1/ The master Frank Rich 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 persistent self-incrimination, the ongoing trial of Paul Manafort, and the lessons of Ohio’s special election.
This weekend, Donald Trump changed his story once again about the infamous June 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower, tweeting that its purpose was in fact to “get information” on Hillary Clinton. What does he get out of his continued potentially self-incriminating tweets?
A very good question. Part of me wonders if our president gets some kind of psychosexual thrill out of his repeated use of Twitter as a vehicle for reckless self-incrimination now that Playboy is no longer minting new Playmates for him to prey upon. He’s like the killer who keeps returning to the scene of the crime, ignoring the bloodhounds on his trail. There’s no method to his madness. It’s just madness.
2/ Stephen Colbert with an Alex Jones impression......insane, OTT but looks pretty true if you have ever watched Alex Jones....5 minutes....
Over the past 48 hours, Infowars — the Alex Jones-run far-right conspiracy site — has had its content removed from a host of major platforms including; Apple, Facebook, and YouTube.
On Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert could hardly contain his glee while reporting the news.
“Folks, there was some bad news recently for extreme right-wing conspiracy theorist and bath salts spokesmodel Alex Jones,” the Late Show host said. “Because it looks like his website Infowars just lost their war on info…Now if you want to see one of Jones’ signature rants, you’ll have to be in the next booth at Ruby Tuesday’s when he sees a mother breastfeeding.”
3/ Frank Rich with a medium length commentary on how the American Dream died in 2008......an insightful piece, worth reading....
If you were standing in the smoldering ashes of 9/11 trying to peer into the future, you might have been overjoyed to discover this happy snapshot of 2018: There has been no subsequent major terrorist attack on America from Al Qaeda or its heirs. American troops are not committed en masse to any ground war. American workers are enjoying a blissful 4 percent unemployment rate. The investment class and humble 401(k) holders alike are beneficiaries of a rising GDP and booming stock market that, as measured by the Dow, is up some 250 percent since its September 10, 2001, close. The most admired person in America, according to Gallup, is the nation’s first African-American president, a man no one had heard of and a phenomenon no one could have imagined at the century’s dawn. Comedy, the one art whose currency is laughter, is the culture’s greatest growth industry. What’s not to like?
Plenty, as it turns out. The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era.
4/ Bill Maher with his six minute opener last week, focusing on Fox News "The Enema of the People".....quite good....
Bill Maher took President Donald Trump to task over his relentless attacks on the press during his opening monologue on Friday’s broadcast of “Real Time.”
The comedian also gave the president’s favorite cable network, Fox News, a brand new nickname.
“This week he (Trump) held two of his hillbilly Nuremberg rallies. It’s scary to people in this profession, he calls the media the ‘enemy of the people,’” said Maher. “Except of course, for Fox News. They’re so far up his ass they’re the ‘enema of the people.’”
“We live in a country now where reporting reality gets attacked because it threatens the fantasy world created by the cult leader,” he added.
5/ Paul Krugman with an excellent column - "Stop Calling Trump a Populist".....
President Trump mentioned only the positive effects of his trade wars during a speech last week at a steel plant
Message to those in the news media who keep calling Donald Trump a “populist”: I do not think that word means what you think it means.
It’s true that Trump still, on occasion, poses as someone who champions the interests of ordinary working Americans against those of the elite. And I guess there’s a sense in which his embrace of white nationalism gives voice to ordinary Americans who share his racism but have felt unable to air their prejudice in public.
But he’s been in office for a year and a half, time enough to be judged on what he does, not what he says. And his administration has been relentlessly anti-worker on every front. Trump is about as populist as he is godly — that is, not at all.
6/ What Facebook really is....
7/ Sorry to pile on the climate news, but David Wallace-Weis has a new story on a report from some scientists.....
Yes, scientists, and they are now officially worried.....
On Monday night, the Mendocino Complex wildfire became the biggest in California history — and, having burned through 283,000 acres, was just 30 percent contained. “Complex” is because the fire started as two distinct blazes, the “Ranch” and “River” fires, later married in one hellish flame. “It is extremely fast, extremely aggressive, extremely dangerous,” Scott McLean of Cal Fire told the Los Angeles Times. “Look how big it got, just in a matter of days … Look how fast this Mendocino Complex went up in ranking. That doesn’t happen. That just doesn’t happen.”
8/ Rick Wilson with a frank [and a little harsh] polemic on Trumpies....look at the first line!
Conspiracies are hard. They're even harder when you're stupid.
They are, however, deeply compelling. Some people need a single, grand unifying theory of why the world refuses to line up with their expectations. When difficult realities confront people without the intellectual horsepower to understand and accept the truth, some turn to conspiracy theories to paper over the holes in their worldview. No matter how absurd, baroque, and improbable, conspiracies grow on their own like mental kudzu where inconsistencies aren't signs of illogical conclusions, but of another, deeper layer of some hidden truth, some skein of powerful forces holding the world in its grip.
9/ Stephen Colbert at his most brilliant.....he dissects Ivanka Trump's interview.....very funny indeed....
four minutes....
On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert blasted White House senior advisor and First Daughter Ivanka Trump.
Colbert began by telling his audience that during a recent interview, she came “admirably close to displaying empathy.” He mocked her for calling the separation of illegal immigrant families at the border a “low point” for her but for doing “absolutely nothing” about it.
