Some exceptionally good stuff this week.....#1 is almost like an epiphany - read it and everything happening becomes clearer... #2 MIGHT happen, and if it does this is what we can expect, and #3 is wonderfully funny....
Anyway - enjoy....
1/ Wow. A fascinating explanation of why our country is slipping further and further behind in every meaningful metric of quality of life - a reasoned, clear and focused look at what it means to be a society that demeans critical thinking and reacts to every event from fear and emotion.
An unlikely source for such an excellent analysis of our political and societal issues - Psychology Today - but they nail it.....a must read folks......
Source: dylann roof facebook
The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.
America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof's actions on America's culture of racism and gun violence, but it's time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation's culture of ignorance.
2/ The Supreme Court has to issue a ruling on "King vs Burwell" [Obamacare] by the end of this week, and if the decision goes against the Affordable Care Act there will be chaos in the health insurance market, but only in the Republican states that have not set up their own health insurance exchanges, which of course includes Floriduh.....
Not quite.Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call
What happens if the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell? The simplest answer is that Republican states get screwed.
You wouldn't know that from the political debate, which pits Democrats who fear a ruling for the plaintiffs against Republicans who welcome one. But both sides are operating under an outdated model of the politics around Obamacare — one in which the law's survival remains an open question.
It's not. Obamacare is here to stay — as even congressional Republicans now realize. And the King v. Burwell case doesn't threaten the law itself. It threatens Republican states that don't want to implement the law. Residents in those states will end up paying a huge amount of money to fund a law that delivers no benefits to them and their state — and, in fact, turns their insurance market into a disaster zone.
More importantly, King v. Burwell threatens the 6.4 million people receiving insurance subsidies in states that don't want to implement the law. For them, an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court won't just be an interesting political story — it'll be a genuine disaster that may leave them unable to afford care they badly need.
3/ With Charleston being the latest massacre in this country, it's time to revisit the brilliant rant by Australian comedian Jim Jeffries on gun control.....he's hilarious, but also makes some great points....you will really enjoy this unless [as he says] you are in the 10% of his audience.....about 14 minutes....
Note - salty language.....
The United States does, in fact, have far more gun violence than the rest of the developed world. To Americans, that can seem like a regrettable but unavoidable fact of life. But to much of the rest of the world, the US attitude toward gun control seems absolutely crazy.
Australian comedian Jim Jefferies was the victim of a home invasion once. He was tied up and beaten, and his girlfriend was threatened with rape. So you might think he'd sympathize with the idea that Americans want guns to protect their families. Quite the opposite — he does an excellent job of summing up why so many foreigners are baffled by America's gun culture:
In Australia, we had the biggest massacre on Earth, and the Australian government went: "That's it! NO MORE GUNS." And we all went, "Yeah, all right then, that seems fair enough, really."Now in America, you had the Sandy Hook massacre, where little tiny children died. And your government went, "Maybe ... we'll get rid of the big guns?" And 50 percent of you went, "FUCK YOU, DON'T TAKE MY GUNS."
4/ If you are 1/ a Democrat or 2/ interested in politics, you will be very interested in this article by Bill Curry in Salon......
Hillary Clinton is going to lose: She doesn’t even see the frustrated progressive wave that will nominate Bernie Sanders
In this photo taken May 20, 2015, Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., poses for a portrait before an interview with The Associated Press in Washington. For Democrats who had hoped to lure Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren into a presidential campaign, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders might be the next best thing. Sanders, who is opening his official presidential campaign Tuesday in Burlington, Vermont, aims to ignite a grassroots fire among left-leaning Democrats wary of Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is laying out an agenda in step with the party's progressive wing and compatible with Warren's platform _ reining in Wall Street banks, tackling college debt and creating a government-financed infrastructure jobs program. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)(Credit: AP)
Hillary Clinton went to New York’s Roosevelt Island earlier this month to relaunch her campaign for president. Her first kickoff fell flat, perhaps because she herself didn’t attend, opting instead to send a video greeting card in which people she still insists on calling ‘everyday Americans’ shared their life plans. (To go to school! Plant a garden! Get married!) She came on at the end to say she had plans of her own that include being president, and that she does it all for us.
She delivered a 45-minute speech that told us little more than that three-minute video. She still won’t say where she’d peg the minimum wage or if she’d ever rein in the surveillance state or get us out of Iraq. Most amazing is how she finesses the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Obama so covets. It’s the biggest deal in the history of commerce; its investor tribunals would substitute corporate for democratic will here and around the world — and Clinton hasn’t said boo about it. Some ask how she gets away with it. I’m not so sure she does.
