1/ Frank Rich with one of his better ones.....a great summary of the week's news from one of our best political commentators, who's not owned by the corporate media......
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 historic moment, potential Republican defectors, and Dick Morris's return.
Hillary Clinton has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, the first woman to be a major-party nominee in U.S. history. How will her election campaign be different from her march through the primaries?
Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the headline here: Hillary Clinton is the first woman to secure the presidential nomination of a major political party. That is an honest-to-God historic achievement. And she got there even though she is (as she herself puts it) “not a natural politician.” The question now: Can she become more of a natural politician as she steps into a cage match with an attention-commanding bully who doesn’t even speak the same political language she does? Clinton’s hallmarks as a candidate — civility, substance, caution, a strong work ethic, and a proclivity for fudging or hiding her actual views on tough issues — are the antitheses of Trump’s. He is crude, unprepared, reckless, and lazy, and full of strong (if often self-contradictory) stands on every issue. They represent two different American cultures even more than they do two different parties or ideologies
Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on the headline here: Hillary Clinton is the first woman to secure the presidential nomination of a major political party. That is an honest-to-God historic achievement. And she got there even though she is (as she herself puts it) “not a natural politician.” The question now: Can she become more of a natural politician as she steps into a cage match with an attention-commanding bully who doesn’t even speak the same political language she does? Clinton’s hallmarks as a candidate — civility, substance, caution, a strong work ethic, and a proclivity for fudging or hiding her actual views on tough issues — are the antitheses of Trump’s. He is crude, unprepared, reckless, and lazy, and full of strong (if often self-contradictory) stands on every issue. They represent two different American cultures even more than they do two different parties or ideologies
2/ We lost Muhammed Ali this week, and the news has been full of tributes to the champ......but as Matt Taibbi writes Ali was not always a hero to the elites.....the Pentagon tried to make him a martyr for refusing the draft, and this was disastrous for the Vietnam conflict, but the Army learned from this and we are paying the price for it now.....
A really interesting perspective on Ali's legacy.....
Muhammad Ali being escorted from the Houston Army Induction Center in 1967.
As is the case with many people who are reflecting on Ali's legacy right now, Ali for me later in life also defined what it meant to stand on a principle. The story of how he defied the government and risked jail because he refused to kill on command was easy even for a young person to understand.
So I was saddened to hear of his death earlier this weekend. It's unlikely we'll ever see anyone like Ali again, and not just because he was a billions-to-one marvel of physical and mental gifts.
It's also because his enemies learned from the mistake they made, and spent a generation making sure that the next of his ilk, in the unlikely event that he or she ever comes along, won't become so powerful a dissenting influence.
3/ I have never seen this tribute to Ali from Billy Crystal, but it's amazing.
It's from 1979, and called "15 Rounds"......from a roast of the boxer, and you can see Ali's reactions to Crystal's jokes and impersonations......
Very, very good indeed.....
Far, far down on the list of Muhammad Ali's attributes: He inspired others to do their best work.
This was true of the people who spoke about him — think of Howard Cosell. This was true of the people who wrote about him — any under the age of, oh, 65 is mourning. This was true of the people who photographed him — how many iconic Ali magazine covers are there?
And this was true of Billy Crystal.
On Friday afternoon, before Ali's death at 74 but after reports of his condition had begun to circulate, Crystal shared video of his 36-year-old tribute to Ali. It's from Ali's 1979 retirement tribute at the Great Western Forum, it's called "15 Rounds," and it's really, really good. This is coming from someone who saw the link and though, "uh oh."
Crystal structures it as a 15-part retrospective spanning from the start of Ali's professional career to his retirement, filled with actual quotes from Ali and theatrical impressions of him, Cosell and some others. Each segment, naturally, ends with a bell — and while it starts a little slow, stick with it until the 3 1/2 minute mark.
That's when the fun starts; that's when Ali starts to laugh.
4/ Wonderful two minute clip from The Carol Burnett Show...."Undercover Couple" with Harvey Korman and Tim Conway.....
The boys are undercover cops, and Conway is in drag......very funny.....
5/ This article has a lot of truth in it.......starting with the title.....it's a little wordy and he goes off into the weeds a few times, but it's quite perceptive.....
