1/ An interesting opinion piece in the NYT from Henry Paulson, yes that Paulson - big tall bald guy who rescued the economy in 2008 - Secretary of the Treasury.
This is titled "The Coming Climate Crash", and it's significant because Paulson is a serious dude, super well connected to the business elite - he is also a Republican, from the non-crazy side of the party.
A sober, businesslike analysis about the climate disaster coming and a good case for how to mitigate the effects.......a grain of hope perhaps that there are some sensible oligarchs speaking up? Naaaa......
THERE is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.
For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses building up in the nation’s financial markets. When the credit bubble burst in 2008, the damage was devastating. Millions suffered. Many still do.
We’re making the same mistake today withclimate change. We’re staring down a climate bubble that poses enormous risks to both our environment and economy. The warning signs are clear and growing more urgent as the risks go unchecked.
This is a crisis we can’t afford to ignore. I feel as if I’m watching as we fly in slow motion on a collision course toward a giant mountain. We can see the crash coming, and yet we’re sitting on our hands rather than altering course.
We need to act now, even though there is much disagreement, including from members of my own Republican Party, on how to address this issue while remaining economically competitive. They’re right to consider the economic implications. But we must not lose sight of the profound economic risks of doing nothing.
The solution can be a fundamentally conservative one that will empower the marketplace to find the most efficient response. We can do this by putting a price on emissions of carbon dioxide — a carbon tax. Few in the United States now pay to emit this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere we all share. Putting a price on emissions will create incentives to develop new, cleaner energy technologies.
2/ Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.....here we are again, trying to avoid getting sucked into another war but it won't be for the lack of effort from the same idiots who took us there in 2003. The talking heads are all over the news, saying "Obama has to do something!", but he doesn't.
The reason we are hearing the calls for troops again is that the military/industrial oligarchs want another war. They made so much money from Iraq and Afghanistan that now it's dried up, they need some action, somewhere, so the boys can make money. So out of their slimy pits come the tired old white guys who fucked us over last time, and our corporate media dutifully trots them out.....
The only media telling it like it is now are the comedians.....Jon Stewart is one......the truth and jokes too!
Six pretty good minutes....
Jon Stewart examined the current crisis in Iraq through a historical lens to ask an important question: why does the media keep giving airtime to all these politicians and pundits who were ‘wrong about the whole fucking thing” years ago? Stewart singled out Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain in particular, the latter earning Stewart’s honor as “one of the wrongest.”
Stewart mocked the “freedom rave” Republicans and people in the Bush administration were celebrating years ago about Iraq, but luckily, he said, after being wrong for so long, “those idiots were ostracized, never heard from again.”
Not.
Stewart marveled at how many media appearances McCain’s made; so much so, “you’d think he just won Dancing with the Stars.” But Stewart credited McCain with one thing: at least he’s consistent in his desire to get involved in basically every country you can think of.
3/ And Bill Maher is definitely another comedian who gets to the heart of the issues in Iraq, and again the bonus is he is often very funny.....this four minute segment has some wonderful zingers....
Bill Maher ended his show Friday night by getting to the real heart of America’s issues with the Middle East: the U.S. is the naïve woman in a rom-com who believes that with just the right amount of tender loving she can win over all the “bad boys” and they won’t drink or smoke or fall to dangerous militant groups ever again.
Maher suggested that it’s time the U.S. gets an intervention of its own because, he said, some nations will just never change and it shouldn’t be up to America to fix that. He likened Iraq to that one place on the street corner that’s always under new management: “It’s not failing ’cause it hates freedom, it’s just a shitty location!”
Maher took the analogy to its logical extreme and actually played clips of Dr. Phil diagnosing toxic relationships to make the point that America can’t keep thinking it’s going to get Iraq to change likeJack Nicholson in that one movie.
4/ I'm sure you have heard of the problems with bees dying worldwide, and how dire it would be if bees disappeared. The problems are many including loss of habitat, but one of the main causes are neocontinoids, a pesticide group made by Monsanto. Just one of the ways this evil corporation is kllling the planet and us all.....
