1/ Frank Rich on the disturbing and blatant theme of the RNC.....racism....we are in for some scary times....
Trump on Thursday night. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/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 message of the Republican convention.
During a week of police violence and vigilante murder in Wisconsin, in a year of preventable deaths and growing poverty, the Republican convention emphasized loyalty to Donald Trump, casting aside matters of policy and campaign law in favor of grievance. Was the convention just another concession to his outsize ego, part of the strategy to energize the party’s base in the run-up to November, or an attempt to win over undecided voters?https://nymag.com/
2/ A great Biden ad....."Anthem 60".....he showed this on Fox Thursday night....
3/ One of our most credible environmental journalists, Jeff Goodell, writes on the current state of our environment.....and he concludes four more years of Trump means a wrecked planet.
Doubt this? Read the article.....
I’m not a religious person, or someone who sees messages written in clouds, but if I were, I might believe that Mother Nature is trying to tell President Donald Trump something right now. California is burning, a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 mph just blasted into the Louisiana coast, and nearly 180,000 are reported dead from a viral outbreak that is just a harbinger of what one scientist calls “a new pandemic era”driven in part by our changing climate and wanton destruction of ecosystems. But on the eve of Trump’s big speech to accept the Republican nomination, if Mother Nature had a voice, I imagine she would say something like this: Pay attention to me, asshole, or you — and every generation of humans to come — will regret it.
4/ Thomas Frank on the failure of our medical experts but more importantly our system itself to protect us from
the pandemic.....one of our most intelligent writers.....
T
he great underlying political crisis of this plague year, it is often said, is the stubborn refusal of Americans to respect expert authority. There’s an epidemic raging... and just look at those people frolicking in a swimming pool at the Lake of the Ozarks, repeating stupid conspiracy theories, spreading non-peer-reviewed medical advice on social media, running errands without a mask on, setting off roman candles in the street.
5/ Trump meets the Honeymooners [remember Ralph Kramden?].....very cleverly done, one minute.....
6/ The story of how Fox News and specifically Hannity manufactured the Seth Rich story that still haunts the family today.....
They are evil people.....and Hannity is the worst.....
This is the true story of an untrue story. It’s the story of how Fox News took a conspiracy theory from the online fringes and mainstreamed it into global news. It’s the story of how a Fox News staff writer, a Fox News paid contributor, and a Fox News unpaid commentator worked together to win the trust of a family wracked by grief and then used their imprimatur to publish a “sham story” that would become an article of faith in MAGA culture. It’s the story of how Fox News and some of its biggest stars have so far escaped any accountability for actions whose consequences continue to haunt the Rich family.
7/ Tom Tomorrow on McAction BS News.....
8/ The Lincoln Project with "Evil"....featuring the human pool noodle Jared....
9/ The Republican Party's actual platform.....by never Trumper Republican David Frum.....
republicans have decided not to publish a party platform for 2020.
This omission has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for nothing, that it has shriveled to little more than a Trump cult.
This conclusion is wrong. The Republican Party of 2020 has lots of ideas. I’m about to list 13 ideas that command almost universal assent within the Trump administration, within the Republican caucuses of the U.S. House and Senate, among governors and state legislators, on Fox News, and among rank-and-file Republicans.
10/ Tired of the RNC coronation of Trump and everything else Trumpish? Steven Colbert has
a drug for you....."NotNormazol"....one amusing minute...
11/ Weirdly fascinating story about the dysfunctional Jared and his relationship to Trump......reminds me of the movie Young Frankenstein with the Doctor and Igor.....
Even if it wasn't about the most powerful and dangerous man in the world this pathetic tale would still be disturbing....
jared kushner, the second-most-powerful man in the White House, is quite a bit smarter than the most powerful man, his father-in-law, the president. Donald Trump possesses a genius for the jugular, but he evinces few other signs of intelligence. He certainly displays no capacity, or predisposition, to learn. His son-in-law, by contrast, appears to have sufficient analytic acumen to comprehend that the country has been brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic.
12/ Bill Maher with a New Rules - "QAnon".....pretty good six minutes....
13/ BTW - are you aware that Melania's "improvements" to the Rose Garden included ripping out
Jackie Kennedy's magnificent rose bushes? Thought not.....
14/ The First Lady was just on the Stephen Colbert show to give some details from her speech.....an amusing five minutes.....
