Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Henry Rollins: Trump Might Be the Last Person in the Room to Know He's Fucked (LA Weekly)
Comrade Trump is in so many ways the perfect mark. You loan him money he'll never be able to pay back and compliment his greatness and he hops into your boat, unaware of the hook in his mouth, thinking you're lucky he's giving you the time of day.
Lucy Mangan: "Roasting a chicken, Facebook privacy settings, Doomsday prep: life skills all school kids should learn" (The Guardian)
Experts say children need to be taught more about breastfeeding - but are there other real-world lessons they should be getting too?
"Brace yourself - it's time we had the baby chat": Lucy Mangan on why it's fine to not want children (Stylist)
In a recent interview, Winfrey said: "I didn't want babies. I wouldn't have been a good mom for babies. I don't have the patience. I have the patience for puppies, but that's a quick stage!" It's a rare and valuable corrective (especially from a figure as high- profile and influential as Oprah, and as Oprah knows herself to be) to the insidious assumption that all women should be having babies and that we will all regret it if we don't.
Lucy Mangan: "Apathy is domestic violence's biggest ally" (Stylist)
You know what I don't understand? People who don't understand. And the people who only manage to understand when presented with a situation that has been pushed to an absolute clear-cut extreme I find the least understandable of all. The latest example to have me gnashing my teeth and climbing the walls is the story of Geeta and Neetu Mahour, who made headlines recently because they have been living with the man - husband and father respectively, Inderjeet - who, 25 years ago, poured acid on them as they slept.
Hadley Freeman: Welcome to Gwyneth's Goop 'mudroom'. But does it sell rose quartz vaginal eggs? (The Guardian)
Now, making fun of Paltrow is so easy it's not so much shooting fish in a barrel as taking an AK-47 to a goldfish in a tea cup, and, because this column has never shied away from the obvious, Paltrow has featured here two or 17 million times before.
Taylor Swift: judge dismisses DJ's case against pop singer (Associated Press)
Judge rules David Mueller failed to prove Taylor Swift personally set out to have him fired after 2013 photo opportunity.
Arwa Mahdawi: Taylor Swift is tough, cool and in control. Unlike Donald Trump (The Guardian)
The last few days have seen a temperamental Trump tweet the world closer to world war III. The president has been emotional, voluble and reckless - traits one would tolerate in a toddler but which are treacherous in a head of state. Presenting a far more presidential demeanor, however, has been Taylor Swift. This week, the pop star has been settling a score of her own in a Denver courthouse. And while the White House may be a hot mess, Swift has been the picture of cool, collected and courageous. If Trump wants to learn what tough really looks like, he could do with taking some lessons from Tay-Tay.
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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/Suggestions
Current Events
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Patriot Act
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
THE COWARD-IN-CHIEF.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?
"LOVE YOUR ENEMY." "TURN THE OTHER CHEEK."
TRUMP IS THE "FASCIST JESUS."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Marine layer heading this way.
Donates $1M To Flint Water Crisis
Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars said Saturday he is donating $1 million from his Michigan concert to aid those affected by the Flint water crisis.
The Grammy-winning star told the audience at his show in Auburn Hills, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Detroit, that he and tour promoter Live Nation are redirecting funds from the show to the charity The Community Foundation of Greater Flint.
In 2014, Flint switched water sources and failed to add corrosion-reducing phosphates, allowing lead from old pipes to leach into the water. Elevated levels of lead, a neurotoxin, were detected in children, and 12 people died in a Legionnaires' disease outbreak that experts suspect was linked to the improperly treated water.
"I'm very thankful to the Michigan audience for joining me in supporting this cause," Mars said in a statement. "Ongoing challenges remain years later for Flint residents, and it's important that we don't forget our brothers and sisters affected by this disaster."
Bruno Mars
Visits Tombstone
Val Kilmer
Val Kilmer rode through the streets of Tombstone in a horse-drawn wagon to the chants of "We love you Val!" on Saturday as the actor returned to the Old West town that was the setting of one of his most famous roles.
