1/ The Eric Garner case has polarised America, and as Matt Taibbi writes in Rolling Stone the police are running the risk of becoming illegitimate in some of our big cities and smaller places like Ferguson.....
A thoughtful and interesting take on the priorities and politics of policing in this country.....
Nobody's willing to say it yet. But after Ferguson, and especially after the Eric Garner case that exploded in New York yesterday after yet another non-indictment following a minority death-in-custody, the police suddenly have a legitimacy problem in this country.
2/ Stephen Colbert had a special guest on his show last night - the President, who proceeded to do a segment called "the Decree"......he's amusing, but the captions are funnier......a different four minutes.....
Stephen Colbert brought his show to D.C. tonight, but it got hijacked by President Obama, who delivered his “DECREE” in place of Colbert’s “WORD” segment. And just to give you some idea how it played out, Obama opened by saying, “I, Stephen Colbert, have never cared for our president.”
Most of the segment involved the president talking about getting rid of Obamacare, while jokes about himself, Republicans, and even Fox News popped up next to him. For example, Obama as Colbert said that appearing on a comedy show would be below his dignity; the words next to him then read “but above his approval ratings.”
And when President Obama said, “Young people don’t watch real news shows like this one,” the words next to him read “Or fake ones like Fox.”
3/ Frank Rich interviews the wonderful Chris Rock, and although there have been excerpts about the political comments Rock made, most of the conversation is about comedy and also Rock's new movie.....if you appreciate Chris Rock's humour, you will like this interview.....
What about conservative comedians? You and Dennis Miller were on SNL together. Is it just because I don’t share his politics that I find him less funny, or is there something about conservative stand-up that just doesn’t work?
Yeah, he was there my first year. He used to bust my balls. He’d come into my office and say, “Hey, Rock, how’s that ‘next Eddie’7 thing working out?” Oh, he’s definitely less funny. You know where he’s going. Smart as hell, but you know where he’s going. The middle’s where it’s at, comically. I mean, what do you got? Miller, Stewart, Maher.
Miller on the right, Stewart in the middle, Maher on the left?
And the most successful guy’s …
Stewart?
Stewart’s middle-to-left, but he’s still more in the middle.
In Miller’s case, do you think that identifying with those in power is an impediment to laughter?
I’ll say this. Poor people laugh harder than rich people. Especially black people, they laugh with their feet, too.
4/ One of the funniest SNL clips we have seen for a while - the team imagines a morning show on local TV in St. Louis while the riots in Ferguson are going on......four minutes of hilarity.....really good.....
Note - this segment wasn't aired because of it's edginess....but it's gone viral as a video......
It turns out Saturday Night Live’s most biting satire on the situation in Ferguson last night was not Al Sharpton flubbing his Teleprompter lines. Only this sketch, featuring a St. Louis morning news team that wanted to do anything but their regular silly schtick as the protests raged, was ultimately cut for time.
SNL posted the video online Sunday morning, in which Cecily Strong and Keenan Thompson’s “Rise and Smile” anchors struggle through stories like the 5K fun run “superior race” and check in with a traffic reporter who does not have any good news to share. By the time James Franco’s chef “Darrel Wilson” asks “Who am I to argue with the grand jury?” about his award-winning frittata, things have really gone to hell.
5/ A great story in the Times about how Republican Attorney Generals are partnering with energy companies to stop any action on the environment and cripple the EPA....
It's another indicator of how big money has corrupted all branches of our government, which includes the one office who is supposed to have the most integrity and investigate these issues.....
The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.
But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oiland gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.
“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”
Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”
6/ On one of his shows last week Jon Stewart made an error.....he said a black man in California was shot by police but in fact he was tasered, then died because of the drugs in his system..... to get this in proportion this was one of five examples of black men dying at the hands of police.
Of course, because liberals are held to a much higher standard than Fox, he was corrected by the [Republican] DA of the County, and pilloried on Fox News. Stewart had enough, and although he apologised for the error he had some words for the assholes at Fox, specifically Brian Kilmeade.....
