Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Andrew Tobias: How The DNC Is Investing Your Money
The DNC has enhanced its voter file with the purchase of 94 million more cell phone numbers … has identified 25 million likely Democratic voters who are not yet registered … has funded registration of Puerto Ricans displaced to Florida and Pennsylvania … is raising millions in small-dollar contributions directly for candidates in tough races (including special-election winners like Doug Jones and Conor Lamb) … is providing cybersecurity guidance to the state parties …and a lot more.
100 Days Out: 10 DNC Efforts You Need to Know About
With 99 days to go to Election Day, the DNC is working to help elect Democrats up and down the ticket. The New DNC has completely changed its approach from being a committee that showed up every four years to one that organizes and mobilizes 365 days a year, every year.
Andrew Tobias: "Corrections: 4.1% …"
So you can see why Trump's popularity among Republicans is - as he noted this past weekend - is the highest in history. (Except that Eisenhower's and Reagan's popularity was higher among Republicans at this point in their first terms.) And why a state like Wisconsin - that he proudly notes hadn't gone Republican since 1952 - chose him in 2016. (The only slight correction to that presidential statement is that Wisconsin went Republican in 1956 and 1960 and 1968 and 1972 and 1980 and 1984.)
Tom Danehy: Tom pens open letters to the KGUN-9 newsroom, people who parent pets and Congresswoman Martha McSally (Tucson Weekly)
So, your Orwellian stunt of a local newscast without sports has effectively run us off. Let me know if you ever come back to being American.
Andy Humm: "Young Friends Offered 'Late-Life Renaissance'" (Gay City News NYC)
Peters, a 28-year-old filmmaker, wrote in an email, "His charm was disarming, even at the end of his life. When I spoke with him on the phone after his terminal cancer diagnosis, he spoke about his life and perspective on dying. He said he's older than dirt, nothing is new anymore, he feels ready, and that if he knew so many people would be calling and giving him attention, he would have died sooner. 'If I knew dying was this fun, I would have done it years ago!' Then he gave his unmistakable laugh you could recognize from across a crowded bar."
Andy Humm: "Dick Leitsch: Gay Before People Were Gay" (Gay City News NYC)
Dick Leitsch, who as president of the Mattachine Society, a pre-Stonewall gay group, participated in the first act of gay civil disobedience in 1966, worked to end entrapment of gay men by the police, and wrote the first eyewitness report on the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, died June 22 in Manhattan after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 83.
Joe Bob Briggs: The Loneliness of the Cord Cutter (Taki's Magazine)
There's a theater in the little Greek town of Epidaurus that seats 14,000 people. It has perfect acoustics. It's where people gather to tell stories, hear stories, and discuss stories, sometimes with music, sometimes with dance, sometimes with costumes, sometimes just with words. This was true 2,300 years ago and it's still true today.
Joe Bob Briggs: The Ghoul Was Truly Cool (Taki's Magazine)
On the day Zacherle was scheduled, an ex-Marine working as best boy came up to me at eight in the morning to find out when John would be there. When Zacherle arrived, about six of the toughest hombres I've ever worked with lined up to get his autograph. Zacherle cheerfully amused them with puns and old bits that he'd been doing for 30 years, then told me he was at my service. And he was. He was a soldier. He was there to work and amuse. He didn't care that we were working on a crappy insert stage because his whole life had been on a crappy insert stage, and he knew the journey was not about the stage, it was about the life and joy you created while you were standing on it.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
This Wonkette look at Manafort's hideous and tacky wardrobe purchases was good for lots of laughs for me:
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
BS ON MEGHAN!
"COMPASSION FATIGUE."
COLLUSION IS "NO BIG DEAL."
DOES THE RUSSIAN MOB OWN TRUMP?
THE REPUGS JUST DONT GIVE A SHIT!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Skunk's back.
Story Published For First Time
Ernest Hemingway
The themes and trappings are familiar for an Ernest Hemingway narrative: Paris, wartime, talk of books and wine and the scars of battle.
