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patd
patd
3 years ago

jack, thank you/ yo yo’s rendition glides as musically thru the air as does a beautiful swan on a placid pond.

a ‘toon for you (thinking back about your question “what better” in a previous thread). dems might start with building back better party unity.

patd
patd
3 years ago

Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like Biden getting his COVID booster shot.

Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che tackle the week’s biggest news, like Amazon’s new robot.

 

patd
patd
3 years ago

click here for last night’s SNL cold open which had it’s moments but IMHO as a whole wasn’t one of their best.  for one thing, the biden character needs to slow down his delivery.

Biden Unites Democrats Cold Open – SNL – YouTube

patd
patd
3 years ago

here’s a second opinion

SNL introduces a new Biden while parodying infrastructure negotiations in the season premiere – The Washington Post

Comedian James Austin Johnson’s “Saturday Night Live” career is off to a strong start, as the new hire kicked off the Season 47 premiere with a high-profile role: President Biden.
Johnson, who made an impression online with his impeccable viral impressions of Donald Trump, instead presented the show’s latest iteration of the current president in a cold open that began with Biden describing his summer as “bad — not Cuomo bad, but definitely not Afghanistan good.” He then parodied Biden’s attempts to urge Democrats to compromise on his infrastructure plan.
Joining Johnson’s Biden were moderate Democrat senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia (played by Aidy Bryant) and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona (Cecily Strong), the latter of whom Biden described in the sketch as looking like “all the characters from ‘Scooby Doo’ at the same time.”
[continues]

patd
patd
3 years ago

hardly mentioned by media, the death toll that at any other time would have been the headline of the day is now so ho-hum it’s barely covered. 

 ‘Tragic and completely avoidable’: US hits 700,000 Covid-19 deaths | Coronavirus | The Guardian

The Covid-19 death toll in the US has now surpassed 700,000, despite the Covid-19 vaccines’ wide availability, in what one expert called a “tragic and completely avoidable milestone”.
Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the US went just past 700,000 deaths on Friday; the US had previously reached 600,000 deaths in June. The country has had a total of 43.6m confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins.
[…]
“Reaching 700,000 deaths is a tragic and completely avoidable milestone. We had the knowledge and the tools to prevent this from happening, and unfortunately politics, lack of urgency and mistrust in science got us here,” John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston children’s hospital, told ABC News.
[continues]

Pogo
Pogo
3 years ago

It’s hard to miss with YoYo, Jack. Very soothing Sunday Serendipity. Thanks. 
I agree that the SNL cold open was not the best of the best but I thought overall the show was very good. Weekend Update was close to top of its game. 

Pogo
Pogo
3 years ago

Here’s Robert Barnes’ primer in WaPo on the upcoming SCOTUS term:

The Supreme Court embarks Monday on what could be an extraordinarily controversial term, with its justices on the defensive, its actions and structure under a political microscope and abortion — the most divisive issue of them all — taking center stage.

Before the term ends next summer, the justices will have weighed in on three major public policy disputes — guns, religious rights and possibly race, if the court takes up a request to once again review affirmative action in university admissions.

Another change on the court is possible: Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 83, nominated by President Bill Clinton, faces increasing pressure to retire while another Democrat is in the White House and the party has a tenuous hold on the Senate.

And a presidential commission on the Supreme Court, taking testimony on the court’s power and proposals to add seats to the court, limit justices’ lifetime tenure and require more transparency, is due to report to President Biden next month.

“The spotlight will be shining brighter on the court this term than perhaps any other since Bush v. Gore,” in 2000, said Pratik A. Shah, a Washington lawyer who argues before the Supreme Court.

And the background for it all will be the issue that has vexed the political and judicial branches for decades. Republican-led states and antiabortion activists are asking the court to overrule the constitutional guarantee of abortion it established nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, and reaffirmed 20 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

[…]

Lengthy but good read. Worth it if you care about what goes on with SCOTUS, and if you don’t you should.

Sturgeone
Sturgeone
3 years ago

Beyond the obvious biggies, composer-wise, I’m not much conversant with the names of composers.   Tell a truth, I just don’t much listen to music anymore, and never did veer off deeply into classical, just deep enough to say, “Ahh, Bach.” every now and then. But there was this one time when I took a Music Appreciation course from Vernon Westen, the only prof at the Citadel to be allowed to remain a civilian.
Quite a guy, human-wise; but one of his favorites was “The Moldau”, which he played and went into in great depth. And so, as collateral damage, Saint-Saëns became known to me.  
Thanks, Jack, for re-kindling the acquaintance.

patd
patd
3 years ago

this being our day dedicated to music, it’s only fitting to mention this week’s story about how music calmeth the savage beast.

the beast in this case was that former guy.  according to an ex-minion’s tell-all there was a WH staffer whose job was to play “memory” from cats to calm a raging said beast.

courtesy of crooksandliars in coverage of that tidbit, here is one man’s illustration of how it might have worked

patd
patd
3 years ago

yeah, yeah, i know it’s sooths, not calmeth, and breast, not beast.  for you purists, the original idiom according to writingexplained is

“a line from the play The Mourning Bride from the year 1697. The British poet William Congreve wrote this originally as music hath charms to sooth a savage breast.”

