Franz Schubert - Grab Und Mond

Michael - Christian - Peter Paumgarten, Uli Staber

Apparently the first three have the same last name, though I can't swear to that. Brothers?  It's interesting to hear this music sung by a quartet instead of the typical choral performance.  From what I've read Schubert would have been more likely to have conceived of it as sung by such a quartet than a large chorus.  Though I believe such choruses were known to him.

Here it is sung by another quartet:

Egidius Kwartet,

It's a nice, gloomy song for what is a cold, wet Thursday night, here.

Score

The True Evil of Russia’s Cyber War on America

Little Milton - Walking The Backstreets

Colin James - Tin Pan Alley 

Update:  Stupy is trying to get me to post some snark in which he claims that Mick "pissing toad" Jagger and his superannuated Stones are the greatest white blues band ever. 

And he got paid to write that kind of crap for an ad flyer. 

Such is the opinion of someone who knows everything they know about music from reading what people who got paid more than he did to write that kind of crap wrote instead of using his ears.  Well, it helps if the ears are connected to a mind and his is a negligible thing to waste. 

Update 2:  Stupy has 10 comments held back in moderation on this thread alone, he's got at least five more on other threads posted today.   I wonder how long he'll go on like that.  

And I haven't even said "Mop Heads" yet. 

Update 3:  Mr. OCD is up to 12 comments held back in moderation.  He really goes nuts when I post the blues.  I remember last summer when he claimed Little Milton played harp instead of guitar during one of our go rounds.   He's such an expert.  

Why is the Hungarian Nazi and obvious liar on his papers to enter the country, Sebastian Gorka, still in the United States and in the Trump White House instead of his deported ass being on a plane back to Britland?  

Why is the filthy lying Nazi on TV?  

Hate Mail

I do think that the assault on the transcendent aspects of reality is intimately linked to the introduction and hegemony of scientism in the culture.   That starts in exactly the restrictions of what is included within science in order to try to do what its purpose is, to try to find some generally applicable facts about physical objects and phenomena of enhanced reliability.   To do that many aspects of real objects and real phenomena in real life are left out because those aspects, real as they are, aren't relevant to generally discernable qualities of the set of objects and phenomena those particular and real objects and phenomena are members of.   In its most effective science comes up with information about limited aspects those sets of objects and phenomena through abstracting them, removing any particular aspects of them, though there is always a danger that you will either abstract the object out of any real existence or that you will mistake the limited information you can gain through science as an exhaustive reality of the object itself.

When scientists pretend to be able to apply those techniques to human or animal minds, consciousness, intelligence, etc. the returns diminish in direct proportion to the pretenses that are involved.  It is seen in the scandalous history of psychology and the other social sciences as they violate pretty much all of the rules of science while pretending that their results have the reliability of the physical sciences such as physics and chemistry or even the strictly scientific aspects of biology and the life sciences - which have their issues with stretching their practices and what those yield which is permitted to be called "data" but which sometimes leave a lot to be desired in those terms.

When that gets totally out of hand in the even more obvious pseudo-scientific assertions of debunking the very thing which all of the scientists, near scientists, pseudo-scientists and assorted academic wannabees, as can be seen in the assertion that our minds are products of physical causation, free will and free thought are illusions, that consciousness, itself, is a mere epiphenomenon of physical causation and a vulgar, ridiculously reductive conception of genes and DNA and what those really are and really do, they impeach the very minds which are the only place in the known universe where science and all of the rest of it is generated and resides.  The neuroscientists, the people who study consciousness, and right on down to the ultimate decadence of "neuro-philosophers" are like realators who try to sell you a house only to burn it down as you're signing the contract.  They, the Wilsons, the Dennetts, the Churchlands, are the ultimate exemplars of intellectual decadence, the academic institutions that employ them are the ultimate exemplars of academic decadence.

The whole thing is fascinating as a study in how far they are willing to go in destroying the status of everything, including the very categories of truth and reality in persuit of atheist-materialism.  That makes theirs the most decadent of ideologies in the history of recorded human thought, worse than the nihilists who were arguably at least honest about what they were up to.  And as they could corrupt the wider society with their wrecking job on transcendent reality and the truth, they have found their most successful results in such politicians and strongmen who put into practice the results of their work.  Trump and his post-reality period of rule should stand as their greatest experiment and test in reality, such as they leave that as being.