But the story itself has been little known beyond the scholarly community for decades: "A Room on the Garden Side," written in 1956, is being published for the first time. The brief, World War II-era fiction appears this week in the summer edition of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly which has released obscure works by Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and others.
"Hemingway's deep love for his favorite city as it is just emerging from Nazi occupation is on full display, as are the hallmarks of his prose," Strand Managing Editor Andrew F. Gulli wrote in an editorial note.
Kirk Curnutt, a board member of The Hemingway Society, contributed an afterword for the Strand, saying that "the story contains all the trademark elements readers love in Hemingway."
"A Room on the Garden Side" takes place in the Ritz hotel (Hemingway liked to say that he liberated the Ritz bar) and is narrated by a Hemingway stand-in called Robert who shares the author's own nickname - Papa. Robert and his entourage drink wine, quote from Baudelaire and debate "the dirty trade of war."
Ernest Hemingway
Israeli Court Sentences Arab Poet
Dareen Tatour
The father of an Israeli Arab poet who was sentenced to five months in prison for incitement to violence online said Wednesday that the ruling was unjust.
An Israeli court sentenced Dareen Tatour, 36, a resident of a village near Nazareth in northern Israel, to five months in prison on Tuesday for social media posts she made in 2015 during a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
"This is not justice," Tawfiq Tatour told The Associated Press. "We brought the court strong examples of Jews inciting against Arabs on social media, Jews who call for killing and burning Arabs, but the court didn't accept that. This is blatant discrimination against Arabs."
Dareen Tatour's case drew international attention after Israeli authorities arrested her in 2015 and put her under extended house arrest for her poems. More than 150 literary figures, including authors Alice Walker and Naomi Klein, called for Tatour's release. Critics called her arrest a violation of freedom of expression.
Critics of Tatour's trial proceedings, such as the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper, have pointed out that Jewish authors of social media posts and publications calling for violence against Arabs have not met similar treatment in Israel's legal system. The paper published an editorial on Wednesday saying Tatour's sentence was "another drop in the sea of political persecution of opponents of the occupation."
Dareen Tatour
Drops off Social Media
Fan Bingbing
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has disappeared from social media amid rumors she is the target of a tax evasion investigation.
Fan is usually a prolific user of China's main microblogging service Weibo, but her account hasn't been updated since June 2, when she wrote about the work of her charitable foundation.
Her boyfriend, actor Li Chen, has not updated his account since July 6.
Fan has appeared in dozens of movies and TV series in China, but is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014's "X-Men: Days of Future Past."
Criminal cases can be career-ending for Chinese celebrities because authorities, who have control over what content is released, have ordered offenders blacklisted.
Fan Bingbing
Fires Chief Conductor
Royal Dutch Orchestra
The chief conductor at Amsterdam's renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Daniele Gatti, has been fired because of allegations of sexual harassment, the orchestra said on Thursday.
Gatti dismissed the allegations as a "smear campaign" and said he had asked his lawyers to protect his reputation.
"He asked me to inform all media that he is extremely surprised and that he firmly denies all sorts of allegations," a statement sent by attorney Alberto Borbon said.
The allegations first arose in an article on July 26 in the Washington Post, in which female singers accused Gatti of groping and other inappropriate sexual behavior.
Gatti joined the Concertgebouw Orchestra in September 2016.
Royal Dutch Orchestra
Rules Out Death Penalty
Pope Frankie
Pope Francis has decreed that the death penalty is "inadmissible" under all circumstances and the Catholic Church should campaign to abolish it, a change in church teaching that could influence Catholic politicians and judges in the U.S. and across the globe.
The change, announced Thursday, was hailed by anti-death penalty activists and scorned by Francis' frequent conservative critics, who said he had no right to change what Scripture revealed and popes have taught for centuries.
