For the environment - read #1.....for politics, read #10.......both important and insightful stories....
1/ A serious article from Rolling Stone on the climate - the news keeps getting worse. It's been a brutal summer all over the world for heat, but as this excellent story says the real news comes from scientists studying the oceans. There are sea level rises, but there is also increasing acidification and warming of our oceans to the point of major changes to sea life and weather patterns.
Since the last time anything this drastic has happened to our environment was aeons ago no one really knows what will happen, or how fast, but what the scientists do know is that it's all accelerating.
One of the interviewees says in the article she has contingency plans to move to Canada.....
Walruses, like these in Alaska, are being forced ashore in record numbers
Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.
2/ Are you an atheist? Mrs Betty Bowers, "America's Best Christian" has some harsh words for you.....one minute.....
3/ A most interesting and perceptive story on Jon Stewart, and why it may have been best for him to move on because the show was devouring him......his strength was exposing the rage and stupidity all around us, but it never stops.......it's like whack-a-mole.
A good article, and retiring the Daily Show may well be the best thing for Jon.....
(Credit: AP/Victoria Will)
It’s not hard to argue that Jon Stewart has become one of the key political figures of our time – someone so smart, funny and gutsy that he has almost brought clarity to this politically unpleasant decade and a half. The appreciations in his final week hosting “The Daily Show” have started to roll in, and he’s virtually got a place on Rushmore ready.
“I’m going to issue an executive order,” President Obama said when he made his farewell visit two weeks ago. “Jon Stewart cannot leave the show.” Last night, Denis Leary said he and Chris Rock would write jokes for Stewart so he could stay on the air. Amy Schumer paid what seemed to be unironic appreciation Monday. Variety columnist Brian Lowry writes that Stewart’s stepping down could be as significant as any similar departure since Johnny Carson left his show in 1992.
Stewart is so beloved – especially by younger, media-savvy liberals – and seems to be at the top of his game. So why, despite some talk about being “restless” and wanting to take some time with his children, does Stewart feel the need to step down? (Can’t Comedy Central give him a nice, restorative vacation?)
4/ You can tell in this Bill Maher clip he is a little pissed off.......some decent jokes, but the dentist shooting Cecil the lion obviously got to him.....
I hope he isn't going the way of Jon Stewart and letting the never-ending BS get to him!
Last night Bill Maher tackled the Cecil the lion controversy and said it’s part of a larger problem of the rich in America feeling the desire to “actively take from others” with the help of their massive wealth.
Maher is well-known for having some strong views about the treatment of animals, and said, “If you’re a dentist itching to travel to another continent to do something… go to Syria, grow some balls, and take on ISIS.”
As far as he’s concerned, posing next to a dead animal proves you’re a “soulless prick” who enjoys the taking of life.
He continued to go off on the rich for buying politicians and thought up a way to cut out the middleman. “For taht kind of money,” he said, “the rich shouldn’t just get to tell politicians what to do. I think they should get to hunt them. That would be the ultimate trophy… What could be better than a trophy Republican candidate’s head on your wall?”
5/ Matt Taibbi on Trump, and he points out all of the media attacks on him could end up making him stronger......this was written before the Megyn Kelly "hormonal" comment, but even that seems to be blowing over because as of this morning [Wednesday] Roger Ailes has caved and made peace with Trump.........
Donald Trump was the punching bag at last night's Fox News GOP debate.
Last night's debate was the funniest political program in our nation's history. Nothing really comes close.
There have been moments, obviously. Bush ducking a shoe. Admiral Stockdale saying "Who am I? Why am I here?" Sarah Palin being interviewed while a man in the background beheaded turkeys was a classic.
But for comic staying power and sheer WTF factor last night's debate went beyond 11. By my count there were over a dozen genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Mike Huckabee bringing pimps into a presidential debate for the first time ever was a landmark moment. Jeb Bush's attempt at a one-liner, "They call me Veto Corrleone," made millions of adults cringe at the same time. Then there was Megyn Kelly's brain-busting toss to commercial near the end:
KELLY: We have to stand you by, because after the break, we're going to let the candidates make their closing statements, their final thoughts, and… God.
Is it really possible we made it this far in the television era without reaching this point: We'll be right back – with God!
6/ A wonderful unscripted tribute from Stephen Colbert to Jon Stewart that brought Jon to tears.....a poignant moment, and very funny indeed....five minutes.....
After all the jokes, it was Stephen Colbert’s job to make things serious and deliver an unscripted, moving tribute to Jon Stewart, who gave him his first big break as a correspondent on The Daily Showback in 1999.
“You can’t stop anyone because they don’t work for you anymore,” Colbert said as Stewart squirmed in his chair. “It will be quick if you just hold still.”
