'Music by John Williams' wins GRAMMY for Best Music Film, earning Steven Spielberg an EGOT

Slight change of plans — I'm following up on 'Music by John Williams' leads Gold Derby odds for Best Music Film at the GRAMMYs today, not 'Sinners,' 'KPop Demon Hunters,' and 'Wicked' — movie musicals at the GRAMMYs as I promised yesterday. Don't worry; it's on tap for tomorrow.

I begin by revisiting the prediction from last November.

Yesterday, I asked "More GRAMMY nominees, anyone?" I'm following through with the Gold Derby odds for Best Music Film. Music by John Williams leads as the choice of every expert and editor plus 65.3% of users. Raye: Live at the Royal Albert Hall sits in second as the pick of 26.5% of users, followed by Diane Warren: Relentless with 4.1% of users, Piece by Piece with 2.3%, and Devo with 1.8%.

By Sunday, Music by John Williams consolidated its lead as the choice of every expert and editor plus 70.1% of users. Raye: Live at the Royal Albert Hall retained 23.3%% of users, followed by Diane Warren: Relentless with 4.2% of users, Piece by Piece with 2.1%, and Devo with 0.3%. The experts, editors, and users who picked Music by John Williams called it. Watch as JOHN WILLIAMS Wins BEST MUSIC FILM For MUSIC BY JOHN WILLIAMS | 2026 GRAMMYs Acceptance Speech.

LAURENT BOUZEREAU delivers an acceptance speech after winning the GRAMMY for BEST MUSIC FILM at the 2026 GRAMMYs.

This award had greater significance, as The Wrap reported Steven Spielberg Earns EGOT Status With Grammys 2026 Win.

Steven Spielberg has officially achieved EGOT status thanks to his Best Music Film Grammy win Sunday. Spielberg produced the documentary “Music by John Williams.”

Spielberg previously won Oscars for “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan,” Emmys for “E.R.” and “Animaniacs,” and a Tony for “A Strange Loop.”

Spielberg had plenty of company in this win.

Laurent Bouzereau directed the doc, which is produced by Spielberg, Brian Grazer, [Ron] Howard, Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Sara Bernstein, Justin Wilkes, Meredith Kaulfers, [Kathleen] Kennedy, [Frank] Marshall and Bouzereau with Markus Keith and Michael Rosenberg as executive producers.

Congratulations to Spielberg for earning an EGOT, the rest of the producers for their GRAMMY, Williams, and the prognosticators at Gold Derby for correctly calling this category!

That's a wrap for today. Stay tuned for more awards show coverage as I blog about the GRAMMYs won by Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters, Wicked, and Tron: Ares tomorrow.

Previous posts about the 2026 Grammy Awards

• 'Sinners,' 'KPop Demon Hunters,' and 'Wicked' — movie musicals at the GRAMMYs
• 'Music by John Williams' leads Gold Derby odds for Best Music Film at the GRAMMYs
• 'The Daily Show' on Trump talking about canceling elections plus Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl and GRAMMYs

CNBC, The Economist, CBS This Morning, and Retail Archaeology explain GameStop, a serious tale of the stock market and Retail Apocalypse

I concluded Noah, Colbert, Kimmel, and Corden explain GameStop, a funny tale of the stock market and Retail Apocalypse with "That's it for today's funny takes on GameStop. I plan on posting serious ones tomorrow. Stay tuned." I begin with CBNC's GameStop Mania: How Reddit Traders Took On Wall Street, which the financial channel just uploaded to YouTube this morning — perfect timing!

GameStop has captivated Wall Street’s attention. The stock’s rise has been otherworldly. But the obsession isn’t just with the rally, it’s with who’s making money off of it. Legions of individual investors -- regular, everyday people -- gathered on social platforms like Reddit and decided to send GameStop stock, as they would say, to the moon. This week, GameStop shares soared 400%, a hedge fund had to get bailed out, and online trading platforms had to restricting trading on GameStop and other hot stocks. Here’s how the GameStop saga played out, and what’s next as lawmakers turn their sights on the story that took over Wall Street this week.

That's a good explanation, although favors the long-time and institutional investors over the Redditors, who may not have been regular investors and watchers of CNBC before the COVID-19 pandemic; as New York Magazine points out, they were probably sports bettors who had to find a new way to satisfy their gambling fix while sports were on hold. Still, it's up to the high journalistic standards and production values I expect out of CNBC. The network may have a perma-bull attitude and prioritize entertainment as much as information, but they do have to give their viewers good advice or they'll leave for Bloomberg or the Wall Street Journal. Also, I'm glad they interviewed Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, along with Kourtney Gibson, warned that this may not be the "David versus Goliath" story most people are making it out to be. In the later stages, big investors may have joined the Redditors in the short squeeze.

The Economist also uploaded GameStop: what it reveals about the US stockmarket this morning — again, perfect timing!

The frenzied rise of GameStop’s share price baffled Wall Street and panicked the US Treasury. What does the GameStop story reveal about American stockmarkets? Our experts answer your questions.

Chapter titles:

00:00 - GameStop surge explained
00:55 - Was Robinhood right to restrict trade?
01:56 - Short selling and short squeezes
03:05 - Is the stockmarket fair?
06:03 - Will it lead to more regulation?
06:51 - Is the US stockmarket overheated?
10:09 - Is this a trend?

