1/ You may have been getting the impression that the corporate media doesn't tell the truth about anything foreign. Instead we are fed simple narratives about good guys and bad guys, and how we need to remove/undermine the bad guys, justifying US military action and/or aid to the "rebels".
As this excellent story by Robert Parry says, it's almost always bullshit - from Libya, to Iraq, to Syria, to Ukraine, Yemen and beyond the world is presented in these simple terms for you, the gullible US TV viewer and consumer of network news. The truth is the world is a complex place, nothing is as it seems and in addition when in doubt, follow the money.....
In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.
So, regarding U.S. relations toward the world, we see the State Department, the White House, Pentagon, NATO and other agencies pushing various narratives to sell the American people and other populations on how they should view U.S. policies, rivals and allies. The current hot phrase for this practice is “strategic communications” or Stratcom, which blends psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into one mind-bending smoothie.
President Barack Obama.
I have been following this process since the early 1980s when the Reagan administration sought to override “the Vietnam Syndrome,” a public aversion to foreign military interventions that followed the Vietnam War. To get Americans to “kick” this syndrome, Reagan’s team developed “themes” about overseas events that would push American “hot buttons.”
2/ One of the best "Bad Lip Readings" they did was NFL 2014......here's the new one - "NFL 2015"......
Two minutes of hulking brutes saying weird shit....amusing for guys, especially if you are watching the NFL this week....
3/ What are we to make of the crazy conservatives in charge of the Republican Party? What's driving them? It's religion......and it makes then unable to compromise, because in their view "how can you compromise with evil?"
An excellent short column from the Orlando Sentinel's Jack Lane, and a scary one too.....
If we are to comprehend the seemingly unbridgeable divide between the Democrats and Republicans, we must understand one of the most problematic developments in recent American politics — that is the degree to which the religious right has captured the Republican Party.
The shift of the religious right from emphasizing personal salvation to demanding also that members' religious world view be made a part of the political landscape began in the 1920s. That is when fundamentalist religious leaders realized that industrialization and urbanization (that is modern America) were creating a secular way of life that relegated them to the fringes of American society.
In the 1930s, the Republican Party came to the rescue by recruiting fundamentalist leaders to help thwart the perceived godless, socialistic New Deal legislation. The postwar Civil Rights Movement solidified that alliance. Thereafter, white fundamentalist Southerners came pouring into the Republican Party and the fateful alliance of fundamentalist religion and politics now controls that party's agenda.
What makes this development problematic is the way in which fundamentalists have shaped not only the agenda but the behavior of one of our major parties. The religious right has caused a majority of the members of the Republican Party to function with what historian Richard Hofstadter several decades ago called "the fundamentalist mind."
4/ This is the same theme as #3 - religious extremists, but Bill Maher puts his own theory to explain the fundamentalist mind - the religious nuts have invented a new Jesus!
This four minutes is one of his better "New Rules" as you can tell he means it! A serious Maher, fewer jokes than normal but a great message.....
Bill Maher ended his show tonight by going after Christian Republicans for making up their own version of Jesus because they don’t really like the teachings of the real one.
Maher invoked both Pope Francis and that pharmaceutical industry CEO Martin Shkreli to argue “these so-called Christians” believe in “supply-side Jesus” instead of the Jesus who preached against materialism and for taking care of the poor.
He snarked that their version of Jesus is “a small businessman from Galilei whose main gripe is big government and who wants to make Nazareth great again.”
5/ Paul Krugman dissects the Republican candidates tax plans.....confirming they are all pawns of the oligarchs....the title of this column is "Voodoo Never Dies"......
So Donald Trump has unveiled his tax plan. It would, it turns out, lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.
This is in contrast to Jeb Bush’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit, and Marco Rubio’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.
For what it’s worth, it looks as if Trump’s plan would make an even bigger hole in the budget than Jeb’s. Jeb justifies his plan by claiming that it would double America’s rate of growth; The Donald, ahem, trumps this by claiming that he would triple the rate of growth. But really, why sweat the details? It’s all voodoo. The interesting question is why every Republican candidate feels compelled to go down this path.
6/ Stephen Colbert with a great segment - the first two minutes are a discussion of the Oregon shootings with Stephen getting a little emotional, but the remaining six minutes are a very amusing riff on the Bengazi hearings and the replacement for John Boehner....
The Late Show is coming together! Yeay!
After speaking briefly on the tragic Oregon shootinglast night, Stephen Colbert brought things right back to comedy by riffing on Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy.
Colbert briefly dropped some harsh truths on Trump, informing him this whole thing has been fun, but he’s never actually going to be the president.
He then turned his focus to the potential next Speaker and his comments connecting Hillary Clinton‘s dropping poll numbers to the Benghazi committee. Colbert said it’s kind of “refreshing” for him to admit that, but still couldn’t help but highlight how this was the man Kevin Spacey shadowed when he was prepping to play Frank Underwood.
7/ SNL is back, and this week was a good one....here is the show opener, with Donald and Melania Trump.....four OK minutes.....
