As I'm typing this I am listening to NPR's Steve Inskeep doing a soft-hit interview with Democratic strategist Margie Omero. He's doing the typical media thing of turning monumental irresponsibility of Republicans, Trump, Mitch McConnell in the shut down into a Democratic problem, even though Democrats in the only part of government they control, half of the legislative, have already voted, repeatedly to reopen the government. He's also bringing up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the focus of a right-wing hate campaign of the kind that they have mounted against Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. Now they are including Rashida Talib whose one profane statement will, certainly be talked about for as long as she's before the public and probably after.
Have I mentioned that NPR should be fuck off and die?
The corporate media had a problem while Democrats were entirely out of power, how to make them responsible for the inability of Republicans to do anything responsible and reasonable? Now that they have one house of Congress under the control of Democrats, better, with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, they can go back to their old and well practiced habit of making Democrats and, especially Democratic Women, and best of all, Democratic Women of Color responsible for the disgusting and obscene behavior of old, white, racist Republican men who hold control in the rest of the government.
The idiots on the alleged left part of the "free speech - free press" industry have always had it wrong, the American media, even the "left" of it is not liberal, not in the real meaning of the word in the United States, it is, left to right, in the hands of people who oppose egalitarian democracy, either overtly or by force of their content, Steve Inskeep is typical though hardly isolated in doing that. It is the effect of just about everything they do. As I've pointed out time after time, the secular-leftist media does the same thing from another direction.
The American media, with very few exceptions, is not the friend of egalitarian democracy. It should have its ability to lie and distort taken from it by making its privileges contingent on telling the truth instead of lying and distorting. NPR should fuck off and die.
Monday, January 7, 2019
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Reges Tharsis - For Epiphany
The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts. And all the people of the Earth will serve him.
William Byrd
You might hear the Gregorian Melody in Litaize's organ piece.
William Byrd
Pomerium
Alexander Blachley, conductor
Gaston Litaize
You might hear the Gregorian Melody in Litaize's organ piece.
Shove Jordan Peterson Back Over The Canadian Border And Seal It Against Him
Listening to this Canadian crackpot talk about rape is one of the most incredibly bizarre things I've heard yet this year.
There are a few other professional fields where someone could get away with being as fricken loony as Jordan Peterson is and no one would consider firing him except psychology. That such a nutcase and intellectual phony holds a faculty position at a major North American university shows that the entire field is bullshit. It should be as big a scandal as when the idiots in evo-psy all of a sudden noticed that the flaming anti-semite Kevin Macdonald was publishing science that wouldn't have been out of place in Germany in the late 1930s but, of course, it being psychology it isn't.
Democrats Have To Defeat Misogynistic Republican Vilification Campaigns Even When "Democrats" Mount Them
The use of racism by the scumbag-Republican Matt Gaetz, (scumbag-Republican FL) against Elizabeth Warren is just the latest in what is an obvious and organized effort by Republican-fascists to use misogyny and racism against potential Democratic presidential nominees. Since the likes of Gaetz swim in the bottom regions of the cesspool that is the Republican Party under Trumpism - they're all pretty much bottom feeders - it is mainstream Republican politics when he does it.
This has been such a long standing and obvious effort that it is certain planned and planned to become effective. A big part of that effectiveness is the American media which can be counted on to not only carry Republican-fascist use of racism and misogyny, they will adopt it as part of their "people are saying" narration. The effect of that isn't planned to be on rational people who are informed, it is planned to have an effect on an effective margin of voters who are not informed and will vote on their ill-informed emotions, the kind who knew they didn't like Hillary Clinton but, when asked, couldn't tell you why. I can tell them why, the American media from the New York Times, NPR, The Nation, In These Times, . . . . and all the way down to the fascist and neo-Nazi sewer was telling them for three decades to not like her.
The American "free press" is a willing participant in these things and it will be as the Republican-fascists attack Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and any other Democratic woman they can mount an attack on. And the lefty media participates in that as much as any other.
The misogyny on the lefty blogs and websites in the nominations during 2008 was more than matched by that during the nominations of 2016, it is ongoing on comment threads of lefty media such as Majority Report. We now know some of it was rampant in the Sanders campaign, Bernie Sanders has admitted that and apologized for it, though at the time it was certainly known within the upper reaches of his staff I suspect including his wife and campaign manager, so I can't believe he didn't know about it at the time.
American media doesn't deal in developed ideas, it peddles labels, so we need an effective term for this Republican-fascist tactic of vague vilification. Something specific to it. I'm not good with making up such terms but if it's going to be fought one will have to be used. Democrats have to study and plan an effective series of strategies that will expose that for what it is and they will have to adopt a solid line of opposition to that practice. Given the non-Democrat Sanders campaign and its fan boys and gals in 2016 and what I think was probably a far less intrinsic part of Obama's 2008 campaign, the first thing to do is to make opposing misogyny and racism a requirement of ALL of those who are trying to run a campaign against Democratic women, even during the nominations process. If we can't eliminate it among our own campaigns how can we hope to defeat the Republican-fascists doing it?
NOTE: Democrats should insist that the DNC adopt a rule that no one who has not been a registered Democrat for at least two presidential cycles is eligible for the Democratic nomination for president. There is no reason for the Democratic Party to remain vulnerable to the likes of Bernie Sanders or, in the upcoming election, Michael Bloomberg who didn't see fit to BE DEMOCRATS except when they figure they can benefit from declaring they are, temporarily, Democrats.