“Here’s the thing, Jon,” he continued, as Stewart struggled not to cry. “You said to me and many other people to never thank you because we owe you nothing. It is one of the few times I’ve known you to be dead wrong. We owe you — and not just what you did for our careers by employing us to come on this tremendous show that you made — we owe you because we learned from you. We learned from you by example how to do a show with intention, how to work with clarity, how to treat people with with respect. You were infuriatingly good at your job.”
7/ Did you watch the Republican debate? Paul Krugman did, and he was underwhelmed by the spectacle....
This was, according to many commentators, going to be the election cycle Republicans got to show off their “deep bench.” The race for the nomination would include experienced governors like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, fresh thinkers like Rand Paul, and attractive new players like Marco Rubio. Instead, however, Donald Trump leads the field by a wide margin. What happened?
The answer, according to many of those who didn’t see it coming, is gullibility: People can’t tell the difference between someone who sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about and someone who is actually serious about the issues. And for sure there’s a lot of gullibility out there. But if you ask me, the pundits have been at least as gullible as the public, and still are.
For while it’s true that Mr. Trump is, fundamentally, an absurd figure, so are his rivals. If you pay attention to what any one of them is actually saying, as opposed to how he says it, you discover incoherence and extremism every bit as bad as anything Mr. Trump has to offer. And that’s not an accident: Talking nonsense is what you have to do to get anywhere in today’s Republican Party.
8/ This beer commercial from Guinness is a little bit of a weepie.....but very good indeed....one well directed minute.....
9/ Golfers - you can do these trick shots! Two minutes of amazement.....
10/ Robert Reich can be a little over the top, but in this story he is spot on - Trump and Bernie are part of the same reaction against the wholesale corruption of our politics.....
As Robert Reich puts it, "Political insiders don’t see that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the 'ruling class.'” Are Trump and Sanders agents of this revolt?
“He can’t possibly win the nomination,” is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.
Political insiders don’t see that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the “ruling class” of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.
In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. I’ll explain the two ways in a moment.
Don’t confuse this for the public’s typical attraction to candidates posing as political outsiders who’ll clean up the mess, even when they’re really insiders who contributed to the mess.
What’s new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.
11/ George Carlin on the pro-lifers, which would include every one of the 17 Republican candidates for President.....
One excellent minute....
12/ John Oliver with a comedy-doc on Washington DC, and it's quest to try to get some representation in, ironically, DC! An amusing 16 minutes, with a kicker at the end about "Floriduh"......
John Oliver probably just lost a lot of fans in the Sunshine State. For his main Last Week Tonightstory on Sunday, the host examined the strange situation in Washington, D.C., whose residents still has no true representation in Congress, despite the fact that Congress still makes all the budget decisions for the nation’s capital. Oliver’s solution is to just kick out Florida and make D.C. to new 50th state.
“The people of D.C. clearly deserve a greater voice in their own affairs, and they’ve actually come tantalizingly close to getting a voting representative in Congress,” Oliver said. “In 2009, a bill to give D.C. a vote was introduced in the Senate, and the Senate did the most dickish thing imaginable: passing it, but with a little addition.” Namely, adding a rider that would have abolished the city’s gun control laws.
And Oliver gave “the award for the most depressingly cynical thing that has ever been said about D.C.” to President Barack Obama, “who in 2011 avoided a government shutdown by striking a deal with John Boehner that included prohibiting D.C. from spending its own money on abortions for low-income women, saying, ‘John, I will give you D.C. abortion. I am not happy about it.'”
13/ There is another event in 2016 coming up besides the US elections - the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, but as this story says "they ain't ready"......
It is a cheap and easy metaphor, made no more sophisticated or amusing by the fact that it is true. The Rio 2016 Olympics are caked in all kinds of shit. There’s the bullshit of broken promises about the benefits that the Games would bring, and then there is the actual literal shit, long a reality in Rio and now visible to the world. The rivers, streams, and oceans are filled with floating feces, as the raw sewage of the city is, per custom, pumped directly into the water. Even the most pristine appearing of beaches are, in the words of an Associated Press report, “thick with putrid sludge.” And its Olympic lake, Rodrigo de Freitas, is “littered with rotting fish.”
This is an Olympic sized problem, as athletes who participate in water sports will carry, in the words of Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses, “an infection risk of 99 percent.” As of this writing not one of the many water venues has been deemed safe for swimming or boating with waterborne virus levels in the water amounting to 1.7 million times the level of what would be dangerous in Southern California. John Griffith, a marine biologist at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project said to the AP. “It’s all the water from the toilets and the showers and whatever people put down their sinks, all mixed up, and it’s going out into the beach waters.
14/ Amy Schumer is the comedienne de jour, and here are some outtakes from her latest movie "Trainwreck"......note some of these are quite rude.....
No - really rude, but funny.....
Outtakes and bloopers from Amy Schumer's hit movie "Trainwreck" may have hit the proverbial cutting-room floor, but they're still comedy gold.
