Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Marc Dion: The Columnist's Cookbook (Creators Syndicate)
When readers send me emails, they often ask me for one of my favorite recipes. OK, so they don't. Usually when readers send me emails, they call me a "filthy communist," suggest that I move to another country, or sometimes offer to shoot me in case I'm too scared of guns to shoot myself.
Suzanne Moore: If kindness is not part of the socialist vocabulary, count me out (The Guardian)
The career of Tessa Jowell, who died last week, shows that kindness is smart, strategic - and sadly absent from public life right now.
Froma Harrop: Prosperity Exacts a Quality-of-Life Price (Creators Syndicate)
It's the craziest thing. Factory towns that bled both jobs and people still have a fine housing stock, cheap for lack of demand. Booming tech centers, meanwhile, attract battalions of newcomers despite their soaring housing costs and growing congestion. Can't something be worked out here?
Froma Harrop: California Keeps the Faith on Climate, Replacing Washington (Creators Syndicate)
Many on the right insist that California's tough environmental rules are strangling its businesses. Evidence to the contrary emerged last week in news that California has just zoomed past Britain to become the world's fifth-biggest economy. California must be doing something right. One of the things is vigorously confronting the perils of global warming. The Trump administration, married to fossil fuel interests, has gone AWOL in dealing with this threat to both the environment and global stability.
Ted Rall: Iran is Now On a Higher Moral Plane Than the U.S. (Creators Syndicate)
Honor matters. That's especially true in international diplomacy, the art of mitigating and resolving conflicts between nations that often don't share a common language, much less cultural or religious attitudes. When a nation as powerful as the United States, which has done more to shape the postwar international order then any other country - there's a reason that the United Nations is in New York - behaves dishonorably, it establishes a precedent whose repercussions will reverberate long after the crisis at hand is a distant memory.
Mark Shields: "Politics as (Un)usual" (Creators Syndicate)
These are the early returns from the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin. America is anything but united; any common ground between the politically warring camps is scarce. Sadly, even an authentic American hero who is almost certainly on his deathbed is not given the benefit of the doubt and instead is the target of political invective from fellow Republicans.
Lenore Skenazy: My, What Big Neuroses You Have! (Creators Syndicate)
If parents find an age-old story so traumatizing that they don't want their kids to read it, fine. Tuck it away for a later date. But treating kids in this generation as if they're more fragile than any other is insulting and untrue. Kids are as fragile as we make them. If generations have heard a story and turned around and told it to their own kids, it's probably a tale that should live happily ever after.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
responded:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
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
"THE DAY OF SHAME"
"SLINKY" IS GOING DOWN.
ERIK IS NOT A PRINCE.
CHRISTIAN HOCUS POCUS.
ROCKS IN HIS HEAD!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Marine layer so thick the sun never peeked through.
Film Festival 2018
Cannes
With a female-led jury and two highly acclaimed films by women at the forefront of the competition pack, this year's Palme d'Or was widely anticipated to strike a blow for sisterhood, at the climax of a Cannes Film Festival that often felt like it was struggling to catch up to the #MeToo and #TimesUp moment.
But in the end, Cate Blanchett and her fellow jurors opted to recognise a male director who has been painstakingly honing his craft for almost three decades: the Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose softly spoken family drama Shoplifters was presented with the most prestigious prize in world cinema at the Palais des Festivals earlier tonight.
Kore-eda has been a regular at Cannes since 2001, when his third film Distance screened in competition. But his only prize to date was the 2013 Prix du Jury for Like Father, Like Son. Shoplifters' triumph crowned a warmly received set of winners chosen by Blanchett's jury, which also included the directors Ava DuVernay, Denis Villeneuve, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Robert Guédiguian, the singer Khadja Nin, the actresses Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, and the actor Chang Chen.
Blanchett told journalists after the ceremony that she and her colleagues had sworn to keep wider political considerations out of the jury's discussions.
The Grand Prix went to Spike Lee for his satirical period drama BlacKkKlansman, which tells the true story of the African American police detective Ron Stallworth who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. The Prix du Jury - Cannes' unofficial third place honour - was given to Nadine Labaki's widely praised social-realist drama Capernaum, about a 12-year-old boy's against-all-odds struggle for survival on the streets of Beirut. Many, including this writer, had predicted Labaki's film would win the Palme, and a ripple of surprise ran through the press room when the award was announced.
Cannes
Can Proceed
Summer Zervos
Former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos can proceed with her defamation lawsuit against President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Huckster), at least for now, a court said on Thursday.
The ruling by the state Supreme Court's appellate division means Zervos' lawyers can press ahead with a demand for Trump campaign documents and other records while they await another appeals court decision that is likely months away.
"We look forward to proving Ms. Zervos's claim that (the) defendant lied when he maliciously attacked her for reporting his sexually abusive behavior," said her lawyer Mariann Wang.
Trump's lawyers had asked to put the case on ice until the appeals court decides whether to dismiss it or postpone it past his presidency, a decision likely to take at least until fall.
Summer Zervos
Judge Denies Bid
CBS
Shari Redstone won the first round Thursday of a messy legal battle for control of CBS Corp, but the media group said the fight is not over yet.
A Delaware judge rejected a petition from the CBS board of directors to block the Redstone family's holding company from interfering with the evaluation of any merger deal.
