1/. The hard right has embraced climate denial again because they can't lose.....the worse the climate becomes, the more
fascism becomes accepted.....
Very insightful and frankly scary article from George Monblot in the Guardian....
Illustration: Danielle Rhoda/The Guardian ound the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times.
2/. Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan......first female President?
Maybe, maybe not - we report, you decide......
“He did this for one reason and one reason only, to throw you off your game.” That’s what I told Hillary Clinton backstage at Washington University in October 2016, moments away from her second presidential debate with Donald Trump. Two days prior, the world had learned, thanks to the Access Hollywood tape, that Trump liked to assert power by assaulting women. Trump retaliated by showing up at a pre-debate appearance with women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault. “Yeah, I got that,” Clinton responded dryly to my pep talk. “The great news is that it didn’t work,” I insisted. She had been through worse and I thought she would be okay, but it was my job, as the campaign’s communications director, to make sure of it. She mustered a serene smile, folded her hands, and slowly shook her head. “Nope. Didn’t work.”https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/gretchen-whitmer-white-house-run?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=VF_HIVE_061523&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9d5dd3f92a40469e409a5&cndid=24450331&hasha=757da4c757bd7d86b040a18975d30c93&hashb=2bad61b1bd19c0a6a3a4a38617b56bc8e87c94e9&hashc=fbbe473f5037f7de779a9b352866aaa97ce40dede88d542358cbe645dd211019&esrc=bouncexmulti_second&source=EDT_VYF_NEWSLETTER_0_HIVE_ZZ&utm_campaign=VF_HIVE_061523&utm_term=VYF_Hive
3/. Cheeseburgers and ketchup....
4/. Minnesota Democrats are hell bent for leather......you go guys!
As soon as Minnesota Democrats secured both the governorship and majorities in the state House and Senate last November, Tim Walz huddled with his party leaders to map out an aggressive agenda. During his first term as governor, Walz had struggled with a divided state government; this time, the now 59-year-old former Congress member was intent on not letting the hard-won political trifecta go to waste. “We’ve seen that our politics has been one of ‘what can’t be done,’” Walz said in an interview with Vanity Fair—that was about to change. Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman said Democrats’ attitude headed into 2023 was “LFG”—“let’s fucking go.”
5/. The moral crisis facing doctors.....will this article resonate with you as a patient?
Has your doctor been absorbed by a conglomerate or hedge fund?
Some years ago, a psychiatrist named Wendy Dean read an article about a physician who died by suicide. Such deaths were distressingly common, she discovered. The suicide rate among doctors appeared to be even higher than the rate among active military members, a notion that startled Dean, who was then working as an administrator at a U.S. Army medical research center in Maryland. Dean started asking the physicians she knew how they felt about their jobs, and many of them confided that they were struggling. Some complained that they didn’t have enough time to talk to their patients because they were too busy filling out electronic medical records. Others bemoaned having to fight with insurers about whether a person with a serious illness would be preapproved for medication. The doctors Dean surveyed were deeply committed to the medical profession. But many of them were frustrated and unhappy, she sensed, not because they were burned out from working too hard but because the health care system made it so difficult to care for their patients
6/. The second best version of "Stairway To Heaven" ever made....."Heart" performs in front of Led Zeppelin......
7/. Thomas Friedman with a searing assessment of Trump's success in breaking our collective trust in
each other and our faith in our institutions.....
What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?
What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!
8/. Tom Tomorrow is in alternate realities.....
9/. Pretty soon there will be a severe shortage of OB-GYN doctors in red states that have banned abortion....
They cannot by law complete their training which includes all types of abortions, and have to travel to blue states to get their degree completed....
Rachel is a third-year OB-GYN resident at a medical institute in Texas and last year, when the Dobbs vote overturned Roe v Wade, her education was derailed. For her safety, she declined to offer her last name or where she studies. In June 2022, the state’s “trigger law” went into effect and abortions became illegal – first after six weeks, now full stop.
