Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Davids Daily Dose - Tuesday July 21

1/. " The Mad King rants alone" - Andrew Sullivan on our would be tyrant......

We’re used to it, of course, but it still demands repeating. The president is mentally unwell — a delusional, malignant sociopath incapable of absorbing any reality that is not pure wish-fulfillment. We have never elected anyone to that office as inadequate to it as this man. The stream of consciousness we were subjected to last night is merely the latest of a series of humiliations for a country dumb and desperate enough to re-elect a global laughingstock. Have I said this before? Yes, I have said this before. It remains a fact we are currently doing our best to ignore. For appearance’s sake.                     https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-mad-king-rants-alone?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61371&post_id=206918698&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email


2/. So much greatness......



3/. Thursday night Trump revealed what he is going to do in the midterms, and Thom Hartmann spells it out for us......                                                   

Last night, Donald Trump essentially told us exactly what he will do this November. When reports start coming in that the Democrats are winning this fall, he will send in the troops.

He’ll point back to last night‘s speech and tell the nation:

“I told you so. I warned you. They rigged the election for the Democrats and now I have to stop it.”

He’ll mobilize ICE and the National Guard’s “Rapid Reaction Force” that he’s assembled over the past six months to seize ballot boxes and crush the inevitable “insurrection” — protests in the streets against his seizing ballot boxes — by “left-wing communist radical domestic terrorists.”

He’ll declare a state of emergency, invoke his NSPM-7, and blame it on a foreign country and/or “Antifa.” He’ll declare protesting a crime, and tear gas will fill our streets.                                                                                                                                                                                                     https://www.rawamerica.com/p/trump-just-accidentally-revealed?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6832795&post_id=207439534&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



4/. Do you know a MAGA? An uncle, friend, colleague? You'll appreciate this one......


5/. Bill McKibben gives us the background and the reality of how Trump is subsidizing the fossil fuel corporations.
It's devastating to every family in America, as well as being blatantly corrupt..

I write this under an ashy, yellow northeast sky; smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Minnesota swept across the region in the middle of the night, and I awoke at 3 (as I too often do in these parlous times) with stinging eyes. But I will try to see clearly enough to discern some of the latest numbers in the climate and energy battle—numbers which prove to me the economic folly of staying on our current course. 
To me, I admit, these are secondary—there’s not enough money on earth to make me want to condemn people to a few centuries of waking up in smoke, and I know without calculation that a clear blue sky is worth almost any price. But I also know how the world works, and so I want to provide people with the ammunition they need to carry on this fight—and the last few weeks have seen that ammunition piling up in the arsenals of logic and thrift. There is at this point no doubt that the world would operate more cheaply on clean energy, which is a lucky thing, and one that needs to be hammered home till the conventional wisdom (that sun and wind and batteries are a luxury) is finally routed.                                                                                  https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/setting-money-on-fire?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=438146&post_id=207169259&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=2cwgv&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



6/. This toon is based on a real proposal, just approved by Trump, to do exactly this.......



7/. Very interesting and intelligent discussion on reading in our digital age.....it's not as bad as you think......
David Wallace-Wells with a good article.....

Few things are more intuitive about the smartphone era than the fact that devices have torpedoed our interest in reading and dragged down the status that books and their authors once seemed to enjoy.

You can tally the signs. Reading scores among both students and adults have fallen from where they were a decade ago, and it’s hard to find a college professor who thinks freshmen are arriving in class as prepared as ever for the reading. On the subway, people are always on their phones, and nobody appears to be reading anything on them. You probably have a hard time concentrating on books yourself, with so many distractions around. Public discourse seems shaped by podcast clips and short-form video, and if you happen to find yourself reading something longer than an Instagram caption it might well be an essay, like “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic last week, studded with incisive observations about the shift from a culture of literacy to one defined by what’s been called a digital culture of orality, in which charismatic narrators make sweeping emotional appeals to their audiences rather than through logical argumentation and careful citation.                                                                                                                                https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/opinion/reading-test-scores-smartphones.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share



8/. Remember the Epstein files? Don't be distracted.......



9/. Roy Cooper in North Carolina is running an interesting campaign......