Instead of letting the experts guide the discussion, The Economists let their readers ask the questions and had their experts respond. I find that democratic approach fitting given the populist nature of the interest in GameStop, AMC, Nokia, Blackberry, and, as Trevor Noah mentioned in yesterday's entry, Tootsie Rolls. About the only gatekeeping was by the editors in selecting the questions and editing the video. I don't begrudge them that; they were only doing their jobs to maintain quality and pacing.

CBS This Morning got into the act Thursday by following the prevailing narrative, Small investors turn GameStop into a Wall Street "David and Goliath" story.

Small investors using a Reddit forum appear to have driven the stock of the struggling retail chain GameStop up nearly 800% and it's causing some major financial losses for seasoned Wall Street investors. Vladimir Duthiers has the details. CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger also joins "CBS This Morning" to discuss.

I found this valuable because, in addition to providing a third perspective to the story, I learned something new about CBS News anchor Vladimir Duthiers; he used to be a Wall Street executive. That means that I will pay more attention to his takes on investing and the economy from nowon, just as I do to Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC and NBC News.

Follow over the jump for more from CNBC and Retail Archaeology about GameStop.

Drinking game, drinks, and memes for the 2020 Vice-Presidential debate

"Stay tuned for a drinking game, memes, and drinks for this year's Vice Presidential Debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence," I repeated in 'Why We Hate,' 'Cosmos,' 'Seven Worlds, One Planet' and 'Life Below Zero' — science and nature winners at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, so it's time to follow through.

I begin by recycling the version of the drinking game I posted on Coffee Party USA's blog as Coffee Party USA celebrates National Coffee Day with a drinking game for the 2020 Presidential Debates.

As an entertainment service to my readers, I'm sharing This Bipartisan Drinking Game Will Help You Survive Tonight's Presidential Debate from Delish.

Enter: our entirely bipartisan drinking game. It includes items that happen again and again in debates and are often super cringey. Yes, the candidates are all fighting to talk, but do they have to bicker like that? And must they recount so many long, open-ended, irrelevant stories from their youths!? You get it.

Again, we kept this game extremely bipartisan, but if you'd like to add some items for things that really grate you—like Senator X's habit of gesticulating wildly or Congresswoman Y's tendency to bring the discussion back to the old days—that's your prerogative. It's your living room! Drink up!

Drink when a candidate:

Gets cut off
Raises their hand
Invokes a folksy phrase
Insults the opposite party
Speaks over someone
Rolls their eyes
Loses their train of thought
Says “when I’m President”

Finish your drink when a candidate:

Laughs at someone else onstage
Goes deep on taxes
Is grilled by a moderator
Mentions their opponent’s past

Take a shot when a candidate:

Speaks another language
References their childhood

This should be generic enough for anyone reading who is watching the debate. In fact, it's generic enough that it can be used for any political debate this season, regardless of office, from President down to county commission or even city council if it has partisan candidates. I'm an environmentalist, so I like to reuse and recycle. I also like to reduce, so I'm not proposing another drinking game, at least not today.

Now that we have the drinking game, it's time for the drinks. Follow over the jump for drink suggestions for the candidates.

2019's baby names delayed and The Atlantic and New York Magazine on motherhood for Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day! I had been planning to write about the most popular baby names of 2019, as I had for 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, but that's not going to happen. NBC's Today Show has the news.

For the first time in nearly 25 years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) will not be releasing its list of the year's most popular baby names.

Since 1997, the SSA has released an annual list of the previous year's most popular names for boys and girls. Typically, the list is released the Friday before Mother's Day, but this year, the administration announced that the coronavirus pandemic had caused them to shift their plans.

"Out of respect and honor for all people and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the announcement of the 2019 most popular baby names is being rescheduled to a to-be-determined date," said the administration in a statement. "The agency sends its gratitude and heartfelt thanks to everybody fighting the pandemic and providing vital services throughout the country during these difficult times."

Looks like the COVID-19 pandemic has put this holiday tradition into isolation. That's disappointing. Here's to hoping the Social Security Administration will have the list ready by Father's Day.

In the meantime, I present two videos about the reality of motherhood, beginning with The Atlantic's A Poetic Ode to Motherhood.

Becoming a mother changed the way Nanfu Wang saw the world. This is an experience common to new parents, but it’s often ineffable. Wang’s new film, Between Everything, renders the perspective shift of motherhood in cinematic poetry.

YouTube suggested New York Magazine's Motherhood Through the Years, which I watched and enjoyed enough to share with my readers. As I last wrote in PBS Digital's Storied examines pandemics in literature and entertainment, "Behold the power of the YouTube algorithm!"

We asked six moms about what motherhood is like at a month, six months, a year, five years, 15 years, and 30 years. Does the mother of a 30-year-old feel like she knows what she’s doing any more than the mother of a 1-month-old baby? What are the greatest challenges and triumphs of motherhood? What we wanted to define was how mothering changes as children age — what we learned is that through years of challenges, heartache, and joy, once you’re a mother, “Everything changes. Everything.” Call your mom.

