Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: The Republican War on Children (NY Times Column)
Let me ask you a question; take your time in answering it. Would you be willing to take health care away from a thousand children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so that you could give millions of extra dollars to just one wealthy heir? You might think that this question is silly, hypothetical and has an obvious answer. But it's not at all hypothetical, and the answer apparently isn't obvious. For it's a literal description of the choice Republicans in Congress seem to be making as you read this.
JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH: "MSNBC Rehires Contributor Sam Seder: 'Sometimes You Just Get One Wrong'" (NY Times)
"We made our initial decision for the right reasons - because we don't consider rape to be a funny topic to be joked about," Mr. Griffin said in his statement. "But we've heard the feedback, and we understand the point Sam was trying to make in that tweet was actually in line with our values, even though the language was not. Sam will be welcome on our air going forward."
Daniel Shaviro: Newly published report on taxpayer game-playing under the Republicans' tax cut act
This report describes various tax games, roadblocks and glitches in the tax legislation currently before Congress. The complex rules proposed in the House and Senate bills will allow new tax games and planning opportunities for well-advised taxpayers, which will result in unanticipated consequences and costs. These costs may not currently be fully reflected in official estimates already showing the bills adding over $1 trillion to the deficit in the coming decade. Other proposed changes will encounter legal roadblocks, that will jeopardize critical elements of the legislation. Finally, in other cases, technical glitches in the legislation may improperly and haphazardly penalize or benefit individual and corporate taxpayers.
Matt O'Brien: For the last time: Tax cuts don't pay for themselves (Washington Post)
There really are only two certainties in life. The first is that Republican politicians will pretend their tax cuts will largely pay for themselves, and the second is that Republican economists will largely indulge them in this.
Sarah Blackwood: YouTube Subway Videos and the Search for the Sublime (Slate)
The train is late again. One after another, waiting passengers wander up to the yellow line and lean out a bit to peer into the tunnel. The tunnel doesn't answer back. Finally, the distant sound of clunking metal crescendos into a deafening rail squeal. The Q has arrived. The doors open ("bing bong!"), and a crowd pours out of the overstuffed car while other passengers push their way in. Is this my mindless morning routine, every single weekday? Yes! But it's also my kids' favorite thing to watch on a screen.
ROBERT KUTTNER: "Al Franken: The Tragedy and the Travesty" (Prospect)
The Senate Democrats succeeded in throwing Al Franken under the bus. They may come to rhttp://prospect.org/article/al-please-dont-resignegret it.
Lead us not into mistranslation: pope wants Lord's Prayer changed (The Guardian)
Pope Francis says wording of prayer implies that God induces temptation but that is Satan's department.
Jonathan Jones: Arguing over art is right but trying to ban it is the work of fascists (The Guardian)
A failed petition to remove a controversial Balthus painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the latest worrying attempt to censor a work of art.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Pimped Out Wheelchairs
David
Thanks, Dave!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
A fun opinion piece
Large Adult Son vs. Idiot Son--no contest:
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 LAST TIME AMERICA WAS GREAT WAS WHEN "WE HAD SLAVERY"
"OUR JERUSALEM"
GOD DAMN CRIMINALS.
TRAITORS TO THE CONSTITUTION!
DONALD TRUMP IS A WACKO.
REPUBLICANS ARE EVIL.
THE LYING LIARS OF ALA-DAMN-BAMA.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Dry and warmer than seasonal.
Woman With An Opinion
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep says she and other actresses are planning to make a series of "non-negotiable" demands in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations that have rocked Hollywood, media and politics.
Streep on Thursday also called the allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein "the most gargantuan example of disrespect" permeating every industry.
She said women still don't have enough representation in leadership positions and that impacts how decisions are made. Streep said women in the entertainment industry are prepared to demand for equal representation in board rooms and other improvements to the American workplace.
"We are after 50/50 by 2020," she said to loud applause. "Equal means equal. And if it starts at the top, none of these shenanigans would have filtered down and it wouldn't have been tolerated."
Streep made the comments in a conversation with feminist icon Gloria Steinem at the Massachusetts Women's Conference in Boston.
