Jun 20 2019
I don’t know if Sam has anything special happening next week, or indeed that she will have new material at all, Stephen is running live special episodes and Seth will probably be new on tape meaning his jokes are going to be about a day behind.
I’m also not sure how we’re going to cover it. Probably topic by topic as it comes up.
Too Many Candidates
Flies and some Lettuce
Juneteenth
Jun 20 2019
I could not have said this any better and, as a Jew, agree wholeheartedly.
Adam L. Silverman, Balloon Juice
Shut your pudgy pie holes and sit your flabby asses down!
This includes, but is not limited to:
Megan “I know Hadassah Lieberman” McCain
Liz “Daddy’s Little Deferment” Cheney
And Erick “I’ve Got So Many Chins, They Cannot Be Fully Counted” Erickson.
Also, if you’re a Jew without Mercy, like Ben Shapiro, keep your Lashon HaRa in your mouth and sit your 4’10 inch tuchas down with the others! And I’m not interested in debating you, but I am willing to spar. And I’ll spot you whatever weapon you want and I’ll only use my left arm, the forearm of which, is bigger than you are.
That is all.
Signed, one very pissed off Jewish American who knows damn well that they’re concentration camps.
Jun 20 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Lizzie Borden found innocent of a grisly double murder; Britain’s Queen Victoria begins rule; Race-related rioting hits Detroit; Muhammad Ali convicted in Vietnam War-era draft case; ‘Jaws’ premieres.
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. Marshall McLuhan
Jun 20 2019
A US military drone has been shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile while in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, US officials say.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it shot down the drone over Iranian airspace, near Kuhmobarak in the southern province of Hormozgan.
IRGC commander Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the incident sent “a clear message to America”, state media said.
It comes at a time of escalating tension between the US and Iran.
On Monday, the US defence department said it was deploying 1,000 extra troops to the region in response to “hostile behaviour” by Iranian forces.
Report outlines deadly impact of direct targeting of civilians as researchers call for resolution to conflict
As the court of appeal prepares to rule on the legitimacy of the British government’s continued supply of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, new figures show the conflict’s death toll is fast approaching the 100,000 mark.
The extent of civilian casualties caused by direct targeting as the war with Houthi rebels enters its fifth year has been outlined in a report by the the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled).
Extending its previous research into fatalities to cover the start of the Yemenconflict in March 2015 through to the present day, the project claims to provide the most comprehensive evaluation of the war to date.
Almost half of single people in Japan who want to get married are unable to find a suitable partner, according to a government survey.
However, 61.4 per cent of those surveyed by the country’s Cabinet Office said they were not doing anything to change their situation.
The research comes amid long-standing concerns over Japan’s birth rate, which has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1899.
Resistance to a planned extradition law has enlivened the opposition in Hong Kong after several years of placidity. But the danger of confrontation with Beijing is real and neither side seems ready for compromise.
Updated 0118 GMT (0918 HKT) June 20, 2019
The floor of the Chembarambakkam reservoir is cracked open, dry and sun-baked. About 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away, in Chennai, India’s sixth largest city, millions of people are running out of water.
A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, hit back at President Donald Trump’s increased rhetoric against the newspaper in a blistering opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal.
Last weekend, Trump stepped up his attacks on the Times — which he’d previously called “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” — by blasting its reporting on U.S. cyberattacks on Russia’s power grid. He also accused the newspaper of conducting “a virtual act of Treason”:
Jun 19 2019
As anyone, who has taken an inorganic chemistry or physical chemistry class knows, some of the material is a long, complicated, detailed read and a great sleep inducer. That’s the problem with the 448 page Mueller Report. Even with redactions, for many people, including some of our congressional representatives, it is too long and they didn’t read it. Yet, they feel free to criticize its content and, yes, conclusions. Enter Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to the rescue for all those lazy, reading comprehension impaired, right wingers. PBS has summarized the important points of the report in a less 3 minute video.
So for those who find the report tl;dr and those who can’t, or won’t, read it, there are no more excuses.
The video was made and narrated by Lisa Desjardins and William Brangham of PBS.
Ed Note: I’ve read the report, twice. This video helped as a guide to the really important points that the right wingers and Trump supporters so blithely ignore.
Jun 19 2019
Biden epitomizes everything bad about Hillary Clinton without the charisma or brain. His nomination as the Candidate of the Democratic Party is about the only scenario where I can see Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio eeking out a victory of sorts.
