Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Dave Jamieson: How The Fast-Food Chain Led By Trump's Labor Nominee Stiffed Workers Again And Again (Huffington Post)
While Andy Puzder ran Hardee's, its franchisees altered timecards, deducted pay for uniforms and even broke child labor law.
Lee Moran: Fake Vigils Honor Kellyanne Conway's Bogus 'Bowling Green Massacre' Victims (Huffington Post)
Protesters held fake vigils on Friday night to honor the victims of the "Bowling Green Massacre" that never actually happened.
Marc Dion: It's Real People Now (Creators Syndicate)
I know a guy. I don't know how he votes because I was raised not to ask, but I know he is the first generation of his family to be born an American citizen.
Dan Levine and Scott Malone: Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Donald Trump's Travel Ban (Reuters)
The temporary restraining order applies nationwide.
Brian Feldman: Look at the Horrific Injuries 'Tolerant' Liberals Gave This Meme Just for Supporting Trump (NY Mag)
This is the second widely circulated hoax image concerning imaginary beatings of Trump supporters this week: Another widespread image supposedly of a badly beaten Trump-supporting Latino teenager was actually taken from a telenovela.
SOPHIE GOULOPOULOS: Now that's scary! Samara Weaving sports bloodied face and a bruised eye while on the set of Ash vs Evil Dead (Daily Mail)
Originally shared by the makeup artist, Hannah Wilson, the snap depicts exceptionally realistic effects, including a bloodied eye and what appear to be claw marks on Samara's decolletage.
Clive James: 'Gérard Depardieu is not light on his feet. But I've always wanted to be him' (The Guardian)
His nose once looked like a pair of lorries parked side by side, but now the lorries are the size of trains.
Hadley Freeman: I'm American and British. Can I save the special relationship? (The Guardian)
Imagine if both your parents had a midlife crisis, one that involved banning people from the house rather than buying Ferraris.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
Current Events
Cynthia shared this link. It has very funny videos frm several European countries mocking Lumpy.
A Bunch Of European TV Shows Are Mocking Donald Trump With Spoof Tourism Ads | The Huffington Post
As one guy says of the videos, I can't believe I'm laughing at worldwide videos making fun of us and our president. What a buffoon to make the whole world unite in mocking him!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda (& Cynthia)!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
WHAT A REVOLTING DEVELOPMENT THIS IS!
FIRST ANIMAL ABUSER!
'TRUMP IS SETTING US FREE'.
THE TAIL IS WAGGING THE DOG!
HELPING THE CROOKS!
"I DON'T NEED NO STINKING CONSTITUTION!"
I GUESS HE GOT TIRED OF PLAYING MONOPOLY!
"WE CAN ALL SLEEP WHEN THE WORK IS DONE.
AMERICA FIRST!
AMERICA FIRST. PART TWO.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still getting caught up. Ack.
Obama's White House Alumni Fight Tweet For Tweet
T-rump
Some Democrats may think former President Barack Obama has been too quiet since leaving office on Jan. 20 - particularly on the subject of his controversial successor, Donald Trump (R-Grifter).
The same cannot be said of the people who worked for him.
In the days since Trump assumed the presidency, an increasingly ardent and even aggressive army of formerly buttoned-up Obama administration alumni - aides, advisers, speechwriters, spokespeople - have taken to their own social media platforms to rail, loudly and publicly, against pretty much every move Trump has made, undaunted by his 23.5 million followers and determined to tweet fire with fire.
"There are more than a few of us who believe deeply in holding this administration's feet to the fire - especially when they offer falsehoods to the American people and distort our record," a former senior administration official tells Yahoo News. "We have an email chain going where we share impressions, etc."
T-rump
Lurking Under African Island
'Lost Continent'
It's official: A 3-billion-year-old "lost continent" lurks beneath the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, new research confirms.
Sparkly, iridescent flecks of rocks known as zircons from Mauritius date back billions of years, to one of the earliest periods in Earth's history, the researchers found. Other rocks on the island, by contrast, are no more than 9 million years old.
