1/ Is it a surprise Republicans are now working with the Russian GRU to re-elect Trump?
In another time warp this would be treason....
Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Two weeks ago, William Evanina, director of the United States National Counterintelligence and Security Center, published a somewhat vague warning about various forms of foreign interference in the upcoming election. On Friday, he followed up with a more direct and incriminating one, specifically warning that Russia is working to help reelect Donald Trump. Even more important is what this warning unmistakably implies: that Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are actively cooperating with Russia’s campaign.
2/ Filmmaker Matthew Cooke with a five minute message to Republicans....excellent, he really
encapsulates all of their BS....
3/ Stuart Stevens was a Republican strategist - now he rants on the state of the GOP and it's moral bankruptcy....interesting story from an insider....
When Donald Trump decided to back-burner the coronavirus crisis and reboot his reelection campaign with superspreader events in June, he headed to an arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to present his case for four more years. In front of an audience of maskless fans standing side by side, Trump performed his usual routine. He threw out buzzwords (“law and order,” “left-wing radicals”). He boasted. (“I have done a phenomenal job” responding to the pandemic.) He denigrated his opponent as “Sleepy Joe.” He obsessed over personal grievancesand slights, devoting much time to slamming news outlets that had recently shown video of him walking gingerly down a ramp after delivering a commencement address at West Point. What was mostly missing from Trump’s speech: ideas.
4/ I know there's a lot of negativity about Trump in the ads I post, but in the spirit of balance here's an ad that features his supporters....in their own words....
A really good one from SNL....
5/ Matt Taibbi on how Big Pharma is going to rape us all.....again.....when a vaccine for Covid is developed....
On June 29th, 2020, while America remained transfixed by anti-police protests, the chairman and CEO of the pharmaceutical company Gilead issued a much-anticipated announcement. In a breezy open letter, Daniel O’Day explained how much his company planned on charging for a course of remdesivir, one of many possible treatments for Covid-19. “In the weeks since we learned of remdesivir’s potential against Covid-19, one topic has attracted more speculation than any other: what price we might set for the medicine,” O’Day wrote, before plunging into a masterpiece of corporate doublespeak.
6/ "Trump Gave Up"....great ad from a Republican group....
7/ We can still defeat this virus....it will take leadership, so I guess we are doomed.....good story from
an epidemiologist in the Times....
In just weeks we could almost stop the viral fire that has swept across this country over the past six months and continues to rage out of control. It will require sacrifice but save many thousands of lives.
We believe the choice is clear. We can continue to allow the coronavirus to spread rapidly throughout the country or we can commit to a more restrictive lockdown, state by state, for up to six weeks to crush the spread of the virus to less than one new case per 100,000 people per day.
8/ This is police body cam footage of Key West cops arresting a mentally challenged 8 year old and taking him off to the police station - he isn't physically harmed, but mentally? Who knows.....
9/ I keep hearing the phrase "when everything gets back to normal", but as this story says there is no normal
anymore - It's gone into history....
Forget about the old days. They are gone. Forget about the old ways of doing things. They are gone. You are facing things your parents never faced. Your children are facing things that you, as a child, never faced. Everything has changed. I mean that completely, categorically. The one exception is our belief in a return to normal. There is no normal. Unless you mean chaos and disaster. Unless you mean they’re normal.
10/ Bad Lip Reading with a take on Trump's insane Axios interview....very amusing and totally loopy....five minutes....
11/ Bill Maher imagines what an accurate eulogy would sound like at Trump's funeral.....three minutes of what
counts as comedic reporting.......
12/ An ad from Veterans against Trump.....wow....
13/ Thomas Friedman in the Times has an interesting theory in his latest column - American is resembling Beirut,
where everything, everything is political....
When I first heard the news of the terrible explosion in Beirut, and then the rampant speculation about who might have set it off, my mind drifted back some 40 years to a dinner party I attended at the residence of Malcolm Kerr, then president of the American University of Beirut.
During the course of the dinner, someone mentioned the unusual hailstorms that had pelted Beirut the previous two nights. Everyone offered an explanation for this extreme weather event, before Malcolm, tongue in cheek, asked his guests, “Do you think the Syrians did it?”
14/ "Vote", one of the best yet from the Lincoln Project....watch this one twice!
15/ A long and nerdy story from David Wallace-Wells about herd immunity and Covid-19....it's a little bit of a tough read, but if you are scientifically inclined it's really interesting. My takeaway is that if you have had the flu or a serious cold in the last few years, your resistance to the virus is higher than average....