This has been such a long standing and obvious effort that it is certain planned and planned to become effective. A big part of that effectiveness is the American media which can be counted on to not only carry Republican-fascist use of racism and misogyny, they will adopt it as part of their "people are saying" narration. The effect of that isn't planned to be on rational people who are informed, it is planned to have an effect on an effective margin of voters who are not informed and will vote on their ill-informed emotions, the kind who knew they didn't like Hillary Clinton but, when asked, couldn't tell you why. I can tell them why, the American media from the New York Times, NPR, The Nation, In These Times, . . . . and all the way down to the fascist and neo-Nazi sewer was telling them for three decades to not like her.
The American "free press" is a willing participant in these things and it will be as the Republican-fascists attack Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and any other Democratic woman they can mount an attack on. And the lefty media participates in that as much as any other.
The misogyny on the lefty blogs and websites in the nominations during 2008 was more than matched by that during the nominations of 2016, it is ongoing on comment threads of lefty media such as Majority Report. We now know some of it was rampant in the Sanders campaign, Bernie Sanders has admitted that and apologized for it, though at the time it was certainly known within the upper reaches of his staff I suspect including his wife and campaign manager, so I can't believe he didn't know about it at the time.
American media doesn't deal in developed ideas, it peddles labels, so we need an effective term for this Republican-fascist tactic of vague vilification. Something specific to it. I'm not good with making up such terms but if it's going to be fought one will have to be used. Democrats have to study and plan an effective series of strategies that will expose that for what it is and they will have to adopt a solid line of opposition to that practice. Given the non-Democrat Sanders campaign and its fan boys and gals in 2016 and what I think was probably a far less intrinsic part of Obama's 2008 campaign, the first thing to do is to make opposing misogyny and racism a requirement of ALL of those who are trying to run a campaign against Democratic women, even during the nominations process. If we can't eliminate it among our own campaigns how can we hope to defeat the Republican-fascists doing it?
NOTE: Democrats should insist that the DNC adopt a rule that no one who has not been a registered Democrat for at least two presidential cycles is eligible for the Democratic nomination for president. There is no reason for the Democratic Party to remain vulnerable to the likes of Bernie Sanders or, in the upcoming election, Michael Bloomberg who didn't see fit to BE DEMOCRATS except when they figure they can benefit from declaring they are, temporarily, Democrats.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Damien Atkins - Good Mother
Adapted for Radio from the world premier production at the Stratford Festival In Canada 2002. What would you do if suddenly your mom wasn’t your mom anymore. The Driver family struggles to come with an accident that robs them of a mother and leaves them to care for her as she struggles to regain her memory.
Seana Mckennam
Damien Atkins
Walter Best
Michelle Graff
Jane Spider
Ron Horsman
Andrew Dodd
Directed by Miles potter
Produced by Barbara Worthy
In Contrast To The Below
Gov.-elect Janet T. Mills hugs singers Shy Pace, 11, (left) and Natalia Mbadu, 10, after the duo sang "Girl On Fire" in honor of Mills before she took the oath of office in Augusta on Wednesday night. Bangor Daily News: Troy R. Bennett
Enabling the telling of lies, especially in the mass media, is not only something a liberal has absolutely no moral obligation to do out of some flaky notion of fairness, it is an immoral act of enabling the destruction of egalitarian democracy
The stinking, racist hypocrisy of Maine Republicans' Paul LePage, elected, twice, with less than the support of a majority of voters is far deeper than I knew last Wednesday when I wrote about his pardon of Jeff Pierce, a felony drug dealer who was also charged with multiple other crimes before and after, who Republicans put in the legislature to support Paul LePage. And, it was reported that the Clemency Board in Maine had recommended the Pierce, who has a record of continuing to break the law, EVEN AS A STATE LEGISLATOR, not be pardoned. To top it off, as Rachel Maddow points out, LePage refused to pardon a family man in Maine who was deported by the Trump regime on the basis of an old drug conviction EVEN THOUGH HE HAD AN OTHERWISE CLEAN RECORD. I hope Governor Janet Mills pardons him and works to restore him to his family here in Maine.
The idiocy of laws passed as an experiment by flaky lefties in Maine* not only made it far more likely that the last choice of the majority of voters would become governor, they also adopted laws that allowed a scumbag like LePage to hide most of the pardons they issued so we don't know what other scum Lepage has given a pardon to. Lots of the laws passed on the basis of liberal flakiness of the past should have been looked at, hard, to see what opportunities those chuckleheads were giving to fascists like LePage and scum like Pierce because a good percentage of their success was based in some of the dumbest of "reforms" and theories of fairness and niceness of the 60s and 70s.
Liberal politics that has being fair to fascists and nice to Nazis and standing up for Stalinists and mushy for Maoists is the wrong kind of liberal politics.
Liberal politics should, always, be about the protection of egalitarian democracy against all of the forces and all of the people who would destroy it. Whether those are Trumpian-LePagian fascists and Nazis, or billionaire oligarchs, or the corporate media or some pseudo-lefty ideology. Unfortunately, given how much the America left has been suckered by the "free speech - free press" contingent who controls the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry, one of the things it has to fight against are such duped and suckered liberals and lefties.
Fairness to fascists, providing them an even playing field, providing them with the ability to push their poison into the minds of those they can sucker is not and never has been a legitimate goal of any liberalism.