"The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent," Lewis Ashwal, lead author of the new study and a geologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in South Africa, said in a statement.
The traditional thinking is that the island of Mauritius was formed by volcanic activity stemming from one of these midocean ridges, meaning older crust shouldn't be there.
But the new study suggests that a tiny sliver of a primeval continent might have been left behind when the supercontinent Gondwana split up into Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica more than 200 million years ago. Then, the fiery birth of the island blanketed the primeval rock in layer after layer of cooling lava, building up the bulk of the island that is visible today, the researchers said.
'Lost Continent'
38,000-Year-Old Rock Art Discovered
France
In the summer of 2012, a group of archaeologists turned over a broken block of limestone on the floor of a rock shelter in southwestern France and discovered what could be one of the oldest examples of art in Europe.
Scrawled with the image of an aurochs (an extinct species of cattle) and dozens of small dots, the slab was created by the Aurignacians, the first Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe. Radiocarbon tests showed that the engraving dates back to about 38,000 years ago, according to a Jan. 24 report in the journal Quaternary International.
New York University anthropologist Randall White, a co-author of the study who led recent excavations at the rock shelter, said that the discovery "sheds new light on regional patterning of art and ornamentation across Europe" at a time when humans were just starting to spread across the continent.
The slab comes from a partially collapsed rock shelter called Abri Blanchard, where groups of hunter-gatherers would have congregated during the winter.
This 65-foot-long (20 meters) shelter is located near the small town of Sergeac in France's Vézère Valley, a region famous for having some of Europe's oldest examples of cave art. Several other carved slabs were already discovered at Abri Blanchard a century ago, during excavations by amateur archaeologists Louis Didon and Marcel Castanet from 1910 to 1912.
France
Lower Mortality Rates With Foreign-Trained Doctors
U.S. Patients
U.S. patients may have lower mortality rates if their doctors were trained at foreign medical schools rather than at American universities, a recent study suggests.
Researchers examined data for more than 1.2 million hospitalizations handled by general internists at U.S. hospitals and found patients were slightly less likely to die within 30 days after admission if their doctor went to medical school in another country.
"Although we are uncertain exactly why foreign-trained doctors have slightly better outcomes, the U.S. currently sets a very high bar for foreign medical graduates to practice medicine in the U.S.," said lead study author Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, a policy and management researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
"Therefore, the doctors who choose to leave their home country and manage to pass all certification exams may be very capable and motivated individuals," Tsugawa said by email.
International medical graduates make up a quarter of the physician workforce in the U.S., the UK, Canada and Australia, researchers note in the BMJ. In the U.S., doctors trained elsewhere treat a far greater proportion of patients in many rural and underserved communities, previous studies have shown.
U.S. Patients
Will Stop Companies From Providing Subsidized Internet To Low-Income Users
FCC
Nine companies participating in a program designed to provide subsidized internet access to low-income customers have been told by the Federal Communications Commission they are no longer allowed to provide their service.
The decision by the FCC's new leadership to prevent the companies from providing a more affordable internet option marks a reversal of a ruling made by former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler just weeks earlier.
Ajit Pai, the successor to Wheeler and current head of the regulatory commission in the Donald Trump administration, said the decision to give the go ahead to companies providing low-cost internet was an example of a "midnight regulation" passed in the lame duck session.
These last-minute actions, which did not enjoy the support of the majority of commissioners at the time they were taken, should not bind us going forward," he said in a statement.
Pai's reversal effectively stifles an expansion of the FCC's Lifeline program. First launched in 1985, the initiative provides households a $9.25-per-month credit to be put toward the purchase of home internet service. It also provides a credit toward mobile phone subscriptions. The program serves 13 million low-income Americans.
FCC
Pipeline To Start
Dakota Access
The chief executive of Phillips 66 said on Friday he expects the Dakota Access Pipeline to start operations in the second quarter, even though the project - which has sparked protests by Native Americans and environmentalists - is still in the midst of legal battles and a U.S. regulatory review.
Phillips 66 has a 25 percent stake in the $3.8 billion project led by Energy Transfer Partners LP . Phillips 66's CEO, Greg Garland, made the comments on a conference call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.
