Saturday, July 22, 2017
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Platinum Listening from the Hear Now Radio Festival 2017
You only have till August 1st to listen to these radio dramas from this summer's Hear Now Radio Festival. They're well worth trying, you'll be likely to find something you like, maybe all of them.
And for desert, yet another BBC radio production of J. B. Priestley's
An Inspector Calls.
And for desert, yet another BBC radio production of J. B. Priestley's
An Inspector Calls.
Stupid Trolls
I think that along with other phrases and terms that have obviously suffered a decline in denotative significance in common usage - especially as used among atheists - such terms as ad hominem, fallacy, Occams razor, evidence, proof, ... etc, you can add "run on sentence". I think for most people online that term means "long sentence" or, "longer than I'm used to reading because I don't read much". I think short sentences tend to lead to superficial, simplistic and facile thinking, so I use whatever length of sentence I think in. If the guys who troll me can't keep up, I'm not surprised. I write the occasional run-on sentence, sometimes I even go back and fix that in editing. But I'd rather be guilty of the occasional run-on sentence than the long ago ran-out of ideas contents of the trolls who get sent to the Spam file.
Update: One of the two trolls trolling here today, "General Zod" for anyone who wants to get a general sense of the level of maturity I generally spare you from, obviously doesn't know what a "run-on sentence" is. Here, from Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, the Freshman course:
13b. A run-on sentence consists of two or more sentences separated by a comma or by no mark of punctuation.
The Senior Year version says this in a note on run-on sentences:
Professional writers (who have a strong sentence sense or they would not be professionals) do at times write fragments and use the comma between sentences, especially when the ideas in the sentences are very closely related.
I don't see why non-professionals shouldn't get to do what the pros do, on occasion. Though I suspect one of the most important differences between professional writers and non-professional ones is that the pros get editors.
If you want me to take what you say seriously, find out what you're talking about, don't just pull it out of your asininity.
Update: One of the two trolls trolling here today, "General Zod" for anyone who wants to get a general sense of the level of maturity I generally spare you from, obviously doesn't know what a "run-on sentence" is. Here, from Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, the Freshman course:
13b. A run-on sentence consists of two or more sentences separated by a comma or by no mark of punctuation.
The Senior Year version says this in a note on run-on sentences:
Professional writers (who have a strong sentence sense or they would not be professionals) do at times write fragments and use the comma between sentences, especially when the ideas in the sentences are very closely related.
I don't see why non-professionals shouldn't get to do what the pros do, on occasion. Though I suspect one of the most important differences between professional writers and non-professional ones is that the pros get editors.
If you want me to take what you say seriously, find out what you're talking about, don't just pull it out of your asininity.
Snore
So many of Duncan's regulars believe what Steve Simels says without fact checking, they are brainlessly trusting, not a brain trust.
It's Almost Too Late For The Left To Wise Up And The First Thing We Need To Do Is Admit We Haven't Been Wise And To Dump The Stupidest Who Will Never Learn
One of the most obvious and frightening truths to come from the past six months of Trumps regime and the Nazi style spectacle of his campaign is that there is a dangerously large number of Americans, after 241 years, an abolition campaign, a civil war, the struggle to expand the franchise to women and even among white men, the labor struggles, the civil rights struggles, etc. after all of that and the institution of effective universal availability to basic education and mass media, that thirty to forty percent of Americans have a dangerous tendency to support a fascist strongman as phony, as vile and as repulsive as the troll-doll hair, lard bucket, ignorant sleazoid, predator and proven crook, Donald Trump. Anyone who wonders how the Germans could go for a vile piece of crap as Hitler should take a really good look at what's living in the White House, with that history to inform our choice.
That IS something that should keep people up at night, that is something that should be not only in everybodys mind but in their discourse and in serious political and legal discussions of how to avoid them pitching us into fascism. With Senator Chuck Grassley and the rest of the allegedly responsible conservatives in the Senate and those in the House not only doing nothing but actively carrying water for the Trump regimes reign of criminality and open treason, it is something that we really can't avoid addressing in an effective way so as to prevent the disaster we are likely not going to avoid.
