Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Predators in Arms (NY Times Column)
Is there a partisan pattern here?
Maureen Dowd: Donald Goes to the Dogs (NY Times Column)
"WHEN a man knows he is to be hanged," Samuel Johnson once said, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Unless, of course, that man is Donald Trump.
Ann Robinson: "Pomegranates, turmeric and red grapes: the key to long life?" (The Guardian)
Advice to feast on fruit, veg and red wine is hardly new. But thanks to this year's Nobel prize-winner, our understanding of the science that underpins it is developing all the time.
Anna Petherick: Personality influences lifespan as much as socioeconomic status. Why is that? (The Guardian)
A group of Wisconsin nuns in the 1930s proved that positive personality traits can add years to your life. Being disagreeable, on the other hand, can be deadly.
Jamelle Bouie: Banana Republican (Slate)
By threatening to jail his opponent, Donald Trump promised to rip up the foundations of liberal democracy.
Matthew Dessem: Amber Tamblyn Just Shared Her Own Sexual Assault Story on Instagram (Slate)
In the wake of the leaked tape of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault, women have been sharing stories of their own sexual assaults. On Friday, writer Kelly Oxford asked women to tweet their stories at her, and received thousands and thousands of responses, with more still coming in: … On Sunday, actress Amber Tamblyn joined the already-overwhelming chorus of replies with her own story…
Ed Simon: "The Other Folio: On the Legacy of Ben Jonson" (The Millions)
Outside of academic circles, where there has been a resurgence in interest, Jonson is a distant third in the contemporary popular imagination about the time period, after canonical William Shakespeare and sexy Christopher Marlowe.
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Reader Comment
The Sniffler
Does Lumpy only take cocaine before debates to fuel his rage? When I see coverage of him at his rallies, I never hear him sniffing constantly. As if his looming up behind Hillary and wandering around looking for an exit were not bad enough, the sound of his constant sniffing into the microphone was totally irritating.
I'm not a big fan of smarmy Billy Bush, but suspend him for what Lumpy said? ("Let me be clear - there is simply no excuse for Billy's language and behavior on that tape," NBC executive Noah Oppenheim said.)
How about suspending Matt Lauer for having his head so far up Lumpy's ass?
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Having lived in LA during the 80s, I think his sniffling sounds more speed-related than coke-ish.
Strikes me as more of a pill-popper than a snorter.
It's much more convenient to pop a cap than cut a line.
Just sayin'.
Bonus Links!
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
500 Greatest Albums of All Time | Rolling Stone
IS "GOOD ENOUGH" GOOD ENOUGH?
EAT MEAT AND DIE!
"TRUE BRUCE"
NO TRUMP PLEASE!
R.I.P. TOUGHIE!
HAPPY INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' DAY!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still hearing fireworks in the 'hood.
Hollywood Walk O'Fame
Kevin Hart
Shoe-salesman-turned-comedian Kevin Hart received the 2,591st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Monday, in advance of his stand-up comedy film, "Kevin Hart: What Now?"
The 11 a.m. ceremony at 7013 Hollywood Blvd. - coincidentally, next to a DSW Shoes store - included Ice Cube, who co-starred with Hart in "Ride Along" and "Ride Along 2," producer Will Packer and director Tim Story.
Hart quit his job as a shoe salesman to embark on a career as a comedian following an acclaimed performance at an amateur night at a Philadelphia comedy club. He went on to perform at professional venues such as the Boston Comedy Club, Caroline's on Broadway, Stand Up NY, and the Laugh Factory and The Comedy Store in Los Angeles.
Hart's first performance at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal led to his first film role as a rookie thief in the 2002 urban crime comedy "Paper Soldiers."
Hart's other movie credits include "Scary Movie 3," "Scary Movie 4," "Soul Plane," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Little Fockers," "Death at a Funeral," "Fool's Gold," "The Wedding Ringer," and "Get Hard."
Kevin Hart
Arrested While Peacefully Protesting In Dakota
Shailene Woodley
On Monday morning, actress and activist Shailene Woodley went live on her Facebook account from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where she claimed that riot police were coming to break up a peaceful protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was recently rejected by a federal judge in its efforts to halt construction,NBC News reports
Woodley has been a prominent voice in the battle against the Dakota Pipeline, both on social media and in person, and her presence on Monday may bring the most attention to the cause yet.
About 100 protesters were on a construction site for the controversial pipeline project before cops moved in and put handcuffs on Shailene.
