Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ted Rall: Hiring John Bolton is Donald Trump's Most Dangerous Decision (Creators Syndicate)
Wonder if the families of those dead and injured American soldiers think their role was "fairly minimal."
Greg Sargent: The real reason Trump's choice of John Bolton should terrify you (Washington Post)
What's really happening is that Trump is increasingly surrounding himself with advisers who are better than the "adults in the room" at manipulating his erratic and shifting impulses and whims, by giving a shape to them he can accept and act upon.
Paul Waldman: Why is Trump raging about the budget? Because Democrats got most of what they wanted. (Washington Post)
After threatening to veto the big omnibus spending bill and after railing against it moments before as a "ridiculous situation," President Trump confirmed to reporters that he has signed the $1.3 trillion spending package. Trump also attacked the bill because it doesn't protect the "dreamers," which is like me breaking into your house and then saying I'm angry that you didn't have an alarm system.
Marc Dion: Cigarettes and Coffee (Creators Syndicate)
Back in 2006, President Donald J. Trump is supposed to have played a brief game of bump and shove with a porn star named after a bottle of whiskey.
Froma Harrop: "Capital Idea: Seize the Oligarchs' Manhattan Penthouses" (Creators Syndicate)
Trump is obviously steering clear of sharp-toothed sanctions, such as freezing the U.S. assets of Putin's oligarchs. Others should pursue the idea. Follow the money, they say. And in the case of Putin allies living large on American soil, take it.
Lenore Skenazy: The Human Phoenix (Creators Syndicate)
So why do we associate post-traumatic existence only with disorder and never-ending pain? My guess is it's because as much as we love the hero's journey, we have been taught a much grimmer narrative about real-life trauma: that no one ever recovers. Even to suggest that someone might is considered insensitive.
MATT RICHTEL and ANDREW JACOBS: American Adults Just Keep Getting Fatter (NY Times)
American adults continue to put on the pounds. New data shows that nearly 40 percent of them were obese in 2015 and 2016, a sharp increase from a decade earlier, federal health officials reported Friday.
Paul Krugman: "Friday Night Music: Lucius at Town Hall" (NY Times Blog)
An explanation for readers who may not have followed my old blog: In my later years I have found myself, unexpectedly, a fan of indie music, and began running a regular feature I called "Friday night music," with performance videos by bands I like - sometimes ones I shot myself, sometimes pulled off others.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Microsoft - situational avoidance
Marty
So far, Microsoft has amazingly avoided the spotlight now focused on
Facebook, et al., despite its Windows 10, earlier described as "spyware
in the guise of an operating system"...
Then there's Google, Amazon, et al.
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
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 "JEFF" SESSIONS.
HE'S AN ASS! HE'S CRASS! HE'S 'BOLTON MAN'!
BANG, BANG. SHOOT, SHOOT. DIE, DIE!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still running late. Sigh.
Sued For Defamation
O'Really
A former Fox News anchor filed a defamation lawsuit on Thursday over comments by Bill O'Reilly it says were meant to damage the reputations of women who have accused him of harassment.
The suit by Laurie Dhue in federal court in Manhattan accuses O'Reilly of engaging in a "smear campaign" against his accusers after the former prime-time star or Fox settled their claims for millions of dollars. At least three other women have filed similar suits.
"As part of his desperate campaign to clear his name, O'Reilly published false statements about Dhue . calling her a liar, swearing that her allegations were fabricated in an effort to obtain a settlement," according to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages. It also accuses him of "falsely asserting that her purported claims against O'Reilly were politically motivated."
Fox ousted O'Reilly last year after The New York Times reported that at least five women with professional ties to him had received payouts totaling $13 million to settle claims of sexual harassment and other misbehavior. The newspaper said Dhue received $1 million.
There was no immediate response on Thursday to a request for comment from one of O'Reilly's lawyers. In court papers filed earlier this week in the suits brought by the three other women, his lawyers called the defamation claims "frivolous and wholly unsupported in law or fact."
