1/ Frank Rich with his commentary 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, Trump’s ongoing campaign against his attorney general, the question of “Spygate,” and the cancellation of Roseanne.
Following a New York Times report that Trump had asked Sessions to “unrecuse” himself from the Russia investigation, Trump tweeted that he wishes he’d picked someone else as his attorney general, whom he accused of “betrayal.” Is his response to the story an admission of obstruction of justice?
So you’d think. If Trump is innocent of all potential charges in the Russia probe, why would he want a loyal puppet in charge of the Mueller investigation except to obstruct it? His continued wail about Sessions, not just on Twitter but to anyone in earshot, is so patently self-incriminating that it’s laughable.
2/ A very good Bill Maher "New Rules"....
Before closing his show Friday night, Bill Maher blasted the GOP embracing “conspiracy theories.”
Maher began by explaining how conspiracy theories used to be about aliens, Hitler escaping to Argentina, and Elvis still being alive, but now they’re the “ideology of the Republican party.”
“Conspiracy theorists used to be ‘crazy,’ now they’re called ‘Senator,'” Maher said. “It used to be an unwritten rule of both parties that you can’t just make sh*t up, the old ‘You’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts’ thing, but that was before Republicans discovered, ‘Yes, yes you can just make sh*t up.
3/ Andrew Sullivan with a most disturbing column, where he speculates that liberal democracy is on the retreat, and Trump is winning.....
I hope beyond hope he's wrong, and that the sane American people have woken up.....
But he's a compelling writer.....
“The real winners here are Italy’s voters. Thanks to their coolheaded president, they have a chance to rethink their answers to a very important question.” If you want a quick summary of clueless elite liberalism, it would be hard to best these sentences from Beppe Severgnini, the New York Times’ op-ed contributor on Italy. He was relieved that two populist parties with more than 50 percent of the vote — the League and the Five Star Movement — were temporarily barred from forming a government.
4/ Roger Goodall, head of the NFL is dissected in this vivid story from Will Leitch....
This is a new weekly column I’ll be writing for Daily Intelligencer every week moving forward. We’ll be looking at the absurdity of the sports world, but also of course its somehow infinite appeal. Email anything you’d like to talk about at will.leitch@nymag.com. Let’s try to get through this together.
You think you’ve seen it all, honestly. Sportswriting is a repetitive profession: Every big event by definition is the same big event they just had a year ago. One must be careful not to be too jaded, too lulled by the familiar. (It’s difficult sometimes.) But then something like last Thursday’s surreal, patently disastrous decision by the NFL to fine teams whose players do not stand for the national anthem comes along, and you remember that sports still have the capacity to make your jaw drop — to knock you off your feet. I’m pretty sure it’s what this entire era of sports is going to be remembered for, the thing we’ll try to explain to our grandchildren and fail to. I’m still flabbergasted by it. We can’t be outraged enough.
But this is Roger Goodell’s NFL. I suppose we all should have seen the dumbest possible outcome coming.
5/ Jordan Klepper [who plays a right wing TV host] had Bernie Sanders on for a 12 minute [supposedly] hostile interview......we love Bernie!
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told Jordan Klepper of “The Opposition” that Donald Trump is “the worst president in the history of the United States.”
The audience cheered, but Klepper ― who portrays a parody version of an alt-right host on the Comedy Central show ― had to interject.
“At least admit to him being the best at being the worst,” he pushed.
Sanders, a persistent Trump critic, couldn’t argue with that one.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll grant you that.”
The two spoke for 12 minutes in a conversation that ranged from serious issues, including wages and North Korea, to Klepper trying to get Sanders to announce a 2020 presidential bid.
6/ Matt Taibbi with the battle for Woodstock, Part 2.....Dem on Dem violence!
Early evening, May 23rd, a fire station in Liberty, New York. Brian Flynn, a Democratic candidate for Congress, is getting ready to hold a town hall on health care issues.
Flynn, a businessman and former Citibank executive who personality-wise resembles the engaging Dave version of Kevin Kline, chose the right spot to talk about health care. Liberty is in Sullivan County, which for the eighth straight year was just ranked the second-unhealthiest county in New York state.
This area used to be home to a thriving hotel and resort business but is now mostly an economic dead zone chewing up map space between cities – in this case between relative metropolises Binghamton and Poughkeepsie. The county went for Trump 55-41 after going 53-45 for Obama in 2008. Flynn understands why.
7/ Bill Maher's opener with some really good zingers....six funny minutes....
ABC had barely finished canceling Roseanne this week when conservatives on Twitter started equating Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett to Bill Maher’s infamous joke in which called Donald Trump the spawn of an orangutan.
