1/ It's fashionable to blame the corporate media for the rise of Trump, but as Matt Taibbi writes although some of the blame is rightly on the media, they are giving our corrupt society what we want.....phoniness and hate....he says it's our fault folks....
I partially agree with him.....
Stop Whining About 'False Balance'
Everyone wants to blame reporters for the rise of Donald Trump. How about the media consumer?
News media outlets are increasingly coming under fire for the sin of "false balance" or "false equivalency." The New York Times, one of the outlets most often accused of this offense, recently defined the term:
"The practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present each side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evidence is stacked heavily on one side."
The crime of The Times, according to some of its readers, has been its coverage of the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation stories. As one Times reader put it, "There's too much at stake in this election for the media to stoke the belief that Hillary's mistakes (which she has definitely made) are even close to par with Trump's."
When Times public editor Liz Spayd essentially told readers that her paper was just doing its job and that readers should just suck it up and deal, she was hit with a torrent of criticism.
2/ A pretty good Bill Maher "New Rules".....a little more serious than usual, but some good zingers too.....five minutes....
It might seem weird to hear this message from someone as outspoken as Bill Maher, but the HBO host tonight called for a return to civility in American politics.
He said Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should agree to congratulate the other if they win the election because America’s “basic rules of conduct” are “all going away.”
And Maher did not just say this is a problem on the right. He criticized Ruth Bader Ginsburg for lashing out at Trump when she’s supposed to be independent of the political goings-on in America, and he also swiped at Alan Grayson for how he’s acted over the past few years.
3/ Want to know what wrong with this corrupt, unfair country? Read this story....
Wells Fargo fired 5,300 workers for improper sales push. The executive in charge is retiring with $125 million.
When Wells Fargo was hit last week with $185 million in fines after thousands of its employees were caught setting up fake accounts customers didn't ask for, regulators heralded the settlement as a breakthrough.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted that the $100 million it will collect as part of the deal was the agency's "largest penalty" ever. The head of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a banking regulator, said its $35 million penalty would "demonstrate that such practices will not be tolerated and banks will be held responsible.” “This is a major victory for consumers,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, touting the $50 million the city extracted from the bank.
But the fines being levied against Wells Fargo pale in comparison to the bank's yearly profit -- more than $20 billion in 2015.
4/ Fascinating story from the Guardian, who got files from an anonymous whistleblower implicating Scott Walker in raising millions from "dark money".....this is the way it works people, and assholes like the little runt Walker do real damage to our society....
The pervasive influence of corporate cash in the democratic process, and the extraordinary lengths to which politicians, lobbyists and even judges go to solicit money, are laid bare in sealed court documents leaked to the Guardian.
The John Doe files amount to 1,500 pages of largely unseen material gathered in evidence by prosecutors investigating alleged irregularities in political fundraising. Last year the Wisconsin supreme court ordered that all the documents should be destroyed, though a set survived that has now been obtained by the news organisation.
The files open a window on a world that is very rarely glimpsed by the public, in which millions of dollars are secretly donated by major corporations and super-wealthy individuals to third-party groups in an attempt to sway elections. They speak to a visceral theme of the 2016 presidential cycle: the distortion of American democracy by big business that has been slammed by both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
5/ If you like Monty Python's Holy Grail, and the old Star Trek, you'll appreciate this cleverly done merger of the two.....one amusing minute....
6/ We really liked Keith Olbermann when he was on MSNBC, but he was fired because he couldn't toe the corporate line, and also because he was a bit of a dick. Never mind, he's got an opinion, and like it or not he's consistent......
This 17 minute rant about why we shouldn't elect Donald J. Trump is wonderful.....the game Trump is playing is that he knows the American public has the brain retention power of a small mammal, so he just keeps going from outrage to outrage. Olbermann short circuits this process.....
A powerful video.....
7/ Samantha Bee is back! Yeay! And she evicerates the news anchors like the idiot Matt Lauer for not doing their jobs....excellent! Two parts - three minutes and five minutes....
