Nov. rambling: gifts of grace

Contractions-bitsThe Child Soldier Crisis: ‘Kids Are Cheap’

1619-2019: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration

Flat Earth conspiracy is growing especially among born again religious zealots

John Oliver Slaps Down Coal Baron’s SLAPP Lawsuit: ESB

Samantha’s Journey Into the Alt-Right, and Back from The New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick. I happened upon this while listening on the radio in the car last week. Whoa.

Susie Meister: How Studying Religion Made Me a Liberal and The Reality of Being a Reality Star, from Ken Levine’s podcast

Why use Ukraine to impeach when you’ve got the emoluments clause (and the Hatch Act)?

Weekly Sift: An Impeachment Hearing Wrap-Up

Recognizing Israeli Settlements Marks the Final Collapse of Pax Americana

The GOP Tax Cuts Didn’t Work

As a Veteran, I Refuse to Celebrate War

On Nov. 19, 1863, the accomplished Massachusetts statesman Edward Everett gave a two-hour speech at Gettysburg, but history gave him the shaft

RIP, the great Howard Cruse, from cancer.

Now I Know: The Woman Who Sniffed Out Parkinson’s and The Man Who Won a Trip to Mars and The British Ban on Clapping and When the US Air Force Bombed Montana and How Luke Skywalker Beat the Puffins and Why Did the Crab Cross the Road? and The Poacher Who Got Sent to the DVD Player

Gifts of grace

Ranked-Choice Voting “Allows You to Vote for the Person You Really Like”

Why bad taste is over – An interview with John Waters

Ruthie Berman & Connie Kurtz Residence – NYC LGBT Historic Site

Worker Training Program tackles opioid misuse and addiction. I know Jonny Rosen IRL.

Syracuse University janitor who cleaned racist graffiti replaces it with kindness

We desperately need to get out kids back outside

blue books

250 families receive “gifts of grace” to donate to meaningful causes

US Census Bureau: American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

Authentic black beauty

102 Common English Idioms with Meaning and Examples

The Beautifully Macabre Cartoons of Gahan Wilson

Massachusetts Highway Exits to Be Renumbered by 2022

It’s a Musical

Who’s the greatest JEOPARDY! player of all time? I’m so glad this is on ABC-TV in January, not part of the syndicated series

Gone in 13 Episodes (or Less!)

The story of The Whistler radio program

Groucho Marx on TV after the game show You Bet Your Life

MUSIC

He’s Just a Gurl Who’ll Quid Pro Quo – Randy Rainbow

Dommage – Bigflo & Oli; English lyrics to Dommage

Papaoutai – Stromae

I’m Going Home – Sacred Harp Singers At Liberty Church; Idumea– ditto; Sacred Harp and Shape Note singing

The Rock by Sergei Rachmaninov

Mr. Tambourine Man – the Starbugs, from New Zealand

One, a U2 cover, features McKenna Breinholt as the soloist and the 100-person Cinematic Pop orchestra and choir, arrangement of Rob Gardner

Hooked on a Feeling – Pomplamoose

Coverville 1285: The Bonnie Raitt Cover Story and 1286: J. Geils Tribute and Indie Hodgepodge

Metamorphosis episode of Star Trek (original series), incidental music

Rockin’ in the free world, the Netherlands, 2016

Mah Na Mah Na – Piero Umiliani (1968); Mah Na Mah Na – first Seaame Street appearance (1969)

LAY DOWN (Candles In The Rain) – Melanie & The Edwin Hawkins Singers (1970). Full recording.

I Wanna Be A Lifeguard – Blottomoji version

A highlight of the Barbershop Harmony Society’s International Convention

Tina Turner is 80 years old. The big Interview

The Best-Selling Music Artists of the Last 50 Years

November rambling: triple plays

Rebecca Jade And The Cold Fact

Awkward
From TheAwkwardYetti.com
The Violent History of the U.S.-Mexico Border

The Revolution Isn’t Being Televised

Stephen Miller E-Mails Show How He Promoted White Nationalist Ideology In Media, going back to when he worked for then-Senator Jeff Sessions

How women fall into the white supremacist movement

Maligned in black and white– Southern newspapers played a major role in racial violence. Do they owe their communities an apology?

