GET YOUR WORD AND GRAMMAR QUESTIONS READY As Charles Harrington Elster is on at 2 today to answer all of your word and grammar issues. Get ready to be told you are right...or wrong. Find out more about Charles by clicking here.
DEATH ROW MEALS. WHY DO WE CARE? Whenever a death row inmate goes to meet his final maker, we always find out from the press what they asked for their last meal. Why is this? Why do we care? What does a last meal say about the criminal about to pay the ultimate price for his or her crimes? And more importantly, am I the only one who has thought about what my last meal would be?
COULD PRESCRIPTION DRUGS HAVE INFLUENCED CHRIS CORNELL'S SUICIDE? That is what his wife is alleging, as she says he told her the night he died that he may have taken an "extra Ativan". Ativan is an anti anxiety med that can cause suicidal thoughts. We shall see when the toxicology report comes in. Ativan made my dad INSANE when they gave it to him in the hospital. INSANE. Just an fyi to read ALL the possible side effects before you take any medication and be on the lookout for those side effects at all times.
CAPITALISM BEATS BACK A MONOPOLY! OPEC is what used to be the world's leading oil monopoly, although technically they are a oligopoly. They have artificially controlled the price of oil for decades. But a funny thing happened while they were counting their duckets, the shale oil producers in the US, driven by CAPITALISM found a way to produce top quality oil from shale at a price point that the Saudis can't break. When I first started talking about shale oil on my show, with members of the shale oil producing community, the break even for a barrel of shale oil was about 53 bucks. That floor was easy for the traditional oil producers to bust through, making it easy to simply make shale oil production too expensive to be profitable. But now, that break even is $34 a barrel, making that simply market distortion very difficult. Yay capitalism! So OPEC can cut production all they want now, but the difference will be made up by the US producers. Ha! Take that, middle Eastern dictators and Russia.
HARVARD SAYS THE MEDIA HATES TRUMP...AND LOVED OBAMA Now SCIENCE knows what any thinking human being can easily see: the media has treated Trump far worse than his predecessors in the first 100 days. It's not opinion, it's science! Harvard did a study on the coverage of the last three Presidents and Trump. Of course they found that Trump coverage was negative a vast majority of the time. Look at this graph:
What struck me most is not the overwhelmingly negative coverage of Trump (because DUH) but the softball coverage of Barack Obama. I sure hope those in the media look at this and realize that if everyone keeps telling you that you are dead, it's time to lie down. Or work on your blatant bias.
BUT DON'T COUNT ON THE FACT CHECKERS, THEY NEED TO BE FACT CHECKED Because people who have actually studied the fact checkers say they are biased too. And don't even agree with each other enough of the time to call the whole nonsense into question. Check your own facts, just to be safe.
WHY BLIND PARTY LOYALTY IS A BAD, BAD IDEA (AND I WISH I HAD WRITTEN THIS) National Review's David French handles gracefully the questions I tackled less gracefully earlier this week. Namely, is blind loyalty to "our guy" the right move? He says when you look at the long term, the answer is a definite no.
WHAT DID DENIM EVER DO TO DESERVE WHAT FASHION PEOPLE ARE DOING TO IT? We've had pre muddied jeans and now we've got a fashion crime in the form of convertible shorts. The legs come off and leave essentially jean bloomers behind. Why fashion, why???
MICKEY D'S IS GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT MAKING ICE CREAM HEALTHIER? It's not just ice cream, it's a lot of menu items, but they have made some changes in their ice cream, and no one noticed. Good for them, you shouldn't have to worry about eating chemicals while indulging in fat and calorie loaded treats.
NOW TELLING PREGNANT WOMEN NOT TO DRINK IS SEXIST. SIGH. This story made me roll my eyes SO hard they almost got stuck. In the UK there is a push to stop telling women to not drink during pregnancy. The logic? There is no proof that moderate drinking during pregnancy causes harm to the baby. Okay, I'll go with that. However, there is also an SJW component that made me roll my eyes. That is that telling women not drink is sexist and excludes them from social activities and makes them feel stigmatized. Guess what? When you're pregnant, you already feel stigmatized because you are HUGE. One other point is that some women have no control when it comes to drinking and convince themselves, quite easily I might add, that four beers and two shots are "moderate". This is a very bad idea, because if there are ANY complications to your pregnancy, or your child develops ANY health or learning issues, you will ALWAYS wonder as a mom if it was something you did. Trust me on this. It's not worth it.
TOO MANY JOB SEEKERS ARE GETTING HIGH And if you aren't smart enough to stop smoking pot long enough to get a job, I wouldn't want you to work for me. But this is an interesting story about our job market right now.
AND HERE'S A NEWBORN MOOSE TRYING TO WALK ON THE HIGHWAY Because it's adorable, that's way.