Sam Bee on Full Frontal
Suffice it to say, Matt Lauer’s Clinton-Trump forum inspired plenty of criticism. Last Wednesday, journalists piled on after Lauer grilled Hillary Clinton on her private e-mail server, then rushed her through complex policy questions—and lobbed softballs at Donald Trump without fact-checking any of the candidate’s responses. On Monday night, though, Samantha Bee kicked off Full Frontal’s return from hiatus by pointing out that while Lauer “is a man whose crack journalism skills include getting up early and asking tough questions about recipes,” his performance last week was pretty much par for the course.
“The truth is, Lauer did a fantastic job at the meaningless campaign coverage we’ve come to demand from our media,” Bee said. “At some point, networks decided they could ask questions, and the answers would just be someone else’s problem—specifically, yours.”
8/ The NFL has had a multitude of bad publicity in the last couple of years, but it's Commissioner Roger Goodell keeps rolling on.....just remember he couldn't care less about you as a fan, all he has to do is please the 30 billionaires he works for....
In July, presidential candidate and Home Alone 2 star Donald Trump announced that he was displeased by the scheduling of the 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton. Specifically, Trump said, “I’ll tell you what I don’t like: It’s against two NFL games. I got a letter from the NFL saying, ‘This is ridiculous.’ ” The NFL immediately noted that it had sent no such letter — while admitting, “We obviously prefer the debates on a different night than scheduled games” — and Trump’s maneuver was widely seen as an attempt to either maximize his leverage on debate rules or get out of debating altogether. (We’re almost to November, people. Hang in there.)
Perhaps most noteworthy, however, was that few questioned Trump’s complaint: that scheduling a debate opposite an NFL game was a really bad idea, like putting one on Christmas or something. Would Trump have argued that a debate opposite the final episode of Breaking Bad be scrubbed? Or the night of the Grammys? Of course not. Because when you’re talking about America — particularly the sort of America Trump’s talking about — you’re talking about the NFL.
9/ Totally compelling look at earth's temperature over the last 22,000 years as an easy to follow graphic.....have a look at this, you will also learn some history.....
Excellent stuff....
Randall Munroe, the author of the webcomic XKCD, has a habit of making wonderfully lucid infographics on otherwise difficult scientific topics. Everyone should check out today’s edition on global warming. It’s a stunning graphic showing Earth’s recent climate history. Take some time with it. Stroll through the events like the domestication of dogs and the construction of Stonehenge. And then ponder the upshot here.
There’s a common line among climate skeptics that "[t]he climate has always changed, so why worry if it’s changing now?" The first half of that sentence is undeniably true. Due to orbital wobbles, volcanic activity, rock weathering, and changes in solar activity, the Earth’s temperature has waxed and waned over the past 4.5 billion years. During the Paleocene it was so warm that crocodiles swam above the Arctic Circle. And 20,000 years ago it was cold enough that multi-meter-thick glaciers covered Montreal.
But Munroe’s comic below hits at the "why worry." What’s most relevant to us humans, living in the present day, is that the climate has been remarkably stable for the past 12,000 years. That period encompasses all of human civilization — from the pyramids to the Industrial Revolution to Facebook and beyond. We’ve benefited greatly from that stability. It’s allowed us to build farms and coastal cities and thrive without worrying about overly wild fluctuations in the climate.
And now we’re losing that stable climate.
10/ A classic - Jimmy Fallon and Emma Stone with their lip sync battle......seven excellent minutes....
11/ The final section of the graphic above [#9] had three scenarios....read this chilling story from Michael Klare in Salon , and you will know which of the three will happen....
It's a discussion of climate change from a political viewpoint - not how we can transition to clean energy, but what are the forces resisting it....
In this picture taken on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015 near the town of Most, Czech Republic, water runs down inside a giant open pit lignite mine. Ahead of the U.N. climate conference in Paris, the Czech government approved a plan to expand the mining of lignite, a fossil fuel known as brown coal, a major source of greenhouse gases. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)(Credit: AP)
This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
In a year of record-setting heat on a blistered globe, with fast-warming oceans, fast
12/ If you are a fan of snarky writing you will love this mildly amusing and clever discussion of the scum Trump has surrounded himself with, especially Roger Ailes....