Kilmer came to Tombstone for the "Doc Holli-Days" event to celebrate the life of gunslinger Doc Holliday, whom Kilmer played in the 1993 movie "Tombstone." He also met with fans and was to attend a party to mark Holliday's birthday on Aug. 14.
Kilmer wore a cowboy hat, sunglasses and bright green shoes as he was led through town in the 1880s coach.
The town saw a surge in popularity after the hit 1993 movie "Tombstone," starring Kilmer, Kurt Russell and Sam Elliot. The movie was filmed at various locations in Arizona, but not in Tombstone.
Kilmer visited the town during the making of the movie but hadn't been back since.
Val Kilmer
Criticizes Trump's Reaction
Scaramucci
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci had harsh words for Donald Trump's (R-Buffoon) reaction to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend.
Scaramucci spoke to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' "This Week" today in his first television interview since his whirlwind 11-day stint in the White House.
"I wouldn't have recommended that statement," Scaramucci said of Trump's words on Saturday from Bedminster, New Jersey. "I think he would have needed to have been much harsher."
"With the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out," Scaramucci said, referring to Trump's seeming unwillingness to condemn the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, where clashes between white nationalists and counter-protest groups forced the city to declare a state of emergency Saturday.
Scaramucci went on to criticize the influence of the website Breitbart and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who was the executive chairman of Breitbart before joining the Trump campaign and later the administration, saying that there's "this sort of 'Bannon-bart' influence" in the White House that he thinks "is a snag on the president."
Scaramucci
Like A 'Half Wit' Saudi Prince
Ivanka Trump
An Indian diplomat likened Ivanka Trump to a "half wit" Saudi prince after it was revealed that the president's eldest daughter would be representing the U.S. at an international entrepreneurship summit.
On Thursday, Donald Trump (R-Profiteer) announced that his eldest (sic) daughter would head the U.S. delegation at November's Global Entrepreneurship Summit in southern India, a three-day event designed to encourage collaboration and "lasting relationships" between American business leaders and investors with international counterparts, according to a statement released by the U.S. State Department.
Bobby Gosh, editor of the Hindustan Times tweeted that an Indian diplomat, whose name he didn't reveal, remarked on Ivanka: "We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit Saudi princes. It's in our national interest to flatter them."
Gosh added: "Yes, it is a shame that the U.S. should be compared to a kingdom. But that is America's shame, not Modi's, or India's."
Ethics experts have accused Trump of nepotism for appointing his daughter to a White House role. However Trump spokesman Jason Miller has claimed that the appointment is above reproach since Ivanka is unpaid for her advisory role.
Ivanka Trump
Slam T-rump
Republicans
Donald Trump (R-Crooked) has condemned the "egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" during clashes between white supremacists and anti-fascist protesters in Virginia.
In a speech, the US President did not specifically condemn the far-right groups who gathered in Charlottesville - including some carrying assault rifles and wearing paramilitary-style clothing - to protest about plans to remove a statue to Confederate General Robert E Lee.
Instead he appeared to apportion blame to all those involved in the fighting.
This sparked outrage among some leading Republicans with Senator Orrin Hatch writing that his brother "didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home".
A Republican senator from Colorado, Cory Gardner, tweeted "Mr President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism."
Republicans
Pushes Back
White House
After coming under fire from all sides of the political spectrum for his response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va., the White House said on Sunday that Donald Trump (R-Corrupt) "condemns all forms of violence" - including hate groups.
"The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry, and hatred," read the statement issued by an unnamed White House spokesperson. "Of course that includes white supremacists, KKK neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together."
Trump responded to the incidents during a previously-scheduled press event at his golf club in New Jersey Saturday afternoon, saying "many sides" were to blame. The president later tweeted "condolences" to the families of the victims. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle blasted Trump for not explicitly condemning the white supremacists involved.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides," the president said on Saturday. "On many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America."