Yes, I will call my mom. I'm glad she's still around.

John Oliver on marijuana legalization for 4/20

It's April 20, which for the past two years I've used to update my readers on the status of marijuana legalization.  Last year, I referred my readers to Reclassifying Marijuana Would Be Game-Changing at You Might Notice A Trend while posting drink recipes with a reefer theme.  This year, I'm letting "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" do the heavy lifting with Marijuana from two weekends ago.

Under federal law, even legal marijuana is illegal. John Oliver explains why conflicting drug laws pose serious problems.

As I wrote last year, "Here's a toast to marijuana legalization following in the tracks of marriage equality!"  At this rate, it will happen in Canada before the U.S.

Trump's wiretapping claim shows his vulnerability to conspiracy theories

The latest installment in Trump and Putin's Bad Bromance came Saturday, when he claimied, without evidence, that Obama wiretapped him.  He followed that up by asking Congress to investigate Obama over wiretap that his White House refuses to provide evidence for.  That didn't completely get people's minds off the Trump campaign's relationship to Russia, but it did suck up all the oxygen on the Sunday talk shows.  I offer CNN's Rogers: Trump is feeding 'conspiracy meter' as an example of the range of reaction, most of which did not support Trump.

Jake Tapper dissects this week in politics with our State of the Union panel Rep. Mike Rogers, Jennifer Granholm, Dana Loesch, and Bakari Sellers.

First, Jennifer Granholm and Mike Rogers -- Michigan represent!  Second, that list that Bakari Sellers ran through works very well as Trump's greatest conspiracy theory hits.  This is not a new feature of Trump's.  It was noted more than a year ago in The Federalist's Military Strategist Explains Why Donald Trump Leads—And How He Will Fail.

While he’s very shrewd and swift in observing, orienting, deciding, and acting when he’s on familiar terrain, Trump draws information from a fairly closed loop.
...
The way Trump has dealt with facts in his public statements is a tipoff. Political speech routinely incorporates assertions of fact that range from debatable to unverifiable to provably false, and sometimes this is a sign of shrewd cynicism rather than self-deception.

But Trump has repeatedly made statements that he and his team had clearly made no effort to verify in advance, drawn from sources whose credibility should have been huge red flags, even though they were outside the common cultural and media conventional wisdom and therefore likely to be challenged.
...
Trump has repeatedly made statements that he and his team had clearly made no effort to verify in advance, drawn from sources whose credibility should have been huge red flags.

The recent dustup over Trump’s claim—which was, at best, severely exaggerated—that he had seen video of thousands of Muslims celebrating 9/11 in Jersey City is a classic example of this. So is the fact that Trump cites Infowars reporting in campaign speeches based solely on having clicked a link on the Drudge Report, and has gone on Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory-soaked show to trade praise with Jones.

When I first mentioned Alex Jones on this blog, I called him a "tinfoil hat wearer."  I still think so.  So, apparently, does Stephen Colbert.  Watch Infowars' Alex Jones Is Trump's CAPS LOCK Advisor.

Trump's new confidant is a right-wing conspiracy theorist whose rants are best enjoyed on mute.

New?  Trump has been listening to Jones for years.  Still, I'm glad the mainstream media has found the Trump-Jones connection worth examining.  That's the good news.  Here's the bad news.


Here's to everyone, including Trump, learning that the voices in Alex Jones' head are not reliable sources.

U.S. life expectancy falls prompting Russian analogies

On the collapse and decline beat in the real world, Al Jazeera English reports US life expectancy declines for first time in two decades.

The average life expectancy in the United States has fallen for the first time in more than two decades.

Researchers blame the drop on a rise in preventable diseases.

Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey has more.

Vox noted that the increased rates of death resulting in lower life expectancy are not the result of one cause in one part of the country.

What complicates the overarching narrative of despair — that a lack of economic prospects is leading people to self-harm and substance abuse — is that it simply can’t apply to the whole country. Different geographic regions are experiencing extreme variations in despair-related outcomes like suicides, drug overdoses, and heart disease, said Abraham Flaxman of the University of Washington, one of the authors of the new JAMA paper.

"If you look at geographic patterns, you can say it’s despair that’s leading people to drink and do drugs. But then why wouldn’t that apply to leading people to overeat and become obese and diabetic? These trends are happening in different places."

To be more specific, today’s cardiovascular disease problems (which are linked to nutrition and obesity) largely plague the South, while the substance abuse and mental health issues are more concentrated in Appalachia, and the rise in self-harm and interpersonal violence is happening in the Southwestern part of the country.

New York Magazine was less sanguine.

“I think we should be very concerned,” Case told Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post. “This is singular. This doesn’t happen.” When Case and Deaton released their finding, they argued that it was largely attributable to disturbing upticks in various forms of addiction — opioids, most importantly — as well as suicide. The new statistics get more granular, and they suggest the misery is well-dispersed: There were increases in just about every major cause of death between 2014 and 2015, and the death-rate increases centered on whites and black men — they remained flat for Latinos and for black women. People are dying for a lot of reasons, but drugs stand out as a particularly devastating part of the problem: In fact, one key to the racial divide may also come from numbers released yesterday, these from the CDC: For the first time ever, more people died from heroin overdoses than from gun homicides in 2015.