Whole Foods did a demo in their dairy and produce sections to give you an illustration of what it would mean......slide the cursor left to right, bees and no bees......
Hoping to pick up some chocolate, apples, lemons or watermelon during your next outing to the supermarket? What about an iced coffee with a splash of cream? Bees, beetles, butterflies and their pollinating brethren are essential in the production of nearly 75 percent of our crops, and without them, you could count out all those foods -- and many, many others.
Pollinators are dying off in record numbers, and scientists are still struggling to figure out what's causing the problem (pesticides?food availability? mites?). Today, a quarter of Europe's bumblebees face extinction, and the beautiful and beloved migration of the Monarch butterfly -- another pollinator -- is in danger of disappearing.
Last year, Whole Foods Market removed all of the fruits and vegetables dependent on pollinators from its produce section to create a striking visual of what our supermarkets would look like without these important creatures as part of its Share The Buzz campaign. The store ditched a shocking 237 items, or 52 percent of the normal product mix. This year, the grocery chain has extended the pollinator's reach to the dairy counter, where milk, yogurt, butter and cheese could disappear.
5/ A recent Pew poll showed some startling differences between conservatives and liberals, and how the polarization of our politics has started to affect our daily lives, including where we live and who we mix with as individuals and families. This story has 13 charts and graphs, and the trends are unmistakable - we are slowly separating into two groups who inhabit the same country....
Fascinating - read this, apply it to YOUR life and see if it's true.....
One of the very interesting things reveled in this poll is how our political views influence how we live our lives. Apparently there are distinct cultural and geographical preference differences between Conservatives and Liberals. The study says,
“If people living in ‘deep red’ or ‘deep blue’ America feel like they inhabit distinctly different worlds, it is in part because they seek out different types of communities, both geographic and social.”
The majority of Liberals prefer to live where the houses are somewhat smaller, but where many things are within walking distance. The more Liberal a person is, the more they choose to live in a city or suburb. While the majority of Conservatives prefer to live in larger houses further away from shops, restaurants, and schools. The more Conservative a person is, the more they prefer to live in a small town or rural area.
6/ Stephen Colbert has some unique ideas on how to get minorities to vote Republican.....a good five minutes.......
The news: It's no secret that Republicans have trouble attracting minority voters.
It's anyone's guess as to why. Maybe it's their staunch opposition to any legislation that might, you know, help minorities — from marriage equality and reproductive rights to immigration reform and so on.
Either way, Stephen Colbert has a solution. Citing the New York Times' dubious claim that more Hispanics are identifying as "white," he concludes that the GOP should rock the vote by turning minorities into a group they've had no trouble attracting:
White guys.
The result is a gem:
7/ Walmart as a corporation has had a large influence in destroying America, by sucking the life out of small and medium size towns, shipping jobs overseas to China by undercutting American companies and underpaying their employees to the point that we the taxpayers are subsidising every Walmart job by about $5000 in food stamps etc.....for how they did it, see #12.
This has made the Waltons, five siblings of Sam Walton, fabulously wealthy but as this story shows they give very little back to the communities that have made them oligarchs - even their family charitable foundation is a tax dodge. Surprisingly this story is from Forbes Business, not some left wing blogger.....
If there really is a hell, I'd volunteer to go there if my duty in the firey pit was to turn the spit that these five evil, disgusting excuses for humans were impaled on.....I'd love my job!
Alice and Jim Walton at the 2011 Walmart annual meeting. Photo: Walmart Stores' Flickr.
The Walton family is America’s richest, worth some $140 billion between them and longtime fixtures of the Forbes 400 list thanks to their approximate 50% ownership of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.
Their Walton Family Foundation, established by the late Sam and Helen Walton in 1988, is considered a heavyweight in the world of nonprofits with just under $2 billion in assets.
In 2013 alone, the Foundation invested $325 million across three key areas: education reform, the environment and the family’s home region of northwest Arkansas. One of the Foundation’s major recipients has been Alice Walton’s stunning Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, funded to the tune of $1.2 billion.
However, almost none of this largesse is the result of donations from the Waltons themselves, according to a report released on Tuesday by Walmart 1 Percent, a project of union-backed Making Change at Walmart.
