1/ Matt Taibbi on how the Democrats are just sitting back in delight, watching the Donald manipulate the Republican party - any why this might be a disastrous move.....very insightful....
Democrats have celebrated the Trump-fueled GOP spiral.
Over the weekend, polls showed that that the Trump-fueled collapse of the Republican Party is reaching historic depths. According to CNN, the GOP's approval rating is now down to 32 percent, the lowest level in over two decades. It probably won't be trending up anytime soon, either, now that the Trump campaign is turning "you can't rape your spouse" into this week's political catchphrase.
News of the Republican approval-rating slide came not long after the release of a Gallup survey showing that 32 percent of Americans now believe animals should have the same rights as people. That number is likely to keep climbing – though one can't say the same for the GOP's numbers, given the nation's demographic situation. Animals are now a better political futures bet than Republicans.
This is leading to a lot of "the witch is dead"-style celebrating among Democrats. Many believe Trump has triggered a long-overdue Credibility Event Horizon that will sink the loony right forever as a mainstream force.
2/ This is Jon Stewarts last week, and he told Fox News exactly what he thinks of them.......a wonderful sayonara from their fiercest critic.....seven delicious minutes.....
On the first day of his final week at The Daily Show, Jon Stewart really went off on his most frequent foe: Fox News.
Stewart was really bothered by how Fox’s Howard Kurtz and guest David Zurawik calling him an Obama “propagandist,” showing clips of Fox Newsers over the years using the same “even Jon Stewart’s mocking the president” line.
He even turned a few of their arguments back on Fox themselves and said he’s been harsher on President Obama than they ever were on George W. Bush, and said, “Your hypocrisy isn’t a bug in the Fox model, it’s the feature. Your job is to discredit any source of criticism that might hurt the conservative brand.”
He concluded, “Adios, motherfuckers!”
3/ Another excellent John Oliver, on prison and the minimum mandatory sentences that have been grossly unfairly used to punish minorities....
For his main segment Sunday night, John Oliverattempted to pin down the problem with mandatory minimum prison sentences. It was perhaps best summed up with this analogy: “Prison sentences are a lot like penises. If they’re used correctly, even a short one can do the trick.”
“Mandatory minimums require judges to punish certain crimes with a minimum number of years in prison regardless of context, which is a little strange, because context is important,” Oliver explained near the top of the segment. “For instance, shouting the phrase ‘I’m coming!’ is fine when catching a bus, but not okay when you’re already on the bus.”
The comedian proceeded to look at a series of specific cases in which low-level drug offenders have spent nearly their entire lives in prison for making what amount to nothing more than stupid mistakes. On one man who was sentenced to life in prison for possessing three ounces of meth, Oliver decried the fact that the system treats him like “season five Walter White when he was barely season one Jesse Pinkman.”
Oliver commended President Barack Obama for commuting the sentences of 46 federal drug offenders this month, but said it’s far from enough. “Drugs have hurt people, for sure,” the host said. “But the mandatory minimum sentencing laws designed to stop them have done way more harm than good.”
4/ Got to confess this one minute clip got to me.....some moisture appeared out of nowhere......a lovely video, from Argentina....
5/ You may have read James Hansen's story in the last DDD.....
Hansen has long suspected that computer models underestimated how sensitive Earth’s ice sheets were to rising temperatures. Indeed, the IPCC excluded ice sheet melt altogether from its calculations of sea level rise. For their study, Hansen and his colleagues combined ancient paleo-climate data with new satellite readings and an improved model of the climate system to demonstrate that ice sheets can melt at a “non-linear” rate: rather than an incremental melting as Earth’s poles inexorably warm, ice sheets might melt at exponential rates, shedding dangerous amounts of mass in a matter of decades, not millennia. In fact, current observations indicate that some ice sheets already are melting this rapidly.
Scientists are inherently cautious, so Hansen's warning of disastrous sea level rise by 2050 is serious enough, but although he says the UN report is overly cautious, he talks of decades before there is a major issue. However there are forums where scientists talk peer to peer about what they are really finding out, and the story below was on one of those websites......this guy thinks we will have a sea level catastrophe in five years....by 2020.
Arctic Ocean Temperatures Keep Rising
People's emissions are causing the planet to heat up and more than 93% of this heat goes into the oceans.
People have measured ocean temperatures for a long time. Reliable records go back to at least 1880. Ever since records began, the oceans were colder than they are now. NOAA analysis shows that, on the Northern Hemisphere, the 20th century average for June is 16.4°C (61.5°F). In June 2015, it was a record 0.87°C (1.57°F) higher.
Back in history, there have been times when it was warmer. The last time when it was warmer than today, during the Eemian Period, peak temperature was only a few tenths of a degree higher than today, according to the IPCC. In those days, there was huge melting, accompanied by extreme storms and sea levels that were 5 to 9 m higher than today.
People have measured ocean temperatures for a long time. Reliable records go back to at least 1880. Ever since records began, the oceans were colder than they are now. NOAA analysis shows that, on the Northern Hemisphere, the 20th century average for June is 16.4°C (61.5°F). In June 2015, it was a record 0.87°C (1.57°F) higher.
