Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Resisters (Creators Syndicate)
Seven. Get out the vote. Fixing habits one through six should free up time to do what really matters, and this is it. The resistance has already scored major victories in Virginia and Alabama through improved turnout. Imagine the sweep in Virginia had Republican state lawmakers not gerrymandered the map.
Paul Krugman: Faust on the Potomac (NY Times Blog)
I haven't yet read Wolff's book - do I really have to? - but the basic outlines of his story have long been familiar and uncontroversial to anyone with open eyes. Trump is morally and intellectually incapable of being president. […] It seems to me that that the real news now is the way Republicans in Congress are dealing with this national nightmare: rather than distancing themselves from Trump, they're doubling down on their support and, in particular, on their efforts to cover for his defects and crimes.
Josh Marshall: Did Trump Ever Have a Chance? (TPM)
Six months ago I joked that the President's defenders would eventually come around to arguing that we should pity the President rather than hold him in contempt because he'd been raised in a culture of criminality and had no experience following the law. The weird thing is that I'm now coming around to that defense. Now, needless to say, it's no defense. But allow me to explain.
Susan Estrich: How Democrats Can Lose the House (Creators Syndicate)
"I think we've got the House," one California Democrat said to me not long ago. "It's the Senate we need to focus on." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Cry, I think. This is how Democrats lose the House.
Marc Dion: Trust and Verification (Creators Syndicate)
And I asked her if she wanted to stay married for another year, as I promised her I would nine years ago, at a loud New Year's Eve party in a bar. "Yes," she said.
Lenore Skenazy: When Parents Can Know Everything About Their Kids (Creators Syndicate)
"Arkangel," an episode of the Netflix show "Black Mirror" directed by Jodie Foster, had me cheering - which is a little odd, seeing as it is an incredibly horrifying tale of what can happen when parents get what some think they want: the chance to watch what their children are doing every minute and shield them from all misery and harm.
Mark Coker: "2018 Book Industry Predictions: Are Indie Authors Losing their Independence?" (Smashwords)
Welcome to my annual publishing predictions post where I prognosticate about the future and share my views on the state of the indie nation. Each year around this time I polish off my imaginary crystal ball and ask it what the heck is going to happen next. My crystal ball was a bit surly this year. The first thing it told me was, "you don't want to know." Less than helpful.
Mark Coker: Smashwords 2017 Year in Review and 2018 Preview (Smashwords)
Welcome to my annual Smashwords year in review for 2017 and preview of the year ahead.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Janet shared the link below. Twitter responses to a GOP request for birthday messages to private citizen & idiot son Eric Trump:
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
JD took the day off.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The weather prognosticators are teasing us with a chance of rain this week.
University of Illinois Expert Helps Libraries
Puerto Rico
A University of Illinois expert is helping libraries in Puerto Rico assess and repair collections that were damaged by Hurricane Maria.
Miriam Centeno is the collections care coordinator at the University of Illinois Library. She's also a Puerto Rico native. She'll spend two weeks as a consultant at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez, the News-Gazette reported .
The university's library sustained heavy water damage from the September hurricane. The collections themselves weren't damaged by water, but by mold from the building going weeks without electricity and air conditioning.
"From what I hear, the climate conditions are pretty bad," Centeno said. "The water didn't hit the books, which is a miracle. It damaged some parts of the library that were more like reading areas. But the problem is the mold that permeates the entire environment."
Centeno will lead a program to teach library staff members how to assess and clear their collections, put damaged materials in better storage and develop disaster preparedness plans.
Puerto Rico
How To Prepare For A Nuclear Explosion
CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week - days after President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Buffoon) bragged about the size and effectiveness of his "Nuclear Button" (which doesn't exist) ? that the agency will hold a public session on how to prepare for a nuclear explosion.
The CDC said its briefing, which is scheduled for the afternoon of Jan. 16, will address "planning and preparation efforts" for such a strike.
"While a nuclear detonation is unlikely, it would have devastating results and there would be limited time to take critical protection steps," the CDC explained in its description of the event. "Despite the fear surrounding such an event, planning and preparation can lessen deaths and illness."
The agency said most people "don't realize that sheltering in place for at least 24 hours is crucial to saving lives and reducing exposure to radiation."
Good to know.
CDC
Ample Weapons
California
In the decades since a 1969 oil spill near Santa Barbara tarred sea-life and gave rise to the U.S. environmental movement, politicians and environmental activists have built up ample ways to make it difficult but not impossible for the Trump administration to renew drilling off California's coast.
