Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Things I Learned on the Street (Creators Syndicate)
I'm a newspaper reporter for a midsize daily paper in an economically depressed Massachusetts city. While I'm not on the "crime beat," the paper has a small enough staff that everyone does a little bit of everything.
Connie Schultz: Trump Speaks, Children Listen (Creators Syndicate)
My grandson is one-fourth Latino - his maternal grandfather is Puerto Rican - and he lives in a community where most of the people are black. Many in his town speak one language at home, and English when they are with people like him. These people are his neighbors and classmates. Many of them are his friends.
Susan Estrich: August (Creators Syndicate)
What Trump needed to do this summer was convince people he really could be president, that he belonged in that small group of people who Americans can imagine in the White House. What he did was just the opposite. Even white men are turning on him. Imagine: Hillary Clinton closing the voting gender gap. Only the Donald could make that happen.
Lenore Skenazy: Adulthood 101 (Creators Syndicate)
So now, even as it offers its adulting class, East Carolina intends to reach out to elementary, middle and high schools and try to restore some childhood resiliency. It's not such a tall order. Simply by giving kids a little more unsupervised time when they're young we can create students who are more ready - and happy! - to become unsupervised adults.
Kathy Benjamin, AuntieMeme: 14 Epic Comebacks Stars Gave To Stupid Interview Questions(Cracked)
Like that time a journalist asked Nirvana, "How would you define the music of Nirvana?" Which, I mean, how are they even supposed to answer that? So all three guys burst into a crappy, simple, impromptu song with their mouths before Kurt grabbed a lemon, squeezed it, and added, "With a twist of lemon."
Lucy Mangan: 'Rambo' George Osborne will soon be back on the A-Team (The Telegraph)
What is carpet bombing, napalm and Agent Orange defoliation but austerity made flesh?
Clive James: 'I watched everything at Rio, far into the night, cycle races and gymnastics' (The Guardian)
Nothing could beat the women's gymnastics. The men's gymnastics almost did, but it was short of women, or one woman: Simone Biles.
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Really?
It wasn't a photo op, but Lumpy passed out TOYS to flood victims for 49 seconds. How do toys help flood victims??
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Yep, really!
Guess Lumpy figures home is where the Play-Doh is.
Trump Disobeys Louisiana Governor to Bravely Deliver Play-Doh to Flood Victims (VIDEO)
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
Eliminating $5.3 Trillion of Fossil Fuel Subsidies - EcoWatch
"OLYMPIC JEWS?"
THE DIRTY ELEVEN!
SINGLE PAYER NOW!
STOP THE EVIL NOW!
THE SCAB ON THE WOUND!
A PIG AT THE TROUGH.
STOP BEING STUPID YOU IDIOT!
LITTLE PACs OF SHIT.
THE STORY BEHIND 'THE EMPEROR HAS NO BALLS.'
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Long, long day.
93-Year-Old WWII Vet
Ernie Andrus
A 93-year-old World War II veteran finished jogging across the U.S. on Saturday morning, an endeavor he began in California nearly three years ago.
Ernie Andrus set out to run across the country to raise money to restore and return a World War II-era ship to Normandy, France for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing in 2019, the Associated Press reported. Andrus had served as a medic on a similar ship, according to the AP.
Andrus spent about $170,200 on the cross-country project, and he received about $48,800 in sponsorship donations, according to his website. He also received $16,225 in donations to the ship, which does not include any contributions made directly to the ship memorial fund. On his website, he estimated it would take millions of dollars to restore and move the ship.
Andrus began his journey on Oct. 7, 2013. He reached the Atlantic Ocean on St. Simon's Island in Georgia on Saturday, a day after his 93rd birthday.
Ernie Andrus
Pot Plants At State Fair
Oregon
Nine living marijuana plants will be displayed at the Oregon State Fair in a first of its kind event for the United States starting next Friday.
