Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: A Few Notes for a New National Anthem (Creators Syndicate)
"Oh, say can you see the holster on me? I have fed it my vote and the lives of my children." Too dark. An anthem's got to be, well, not peppy, but you should never use words like "entrails."
Susan Estrich: "TRUMP: 'Nothing's as Bad as the 9th Circuit'" (Creators Syndicate)
It should come as no surprise that a president who governs by tweets and shoots first and checks later would attack the courts, just like he attacks everyone else who disagrees with him. But courts aren't like everyone else. The rule of law depends on our respect for them, respect that this president serves to undermine without even appearing to realize what he is doing. And that is a whole lot scarier than Nixon on his worst day.
Paul Krugman: Oh! What a Lovely Trade War (NY Times Blog)
O.K., so what's complicated about trade policy? First, a lot of modern trade is in intermediate goods - stuff that is used to make other stuff. A tariff on steel helps steel producers, but it hurts downstream steel consumers like the auto industry. So even the direct impact of protectionism on jobs is unclear.
STEPHANIE RUHLE and PETER ALEXANDER: Trump was angry and 'unglued' when he started a trade war, officials say (NBC NEWS)
According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.
Chad P. Bown: Trump has announced massive aluminum and steel tariffs. Here are 5 things you need to know. (Washington Post)
The Trump administration made the politically controversial decision in April 2017 to initiate these national security cases. Details of the investigations were kept secret, and the decision on whether to eliminate billions of dollars of trade is now up to the president alone. If Trump follows through with tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, there is no statutory process for ending them. Even the prospect of trading partners legally engaging the WTO to protect their economic interests runs the risk of making matters worse.
Ben Williams: "Barry Crimmins: the standup comic who stood up for those who couldn't" (The Guardian)
The late satirical comic was an early name in an underpopulated subgenre and spent his life campaigning to protect children from sexual abuse.
Jeremy Gavron: The highest form of flattery? In praise of plagiarism (The Guardian)
Echoes of Amélie in Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, traces of Nabokov in Kristen Roupenian's Cat Person ... Where is the line between influence and plagiarism?
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Bill Maher clip
In the embedded 6 minute clip Bill Maher mocks Hope Hicks, Jared, Predator, the NRA--all the easy targets:
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
WILL BERTA GET HER DAY IN COURT?
BLOWBACK!
"FIERCER STORMS MAY BE ROUND THE CORNER."
"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"
"BYE, BYE BIBI."
THE LIST.
POOR LITTLE NUNERS.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
No more rain.
'Get Out' Earns Top Honor
Independent Spirit Awards
"Get Out," a horror thriller that examines U.S. race relations, won the top honour at the Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, independent film's biggest prize and the final awards ceremony ahead of the Oscars.
Jordan Peele, a comedian who wrote and directed the film, also won best director at the annual awards that recognises the year's best independent achievements made on small budgets.
The last four winners of the Spirit Awards' top prize - "Moonlight," "Spotlight," "Birdman" and "12 Years a Slave" - all went on to win the best picture Oscar, which will be awarded on Sunday.
Frances McDormand, who has so far swept all major awards for her role as an aggrieved mother in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," won best actress at the casual beachside ceremony. She is also tipped to win the Academy Award.
Allison Janney, who has won all top awards as an abusive mother in biopic "I, Tonya" won best supporting actress while Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor for his part as a racist, alcoholic police officer in "Three Billboards."
Independent Spirit Awards
Pledges $2.5 Million
Everytown for Gun Safety
Gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety said on Friday it will donate up to $2.5 million to support marches around the United States on March 24, the date of a planned March For Our Lives in Washington to demand an end to school shootings.
They are calling for the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to overhaul gun laws to make schools safer in a country where school shootings happen multiple times a year.
The deadly shooting last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people were killed, gave rise to a student-led movement organizing the planned march in the nation's capital.
Organizers said more than 300 other related events are being organized in support of the march both in the United States and abroad. Everytown will give grants of $5,000 to organizers of up to 500 "sibling" marches, to help with permits, equipment rentals, transportation and other costs.
"Students are making history and demanding that our elected officials protect them," John Feinblatt, Everytown's president, said in a statement. Everytown is a non-profit group founded by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of the Bloomberg media company and former New York City mayor.
Everytown for Gun Safety
Conservative Concerns
Kentucky
A bill to stop child marriage in Kentucky was stalled by a conservative group this week, leaving some state lawmakers furious. But the group said they just want to protect parents' rights in the process.
State Sen. Julie Raque Adams (R-Louisville) introduced Senate Bill 48 after she learned that Kentucky has the third-highest rate of child marriage in the country, just below Texas and Florida, according to Insider Louisville. From 2000 to 2015, more than 10,000 children were married in Kentucky, according to the Tahirih Justice Center.