The idea that people whose political inclinations and ideology were not only anti-democratic but overtly in support of fascism and its preceding movements of dictatorial rule should have ever had the opportunities that an indiscriminate and absolutist interpretation of the free-speech, free-press, freedom of association of violence advocating fascists and other assorted scum is quite insane. The idea that they should have the opportunity to lie their way into power - and such an attempt would depend on lies and other assorted appeals to the worst in people, was one of the stupidest ideas of the Jeffersonians and their political if not intellectual heirs. Such a pose is only rational when it is impossible for things to go bad and it is impossible for the fascists to win. If there is anything that the history of the world in the past century proves, that is not impossible. Now, with Donald Trump sitting in the White House his enablers and cohorts in control of the House and Senate, we now know it can happen here.*
That Jeffersonian superstition that enabling lies with the same privileges as the truth, fascists with the same abilities to win as those who support egalitarian democracy, equal right, equal responsibility to respect rights, seems to have believed that things would just come out right in the end in some absurd idea that human societies operate under some "balance of nature" when everything about human cultures, societies and governments happen as a result of human choices and human blunders and human personality. There is no natural force to keep democracy alive and to prevent fascism. Our current fashion in the interpretation of the First Amendment, with its facile and media-promoted absolutism and the phobia of censorship of fascist propaganda is as near a guarantee of things going bad as there could possibly be. Add in that permission to lie that the Supreme Court gave the mass media and that only makes things more likely to turn out as they are.
As recently as 2008 I believed that there was a real difference in intelligence between those on the left and those on the far and even the nearer right. But that's self-aggrandizing conceit. If you want to look at who has been smart about things, taking maximum advantage of opportunities, many of them handed to them by liberals in recent decades, it has been the far right, driving our politics ever rightward since 1968 when Nixon won over the flawed but infinitely better Hubert Humphrey. The left sandbagged him and helped put Nixon in office, it has repeated that in 1980, 2000 and now 2016. If the left were smart it would learn something and it doesn't. It cleaves to disproven and even absurd theories that were given the test of time and have failed, over and over and over again.
The presence on the alleged left of the Greens, Marxists, Anarchists, and others who have had a hand in that idiocy is even more proof that as much as we love to believe we're brilliant, taken as a whole, we are nothing of the sort. The political regime that includes them has been a dead weight on the left my entire life and long before my parents were born. If you want to read a good history of that, James Weinstein's The Long Detour is a good introduction, even if he repeats a few of the stupid assertions that have not only kept us out of power but have enabled the worst. And if you want to go see how well the left learns, go over to the magazine he started, In These Times and read the massive stupidity in its archive over the past two years and continuing today. They should try reading their founders last book. They might learn something. But I doubt it.
* I am more convinced than ever that the pose of Free Speech absolutism that was promoted was asserted for what various Marxists and near-Marxists hoped would enable them to propagandize the People of the United States to support their own, red-fascist, political ideology. It was one of the stupidest ideas ever because if there is one thing that Marxists provided, it was one of the strongest cautionary lessons of all time in Leninism-Stalinism, Maoism and other Communist dictatorships. Almost as stupid is turning violent anarchists like Emma Goldman into some kind of heroine. If there has been one thing that has been a definite political loser, it's things like setting bombs and terrorizing people. Especially when it's done for a political ideology as stupid as anarchism. Just this week I had to point out to an idiot anarchist that if they wanted to find out what an absence of civil authority is really like, they should go to some of the neighborhoods here or the towns in Northern Mexico where there is no real civil authority. They'd get their stupid asses shot within a week.
That IS something that should keep people up at night, that is something that should be not only in everybodys mind but in their discourse and in serious political and legal discussions of how to avoid them pitching us into fascism. With Senator Chuck Grassley and the rest of the allegedly responsible conservatives in the Senate and those in the House not only doing nothing but actively carrying water for the Trump regimes reign of criminality and open treason, it is something that we really can't avoid addressing in an effective way so as to prevent the disaster we are likely not going to avoid.
