~900: The number of times "this month's summer's searing heat has tied or broken high temperature records" across the US.
Forecasters call the heat wave gripping the central U.S. "unrelenting," and say residents should not expect any relief soon.
Heat advisories and warnings are in place in 17 states, from Texas to Michigan, as temperatures and humidity combine to make being outside uncomfortable for millions.
A half-dozen cities set new all-time highs. On June 15 it hit 105º in Tallahasse, Fla., and on June 26 records were broken or tied in Amarillo, Texas (111º), Borger, Texas (113º), Dalhart, Texas (110º), Childress, Texas (117º) and Gage, Okla. (113º).
In Oklahoma there's no place to hide - Oklahoma City temperatures have been 90 degrees or more for 47 straight days, topping a hundred nearly every day this month. With triple-digit heat possible through September, the city is on pace to break its record for such days (50, set in 1980).
In Enid, Okla., asphalt at a major intersection along U.S. Highway 412 buckled Saturday night from the intense heat.
The governor asked for a statewide day of prayer in the hopes of divine intervention.
That would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.
In Chicago and Detroit, they're taking a more earthly and "immediate results" kind of approach by opening cooling centers across the cities. Public health officials in Chicago have urged people to take extra precautions, including "limiting time outdoors, drinking plenty of water and wearing loose fitting clothes. Health officials are also urging the public to keep a close eye on infants and the elderly."
The heat is also adversely affecting wildlife and livestock across the country.
Insert here the ten million global warming jokes made over the extreme winter by people who don't understand or care about the climate crisis.
In his continuing bid to make me regret ever enjoying any project on which he ever worked, Ricky Gervais has yet another new show in the pipeline, the description of which is making my teeth grind:
Ricky Gervais, the creator of The Office and Extras is teaming up with former Dexter showrunner, Clyde Phillips, for a new show called Afterlife, about an atheist who dies and goes to heaven.
They are writing the pilot episode now and plan to film in early 2012, though no studio is yet attached. Gervais will take a cameo role.
...The plot has traces of Gervais' The Invention of Lying, the 2009 film that featured Gervais as a desperate underachiever who introduces the idea of God to a naive society where no one else has yet contemplated the notion of telling a falsehood.
Between a film that had an atheist introducing the notion of a god to an atheist population, and a show about "an atheist who dies and goes to heaven," I smell a future insufferably sanctimonious god-believer. Gervais reminds me of the exhausting dipfucks I knew in college who were constantly blathering on about being Marxist atheist anarchist nihilist separatists or whatever, and now drive Chevy Tahoes with fading Bush bumper stickers and decals of Calvin peeing on France.
You can watch it live here. So far, it's exactly what you'd expect: Oh, the phone-hacking is so regrettable. We didn't know. Once we did know, we "acted as swiftly and transparently as possible." It's everyone else's fault. The police claimed there was no evidence. We have 53,000 employees; we can't know what everyone's doing at all times. Blah blah blah.
James Murdoch (son) seems to be tasked with looking regretful, while Rupert Murdoch (father) is taking on the role of expressing hapless ignorance and shock. Mendacious assholes, both of them.
@emptywheel is providing a great live-tweet of the testimony.
The White House on Monday warned President Obama will veto GOP legislation to "cut, cap and balance" spending and the budget.
In a statement of administration policy, the White House Office of Management and Budget labeled the GOP bill as an "empty political statement."
The House Rules Committee is expected to take up the measure Monday, and it is likely to receive a floor vote on Tuesday. The measure would cut spending in fiscal 2012 by $111 billion, cap future spending at 19.9 percent of gross domestic product and allow for the debt ceiling to be increased if a balanced-budget amendment is approved by Congress and sent to the states.
The administration said the measure, which is not expected to move through the Senate, is unnecessary and unrealistic.
...The president's veto threat was followed by a full-on assault from administration officials who blasted the GOP proposal as "extreme, radical [and] unprecedented."
