Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Useful Idiots Galore (NY Times Column)
Russia got a lot of help in the United States hacking the election.
Andrew Tobias: Bye-Bye, Verio - Hello, Electors
OK. Finally free of Verio, which was simply not up to the task of hosting websites reliably. (Wikipedia: "In early 2000 Verio was sold to NTT at . . . a total cost slightly exceeding $5 billion. . . . In late May 2015, Verio . . . was sold to The Endurance International Group, Inc., a low-confidence provider of web solutions who generally tanks new acquisitions, for around $13 million.")
Michael F. Cannon: Democrats can stop Trump via the electoral college. But not how you think.(Washington Post)
As Alexander Hamilton explained, the electoral college provides a backstop in the event voters select a dangerously unfit candidate. "The process of election," Hamilton wrote, "affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." Electors would use their judgment to prevent the "tumult and disorder" that would result from "this mischief" of presidential candidates exploiting "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity."
Robert Fay: Finding Wisdom in the Letters of Aging Writers (Atlantic)
The epistolary collections of authors such as Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, and Elizabeth Bishop suggest that old-fashioned communication can offer invaluable insight into the process of growing older.
Alexis Petridis: R&B is in a golden age - and 2016 was its most potent year yet (The Guardian)
From Beyoncé and Frank Ocean to Dawn Richard and Laura Mvula, there was a sense that artists saw success as a means to an end, whether that was speaking out or pushing boundaries.
David Bruce: A One-Issue Voter (Davidbruceblog)
One major political party wants to keep the safety net and make it stronger. For example, it prefers to raise taxes rather than lower the benefits paid by Social Security or raise the age at which people can get Social Security. The other major political party follows these steps: 1) Look at the deficit! 2) Let's lower benefits! 3) Look at all this money! 4) Let's lower taxes! 5) Repeat as many times as possible.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
answered:
took the day off.
took the day off.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
David E Suggests
Age of the Aged
David
Thanks, Dave!
Reader Suggestion
Great Lakes
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Suggestion
Bobcat
Hey, it's an animal, and The Trumpinator has no control of it, so enjoy.
Reader Comment
Press conference
Listened to part of Obama's press conference this afternoon. I kept trying, and failing, to imagine His Orangeness speaking as clearly or articulately. Tried and failed to imagine His Orangeness being able to put together a complex sentence. Tried and failed to imagine His Orangeness holding a thought with any depth in that skull.
Well, we won't have to listen to another press conference for the next 8 years. And since I refuse to do Twitter or social media, I won't have to put up with that crap either. Call me blissfully ignorant.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JACKSON 'PIGLET'.
"BIRTHERS" AND "HACKERS".
BURP!
HELLBENDERS!
"RUSSIA DID IT."
STRANGE DAYS ARE HERE.
BRIBERY AND BLACKMAIL CENTRAL.
THE DICTATORS.
THE COUP!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Windy and cold.
World's Smallest Porpoise
Vaquita Marina
Mexican authorities and scientists are scrambling to save the world's smallest porpoise, the vaquita marina, from extinction, capturing illegal "ghost" fishing nets while hoping to make specimens reproduce in captivity.
The environment ministry said Thursday that the navy, conservation groups and fishermen removed 103 nets between October 10 and December 7 in the upper Gulf of California.
The vaquita's population has dropped under 60 despite the government's deployment of navy ships in April 2015 to prevent illegal fishing with nets that accidentally ensnare the porpoise.
The vaquita has died in gillnets used to illegally catch a large fish known as the totoaba, which is also endangered.
Fishermen capture the totoaba for its swim bladder, which is dried and sold to smugglers, who then ship them to China, where it can for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market and is eaten in soup.
Vaquita Marina
Employees Ward Off Robber
Lotions & Lace
Two brave clerks at an Inland Empire sex store warded off an alleged armed robber by throwing adult toys at him.