His definition of "neoliberalism in this story is roughly this: It has confined the remnants of any genuine egalitarianism to the attic of the Democratic Party so as to protect the vested interests of the oligarchy that runs things.
Neoliberalism gave us Trump: A dying America is raging against the capitalist machine
The U.S. economy has left millions on the outside looking in. Some have turned to socialism, others to a demagogue
Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Richard Drew)
This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Arising from the shadows of the American repressed, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been sending chills through the corridors of establishment power. Who would have thunk it? Two men, both outliers, though in starkly different ways, seem to be leading rebellions against the masters of our fate in both parties; this, after decades in which even imagining such a possibility would have been seen as naïve at best, delusional at worst. Their larger-than-life presence on the national stage may be the most improbable political development of the last American half-century. It suggests that we are entering a new phase in our public life.
6/ Samantha Bee with a wonderful seven minute segment on Trump, Clinton and TV talking heads.....she is in her true form for this one, roasting the media and the candidates all rolling over for Trump.....great edgy comedy.....
“Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee last night gave what should be her final analysis of the primary race, ahead of today’s contests in California and New Jersey.
“The media have already pivoted toward the general,” Bee said. “Well, toward the general direction of anything emanating the musky whiff of Trump pheromones.”
“Short of shooting an endangered gorilla or writing her economic policy on her tits, there’s only one way to grab the media’s attention,” she continued, referring to Clinton’s foreign policy roast of Donald Trump.
Herself pivoting to a segment she called “How the F*ck Did We Get Here?,” Bee explained the Republican party’s reluctant embrace of now-nominee Trump, capped off by Paul Ryan’s recent endorsement.
“One-by-one, Republicans turned up their collars and did the scuttle of shame into Trump’s limo until finally, predictably, the last domino fell.”
7/ A long but very revealing story on the scariest of all of our institutions - the military, and how they are deliberately concealing how they spend the vast sums in their budget.......at the same time whining about how underfunded they are, and of course our politicians buy it.....and so do you because you never, ever hear about the vast waste and corruption at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon’s War on Accountability
Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore
By William D. Hartung
Slush Funds, Smoke and Mirrors, and Funny Money Equal Weapons Systems Galore
By William D. Hartung
Now you see it, now you don’t. Think of it as the Department of Defense’s version of the street con game, three-card monte, or maybe simply as the Pentagon shuffle. In any case, the Pentagon’s budget is as close to a work of art as you’re likely to find in the U.S. government -- if, that is, by work of art you mean scam.
The United States is on track to spend more than $600 billion on the military this year -- more, that is, than was spent at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military buildup, and more than the military budgets of at least the next seven nations in the world combined. And keep in mind that that’s just a partial total. As an analysis by the Straus Military Reform Project has shown, if we count related activities like homeland security, veterans' affairs, nuclear warhead production at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries, and interest on the military-related national debt, that figure reaches a cool $1 trillion.
The more that’s spent on “defense,” however, the less the Pentagon wants us to know about how those mountains of money are actually being used. As the only major federal agency that can’t pass an audit, the Department of Defense (DoD) is the poster child for irresponsible budgeting.
8/ Seth Meyers takes "A Closer Look" at the Trump University kerfuffle.....he is one of our best comedic reporters, and if you watch this you will get a pretty good summary of the facts, along with some great zingers.....eight good minutes.....
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers last night took a “Closer Look” at presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s fraudulent Trump University.
“Trump University was founded in 2005, promising to teach people how to make money off real estate,” Meyers explained. “But, as the Washington Post reported, it wasn’t a university or even a school; it was just ‘a series of seminars held in hotel ballrooms across the country.'”
Meyers outlined Trump’s method of rhetorically dodging the allegations that his University was a scam by calling the judge’s Mexican heritage an “inherent conflict of interest” in presiding over the case.
“Now to be clear, claiming that someone is not able to do their job because of their race is, by definition, racism,” Meyers said. “Period.”
9/ I'm in the UK right now, and it's interesting because many Brits are genuinely undecided about the Brexit vote, coming in 10 days. The feeling I get from the locals I've talked to is that no one trusts the elites, and it's genuinely difficult to know which side is lying - both leave or stay, so this vote will be really close.....