“I was horrified and angry,” said Rachel, when Roe was reversed.
Following the ban, clinics in Texas have stopped providing abortion care to patients, as well as training to medical residents like Rachel.
Yet as a part of a national program requirement, under the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), Rachel needs to have experience in abortion procedures to become an OB-GYN physician. In Texas, abortion training is now limited to miscarriage procedures, but not hands-on abortion care.
10/. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman welcomes the new class of marines to his unit in "Full Metal Jacket".....
Ladies skip this one.....very VERY salty language......
11/. Excellent post from Andrew Sullivan on the character flaws of both Trump and
Boris Johnson....very insightful....
“This has nothing to do with vendettas or witch-hunts or partisan advantage. This is very simply about the rule of law, and the survival of the American system of justice. This is what the Constitution demands,” - Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1998. “A president whose character manifests itself in patterns of reckless personal conduct, deceit, abuse of power, and contempt for the rule of law cannot be a good president,” - William Bennett in his 1998 book, “The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals.”
There was a period during the Clinton scandals — and how quaint they now seem — when the question of presidential character became an earnest subject of conversation. Everyone knew that Bill was at best parsimonious with the truth, and also deeply shitty toward women — but that he was also a pretty capable president, and a charmer to boot. Were his flaws so bad he had to be impeached? Or was he just, in the words of Bob Dole, a “likable rogue”? https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-fault-is-not-in-their-stars-but?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61371&post_id=128334095&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email
12/. If you are a "woke" liberal who uses those pronouns I don't really understand, this Monty Python skit will be familiar.
It's amazing to think this was written over 50 years ago, but here we are echoing the same unreality....
13/. This is very, very interesting - it details the effect of noise on one's health, and if you live in a noisy area, look out!
A Times interactive article....click on the left hand corner to hear the noise.....
On a spring afternoon in Bankers Hill, San Diego, the soundscape is serene: Sea breeze rustles through the trees, and neighbors chat pleasantly across driveways.
Except for about every three minutes, when a jet blazes overhead with an ear-piercing roar.
A growing body of research shows that this kind of chronic noise — which rattles the neighborhood over 280 times a day, more than 105,000 each year — is not just annoying. It is a largely unrecognized health threat that is increasing the risk of hypertension, stroke and heart attacks worldwide, including for more than 100 million Americans.a spring afternoon in Bankers Hill, San Diego, the soundscape is serene: Sea breeze rustles through the trees, and neighbors chat pleasantly across driveways.
Except for about every three minutes, when a jet blazes overhead with an ear-piercing roar.
14/. Trump's diligent search.....
15/. This will make your shopping a pleasure. Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the Publix heir, gave millions more than we knew to
Jan 6 and more.....money from the Jenkins family trust.
Julia “Julie” Jenkins Fancelli, whose father founded the grocery store chain, gave at least $5 million of her roughly $9 billion fortune to "dark money" groups that challenged Donald Trump's election loss in 2020 and organized the rally that led up to the deadly U.S. Capitol riot, reported Open Secrets.
Fancelli is the sole funder and president of the tax-exempt George Jenkins Foundation, which in 2020 gave $1.3 million to rally sponsor Moms for America, and she had not previously reported that contribution or disclosed to the Jan. 6 select committee to which she gave testimony.
16/. Bob Lefsetz with one of his philosophical rants - this one is about CNN and HBO, and how they are being destroyed by idiot executives....and more..
He's on a roll in this one.....
The reason Zaslav changed the name to Max from HBO Max is because he wants all the credit if it succeeds, and if it doesn’t…he’s been paid more than $247 million since 2018: https://tinyurl.com/mr399yh3 Quick, name the previous head of Discovery, never mind the top exec at a movie studio. You can’t. They’re not the titans they once were. So when they’re gone, they live the life of kings, they’re almost all male, and who cares if anybody knows their name, they’re a permanent member of the U.S. elite, always flying private, living behind gates, vacationing at not only hotels, but locations you’ve never heard of. As for those still with their knickers in a twist about what I said about the outsized press fascination with “Succession”:
“The data found that ‘Succession’ was covered six times more than any other show analyzed, but saw the second lowest average readership of that coverage.”