Meryl Streep
Delayed 'Nureyev' To Premiere
Bolshoi
A Bolshoi Theatre ballet based on the life of Russian dance legend Rudolf Nureyev that was abruptly pulled in the summer will premiere Saturday, despite its director remaining under house arrest.
In a move unprecedented in the theatre's modern history, the Bolshoi in July cancelled the world premiere of "Nureyev" just three days before opening night, after director Kirill Serebrennikov was questioned in a high-profile criminal inquiry.
Management cited an under-rehearsed cast but many suspected it had been pulled because of the investigation or the ballet's treatment of Nureyev's homosexuality.
Serebrennikov was placed under house arrest in August in a fraud case that has shocked the Russian arts community.
Dozens of prominent figures in Russia and international stars, including Cate Blanchett and Ian McKellen have called for Serebrennikov to be released without charge.
Bolshoi
Name Removed From USC Film School
Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer's name is being removed from the USC's Division of Cinema and Media Studies, the school announced in a statement on Friday.
The statement stopped short of saying his name was being permanently removed, however, and instead noted that the use of his name was "suspended" until the sexual assault allegations against Singer are resolved.
The news comes a day after a new lawsuit was filed against the "X-Men" director, alleging that Singer raped a 17-year-old boy on a yacht in Seattle in 2003. "Bryan categorically denies these allegations and will vehemently defend this lawsuit to the very end," Singer said in a statement about the lawsuit on Thursday.
Last month, USC students started a petition to remove Singer's name from the film school over previous allegations. It has accrued more than 4,000 signatures since it was launched on Nov. 7.
The name removal is the latest in a storm of recent news about Singer. Earlier this week, Fox fired him as director of Queen biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" after repeated absences forced the studio to halt production. Singer, however, claims that Fox refused to allow him to care for a sick parent.
Bryan Singer
'Graffiti' Discovered
Isaac Newton
Towering thinker Sir Isaac Newton carved a now-barely visible doodle of a windmill into a stone wall in his childhood home, according to a news release from the National Trust.
The drawing was discovered at Woolsthorpe Manor, the Lincolnshire, England, home where Newton was born in 1642, said the National Trust,which protects the house and other heritage sites in the United Kingdom.
Newton is famous for his laws of motion, theory of universal gravitation and an experiment that involved shooting sunlight through a prism to create a rainbow effect (and inspire a very famous Pink Floyd album cover). But before Newton was a Sir, he was a boy - and apparently that boy had a thing for drawing on walls.
Chris Pickup, an independent conservator and doctoral candidate at Nottingham Trent University in England made the discovery while investigating the manor. Pickup used a photographic technique called reflectance transformation imaging (RTI). By bathing the interior walls of the manor in light coming from multiple different directions, Pickup was able to capture details of the surfaces that would be otherwise invisible to the naked eye, including the faded outlines of Newton's alleged doodle.
Newton was born at the manor on Christmas Day, 1642, and spent the first few years of his life at the house. Decades later, in 1665, Newton returned to Woolsthorpe when the University of Cambridge, where he was studying, closed due to an outbreak of the plague. It was at Woolsthorpe that Newton performed many of his experiments involving light and optics, including the famous work with prisms that led him to conclude white light contains all other colors in combination. An apple tree still standing in the nearby orchard is said to be the very tree that inspired Newton to develop his law of universal gravitation, after watching an apple drop from the branches to the grass below.
Isaac Newton
Stark Warning
Obama
Barack Obama has warned of the fragility of American democracy, making reference to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Speaking during a question and answer session at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, the former US president warned against growing nativism in America.
"We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly," Mr Obama said.
"That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s which, despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph Hitler rose to dominate," he said, according to newspaper Crain's Chicago Business.
"Sixty million people died," he added. "So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."
Obama
Won't Attend Civil Rights Museum Opening
John Lewis
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Thursday that he will not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend because President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Racist) "attendance and hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed" in the museum.
"After careful consideration and conversations with church leaders, elected officials, civil rights activists, and many citizens of our congressional districts, we have decided not to attend or participate in the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum," Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, said in a statement.
