Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: Warmed By the Breath of Fools (Creators Syndicate)
These men and women who talk of Trump crucified kneel before the cross and forget The Babe, my babe. They salute the flag and forget the homeless drug-addicted veteran who once held out a chubby hand to his father. They cannot see the line between manger and housing project. Damn them all. I will not be lost. I will not worship death. I will not be incinerated by the breath of fools. I hold tight to the hand of The Babe.
Susan Estrich: The Impeachment Show (Creators Syndicate)
Can men and women, when called to sit as judge and jury, put down their phones and listen; take off their pins and hear; think about anything more than the evening polls?
Probably not. That is what everyone is betting: that they will behave like the trained swamp dwellers who they are, who got them there, who keep them there, putting raising money ahead of raising principles, getting in line behind a man they openly disrespect.
Maybe that's how it will go. But we should at least get to watch it - slowly; watch decent men shed their patina of decency - deliberately; let them talk their way into circles - with passion; let them wonder just how dumb we really are.
Ted Rall: The Media Is Down in the Gutter With Trump (Creators Syndicate)
There is a "because Trump" change in media ethics that I welcome. What's suspect is the timing. Trump is the first president to get called out for his lies right in the news section. Great! Imagine how many lives could have been saved by a headline like "Bush Repeats Debunked Falsehood That Iraq Has Weapons of Mass Destruction." A headline like "Slurring Sanders' Numerous Female Supporters as 'Bros,' Hillary Clinton Lies About 'Medicare for All'" could have nominated and elected Bernie and saved many Americans from medical bankruptcy. But all presidents lie. Why pick on Trump?
Mark Shields: Heraclitus Was Right (Creators Syndicate)
How tough is Nancy Pelosi? In the last national election, according to the Wall Street Journal, there were nearly 136,000 paid television commercials attacking the Democratic speaker, both personally and politically - far more than the number run critical of President Trump, who told us repeatedly that no one had ever been treated as badly as he was savaged by his political opponents. And never once did she utter a syllable of self-pity. Speaker Pelosi is the grown-up; character is destiny.
Lenore Skenazy: Ho-Ho-Hoaxes (Creators Syndicate)
In any case, everyone who was very worried about this girl should be happy about the news. She's safe - not raped or murdered or sold into sex slavery. But let's also keep reality in mind next time one of these things happens. While only a cynic would have said, "I'll bet this is a hoax," the second the Amber Alert went out, it does look pretty fishy in hindsight.
Susan Estrich: Bernie Blows It in California (Creators Syndicate)
Former Rep. Katie Hill was driven out of office by vicious revenge porn clearly orchestrated by her angry ex-husband and her defeated former rival. Now Sen. Bernie Sanders - ignoring the advice of virtually everybody, starting with the governor - has jumped into the primary fray to replace her. Sanders knows better than Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, all of whom have endorsed state Rep. Christy Smith for the special election to replace Hill. But socialist Bernie, Mr. Progressive, endorsed a former Republican who has had this to say about women: "They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully."
Froma Harrop: Feeding Innovation Better Than Barring Fossil Fuels (Creators Syndicate)
… Bill Gates offers a more effective approach to halting the rise in temperatures than going after specific industries. Rather than boycott fossil fuel stocks, which the Microsoft multibillionaire regards as a waste of time, investors should put their money into green technologies. Rich entrepreneurs are already doing that for the good of the environment but also for their bottom lines.
Froma Harrop: Was Boris Johnson's Win Bad for Democrats? Not Quite (Creators Syndicate)
… Johnson campaigned fervently for strengthening the United Kingdom's socialist health care system. By contrast, Trump has been doing his darndest to dismantle our market-oriented Affordable Care Act. To see how little middle- and working-class Americans care to lose their health care security, consult the results of the 2018 midterm elections.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Song: "Greensleeves (Piano)" from the album GREENSLEEVES
Artist: The Anthropophobia Project
Artist Location: Vancouver, Washington
Info: The album includes three versions of "Greensleeves": 1) "Greensleeves (featuring the Aquaerials)," 2) "Greensleeves (Piano)," and 3) "Greensleeves (Guitar)."
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Instrumental, Easy Listening
GREENSLEEVES
The Anthropophobia Project at Bandcamp
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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Michael Egan
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
With his usual projection, Predator had some stupidass tweet about Nancy Pelosi's teeth falling out. What a delusional, asshat bully! Anyway, found a short video that Trevor Noah put together of Mr. Articulate murdering the English language and slurring his way through 2019. Enjoy laughing at the pathetic shell of a human living (for now) in OUR White House:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Weather's changing - TV reception's gone all wonky.
