1/ Frank Rich on the weeks news......
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, the Trump-Kim summit, the G7 debacle,
and the president’s public feud with Robert De Niro.
and the president’s public feud with Robert De Niro.
Donald Trump says he developed a “special bond” with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and declared the summit a success despite few tangible results. Did Trump get what he wanted?
Yes. But the shelf life of this “win” is likely to expire in about a week. Let’s be precise here about what Trump wanted. His goal was not to enhance American security by achieving complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea — a cause that his Potemkin summit arguably set back rather than advanced. The goal instead was entirely personal.
2/ An excellent, excellent Stephen Colbert segment where he get's as angry as I've ever seen him about the evil Trump/Sessions policy of ripping children from their families.....a few jokes,but mostly serious.....a great four minutes.....
And listen to the last line!
CBS
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is using the Bible to justify separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and Stephen Colbert is not having it.
The Late Show host, who has embraced his Catholic identity in a more prominent way since leaving The Colbert Report behind—he knows the Bible by heart, and taught Sunday school—spent several minutes Thursday night laying into Sessions for getting it wrong on this fundamental moral issue.
After telling a few jokes about Father’s Day gifts, Colbert said, “Let’s face it. The only things dads really want for Father’s Day is to be with their kids, which is why what’s happening on our southern border is so shocking.
3/ Thomas Friedman with a very good column.....
President Trump during a news conference on Tuesday.
First Donald Trump remade the Republican Party in his own image, and now he is trying to remake America the same way — into a selfish, dishonest country with no close friends, totally unpredictable, free of any commitment to enduring values, ready to stab any ally in the back on Twitter if it doesn’t do our bidding and much more comfortable with mafia-like dictators than elected democrats.
God forbid we become the United States of Trump. That would threaten our future and the stability of the world.
4/ Trump's team actually made a movie trailer for Kim Jong-un, and if you have seen Trump's version you won't believe how awful it is......but the Times made it better.....three minutes.....[a la "Honest Trailers!]
Trump Made Kim a Movie Trailer. We Made It Better.
Donald Trump showed Kim Jong-un a movie trailer casting both leaders as heroes. The Times’s Opinion video team cut a more honest makeover.
5/ And Stephen Colbert made his own Kim/Donald trailer.....two minutes, and very funny indeed.....
CBS
President Donald Trump “didn’t just talk the talk” with Kim Jong Un in Singapore this week, Stephen Colbert said Tuesday night. He also showed him a bizarre fake movie trailer that was meant to inspire the North Korean dictator to choose peace over war.
“The video shows Kim that peace brings all of the incredible riches that stock footage can provide: delicious food, drone delivery, slides, speedboat races, unlimited babies, and monster jams,” the Late Show host said. “That, of course, was to appeal to Kim's famous love of basketball and his favorite team, the Generic City Stock Footages!”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/
6/ Seth Meyers on the Summit of Dictators......an amusing nine minutes....
Seth Meyers mocked President Donald Trump’s notorious meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday in Singapore.
Their highly anticipated meeting was met with both praise and criticism. However, Late Night show host Seth Meyers, paid close attention to what everyone else was thinking.
President Trump said he would know by “touch and feel” if the summit was a success during the G7 meeting in Canada.
“Touch and feel is not how you determine the success of the summit,” Meyers said. “Touch and feel is how you determine whether a blouse is made of cotton.”
7/ Bill McKibben in the Guardian with the essence of our problem with having the Republicans and Trump for four years, vs climate change.....time is ticking away.....
Donald Trump may be costing us many things: a sense of national decency, a stable global order, a generation of professional civil servants and diplomats. Or maybe not. Maybe we can claw those losses back – perhaps the reaction will begin with the midterm elections and we’ll slowly return our way towards something that looks like the old normal.
But he’s definitely costing us one precious thing, and that’s time. It rolls past every day as we stand necessarily transfixed by his transgressions, and since it can’t be rolled back there are victims who – whatever the future holds – are paying an unrefundable price.
8/ Just a dream folks, just a dream....
9/ I love Bill Maher.....a smart and practical liberal......and definitely not a weenie....
Bill Maher took aim at liberals for their constant “symbolic victories” and not actual victories.
He began by mocking the various children’s books about LGBT issues and they need to be “more direct” like the book he read to his audience, Uncle Steve Likes C*ck. He then immediately told everyone not to call for his firing over his crass book.
“Look, I’m not saying there aren’t some instances where people have to go, but really, jeez,” Maher said. “For free speech, this has become a terrifying time in American history.”
Maher then cited the firing of Roseanne Barr over her racist tweet and President Trump asking for the firing of Samantha Bee for calling his daughter a “feckless c*nt.”
“Fat Donny is not the only one who demands that everyone gets fired all the time. We’ve all become too comfortable with playing the ‘clear out your desk’ card,” Maher continued
10/ Michael Tomasky in the Daily Beast on Trump supporters......"they're in a cult".....