Eep!  That's an alarming statistic on a topic I haven't blogged about here.  No wonder opioid addiction has been a big topic in the news!  On the other hand, it reinforces a point I've been making off and on all year, that it was not likely that gun deaths would pass traffic deaths in the U.S. last year.  Now I'm even less sure that will happen as long as Americans continue to increase the miles they drive and other causes of death are gaining on those from firearms.  As seen on the graph at the top, accidents of all kinds, including both traffic deaths and overdoses, are now the third leading cause of death for all Americans.

Both Vox and New York Magazine compared the current increase in mortality to that of post-USSR Russia, but New York Magazine was more colorful.

We don’t know how bad the United States’ burgeoning mortality crisis is going to get. Russia provides a disturbing worst-case scenario. “Sometime in 1993, after several trips to Russia, I noticed something bizarre and disturbing: people kept dying,” wrote Masha Gessen in New York Review of Books in 2014. “I was used to losing friends to AIDS in the United States, but this was different. People in Russia were dying suddenly and violently, and their own friends and colleagues did not find these deaths shocking.” She went on to explain that “In the seventeen years between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5 percent — a rate of loss unheard of in Europe since World War II. Moreover, much of this appears to be caused by rising mortality,” with alcohol a prime culprit. This is what happens when the insides of a developed country begin to rot.

The United States isn’t Russia. Probably. But wherever this trend goes, what we’re seeing is the end result of decades of slow-burn economic decline and decay, with no end in sight. You can only make it hard for people to work and pay rent and buy necessities and live so long, you can only have them living right on the brink of bad-break ruin for so long, before there will be serious consequences. And we’re seeing those serious consequences in every new set of shocking mortality statistics.

I mention the Russian experience after the fall of the Soviet Union in class regularly as an example of how government and civilization work to increase and maintain carrying capacity and how their decline and fall causes carrying capacity to fall, increasing mortality dramatically.  It's right up there with the fall of Rome.  I hope I don't have to use the U.S. as an example as well.

Enough DOOM from the real world.  Stay tuned for a weekend of entertainment entries concentrating on awards shows and Star Wars!

Some good news from last week's election

Despite Trump winning and public transportation losing last Tuesday, some good news came out of the election.  New York Magazine forecast that Progressives Are Headed for Big Election Day Wins on Wages, Weed, and Guns.

[I]if polls can be believed, America will have less marijuana prohibition, more gun control, and higher minimum wages a week from now than it does today. Which may be the closest thing to “change you can believe in” that progressives will get for a good while.

Sure enough, Marijuana, gun control, minimum wage hikes win at the polls as Wochit News reported.

Filling a void created by congressional inaction, voters in a scattering of states tightened gun control laws and approved increases in the minimum wage. The campaign to legalize marijuana achieved a major breakthrough, with victories in at least six states. In all, more than 150 measures appeared on statewide ballots in Tuesday's election. California, Nevada and Massachusetts approved measures legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, while Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota voted to allow pot for medical purposes. A recreational pot proposal lost in Arizona.

Shades of Meanwhile, at the bottom of the ballot!

Vox had more on the results in Trump won. But so did marijuana legalization, gun control, and minimum wage increases.

While Democrats lost big, liberals won some of the big initiatives that were on statewide ballots. It wasn’t a total sweep — several states, for example, affirmed the death penalty — but there were gains on some issues, including marijuana legalization, minimum wage, and gun control.

At least the polls weren't wrong on these measures.

Crooks and Liars found even more good news for public education, environment, and diversity in Some Good News - Progressives Win Key Ballot Initiatives beyond those victories above.

Massachusetts voters reject charter school expansion. MassLive: “In a devastating loss for supporters of charter schools, Massachusetts voters on Tuesday voted against a ballot question that would have allowed the state to approve up to 12 new or expanded charter schools a year, outside of an existing cap … The pro-charter school money came from a mix of Massachusetts corporations, individuals working in the financial industry, out-of-state donors like the Walton family who owns Wal-Mart and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.”

Washington State rejects “revenue-neutral” carbon tax. Seattle Times: “Initiative 732, which sought to apply a tax on energy-derived coal, oil gas garnered just 42 percent after ballot counts around the state … The measure had trouble marshaling consensus among progressive and environmental groups.”

“Florida voters say no to misleading solar amendment” reports Miami Herald: “Florida voters rejected Amendment 1 on Tuesday, the utility-backed measure to limit rooftop solar expansion, after a scrappy, grassroots campaign and last-minute revelations raised doubts about the proponents’ claims that their goal was to expand solar generation … with nearly three-quarters of precincts reporting, the vote was almost evenly split, falling short of the 60 percent needed for a state constitutional amendment to become law.”

Progressive rising star Pramila Jayapal wins House seat. Huffington Post: “…she will be the first Indian-American woman to hold a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives … Jayapal will also join Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the first Indian-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Hat/tip to Infidel753 for finding this story.

I can at least feel a little better after reading all that, although it won't make up for what I expect will be lost when Trump occupies the Oval Office next year.