Update:  Steve Simels is a liar and the people he tells his lies to are a small congregation of incurious mid-brow dolts.  I don't care what they don't think.

We Are Witnessing The Fruition Of Modernisms War On Transcendent Reality

Sometime in the past fifteen or so years of reading the claims and declarations and theories of the high atheism of academia, science, the humanities, and the somewhat lower manifestation of that in journalism, I came to the conclusion that even the alleged leftist form of that was not qualitatively different from the vulgar materialism of corporate, consumerist mass culture.  The only difference was the felt need of citation and other trappings and pretenses of something higher that allowed the practitioners of the high atheism to make distinctions so as to feel good about themselves.  I will say that the scribblege of such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens had a lot to do with that realization, their thinking being both resistant to factual rigor and logical coherence.  Though even if those popularizers hadn't been there such people as Daniel Dennett,  E.O. Wilson, Paul and Patricia Churchland and others who make ideological claims that dismiss the significance of consciousness and come up with absurdly inadequate claims about the evolution and presence of the mind would have forced the conclusions.  I have noted, repeatedly, that my concentration of these issues was sparked by a lefty of the barroom atheist variety declaring that "science proved that free will doesn't exist," (in which case, how can you claim rights do or that democracy is possible) but I'd never believed that materialism could be a valid ideological position.

The entire program of late modernism, starting in the 19th century has included a demotion of the significance of the truth (it being assigned a merely relative existence based on general consensus) or morality (demoted to that same merely social relativity) or the status of the individual (the frequently encountered modernist icon who supported fascism is only matched by those who supported other forms of anti-democratic dictatorship such as among the Stalinists, Trotskyites and Maoists) and the mind.   The major thrust of academic modernism has been, through its scientism, one long assault on the very things which justify egalitarian democracy, any such claims of some modernists to be supporters of liberalism in the American sense of equal rights, economic justice and self-determination of the individuals, being more than matched by positions and even entire ideological programs that deny the possibility of the foundations of those in reality.

There has been a bizarre double-speak on that count which is more often found in contradictory ideas being held at the same time.  One, which I've noticed more and more is the use of the word "meme" by people like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes without any seeming understanding that the idea is part of the extreme biological determinism of the neo-eugenicists such as Richard Dawkins and the wacky determinism and reduction of the individual and the mind of people like Daniel Dennett expounds.  If memes are real then there can be no discernable significance to the minds that are the product of their infection, the "lumbering robots" of our genetic determinism - exactly the kind of stuff that the barroom atheist, lefty mentioned above was parroting - and there is no way that egalitarian democracy or even a system that values justice over injustice can survive such an intellectual invalidation.

This came to me while I was watching John Oliver talking with Stephen Colbert talk about the insanity of America, today, in which truth and even reality, itself, has been so undermined that treasonous lies are being normalized in the general babble devoid of holding that some truths are self-evident, some facts are hard facts and, though they may have felt inhibited from making that point, morality is not fungible and and in the end it does really matter.

And if you want to claim that the academic scribblers who promote the high materialism are liberals, that doesn't change for a second the fact that their intellectual program, whatever effect it has, undermines the very foundations on which the American liberalism of equal rights, egalitarian democracy and economic justice.  They dissolve the very morality on which those rest and attack the beliefs on which their reality in the world depend.  In the end, as the likes of Wilson and the Churchlands and Dennett dissolve the validity of the mind in the middle-brow imagination - where most people of influence in society reside - they undermine even the acknowledgement that the truth residing in and depending on those minds, matters.

Think about that the next time you hear Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes or, if I remember correctly, even Bill Moyers use the word "meme".

--------------------

American style liberalism as described above, isn't a product of modernism or any kind of thinking compatible with a belief that people and their minds are the product of material causation and without any transcendent capacity or value.  It is dependent on things that surpass the current bifurcation between the vulgar materialism of the right or the more conceited materialism of academic modernism.  It really doesn't fit into either of those, it is a totally different thing that those two other categories are in opposition to.   That became obvious in the late 18th century with the disastrous failure of the French Revolution, the scientifically congealed class system in Britain and the slow motion implementation of the claims and promises of the Bill of Rights in the United States.  The reform movements in the United States were a constant struggle for expanding equality and economic justice against the enlightenment - what became the British style of "liberalism" which was based on market economics and freeing of capital instead of equal rights and economic justice.