Shailene was arrested for 2 misdemeanors … including engaging in a riot. Cops tell us they issued multiple warnings for the protesters to leave. 27 protesters were ultimately arrested. (Via TMZ
As you can see in her Facebook video, Woodley explains that she did as the police told her, but she believes that she was still arrested because of her notoriety. Woodley also calls for the mainstream media to pay attention, something she recently celebrated
Shailene Woodley
Buys Stake In Spielberg Firm
Alibaba
Chinese internet billionaire Jack Ma has bought a stake in cinema legend Steven Spielberg's company, they said, the latest tie-up between China and Hollywood as they seek to make movies for audiences in the Middle Kingdom and beyond.
Alibaba Pictures, a unit of Ma's sprawling e-commerce conglomerate, has taken a minority shareholding in Spielberg's Amblin Partners, a film creation company that includes DreamWorks studios.
The deal will see the companies co-finance and co-produce movies for Chinese and international audiences, Alibaba said on its corporate website.
It marks "an important milestone" in the Chinese firm's strategy to reach Chinese and global audiences, its chaiman Shao Xiafeng said in a statement.
Alibaba Pictures will also have a seat on the board of Amblin. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
Alibaba
Awkwardly Dodges Kiss
Tiffany
Tiffany Trump awkwardly dodged a kiss from her father after the second presidential debate on Sunday, and Internet sleuths were quick to point it out.
In the video, Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) can be seen beckoning at someone off camera - and as his daughter Tiffany appears, he leans in for a peck on the cheek, but the 22-year-old looks away and gives him a gentle arm rub instead.
Trump children Ivanka, Melania, Eric and Donald Jr. were all sitting in the audience, with Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner and Tiffany joining the party later.
Tiffany Trump is the daughter of Donald Trump and his former wife Marla Maples.
Video at link - Tiffany
What Climate Change?
Forest-Fire Burn Areas
Climate change is making the planet hotter and drier, and has about doubled the area burned by forest fires in the western United States in the past three decades, a study said Monday.
Researchers found that since 1984, drier conditions and higher temperatures have caused fires to spread across an additional 16,000 square miles (41,500 square kilometers) -- an area about 30 times the size of Los Angeles.
This "approximately doubled the western US forest fire area beyond that expected from natural climate variability alone during 1984-2015," said the study in the October 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.
Even more scorching wildfires can be expected in the years to come, warned the study authors.
Researchers arrived at their figures by examining eight different systems for rating forest aridity, including the Palmer Drought Severity Index, the MacArthur Forest Fire Danger Index and the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System.
Forest-Fire Burn Areas
Body Language
T-rump
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump paced, frowned and physically loomed at times over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during Sunday night's town-hall debate, prompting bewilderment and mockery from some on social media.
The online reaction underscored the contentious tone of the encounter in St. Louis in which Trump and Clinton hurled insults at each other less than a month before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.
Twitter users seized on Trump's body language, with some remarking that he appeared to have "stalked" Clinton around the stage. The criticism came as the Republican faces a political storm after being caught on a leaked 2005 videotape making lewd and demeaning remarks about women.
Sentiment on Trump's performance was 66.9 percent negative, according to an analysis by social intelligence firm Brandwatch of Twitter posts during the debate, while Clinton's was 57.8 percent negative.
The debate, which featured questions from audience members, was the most tweeted-about debate ever, with more than 17 million tweets, said Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio.
T-rump
TV Ratings Fall 18 Percent
Debate No. 2
Americans again tuned into a presidential debate, anticipating fireworks. And while updated numbers for Sunday's rematch between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are quite high - they don't come close to duplicating the first meeting two weeks ago.
With 10 networks now reporting adjusted ratings for the night, the grand total of linear telecasts is 68.8 million viewers. That's off roughly 18 percent from the record-breaking haul of the first showdown. That gross excludes NBC News. The typical leader in recent political coverage did not carry the live event in favor of Sunday Night Football. All told, the gross sum falls just shy of the previous record (nearly 70 million viewers) and just beats out the No. 2 debate from the last cycle.
As anticipated, most of cable news saw a bump from NBC News sitting this one out. MSNBC, in fact, posted its largest-ever audience for a presidential debate with 5.55 million viewers. But CNN topped cable news with its own jump. It averaged 11.23 million viewers after heavily promoting the appearance of its own talent in co-moderator Anderson Cooper. As for Fox News Channel, it saw a slight dip from the first debate to rank No. 2 among cable news networks for the night. FNC averaged 9.96 million viewers.
