1/ Frank Rich with his take on last weeks news, including Hillary, Bernie and the Confederate flag.....as usual, really insightful......
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: Hillary Clinton's relationship with the media, Bernie Sanders, and the future of the Confederate flag.
Hillary Clinton, who has been running a notoriously press-averse campaign, is trying to convince voters that her CNN interview and an intention to take more questions on the campaign trail mark a new direction. Do you believe her?
Actually, no. People don’t change. Her press aversion is deeply ingrained. It is also understandable, given the siege the Clintons faced (some merited, but some of it psychotically over-the-top) in the 1990s. But Bill Clinton more or less got past it. Hillary Clinton never did. That would be fine if she were not running for president, but in the 2016 race, her antipathy to the press is already taking a toll. The most recent blunder came on July 4, when her minions herded reporters with a kind of a supersize lasso to keep them away while she marched in a small-town New Hampshire parade. We keep being told that she’s learned from the failures of her 2008 run, but where’s the evidence? She has shuffled her political team since the dark days of Mark Penn, but it’s still the candidate who sets the tone (tone-deaf, in this case). As the Politico reporter Glenn Thrush tweeted over the weekend, “Never underestimate @HillaryClinton’s capacity to fritter away commanding natural advantages with poor judgment.”
Actually, no. People don’t change. Her press aversion is deeply ingrained. It is also understandable, given the siege the Clintons faced (some merited, but some of it psychotically over-the-top) in the 1990s. But Bill Clinton more or less got past it. Hillary Clinton never did. That would be fine if she were not running for president, but in the 2016 race, her antipathy to the press is already taking a toll. The most recent blunder came on July 4, when her minions herded reporters with a kind of a supersize lasso to keep them away while she marched in a small-town New Hampshire parade. We keep being told that she’s learned from the failures of her 2008 run, but where’s the evidence? She has shuffled her political team since the dark days of Mark Penn, but it’s still the candidate who sets the tone (tone-deaf, in this case). As the Politico reporter Glenn Thrush tweeted over the weekend, “Never underestimate @HillaryClinton’s capacity to fritter away commanding natural advantages with poor judgment.”
2/ According to Republicans, you're lazy.......if that gets your attention, read this column from Paul Krugman with the latest coded messages from most of the Republican Presidential candidates....
Americans work longer hours than their counterparts in just about every other wealthy country; we are known, among those who study such things, as the “no-vacation nation.” According to a 2009 study, full-time U.S. workers put in almost 30 percent more hours over the course of a year than their German counterparts, largely because they had only half as many weeks of paid leave. Not surprisingly, work-life balance is a big problem for many people.
But Jeb Bush — who is still attempting to justify his ludicrous claim that he can double our rate of economic growth — says that Americans “need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families.”
Mr. Bush’s aides have tried to spin away his remark, claiming that he was only referring to workers trying to find full-time jobs who remain stuck in part-time employment. It’s obvious from the context, however, that this wasn’t what he was talking about. The real source of his remark was the “nation of takers” dogma that has taken over conservative circles in recent years — the insistence that a large number of Americans, white as well as black, are choosing not to work, because they can live lives of leisure thanks to government program
3/ Eric Holder just gave up the job of Attorney General of the US, and has returned to his former job in a consulting firm that advises all of the big banks.....
He did his job well, as none of the major banks was indicted nor did any banker go to jail.....and this story should give you some indication of the wholesale corruption of our Government....it's almost like he was a secret agent for the banks to make sure none of the bastards went to jail, and he did his job well and noone in the media told you about it.
Matt Taibbi is disgusted, and so should you be.....
Eric Holder is back at Covington & Burling after serving as U.S. attorney general for six years. Saul Loeb/AFP/GettyEric Holder has gone back to work for his old firm, the white-collar defense heavyweight Covington & Burling. The former attorney general decided against going for a judgeship, saying he's not ready for the ivory tower yet. "I want to be a player," he told the National Law Journal, one would have to say ominously.
Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly – this is no joke – was kept empty for him in his absence.
The office thing might have been improper, but at this point, who cares? More at issue is the extraordinary run Holder just completed as one of history's great double agents. For six years, while brilliantly disguised as the attorney general of the United States, he was actually working deep undercover, DiCaprio in The Departed-style, as the best defense lawyer Wall Street ever had.
Holder denied there was anything weird about returning to one of Wall Street's favorite defense firms after six years of letting one banker after another skate on monstrous cases of fraud, tax evasion, market manipulation, money laundering, bribery and other offenses.
4/ One of the best ventriloquist acts out there is Nina Conti, and her original was one of the funniest skits ever, and this is a follow up.....almost as good as the first one......I guarantee you will laugh some time in this four minutes....
5/ More blatant corruption - Jeb Bush gave speeches to a Korean steel company, which paid him over a million dollars in speaking fees, then got a Billion dollar contract from the US government......headed by Jeb's brother, George W......
Jeb’s South Korean sugar daddy
Bush gave 10 speeches for firm that reaped more than $1 billion from his brother’s administration.By Kenneth P. Vogel
As he amassed wealth after leaving the Florida governor’s office, Jeb Bush delivered 10 separate paid speeches to a South Korean metal company that won more than $1 billion in contracts from his brother’s presidential administration, according to disclosures released Tuesday.
