1/ Did you see any of the disgraceful Clinton/Trump "debate" on the aircraft carrier? It was blatantly unfair, and almost like Matt Lauer was paid to screw it up......awful TV, but this incompetent coverage is one of the reasons this contest is going to be a lot closer than the media is telling you.....
Frank Rich with his thoughts on Lauer....
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: NBC’s disastrous presidential forum, allegations of a Trump pay-to-play, and Fox News without Roger Ailes.
Before Wednesday night’s presidential forum had even ended, reporters and fact-checkers were picking apart Matt Lauer’s failure to challenge Donald Trump’s false statements and attacking the parity of his questions. What should the moderators of the upcoming debates take from this? The moderator of the first presidential debate on September 26 is Lester Holt — like Matt Lauer, an NBC News anchor. If he arrives onstage as poorly prepared as Lauer, and behaves as boorishly toward Hillary Clinton as Lauer, the first debate, likely to be the most-watched presidential debate in the history of broadcasting, is going to be a debacle for the country.
2/ Matt Taibbi had two stories out this week......the first was titled "How Donald Trump lost his Mojo" and he detailed the disaster that is his campaign and how whatever he had is gone.....
Then a new poll came out showing Trump back in the lead, and in this story he eats his words......
As I said, this ain't over folks.....
What can I say? Sometimes in journalism, you can't help looking like a buffoon.
Let's look at that poll, for if there's any truth to it (and there has been some other evidence a "tightening" in the race), it would mean the ultimate worst-case scenario.
On the surface, Trump and new "campaign CEO" Steve Bannon appear to be employing one of the dumbest campaign strategies presidential politics has ever seen.
The recent rebrand is a transparent effort to rehabilitate Trump's image as a racist loon. Bannon's play has been to wheel Trump out at campaign events shackled, Hannibal Lecter-style, to teleprompters. At each stop, the candidate tries to focus just long enough to read out a robotic script offering "minority outreach," while also signaling a "softening" and a "pivot" on his chief issue, immigration.
2A/ This was the first Matt Taibbi story "Lost His Mojo" and it's true what Taibbi says, his campaign is a disaster but it doesn't matter - we are so polarized Trump is teflon.....
Illustration by Victor Juhasz
3/ Stephen Colbert skewers Trump, Pam Bondi and Florida in a hilarious four minutes.....wonderful......
I really, really hope Bondi disappears down the rat hole she crawled out of.....
Stephen Colbert last week had some fun with the renewed controversy surrounding "Florida's attorney general and stepmom who can't understand why you don't warm up to her Pam Bondi" and her 2013 decision not to pursue consumer complaints against Trump University after soliciting a campaign contribution from Donald Trump.
"There were so many complaints from former students that even Florida was considering an investigation. Keep in mind: Their state seal is someone dumping a body," quipped the The Late Show host, suggesting that Bondi was the only person other than Trump to make money off Trump University.
4/ It's Sunday September 11th, so this ad is up there for the most offensive ad award.....wow.....breathtaking in it's stupidity.....
The owner of a Texas mattress store has closed his store after apologizing for what he called a "tasteless" advertisement promoting a 9/11 anniversary sale.
The online ad for Miracle Mattress in San Antonio featured a woman screaming as two towers of mattresses topple.
In a statement posted to the store's social media Friday, owner Mike Bonanno said the store "will be closed indefinitely." He said the company also "will be silent through the 9/11 anniversary to avoid any further distractions from a day of recognition and remembrance for the victims and their families."
He repeated his Thursday apology, saying the online ad was produced without his knowledge by employees in San Antonio.
5/ Seth Myers on how Trump's unashamedly boasts that he buys politicians......in the eight minute clip there are a couple of minutes on how he purchased our very own Pam Bondi, corrupt Attorney General of Floriduh.....
“Late Night” host Seth Meyers on Wednesday took “A Closer Look” at GOP nominee Donald Trump’s repeated (and hypocritical, it turns out) accusation that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, used her foundation to run a “pay-for-play” scheme.
“One reason you’ve probably heard less about [the Trump Foundation] is that it’s not exactly clear what the Trump Foundation does,” Meyers explained. “The Clinton Foundation provides life-saving care to AIDS patients, while the Trump Foundation once gave $250 to the Special Olympics and $100 to the March of Dimes.”
Meanwhile, he added, Trump “spent the entire primary season openly bragging about how he was able to buy politicians and get whatever he wanted from them by giving them money” — in other words paying to play.
6/ A satirical British TV show has a new ad for "Forrest Trump"......amusing, but it's painful to watch this stupid man even as a stick puppet.......one minute.....