Donna Pollard, a leading advocate for the bill, told the Courier Journal that she was married at 16 to an older man who had sexually abused her since she was just 14. She said she was encouraged to marry by her mother, who had been wed at just 13 years old herself.
She described her former husband as a "perpetrator" who regularly abused her.
The so-called "child bride" legislation would bar marriage for anyone under age 17 and require judicial approval for a 17-year-old to wed. Under current law, 16- and 17-year-olds can marry with parental permission, and children can marry even younger when there's a pregnancy involved, Insider Louisville explains.
Kentucky
Rebel Against Clergymen
Overworked Nuns
Three nuns lashed out on Friday against the menial work they have to do for clergymen, often for no money, in a rare public criticism of the Catholic Church's male hierarchy.
"Some sisters employed by clergymen get up at dawn to prepare breakfast and only go to bed once dinner has been served, the house cleaned and the laundry washed and ironed," said Sister Marie, who came to Rome from Africa 20 years ago.
Voicing criticism is no simple task for nuns from developing countries, who may have had school fees or medical care for their relatives paid by their religious congregations.
"The sisters feel obliged, bound and so they keep quiet," Marie told the monthly magazine "Women, Church, World" published with the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano.
Pope Francis in 2016 said nuns should speak out against unreasonable work conditions but warned against falling into the "trap of feminism".
Overworked Nuns
'Screams Of The Children'
Parkland Survivors
Survivors of last month's deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, have delivered a blistering message to President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Tone Deaf).
Students David Hogg and Cameron Kasky joined Bill Maher on Friday's broadcast of "Real Time" to talk about the upcoming "March For Our Lives" and their campaign for gun control.
During the wide-ranging interview, Hogg described how the White House had called him the day before the president held a "listening session" on the issue, to invite him to attend.
Hogg declined the invitation, which he called "very offensive, considering the fact that there were funerals the next day, there was mourning we still had to do."
Kasky also delivered a strong response to members of the National Rifle Association and lawmakers who claim the student activists "don't know what they're talking about."
"We've been locked in a classroom. We have seen our friends text their parents goodbye. We are the experts," he said. "We know exactly what we're talking about. How dare you tell us we don't know?"
Parkland Survivors
Benefiting Shareholders
New Tax Law
Since President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) signed the Republican tax bill in December, hundreds of retail companies have announced employee bonuses totaling more than $3 billion, which Republicans have said proves them right that the new law benefits regular Americans.
But so far, companies have thrown a lot more money at their shareholders than at their workers. According to several estimates, firms have announced roughly $200 billion worth of stock buybacks this year, inflating the value of company shares by reducing their supply.
"Stock buybacks are windfalls that drive up the value of investment portfolios for CEOs and high-flyers," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a Senate floor speech this week. "And they're coming in at a rate 30 times greater than worker bonuses - 30 to one! They're on pace to double the amount from the first quarter of last year."
Buybacks are controversial because they can represent a missed opportunity for a company to invest in its own productive capacity or its workers, and it just so happens that executive pay is usually tied to stock performance.
Companies have increasingly plowed profits into stock buybacks over the past several decades because doing so lines corporate executives' pockets, argues William Lazonick, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. According to Lazonick's analysis of the compensation of the 500 highest-paid executives, stock-based gains accounted for 82 percent of their pay in 2015.
New Tax Law
'Are Good And Easy To Win'
Trade Wars
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Crooked) spoke out defiantly Friday against global criticism of his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, seeming to welcome the idea of a trade war.
"When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win," Trump wrote in an early morning tweet.
"Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don't trade anymore-we win big. It's easy!" the president wrote.
The tariffs -- 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum -- cover two materials that are the lifeblood of the construction and manufacturing sectors.
The announcement was greeted with fury within key US trading allies such as Canada, the EU, Australia and Mexico, as well as rival China.
Trade Wars
Iditarod Set To Begin
Alaska
The 46th running of Alaska's famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race kicks off Saturday amid the most turbulent year ever for the annual long-distance contest that spans mountain ranges, the frozen Yukon River and dangerous sea ice along the Bering Sea coast.
Among the multiple problems: a champion's dog doping scandal, the loss of major sponsor Wells Fargo, discontent among mushers and escalating pressure from animal rights activists, who say the dogs are run to death or left with serious injuries. The Iditarod has had its ups and downs over the decades, but the current storm of troubles is raising questions about the future of the 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) race that for many symbolizes the contest between mortals and Alaska's unforgiving nature.
Leo Rasmussen, one of the race's founders, predicted the Iditarod is heading for extinction within the next few years, given an "extreme lack of organization" from its leadership.
