Chaos Theory

Update #36: It's National Bar Lowering Day!

Explanation of that title here.

Can I be real a second, just for a millisecond? I do not give a shit about Kellyanne's feet on the couch (both Washington Post). The woman does a billion worse things than sit on a couch funny. This is not a priority. Though I did laugh at this one and  Everyone in this photo is making a strange life choice.The same kind of goes for how Trump eats steak, except I did find some interesting articles about that one. This one is particularly deep.

Speech:

• Annotated speech is up. Another annotated version is up at Washington Post.
• Fact checking.
• The Donald Trump Show is getting stale and boring: He doesn’t want to be president, he just wants to play one on TV
• Any minute now, Trump will ruin the good impression he just made (Washington Post)
• Obamacare changed American health care forever, and Trump’s speech proved it: Republicans now agree health insurance is the government’s job.
• Trump proposed 5 specific policies to replace Obamacare. Here’s how they work.
• All 22 promises Trump made in his speech to Congress, in one chart
• Democratic Response to Trump's Address to Congress

That's....new: New Trump Order Drops Iraq From Travel Ban List

Washington Post:

• FBI once planned to pay former British spy who authored Trump dossier
• “We’re Canadians,” Toderian said. “We don’t get angry very often. But we are offended.”
• "President Trump and his aides despise and condemn anonymous leaks to reporters. Except, of course, when they are the ones doing the leaking."
• Aisle hogs don't care this time.
• Mattis and McMaster are canaries in Trump’s coal mine: "Like the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster are expected to be early alarms in the event that life in the Trump administration becomes untenable. If the White House fails to build an atmosphere in which they can work, Mattis and McMaster – both of whom are keenly aware that the world is watching their every move – could take their leave. The shock waves caused by their departure would be felt throughout the White House, Congress, and foreign capitals around the globe. The stakes couldn’t be higher — everyone knows that if they aren’t able to make it work, something must be seriously broken."
• There are a few voices of sanity around Trump. They’re likely to be overwhelmed.
• White House Power Rankings This Week.
• Republicans are headed for huge clashes with Trump
• "Spicer has become more useless with each passing day, because what he says too often isn’t true. Unlike with Kellyanne Conway, the press cannot very well refuse to put Spicer on air, but it can confront him on his inaccuracies and refuse to take virtually anything he says at face value."
• ‘La La Land’ producer Jordan Horowitz is the truth-teller we need right now: "Because what he did wasn’t exactly revolutionary. He told the truth even though it was difficult and awkward and embarrassing, because he had just stood in front of the world and thanked his friends and family for an award that wasn’t his....This kind of behavior shouldn’t be all that exceptional, but truth has been hard to come by lately."
• ‘Low information voters’ are a crucial part of Trump’s support
• Protesting Trump at a funeral
• President Trump’s friendly ‘Fox and Friends’ interview went exactly how you think it would
• “There are thousands of things that are more concerning than that, than him not going to a dinner which is kind of bulls— anyway,” he added.
• Donald Trump just admitted he’s incapable of acknowledging legitimate criticism
• News coverage of Trump is really, really negative. Even on Fox News. "Only 3 percent of the reports about Trump that aired on NBC and CBS were positive, while 43 percent were negative and 54 percent were neutral."
• "You can fool 37 percent of the people 100 percent of the time."
• The multiple ways Trump is hurting his base
• If Democrats want to beat Trump, they better stop fighting each other first
• Republicans demonstrate why they can’t be trusted to investigate the Russia scandal
• A student was punished for filming professor’s anti-Trump rant. Then came the backlash.

Fear and loathing:

• No sympathy for regretful Trump voters: "Tonight, the president will unveil his facsimile of a federal budget and I guarantee you it will make the lives of practically every person in all these stories worse, not better. And, in a few months, when it's really begun to bite, the editors and news directors will send out more expeditions to find out what "real Americans" feel about the disaster they've wrought on themselves, and us. They all had the same choices we did. They all had the same opportunity to inform themselves; I mean, it wasn't like the campaign was under-covered, and it wasn't like the eventual winner hasn't governed precisely the way he campaigned. Feeling lost and desperate is a terrible thing. But if, out of loss and desperation, you drink 20 cold beers out of the old preparation room and smash your car into a daycare center, the judge is not going to care how lost and desperate you felt. You build your own prisons in this life. You design your own sentences."
• Tibet Women’s Soccer team denied tourist visas to United States after a year of preparation
• Nineteen of Donald Trump’s White House staff and advisors have been fired or resigned this week
• Shock Us. Tell Us It’s Fake News. Tell Us to Move On.
• Way too many goddamned bomb threats.
• Oh, go ahead cops, shoot whoever you like.
• The Trump Administration Is Threatening to Publicly Release the Private Data of Immigrants and Foreign Visitors

Trump crap:

• Great Manager’ Donald Trump sits at the top of the biggest org chart in the world. Why does he look so uncomfortable in the job?
• Trump says he's adjusting to the 'surreal' experience of being president
• it's not so easy to reject the president's paycheck
• Oh look, another security breach.
• Donald J. Trump State Park is as ugly and dilapidated as its namesake’s soul
• Trump tweets and the TV news stories behind them
• Don’t get too excited about a Trump immigration “compromise”

The evil empire:

• Here Are the Top Ten Republican Accomplishments of 2017 So Far
• First month's evaluation.
• Can Republicans Be Trusted to Investigate Trump's Russia Scandal? No.
• A Complete Chronology of Trump's Black History Month Screw-Ups
• The swamp.
• Oh noes, someone mis-identified Spicey's place of birth! The irony!