The idea that people whose political inclinations and ideology were not only anti-democratic but overtly in support of fascism and its preceding movements of dictatorial rule should have ever had the opportunities that an indiscriminate and absolutist interpretation of the free-speech, free-press, freedom of association of violence advocating fascists and other assorted scum is quite insane. The idea that they should have the opportunity to lie their way into power - and such an attempt would depend on lies and other assorted appeals to the worst in people, was one of the stupidest ideas of the Jeffersonians and their political if not intellectual heirs. Such a pose is only rational when it is impossible for things to go bad and it is impossible for the fascists to win. If there is anything that the history of the world in the past century proves, that is not impossible. Now, with Donald Trump sitting in the White House his enablers and cohorts in control of the House and Senate, we now know it can happen here.*
That Jeffersonian superstition that enabling lies with the same privileges as the truth, fascists with the same abilities to win as those who support egalitarian democracy, equal right, equal responsibility to respect rights, seems to have believed that things would just come out right in the end in some absurd idea that human societies operate under some "balance of nature" when everything about human cultures, societies and governments happen as a result of human choices and human blunders and human personality. There is no natural force to keep democracy alive and to prevent fascism. Our current fashion in the interpretation of the First Amendment, with its facile and media-promoted absolutism and the phobia of censorship of fascist propaganda is as near a guarantee of things going bad as there could possibly be. Add in that permission to lie that the Supreme Court gave the mass media and that only makes things more likely to turn out as they are.
As recently as 2008 I believed that there was a real difference in intelligence between those on the left and those on the far and even the nearer right. But that's self-aggrandizing conceit. If you want to look at who has been smart about things, taking maximum advantage of opportunities, many of them handed to them by liberals in recent decades, it has been the far right, driving our politics ever rightward since 1968 when Nixon won over the flawed but infinitely better Hubert Humphrey. The left sandbagged him and helped put Nixon in office, it has repeated that in 1980, 2000 and now 2016. If the left were smart it would learn something and it doesn't. It cleaves to disproven and even absurd theories that were given the test of time and have failed, over and over and over again.
The presence on the alleged left of the Greens, Marxists, Anarchists, and others who have had a hand in that idiocy is even more proof that as much as we love to believe we're brilliant, taken as a whole, we are nothing of the sort. The political regime that includes them has been a dead weight on the left my entire life and long before my parents were born. If you want to read a good history of that, James Weinstein's The Long Detour is a good introduction, even if he repeats a few of the stupid assertions that have not only kept us out of power but have enabled the worst. And if you want to go see how well the left learns, go over to the magazine he started, In These Times and read the massive stupidity in its archive over the past two years and continuing today. They should try reading their founders last book. They might learn something. But I doubt it.
* I am more convinced than ever that the pose of Free Speech absolutism that was promoted was asserted for what various Marxists and near-Marxists hoped would enable them to propagandize the People of the United States to support their own, red-fascist, political ideology. It was one of the stupidest ideas ever because if there is one thing that Marxists provided, it was one of the strongest cautionary lessons of all time in Leninism-Stalinism, Maoism and other Communist dictatorships. Almost as stupid is turning violent anarchists like Emma Goldman into some kind of heroine. If there has been one thing that has been a definite political loser, it's things like setting bombs and terrorizing people. Especially when it's done for a political ideology as stupid as anarchism. Just this week I had to point out to an idiot anarchist that if they wanted to find out what an absence of civil authority is really like, they should go to some of the neighborhoods here or the towns in Northern Mexico where there is no real civil authority. They'd get their stupid asses shot within a week.
Friday, July 21, 2017
40 Years Ago - Richard Pryor As The Model of Jay Sekulow
I just watched a clip of Jay Sekulow and his double talk and, for the life of me, knowing what that scam artist has done to get millions for himself, listening to his absolute shameless lies and self-contradiction, all I could do is remember forty years ago (believe it or not) and Richard Pryor's Reverend James L. White routine. Translated in time and color and setting, Pryor was prophetic. The campaign of The Rev. White is pretty much Republican Politics, right now.
I wonder how many of the Republican Senators who Trump was publicly shaking down the other day found it as funny as I do that Donald Trump, the man who spends less time in DC than any previous president since George Washington was telling them they should stay in session until they gave him a Kill The People bill to sign in front of the cameras.
It must be a really unpleasant thing to have to pretend to have some respect or regard for such a stupid, ignorant, corrupt,hypocritical, infantile ass as Donald Trump. The respectable thing would be to oppose him on principle but none of them seem to have the character to do that in an important way.
It must be a really unpleasant thing to have to pretend to have some respect or regard for such a stupid, ignorant, corrupt,hypocritical, infantile ass as Donald Trump. The respectable thing would be to oppose him on principle but none of them seem to have the character to do that in an important way.
The Limits of The Honor And Morality The Founders Imagined Were Violated A Long Time Ago and Is Anyone At FOX or Sinclair or The Nation in Putin's Pocket?