The Interior Department said Thursday it plans to open most federal waters off the United States to oil leases.
In California, where no new federal leases offshore have been approved since 1984, Gov. Jerry Brown joined governors of Oregon and Washington in vowing to do "whatever it takes" to stop that from happening off the West Coast.
State officials, environmental groups and oil-industry analysts say California has solid regulatory and legal means to try to make good on that threat.
For one thing, oil companies know that even if the federal government sells leases in federal waters, California and other coastal states by law control the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore, all along the coasts.
California
Getting Worse
Coral Bleaching
Global warming is making the world's oceans sicker, depleting them of oxygen and harming delicate coral reefs more often, two studies show.
The lower oxygen levels are making marine life far more vulnerable, the researchers said. Oxygen is crucial for nearly all life in the oceans, except for a few microbes.
"If you can't breathe, nothing else matters. That pretty much describes it," said study lead author Denise Breitburg, a marine ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "As seas are losing oxygen, those areas are no longer habitable by many organisms."
She was on a team of scientists, convened by the United Nations, who reported that the drop in oxygen levels is getting worse, choking large areas, and is more of a complex problem than previously thought. A second study finds that severe bleaching caused by warmer waters is hitting once-colorful coral reefs four times more often than they used to a few decades ago. Both studies are in Thursday's edition of the journal Science .
When put all together, there are more than 12 million square miles (32 million square kilometers) of ocean with low oxygen levels at a depth of several hundred feet (200 meters), according to the scientists with the Global Ocean Oxygen Network. That amounts to an area bigger than the continents of Africa or North America, an increase of about 16 percent since 1950. Their report is the most comprehensive look at oxygen deprivation in the world's seas.
Coral Bleaching
'Mental Stability And Being, Like, Really Smart'
Greatest Assets
Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) has claimed his two greatest assets are his mental stability and "being, like, really smart".
In a series of early-morning tweets, the President hit back at questions about his capacity for office after revelations in Michael Wolff's explosive new book renewed scrutiny of his mental health.
"The Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence," Mr Trump wrote.
He added: "Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.
"Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top TV Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius... and a very stable genius at that!"
Greatest Assets
U.S. Changes Policy
Marijuana
Cannabis businesses across the United States said they are bracing for an investment slowdown following the U.S. Justice Department's Thursday directive that will allow the enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized the drug.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R-Opossum) announced that the Justice Department was rescinding an Obama-era policy that eased enforcement of federal marijuana laws amid a wave of legalization in states from Alaska to Pennsylvania.
"In the short term, this news will further scare away investors which will, in turn, slow down cannabis entrepreneurship," said Nicolas Ruiz, co-founder of Cloudponics, a San Francisco startup that makes technology which can be used to grow marijuana.
Marijuana legalization has spurred new businesses from growers to retailers, delivery services, providers of supplies and technology startups serving the industry.
Lawmakers from U.S. states that have legalized marijuana, including California and Colorado, denounced the directive, vowing to enforce their laws and protect the burgeoning cannabis industry.
Marijuana
Won't Give Information To Homeland Security
Vote Fraud Panel
A lawyer for President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) voter fraud commission indicated Friday that the panel will not turn over voter information it collected from states to the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump disbanded the commission on Wednesday, and the White House said DHS would take over the commission's work of investigating voter fraud, which several studies and investigations have shown is not a widespread problem. The announcement prompted confusion and concern over what DHS would do with personal voter roll data that the commission, as of October, had collected from 20 states. As a federal agency, DHS faces restrictions on how it can collect and use Americans' personal information that the commission, which was only a federal advisory committee, did not have.
On Friday, the ACLU of Florida filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the commission from giving any personal information it collected to DHS. In an email that was included in the ACLU's filing, Joseph Borson, a Department of Justice attorney representing the commission, said the panel had no intention of turning information over.
"First, as you know, the Director of White House Information Technology ("DWHIT") is maintaining the data submitted by the States, and has made clear that no other entity or persons beyond a limited number of his technical staff have access to it," Borson wrote. "We have additionally been authorized to represent that the data will not be transferred or utilized; thus, there is no basis for emergency injunctive relief."
The comment only adds to confusion about how DHS will take up the commission's work. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) has said he would be an informal adviser to DHS and told Politico he expected Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run state voter rolls against databases to identify noncitizens on the voting rolls. Experts warn that's not a reliable way to identify people illegally on the rolls.