Trump pulls a Gingrich on space

Four years ago, I wrote Gingrich shoots for the Moon while campaigning in Florida.  In it, Newt Gingrich proposed establishing a lunar base by 2020.  I portrayed it as playing to the voters on Florida's Space Coast and a grandiose aspirational plan for the country.  It elicited the most approval I've ever expressed about Gingrich on this blog.

Seriously, Gingrich's grandiose plans for space exploration are the only thing I like about him. They prove that, unlike much, even most of the rest of his party, he hasn't given up on science. I applaud him for that.

Even so, it wasn't enough to make me like him otherwise.

However, his ideas about space are not enough to get me to vote for him. It would be like voting for Ron Paul because of his anti-war and pro-legalization positions, while the rest of what he advocates is just unacceptable.

It also subjected Gingrich to a lot of ridicule, deserved or not.


Gingrich's proposal didn't help him win Florida; he lost to Romney.  Still, it was one of the few things I sincerely and unironically liked about any of the 2012 Republican candidates.

It turns out that Trump has just done Gingrich one better; follow over the jump to read how.

Dancing German witches for Halloween

I fell into an "I can't be all DOOM all the time" mood while writing WWF reports massive loss of wildlife populations, so I'm going to take advantage of the holiday weekend to post entries that are a little more fun.  I begin with these dancing German witches.

Die Wolfshäger Hexenbrut tanzt "Schüttle deinen Speck" zu Walpurgis 2016

Translation: "The Wolfshaeger Witches Brood dances to 'Shake Your Bacon' at Walpurgis 2016."  Yes, the song translates to "Shake Your Bootie."

I know that Walpurgis is really a holiday associated with May Day, but this video works better for a U.S. audience during Halloween.  Besides, as New York Magazine wrote, "These Witches Dancing...Are Having More Fun Than You."  We could use more fun in the middle of this election campaign.

Stay tuned for Entertainment Sunday.  Since "The Walking Dead" is on and it's Halloween weekend, expect zombies.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving 2016!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!  For this year's celebration, I'm going to pass the mic to Lisa Ryan of New York Magazine, who writes This Canadian Thanksgiving, We Give Thanks for Justin Trudeau.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, a day in which our neighbors to the north gorge on pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, and coma-inducing turkey while subjecting themselves to hours of awkward conversations with relatives. It’s a lot like American Thanksgiving, but everybody is much nicer to each other.

On this joyous occasion, let’s celebrate the Canadian who matters most to us besides Drake: Justin Trudeau. Here’s why we’re thankful for this walking feminist meme.

Among the many reasons listed is "He’s also pro pot."  On that basis alone, Gary Johnson should have been able to name him as a world leader he admires.  Too bad he didn't.

2016 may not be 1968, but Trump is worse than Wallace

I opened June's stats and top posts with a statement of revulsion and despair.

I'm having a reaction to this week's news much like I did when I posted Grumpy Cat rates this past weekend.  The result was a retreat into life imitating art and three retrospectives before coming up for air.  The most I can say today is that it's still 1968 and the year is only half over.  I might have more to say by Monday.

The idea that we are at 1968 levels of political conflict has become so widespread that it got a lot of attention from the media over the weekend.  Jonathon Chait noted the analogy on Friday at New York Magazine.

It has been especially strained during a presidential campaign in which Republicans nominated a race-baiting demagogue for president. And last night, when a gunman murdered police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, it appeared to reach a kind of breaking point. In the feverish late-night heat, race-baiters at the New York Post, Breitbart, and Matt Drudge stoked a race war they clearly craved. It was 1968 again, more than a few observers said. Everything seemed to be coming apart.

So did Libby Nelson at Vox.

On Wednesday night, a sniper shot 14 people, killing 5, near the end of a protest against police brutality in Dallas. The shooting followed two killings of African-American men by police earlier in the week, and the deadliest mass shooting in American history in Orlando, Florida, less than a month ago.

The sense of instability — plus the chaotic Republican campaign of Donald Trump — brought one comparison to mind for many in the media: 1968.

The superficial parallels are obvious: Shocking gun violence. A nation convulsing over racism and inequality. A chaotic presidential campaign featuring populist candidates who gleefully paint nonwhite people as the enemy.

The reference to 1968 — even, and maybe especially, by people who don’t remember the year themselves — may also be to a national mood. It’s a feeling captured by William Butler Yeats in his apocalyptic poem, The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” 1968 is a shorthand for a fear of institutions breaking down, or a fear of new wounds that will leave scars that persist for generations.

There are similar comparisons at Reuters, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and Talking Points Memo.  The Reuters piece noticed another similarity besides the mood and level of political conflict.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 1968 and 2016 are both the Year of the Monkey. But maybe we should call this the Year of the Ghost Monkey of 1968. From the presidential primaries to the convention platform battles to bloody mayhem in the streets, 1968 is the go-to, default metaphor for what we seem to be reliving.

This year, like 1968, is certainly one of bitter conflict and wrenching change.

Yes, nearly all of these articles refer back to 1968.  However, they also make a strong point that things aren't as bad as they were then.  Follow over the jump for the pushback to the meme, including one example of how today actually is worse.