The company, Poongsan Corp., and its CEO Jin Roy Ryu, have been generous patrons of the Bush family over the years, raising about $1 million for the presidential library of Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, while also helping to organize trips to South Korea for Jeb Bush and his presidential relatives.
6/ A montage of technological change, updated.....four minutes of mind expanding facts and projections about the future....
7/ Mary and I have discussed this issue, and when this happens to me and she needs to write an obituary, she will put this in the paper [if there still are papers] or post it on whatever comes after Facebook, just like this....
No details, just open this story.....
85-year-old Fargo, N.D., resident Douglas Legler wanted to go out with a laugh, and his wish was granted. While everyone else writes hagiographic biographies for their obituaries, listing every major accomplishment in detailed fashion, Legler insisted his eventual obit be as succinct as humanly possible.
8/ Fox News loves Trump, and promotes him relentlessly but there MAY be a downside......this article says so, but who knows - the right has all the money and the country is very stupid....
Fox News built a f**ked-up Frankenstein, dumb, angry and divorced from facts. Now Donald Trump will devour them
Conservative media destroyed conservative politics. The right's impossible to take seriously. Then came Trump!
Fox News –and the conservative media-industrial complex – have created a Frankenstein. His name is Donald Trump, and his political success is now a huge problem for the Republican Party. In so many ways, Trump’s political existence was inevitable. For years, Fox News and the conservative talk radio machine have played to the populist Tea Party id: fomenting fear, demonizing immigrants, and enabling every nativist anxiety imaginable. Now they’re paying the price.
Donald Trump is practically a mirror image of the Fox News psyche. Most of his speeches consist of repackaged stupidities plucked right out of the conservative mediascape. It’s kind of brilliant, really. Trump knows his audience, and he beams back at them every idiotic thing they want to hear. Which, of course, is exactly what Fox News does.
The wonderful irony of all this is that the conservative media have ruined conservative politics, far more than liberals ever did. And the results speak for themselves. It’s true that Fox News has promoted the conservative brand and very likely energized grass-roots conservatism in some sense, but at what cost? The GOP, increasingly, is no longer a national party – it’s confined more and more to the South and to pockets of rural America.
9/ And more Trump, this time from Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald.....as usual an insightful and intelligent look at this blowhard.....
Before one more straight-faced political story is written about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, the obvious begs to be stated: The man has absolutely no chance of winning.
Zero. Nada.
Write it down. Take it to the bank. Bet the farm.
This preening self-parody of an egomaniac will never, ever be elected president of the United States. He has more baggage than all the Kardashians put together, and less class. The only way he could win is if the Democrats nominate Bill Cosby.
Anyone who manages to defame an entire Hispanic nationality on his first day of campaigning will, inevitably, offend practically everybody . The early Republican polls showing Trump in second position behind Jeb Bush are hilarious — and meaningless.
Trump wears thin fast on voters. He isn’t the sharpest tack in the corkboard, but he has brains enough to know he can’t possibly capture his party’s nomination, much less the White House. So why is he running?
10/ One minute viral video of a yoga session being filmed that goes a tad astray....
Lads - see how yoga is done by a very fit young lady!
11/ Continuing the story of political corruption, this one is local. Florida's own Attorney General Pam Bondi is suing to stop a voter solar energy initiative.....and it's blatant who she is working for - FPL, Duke Energy etc. If there's any state that should be encouraging solar energy it's Florida, with more sun than anywhere else, but because this would cut into the energy companies profits our "leadership" does everything it can to stop it.
The corruption is blatant - they just don't care, because the stupids of Florida keep voting them in.....
Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi is trying to stop a voter initiative that would allow state residents to buy solar-generated energy from their neighbors instead of the state’s big electric utilities.
Bondi has come to the aid of Florida Power & Light to oppose a ballot amendment that would prevent the government and state utilities from imposing legal barriers to people who choose to power their homes in a way that eliminates doing business with one of the state’s big providers.
“As a large and growing state, Florida needs a diverse energy portfolio that includes solar energy; however, the proposed constitutional amendment mandates major changes in existing law, using language that is unclear and misleading,” Bondi said in a prepared statement.
Bondi’s really just protecting the business interests of the state’s big power companies who want to maintain their monopoly on selling electricity, rather than allowing Floridians to take full advantage of the state’s abundant, and largely untapped, solar energy.
12/ Amazing rant of a woman upset over the gay marriage decision.....she is truly a "Crazy Christian".....you will find yourself hypnotized watching this till the end, in fascination.....
This has gone viral of course, and after you watch it you might start to wonder if this is truly what they think and behave in Kansas and Oklahoma?
A couple of days ago, “Queerty was the first to report on the 64-year-old Indiana housewife’s recorded meltdown over marriage equality. It included tears, screaming, yelling, crying for Jesus, and jabs at gays, gay-loving Christians, Muslims, women who have abortions, and, of course, President Obama.”