Back in history, there have been times when it was warmer. The last time when it was warmer than today, during the Eemian Period, peak temperature was only a few tenths of a degree higher than today, according to the IPCC. In those days, there was huge melting, accompanied by extreme storms and sea levels that were 5 to 9 m higher than today.
The Eemian period he refers to was 130,000 years ago when everything melted and the seas rose 10 meters or more.....
The Eemian is the the most recent interglacial period, enduring from the end of the penultimate glaciation about 130 thousand years ago (kya) until approximately 107 kya when the most recent Ice age commenced. The Eemian is generally viewed as a typical interglacial event, with characteristics including relatively high sea level, retreat to minimum size of global ice sheets, and the establishment of biotic assemblages that closely parallel those at present.
6/ A dance supercut - how many movies can you name from the collage of scenes? I think I got close to half of them.....
Lively, fun three minutes....
7/ One of the best stories Robert Reich has done for a while - the title says it all, and explains the deep anger in the 99% that is boiling up and making Trump and Bernie serious candidates.....
8/ Seth Meyers implores Fox to let Rick Perry into the Thursday debate.....a quite amusing four minutes....
And by the way Meyers failed, as Perry is now in the second tier debate, but it's still funny.....
As we reported yesterday, it is looking increasingly unlikely that Rick Perry will make it onto Fox News’ primetime debate stage Thursday night. Seth Meyers wants the network to know this is not OK.
“It’s gonna be a fun debate no matter what,” Meyers said. “But there is currently one candidate who is on the bubble and if he was in the debate it would make it so much more fun.” Naturally, this led directly into the clip of Perry’s infamous “oops” moment from 2011. eyers also reminded viewers that Perry is the candidate who recently challenged Donald Trump to a pull-up contest. “They could actually get into a fight on stage,” he said. “But, oh no, we don’t want that. We want to hear what Rand Paul has to say about tax code.”
“Put him in the middle!” Meyers urged Fox News.
9/ Homer Simpson gets close to Donald Trump.....a rare topical "Simpsons" - an amusing 2 minutes......
If a show like “The Simpsons” made some cultural reference it would have to have a shelf life of at least six months to a year to make sense. Pretty tall order in the world of immediate internet humor.
The folks at the Simpsons haven’t seemed up to the task of quick jokes and turnarounds, until “Trumptastic Voyage” that is, a 1.33 minute short, presented on YouTube.
10/ Following on from #5, the oceans warming story. Here is one of the side effects of the oceans heating up - toxic algae.....and yes this does matter, because you can't eat fish or shellfish that have died from ingesting the algae....
The last line of this story is chilling.....from Al Jazeera....
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The toxic algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean stretching from southern California to Alaska — already the largest ever recorded — appear to have reached as far as the Aleutian Islands, scientists say.
“The anecdotal evidence suggests we’re having a major event,” said Bruce Wright, a scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association, the federally recognized tribal organization of Alaska’s native Aleuts. “All the populations [of marine mammals] are way down in the Aleutians.”
While algal blooms are not uncommon in the Pacific, 2015’s blooms appear to be the largest on record, scientists say. Stretching from Southern California to Alaska, the blooms are responsible for unprecedented closures of fisheries and unusual deaths of marine life up and down the Pacific coast.
Pseudo-nitzchia is one species of algae that produces domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can be lethal to humans and wildlife. The toxin is ingested by shellfish and krill that, when consumed, pass the toxin onto the predator — in some cases, people.
11/ The right wing media have been muttering about Jon Stewart's "secret" meetings with the President.....and here he addresses this head on, following on from the Fox frenzy about his alleged "collusion".....a very good six minutes....
Media outlets, particularly conservative ones, had a field day this week analyzing Jon Stewart’s alleged “secret” White House meetings with President Barack Obama. It's even been suggested that Stewart has been working “in concert” with the president, casting the comedian’s integrity into question.
On Wednesday's “The Daily Show,” Stewart addressed the controversy head-on, and insisted that the conspiracy “sounds so much more awesome” than what actually happened.
“Something is not a secret just because you don’t know about it,” Stewart said, pointing out that his visits were documented in the public White House log. “If the president tells you to [meet him] and you don’t, who the fuck knows what would happen?”
12/ London is a wonderful city, but as Roger Cohen writes in the Times it's becoming a city for the rich, and normal people unless they already own property can't afford to buy there....just like New York....
I left London recently for New York after a five-year stay in the British capital. It would be wrong to say that the place where I grew up after spending my infancy in South Africa has become unrecognizable. Just because there’s a “Pret” on every corner, and a camera on every other corner, and Hoxton is hot, and sleek towers for the world’s financiers dot the City’s skyline does not mean that London is changed utterly. In fact it is familiar, but often in a troubling way, as if the city were one of those buildings transformed within but left with a preserved facade.
The streets look the same — if spruced for the new gentry from drab and dreary to spick and span — but London’s animating spirit is another. Money, and I mean the world’s money not Britain’s, now determines how London looks, sets it apart from the rest of the country, and defines what it is. Belgravia is still Belgravia. On closer inspection, however, it resembles a mausoleum reserved for the occasional use of the globe’s peripatetic rich and their ample staffs.