The Vatican said that Francis had amended the Catechism of the Catholic Church - the compilation of official Catholic teaching - to say that capital punishment can never be sanctioned because it constitutes an "attack" on the dignity of human beings.
Previously, the catechism said the church didn't exclude recourse to capital punishment "if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." Past popes have upheld that position, though St. John Paul II began urging an end to the practice and stressed that the guilty were just as deserving of dignity as innocents.
The new teaching says the previous policy is outdated because there are new ways to protect the common good, and the church should instead commit itself to working to end capital punishment.
Pope Frankie
Activists Brace
Abortion-Rights
Abortion-rights advocates are intensifying efforts to make it easier for women to get abortions amid a new wave of state-level bans and restrictions expected to occur under a reconfigured U.S. Supreme Court.
The efforts include boosting financial aid for women needing to travel long distances to get an abortion, and raising awareness about the option of do-it-yourself abortions.
The sense of urgency stems from the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes provided the decisive vote in support of abortion rights, and the possibility that Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by President Donald Trump to replace him, would give the court an anti-abortion majority.
Advocates anticipate new limits on abortion access in red states that are emboldened by the prospect of a more solidly conservative court. The Republican-led states want more latitude in the courts to impose far-reaching abortion restrictions while hoping that a lawsuit on the issue makes its way to the Supreme Court and is the case that ultimately overturns Roe v. Wade - the 1973 establishing a nationwide right to abortion.
If Roe were overturned, abortion-rights advocates anticipate that 20 or more states would ban most abortions. Women in those states might face long and costly interstate journeys to reach an abortion provider, or they could avail themselves of information about how to self-induce an abortion.
Abortion-Rights
Learn By Eavesdropping
Birds
For birds, understanding neighborhood gossip about an approaching hawk or brown snake can mean the difference between life or death.
Wild critters are known to listen to each other for clues about lurking predators, effectively eavesdropping on other species' chatter. Birds, for example, can learn to flee when neighbors cluck "hawk!" - or, more precisely, emit a distress call.
The fairy wren, a small Australian songbird, is not born knowing the "languages" of other birds. But it can master the meaning of a few key "words," as scientists explain in a paper published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
"We knew before that some animals can translate the meanings of other species' 'foreign languages,' but we did not know how that 'language learning' came about," said Andrew Radford, a biologist at the University of Bristol and co-author of the study.
Birds have several ways of acquiring life skills. Some knowledge is innate, and some is acquired from direct experience. Radford and other scientists are exploring a third kind of knowledge: acquiring information from peers.
Birds
Top 20
Global Concert Tours
The Top 20 Global Concert Tours ranks artists by average box office gross per city and includes the average ticket price for shows Worldwide. The list is based on data provided to the trade publication Pollstar by concert promoters and venue managers. Week of August 1, 2018:
1. Taylor Swift; $11,730,037; $125.71.
2. The Rolling Stones; $9,164,090; $159.17.
3. Jay-Z / Beyoncé; $5,840,059; $100.57.
4. Bruno Mars; $4,887,949; $168.97.
5. U2; $3,617,679; $140.39.
6. Eagles; $3,100,456; $160.09.
7. Justin Timberlake; $3,069,580; $143.05.
8. Pink; $2,817,430; $139.90.
9. Kenny Chesney; $2,655,157; $86.30.
10. Metallica; $2,142,342; $106.87.
11. Roger Waters; $2,109,517; $99.46.
12. "Springsteen On Broadway"; $2,048,515; $508.54.
13. Dead & Company; $1,851,597; $70.98.
14. Foo Fighters; $1,849,491; $90.81.
15. Jennifer Lopez; $1,782,586; $186.91.
16. The Killers; $1,396,762; $68.77.
17. Katy Perry; $1,354,473; $78.83.
18. Luis Miguel; $1,351,881; $113.49.
19. Journey / Def Leppard; $1,316,708; $95.85.
20. Romeo Santos; $1,295,130; $85.89.
Global Concert Tours
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