1/ Frank Rich with some insights into a possible version of the endgame....
Prepare for the final descent. Photo: The Washington Post/The Washington Post/Getty Images
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 fallout for Trump from Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and Paul Manafort’s conviction on multiple felonies.
When you looked back on Watergate last summer, you found that the scandal unraveled incredibly slowly until, in August 1974, Nixon’s presidency collapsed all at once. This week, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted on multiple counts of fraud and Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations he says he committed “at the direction of the candidate.” Have we reached the August 1974 of the Trump presidency?
There have been so many times when Trump was doomed, dating at least as far back as his denigration of John McCain’s war heroism three summers ago, that it would be foolish to declare any new horror the final blow.
2/ Bill Maher with a good "New Rules"....five minutes...
Last night Bill Maher closed out his show by proposing that if the GOP is “merging” with Russia, maybe the Democrats should merge with a foreign power too.
He noted how Republicans “used to hate Russia” before bringing up more recent polls on the question of Russian interference.
And if “it’s okay to merge your party with a foreign power,” Maher said maybe it’s time for the Democrats to bring in their own ringer: China.
He even channeled President Donald Trump‘s infamous words about Russia to say, “China, if you’re listening, I hope you can find Donald Trump’s tax returns!”
3/ Andrew Sullivan with a possible endgame that's not quite as optimistic as Frank Rich's.....
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
There was a sense among some this week that we had at last reached that golden “inflection point” when all of Trump’s lies, scams, cons, and crimes finally sink in with Republicans, and the cult begins to crack.
I tend to think something else is happening: that we are entering the most dangerous phase of Donald Trump’s presidency. We always knew this would happen — that the rule of law and Trump would at some point be unable to coexist — but we had no idea how it would specifically play out. Now we see the lay of the land a little more clearly.
4/ Beto O'Rourke is running for Senator in Texas against the awful Ted Cruz, and was asked about the NFL players taking a knee.....his wonderful response has gone viral....four passionate, reasoned and sincere minutes.....
5/ Roger Cohen on the tragedy that is our country, or at least 35% of it....
How Far America Has Fallen
The thing with every shocking revelation about Trump is that it's already baked into his image. I've never met a Trump supporter who did not know exactly who he is.
RIDGWAY, Colo. — It’s different in the West. It’s easier to feel in touch with some essence of what America is. The space, so much of it still, so empty, so awe-inspiring, speaks of American possibility. The boundlessness invites reinvention and prickly individualism. Here in Colorado, purple state, split between gun lovers and legal marijuana lovers, the libertarian streak runs strong.
That’s the bit of the United States the rest of the world finds hardest to fathom.
6/ A most interesting story - how do you define corruption? Not like Trump supporters I'll bet...
Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt
7/ Bad Lip Reading with the White House Briefing room.....Sarah Huckabee Sanders....3 minutes of utterly believable dialogue.....[in her head]....
8/ This is not a good omen for the future - because of the warming in the Arctic, summer weather is getting "stuck".....
Summer weather patterns are increasingly likely to stall in Europe, North America and parts of Asia, according to a new climate study that explains why Arctic warming is making heatwaves elsewhere more persistent and dangerous.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic have slowed the circulation of the jet stream and other giant planetary winds, says the paper, which means high and low pressure fronts are getting stuck and weather is less able to moderate itself.
The authors of the research, published in Nature Communications on Monday, warn this could lead to “very extreme extremes”, which occur when abnormally high temperatures linger for an unusually prolonged period, turning sunny days into heat waves, tinder-dry conditions into wildfires, and rains into floods.
9/ And if you want to know if your home is going to flood in a hurricane, here's an interactive site that will let you know.....it goes in five year segments and includes charts for king tide flooding and three levels of hurricane.....I'm very happy we moved from South Florida!
Wondering how your home will fare? A new tool is now available to see how sea level rise and the resulting increases in tidal flooding and hurricane storm surge are expected to affect your property value. Using data from First Street Foundation’s recent study, the interactive FloodiQ website allows you to search by address or city and see both expected flooding and property value loss for your area.
The website currently includes data for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, and FloodiQ plans to add data from the remaining at-risk U.S. coastal regions.
10/ Bill Maher's opener Friday, titled "Orange Tuesday".....six funny minutes....
11/ I'm not sure this is entirely true, but Frank Bruni has a challenging column in the Times - see if you agree.....
Maybe someday, when the history of Donald Trump’s presidency is written, we’ll pinpoint the start of this week as his pivot into complete derangement and come up with a pithy name for it. Maybe we’ll call it Melania Monday.
12/ Scary stuff.....sounds logical and true...
For the past three years, I have been engaged in an informal, involuntary, and extremely painful study of Donald Trump supporters, with a special focus on those which I have come to describe as “Cult 45.” Via Twitter, Facebook, personal friendships (some of which have ended because of Trump), and even extensive interactions with my own extended family, I could probably qualify for a Doctorate, or at least a Master’s degree, in this subject,
13/ Matt Taibbi casts the Michael Cohen movie.....amusing....
Two years ago, there was a fierce online debate over the cast of a future movie about the 2016 Republican presidential race, which would probably be called Clown Car! (although Every Which Way But Left and A Kochwork Orange were also strong suggestions).
Twitter users attacked difficult questions like, “Could veteran character actor Daniel Von Bargen of Seinfeld fame play George Pataki despite being dead?” and “Was Justin Timberlake training for the role of Rand Paul in his portrayal of dry-humping weenie Scott Delacorte in Bad Teacher?”