This column from Benjamin Studebaker is therefore apropos - some good logic here.....
Britain: For Pity’s Sake, Stay in the EU
by Benjamin Studebaker
On 23 June, Britain is having a referendum on its membership in the European Union. I care deeply about British politics–I’m doing my PhD there as I write this. But more importantly, Brexit would be a stunningly poor choice, undermining British interests in both the short and the long-term, and I would feel deeply remiss if I didn’t do my part to point this out.
The Short Term
There has been a lot of sniping back and forth in the British press about the economic consequences of Brexit.
10/ A lovely nature video about Africa from the BBC, with montages of landscapes, sunsets but most of all animals being charming.
The usual format, but this four minute piece is distinguished by the cinematography....creative, sometimes surreal but quite hypnotic as well....
11/ Sam Bee with a wonderful six minute piece on rape in the military.....she's the real thing folks....and by the way our Florida Democratic Senator Nelson voted against the bill she is talking about....
Our edgiest and best successor to Jon Stewart....
In 2014, of the 20,300 cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military (48 percent female, 52 percent male), only 6,131 reports were actually filed.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York is pushing the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), which allows victims of sexual assault in the armed forces to report sex crimes without fear of retaliation.
For some inexplicable reason, the legislation has still not been passed, though it is even supported by occasional-feeler-of-feelings Senator Ted Cruz.
Samantha Bee takes us through the ins and outs of MJIA.
12/ Bill Maher explains the real meaning of capitalism....... five minutes with some pointed jokes, but the piece seems to fall a little flat because I think he was trying too hard......Maher being serious! Still worth a look.....
“Real Time” host Bill Maher last night, during his popular “New Rules” segment, clowned laissez-faire bullshitters who demonize socialism while allowing capitalism to spread like wildfire into every nook of American life.
“Someone needs to explain to the free-market crowd that when it comes to socialism, you’re soaking in it,” Maher said. “So many Americans hate the word ‘socialism’ but love the concept: Medicare, unemployment, disability, farm subsidies. Forget the transgender debate. What America really needs is a separate bathroom for welfare queens.”
“America’s real religion is capitalism,” he explained. “And like any religion, it needs a devil. And that devil has always been socialism.”
13/ Both Mary and I thought this story from the Times was exceptionally interesting and could explain a lot of health problems we hear about. I really related to it because when I grew up as a lad my friends and I practically lived on our local river, swimming every day etc. After I left the town the local health authority closed the river for swimming because of sewer discharges upstream, so all that time I was exposed to what they are talking about in the article....my autoimmune system was tested to the max.
And it also validates the "five second rule"! Drop some food on the floor and if you pick it up within five seconds it's OK to eat....
Educate Your
Immune System
Our bodies are confused by this 21st-century world.
IN the last half-century, the prevalence of autoimmune disease — disorders in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue in the body — has increased sharply in the developed world. An estimated one in 13 Americans has one of these often debilitating, generally lifelong conditions. Many, like Type 1 diabetes and celiac disease, are linked with specific gene variants of the immune system, suggesting a strong genetic component. But their prevalence has increased much faster — in two or three generations — than it’s likely the human gene pool has changed.
Many researchers are interested in how the human microbiome — the community of microbes that live mostly in the gut and are thought to calibrate our immune systems — may have contributed to the rise of these disorders. Perhaps society-wide shifts in these microbial communities, driven by changes in what we eat and in the quantity and type of microbes we’re exposed to in our daily lives, have increased our vulnerability.
To test this possibility, some years ago, a team of scientists began following 33 newborns who were genetically at risk of developing Type 1 diabetes, a condition in which the immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas.
14/ Another disaster waiting to happen in California.......
CRESTLINE, Calif. — They appear at random, cinnamon-and-silver-colored pines and firs, the standing dead amid otherwise healthy groves of cloud-snagging trees in the mountains of Southern California. Last week, the Forest Service said there were 40 million of them — that is, 40 million dead trees in this state, almost one for every resident.
