Gotta admit. He knew how to get things done

LBJ launches Medicare: "You can't treat grandma this way"
Salon

Watching the craziness in the Senate this week, as Mitch McConnell and the GOP's zealots drove their clown car into a brick wall and yet another effort to take away health care coverage from millions crashed and burned, I thought back to a different turn of events. It was 52 years ago this Sunday — July 30, 1965. Two American presidents celebrated the birth of Medicare, the most significant advance toward national health insurance in America's history. I was a White House assistant at the time, Read the full story

Shared from Apple News

Here’s an idea: Let’s just be Republicans!

Democratic Campaign Chief Suggests Party Back Anti-Abortion Candidates
TIME

The basic message: Don't go there Read the full story

Shared from Apple News

Ooops

Can you spell “I’m staying home”?

Two Minutes Of Darkness With 20,000 Strangers | FiveThirtyEight

"That's creating huge logistical challenges for towns along that several-thousand-mile route. Hundreds of small municipalities will be in the crosshairs of what could be an enormous one-day population boom, creating significant challenges for traffic management, sanitation and emergency services."

http://53eig.ht/2uZM9Am

Vixens now

Woman in Spitzer blackmailing case likely going to trial - NY Daily News

The Russian vixen accused of blackmailing disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer will likely go to trial in the fall, a Manhattan Supreme Court Judge said Tuesday.

Those Russians do sell newspapers.

http://nydn.us/2w9aemZ

28

There are 28 non-sovereign entities in the world where English is the de facto or de jure official language, including this blog, where English happens to be the only language we know.

Yesterday during a White House press conference (described here in Politico http://politi.co/2w9rs3E) there was a testy exchange between a White House guy named Stephen Miller and a CNN reporter named Jim Acosta over a new immigration law which requires immigrants to speak English before being admitted. Acosta wanted to know if this meant we were going to allow immigration only from Great Britain and Australia.

English, it turns out, is not the official language by law in either Australia or the United Kingdom. It is also not the de jure official language of the United States, although it is in several of the individual states, including the one in which I live.

English is an official language, de facto or de jure, in 54 sovereign states around the world, in addition to the 28 non-sovereign entities mentioned above.

You find out a lot more about all of this, including some nifty charts and maps, on Wikipedia here: http://bit.ly/2w9FzFY

ADD
 Actually it’s a bill, not a law, and we are not endorsing it but just pointing out. 

Noooooo

Trump Is Considering Perry for Homeland Security Secretary - Bloomberg

https://bloom.bg/2uVOdJO

I had peanut motor on my grocery list

I meant peanut butter, of course, but I was multitasking with, appropriately, a peanut butter sandwich when I said it. Siri heard peanut motor. I didn’t correct it because if I really wanted peanut motor, why would I put it on my grocery list? And we have to come to terms with our technology now and then.

When I mean to add meat to my list I say chicken. Meat always comes out “meet,” and everything tastes like chicken anyway. Might as well leave well enough alone.

Sometime in the prehistoric past a singing group called the Smothers Brothers sang “I yelled FIRE when I fell into the chocolate.” Who would come to save you if you yelled CHOCOLATE, the lyric asked. Well, I would, certainly. But maybe not you.

Research performed some time later suggested FIRE is, indeed, exactly the right thing to call out in an emergency, no matter what the emergency might be. Because FIRE is the only thing most people pay attention to. THERE’S A BEAR CHASING ME won’t cut it. Nor CHOCOLATE.

Good news

Analysts doubt North Korea's ICBM re-entry capability

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea after decades of effort has a missile potentially capable of reaching the continenta...

It might be just an international ballistic missile that hits you in the head, not a whole atomic bomb!

Read the full story

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Spare us the fancy writing, please

Kelly shows his clout: Scaramucci out as WH chief moves in

WASHINGTON (AP) — Firmly taking charge in an unruly White House, former Gen. John Kelly moved in Monday as President Donal...

The communication director's tenure was the stuff of Shakespearian drama — though brief enough to be just a morbid sonnet.

Read the full story

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Somebody call Guinness

Trump Ousts Scaramucci in Latest White House Shakeup - Bloomberg

This is got to be a world record for something. Ten days, it took this guy, to get fired from a White House job and get divorced by his wife.

Impressive!

https://bloom.bg/2uOrD5X

Everyone's in a twit now…

Hackers break into voting machines within 2 hours at Defcon - CBS News

…about a 15-year old story: voting machines can be hacked. A woman named Bev Harris started blogging about this around the year 2000 and founded the web site Black Box Voting in 2003. 

Brad Friedman has been blogging about voting machines as long.

And here are notes about voting machines from this blog going back to 2006 or so.

Somewhere floating around in the mists of time is a story about a voting machine hacked, on TV, by an ape. In minutes, not hours.

So good on you, CBS, for figuring out there’s a story here. Too bad you’re more than a decade late.

But at least you’re doing better than the Congress.