Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Worthy of Our Contempt (NY Times)
The civic irresponsibility of indulging your feelings in the age of Trump.
Paul Mason: Are we living through another 1930s? (The Guardian)
As daunting events come thick and fast amid increasing public racism and xenophobia, the similarities with the buildup to the second world war are real, but we can take hope from a few key differences.
Michele Hanson: Please let's not send Europeans away - we need them for the NHS (The Guardian)
Our poor health system is having a tough time, but things are only going to get worse if we have an exodus of staff.
Ann Robinson: Is your gut making you sick? (The Guardian)
New research suggests that the range and quantity of microbes that live in our guts could have a powerful effect on a range of conditions including depression, MS and obesity.
3 a.m. | The SIMPSONS (YouTube)
Marge and Homer Simpson wrestle with the choice in this election.
Willa Paskin: Sarah Silverman Singlehandedly Made the Case for the Value of Celebrities at Political Conventions (Slate)
And it was Silverman, a stand-up comic, who showed what the right celebrity can do in the right circumstance: handle a crowd.
David Ferguson: Chelsea Clinton is right: A Wrinkle in Time is amazing (The Guardian)
When she mentioned the book in her DNC speech, it shot up the bestseller lists. I'm excited to think of all the young minds who will embark on its journey.
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"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
wrote:
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Cooper's Hawks
Hey Marty,
Enjoyed your Cooper's Hawk photo. I get them in my backyard in the heart of Dallas pretty often. Mostly looking for a drink from my birdbath. Pretty funny; usually I have lots of birds hanging out, but when the hawks show up it's totally deserted.
Ken
Thanks, Ken!
That's a great shot!
Here are a few more from the kid...
(Click on image for a larger version)
Reader Comment
Worth Repeating
It is worth repeating
I think Bart had this up years ago. It's worth repeating.
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
DONALD TRUMP THE LIAR!
DONALD TRUMP THE LIAR! PART TWO.
SHAKE IT UP BABY!
THE GIRL FROM SLUTSYLVANIA
DONALD TRUMP THE TRAITOR!
THIS IS GOOD NEWS!
MAKE SURE TRUMP GETS A COPY!
PRESIDENT WHACKO? NO THANKS!
"CITIZEN VAIN"
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Whole degree cooler today!
HBO Confirms
'Game of Thrones'
Even though Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss previously hinted that HBO's award-winning series only had about 15 or so episodes left, HBO over the weekend confirmed that the beloved fantasy drama will draw to a final and likely bloody conclusion after season 8.
Speaking at the Television Critics Association's press tour this Saturday, HBO's new chief of programming Casey Bloys said that HBO will not seek to extend the show beyond what Weiss and Benioff currently envision.
"Yes, [Weiss and Benioff] have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do," Bloys said in remarks transcribed by Entertainment Weekly. "Believe me, as the new [programming executive] coming in, if I could get them to do more, I would take 10 seasons. But we want to take their lead on what they think they can do and what the best version of the show is."
So now the question becomes: just how many episodes of Game of Thrones truly remain?
While Weiss and Benioff said that they would ideally like to put together just 15 more episodes, that plan would result in a rather short 5-6 episode arc for either season 7 or season 8. Fans of the series, however, might find solace in the fact that while season 8 will be the show's last, HBO relayed that the exact number of episodes remaining is still up in the air.
'Game of Thrones'
Family Wins Defamation Appeal
Real-Life 'Pianist'
The family of the late Jewish-Polish protagonist of Oscar-winning Holocaust film "The Pianist" said Monday they had won an appeal against defamation over claims in a book that he was a Nazi collaborator.
Wladyslaw Szpilman's widow and son brought the case in Warsaw's appeals court after losing the initial complaint in September 2013.
The family took issue with certain quotes by Polish-Jewish singer Wiera Gran in a 2010 biography of her life, written by Agata Tuszynska.
The popular late ghetto songstress was herself suspected of collaborating with the Nazis. A court acquitted her of the charges after the war but continued criticism forced her to leave Poland.
In the original court case, ghetto survivors who knew Szpilman testified and rejected Gran's claims, as did former foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who helped Jews during World War II.
Real-Life 'Pianist'
Released From Prison After 7 Years
Cameron Douglas
Cameron Douglas, the son of Michael Douglas, was released from prison after serving seven years for drug charges, a rep for the actor confirmed to ABC News.
Cameron Douglas, 37, was sentenced to five years in prison on drug charges back in 2010, but was given additional time after he was caught smuggling drugs into a correctional facility.
The "Wall Street" actor's son, himself an actor and DJ, had pleaded guilty to selling bulk quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine at Manhattan's upscale Hotel Gansevoort in 2009.