Five minutes of a rare event - Jon Stewart pissed!
Jon Stewart tonight apologized to a California DA that fact-checked a segment he did on black shooting victims. Stewart felt really bad he made a mistake, because it just undermined the larger point he was making about black victims of excessive force by police officers.
And what drove Stewart the craziest was that his “sloppiness” is being used by Fox News to dismiss the more complex conversation about race and the police.
But, Stewart lamented, in “media counter-errorism,” he has to be right all the time; “Fox only has to be right once.”
7/ An letter to Evangelicals from a gay liberal........and what he says seems true - these poor deluded people are being conned......
Dear Evangelicals: You’re Being Had
Dear Conservative Evangelicals,
I drive a Prius, enjoy Vanilla lattes, and am married to a man. I know it’s unlikely for me to be writing you this letter, and even more unlikely for you to read it.
But unlike most of my Obama-loving, liberal friends, I am no longer afraid of you. It’s clear to me that “your side” is losing the battle for public opinion, and I know that many of you agree with that assessment.
So why am I writing you this letter? Because, also unlike my liberal friends, I’m actually on your side, in some ways. I’m an ordained rabbi, and someone deeply concerned with the vulgarization and sexualization of our society. You and I disagree about the solution to this problem, of course, but we agree that there is a problem.
The trouble is, you’re trying to solve cultural problems with political solutions—because politicians have convinced you to do so. I am referring here to establishment Republicans, which for 150 years have consistently been the party of the rich and ungenerous.
In the first half of the twentieth century, most Christians distrusted this party, controlled as it was by “urban bankers” and others opposed to the Jeffersonian values of rural America. But in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the switch began—and by Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, it was complete. Republicans catered to conservative social attitudes on racial integration, and eventually moved rightward on issues like abortion and feminism, too, although you know as well as I do that they never really believed in them. They just realized that they could gain power by uniting two very different groups: the same moneyed elites as always, and you.
8/ An interesting three minute video from Consumer Reports on the best [and worst] cars on the road......they asked 350,000 people how they felt about their cars, and chose seven of the best, and three of the worst.....
See if YOUR car is on the list.....
9/ Great column from Nicholas Kristof in the Times about chickens, Purdue Corp's sunny ads and a farmer who had enough......
If you read this you MAY follow the advice of all responsible food industry critics, and never, ever eat non-organic chicken again. We don't......
If you buy a Perdue chicken in the grocery store, you might think it had lived a comfortable avian middle-class existence.
“Doing the right thing is things like treating your chickens humanely,” Jim Perdue, the company’s chairman, says in a promotional video. The company’s labels carry a seal of approval from the Department of Agriculture asserting that the bird was “raised cage free,” and sometimes “humanely raised,” although it says it is phasing that one out.
Customers approve. Most of us are meat-eaters who still want animals treated humanely, and one survey found that 85 percent of consumers would prefer to buy chicken with a cage-free “humanely raised” label like Perdue’s.
Enter Craig Watts, 48, a North Carolina farmer who says he raises about 720,000 chickens each year for Perdue. He watched the video of Jim Perdue and had an attack of conscience. “My jaw just dropped,” he said. “It couldn’t get any further from the truth.”
10/ Trailer time.......
Exciting preview of "Terminator - Genisys".....Arnold has a part......
Looks interesting - "American Sniper", directed by Clint Eastwood.......
Two serious trailers above, now one from SNL imagining the new Star Wars movie with the original [40 years older!] stars.....an amusing effort......
11/ Another Floriduh story about the corruption endemic in our gub'ment, focusing on Bill McCollum the former Attorney General and how he and the present person in that office, perky Pam Bondi conspire together to do the bidding of their corporate clients [one of whom was Royal Caribbean]......
Basically a ho hum story, nothing will happen and we have four more years of this BS thanks to YOU, who elected this scum.....
By his reckoning, former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is purer than the driven snow, a virtual Bambi of probity, the virtuous Thomas More of Tallahassee. It's any wonder when McCollum walks into a room that Gregorian chants don't flow from the heavens.