Enabling the telling of lies, especially in the mass media, is not only something a liberal has absolutely no moral obligation to do out of some flaky notion of fairness, it is an immoral act of enabling the destruction of egalitarian democracy. America's left got sold a huge load of bull shit when it bought that line from the likes of the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry. All of the bull shit laws of easing ballot access that enabled Paul LePage to win election, twice, and which has helped him hide his pardons given to his buddies and cronies were part of that same program of idiotic "fairness" that took advantage of liberals who are more ruled by their easily swayed emotions than by a clear-eyed evaluation of the consequences for the one and only legitimate form of government, egalitarian democracy adopted by a majority of informed voters acting out of good will.
Maine Republicans should have to wear the stink of Paul LePage, the worst governor in our history. Ranked-choice voting should be extended to every election in Maine AND IT SHOULD BE LAW THAT NO ONE CAN BECOME GOVERNOR OR A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE WHO ISN'T AT LEAST THE SECOND CHOICE OF A MAJORITY OF VOTERS.
* Gov. Janet Mills said she is now considering a similar change to Maine’s new private pardon law. Mills was not available for an interview, but a spokesperson said in a statement that she generally believes that the public has a right to know about pardons granted by her or other governors.
Not all Democrats are in agreement on the issue.
“Shame isn’t the tool we should be using,” said Rep. Charlotte Warren, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “People deserve second chances, and when the governor is saying you’ve done your time and I’m going to pardon you, or shorten your sentence through another process, you know, that’s saying you’ve paid your debt to society.”
Well, if that's the case,why not just grant all people who have served their sentence with the equivalent instead of leaving it to the whims of whoever happens to be the governor?
The power to grant pardons is an extraordinary power that is extraordinarily open to abuse by a governor who, in that function, is pretty much free and unanswerable for what they do with it. Making who he pardons secret is one of the stupidest things Maine legislators have done in criminal reform. Considering who isn't covered under that secrecy rule - including people who were convicted of consensual sex when teenagers decades ago - Warren is an idiot.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Dusan Bogdanovic - Tombeau de Purcell
Dusan Bogdanovic, Tombeau de Purcell, Eden-Stell Guitar Duo.
Recorded in 2005. Published by https://productionsdoz.com/
1. Overture, Grave doloroso, 0:00
2. Var.1, Lamentoso, 1:24
3. Var.2, Risoluto, 2:19
4. Var.3 Adagio trasparente, 3:06
5. Var.4, Espressivo e ritmico, 4:09
6. Var.5, Allegro non troppo e ritmico, 5:28
7. Passacaglia, Grave doloroso, 6:11
Image: Henry Purcell by John Closterman.
Already Feeling Cleaner In The New Year
I have given up trying to clean out the Spam file of this blog. The program that does that allows you to delete 100 spam messages at a time. I've done it over and over again and I'm still not out of the backlog for 2018. Looking at them, most of them are old hate-mail that was too stupid and useless for me to do anything else with but junk them. A few were attempts at scams, probably less than 1%. I do know that when I decided that I'd moderate comments because I didn't want this to turn into the kind of open comment food-fight that those usually turn into AND THAT I WOULD NOT KNOWINGLY CARRY LIES TOLD ABOUT NAMED PEOPLE I didn't realize what a high percentage of comments that would turn out to be. I wish I'd just deleted those. I wonder where they reside. Will they ever disappear or will they always be there in a way that could be opened and read? I do know I've given up trying to empty it out. I must have deleted a couple of thousand of those people have tried to post since last March. The ones I read were mostly just stupid stuff, the stuff from "the left" as stupid as the stuff from the right. I think stupid people probably lie more. It's a symptom of stupidity.
I Love That The Fascists Attacking AOC For Being Young, Happy and Female (or is it Latina?) Backfired
For the Republican-fascists who installed a guy who was a regular and violent drunk who smeared a Woman as a slut in his high school yearbook claiming, apparently falsely and without her knowledge (until after the dope supported him), that he'd screwed her, who is very credibly accused of sexually assaulting and two Women, one in front of witnesses, the other trying to rape her with a drinking buddy, and which totally supports a confessed, serial sexual assaulter as the president* to try to shame the young,wonderful and brilliant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a video in which she does a very chaste and clean dance while she was in college is more than disgusting.
I have never been much on dancing but even I smiled when I saw AOC dancing on the rooftop - dancing very well - in the college video. It made me happy.
This is part of a clear Republican game plan of vilifying, especially, Women, to create a vague negative feeling about Democratic Women with an effective percentage of the largely uninformed population. I wish I had kept a list of younger people who knew they didn't like Hillary Clinton but, when you asked them why, they couldn't tell you why, they just knew it. It has been an ongoing effort with Hillary Clinton, now that we know the criminal acting-AG is continuing the smear campaign at taxpayers expense over her e-mails. I would love an accurate accounting of how many tens of millions of dollars Republicans have spent trying to find something they could indict Hillary Clinton on because it's going into its third decade now and they've found nothing. The last figure I recall was $40,000,000, and that was a long time ago.
Hillary Clinton is, certainly, the most certifiably INNOCENT American citizen in the history of the country. Certainly the most investigated and they have yet to indict her on anything.