I have started writing this post two other ways but I think we are at a place in the United States where it is becoming obvious that our Constitution, our laws have serious flaws that have led to the possibility of fascism arising out of what was assumed to be American democracy. Anything that relies on such things as a sense of honor, individually or collectively, civic morality, has gone out the window with the Trump regime, the tea-party - cabloid "news" environment that led us here, directly. The total absence of any sense of honor or morality on full display in the Trump regime was the creation of the mass media which was allowed to corrupt the American people, its Electoral College mechanism handed the loser of an election the power of the presidency, those and similar things are what gave us Donald Trump.
Now we have the spectacle of a president who, like the criminal, Richard Nixon, has lawyers who are floating the idea that he might pardon members of his family, members of his administration AND EVEN HIMSELF in order to prevent their prosecution and in the belief that he will be able to stop the investigation into their treason with the Putin regime and in other criminal matters. Does anyone believe that Donald Trump's sense of honor or even shame will prevent him from trying to pardon him if he can't get his chosen Vice President, Mike Pence, to end his political career by pardoning them and him?
Our Constitution is extremely hard to amend, it was hard to start with, as thirteen states went to fifty and regional-political powers played the thing for the advantage of whatever class ran those states and regions made it almost impossible to make the needed changes in the sketchier parts of the thing. We are at a time in our history, in the development of our culture and politics when, among other things, it is obvious that presidential powers of pardon have to be limited to make it impossible for him to be pardoned for treasonous acts, treasonous in reality not by Constitutional definition, that he should have no power to pardon members of his administration and campaign who are guilty of corrupting the electoral process on behalf of enemies of democracy foreign or domestic. Vice Presidents should not have the power to pardon their predecessors who chose them and to who they have ties and owe obligations. If Donald Trump and the members of his campaign and administration knew that there was no way they were going to be pardoned for the crimes it becomes absolutely certain they committed, THE HIGHEST CRIMES AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND DEMOCRACY, they might not have done it.
If that isn't done, even if our damaged democracy survives, don't count on never seeing worse in your lifetime. The timeline of American history runs through the Bush family putsch that gave George W. Bush the presidency by one of the most shameful acts by a Supreme Court and the state of Florida run by his brother, Jeb Bush to Trump. In my lifetime we went from the criminality of the Nixon administration to the corruption of the massively criminal Reagan administration, to the two Bushes and, now, Trump. The Republican Party is a party which is demonstrably in the hands of criminals, they have handed the Supreme Court to politically corrupt Justices who cannot be counted on to not rule in favor of their corruption.
------------------
I don't know about anyone else, but the revelations of ties with the Putin criminal class by Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, etc. lead me to wonder what kind of financial and business relation that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, other FOX figures, others owning and in charge of the right-wing media in the United States and their families have with Putin and his oligarchic crime buddies. We now know that Putin pretty much bought himself a Presidency, how much less of a stretch of the imagination would it be to imagine him buying Rupert Murdoch or others in the right-wing and more overtly neo-fascist media. I would love to see that investigated because I'm just about certain that there must be ties as disturbing as the ones Trump and his cronies and family have. And I wouldn't limit that to the officially right-wing media. There were and are many alleged lefties and liberals who have soft-sold Putin advantaging lines, even in magazines you wouldn't expect it. Even such former liberal heroes as Dennis Kucinich - now a FOX "liberal" - is peddling that line. If the American media is in the pocket of Putin, we certainly have a right to know that, especially considering their power to create a Trump and put him into office on behalf of a foreign dictator. If the Constitution doesn't hold that we do have that right, it's just another way in which it is a danger to a free people and their right to self-government on the basis of accurate and reliable knowledge and common morality and decency.
Now we have the spectacle of a president who, like the criminal, Richard Nixon, has lawyers who are floating the idea that he might pardon members of his family, members of his administration AND EVEN HIMSELF in order to prevent their prosecution and in the belief that he will be able to stop the investigation into their treason with the Putin regime and in other criminal matters. Does anyone believe that Donald Trump's sense of honor or even shame will prevent him from trying to pardon him if he can't get his chosen Vice President, Mike Pence, to end his political career by pardoning them and him?