The former attorney general was taken aback over any remote suggestion he had used his former perch of power to schmooze his successor, Pam Bondi, and cook up some sweet deals for his clients.
McCollum was particularly galled that simply because he can claim Bondi's office as a homestead exemption, he should be required to register with the state as a professional, back-slapping, influence-peddling lobbyist.
Tut-tut, McCollum responded with a harrumph or two thrown in to rather nice effect. Lobbyist? McCollum? He was just a humble lawyer representing his clients by providing information to Bondi's office to clarify some arcane legal questions. Billable hours to follow.
Let's be perfectly clear. The fact that McCollum served as a big shot with the Republican State Leadership Committee — which contributed $650,000 to Bondi's recent re-election campaign and lavished $16,000 in gifts upon her so she could attend ritzy Republican attorneys general conferences — had absolutely nothing to do with gaining access to the future attorney general of Fox News.
12/ I love Jimmy Fallon - here he and Brian Williams slow jam the President's announcement of executive action in Immigration.....I know it sounds stupid, but it's actually really funny......three most amusing minutes....
A few weeks ago, President Obama took executive action on immigration, and some people still don't know what to think about it. In order to break it down in the most seductive way possible, Brian Williams, who is also celebrating his 10th anniversary as anchor of "NBC Nightly News," joined Jimmy Fallon and The Roots to slow jam the news.
Whatever your stance on the president's decision, one thing we can all agree on is that immigration has never sounded so sexy.
13/ Our second Floriduh chronicle, thanks to the excellent Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel. This is a two part column on The Villages and it's financial structure, which was and continues to be set up to make the late Gary Morse and his family multi-billionaires. As usual in Floriduh it's a story of corruption, but even if the residents of The Villages read these columns, they're probably too stupid or drunk to care what's being done to them financially.....
Oh well......at some point you just say the Village Idiots deserve being hosed.....
Uncle!
That's the sound of The Villages giving up a $426 million battle with the Internal Revenue Service that started six years ago when a sharp agent figured out how fiendishly the developer had perverted a Florida law to be able to issue tax-free bonds.
The IRS tentatively ruled in 2013 that the community-development district running municipal operations at the retirement community of 111,000 retirees wasn't a recognized government for tax purposes because it doesn't represent the residents — it represents only the developer. That means, the IRS concluded, that it can't issue tax-free bonds.
The ruling made the Village Center Development District fight even harder, and the battle is still going on.
But the fuss is rapidly becoming hollow at this point: Last month, the Village Center district refunded all the tax-free bonds it issued from 1993 to 2004 by selling $257 million in taxable ones.
Because of what bond sellers consider generational lows in market interest rates, the district said it actually is saving $21 million over the life of the bonds, even though tax-free bonds usually pay lower interest than taxable ones.
H. Gary Morse, the developer behind The Villages who cashed out for $925 million thanks to the tax-free bonds, died a week after district officials reported the results of the new sale to the board of supervisors controlled by the 77-year-old developer.
What the district did not do as a result of the IRS scrutiny is change its structure so that the quasi-government behind The Villages benefits the people rather than the developer and his family, who continue to run the development. That would have allowed the district to issue tax-free bonds when needed, like any other municipality. Apparently it was too much to hope.
Part 2.....
14/ Finally in Floriduh - I like Publix - good service, nice staff, decent choice of organics and well stocked stores, which is why it's so disappointing to see they STILL haven't agreed to pay the extra 1c a pound to the tomato pickers in South Florida. I did a special DDD a couple of years ago on this very issue, and my conclusion then was there is blatant racism in Publix corporate offices.
Here's what I wrote two years ago.........
And this is a great column from Scott Maxwell in the Orlando Sentinel last week......
Tell Publix you are concerned.....go on their Facebook page, or Twitter feed......it's really disgraceful they won't pay it - even WalMart has agreed to the 1c......
Todays video - an honest trailer for "Les Miserables" - most of the funny commentary on this earnest but dull movie is done in song, just like the film.....quite amusing if you've seen the movie.....
