1/ Andrew Sullivan with an excellent summary of the Mueller Report, free from all of the cable news BS.
Most interesting, and his other two subjects [Mike Pence and Notre Dame burning] are excellent as well.
Make the time to read this one....
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Yes, it was worth waiting for. The merit of the Mueller report is that it gives us the whole narrative again, a chance to review the last three years with new perspective and fresh eyes, to get above the daily drizzle of short-attention-span disinformation and lies. First of all, it lays out a foreign government’s extraordinary attempt to corrupt our democratic system — in very close and damning detail. At the same time, the report comes very close to destroying the notion that Donald J. Trump was and is a Russian agent, that his campaign was actively conspiring with a foreign government to hack and defeat his opponent in 2016, that Putin had (and still has) something that could be used to blackmail Trump, and that his foreign policy since has been dictated by the Kremlin. The much more believable truth, in fact, is a large-scale version of that infamous “I love it!” Donald Jr. email. The Trump campaign had no problem with foreign interference if it could help them, were eager and hopeful it would occur, publicly encouraged it … but never initiated this or followed through.
2/ A two minute Stephen Colbert clip that made both Mary and I laugh out loud....
Trump, Notre Dame and the flying water tanker....excellent!
3/ A most insightful article by Matt Taibbi on how the mainstream Democrats are terrified of new ideas, so they attack the person rather than the policies.
It's happening right now with Bernie....
Wonderful as usual from Taibbi....
The satirist Ambrose Bierce, author of the Devil’s Dictionary, once defined radicalism as “the conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.”
What Bierce wittily captured — that today’s radicals are tomorrow’s normies — means that at any given moment, the current political establishment will be fighting off the inevitable.
The Brahmins of today don’t battle with ideas, because as Bierce pointed out, their belief systems are usually regressive and unpopular, only they don’t know it yet. The battle is almost always waged instead over personality, because while certain “radical” ideas may be unstoppable, individual politicians are easily villainized, delaying change — a little.
4/ Well this is controversial - this article is titled:
Quit Obsessing About Climate Change. What You Do or Don’t Do No Longer Matters.
In other words it's too late, the planet is screwed. The author presents a logical, dispassionate argument that I find it difficult to disagree with....
Quit worrying about going vegan, or recycling, or riding a bicycle to work, or buying a Tesla instead of that Ford F-650 pickup you’ve always wanted in order to save the planet. You’re off the hook. It’s out of your hands. You can do these things if it makes you feel better, but they are not going to change the big picture. Whatever you do does not matter. Unless you are a head of state, king, president, prime minister, or other grand poobah, it is above your pay grade. If you are able to vote for people of power, that is what is left for you to do. Other than that …. nothing.
5/ A Jimmy Kimmel skit that's clever and funny IF you watch GOT....
"Game Of Phones"....two minutes...
6/ Good column from Timothy Egan in the Times - "How To Break the Republican Lock on God"....
We know that slaveholders in the American South used Scripture to justify keeping their fellow humans in bondage. They could find no words from Christ on this, for there are no words from him. Just a line in the New Testament from mere mortals presuming to speak for him.
But perhaps it made those who tore apart families, who whipped insubordinates until they passed out, who sold children and cotton bales as similar commodities feel better to know that the monstrous crime of their daily enterprise could be a blessed act.
These days, no less an authority than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary,
said recently that God “wanted Donald Trump to become president.”
7/ SNL's sketch "Fashion Coward" with Emma Stone...
In a night with several overlong sketches, this two-minute pre-taped segment knows its limits and maximizes its impact. It introduces the concept, gets in about 15 great jokes, and gets the heck out of Dodge. It’s impossible to build an entire show around live sketches this short, but as a way to ensure the best flow for an overall episode, these are invaluable to keeping things moving.
8/ Tom Tomorrow on Fox News....
9/ Bernie went on Fox News for a town hall....it went well, and Trump went batshit as usual....interesting!
On Monday night, Fox News hosted a town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. It may not have gone the way the network was expecting. Sanders was generally well received by the studio audience, which even cheered when host Bret Baier asked them if they supported Medicare-for-All, the all-inclusive healthcare plan for which Sanders has long advocated. President Trump seemed confused, tweeting Tuesday morning about how “weird” it was that “Crazy Bernie” appeared on his favorite network. “Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the ‘audience’ was so smiley and nice,” Trump wrote.
10/ This is a Supercut of Fox News talking about President Obama....watch it and it will make you want to vomit.... three minutes...
A new supercut video shows Fox News hosts slamming former President Barack Obama for the same actions that they either ignore or praise when it comes to President Donald Trump.
The footage, assembled by NowThis News, highlights personalities on the right-wing network attacking the former president for golfing, tweeting, executive actions, criticizing the press and being “almost obsessed with cable TV,” among other things. However, the footage was edited to remove Obama’s name ― and with that context excised, most of the commentary could just as easily refer to Trump:
11/ Here at DDD we are as cynical as the rest of you about politics and politicians, so it was such a pleasure to feel the stirrings of a little bit of hope that we may have found a candidate that can actually try to change this country into a fairer place.....there's a long way to go, but Mayor Pete may have the some of the answers.
