1/ Brexit and Teresa May's dilemma explained....nice clear summary of the disaster unfolding from New York Magazine....
During the two years that have passed since the slow-moving train wreck of Brexit began, it has been abundantly clear to any observer outside the U.K.’s nativist right-wing fever swamp that eventually, everyone was going to get hurt by it.
2/ Paul Krugman explains the "trade war" and details the unparalleled incompetence of this administration....
President Trump talking about fair trade at the Group of 7 summit last month.
Trump’s declaration that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” is an instant classic, right up there with Herbert Hoover’s “prosperity is just around the corner.”
Trump obviously believes that trade is a game in which he who runs the biggest surplus wins, and that America, which imports more than it exports, therefore has the upper hand in any conflict. That’s also why Peter Navarro predicted that nobody would retaliate against Trump’s tariffs. Since that’s actually not how trade works, we’re already facing plenty of retaliation and the strong prospect of escalation.
But here’s the thing: Trump’s tariffs are badly designed even from the point of view of someone who shares his crude mercantilist view of trade.
3/ Stephen Colbert celebrates the Thai boys getting out of the cave, and a few great zingers too....three funny minutes...
Stephen Colbert heralded the news on Tuesday from Thailand, where 12 boys and their soccer coach were rescued from a flooded cave. He relished the chance to discuss a bit of good news — but he inevitably couldn’t help but turn the story into a commentary on President Trump.
“All 12 Thai boys and their coach have been rescued from the cave that they were trapped in for more than two weeks. That feels good. In fact, it’s a great story that gives everyone hope. And it reminds us of the importance of permission slips for field trips to flooded caves.” — STEPHEN COLBERT
“Everybody loves this story. Are you listening, Mr. President? Freeing children makes people like you!
3/ Jonathan Chait with a theory I can definitely believe in.....
On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Russian hackers had broken into the Democratic National Committee’s files and gained access to its research on Donald Trump. A political world already numbed by Trump’s astonishing rise barely took notice. News reports quoted experts who suggested the Russians merely wanted more information about Trump to inform their foreign-policy dealings. By that point, Russia was already broadcasting its strong preference for Trump through the media. Yet when news of the hacking broke, nobody raised the faintest suspicions that Russia wished to alter the outcome of the election, let alone that Trump or anybody connected with him might have been in cahoots with a foreign power. It was a third-rate cyberburglary. Nothing to see here.
The unfolding of the Russia scandal has been like walking into a dark cavern.
5/ Boy is this true.....
6/ Scott Pruitt at the EPA made it clear there is no climate change, but the evidence is right in our faces every day.
David Leonhart in the Times with a very good column on the global weather extremes.....
I spent July 4 at the ballpark, for a game between the Washington Nationals and the Boston Red Sox. The stadium was supposed to be filled to capacity. But by the game’s middle innings, a huge number of seats — about half, in some sections — were empty, even though the game was tied. In more than 40 years of attending ballgames, I had never seen anything quite like it.
What was going on? It was a brutally hot day in Washington, and many people found it too uncomfortable to remain in their seats. So they decided to escape the sun and wander the stadium’s shaded concourses or to leave the ballpark altogether.
Washington is often hot in the summer, of course, but the heat wave of the past week has been decidedly abnormal.
7/ And the last day in his tenure Pruitt signed this corrupt little policy....the corruption is disgusting....
‘Super Polluting’ Trucks Receive Loophole on Pruitt’s Last Day
Fitzgerald Glider Kits sells trucks that use old engines built before modern emissions standards. A 300-unit cap per manufacturer that was imposed in January will no longer be enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency
8/ Michelle Wolf had Seth Meyers on her show for an amusing segment called "How Dare You"....five pretty good minutes.....
9/ Matt Taibbi and the gutting of the Dodd-Frank Act aided and abetted by Democrats....
In the age of Trump, bipartisanship is considered a sin. So one would think that when Republicans and Democrats do pass a law together, it’d be for something so popular, it couldn’t be questioned politically: a nonbinding resolution on the cuteness of puppies, maybe, or a national ice cream giveaway.
Nope. The rare bipartisan bill turned out to be a rollback of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act. More than 80 percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans want tougher rules on banks. Yet this was our Trump-era kumbaya moment: a bank deregulation bill!