The news demographic of adults 25-54 remains sort of irrelevant here, considering the absence of advertising during debate coverage, but CNN did lead with 4.8 million in the targeted demo.
CBS benefited the most among the broadcast networks, with its 10.4 rating among households during the debate, edging past the dipping coverage of Sunday Night Football. The game, a marquee lineup between the New York Football Giants and the Green Bay Packers, only fetched a 10.2 rating
Debate No. 2
At Risk Of Flooding
New York City
Hurricanes could start flooding New York City's coastline as often as every 20 years due to the effects of climate change on sea-level rise and hurricane activity, scientists said on Monday.
Water could surge some 9 feet (2.8 meters) in hurricanes occurring anywhere from three to 17 times more often than today, they said.
"That's approximately - worst case scenario - once every 20 years," said Benjamin Horton, part of a team of U.S. scientists who published their findings in a study.
The projections act as a reminder of the human cost of climate change, said Horton, in particular after Hurricane Matthew ravaged the southeastern United States over the weekend.
The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences aimed to measure how frequently floods like those produced by Hurricane Sandy in the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey could occur until 2100.
New York City
Horrible Ratings
NFL
The NFL is blaming its horrible TV ratings on the election, according to a leaked memo to team owners obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
Every single one of the NFL's primetime offerings (Sunday, Monday, and Thursday Night Football) is down double-digits, according to Sports Illustrated. Overall, NFL viewership is down 11% this year.
The NFL wrote that the drop in primetime was likely because of "unprecedented interest in the Presidential election." The letter went on to reference the 2000 election as another period of time when NFL ratings went down.
The NFL is not the only one to make the connection. In an interview with Sports Business Daily, Mike Mulvihill, a senior VP at Fox Sports, said the current season reminded him of fall of 2000, a year which included the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush. 2000 was the only year during the decade 2000-2010 where the NFL saw a downtick overall, Sports Illustrated notes.
One thing the NFL said was not affecting ratings was fan backlash against players protesting police brutality by not standing during the national anthem. "In fact, our own data shows that the perception of the NFL and its players is actually up in 2016," the NFL wrote.
NFL
In Memory
Andrzej Wajda
Polish freedom icon Lech Walesa Monday hailed legendary film director Andrzej Wajda as "a great man, a great Pole" after he died aged 90, leaving behind a series of acclaimed movies inspired by his country's turbulent history.
Wajda's first films were marked by the painful experience of World War II and the Polish resistance against the Nazis, who occupied the country for almost six years.
Then leader of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union, Walesa appeared in Wajda's anti-regime film "Czlowiek z Zelaza" ("Man of Iron"), which in 1981 won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Born on March 6, 1926 in Suwalki, northeast Poland, Wajda tried to follow in his father's footsteps and become a soldier, but was rejected from a military academy in 1939. He later attended Poland's renowned Lodz film school.
His first feature-length film, "Pokolenie" ("A Generation", 1955), a coming-of-age story of young Poles in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, is considered the debut of a "Polish school of cinema" which delves into heroism and romanticism.
In 1957, Wajda won the Jury Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Kanal" ("Canal"), his masterpiece on the doomed 1944 Warsaw Uprising by Polish partisans against the Nazis.
At the 1977 Cannes festival, he screened "Czlowiek z marmuru" ("Man of Marble"), a film critical of communist Poland.
It was followed three years later by "Man of Iron", focused on the rise of Poland's anti-communist Solidarity trade union.
That won the 1981 Cannes Palme d'Or, even as Poland's then-communist regime cracked down on Solidarity and imposed martial law.
The Palme d'Or saved Wajda from internment by the communist regime during its December 1981 martial law crackdown, an episode which saw many of Wajda's friends and acquaintances imprisoned -- including Solidarity leader Walesa.
Wajda's opposition to the regime drove him to make films abroad, including "Danton" (1983) in France, starring Gerard Depardieu. "Eine Liebe in Deutschland" ("A Love in Germany", 1986) followed in Germany.
Wajda's rendering of Russian writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Les possédés" (The Possessed, 1988) was also filmed in France.
After the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989, Wajda returned to his country's wartime history, focusing on stories suppressed by the communists.
"Korczak" (1990) details the fate of Janusz Korczak, a pre-war Polish-Jewish children's author and physician who died in the Holocaust.
Another film, "Katyn", nominated for an Oscar in 2008, tells the tragic story of Wajda's own father during World War II.
Wajda continued working into his latter years, premiering his most recent film, "Powidoki" (Afterimage), in September at the Toronto Film Festival.
Andrzej Wajda
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