White House
False Flag Says Alex Jones
Charlottesville
George Soros did it. Or maybe it was the Deep State. That was the reaction of the far right to Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left three dead. Even as images played on television of James Alex Fields, Jr., plowing his car into a crowd protesting the Unite the Right rally, a counter-narrative was coalescing on the Internet that offered a competing reality, one that had little grounding in confirmable fact.
For the extreme right, Charlottesville was not a cautionary tale about emboldened white supremacists who appear to have found troubling succor in the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump. Instead, the entire Unite the Right rally was potentially a false flag perpetrated by the Democrats and their enablers in the Deep State, a nonexistent figment of the right-wing imagination that invokes a network of career federal and military officials seeking to bring down Donald Trump. A global network of elites, many of them Jewish, may also have been involved, according to this version of events.
Jones presented his depressingly predictable explanation of what transpired in Charlottesville in a video posted on Saturday. "EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Riots Staged To Bring In Martial Law, Ban Conservative Gatherings," the headline read. The video was an hour-long diatribe against some of Jones's favorite targets, including liberal philanthropist George Soros, Black Lives Matter, globalists, elitists, the Democrats, the Republicans and anarchists, among many others. However, Jones failed to provide even remotely compelling evidence that anyone of these forces was directly responsible for the weekend's violence (Fields killed one woman with his car, while two Virginia State Police officers died when their helicopter crashed en route to Charlottesville).
At one point, Jones appeared to suggest that the Southern Poverty Law Center was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Jones also claimed that the media had failed to cover widespread assaults on families of Trump supporters in Washington, D.C., during January's presidential inauguration.
Charlottesville
'E-Residency'
Estonia
As Brits brace for the upheaval that Brexit could bring, some are turning to Estonia's e-residency digital ID programme to keep doing business across the European Union.
Using its knack for digital innovation to capitalise on the global explosion in e-commerce, the small cyber-savvy Baltic eurozone state became the first country to offer e-residency identification cards to people worldwide in 2014.
Touted as a "trans-national government-issued digital identity", e-residency allows users to open a business in the EU and then run it remotely with the ability to declare taxes and sign documents digitally.
It does not provide citizenship, tax residency, physical residency or the right to travel to Estonia. Applications can be made online via the www.howtostayin.eu website and cost 100 euros ($112).
Just over 22,000 people from 138 countries across the globe have become e-residents so far, including around 1,200 Brits and last year's Brexit vote triggered a boom in applications from the UK.
Estonia
Weekend Box Office
'Annabelle: Creation'
The "Conjuring" spinoff "Annabelle: Creation" scared up an estimated $35 million in North American theaters over the weekend, making it easily the top film and giving the lagging August box office a shot in the arm.
The opening came close to matching the film's predecessor, "Annabelle," which opened with $37.1 million in October 2014. Warner Bros. could celebrate not only the month's biggest debut but also having the week's top two films. Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" followed in second with $11.4 million in its fourth weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Last week's top film, the poorly received Stephen King adaptation "The Dark Tower," slid dramatically. The Sony Pictures release, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, toppled nearly 60 percent on its second weekend with an estimated $7.9 million.
The week's other new entry, the Open Road animated release "Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature," edged just above "The Dark Tower" with $8.9 million. That was well below the 2014 debut of the original, "The Nut Job," which opened with $19.4 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers also are included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Annabelle: Creation," $35 million ($35 million international).
2. "Dunkirk," $11.4 million ($14.5 million international).
3. "Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature," $8.9 million.
4. "The Dark Tower," $7.9 million ($7.9 million international).
5. "The Emoji Movie," $6.6 million ($14.1 million international).
6. "Girls Trip," $6.5 million ($1.4 million international).
7. "Spider-Man: Homecoming," $6.1 million ($12.4 million international).
8. "Kidnap," $5.2 million.
9. "Glass Castle," $4.9 million.
10. "Atomic Blonde," $4.6 million ($5.2 million international).
'Annabelle: Creation'
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