Sturgeone
Sturgeone
3 years ago

To drink is a Christian diversion
unknown to the Turk or the persian
—congreve
(Google the rest if ya wants it)

prithee fill up my glass 
till it laugh in my face 
with ale that is potent and mellow
he that whines for a lass
is an ignorant ass
for a bumper of wine has not its fellow. —congreve

Sturgeone
Sturgeone
3 years ago

Lot to be saiid for the soothing of savage breasts.  “Ah yes; I remember it well.”

Ah, pucket
To drink is a Christian diversion,
Unknown to the Turk or the Persian.
Let Mahometan fools
Live by heathenish rules,
And be damned over tea-cups and coffee.
But let British lads sing,
Crown a health to the King,
And a fig for your Sultan and Sophy.

Pogo
Pogo
3 years ago

Patd – see, I knew the expression it not the origin.  
 
Sturg, yeah, passing time by drinking is certainly at least Western if not Catholic, and there’s been a bunch of overlap between that and music in my experience. Now my music listening is primarily in the car, on the lawn tractor, anytime i need to wear hearing protection or if I’m in the boat w/out Mrs. P or screwing around in the garage.  As Brad Paisley said of PAC-man he played at the arcade in his youth, “And now I’ve got it on my phone.”

patd
patd
3 years ago

Pandora Papers reveal secret offshore financial system for global elites – Washington Post

A massive trove of private financial records shared with The Washington Post exposes vast reaches of the secretive offshore system used to hide billions of dollars from tax authorities, creditors, criminal investigators and — in 14 cases involving current country leaders — citizens around the world.
[…]
The files provide substantial new evidence, for example, that South Dakota now rivals notoriously opaque jurisdictions in Europe and the Caribbean in financial secrecy. Tens of millions of dollars from outside the United States are now sheltered by trust companies in Sioux Falls, some of it tied to people and companies accused of human rights abuses and other wrongdoing.
The details are contained in more than 11.9 million financial records that were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and examined by The Post and other partner news organizations. The files include private emails, secret spreadsheets, clandestine contracts and other records that unlock otherwise impenetrable financial schemes and identify the individuals behind them.
The trove, dubbed the Pandora Papers, exceeds the dimensions of the leak that was at the center of the Panama Papers investigation five years ago. That data was drawn from a single law firm, but the new material encompasses records from 14 separate financial-services entities operating in countries and territories including Switzerland, Singapore, Cyprus, Belize and the British Virgin Islands.
The files detail more than 29,000 offshore accounts, more than double the number identified in the Panama Papers. Among the account owners are more than 130 people listed as billionaires by Forbes magazine and more than 330 public officials in more than 90 countries and territories, twice the number found in the Panama documents.
As a result, the Pandora Papers allow for the most comprehensive accounting to date of a parallel financial universe whose corrosive effects can span generations — draining significant sums from government treasuries, worsening wealth disparities, and shielding the riches of those who cheat and steal while impeding authorities and victims in their efforts to find or recover hidden assets.
[continues]

patd
patd
3 years ago

one of today’s stories wapo tells us about what’s in the pandora papers

 Putin’s Monte Carlo mystery, secret money and swanky real estate – Washington Post

Blue Bronc
Blue Bronc
3 years ago

I am trying to think of how off the universe the far right would be if President Biden decided to not only state Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands should become states, but also we need to take over Haiti.  Provide security and statehood.
 
Those people would freak out.
 
And racist SFB would have a stroke.

Pogo
Pogo
3 years ago

BB

And racist SFB would have a stroke.

There is no better reason to do it.  Please send Joe an email and copy Nancy… oh, and Kamala.

blueINdallas
blueINdallas
3 years ago

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/28/texas-power-grid-loophole/

…”Texas senators were furious that natural gas companies won’t have to better prepare their facilities for extreme weather before this winter and rebuked the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s massive oil and gas industry, for not fixing the problem sooner.“

“But the “loophole” that lawmakers spent the hearing condemning and the slow timetable for winterizing the state power grid were part of legislation they approved during the regular legislative session in the spring.”

“Senate Bill 3, which Abbott signed into law, calls for creating a committee to map out the state’s energy infrastructure by September 2022, then gives the Railroad Commission 180 days to finalize its weatherization rules.“

If we have another outage this winter, Greg’s ass is grass.

patd
patd
3 years ago

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