With the fewest of exceptions

those who hang out at Eschaton are lazy, non-reading idiots who NEVER fact check Simps to find out he lies about what I've said, EVEN AS HE COPIES THINGS I HAVE SAID TO PRESENT THEM AS HIS OWN IDEAS.  

I have dealt with that enough for this year so I won't bother answering what he said at the link.   I remember when they all seemed to believe that Duncan and his commenting community had the attention of such as Paul Krugman and various others of that caliber though I never was sold on that.   Nothing that is important is said there,  it's geezers wasting time and being in with what they take as an in-crowd until someone declares one of them has cooties and drives then out.  Adults left a long time ago.   As for DD,  I gather he's one of those high school teachers who has an emotional need to be kewel with the kids.    I couldn't stand those teachers when I was in school but, then,  I thought the kewel kids were conceited boring jerks  

I will endeavor to have this a Simps free space for the summer,  though if he says something I think is hilariously stupid I might mock it.   As for his fan base at the baby blue blog,  as they say on Letterkenny,  I really don' give a fuck. 

So Much Talent I Can't Keep Up With Them

I DON'T KNOW who Max from UNFTR is and never heard of him until this came up on the ol' Youtube sidebar this morning.   He's also one of the Meidas Touch's ever growing stable of commentators and,  as he seems to use a script instead of improvising,  he's one of the more effective ones I've heard.   His explanation of the political economics of the past about eighteen years is excellent, especially interesting to me because he squarely includes the Obama economic team's enrichment of the elites at the cost of the many as a part of why we are in such trouble now.   Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and others, including Rahm Emanuel helped the prep to Ivy Leaguer Obama do that instead of fulfilling the expectations of his massive vote for his first term.   It cost Democrats AND THE COUNTRY dearly that he chose those preppy asses to do things.  Oh, we plebs got a little from them but it was trickle down.   They were careful to save the bankers from their greed while enriching them even more.   I was never all that sold on Obama to start with and, though I voted for him in 2012,  I wasn't expecting him to be even very good, just far better than any Republican.   

Especially listen to what Max says about the direct stimulus that the middle class and even poor and destitute People got during Covid and how the corporate crooks couldn't stand that they had money that served them and decided en masse to gouge them through inflated prices using the supply chain disruption as a cover.  

I don't agree with every detail in the video though he tells far more of the truth about that than you're likely to find elsewhere.  

I'll be looking to click on more of his content when I see it,  unlike the lawyers, he doesn't bury his lede under rambling stream of consciousness,   the thing that drives me up the wall with Meidas and such other outfits who seem to do it as a conscious decision at Occupy Democrats - you generally have to skip the first three minutes or more to get to what they promise you they're talking about.   Why they do that I don't know.   I sometimes write that way because I'm writing.   People can skim or skip or go back and look at what I've said.   Writing for talk, especially talk with pictures is different.   Those guys should read something like Radio Deutsche Welle's Manual For Radio Journalists (available as a pdf online) or some other radio services' advice about that.  NOT that I expect most lawyers would have the humility to learn something new,  they might be even more successful if they tried something like using a script that GETS TO THE POINT.  

Answer To Whining That I Blasphemed Against The Constitution

WE ARE IN THE INCREDIBLE position for what is alleged to be a republic and far more so a deputed democracy that we are seriously contemplating the possibility that the stupidest to start with and now clearly senile-demented Trump could, on his own, not only get us into the Israeli war on Iran but,  AND THIS IS SERIOUSLY UNDER DISCUSSION,  dropping nuclear weapons on Iran ON HIS OWN WHIM.   And everything with Trump is done on a whim.   I lie when I call that "incredible" because under our petrified presidential system, it isn't unbelievable,  it is a fact in the realm of the all too possible. 

That any government of any kind could be the rational focus of such expectations completely demolishes the legitimacy of such a government and the system of Constitution and laws that bring such governance into existence.  And our Constitution, under the manipulation of the Supreme Court starting in 1803 with the Marbury v Madison usurpation of power by that Court has brought us here.   I maintain that it is clear that that power was never contained in the Constitution but the Constitution AS IT REALLY IS is what is allowed to happen continuously under it.   Ours has allowed that to be the law of the land for more than two and a quarter centuries without any correction so that and the entire corpus of corrupt judicial law making it has led to*  IS WHAT OUR CONSTITUTION REALLY, TRULY IS.  

That original violation of Adams' theory of "balance powers" has since metastasized into the many and varied  abandonment to legislative powers by the Congress to the Executive, as that used to be and now, with the modern Rehnquist-Roberts Courts and, especially,  Republican then Republican-fascist granting of absolute power to Republican-fascist presidents THAT IS WHAT OUR CONSTITUTION REALLY, TRULY IS IN REALITY INSTEAD OF CONSTITUTIONAL "SCHOLARSHIP" AND THE MORE POPULAR FOLKLORE OF OUR PHONY, MYTHICAL OFFICIAL "CIVICS."   

I have meant to try to research the original skepticism of the anti-federalists as the Constitutional Convention's - you don't know how hard it is for me to resist John Quincy Adams' adjective for it at this point - Constitution which I know contained serious skepticism about the "separation of powers" theory that was set forth in it.   I very much suspect that a lot could be learned about how much of the fraud it has turned out to be in real life was pointed out before its rigged adoption was achieved - not, by the way, without intentional vote suppression in some states - just as I learned a lot about the objections to the original Marbury power grab by the Supreme Court in the wake of its first serious use to issue the Dred Scott decision - rejection of that power by Abraham Lincoln alone should have been the occasion for the Congress to decisively reject it. 

Our Constitution has always been held in place by what is well characterized as masking tape and chewing gum.   It has never worked as it's supposedly would for People of Color, certainly not for Native Americans, African Americans as it was never intended to work until the Civil War and later Amendments to fix that were passed.   It has never worked well for working People without means.   Its not working for Women has been reasserted by the Roberts Court in the Dobbs decision that makes every Woman's body subject to control as de jure slavery did.   It has not worked for many others.  It has worked for affluent, straight, white men, especially those with old money.   The task of the Republican-fascists and, especially those on the Roberts Court and many a lower Court AND AS TAUGHT IN VIRTUALLY EVERY LAW SCHOOL COURSE is to make sure it continues as it has.   Much as I might like some of the Democratic "Constitutional Scholars" in and out of public office,  they are willing dupes of that centuries long effort unless they are honest about how truly dangerous our Constitution, both as written and as distorted by Supreme Court lore (what the literature of its decisions is) and as it is distorted whenever the opponents of egalitarian democracy hold the unbalanced power of power under it.   I have yet to hear one of them admit to that. 

Remember this if Trump, single-handed, on his whim AS EVERY DECISION HE MAKES IS ON HIS WHIM AND NOTHING IS STOPPING HIM, LEAST OF ALL THE GODDAMNED SUPREME COURT,  and especially if he does use nuclear weapons as Truman did.  If he gives Putin that excuse,  you can be sure Putin will do so in Ukraine and very likely in other countries, those which were once part of the Soviet empire and others.    I think the Chinese Communists might have more discipline in their dictators but I don't think you can count on that once Trump does it.   As I said,  I am morally and practically opposed to military coups but if that's what it takes to stop Trump from doing that,  I pray for the generals and others who would keep him from doing it.  

*  The Supreme Court invention of what is a clearly false and anti-democratic abomination "corporate person hood" which has stood for 139 years as of just over a month ago,  something relied upon by later Courts in such abominations as Buckely v Valeo and Citizens United.   It was clearly not in the Constitution as it was written by that time but it is part of it AS IT REALLY, TRULY IS NOW.    That our Constitutional system has not gotten rid of it is proof that the goddamned thing is dangerous and will be until it is drastically altered,  I'd hope getting rid of the goddamned presidential system once and for all time. 

Notes From A Rough And Busy Week

I POSTED A ROUGH DRAFT of the major piece I put up yesterday,  something I'd tried to stop doing a couple of years back but felt I had to because of the urgency of the hour.   I've gone back and corrected at least some of it.  I should know better than to do that when I'm breaking some of the biggest taboos,  violating the taboo on telling the truth about Israel and Zionism and the crimes of the Israelis and Zionists and the American fascists who make common cause with them but when the Israeli government is trying to get Trump to drop big ones if not THE BIG ONE on a country perhaps setting off WWIII what that will be taken as an opportunity to lie about what I said by the "Israel right or wrong" crowd is of no importance, at all.   I know you can't keep a career in American journalism if you tell the truth about Israel and Zionism - or American fascism, for that matter -  so you don't mention those or lie about that so you can tell the truth about other things in your journalistic career,   but I don't have one of those to worry about.    So I'll speak the thought crimes others won't. 