The Republican Smear-The-Women campaign has targeted Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Frederica Wilson * . . . . and now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It's time to call this what it is, an organized, planned use of misogyny in exactly the same way that Republicans have used racism all along. It is time to shove it in the face of all Republicans but, especially, Republican Women as Black Republicans should have to answer for their remaining in a party which is the foremost vehicle of racism in the United States. I think the Democratic Party should research this because I'm sure they have some kind of planning, probably doing market-style research to see who to target and what lies and lines to use. I'm sure scum like the Mercers and Murdochs finance it and there are probably hints as to which firms are doing the research for them. Expose this as the media campaign that it is.
* That lying scumbag John Kelly should never appear on the media without someone asking him if he's ready to admit he lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. He is, I'm sorry to say, typical of a kind of Boston Irish racist and a coward. A real man of substance wouldn't have lied and even one of marginal honor would have apologized after being exposed as a liar, especially in the context in which he lied about her.
I have never been much on dancing but even I smiled when I saw AOC dancing on the rooftop - dancing very well - in the college video. It made me happy.
This is part of a clear Republican game plan of vilifying, especially, Women, to create a vague negative feeling about Democratic Women with an effective percentage of the largely uninformed population. I wish I had kept a list of younger people who knew they didn't like Hillary Clinton but, when you asked them why, they couldn't tell you why, they just knew it. It has been an ongoing effort with Hillary Clinton, now that we know the criminal acting-AG is continuing the smear campaign at taxpayers expense over her e-mails. I would love an accurate accounting of how many tens of millions of dollars Republicans have spent trying to find something they could indict Hillary Clinton on because it's going into its third decade now and they've found nothing. The last figure I recall was $40,000,000, and that was a long time ago.
Hillary Clinton is, certainly, the most certifiably INNOCENT American citizen in the history of the country. Certainly the most investigated and they have yet to indict her on anything.
The Republican Smear-The-Women campaign has targeted Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Frederica Wilson * . . . . and now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It's time to call this what it is, an organized, planned use of misogyny in exactly the same way that Republicans have used racism all along. It is time to shove it in the face of all Republicans but, especially, Republican Women as Black Republicans should have to answer for their remaining in a party which is the foremost vehicle of racism in the United States. I think the Democratic Party should research this because I'm sure they have some kind of planning, probably doing market-style research to see who to target and what lies and lines to use. I'm sure scum like the Mercers and Murdochs finance it and there are probably hints as to which firms are doing the research for them. Expose this as the media campaign that it is.
* That lying scumbag John Kelly should never appear on the media without someone asking him if he's ready to admit he lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. He is, I'm sorry to say, typical of a kind of Boston Irish racist and a coward. A real man of substance wouldn't have lied and even one of marginal honor would have apologized after being exposed as a liar, especially in the context in which he lied about her.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Dusan Bogdanovic - Furioso
Dusan Bogdanovic, Winter Tale, guitar duo with Miroslav Tadic
Recorded in 1995 at the Gallery of frescos (Galerija fresaka) in Belgrade.
Published by http://www.singidunumusic.com/
"they don't realize that this Book is their enemy" Put The Meaning In The Christmas Narratives Back Into It And FOX Will Declare War on Christmas
Afterwards we read how Joseph was informed by an angel of the death of Herod and he returned to Israel:
But when Joseph heard that Archelaus was governing in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there; and having been warned in dreams, he went to the province of Galilee. When he reached there, he went to live in the town of Nazareth.
WILLIAM: "They were practically in the underground."
Another boy: They were right to stay in hiding, because even if Herod was already dead, there was another dictator there; just as if a Somoza dies and somebody else is in power, you're still always afraid.
I said that this Herod Archelaus that was left governing Judea was the cruelest of the sons of Herod and was even crueler than his father; his government was inaugurated with a riot by the people and he killed more than three thousand demonstrators who were asking for freedom for political prisoners and for tax cuts. In Galilee Herod Antipas ruled, who was less dreadful, even though he was the one that killed John the Baptist and was governing at the time of the death of Christ.
My brother FERNANDO said: "The old dictator died and the angel tells Joseph that they can come back now, but that doesn't mean that now there wouldn't be more people that would want to kill the child. In fact his life continued in danger and that's why they were in that insignificant little town of Galilee, and part of his public life he also spent half in hiding, until they finally killed him. And the same thing will happen to anyone who gets involved with liberation. He'll get out of one danger only to fall into another. And this you always have to keep in mind. The angel informed that one danger had ended . . . for the moment."
ALEJANDRO: "And Mary was screwed from the very first, right? It was thirty years of fighting right back beside her son, risking herself just like him from when he was a child until he died. That seems to me a good lesson for every mother. And another lesson as Joseph."
And OLIVIA, Alejandro's mother: " What Alejandro says is quite right, and fathers and mothers ought to think a lot about it. That mother went with her son until his death and willingly. But nowadays many times mothers are the first to be opposed to their sons fighting for freedom. Some of them don't even like the boys and girls to come to the meetings, so they don't get involved. I, when I heard that some young people were taking over at the cathedral, I wanted to be close to them, I wanted to be able to go and see them, help them in some way. And even take the microphone and talk also."
FERNANDO: "I don't understand how you can read the Gospels and get spiritual lessons for your life out of it and not get involved in the Revolution. This Book has a very clear political position for anyone that reads it simply, as you read it. But there are people in Managua who read this Book, and they are friends of Herod; and they don't realize that this Book is their enemy.
So that what the prophets said could be fulfilled; that Jesus was going to be called a Nazarene.
