Right move, wrong team; ICE atrocities; pizza index update; Florida man yet again.
It's World UFO Day!
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Knee Deep in the Hoopla
Trump illegally bombs Iran, floats regime change, then claims ceasefire; Vance flails: A Closer Look (Video)
Trump's Weird Iran War Speech | Massive Penetrators | More Than A Feeling | Regime Change? (Video)
Watch what ICE does to members of the military and their families; This is the US, right? (Video)
David Frum: “Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism, and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation. Trump has not put U.S. boots on the ground to fight Iran, but he has put U.S. troops on the ground for an uninvited military occupation of California.” The latest on this mess from the BBC.
B-2 bomber pilots had a microwave oven, snacks and a toilet on the 37-hour flight to demolish Iranian nuclear plants. Each B-2 costs more than $2 billion and were originally built during the Cold War to carry nuclear weapons. No word on how much it cost to convert one into a flying stealth studio apartment with kitchen and bath.
A follow up to last week’s story about the Pentagon Pizza Index: Video.
The Republican megabill’s horrible compromise. The populists and the tech right competed to supply the GOP’s new policy. The president has picked the least-attractive ideas from each.
RFK Jr. is taking an axe to America’s dietary guidelines. Last month, he told Congress that the new dietary guidelines could be released “before August,” teasing big changes. The current version of the document is 149 pages. The forthcoming update, he said, will stand at just four pages that tell people to “eat whole food; eat the food that’s good for you.”
Elon Musk’s lawyers claim he doesn’t use a computer, even though there's a vast amount of evidence that he does.
Arby's is bringing cheesesteaks back to the menu. Not quite the return of the McRib, but we’ll take it.
Watch: Florida man wakes to find alligator swimming in pool. Most of us just set an alarm on our phone.
Man gets stuck in chimney while trying to get his dog out of a locked building. They arrested the guy. No word on what happened to the dog.
Quote of the Day:
The worst thing in the world, next to anarchy, is government.
--Henry Ward Beecher (Wikipedia link)
(More Henry Ward Beecher quotes from the KGB Quotations Database)
Today’s holidays:
Celebration of the Senses, International Day for Women in Diplomacy, International Fairy Day, Museum Comes To Life Day, National Pralines Day, St. John's Day, Swim a Lap Day, World History Day, World Pneumothorax Day, and World UFO Day.
Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA.
On This Day:
1374– A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion. (Video)
1497 – John Cabot landed in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings. (Video)
1880 – First performance of "O Canada," the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français. (Video)
1916 – Mary Pickford became the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract. (Video)
1922 – The American Professional Football Association was renamed the National Football League.
1938 – Pieces of a meteorite landed near Chicora, Pennsylvania. The meteorite was estimated to have weighed 450 metric tons when it hit the Earth's atmosphere and exploded.
1941 – FCC granted the first commercial TV licenses to New York City experimental stations W2XBS, as WNBT (NBC), and W2XAB, as WCBW (CBS.)
1947 – Kenneth Arnold made the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. (Video)
1948 – Cold War: Start of the Berlin Blockade: The Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.
1949 – The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, starring William Boyd, was aired on NBC. (Video)
1963 – First demonstration of a home video recorder at BBC Studios in London
1997 – The U.S. Air Force released a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.
2006 – "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" premiered at Disneyland. (Video)
2021 – The Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida suffered a sudden partial collapse, killing 98 people inside. (Video)
2022 – In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not assign the authority to regulate abortions to the federal government, thereby returning such authority to the individual states. This overturned the prior decisions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).
(For comprehensive lists of the day’s historical events, check here, here, and here.)
Some Birthdays:
1813 – Henry Ward Beecher, American minister and reformer (died 1887)
1842 – Ambrose Bierce, American short story writer, essayist, and journalist (died 1914)
1893 – Roy O. Disney, American businessman, co-founded The Walt Disney Company (died 1971)
1895 – Jack Dempsey, American boxer and soldier (died 1983)
1904 – Phil Harris, American singer-songwriter and actor (died 1995) (Video)
1915 – Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and author (died 2001) (Video)
1919 – Al Molinaro, American actor (died 2015) (Video)
1922 – Jack Carter, American actor and comedian (died 2015)
1929 – Carolyn S. Shoemaker, American astronomer (died 2021) (Video)
1930 – William Bernard Ziff, Jr., American publisher (died 2006)
1936 – Robert Downey Sr., American actor and director (died 2021) (Video)
1938 – Lawrence Block, American author
1942 – Michele Lee, American actress and singer (Video)
1944 – Jeff Beck, English guitarist and songwriter (died 2023)
1945 – George Pataki, American lawyer and politician, 53rd Governor of New York
1946 – Ellison Onizuka, American engineer, and astronaut (died 1986)[29]
1947 – Mick Fleetwood, English-American drummer
1947 – Peter Weller, American actor and director (Video)
1950 – Nancy Allen, American actress (Video)
1979 – Mindy Kaling, American actress and producer
(A more complete list of today’s birthdays.)
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