Remember the “cult of Obama”? Of course you do. They carried on about it nonstop.
Jerome Corsi, the “investigative reporter” whose current fan-fiction obsession is the CIA’s “plot” to assassinate Donald Trump, wrote a book called Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (get the joke in the title? Say it fast a couple times). This came out in 2008, before Barack Obama was even in possession of the full power and majesty of the presidency to brainwash the defenseless masses.
Corsi would have many followers and imitators over the next eight years proclaiming that the relationship between Obama and his followers was not merely that of politician and admirers but of Dear Leader and sycophantic cult members. The argument was a stool with three legs.
11/ Jimmy Kimmel with a very funny four minute riff on the Korea meeting....
Jimmy Kimmel kicked off his ABC late-night show addressing President Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“A lot of pundits thought it was a mistake to meet with an unstable dictator – but Kim Jong Un said, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it anyway!’” Kimmel explained, with help from his band.
Even Kim described the Singapore summit seemed like something from science fiction, while Trump, after meeting Kim and spending just 38 minutes with him, announced they had developed a “special bond.”
“His dentures take longer to bond then that,” Kimmel snarked.
12/ Paul Krugman on the ongoing saga of Republicans trying to gut the ACA and throw 50 million Americans off their health insurance......next stop? Medicare....
Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, held a press conference Wednesday criticizing the G.O.P.’s position on protecting coverage of pre-existing medical conditions.
Polls suggest that the public considers health care the most important issue in the midterm elections. This immediately raises the question: Do voters understand what’s at stake? In particular, do they realize that if Republicans hold Congress, they will strip away protections for the 52 million Americans — more than a quarter of nonelderly adults — who have pre-existing conditions that, before passage of the Affordable Care Act, could have led insurers to deny them coverage?
It probably won’t succeed. But it might, in which case an estimated 17 million Americans would lose their health coverage.
13/ Stephen Colbert accurately predicts the chaos at the G7 Summit......and it's really funny.....four minutes....
Stephen Colbert, that nice Catholic boy, sometimes gets a case of the giggles and needs to compose himself. (Who doesn’t.) That, or he just really loves Alanis Morissette and doesn’t want to embarrass himself if her ‘90s hits are involved. (Also, who doesn’t.) Such fun occurred on The Late Show last night, when Colbert was trying to transform “Ironic” into a song with 10000 percent more Trumpian lyrics. “It’s like raiiiiin on your third wedding day!” he eventually manages to croon. “A porn staaaar that you already pay!”
14/ You may remember this photo from the G7, after it was photoshopped by the "fake news" media to remove the cart.....
15/ A "Floriduh" story if these ever was one......you just won't believe it.....
Florida Sold Guns Without Background Checks for a
Year Because of a Forgotten Password
If there’s one place in the South where it’s not a good idea for even a Republican politician to look sloppy about very basic gun regulation, it’s probably Florida, home to both the June 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando and the Parkland massacre in February of this year.
16/ "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" played by the Danish National Orchestra.....most unusual....
17/ "Oceans 8" has great reviews as a fun,spirited and well acted summer movie....but here's a slightly snarky review of the lesbian undercurrents in the movie....
The emotional crux of Ocean’s 8 happens fairly early on in the movie, when the titular Debbie Ocean, played by Sandra Bullock, is out of prison and back on her bullshit with a master plan to steal a $150 million Cartier necklace at the Met Gala. In order to pull off the heist, she needs to convince her partner in crime, “Lou,” played by Cate Blanchett, to join her. Cate knows she’s going to say yes, but she’s loving this little cat-and-mouse thing they’ve got going on, so she demurs for a few scenes.
18/ And if "Oceans 8" doesn't excite you, "Hereditary" has been compared to 'The Exorcist" for it's creepiness and power......great reviews....
In Ari Aster’s film, a recently bereaved woman learns how to contact the dead.
The scariest thing in “Hereditary,” a movie well supplied with fear, is a noise. It’s the one that you make by flicking your tongue down from the roof of your mouth: klokk. Most of us rarely do this, unless moved by a desire to mimic the hoofbeats of a horse, but Charlie Graham (Milly Shapiro), a non-smiling girl of thirteen, klokks with unnerving frequency. It’s her signature sound, like the bing! emitted by the annoying guy in “Groundhog Day,” and her brother, Peter (Alex Wolff), who’s a few years older than Charlie, hears a klokkin the corner of his bedroom, after dark, even when she’s not there.
Or, at any rate, he thinks he does. Most of the folks in the film, which is written and directed by Ari Aster, don’t quite know what to believe, or how much they should trust their eyes and ears.
Todays video - Buddy Hackett on the Carson show - "A Guy Goes to the Doctor".....one for the boys....
Todays wisdom of Anthony Bourdain
Few people on the planet have lived the kind of globetrotting and adventure-filled life that chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain has. You can probably learn a thing or two from the man.
No comments:
Post a Comment