Unveils New Art
Banksy
A manger scene juxtaposed against concrete blocks seemingly pierced by a mortar shell: with Christmas looming, the latest Bethlehem offering by secretive artist Banksy appeared Saturday in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Dubbed the "Scar of Bethlehem", the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph are backlit through damaged concrete, chiseled pockmarks exploding out from a gaping hole in four directions to approximate the Christmas Star.
The work is installed at Banksy's Walled-Off Hotel, where all rooms overlook a concrete section of the barrier built by Israel to cut off the occupied West Bank from Israeli territory.
"Love" and "peace" are respectively graffiti tagged in English and French on the artistic installation's concrete blocks, while three large wrapped presents are at the forefront of the scene.
Banksy
5th Fire Drill Friday Arrest
Jane Fonda
Happy birthday to Jane Fonda - in jail?
The Oscar winner, who turns 82 on Saturday, was arrested for a fifth time in Washington, D.C. Friday as part of her ongoing climate change march.
Fonda has been protesting weekly during her Fire Drill Fridays since announcing she was moving to Washington "to be closer to the epicenter of the fight for our climate." Her participation has ended in multiple arrests.
Fire Drill Fridays reports the "Grace & Frankie" star was arrested alongside several other protesters Friday. Of the 138 arrested, two were kept overnight, Fonda's rep Ira Arlook told USA TODAY, adding Fonda was released later that night.
Friday's march was another celebrity-studded affair. Rosanna Arquette, Gloria Steinem and Casey Willson were arrested at the protest, too.
Jane Fonda
Professor Gets Death Sentence
Pakistan
A Pakistani court on Saturday convicted a Muslim professor of blasphemy, sentencing him to death for allegedly spreading anti-Islamic ideas.
Junaid Hafeez has been held for six years awaiting trial. He's spent most of that time in solitary confinement because he would likely be killed if kept with the general population, local media have reported. Due to security concerns, Saturday's trial was held inside the jail where Hafeez is being held.
Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law carries an automatic death penalty for anyone accused of insulting God, Islam or other religious figures.
While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, even the mere accusation can cause riots. Domestic and international human rights groups say blasphemy allegations have often been used to intimidate religious minorities and to settle personal scores.
A Punjab governor was killed by his own guard in 2011 after he defended a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy.
Pakistan
New Fundamental Underwater Force
Ocean Particle Accumulation
A team of mathematicians from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Brown University has discovered a new phenomenon that generates a fluidic force capable of moving and binding particles immersed in density-layered fluids. The breakthrough offers an alternative to previously held assumptions about how particles accumulate in lakes and oceans and could lead to applications in locating biological hotspots, cleaning up the environment and even in sorting and packing.
How matter settles and aggregates under gravitation in fluid systems, such as lakes and oceans, is a broad and important area of scientific study, one that greatly impacts humanity and the planet. Consider "marine snow," the shower of organic matter constantly falling from upper waters to the deep ocean. Not only is nutrient-rich marine snow essential to the global food chain, but its accumulations in the briny deep represent the Earth's largest carbon sink and one of the least-understood components of the planet's carbon cycle. There is also the growing concern over microplastics swirling in ocean gyres.
Ocean particle accumulation has long been understood as the result of chance collisions and adhesion. But an entirely different and unexpected phenomenon is at work in the water column, according to a paper published Dec. 20 in Nature Communications by a team led by professors Richard McLaughlin and Roberto Camassa of the Carolina Center for Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences, along with their UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student Robert Hunt and Dan Harris of the School of Engineering at Brown University.
In the paper, the researchers demonstrate that particles suspended in fluids of different densities, such as seawater of varying layers of salinity, exhibit two previously undiscovered behaviors. First, the particles self-assemble without electrostatic or magnetic attraction or, in the case of micro-organisms, without propulsion devices such as beating flagella or cilia. Second, they clump together without any need for adhesive or other bonding forces. The larger the cluster, the stronger the attractive force.
Like so many discoveries, this one began accidentally, a couple years ago, during a demonstration for VIPs visiting the Joint Applied Mathematics and Marine Sciences Fluids Lab that Camassa and McLaughlin run. The pair, long fascinated with stratified fluids, intended to show a favorite parlor trick -- how spheres dumped into a tank of salt water will "bounce" on their way to the bottom, as long as the fluid is uniformly stratified by density. But the graduate student in charge of the experiment made an error in setting up the density of the lower fluid. The spheres bounced and then hung there, submerged but not sinking to the bottom.