Good news, bad news from jobs report

Last month, I showed the above graph showing the relationship between education and unemployment to my students* and I pointed out out to them that the recent pattern of a spike in unemployment for those with less than a high school diploma along with a flattening of unemployment for high school and college graduates looked a lot like the period right during late 2006 and early 2007, a year or less out from the onset of the Great Recession in December 2007.  I then repeated my prediction that I first made in 2014, updated twice in 2015, and twice early this year of a recession beginning late this year or early next year and no later than the end of 2017.  They gasped in apprehension at the prospect.

Friday, news came that gave a little more confidence in that prediction, the May Employment Report: 38,000 Jobs, 4.7% Unemployment Rate.  The good news was that unemployment fell.  In addition to the headline rate dropping, it fell among all educational classes with Jobsanger reporting the following:

Less than HS diploma...............7.1%
HS graduate...............5.1%
Some college...............3.9%
Bachelor's degree or more...............2.4%

All of those are at record post-recession lows except for those with less than a high school diploma.  Those are still above the post-recession low of 6.8% in December 2015, which is consistent with the pattern.  Even convincing so was the low number of jobs created along with the high number of people leaving the labor force.  That looks like the kind of change in the labor market that would happen in advance of a recession.

Now, the r-word didn't pass the lips of the reporters from the Wall Street Journal in Hilsenrath: What Jobs Report Means for the Fed, but other worries certainly did.

The U.S. added only 38,000 new jobs in May, the slowest pace since September 2010. How will the report be interpreted by the Federal Reserve? WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath discusses with Tanya Rivero.

The jobs report had a lot of other outlets worried, too.  FiveThirtyEight posted Hiring Really Is Slowing Down.  Vox published The economy just got its worst job report in years.  New York Magazine connected the poor economic performance to the election in Hillary Clinton Should Be Worried About This Lousy Jobs Report.  Yes, she should, but only if it persists.  After all, she is still leading Trump and Johnson in Michigan, Trump is attacking the judge in his case while his supporters were getting beat up in San Jose, and Clinton beat up on Trump's lack of foreign policy experience, among other things.  Last week was not a good one for Trump.

The people who aren't panicking are the economic bloggers, although they aren't happy about them, either.  Bill McBride called it disappointing, but pointed out that this has happened in the middle of expansions before, then repeated his prediction of 2 million new jobs by the end of the year.  New Deal Democrat over at the Bonddad Blog described the pattern as pre-recessionary, bragged a bit that he had been calling for something like this to happen beginning a year ago, but then said to expect "more reports of 1xx,000 to come. But at the same time, it is nowhere near as negative as it has been in the past at the onset of recessions."  In his next entry, he then reassured his readers "Despite the punk jobs report, the high frequency data is almost all positive or neutral.  There are very few negatives."  I'm with him.  I don't expect a recession to hit until next year now.

*If they look familiar, it's because I posted earlier versions in 2011 and 2015.  Despite the fulminations of Greer and Kunstler, the positive relationship between education and employment still holds.

Trump vs. Sanders, the top post of the fifth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News

I concluded Statistics for the fifth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News by telling my readers to "Stay tuned for a entry about the top post of last year."  It only took until the end of the week, but here it is.

The most read entry of the fifth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News was Trump thinks Sanders is the right enemy.  It ended the blogging year with 7107 page views, 7247 according to the raw counter.  This puts it not only in first for the year but first in the history of the blog by a wide margin; the second most read entry according to the default counter is more than 4500 page views behind.  I'll be a good environmentalist and recycle how it earned this status from Record page views, comments, and 100th follower: Monthly meta for October 2015.

"Trump thinks Sanders is the right enemy" was the single most viewed post of the month as well as the most read entry in the history of the blog with 7111 page views, 7422 according to the raw counter.  This entry was shared at the Coffee Party Facebook page.  It drew 1369 page views to the blog the first hour and 1150 page views the second hour.  The total number of page views for the day was 6316, a record, and for the post 7110 over the next week, another record.

Between this post and the fourth place entry, "page views shattered the previous high of 14,981 page views during August 2015 by 7,500 with a new record of 22,491."  That record has not yet been matched.

Since that entry, the continuing rivalry between Sanders and Trump was reignited when the torches and pitchforks came out for Trump last night, as many of the protestors were Sanders supporters.  I documented Trump's response in a comment to Kunstler's Bull Run.

Trump isn't ignoring Bernie.  He's blaming Bernie for the protesters and threatening to send his supporters over to Bernie's events.  He thinks Bernie organized the protests, a claim Bernie has denied.  In fact, Bernie called Trump a liar and tweeted back that his supporters would be welcome to see "an honest politician."

On the one hand, this could lead to a whole series of Weimar moments like last Friday's.  On the other, the best way to attract a crowd is to start a fight.  On top of Sanders winning Michigan, this direct conflict could help Bernie.  Unfortunately, it will also draw more people to Trump.  Sigh.

Trump has moved on to attacking Ted Cruz, but Sanders continues to say the following about Trump in his stump speeches.

Sanders attacked Donald Trump later in his address.  In particular, he went after Trump's attempts to use fear and bigotry to divide the nation.

"We will together defeat Trump because the American people understand that bringing our people together trumps divisiveness," he said as quoted by the Michigan Daily. "The American people will defeat Trump because they understand that a community helping each other, standing with each other in our times of need, trumps selfishness."

