1/ Requiem for a Grifter.....good story from Rolling Stone on the downfall of this evil bastard....
Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt – who at times appeared to be competing in a personal decathalon of corruption – finally resigned Thursday.
The former Oklahoma attorney general arrived in Washington, D.C. zealous to fulfill President Trump’s vow to dismantle the EPA and leave only “tidbits” behind. And Pruitt, a climate denierwith a “biblical worldview,” departs having done grave damage to the agency and the country, chiefly convincing Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord.
Pruitt had his sights set on grander posts: He angled to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general and reportedly harbored presidential ambitions. But the administrator’s rising star was eclipsed by seemingly non-stop scandal. Pruitt’s noxious blend of greed, paranoia and entitlement invited more than a dozen federal probes – including one that concluded he violated the law. His gift for grift left even his fellow Republicans fuming. In June, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa blasted Pruitt as “about as swampy as you get”; this week, Fox News star Laura Ingraham tweeted: “Pruitt is the swamp. Drain it.”
Accepting the EPA administrator’s resignation, Trump continued to praise Pruitt, tweeting: “Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him.”
2/ The Democratic Party is still clueless about who they are dealing with on the Republican side....
But there is no salvaging the Republican Party. Its leaders are beyond shame, beyond rules, beyond reason. Democrats can speak in the dialogue of peace, but the only dialect Republicans understand is power.
In the face of an unspeakable atrocity on our southern border ― constructed, announced and implemented by President Donald Trump’s administration, this Republican-led Congress does nothing and leverages none of its authority as a co-equal branch of government. Despite years of rhetoric about family values and shining cities on hills, the Republican Party allowed and tacitly condoned separating, perhaps irreparably, asylum seekers from the very children they fled here to save. Then, with more than 2,000 children still stranded away from their parents, they went on vacation.
To negotiate with such people, to treat them as colleagues and friends, to accept this as a normal partisan disagreement is to validate this grotesque hypocrisy.
3/ I think we all kind of believed that big business would stop Trump and his toadies doing anything really stupid that would harm our economic interests......the "big boys " would step in and calm him down. Guess what - he's out of anyone's control....
Paul Krugman with a very good column on the trade war....
President Trump listening to Tom Donohue, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at the White House in October.
The imminent prospect of a trade war, it seems, concentrates the mind. Until very recently, big business and the institutions that represent its interests didn’t seem to be taking President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric very seriously. After all, corporations have invested trillions based on the belief that world markets would remain open, that U.S. industry would retain access to both foreign customers and foreign suppliers.
Trump wouldn’t put all those investments at risk, would he?
Yes, he would — and the belated recognition that his tough talk on trade was serious has spurred a flurry of action. Major corporations and trade associations are sending letters to the administration warning that its policies will cost more jobs than they create. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has begun an advertising campaign to convince voters of the benefits of free trade.
Pathetic, isn’t it? Who in the Trump administration is going to pay attention to those letters?
4/ Not much comedy this week due to the July 4th holiday, but Michelle Wolf is still on the air! Here she is on abortions....
Michelle Wolf Unloads on Anti-Abortion Activists: ‘God Bless Abortions!’
“Some people say abortion is ‘killing a baby,’” the Netflix host said. “It’s not. It’s stopping a baby from happening.”
This is why it’s so important to have women hosts in late-night television.
In a segment that could never have been delivered by her male counterparts, Michelle Wolf responded to the news of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement on this week’s episode of The Break by clearing up some common misconceptions about abortion in America.
“Although it’s great for his wrinkly head,” Wolf said of Kennedy, “it could be catastrophic for reproductive rights.”
5/ Matt Taibbi on the significance of the election of Alexandria Occasion-Cortez and how the media and the DNC still aren't getting it...
Steve Schmidt – ex-Dick Cheney aide, new liberal hero and not at all the guy who helped unleash the modern far right by inviting Sarah Palin onto a presidential ticket – had a few things to say in the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking win over long-serving Democrat Joe Crowley.
Schmidt told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle that the result was a boon to Donald Trump.
“What Trump is doing is radicalizing American politics,” the conservative strategist continued. “And he is a beneficiary the more radical politics becomes.”
Schmidt pooh-poohed the Ocasio-Cortez platform of a government jobs program, free day care and free college education, among other things. These things can’t be paid for, he insisted. Therefore, the Ocasio-Cortez brand of politics is inherently dishonest.
6/ Read this story and then think of how the rest of the world thinks of us......blatantly corrupt and stupid.....
America foreign policy is now officially against breast-feeding because it's hurting some Pharma giants.........
A Brooklyn mother unable to nurse fed her child donated breast milk. The $70 billion infant formula industry has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years.
A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.
Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.
Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.
7/ Tom Tomorrow on the weeks news.....
8/ A very insightful story about cruising.....
It’s the final day of this seven-night cruise and I am sitting in my moderately messy balcony stateroom aboard the Celebrity Summit finishing the last bites of a room service cheeseburger, bags as yet unpacked for tomorrow morning’s disembarkation, the vast undulating North Atlantic just over my starboard shoulder.
I am trying to summon up my arguments in support of the mass-market luxury cruise, and against the snarky subgenre of travel writing about mass-market luxury cruises, a snarkiness best exemplified by David Foster Wallace’s classic 1997 essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” piece that is hilarious and insightful and brilliant. And also wrong.
It’s wrong because he tills every square inch of the surreal journalistic soil available to him during his own seven-day Caribbean cruise aboard the now decommissioned Celebrity Zenith (which he redubs the Nadir), but after 98 exhaustive pages of skeet shooting, conga dancing, fruit eating and existential despair falling, he fails to unearth what I believe is the flowering root of the widespread appeal of cruises: their unapologetic, gleaming banality.
9/ Best TV of 2018 so far.....according to New York Magazine....
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It has not been a great year for television so far.
There have been plenty of treats, to be sure, and even some real treasures. But compared to the way 2017 seemed to haul out new classics with astonishing regularity (to the degree that I couldn’t rank them when it came time to make a list), 2018 has featured a lot of shows where my recommendation comes with a caveat, or where I love it but plenty of my critical comrades despise it, or something like that.
This is fine, in many ways.
Todays romantic joke
The waitress, taking another order at a table a few steps away, suddenly noticed the man slowly sliding down his chair and under the table, but the woman acted unconcerned. The waitress watched as the man slid all the way down his chair and out of sight under the table. Still, the woman appeared calm and unruffled, apparently unaware her dining companion had disappeared. The waitress, thinking this was a bit too risqué behaviour that might offend other diners, went over to the table and tactfully, began by saying to the woman "Pardon me, ma’am, but I think your husband just slid under the table." The woman calmly looked up at her and said, "No, he didn't. He just walked in the door." |
Todays British joke
A devout Arab Muslim entered a black cab in London. He curtly asked the cabbie to turn off the radio because as decreed by his religious teaching, he must not listen to music because in the time of the prophet there was no music, especially Western music which is the music of the infidel.
The cab driver politely switched off the radio, stopped the cab and opened the door.
The Arab asked him, "What are you doing?
"The cabbie answered, "In the time of the prophet there were no taxis, so fxxk off and wait for a camel!"
Todays Grandfather joke
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