I was surprised as well as a bit sad to read that the great pianist Alfred Brendel died yesterday, though he retired so long ago that I hadn't thought of him much in the last years.   He was 94.   Reading his obituaries online,  I hadn't ever known the extent to which he was self-taught, probably more so than any major classical musician of our time has been.  Considering he stopped taking formal lessons in his teen years,  his ability to resist devolving into the kind of willful, neurotic, self-generated habits and mannerisms that defined the career of someone most similar to that career description,  to my knowledge,  Glenn Gould, his intellectual honesty and self-discipline and modesty must have been even more extraordinary than I'd thought during his playing career.    

I remember his interview with Dick Cavett for the subtle warmth and humor he demonstrated but most of all for his response to a question about "modern music" perhaps even specifically the widespread hostility for the music of the greatest European composer of the 20th century,  Arnold Schoenberg,  Brendel said that the reason people didn't like it wasn't because it was cold and "mathematical" as they would have said but because, on the contrary, it was among the most emotionally fraught music ever composed.   As I recall he mentioned the Op. 11, Three Pieces for piano and the short monodrama Op. 17 Erwartung, which I still think was one of the more important insights into the music of Schoenberg I've ever heard.  

I've become pretty well convinced that the research into the early 19th century use of the metronome by Wim Winters and his colleagues is correct - a truly revolutionary concept which I may get into someday - so much of Brendel's recordings of Beethoven and other composers contain a number of movements that probably don't represent their intentions nearly as well as I'd once felt they were.  Though I'd have to go through any given recording of it with the score to judge that.   I can say, with some confidence, that Brendel at least tried to do that with the knowledge he had during his career far better than most do.  I would wonder what Brendel may have thought or said about that research though I suspect he would have waited to read the book Winters and his colleagues have been working on to make a definitive version of their case before he said anything about it.   I have to say that having listened to Winters and looking at the contemporaneous sources he and his colleagues cite and listening to their performances as I have access to,  I'm convinced they are right.   Which means my entire conception of that repertoire has been wrong.  I can say that hearing and playing Moazart at the tempos they advocate has greatly elevated my regard of his music, it gains in gravity what is lost when it is played too fast,  the real genius of his music evaporates faster than that of Beethoven's or Schubert's or Bach's, for that matter.  

In the same interview of Brendel by Cavett, he talked about Liszt and played - as I recall it was the piece about St. Francis preaching to the birds - in a way that enormously altered my regard of Liszt's music for the better.   I'd been kind of allergic to Liszt's music before that but he cured me of it.  Though I think Liszt is mostly ill served by performances of his music,  Brendel got me past that.  

Fact checking myself to give an answer to Simps on the last RFK post

CAME ACROSS an anecdote I told while I was trying to educate him on why his claim that Queens was the most ethnically diverse entity on Earth was clearly false because even if that dubious claim were true, it would only make New York City an even more diverse entity.   I'll retell it here for those who think I commit that greatest of moderny American sins of having no sense of humor. 

I'll tell you a funny story about that book.  It was back at a family party, I think it was the Labor Day one, when I was taking care of my two youngest nieces, after school.  They were constantly asking me to read them the Harry Potter books.  I ended up reading all of them to them, some of them several times.   

Anyway, sitting at the long table at the party among our very old mother, a brother's almost as old mother-in-law, several of my siblings, one of those nieces was badgering me to read one of  the Harry Potter books and I was getting kind of tired of it so among the chattering and babbling around the table, I said,  How about I read you another book, 

Which one? she demanded,

Oh, I don't know, how about "Sets, Relations and Functions."  A joke between us because I'd proposed that one among several other math titles on my shelf other times she was demanding I read Harry Potter to her.  Math not being her favorite subject.  

But the joke was on me that time because I quickly found out if you don't pronounce that particular title, very clearly in mixed company, it can be easily misconstrued.

UPDATE:  Found this before I closed out the search window on that, too.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Simps and Trump are alike re truth telling, 

As well in their ranting and yelling,

They both come from Queens,

And they both act like tweens 

And oddly alike re repelling.  

Maybe I should go back to answering him in limericks again. 

Update 2:  It's kind of shocking to find out that I seem to understand the most basic of set theory better than a long-time physics teacher at the Chicago Lab School,  though you do have to understand he's been hanging out at Duncan's Daycare for Elderly Boomers and that's bound to lead to stupification.    You can count DD as one who I used to have some respect for but don't have much for, anymore. 

The Issue Is Imperialist Fascism, It Is Everywhere And Opposing That Isn't Racism, It's It's Opposite

THE ISRAELI VOTERS have kept Netanyahu in power and that is with election after elections that they could have gotten rid of him.   It is one of the sometimes effective safeguards of a parliamentary system that that can happen, though Israel as Britain shows, that's no guarantee.   While there is a minority in Israel who oppose the aggressive fascists they have been a minority who have not elected a government in about thirty three years and, arguably, the real opponents of Israeli imperialism have never, once elected a government in the history of that country.   I will note that the American presidential system is far more dangerous and inflexible and our politics has shown that even more so now than used to be.  I mean, American elected Trump II after it experienced the Trump I that the Electoral College imposed on us.  But more of that in a minute. 

It was one of the early covers-ups for the current genocide and expulsion against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and around the area, blaming Gazans and Palestinians for having, long ago, voted for bad government.  But those bad governments have kept Palestinians from voting them out of office far more effectively than the non-egalitarian, putative ethno-democracy of Israel have controlled the politics of that country.  In many cases those who oppose fascism in Israel have left the country as they must realize nothing like egalitarian democracy is going to happen there.  I can certainly understand why anyone with a chance to leave that disaster leaving it,  I admire those who tell the truth of the matter, whether they have left or whether they remain Israelis - often working outside of it.   I have said the United States should have given Jews who wanted to leave Europe the chance to come here instead of having the Zionists imperialist project getting set up.   It would certainly have been better than what has happened in the past seventy six years.   I think that it would probably have lessened the amount of antisemitism in the world and would certainly have saved the United States from its catastrophic involvement with the Zionist state, benefiting everyone,  Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians, Jews, Americans and numerous other People who have been disastrously impacted by the situation that has developed in the region, including Africa.   Zionism was the last major European imperialist scheme after Mussolini's and Hitler's,  it has gone from the Labour government's more modest imperialist intentions to the psychotic-fascism's big dreams of who knows how much territory and how many Palestinians, Arabs and Iranians dead and under the regional hegemony of Israel backed up by the United States, primarily but the West which has its own intentions in the area.   I think the theory that when the worst of the Western gangsters with power saw what Israel did in the Six-Day War,  it saw its potential to be a basis of imposing their will on a region rich with oil and other resources as well as major shipping lanes and as a base for expanding their control.   Of course, the Israeli fascists have been calling most of the shots since they took over from Labour with the man that many Jewish skeptics of Israel were warning about since the 1940s taking power,  Menachem Begin.   With that the old-fashioned Western lefty support of socialist Zionism began to decay, though, especially among the more ignorant mid-brow and lower on the left,  the old habits of thought are maintained though there is no real-life reality - such as was always largely imaginary and symbolic - to support that naive faith.   The media, especially the entertainment division has kept those idiots gulled my entire lifetime. 

But I'm an American who opposes the American part in this, watching the United States brought into another Israeli fascist and neo-con inspired catastrophe in the that part of Asia which has the potential to make what was already bad in all those places mentioned above, far, far worse.   That it is largely to keep two utterly corrupt and old men in power, Netanyahu in Israel and Trump in the United States is not a complete surprise.   If Israeli politics has been bad American politics has been worse.   We had had some progress towards the legitimate governance of egalitarian democracy here in the 1930s and 1960s which, ironically, foundered in the late 60s with those kinds of catastrophic foreign entanglements during his term in office made things during the Biden administration.  The same corrupt American and Western interests (the like of the Murdochs are about as American as Musk and Theill) that used Israel as a tool for its ends, has successfully rigged the media and legal establishment to make sure nothing like egalitarian democracy ever happens here.  The Israel project is a major but only small part of that.   But it is one that in the past quarter of a century has involved the United States in the overthrow of the Iraqi government and many smaller projects that have corrupted us even farther and which has cost us as People and as a country and I do blame not only the governments of Israel but the Israeli voters who have kept those fascists and imperialists in power.   I blame them as much as the American voters who have kept us under increasingly fascist regimes as they've been planning since the early 1970s with remarkable success.  

