1/ Frank Rich with his wisdom on the week's 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 Supreme Court after Anthony Kennedy, the politics of civility, and Sean Spicer’s next act.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, often seen as the swing vote on an ideologically divided court, has announced his retirement, effective at the end of this term. What does a post-Kennedy Court look like?
Despite the ostensibly moderating influence of the very conservative Anthony Kennedy, the Roberts Court will go down in history as having enhanced the rights of corporations while eroding those of minorities. Kennedy not only wrote the majority decision on Citizens United but joined the 5–4 majority that castrated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This week alone he sided with the majorities upholding the Trump travel ban and pummeling organized labor. Yet hard as it is to imagine how this court could get much worse, it will, now that it loses Kennedy’s anomalously liberal votes extending gay civil rights, abortion rights, and habeas corpus, and restricting prayer in public schools and capital punishment.
2/ Bill Maher "New Rule".....one of his more serious ones, but still very amusing....five minutes....
3/ Trump as an early stage Mussolini? Most interesting article.....
OPINION
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY THE DAILY BEAST
It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini
The false threat of murderous immigrants, the draconian response, a government agency going rogue—it’s all been seen before and it’s very dangerous.
06.30.18 12:00 AM ET
Is there a moment when a fanatical leader can be stopped before he takes a nation into the abyss? A moment when those with the moral determination to stop him can act before it is too late?
These questions are not academic. Every day Trump stress tests this republic’s defenses against a demagogue.
History has such moments. They need to be heeded.
In Italy the moment came on Aug. 16, 1924.
4/ John Oliver on SCOTUS.....a pretty good five minutes....
The Last Week Tonight host then read the embarrassing tweet from the president’s eldest son over the Kennedy retirement news:
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with Mister Junior on this, because I don’t think this is ‘lit’ at all. I mean, it’s obvs crayAF, no one is denying that fam, but I would argue that this week’s news was neither lit nor on fleek nor was it three fire emojis,” joked Oliver. “Now, granted, I’m still a little shook jsyk, but I personally believe Kennedy’s retirement is super werpt. And I’m happy to announce that in saying that, all of the slang words I just used are now officially dead forever—and that includes ‘werpt,’ a term that doesn’t even exist for which I preemptively ruined just in case.”
5/ A good story from the Times by Michael Tomasky.....the situation with Justice Kennedy has happened before....
Democrats need to get their core constituencies to understand what is at stake with this Supreme Court nomination.
If you’ve been spending the past few days pondering some Supreme Court-related historical what-if’s, then try this one on for size. Thurgood Marshall, the court’s first African-American justice, announced his retirement on June 27, 1991. That was, of course, smack in the middle of a Republican presidency — that of George H. W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, a one-term president, had already made one appointment to the court, David Souter, so Justice Marshall’s retirement was — and indeed was seen as — a gift to the president. He was in his 80s, and he felt increasingly isolated on the court, but it’s also the case that politically, Supreme Court succession wasn’t a life-or-death matter in those days.
In our time, Justice Marshall would surely have held on, hoping for the possibility of a Democrat winning the presidency in 1992. And as we know, that happened. Bill Clinton won. And here’s where fate’s heavy hand figures in: Mr. Marshall died on Jan. 24, 1993 — Bill Clinton’s third full day as president.
Had Justice Marshall stuck by his original intention not to retire, Mr. Clinton would have delivered his funeral oration and replaced him.
6/ Michelle Wolf with some brutal jokes on the weeks news.....
Comedian Michelle Wolf helped set off America’s current “civility” debate by making jokes at the expense of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and others in the Trump administration at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a move that landed her at the center of new GOP ad that condemns the “unhinged” Left heading into the 2018 midterms.
But just as she refused to apologize for her jokes about the White House press secretary, Wolf has only doubled down on her criticism. And this week on Netflix’s The Break, she shared with viewers some specific lines liberals can use should they take Rep. Maxine Waters’ advice and confront Trump administration officials in public.
While Wolf said she agrees with Waters’ sentiment, she explained, “You can’t just casually harass these people, you have to insult them specifically,” adding,
7/ Charles Blow in the Times, expressing what a lot of intelligent people are thinking....Trump is truly remaking America into something nastier....
Donald Trump, a lying, bullying, womanizing autocrat-idolizer, is fundamentally transforming America in very real and lasting ways, in ways that have left decent people slack-jawed, enraged and exasperated.
He has overtaken and destroyed the structure of the Republican Party, unleashing its ugliest elements to chant his praise and stroke his ego like drunken apostates dancing around a golden calf.
He has attacked American institutions that seek truth and justice, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the press, because he wants to weaken America’s faith in truth and facts themselves.
He has shunned and denigrated America’s traditional allies and cozied up to America’s traditional enemies, in one of the most bewildering presidential postures the country may ever have seen.
And now, with the retirement of the Supreme Court moderate Anthony Kennedy, Trump will be able to solidify the court’s conservative majority for a generation.
8/ Michelle Wolf again - with a great riff on the media....
Comedienne Michelle Wolf has some thoughts about the GOP’s recent ad titled “The Left in 2018: Unhinged.”
The Republican National Committee (RNC) ad features Wolf’s voice saying to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, “What’s Uncle Tom but for white women who disappoint other white women?”
Rep.Maxine Waters (D-CA), Bill Maher, Kathy Griffin, and Samantha Bee also make cameos in the left-shaming ad.
Wolf used her most recent Netflix show, The Break to respond to the GOP’s claims and note two things that should really be unhinged these days.
9/ Andrew Sullivan with a lament on how Justice Kennedy was the last traditional conservative left......