Note Melania [Laura Benati] is on at the 2 minute mark....
15/ Some of the most dangerous stuff Trump and his toadies are doing is behind the scenes....here is just one more you've never heard of......how your pension has just become more vulnerable....
The Trump administration is pushing dramatic changes to the American retirementsystem that will benefit Wall Street but push average citizens into plans that are riskier, less profitable, and loaded with high and hidden fees.
In the past two months, the Trump’s Labor Department has introduced two pending changes to deregulate vulturous private equity firms and multi-trillion dollar retirement managers like Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock. A third proposed change would restrict retirement investments with an underlying environmental, social, or governance mission — mainly to boost the struggling fossil-fuel industry.
16/ "Acidmath" by Steve Cutts.....an animated look at our world.....an excellent two minutes, both descriptive and
depressing, but very clever........
17/ David Wallace-Wells on the fires in California.....
A sign for our times. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
California is Australia now. Beginning late last year, in what is already known as the country’s Black Summer, bushfires burned through 46 million acres, or 72,000 square miles; killed several billion animals, pushing a number of species to extinction or the brink of it; flooding Sydney with air so thick with smoke ferries couldn’t navigate its harbor and fire alarms in office buildings rang out, registering the smoke as proof the building itself was in flame; and forcing beachfront evacuations in scenes that crossed Dunkirk with Mad Max.
18/ Trump goes there.....shoots someone on Fifth Avenue [sort of]....
19/ If you have ever watched the wonderful show "Schitts Creek" you will appreciate this - the cast of the show and friends made a video to congratulate Eugene Levy on receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Newport Film Festival, and they play the video to Levy split screen while he is watching it live.....it's touching, funny, and above all a celebration of his life.....he appears to be a really, really nice man....10 minutes.....
20/ "Tenet", the new movie from Christopher Nolan is out this week.....great review from Rolling Stone....
You could argue that Tenet, the brain-teasing new blockbuster-to-be from agent provocateur Christopher Nolan, doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going. Actually it’s doing both — and the director-screenwriter is challenging us to try and keep up. It’s as if an African-American James Bond, in the person of the sharply bespoke-suited spymaster played by John David Washington, found himself among the mindhunters of Nolan’s 2010 Inception. He’s a filmmaker who has been screwing around with our ideas about time since his 2001 breakthrough Memento — even his 2017 war epic Dunkirk asked us see the same event from interlocking, rewinding-and-fast–forwarding perspectives. In his latest, a sci-fi thriller whose action globe-trots across three continents and seven countries, Nolan’s tick-tock obsession hits a fever pitch.
21/ "Tenet" is in theaters only, but if you don't fancy a trip to the cinema just yet here are five similar movies for you.....
Looper. Photo: TriStar Pictures
This article originally ran on July 17 and is being republished in light of Tenet’s international release.
If not for the pandemic, we’d be in the midst of Hollywood’s epic summer season, enjoying the nearly weekly unveiling of major films, whether it’s the latest Wes Anderson opus (The French Dispatch) or Tom Cruise’s return to his most iconic 1980s role (Top Gun: Maverick). Instead, you’re cooped up trying to figure out what to watch while not going stir-crazy.
This is where we come in. On a regular basis, we’ll be presenting “The Replacements”: a list of five alternative choices for every big tentpole you were excited to see before COVID-19 changed our lives.
22/ Book review from the Times - "Evil Geniuses" from Kurt Andersen....
EVIL GENIUSES
The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
By Kurt Andersen
It used to be called the New World. Now it’s run by a man who wants to make it great “again.”
Sometime between then and now, the writer Kurt Andersen argues in his essential, absorbing, infuriating, full-of-facts-you-didn’t-know, saxophonely written new book, America lost one of its “defining” traits: “openness to the new,” its gee-whiz tendency to “try the untried and explore the uncharted,” its “innovative, novelty-seeking, risk-taking attitudes,” its “new conceptions of freedom and fairness and self-government and national identity” — built, it must be said, atop tyrannies new and old.
Andersen traces this “cultural U-turn” to the 1970s.
23/ The Times has a list of the 100 best TV shows on Netflix.....this is for those of you who are really bored....