Lewis said the president's "disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants, and National Football League players disrespect the efforts" of civil rights leaders.
"The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi," he added. "After President Trump departs, we encourage all Mississippians and Americans to visit this historic civil rights museum."
John Lewis
Poll Shows Support Dropping
White Evangelicals
A new national Pew Research Center poll released Thursday shows that President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Corrupt) approval rating is declining among demographic groups that previously gave him relatively high numbers, particularly among evangelicals.
According to Pew, Trump's approval rating among white evangelical Protestants dropped 17 percentage points from February to December, down from 78 percent to 61 percent. Eighty-one percent of white evangelical voters backed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, NPR reported.
Though the decline was not as steep, Trump's approval rating also dropped among adults 50 and older (from 47 percent to 38 percent) as well as among whites (49 percent to 41 percent). As Axios noted, Trump's approval rating had either remained the same or droppedamong every demographic group Pew polled.
The survey was conducted Nov. 29 to Dec. 4 among 1,503 participants nationwide, a period during which Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. According to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll taken in the wake of Flynn's plea, half of Americans thought the ties between Russia and Trump's team were a legitimate issue.
Trump's approval rating has been hitting record lows throughout his first term in office, and Pew's latest survey is no exception. It found that 32 percent of respondents approved of Trump's job performance while 63 percent disapproved.
White Evangelicals
Resumes Issuing Birth Certificates
Arkansas
Arkansas' governor ordered health officials on Friday to treat married lesbian and heterosexual couples the same when listing the parents on a birth certificate, in an effort to comply with a June U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state's birth certificate law was discriminatory.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson's (R-Remember Me?) directive came hours after a judge blocked the state from issuing any birth certificates until it complied with the June ruling. Arkansas stopped issuing and amending birth certificates for about two hours Friday morning after the injunction by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, who also cancelled mediation he had ordered between attorneys for the state and three same-sex couples to find a fix to the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with Fox's 2015 ruling striking down part of a birth certificate law defining parents by gender. That overturned an Arkansas Supreme Court decision. The state Supreme Court ordered Fox in October to come up with a way for the state to comply with the U.S. high court's decision.
The law required the name of the husband to appear on the birth certificate when a married woman gave birth in Arkansas, regardless of whether he was the biological father. But married lesbian couples had to get a court order to have both spouses listed. The three couples who sued the state were allowed to amend their children's birth certificates in 2015 under a ruling issued by Fox.
Hutchinson's order said the department must list the spouse of the woman who gives birth, regardless of the spouse's gender. The state Health Department, which had stopped issuing and amending birth certificates Friday morning because of Fox's ruling, resumed after the governor's directive. Hutchinson directed the department to issue corrected birth certificates at no charge to married lesbian couples who should have had both spouses listed as parents. Hutchinson also ordered the department to notify hospital administrators of the new procedures.
Arkansas
Scientists Warn
Canola Oil
Cooking with canola oil is extremely common, but a new study might make you think before subbing it in for the ever-popular olive. Researchers from Temple University found that canola decreased learning ability, inhibited memory and led to weight gain for mice with Alzheimer's disease.
The findings were published today in Scientific Reports and offer new insight into how the very common product could be impacting our brains. Very little current research focusing on this area exists.
"Canola oil is appealing because it is less expensive than other vegetable oils, and it is advertised as being healthy," study co-author Dr. Domenico Praticò, said in a statement. "Very few studies, however, have examined that claim, especially in terms of the brain." Praticò directs the Alzheimer's Center at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
The team used mice engineered to have Alzheimer's disease, splitting them into two groups when they were six months old (before any signs emerged). The control group was given a standard diet and the experimental group was given a supplement that equaled roughly two tablespoons of canola oil each day.
When the animals were assessed at a year old, the team noticed one stark difference: Mice who consumed canola oil were heavier than their control counterparts. But then, the scientists performed tests on the animals to study short-term memory, working memory (which helps us remember things like our favorite cake recipe) and how well mice could learn. They found that the mice eating canola oil performed poorly in all three areas.
Canola Oil
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