Cameron Douglas, the only child from his father's 22-year marriage to Diandra Douglas, has had a life riddled with legal trouble and addiction.
Cameron Douglas
Solar-Powered Television
Kenya
Violet Mwikali's new television has not just brought entertainment to her home. It has ushered in peace, too.
"The whining has stopped now. I was put on the spot for a while as my two children went to the neighbors' to watch television," Mwikali said as she adjusted her new 16-inch solar-powered television.
Mwikali is one of many residents of Lukenya in Machakos County, east of Nairobi, who have bought televisions from M-KOPA Solar, a Nairobi-based company that sells solar-powered products in places not connected to the national energy grid.
The digital flat-screen television, added to the product line in February, comes with a solar panel and a portable battery that also controls a lighting unit and has a socket for charging mobile phones.
The whole M-KOPA kit, including the television set, costs about $530, and customers make an initial payment of up to $79, followed by instalments of as little as $1 a day.
Kenya
Guns And Memories
University of Texas
Half a century ago, a sniper perched on a University of Texas tower unleashed a killing spree that left 16 dead, and for the first time since then the school will hold an official memorial for an event that shocked the nation.
But overshadowing the anniversary of the Aug. 1, 1966 tower shooting is the start of a new law backed by Republican lawmakers to allow more guns in more places at public universities.
The lawmakers say the "campus carry" law, which goes into effect August 1, could prevent another mass shooting, while many survivors of the university tower shooting half a century ago see it as a chillingly wrong-headed approach that could spark more killing.
"Guns do not have a place on campus. A university is a battleground of words and ideas, and not of weapons," said John "Artly" Fox. In 1966, he was a 17-year-old student who crossed one of the killing fields on campus to help carry a pregnant woman shot by sniper Charles Whitman to safety.
The Texas shooting in which Whitman, a 25-year-old former Marine who brought a cache of weapons to the tower's observation deck about 250 feet (76 meters) in the air, was considered one of the seminal events of the era and the first U.S. mass shooting of live, national TV news.
University of Texas
Turns Away From Lumpy
Koch Network
Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has declared that his expansive political network would not support Donald Trump, questioning whether the Republican presidential nominee believes in free markets.
During an exclusive gathering with some of the nation's most powerful Republican donors Sunday, the 80-year-old conservative icon also dismissed as "a blood libel" any suggestion he might support Democrat Hillary Clinton.
With Election Day just three months away, Koch and his chief lieutenants openly refused to support the Republican presidential nominee, focusing their tremendous resources instead on helping the GOP win competitive Senate contests in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Details on Koch's decision emerged Sunday, the second day of a three-day gathering for donors who promise to give at least $100,000 each year to the various groups backed by the Koch brothers' Freedom Partners - a network of education, policy and political entities that aims to promote a smaller, less intrusive government.
The decision was welcomed by many of the 400 donors who attended the weekend retreat, even though "a reasonably significant" number of attendees wanted the Koch network to support Trump, said Chris Wright, a Colorado-based energy entrepreneur.
Koch Network
Dirty Cop Withdraws Guilty Plea
Lee Baca
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca on Monday withdrew his guilty plea to a charge of lying to investigators, opting instead to face trial in a corruption case that clouded his final years as chief custodian of the nation's largest jail system.
Baca, 74, was permitted to back out of his plea deal after a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that a six-month prison term recommended by prosecutors as part of the agreement - far less than the five-year maximum penalty - was too lenient.
Baca served as the top elected law enforcement official in Los Angeles for 15 years before retiring in January 2014 amid a federal investigation of inmate abuse and other wrongdoing, including cover-up attempts, at two downtown lockups.
He pleaded guilty in February to a charge of making false statements to investigators when he asserted in 2013 that he had no prior knowledge of his deputies' efforts to harass a Federal Bureau of Investigations agent and thwart a criminal probe of his department.
Specifically, Baca admitted he actually was aware that his deputies planned to intimidate the agent and that he had directed them to "do everything but put handcuffs" on her, his plea agreement stated.
Lee Baca
Ancient Greek Site
Shackled Remains
At least 80 skeletons lie in a mass grave in an ancient Greek cemetery, their wrists clamped by iron shackles.
They are the victims, say archaeologists, of a mass execution. But who they were, how they got there and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect - that all remains a mystery.
They were found earlier this year in part of the Falyron Delta necropolis - a large ancient cemetery unearthed during the construction of a national opera house and library between downtown Athens and the port of Piraeus.
The experts hope DNA testing and research by anthropologists will uncover exactly how the rows of people died. Whatever happened was violent - most had their arms bound above their heads, the wrists tied together.