The faster that traditional American style liberals - wherever in the world they exist - realize that distinction and the danger of atheism-materialism to it the faster it can dissociate itself from the pseudo-left which has always been anti-democratic and in love with violent dictators.  That pseudo-left, the left of the magazines, Jacobin, In These Times, The Nation is notorious for its frequent support for foreign dictators, even last year some of them carried criticism of those who opposed Putin even as it became clear he was supporting Trump.  That left's affection for and romantic promotion of the French revolutionaries, especially the most violent of those who mounted the Reign of Terror, 3/4ths of whose victims were peasants and the poor is a continuing discrediting of it.  That should stand as a symptom of anything and anyone to avoid.

A Good Example of Why TV Advantages Liars Over Text

I have watched this several times, Chris Hayes trying to get Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) to answer the question as to whether or not he approves of what Donald Trump jr. did in colluding with representatives of the Putin crime regime to benefit Donald Trump and it is so frustrating to hear someone as smart as Chris Hayes and his rational questions thwarted by this Republican dialect of Babbleonian.

Pittinger doesn't even do it well but as a result of Hayes playing by the rules of logic and TV host courtesy, he gives this lying ass face time on TV and an ability to pretend he hasn't approved of treason against the United States as he sits as a member of Congress.  Which wouldn't be so terrible if it wasn't a party of such supporters of treason, from Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, down who are supporting and covering for the biggest traitors this country has ever known in the highest positions in government.

If they're not going to be more effective at nailing these liars they shouldn't give them face time.   I've heard Republicans do this for decades and it is one of the reasons why live interviews of this kind, especially since the advent of cabloid 24-7 alleged news which has been such a boon for Republican liars.  It's a real life example of the media being the message.  When someone is lying you need to have enough control of the flow to point out they're lying as many times as needed, the same if what they're saying amounts to something as awful as supporting treason for political gain as Pittinger, Ryan and others have explicitly done while holding high office.

The Staple Singers - I'm Coming Home

I always come back to this, one of the supreme works of religious art of the past century.

Blatant, Shameless liars Jason Miller and Matt Whitaker Should Never Be Allowed On TV Again

I just listened to the go round on CNN, Anderson Cooper's show with two obvious and shameless liars, sleazeball Trump hired-liar Jason Miller and former federal prosecutor Matt Whitaker and have to say that they could stand as an example of people who a rational media wouldn't consider putting on camera.

It's painful to listen to these people who have been taught the Republican talk-over anyone who isn't lying technique that Kellyanne Conway and others have used in the media for decades now.

If you want to know how we arrived at the post-truth culture that can't even protect itself against obvious treason with foreign dictators, these kinds of professional liars being allowed on TV and radio are the way it happened.

If you don't see the likes of these two liars disappear from TV, you'll know the problem is still with us.

Mitch McConnell And The Other Republicans In The Senate Are Still Trying To Kill Us To Please Their Pathological Base

The degenerate Republican leadership in the Senate is putting pressure on Republicans who listen to their constituents to force them to support throwing millions of people off of healthcare by delaying their month long August vacation by two weeks.  Meanwhile such Senators as Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and, in fact, the rest will keep their ultra-gold health coverage paid for entirely by tax dollars, even as they do things like give themselves month-long vacations.

Cruz and Lee have a new plan out that they hope will clinch the deal for destroying the Affordable Care Act through that most deceptively used concepts, "choice".  Only the choices offered to people who can't afford what they offer are no choices.

Some Senators have already begun offering alternatives which could make it into the revised bill. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have an amendment which would let insurance companies sell any health insurance plan they wish as long as they also offer at least one plan that is compliant with all of the coverage mandates outlined in Obamacare.

That would allow insurers to offer plans that do not comply with ACA regulations, like providing so-called "essential health benefits," and would therefore provide less robust coverage and cost less. Critics say it will cause costs for people with pre-existing conditions who need more services to rise sharply, undermining protections in place for them.