“Just image how upset she’ll be when the feds drag away Don Jr.” Colbert quipped.
10/ A story on the Koch Brothers and the hate machine they built up, ran successfully and just lost.....painful but satisfying....
The thing about a rampaging mob is that it rampages. Once it gets out the tiki torches and starts yelling “Monster,” someone’s windmill is going to burn, and steering this marching disaster can turn out to be a little trickier than it seems.
The Koch brothers, now reduced to one active brother and his multi-billion dollar empire, spent years building up a set of “institutes” and “think tanks” and “foundations” that allowed them to practice the Republican form of welfare—paying would-be politicians to sit around and hone their media skills. These institutions also served as PR factories for the pro-corporate, pro-fossil fuel religion the Kochs were interested in spreading, and as a source of handy checks for those Republicans willing to preach this message.
This was the traditional form of building power within the Republican Party. Buy influence within the existing power structure.
11/ Drain the Swamp!
12/ The way Trump is treating the rest of the world has consequences.....tourism is down.....
I'm not surprised - have you ever looked at the immigration lines at any major airport, and heard about the way non-US are treated by the immigration officers, who are a slightly more civilized version of ICE? Of course tourism is down....
Summertime, but where are the foreign tourists?
Ever since our forty-fifth president was elected, tourism to the United States from foreign countries has steadily dropped—in the face of a world-wide boom in travel—and the authoritative U.S. Travel Association has just provided me with figures projecting a further drop in 2018, from a share of worldwide tourism of 12.0 percent in 2017 to 11.7 percent this year. And this is after a drop in Trump’s first year in office from 12.9 percent. Though the numbers and differentials look small in percentages, they are large in terms of dollars not spent here by foreign tourists and they have serious negative implications for jobs not created.
What has caused this series of drops in foreign tourism since Donald Trump was sworn in as president? Trump’s rhetoric and new policies and rules and regulations regarding travel have combined to blot America’s long-standing image as a welcoming nation.
13/ More on free range parenting - letters from US and foreign parents.....really interesting....
A mother in Sweden says she often didn’t know where her elementary-school-aged son wen
A father in Paris says he sends his daughters outside to the playground nearby — alone.
And a mother in the Netherlands says parents don’t feel compelled to stick around for children’s birthday parties — they drop off their little ones, and then leave to run their errands.
In much of the world, parents tend to regard such free-range parenting practices as developing a child’s self-reliance. But as a popular Sunday Review article by Kim Brooks, a writer in Chicago, pointed out, many in America see these practices as neglectful.
Some have called the police or child protective services after witnessing a parent leave a child in a car to run into Starbucks or attend a job interview.
The article prompted a flood of comments from our readers
14/ If only....if only....
15/ Seth Meyers on Trump, Giuliani and Mueller.....a good and amusing 7 minutes....
Seth Meyers used his "Closer Look" segment Thursday night to discuss the anxiety of President Donald Trump over special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, especially as Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort's trial proceeds and his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen turns on him.
"You can tell the walls are closing in on Trump because he keeps reacting to the Russia investigation in increasingly desperate ways," Meyers said. "He’s gone all the way from insisting he had nothing to do with Russia, to saying there was no collusion, to claiming that even if there was collusion it’s not a crime, to demanding that the investigation be shut down. He’s like a murder suspect who says, 'I didn’t kill anyone, and besides, it was self-defense!'"
16/ Scott Maxwell with a good column about the slimy Rick Scott....
Maxwell's passionate! Hates the bastard as much as I do.....
Imagine for a moment that you see a guy slowly reaching toward a scalding hot stove.
Everyone around screams: “Don’t touch it! You’ll hurt yourself!”
But the guy pays them no mind and places his palm flush upon the bright orange burner, only to scream in surprise and agony as his flesh begins to char.
You’d think this man was pretty stupid, right?
Like sell-your-car-for-gas-money stupid.
Well, we are this man. This entire state.
For the past eight years, we stood by as the state decimated its environmental and water-protection agencies and repealed checks on sustainable growth.
17/ Now the Times weighs in with good TV in August.......you may as well look at this, it's too hot to go outside anyway.....
Clockwise from top left, scenes from “Disenchantment,” “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” and “Shaun of the Dead.”
18/ Spike Lee has made a masterpiece according to Rolling Stone....
‘BlacKkKlansman’ Review: Spike Lee Delivers a Hellraising Masterpiece
The filmmaker turns true story of an African-American cop who infiltrated the white supremacy group in 1970s into an incendiary indictment of our current moment
Todays hospital joke....
A sweet grandmother telephoned St. Joseph's Hospital. She timidly asked,
"Is it possible to speak to someone who can tell me how a patient is doing?" The operator said, "I'll be glad to help, dear. What's the name and room number of the patient?"The grandmother in her weak, tremulous voice said, Norma Findlay, Room 302." The operator replied, "Let me put you on hold while I check with the nurse's station for that room."
After a few minutes, the operator returned to the phone and said,
"I have good news. Her nurse just told me that Norma is doing well. Her blood pressure is fine; her blood work just came back normal and her Physician, Dr. Cohen, has scheduled her to be discharged tomorrow."
The grandmother said,
"Thank you. That's wonderful. I was so worried. God bless you for the good News."
The operator replied,
"You're more than welcome. Is Norma your daughter?"
The grandmother said, "No, I'm Norma Findlay in Room 302. No one tells me shit."
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