There are politicians who traffic in impassioned oratory or contagious fervor or ingenious catchphrases. Then there’s Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee in the crucial U.S. Senate contest in North Carolina. His campaign slogan is so prosaic, so blunt, so gruff that every time I see it, I do a double take, wondering if it’s some parody or I’m hallucinating.

Make Stuff Cost Less. That’s it. He even calls his campaign schedule the Make Stuff Cost Less tour, as if he’s Bon Jovi or Bad Bunny, poised to perform his greatest hits. Except he’s going to talk about, you know, stuff. And making it cost less. Because who’s not in favor of that?




10/. Love this one - "Whiskers R' We" with Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig....4 minutes.....




11/. The billionaires don't just buy politicians, they have already bought you!

As I write this, federal investigators are chasing the worst cyclospora outbreak in decades, thousands of people across more than thirty states doubled over with what the CDC delicately calls “frequent and sometimes explosive diarrhea,” and they still can’t tell you for certain which farm it came from. 

Over the weekend, after the $7 billion company’s CEO visited the White House, the FDA walked back a positive test on lettuce from Taylor Farms, the largest salad producer in North America, announcing that its own earlier finding of cyclospora had somehow turned out to be a false positive. That leaves thousands of sickened Americans with no confirmed source at all, which is a peculiar place to land in a country that once prided itself on knowing where its dinner came from.

The reason nobody can trace it back isn’t much of a mystery. Back in March of 2025 Trump’s FDA and it’s boss, Bob Kennedy, delayed its new Food Traceability Rule by thirty months, shoving the deadline to track high-risk foods like leafy greens from the field to your plate all the way out to 2028.

Six days after that delay went public, Taylor Fresh Foods, the parent company of Taylor Farms, cut a million dollar check to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, part of the $2.2 million it has steered to Republican committees this cycle.



12/. A classic and very goofy music video - Weezer with "Pork and Beans".......3 minutes.....



13/. Want more data centers in Florida? Vote for Byron Donalds.....

Data center supporters have spent more than $22 million on campaign contributions in Florida ahead of the 2026 elections, according to a new Seeking Rents analysis of state fundraising data.

Roughly a quarter of that money — around $5.8 million — has been spent boosting Byron Donalds, the Republican Congressman from Naples who is the heavy favorite to win the GOP nomination for governor in next month’s primary elections.

Billionaire artificial intelligence investors, who depend on data center computing power, have put $3 million into a state committee paying for advertisements touting Donalds. The parent company of utility giant Florida Power & Light, which is building a network of gigawatt-scale data center hubs that it will supply with electricity, has donated $1 million to Donald’s personal political committee. People and companies connected to an AI data center proposed in Palm Beach County have given Donalds at least $375,000.

Donalds became the GOP frontrunner thanks to an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who has called data centers “money machines” and “LIQUID GOLD!”and encouraged states to build more of them.



14/. Book reviews - the best crime and thrillers from the Guardian......
The Runner by Scarlett Thomas; The Madman by Henning Mankell; Everything She Didn’t Say by Jane Casey; The Spy and the Snake by MJ Robotham; Murder at the End of the World by Akane Araki




15/. "The Odyssey", a five star review from the Guardian.......
It's in IMax at your local theater......

Christopher Nolan reinvents the Homeric legend as a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion, an epic ordeal of anguish witnessed by the dead and presided over by capricious deities who participate on almost equal terms with the humans. It speaks to the generational pain of PTSD; plenty of soldiers come home in person after any war promptly enough, but arriving back to their prewar state emotionally or spiritually can take years or decades and may never happen at all. The invisible odyssey of anguish is punctuated by flashback episodes, hallucinations, confrontations with the arbitrary gods of dysfunction. And all the time the spouses and children cannot move on with their lives.. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/the-odyssey-review-christopher-nolan-matt-damon?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other



16/. One for the guys......a really good boxing movie!


In the lineage of Creed and Million Dollar Baby, They Fight makes yet another compelling case for why boxing remains a timeless allegory for the human condition. This time it’s Walt (André Holland) who’s staring up at a 10-count. Once a luminary on Washington DC’s boxing scene, Walt saw his promising career derailed by the city’s drug trade. After an extended prison stint, he is paroled and intent on reuniting with his old flame (Samira Wiley) and their young son.                                                                                                                                                                                                 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/14/they-fight-movie-review-boxing-drama?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other




17/. The Times rates the best TV on Netflix.....
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 30 best shows on Netflix in the United States. Each recommendation comes with a secondary pick, too, for 100 suggestions in all. (Note: Netflix sometimes removes titles without notice.)