Netflix adds original programming at such a steady clip that it can be hard to keep up with which of its dramas, comedies and reality shows are must-sees. And that’s not including all the TV series Netflix picks up from broadcast and cable networks. Below is our regularly updated guide to the 50 best shows on Netflix in the United States. Each recommendation comes with a secondary pick, too, for 100 suggestions in all.
24/ Another tell-all Trump book, this one about the Ice Queen herself - Melania....
A former public-relations executive at Vogue who bears a vague resemblance to Stephanie Seymour, Wolkoff is 49 years old and over six feet tall. She is sweet and friendly and quick with a self-deprecating joke. She is scatterbrained but focused, if that makes any sense at all, like the personification of an “organized mess.”
Today's video - time for the Trunk Monkey commercials again.....three pretty good minutes.....
Today's Catholic joke
Twelve Italian priests were about to be ordained. The final test was
for them to line up in a straight row, totally nude, in a garden while
a sexy, beautiful, big breasted, nude model danced before them.
Each priest had a small bell attached to his willy, and they were told
that anyone whose bell rang when she danced in front of them would not
be ordained because he had not reached a state of spiritual purity..
The beautiful model danced before the first candidate with no reaction.
She proceeded down the line with the same response from all the priests
until she got to the final priest, Carlos.
for them to line up in a straight row, totally nude, in a garden while
a sexy, beautiful, big breasted, nude model danced before them.
Each priest had a small bell attached to his willy, and they were told
that anyone whose bell rang when she danced in front of them would not
be ordained because he had not reached a state of spiritual purity..
The beautiful model danced before the first candidate with no reaction.
She proceeded down the line with the same response from all the priests
until she got to the final priest, Carlos.
Poor Carlos.
As she danced, his bell began to ring so loudly that it flew off,
clattering across the ground and laid to rest in nearby foliage...
Embarrassed, Carlos quickly scrambled to where the bell came to rest.
He bent over to pick it up...and all the other bells started to ring.
As she danced, his bell began to ring so loudly that it flew off,
clattering across the ground and laid to rest in nearby foliage...
Embarrassed, Carlos quickly scrambled to where the bell came to rest.
He bent over to pick it up...and all the other bells started to ring.
Today's mobile phone joke
After a tiring day, a commuter settled down in his seat and closed his eyes. As the train rolled out of the station, a woman sitting next to him pulled out her mobile phone.
She started talking in a loud voice: "Hi sweetheart.. It's Mary. I'm on the train". "Yes, I know it's the six thirty and not the four thirty, but I had a long meeting. No, honey, not with that Kevin from the accounting office. It was with the boss. No sweetheart, you're the only one in my life. Yes, I'm sure, cross my heart!"
Fifteen minutes later, she was still talking loudly.
When the man sitting next to her had enough, he leaned over and said into the phone, "Mary, hang up the phone and come back to bed."
Mary doesn't use her mobile phone in public any longer.
Today's retirement options joke
You can retire to Phoenix, Arizona where...1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away from your house because you found shade.2. You've experienced condensation on your hiney from the hot water in the toilet bowl.3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.5. You know that "dry heat" is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??ORYou can retire to California where...1. You make over $450,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.3. You know how to eat an artichoke.4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there ratherthan how many miles away it is.6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and DroughtORYou can retire to New York City where...1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan ....2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can'tfind Wisconsin on a map.3. You think Central Park is "nature."4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.5. You've worn out a car horn. (IF you have a car).6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.ORYou can retire to Minnesota where...1. You only have three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup ...2. Halloween costumes have to fit over parkas.3. You have seventeen recipes for casserole.4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.5. The four seasons are: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road repair.6. The highest level of criticism is "He is different, she is different or It was different€ORYou can retire to the Deep South where...1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.2. "Y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural.3. "He needed killin" is a valid defense.4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Joe Bob, Betty Jean, Mary Beth, etc. etc.5. Everywhere is either "in yonder," "over yonder" or "out yonder"..ORYou can retire to Colorado where...1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.2. Your wife tells you to pick up Granola on your way home and so you stop at the day care center.3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.ORYou can retire to Nebraska where...1. You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.2. Your idea of a traffic jam is three cars waiting to pass a tractor.3. You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day.4. You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at.ORFINALLY You can retire to Florida where...1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind -- even houses and cars.3. Everyone can recommend an excellent cardiologist, dermatologist, proctologist, podiatrist, or orthopedist,.....4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless people.