The exhibit of the non-flowering, immature plants brings pot cultivation more into the agricultural mainstream less than two years after Oregon voters legalized recreational marijuana. The Oregon Cannabis Business Council, which organized the exhibit, says it's the first time live cannabis will be shown at a state fair anywhere in the U.S.
The group last year had an informational booth about marijuana at the fair and there were no complaints - a key factor in allowing them to go one step further and offer live plants for viewing this year, said Dan Cox, spokesman for the Oregon State Fair.
The specimens were selected by judges at a competition last weekend who chose three winners each in the sativa, indica and hybrid categories.
The entire exhibit will be housed in a translucent tent and extra security will be on hand to check identification so only people 21 and over can enter, Cox said.
Oregon
Gay Rights Setback
Illinois
An Illinois Supreme Court ruling is a step backward for same-sex couples and will harm all unmarried domestic partners who might want a court to decide a property dispute after a break-up, according to gay rights advocates.
The court on Thursday rejected 5-2 a claim by a Chicago woman who split up with her partner after nearly 30 years of living together and raising children. The two women split in 2008, years before Illinois legalized same-sex marriage.
Eileen Brewer, a Cook County judge, was seeking a share in Dr. Jane Blumenthal's medical practice as restitution. Her attorneys asked the state high court to overturn its 1979 position barring such claims by unmarried partners.
Writing for the majority , Justice Lloyd Karmeier rejected the argument, saying the 1979 ruling in Hewitt v. Hewitt "remains good law" and if the Legislature had wanted to revive common-law marriage, it would have done so. Common-law marriage has been barred in Illinois for more than a century.
In her dissent, Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote that Illinois, Georgia and Louisiana are the only states that don't recognize property-division claims between unmarried partners. She said the majority opinion reaffirmed "an oddly myopic and moralistic view of cohabitation."
Illinois
Poster Blunder
Hollywood
A poster for upcoming Hollywood movie "Arrival" mistakenly featuring a Shanghai landmark on Hong Kong's skyline was taken down from the film's official Facebook page Friday after sparking outrage and ridicule.
Hong Kong is deeply divided over mainland China's governance of the city, with many angered by what they see as Beijing's tightening grip, and the error sparked a torrent of comments on social media under the hashtags #HongKongisnotChina and #HongKongindependence.
The poster showed a giant vertical spaceship over the semi-autonomous city's harbour with the Oriental Pearl Tower, perhaps Shanghai's best known landmark, prominently featured in the foreground.
The poster was still displayed on the official Facebook page on Thursday evening but was replaced by a message on Friday blaming a contractor for the gaffe.
Hollywood
Highest Maternal Mortality Rate In Developed World
Texass
The rate of Texas women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014, a new study has found, for an estimated maternal mortality rate that is unmatched in any other state and the rest of the developed world.
The finding comes from a report, appearing in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that the maternal mortality rate in the United States increased between 2000 and 2014, even while the rest of the world succeeded in reducing its rate. Excluding California, where maternal mortality declined, and Texas, where it surged, the estimated number of maternal deaths per 100,000 births rose to 23.8 in 2014 from 18.8 in 2000 - or about 27%.
But the report singled out Texas for special concern, saying the doubling of mortality rates in a two-year period was hard to explain "in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval".
In the wake of the report, reproductive health advocates are blaming the increase on Republican-led budget cuts that decimated the ranks of Texas's reproductive healthcare clinics. In 2011, just as the spike began, the Texas state legislature cut $73.6m from the state's family planning budget of $111.5m. The two-thirds cut forced more than 80 family planning clinics to shut down across the state. Theremaining clinics
At the same time, Texas eliminated all Planned Parenthood clinics - whether or not they provided abortion services - from the state program that provides poor women with preventive healthcare. Previously, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas offered cancer screenings and contraception to more than 130,000 women.
Texass
Unfair To Poor
Bail-Or-Jail
Local courts that jail poor defendants because they can't afford to pay bail are unlawfully discriminating against the poor, federal attorneys say in a legal brief in a Georgia lawsuit.