7/ For a Democracy to function properly the electorate has to be informed and aware of the basic facts of how the system functions, but as this excellent column from Timothy Egan in the Times says we are way past that point - there are too many politically illiterate people out there.....
There is a theme currently in the media elites that if you are a Trump voter you are stupid....this is NOT his argument, he is saying that most Americans are dumber than a post politically....
Are you smarter than an immigrant? Can you name, say, all three branches of government or a single Supreme Court justice? Most Americans, those born here, those about to make the most momentous decision in civic life this November, cannot. And most cannot pass the simple test aced by 90 percent of new citizens.
Well, then: Who controlled the Senate during the 2014 election, when control of the upper chamber was at stake? If you answered Dunno at the time, you were with a majority of Americans in the clueless category.
But surely now, when election news saturation is thicker than the humidity around Lady Liberty’s lip, we’ve become a bit more clue-full. I give you Texas. A recent survey of Donald Trump supporters there found that 40 percent of them believe that Acorn will steal the upcoming election.
Acorn? News flash: That community-organizing group has been out of existence for six years. Acorn is gone, disbanded, dead. It can no more steal an election than Donald Trump can pole vault over his Mexican wall.
We know that at least 30 million American adults cannot read. But the current presidential election may yet prove that an even bigger part of the citizenry is politically illiterate — and functional. Which is to say, they will vote despite being unable to accept basic facts needed to process this American life.
8/ A clever, amusing little story by "the Greatest Living American Writer" Neal Pollack......if you like sarcasm, you'll love this one....
“I have found and befriended a lower-middle class white family”
(Credit: Shutterstock/Salon)
In the many uninterrupted decades that I’ve claimed the title of The Greatest Living American Writer, I’ve endlessly fought for social change via literary nonfiction. No one can forget my epic study of 1970s ghetto life, “Leon: A Man of the Streets,” which caused Cornel West to call me a “righteous brother of the revolution.” I wrote the groundbreaking trilogy about the early days of the gay rights movement, “Just Before Stonewall,” “During Stonewall” and “Slightly After Stonewall, and the Pulitzer-sweeping 1983 book on living with Southeast Asian refugees, “Among The Hmong.” As the beautiful Isabel Allende once said to me as we made love in a hammock at our Uruguayan costal retreat, “No one understands the forgotten like you do.”
That said, there remains one group that, until now, I have neglected: lower-middle-class white people, the people’s people, the first people. They have been abandoned by modernity, swept away by an economic reality that doesn’t care about them or their children or anything else, for that matter. They rot in their moldy hovels while we sip Kir Royale cocktails and laugh. It isn’t right.
9/ I want one of these.....a Donald Trump action figure.....30 seconds.....
10/ A tough column from Paul Krugman, and he wonders if Hillary Clinton is getting the same poisonous media attention that nailed Al Gore in 2000.....
Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.
And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.
11/ There is a whole conservative media industry devoted to debunking climate change, as well as the entire Republican party.......but it's funded by the usual suspects.....oil and gas, and the Koch Brothers.....
Companies which signed the environmental pact and then gave political donations to climate deniers are PepsiCo, Dupont, Mondelez, Google, AT&T, Verizon and GE.
A new study from professors at Oklahoma State University has found that Republicans and Democrats have never been so far apart on climate issues.
Fox News’ Megyn Kelly interviews The Weather Channel co-founder John ColemanMedia Matters for America
“What was once a modest tendency for Congressional Republicans to be less pro-environmental than their Democratic counterparts has become a chasm—with Republicans taking near-unanimous anti-environmental stances on relevant legislation in recent years, especially 2015,” the study said.
This distance between the parties was further exacerbated by the rise of the Koch-fundedTea Party, which took the hard line of fully dismissing the climate change threat, often making climate change a lightning rod for voters who were outraged at Washington.
12/ Did you watch bits from the Democratic convention? Relive it again with clips from Bad Lip Reading.......I love this stuff.....five fun minutes.....
This is one of their better ones....
13/ Here's a nouveaux word for you - irreligion.....it's the word de jour for the fastest growing religion in the US, or rather lack of it....and as this story details most of the irreligious are repelled by the Republican brand of fealty to Christian loonies.....
Very interesting article....
Ted Cruz (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
In the past several years, many trees have been felled and pixels electrocuted in the service of discussion about the impact of Hispanics on the American electorate. No one knows for sure which way they’ll vote in the future but everyone is interested in discussing it. Curiously, though, an even larger political shift is taking place yet receiving almost no attention whatsoever from political reporters — the emergence of post-Christian America.