She began her rant stating that “This is a really sad day for me, today is a sad day for a lot of Christ followers. Because. Today, our government decided that everything that God created his church to be, as man, as woman — Adam and Eve — five justices decided that God was wrong!
13/ A South Carolina House member gave a passionate four minute speech during the Confederate flag debate, and it was powerful enough to sway the House to vote to take the flag down....
She is articulate, almost in tears, but above all a proud Southern lady wanting to do the right thing.....she is a descendant of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, so she had the lineage to make a difference....
A "wow".....
Representative Jenny Anderson Horne, a descendent of Jefferson Davis, gave an impassioned 4 minute oration on #heritage and the flag that left many in tears.
14/ And then we have Floriduh, where the Marion County Commission just voted to put the Confederate flag back up! Marion County is Ocala, just above Lake County, and incorporates part of The Villages.
Sometime you just despair at the stupidity.....
Two weeks ago, Interim Marion County Administrator Bill Kauffman, after consulting with commission Chairman Stan McClain, decided to remove the flag in the wake of the June 17 killings of African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. The accused killer expressed racist beliefs while waving a Confederate flag.
The commission on Tuesday voted to once again fly the flag after several residents spoke in favor of such a move during the meeting.
A half dozen people took part in Wednesday’s protest. For them, the flag has profoundly negative connotations, representing slavery and the episodic hatred that resurfaces during racist incidents such as the Charleston killings.
“Everything I remember about seeing the flag had something to do with hatred,” said protester Ron McDavid.
15/ And speaking of The Villages, there is a growing group of gays [mainly lesbians] making The Villages their home......this story is almost enough to make your head explode - "what are they thinking!"
THE VILLAGES — The community has a soundtrack, and it is Fox News. Take a walk through one of the bustling town squares, and you can hear it descending from the speakers — or is it the heavens? — somewhere above.
This is the place Republican presidential candidates come to boost campaigns. The place conservative authors are rock stars, and Gov. Rick Scott comes to feel the love.
It is also the place where hundreds of lesbians have taken over a country club's breezeway and are dancing the night away to Pink songs.
Welcome to the Villages of diversity?
"You can tell just about anyone around here that you're gay, and you won't have a problem,'' said Villages resident Linda Bernat. "Just don't tell them you're a Democrat.''
Call it inexplicable, or call it encouraging, the folks of the Rainbow Family & Friends club call it home.
16/ This would appear to be a movie for guys [ultraviolence].......the Director of this movie is lucky to be alive, as according to this article he embedded himself with a gang of Mexican meth dealers....
Produced by Kathryn Bigelow.....
“Cartel Land”: A crazy, violent trip into Mexico’s deadly drug war and America’s border paranoia
Vigilantes on both sides of the border take on Mexico's cartels -- and must face the murky morality of capitalism
Vigilantes of the Autodefensa movement celebrate the "liberation" of a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán, in a scene from "Cartel Land."
Everybody becomes corrupt sooner or later, muses a bandanna-wearing philosopher, in the middle of the night somewhere in the Mexican state of Michoacán, toward the end of Matthew Heineman’s unsettling and sometimes terrifying documentary “Cartel Land.” This guy has a reflective and almost mild demeanor, but it’s true that he is wearing the bandanna over his face, carrying a semiautomatic rifle and cooking up an enormous bubble-and-boil batch of crystal meth in blue plastic chemical drums. Whether those facts invalidate his insight into human nature is up to you. (There are further facts about him I will not reveal.) What he says serves as a fitting epigraph or central maxim for “Cartel Land,” which surveys two different frontiers of the disordered relationship between Mexico and the United States without trying to deliver moral lessons.
Maybe the first thing to say about Heineman is that he has a crucial attribute that’s very helpful for documentary filmmakers – he is apparently out of his freakin’ mind. He interviews meth-cooking gangsters in the middle of the night, in situations where if he and his crew were shot and chopped into pieces, it’s probably 50/50 that they would ever be found. He stumbles into a shootout with the Autodefensas, a heavily armed vigilante group who go from village to village across Michoacán, driving out the notorious drug cartel known as the Knights Templar. (Seriously, the Knights Templar! Was some Mexican drug lord, like, a big Dan Brown fan?) A thousand miles or so to the north, he patrols the rugged terrain along the Arizona-Mexico border with a blue-eyed militia-type dude known as “Nailer,” who seems only intermittently connected to reality.
Todays video - the beauty of pollination, hummingbirds, bees etc......a NICE video for all you nature lovers.....
Todays joke for married guys
A couple were at home watching TV.
Phil had the remote and was switching back and forth between a fishing channel and the porn channel.
Sally became more and more annoyed and finally said, "For god's sake, Phil... leave it on the porn channel... you know how to fish!"
Todays Scottish joke
Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life.
As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Nova Scotia back country.
As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost and, being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions.
I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.
I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.
The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man.
And as I played "Amazing Grace", the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.
As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
Apparently, I'm still lost....it's a man thing.
As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost and, being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions.
I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.
I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.
The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man.
And as I played "Amazing Grace", the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.
As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
Apparently, I'm still lost....it's a man thing.
Todays clever jokes
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are: 1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bea ring adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
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