The U.S. Justice Department says such policies are unconstitutional.
The federal brief was filed Thursday with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the lawsuit of a north Georgia man who spent six days in jail in the city of Calhoun because he couldn't afford $160 bail following his arrest on a misdemeanor charge.
U.S. Justice Department lawyers argue that such policies "unlawfully discriminate" against poor defendants by using preset bail amounts that don't take into account the accused person's ability to pay.
The department said it's the first time it has weighed in with a legal opinion in federal court on bail systems used by state and local courts.
Bail-Or-Jail
To Forfeit Book Proceeds
Former SEAL
The Pentagon has dropped a claim against a former Navy SEAL who wrote about his experiences in the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden, after he agreed to forfeit earnings from the book, his lawyer said Friday.
Matt Bissonnette, who in 2012 published a book about his role in the raid titled "No Easy Day," has finalized a settlement with the US government, Robert Luskin confirmed to AFP.
"Mr Bissonnette has agreed to pay the United States all of his past and future proceeds from the publication of 'No Easy Day,'" Department of Justice spokesperson Nicole Navas said earlier in a statement.
Bissonnette will pay the US government some $6.8 million in book royalties and speaking fees, Luskin said.
The Obama administration had filed a claim against Bissonnette for publishing the book without Pentagon approval and violating non-disclosure agreements.
Former SEAL
Experts Clash On Age
Land Bridge
Despite reports that the land bridge connecting the Americas is "older than the hills," it is actually quite young, geologically speaking - only about 2.8 million years old, a new review of studies finds.
The finding contrasts with several recent studies purporting that the land bridge, known as the Isthmus of Panama, formed between 6 million and 23 million years ago, and reveals important details about the evolution and migration of animal species in different regions of the Americas.
These dates didn't jibe with data from other studies, the scientists of the new paper said. So they did an extensive review of studies on the geological, paleontological and molecular evidence from the isthmus and the animals that lived there, with the goal of deducing its true age, they said.
"Our study had the simple aim of refining the timing of isthmus formation in a format intelligible for a wide audience of interested scientists, including geologists, ecologists, paleontologists, climatologists and evolutionary biologists, each of whom were begging for clarification of the question," study lead author Aaron O'Dea, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, told Live Science in an email.
In the end, O'Dea and his colleagues found that while the isthmus developed slowly over a period of 30 million years, "all rigorous evidence" suggests that the land bridge formed 2.8 million years ago, thanks to a geologic uplift and a drop in sea level, he said.
Land Bridge
Drifting Tectonic Hotspot
Himalayan Theory
In a region that boasts the tallest peak in the eastern Himalayas and a body of water so impressive it has been nicknamed the "Everest of rivers," an enormous canyon has been carved through the rock over the course of millions of years.
This imposing landscape is the result of powerful erosion and dramatic tectonic activity, but the interactions between the surface and interior processes in this part of the Himalayas have been the subject of major debate among scientists. Now, a new study provides evidence that a patch of extreme rock-uplift in the eastern Himalayas - the area of greatest tectonic activity - has been slowly migrating northward, drifting rather than remaining anchored to the location of river erosion, as researchers had previously theorized.
To calculate the movement, researchers used a cutting-edge mineral-dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) thermochronometry. As common minerals like quartz and feldspar move away from the Earth's hot center, they cool. And at temperatures specific to each mineral, they begin trapping electrons, the researchers said. So, until the traps are filled, a chunk of bedrock can tell scientists how recently that rock reached certain temperature milestones, which correspond to depths below ground. That information, in turn, can be translated to tectonic rates of exhumation, or how quickly rock is moving toward the surface.
The researchers combined older data with a new analysis of samples from eight spots within the region, known as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, to model a "continued migration of tectonic structures towards the northeast."
The new findings were published today (Aug. 18) in the journal Science.
Himalayan Theory
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