One of the few things to keep me from total despair is the increasing activity of Jewish Antizionists,  whether religious or those many who are my fellow egalitarian democrats.     I saw last weekend's First Jewish Anti-Zionist Convention held in the same city where the first Zionist Convention was held to be a small glimmer of light.   The blackmail of those who have used false accusations of "antisemitism" as part of its American and Western plan to further the worst of Zionist fascism may be showing signs of crumbling.   The point made by not a few of the Antizionists, that the Zionists in Israel,  the West in general and most of all the United States have allied themselves with some of the most overt haters of Jews is certainly something that is true.  It's being noted that one of the biggest fans of the U.S getting involved with Netanyahu's second call for us to fight a major war on HIS behalf is coming from the antisemitic,  Mammonist pseudo-Christian, ordained Southern Baptist Mike Huckabee.  No doubt he'd hightail it out of Israel to save his ass before the shit really hit the fan, watching from the sidelines as he anticipated that his his Kristian Komic Koncept of the Book of Revelation was about to unfold.   I would not be surprised if sometime in the near future that red-heffer con job didn't announce they had their cow and they sacrificed the poor creature on the Temple Mount blowing things to shit - though, of course, that being a Western pseudo-Kristian financed millionaire-billionaire con job, they might want to milk it if Bibi's latest war went badly.   

Among the things I resent about this whole thing is the part it played in corrupting American minds and politics.  Among those things I resent is how it has fanned antisemitism here.  As I've noted it was reading the Argentinian-Israeli journalist Jacobo Timmerman pointing out that since World War II the largest part of antisemitism was inspired by the crimes committed by Israel,  if the Zionist project had been abandoned instead of implemented,  I think it's entirely likely that there would be far, far less antisemitism and antisemitic violence today.   The Israel project is hardly a large part of the American fascists' operations or those fascists in Europe and elsewhere,  the techbro fascists and their like are the major part of that but it has played a part in the corrupting of our politics.   I think the Israeli genocide in Gaza played a major part in the reinstallation of Trump II and I think the Israeli fascist government made it abundantly clear that they wanted Trump because they knew they could manipulate him into giving them everything they want,  we're about to see him give them another Iraqi style regime-change war which may well make the Iraqi one that Bush II gave him look like just the prelude to it.   I think Americans have got to have an honest and anti-racist discussion about Israel and the catastrophe it has been.   I listened to a major Democratic politician yesterday sounding the same "Israel right or wrong" slogans that dragged Joe Biden into the worst thing he ever did,  supporting the Israeli fascist genocide in Gaza.   We can't let that corrupt and rigged definition of "antisemitism" stop us from having that discussion on anti-racist, honest terms BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE WILL EVENTUALLY BE AN ANTISEMITIC BACKLASH WHEN THE ISRAEL INSPIRED AMERICAN WARS BRING A REACTION WHICH WILL REACH THAT TIPPING POINT.  The fever dreams of the most insane of the Zionists want more anti-Jewish violence in other places because they think it will force Jews to go to Israel.   I know that because a lot of them,  including Netanyahu have said as much.    On that 'll take my cues from the informed Jewish Antizionists,  they've been making the most sense to me.    And I will equally take my cues from the informed Palestinian opposition to zionism,  listening to Palestinians is not an optional thing,  not if you want to avoid a distorted, racist,  intellectually imperialist concept of things. 

What's most important in this isn't how I feel about it, it's what gets People killed, maimed, displaced, oppressed and the certain enraged reaction it will cause.   That's most true for People in those places and countries most directly involved.  But it plays not a small part in the corruption of governments and powerful institutions and entities around the world.  Barring the American military successfully stopping Trump,  we're about to embark on a complete catastrophe which could involve nuclear weapons being used for the first time since Truman dropped the second one at the end of WWII.  No one can possibly predict or control what's going to happen then.  I certainly wouldn't favor a military coup here - I certainly don't trust any non-democratic governance - but I fear what Trump is about to do even more.  

Hey, hey RFK How many kids did you kill today?

 

Thanks to Brian Tyler Cohen for posting this short.   I can't keep up with the flood of criminal degeneracy that flows from RFK jr. and I'm glad he's one of those on the case. 

The First Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress Happened This Past Weekend

YOU WON'T HEAR about it in the American media.   Just about every part of the Western media has covered up the most public genocide in history.    Here's a sample of the information that was part of it from Katie Halper's podcast:  Jews Speak Out: Israel’s Genocide “Worse Than Nazis”

In case you want to know, here are the notes at Youtube:

Before this weekend's Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress, I spoke with three of its organizers about Israel's decades-long "democratic" genocide in Palestine and the Israelis who keep voting to support it. Thank you to Ronnie, Dalia, Haim and everyone who was able to participate in, attend or watch the Congress! 

00:00 What's happening right now in Palestine

02:27 How does the genocide in Gaza compare to the Holocaust?

05:43 Netanyahu is representative of Israeli society - "the vast majority support genocide"

08:05 Resistance in the West is "still not good enough"

11:14 "The idea that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic is anti-Semitic in itself" - Katie

Dalia Sarig is co-founder of the initiative ‘Not in our Name’ founded by Jews in Vienna and candidate on the GAZA list. 

Haim Bresheeth Zabnner was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of East London and then a Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).He is Filmmaker, photographer, film studies scholar, and historian. His films include “A State of Danger,” a documentary on the first Palestinian Intifada. His books include "An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Force Made a Nation." Haim is the son of two Holocaust survivors and was raised in Israel. He is a member of Holocaust survivors and Descendents Against the Genocide and a founding  member of Jewish Network for Palestine. On November 4, Haim was arrested over a speech he gave at a pro Palestine demonstration outside the residence of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in north London.

Ronnie Barkan is an Israeli activist, a conscientious objector and co-founder of Boycott from Within – a group of conscientious Israelis who support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. He represented the Popular Struggle Coordination Committees at the European Parliament in Brussels, where he challenged EU institutional complicity in Israeli violations.

Brahms - 7 Fantasien - Mieczysław Horszowski

 

I recently had an occasion to listen to the Brahms Cello Sonatas played by Pablo Casals and Mieczysław Horszowski and was reminded how great a pianist he was.   Also how very different their playing was from younger performers.  Casals was 21 when Brahms died and already a very active musician, the extent to which he was familiar with those who played as Brahms intended,  I don't know but it sounded quite convincing.  Horsozwski was about five then.    

I'm just,  just getting back to playing a little after my accident last winter.   I am taking come comfort in remembering how old he was while he was still playing extremely well.  He lived to be a hundred and taught his last lesson a few days before he died.  Which, unless I win the lottery I might be doing, too.    Here he was in 1958 in a live performance.   This live performance of the Opus 116 pieces is extremely deep and good. 

Fifty Gay Retablos: Gay Mexicans thank the saints for blessings

 

THIS MIND EXPANDING  video by Hugh Hagius in which LGBTQ+ Mexicans going back decades painting retablos for the saints intervening to help them in their lives which the official Catholic Church certainly wouldn't ever believe the saints would help them with.   I have to say that as being Irish Catholic praying to my patron saint to help me find a good, faithful partner never once occurred to me.   Maybe I should pray for a rich one whose dental insurance would cover me. 

I always love retablos but now I love them even more.  Don't miss the website where he found them. But I'll warn you that my computer gave me a "not secure" warning when I tried it.  

I Wish That My Beloved

JACK LEVINE was alive to paint the Kim Jong  Trump parade flop.   If not him then the great Herblock to draw it.   I can't think of another artist who could do it as well and truthfully. 

I think Trump doing his Kim Jong Un salute TO SOLDIERS DRESSED UP TO LOOK LIKE VIETNAM ERA SOLDIERS,  you know, the ones who went to Vietnam while his daddy paid a quack to get him out o the draft for a war Donnie and Fred supported, would be one of the emblematic moments of the thing.  