Here is his interview with Rachel Maddow in full....27 minutes of two Rhodes Scholars talking intelligently about issues and Mayor Pete's candidacy....
Wonderful!
12/ And after you watch Mayor Pete and Rachel, read this thoughtful story from Rolling Stone on the
politics of what he is doing....most interesting....
Bad weather did Pete Buttigieg a favor when he made his presidential candidacy official on Sunday. With an ugly forecast in South Bend (surprise!), the mayor’s original plans for an outdoor launch to match the slogan he’d be unveiling for the occasion — the sunny promise of a “new American spring” — were scuttled in favor of a former train dock in one of the city’s long-abandoned Studebaker auto factories. Even with the big, raw space festooned with the campaign’s way-hip new logo, the optics weren’t exactly what Roger Ailes would have chosen for Ronald Reagan back in the day. But the setting turned out to be as weirdly charmed as the rest of Buttigieg’s formerly far-fetched quest for the presidency has been so far.
13/ SNL" piece "The Actress" with Emma Stone....I love Emma Stone! Four minutes...
This late-episode sketch takes a while to get going, but once the puzzle pieces start to click into place, it’s like watching the final act of a Christopher Nolan film. You know, if that Nolan film happened to be about a struggling actress delivering two lines in an adult film.
What could have been a flat, uninspired premise (person takes something far too seriously) turns into something almost tragic, as Stone’s actress goes from obliviousness into something approaching the sublime. She discovers the interior life of a one-dimensional character through a haphazard assortment of items in a throw-away prop bin, and as those disparate items form a coherent backstory, one can’t help but marvel at the magic trick this sketch pulls off. Yes, Stone’s actress is finding connections where none exist, but this in turn becomes an oddly affecting meditation on the act of connection itself. Even if Beck Bennett’s direction continually ignores her attempts at profundity, it’s clear that her fellow actors respect and even respond to her line readings. They see and feel what she does in that moment.
14/ Not often I agree with Thomas Friedman in the Times because he tends to be an elitist dick, but this is a good column.....
Although my day job is writing the foreign affairs column for The New York Times — more Persian Gulf than fairway golf — thinking about golf and playing as often as I can is my all-consuming hobby. So like millions of others, I was awed by Tiger Woods’s comeback for the ages by his winning the Masters at 43 years old. What can be learned from it?
It’s hard for nongolfers to appreciate the scope of Tiger’s physical and psychological achievement, after he went through four back surgeries and the global tabloid exposure of his industrial-scale marital cheating.
If I think of the news I normally cover, it would be as if Bill Clinton came back and defeated Donald Trump for president in 2020. Or, in technology, it’s the equivalent of Steve Jobs founding Apple, losing Apple and then coming back and winning all four “technology majors’’ — the Apple desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad — with a reborn Apple
15/ Pure joy.....great picture.
16/ SNL - "Ladies Room"....Rolling Stone likes it! Four minutes....
OK, full stop: I have no idea if this is actually good. But I do know that it’s definitely GREAT.
The primary reason why this sketch works is that the song is catchy as hell. The chorus is as catchy as “D%ck in A Box,” and like Donald Glover’s “80’s Music Video” sketch last season, perfectly captures the music, vibe, and fashion of the early 80’s. The fact that this song also takes place inside a department store with a frazzled, unnerved night manager trying to make sense of the proceedings takes things up three notches: Why don’t these people know they aren’t in a nightclub? How did they rig that stage to come out of the wall? How come none of them realize there are no toilets in this “bathroom”?
17/ This sounds like a most interesting book....Peter Brannen on the planet's mass extinctions....
As science journalist Peter Brannen points out, life is extremely fragile, a “thin glaze of interesting chemistry on an otherwise unremarkable, cooling ball of stone”. So fragile, in fact, that in the planet’s history there have been five mass extinctions, when nearly all life has been wiped out. The question hanging over this book is whether the current most dominant species on the planet is about to cause a sixth mass extinction.
To answer this, Brannen takes us back millions of years: “to see the world through the lens of geology is to see the world for the first time”.
Todays Irish joke
THE IRISH BROTHEL
Three Irishmen are sitting in the pub window seat,
Watching the front door of the brothel over the road.
The local Methodist pastor appears, and quickly goes inside.
"Would you look at that!" says the first Irishman.
"Didn't I always say what a bunch of hypocrites they are?"
No sooner are the words out of his mouth than a Rabbi appears at the door,
Knocks, and goes inside.
"Another one trying to fool everyone with pious preaching and stupid hats!"
They continue drinking their beer roundly condemning the vicar and the rabbi
When they see their own Catholic priest knock on the door.
"Ah, now dat's sad." says the third Irishman.
"One of the girls must have died.”
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