Before I get to that, a word about what is right in London. The city works.
13/ A very British little two minute video "Sir Reginalds Marvelous Organ", full of double entendres and smutty references - it reminded me of Benny Hill.....the lads should find this amusing, ladies not so much.....
14/ One thing we never [knowingly] order in a restaurant is tilapia......this story gives you the reasons why, and I think it refers to US farmed tilapia. There are also farms in Vietnam and China that are worse....
Tilapia has become the ubiquitous fish in America today. It’s cheap, not “fishy” tasting, boneless and skinless, and is hard to mess up by overcooking, which is a problem with many other fish varieties.
However, the tilapia we’re eating is almost entirely a farmed fish, meaning you cannot find wild tilapia in any grocery store or on any restaurant menu. And the farming is usually done on an industrial scale, with thousands of fish being harvested every day.
Their feed is not natural — in the wild, tilapia would eat algae and lake plants, but the farms fatten up the fish on GMO corn and soy pellets. The amount of healthful fish oils in these creatures is almost non-existent, negating the main reason why fish is so good for us.
15/ Daniel Ruth in the Tampa paper about the environmental award about to be given to the evil, corrupt bald freak you elected Governor....and he's as outraged as you are!
Reader alert! You are about to enter the mother of all spit-take zones! Do not under any circumstances consume any liquids! Face away from any walls! Avoid looking directly at any children, pets, friends or spouses!
You have been warned. Proceed to the following paragraphs at your own risk.
Gov. Rick Scott is receiving an award for being a champion of the environment.
Hailing Scott, R-Nuclear Winter, as an environmental guardian is a bit like tapping Tom Brady as Sportsman of the Year.
What group of pandering serfs would conclude that a governor who can't find the Everglades on a map, much less protect it, would be worthy of being designated an environmental savior?
Why, none other than the Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida, which on paper at least is supposed to support the work of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Well! That sounds pretty impressive. After all, the group has the words "fish" and "wildlife" in its title, so it must be a group zealously proactive about safeguarding all those fish and critters.
Alas, it seems Scott, R-Agent Orange, stacked the deck on the way to being feted as the Mother Teresa of mangroves. The Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida is controlled by — you're not going to believe this — gubernatorial appointees. Or think of this as something along the lines of the Russian Politburo voting unanimously to proclaim Vladimir Putin Humanitarian of the Year. Me? Really? Oh, you shouldn't have!
16/ Big controversy in Broward County about Uber, and the way the county commission who are owned by the taxi interests [Jesse Gaddis] are protecting the disgusting taxi service that has had a monopoly on cabs in Broward for decades.....
This columnist in the Ft Lauderdale paper has had an epiphany.....
There are some who will say I have gone over to the dark side. That I flip-flopped bigger than Charlie Crist.
I prefer to think I have become a convert. A believer.
Forget everything I said in the past. I am now an Uber fan. Big time.
Oh, I was a whiner all right. When Uber started it's battles with the Broward and Palm Beach county commissions, I thought they were the epitome of arrogance. They didn't want to follow anybody's rules except their own, because they don't like rules. The playing field with taxis was uneven and unfair, I said. Uber is a bully, I said. If they are threatening to leave, show them the door.
But then, a few weeks ago, I used Uber for the first time.
Todays video - a working model of the US gub'ment.....
He has titled it "Scale Model of the US Government". It is powered by a 1920's vintage hit & miss engine, & doesn't do anything except make noise & lots of lost motions & is costly to run. Check out the 1:36 min video at the site below:
Todays best insults
Alfred Hitchcock responding to actress Mary Anderson who asked him “What is my best side,” while filming “Lifeboat.”
“You’re sitting on it, my dear.”
Bette Midler on Princess Anne:
“She loves nature, in spite of what it did to her.”
Elizabeth Taylor:
“Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.”
Frank Sinatra on Robert Redford:
“Well at least he has found his true love – what a pity he can’t marry himself.”
Mahatma Gandhi asked by a reporter in a crowd “What do you think of Western civilization?”
“I think it would be a good idea.”
Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, responding to hearing that President Richard Nixon had called him an “asshole.”
“I’ve been called worse things by better people”
Pope John XXIII, when asked “How many people work at the Vatican,” by a journalist:
“About half.”
Valentino Liberace to a critic:
“Thank you for your very amusing review. After reading it I laughed all the way to the bank.”
Winston Churchill and Bessie Braddock:
Bessie Braddock: “Winston, you are drunk, and what’s more you are disgustingly drunk.”
Winston Churchill: “Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.”
Frank Zappa and TV talk show host Joe Pyne, a decorated WWII hero who lost one of his legs in combat:
Joe Pyne: “So I guess your long hair makes you a woman.”
Frank Zappa: “So I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.”
BONUS INSULT:
Winston Churchill and Lady Nancy Astor:
Lady Nancy Astor: “Winston, if you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee.”
Winston Churchill: “Nancy, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
Todays kiddie joke
Todays cop joke
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