1/ The extremism of Republicans is generating grassroots opposition.....thankfully!
Christ is King,” announced signs in Dutchess County last spring. “Anthony Ciro DiLullo, WCSD Board. Vote May 17th.” He and a slate of far-right candidates running for school board were campaigning on “parents’ rights.” Some were endorsed by a local chapter of Moms for Liberty, a Florida-based group spearheading right-wing attacks on education nationwide through roughly 200 county chapters spread among nearly every state. Members are banning books, running for school board, and training others to do the same. Mother Jones anointed them “the Most Powerful Moms in America.” And they had descended on this politically purple swath of upstate New York.
2/ The best Jerry Springer.....ever....2 minutes....
3/ How bad will a President DeSantis be? Pretty bad, according to this column in the Guardian....
‘The rollout was plagued with embarrassing glitches, no big surprise given Twitter’s meltdown under Musk’s ownership.’ Photograph: @RonDeSantis/Reuter olitical journalists and pundits spent much of Wednesday obsessing over the gimmicky way that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was announcing his candidacy for presidency – in an audio chit-chat on Twitter Spaces, in the company of the billionaire Elon Musk and of David Sacks, the South African-born venture capitalist and Republican donor who recently opined that continued military support for Ukraine could lead to “woke war III”.
4/ Tom Tomorrow....even aliens have debt ceilings....
5/ News that will make you sick....
Amanda Gorman was the young lady who read her beautiful and moving poem at the Biden inauguration, which of course has
now been banned in Florida based on a complaint from the mother of a Proud Boy.
The Florida parent behind the ban of Amanda Gorman’s poetry book ban has ties to the Proud Boys and the ultraconservative
6/ Something different - a classic Western opening scene, from Once Upon a Time in the West.....
7/ This story gave me chills. It's about how the hard right have started to destroy Sarasota's school system, and are using this as a model for the state.
This is the reality of what DeSantis has started.....
On a Sunday afternoon in late May 2022, Zander Moricz, then class president of Sarasota County’s Pine View School, spent the moments before his graduation speech sitting outside the auditorium, on the phone with his lawyers. Over the previous month, the question of what he’d say when he stepped to the podium had become national news. That March, Florida governor Ron DeSantis had signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law for its ban on all mention of gender identity and sexuality in K–3 classrooms and restriction of those discussions in higher grades as well. Moricz, a student LGBTQ+ activist, had led several protests against the act that spring and joined a high-profile lawsuit against the state. In early May, he charged on Twitter that Pine View’s administration had warned that if he mentioned his activism or the lawsuit at graduation, his microphone would be cut. (In a statement released last year, the school district confirmed that students are told not to express political views in their speeches.)
8/ Corporations are people my friend.....
9/ Hurricane season is coming, so this story about Ft. Myers is especially relevant, particularly about the insurance coverage...
FORT MYERS BEACH — The front door of an empty yellow house creaks and sways with the sea breeze.
It’s never locked: Why bother, the owner says, when there’s nothing left to protect?
Stained on the 1926 beach cottage’s walls are reminders of the hurricane that made landfall eight months ago: High-water marks, left behind by a surging Gulf of Mexico, stretch 8 feet high. Blinds are browned and withered. Doors are off hinges.
The owner of this home on Jefferson Street is Anita Cereceda, the first mayor of Fort Myers Beach when the town incorporated in 1995. On Sept. 28, 16 people died in this barrier island town when Hurricane Ian, a menacing Category 4 storm, brought 150-mph winds and 15 feet of surge.
10/ CNN has gone "fair and balanced".....
11/ Fascinating analysis of why and how Florida became a conservative state......
Florida has become the nerve center of the modern Republican Party.
Once the nation’s largest and most volatile swing state, Florida has lurched to the right in recent years, becoming a mecca for the GOP’s most influential luminaries and wealthiest donors.
Republicans now hold supermajorities in the state legislature, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has solidified his grip on the reins of political power in the state, turning Florida into a laboratory for conservative policy experiments. For the first time since Reconstruction, there’s not a single Democrat in statewide elected office.
But Florida’s transition from coveted political battleground to the premier haven of modern conservatism has been decades in the making, owing to a perfect storm of demographic changes, Republican power plays, pandemic politics and Democratic missteps, according to more than a dozen strategists, experts and officials interviewed by The Hill.
12/ An SNL game show that quickly goes awry.....amusing.....
13/ Are you aware a doctor in Florida can refuse to treat you because you're gay? Or an atheist? Thought not.....