UPDATE:  History Repeating Itself 

Here's Herblock on the news media's treatment of Trump. 

The Fascists Have Started Assassinating Democrats

THIS IS WHAT Republican-fascist politics is about,  this is why the Supreme Court has allowed Republicans to amass arsenals so they can use guns when they lose elections.   This is hardly an isolated phenomenon,  this is the tip of Republican-fascist politics. 

An LGBTQ+ Pride-month Post - I Confess

THAT WHEN I saw the great journalist and prophetic witness against fascism,  Masha Gessen was clearly  transitioning,  my immediate reaction was that it was unfortunate because it would be used by the fascists to discredit Gessen and a voice that has been strong and to actively discredit ideas that we need.   

Sensing, immediately that there was something wrong with that reaction I soon realized that it was a part of exactly what her prophesy and testimony and mine were opposing.  Masha Guessen gets to decide her life, not my sense of utility or even helpfulness to the cause.  My reaction was one that instrumentalized a Person, a life that didn't belong to me but belongs to Gessen.   There is no way that it was just or egalitarian or democratic,  though it is certainly how most of us think about other People.  It was a serious violation of doing to others what I'd have done to me. 

I have to admit that I don't understand what leads Transpeople to some of the decisions they make, especially around the somewhat dangerous practice of taking hormones or the somewhat less risky submission to what may be legally considered elective surgery.   Of course, from their point of view it may not be nearly as elective as it would be for me or some right-wing, cis-gendered straight Person.   No one else is qualified to make that determination,  It's their life, their mind, THEIR BODY, their future.  It's not only none of my business,  my ideas about that are entirely unimportant and irrelevant from any legitimate consideration in the matter.  

Either we take the "T" in LGBTQ+ for everything it includes or we are hypocrites.   When you hear someone whining about it, objecting to someone deciding to answer to "pronouns" other than him or her, he or she, what they're doing is akin to the fascists who have nationalized Womens' bodies, who want to control the sex lives of People other than themselves,  to define the identities of People of Color and others to suit themselves and their lazy objectification and instrumentalization of other People,  it is to practice a fascist view of the lives of others in ways the fascist would never accept for themselves,  it is to do to others what we would never want done to us.   The Golden Rule is the foundation of legitimate government and a decent society, no matter how inconvenient it is to us or to others.   The problem with fascists is that they don't want others to do to them as they want to do because they don't want to do that to other People.    For the Golden Rule to work, it has to be reciprocal.   We don't have control of the other side of it but we'd better practice our part of it if we want any chance of it working, at all. 

If Democrats Take The House They Need To Expel Mike Johnson

THAT LYING, GAYDAR sounding, sanctimonious Southern Baptist, lawyer-liar has called for a member of Congress to be punished FOR DOING NOT ONLY HIS JOB BUT THE SPECIFIC FUNCTION OF HIS POSITION IN THE SENATE.   Democrats should make the rule that that is grounds for expulsion of a member of the House.   

And I mean it when I say "Southern Baptist" because that pro-slavery originated, pseudo-Christian denomination is a bulwark of America's indigenous form of fascism,  far more so than you can argue that America's Catholic Church is,  despite the fact that the "trad catholic" cult within Catholicism is another bulwark of American fascism.   I'm done being polite and dainty and pretending about that.   I am done pretending that the Southern states,  much of the mid-west and Rocky Mountain states will ever tolerate egalitarian democracy.   I'm decades past pretending the fascist American free press is anything other than a bulwark of American fascism,  the alleged news and even more so the more widely watched - by miles - "entertainment" divisions.

All of the old assumptions of how America worked were fully in place when this all happened,  pretending that those old assumptions, restored, will result in legitimate egalitarian democracy is a delusion common to conventional Democratic politicians,  a large percentage of them part of the profession that pretends that as a professional obligation,  lawyers,  and the supposedly responsible academics and journalists.   Doing the same old thing,  going "high when they go low" has brought us here.   Pretending that things just right themselves when there's an "even playing field" is a psychotic delusion.   

Eschew Nostalgia The Refuge Of The Lazy And Egotistical

THINKING BACK to the blogs I enjoyed reading in the early years,  it made me think of the ones I didn't enjoy much and that, inevitably, led me to wonder if PZ Myers is still doing it.   I wondered what the guy who owed his fame and, well, maybe fortune, to he atheist fad of the 00's had thrown in the towel,  maybe my pointing out the immense improbability and ulitmately, unbelievability  of one of his biggest publicity stunts, his "Great Desecration" hoax had convinced him to give that kind of thing up.

Well,  I traced him back to where I stopped paying attention to him, at the ridiculously named "Free Thought Blogs"  where many if not all of the bloggers will tell you that free thought is impossible due to us being a product of material causation and, so even if they admit we have thoughts - and not a few of those guys deny even that -  those are as predetermined as John Calvin thought the final disposition of our souls were due to double-predestination.   It is funny how the materialist-atheist-scientistic types who deny the possibility of free thought are called "free thinkers."   Guess they get called that by the unthinking, including themselves.  

I started reading his recent posts but, while we may agree on some politics and even on some of the more absurd aspects of pseudo-Christianity,  it was just the same old crap I read back when he was one of Epstein's and Maxwell's protogees.  

One thing, since he is a professional teacher of biology, struck me as monumentally stupid was the headline: 

All eugenicists are incompetent geneticists.

which has to be one of the stupidest headlines on  a college teacher's musings I've ever read  outside of teacher of composition declarations about using the passive voice in writing.    

Starting with the first generation of post Mendel geneticists, virtually every one of the most famous of them was a eugenicist.  Galton, Pearson,  Fisher, Huxley, Haldane,  Watson, Crick, . . .  any geneticists who have bought into the neo-eugenics of Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology,  . . .  There have been geneticists who weren't eugenicists but they tended to not be the public face of that specialty, were often attacked and damaged by their conventional colleagues and,  my guess, is that they are a relatively small minority in that field.   Academics, including scientists, are mostly cowardly careerists, when it comes down to basic facts.    I can't imagine a biology teacher who was aware of the real history of their topic wouldn't know that.    I have to wonder what he's teaching his students.   That is, unless he's holding that all those famous geneticist-eugenicists were incompetent geneticists,  in which case that field has got really deep problems.   I mean other than that modern genetics and physiology have overturned much of the still reigning dogma of it.  

One of the things I discovered during the new-atheist fad was that even the academics among them were prone to saying flat-out false things,  I got into a lot of brawls with them when they lied about things that were easily disproven,  the quote by Jurgen Habermas quote about the importance of Jewish and Christian morality for modern egalitarian democracy,  "Orac's" pseudo-errudition that "only creationists use the word "Darwinist,"  the fact that we can actually know nothing about the first organism to have lived on Earth because there is absolutely no physical evidence of what it was like or how it arose from non-living matter, etc.   I've written about all of those with links - unfortunately some of them no longer work, but I always checked them at the time I posted them. 

Well, that's enough of going down memory lane.   I don't mind doing that with pop music once a week on Maine Public Classical,  though I generally get off before they get to 1965 when the music generally mostly sucked.   But nostalgia is mostly a lazy form of self-indulgence.  It's one of the things they do at the ExLax and Geritol set at baby blue.   Simps is always posting old pictures of himself,  something I've spared People here,  though I did post him in his stupid Groucho beret once, to make a point. 

Yet Again Someone Asks. You know, when I blew off way too much time

at his blog I used to feel some sympathy for Duncan who, back then, tried to write substantial posts.  I often praised his posts on infrastructure.   I tried to encourage him to write on things he clearly had some interest in, interest enough to make an effort.    I figured it wasn't entirely his fault that the, then, very large and diverse commenting community there spent most of its time on lazy-assed bullshit.   As time passed, one after another of the adults among the commentators there stopped coming.   Tena,  NTodd,  Phila, so many others stopped commenting there.   I left for a long time during the 2008 primary season because I was disgusted by the slanders of the Obama bros against Hillary Clinton -  I pointed out that it was necessary for which ever Democrat got the nomination to be elected because we were, then, on the cusp of fascism, what with the appointments of Roberts and Alito by Bush II.  I don't remember if some dolt there was still telling me that "the first one to say 'fascist' loses" or was still horrified by by impiety towards the Supreme Court, the ACLU and the First as well as the Second Amendments.  