FRED PROUSER / REUTERS
Over at Daily Intelligencer, Gabriel Sherman has a fresh account of the banishment of Roger Ailes from the Fox News Channel, focused mainly on the women at Fox who meticulously built their case against the infamous network head in response to years of sexual harassment. You can revisit many of the gory details of the case: the snide sexist comments, the way Ailes treated his female talent as objects for his on-demand titillations, and the retreat to intimidation whenever one of Ailes’ victims dared to stand up to him. All in all, it paints the picture of an ouster that was justly deserved.
Here’s an interesting side detail to this whole story, though. Ailes went from being forced out at Fox News under a grotesque, career-ending scandal to ― hey, let me double-check this ... oh, yeah, here we go ― advising a presidential campaign.
That’s like ... fffffucked up, man! I think that maybe more people should talk about this?
Of course, many people have noted that Ailes has ended up in the advisory orbit of GOP presidential candidate and sewage-poisoned log flume Donald Trump. One can’t help but notice this because, of late, the Trump campaign has seemingly made a mission of collecting many of the right wing’s more diabolical characters, “Pokemon Go”-style.
13/ Book Review
How Big Pharma has likely ruined millions of children lives by the over treatment of ADHD......and what a fraud it is.....
ADHD NATION
Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic
By Alan Schwarz
Illustrated. 338 pp. Scribner. $28.
Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic
By Alan Schwarz
Illustrated. 338 pp. Scribner. $28.
In the late 1930s, Charles Bradley, the director of a home for “troublesome” children in Rhode Island, had a problem. The field of neuroscience was still in its infancy, and one of the few techniques available to allow psychiatrists like Bradley to ponder the role of the brain in emotional disorders was a procedure that required replacing a volume of cerebrospinal fluid in the patient’s skull with air. This painstaking process allowed any irregularities to stand out clearly in X-ray images, but many patients suffered excruciating headaches that lasted for weeks afterward.
Meanwhile, a pharmaceutical company called Smith, Kline & French was facing a different sort of problem. The firm had recently acquired the rights to sell a powerful stimulant then called “benzedrine sulfate” and was trying to create a market for it. Toward that end, the company made quantities of the drug available at no cost to doctors who volunteered to run studies on it. Bradley was a firm believer that struggling children needed more than a handful of pills to get better; they also needed psychosocial therapy and the calming and supportive environment that he provided at the home. But he took up the company’s offer, hoping that the drug might eliminate his patients’ headaches.
14/ What a charmer Bette Midler was in this wonderful clip from the Johnny Carson Show.....two great minutes.....
15/ A journalist who once lived in Amsterdam goes back there.....nice story about one of our favorite cities....
This year we decided to take our summer vacation in Amsterdam. For my family, Amsterdam is not just any destination. I lived in the city for seven years and wrote a book about it. My partner, Pamela, lived there for 23 years. We met in Amsterdam. Our son was born in the city. We have friends, family, colleagues, memories and roots there. It is, logically and in our hearts, our second home. And yet, three years after returning to the United States, we realized that it had become shockingly remote in our lives. So while the trip would be a vacation, the real motive was to spend a couple of weeks reclaiming Amsterdam.
We had been hearing and reading that the city had changed dramatically in the short time since we had moved, thanks to a number of forces. The population is growing, the city has plans to build 50,000 homes over the next 10 years, and the largest group of newcomers (both Dutch and immigrants from places like Turkey and Morocco) are those between the ages of 20 and 34, who are putting down roots and reshaping the urban landscape.
At the same time, real estate prices are spiking.
A very good friend of ours wrote this for the Orlando Sentinel, and it was published last week......some of us might relate to this story!
17/ Pam Bondi - Donald Trump......a disgusting pair of crooks, but at least you know where you are with Trump. He's unashamedly a crook.....Bondi is a weasel....
Great column from Scott Maxwell.....
Donald Trump made headlines last week for paying a $2,500 IRS fine for improperly using money from a charity to fund a campaign committee for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
But I'm here to tell you: The wrong person is receiving the brunt of the scrutiny here.
Listen, I understand the global interest in Trump. But when a prosecutor has been asked to investigate someone — and instead takes $25,000 in campaign cash from him — it's the prosecutor who most needs probing.
That's why I began digging into this way back in 2013 — long before Trump was even a candidate for the White House.