Says the study, which can be viewed in full here:
The central finding of this report is simple: Our analysis of 23 years’ worth of the Walton Family Foundation’s tax returns shows that Rob, Jim, Alice and Christy Walton—the second generation Walmart heirs—have contributed almost none of their personal fortune to the foundation which bears their family name.
8/ Did you watch the John Oliver segment on the FCC? Apparently so did the head of the FCC, and he was asked about the clip in a Congressional hearing, and John Oliver follows up with his testimony......a hilarious four minutes......
John Oliver (Credit: Screenshot)
A couple of weeks back John Oliver spouted an epic 13-minute monologue on the importance of net neutrality. (The rant may have even caused an overload on the FCC website.)
In part of the segment, Oliver compared FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to a dingo, which Oliver described as “Australia’s favorite baby-eating animal.”
In a public meeting on Friday, the FCC chairman was asked if he’d seen the “Last Week Tonight” segment. Wheeler responded that he had in fact seen the rant, saying it demonstrated a “high level of interest in the topic.”
9/ Ho hum - California is in deep shit this summer, reservoirs are going dry etc. etc. El Nino may save the state with much needed rain, but you can't count on it.
This is a George Carlin moment - "Nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care"......but wait till the produce section in your local market is affected. Then even the stupids will notice.....
The fire camp for the Shirley Fire at Camp Nine, near Kernville, Calif., is well underway Sunday, June 15, 2014. (AP photo/The Bakersfield Californian, Casey Christie)
Tough times are getting tougher in California: Wildfire season is already well underway and cities are doing everything possible to conserve water, from ripping out lawns to seriously considering “pee-drinking.”
The entire state is experiencing some level of drought, but within that, there are different categories, from “abnormally dry” right on through to “extreme drought.” Oh, and then there’s the absolute worst — “exceptional drought” — and as of Thursday, a full third of California has made it to that level, up from 25 percent on June 10.
That means a full 77 percent of the state is now experiencing extreme to exceptional drought, according to he U.S. Drought Monitor. Here’s what it looks like (the darker the red, the worse the conditions):
California’s currently in its dry season, but that’s not what’s to blame for the extremity of the drought, explains Climate Central. Instead, the dire conditions are the result of three years of abnormal dryness; officials are only now beginning to understand the extent of the problem:
10/ Guy video time - A TwisterNederland compilation of fails, not as violent as usual, but still seven painful and sometimes expensive minutes.....
11/ We captured the Benghazi mastermind this week, but if you watched Fox News it wasn't good enough....or crazy enough......
Jon Stewart skewers Fox and CNN for their "coverage" of this event.....eight most amusing minutes....
Jon Stewart tore into Fox News on Wednesday night for being such “dicks” about a Benghazi victory after over a year of complaining about the Obama administration not doing anything about it. He mocked them for increasingly “stupider complaints” about the capture of a Benghazi suspect conveying some kind of message that “the world revolves around Fox.”
But Fox News wasn’t just talking about that, they also scored an “exclusive” sitdown with Hillary Clinton! On the same night as CNN’s “exclusive” with Clinton! And while Fox’s ménage-à-trois struck Stewart as a little weird, CNN’s over-the-top self-congratulation really threw him for a loop.
CNN hyped its own town hall all day and had a town hall special following their town hall in which literally everyone and everything received a huge round of applause. Stewart compared CNN to Ron Jeremy because at this point, “you’re the only network that can blow itself.”
12/ More on the spit-worthy Waltons and Walmart.....title says it all......
50 Years of Gutting America’s Middle Class
Walmarts explosive growth has gutted two key pillars of the American middle class: small businesses and well-paid manufacturing jobs.
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, 50 years ago this month. Sprawled along a major thoroughfare outside the city’s downtown, that inaugural store embodied many of the hallmarks that have since come to define the Walmart way of doing business. Walton scoured the country for the cheapest merchandise and deftly exploited a loophole in federal law to pay his mostly female workforce less than minimum wage.