I went back briefly around 2012, had some more brawls with the same liars and idiots I'd had brawls with there, before.  Duncan banned me because I made fun of his announcement that he thought the "boring, stupid, puerile, pointless, inflamed sphincter of a movie"(my description back then) by "one of America's biggest professional assholes" (said that back then, too) Penn Jillette,  "The Aristocrats" was brilliant one night just about 13 years ago, to the day.   But as I recall,  I had announced earlier on the same comment thread that I was pretty much done with Eschaton because it had just gotten too stupid and counterproductive.   I'm not proud of that only because I should have done so a half dozen years earlier.  A handful of those I like still wasted their time there,  Hecate, Gromit, Derbes, . . . so I wanted to see what they were saying.   It wasn't worth it. 

Since then the only reason I paid attention to it has been because someone told me Simps was lying about things I'd said there.  I quickly realized no one there ever bothered to see if he was telling the truth, the only time I recall any of them came was back when I kept posing the questions that definitively debunk the "brain-only" materialist model of the mind,  I think it was back in 2015 - maybe I'll post those unanswerable questions again.  The crew at Baby Blue these days wouldn't even realize that was a definitive refutation of their house ideology.   They tend to be rather stupid and easily distractable and entirely unproductive. 

Israel Is Trying To Draw The United States Into Another Disastrous Middle Eastern War This Time With Iran

It has been trying to do that ever since at least Bush II.   

America has to stop getting into the Israeli government's shit shows.   Howard Zinn put it as mildly as it can be put,  Israel was a big mistake. 

Jeffrey Sachs Lays It Out: The United States Is The Major Impediment To Stopping The Genocide Against Palestinians

 

Woke Up This Morning Thinking Of Walter Brueggemann And This Piece Came To Mind

 

William Bolcom - Gospel Prelude 12:  Free Fantasia on O, Zion Haste And How Firm A Foundation 

Gregory Hand, Organ 

Maybe I'll post all of them over the next week or so.  I do admire the Protestant musical tradition at its best and I love the musical culture of church organists.   If I had it to do over again I'd have majored in organ and taken a church job,  in the 60s and early 70s that wasn't a job I'd have felt secure in, certainly not in a Catholic church,  priests and bishops are notoriously cheapskates when it comes to paying for music.  

William Bolcom is the greatest American composer of my lifetime.   

Tell Me This Man Wouldn't Have Been Swept Up By The ICEstapo If He Looked Like This Today

 

Trump And His Goons Create Terror Then The Media Helps Him Turn The Reaction Against It To His Dictatorial Advantage

TRUMP CREATED THE CONDITIONS that led to the, at first, relatively small reaction to one of his ICEstapo terror raids in Los Angeles.  For most People who aren't subjected to the conditions of those most vulnerable to that terror,  they have no idea how rapidly the routine reporting of immigrants has turned into part of that terror campaign. 

Just six months ago, an appointment to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would have seemed routine — go in, make sure the federal authorities have your information, receive a date to return and do it again in a year or so. 

Not anymore.

On this spring day, a 40-year-old woman approached the ICE check-in with trepidation. The woman, who asked that her name not be used for fear of government retaliation, thought it was likely she would be detained and deported.

She wasn't. 

But the ICE appointment itself now sends terror through immigrant families, many who have fled violent gangs and other conditions in Latin America. Many families  came to the United States to live simple lives, remain here legally, closely follow orders from the government, and yet live with the fear that any interaction with ICE could mean the family is separated.

The Trump administration is moving aggressively to remove immigrants across the country. Although it's not everyone's experience, for some, routine check-ins with ICE are turning into ambushes where they are taken into custody and swiftly removed from the United States, according to NCR interviews, immigration groups, members of Congress and media reports. 

Trumps thugs, under the criminals such as Homan and Noem, have been terrorizing everyone from the youngest children - some of them here for life saving medical treatment - to adults of all ages, arresting people in exactly the way some of them fled,  being kidnapped off the street by masked, armed men and dragged into unmarked vehicles and removed to one of Trump's buddies for-profit prisons in Lousiana or elsewhere, maybe thousands of miles from home without any legal representation,  sent to torture prisons in foreign countries - not unlike what the Bush II regime did though on a much larger scale and targeting far more People.   I remind Americans of that because this and the Supreme Court butchery of what we still cynically call the "Constitution" has been in the works through a number of Republican administrations and Supreme Court terms.  

The resistance to that terror by ICE and "Homeland Security" (you just knew that name was chosen by Bush II to normalize fascist terminology) in Los Angeles produced less disruption and violent reaction than a city gets when its home team wins a major game,  as Olbermann pointed out the other day, but Trump's brains,  Miller, most likely, saw it as an opportunity for him to get back at the Los Angels Latino Community for that date refusal in his teen years (Afrikaners needn't worry,  you're white so the racist little pinhead won't target you) and to try to whip it up into another opportunity for the Roberts Court to give Trump even more dictatorial powers - as I said his Reichstag Fire - KNOWING FULL, WELL THAT THE CORPORATE MEDIA IS ALL-IN ON THAT.   

We are a lot farther down the road to fascism than anyone still wants to believe,  we've been a lot farther down that road than anyone wanted to believe for the past quarter of a century and more - led there by the media,  Hollywood created Trump the powerful dictatorial CEO who turned thumbs up or down on the likes of Meat Loaf and then sold him to the racists who were pissed off at Dems for electing a Black Man as president, then nominating a Woman and then, after Joe Biden, a Black Woman, as president.   It was entertainment media that did the most to get us here,  though the infotanement division, the "news" division did its part, as if that's in any way not just part of the same thing. 

I don't know if we'll ever get back to the idea of a democracy but I do know one thing,  if we don't change the most basic parts of our Constitutional order which have brought us here, we will just see it all happen again.   I remember back in the late 1960s and early 70s, many a liberal and even many lefties and certainly moderates, thought that what should have been understood as our long term and powerful form of indigenous fascism, white supremacy, was down for the count and wouldn't get up again.  That was always a stupid notion, largely by white, affluent People who were never targets of American apartheid in any serious way.   Though white workers faced its ally in the other major power holders here,  the super rich,  they reliably focused on those even beneath them in the economic and political ranking.   That major fact of our history is little seen even though white supremacy has, in fact, always ruled a large number of American states and,  I would argue, has, in fact, had the power in just about all of them for most of our history.   I can't name one in which People of Color have not, for long periods, been held in legal second class or lower status and, even when legal discrimination has not been in place, then it was through social ostracism and institutional racism as practiced so notably by employers and lending institutions.   And the free press, the media, has been among the worst in enabling and maintaining that.   The fear and loathing of Latinos was a nightly feature of CNN as spewed by Lou Dobbs, year after year, as, in fact, fear and loathing of Palestinians has been,  "Arabs" to remind you of how the Bush II regime played the same media prepared racism so as to enhance its own power.   

Going back to a status quo which got you into a disaster is a particular lunacy of our Constitutional system.   Relying on the words and sayings of "the founders,"  "the framers" who, as must always be pointed out were aristocratic slave-holders and finaciers AND THOSE WHO HELD POOR WHITES IN WAGE-SLAVERY,  while ignoring the experience of living under the oppression and inequality made possible by Courts imposing those words on us in perpetuity is only a guarantee of getting you more of what you have gotten under it.   The words we live under have to change if you want to get shut of the oppression and inequality that the Supreme Court can always be certain to return us to NO MATTER HOW OFTEN THAT RAREST OF THINGS HAPPENS, THE CONGRESS WITH OR WITHOUT THE EXECUTIVE, TRIES TO MAKE OUR ELECTIONS HONEST OR TO MAKE THE UNITED STATES AN EGALITARIAN, AND SO, GENUINELY LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT.    The Court has consistently abolished or twisted not only the regular and duly adopted law to turn things back to their favored unequal status quo for the privilege of those already privileged BUT ALSO TO ABOLISH THOSE PARTS OF THE CONSTITUTION THAT DON'T SERVICE THAT PRIVILEGE.     The Roberts Court, the faith stupidly put in such granite false front as Robert Mueller,  the willful idiocy of all those MSNBC style lawyers assuring us that the courts and Court would restrain Trump, and the history of serving that same corruption while posing as a force for progress by the lawyers of the ACLU have convinced me that the professional practices and motives of that profession are almost a guarantee that the end result will be in service of even the overtly violent and fascist status quo,  certainly those who have the most money because, as a number of lawyers I know told me,  they're taught and learn to always go for the deepest pockets.   