Politicians have always ducked tough issues, but today’s Democrats are the worst. When the TPP came before the House, enough Democrats played it cute to leave the outcome in doubt till the very end. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t tip her hand until just before the vote. Many who voted no never said exactly why. Some want to curb currency manipulation. Some oppose the fast track process, others the secret tribunals or the intellectual property rules that actually restrain competition. If the caucus as a whole has a bottom line, no one knows what it is.
The TPP is a mystery because our leaders wish it so. We don’t know what’s in it because our president won’t let us read it
5/ Bill Maher with a funny one, but also with an edge because this is personal for him - how comedians get attacked for jokes that offend segments of the population, and how a lot of comedians won't play at colleges any more because of the Political Correctness police.....he makes a lot of sense, and is amusing doing it.
Six good minutes, and wait for the Kardashian joke....hysterical......
Bill Maher ended his show tonight with another rant against politically correct culture, telling people to just lighten up and take a joke already. He reiterated what he said last week about the politically correct culture: Jerry Seinfeld is right, people are too sensitive, and kids these days throw words around like “sexist” and “racist” without knowing what they mean.
Maher told these PC ‘idiots” that their “new brand of censorship” doesn’t care if something is offensive, all it takes is for certain words to set people off and they go ballistic.
Maher particularly had some choice words for the writer of “An Open Letter to Jerry Seinfeld from a ‘Politically Correct’ College Student.” Maher called him a “little shit” and gleaned from his letter that the PC police are fine with jokes as long as they’re not made “about a protected species.”
6/ The President gave a radio interview this week and in the dialogue he used the n-word to make a point, but none of the networks give the context of the remarks, especially Fox.
Here is the President discussing how "progress has been made on race relations, but there is a lot more to do".....three minutes of the actual interview so you can make up your own mind, not just letting Cable News tell you what to think.....
As we observed yesterday, President Barack Obama may have engaged in an hour-long conversationwith WTF podcast host Marc Maron, but the media only seemed to care about one 30-second clip. Specifically, the moment in which Obama dropped the “n-word.”
Using TVEyes for research, we found that one clip, which begins with Obama saying, “Racism, we’re not cured of,” and ends with “Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior” aired at least 14 times on Fox News over the course of the day on Monday (and twice more Tuesday morning).
A slightly longer passage, which included Obama’s mention of “the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives,” played repeatedly on CNN and MSNBC. That portion, including the “n-word” line, aired at least 15 times on MSNBC and at least 11 times on CNN yesterday, all according to a TVEyes transcript search.
But the words that President Obama said to Maron immediately preceding that oft-repeated quote were practically non-existent across the cable news landscape.
7/ "People are Awesome" is one of the better compilations, of extraordinary athletic feats and just amazing stuff.....and none gets hurt! A fast moving and "hold your breath" three minutes.....
8/ The names of none of these corporations that abuse and exploit their customers are a surprise, but they all share a characteristic - they are monopolies or dominate a market segment.....
10 companies that are openly contemptuous of their customers
Cable companies, insurance providers and airlines are famous for awful customer service. Some are worse than others
(Credit: AP/Toby Talbot)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Recently, Comcast customers in Philadelphia were invited to share their thoughts on the cable television giant. One Philly resident after another described Comcast as an appalling combination of high prices and terrible customer service: customers billed for services they didn’t order; repair people not showing up; long amounts of time spent on hold.
Comcast’s less-than-stellar reviews should surprise nobody. In Philly and elsewhere, Comcast is a monopoly, and when a company is allowed to dodge competition and become a monopoly, customer service inevitably suffers. From cable television to banking to air travel, major corporations get away with offering abysmal customer service because they have done everything imaginable to squelch competition and rig the game. The U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous 2010 decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission made matters worse by encouraging giant corporations and their lobbyists to give unlimited contributions to politicians—both far-right Republicans and neoliberal Democrats—and ensuring that they will be as submissive as possible.
9/ "Honest Trailers" makes funny attempts to give you the truth behind the plots of movies, and this one takes on "Lord Of The Rings".....a very amusing three minutes, and this is one of their best ones...
10/ Ross Douhat is one of the conservative columnists for the Times, and in this story he discusses Pope Francis and the implications of the new Encyclical "Laudato Si", and he somewhat sneeringly divides us all into "dynamists and catastrophists"......read this to decide which one you are, but just keep in the back of your mind the climate change effects coming that he doesn't mention.
IN Pope Francis’ sprawling new encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” there are many mansions: A meditation on biblical ecology, a discussion of environmental policy, a critique of consumerism, even a reflection on the perils of social media.
What everyone wants to know, of course, is whether the pope takes sides in our most polarizing debate. And he clearly does. After this document, there’s no doubting where Francis stands in the great argument of our time.