"And the American people will defeat Trump most profoundly," Sanders concluded as quoted by MLive, "because they know what every religion in the world teaches, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism, and that is ultimately: Love trumps hatred."

It looks like Sanders has decided that Trump is the right enemy.  May he find this quote to be true--"There is only one thing more useful in politics than having the right friends, and that is having the right enemies."


Stay tuned for entries about the second most read post of the past year, the Sunday entertainment entry, a humorous take on nuclear meltdowns, and an update on the Flint Water Crisis.  Also, follow over the break for a linkspam about the top entries of the past four years.

'Songs about something' and music scores at the Oscars

I recycled Infidel753's comment along with my response at the end of Speculative fiction at the 2016 Razzie Awards.

I hope Lady Gaga wins the best song Oscar, though. I've always liked her. Like Fifty Shades, she offends those people whom, as John Cleese put it, one would truly wish to offend.

Speaking of Lady Gaga, I'll follow up on the music nominees tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

It's tomorrow, so it's time to revisit the nominees for Best Original Song I first mentioned in The songs really are the best part of 'Fifty Shades of Grey'.

First, I invite my readers to Listen To The Oscars’ Best Original Song Nominees along with commentary about each of them from NPR's "Here and Now."  In particular, I want to direct their attention to an observation by guest Mason Daring, a professor of film scoring at Berklee College of Music, a composer of dozens of soundtracks, and a voting member of the music branch.  He noted that this year's batch of nominees had two songs from documentaries (“Til It Happens To You” from “The Hunting Ground” and “Manta Ray” from “Racing Extinction”) but no songs from animated musicals.  He called those two pieces "songs about something" and thought they were the signs of changing times, as he said this was "a year that things matter."  The changing times might affect the chances of what would normally be the favorite, "Writing's on the Wall" from "Spectre," which won the Golden Globe in this category.  Daring opined that a Bond song would normally be a lock, but maybe not this year.

That uncertainty is reflected in the predictions.  FiveThirtyEight included the category in Every Oscar Prediction We Could Find.

Goegan says “Writing’s on the Wall” from “Spectre.” Paddy Power’s favorite is “Til It Happens To You” from “The Hunting Ground,” with 2-to-5 odds.

New York Magazine's Vulture came to a similar conclusion in Vulture’s Final 2016 Oscar Predictions for Every Category.

The best song in this category is "Earned It," but there is no way on Earth that the Academy is going to give an Oscar to Fifty Shades of Grey. Lady Gaga has been promoting her song from The Hunting Ground with a vengeance, and I suspect "Til It Happens to You" has the advantage because of it.

Finally, Predictwise gives Lady Gaga and Diane Warren's song a 68% chance of winning.  "Writing's on the Wall" comes in second at 12%, "Simple Song #3" and "Earned It" are tied at 9%, and "Manta Ray" has a 2% chance of winning.  Based on those odds, plus Lady Gaga's star Power and Warren's many previous nominations with no wins, my head agrees "Til It Happens to You" will win, although my heart is with "Manta Ray" and "Writing's on the Wall."

Follow over the jump for my thoughts on the nominated music scores.

'Tomorrowland'--optimism isn't selling as well as dystopia at the box office

I telegraphed my intentions for today's post in yesterday's entry about roundabouts when I wrote that it would feature "Tomorrowland," which Vulture called the anti-Hunger Games, an optimistic movie about rescuing a better future that is at risk of being lost.

It emerges that Bird, in Tomorrowland, is mounting nothing less than a full-throated assault on the nihilism, dystopianism, and what might be called the fetishization of apocalypse in today’s movies, TV shows, and books — especially YA books that worm their way into the fantasies of impressionable kids. This is not, you understand, the movie’s subtext. It’s the Über-Über-text. It’s the message that’s articulated in multiple ways, as boldly as that Einstein sign, by characters bad and good, and it’s implicit in the riddle posed by Casey’s NASA dad that becomes the cornerstone of his daughter’s worldview: You have two wolves, one representing darkness and despair, the other light and hope. Which one lives? Says Casey: “The one you feed.”

My response to Bird’s anti-dystopianism is “Cool.” Because, really, how many more plague–flood–road warrior–kids-killing-kids movies do we need? It is time to feed that other wolf, if only for the sake of variety. And maybe we’ve learned too well since the days of Dr. Strangelove — which came out the same year as the New York World’s Fair — to “stop worrying and love the bomb.”

The trouble comes when Bird gets carried away with his critique of all things critical. In Tomorrowland, he suggests that it’s the people sounding the alarm — the ones constantly reminding us about climate change or the dangers of nuclear power — who are accelerating our demise, their pessimism wreaking havoc on imaginations that would otherwise be busy inventing solutions. I suspect that’s Bird’s Ayn Rand side showing its warty head, spinning another tale of extraordinary individuals kept from manifesting their creativity by repressive liberal groupthink. If Bird really believes we should shift the blame from a fossil-fuel industry bankrolling anti-science propaganda embraced by greedheads and fundamentalist wackjobs to the 98 percent of the world’s scientists saying, “If we don’t act now, and we mean now, we’re royally screwed,” he’s living in his own private Disneyland.