The Wall:

• Can they actually do that?
• You got five days to submit your designs! Here's some suggestions! 
• “The drugs can come under the wall, they can come over the wall, and they can come around the wall.”

Attempting some humor: Pence Gallery to change name for obvious reasons.

The Resistance:

• Obama is ready to roll. Or maybe he's leaking, hah hah.
• There's a petition to silence Disney's Donald Trump robot at the Hall of Presidents. There's also a T-shirt.
• The Real Triumph of Town Halls
• The 45th is live.
• Bernie Alums Think They've Found the Secret to Reaching Trump Voters
• How Democrats Are Trying to Corner GOPers on the Trump-Russia Scandal
• An LGBTQ Suicide-Hotline Volunteer on Speaking With Trans Youth in Trump’s America
• Jennifer Garner is attempting to work with the Trumps on improving well, anything.

How I inadvertently made my hometown haunted

"My dad, a Freemason, had offered our woods as a location for rituals. My dog at the time, a black Labrador, was allowed to roam free. My parents often cooked over an open fire in a cauldron, either preparing food or chemical treatments for my father’s craftsmanship. Our log cabin we constructed out of pieces of old 18th century local buildings and is filled with oddities @. The hooded figures had been my birthday party, wandering the cemetery with lanterns ‘cause there was nowhere else to go.

“It’s not haunted,” I assured her. “That’s all just my family doing normal stuff."

News from the file marked "Duh"

The joy of sweatpants.

Oh, some good news!

"Cat Pictures Please" to become YA novel. This is an awesome story and now there shall be more of it!

Roger Ebert’s Zero-Star Movies

What did it take for the most famous and widely read American film critic ever to hand out his lowest possible rating, issued only a few dozen times in a 10,000-plus review career?

“‘We’re focused on making cars. We don’t have time to deal with all this other stuff.’”

Surprise surprise, another tech company treats women like shit.

Some people shouldn't have kids

Excerpt from "Down Among The Sticks and Bones."

The science of the office candy jar

A scientific study (Washington Post) and Ask A Manager discussion. 

• The nearer the candy, the more you eat it.
• Chocolates and chews are the best.
• "First of all, nearly everyone who approached the candy while Kevin was present emitted some sort of noise before opening the jar, even if it was just a primal “oooooh!” or “mmmm.” Some politely asked if they could have a piece. Others explained why they shouldn’t have a piece before diving in. A photographer started singing “The Candy Man.”
• Wenk called it “the Kevin stimulus.” Basically, Kevin’s presence injected social complications into the food decisions. People had to decide whether the candy was worth the interaction. “You have to be willing to break into someone else’s personal space and take one of their items that they are offering to you,” Wenk said. “You have to say, ‘Okay, I’m worth it, and I’m going to come over there and talk to you.’ ”
• if an alpha male has a candy jar, Wenk said, it would have to contain some pretty spectacular candy for all but a fearless few to go there.
• Not once in our experiment did the last piece disappear while Kevin was sitting by the jar.
• Among the things people said to Kevin during our two-month experiment were, “Did you run out of all the good candy?” “Nobody likes these.” “Tastes like chalk.” And this cryptically derisive reaction to individually wrapped Rolos: “What, is this the 1990s?”

Founding Fathers links

• American Prankster: Benjamin Franklin
• "Jefferson was a child of the Enlightenment, and arguably the most enlightened of them all. For two centuries, historians have found him “maddening,” “a sphinx,” “a mass of contradictions,” “an enigma” and you get the point… Some modern historians, who dedicate their entire careers to analysis-by-single-issue, usually fail to acknowledge whatever might be understood as a whole. Then of course, there is the sneaky feeling that Mr. J. did not wish to be so easily understood."

Update #35: guess who watched the Oscars

Trump:

• Oh, look who watched the Oscars after all. "U up?" Yes. Was it sad?
• How Does Donald Trump Think His War on the Press Will End?
• Trump signed off on checking White House staffers' phones
• The 100 day plan.
• "his is the core to Trumpism. Say nice things about him, he’ll say nice things about you. Say mean things about him, and he’ll go nuclear on you."
• 5 GRAPHICS TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND PRESIDENT TRUMP’S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
• "from the Russian point of view, the romance is over. He hasn’t lifted the sanctions, which Russia was very much hoping he would. He’s rapidly becoming the enemy on Russian TV."
• 'Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated' Uh, yes, people knew that. Like Obama knew that.