But I don’t mean the argument between liberalism and conservatism. I mean the argument between dynamists and catastrophists.
Dynamists are people who see 21st-century modernity as a basically successful civilization advancing toward a future that’s better than the past. They do not deny that problems exist, but they believe we can innovate our way through them while staying on an ever-richer, ever-more-liberated course.
11/ Louis CK opened the SNL 40th Anniversary show in May 2015, and got in all kinds of trouble for this monologue, about racism, the Middle East and child molestors......it's really edgy, but funny too....nine minutes....
Yet one of the most interesting back-and-forths is a 2014 interview with Louis C.K., arguably one of the most important and game-changing comics working in the industry today.
Within the interview, C.K. shared an anecdote about his second experience hosting “SNL” back in 2014, and the brilliant 9-minute monologue he gave, which touched on weighty topics like feminism and religion (despite containing nothing nearly as controversial as his polarizing child molestation bit from this year’s “SNL” season finale)
Explaining how he has long revered “SNL,” C.K. told Apatow that he worked on the set harder than he had ever worked on anything in his life, wanting to do something that pushed the audience — “a really interesting monologue that’s like its own piece of performance,” as he put it – ultimately coming up with a dark and challenging 12-minute set that, to his surprise, killed at dress rehearsal.
12/ Governor Brownback of Kansas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana are hardline Tea Party conservatives, running their States into the ground by giving tax breaks to the rich and soaking the poor for more fees and cutting benefits.
As this article says they are gutting their States infrastructure, schools, welfare and support for the elderly, poor and infirm.....but they don't care, and they are getting away with it because their states are full of stupids.
You read this and even though they are ruining a lot of peoples lives, there comes a point where you just go "suck it up". The stupids voted for these assholes twice, now they are getting what everyone told them would happen.....tough shit Kansans and Cajuns.....
Bobby Jindal, Sam Brownback (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/AP/Orlin Wagner/Photo montage by Salon)
Nowadays, states are often referred to as “laboratories of democracy,” based on a line from Justice Louis Brandeis stating federalism allows that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”
Implicit in this formulation is the scientific method—trying things out, and learning from the results. But science is in ill repute with the increasingly rigid, ideological GOP these days. For them, the question of what’s to be learned is not how to produce beneficial results, but how to repackage and sell disasters as shining examples of “success.”
Which helps explain how it comes that two of America’s most ambitious GOP governors are now deep in denial that their imaginary budget schemes lie in ruins.
As their state’s legislative sessions came to an end, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal could both claim they were about to sign balanced budgets—by law, they had no choice—but Brownback did so only with a massive sales tax hike, while Jindal raided the piggy bank for one-time funds that will only make things more difficult for his successor.
Both men deeply antagonized their state legislatures in the process—legislatures dominated by their own party.
13/ An absolutely lovely a cappella version of "Chandelier" by the group "Twisted Measure".....it's hard to believe there are no musical instruments played except human voices.....a wonderful song, and beautifully done....
Sia’s hit “Chandelier” is a deep song, putting beats behind the inner pain of a party girl. This stunning a cappella version brings all that hidden emotion right to the surface.
14/ A fascinating tale of how intractable problems can be dealt with if you do the smart thing.....a tale of two cities with the same problem.....
As we know there is a water crisis in the West, but only one city so far has come up with a solution that works - Santa Fe, New Mexico. It's a civilized city [we just spent three days there] full of smart people and look what happened when they rationed water by price!
FRESNO, Calif. — When residents of this parched California city opened their water bills for April, they got what Mayor Ashley Swearengin called “a shock to the system.”
The city had imposed a long-delayed, modest rate increase — less than the cost of one medium latte from Starbucks for the typical household, and still leaving the price of water in Fresno among the lowest across the entire Western United States. But it was more than enough to risk what the mayor bluntly admits could be political suicide.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Ms. Swearengin said, “that people here were fighting the installation of water meters.”
Nearly 15 years ago and 1,000 miles away in Santa Fe, N.M., officials faced a similarly dire predicament when a drought came within a few thousand gallons of leaving the city without enough water to fight fires. But Santa Fe’s response was far more audacious.
Santa Fe, in addition to raising the basic cost of water, decided to make the heaviest users of water pay more — much more — for the water they consumed.
Known as tiered pricing, the system wasn’t new or unique to Santa Fe, but in no major city today are the tiers so steep, with water guzzlers paying three to four times more per gallon than more efficient consumers are charged.
“It was a big wake-up call,” said Rick Carpenter, manager of water resources and conservation for Santa Fe. “There was some opposition, and it could easily have gone the other way. But the majority saw we needed to band together on this one.”