Our Constitution is extremely hard to amend, it was hard to start with, as thirteen states went to fifty and regional-political powers played the thing for the advantage of whatever class ran those states and regions made it almost impossible to make the needed changes in the sketchier parts of the thing. We are at a time in our history, in the development of our culture and politics when, among other things, it is obvious that presidential powers of pardon have to be limited to make it impossible for him to be pardoned for treasonous acts, treasonous in reality not by Constitutional definition, that he should have no power to pardon members of his administration and campaign who are guilty of corrupting the electoral process on behalf of enemies of democracy foreign or domestic. Vice Presidents should not have the power to pardon their predecessors who chose them and to who they have ties and owe obligations. If Donald Trump and the members of his campaign and administration knew that there was no way they were going to be pardoned for the crimes it becomes absolutely certain they committed, THE HIGHEST CRIMES AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND DEMOCRACY, they might not have done it.
If that isn't done, even if our damaged democracy survives, don't count on never seeing worse in your lifetime. The timeline of American history runs through the Bush family putsch that gave George W. Bush the presidency by one of the most shameful acts by a Supreme Court and the state of Florida run by his brother, Jeb Bush to Trump. In my lifetime we went from the criminality of the Nixon administration to the corruption of the massively criminal Reagan administration, to the two Bushes and, now, Trump. The Republican Party is a party which is demonstrably in the hands of criminals, they have handed the Supreme Court to politically corrupt Justices who cannot be counted on to not rule in favor of their corruption.
------------------
I don't know about anyone else, but the revelations of ties with the Putin criminal class by Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Donald Trump, etc. lead me to wonder what kind of financial and business relation that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, other FOX figures, others owning and in charge of the right-wing media in the United States and their families have with Putin and his oligarchic crime buddies. We now know that Putin pretty much bought himself a Presidency, how much less of a stretch of the imagination would it be to imagine him buying Rupert Murdoch or others in the right-wing and more overtly neo-fascist media. I would love to see that investigated because I'm just about certain that there must be ties as disturbing as the ones Trump and his cronies and family have. And I wouldn't limit that to the officially right-wing media. There were and are many alleged lefties and liberals who have soft-sold Putin advantaging lines, even in magazines you wouldn't expect it. Even such former liberal heroes as Dennis Kucinich - now a FOX "liberal" - is peddling that line. If the American media is in the pocket of Putin, we certainly have a right to know that, especially considering their power to create a Trump and put him into office on behalf of a foreign dictator. If the Constitution doesn't hold that we do have that right, it's just another way in which it is a danger to a free people and their right to self-government on the basis of accurate and reliable knowledge and common morality and decency.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
I Checked, Simps Really Did Say That
Actually, there's a dishwater dull Eastern European guy who writes unlistenable academic bullshit for classical guitar [that would be Dusan Bodagnovic, probably the most respected living composer for the instrument, a guy who has played and jammed with people like Charlie Haden and Anthony Cox] that he [that would be me] adores who's still with us.
Yeah, apparently this is the kind of thing Simps means when he says "unlistenable academic bullshit".
And this:
And this:
I would guess that a rational person might say Dusan Bodganovic was "an academic composer" because of the fact that just about any university music department in the world would probably kill to have him on its faculty. I suspect any of the same would kill to keep Simps off of theirs.
Yeah, apparently this is the kind of thing Simps means when he says "unlistenable academic bullshit".
And this:
And this:
I would guess that a rational person might say Dusan Bodganovic was "an academic composer" because of the fact that just about any university music department in the world would probably kill to have him on its faculty. I suspect any of the same would kill to keep Simps off of theirs.
"Why won't you post my comment when you answer it?"
It has always been my explicit, stated policy to not post comments that are abusive of other people who comment here and any that are abusive of me that I choose not to post. I saw at Eschaton how doing that tended to lead things into the gutter. I have also always said that I would use any material contained in comments I withhold or those I post as I choose to. If you want me to post your comment don't include abuse against other people.
I will also not post comments informing me of things said about me by other people if I choose not to, though I might use the information in them.
There is one of those at the top of my "awaiting moderation" box which informs me of something a person I think has mental health issues said but which I won't address. I think she is a rather sad case of someone who mistakes atheism as conveying a sort of instant erudition and intellectual status which it certainly doesn't. I think that kind of mistaken notion accounts for easily a majority of the online atheist invective among the middle-brow and low brow. The blanket anti-Christianity contained in her comment is considered by such to be some kind of fashion statement. If I didn't think she had mental health issues, I'd have no problem doing what I do with Simps comments and those of such dolts as Freki and Skeptic Tank (I do think there is something interesting in how many of those among such atheists self-identify with shit).
Though if I answered even just all of the ones Simps tries to post here it's all I'd have time to do. My Spam file is a monument to obsessive compulsive venom spewing that would keep a Freudian fable spinner busy for a life time. If Philip Roth were younger I might send it to him for research material.