That relentless focus on squeezing workers and suppliers for every advantage has paid off since July 1962. Walmart is now the second-largest corporation on the planet. It took in almost half-a-trillion dollars last year at more than 10,000 stores worldwide.
Walmart now captures one of every four dollars Americans spend on groceries. Its stores are so plentiful that it’s easy to imagine that the retailer has long since reached the upper limit of its growth potential. It hasn’t. Walmart has opened over 1,100 new supercenters since 2005 and expanded its U.S. sales by 35 percent. It aims to keep on growing that fast. With an eye to infiltrating urban areas, Walmart recently introduced smaller “neighborhood markets” and “express” stores.
Community members rally against Walmart in New York City (asterix611 / Flickr)
While the big-box business model Sam Walton pioneered half a century ago has been great for Walmart, it hasn’t been so great for the U.S. economy.
Walmart’s explosive growth has gutted two key pillars of the American middle class: small businesses and well-paying manufacturing jobs.
Between 2001 and 2007, some 40,000 U.S. factories closed, eliminating millions of jobs. While Walmart’s ceaseless search for lower costs wasn’t the only factor that drove production overseas, it was a major one. During these six years, Walmart’s imports from China tripled in value from $9 billion to $27 billion.
Small, family-owned retail businesses likewise closed in droves as Walmart grew. Between 1992 and 2007, the number of independent retailers fell by over 60,000, according to the U.S. Census.
Their demise triggered a cascade of losses elsewhere. As communities lost their local retailers, there was less demand for services like accounting and graphic design, less advertising revenue for local media outlets, and fewer accounts for local banks. As Walmart moved into communities, the volume of money circulating from business to business declined. More dollars flowed into Walmart’s tills and out of the local economy.
13/ OK Go is a band with imagination and an amazing visual sense.....nice song too......
The music video for the group's new single "The Writing's on the Wall" is brilliant. Its trompe l'oeils and single-shot execution are flawless, but it's more than perfect Internet fodder. The band has managed to tie an extremely catchy New Wave single to a thematically fitting, visually stunning video. It's a song about a failing relationship. It's fitting, then, that in OK Go's Brooklyn soundstage, everything looks different depending on your perspective.
OK Go's career often looks like the work of director Michael Bay. Like the unending series of Transformersfilms, OK Go has unflinchingly upped the ante on each subsequent music video since their first great success. They're career goofballs. Observe:
14/ Twenty miles north of Mount Dora is The Villages, a retirement community for older retirees that is owned by a right wing billionaire, Gary Morse, who MAY have thought up a great marketing gimmick to boost sales of the homes they continue to build - public sex in the village squares......
This was a story one of the British tabloids jumped on with gusto......and Lauren Ritchie was quite amused by it all. Excellent column from her in the Orlando Sentinel.......
Margaret Ann Klemm, 68, and David Bobilya, 49, are accused of having sex at a town square in The Villages. (Sumter County Sheriff's Office
Whatever it is, the story online and in the American edition of the conservative British tabloid the Daily Mail about a couple having sex in one of The Villages' public squares is positively hilarious and was shared nearly 11,000 times on social-media sites. You can read ithere.
The story recasts the massive retirement community of 100,000 people from a golf mecca for grandpa into Sodom and Gomorrah, USA, for randy retirees awash in booze and enthusiastically buying Viagra through a thriving black market. It goes on and on quoting residents about sly public sex, organized group sex, sex parties, sex on golf carts and S-e-x with a capital S on the putting greens. It portrays aggressive women in their late 50s and 60s dressed as teenagers on the prowl as it endlessly emphasizes the point that "every night is Saturday night!" Yes! Go, Grandma!
What gives the story an effective barb and humor is the bit of truth at the bottom of it. That's what makes all the best jokes funny, isn't it?
15/ Here is the original story from the Daily Mail - exactly as Lauren describes, with more salacious detail and lots of pictures of "swingers"......