Biden represents nothing except the failure of Neo Liberalism and the smug self righteous satisfaction of those who see nothing wrong with the system that rewarded their corruption and incompetence.
People of Color, especially to the extent they support Biden out of name recognition and proximity to Barack Obama, have a deluded view about actual Obama policy and about Joe Biden’s deep and abiding support of Racism and Racist leaders even after it it became unfashionable to be openly racist in public.
Joe Biden may not be a racist, but he sure says nice things about them and their policies.
Of the potential candidates he’s the one I think truly dangerous. The Republicans may cheat us at the Ballot Box. Only soulless hypocrites like Biden can steal the Party and destroy it.
Biden’s comments about segregationists and the rich are deeply problematic
By Paul Waldman, Washington Post
June 19, 2019
At a fundraiser in New York attended by the usual Wall Street types, Joe Biden said some things that are raising eyebrows, for good reason, on two subjects. His comments on his friendly relations with segregationists are getting the most attention, but he also said something important about the wealthy people whose dollars he was seeking.
Both comments are deeply problematic, and both stem from the same misconception Biden holds.
…
Biden knows his audience. His pitch to them is not that we must reduce inequality because it’s a fundamental wrong, but because if we don’t, the masses will rise up in anger and you never know what might happen then.If you want to be generous, you could argue that when he assured the well-heeled donors that “No one’s standard of living will change,” he was telling them that they have so much money that no matter how much we raised their taxes they’d barely notice it. After all, if you have a billion dollars in assets and Elizabeth Warren’s 2 percent wealth tax took effect, your taxes would go up by $20 million, which would leave you with $980 million in assets. You wouldn’t have to cut back on dinners out or start buying the generic toilet paper.
But Biden’s actual ideas about policy change are far more modest, and so are the arguments he wants to make to the public. He believes that you can govern well without attacking the wealthy or big corporations, in both substance and rhetoric. We can all get along if we assume everyone is operating out of good will.
But are they? The problems we’re facing right now didn’t happen by accident. Biden says he’s a great friend to labor unions, but does he think that the Republicans and their corporate partners can be persuaded to abandon their war on collective bargaining with enough backslapping and reassurances that “nothing would fundamentally change”? Or do you have to fight and defeat them because fundamental change is exactly what’s necessary and they’ll never agree to it? If you’re maintaining good relations with the billionaire class, might that be evidence that you’ve already committed to not changing the status quo?
Now let’s look at the even more startling thing Biden said at the fundraiser.
First Biden recounted being at a caucus with the late Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland. Imitating his southern drawl, Biden said: “He never called me ‘boy,’ he always called me ‘son’.”
Then Biden brought up deceased Georgia Senator Herman Talmadge, and called him “one of the meanest guys I ever knew.”
…
There’s a reason why James O. Eastland didn’t call Joe Biden “boy.” That’s what racists like Eastland called black men, and Joe Biden is white. In fact, Eastland was friendly toward Biden in no small part because at the time Biden was an opponent of busing.Furthermore, much of Biden’s career was built on him being the kind of Democrat who could speak to and for white people who felt dispossessed by societal change, particularly around issues of race. That’s also a key building block (though it goes unstated) of the suggestion that he’s “electable” in ways other Democrats might not be.
Which means that when he’s running to be the presidential nominee of the party that represents pretty much all non-white Americans, Biden needs to be especially thoughtful about how he talks about his friendships with people like James Eastland.
If you aren’t familiar with that history, Eastland was one of the most prominent segregationists in America.
…
It takes more than calling a segregationist “mean” to assure us that Biden really gets that these men he worked with didn’t just have political differences with him and weren’t just personally unpleasant, but had devoted their lives to a project of monstrous evil, the subjugation of millions of Americans because of their race.But let’s try again to be generous to Biden. The point he was trying to make is that if he could work with a racist like Eastland to “get things done,” surely he can convince Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do the same.
But there’s a problem with this logic, which is that Eastland and other segregationists were perfectly happy to pass legislation on any number of issues that didn’t impede their agenda of white supremacy.
Today’s Republican Party is not. If there’s a Democrat in the White House in 2021 they will employ the same strategy they did under Barack Obama of obstructing everything that president wants to do, as Biden ought to remember.
When the other party is committed to that view — as today’s Republican Party is — the president’s good will and friendliness will change nothing. Yet Biden continues to believe that his friendships with Republicans are so profound and his powers of persuasion so overwhelming that he can transform the Republican Party, altering the course it has been on for decades.