Joe Conason in the National Memo—Exclusive Bill Clinton Interview: I Would Use Constitutional Option to Raise Debt Ceiling: "Former President Bill Clinton says that he would invoke the so-called constitutional option to raise the nation's debt ceiling 'without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me' in order to prevent a default, should Congress and the President fail to achieve agreement before the August 2 deadline."
CNN—Coburn offers his own budget plan: "Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, released his version of a budget plan Monday, saying his ideas would save the country $9 trillion over 10 years. ... The plan, titled 'Back in Black,' includes cuts to the Department of Defense, entitlement reforms, and shutting down the Department of Education."
Think Progress—Rep. Louie Gohmert Wonders If Obama Chose Debt Ceiling Deadline To Coincide With His Birthday Party: "While a startling number of House Republicans refuse to accept experts' dire warnings about the possibility of default come Aug. 2 if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) thinks he has stumbled across the Obama administration's real motivation behind choosing that date. Many Republicans think the August date is a phony deadline Democrats invented to scare Congress into raising the ceiling, but Gohmert sees a more personal significance for President Obama—his 50th birthday on Aug. 4 and his birthday party on the 3rd. The fact that the party is the day after the debt deadline is something Gohmert finds awfully suspicious, he told Newsmax TV yesterday, suggesting that Obama chose the date so he could be a hero at his 'birthday bash' for the 'celebrities flying in from all over.'"
The Hill—Reid: Saturday workdays for Senate: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday said the Senate would work weekends until Congress and the White House reach a deal to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.
House leaders offered no new announcements on Monday about their own schedules, but sources said congressional leaders were prepared to keep lawmakers in session through the beginning of the August recess if negotiators fail to reach a deal."
[According to a new poll from the Washington Post and the Pew Research Center, a] third or fewer Americans express a "great deal" or even a "fair amount" of confidence in any of the five top congressional leaders at the center of negotiations aimed at avoiding an historic default – Republicans Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
President Obama fares better, although not particularly well: 48 percent of those polled have at least a fair amount of confidence in the president, but about as many, 49 percent, have "not too much" or "none at all." More say they have none than say they have a lot (32 to 24 percent).
George Packer in The New Yorker—Empty Wallets: "What does either side have to offer the tens of millions of Americans who have settled into a semi-permanent state of economic depression? Virtually nothing."
Washington's frayed nerves showed through Monday amid tough talk on the right, a White House veto threat, canceled weekend passes and the top Senate Democrat likening default to a "very, very scary" outcome even for those "who believe government should be small enough to drown in a bathtub."
"What will it take," asked an agitated Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), "for my Republican colleagues to wake up to the fact that they're playing a game of political chicken with the entire global economy?"
House Speaker John Boehner confirmed a POLITICO report that he had met again privately with President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday to try to get debt talks back on track. But ignoring Obama's veto warning, Boehner will press ahead Tuesday with House votes on a revised debt ceiling bill that shows no sign of compromise on the spending and tax policy differences behind the crisis.
Of course. Because Boehner and his entire party are a bunch of fucking jackasses.
"I still can't stop thinking about Tony. Wondering where he could be, who he is with, what is he thinking, is he thinking of me, and whether he'll ever return someday."
Usually, Pawlenty explains away his wife's absence on the campaign trail with this quip about her parenting obligations back home in Eagan, Minn.: "I have two teenage daughters. One is 18 and one is 14. They both like boys and one of them drives."
The line always draws a laugh, and Pawlenty always follows up with a promise to bring Mary along next time.
Barrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf.
Fun Fact: Tim Pawlenty once said at a campaign event: "I'm very thankful for my red-hot smoking wife, the first lady of Minnesota."
I've heard that weaponizing a woman can make her red-hot and smoking.
[Trigger warning for rape culture, exploitation, violence.]
Jason Batman is like Ben Stiller and Dane Cook rolled into one giant garbage disaster: He's got all the überdouche taste in material of Dane Cook, plus the No-Doz fueled work ethic of Ben Stiller (who, it should be noted, also chooses an excessive number of awful projects).