One day, Bondi's office told this newspaper it was reviewing complaints from Floridians who said they felt swindled by the Trump Institute affiliate of Trump University.
foundation cut a $25,000 check to Bondi's campaign committee.
Then, after the check came in, her office decided not to take any action against Trump.
Bondi — whose own spokesman said Bondi personally asked Trump for the money — says the two things weren't related. But imagine if another prosecutor did such a thing.
Imagine you were robbed and the prosecutor gave the suspect a pass after taking $25,000 from him.
Todays video - time for one of the short horror movies....three chilling minutes.....this is a good one, called "The Picture"...
Todays Israeli joke
The coach had put together the perfect team for the Chicago Bears. The only thing that was missing was a good quarterback. He had scouted all the colleges and even the Canadian and European leagues, but he couldn't find a super athlete who could ensure a Super Bowl win.
Then one night while watching CNN he saw a war-zone scene in the West Bank . In one corner of the background, he spotted a young Israeli soldier with a truly incredible arm. He threw a hand grenade straight into a 15th story window 100 yards away. KABOOM! He threw another hand grenade 75 yards away, right into a chimney. KA-BLOOEY! Then he threw another at a passing car going 90 mph. BULLS-EYE!
"I've got to get this guy!” the coach said to himself. "He has the perfect arm!" So, he brings him to the States and teaches him the great game of football. And the Bears go on to win the Super Bowl.
The young man is hailed as the great hero of football, and when the coach asks him what he wants, all the young man wants is to call his mother.
"Mom,"he says into the phone, "I just won the Super Bowl !"
"I don't want to talk to you", the old woman says."You are not my son!"
"I don't think you understand, Mother," the young man pleads. "I've won the greatest sporting event in the world. I'm here among thousands of my adoring fans."
"No! Let me tell you!" his mother retorts. "At this very moment, there are gunshots all around us. The neighborhood is a pile of rubble. Your two brothers were beaten within an inch of their lives last week, and I have to keep your sister in the house so she doesn't get raped!" The old lady pauses, and then tearfully says,.......... "I will never forgive you for making us move to Chicago!"
Todays cycle of life joke
1. When I was 13, I hoped that one day I would have a girlfriend with big Tits.
2. When I was 16, I got a girlfriend with big tits, but there was no passion, I decided I needed a passionate girl with zest for life.
3. In college I dated a passionate girl, but she was too emotional. Everything was an emergency. She was a drama queen, cried all the time and threatened suicide. I decided I needed a girl with stability.
4. When I was 25, I found a very stable girl but she was boring. She was totally predictable and never got excited about anything. Life became so dull that I decided I needed a girl with some excitement.
5. When I was 28, I found an exciting girl, but I couldn't keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. I decided to find a girl with some real ambition.
6. When I turned 30, I found a smart ambitious girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground, I married her. She was so ambitious that she divorced me and took everything I owned.
7. I'm older and wiser now, I'm looking for a girl with big tits.
The Irishman then handed his drinks back to the attendant and said, "Me too, I didn't know we had a choice."
2. When I was 16, I got a girlfriend with big tits, but there was no passion, I decided I needed a passionate girl with zest for life.
3. In college I dated a passionate girl, but she was too emotional. Everything was an emergency. She was a drama queen, cried all the time and threatened suicide. I decided I needed a girl with stability.
4. When I was 25, I found a very stable girl but she was boring. She was totally predictable and never got excited about anything. Life became so dull that I decided I needed a girl with some excitement.
5. When I was 28, I found an exciting girl, but I couldn't keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. I decided to find a girl with some real ambition.
6. When I turned 30, I found a smart ambitious girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground, I married her. She was so ambitious that she divorced me and took everything I owned.
7. I'm older and wiser now, I'm looking for a girl with big tits.
Todays Irish joke
A Utah Mormon was seated next to an Irish Catholic on a flight back to the States from London . After the plane was airborne, drink orders were taken.
The Irishman asked for a whiskey and a glass of Guinness, which were promptly brought and placed before him. The flight attendant then asked the Mormon if he would like a drink.
He replied in disgust, "I'd rather be savagely raped by a dozen whores than let liquor touch my lips."
The Irishman then handed his drinks back to the attendant and said, "Me too, I didn't know we had a choice."
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