A man, seen in surveillance video as wearing a gray hoodie and holding what appears to be a gun, entered Lotions & Lace in San Bernardino on Wednesday night at about 9:45 p.m., just 15 minutes before the shop closed. He was seen striding through the racks of lingerie to the counter where he immediately encountered two female employees and demanded the cash from their till. But, the alleged robber got more than he bargained for when one employee-identified by ABC 7 only as Amy-decided she didn't have time for his shenanigans.
"I just thought he was trying to be funny, to scare us. But then I saw the gun and it was like, really? I don't have time for this," she said.
Amy suspected that the gun he was carrying was a fake, and was not scared. She instead described herself as "really irritated." The video depicts the two employees yelling at the man and flinging a variety of sex toys at him until he leaves the shop.
Lotions & Lace has multiple locations throughout Southern California, including shops in Costa Mesa and Montclair. As you may have guessed, they sell adult novelty items, sex toys, lingerie and, yes, lotions. The San Bernardino location has four stars on Yelp, and many patrons who apparently found the customer service-in ordinary, non-robbery circumstances-to be excellent.
Lotions & Lace
New Study Casts Doubt
Anne Frank
Anne Frank may not have been betrayed to Nazi occupiers, but captured by chance.
A new study published Friday by the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam says that despite decades of research there is no conclusive evidence that the Jewish diarist and her family were betrayed to the Netherlands' German occupiers during World War II, leading to their arrest and deportation.
Ronald Leopold, Executive Director of the Anne Frank House museum, said in a statement Friday that new research by the museum "illustrates that other scenarios should also be considered."
One possible theory is that the Aug. 4, 1944, raid that led to Anne's arrest could have been part of an investigation into illegal labor or falsified ration coupons at the canal-side house where she and other Jews hid for just over two years.
Another possibility raised by the report is that the raid was part of an investigation into people being allowed to work to prevent them being called up as forced labor and sent to Germany.
Anne Frank
Auction Disappeared From Internet
Ivanka
A charity auction for a coffee date with Ivanka Trump has been removed from Internet.
The auction was intended to benefit the Eric Trump Foundation, which supports terminally-ill children at St. Jude Research Hospital. However, a New York Times article published Thursday also raised ethical questions about whether face time with an influential member of the future First Family should be up for sale.
Bidding for the coffee outing-which would have lasted 35 to 40 minutes-started at $8,000 on Dec. 5 on CharityBuzz.com. As of Thursday evening, the highest bid for the java date was $67,888, from Russell Ybarra, a Tex-Mex restaurant chain owner who wanted to encourage Ivanka to push her father, President-elect Donald Trump, not to restrict immigration law.
The Times piece quoted ethics lawyers who said that offering meetings with Ivanka Trump to the highest bidder could raise problems given how involved the President-elect's eldest daughter has been in the transition process. Bidders also included a London-based investment manager who wanted to learn about Trump's diplomatic plans for countries like Turkey where he invests, and a real estate executive who wanted to communicate with the president about election fraud.
Eric Trump told the Times on Thursday he was considering shutting down the auction. The original link to the site now redirects to CharityBuzz's homepage, and no explanation was provided as to why the bid was removed. Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ivanka
House GOP Quietly Closes Investigation
Flint, Mich.
Congressional Republicans quietly closed a year-long investigation into Flint, Michigan's crisis over lead in its drinking water, faulting both state officials and the Environmental Protection Agency for contamination that has affected nearly 100,000 residents.
In letters to fellow Republicans, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Friday that Michigan and federal officials were slow in detecting high levels of lead in the water and did not act fast enough once the problem was discovered.
"The committee found significant problems at Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality and unacceptable delays in the Environmental Protection Agency's response to the crisis," wrote Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. "The committee also found that the federal regulatory framework is so outdated that it sets up states to fail."
Flint's drinking water became tainted when the city switched from the Detroit water system and began drawing from the Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The impoverished city was under state control at the time.
Regulators failed to ensure the water was treated properly and lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply.