Universal Pictures' "Line-O-Rama" compilation shows a funny woman hilariously working out her stuff as the cameras roll. There's also a fun segment with a fledgling actor by the name of LeBron James.
Former Knick and current Heat player Amar'e Stoudemire also made the reel -- and it looks like he was charmed.
15/ Nineteen pictures of what we humans are doing to our planet......pour yourself a glass of wine, look at these and try not to weep excessively......
Last week, Pope Francis and church officials encouraged everyone to consume less and think more about our impact on the environment.
It's a timely warning because the next six months will be critical to our future.
Ahead of a series of major events later this year, The Foundation for Deep Ecology and the Population Media Center released a collection that illustrates the devastating effects of out-of-control growth and waste, and it's breathtaking.
"This is an issue that people care about, and oftentimes it's just not discussed by mainstream media," Missie Thurston, director of marketing and communications at the Population Media Center, told Mic.
It's difficult to always know the impacts of our daily choices, like the real effect of buying a bottled water or an extra TV or laptop. With 220,000 more people on the planet every day, and the average person generating over 4 pounds of waste a day — an almost 60% increase since 1960 — the impact of that growth and change in behavior is rarely seen like this.
Electronic waste, from around the world, is shipped to Accra, Ghana, where locals break apart the electronics for minerals or burn them.
16/ More on your Governor Voldemort, the corrupt piece of weasel shit you elected last year - here he's being his usual self, i.e. lying and playing to the crazies about Planned Parenthood.....
Maybe it’s the excitement of the upcoming candidate debate, the influence of Pluto, or the infernal heat, but Florida Republicans are acting weirder than usual.
Jeb Bush casually proposed getting rid of Medicare in front of a gaggle of older people. A couple of days later, he copped to a man-crush on James K. Polk, 11th president and unrepentant slaveholder. What makes Polk so sexy? He brought Texas into the Union.
Texas, which gave us George W., Ted Cruz, Rick Perry and Louie “terror babies” Gohmert; Texas, which has a law school that actually admitted Gov. Rick “10 Watt” Scott.
Yeah, thanks a bunch, James K. Polk.
Todays video - a collection of the funniest commercials ever made.....and some of them are really good! And some aren't.....
I love the library blonde one.....
Todays Donald Trump joke
A woman in her forties went to a plastic surgeon for a face-lift.
The surgeon told her about a new procedure called "The KEY", where a small key is placed on the back of a woman's head and can be turned to tighten up her skin to produce the effect of a brand new face lift.
Of course, the woman wanted "The Key".
Over the course of the years, the woman tightened the key, and the effects were wonderful --the woman remained young looking and vibrant. After fifteen years, the woman returned to the surgeon with two problems.
"All these years, everything has been working just fine. I've had to turn the key and I've always loved the results. But now I've developed two annoying problems:
First, I have these terrible bags under my eyes and the key won't get rid of them."
The doctor looked at her closely and said, "Those aren't bags, those are your breasts."
She said, "No point asking about the beard then ..."
Of course, the woman wanted "The Key".
Over the course of the years, the woman tightened the key, and the effects were wonderful --the woman remained young looking and vibrant. After fifteen years, the woman returned to the surgeon with two problems.
"All these years, everything has been working just fine. I've had to turn the key and I've always loved the results. But now I've developed two annoying problems:
First, I have these terrible bags under my eyes and the key won't get rid of them."
The doctor looked at her closely and said, "Those aren't bags, those are your breasts."
She said, "No point asking about the beard then ..."
Todays little boy joke
A LITTLE THREE YEAR OLD BOY IS SITTING ON THE TOILET.
HIS MOTHER THINKS HE HAS BEEN IN THERE TOO LONG, SO SHE GOES IN TO SEE WHAT'S UP.
THE LITTLE BOY IS SITTING ON THE TOILET READING A BOOK, BUT ABOUT EVERY 15 SECONDS OR SO, HE PUTS THE BOOK DOWN, GRIPS ONTO THE TOILET SEAT WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND HITS HIMSELF ON TOP OF HIS HEAD WITH HIS RIGHT HAND.
HIS MOTHER SAYS: "BILLY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? YOU'VE BEEN IN HERE FOR A WHILE."
BILLY SAYS: "I'M FINE, MOMMY. I JUST HAVEN'T GONE POTTY YET."
MOTHER SAYS: "OK, YOU CAN STAY HERE A FEW MORE MINUTES, BUT BILLY, WHY ARE YOU HITTING YOURSELF ON THE HEAD?"
BILLY SAYS: "WORKS FOR KETCHUP."
A bonus Trump joke
So a guy walks into a Latino bookstore and asks "Do you have Donald Trump's book about immigration?"
The clerk says "Fuck you! Get the hell out of here!"
The guy says "Yeah, that's it. Do you have it in paperback?"
Todays rueful joke.....
I was always taught to respect my elders, but it's getting a lot harder to find one! 
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