In case anyone was wondering why people with disabilities have been taking the lead on fighting against this Republican effort, it's because it will literally kill them unless they are too rich to need such things as affordable health insurance.

And if you thought that there were reasonable Republicans on this, Chuck Grassley is more concerned about throwing that long promised bone to his party's psychotic base who love the idea of causing pain and killing poor people and people who are ill and in need of medical care.  Though apparently the polls are telling them that their last bill got only 17% support and even a lot of Republicans didn't like it.

The Republican Party has proven it is the enemy of the American People over and over again, this past seven months, as they have had total control of the country under Trump, a traitor to the country, has shown that it is too dangerous to allow to remain in power.

The alleged "moderates", starting on the pretty far right with Susan Collins, are afraid of the people represented in the 17% enough so they would vote to kill their own constituents if they thought they could do it and win their next election.  They are the swing vote on this, as the NPR story quoted above said, in the most delicate of ways,

GOP senators are already warning that failure to uphold their seven-year campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare could have reverberations with their base.

That is the game that the "moderates" have been playing all along, hoping that they could come up with the calculations to do something just appalling enough to appeal to the worst of their voters without killing or maiming or harming too many normal people to get them bad press and lose them votes.   There is no higher principle involved in this and certainly no morality.  Any bill that comes out of the Senate is going to kill people, their refusal to fully implement the Affordable Care Act already does.   There are people dying today because of Republican governors and legislatures in most of the states.

This effort by Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans is among the most pathological thing that has been done by the Congress in living memory, it is declaring war on the American People, a war which will end up with a body count which can and has been estimated which dwarfs the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam or Afghanistan.  This is an act of treason as certainly as the Trump crime family is being exposed as having committed.

Two Trumps Confess to Conspiracy

De-Nazify The Police

I  hadn't seen the video of the policeman who dumped a woman with multiple sclerosis out of her wheelchair during a protest at Ohio Senator Rob Portman's office in Columbus before this morning.

A video posted to Facebook shows Alisa Grishman—a 35-year-old woman from Pittsburgh who suffers from multiple sclerosis among other ailments, as she explained in another video—being casually pushed out of her chair and onto the floor by an officer from the Columbus Police Department. According to people present, a second woman was pushed over in her scooter and others were pushed or thrown to the ground.

I'm so furious about policeman-thugs doing that and, apparently getting away with it without being summarily fired and arrested for assault that I had to calm down before I wrote this.

The police in this country who don't like being judged by this kind of behavior have to stop covering up for the thugs and fascists among them.  That cop should be in jail awaiting trial for a serious assault, this kind of behavior by the police should be considered a hate crime.  The police and their superiors who don't clamp down on police brutality and prosecute the guilty have no one to blame but themselves when people don't respect them or trust them.  The police unions have a big hand in that, this kind of thing makes me wonder if maybe they shouldn't be allowed to unionize.

I have a close family member in a wheelchair and if a cop ever did that to them,  I would do everything I could to expose him and to ruin his life.

Revolt Against The Spell-Shamers - A Sick Day Post

I've decided to intentionally stop using apostrophes for indicating the possessive case (that means showing when something belongs to someone or something, Simps).  It's stupid, based on a stupid idea some stuck-up dolts in England had in the long, lost past,  based on one of the dumbest ideas anyone ever had about the history of the English language by people who didn't know what they're talking about.  It's also something that is inconsistently done and by rules which, like almost all of those governing standard spelling, bizarrely irregular.

As the asshole who has been trying to spell-shame me loves to believe himself to be the "nothing sacred" type of sophisticated wise guy, it's so funny that he's such a stickler for one of the stupidest areas of conventional and meaningless piety there is, the artificial god of standardized English spelling.  Posing as an iconoclastic sophisticate, he's as prissy as a stereotyped schoolmarm from one of the crappy movies he's addicted to.

Well, most of us are de facto heretics against spelling convention.  I say take the same attitude June Havoc did when she started writing, don't worry about it, don't let it stop you from writing whatever you want to.  I'm in favor of everyone who wants to to write and to learn from looking at their thoughts on a page or on a screen.  I think we'd all be a lot better off if everyone took up the practice, no matter how bad they were with conventional spelling and the arcana of standard punctuation.   One of my great aunt  wrote letters which were not conventionally spelled but they're a lot more interesting than a lot of the ones by people who spelled according to Webster (or some of those of my relatives who used the Brit rules).