I said that Nazareth was a place so humble that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament, and we don not know exactly what prophecies Saint Matthew is referring to. It is believed that he may be punning with a Hebrew name of similar sound that has been given to the Messiah that means "sprout". One thing seems certain, that this is what the name "Nazarene" that Jesus had was a nickname given to him by his enemies to make fun of his humble origins."
GLORIA: "To say 'from Nazareth' might be like saying 'from Nindiri' . . . or worse, 'from Solentiname.' "
JOSE, Mariita's husband, said: "His nickname meant that he was a man of the people, and he was a man of the people, including even that his parents hadn't been married, were engaged to be married and she was pregnant, as so often happens with the poor, with that problem of the poor, then, the Messiah was born, son of an unwed mother."
WILLIAM (smiling): "And they didn't know who the father was. . . "
MARIITA: "But he married her because he loved her."
That is the last part of this chapter from The Gospel in Solentiname. As RMJ pointed out during Advent, far from being fairy tales and children's books both accounts of the Birth of Jesus are dark and troubling stories of a child being born and a mother giving birth in dangerous and primitive and, as everyone who first heard the stories would know, filthy conditions, as humble as could be had. And if that weren't enough, the king wants to hunt him down and kill him, willing to kill lots of baby boys in order to kill him - as in an earlier passage they pointed out the American supported dictatorship in Nicaragua killed a bunch of farmers to kill the one who was a union organizer.
Back when I was a kid there were a lot of people who liked to talk about "putting the Christ back in Christmas". I remember my mother wondering when Christ got taken out of it but, then, she was seriously Catholic.
If FOX had any idea what REALLY reading the stories of Christmas meant, as Fernando Cardenal said, they'd be the first to declare war on it.
But when Joseph heard that Archelaus was governing in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there; and having been warned in dreams, he went to the province of Galilee. When he reached there, he went to live in the town of Nazareth.
WILLIAM: "They were practically in the underground."
Another boy: They were right to stay in hiding, because even if Herod was already dead, there was another dictator there; just as if a Somoza dies and somebody else is in power, you're still always afraid.
I said that this Herod Archelaus that was left governing Judea was the cruelest of the sons of Herod and was even crueler than his father; his government was inaugurated with a riot by the people and he killed more than three thousand demonstrators who were asking for freedom for political prisoners and for tax cuts. In Galilee Herod Antipas ruled, who was less dreadful, even though he was the one that killed John the Baptist and was governing at the time of the death of Christ.
My brother FERNANDO said: "The old dictator died and the angel tells Joseph that they can come back now, but that doesn't mean that now there wouldn't be more people that would want to kill the child. In fact his life continued in danger and that's why they were in that insignificant little town of Galilee, and part of his public life he also spent half in hiding, until they finally killed him. And the same thing will happen to anyone who gets involved with liberation. He'll get out of one danger only to fall into another. And this you always have to keep in mind. The angel informed that one danger had ended . . . for the moment."
ALEJANDRO: "And Mary was screwed from the very first, right? It was thirty years of fighting right back beside her son, risking herself just like him from when he was a child until he died. That seems to me a good lesson for every mother. And another lesson as Joseph."
And OLIVIA, Alejandro's mother: " What Alejandro says is quite right, and fathers and mothers ought to think a lot about it. That mother went with her son until his death and willingly. But nowadays many times mothers are the first to be opposed to their sons fighting for freedom. Some of them don't even like the boys and girls to come to the meetings, so they don't get involved. I, when I heard that some young people were taking over at the cathedral, I wanted to be close to them, I wanted to be able to go and see them, help them in some way. And even take the microphone and talk also."
FERNANDO: "I don't understand how you can read the Gospels and get spiritual lessons for your life out of it and not get involved in the Revolution. This Book has a very clear political position for anyone that reads it simply, as you read it. But there are people in Managua who read this Book, and they are friends of Herod; and they don't realize that this Book is their enemy.
So that what the prophets said could be fulfilled; that Jesus was going to be called a Nazarene.
I said that Nazareth was a place so humble that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament, and we don not know exactly what prophecies Saint Matthew is referring to. It is believed that he may be punning with a Hebrew name of similar sound that has been given to the Messiah that means "sprout". One thing seems certain, that this is what the name "Nazarene" that Jesus had was a nickname given to him by his enemies to make fun of his humble origins."
GLORIA: "To say 'from Nazareth' might be like saying 'from Nindiri' . . . or worse, 'from Solentiname.' "
JOSE, Mariita's husband, said: "His nickname meant that he was a man of the people, and he was a man of the people, including even that his parents hadn't been married, were engaged to be married and she was pregnant, as so often happens with the poor, with that problem of the poor, then, the Messiah was born, son of an unwed mother."
WILLIAM (smiling): "And they didn't know who the father was. . . "
MARIITA: "But he married her because he loved her."
That is the last part of this chapter from The Gospel in Solentiname. As RMJ pointed out during Advent, far from being fairy tales and children's books both accounts of the Birth of Jesus are dark and troubling stories of a child being born and a mother giving birth in dangerous and primitive and, as everyone who first heard the stories would know, filthy conditions, as humble as could be had. And if that weren't enough, the king wants to hunt him down and kill him, willing to kill lots of baby boys in order to kill him - as in an earlier passage they pointed out the American supported dictatorship in Nicaragua killed a bunch of farmers to kill the one who was a union organizer.