The pipeline was originally set to start in late 2016 but has faced intense protests and legal challenges from climate activists and Native Americans, led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose land in North Dakota runs adjacent to the route..
"Commercial operations are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2017, pending the issuance of an easement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete work beneath the Missouri River on DAPL," Phillips 66 said in its earnings news release.
Dakota Access
Sales Soar
Milo
Sales are soaring for the upcoming book by incendiary right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos but details of his promotional tour - assuming there is one - are a mystery for now.
A spokeswoman for Threshold Editions, the conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, declined comment Thursday when asked where Yiannopoulos was expected to appear on behalf of "Dangerous." Publishers would usually be anxious to share details about a book just a few weeks from publication, March 14, and in high demand from the public. "Dangerous" was No. 1 on Amazon.com as of Thursday evening.
But the controversy that has driven pre-orders for "Dangerous" has also made promotion unusually complicated. The 32-year-old Breitbart editor, born in Greece and raised in England, is a walking challenge to free speech principles. A vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, Yiannopoulos has made vicious comments about Muslims, women and others, and on his web site offers such products as "Feminism is Cancer" T-shirts and "Fat Shaming Works" hoodies. His harassment campaign last summer against "Ghostbusters" star Leslie Jones led to his banishment from Twitter.
Yiannopoulos' book deal was greeted with immediate anger when announced in late December. Hundreds of authors have objected and one writer, Roxane Gay, withdrew a book she had planned for Simon & Schuster. Many independent sellers have expressed uneasiness, saying they will make the book available if asked for, but will not promote it. One store, The Booksmith in San Francisco, has announced it will neither stock the book nor order a copy upon customer request. Booksmith also said it was cutting orders for Simon & Schuster books by 50 percent.
Milo
Anti-Fascist Protest
NYU
Protestors stormed the campus of New York University in opposition of a conservative guest speaker Thursday night. The speech by Gavin McInnes, which was recorded by a student with the NYU independent news source's Periscope account, NYU Local showed the address to the NYU Republican student body at the Kimmel Center was interrupted by students' Anti-Fascist group about eight minutes into his appearance.
Eleven people were later arrested for misconduct, CBS News reported. During the demonstration, angry protestor sprayed McInnes with pepper spray.
The 22-minute Periscope broadcast showed the Anti-Fascist group screaming at the conservative event's attendees. The group organized the protest on Facebook after discovering the Republican group's event. The event description, which has since been taken down, encouraged students to join them to "let NYU know that we will not stand for bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus," the NYU Local reported.
"No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA!" the crowd chanted.
McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media, comedian and leader of the conservative group "Proud Boys," was invited to speak by the NYU Republicans, according to the NYU Local. McInnes has had a reputation among feminist organizations and the LGBTQ community over his controversial statements written in an article he published on Thought Catalog in 2014 titled Transphobia is Perfectly Normal.. He received backlash for his views on transgerism, which he called a mental illness. He also wrote that changing from one gender to another is in fact "sexist, misandrist, homophobic, and further damages the lives of the mentally ill." After the article was heavily criticized and reported for violating guidelines by the Thought Catalog community, McInnes went on to create his own podcast called "Free Speech with Gavin McInnes."
NYU
In T-rump's Shadow
'President Bannon'
Donald T-rump's chief strategist is rarely heard in public but he has emerged as an ever-present force at the president's side, leaving America in little doubt that Steve Bannon is the new strongman in the West Wing.
The 63-year-old former head of the right-wing Breitbart News site cuts a low-key figure, his stubble-cheeked demeanor somewhere between laid-back and slouchy.
But a cartoon that went viral in the two weeks since the real estate magnate took power sums up what many suspect to be the true power dynamic in the White House.
In it, a tiny Trump sits in the lap of a giant Bannon, who guides his hand as he signs his first decrees and congratulates the "big boy" as a father would a child.
Advocating a radical break with politics-as-usual, Bannon is clearly revelling in his role as America's provocateur-in-chief.
'President Bannon'
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