Todays Jewish joke
An Arab had spent many days crossing the desert without finding a source of water. It got so bad that even his camel died of thirst.
He crawled through the sands, certain that he was breathing his last breath, when suddenly, he saw a shiny object sticking out of the sand several yards ahead of him.
He crawled to the object, pulled it out of the sand, and discovered that he had a Manischewitz wine bottle.
It appeared that there may be a drop or two left in the bottle, so he unscrewed the top, and out popped a genie.
BUT this was no ordinary Genie. This genie appeared to be a Chasidic Rabbi, complete with black alpaca coat, black hat, side curls, and tzitzis.
'Vell kid,' said the genie, 'you know how it voiks. You got tree vishes.'
'I'm not going to trust you,' says the Arab. 'I'm not going to trust a Jewish genie!'
'Vott you got to lose? Looks ta me - you're a goner anyvay!'
The Arab thought about this for a minute, and decided that the genie was right. 'Okay, I wish I were in a lush oasis, with plentiful food and drink.'
* * * * * * * P O O F! * * * * * * * * *
The Arab found himself in the most beautiful oasis he had ever seen and he was surrounded with jugs of wine and platters of delicacies.
'Okee-dokee kiddo, vat's your second vish?'
'My second wish is that I were rich beyond my wildest dreams.'
* * * * * * * P O O F !!* * * * * * * *
The Arab found himself surrounded by treasure chests filled with rare old coins and precious gems.
'Okay kid, you got just vone more vish. Best you should make it a good vone!'
After thinking for a few minutes, the Arab says, 'I wish that no matter where I go, beautiful women will always need and want me!'
* * * * * * * P O O F!!! * * * * * * * * *
He was turned into a tampon.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY:
If you're an Arab doing business with a Jewish genie, there's going to be a string attached.
Todays gun nut joke
You may have heard on the news about a Southern California man who was put under 72-hour psychiatric observation when it was found he owned 100 guns; and allegedly had 100,000 rounds of ammunition stored in his home. The house also featured a secret escape tunnel.- By Southern California standards, someone owning 100,000 rounds is considered "mentally unstable."- In Arizona, he'd be called "an avid gun collector."- In Arkansas, he'd be called "a novice gun collector."- In Utah, he'd be called "moderately well prepared," but they'd probably reserve judgment until they made sure that he had a corresponding quantity of stored food.- In Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, he'd be "A guy down the road you would want to have for a friend." - In Montana, he'd be called "The neighborhood 'Go-To' guy."- In Alabama, he'd be called "a likely gubernatorial candidate."- In Georgia, he'd be called "an eligible bachelor."- In North Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Sou th Carolina he would be called "a deer hunting buddy.” - And in Texas he'd just be "Bubba, who's a little short on ammo."
Todays sexist Scottish joke
A woman goes to the Doctor in Glasgow, worried about her husband's
temper and threatening manner.
temper and threatening manner.
The Doc asks: "What's the problem, Janet?
The woman says: "Weeell Doctor Cameron, I dinae know what to do.
Every time ma hubbie comes home drunk, he threatens to slap me aroon'."
Every time ma hubbie comes home drunk, he threatens to slap me aroon'."
The Doctor says: "Aye, well... I have a real good cure for that.
When your husband arrives home intoxicated, take a wee glass of water
and start swishing it in your mouth.
When your husband arrives home intoxicated, take a wee glass of water
and start swishing it in your mouth.
Just swish and swish but don't swallow it until he goes to bed and is
sound asleep."
sound asleep."
Two weeks later she comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.
She says: "Doctor that was brilliant! Evrae time ma hubbie came home
drunk, I swished with water.
drunk, I swished with water.
I swished an' swished, and he didnae touch me even once!
Tell me Doc...wha's the secret? How's the water do that?"
The Doctor says: "Janet hen, it's really nae big secret.
The water does bugger all - it's keeping your mouth shut that does the
trick…"
The water does bugger all - it's keeping your mouth shut that does the
trick…"
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