GLOBAL GARBAGE MAN DAY UPDATES
Hooray and Thank-You to Everyone Who Clears Out Our Trash Cans, Dumpsters, Recycling Bins, and Compost Containers!
-"CONVICTED - 34 FELONIES ... LIABLE FOR SEXUAL ASSAULT ... COMMITTED FINANCIAL FRAUD ..." so posts the words on an ad released by the Biden campaign this morning accurately describing the up-to-date results of the last few years of filed and recognized legal judgments and verdicts against the MAGAGOP PartyCult's candidate, Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist). Of course, there are always slants that can be taken, such as the New York Times' headline describing the ad in which their crack reporting staff, still under the influence of the publisher still butt-hurt about Biden not honoring the Gray Lady with an interview, describes the ad as ... "Paint(ing) Trump as a Felon."
-This at least acknowledges something bad about Trump - unlike the MAGA Press, who continues to attempt to flog a "four-Pinocchio" video from the G7 Summit that uses Biden talking to paratroopers at a ceremony as if he was wandering outside a senior home unsupervised. The story - also still being pushed by Sinclair Media Group - is being accompanied by a new story first claiming Biden had to be led off stage by Barack Obama at the end of the Biden fundraiser in Hollywood (they walked off arm in arm because they are FRIENDS) and, even worse, now claiming Biden defecated himself either at the benefit or overseas (again, uh ... no - and this clearly counters stories that have circulated for at least a decade about Trump's bowel issues and constant literal body stink).
-Your 2024 campaign, ladies and gentlemen!
-One of the subtexts of the building campaign are Trump's plans for a second term should he get back in power. Many of those plans are tied to Project 2025, a literal blue print created by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other hard-right 'think tanks' designed to gut the civil service and centralize power in Trump and the executive in order to take the U.S. into Catholic/Christian theocracy and apartheid (with, as always, tax cuts for the richest of the rich). This all sounds like hyperbole, and yesterday an easy-to-access primer of what it would do was featured on LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER, the excerpts and entire episode of which should be available by midweek at the absolute latest. Do look it up - it has that John Oliver humor while levelling facts and giving advice on things to do if you are upset (first and foremost: DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP).
-If you haven't taken a walk outside, there is a TON of weather going on across the country - and a lot of it nasty. A 'heat dome' settling in on the Midwest and spreading towards the East Coast is now expected to bring near-triple-digit temperatures across the area, with some cities likely to see their hottest weather in at least 30 years. On the West Coast, wildfires are beginning to ramp up around Los Angeles. And in Florida - where defeated MAGAGOP Presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis has literally forbidden the use of the term "climate change" while also presiding over a home insurance crisis (as in, nobody wants to sell homeowners in Florida insurance) - cities that last week got record torrential rainfall is expecting another set of storms with even more rain coming.
-As you try to stay cool and dry, keep all of this in mind - and remember, as part of Project 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency would be eliminated because the freaks who wrote it truly think there is a "climate crisis industry" they want to kill in order to drill baby drill and mine baby mine and who cares about weather extremes when we're all going to wind up in Heaven if you follow Trump anyway? (Again, this depiction is not as hyperbolic as you might think - watch the Oliver segment ...)
-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved his War Cabinet today - a move necessitated by the resignation of opposition party leader Benny Gantz as a protest to Netanyahu's tactics in trying to eliminate HAMAS by waging all-out war against Palestine, to horrific humanitarian effect. The move is not expected to end the conflict, though there has been a temporary hold to fighting in order to get aid to refugees while Netanyahu reorganizes the cabinet. The resignation of Gantz is also not expected to trigger an election in the near-term, though protests within Israel against Netanyahu continue.
-In social media news, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy floated a proposal to Congress that would require social media networks to display a 'warning' to users of social media about its potentially corrosive mental health effects. The warnings are patterned after similar warnings began to be printed on cigarette packages since the 1960s, and while Murthy admits such a warning is not likely to make most people stop their use, the hope is to make some at least take a breather - in short, the argument seems to be, it's better than nothing ...
-In movie news, the industry is breathing a bit of a sigh of relief after INSIDE OUT 2 grossed over $150 million in its first weekend of release - not for the success of the movie per se, but the movie becomes the first movie since BARBIE last year to gross over $100 million. Ever since last summer's box office duel of BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER, box office receipts have been very slow, particularly in the early summer season when two expected hits - BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES and FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA - both performed far below expectations (particularly FURIOSA, whose generally good reviews did not blossom into crowds and likely has ended the Mad Max saga of director George Miller, who was planning for one more prequel that is now likely not to ever be made). Perhaps because it's hot, or because there may not be much to see in the theatres (arguably outside DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE) or that thre is now so much to be seen on TV (HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, THE BEAR, NO MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, etc. etc. etc. ...), but this is shaping up to be one of the weaker box office summers in a long time ...
-In closing today's update, the Tony Awards were presented yesterday, with THE OUTSIDERS semi-surprisingly winning Best Musical, STEREOPHONIC unsurprisingly winning Best Play, and Hillary Clinton winning Best Presenter when she received a standing ovation before introducing a scene from SUFFS, a musical about the women's suffrage movement that won Tonys for Best Book and Best Score - and was up for Best Musical, with Clinton (who is a producer on the show) also up for Best Musical. It's always fun to tell the world folks like Clinton and Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are being nominated for and winning entertainment trophies - especially because it burn and burns and BURNS the fat and bloated gut of a certain Convicted Felon who absolutely hungers for acceptance from the arts communities, who will always righteously and hilariously shun him.
-But hey, Donnie, there are always the Razzies!
-On this date in 1775, revolutionaries fought British forces in the Battle of Bunker Hill. On this date in 1930, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff was imposed, leading the American economy even further into the Great Depression. On this date in 1972, five men hired by the Republican National Committee broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment/hotel complex in Washington, DC and were arrested for the break-in. On this date in 1994, O.J. Simpson led Los Angeles Police on a low-speed pursuit before he was arrested for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. And on this date in 2015, a white mass shooter killed nine members of a Black church in Charleston, SC.
Debuts on this date: Rubber (1837), BARNEY GOOGLE (1919), Iceland (1944).
-Happy Birthday to James Weldon Johnson, Igor Stravinsky, M.C. Escher, Ralph Bellamy, Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch, Barry Manilow, Greg Rolle, Mike Millury, Mark Linn-Baker, Bobby Farrelly, Jello Biafra, Thomas Haden Church, Greg Kinnear, Dan Jansen, Eric Stefani, Will Forte, Venus Williams, Jodie Whittaker, and Kendrick Lamar.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Maxwell Perkins, Swale, Kate Smith, Cyd Charisse, Rodney King, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Jean-Louis Trinitgnant.
-Feed the Worms: Degenerate House member and leader of the destruction of civility on Capitol Hill, Newt Gingrich and unfunny Trumper 'comic' Joe Piscopo entered Earth on this date.