And I've decided to annoy the spelling monitors as much as I can.   Here's something I wrote about it ten years ago, before I started using my real name.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

A Response To A Gentle Commentator (optional reading)

Posted by olvlzl.

History of the genitive - you mean it's from the strong masculine OE? Or am I missing yet another fun folk legend?

I hate, hate, hate it when the idea of 'more phonetic English spelling' comes up, because people pronounce English words differently. Whose phonetics get the nod? For a lazy example, do those who say 'pe-pul' speak truer, better English than those who say pe(o-kind-of-like-a-stop)-pl? Or Peepl? And so forth. That's why it hasn't been settled, imho. Too many not-quite-dialects, and since we have a common form, no use screwing with it to the logical benefit of only-some.

That's not even starting on how it could suck to have even one altered Am.Eng. spelling, a British English spelling, a spelling adapted for South Asian Englishes that only fits one really, and so forth... okay, I'll stop.

Of course, as one of those visual-memoried individuals, I never really know what words people want changed in the first place. But then, I probably pronounce at least 96% of the letters I see.

Painini 

Dear Painini, taking your concerns out of order. This website is an incomplete list of the many irregularities of Standard English Spelling. The site is impressive, though I know for a fact that there are more ways to spell some of the vowels, having come up with more spellings for long e one insomniac night. It also makes at least two untrue assertions. It hasn’t “been this way for a long time”. It’s been the way it is, in theory, for about two hundred years, with many if not most people using non-standard spellings the whole time. There is also no reason to just accept the absurdity, mastered by only a minority which has been allowed to tyrannize the rest of us who use the English language. Even the standard system has variants and has had modifications over the years. “Cooky” is how my first grade speller taught the word. Write it that way now and watch the response. Then show them that spelling in the dictionary and have a bit of innocent fun.

You are concerned that some of todays variant pronunciations of the English language would get left out of a reformed spelling. This is surprising since all of them are left out of the standard spelling systems now, both the British and the American. The pronunciations that control standard English spelling are those of people who have not uttered a single syllable for centuries, some have been silent for at least a millennium. To serve their long dead words the system is made impossible for the majority of people alive today.

You might notice that I support an attempt to make English spelling, “more nearly phonetic,” as no system of spelling in a natural language is exactly phonetic. I’d be satisfied with things like getting rid of unpronounced consonants, pitching such quaint antiquities as use of combinations such as -ough, -igh, ..., coming up with one standard spelling for roughly each of the long and short vowels and making the addition of grammatical suffixes regular. Putting any silent e as a sign of the long vowel either next to the pronounced vowel OR at the end of the syllable would be an immeasurable improvement. Just make a rule that once a silent e is put there, it stays there when the word goes on through inflection or compounding.

Choosing one, widely used pronunciation, coming up with a rational and phonetic spelling for it without the myriad of variant spellings we have now, would essentially solve the problem. For mercys sake, think of the children who have to waste their time and lose self-respect for the sake of of middle-aged, would be, etymologists’ vanity.

The alternative to spelling reform is to get used to the reestablishment of non-standard spelling. Those are the choices in spelling. As time wears on, it’s clear that standard spelling is being over run by the rabble. The choices in spending your time are either to get used to the reality that results when the last two centuries of class-based irrationality runs head long into a computer using population that isn’t going to be silent any longer, or to be continually upset that most people are not following the old religion.

As for your worries concerning my footnote about the use of the apostrophe in the English genitive case being based in “folk legend”, I refer you to page 291 of Albert C. Baughs “A History of the English Language,” 2nd edition:

... Until well into the eighteenth century people were troubled by the illogical consequences of this usage, Dr. Johnson (!) points out that one can hardly believe that the possessive ending is a contraction of his in such expression as a woman’s beauty or a virgin’s delicacy. He, himself seems to have been aware that its true source was the Old English genitive, but the error has left its trace in the apostrophe which we still retain as a graphic convenience to mark the possessive.