Over the six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, you would never have gone broke betting on the disease continuing to surprise — on its apparent ability to grow weirder, less predictable, and less consistent, at times by the day. What first looked like a simple respiratory disease produced, over time, disorienting, diverse damage — in lungs, in hearts, in brains.
Scientists are familiar with this kind of variation; they often call it “heterogeneity.”
16/ Amber Ruffin from the Seth Meyers show with commentary on Trump's claim he's a great friend to black people......
an amusing two minutes....
17/ Tom Tomorrow.....
18/ Enlightening and eye opening story from Kurt Andersen in The Atlantic...."College Educated Liberals Are Capitalism's Useful Idiots".....how for many years the resurgent right [i.e the wealthy elites] have used every means out there to move capitalism to where it is today...with a slim sliver of obscene wealth at the top, and almost nothing for the 90% on the bottom.
Excellent article....
from my parents’ teenage years in the 1930s and ’40s through my teenage years in the 1970s, American economic life became a lot more fair and democratic and secure than it had been when my grandparents were teenagers. But then all of a sudden, around 1980, that progress slowed, stopped, and in many ways reversed.
I didn’t really start understanding the nature and enormity of the change until the turn of this century, after the country had been fully transformed.
19/ Miley Cyrus is an interesting lady....this is her latest video "Midnight Sky" which is a typical "naughty bad girl" video....impressive production values, but.....
....Miley Cyrus can really sing.....look at her doing "Look What They've Done To My Song" - live....
20/ How To Immigration Policy" with Sarah Cooper.....an amusing minute...
21/ A challenging article about how to get prosperity for all people back in this country, not just for white men but for everyone......the story discusses how the economy worked for everyone in the 50's and 60's, until the elites conspired to ruin it. Yes this sounds like it was taken from QAnon, but in my opinion it's true.....really interesting....
The United States long reserved its most lucrative occupations for an elite class of white men. Those men held power by selling everyone else a myth: The biggest threat to workers like you are workers who do not look like you. Again and again, they told working-class white men that they were losing out on good jobs to women, nonwhite men and immigrants.
22/ What to do....what to do....good one!
23/ Fascinating, illuminating and eye opening discussion with Heather Cox Richardson about the Civil War, and how whatever you were taught in History class about the Civil War was not quite the reality.....
A long read, but hey what else do you have to do. [retirees I mean]....
I am also following her on Facebook and she does a daily summary of the news....I call it news for intelligent people....
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Moyers on Democracy. If you want to understand this moment in American politics, here’s a suggestion for you: It’s the must-read book of the year — HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR, by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Yes, the Civil War brought an end to the slave order of the South and the rule of the plantation oligarchs who embodied white supremacy. But the Northern victory was short-lived.
24/ Looks......interesting - "I May Destroy You" on HBO.....
In “Line Spectrum Border,” the eighth episode of Michaela Coel’s mesmerizing, borderline-perfect dramedy, I May Destroy You, Arabella, a young writer played by Coel herself, attempts to kick down a door. She’s been locked out of an apartment where she was intending to crash, and she’s not particularly happy about it. When her stylish boot nearly kicks the door in, the apartment’s occupant, her ex-boyfriend, opens it. He is holding a gun. She turns and runs
https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/8/7/21356216/i-may-destroy-you-hbo-review-michaela-coel
25/ Also looks worthwhile.....[Un]Well on Netflix...
From celebrities peddling the latest crazes to holistic promises that skirt around big Pharma, it’s little wonder how the global wellness industry has ballooned to a staggering $4.5 trillion.
But are people actually getting well?
It’s a question at the heart of Netflix’s latest docuseries, (Un)Well
Today's video - the beauty of pollination, hummingbirds, bees etc......a NICE video for all you nature lovers.....
Today's joke for married guys
A couple were at home watching TV.
Phil had the remote and was switching back and forth between a fishing channel and the porn channel.
Sally became more and more annoyed and finally said, "For god's sake, Phil... leave it on the porn channel...
you know how to fish!"
Today's Scottish joke
Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life.
As a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Nova Scotia back country.
As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost and, being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions.
I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.
I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play.
The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man.
And as I played "Amazing Grace", the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head was hung low, my heart was full.
As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."
Apparently, I'm still lost....it's a man thing.
Todays clever jokes
The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:
1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.
3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
6. Negligent, adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.
7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