Flint, Mich.
T-rump Builds Team Of Oil Allies
Climate Scientists
Climate scientists worried that President-elect Donald Trump (R-Grifter) will slash their budgets and sideline their research are entering survival mode, trimming the words "climate change" from study proposals, emphasizing business applications of their work, and safeguarding data that shows global warming is real.
The early reactions, gathered by Reuters in more than a dozen interviews, may foretell a broader shift in the U.S. climate science community, which had enjoyed solid political and financial support under President Barack Obama but could be isolated under a new administration skeptical of climate change and committed to expanding oil drilling and coal mining.
"I think it is maybe really necessary to refocus what you are doing and how you are labeling it," said Andreas Prein, a scientist at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research, who previously had changed the term "climate change" in a project for the oil industry and expects such linguistic twists to proliferate.
Trump has questioned whether climate change exists and has raised the possibility of withdrawing U.S. support for a global accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which an overwhelming majority of scientists believe is driving sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms.
Trump is also preparing to nominate cabinet members with close oil industry ties, including Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and former Texas Governor Rick Perry as energy secretary.
Climate Scientists
Elderly French Couple Convicted
Pablo Picasso
An elderly French electrician and his wife were convicted on Friday of illicitly procuring hundreds of Picasso artworks that they kept for almost 40 years in the garage of their home.
An appeals court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence gave a two-year suspended sentence to Pierre Le Guennec, who carried out electrical work at the home of Pablo Picasso's last wife in the early 1970s, along with his wife, Danielle.
The two were also ordered to hand the works over to Picasso's heirs and to pay legal and other related costs. The court also upheld an earlier ruling ending six years of legal wrangling that began when the Le Guennecs took out the 180 paintings and other artworks as well as a book of 91 drawings in 2009-10 to get them authenticated, revealing their existence.
The artworks that were kept in a box in the Le Guennecs' garage have an estimated combined worth of 60-100 million euros ($63-$105 million), according to public prosecutors.
Pierre Le Guennec argued at the trial that he was given the artworks by Jacqueline Picasso upon her husband's death at 91 in 1973, which sparked a succession feud between her and her son-in-law, Claude.
Pablo Picasso
Financial Conflicts Of Interest
GMO Studies
Financial conflicts of interest were found in 40 percent of published research articles on the genetically modified crops, also known as GMO crops, French researchers said this week.
The findings in the December 15 edition of the US journal PLOS ONE focused on hundreds of research articles published in international scientific journals.
Researchers also found that studies that had a conflict of interest were far more likely to be favorable to GM crop companies than studies that were free of financial interference.
Among the 350 articles without conflicts of interest, 36 percent were favorable to GM crop companies.
Among the 229 studies with a conflict of interest, 54 percent were favorable to GM companies.
GMO Studies
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers.
1. Adele; $3,649,630; $109.07.
2. Barbra Streisand; $3,603,460; $258.94.
3. Justin Bieber; $2,931,828; $82.15.
4. Drake; $2,216,942; $112.23.
5. Kanye West; $1,872,742; $88.13.
6. Marc Anthony; $1,670,772; $131.93.
7. Luke Bryan; $1,595,499; $64.32.
8. Maroon 5; $1,249,866; $93.35.
9. Jason Aldean; $1,149,514; $52.08.
10. Black Sabbath; $962,337; $64.06.
11. Sia; $921,900; $80.34.
12. "Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour" / Puff Daddy; $920,868; $83.91.
13. Nickelback; $876,412; $97.51.
14. Dixie Chicks; $794,001; $68.22.
15. Carrie Underwood; $703,262; $70.68.
16. Florida Georgia Line; $679,577; $44.69.
17. Dolly Parton; $636,847; $80.62.
18. Keith Urban; $585,146; $59.68.
19. Def Leppard; $565,586; $50.76.
20. Blink-182; $536,180; $36.64.
Global Concert Tours
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