I don't trust any of them anymore, certainly not those who are always reassuring us that just getting back to the intentions of the founders and framers are going to get us somewhere doing that in the past has not gotten us yet.   Certainly not those who maintain we are to suffer this forever because of what they wrote centuries ago.   I suspect many a white person, such as myself, is going to be learning that before this is over.    I suspect most People of Color already understand something like that now.   You wonder why any Woman, whose body was put under the ownership of state legislatures in even the most white-supremacist-fascist states doesn't realize it most directly.  Maybe they're so used to terror that it feels normal to them.  Media indoctrination is certainly part of that, too. 

Northampton—“Lesbianville, USA”—Faces Protest, Fear, and Flying Eggs at Its First Pride

 

In 1982, Jane Fleishman was part of a small group of queer activists who organized the first-ever LGBTQIA+ Pride march in Northampton, Massachusetts—long before the city became known as a queer haven. An underground movement, the organizers met in living rooms, planned for months, and marched through fear and hostility, including facing anti-gay protestors who were throwing eggs at them. Their goal wasn’t assimilation but liberation—a fight rooted in solidarity with broader social justice movements. Though only a few dozen people showed up that cloudy day, their courage helped spark a tradition that now draws tens of thousands each year, proving that collective queer resistance can grow into lasting change.

I'm From Driftwood is another good LGBTQ+ Youtube channel that tells stories you don't get to hear very often if ever.   

Never been much on parades, myself.  While Pride Marches isn't my thing,  I'm glad that they're held for those who like them.   I'm always interested in hearing these kinds of stories from People who have other lives than the one I choose to lead. 

Wish I Knew Where Tim Anderson Was And How He's Doing

ON THE WHOLE most of the blogs and websites I used to frequent fifteen and more years ago seldom if ever come to mind.  One exception of those I recall involuntarily is the long ago baby blue blog (as once allegedly referred to on the silly and long ago Sorkin fairy tale, The West Wing) comes to mind only because one of its habitues insists on libeling me there and cross posting his slanders here, or tries to.   But you know as much about that as anyone needs to.  And, really, who does need to know about it? 

There are a number of those who were always interesting and frequently had content that I wasn't likely to come about anywhere else.  I won't make a list because I wouldn't want to leave any of them out.  One I will mention is the blogger who called herself Echidne of the Snakes for whom I used to act as weekend guest blogger,  someone for whom English is a second language and who wrote better than easily 99% of those of us who started learning the language at birth.   I don't know the details of why she stopped writing her blog, nor do I know what happened to her other guest bloggers,  Suzie, Phila, a few others.   I always enjoyed reading them.  I will mention NTodd whose blog I really enjoyed a lot and the mysterious blogger who went by the name Roger Ailes,  I assume though never knew, out of some subtle irony that I never knew.   

But this is about one named Tim Anderson who was a Gay man who drove trucks for a living,  had a degree from a small college in the North West,  was active in HIV prevention among truckers, truckstop prostitutes and others and an entirely admirable man.   He also wrote and posted many very good essays and stories which I read and copied a large number of to re-read.    Unfortunately,  I don't have access to the hard drive of my long ago had and now greatly lamented desktop computer where I believe those might be located because his website isn't anywhere online I can find,  trying the link to one that I mentioned in a post eleven years ago,  the result is to tell me that the domain name is up for purchase.  He had another website after that one which has a number of interesting posts still up but I can't find those many stories I loved so much.   Its last post from four years ago might hold the clue as to why I can't find him, his sudden, unexplained and unsuspected deplatforming from Facebook, taking down 14 years of his work -  I'd read it on his blogspot blog, never having been involved with Facebook.  It wasn't much like the stereotype of LGBTQ+ life that most straight People and many an LGBTQ+ one holds  

I can understand him not having the heart to repost so much work,  even though he seems to have had many other dedicated readers.   I wish I could find him in some active blog or other website, I'd like to be able to tell him, again how much I liked his work and respected his point of view and his work.   

Anyone know were I can tell him that?  

As Trump Mounts His Reichstag Fire In LA, His Policies Are Killing Scores Of People Every Hour

BROOKE NICHOLS,  professor of public health at Boston University has been posting on how many People,  Children, Women, Men are dying every hour, right now, due to the Trump-Musk-Miller slashing of funds that were keeping them alive around the world.    The estimate is that every hour 103 People die due to that, twice as many of them Children as Adults,  you can read the figures at the Impact Dashboard.  I would call your attention to the Filters and the tabs that let you access the data according to several categories,  including deaths due to cuts to Medicaid,  deaths caused by HIV,  and deaths due to malaria.  

The "pro-life" Trumpzis should have that thrown in their faces as should Catholic bishops and others who overtly supported Trump, as should those worshipers of Mammon and the Antichrist who pretend to be Christians, as, in fact, should every single person involved in Republican-fascist politics and everyone who voted for him or encouraged People to vote against Kamala Harris - I certainly include those who did so on the basis of the Biden-Blinken policy on supporting Israel, right or wrong. 

On Being Accused Of The Greatest Mortal Sin In Media Addled America, Not Having a "Sense of humor"

OH, I'VE SAID a few good lines here.  I once pointed out to Simps that one of the reasons that movies are more profitable than books is that no one expected they could get sex by bringing someone to the books.  

Abolish the ICEstapo Arrest Everyone Involved In The Crime Of Trump II - An unfiltered reaction to yesterday's federal government attack on American Citizens and Residents

ABOLISH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.   With the attack by Trump's crime gang in California yesterday it's clear that the entire thing is a fascist putsch against American democracy,  one started decades ago when Lewis Powell wrote his memo about how to impose a fascist oligarchy on the United States, which the fascists, in the Republican-fascist, billionaire-millionaire financed stink tanks,  on elite law school faculties,  in the Republican party,  in the corporate media have been following which has brought us to first the Supreme Court imposed Bush II then Trump I and now Trump II,  in which the stupidest man to have ever been president is doing a brilliant job of destroying the country on behalf of the richest criminals, with the immunity from the law that the Roberts Court AND THE DISASTROUSLY FAILED CONSTITUTION HAVE GIVEN HIM.  

Trump and his ICEstapo,  the National Guard units who should have mutinied instead of following illegal orders will get away with it,  they will do it again.   When you listen to the MSNBC lawyers talk about how Trump is "losing in the courts" your first comment NOT QUESTION should be, HE'S NOT BEING STOPPED BY THE GODDAMNED COURTS BECAUSE THE SUPREME COURT HAS YET TO STOP HIM.

Our Constitution was a crooked deal between slave holders and Northern financial interests,  it is full of provisions that they either intended or which since the Supreme Court has made into weapons against equality and democracy.   The Electoral College is what gave us those two giant steps into fascism,  Bush II and then Trump.   That, alone should make anyone who is opposed to fascism demand its abolition AND IF THE FASCIST STATES AND TINY POPULATION STATES WON'T ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN,  THOSE STATES SHOULD SEPARATE FROM THE "PRO-SLAVERY COMPACT" Wendell Phillips called it correctly and honestly in 1845,  as soon as he could read Madison's papers on the framing of the document.   No one who had a voice at all favorable to the practice of slavery in that period is worthy of trust, either then or now.  That would include all of those who took part in the framing of that document even the lone non-slave holder, John Adams because he went along with some of the most appalling pro-slavery-anti-egalitarian-anti-democratic features that were in it.*

America's only good history is the history of the struggle AGAINST the Constitution as it was originally written.  Its only virtue has been in the struggle to make the government what the Constitution has never been, INCLUDING THE SO-CALLED "BILL OF RIGHTS"  a egalitarian, and so truly democratic instrument of legitimate and just government.  The major enemies of that have been the wealthy, their media,  the Supreme Court, at times even when the "justices" may have intended otherwise (the Warren Court having done some of the worst damage by their good intentions) and the legal establishment which has invented all kinds of novel "interpretations"  and outright fabrications,  such as Court nullification of federal laws,  corporate-personhood and, now, presidential immunity under the Ivy League Law-school innovation of the fascist unitary executive theory of the presidency.    Anyone who believes that Amy Coney Barrett is going to turn against Republican-fascism should take a harder look at the totality of her choices on the Roberts Court because it's clear as day she's pretty much as all-in on fascism as the rest of her Republican-fascist colleagues.   I'm not even sure I think Kagan is that reliable, when it comes down to it. 