Busy man … DeSantis recently banned state funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. Photograph: Douglas R Clifford/AP You know what I love about living in the US? Freedom! You can choose between multiple overpriced insurance companies to provide you with healthcare, for example. The healthcare companies, in turn, can seemingly charge you whatever they like for their services. If they want to charge you $1,500 (£1,200) for some toenail fungus cream, that is their prerogative. That’s freedom, baby.
As if this wasn’t glorious enough, the healthcare system in Florida has just had a new layer of freedom added to it. On 1 July, a new law goes into effectthat means a doctor can look a potential patient up and down, decide they are giving off homosexual vibes and refuse to treat them because interacting with gay people goes against their personal beliefs. The doctor will not face any repercussions for denying care and has no obligation to refer the patient elsewhere.
14/ A mildly amusing SNL - "The Real Housewives of Disney".....
15/ Bob Lefsetz with his theory of why Apple is so dominant......and some thoughts on office meetings......not heavy stuff, but interesting nonetheless....
“The Unexpected Reason Apple Is Dominating the U.S. Smartphone Market – It’s not just lavish marketing and the threat of green bubbles—Apple’s commitment to supporting old phones has allowed it to capture a part of the market once cornered by inexpensive Android devices”: https://on.wsj.com/43b0Q0J
I can’t get this article out of my head.
Last night I wrote about the “New York Times”‘s new Audio app. And I promptly received e-mail from “Times” subscribers complaining that it doesn’t work on Android, at least not yet.
You recall the memo. Apple lost the market share race in smartphones, although it won the profitability game. Steve Jobs threatened to sue Google for Android, calling it a copycat. So Apple kept raising prices and the world went Android. Or did it?
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2023/05/19/two-important-articles/
16/ The mainstream media "normalising" the lunacy of the Republicans....
17/ George Monblot in the Guardian on our food system.....he makes a lot of sense....
No issue is more important, and none so shrouded in myth and wishful thinking. The way we feed ourselves is the key determinant of whether we survive this century, as no other sector is as damaging . Yet we can scarcely begin to discuss it objectively, thanks to the power of comforting illusions.
Food has the extraordinary property of turning even the most progressive people into reactionaries. People who might accept any number of social and political changes can respond with fury if you propose our diets should shift. Stranger still, there’s a gulf between ultraconservative beliefs about how we should eat and the behaviour of people who hold such beliefs. I have heard people cite a rule formulated by the food writer Michael Pollan – “Don’t eat anything your great-great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food” – while eating a diet (Thai one day, Mexican the next, Mediterranean the day after) whose range of ingredients no one’s great-great-great-grandmother would recognise, and living much the better for it.
18/ I realise a lot of you don't have kids in school, but your grandkids still need an education, so what is happening to Florida schools should still matter to you!
At a signing ceremony last week in Sarasota, where he added three new bills to his culture war belt, Ron DeSantis stood behind a podium emblazoned with a slogan that hailed Florida as “the education state.” It’s this image that he and his fellow Republicans have tirelessly sought to build with a yearslong, multipronged effort to expunge “woke indoctrination” from the state’s public school system.
And yet, ask those on the ground, and that image couldn’t be further from the truth. As Florida’s culture war rages on, educators across the state—which, according to the National Education Association, ranks 48th nationally in average teacher salary—are leaving in droves, with some even retiring early. In January 2019, when DeSantis first took office, Florida had 2,217 teacher vacancies. That number has since more than doubled to 5,294 vacancies as of January 2023, according to the Florida Education Association.
19/ Ever get stuck in traffic? This SNL skit is quite good......
20/ Tina Turner just died, and Bob Lefsetz gives us a most interesting recap of her life and career......
She was a has-been. And Ike didn’t get any respect either.
This was the sixties. The era of one-hit wonders, the British Invasion and then album rock. Where did Ike and Tina Turner fit in?
They didn’t. They were an inside act. With hits on the R&B charts, but virtually no action on Top Forty, the main career driver of the era. And it’s not like the nascent FM rock was going to play them either. Sure, the deejays had their pick, it was free-form radio, but the acts were all white, except for Jimi Hendrix, and maybe Richie Havens, but they didn’t really play him either, not until after the Woodstock movie.
And then the Stones took Ike & Tina out as the openers on their ’69 tour.
The Stones knew the act, the British acts knew their history, and “River Deep, Mountain High,” was actually a hit across the pond, it went all the way to #3, whereas in America, it peaked at #88. In other words almost no one ever heard it. And this was back in the era when if it wasn’t on the radio you had to buy it to hear it, and people didn’t, buy it that is.
21/ Horror, sci-fi, action and international movies coming this summer.....
From web-slinging diversions to archaeological excursions, this summer movie season is stacked with releases across a variety of genres. Our writers who seek out the most interesting picks in horror, international, science fiction, action and children’s movies each month scoured the summer calendar to come up with the films that have their attention.