Ocean Particle Accumulation
Over $118 Million
Golf Tab
President Donald Trump (R-Grifter) has pushed his taxpayer-funded golf tab past $118 million on his 26th visit to Mar-a-Lago, his for-profit resort in Palm Beach, Florida, with a Saturday visit to his course in neighboring West Palm Beach.
The new total is the equivalent of 296 years of the $400,000 presidential salary that his supporters often boast that he is not taking.
And of that $118.3 million, at least several million has gone into Trump's own cash registers, as Secret Service agents, White House staff and other administration officials stay and eat at his hotels and golf courses.
The exact amount going into Trump's pocket cannot be determined because the White House refuses to reveal how many Trump aides have been staying at his properties when he visits them and the administration will not turn over receipts for the charges incurred.
At this exact point in former President Barack Obama's first term, he had spent 88 days on a golf course. Saturday was Trump's 227th day as president on a course that he owns. If Trump continues golfing at the pace he has set in his first three years, he will surpass in just one term the total number of days Obama spent golfing over two full terms - despite having repeatedly criticized Obama for playing too much golf and having promised, as a candidate, that he would be too busy to play any golf at all.
Golf Tab
Wonders Where's Winter
Moscow
Winters in Moscow usually look like something out of a picture book: the Russian capital is covered in snow, people go skiing, and temperatures are well below freezing.
But this year things are different.
For the past two weeks, temperatures in Moscow have easily topped four degrees Celsius and are expected to move as high as 7C next week -- compared to the normal average for December of around minus 6C.
Snow is nowhere to be seen, the city's ski resorts are closed, and even the first spring buds on the trees are beginning to show -- three or more months too early.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has always been reluctant to acknowledge the link between human activity and global warming.
Moscow
U.S. Rolls Back Standards
Light Bulbs
The Trump administration on Friday said it has finalized a decision to roll back a 2007 rule calling for energy-efficient light bulbs, a move that states including New York and California are challenging in the courts.
The administration finalized a proposal made in September to roll back the standard that Congress passed in 2007 when George W. Bush, a Republican, was president and which was to come into effect next year. The Department of Energy said that increasing the efficiency of bulbs could cost consumers more than 300% compared to incandescent bulbs and that Americans do not need regulation because many are already buying efficient bulbs.
"The American people will continue to have a choice on how they light their homes," said Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.
The move is part of the administration's push to ease regulations by requiring agencies to ditch two old regulations for each one they propose. The administration has also rolled back Obama-era regulations on pollution and emissions as it seeks to maximize oil, gas and coal production.
The roll back on light bulbs has been challenged in court by 15 states and Washington, D.C. who say it would harm state efforts to fight emissions blamed for climate change.
Light Bulbs
Reindeer Herders
Sweden
It's been a race against time to bring in the reindeer from their mountain summer grazing ground, but today Per-Martin Kuhmunen, a 39-year-old Sami herder is triumphant.
"We brought them in today," he grins as he and two other members of the Gabna herding district sit exhausted, bruised and battered, in a cabin on the outskirts of the village of Abisko in the far-northern corner of Swedish Lapland.
The herders, like those from other districts across Sweden, have this year been forced to bring their 6,500 reindeer in from their mountain pastures a month earlier than normal, after unusually early and heavy snowfall linked to climate change meant their animals could not find food.
"The problem comes when the ground is still warm," explains Tomas Svonni, the district's chairman. "When you get snow on warm ground, you get ice at the bottom, and the food which the reindeer eat becomes frozen."
This Arctic corner of Sweden is seeing some of the most dramatic changes to weather patterns on earth. According to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, temperatures here were on average more than 3C higher between 1991 and 2017 than between 1961 and 1990. That is more than six times as much of a rise as the 0.5C estimated for the world as a whole.
Sweden
Monument Re-Designated
White Sands
President Donald Trump (R-Crooked)'s signature on defense legislation enacted by Congress means White Sands National Monument in southern New Mexico is now White Sands National Park.
White Sands became the 62nd designated national park Friday with Trump's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, which included a provision on the re-designation, park officials said Saturday in a statement.
White Sands National Monument was established on Jan. 18, 1933, by President Herbert Hoover to preserve "the white sands and additional features of scenic, scientific, and educational interest."
According to the statement, White Sands contains not only the world's largest gypsum dunefield, including gypsum hearthmounds found nowhere else, but also is home to the globe's largest collection of Ice Age fossilized footprints."
Aside from the name change, the federal legislation included provisions for a land exchange between White Sands and the U.S. Army, which operates an adjacent missile range.
White Sands
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