashoggi was an outspoken critic of bin Salman's rule and often expressed his views in columns for the Washington Post.
But Trump has shrugged off the CIA findings, saying in a statement that, "it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event - maybe he did and maybe he didn't!"
Trump's response, according to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson - who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2009 - shows only that bin Salman, and other foreign rulers, know that they can have their way with Trump by appealing to his vanity.
"Trump's reaction - or non-reaction - to the Saudi regime's brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe," Robinson wrote in a Thanksgiving Day column. "It shows them that if you just shower Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder."
Foreign Leaders
2009 Book Warning
Ivanka
Senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump faces a House investigationinto her alleged use of a personal email account for government business.
But President Donald Trump's (R-Fabulist) eldest daughter perhaps should have known better, given how she reportedly wrote about the dangers of communicating via email in her 2009 book The Trump Card: Playing To Win In Work And Life.
"My friend Andrew Cuomo, New York's great attorney general (who is now Governor of New York), tells me that e-mail is the key to prosecuting just about everyone these days," wrote Trump.
Trump added that people "can be so incredibly slapdash with their electronic messages, as if they were some modern version of smoke signals that can disappear without a trace."
But it was "just the opposite," she noted. "E-mail correspondence can be retrieved in perpetuity, so there's no hiding from what you've written in haste or just hoping it goes away."
Ivanka
France To Return Treasures
Benin
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday agreed to return 26 cultural artefacts to Benin "without delay", a move that could put pressure on other former colonial powers to return African artworks to their countries of origin.
The decision -- which Macron said should not be seen as an isolated or symbolic case -- came as the president received the findings of a study he commissioned on repatriating African treasures held by French museums.
Macron agreed to return the 26 works, mainly royal statues from the Palaces of Abomey -- formerly the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey -- taken by the French army during a war in 1892 and now in Paris' Quai Branly museum.
In addition, he proposed gathering African and European partners in Paris next year to define a framework for an "exchange policy" for African artworks.
Britain has also faced calls to return artefacts, including the Elgin Marbles to Greece and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, while museums in Belgium and Austria house tens of thousands of African pieces.
Benin
Lurking in The Soil
Giant Viruses
There's a forest in Massachusetts that for nearly 30 years has hosted the world's longest running soil-warming experiment, measuring how hotter temperatures impact the tiny life-forms that live in the dirt.
With the way climate change is going, you could say the future itself is buried in that heated dirt. But our unknown tomorrows aren't all that's hiding there.
In this oversized outdoor research laboratory, scientists have made an unexpected discovery, finding 16 rare 'giant' viruses that are completely new to science.
"We were not looking for giant viruses," says biologist Jeff Blanchard from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass).
Once upon a time, when soil warming wasn't perhaps quite as crucial a phenomenon to understand as it is today, scientists thought all viruses were incredibly small things, much smaller than bacteria.
Giant Viruses
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