SNL wasted no time in its season premiere tonight getting to the comedic goldmine that is Donald Trump‘s candidacy for President.
“Trump” and his wife spent the entire cold open bragging about how well-off they are but also assuring the American people they’re just average Joes “but better.”
They even got in a reference to Trump’s Megyn Kelly feud, in which The Donald said that he loves Kelly and thinks she’s great, but “she’s a heifer who’s always on her period and I hope she dies.”
8/ Taken a flight recently? Horrible wasn't it.....
This story says the airlines are doing this on purpose to get you to pay more extra fees so your flight is a little less aggravating......interesting theory, so next time you fly think about this story.....as you cough up to board early.....
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
If you’ve ever seen those pictures of flight from the air industry’s “Golden Age” – roughly the 1950s to the 1970s – you know how hard it is to reconcile those images of spacious cabins, piano bars and in-flight freebies with today’s bare-bones, claustrophobic, no-free-lunch (or anything else) flight experiences. You might even say the discrepancy is a bit infuriating, especially considering that we’re in the midst of a boom time for airlines. In the three months of last quarter, America’s commercial airlines collectively made $5.5 billion, up 53 percent over the same period a year before and the highest tally since the pre-Recessionary days of 2007.
And yet, customers have never been more unhappy. The Air Travel Consumer Reportfrom the U.S. Department of Transportation finds that in the first six months of this year, complaints from air travelers were up 20 percent over the same timeframe in 2014. It’s nothing short of confounding that as commercial airline profits and revenues skyrocket, customer service is worse than ever.
Confounding – though not confusing – when you consider airlines’ singular focus on their bottom lines.
9/ Miley Cyrus on SNL with a musical number, and damn good she is....she sings "My Way", and the cast says goodbye to all the annoying characters of the summer.....four very good minutes....
The summer of 2015 is over, and so Miley Cyrus sang a farewell ballad to all of the really annoying stories of the summer.
And everything you can imagine is in there, from Rachel Dolezal to Kim Davis to the Entourage movie to Josh Duggar.
10/ Every country in the world with a democratic system has conservative political parties, but the Republican Party is unique as they are the only right wing party to have an official policy of climate denial....
On Tuesday, Jeb Bush proposed to eliminate the Obama administration’s regulation of carbon pollution, and, in keeping with his self-styled goal of “growth at all cost,” proposes to make any further climate regulation essentially impossible. In any other democracy in the world, a Jeb Bush would be an isolated loon, operating outside the major parties, perhaps carrying on at conferences with fellow cranks, but having no prospects of seeing his vision carried out in government. But the United States is different. Here in America, ideas like Bush’s fit comfortably within one of the two major political parties. Indeed, the greatest barrier to Bush claiming his party’s nomination is the quite possibly justified sense that he is too sober and moderate to suit the GOP.
11/ Trevor Noah on the Daily Show imagining Donald Trump as an African dictator.....not so far fetched either.... seven pretty funny minutes.....
Trevor Noah doesn’t see what’s so un-presidential about Donald Trump. The new “Daily Show” host said Thursday that it’s all in your perception of what “presidential” means.
Noah mentioned Trump’s comments during the CNN Debate about vaccines causing autism. “Is this true?” Noah asked. “No. But is it presidential? Depends on where you’re from.” Gambian president Yahya Jammeh once claimed he could cure AIDS using herbs and bananas saying: “Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It’s a declaration. I can cure AIDS, and I will.” Science is for wimps.
Trump is merely running for president in the wrong part of the world, Noah said. Like Trump, Ugandan President Idi Amin spent a lot of time talking about how amazing he thought he was. “The people like me very much … I’m very popular … I am very powerful … I am the one who has got the money … I have got a very good brain …” All quotes that are difficult to distinguish from Trump and Amin.
12/ SNL's commercial for Republican candidates.....a wonderful two minutes.....very amusing....and Miley Cyrus is great.....
SNL tonight featured some of the Republican candidates in a fake ad for a drug “for people who think they can be president.”
The wives of candidates like Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Jim Gilmore explain they’re worried their husbands are sick or have dementia because they seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that they have a realistic shot at being president.
13/ Jimi Hendrix with a live version of "Hey Joe", with amazing guitar solos from Hendrix....he plays with his teeth, plays with the axe behind his neck.....absolutely incredible.....
But a bonus - look at the doofuses in the audience, listening to music they don't comprehend.....I'll bet this was some silly Swedish TV show who booked Hendrix not knowing they had the best guitar player of all time....it's also in B/W....
When the camera pans to the crowd showing very young kids, some in suits and ties...standing there with blank faces, politely clapping... think about it. I bet their parents have warned them Rock Music is Devil worship, nobody had ever seen or heard anything even remotely like Hendrix (talk about being ahead of your time!) add in the fact he's a sexy black man backed up by white guys with matching afros! If that's not enough to freak em out... Hendrix just sang about a dude killing his "old lady" for cheating on him, playing a solo like a man POSSESSED, with his teeth no less!