Back when I was a kid there were a lot of people who liked to talk about "putting the Christ back in Christmas". I remember my mother wondering when Christ got taken out of it but, then, she was seriously Catholic.
If FOX had any idea what REALLY reading the stories of Christmas meant, as Fernando Cardenal said, they'd be the first to declare war on it.
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
J.S.Bach - Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue, BWV 903
Wim Winters, clavichord
Wim Winter's Youtube channel which deals mostly with the clavichord but also historical pianos and performance practice, based on extensive reading and research of primary documentary evidence along with well reasoned and informed speculation is wonderful. I'm intending to post more of his work this year.
This one in which he documents that Beethoven! was apparently using a clavichord as late as 1825 was really astonishing. Considering the profundity of his hearing loss it's as puzzling as it is interesting.
His ideas on how the use of the metronome seems to have changed are really important but more of that later.
I Listened To Kanye West's Shitty Music This Time
My question is why anyone would listen to him before he became the biggest asshole in the country not named Trump?
I also read his bio. Is he the worlds biggest and oldest asshole of a faculty brat in history or what?
I also read his bio. Is he the worlds biggest and oldest asshole of a faculty brat in history or what?
Deal With It, Bunky AOC Is A Catholic
I have said that I'm worried that the ever fickle secular left will turn on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as soon as she fails to fulfill their entirely unrealistic pipe-dreams that her very impressive but quite atypical win in a rather atypical congressional district means the great lefty millennium (which ever version of that the deluded play-lefty wants) is at hand. There has already been anger at her refusal to take futile and stupid stands on things like Nancy Pelosi's leadership which are as counter-productively stupid as they are childish. The large majority of seasoned Democratic office holders support Nancy Pelosi BECAUSE NANCY PELOSI IS THE BEST DEMOCRATIC LEADER IN THE HOUSE IN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS, AND ARGUABLY THE FARTHEST LEFT IN THE HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY.
But that's not enough for play lefties in the secular lefty bubble of NYC or San Francisco or in Madison or other college towns or scribblers for the lefty mags and podcasters who live in a lefty la-la-land and are quite atypical of the real left in the United States.
I had a feeling this would turn into a problem for AOC because I read this short but brilliant article she wrote for America: The Jesuit Review last June. Heck, forget the link, risking a cease and desist I'm going to post the whole thing.
Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.”
I have never known Marc as a criminal. I have only known him as the largest and funniest member of my family. As a child, I saw this tattooed arm over and over again. It appeared at family cookouts turning a lechón (roasted pig) in its fifth hour, it held me steady on Marc’s broad lap, and it was revealed during the wintertime, when our pipes would hiss until the relentless heat would force us all to roll our sleeves as far up as they would go.
I remember reading his tattoo each time I saw it, trying to understand what it meant: Only God Can Judge Me. Innocence, in its mercy, partly excuses us from having to fully reckon with the spiritual gifts of forgiveness, grace and redemption at the heart of the Catechism: I believe in the forgiveness of sins.
Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been out of the system ever since—a miraculous feat, given that over 75 percent of released state prisoners in the United States are rearrested within five years. Today he is a union worker and a happily married father of three successful children.
The still imprisoned are not so lucky. By virtually every measure, the United States incarcerates more of its people than any other nation in the world. When we look at the fuller picture of who we imprison, for how long and why, it may not be a stretch to conclude that our criminal justice system could very well benefit from a rite of penance of its own. There is overwhelming evidence that mass incarceration evolved as an outgrowth of Jim Crow laws, which itself was a system rooted in the subjugation of former slaves. According to legal scholar Michelle Alexander, there are more African-Americans under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850—that is, before the Civil War.
When it comes to Latinos, the numbers are more confusing. While 40 states track race in their arrest records, only 15 states in the nation track ethnicity. This means that most states have little to no data on Latinos in the criminal justice system. We must also look at what imprisonment entails. Criminal justice reform must take into consideration factors including increasingly punitive Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and the black-box detainment of immigrants and separated families; the ethics of solitary confinement; parole and probation; protecting due process; and the effects of incarceration on motherhood and mental health.
Discussions of reforming our criminal justice system demand us to ask philosophical and moral questions. What should be the ultimate goal of sentencing and incarceration? Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Forgiveness? For Catholics, these questions tie directly to the heart of our faith.
Solutions are already beginning to take shape, which include unraveling the War on Drugs, reconsidering mandatory minimum sentencing and embracing a growing private prison abolition movement that urges us to reconsider the levels at which the United States pursues mass incarceration. No matter where these proposals take us, we should pursue such conversations with an openness to change and an aim to rehabilitate our brothers and sisters wherever possible and wherever necessary. By nature, a society that forgives and rehabilitates its people is a society that forgives and transforms itself. That takes a radical kind of love, a secret of which is given in the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And let us not forget the guiding principle of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are compelled to care for the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick and, yes—the imprisoned.
What a different view of what atheist-secularist lefties might champion as the "lumpenproletariat" who were seen by Marx and Engels as useless dross and by later Marxists and Maoists as a raw resource that could be harnessed by the right leaders - really not much different from how Hitler saw them. If "Democratic Socialists" are to ever amount to anything except yet another counter-productive leftist cult, they will have to adopt the, frankly, Monotheistic view of such people as People who are more than "the masses" more than an exploitable resource or the social-political equivalent of trash. That later point of view is entirely compatible with materialism of all kinds, Nazi through Marxist, which are all forms of gangster government. The only alternative to that is egalitarian democracy and that is incompatible with materialism. Democratic Socialism, if it rejects that materialistic view of People, is quite compatible with AOC's Catholicism. It says so in The Jesuit Review, after all.