"I have got to be in EVERYTHING, and make sure ALL OF IT IS GARBAGE!"—Jason Batman's memo to his agent.
Settle down, Jason Batman.
With Horrible Bosses still tops at the box office (USA! USA! USA!), one of the nightmare factories known as The Studios are striking while the barf is hot and rolling out the preview for the next Jason Batman vehicle ("Keep the Jason Batman train a-rolling!"—Hollywood), in which he stars with Ryan The Green Ryan Reynolds Reynolds, as one of two blokes who covet each other's lives and through the magic of simultaneously wishing while peeing in a fountain (seriously), they wake up in each other's bodies.
Behold: The trailer for The Change-Up.
Jason Batman is married to Leslie Mann (who is married in real life to Judd Apatow, who didn't have anything to do with this movie, unless you count being one of the brave trailblazers who took a long look at the film industry ten years ago and thought, "This place could use some more misogyny!") and they have twin babies who cry while their parents are trying to sleep. Leslie Mann says, "It's your turn," and Jason Batman gets up and sleepily walks down the hall and steps on a squeaky toy because no doy this movie is trite garbage.
Bottles. Feeding. Diaper-changing. Jason Batman gets squirted in the face with diarrhea. That baby's butt is the smartest thing in this movie.
Cut to Ryan Reynolds, who is sound asleep in his bachelor pad, until a half-naked lady storms in wanting to have wild sex with him. OBVIOUSLY.
Cue Motown music. Cut to the BFFs at a bar, where Jason Batman asks Ryan Reynolds to "tell me about your women." I make a face which I can only describe as the same terse grin of horrible expectation I made in a dream where I was assassination dispatched to poison a warlord, just as he took his first bite of the beautiful cake I had baked him.
"I have been keeping company with a number of nice ladies," replies Ryan Reynolds, who then regales Jason Batman with stories of women like "Tatiana," whom he has to "make cry first, but it's worth it," and "Brenda," who "wants it in wheelbarrow, Arabian goggles, the Arsenio Hall, the pastrami sandwich..." These are the imaginary names of exotic sexual positions, as conceived by creatively bankrupt jackasses.
Jason Batman says he doesn't even know what those are. "You're married," says Ryan Reynolds. "Good point," says Jason Batman. And NO DOY it is because married people are basically DEAD and therefore DON'T HAVE SEX.
Later, Jason Batman explains to Ryan Reynolds that having babies is difficult because they don't understand the world and lack the ability to communicate their needs in a calm and effective way, which can be frustrating for a parent who loves them and wants to successfully fulfill those sometimes enigmatic needs. HA HA! Just kidding! He says having kids is "like living with mini drug addicts: They're laughing one minute and then they're crying the next, and then they're trying to kill themselves in your bathroom for no good reason. They're very mean and selfish, and they burn through your money..." This rant only ends here because Ryan Reynolds finally stops him.
The two buddies stop to pee in a fountain, because they are disgusting and rude assholes, and they say they envy each other's lives. "I wish I HAD your life," they say in unison. LIGHTNING STRIKES!
Whooooooooooooooooops they shouldn't have been pissing in that wishing well and wishing things, because the next morning, they wake up in each other's bodies!
Cue the zany romp score over a montage of their figuring out what happened. Ryan Reynolds admits he didn't really envy Jason Batman's life: "I was just being polite!" HAR HAR! Oh well, maybe he'll learn that being a family man is something he wants after all! FINGERS CROSSED!
In the meantime, he urges Jason Batman to use his body to get laid and shit. He fixes up Jason Batman with his own secretary, which is confusing, I know, but the whole body switcheroo thing. She doesn't know it's him, which makes the whole thing very creepy! Luckily, as we all know, tricking women is hilarious.
Just in time to remind us that the whole rape culture is hilarious, here comes a scene of Ryan Reynolds telling Jason Batman not to have sex with Jason Batman's wife. (Again, confusing, switcheroo.) He tells his BFF, "If she comes at me like a hurricane, a guy can only withstand so much." WHAT A GREAT FRIEND!
