1/ The longer the Trump regime stays, the more this author's premise is becoming true.
We Have a Real Problem: Conservatives Are Destroying America
The first step is admitting there's something wrong. The second is correctly identifying the problem.
We are long overdue to take that second step.
There are two ways to view the "carnage" occurring in America right now. The first requires a stunning amount of willful blindness to the cause of this carnage. The second requires an almost effortless amount of will to say it out loud: Conservatives are destroying America.
The American right is cheering everything from Trump's attempted Muslimban that violates the Constitution they claim to revere to the ongoing repeal of Obamacare that will strip healthcare from millions of those same cheering conservatives. They're giggling like demented schoolchildren that Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement and that a journalist was physically assaulted because it's making libtards hopping mad. Yet, we're still told to believe that everyone is to blame.
2/ Stephen Colbert with an amusing opener where he looks at Trump's privatization scheme....five good minutes....
Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s “Late Show,” returned from a week-long hiatus Monday just in time for the White House’s “infrastructure week” — a seven day period dedicated to President Trump’s bold plan to overhaul the country’s transportation system.
“The White House announced today that they are kicking off infrastructure week,” Colbert informed his audience Monday. “It’s like shark week, except American infrastructure might actually kill you.”
To commence the week, the White House held a ceremony where Trump revealed plans to turn air traffic control into a nonprofit corporation.
“To be fair, any company Trump runs eventually is a nonprofit,” Colbert quipped. “But if they’re gonna be a nonprofit, our air traffic control is going to have to do some fundraising to make ends meet, and I’m here to help.”
Colbert then looked into the camera to lampoon a “for just 10 cents a day” commercial.
3/ If you read #1, this will also resonate because it's clear that Republicans assume if it pisses off the left, it's a good move....
Climate change as culture war: Trump’s Paris
pullout is a giant middle finger to the left
As Paris makes clear, right-wing attitudes on climate change are largely driven by hatred of tree-hugging liberals
(Credit: Getty/Leolintang)
When President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, with great fanfare, that he is pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, it was a stunning illustration not just of Trump’s own ignorance and pettiness, but also of the widespread nastiness in the conservative movement about this issue. For American conservatives, climate change is not fundamentally understood as an environmental, economic or moral issue. Instead, it has become a symbolic front in the culture war that has metastasized in the past couple of decades, touching on every aspect of life, from how we eat to the kind of cars we drive.
“Tribalism has also entirely subsumed the US conservative movement,” David Roberts at Vox wrote on Friday. “The intellectual core has all but rotted; what remains are older, rural and suburban white men and their wives, angry that their tribe is being demoted from its hegemonic position.”
4/ Samantha Bee on Jeff Sessions's War on Drugs....a very amusing six minutes.....
As all of America prepared for James Comey’s testimony Thursday before the Senate intelligence committee, “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee pivoted and dedicated most of her show Wednesday to the war on drugs the Trump White House is reviving.
“While the legislative branch’s baby proofing is holding up, the executive side still offers Donald Trump unfettered access to all the matches, oily rags and flammable chemicals he needs to burn down society. His latest co-arsonist? Apple-cheeked hate-goblin Jefferson Beauregard Sessions,” Bee said to start her monologue.
The late-night comedian then told an appropriate phallic joke that perfectly encapsulates the problem with mandatory minimums:
5/ Aaaaargh.....you almost feel sorry for her.....
6/ Paul Krugman on how facts are now irrelevant to Republicans......scary column....
Donald Trump just took us out of the Paris climate accord for no good reason. I don’t mean that his decision was wrong. I mean, literally, that he didn’t offer any substantive justification for that decision. Oh, he threw around a few numbers about supposed job losses, but nobody believes that he knows or cares where those numbers came from. It was just what he felt like doing.
And here’s the thing: What just happened on climate isn’t an unusual case — and Trump isn’t especially unusual for a modern Republican. For today’s G.O.P. doesn’t do substance; it doesn’t assemble evidence, or do analysis to formulate or even to justify its policy positions. Facts and hard thinking aren’t wanted, and anyone who tries to bring such things into the discussion is the enemy.
7/ Sam Bee on Fox and Friends sending messages to Trump.....listen closely, she gets some real barbs in .....
Samantha Bee is not impressed by Donald’s Trump‘s fight with Sadiq Khan, and she’s also not happy with Fox & Friends for acting as the president’s echo chamber regarding Muslims and terrorism.
The Full Frontal host began her Wednesday night show by looking at how Trump decided to spar with the London mayor while Britain is still dealing with the aftermath of the attack on the capital this past weekend. Bee was particularly incensed by how Trump took Khan’s words out of context when the mayor advised citizens not to give in to fear and weaken the British peoples’ resolve.
“What is wrong with you?” Bee asked the president. “Are you just fulfilling your annual Ramadan tradition of hurling insults at grief-stricken Muslims named Khan?”
Bee eventually threw Fox & Friends into the mix when she slammed the show for parroting (and inspiring) Trump’s talking points about how surveilling mosques and instituting a travel ban are indisputable necessities.
