1/ Andrew Sullivan with a bleak look at our political system and the stress that has been put on our society by the corruption and cruelty of Trump. You may or may not agree with him, but Sullivan makes a good case for being uneasy about the future of our democracy....
Former special counsel Robert Mueller testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on July 24, 2019. Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The Mueller hearings told us almost nothing that we didn’t know already. We knew that the president welcomed assistance from a foreign power in order to win an election, and has fawned over his political patron in this endeavor, Vladimir Putin, since he became president. We knew that though he was not competent enough to construct a conspiracy, he was eager to collude with a foreign foe to defeat his domestic one. And we knew that he then lied about it as baldly as he lies about almost everything, and tried repeatedly to obstruct the investigation into the affair.
2/ Sam Bee on the Mueller testimony....five amusing minutes....
3/ Matt Taibbi at his best - on the road in Iowa with the Democratic candidates.....
He isn't impressed with the players and their messages, and he tells us why. Fascinating if you are interested in the 2020 race.....
Traveling hundreds of miles across Iowa, passing cornfields and covered bridges, visiting quaint small town after quaint small town, listening to the stump speeches of Democrat after would-be Donald Trump-combating Democrat, only one thought comes to mind:
They’re gonna blow this again.
Imagine how it looks to Republicans. If that’s too difficult or unpalatable, just look at the swarm of 24 Democratic candidates in high school terms.
The front-runner — the front-runner! — is septuagenarian gaffe machine Joe Biden, who started running for president in the Eighties and never finished higher than “candidacy withdrawn,” with a career delegate total matching John Blutarsky’s grade-point average, i.e., zero point zero. The summer’s “momentum” challenger is California Sen. Kamala Harris, who spent all year sinking in polls but surged when she hit Biden with “I don’t think you’re a racist . . . but . . .” on national TV.
4/ Paul Krugman remembers the racist dog whistles Republicans used to use. Gone.....now it's blatant and out in the open - the Republican party is not a real political party but a cult - and the Dems need to stop pandering to them.
In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political operative, explained to an interviewer how his party had learned to exploit racial antagonism using dog whistles. “You start out in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’” But by the late 1960s, “that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Well, the dog whistle days are over. Republicans are pretty much back to saying “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”
5/ "The Shining" remake....
6/ An excellent column from George Monblot in the Guardian about how the "populists" Trump and Boris are being funded by oligarchs....
Seven years ago the impressionist Rory Bremner complained that politicians had become so boring that few of them were worth mimicking: “They’re quite homogenous and dull these days … It’s as if character is seen as a liability.” Today his profession has the opposite problem: however extreme satire becomes, it struggles to keep pace with reality. The political sphere, so dull and grey a few years ago, is now populated by preposterous exhibitionists.
This trend is not confined to the UK – everywhere the killer clowns are taking over. Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison, Rodrigo Duterte, Matteo Salvini, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán and a host of other ludicrous strongmen – or weakmen, as they so often turn out to be – dominate nations that would once have laughed them off stage. The question is why? Why are the technocrats who held sway almost everywhere a few years ago giving way to extravagant buffoons?
7/ Seth Meyers on the "send her back" rally, very amusing, he skewers Trump in 9 funny minutes....
8/ Really interesting blog from Benjamin Studebaker on how we are all affected by the chaos in our political system and how we deal with it, and as he says many of us just can't deal with the noise and retreat into our own worlds....
Excellent, makes one think....
In the Roman Empire, during the Crisis of the 3rd Century, everything began falling apart. The army was swapping emperors out left and right, and the political system could no longer generate the legitimacy or stability that had prevailed in the two centuries prior. Chunks of the empire lost faith in the ability of the central authority to restore order, and began looking to their own defences. It was bleak:
During this period, there was a philosopher by the name of Plotinus, the progenitor of “Neoplatonism”
9/ Matt Taibbi looks at the Eric Garner case [I can't breathe] and explains how the system protects the police so nothing is ever done about police violence.....most insightful....
I first started hearing about federal agents in Staten Island about four years ago, roughly a year after the killing of Eric Garner. I was working on a book about the case called I Can’t Breathe. The streets were abuzz with rumors about G-Men showing up in the old Bay Street neighborhood where Garner had been choked to death, in July of 2014, by a New York City policeman.
The New York Times summarized what happened to Garner:
Bystanders filmed the arrest on their cellphones, recording Mr. Garner as he gasped “I can’t breathe,” and his death was one of several fatal encounters between black people and the police that catalyzed the national Black Lives Matter movement.
10/ Most interesting story from the Times about how Jeffrey Epstein really made his money.....from the billionaire Leslie Wexner, owner of Victoria's Secret....
In May 1997, Alicia Arden, a model in California, was introduced to a man who identified himself as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. He invited her to his Santa Monica hotel room to audition for the brand’s catalog. When she arrived, Ms. Arden said, the man grabbed her, tried to undress her and said he wanted to “manhandle” her. Ms. Arden, then 27, fled in tears.
It was the type of crisis that should not have come as a complete surprise to leaders at L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret.
In the mid-1990s, two senior executives had discovered that the same man, a close adviser to the company’s chief executive, Leslie H. Wexner, was trying to pitch himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models. Mr. Wexner was alerted, according to the two executives.
11/ Good column from Michelle Goldberg in the Times....
Nancy, they aren't the enemy!
For the last couple of weeks, the House Democratic leadership has been locked in an escalating battle with four left-wing freshmen congresswomen known as “the squad”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
It started with a dispute over funding for detention facilities at the border, with the squad voting against any new allocations for locking up migrants. There were ugly fights on Twitter, with Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff comparing Democrats who voted for one funding bill to segregationist Dixiecrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi belittled the squad to my colleague Maureen Dowd, saying that despite “their public whatever and their Twitter world,” they’re only four people without a following in Congress.