Related topic: Interview: former Gov. Steve Beshear explains how he sold deep-red Kentucky on Obamacare: "We wanted to get as far away from the word ‘Obamacare’ as we could." "And this guy, I heard him say, “Oh, man. This is great. This is a lot better than that Obamacare.” After he left, I came back to the gal and said, “Did you tell him?” And she said, “Well ... I hesitated. I thought I should. And then I just said, No. I'm just going to sign him up.”

The axis of evil:

• State GOP Chair Opposes Bill To Make It Easier To Vote, Claiming It Will Hurt Republicans: “If you look at the three states that have done it, you can see that populism and direct democracy at its best, all three states — Oregon, Washington and Colorado — they do all-mail-in ballots and they’re all marijuana-all-the-time states too,”
• Oh, screw you, Issa, you backpeddler.
• "Anything can happen, from trudging along as we have been, to a dramatic crackdown on free speech and a major war."
• "Shortly after that, the U.S. State Department’s official Farsi-language Twitter account tweeted a message of congratulations to Farhadi and the people of Iran, but some time later the tweet was deleted."
• We No Longer Have Three Branches of Government

Town halls:

• Have you seen these politicians?

Fear and loathing:

• Planned Parenthood Is Not Sure It’s Going To Be OK: “The truth is, no one really knows what will make a difference anymore,”
• Papers Please.
• "Make America great again?" Well, to them, it means make America white again. And I'm not ready to let that happen, because America is for everybody.
• Hate in the age of Trump.
• We Are Living In the Second Chapter of the Worst-Case Scenario
• From the Trump Story Project: Clippers. "On his walk to work, he checked “white” on the racial quiz he had to fill out to buy his breakfast, a melted mess of egg and cheese on a roll from a street vendor whose cart didn’t look big enough to store the hundreds of racial questionnaires he made people fill out every day."
• What Is Your Name? Where Are We? Who Is President? Oh God. This used to be a routine test. "One elderly woman let out a startling moan, the kind of sound I would have expected if someone had told her that her cat had died. Another blinked twice when I told him. “Really?” he said, in disbelief. “Come on, doc, you’re shaking my leg.” One patient accused me of playing a trick, although I have not yet been accused of bringing fake news."
• Welcome Aboard, But First US Marshals Will Scan Your Retina
• Stop Fabricating Travel Security Advice

Video:

• Conan tries to raise money for the wall in Mexico.
• John Oliver on Obamacare.
• Jon Stewart on breaking up with Trump.
• Seth Meyers on the upcoming speech, god help us.

No idea how to categorize this.

Well, a bit of good news:

• Crappy bill not going on in Arizona now.
• Pro-Trump rallies don't get hordes attending. Sad!
• I Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Workout. It Nearly Broke Me.
• Former President George W. Bush said Monday that the media is “indispensable to democracy,”
• Trump Did the White House Press Corps a Favor. Now They Can Fix Their Gross, Corrosive Dinner.

The Resistance:

• What calling Congress achieves: "If you ask your senator to co-sponsor a bill on mud-flap dimensions or to propose a change to the bottling requirements for apple cider or to vote in favor of increased funding for a rare childhood disease, you stand a decent chance of succeeding. This is not a trivial point, since such requests make up the majority of those raised by constituents. (They also represent the underappreciated but crucial role that average citizens play in the legislative process. “I’ve written bills that became law because people called to complain about a particular issue I was unaware of,” Akin, of Senator Wyden’s office, said. It was constituents, for instance, who educated Congress about America’s opioid crisis and got members to dedicate funds and draft health legislation to begin dealing with it.)...If, however, you want a member of Congress to vote your way on a matter of intense partisan fervor—immigration, education, entitlement programs, health insurance, climate change, gun control, abortion—your odds of success are, to understate matters, considerably slimmer. To borrow an example from the C.M.F.’s Brad Fitch, four well-informed doctors might persuade a senator to support the use of a certain surgical procedure in V.A. hospitals, but four hundred thousand phone calls to Senator John McCain are unlikely to change his position on the appropriate use of American military power overseas."... When I asked past and present Congress members and high-level staffers if constituent input mattered, all of them emphasized that it absolutely does. But when I asked them to name a time that a legislator had changed his or her vote on the basis of such input, I got, in every instance, a laugh, and then a very long pause....“We want people to know their voices are being heard,” Phil Novack, the press secretary for Ted Cruz, told me, before going on to say, essentially, that they wouldn’t be heeded: “The senator was elected based on certain values and ideals, and he’s going to keep fighting for those, even though some of his constituents might disagree.”
• In Response To Rising Biased Rhetoric, Muslims Run For Office: "When your civil rights are under attack," McCaw said, "grab hold of the constitution and assert yourself."
• How The Media Are Using Encryption Tools To Collect Anonymous Tips: "We're living in almost a golden age for leaks."
• Federal Court Tells Pine-Richland High School to Let Transgender Students Use the Bathroom
• We're putting the team together...
• NYPD commissioner to officers: Disregard Trump’s immigrant deportation order
• Want to throw a little money at it: Democrat edition
• Rosie O’Donnell Will Lead a Protest Against Trump Before His First Congressional Address
• Oscars political moments.
• Boycott Miami.
• Loving America and Resisting Trump
• Dissent in America.