The error was thinking that the possessives ending in -s were a contraction of the word “his”. This an example of the foolishness of not simply writing a word as pronounced and attempting to weigh down what should be the helpful mechanics of spelling with an attempt at scholarship, showing off. In this case, as even Johnson managed to notice, the erudition was absolutely absurd, the product of rank ignorance. The results are an absurdity endowed with the force of conventional morality. Sinners who forget to place the erroneous apostrophe or who, in an overweening attempt to get it right, commit the sin of wasting one where the cannons of spelling do not place one, ... such heretics are to be cast out from respectable society.

I am grateful for your forcing me to reread my old textbook after so many decades. It’s full of interesting insights into some of the folly of grammarians, would be experts on rhetoric etc. I recommend it if it is read in the spirit of generosity and with an open mind. I forgot that Joseph Priestly delved in the language controversies of his day. Got to get to the library soon.

In perfect seriousness, the written form of the language is one of the most powerful tools for looking at ones thoughts and the thoughts of other people. Which of us haven’t come up with clearer ideas while we look over what we’ve written? To have most English speakers alienated from this tool, rightfully theirs, by the dictate of the aristocrats of orthography, is an offense against democracy. It helps explain how the English Speaking People have put up with so much crap from their ruling classes and how easily some of them are manipulated. You take a kid who doesn’t have the knack of spelling and tell him from the earliest grades that he’s stupid, how do you expect him to think about people who think and write for a living?

Update:  "Too chickenshit to post my response to that? Quel surprise."

That was a response?  Too bull shit to post, Pas de surprise.

Guess What Else Happened on 6/19/16

Psalm 10 - Psalm In a Time of Trump

1 Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—
    let them be caught in the schemes they have devised.
3 For the wicked boast of the desires of their heart,
    those greedy for gain curse and renounce the Lord.
4 In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, “God will not seek it out”;
    all their thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 Their ways prosper at all times;
    your judgments are on high, out of their sight;
    as for their foes, they scoff at them.
6 They think in their heart, “We shall not be moved;
    throughout all generations we shall not meet adversity.”
7 Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
    under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
8 They sit in ambush in the villages;
    in hiding places they murder the innocent.
Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9     they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;
they lurk that they may seize the poor;
    they seize the poor and drag them off in their net.
10 They stoop, they crouch,
    and the helpless fall by their might.
11 They think in their heart, “God has forgotten,
    he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
12 Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
    do not forget the oppressed.
13 Why do the wicked renounce God,
    and say in their hearts, “You will not call us to account”?
14 But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
    that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
    you have been the helper of the orphan.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers;
    seek out their wickedness until you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
    the nations shall perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
    you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
18 to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
    so that those from earth may strike terror no more.

I think you'll find more useful ideas for resisting what created Trump in that than in your average Alternet or In These Times article.

Hate Mail

Simels deciding, after years of me calling him on his anti-Polish bigotry, that he is "half Polish" (I suspect someone at Baby Blue might have objected this time) reminds me of Noam Chomsky's reaction to Christopher Hitchens' claim that he was Jewish (which seems to have been news to his brother and others in his family).   As reported, Chomsky said, “From anti-Semite to self-hating Jew, all in one day.” 

The Country Is Run By Traitors Who Are Doing Nothing To Protect Us From Foreign Criminals Just As They Failed To Protect Us From Domestic Billionaires With Dictatorial Tendencies

His performance at the G20 has been such a total and scandalous spectacle of more than mere incompetence but real and dangerous mental debility that has been of a piece with Donald Trump's pathological performance as president and during his campaign.  He didn't fade under the pressures and challenges of the highest office in the United States government, he was a person who was obviously unqualified, by all of the reasons of incompetence, unfitness for the job and psychosis from before he announced his run.  He was our real-life Lord Buckethead who, under the British parliamentary system was only running for a seat from one riding.   I believe the theory of presidential governmental systems is that a nationally elected executive is supposed to make it unlikely one like Trump will get to run the country into the ground within a year.  But that all goes to hell if the media doesn't do what Jefferson and those other romantics believed it would also do, prevent people from being duped by such a psychotic or demonic figure.  As our system shows, that basic level or moral responsibility on the part of a press such as the one we have today, is pretty much dead here.  At least in the media that counts, terrifyingly enough, the entertainment divisions of the networks and the continual entertainment venues of the 24-7 alleged news cabloids.