The decision allows Shari Redstone -- daughter of media empire builder Sumner Redstone -- to keep tight control over the television and media group, with the power to replace its board.
It also could clear the way for CBS to reunite with Viacom, although the Redstones' National Amusements Inc (NAI) holding firm has said it is not seeking to force a tie-up.
The Redstone holding company controls about 10 percent of the equity of CBS but has nearly 80 percent of the voting power through a special share class.
CBS
Coral Reef
Japan
Japan's biggest coral reef has not recovered from bleaching due to rising sea temperatures, with only one percent of the reef in a healthy condition, according to a government study.
The overall volume of coral in Sekisei Lagoon in southwestern Japan near Okinawa had already plunged by 80 percent since the late 1980s due to rising water temperatures and damage caused by coral-eating starfish.
Now only 1.4 percent of the lagoon, which stretches over 67.89 square kilometres, is in a healthy condition, the environment ministry said, after it was hit by mass bleaching in 1998, 2001, 2007 and most recently 2016.
For the first time since 2008, the ministry analysed satellite photos and information from some 1,000 monitoring sites for the Sekisei Lagoon and two other reefs around the Ishigaki and Iriomote islets in Okinawa.
The ratio of healthy corals stood at 14.6 percent in 1991 but dropped to 0.8 percent in the 2008 survey, Kondo said.
Japan
Calling For Fewer School Doors
Texass
Texas's lieutenant governor reacted to a deadly school shooting by suggesting schools have too many doors.
"We may have to look at the design of our schools moving forward and retrofitting schools that are already built. There are too many entrances and too many exits", Dan Patrick said during a press conference after a gunman killed at least 10 people at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas.
In a familiar ritual, official updates on the toll gave way to vows from public officials to prevent a similar massacre. Texas Gov Greg Abbott said "it's time in Texas we take action to step up and make sure this tragedy is never repeated ever again", saying he would work with legislators to find as-yet-unidentified "solutions".
While some reacted to the bloodshed by calling for tougher gun control laws, Mr Patrick emphasised what he called a hazardous number of entrances and exits to schools.
"There are not enough people to put a guard in every entrance or exit", Mr Patrick said, adding that "maybe we need to look at limiting the entrances and exits into our schools so that we can have law enforcement looking at the people who are coming".
Texass
Mayor Fires Back
Oakland
The mayor of Oakland is pushing back on President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Fabulist) claims that she obstructed justice by warning undocumented immigrants of an impending federal raid.
Mayor Libby Schaaf, a Democrat, wrote in a weekend op-ed that it was her "duty" to warn immigrants about the raid, which was set to target around 1,000 people living in the Bay Area earlier this year.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has indicated that a tweet from the mayor prevented the arrest of as many as 800 people.
"As mayor, it's my duty to protect my residents - especially when our most vulnerable are unjustly attacked. As a leader, it's my duty to call out this administration's anti-immigrant fearmongering for what it is: a racist lie," Ms Schaaf wrote in The Washington Post.
"Mr President, I am not obstructing justice. I am seeking it," she continued.
Oakland
Guns After Parkland
Mark Kelly
Former astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of shooting survivor and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), accused President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Corrupt) Friday of capitulating to the National Rifle Association after the Parkland school shooting and doing nothingfor America's children.
After a shooter killed 10 people Friday in Santa Fe, Texas, the president "talked about how it's been going on too long," Kelly told Anderson Cooper on CNN. "I think we all know that," he added.
Trump "spoke very pointedly to a number of U.S. senators and said that they were scared of the NRA and maybe he would have to be the person [to strengthen] background checks," Kelly said. "That was Tuesday. By Thursday, he'd completely lost interest. And about two months later, he was the speaker at the NRA convention in Dallas."
Cooper referred to a statistic reported Friday by The Washington Post that more people have been killed in U.S. schools this year than people serving in the military.
Kelly responded: "It's ridiculous that these kids have to live in a country, these kids in Santa Fe or in Parkland or 22 other places around the country just this year alone, that they have to assume that kind of risk when they go to school."
Mark Kelly
War Crimes Probe
UN
The UN Human Rights Council voted Friday to send a team of international war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces.
The UN's top human rights body voted through a resolution calling on the council to "urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry" -- the UN rights council's highest-level of investigation.
Only two of the council's 47 members, the United States and Australia, voted against the resolution, while 29 voted in favour and 14 abstained, including Britain, Switzerland and Germany.
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed the rights council's decision, calling it "another shameful day for human rights".
The text said the team should investigate all alleged violations and abuses... in the context of the military assaults on large scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018, ... including those that may amount to war crimes."
UN
Misspells Name
Welcome Home
Melania Trump returned to the White House in "high spirits" on Saturday following a weeklong hospitalization for kidney treatment, a lengthy stay that raised questions about whether the first lady's condition may have been more complicated than first revealed.
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Crooked) heralded her homecoming with a tweet that referred to her as "Melanie" instead of "Melania."
"Great to have our incredible First Lady back home in the White House. Melanie is feeling and doing really well. Thank you for all of your prayers and best wishes!" Trump wrote before quickly superseding that tweet with another that spelled his wife's name correctly.
Mrs. Trump's quiet return to the White House, her husband and their 12-year-old son, after five days at a nearby U.S. military hospital resolved a brewing mystery about when she would eventually be released. What remain are questions about the state of her health.
First ladies are under no obligation to make their medical histories public.
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