This week, there’s been similar debate online about the cast of a Michael Cohen-themed movie. It probably started when people noticed the eerie Separated at Birth-style resemblance between Donald Trump’s disgraced personal lawyer and the aging version of the Fonz, Henry Winkler.
14/ A report on how the giant fishing fleets of China and others are destroying the worlds fishing grounds.....just another reason to worry, and to enjoy wild fish while you still can...
PARIS - When it comes to fish, you can't keep a good plunderer down. Take the 50,000-ton Lafayette, a floating factory four times the size of the biggest super trawler, able to process a half-million tons a year as it prowled off South America, northern Europe and Africa.
Pacific Andes, a global ocean-emptying empire based in Hong Kong, spent $100 million to refit the old oil tanker in China and launched it under a Russian flag in 2008. It was banned on southern Pacific high seas for cheating on quotas a few years later, so the company bought its way into Peru and kept it within territorial limits.
In Peru, it was renamed the Damanzaihao and reregistered in Mongolia, which is not picky about enforcing regulations. It switched to Belize, which later withdrew its flag. After legal battles in Peru, among travails elsewhere, Pacific Andes went belly up last year. Its former flagship was sold for a dime on the dollar to Russian owners seeking other waters to plunder.
The Lafayette-Damanzaihao saga reflects how the big players operate. A small-scale vignette shows the other extreme. Paris markets offer vanishing wild Atlantic salmon from the Basque country at up to $60 a pound. Fishermen net them as they swim back inland to spawn
15/ The Time's list of useful stuff that might improve your life.....
For years I was against the idea of paper planners. I thought they were cumbersome, wasteful and, in the age of Google Calendar, simply unnecessary. The pinnacle of redundancy.
Friends, I was so, so truly wrong.
There are both concrete and intangible benefits of using a paper planner to structure your life, goals and tasks. Physically writing out the way I want to organize my day brings a sense of ownership and responsibility that I never feel from typing it into my laptop or telling Siri to handle it. It’s a tangible manifestation of your goals you can hold in your hands, which to me adds permanence and accountability.
A morality test joke...
Are you as moral as you think you are? This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Only you will know the results, so remember that your answer needs to be honest.
THE SITUATION: You are in Florida, Palm Beach to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.
THE TEST: Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's Donald Trump! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS: You can save the life of Donald Trump or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful Republican men, hell-bent on hell.
THE QUESTION: Here's the question, and please give an honest answer. "Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?"
THE SITUATION: You are in Florida, Palm Beach to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.
THE TEST: Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's Donald Trump! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever.
YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS: You can save the life of Donald Trump or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful Republican men, hell-bent on hell.
THE QUESTION: Here's the question, and please give an honest answer. "Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?"
Idiot jokes
Number One Idiot
I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center.
Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital.
She calmed down and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the emergency room right away.
Here's your sign, lady. Wear it with pride.
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Number Two Idiot
Early this year, some Boeing employees on the airfield decided to steal a life raft from one of the 747s. They were successful in getting it out of the plane and home. Shortly after they took it for a float on the river, they noticed a Coast Guard helicopter coming toward them. It turned out that the chopper was homing in on the emergency locator beacon that activated when the raft was inflated.
They are no longer employed at Boeing.
Here's your sign, guys. Don't get it wet; the paint might run.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Number Three Idiot
A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into the Branch and wrote this, "Put all your muny in this bag."
While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and might call the police before he reached the teller's window.
So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to the Wells Fargo Bank. After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller.
She read it and, surmising from his spelling errors that he wasn't the brightest light in the harbor, told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.
Looking somewhat defeated, the man said, "OK" and left.
He was arrested a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
Don't bother with this guy's sign. He probably couldn't read it anyway.
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Number Four Idiot
A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car.
He later received in the mail a ticket for $ 140.00 and a photo of his car. Instead of payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $ 140.00.
Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture, this time of handcuffs.
He immediately mailed in his $ 140.00.
Wiseguy ... But you still get a sign.
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Number Five Idiot
A guy walked into a little corner store with a shotgun and demanded all of the cash from the cash drawer. After the cashier put the cash in a bag, the robber saw a bottle of Scotch that he wanted behind the counter on the shelf. He told the cashier to put it in the bag as well, but the cashier refused and said, "Because I don't believe you are over 21.";
The robber said he was, but the clerk still refused to give it to him because she didn't believe him. At this point, the robber took his driver's license out of his wallet and gave it to the clerk.
The clerk looked it over and agreed that the man was in fact over 21 and she put the Scotch in the bag. The robber then ran from the store with his loot.
The cashier promptly called the police and gave the name and address of the robber that he got off the license.
They arrested the robber two hours later.
This guy definitely needs a sign.
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Idiot Number Six
A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record shop nervously waving revolvers.
The first one shouted, " Nobody move!"
When his partner moved, the startled first bandit shot him.
This guy doesn't even deserve a sign.
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Idiot Number Seven
Arkansas: Seems this guy wanted some beer pretty badly.
He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back knocking him unconscious.
It seems the liquor store window was made of Plexi-Glass.
The whole event was caught on videotape.
Yep, here's your sign .
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Idiot Number Eight
I live in a semi-rural area.
We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road.
The reason: "Too many deer are being hit by cars out here! I don't think this is a good place for them to be crossing anymore."
Take the sign - Please!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stay Alert Out There! They walk among us ... they Reproduce ... they believe conspiracy theories and they vote ... and a lot of them hold public office!
Optimism: is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking the tartar sauce with you!