“Media’s ‘Succession’ obsession”: https://tinyurl.com/4pevp9ht
Read this Axios article, it won’t even take you a minute. It’s got charts and everything. I know, it doesn’t feel right, but feel is what got us into this mess. The data doesn’t lie.
17/. Men - going to see "John Wick 4"? Honest Trailers has you covered.....
18/. Cool movie coming by Christmas......"Rebel Moon"....
Zack Snyder is world-building once again with Rebel Moon. This time the 300 and Justice League filmmaker is creating not just one world but a sprawling menagerie of planets, full of cyborg warriors with molten-metal swords, giant half-humanoid arachnids, and ancient robots that seem to have emerged more from medieval times than the future. The new Netflix space saga that Snyder directed and cowrote extends far beyond the verdant orb of the title. That moon is actually one of the more modest worlds. It circles an immense gas giant at a distant edge of the galaxy and is populated mainly by farmers. It's nowhere special, but it’s about to change the balance of power in this fictional universe.
While any sci-fi extravaganza naturally features copious digital effects, Snyder also used his estimated budget of at least $166 million to manifest as much of it in real life as possible. In a Santa Clarita canyon just outside Los Angeles, a full-size abandoned starfighter decays not far from what appears to be an idyllic Scandinavian-style village, complete with clusters of homes, shops, and barns, as well as a stone bridge arching over a crystalline river. (Team Snyder also built the river.) Vast fields of actual wheat sprout from desert hardpan never meant for such lush growth, but Snyder insisted on real crops for his farmers to harvest and defend. Just over the rocky hillside sits another Rebel Moon set for a larger community known as Providence that looks like an Old West metropolis. All of these are just locations on the moon of the title; there are other worlds beyond.
19/. Rolling Stone picks the best TV so far this year......
20/. Bob Lefsetz with a TV recommendation - "Tour De France" on Netflix.....
We have watched two episodes already, and we confirm that it's amazing so far.....
This is INSANE!
You may not care about bicycle racing, but you’ll be riveted by this series.
Netflix has established a formula. It started with “Drive to Survive,” its series on Formula 1. The first season the big kahunas don’t want to participate, so you get the viewpoint from the underdogs, who get a lot of screen time. And then the series comes out, blows the sport up, and everybody wants in. Will “Tour de France: Unchained” blow up bicycle racing?
Well, it’s already huge in Europe.
This was shot last year, 2022. And you see the riders and management wearing masks, even outdoors. It’s like they’re not privy to the insanity of the anti-vax, anti-mask movement in the U.S. Just before this was shot, I was entering a hotel wearing my mask, an upscale hotel, and a self-satisfied patron exited through the front door and insulted me, one for whom the vaccine didn’t work. And unlike too many, I know numerous people who died from covid, and numerous people who’ve never completely recovered, their taste has not come back, for years.
Today's military joke...
Years ago, a young Navy Pilot was injured while ejecting from his A-4 Skyhawk
due to engine failure during a catapult shot from the carrier.
Due to the heroics of rescue helicopter crew and the ship's hospital staff, the only permanent
injury was the loss of one ear.
He remained on flight status and eventually became an Admiral.
However, during his career he was always sensitive about his appearance.
One day the Admiral was interviewing two Navy Master Chiefs and a Marine
Sergeant Major for his personal staff.
The first Master Chief was a Surface Navy type and it was a great interview.
At the end of the interview the Admiral
asked him, "Do you notice anything different about me?"
The Master Chief answered, "Why, yes, Admiral. I couldn't help but notice that
you are missing your starboard ear, so I don't know whether this impacts
your hearing on that side."
The Admiral got very angry at this lack of tact and threw him out of his office.