But that's not enough for play lefties in the secular lefty bubble of NYC or San Francisco or in Madison or other college towns or scribblers for the lefty mags and podcasters who live in a lefty la-la-land and are quite atypical of the real left in the United States.
I had a feeling this would turn into a problem for AOC because I read this short but brilliant article she wrote for America: The Jesuit Review last June. Heck, forget the link, risking a cease and desist I'm going to post the whole thing.
Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.”
I have never known Marc as a criminal. I have only known him as the largest and funniest member of my family. As a child, I saw this tattooed arm over and over again. It appeared at family cookouts turning a lechón (roasted pig) in its fifth hour, it held me steady on Marc’s broad lap, and it was revealed during the wintertime, when our pipes would hiss until the relentless heat would force us all to roll our sleeves as far up as they would go.
I remember reading his tattoo each time I saw it, trying to understand what it meant: Only God Can Judge Me. Innocence, in its mercy, partly excuses us from having to fully reckon with the spiritual gifts of forgiveness, grace and redemption at the heart of the Catechism: I believe in the forgiveness of sins.
Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been out of the system ever since—a miraculous feat, given that over 75 percent of released state prisoners in the United States are rearrested within five years. Today he is a union worker and a happily married father of three successful children.
The still imprisoned are not so lucky. By virtually every measure, the United States incarcerates more of its people than any other nation in the world. When we look at the fuller picture of who we imprison, for how long and why, it may not be a stretch to conclude that our criminal justice system could very well benefit from a rite of penance of its own. There is overwhelming evidence that mass incarceration evolved as an outgrowth of Jim Crow laws, which itself was a system rooted in the subjugation of former slaves. According to legal scholar Michelle Alexander, there are more African-Americans under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850—that is, before the Civil War.
When it comes to Latinos, the numbers are more confusing. While 40 states track race in their arrest records, only 15 states in the nation track ethnicity. This means that most states have little to no data on Latinos in the criminal justice system. We must also look at what imprisonment entails. Criminal justice reform must take into consideration factors including increasingly punitive Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and the black-box detainment of immigrants and separated families; the ethics of solitary confinement; parole and probation; protecting due process; and the effects of incarceration on motherhood and mental health.
Discussions of reforming our criminal justice system demand us to ask philosophical and moral questions. What should be the ultimate goal of sentencing and incarceration? Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Forgiveness? For Catholics, these questions tie directly to the heart of our faith.
Solutions are already beginning to take shape, which include unraveling the War on Drugs, reconsidering mandatory minimum sentencing and embracing a growing private prison abolition movement that urges us to reconsider the levels at which the United States pursues mass incarceration. No matter where these proposals take us, we should pursue such conversations with an openness to change and an aim to rehabilitate our brothers and sisters wherever possible and wherever necessary. By nature, a society that forgives and rehabilitates its people is a society that forgives and transforms itself. That takes a radical kind of love, a secret of which is given in the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And let us not forget the guiding principle of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are compelled to care for the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick and, yes—the imprisoned.
What a different view of what atheist-secularist lefties might champion as the "lumpenproletariat" who were seen by Marx and Engels as useless dross and by later Marxists and Maoists as a raw resource that could be harnessed by the right leaders - really not much different from how Hitler saw them. If "Democratic Socialists" are to ever amount to anything except yet another counter-productive leftist cult, they will have to adopt the, frankly, Monotheistic view of such people as People who are more than "the masses" more than an exploitable resource or the social-political equivalent of trash. That later point of view is entirely compatible with materialism of all kinds, Nazi through Marxist, which are all forms of gangster government. The only alternative to that is egalitarian democracy and that is incompatible with materialism. Democratic Socialism, if it rejects that materialistic view of People, is quite compatible with AOC's Catholicism. It says so in The Jesuit Review, after all.
Wipe Out Government By The Majorities Last Choice
Paul LePage, the 38% governor of Maine, product of the idiotic laws adopted by flaky Maine liberals in the 1970s to loosen ballot access for never-will-ever be elected flakes and, later, Greens, will be gone from the Blaine House. He told the state that we would miss him when he's gone. Well, I'd love to see him move to Florida to escape Maine's income tax, as he announced he would and stay there. Either there or - after he's investigated - in prison.
On his way out the door, the lying hypocrite is doing things like pardoning his supporters who committed crimes for which LePage had advocated the death penalty and, after he was convicted, he illegally owned and carried guns.
Pierce was among a core group of House Republicans who were loyal to LePage during his two terms as governor.
LePage’s final day in office is Wednesday. He will be succeeded by Democratic Gov.-elect Janet Mills.
Pierce was convicted of felony-level drug trafficking in 1983 after selling cocaine and marijuana to an undercover police officer. He has other misdemeanor offenses for the years between 1980 and 2006.
State and federal laws bar convicted felons from possessing firearms. It is also unlawful for a felon to obtain a firearms hunting permit, and applications expressly ask people seeking licenses to state whether they have been convicted of a crime.
LePage has taken a tough approach on drug traffickers in particular. He supported tougher sentences for drug traffickers and pushed for more law enforcement resources to combat the Maine opioid crisis.
His position has caused controversy, first for joking during a radio interview that convicted traffickers should be executed by the guillotine, and later for falsely suggesting that the majority of people arrested for drug trafficking are black or Hispanic.
