1/. Thom Hartmann and Trump's next move. By gutting the FBI and other agencies anti-terror groups he
is increasing the chances of a terrorist incident, which gives him authority to declare martial law.
Then it's over for good for us......
Trump is starting to lose big, from courtrooms, to the press increasingly calling him out, to millions of Americans showing up in the streets every few weeks. As anybody who’s ever lived or worked in an autocratic state (I have) can tell you, a strongman or wannabe dictator is most dangerous when he’s on his back foot.
Trump’s tariffs have put America on the verge of a serious inflationary recession, the Supreme Court and multiple lower courts have repeatedly ruled against him, his public approval polling is in the crapper, and even conservative publications and former Republican politicians (free from the strictures of an upcoming primary) are openly calling him out (including in Murdoch publications).
The first lesson they teach in dictator school is that “there must be an enemy within.” Trump embraced this from the first day of his campaign for president when he attacked “Mexican rapists and murderers” he said were “invading” America. https://hartmannreport.com/p/when-the-tyrant-slips-why-america-15f?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=302288&post_id=164117324&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
2/. This video looks like it was made by Elon.....AI with spaceships and babes....
3/. Here's a challenging article, which certainly sounds true to me.....
China is now the world's dominant economy.....
For years, theorists have posited the onset of a “Chinese century”: a world in which China finally harnesses its vast economic and technological potential to surpass the United States and reorient global power around a pole that runs through Beijing.
That century may already have dawned, and when historians look back they may very well pinpoint the early months of President Trump’s second term as the watershed moment when China pulled away and left the United States behind.
It doesn’t matter that Washington and Beijing have reached an inconclusive and temporary truce in Mr. Trump’s trade war. The U.S. president immediately claimed it as a win, but that only underlines the fundamental problem for the Trump administration and America: a shortsighted focus on inconsequential skirmishes as the larger war with China is being decisively lost.
4/. Jon Stewart interviewed Patrick McGee who has just written a book on how Apple started the Chinese electronics industry,
which BTW is now way ahead of ours. A fascinating interview, and surprising too......
6/. Love this story.....DeSantis has tanked.....
These are challenging days for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who would have been king. Barely two and a half years since his landslide re-election and anointment as “DeFuture” of the Republican party in a fawning New York Post cover, he stands isolated from the national political stage, feuding with his once blindingly loyal Florida legislature, and limping towards the finish line of his second term with an uncertain pathway beyond.
It has been, in the view of many analysts, a fall of stunning velocity and magnitude. And while few are willing to completely rule out a comeback for a 46-year-old politician who was the darling of the Republican hard right until he dared to challenge Donald Trump for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, it is also clear that everything has changed.
7/. Every season the Weekend Update lads make each other read jokes they haven't seen.....
And there are some doozies here! Very funny.....
8/. This is where AI is going to eliminate jobs - at the entry level of white collar workers, i.e. the young......
There are growing signs that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to a substantial number of the jobs that normally serve as the first step for each new generation of young workers. Uncertainty around tariffs and global trade is likely to only accelerate that pressure, just as millions of 2025 graduates enter the work force.
We saw what happened in the 1980s when our manufacturing sector steeply declined. Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption.
Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder. In tech, advanced coding tools are creeping into the tasks of writing simple code and debugging — the ways junior developers gain experience. In law firms, junior paralegals and first-year associates who once cut their teeth on document review are handing weeks of work over to A.I. tools to complete in a matter of hours. And across retailers, A.I. chatbots and automated customer service tools are taking on duties once assigned to young associates. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/linkedin-ai-entry-level-jobs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=D4145D26-7319-474B-8FDF-C63C4A7C311E
9/. This is funny - two girls [including Scarlet Johanssen
] are dating Spanish speakers.....
10/. Angus Petersen explains our complete failure to acknowledge the climate crisis......
Pain is the most effective teacher we’ve ever had. Not just the kind that comes from breaking a bone or stubbing a toe. I mean the whole miserable buffet: shame, grief, bankruptcy, rejection, humiliation. Physical pain just happens to be the easiest one to diagnose. The rest? They linger. They mold us. They make us rewrite who we are.
Try asking someone out and getting shot down. That burning behind your ribs? It teaches you something — about your timing, your tone, your deodorant. Make a joke at the wrong time, and you’ll remember the cringed faces long after the punchline. Pain drags us, kicking and screaming, into self-awareness. https://medium.com/edge-of-collapse/you-already-know-whats-wrong-you-just-don-t-feel-it-yet-f992109421a6
11/. Tom Tomorrow nails how MAGA thinks......
12/. MAGA wants women out of the workforce and back in the kitchen, breeding.....
We're seeing the start of the Handmaid's Tale.....
Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congressthat completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.
The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Startwere laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/19/republicans-childcare-women-inequality?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
13/. Last week's SNL cold open.....pretty good....
14/. A wonderful piece in the Atlantic by George Packer.....he describes what Trump has done to his sycophants.....
in george orwell’s 1984, at the climax of Hate Week, Oceania is suddenly no longer at war with Eurasia, but instead is at war with Eastasia, and always has been. The pivot comes with no explanation or even announcement. During a public harangue, a Party orator is handed a scrap of paper and redirects his vitriol “mid-sentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax.”