Cut to not-Jason Batman lying in Jason Batman's bed watching Leslie Mann get undressed. "I am going to ruin her!" he says excitedly, which is a very nice and normal thing that men say about women.
Then she sits on the toilet and farts. Reacting to evidence of her humanity, not-Jason Batman gasps, "Oh my god!" and hides under the covers, then shames her for it when she comes to bed.
Despite the facts that: (1) I grew up in the Twin Cities, (2) I attended the University of Minnesota for a few years, and (3) most of my relatives are on at least one U of M junk mail list, I know precious little about the University of Minnesota's program in Human Sexuality. As a trans woman with a degree in the History of Science, I'm pretty sure there's room for criticism.
The depressing aspect of this is that this is the first chair of its kind in the United States. I mean, come on guys, there are chairs in everything.
Still, this calls for a party, albeit a somber and self-reflective one. I suggest the snack bar on the ground floor of the Malcolm Moos medical-industrial complex.
I currently have, on my right arm alone, 27 mosquito bites. That's not an exaggerated number for humorous affect; that is the actual number of mosquito bites on my arm. Last night, when Iain noticed, he audibly gasped.
Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.
Hoare, who worked on the Sun and the News of the World with Coulson before being dismissed for drink and drugs problems, is said to have been found dead at his Watford home.
Hertfordshire police would not confirm his identity, but the force said in a statement: "At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.
"The death is currently being treated as unexplained, but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing."
Hoare first made his claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World.
He told that newspaper that not only did Coulson know of the phone-hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.
[Trigger warning for racism, misogyny, body policing, and sexual violence.]
Behold, the latest ad, "Hail to the V," from the misogynist body-policers at Summer's Eve (and, yes, I realize there are some women who find value in their products, and my contempt for Summer's Eve does not extend to their consumers; my contempt is firmly rooted in their perpetual sales pitch that all women need their products because our bodies stink):
A woman of color in an animal skin dress holds up a baby swaddled in hide against the backdrop of the aurora borealis in a night-scape on a mountainside as "primitive" drums play. "It's the cradle of life," says a female voiceover. The music takes on a male chorus as the scene changes to a Cleopatra-like character lifting her arms into a V atop a pyramid over a cheering crowd. "It's the cradle of civilization," says the voiceover. The music takes on an action beat as the scene switches to a fight between two Asian men in a bamboo forest, as a mysterious Asian woman watches them. "Over the ages and throughout the world, men have fought for it," says the voiceover, as the scene segues to a jousting match in Merry Olde England as a princess gazes on, "battled for it, even died for it." One knight knocks the other off his horse, then raises his faceguard to look at the princess, who smiles at him. "One might say, it's the most powerful thing on Earth." The music crescendos, then immediately dies to muzak as the scene cuts to a grocery store, where a modern woman of color is standing in an aisle, holding a Summer's Eve product in her hand. "Hmm!" she says, as if it's a revelatory new product, looking at the bottle, then putting it in her cart. "So, come on, ladies," says the voiceover, now in a conversational tone. "Show it a little love!"
Cut to a screen showing the products, labeled "Hail to the V." "Cleansing wash and cloths, from Summer's Eve," says the voiceover. "Hail to the V!"
Well, that's a real douching of history, right there. Women's vulvas/vaginas are powerful because men throughout history have fought and died for them. Yeah, somehow killing other men for the right to rape "their" women doesn't strike me as evidence of the all-powerfulness of the "V."
There are so many things wrong with this ad, I hardly know where to begin, so I'll just leave you to deconstruct its every nefarious nuance in comments.
I will, however, just quickly note that the ad is, ironically, the best argument against the product: Millennia before there were products designed to make women feel ashamed about the smell of our vulvas and/or vaginas, they were still pretty popular.
This blogaround brought to you by Mort Handleman, Professional Representative of Holy Folks since 1982. If you would like to arrange an appearance in your snack food, in your garden, or on your next birthday cake, please call Mort at 1-555-Say-Amen!