Trump's ICEstapo and other military agencies are attacking U.S. Citizens and Residents with military weapons and tactics.   That is more a declaration of war against American democracy than the slave-power's attack on Fort Sumpter and the Japanese Imperial government's attack on Pearl Harbor.   And it's the Republican-fascist party and its billionaire and millionaire owners who have done this to us.   I keep making these points and having scoffers scoff at them only to, weeks, months or years later, have to face that that's what they're seeing before their eyes.   

If the foolish idea that the Supreme Court is going to allow lower courts to stop him,  the idea the Congress in the hands of the fascists themselves is going to stop him had any demonstrable truth in real life instead of lawyerly-liarly claims,  I might revise my ideas.  Slightlyi.  BUT I HAVE YET TO SEE HIM AND HIS CRIMINAL ARMY STOPPED, NEVER MIND THEM BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE.    For crying out loud,  the idiotic idea that St. Jemmey Madison and St. Hamilton are going to save us from their corrupt document was clearly always a lie.   Those states and legislatures that got Madison to promise that a "Bill of Rights" would be added by the First Congress got duped because the Bill of Rights that got passed did little to nothing to fix the worst things about that pro-slavery compact,  not even for white men and women and children who were held in wage-slavery (we're never to talk about the 19th century literature on that, not even when it's the likes of Lincoln who condemned it).   It certainly did nothing to end chattel slavery or get rid of corruptions like the Electoral College.   It didn't even do anything to end the pro-slavery ban on taxing exports, one of those things demanded by the slave-holders.  

* "AI" is not only stupid, it's a liar.   In fact checking one of the things I say above, the goddamned automatic Google "AI" gave a list of "founders" who never owned slaves, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton who both are known to have held slaves at some point in their lives,  Hamilton lived in luxury supported by the slaves held by his wife's family, the largest slave-holders in New York state and he is known to have facilitated the selling and buying of slaves.  He inherited slaves along with his brother when their mother died.   There is no record of him ever having freed them so I assume he sold them when he moved to what would become the U.S.A.   It also mentioned Jefferson's very temporarily expressed disdain for the infamous crime, when he was trying to gull the common Americans to fight the aristocrats war of independence - including the large percentage of very recently freed-blacks and white-indentured servants who fought the rich men's war.  Once that was done,  Jefferson became an enthusiastic advocate of his fellow aristocrats holding and breeding slaves because every slave born under their enslavement made them richer.  His journals show him doing the figures on that.   I wouldn't even exempt the one of the who freed the slaves he, personally held - after he was dead and they were no longer a value to him - Washington because he tired to con the escaped slave held by Martha Washington,  Oney Judge, back into slavery shortly before he died.   I'd like a Constitution that wasn't saturated in the blood of Native Americans and Slaves and Wage Slaves and not full of the tricks and wiles of those who drew that blood.   I hope my niece and nephews and their children might, someday, live under such an honest one that takes into account the experience of living under the one we do now.   

Saturday Night Radio Drama - Dan Treston - Piano In The River

 Piano In The River

Tonight a jewel from the archive, and the winner of the Prix Italia in 1965.

Thomas Studley and Deirdre O'Meara lead the other Temporary Unestablished Civil Servants (who constituted The Raidio Éireann Players) in  Piano in the River ~ An interlude for radio by Dan Treston

Anticipating The Neo-Nazi Trolling Me About The Indictment of Abrego Garcia

IT'S GOT NOTHING to do with Abrego Garcia, this is Bondi DoJ-FOX Lies distraction because now they don't know if among the things Musk and his incel-boys got hold of was Epstein evidence, especially those thousands of hours of video rumored to be among that evidence.   Musk dropping his bomb was all about putting Trump on notice that he's got that or to make Trump think he's got it.   He'll play Trump like Putin in possession of a pee-tape to get what he wants.   So, I think if someone wants to take advantage of the EV subsidy (what Trump, no doubt on the advice of the Republican-fascist PR focus group research to lie more effectively calls a "mandate")  I think you can take your time because as long as Trump and the Republican fascists think Elon has got those goods,  it's a safe bet it isn't going anywhere.  

Real History Isn't Expurgated Like A Best Seller Bullshit Bio Or Coextensive With "Production Values"

I WILL NOTE it's why the bullshit bio that inspired "Hamilton" is bullshit history,  as, in fact, so many of those "biographies" and best-seller "history" books are bullshit.   What makes about 99% of cabloid and now online "documentaries"  annoying bullshit with shitty musical scores and annoyingly upperclass, generally brit sounding narration.    

Some may have been surprised that I posted the video about broke and horny soldiers one of the excellent short videos about LGBTQ+ history  of Hugh Hagius about the long mostly hidden history of straight-identifying men in uniform either prostituting themselves to other men or enjoying sex with other men.   I don't know why that should surprise anyone,  it's always amused me that a lot of People figure being a Christian requires not knowing about such things and, certainly, never talking about them.   I think such  genteel Christianity is of little help to anyone and is certainly incompatible with Jesus as presented in Scripture and the earliest traditions.    It certainly didn't help anyone during the AIDS pandemic (which, despite what the media leads our gulled and media stupefied population to believe is nothing like "over)  or will be of much help in what I have ever confidence will, eventually, be another deadly and easily contracted pandemic of STDs, promiscuity among straight as well as much of LGBTQ+ People providing such an excellent lab for the development of those.   I certainly don't advocate promiscuity or having sex outside of a committed, faithful relationship but I neither think those who do those are beyond the experience of holiness nor do I think they should be excluded from our active care and love.   If anyone needs the love and attention of Christianity,  it is those most at risk.  It's that practice of prissy Christianity and, even more so, respectable secular kulcha that forced LGBTQ+ People into a demimondain life,  sometimes along with a more "respectable" overt life in the wider society.  

If you watched the first of his videos I posted about him,  you'd see that Mr. Hagius spent a number of years in the seminary,  which,  I think, accounts for his care about his research and reporting of history.  I also think it helps that he became a newspaper man back when that profession had some standards of fact checking and integrity of reporting, something that goes out the window when you make it electronic media, especially that which makes money through getting more eyes or ears glued to it.   As with the non-style style production practiced by some of my favorite podcasters,  such as Heather Cox Richardson,  I associate "low production values" with superior content.  I really like his style of presentation as much as I do the paint stains on the woodwork in HCR's videos.   I LOVE her paint stains on her paneling because of what she says in front of it. 

Walter Brueggemann Has Died

I CAME LATE to Walter Brueggemann's scholarship and, more importantly, his witness to Scripture and the life of Christianity.   It's one of the regrets of my life that I didn't read him from the 1970s instead of wasting so much time reading much of the philosophy,  political literature and pretty worthless lit literature instead of reading him and others who wrote on religion.   

I don't know any details other than that he was 92 and remarkably active up till at least recently.  I did hear one interview-discussion with him a few years ago,  when one of the interviewers asked him how he was he said, . . . . "I'm old."   The interviewer pointed out that  he, probably one of the greatest of Old Testament Scholars wasn't familiar enough with Scripture because there were lots of People in the Old Testament a lot older than he was,  which got a good hearty laugh from him. 

May he live with God in the Communion of Saints forever. 

Just Posted And Without Further Comment - Broke & Horny Soldiers and Their Gentlemen Admirers

 

At Last!

I'VE SAID BEFORE that I really like Keith Olbermann,  I mean I like him like you like a really good radio-person who you know is generally reliable, adult and responsible,  and added on that intelligent, good humored, and has good morals,  you know, in the way I love Callie Crossley and a few others.  That's despite our disagreements about religion and a few other topics.   And he's a really good writer and has a really great radio style vocal presentation.    He is the only person in my lifetime who has ever been able to get me to listen to a sports story that was longer than thirty seconds with something like real attention.    

