I already used up my weekly allotment of Dreamgirls references so let’s just say indicted, corrupt Sen. Bob Menendez has made it clear that he’s not leaving. (Washington Post)
Cory Booker should probably demand that his fellow senator from New Jersey resign and quickly. (USA Today)
Menendez hasn’t explained the gold bars they found in his house but he did offer some hilarious explanations for all that cash he was stockpiling like a common gangster. Charles P. Pierce has some fun with him. (Esquire)
Far-right Washington Republican Joe Kent is back and wants to defund the FBI. (The Daily Beast)
Sam Bankman-Fried “trying not to freak out too much” over all those fraud allegations. Maybe he should freak out a little. (The New Yorker)
Felt like giving a shout out to my talented friend Sara. (Substack)
Maybe there’s hope for a private national rail system. (NPR)
Social media really does turn teenage minds into jelly, and you should see what it does to adults. (New York Times)
Kyrsten Sinema of the Sinema Party thinks she can win re-election with “10% to 20% of Democrats, 60% to 70% of independents and 25% to 35% of Republicans.” Yeah, those are crackpipe numbers. (NBC News)
Two Republican mega donors have funded Texas’ recent extreme-right shift. (CNN)
There’s gold in them there anti-vaccine hills. (Politico)
Can Los Angeles turn a crappy freeway into a lovely public park with affordable housing? (LA Times)
Caltrans built a three-mile stretch from the 405 Freeway to the edge of Marina del Rey. But community opposition in the 1960s scuttled the full freeway. Over the years, it went by many names: the Slauson Freeway, the Richard M. Nixon Freeway and, as Johnny Carson once mocked it, the Slauson Cutoff.
No, seriously, that line used to get big laughs on “The Tonight Show.”
Sixty is not the new 40. It’s just a more visible 60, especially for women. (Also LA Times)
A great deep dive into why so many Black folks (myself included) love movies by and about Italian-Americans, despite all the racism. (Vanity Fair)
I review the new Jesse L. Martin series, “The Irrational.” (Primetimer)
Hold my calls this November.
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