I hadn't known that Bird was an Objectivist.  Too bad, it makes me think less of him.  [ETA: Bird denies this, as The Dissolve points out.  Still, there is definitely a Randian flavor to his films' themes, one that the critics pick up.]  As for his film, follow over the jump for how it fared at the box office, especially compared to the films that it's critricizing.

Happy to rewind 2014 in entertainment and social media

For my Sunday entertainment entry, I begin by once again rewinding the year on YouTube.  This year, the video is YouTube Rewind: Turn Down for 2014.

YouTube Rewind 2014. Celebrating the moments, memes, and people that made 2014. #YouTubeRewind

I had to watch a bunch of the top music videos for 2014 to appreciate this video.*  Good thing I did; I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around.  If those aren't enough, check out the popular non-music videos mentioned in WXYZ on 2014 in social media.

Follow over the jump for more from Facebook and Google on the year just past, along with another video in the footnote.

WXYZ on lowest gas prices in five years, plus more on lower oil prices

I described the state of the local gas war on Saturday in Falling gas prices make news in Michigan, again.

Thursday, the three stations down the street lowered their price for regular to $2.25, while the corner station remained at $2.29.  I expected the corner station would match them.  Instead, it undercut them, dropping its price all the way down to $2.17.  In response, the three stations down the street lowered their prices to $2.22.  That's about what should be expected from Gas Buddy, as that is a dime below the Detroit average of $2.32 on Thursday.  However, the corner station seems to have anticipated a further price drop that arrived Friday, when the Detroit average fell to $2.29.  A dozen cents lower at $2.17 doesn't seem that out of line.

The corner station remained at $2.17 throughout the weekend, then dropped one more notch down to $2.15, matching the three stations down the street.  Since this might just be the low for the year, I filled up the new car with midgrade at $2.25 per gallon.

WXYZ reported on the low gas prices in two videos.  This morning's clip was Lowest gas prices in five years.


As the reporter pointed out, the Detroit average is currently $2.25, so the neighborhood price of $2.15 is perfectly in line with the historic pattern of being a dime lower.

This afternoon, Andy Choi's location shot was Falling gas prices.


In both clips, the customers interviewed expressed joy and relief at the lower prices.  That's exactly what I expect will goose the consumer economy for the next year until gas prices start rising year-over-year.

Follow over the jump for some links I've been storing up about the effects of lower oil prices from New York Magazine, Econbrowser, and the Los Angeles Times.

Blast from the past: Joan Rivers vs. Sarah Palin

Yesterday brought this sad news: Joan Rivers, Comedic Legend, Dead at 81.

Investigation into the death of Joan Rivers; fellow comedians comment on her death.

I'll miss her, as she was one of my favorite comics.  She was fearless.

Speaking of Rivers being fearless, she was not afraid to tackle anyone, no matter how famous or dangerous.  I wrote about one such incident on Daily Kos back in January 2011: Fox News bans Joan Rivers for saying Sarah Palin is "stupid and a threat."  As a tribute to Rivers' talent for comedy and controversy, I bring it back as a blast from the past.

It seems that Fox News will go to great lengths to protect its on-air talent and punish those who criticize them.  Joan Rivers found this out the hard way today.

Last weekend, TMZ interviewed Rivers at the Critics' Choice Awards.  The interviewer asked her about her opinion of Sarah Palin.  Rivers gave a candid and snarky appraisal of the half-term governor of Alaska, saying, among other things, that Palin was "stupid and a threat" and that she should be blamed for the shootings in Tucson.

This morning, Rivers tweeted that her appearance on Fox News' morning show had been cancelled.

Details, including a transcript and follow-up, over the jump.

A Bridge Too Fat

I'm in the mood to be a good environmentalist and recycle a comment I left at Kunstler's blog yesterday.

It’s time to run the Chris Chistie bridge-closing kerfuffle against Nate Silver’s checklist for a good scandal.

1. Can the scandal be reduced to a one-sentence soundbyte (but not easily refuted/denied with a one-sentence soundbyte)?

Yes–Christie closed down a bridge on-ramp to punish a political adversary.

2. Does the scandal cut against a core element of the candidate’s brand?

Yes–Christie is supposed to be a competent straight-shooter. Instead, this scandal plays against both his compentence and his honesty, as he either didn’t know what was going on in his own office or he’s lying.

3. Does the scandal reify/reinforce/”prove” a core negative perception about the candidate, particularly one that had henceforth been difficult to articulate (but not one that has become so entrenched that little further damage can be done)?

Yes–it reinforces the widely held perception among Christie’s critics that he’s a bully.

4. Can the scandal readily be employed by the opposition, without their looking hypocritical/petty/politically incorrect, risking retribution, or giving life to a damaging narrative?

So far, yes. Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton’s people in particular are already doing so.

5. Is the media bored, and/or does the story have enough tabloid/shock value to crowd out all other stories?

Yes. It’s the first full week of the year and the press needs something new to write and talk about.

Five yes answers–the last time I did this analysis, I got four and a half, and the politician in question was recalled. This does not bode well for Fat Bastard.

It's too early to tell, but I'm hoping that this second front page reproduced by New York Magazine predicts the impact accurately and he's indeed on a bridge to nowhere.