O'Really
DOJ
AT&T
Will AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner give it a "weapon" to crush pay television rivals or help it catch up with "runaway" technology giants?
Lawyers offered contrasting arguments in US federal court Thursday as the trial kicked off over the government's lawsuit seeking to block the $85 billion merger of the largest US pay TV operator with one of the biggest media-entertainment firms.
Craig Conrath, the US Justice Department attorney arguing for the government, said the tie-up would give AT&T an unfair edge against rival companies and lead to higher prices for the nation's 90 million pay TV subscribers.
But Daniel Petrocelli, the lawyer for AT&T and Time Warner, said in his opening argument that consumers would benefit from a combined firm that competes against tech giants which are dominating advertising and moving increasingly into television.
He said pay TV firms can no longer rely on selling big bundles of channels because "everybody is cutting the cord" and many younger consumers "are not even going into the system."
AT&T
Historians Resolve Fatality Count
USS Indianapolis
Two historians have resolved a decades-old mystery about how many men died when the USS Indianapolis was struck by Japanese torpedoes during World War II.
The Indianapolis Star reports that the number has long varied by one.
Richard Hulver, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, collaborated with historian and filmmaker Sara Vladic on the project.
Nearly 1,200 men were aboard the ship when it was attacked in July 1945. Hulver and Vladic determined that a record-keeping error led to one man's name appearing on some versions of the ship's passenger roster but not on the survivors list.
According to the pair's research, Charles and Ruth Donnor were told their son, Clarence Donnor, was declared missing in action after the tragic voyage. But the couple spoke with their son after the attack and knew he was alive, according to Hulver and Vladic.
USS Indianapolis
The Climate Is Changing
Climate Skeptics
Climate change skeptics may have outlived their usefulness to the fossil fuel industry.
That was one of the key take aways from a five-hour climate tutorial held Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Judge William Alsup, who has a history of digging into the scientific and technical details of the cases before him, ordered the tutorial to better understand climate science before presiding over a case in which the cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing the five largest fossil fuel companies ? ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell ? over the damages of climate change.
Although both sides presented the science that would seem to most help their cases, it was clear that the age of discrediting climate science in general is over. Faced with media investigations, fraud probes and at least a dozen climate liability suits from coastal cities facing large bills as they attempt to adapt to climate change-induced sea level rise, fossil fuel companies have been forced to move away from the position that climate science is invalid or that human-caused emissions don't contribute to climate change. Instead, they're focused on emphasizing a history of uncertainty in climate science, downplaying the severity of climate change and minimizing their role in it.
In this California case, the oil companies are being accused of promoting doubt about climate science, which has delayed regulatory action and left coastal cities to deal with eroding coastlines, property loss and infrastructure damage. The state sees a precedent in its lead paint cases, "where we had to pay out a lot of money to address a damage created by a company, and so to hold those companies responsible we set up an account that they all paid into to cover those costs," explained San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
The writing has been on the wall for outright climate denial ever since documents unearthed by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York in an ExxonMobile fraud probe revealed it publicly promoted doubtabout climate science even as its own scientists' research showed otherwise.
Climate Skeptics
Removes Pages
HHS
The highly trafficked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Women's Health website no longer contains the pages specific to lesbian and bisexual women's health.
A report released this week from government watchdog agency the Sunlight Foundationfound that the pages no longer exist; additionally, other pages have been rerouted in ways that make them nearly impossible to access. The removal of this information has not been publicly communicated on the website, as is required by federal guidelines.
When asked about this newly deleted material, a spokesperson for HHS tells Yahoo Lifestyle in a statement, "The Office on Women's Health strives to provide the most accurate health information on the womenshealth.gov website. As OWH updates its site, the outdated lesbian and bisexual health pages were removed and the health content was integrated into the relevant health topics pages across the website. This aligns with how people search for content."
Those within the administration say the deletion of these pages was part of a larger initiative to make the Women's Health website more mobile-friendly.