I have mentioned previously that I like Victoria Beckham, and I like David Beckham, too—he is widely ridiculed for being daft and silly, but he was one of the first superstar athletes who was routinely asked about his gay fan following and never distanced himself from gay fans (refusing to take the bait even during an "Ali G" interview for Comic Relief) and even being one of the first players to make a PSA about anti-gay prejudice and bullying in football.
In every interview I've ever seen with him, he speaks respectfully about his wife, and/or to her, as they do lots of joint interviews. Before she was pregnant with their daughter, anytime he was asked if they were planning to have more children, he would say how he'd love to have a daughter, and he hasn't stopped gushing about how happy he is to have a daughter since she was born, posting pictures online of her like a typical proud papa.
I don't really know what kind of person he is, besides what little I can glean from media who likes to make heroes and villains out of regular human beings with extraordinary careers, but I like that an international male superstar professional athlete has pink laces because he's so goddamn happy to have a daughter, and that he didn't feel obliged to put his sons' name in blue, as if it's fine to love a daughter or a sister but not to be anything like one.
And, finally, he makes an appearance where it really makes sense: On a receipt from Wal-Mart, the biggest holy institution in the United States of Corporate America.
An engaged couple in Anderson County says a shadowy image that turned up on a receipt from Walmart looks like the face of Jesus.
Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on Sunday, June 12.
The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland's apartment. He says the receipt had changed.
"I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me," Simmons said.
A dark gray mark on the receipt seems to show two eyes, a nose and a mouth in a thickly bearded face.
"Then the more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, breathtaking," Simmons said.
A. That is clearly a portrait created by the world's most beloved underground artist, Pizza Grease.
B. That is clearly a portrait of Charles Manson, not Jesus.
WaPo—Congress tees up crucial votes on debt limit: "A bipartisan effort in the Senate to allow President Obama to raise the federal debt ceiling in exchange for about $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years gained momentum Sunday, as leaders agreed they would have to act in the next two weeks to avert a potential default by the U.S. government."
Politico—GOP's hard right shift in debt talks may put deal at risk: "Turning right with a vengeance, Republicans will bring to the House floor Tuesday a newly revised debt-ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date, two weeks before the threat of default."
Well. That about says it all. But here's a little more from the same piece, just to underline the point:
Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s.
Indeed, much of the deficit-reduction legislation signed by Reagan would not qualify under the new tea-party-driven standards. And even the famed Reagan-Tip O'Neill Social Security compromise — which raised payroll taxes — passed the House in 1983 well short of the 290 votes that would be required under the constitutional amendments being promoted by the GOP.
Dubbed Cut, Cap and Balance, the House bill allows for a $2.4 trillion increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority but effectively uses the Aug. 2 deadline as a Republican anvil on which to hammer out cuts President Barack Obama would otherwise veto.
Grim stuff. But hardly surprising, given everything we know about the modern Republican Party. Steve Benen addresses the absurdity that is "Cut, Cap, and Balance" here.
We've got a party of No Compromise Even When You're Wrong negotiating with a president who values compromise over Standing Your Ground Even When You're Right:
[Obama] doesn't just acknowledge the need for compromise. He glories in it. He sees it as "part of the process of growing up." It's juvenile to act on your own beliefs, to draw bright lines that cannot be crossed, to express core convictions. "Don't set up a situation where you're guaranteed to be disappointed," Obama says. That's the worst thing that could ever happen. He makes an enemy out of disappointment, when it can just as easily be a rallying point, an opportunity to show a better path next time.
This fetish of bipartisanship and compromise would have been the elements of a very good President circa 1954, or maybe 1975. In 2011, with one party that has swore to never compromise on any principle ever again, it's just a recipe for failure to hear this from the head of the other party. It guarantees bad outcomes. And with an economy in tatters and urgency (the fierce urgency of now, I would say) the order of the day, it has enormous consequences.
In related news, President Obama has "selected former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead the embattled Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