Jon Stewart with a caustic look at how Fox News is covering the Charleston crisis.....he's getting better in his last few weeks because the pressure is off, and he's free to say what he thinks, especially about Fox News.....
Two parts - five minutes, then three minutes with Jessica Williams....
Jon Stewart really unloaded on Fox News tonight for illustrating such hypocrisy on the “rush to politicize” issue. On Charleston, they obviously think President Obama and liberals have been wrong to rush to politicize, but Stewart asked where Fox’s restraint was when they invoked the deaths of two NYPD officers to slam the leadership of Mayor Bill de Blasio and an anti-police climate.
As for the Confederate flag, Stewart called its removal “the absolute least that can be done,” when there are lots of things in the South, near the church where the shooting happened, named for Confederate figures.
And then Jessica Williams came on to try and argue fairly important points, only to be ignored by almost everyone because she’s not a white man.
15/ Remember Amendment 1 on the ballot last year, to spend $700 million on the environment and preserving lands? Fred Grimm in the Miami Herald tells us what happened to these funds, and how the corrupt Florida Legislature and our slimy cockroach of a Governor are doing with our money....
You voted for them, especially if you didn't vote....now it's time for Floridians to suck it up.....
The 4.24 million Floridians who approved Amendment 1 last fall only thought they were voting to provide a funding source for the acquisition of conservation land.
Silly, silly voters. The suits in Tallahassee know we can’t be trusted to know our own minds.
Our legislative leadership was able to divine (with the help of lobbyists) that what we really wanted — the 75 percent of the Florida electorate who voted yes — was a nice chunk of money to bail out a major campaign contributor.
Regular folks, naive about the ways of the Capitol, assumed that they had enacted a constitutional amendment that would force legislators to divert $700 million the state collects each year from real estate transactions into buying parkland and wildlife habitat.
Last week, environmental groups that had campaigned for Amendment 1 were aghast at reports coming out of the House and Senate budget negotiations that only $55 million had been allocated for the purchase of new public land.
As it turned out, $55 million was wildly optimistic. The budget agreement set for a final vote on Friday sets aside a piddling $17.4 million for Florida Forever conservation land purchases.
Instead, as Craig Pittman and Michael Auslen of the Tampa Bay Times reported, that great pile of Amendment 1 money is going to pay for items that normally would have been funded out of the regular budget. For stuff like park maintenance.
Todays video - the stunt driver Ken Block tears through the streets of Los Angeles, ruining tires and generating adrenaline! Twelve minutes of testosterone lads!
Todays Over 50 jokes
Despite what you may have seen on the streets, the following combinations
DO NOT go together for anyone over 50 years old and should be avoided:
1. A nose ring and bifocals
2. Spiked hair and bald spots
3. A pierced tongue and dentures
4. Miniskirts and support hose
5. Ankle bracelets and corn pads
6. Speedos and cellulite
7. A belly button ring and a gall bladder surgery scar
8. Unbuttoned disco shirts and a heart monitor
9. Midriff shirts and a midriff bulge
10. Pierced nipples that hang below the waist
11. Bikinis and liver spots
12. Short shorts and varicose veins
13. In-line skates and a walker
And the ultimate 'Bad Taste' in fashion:
14. A thong and Depends
Please keep these basic guidelines foremost in your mind when you shop.
Todays hunter joke
One night at a local bar frequented by a bunch of deer hunters who werewaiting for the opening day of deer season, the local sheriff scoped out thejoint for possible drunk drivers.As he waited, eventually a patron stumbled out of the bar, fumbled for hiskeys, tried them in three different cars until he finally found his, gotinside and rested his head on the steering wheel. The deputy knew he had hisdrunk driver, so now all he had to do was wait for him to start his engineand pull out of the lot.A few minutes passed by and most of the other deer hunters had left by then,when the patron abruptly lifted his head, cranked the car up and drove outof the lot like a bat out of hell. The deputy followed him and stopped himpromptly.He administered the breathalizer test and it read 0.00. Confused, thedeputy asked the driver what the hell was going on.The driver looked at him innocently and said, "Well, tonight I'm thedesignated decoy."
Todays top 10 country songs joke
10. I Hate Every Bone in Her Body But Mine9. I Ain't Never Gone To Bed with an Ugly Woman, But I Woke Up With A Few8. If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me7. I've Missed You, But My Aim's Improvin'6. Wouldn't Take Her to A Dogfight, Cause I'm Scared She'd Win5. I'm So Miserable Without You, It's like You're Still Here4. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend and I Miss Him3. She Took My Ring and Gave Me the Finger2. She's Lookin' Better with Every BeerAnd the Number One Country & Western song is...1. It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chewed My Ass All Day.
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