Vote Fraud Panel
Breitbart 'Considering Sacking Steve '
Bannon
Donald Trump's (R-Corrupt) public attack on his former confidante Steve Bannon (R-Alt Reality), has reportedly led his current employer to consider his position.
Board members on the right wing Breitbart News Network, where Mr Bannon is executive chairman, met earlier this week to discuss whether to sack him, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In a rare statement, Rebekah Mercer, a billionaire and key funder of the news outlet, directly criticised the former White House strategist.
Mr Bannon is reportedly considering a defamation lawsuit against Mr Trump, who said he had "lost his mind" after he was sacked from his White House role.
Bannon
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. The Rolling Stones; $9,996,473; $158.81.
2. U2; $8,355,366; $117.39.
3. Coldplay; $5,638,206; $104.60.
4. Paul McCartney; $5,206,084; $139.39.
5. Bruno Mars; $2,811,918; $109.80.
6. Guns N' Roses; $2,427,489; $124.96.
7. Lady Gaga; $2,423,108; $116.76.
8. Roger Waters; $2,225,025; $117.94.
9. Dead & Company; $1,667,123; $111.11.
10. Jay-Z; $1,505,729; $101.29.
11. Ed Sheeran; $1,472,778; $84.45.
12. Depeche Mode; $1,429,206; $87.35.
13. Neil Diamond; $1,313,396; $112.95.
14. The Weeknd; $1,157,594; $87.13.
15. Tim McGraw / Faith Hill; $999,130; $83.31.
16. Katy Perry; $997,860; $107.03.
17. Foo Fighters; $997,292; $90.83.
18. Enrique Iglesias / Pitbull; $991,703; $87.67.
19. John Mayer; $982,825; $67.34.
20. Little Mix; $969,392; $55.17.
Global Concert Tours
In Memory
Jerry Van Dyke
Jerry Van Dyke, the younger brother of Dick Van Dyke who earned four Emmy nominations for playing the befuddled defensive coordinator Luther Van Dam on the ABC comedy Coach, has died, a source close to his family confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 86.
Van Dyke famously passed up the opportunity to star on Gilligan's Island in favor of toplining the short-lived My Mother the Car, considered one of the worst shows in TV history.
Van Dyke started out as a banjo-playing stand-up comic, and his fun persona throughout his long career was that of a country boy, endearingly earnest and slow-witted.
After working on several TV shows that never stuck, Van Dyke earned supporting actor Emmy nominations in 1990, '91, '92 and '94 for his work as one of Craig T. Nelson's assistants on the staff of the Minnesota State University Screaming Eagles on Coach. The series aired for nine seasons, from 1989 until 1997.
More recently, Van Dyke had a recurring role as Tag Spence, the father of Patricia Heaton's Frankie, on The Middle. Dick appeared as his brother on the ABC sitcom in 2015, and the two often appeared on the small screen together. They also shared the stage for a production of The Sunshine Boys.
In fact, one of Jerry Van Dyke's biggest and earliest breaks came in 1962 when he was hired to portray Rob Petrie's sleepwalking sibling Stacey on two episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. (He was a sleepwalker in real life.)
In 1963, Van Dyke appeared in the features Palm Springs Weekend, directed by Norman Taurog; Vincente Minnelli's The Courtship of Eddie's Father; and the John Wayne Western McClintock!
Jerry Van Dyke was born on July 27, 1931, in Danville, Ill., five-and-a-half years after his brother. Their father was a traveling salesman, and when their parents traveled to Hollywood to see Dick's nightclub act in 1948, Jerry went along and decided to make comedy his career.
In 1962, Van Dyke did his act on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Andy Williams Show. A year later, he was a regular performer on The Judy Garland Show and the host of a CBS game show called Picture This.
Following the quick demise of My Mother the Car in 1966, Van Dyke starred as a widowed nightclub performer with a young son on NBC's Accidental Family and as a gym teacher on CBS' Headmaster - that one starred Griffith in his first show after his iconic series ended - but both series were short-lived.
Van Dyke was memorable in a guest-starring stint as Wes Callison, the writer for Chuckles the Clown's show, on two episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and he played Mike O'Malley's dad on CBS' Yes, Dear.
An avid poker player, he also appeared as Luther on The Drew Carey Show and Grace Under Fire, and his TV résumé included stints on That Girl, Gomer Pyle: USMC, 13 Queens Boulevard, Love, American Style, Fresno, Fantasy Island, Teen Angel and Raising Hope.
Jerry Van Dyke,
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