“I'm so old I remember when Bill Maher claimed President Trump's ‘mother had sex with an orangutan’ and kept his job,” Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted Tuesday afternoon. It only snowballed from there, and soon Maher’s name was trending right along with Barr’s.
On Friday night, the Real Time host finally got his chance to fire back at the “snowflakes on the right” who deliberately can’t tell the difference between satire and racism.
8/ 24 amusing marriage tweets.....so true! A couple are really funny....
Marriage is paved with all kinds of hurdles, from major stressors to the petty annoyances of everyday life. So when it comes to the small stuff, sometimes it’s better (and easier) to laugh it off rather than let it stew.
To that end, we’ve gathered 24 tweets about married life that are as relatable as they are funny.
9/ Some data and charts showing why Fox News viewers live in an alternate reality....
The stories Fox News covers obsessively — and those it ignores — in charts
Compare Fox News’s alternate reality to other cable news coverage.
Every night, Fox News paints a picture of reality that Americans outside the Fox News bubble would not recognize.
In Fox News world, the FBI is conducting a witch hunt against President Trump; the Stormy Daniels saga is part of a conspiracy to take down the president; Hillary Clinton’s corruption is still a major threat to American decency; and the mainstream media is ignoring Trump’s accomplishments, like securing the borders, lowering the unemployment rate, and withdrawing the US from bad international deals and treaties. These stories clash with the world that appears just a few channels away on mainstream media outlets like MSNBC and CNN.
10/ Ignore the voice.....she's very funny! Michelle Wolf on the Roseanne scandal.....
Michelle Wolf knows what it’s like to take heat for making a joke about another woman. So the host of Netflix’s The Break was uniquely positioned this week to discuss why Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrettshould not be equated with Samantha Bee’s use of the word “cunt” to describe Ivanka Trump.
Just as she used a segment about sports in last week’s premiere to comment on her dust-up with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Wolf turned a segment this week ostensibly about “internet goofs” to dig into the Roseanne saga.
11/ The excellent Carl Hiaasen on Publix's own corrupt scumbag Adam Putnam....
Adam Putnam, the Publix candidate for Florida governor, just put out a new TV campaign ad blaming “liberal elites” for pressuring young people to go to college and take on crippling debt.
The Republican agricultural commissioner promises to do more to prioritize vocational training, saying, “College is not the only path to success and it’s OK to say it.”
Actually, lots of people in both parties have been saying it for a long time. College isn’t for everybody, and — please tell us, Adam — who said it was?
Putnam’s sudden concern about predatory student-loan practices is especially curious. As a young U.S. congressman, he was one of only 71 representatives who in 2007 voted against the College Student Relief Act, which aimed to cut the interest rates on student loans.
12/ Scott Maxwell with a good column.....
Over the holiday weekend, Publix found itself in the middle of the national gun debate.
The weekend started with protesters vowing to stage “die-ins” at stores all over the state to protest the grocery chain’s all-in financial support for a gubernatorial candidate who’d labeled himself a “proud NRA sellout.”
NRA supporters mocked the protests … until Publix vowed to reconsider its political activities … quickly prompting boycott threats from the other side.
13/ And finally just another reason South Florida is doomed.....the water supply. It's not a question of is it going to happen, it's a question of when....
Our house in Coral Gables sits at 14 feet of elevation — a veritable ridge by South Florida standards.
In the not-too-distant future, we will live on one of the small islands of South Florida. The Coral Gables Golf Course will be a prime fishing lake and the beach will be just down the road near what is now Highway 1.
Unfortunately, we are unlikely to still live in our lovely neighborhood because, much sooner than having beachfront property, we will have run out of fresh water. Our greatest hope for being able to stay and live on the islands of South Florida is the restoration of the Everglades.
All of the towns and cities in South Florida are built on an old reef. The rocks beneath our feet are actually old corals. They come in all shapes and sizes, but they all have something in common — they are very light and porous.
Todays religious joke
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Todays farmer joke....
A farmer drove to a neighbor's farmhouse and knocked at the door. A boy, about 9, opened the door."Is your dad or mom home?" said the farmer."No, they went to town.""How about your brother, Howard. Is he here?"“No, he went with Mom and Dad.”The farmer stood there for a few minutes, shifting from one foot to the other, mumbling to himself,when the young boy says, "I know where all the tools are, if you want to borrow one, or I can give Dad a message.""Well," said the farmer uncomfortably. "No, I really want to talk to your Dad, about your brother Howard getting mydaughter Suzy pregnant."The boy thought for a moment, then says, "You'll have to talk to my Dad about that.I know he charges $500 for the bulls and $150 for the pigs, but I have no idea how much he charges for Howard."
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