Ostensibly passed to address the causes of the 2008 crash, the Dodd-Frank Act has instead spent more than half a decade now as a hostage to a payola Congress, with both parties taking turns cutting it down and delaying its implementation. The latest indignity is S.2155, a.k.a. the “Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.” Supposedly designed to help some banks by reducing capital requirements and ending regular “stress tests,” the act is really more like helping ships steam faster by allowing them to ditch their lifeboats.
10/ Wow - a climate change scientist who spells out the future of South Florida and sea level rise. Dr. Harold Wanless from the University of Miami....
Look what we have done. Let’s put this global warming and climate change thing in perspective.
For the past million years, atmospheric carbon dioxide fluctuated between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 280 ppm about every 100,000 years, and, in concert, temperature cooled and warmed and sea level went down and up 330 feet or more.
These natural changes in carbon dioxide, temperature and sea level occurred over thousands of years as Earth changed how she presented herself to the sun — cycles of a more and less circular orbit and changes in the amount and direction of the tilt of her axis to the sun.
For the first time in the paleo-record, carbon dioxide levels have risen by more than 110 ppm and within only 100 years because of our burning fossil fuels. The overall human-generated rise in carbon dioxide from 280 to 410 ppm is more than double the 180-280 ppm post-glacial increase that drove 420 feet of sea-level rise in response to natural warming and ice melt — and it has happened 100 times faster!
Earth’s climate is now severely out of balance and will respond in unprecedented, dire and most certainly rapid ways.
11/ Remember Elliott Broidy? You may be hearing about him from the mainstream media soon.....
This week, a giant political volcano has been showing signs that it is about to erupt, though most of the news media, and almost all of the public, are blissfully unaware of it.
Having previously written a couple of times about the bizarre saga of former GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy and former Playboy playmate Shera Bechard, this whole story sure seems based either in the most amazing series of coincidences most people could possibly imagine, or it is by far the biggest presidential scandal of our time. Because it is either or, and because most of the news media is both dumb and extremely risk adverse, the latter possibility has been, this this date, almost completely ignored.
But just because the news media is pretending that it is not very possible that President Donald Trump was actually the man who impregnated Bechard, while president, and paid her, through Broidy, to have an abortion and keep quiet about it, doesn’t mean that the story isn’t still developing in rather significant ways.
12/ Think you're begin virtuous when you drink a fruit juice instead of a soda? Think again!
Good article....and note this doesn't apply to fruits you juice yourself....
But not juice. Juice, for some reason, gets a pass. It’s not clear why.
13/ The Western US is in big trouble.....
Life in the Rocky Mountains is frequently extreme as blizzards, baking sun, and fires alternate with the seasons. But fire tsunamis? Those aren’t normal.
On Thursday, one observer described a “tsunami” of flames overnight at the Spring Creek fire near La Veta in the south-central part of the state. And you can’t stop tsunamis.
“It was a perfect firestorm,” Ben Brack, incident commander for the Spring Creek fire, told the Denver Post. “You can imagine standing in front of a tsunami or tornado and trying to stop it from destroying homes. A human response is ineffective.”
Pyrocumulus clouds, a sure indicator of intense heat release from wildfire, were clearly visible from 100 miles away. The fire is just five percent contained and covers more than 100,000 acres — larger than the city limits of Denver — making it the third-largest wildfire in state history.
Todays Detroit joke
Jack was sitting on the plane when a guy
took the seat beside him. The guy was an
emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in fear.
"What's the matter?" Jack asked.
"I've been transferred to Detroit, there's
crazy people there. They've got lots of
shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs,
poor public schools, and the highest
crime rate in America."
Jack replied, "I've lived in Detroit all my life.
It's not as bad as the media says. Find a
nice home, go to work, mind your own
business, enroll your kids in a nice private school.
It's as safe a place as anywhere in the world."
The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said,
"Oh, thank you. I've been worried to death.
But if you live there and say it's OK, I'll take your
word for it. What do you do for a living?"
"Me?" said Jack. "I'm a tail gunner on a Budweiser truck."
And to finish, a heartwarming story......
| |||||||||||||
No comments:
Post a Comment