Today's old guy joke
       
Bill and Bob, two friends, met in the park every day to feed the pigeons, watch the squirrels and discuss world problems.

One day Bill didn't show up. Bob didn't think much about it and figured maybe he had a cold or something.. But after Bill hadn't shown up for a week or so, Bob really got worried. However, since the only time they ever got together was at the park, Bob didn't know where Bill lived, so he was unable to find out what had happened to him.

A month had passed, and Bob figured he had seen the last of Bill, but one day, Bob approached the park and -- lo and behold -- there sat Bill!
Bob was very excited and happy to see him and told him so. Then he said, ‘For crying out loud Bill, what in the world happened to you?'

Bill replied, 'I have been in jail.'

'Jail!' cried Bob. What in the world for?'

'Well,' Bill said, 'you know Sue, that cute little blonde waitress at the coffee shop where I sometimes go?'

'Yeah,' said Bob, 'I remember her. What about her?

'Well, one day she filed rape charges against me; and, at 89 years old, I was so proud that when I got into court, I pleaded 'guilty'.

'The damn judge gave me 30 days for perjury’.
 

Today's rich person joke
..."Hello, Señor Bob? This is Ernesto, the caretaker at your country house."

"Ah yes, Ernesto. What can I do for you? Is there a problem?"

"Um, I am just calling to advise you, Señor Bob, that your parrot, he is dead".

"My parrot? Dead? The one that won the International competition?"

"Si, Señor, that's the one."

"Damn! That's a pity! I spent a small fortune on that bird. What did he die from?"

"From eating the rotten meat, Señor Bob."

"Rotten meat? Who the hell fed him rotten meat?"

"Nobody, Señor. He ate the meat of the dead horse."

"Dead horse? What dead horse?"

"The thoroughbred, Señor Bob .."

"My prize thoroughbred is dead?"

"Yes, Señor Bob, he died from all that work pulling the water cart."

"Are you insane? What water cart?"

"The one we used to put out the fire, Señor."

"Good Lord! What fire are you talking about, man?"

"The one at your house, Señor! A candle fell and the curtains caught on fire."

"What the hell? Are you saying that my mansion is destroyed because of a candle?!"

"Yes, Señor Bob."

"But there's electricity at the house! What was the candle for?"

"For the funeral, Señor Bob .."

"WHAT BLOODY FUNERAL??!!"

"Your wife's, Señor Bob. 
She showed up very late one night and I thought she was a thief, so I hit her with your new Ping G15 204g titanium head golf club with the TFC 149D graphite shaft."

SILENCE...........

LONG SILENCE.........

VERY LONG SILENCE............

"Ernesto, if you broke that driver, you're in deep shit."



Today's Jewish joke
A man tells a Rabbi: “I have a strong desire to live to eternity, what am I supposed to do?”
“Get married,” replies the Rabbi.
“It’s that simple?  Would that allow me to live forever?”
“No, but the desire will disappear.”


Today's Polish joke
A customer asked, "In what aisle can I find the Polish sausage?"
The clerk asks, "Are you Polish?"
The guy, clearly offended, says, "Yes I am. But let me ask you something.
If I had asked for Italian sausage, would you ask me if I was Italian?
Or if I had asked for German Bratwurst, would you ask me if I was German?
Or if I asked for a kosher hot dog would you ask me if I was Jewish?
Or if I had asked for a Taco, would you ask if I was Mexican?
Or if I asked for some Whiskey, would you ask if I was Irish?"
The clerk says, "No, I probably wouldn't."
The guy says, "Well then, because I asked for Polish sausage, why did you ask me if I'm Polish?"
The clerk replied, "Because you're in Ace Hardware."


Sods laws....
                                              1. Law of Mechanical Repair -  
After your hands become coated with grease,   
your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to 
pee. 
 
2. Law of Gravity -   
Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped,   
will roll to the least accessible place in the 
universe.

3. Law of Probability -   
The probability of being watched is directly   
proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of Random Numbers   -   
If you dial a wrong number, you never get a 
busy signal; someone always answers.

5. Variation Law -   
If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one   
you were in will always move faster than the
one you moved to.
...





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