But this erasure is significant and part of a well-documented pattern of erasure by the Trump administration, says Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, director of public policy for Advocates for Youth, a nonpartisan group that champions programs that recognize young people's rights to honest sexual health information and services.
HHS
Will Turn
Tables
Barely a week after being booted as Secretary of State on Twitter by Donald Trump (R-Corrupt), a sober Rex Tillerson delivered his goodbyes to staffers in Foggy Bottom. He managed not to mention the President once. But he did make this observation: "This can be a very mean-spirited town".
Welcome to Humiliation City, a place run by a man whose political career was built in part on a single catchphrase from a single reality show. Few better ways exist for stripping a person of their dignity and self-confidence than to declare them "fired" on national TV. You're a loser, go.
Trump has amply demonstrated his gifts as Crusher-in-Chief. Let's go over a few of the highlights. Then we'll consider how Trump might suffer some overdue just deserts.
It's almost too easy to raid the list of administration officials discarded by Trump, much as he might toss an empty tub of deep-fried chicken when he's done eating. Bannon, Tillerson, Spicer, Scaramucci. He dismissed Reince Priebus as his first Chief of Staff after calling him "weak". Andy McCabe had retired as deputy FBI director, then Trump arranged for him to be fired two days before he was due to leave just to deprive him of his pension. I call that vindictive.
The ouster of HR McMaster as National Security Advisor, to make way forforeign policy hawk John Bolton, came by tweet, albeit one packed with praise for him. But there were humiliations aplenty for the Army general during his months at the White House, not least the day he was pushed into the Rose Garden to deny to reporters that Trump had leaked classified information during an Oval Office meeting with Russian officials when it was clear to the world that he had.
Tables
Long-Term Antibiotic Use
Women
New US research has suggested that women who take antibiotics over a longer period of time may have an increased risk of death from heart disease and other causes.
Carried out by researchers from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the study looked at 37,510 women aged 60 years and older who were all free from heart disease and cancer at the start of the investigation.
The women were asked to report on their antibiotic use, before being classified into groups based on how long they had used antibiotics: not at all, less than 15 days, 15 days to less than two months or two or more months.
After following the women for eight years between 2004 and 2012, the team found that those who took antibiotics for two months or longer in late adulthood were 27 percent more likely to die from all causes during the study than women who did not take antibiotics.
In addition, taking antibiotics for two or more months was also associated with a 58 percent higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease when compared to no antibiotic use.
Women
Pits Sea Lions Against Fish
Species Battle
The 700-pound sea lion blinked in the sun, sniffed the sea air and then lazily shifted to the edge of the truck bed and plopped onto the beach below.
Freed from the cage that carried him to the ocean, the massive marine mammal shuffled into the surf, looked left, looked right and then started swimming north as a collective groan went up from wildlife officials who watched from the shore.
After two days spent trapping and relocating the animal designated #U253, he was headed back to where he started - an Oregon river 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean that has become an all-you-can-eat fish buffet for hungry sea lions.
It's a frustrating dance between California sea lions and Oregon wildlife managers that's become all too familiar in recent months. The state is trying to evict dozens of the federally protected animals from an inland river where they feast on salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
The bizarre survival war has intensified recently as the sea lion population rebounds and fish populations decline in the Pacific Northwest.
Species Battle
Tiny Skeleton
Atacama
The discovery in 2003 sparked international intrigue -- a tiny, mummified skeleton with an alien-like head, tucked into a leather pouch found behind a church in the Atacama desert of Chile.
The notion that it was an extra-terrestrial was long ago debunked, but researchers said Thursday they have gleaned new insights from a full genetic analysis of the skeleton, nicknamed "Ata."
It belonged to an infant girl with a handful of rare gene mutations linked to dwarfism, deformities and apparent premature aging, said the study in Genome Research.
Experts have said previously the bones appeared to belong to someone between the ages of six and eight, but this advanced wear on the bones was likely a consequence of the child's deformities, not a reflection of her actual age.
Researchers now say the skeleton -- which is incredibly intact -- is probably no more than 40 years old.
Atacama
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