14/ Good movie out this week - "The Martian" with Matt Damon, directed by Ridley Scott.
This is the Rolling Stone review - the Times also liked the movie....
OK, it's not a deep-think piece like Interstellar (in which Damon had a malevolent cameo) or 2001: A Space Odyssey. And there are no little green monsters busting out of human cavities like in Scott's Alien. But The Martian, with a you-are-there script by Drew Goddard, works you over without a hint of dystopian doom in all of its bracing 142 minutes. This suspenseful survival tale, smartass to its core, slaps a smile on your face that you'll wear all the way home.
15/ Mary and I saw this movie this weekend - "Grandma", with Lily Tomlin......this is the Times review and I can confirm it - this is a wonderful and really human movie.....
No aliens, special effects or zombies - just a story about people.....we loved it....
In need of cash — we’ll get to why in a minute — Elle Reid, a poet and sometime professor in her 70s, decides to sell some precious old books. She figures that even though they’re a bit worse for wear, her first editions of Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir should fetch a few hundred dollars at the local feminist bookstore-cafe. Her outrage when she’s grudgingly offered a lot less than that compounds her dismay at her teenage granddaughter’s cluelessness about the authors of “The Feminine Mystique” and “The Second Sex.” What’s wrong with the world these days?
That’s a long conversation, but as of this writing one thing that is absolutely right with the world is the existence of “Grandma,” Paul Weitz’s wry and insightful movie about an eventful day in the life of Elle and her granddaughter. There is much to praise about this sweet, smart comedy of intergenerational conflict and solidarity: the way the script captures the speech patterns of the young, the old and the middle age; the way the story feels at once frantic and relaxed, as the two main characters race against the clock and meander through Los Angeles in Elle’s wheezy vintage car; the brief, memorable appearances from supporting performers like Judy Greer, Sam Elliott and Elizabeth Peña (in one of her last roles). But honestly, the wonder that is “Grandma” can be summed up in two words: Lily Tomlin.
Todays video - an incredible supercut of dozens of movies edited together....it's called "Hells Club"......you should recognize most of the movies too....
Antonio Maria da Silva is a film editor par excellence. Based in Paris, his movie mashups combine footage from classic films so smoothly, it can be hard to tell where the cuts are. In the past, he's brought us treats like Terminator vs. Robocop and Bruce Lee vs. Bruce Lee, but Hell's Club has to be his masterwork.
It seems like he's combined every nightclub scene from every movie ever made into this 10-minute epic. The end result contains a lot of tense (possibly sexual) eye contact, and some spectacular violence. As far as we're concerned, you're not a film buff until you've watched Blade, Tony Montana, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and John Travolta duke it out under an unnatural red light.
Todays groaner....
Jon's working at the lumberyard, pushing a tree through thebuzz saw, and accidentally shears off all ten of hisfingers. He goes to the emergency room.The doctor says, "Well, give me the fingers, and I'llsee what I can do."Jon says, "I haven't got the fingers."The doctor says, "What do you mean, you haven't got thefingers? It's 2010. We've got microsurgery and all kinds ofincredible techniques. I could have put them back on andmade you like new. Why didn't you bring the fingers?"Jon says, "Well, sh*t, Doc, I couldn't pick 'em up."
More awful puns....
Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils?When you get a bladder infection, urine trouble.What does a clock do when it's hungry? It goes back four seconds.I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me!Broken pencils are pointless.What do you call a dinosaur with a extensive vocabulary? A thesaurus.England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.I dropped out of communism class because of lousy Marx.All the toilets in New York's police stations have been stolen. Police have nothing to go on.I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded dough.Haunted French pancakes give me the crepes.Velcro - what a rip off!Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.Venison for dinner? Oh deer!Earthquake in Washington - obviously government's fault.I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.Be kind to your dentist. He has fillings, too.Todays Irish Viagra joke
An Irish woman of advanced age visited her physician to ask his advice on reviving her husband's libido.'What about trying Viagra?' asked the doctor.'Not a chance', she said ... 'He won't even take an aspirin.''Not a problem,' replied the doctor. 'Give him an 'Irish Viagra'...'What is Irish Viagra?' she asked.'It's when you drop the Viagra tablet into his coffee. He won't even taste it. Give it a try and call me in a week to let me know how things went.'It was a week later when she called the doctor, who directly inquired as to her progress.The poor dear exclaimed, 'Oh, faith, bejaysus and begorrah! T'was horrid! Just terrible, doctor!''Really? What happened?' asked the doctor.'Well, I did as you advised and slipped it in his coffee and the effect was almost immediate. He jumped straight up, with a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye and with his pants a-bulging fiercely! With one swoop of his arms, he sent me cups and saucers flying, ripped me clothes to tatters and took me then and there passionately on the tabletop! T'was a nightmare, I tell you, an absolute nightmare!''Why so terrible?' asked the doctor, 'Do you mean the sex your husband provided wasn't good?''Freakin' jaysus, it was the best sex I've had in 25 years! But sure as I'm sittin' here, I'll never be able to show me face in Starbucks again!!
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