12/ The always insightful Tom Tomorrow....
13/ Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset.....a WaPo columnist says.
We’ve seen plenty of media malfeasance in the form of propaganda by shallowness and normalization, enough that history might see the corporate media as complicit with Trumpism.
But Dana Milbank of the Washington Post got it right.
Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset.This doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but neither is it a flip accusation. Russia attacked our country in 2016. It is attacking us today. Its attacks will intensify in 2020. Yet each time we try to raise our defenses to repel the attack, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, blocks us from defending ourselves.
Let’s call this what it is: unpatriotic. The Kentucky Republican is, arguably more than any other American, doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding.
14/ The excellent reporter Jane Mayer on how Republicans set up Al Franken....it's a story of media frenzy, clever right wing plotting and a spineless Democratic Senate including Kristen Gillibrand....
I hope he runs for something again - he is innocent....
Last month, in Minneapolis, I climbed the stairs of a row house to find Al Franken, Minnesota’s disgraced former senator, wandering around in jeans and stocking feet. It was a sunny day, but the shades were mostly drawn. Takeout containers of hummus and carrot sticks were set out on the kitchen table. His wife, Franni Bryson, was stuck in their apartment in Washington, D.C., with a cold, and he had evidently done the best he could to be hospitable. But the place felt like the kind of man cave where someone hides out from the world, which is more or less what Franken has been doing since he resigned, in December, 2017, amid accusations of sexual impropriety.http://go.
15/ If you are a DDD reader of some of at least some of our stories you will realize the world is changing and not for the better.....so I will recommend this HBO TV series "Years and Years" again. The star is Emma Thompson with an ensemble cast, and it plays out in a possible near future. The great thing about this series is you can see how horrible government can change peoples lives, but how families can survive in chaos. It's clever, incredibly well acted, emotionally wrenching and tackles themes you see all the time in DDD....
We are about to watch the last episode tonight [the 6th] and can't wait.
Up there in the best TV ever made, in our opinion!
Years and Years stars Emma Thompson as a populist who becomes an authoritarian demagogue. Photo: Robert Ludovic/HBO
In Years and Years, catastrophe after catastrophe happens to England and to the world, but life always goes on. Babies are born, couples get together and separate, and people lose their jobs and get other jobs. It’s a blessing, this sense of inevitable continuity. But it’s also a problem, because the feeling that life continues regardless disguises the fact that the Overton window keeps shifting on what “normal” means, and when we understandably get lost in everyday drama, we fail to grasp that all of this could literally just end. As in, That’s all, folks.
16/ With "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" out this week to rave reviews here is a story about some of Tarantino's past movies.....
Photo: Vulture
It takes only a thought exercise to realize how central certain performances are to Quentin Tarantino’s films. Imagine, if you can, what key parts might have looked like if someone else had played them: Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction instead of John Travolta. Kill Bill with Warren Beatty as Bill instead of David Carradine. Leonardo DiCaprio as Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds instead of Christoph Waltz. Jennifer Lawrence as Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight instead of Jennifer Jason Leigh. All might have been great, but casting them would have changed the films on a genetic level.
Todays advice for rednecks.....
DINING OUT1. When decanting wine, make sure that you tilt the paper cup, and pour slowly so as not to "bruise" the fruit of the vine.2. If drinking directly from the bottle, always hold it with your fingers covering the label.ENTERTAINING IN YOUR HOME1. A centerpiece for the table should never be anything prepared by a taxidermist.2. Do not allow the dog to eat at the table... no matter how good his manners are.PERSONAL HYGIENE1. While ears need to be cleaned regularly, this is a job that should be done in private using one's OWN truck keys.2. Proper use of toiletries can forestall bathing for several days. However, if you live alone, deodorant is a waste of good money.3. Dirt and grease under the fingernails is a social no-no, as they tend to detract from a woman's jewelry and alter the taste of finger foods.DATING (Outside the Family)1. Always offer to bait your date's hook, especially on the first date.2. Be aggressive. Let her know you're interested: "I've been wanting to go out with you since I read that stuff on the bathroom wall two years ago."3. Establish with her parents what time she is expected back. Some will say 10:00 PM; Others might say "Monday." If the latter is the answer, it is the man's responsibility to get her to school on time.THEATER ETIQUETTE1. Crying babies should be taken to the lobby and picked up immediately after the movie has ended.2. Refrain from talking to characters on the screen. Tests have proven they can't hear you.WEDDINGS1. Livestock, usually, is a poor choice for a wedding gift.2. Kissing the bride for more than 5 seconds may get you shot.3. For the groom, at least, rent a tux. A leisure suit with a cummerbund and a clean bowling shirt can create a tacky appearance.4. Though uncomfortable, say "yes" to socks and shoes for this special occasion.DRIVING ETIQUETTE1. Dim your headlights for approaching vehicles; Even if the gun is loaded, and the deer is in sight.2. When approaching a four-way stop, the vehicle with the largest tires always has the right of way.3. Never tow another car using panty hose and duct tape.4. When sending your wife down the road with a gas can, it is impolite to ask her to bring back beer.5. Never relieve yourself from a moving vehicle, especially when driving.6. Do not lay rubber while traveling in a funeral procession.TIPS FOR ALL OCCASIONS1. Never take a beer to a job interview.2. Always identify people in your yard before shooting at them.3. It's considered tacky to take a cooler to church.4. If you have to vacuum the bed, it is time to change the sheets.5. Even if you're certain that you are included in the will, it is still considered tacky to drive a U-Haul to the funeral home.