I don't think Sullivan heard the news that Kennedy's son was at Deutche Bank when they lent Trump a billion dollars to bail out Trump's failing real estate empire, and that the timing of Kennedy's retirement now allows Trump to put a right wing troll on the Court.
That's Kennedy's legacy....just another corrupt Conservative....
The retirement of Anthony Kennedy is an obituary for conservatism in America.
Kennedy’s pragmatic libertarianism — his belief in limited government, pluralism, moderation, and social cohesion — didn’t fit into either of our two political tribes’ worldview. He favored marriage equality but also the religious freedom of fundamentalists; he opposed racial preferences but found a way to accommodate some version of affirmative action; he believed in free markets but saw a role for government in preventing climate change; he sided with the conservatives on the court much of the time (including in his final term) but defended the habeas corpus rights of Gitmo prisoners, ended the death penalty for the mentally ill and minors, protected the right to burn the flag, and when push came to shove, defended Roe. For all this, he frustrated a lot of people, in both tribes.
10/ Why are there so many refugees? One of the reasons that gets zero coverage is the effect of climate change on the poorer countries.....good story, and once you read it it makes a lot of sense....
But there’s another, lesser-known dimension to this migration. Drought and rising temperatures in Guatemala are making it harder for people to make a living or even survive, thus compounding the already tenuous political situation for the 16.6 million people who live there.
In the town of Jumaytepeque, which is in Central America’s dry corridor, a group of farmers took me to see their coffee crops. Coffee was responsible for the majority of the community’s income but had been decimated by a plague known as coffee rust, or la roya. Plagues like these aren’t necessarily caused by climate change, but it exacerbates them, and roya is now infecting plants at higher elevations as those heights become warmer. Making matters worse, stress from the drought has made these plants more vulnerable to the plague.
11/ Jon Stewart on the Colbert show with a message for Trump....
Jon Stewart made a surprise appearance on The Late Show and had a blunt message to President Donald Trump.
Springing from underneath Stephen Colbert‘s desk, Stewart decided to address the president directly.
“I know you’re upset about all the criticism you’ve been taking and the ‘fake news’ and the ‘fake late night shows.’ It’s just, we’re still having a little trouble adjusting to your presidency as it goes into its 500th year,” Stewart said to Trump. “Everything’s off its axis. It’s a little unusual. Apparently, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are noble, intelligent role models, and Canada’s a bunch giant ***holes.
12/ The algae bloom from Lake Okeechobee is coming back to both coasts this summer......thanks Rick Scott....
A boat plows through an algae bloom in the Caloosahatchee River on Wednesday near LaBelle, west of Lake Okeechobee.
13/ Vulture lists the 30 best superhero movies.......a most interesting list [some for your Netflix queue]....
This list was first published in 2014, and has been updated periodically to reflect new superhero movie releases.
In 1998, predicting a fiscally and artistically rich superhero-movie industry would’ve gotten you laughed out of your local comics shop. Hell, the idea of an “industry” for movies about costumed heroes was ludicrous. No such thing had ever existed. Superhero movies had been few and far between throughout cinema history, and the then-most-recent superpowered flick had been 1997’s Batman and Robin — a movie so derided that George Clooney has spent 20 years apologizing for it. Then Wesley Snipes came along and changed everything. On August 21, 1998, Blade was released and audiences watched Snipes don the shades of the titular vampire-stabbing superhero (a longtime Marvel Comics staple). The picture earned more than $131 million worldwide. Quietly, a revolution began.
14/ The new season of "The Handmaids Tale" is apparently really, really powerful.....
I can’t watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” now: It’s so brilliant and relevant that I can’t stand it
Season 2 speaks directly to the evils we’re living through right now. I cannot not recommend it enough
Hulu released the latest episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Wednesday, as it does every Wednesday, and this one, titled “Holly,” may be the best of the second season. Elisabeth Moss’ performance absolutely blazes across the screen, and Kira Snyder’s script brings out the best of her emotive capabilities with what it shows us as opposed to its relatively reduced amount of dialogue, at least in the scenes taking place in the fearsome alternate present of Gilead.
“Holly” is a piece where the power is sourced in visual symbolism as opposed to verbal. The entirety of “Handmaid’s” can be described that way, but here, in a spare and cruel winter landscape where Moss’ Offred/June finds herself unexpectedly abandoned, her predicament and that of all women in Gilead is laid out in scenes where she struggles to open doors that are locked to her.
Todays Rodney Dangerfield jokes
My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night she used me to time an egg.
It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!
Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.
A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home!
A hooker once told me she had a headache.
If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.
I was making love to this girl and she started crying I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.'
I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.
My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.
I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.
The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.'
My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer.
I know I'm not sexy. When I put my underwear on I can hear the Fruit-of-the- Loom guys giggling.
My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal.
My wife likes to talk to me during sex; last night she called me from a hotel.
My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with.
It's been a rough day. I got up this morning ... put a shirt on and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.
I was such an ugly kid! ...When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and radio.
It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!
Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.
A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home!
A hooker once told me she had a headache.
If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.
I was making love to this girl and she started crying I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.'
I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.
My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.
I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.
The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.'
My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer.
I know I'm not sexy. When I put my underwear on I can hear the Fruit-of-the- Loom guys giggling.
My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal.
My wife likes to talk to me during sex; last night she called me from a hotel.
My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with.
It's been a rough day. I got up this morning ... put a shirt on and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.
I was such an ugly kid! ...When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and radio.
I was such an ugly baby that my mother never breast fed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.
I'm so ugly my father carried around a picture of the kid who came with his wallet.
When I was born, the doctor came into the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through anyway."
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