That Donald Trump holds the presidency of the United States is far more than a Constitutional Crisis, it is an exposure of a crisis that has been there all along but which was just waiting for the right evil Russian billionaire genius to master our own vulnerabilities against us and for him.  Our own billionaires did quite well for themselves out of some of the same weak points of democracy even back when they were just millionaires.

Even now when two of those closest to trump,  his own son and namesake and his son-in-law appointed master of everything have been exposed as having colluded with agents of Putin, our system will not get rid of the malignancy of which such as Donnie jr. and Jared Kushner are major lesions but mere metastases of the thing which will kill us.  If you want to carry the analogy to its start, it was the media who created and promoted and enabled Trump during his entire public career, peddling him and his pathological corporate dictator image to the American public, successfully selling him to an effective margin of victory for him which was the carcinogen that made this happen.

And nothing is happening to prevent it in a basic and reliable way just as the regulatory and other measures to prevent another 2008 economic implosion were hardly a fix for that, just as even the more seriously needed post-Nixon crime wave reforms have not prevented, first the record indictment and conviction Reagan administration, the scandalous imposition by judicial putsch of George W. Bush and, now, Trump.

Someone,  I can't remember who, said that if Putin's attempt to game our laws and our system for his own ends hadn't worked this time, he and his crime associates would learn from what they did and they would make an attempt based on that the next time.   And if that's true, you can bet that they'll learn at least as much from their successes.  Their effort included manipulation of our news media as much as it did the insane practice of running our elections through computers and the internet.  If the DNC didn't learn the folly of putting anything out there on line where it could turn into another successful Putin-Assange opportunity - and I wonder if it has - it's clear that our federal, state and many local governments haven't even caught up to the disaster of 2000.  Nor do they much seem like they want to.

This is worse than a crisis of the American Constitution, this is a crisis for democracy, especially one based on a pre- information technology, 18th century constitution which has features that prevent its modernization.   Such a thing is an open invitation to the Putins of the world.  If he has been exposed as doing this, there is nothing to prevent other despots with resources from having a go at it, too.  Meanwhile our Constitution, our Supreme Court and our legislative branches, federal and state, diddle and delay and try to game it for partisan advantage - AND ALMOST ALL OF THAT IS DONE BY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, THE PARTY WHICH GAVE US PUTIN.   Why bother holding elections if Vladimir Putin is going to end up running the United States through a proxy puppet?  Why elect people to congress and the Senate if they're going to not prevent that but try to use it for their gain?  We are all Russians, now.

Eric Dolphy - Naima

Jacky Bambou Percussion
Jaki Byard Composer
Donald Byrd Guest Artist, Trumpet
Nathan Davis Guest Artist, Sax (Tenor)
Jacques Diéval Guest Artist, Piano
Eric Dolphy Clarinet (Bass), Primary Artist, Sax (Alto)
Jacques Hess Bass

A great version of one of John Coltrane's most famous compositions.  I'm not exactly sure that all of the artists credited on the album played on this cut and would rather credit too many than too few. I've only listened to it once,  not having known about it before tonight.  It is obviously great on first hearing.

Hall Overton - Sonata for Viola and Piano

Walter Trampler, viola
Lucy Greene, piano

Another recording posted by the American Composers Alliance.  Walter Trampler was one of the finest viola players of his time.  Lucy Greene was obviously a fine pianist, as well.

When I started posting Hall Overton on the 4th I didn't intend to make it a series but his music is so good and so little known that I decided it really should be promoted.  Who knows, maybe they'll do an actual professional production of his opera, Huck Finn, which, the more I read about it, it sounds as if Overton made some changes in the story - aging Huck by three years, making it more about Jim's adult point of view than Huck's 13-year-old, white boy's thinking.  Frankly, those and the reported change to Mark Twain's pretty awful ending for what is otherwise a good book could likely improve the story.  And, considering it was done 45 years ago, it sounds like it would be so much fresher than that broadway musical they did to it.

Let's hope we get to hear it someday.

Just Bob And Ray [8]

Bob and Ray