The next candidate, an Aviation Master Chief, when asked this same question,
answered, "Well yes, Sir, you seem to be short one ear."
The Admiral threw him out as well.
The third interview was with the Marine Sergeant Major. He was articulate,
extremely sharp, and seemed to know more than the two Navy Master Chiefs
put together.
The Admiral wanted this guy but went ahead with the same
question. "Do you notice anything different about me?"
To his surprise, the Sergeant Major said, "Yes Sir. You wear contact lenses."
The Admiral, impressed thought to himself, what an incredibly tactful
Marine. "And how would you know that?" the Admiral asked.
The Sergeant Major replied: "Well, sir, it's pretty hard to wear glasses with
only one fuckin' ear. "
Today's winter joke.......
On a bitterly cold winters morning a husband and wife in Belle River were
listening to the radio during breakfast.
They heard the announcer say, "We are going to have 8 to 10 inches of snow
today. You must park your car on the even-numbered side of the street, so
the snow ploughs can get through."
So the good wife went out and moved her car.
A week later while they are eating breakfast again, the radio announcer
said, "We are expecting 10 to 12 inches of snow today. You must park your
car on the odd-numbered side of the street, so the snow ploughs can get
through."
The good wife went out and moved her car again.
The next week they are again having breakfast, when the radio announcer
says, "We are expecting 12 to 14 inches of snow today. You must park...."
Then the electric power went out.
The good wife was very upset, and with a worried look on her face she said,
" I don't know what to do.. Which side of the street do I need to park on so
the snow plough can get through?"
Then with the love and understanding in his voice that all men who are
married to blondes exhibit, the husband replied, "Why don't you just leave
the damn car in the garage this time?"
Today's supermarket joke
A man walked into a supermarket with his zipper down.
A lady cashier walked up to him and said, 'Your barracks door is open.'
Not a phrase that men normally use, he went on his way looking a bit puzzled.
When he was about done shopping, a man came up and said,'Your fly is open..'
He zipped up and finished his shopping.
At the checkout, he intentionally got in the line where the lady was that told him about his 'barracks door.'
He was planning to have a little fun with her, so when he reached the counter he said, 'When you saw my barracks door open, did you see a Marine standing in there at attention?'
The lady (naturally smarter than the man) thought for a moment and said, 'No, no I didn't. All I saw was a disabled veteran sitting on a couple of old duffel bags.
Today's sexist joke
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A WOMAN:
Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according to lights and darks.
Walk to bathroom wearing long robe.
If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
Look at your womanly physique in the mirror -- make mental note to do more sit-ups/leg-lifts, etc.
Get ...in the shower. Use wash cloth , long loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone......
Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.
Wash
your hair again to make sure it's clean.
Condition your hair with grapefruit mint conditioner.
Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes until red.
Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash.
Rinse conditioner off hair. Shave armpits and legs. Rinse off. Turn off shower.
Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower. Spray mold spots with Tilex..
Get out of shower. Dry with towel the size of a small country. Wrap hair in super absorbent towel.
Return to bedroom wearing long robe and towel on head.
If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
HOW TO SHOWER LIKE A MAN:
Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in a pile.
Walk naked to the bathroom.
If you see wife along the way, shake wiener at her making the woo-woo sound.
Look at your manly physique in the mirror.
Admire the size of your wiener and scratch your butt.
Get in the shower. Wash your face. Wash your armpits.
Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse them off.
Fart and laugh at how loud it sounds in the shower.
Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area.
Wash your butt, leaving those coarse butt hairs stuck on the soap.
Wash your hair. Make a Shampoo Mohawk.
Pee. Rinse off and get out of shower. Partially dry off.
Fail to notice the water on floor because curtain was hanging out of tub the whole time.
Admire wiener size in mirror again.
Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, and light and fan on.
Return to bedroom with towel around waist.
If you pass wife, pull off towel, shake wiener at her and make the woo-woo sound again.
Throw wet towel on bed.