I’m sure Biden will protest that people are misunderstanding what he said at that fundraiser, so let’s be clear that this isn’t about a “gaffe.” Biden has a very particular view of how governing works and what’s possible at this moment in history. He thinks his ability to get along with anyone — Republicans, billionaires, segregationists — will make his presidency successful.
There is no reason, based on everything we’ve seen over the last couple of decades, to think he’s right. And we also have to ask what moral compromises he’s willing to make along the way.
I’m not giving Obama a pass. His policies were objectively bad and especially so for People of Color who now hold, after precipitous declines in the Obama years, between 30% (for Hispanics) and 10% (for African-Americans) of the already paltry and inadequate median Wealth of White people.
Democrats need to embrace positive populist policies and nominate a forward looking candidate. Oddly enough the 2 with the newest ideas are among the oldest in the field. Biden is antiquated and not in a good way.
Jun 19 2019
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed; Father’s Day first celebrated in the U.S.; The event behind ‘Juneteenth’; Author Salman Rushdie born; NBA draft pick Len Bias dies; Entertainer Paula Adbul born.
Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.
Jun 19 2019
Public mistrust of vaccines means the world is taking a step backwards in the fight against deadly yet preventable infectious diseases, warn experts.
The biggest global study into attitudes on immunisation suggests confidence is low in some regions.
The Wellcome Trust analysis includes responses from more than 140,000 people in over 140 countries.
The World Health Organization lists vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health.
The global survey reveals the number of people who say they have little confidence or trust in vaccination.
Hong Kong is bracing for fresh rallies on Friday, which many fear could turn violent, as protesters gave city authorities until Thursday to meet their demands on the retraction of the city’s controversial extradition bill.
Anonymous messages have circulated on social media and messaging services calling for people to gather outside the government headquarters in the Admiralty business district to “escalate their actions” if the Hong Kong government fails to meet their demands by 5pm on Thursday. It called on people to strike, close shops and stay off school on Friday. On one popular chat platform alone, the message received nearly 89,000 “likes”. A user called this “Hong Kong’s last battle”.
For the first time ever, the number of displaced people reached 70.8 million at the end of 2018, according to the UNHCR. The agency’s chief warned against a hostile climate for refugees, but Germany came in for praise.
Over 2 million people were forced to flee their homes last year, driving up the number of the displaced to a record 70.8 million worldwide, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said in a new report Wednesday.
The figure includes refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people at the end of 2018.
Launching the agency’s “Global Trends” report, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said the phenomenon was growing in the “wrong direction.”
“We have become almost unable to make peace,” he said.
Shutting down Niger’s business of moving people
The bus station at Agadez was sleepy; the hot season was coming and at dawn a film of dust had settled on the city. But the weather conditions did not explain why there were no travellers. At the ticket office, two clerks were lying on a mattress. One told me, ‘We haven’t had any passengers for a long time. People going north keep a low profile.’ His colleague slept on.
Tourist agencies call Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger, the ‘gateway to the desert’, though it no longer deserves the name. The central bus station was once the heart of the city, the starting point for convoys heading for Dirkou and Libya. Every Monday, up to 200 vehicles would set off into the desert, carrying livestock and migrants, who came from West Africa, and sometimes from the centre and east of the continent, heading mostly for Libya and, with luck, Europe. The convoys had an army escort as far as the Libyan border. To the migrants, they represented hope; to the people of Agadez, they were a source of income. Mahaman Sanoussi, a local activist, said, ‘They provided a living for the whole city. Migration was legal, and the transporters were respectable. They paid their taxes, like other entrepreneurs. But law 2015-36 changed all that.’
Updated 0631 GMT (1431 HKT) June 19, 2019
A utility blamed for igniting deadly wildfires that killed dozens in California has agreed to pay $1 billion in damages to local governments for blazes linked to its power lines, poles and other equipment.
The Diet on Wednesday enacted a revised law banning parents and other guardians from physically punishing children following several fatal cases of abuse dealt out in the name of discipline.
Another law was also amended to strengthen the ability of child welfare centers to “intervene” in abuse cases by separating staff members in charge of taking children into protective custody from those dealing with their guardians.
Though there are no penalties for offenders, the revised abuse prevention law states that parents, foster parents and heads of child welfare centers are banned from physically punishing children while attempting to discipline them.
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