But the orderly way they have been buried suggest these were more than slaves or common criminals.
Shackled Remains
Gold Coins
'Double Eagle'
A federal appeals court on Monday said a cache of exceptionally rare gold coins stolen from the U.S. Mint in the 1930s belongs to the U.S. government, not the Pennsylvania family that possessed it for decades.
By a 9-3 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said Joan Langbord and her sons Roy and David cannot keep the 10 "double eagle" 1933 $20 gold pieces, estimated to be worth several million dollars each.
Monday's decision could end a decade-long battle that began after the Langbords, heirs to late Philadelphia jeweler Israel Switt, found the coins in a safe deposit box and asked the Mint to authenticate them, only to have them seized in 2004.
The coins were among 445,500 double eagles struck by the Philadelphia Mint, but never circulated as President Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard.
Most were melted down but some were smuggled out, including one sold to Egypt's King Farouk and later in a 2002 auction for $7.6 million.
'Double Eagle'
In Memory
Anne of Romania
Anne of Romania, the loyal and modest wife of Romania's last monarch, King Michael, has died, Romania's royal house said. She was 92.
Michael, 94, who is suffering from cancer, visited her every day, and she received the last rites on Sunday, the statement said.
Born Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma, she met Michael in November 1947 when they had both come for the wedding of the future Queen Elizabeth II and Philip Mountbatten in London.
In a 2013 documentary with Romanian public broadcaster TVR, Anne said she was formally introduced to Michael, who was in uniform, at a reception at Claridge's Hotel in London and she responded by clicking her heels and standing to attention. She said he proposed to her soon afterward, while driving.
Michael returned to Romania, and was forced to abdicate by the communists on Dec. 30, 1947, and moved into exile. He returned after communism ended and Anne's first visit to Romania was in Easter 1992.
The couple got married in an Orthodox ceremony in Athens in 1948 after Pope Pius XII refused to give Anne, who was half French and half Danish, dispensation to marry a non-Catholic. In 1966, they had another ceremony in a Catholic church in Monaco.
When she was younger, Anne studied painting in New York and later volunteered for the French Army during WWII.
She will have the most lavish royal funeral in Romania since the death in 1938 of Queen Marie, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Anne is survived by Michael and their five daughters.
Anne of Romania
In Memory
Gloria DeHaven
Gloria DeHaven, the daughter of vaudeville stars who carved out her own successful career as the bright-eyed, vivacious star of Hollywood musicals and comedies of the 1940s and '50s, died Saturday in Las Vegas. She was 91.
As an MGM contract player, the attractive DeHaven also posed for her share of bathing suit pictures, which made her a pinup favorite of GIs during World War II.
As a teenager, she toured with big bands led by Bing Crosby's brother Bob and others. An MGM talent scout spotted her at a concert in Texas.
After minor roles in "Best Foot Forward" and "Broadway Rhythm," DeHaven achieved stardom in 1944's "Two Girls and a Sailor," in which she and June Allyson played sisters vying for the affections of Van Johnson.
MGM went on to employ DeHaven frequently as the second lead in such lightweight films as "Summer Holiday," ''Summer Stock," ''The Yellow Cab Man" (with Red Skelton) and "Three Little Words," the biopic of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. In the latter film, she portrayed her own mother.
DeHaven never achieved the top stardom Allyson and Kathryn Grayson enjoyed in musical movies for MGM, but had better luck at other studios, starring with Donald O'Connor in "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby," Tony Curtis in "So This Is Paris" and Glenn Ford in "The Doctor and the Girl."
With her movie career waning in the 1950s, DeHaven turned to television and theater. She hosted ABC's 15-minute "Gloria DeHaven Show," appeared on numerous variety specials and became a regular on
She also starred in the series "Nakia," ''Delta House" and "Girl Talk" and played lengthy roles in the soap operas "Ryan's Hope" and "As the World Turns."
After a decades-long absence, DeHaven returned to films in 1997 with "Out at Sea," playing a mature woman who has a shipboard romance with Jack Lemmon.
In her youth, DeHaven often toured with her parents, a popular song-and-dance team billed in Broadway shows, vaudeville and silent movies as Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven. (Her mother's name was Flora Parker).
After the vaudeville era died, her father worked as an assistant director on Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." When 11-year-old Gloria visited her father on the set, Chaplin hired her to play Paulette Goddard's younger sister.
DeHaven was married and divorced four times, including twice to Florida auto dealer Richard Fincher.
She had two children, Kathy and Thomas, with her first husband, actor John Payne, and two with Fincher, Harry and Faith.
Gloria DeHaven
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