Soon, they will be fuel, for what rangers fear will be a catastrophic wildfire season — “40 million opportunities for fire,” as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack put it. Or they will be ghosts, gone in that sweep when the earth broke all records for overheating.
The collapse of the conifers is blamed in large part on a beetle the size of a grain of rice that has metastasized with climate change. In record warm years — which is to say, nearly every year of the last decade — the trees’ natural defense systems weaken and beetles reproduce in large numbers. The infestation killing forests all over the Western Hemisphere has been called the largest insect outbreak in global history.
15/ The headline says it all.....a Floriduh story, sad and also infuriating to see the corruption......but we all know nothing is going to come of this, and the dumbass Floriduh voters will elect "bought and sold" Bondi again in 2018.....
Donald Trump buys himself an attorney general for $25,000
They were described as Donald Trump’s “surrogates,” a cabal of second-tier politicians included in the now-infamous conference call as the unrepentant presidential candidate renewed his rant about that “Mexican” judge. You know ... the one born in Indiana.
Bloomberg Politics, which broke the story, reported that has-beens like former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown were on the line as Trump went off (again) on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel and told his supporters to follow his incendiary lead. He said they should demonize the judge and call any reporter who questioned the strategy a racist.
Nobody much cared what private citizens like Brewer and Brown might be up to. But Floridians could only cringe when another of the Trump conference call surrogates was identified. Pam Bondi, supposedly, works for us.
Our state’s chief legal officer was party to a diatribe that conservative legal scholars criticizedas contemptuous of American jurisprudence and Republican political leaders decried as outright racist. Apparently, Florida’s attorney general listened without offering a word of protest.
16/ Good column from Carl Hiaasen about the discharge from Lake Okeechobee killing the estuaries on both coasts.....because Florida politicians are owned by big sugar, and won't act to buy the fields to the south of the Lake so the water can safely recharge the Everglades....
This is the corruption in Tallahassee at work folks.....
The floodgates are open. Here comes the slime.
Grab your paddleboards and kayaks, and run the other way.
This is not a cheesy horror movie — it’s true-life horror on Florida’s Treasure Coast.
If you live on the estuary in Stuart, or along the St. Lucie River, summer time is algae time. This year, the ribbons of goop have arrived early.
It comes unnaturally from Lake Okeechobee, which is overloaded with nitrogen and phosphorus from decades of being used as a toilet bowl by farm corporations, cattle ranches and fast-growing municipalities to the north.
Like clockwork, when the rains come, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers starts dumping billions of gallons from Lake O. The dike surrounding it is old, and a breach would threaten nearby communities like Clewiston.
So what is essentially a biblical deluge of fresh water, laced heavily with fertilizer, is pushed straight to Florida’s east and west coasts, which are supposed to be saltwater habitats.
The discharges go on day after day, week after week — perhaps the most massive, long-term act of pollution in the country, and it’s committed annually by the government. No president, including Barack Obama, has made a priority of stopping it.
Todays video - don't be put off by the hippie look of this guy - the moves he makes with this hoop are amazing......
Shot at Venice Beach, CA.............
Todays "getting old" joke
A seventy-eight year-old man is sitting on a park bench, sobbing, when a
young man walks by and asks him whats wrong.Through his tears the old man
answers, "I"m in love with a twenty-five-year-old woman."
"Whats wrong with that?" asks the young man.
Between the sobs and sniffles, he answers, "You cant understand. Every
morning before she goes to work, we make love... At lunchtime she comes
home and we make love again, and then she makes my favorite meal. In the
afternoon when she gets a break, she rushes home and we have more sex, the
best an old man could want. And then at suppertime, and all night long, we
make love."
He breaks down, no longer able to speak.The young man puts his arm around
him. "I don"t understand. It sounds like you have a perfect relationship.
Why are you crying?"
The old man answers, again through his tears, "I forgot where I live."
Todays short bonus joke.....
So this 78 year old guy is having coffee with his friends and they see him take a viagra out of his pocket cut it into 4 pieces and take a piece with his coffee.
Shocked, they ask him if he is still having sex?
"No" he said. "I just want it to stand up a little bit so I will stop peeing on my new golf shoes."
Todays Little League joke
Todays philosophical jokes
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