Judging solely from the rhetoric and actions of the candidates who sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination this year, you would be hard-pressed to tell much difference between 2016 and 1996, the year that the Christian Coalition was ruling the roost in GOP politics. Sure there was a lot more talk about the Middle East than before, but when it comes to public displays of religiosity, many of the would-be presidents have spent the majority of their candidacies effectively auditioning for slots on the Trinity Broadcast Network.
Even Donald Trump, the thrice-married casino magnate turned television host, went about reincarnating himself as a devout Christian, despite his evident lack of familiarity with the doctrines and practices of the faith.
14/ Tom Tomorrow nails it again......excellent cartoon......Trump, Trump, Trump., Trump....
15/ Rolling Stone with the 16 best and worst moments from the Olympics.....good story, wonderful pictures.....
Best: Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt Leave on Top
With this likely being the last we'll see of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt at the Olympics, they both received the send-offs they deserved – sparkly medals, hilarious memes and all. Following five gold medals in these games alone, Phelps further distanced himself as the most decorated Olympic athlete with 23 gold medals to his name. For Bolt, he pulled off the rare triple-triple in three consecutive Olympics and tied Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi for the most gold medals in athletics history.
16/ Some of the best cinema is non-US [believe it or not] and "In Order Of Disappearance" sounds like a great movie......the Norwegian version of a Coen brothers yarn....
"In Order of Disappearance" (Credit: Trust Nordisk)
Describing Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s violent black comedy “In Order of Disappearance” as an Arctic version of “Fargo” is in the ballpark but doesn’t go nearly far enough. I feel confident that Moland is a big fan of the Coen brothers and would cheerfully admit their influence on his work. But he’s a filmmaker with a sharply nuanced and highly precise vision, and this is no mannered Americanophile homage. As anyone who saw Moland’s 2010 cult hit “A Somewhat Gentle Man” (which like “In Order of Disappearance” stars the magnificently deadpan Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård) already knows, he pushes beyond Coen territory into a distinctive Nordic blend of absurdity and surrealism, where Hollywood crime thrillers of the 1970s meet the contradictions of the decaying welfare state and the winter light of an Ingmar Bergman film.
Certain moments during “In Order of Disappearance” seem to occur in a Tarantino-style universe of random cultural byplay and bizarre parenthetical scenes. While waiting to kidnap a member of a rival gang, two middle-aged gangsters discuss their vision problems, arguing over which of them needs new glasses most.
Great trailer....."In Order Of Disappearance".....
And it's [of course] on Amazon.....
Todays video - magician Shin Lim with a tribute to the Paris bomb attacks, with playing cards - he is rated the #1 sleight of hand magician in the world.....a truly amazing four minutes....
Shin Lim is 23 years old. He picked up magic barely seven years ago. He dropped out of music university after his first year as he had to go for therapy. The doctor told him to completely lay off piano for a year and magic was easier on the fingers.
From Shin Lim’s bio:
Shin Lim considers himself an international citizen. Born in Canada and grew up in Singapore. At the age of eleven, Shin has since moved and lived in Massachusetts. At the age of 16, Shin’s oldest brother showed him a simple card trick and immediately ignited a passion & drive for Shin to study the art of magic. At that time, little did we know, Shin would become one of the most influential & recognizable magicians in the world!Within a short 4 year span, Shin has won major youth magic awards & scholarships. Shin has expanded his talents by winning adult magic awards of international status, recognized by esteemed magicians & peers for his skill and performance.
Shin is constantly busy with rehearsing , performing, composing magic routines, producing commercial trailers & creating new magic for continuous sales with the largest magic distributors and magic retailers in the world.
Todays Irish joke.....
Paddy has broken his leg and his buddy Mick comes over to see him.
Mick says, "How you doin?"
Mick says, "How you doin?"
"Paddy says, "Okay, but do me a favor mate, run upstairs and get me slippers, me feet are freezing."
Mick goes upstairs and sees Paddy's gorgeous 19-year-old twin daughters lying naked on the bed.
He says, "Your dad sent me up here to have sex with the both of you."
They say, "Get away with ya.... Dad would never say that...Prove it."
Mick shouts downstairs, "Paddy, both of em?"
Paddy shouts back, "Of course both of em, what's the point of just fu*kin one?"
Mick goes upstairs and sees Paddy's gorgeous 19-year-old twin daughters lying naked on the bed.
He says, "Your dad sent me up here to have sex with the both of you."
They say, "Get away with ya.... Dad would never say that...Prove it."
Mick shouts downstairs, "Paddy, both of em?"
Paddy shouts back, "Of course both of em, what's the point of just fu*kin one?"