So, if you send me something and you don't want me to use it to my own ends instead of yours, either follow my rules or don't send it because I will use anything anyone provides, provided I choose to.
Update: There are more than 50 comments from Simps in my spam file, just since the beginning of this month. And that's typical of what's been going on here for years. Not to mention the many from people I've never posted one from. Assuming they're not mostly his well known sock puppets.
Update 2: And there are two more from Simps alone since I posted that update.
I will also not post comments informing me of things said about me by other people if I choose not to, though I might use the information in them.
There is one of those at the top of my "awaiting moderation" box which informs me of something a person I think has mental health issues said but which I won't address. I think she is a rather sad case of someone who mistakes atheism as conveying a sort of instant erudition and intellectual status which it certainly doesn't. I think that kind of mistaken notion accounts for easily a majority of the online atheist invective among the middle-brow and low brow. The blanket anti-Christianity contained in her comment is considered by such to be some kind of fashion statement. If I didn't think she had mental health issues, I'd have no problem doing what I do with Simps comments and those of such dolts as Freki and Skeptic Tank (I do think there is something interesting in how many of those among such atheists self-identify with shit).
Though if I answered even just all of the ones Simps tries to post here it's all I'd have time to do. My Spam file is a monument to obsessive compulsive venom spewing that would keep a Freudian fable spinner busy for a life time. If Philip Roth were younger I might send it to him for research material.
So, if you send me something and you don't want me to use it to my own ends instead of yours, either follow my rules or don't send it because I will use anything anyone provides, provided I choose to.
Update: There are more than 50 comments from Simps in my spam file, just since the beginning of this month. And that's typical of what's been going on here for years. Not to mention the many from people I've never posted one from. Assuming they're not mostly his well known sock puppets.
Update 2: And there are two more from Simps alone since I posted that update.
William Bolcom - Eubie's Lucky Day and Epitaph for Louis Chauvin
John Murphy, piano
Epitaph for Louis Chauvin
Spencer Myer, piano
A series of William Bolcom's many wonderful rags. Why not? Both of the recordings of these are excellent, you should get them. Here are two, homages to two of his fellow composers, the great Eubie Blake and Louis Chauvin* who is known through only one rag,Heliotrope Bouquet published by the great Scott Joplin (perhaps adding his own material to it) and two songs, The Moon is Shining in the Skies and Babe, It's Too Long.
As noted yesterday, the Complete Rags of William Bolcom are published by Edward B. Marks company. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were more composed after that was published.
* Now considered a "member" of the "27 Club" of prominent and not so prominent musicians who died at the age of 27, a modern invention which no one noticed when Louis Chauvin died, almost certainly of syphilis, at that age. The promoters of the kind of twisted "Club" mystique consider him the second member of it, apparently. Something for people to remember when they carry on like professional keeners when someone five or more decades older dies of natural causes related to getting really old.
Update: Duncan Black's regulars are about 97% idiots. I could name those who still go there who aren't on one hand, likely with a finger to spare for the rest of them. Yeah, that one.
Another Short Play
Lefty Atheist: If you don't stop pouring carbon into the atmosphere [destroying the ozone layer, dumping brain damaging chemicals into the environment, etc.] it will cause a disaster, maybe the extinction of all life on Earth.
Billionaire Atheist Sociopath: It will cost me millions to do that.
LA: But it might lead to the end of all life on Earth [cause unimaginable damage, pain and suffering, etc.] if you don't do that.
BAS: Might. And even if it does, why should I care?
LA: But it will end the human species, maybe all life on Earth. Everything will be dead.
BAS: I'll be dead by then. Why should I care?
LA: But... but.... but...
Billionaire Atheist Sociopath: It will cost me millions to do that.
LA: But it might lead to the end of all life on Earth [cause unimaginable damage, pain and suffering, etc.] if you don't do that.
BAS: Might. And even if it does, why should I care?
LA: But it will end the human species, maybe all life on Earth. Everything will be dead.
BAS: I'll be dead by then. Why should I care?
LA: But... but.... but...