Ten women to every man, a black market in Viagra, and a 'thriving swingers scene': Welcome to The Villages, Florida, where the elderly residents down Sex on the Square cocktail in 'honor' of woman, 68, arrested for public sex with toyboy
- The Villages in Florida is the world's largest retirement community and has a reputation for naughty behavior
- Peggy Klemm, 68, was arrested for having drunken public sex in the square with toyboy 19 years her junior
- Four days before her arrest she'd been put on probation for drunk driving her golf cart
- Local bar has made a $3.75 Sex on the Square cocktail in honor of Peggy, who is married to wheelchair bound husband
- MailOnline went undercover in The Villages and found a thriving swingers scene, a black market in Viagra
- Dubbed Disney World for old people, there are 10 women to every man and their antics would make Mickey Mouse blush
- Resident Belinda Beard, 62, said: 'All of the women work hard to look good... Turn your back for a minute and someone will try to steal your husband'
- Swimming in cheap booze and sunshine 'every night is Saturday night'
- One of its most infamous residents was a retired biology teacher who called his manhood Mr Midnight
PUBLISHED: 09:49 EST, 16 June 2014 | UPDATED: 10:25 EST, 17 June 2014
Dusk on a Thursday night at the Red Sauce bar and waiters are doing a roaring trade in Sex on the Square cocktails.
The rum, coconut and cream concoction – complete with a cherry on top – costs just $3.75 and the elderly clientele can’t get enough.
It was created last week after 68-year-old Peggy Klemm was arrested for having drunken public sex in the square opposite with her 19 years younger toyboy.
'Every night is Saturday night': Claire Tucci shows off her moves in The Villages - the world's largest retirement community with 10 women to every man. Colourful dancing is the tamest of the behaviour that goes on
Todays video - one of the funniest movies ever made was "Airplane", and this is a five minute clip of some of the best moments from that movie......still amazingly good even after 30 years.....
Todays psychiatry joke.....
Four Moms in therapy --
A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers and their small children.
"You all have obsessions," he observed.
To the first mother, Mary, he said, "You are obsessed with eating. You've even named your daughter Candy."
He turned to the second Mom, Ann : "Your obsession is with money. Again, it manifests itself in your child's name, Penny."
He turned to the third Mom, Joyce: "Your obsession is alcohol. This too shows itself in your child's name, Brandy."
At this point, the fourth mother, Kathy, quietly got up, took her little boy by the hand, and whispered, "Come on, Dick, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Let's pick up Peter and Willy from school and go get dinner.
A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers and their small children.
"You all have obsessions," he observed.
To the first mother, Mary, he said, "You are obsessed with eating. You've even named your daughter Candy."
He turned to the second Mom, Ann : "Your obsession is with money. Again, it manifests itself in your child's name, Penny."
He turned to the third Mom, Joyce: "Your obsession is alcohol. This too shows itself in your child's name, Brandy."
At this point, the fourth mother, Kathy, quietly got up, took her little boy by the hand, and whispered, "Come on, Dick, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Let's pick up Peter and Willy from school and go get dinner.
Todays jokes for guys......
EATING OUT
When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators...YEP!!!
MONEY
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.
BATHROOMS
A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.
ARGUMENTS
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.
FUTURE
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
MARRIAGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.
DRESSING UP
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.
NATURAL
Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.
OFFSPRING
Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
A married man can forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!
Todays fifties joke
You need to be able to remember the era to really enjoy this.... It was a hot Saturday evening in the summer of 1958 and Fred had a date with Peggy Sue. He arrived at her house and rang the bell. "Oh, come on in!" Peggy Sue's mother said as she welcomed Fred in. "So, what are you and Peggy planning to do tonight?" she asked. "Oh, probably catch a movie, and then maybe grab a bite to eat at the malt shop, maybe take a walk on the beach..." "Peggy likes to screw, you know," Mom informed him. "Uh...really?" Fred replied, with raised eyebrows. "Yes," said the mother. "As a matter of fact, she'd screw all night if we let her!" "Well, thanks for the tip," Fred said as he began thinking about alternate plans for the evening. "Have fun, kids," the mother said as they left. Half an hour later, a completely disheveled Peggy Sue burst into the house and slammed the front door behind her. "The TWIST, Mom!" She angrily yelled at her mother. "THE DAMN DANCE IS CALLED THE TWIST!!!"