Today's video - The Amazing Tug Toner.......don't blame me if you think it's rude - I got it from Kimmel on network TV.....
Today's "boss" joke
My boss phoned me today.
He said "Is everything okay at the office?"
I said "Yes, it's all under control. It's been a very busy day, I haven't stopped for a minute."
"Can you do me a favor?" he asked.
I said "Of course, anything, what is it?"
He said "Hurry up and take your shot, I'm right behind you on the 7th hole."
Today's sexist joke for guys....
To those of you who are nit-pickers about the meaning of words: there is a medical distinction between Guts and Balls.
We've all heard about people having Guts or Balls, but do you really know the difference between them?
In an effort to keep you informed, here are the definitions:
GUTS - is arriving home late, after a night out with the boys, being met by your wife with a broom, and having the Guts to ask, are you still cleaning, or are you flying somewhere?
BALLS - is coming home late after a night out with the boys, smelling of perfume and beer, with lipstick on your collar, and slapping your wife on the bottom and having the Balls to say, you're next, chubby.
I hope this clears up any confusion on the definitions.
Medically speaking, there is no difference in the outcome.
Both result in death.
Something different today - a spot of poetry......
THE WOMAN POEM:
Before I lay me down to sleep,
I pray for a man who's not a creep.
One who's handsome, smart, and strong.
One who loves to listen long.
One who thinks before he speaks.
One who'll call, not wait for weeks.
I pray he's rich and self-employed,
And when I spend, won't be annoyed.
Will pull out my chair and hold my hand.
Massage my feet and help me stand.
Oh, send a king to make me queen.
A man who loves to cook and clean.
I pray this man will love no other.
And relish visits with my mother.
--------------------------------------
THE MAN POEM:
I pray for a deaf-mute nymphomaniac gymnast with
big boobs who owns a bar on a golf course,
and loves to send me hunting, fishing and drinking.
This doesn't rhyme and I don't give a rats ass.
Today's oldies jokes....
Oldies But Goodies…Classics!….Much like us!
An elderly gentleman......
Had serious hearing problems for a number of years. He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear 100%.
The elderly gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, 'Your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.'
The gentleman replied, 'Oh, I haven't told my family yet.. I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I've changed my will three times!'
Two elderly gentlemen from a retirement center were sitting on a bench under a tree when one turns to the other and says: 'Slim, I'm 83 years old now and I'm just full of aches and pains. I know you're about my age. How do you feel?'
Slim says, 'I feel just like a newborn baby.'
'Really!? Like a newborn baby!?'
'Yep. No hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants.'
An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.
The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, 'Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great.. I would recommend it very highly.'
The other man said, 'What is the name of the restaurant?'
The first man thought and thought and finally said, 'What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love?
You know.... The one that's red and has thorns.'
'Do you mean a rose?'
'Yes, that's the one,' replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, 'Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?'
Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged.
However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn't need my help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator.
On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him.
'I don't know,' he said. 'She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown.'
Couple in their nineties are both having problems remembering things. During a checkup, the doctor tells them that they're physically okay, but they might want to start writing things down to help them remember ..
Later that night, while watching TV, the old man gets up from his chair. 'Want anything while I'm in the kitchen?' he asks.
'Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?'
'Sure..'
'Don't you think you should write it down so you can remember it?' she asks.
'No, I can remember it.'
'Well, I'd like some strawberries on top, too. Maybe you should write it down, so as not to forget it?'
He says, 'I can remember that. You want a bowl of ice cream with strawberries.'
'I'd also like whipped cream. I'm certain you'll forget that, write it down?' she asks.
Irritated, he says, 'I don't need to write it down, I can remember it! Ice cream with strawberries and whipped cream - I got it, for goodness sake!'
Then he toddles into the kitchen. After about 20 minutes, The old man returns from the kitchen and hands his wife a plate of bacon and eggs.. She stares at the plate for a moment.
'Where's my toast ?'
A senior citizen said to his eighty-year old buddy:
'So I hear you're getting married?'
'Yep!'
'Do I know her?'
'Nope!'
'This woman, is she good looking?'
'Not really.'
'Is she a good cook?'
'Naw, she can't cook too well.'
'Does she have lots of money?'
'Nope! Poor as a church mouse.'
'Why in the world do you want to marry her then?'
'Because she can still drive!'
One more. . .!
A little old man shuffled slowly into an ice cream parlor and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up onto a stool..
After catching his breath, he ordered a banana split.
The waitress asked kindly, 'Crushed nuts?'
'No,' he replied, 'Arthritis.'
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