Donald Trump Treasonous Robber Baron As President
Wow, Trump is apparently on a path that will become a super Saturday Night Massacre in the entire Justice Department, going after everyone from his own Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General he appointed and also the Acting Director of the FBI and the special council investigating the treason Trumps campaign committed with the Putin crime regime. Trumps excuse for implying he might fire any or all of the above is that the Robert Mueller investigation is looking into Trump crime family finances. Obviously, there is something even someone as stupid and demented as Trump knows is illegal in the records Mueller is either in possession of or which he might soon be in possession of. My suspicion on that isn't that Trump would have realized that, himself but that a lawyer or some advisor such as Steve Bannon or, who knows, some Russian attorney or official has told him that his fat ass might well be in a sling unless Trump gets rid of the line of his own appointees that stand between him and Robert Mueller.
This is literally the robber baron MO transplanted from the late 19th century to 2017, the kind of robber baron who would tell a lawyer that he didn't hire him to tell him how to follow the law but how to break the law and get away with it. This is the robber baron, traitor as president doing that.
Donald Trump and his criminal son and son-in-law, arguably his daughter, perhaps other members of his family and inner circle, must be investigated, his statements that are coming out from his interview with the New York Times, overnight, are more outrageous than anything Richard Nixon ever said. It is certain that there are things that are being discovered by Robert Mueller that Trump knows about which Trump doesn't want revealed. It is certain that some of those are at least a total outrage and very likely felonious.
Donald Trump is going to go down, the only protection any of the members of his criminal family have is for him or Mike Pence or whoever might become president pardon them. It's way past time for the Constitution to be amended to make the pardon of a president who commits treason with a foreign adversary impossible. It should have been amended when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon but with Trump that possibile way for him to ultimately win the cover up has to be removed. Mike Pence is as much in danger as some of the members of the Trump family, he has certainly lied about what he knew about Russian collusion during the campaign. There are a few classes of crimes possible by those at the very top of the government which are so dangerous that anyone who commits them should know there is no possibility of getting off as Nixon did. That is a lesson we now know that those who drafted the provisions of the presidential power of pardon didn't know. No president should have the power to pardon other presidents when they commit treason and the kinds of covering up of their crimes that Trump is openly talking about doing. Future Trumps should know they have no way out, it might impede their tendencies to commit treason. If Trump gets away with it, don't be surprised if, within the next two decades, we get another one doing it.
I would put Jeff Sessions on that list of people who should go down and be imprisoned if it is found he committed the crimes I, at least, suspect him of. In his case, with his abuse of power as a prosecutor, a politician and now Attorney General, he deserves whatever bad comes his way.
This is literally the robber baron MO transplanted from the late 19th century to 2017, the kind of robber baron who would tell a lawyer that he didn't hire him to tell him how to follow the law but how to break the law and get away with it. This is the robber baron, traitor as president doing that.
Donald Trump and his criminal son and son-in-law, arguably his daughter, perhaps other members of his family and inner circle, must be investigated, his statements that are coming out from his interview with the New York Times, overnight, are more outrageous than anything Richard Nixon ever said. It is certain that there are things that are being discovered by Robert Mueller that Trump knows about which Trump doesn't want revealed. It is certain that some of those are at least a total outrage and very likely felonious.
Donald Trump is going to go down, the only protection any of the members of his criminal family have is for him or Mike Pence or whoever might become president pardon them. It's way past time for the Constitution to be amended to make the pardon of a president who commits treason with a foreign adversary impossible. It should have been amended when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon but with Trump that possibile way for him to ultimately win the cover up has to be removed. Mike Pence is as much in danger as some of the members of the Trump family, he has certainly lied about what he knew about Russian collusion during the campaign. There are a few classes of crimes possible by those at the very top of the government which are so dangerous that anyone who commits them should know there is no possibility of getting off as Nixon did. That is a lesson we now know that those who drafted the provisions of the presidential power of pardon didn't know. No president should have the power to pardon other presidents when they commit treason and the kinds of covering up of their crimes that Trump is openly talking about doing. Future Trumps should know they have no way out, it might impede their tendencies to commit treason. If Trump gets away with it, don't be surprised if, within the next two decades, we get another one doing it.
I would put Jeff Sessions on that list of people who should go down and be imprisoned if it is found he committed the crimes I, at least, suspect him of. In his case, with his abuse of power as a prosecutor, a politician and now Attorney General, he deserves whatever bad comes his way.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
William Bolcom - Epithalamium
John Murphy, piano
The Complete Rags (I hope not quite complete) and many of Mr. Bolcom's other works are published by the Edward B. Marx company.
Update: Incineratorag - because it's hot as hell here today and something cool is called for.
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