8/ It just gets worse and worse and worse....
9/ Fascinating and insightful story from the Times, about Trump's drive for simple solutions in a complex world...
Very good indeed....by Masha Gessen in the Times....
Can an autocrat be ridiculous? Can a democracy be destroyed by someone who has only the barest idea of what the word “democracy” means? Can pure incompetence plunge the world into a catastrophic war? We don’t like to think so.
We imagine the villains of history as cunning strategists, brilliant masterminds of horror. This happens because we learn about them from history books, which weave narratives that retrospectively imbue events with logic, making them seem predetermined. Historians and their readers bring an unavoidable perception bias to the story: If a historical event caused shocking destruction, then the person behind this event must have been a correspondingly giant monster.
Two stories on our medical systems to give you some background to our present crisis.........
10/ The first is on how specialists are strangling primary care doctors......
Republicans are trying to cut health care spending. But hacking away at Medicaid, weakening coverage requirements and replacing Obamacare’s subsidies with a convoluted tax credit will not deal with the real crisis in American health care.
The Affordable Care Act was misnamed; it should have been called the Access to Unaffordable Care Act. In 2015 health care spending reached $3.2 trillion — $10,000 for every man, woman and child in America. While our health care system is the most expensive in the world by far, on many measures of performance it ranked last out of 11 developed countries, according to a 2014 Commonwealth Fund Report.
But deregulation will not fix it. To the extent that we can call it a market at all, health care is not self-correcting. Instead, it is a colossal network of unaccountable profit centers, the pricing of which has been controlled by medical specialists since the mid-20th century. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have been willing to address this.
Most Americans mistakenly believe that they must see specialists for almost every medical problem. What people don’t know is that specialists essentially determine the services that are covered by insurance, and the prices that may be charged for them.
11/ The second is how the super rich are getting their health care....
SAN FRANCISCO — When John Battelle’s teenage son broke his leg at a suburban soccer game, naturally the first call his parents made was to 911. The second was to Dr. Jordan Shlain, the concierge doctor here who treats Mr. Battelle and his family.
“They’re taking him to a local hospital,” Mr. Battelle’s wife, Michelle, told Dr. Shlain as the boy rode in an ambulance to a nearby emergency room in Marin County. “No, they’re not,” Dr. Shlain instructed them. “You don’t want that leg set by an E.R. doc at a local medical center. You want it set by the head of orthopedics at a hospital in the city.”
Within minutes, the ambulance was on the Golden Gate Bridge, bound for California Pacific Medical Center, one of San Francisco’s top hospitals. Dr. Shlain was there to meet them when they arrived, and the boy was seen almost immediately by an orthopedist with decades of experience.
For Mr. Battelle, a veteran media entrepreneur, the experience convinced him that the annual fee he pays to have Dr. Shlain on call is worth it, despite his guilt over what he admits is very special treatment.
12/ The recent rains have produced chaos in South Florida - here is a report from the Miami Herald......the subdivision in the video is in Weston......built 30 years ago on a drained wetland....
Sawgrass Mills Mall, one of the largest in the country was closed with a foot of water inside the Mall....
Rainfall totals in several areas broke records Tuesday and Wednesday. Fort Lauderdale broke a 1926 record of just under 2 inches of rain with 4.78 inches of rainfall Tuesday, and West Palm Beach sailed past a 3-inch record set in 1904 with 4.18 inches of rainfall. Miami nearly tied its prior record for rainfall Tuesday, coming in shy of the 2.16 inch record set in 1964.
Two-day rainfall totals for the region were more than 12 inches in parts of Broward — with 11 inches in Weston, more than 10 inches in Davie and Sunrise and over 9 inches in Hollywood and Plantation. Northern areas of Miami-Dade got more than 7.5 inches of rain in that period, according to the weather service.
Todays video - a collection of worldwide fails from TwisterNederland......injuries
Todays comic 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.”
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 mailman joke
One Monday morning the mailman was driving through the neighborhood on his usual route, delivering the mail. As he approached one of the homes he noticed that both cars were still in the driveway.
His wonder was cut short by David, the homeowner, coming out with a load of empty beer, wine, and spirit bottles for the recycling bin.“'WOW, David, looks like you guys had one hell of a party last night,” the mailman commented.
David, in obvious pain, replied, 'Actually we had it Saturday night. This is the first time I have felt like moving since 4:00 o'clock Sunday morning. We had about 15 couples from the neighborhood over for a party and it got a bit wild. We all got so drunk that around midnight we started playing WHO AM I?'
The Mailman thought for a moment and said, 'How do you play WHO AM I?'
'Well, all the guys go in the bedroom and come out one at a time covered with a sheet with only the 'family jewels' showing through a hole in the sheet. Then the women try to guess who it is.'
The mailman laughed and said, 'Sounds like fun, I'm sorry I missed it.'
'Probably a good thing you did,' David responded, 'your name came up seven times.'
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