Pierce says he has long since moved on from his checkered past. He told Maine Public Radio that he was upset when Democrats publicized his criminal record during the campaign.
Pierce lost his re-election bid to Allison Hepler. He said he planned to release a full statement about his pardon sometime on New Year’s Day.
Which can stand as a typical example of the unequal justice under law that always comes with Republican fascism.
Janet Mills, who will be our first Woman as governor, is sworn in at six tonight. One of her goals is to change the stupidly written Maine Constitution to have ranked-choice voting in all Maine elections, which will be necessary to protect us from having the last choice of a majority of voters as governor. The stupidity of the old system under which someone who couldn't gain the support of a majority of voters was always obvious, that it has lasted this long proves that habit can overcome reason almost every time.
The Republican Party in Maine deserves to die for what it did to us in imposing Paul LePage, the filth that stained my state for eight years. So does the old system that let fewer voters decide who was going to hold office.
On his way out the door, the lying hypocrite is doing things like pardoning his supporters who committed crimes for which LePage had advocated the death penalty and, after he was convicted, he illegally owned and carried guns.
Pierce was among a core group of House Republicans who were loyal to LePage during his two terms as governor.
LePage’s final day in office is Wednesday. He will be succeeded by Democratic Gov.-elect Janet Mills.
Pierce was convicted of felony-level drug trafficking in 1983 after selling cocaine and marijuana to an undercover police officer. He has other misdemeanor offenses for the years between 1980 and 2006.
State and federal laws bar convicted felons from possessing firearms. It is also unlawful for a felon to obtain a firearms hunting permit, and applications expressly ask people seeking licenses to state whether they have been convicted of a crime.
LePage has taken a tough approach on drug traffickers in particular. He supported tougher sentences for drug traffickers and pushed for more law enforcement resources to combat the Maine opioid crisis.
His position has caused controversy, first for joking during a radio interview that convicted traffickers should be executed by the guillotine, and later for falsely suggesting that the majority of people arrested for drug trafficking are black or Hispanic.
Pierce says he has long since moved on from his checkered past. He told Maine Public Radio that he was upset when Democrats publicized his criminal record during the campaign.
Pierce lost his re-election bid to Allison Hepler. He said he planned to release a full statement about his pardon sometime on New Year’s Day.
Which can stand as a typical example of the unequal justice under law that always comes with Republican fascism.
Janet Mills, who will be our first Woman as governor, is sworn in at six tonight. One of her goals is to change the stupidly written Maine Constitution to have ranked-choice voting in all Maine elections, which will be necessary to protect us from having the last choice of a majority of voters as governor. The stupidity of the old system under which someone who couldn't gain the support of a majority of voters was always obvious, that it has lasted this long proves that habit can overcome reason almost every time.
The Republican Party in Maine deserves to die for what it did to us in imposing Paul LePage, the filth that stained my state for eight years. So does the old system that let fewer voters decide who was going to hold office.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Brahms Seven Fantasias Opus 116 - Mieczysław Horszowski
Mieczysław Horszowski, piano
A few years back I posted Emil Gilels playing these, Horszowski takes a far different approach to them. I love Gilels' playing but I'm finding these quite convincing too, more poetry along with the power.
Firmly Resolved
I made one public resolution yesterday, something I should have done years ago and I did it in public which means I'm too proud to go back on it. We'll see in a year if I kept it. I'm counting on my readers to keep me from backsliding.
There are several others which I made and which are private. Maybe I'll let you know if I kept those next year. Maybe.
I did get a pair of those Perfect Push Up things because doing push ups makes my wrists hurt and one of my resolutions was that I'm not buying any heavier dumb bells than I've got and I really don't want to end up in the kind of shape I'd get in if I didn't exercise. So, I'm doing body-weight exercise. It seems kind of unfair that you need to do more exercise as you get older to maintain your health but apparently fairness has nothing to do with it. Hope to be able to dig my garden without getting a backache in a few months.
I won't be buying anything online. My debit card number got stolen - luckily my credit union caught it right away so I didn't lose any money. I decided to not ask for another one. Which, since I used it mostly to buy used books at ABE will also help with the perennial resolution to not buy any more books till I've read all the ones I've got. I'm a real sucker for books.
There are several others which I made and which are private. Maybe I'll let you know if I kept those next year. Maybe.
I did get a pair of those Perfect Push Up things because doing push ups makes my wrists hurt and one of my resolutions was that I'm not buying any heavier dumb bells than I've got and I really don't want to end up in the kind of shape I'd get in if I didn't exercise. So, I'm doing body-weight exercise. It seems kind of unfair that you need to do more exercise as you get older to maintain your health but apparently fairness has nothing to do with it. Hope to be able to dig my garden without getting a backache in a few months.
I won't be buying anything online. My debit card number got stolen - luckily my credit union caught it right away so I didn't lose any money. I decided to not ask for another one. Which, since I used it mostly to buy used books at ABE will also help with the perennial resolution to not buy any more books till I've read all the ones I've got. I'm a real sucker for books.
La Bolduc - Jour De L'An
Being Irish, I didn't know our family was following a traditional Quebec tradition by having our family Christmas party on the First of January until someone told me. I love La Bolduc's music. Though it sounds like our party's a bit more staid than the ones she went to. Maybe I'll post more of La Bolduc after I get home from it.
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