Today he said something in passing which I realized was the very first time I've heard someone in the media admit a glaring truth that I not only noticed about 49 years ago but which I've railed about ever since.     I've gone to and edited the automated transcript of Olbermann's excellent podcast for this morning where his mention is embedded because you need the context of it:

. . . More importantly Musk's money is going to ghost Trump and bluntly without Musk's money $275 million in the election thank you Citizens United and Floyd Abrams without Musk's money and Musk's tech bro vote Trump probably loses.  Musk has ghosted Trump and is starting to attack Trump and Trump can't say a word because unless Musk bankrolls it Trump will not be able to subvert the Constitution and run for a third term.  And unless Musk bankrolls it a Trump successor will never get off the ground and unless Musk bankrolls it the Republicans will lose the House next year and maybe the Senate too all Trump has been able to do thus far is the really sad sight of publishing without comment a screenshot of a Musk tweet . . . 

Astute readers of my humble attempts here might note this,   "and bluntly without Musk's money $275 million in the election thank you Citizens United and Floyd Abrams without Musk's money and Musk's tech bro vote Trump probably loses. " 

Olbermann was, of course, referring to that figure considered a hero of the "civil liberties" industry,  Floyd Abrams,  who is such a goddamned, frickin' champion of all that is good that he represented Moscow Mitch McConnell in the case that cemented in place the corruption of American democracy on behalf of, not only our domestic billionaire robber barons but, also opened up our elections to being bought and corrupted by billionaires foreign,  such as the richest of those,  Putin,  Xi, MBE, and all of the oil state billionaire dictators,  as the Roberts Court and the goddamned "civil liberties" industry.   

He started his quite brilliant commentary on this by asking a question:

It's still just at the passive-aggressive stage but Elon Musk has not only broken with Trump and ghosted Trump, now he has re-tweeted someone telling MAGAs to go to the comments at Fox News and read how "almost every comment is in agreement with Elon – to see so many vehemently disagreeing with Trump is wild.”

This is not going to end well.

Pass the popcorn.

How is that POSSIBLE? Who could have EVER forseen that relying on a chemical’d-up, psychologically-impaired, persistent over-promising, compulsive sperm donor who may have been the victim of a botched penile implant, could be a BAD thing? 

I can answer part of that in the negative.  We're to believe that the many Ivy Law School grads on the Supreme Court foresaw it as a GOOD thing BECAUSE THEY, WITH OPEN EYES, HANDED OUR ELECTIONS OVER TO CORRUPTION BY THE MUSKS AND BEZOS'S AND TECH BROS AND THE MEDIA WHO WHORES AFTER THEIR MONEY AND AFTER THE SAME TAX BREAKS AND GRAFT THAT THE BILLIONAIRES DO.  And so do the like of Floyd Abrams and many a liar lawyer I can name at the ACLU and many a mealy-mouthed "liberal" civil liberties champion in the whore houses of the legal profession, the media that benefits so handsomely from that corruption and millions of idiot "liberals" and "lefties" who are OK with that status quo continuing and metastasizing because, you know, "the First Amendment." 

But I'm in a celebratory mood because it is the first time I ever remember someone in the news business admitting that it wasn't just Republican-fascists and the alphabet soup of Louis Powell inspired crypto-fascist think tanks and foundations and their kept Ivy League faculty whores who were responsible for making the corruption of American elections Constitutional dogma and the lawless Supreme Court legislated law of the land,  it was the same goddamned "civil liberties" lawyers who are, when you look at their careers, about as virtuous on their beat as RFK jr. is in his anti-vaxx ambulance chasing.   Floyd Abrams shares in the responsibility of corrupting our elections and putting some of the worst Republican-fascist politicians in power as the most corrupt of our oil tycoons or tech bro fascists, as do the "civil liberties" lawyers of the ACLU who have been thick as thieves with them in overturning literally every attempt at effectively cleaning up our elections since a strong bi-partisan Congress passed the post-Watergate election reforms overturned by Buckely v Valeo (a case containing the name of one of our most genteel of fascist families,  sort of like the Kennedys used to be associated with mildly progressive politics).   You will note that Abrams represented Mitch "Leonard Leo Tool" "Republican Court Packer" McConnell in this.   I doubt it was pro-bono work. 

I'm greatly gratified to have heard someone of Olbermann's stature finally note that someone who cares about equality and democracy has finally noticed.   Though I doubt that anyone in the media in my lifetime will admit the truth that that line of "civil liberties" Supreme Court innovation goes back to the Sullivan decision that first gave the media to lie with impunity - a "right" that not only created the impossible,  that there is a "right" to do what's wrong, that is LYING,  but also gave the media a carte blanche to lie with impunity FOR ITS OWNERS AND OPERATORS PROFIT.    The Supreme Court in the legendary Warren years, in fact, are the authors of the downfall of American democracy in that act making lying in the mass media a "First Amendment 'right'" and they were fully supported in that by the ACLU and other "civil liberties" whores.  

Continuing On With Hugh Hagius' Story - Another Pride Month Post

 

I'm old enough and was enough of a news junkie that I remember this period of LGBTQ+ history,  though the news business of the time didn't lead to much information having been accurately transmitted.    It's interesting to hear someone who was there, observing it as a journalist at the time   It's important to look back at the pre-Stonewall period of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement because the Republican-fascists and today's news operations are trying to return us to that status quo. 

You Can Imagine How They'd Be Treated If They Were Muslims

HERE'S A RECENT INCIDENT in Jerusalem:

Palestinian Christians, like many others in the West Bank, must navigate a complex system of Israeli-imposed movement restrictions to access holy sites and basic services. This system includes nearly 800 permanent checkpoints and barriers in the West Bank, along with thousands of temporary "flying" checkpoints, all enforced under the justification of Israeli security concerns. 

After parking near the New Gate, Hani (who preferred not to disclose his last name due to personal reasons) and his family began walking toward the entrance — until he was stopped. Tension hung heavy in the air. 

"You can't get in," said a policeman.

"I'm with my wife and kids," Hani replied. "They're already inside."

His 8-year-old daughter burst into tears, reaching for him. It was only her second time attending with the Orthodox scout group, and she wanted her father beside her. His wife stepped forward.

"He's my husband. We're all inside — he's the only one out."

They stood in the sun for half an hour, pleading. Eventually, the police let him through. He was lucky — at least he made it to Jerusalem. Others from the West Bank never got past the checkpoints, left standing outside the Old City behind barriers, watching.

Hani continued toward the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate but was stopped again — trapped between two checkpoints, unable to move forward or back.

The sun was relentless. The children were exhausted. Then things escalated.

A border police officer approached the children, shouting and demanding the spot they were sitting in. Hani stepped in, but the officer kept yelling and pushing him. Surrounded by Israeli border police, with his wife beside him and his daughter behind him crying, the situation grew tense.

And then — chaos.

Hani heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. He turned to see the officer had drawn his weapon — aimed at Hani's head.

"I was terrified. I moved closer, tried to push his hand up so he couldn't fire."

Others rushed in, pulling the officer back and holding him. Then, quietly, several officers began removing their name tags. They scanned the crowd. People were filming.

Hani moved toward a shaded area. That's when the camera went off — and things got worse. Police, border police, soldiers — it was hard to tell who was who. One officer began hitting him, swinging like a boxer.

It was the members of the Orthodox scout group who intervened, forming a barrier between Hani and the police.

Again, he walked away — searching for someone, anyone, in charge. He found an officer who barely spoke English. Still, the man followed him.

"What happened?" he asked.

Before Hani could respond, another soldier cut in: "It's OK. Never mind. Go away."

Hani asked for the name of the officer who pointed the gun.

"Here's my name," the soldier replied mockingly. "Sue me. Take a picture."

But Hani couldn't. Other soldiers stood behind him, smirking. As if to say: "We can do anything. You can't stop us."

Hani's ordeal was documented on video and the individual, a reservist serving in an operational role, was removed from his assignment following the incident, the Israeli border police told the National Catholic Reporter in a written statement.

But this is not an isolated case. It reflects a larger crisis confronting Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem — a shrinking space for faith in a city that once celebrated its multi-religious identity.

Israel is a pantomime of a democracy, it is an apartheid state and it was bound to become one.   And as the rot of apartheid develops,  some who experienced South African apartheid said it's far worse in Israel and the occupied territories, apartheid is turning to state terror, expulsion and, in the place it has reached its end stage, Gaza, genocide.  

All of those soldiers involved in that should be under international investigation for crimes against humanity as should the entire Israeli government.