Republican politicians in Donald Trump’s Inner Party faced a similar verbal challenge when the president changed sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine. One morning in late February, Republicans in Washington greeted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero for continuing to resist Russian aggression. By afternoon, following Zelensky’s meeting in the Oval Office with Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance, the Ukrainian leader was an ungrateful, troublesome, and badly dressed warmonger who, if he hadn’t actually started the conflict with Russia, was the only obstacle to ending it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-worldview-rubio-johnson-graham/682110/?utm_medium=cr&utm_source=email&utm_content=automated&utm_campaign=reengagement_dormants_politics_roundup
15/. Yes he's corrupt, but MAGA doesn't care......
If much of Donald Trump’s second term seems unprecedented, there are still ways in which he is merely parroting the destructive actions of his predecessors. He is not the first president to attempt to jail and deport legal residents merely for holding political opinions he doesn’t like. He is not the first president to flirt with suspending habeas corpus. Trump is dangerous, but other presidents have wrought havoc, too. George W. Bush launched two deeply unnecessary wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
What does seem genuinely new, even by the standards of America’s warped history, is the unabashed corruption. No president, really, has favor-traded like Trump. No president has ever tried to blatantly enrich himself like this while in office. No president has ever hung a for-sale sign over the White House — not like this, anyway. Trump is poised to accept a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatari royal family, which feels like something of a capstone to his latest corruption binge.
16/. Heather Cox Richardson with how and why we are getting screwed by the "big, beautiful bill".....
It includes massive increases in funding to ICE, Trump's private army, just like the SS started....
Just before 7:00 this morning, the House of Representatives passed the Republicans’ megabill by a vote of 215 to 214. All Democrats voted no. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, joined the Democrats in voting no. Chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus Andy Harris of Maryland voted “present.” The measure now advances to the Senate.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill cuts at least $715 billion in healthcare spending, mostly from Medicaid, and $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, causing more than 2.7 million American households to lose benefits. Because the massive debt increase in the measure triggers a 2010 law requiring offsets, it will cut Medicare, as well, by an estimated $500 billion.
Economist Robert Reich points out that Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 will lose about $700 a year. On average, Americans with incomes of less than $17,000 will lose more than $1,000 a year. But if you are among the top 0.1% of earners, you’re in luck: you’ll gain nearly $390,000 a year.
17/. A Denzel Washington movie? Directed by Spike Lee? Sign me up.....
Spike Lee has made a brash, bold, big-city movie with this pulsing New York adventure that doubles as a love letter to NYC’s sports and its music. It is a remake (or maybe cover version) of Akira Kurosawa’s classic downbeat noir High and Low from 1963, transplanting the action from Yokohama to New York – or rather returning it there, because the original source material, Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, is set in a fictional city based on the Big Apple.
It’s got a terrific throb of energy and life, moving across the screen with the rangy grace of its superstar Denzel Washington – though a little of the minor-key sombreness and complex pessimism and cynicism of the first film has been lost and the modern technology of GPS (unknown in Kurosawa’s day) has indirectly left it with a very small plausibility issue.
18/. The Times lists streaming you may have missed......
‘The Order’ (2024)
This tightly-wound mixture of political thriller and police procedural from the director Justin Kurzel was sadly lost in the shuffle of the year-end prestige pictures. It dramatizes the true story of the title organization, a more-extreme splinter group of the Aryan Nation that was linked to multiple crimes, motivated both by money and by hate, in the early 1980s, including the killing of the Denver talk radio host Alan Berg. Jude Law, working in the gruff, lived-in manner of a middle-aged Gene Hackman, stars as an F.B.I. agent who is tracking the Order’s activities, while Tye Sheridan as a local deputy, and Jurnee Smollett as an F.B.I. colleague, lend ample support. (Marc Maron also impresses in a brief but powerful turn as Berg.) And as Robert Jay Mathews, the leader of the Order, Nicholas Hoult deftly conveys the surface appeal of such a horrific figure — and the emptiness at his center.
19/. Vanity Fair looks at the summer movies......
It’s been almost two years since the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon brought summer movies back in a big way—and the box office has yet to reach those same heights. But that could change in the summer of 2025, when multiplexes will be filled with crowd-pleasing wannabe blockbusters that promise new takes on old properties (and maybe some movies that will land on our “best movies of 2025” list too). We’re going to see James Gunn step up to the plate with a reimagined Superman; Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn suit up for a new, hopefully more successful take on the Fantastic Four; and Tom Cruise take his final (?) bow as Ethan Hunt. There’s even a chance we see an eventual Oscar contender emerge from the dog days, between Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing.Grab some popcorn, then peruse this list of the 25 summer movies—that is, releases between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend—we’re most excited to see. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/summer-2025-movie-preview-25-films-to-watch?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_VFD_UNPAID_052325&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d5dd3f92a40469e409a5&cndid=24450331&hasha=757da4c757bd7d86b040a18975d30c93&hashc=fbbe473f5037f7de779a9b352866aaa97ce40dede88d542358cbe645dd211019&mbid=&utm_campaign=VF_VFD_UNPAID_052325&utm_term=VYF_Cocktail_Hour_UNPAID
Today's heartwarming joke
As she sat by him, he whispered, his eyes full of tears,
"You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times.
When I got fired, you were there to support me.
When my business failed, you were there.
When I got shot, you were by my side.
When we lost the house, you stayed right here.
When my health started failing, you were still by my side.
You know what Martha?"
"What dear?" she gently asked as her heart began to fill with warmth.
"I'm beginning to think you're f#cking bad luck."
Today's attorney jokes
These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts and are
things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and
published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm
while the exchanges were taking place.
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
_______________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget..
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his
sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a
new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death..
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a
deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral...
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
And last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