Todays blonde jokes
A robber comes into the store & steals a TV. A blonde runs after him and says, "Wait, you forgot the remote!"
There was a blonde who just got sick and tired of all the blonde jokes. One evening, she went home and memorized all the state capitals.
Back in the office the next day, some guy started telling a dumb blonde joke.
She interrupted him with a shrill announcement, "I've had it up to here with these blonde jokes. I want you to know that this blonde went home last night and did something probably none of you could do. I memorized all the state capitals."
One of the guys, of course, said, "I don't believe you. What is the capital of Nevada?"
"N," she answered.
A guy was driving in a car with a blonde.
He told her to stick her head out the window and see if the blinker worked.
She stuck her head out and said, "Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes..."
A blonde, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire herself out as a handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood.
She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for her to do.
"Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?"
The blonde said, "How about 50 dollars?"
The man agreed and told her that the paint and ladders that she might need were in the garage.
The man's wife, inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, "Does she realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?"
The man replied, "She should. She was standing on the porch."
A short time later, the blonde came to the door to collect her money.
"You're finished already?" he asked.
"Yes," the blonde answered, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats.
"Impressed, the man reached in his pocket for the $50.
"And by the way," the blonde added, "that's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari."
A blind guy on a bar stool shouts to the bartender, "Wanna hear a blonde joke?"
In a hushed voice, the guy next to him says, “Before you tell that joke, you should know something. Our bartender is blonde, the bouncer is blonde. I’m a six foot tall, 200 lb black belt. The guy sitting next to me is six foot two, weighs 225, and he’s a rugby player. The fella to your right is six foot five, pushing 300, and he’s a wrestler. Each one of us is blonde. Think about it, Mister. Do you still wanna tell that joke?"
The blind guy says, “Nah, not if I’m gonna have to explain it five times."
Todays Scottish joke
A young Scottish lad and lass were sitting on a low stone wall, holding hands, gazing out over the loch.
For several minutes they sat silently. Then finally the girl looked at the boy and said, "A penny for your thoughts, Angus."
"Well, uh, I was thinkin'... perhaps it's aboot time for a wee kiss."
The girl blushed, then leaned over and kissed him lightly
on the cheek.
Then he blushed. The two turned once again to gaze out over the loch.
Minutes passed and the girl spoke again. "Another penny
for your thoughts, Angus?"
"Well, uh, I was thinkin' perhaps it's noo aboot time for a wee cuddle."
The girl blushed, then leaned over and cuddled him for a
few seconds.
Then he blushed, and the two turned once again to gaze
out over the loch. After a while, she again said, "Another
penny for your thoughts, Angus."
"Well, uh, I was thinkin' ... perhaps it's aboot time you let me put my hand on your leg."
The girl blushed, then took his hand and put it on her knee. Then he blushed.
Then the two turned once again to gaze out over the loch
before the girl spoke again. "Another penny for your thoughts, Angus."
The young man glanced down with a furrowed brow. "Well, noo," he said, "my thoughts are a wee bit more serious this time."
"Really?" said the lass in a whisper, filled with anticipation.
"Aye," said the lad, nodding.
The girl looked away in shyness, began to blush, and bit
her lip in anticipation of the ultimate request.
Then he said, "Dae ye no' think it's aboot time ye paid me the first three pennies?"
For several minutes they sat silently. Then finally the girl looked at the boy and said, "A penny for your thoughts, Angus."
"Well, uh, I was thinkin'... perhaps it's aboot time for a wee kiss."
The girl blushed, then leaned over and kissed him lightly
on the cheek.
Then he blushed. The two turned once again to gaze out over the loch.
Minutes passed and the girl spoke again. "Another penny
for your thoughts, Angus?"
"Well, uh, I was thinkin' perhaps it's noo aboot time for a wee cuddle."
The girl blushed, then leaned over and cuddled him for a
few seconds.
Then he blushed, and the two turned once again to gaze
out over the loch. After a while, she again said, "Another
penny for your thoughts, Angus."
"Well, uh, I was thinkin' ... perhaps it's aboot time you let me put my hand on your leg."
The girl blushed, then took his hand and put it on her knee. Then he blushed.
Then the two turned once again to gaze out over the loch
before the girl spoke again. "Another penny for your thoughts, Angus."
The young man glanced down with a furrowed brow. "Well, noo," he said, "my thoughts are a wee bit more serious this time."
"Really?" said the lass in a whisper, filled with anticipation.
"Aye," said the lad, nodding.
The girl looked away in shyness, began to blush, and bit
her lip in anticipation of the ultimate request.
Then he said, "Dae ye no' think it's aboot time ye paid me the first three pennies?"
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