There's one bright spot for organizers: Optimal trail conditions. A warming climate in recent years has caused significant disruptions, including the rerouting of the 2017 and 2015 races hundreds of miles to the north because of dangerous conditions. As always, the race will begin with the customary ceremonial start in Anchorage, but the competitive portion beginning Sunday north of Anchorage will follow a southern route for the first time since 2013. Traditionally, southern and northern routes are alternated every year.
Alaska
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. Bruno Mars; $3,743,612; $104.63.
2. Guns N' Roses; $1,804,477; $135.52.
3. Lady Gaga; $1,630,947; $105.96.
4. Dead & Company; $1,586,940; $107.75.
5. Jay-Z; $1,455,733; $102.14.
6. Little Mix; $1,212,975; $55.63.
7. The Killers; $899,806; $71.73.
8. Scorpions; $821,175; $106.93.
9. Imagine Dragons; $791,762; $65.29.
10. Trans-Siberian Orchestra; $759,351; $56.74.
11. André Rieu; $715,813; $94.01.
12. Chris Stapleton; $667,719; $49.25.
13. Ozuna / Wisin; $654,009; $73.33.
14. Janet Jackson; $623,048; $74.36.
15. Queens Of The Stone Age; $569,310; $54.42.
16. Fall Out Boy; $522,783; $59.77.
17. Jerry Seinfeld; $473,066; $97.98.
18. Avenged Sevenfold; $455,548; $50.46.
19. Bryan Adams; $421,473; $66.92.
20. Jim Gaffigan; $379,456; $53.38.
Global Concert Tours
In Memory
David Ogden Stiers
David Ogden Stiers, best known for his role as the arrogant surgeon Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on "MASH," died Saturday. He was 75.
For his work on "MASH," Stiers was twice Emmy nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy or variety or music series, in 1981 and 1982, and he earned a third Emmy nomination for his performance in NBC miniseries "The First Olympics: Athens 1896" as William Milligan Sloane, the founder of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
The actor, with his educated, resonant intonations - though he did not share Major Winchester's Boston Brahmin accent - was much in demand for narration and voiceover work, and for efforts as the narrator and as of Disney's enormous hit animated film "Beauty and the Beast," he shared a Grammy win for best recording for children and another nomination for album of the year.
He voiced Dr. Jumba Jookiba, the evil genius who created Stitch, in 2002's "Lilo & Stitch" and various spinoffs; once he became part of the Disney family, Stiers went on to do voicework on a large number of movies, made for TV or video content and videogames.
In addition to serving as narrator and as the voice of Cogsworth in "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991, he voiced Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Disney's 1995 animated effort "Pocahontas" and voiced the Archdeacon in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." He also contributed the voice of the grandfather for the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's 1992 animation "Porco Rosso" and of Kamaji in Miyazki's classic "Spirited Away" in 2001. From 2011-15 he recurred on Cartoon Network's "Regular Show."
Indeed, it was his voice that earned him his first screen credit - as the announcer in George Lucas' 1971 film "THX 1138."
In the busy year of 1985, Stiers also played the father to John Cusack's hero in the '80s teen movie "Better Off Dead" and the bitter enemy to Peter O'Toole's eccentric scientist in "Creator," while also appearing in ABC miniseries "North and South" as Congressman Sam Greene.
David Allen Ogden Stiers was born not in New England but in Peoria, Illinois, though the family moved to Eugene, Oregon, while he was in high school. He briefly attended the University of Oregon, began his professional career at the Actors Workshop in San Francisco, the California Shakespeare Festival and improv group the Committee before heading East and, starting in 1968, attending New York's Juilliard and then joining at launch the Houseman Acting Company, where he was mentored by John Houseman.
In 1971 he made his first bigscreen appearance, in the Jack Nicholson-directed "Drive, He Said."
He soon had a recurring role on the brief Barnard Hughes sitcom "Doc" and guested on "Kojak," "Charlie's Angels," "Phyllis," "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Rhoda" before being cast as Major Winchester on "MASH." Even during his years on the hit show, he appeared in movies including "Oh! God," starring John Denver and George Burns; "The Cheap Detective," with Peter Falk; ventriloquist horror movie "Magic" with Anthony Hopkins; and TV movies including "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (1979), "The Oldest Living Graduate" (1980), "Father Damien: The Leper Priest" (1980) and "The Day the Bubble Burst."
Stiers had his musical side, conducting orchestras around the world.
In 2009, the actor revealed publicly that he was gay. He told ABC News at the time that he had hidden his sexuality for a long time because so much of his income had been derived from family-friendly programming, and coming out thus might have had repercussions in the past.
David Ogden Stiers
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