Religious Freedom for Loganists!

My Childhood in a Cult

Republicans want to out the whistleblower because they can’t defend him on the merits

His tortured English

The Obama date-night controversy

Amazon’s Absence from Worker Safety Alliance Highlights Dangers of Unsafe Supply Chains

How One Employer Stuck a New Mom With an $898,984 Bill for Her Premature Baby

Charles à Court Repington and when did we start to refer to the horrors of the 1914-1918 conflict as ‘The First World War’?

Weekly Sift: Sacrifices

Yvette Lundy: French Resistance member who survived Nazi camps dies at 103

UK halts fracking, effective immediately

The Untold Story of the 2018 Olympics Cyberattack, the Most Deceptive Hack in History

AIER: Questions for Immigration Skeptics

Court Allows Police Full Access to Online Genealogy Database

In a rural Wisconsin village, the doctor makes house calls — and sees some of the rarest diseases on Earth

Dial 911 if there’s an emergency, not 112

Social Security and SSI Benefits Are Increasing in 2020

Wealth Is About Much More than Physical Things

New Airplane Feature Could Save You If Your Pilot Can’t

There’s no reason to cross the U.S. by train. But I did so anyway.

Fully Accessible Guide to Smart Home Tech for Disabled and Elderly

That’s entertainment

Washington Grays baseball, in honor of the Homestead Grays, a Negro League Team

All 720 Triple Plays in Major League Baseball history

Beany and Cecil

The accidental brilliance of Silly Putty

Four toy commercials from the sixties – I definitely had a Slinky, and I know I played someone’s Rock ’em, Sock ’em Robots

Tips on attending TV Tapings

Amy Biancolli: I Really Don’t Care

Now I Know: The Last Army Pillow Fight and Why Filmmakers Use That Black and White Flapped Board and The Ark That Went Full Circle

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade And The Cold Fact: Songs From Their New Album ‘Running Out Of Time’ and Gonna Be Alright and how they began

Viola Sonata in D minor by Mikhail Glinka.

The Wolf Glen scene from the opera Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber

Coverville 1284: Cover Stories for Grace Slick and Katy Perry

Go up Moses – Roberta Flack

Polka and Fugue from Schwanda the Bagpiper! by Jaromir Weinberger

How to Play Guitar Like Keith Richards

What Does ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ Really Mean?

His preoccupation with Obama

His relations with others [are] shallow and transactional

obama trumpIn September 2019, there was an article in Psychology Today titled The Psychology of Trump’s Preoccupation with Obama by Noam Shpancer, Ph.D. The subtitle: “Obama is antithetical to Trump. So long as he exists, Trump is threatened.”

Shpancer documents several examples, some noted elsewhere, going back to djt’s 2011 birtherism attacks. The Unreality King suggested that the 44th President was/is a secret Muslim who possibly sympathizes with radical terror attacks. At an event in 2015, the then-candidate declared, “I don’t know if [Obama] loves America.”

You’d think once he was in office, the bellicosity might have subsided. No such luck. He says other countries wouldn’t talk trade policy with Obama, including the European Union and Japan. That wasn’t even close to being true.

More recently, djt brought up Obama’s Netflix deal, well after Barack was out of office. This was done in the defense of his attempt to host the G7 at one of his Florida properties while he was in office.

Motive

Shpancer makes some interesting observations. “Some may posit racism as the primary motive—as Trump has a history of racist statements and actions. Yet racism is not a primary motive for Trump. It cannot be. By all evidence, Trump is not truly animated by big ideas or abstract values. The only thing that matters truly is him.”

The therapist suggests that djt “will accept another person’s (or group’s) worth only to the extent that they approve of and serve [him]. There is no other, independent test of merit. This is why the racism (and anti Semitism) explanation won’t stick on Trump. Racism is an ideology, and a tribal cast of mind. Trump has neither ideology nor tribe, as he lacks the capacity to attach to either. He only has himself.” Interesting.

Shpancer also addresses the “constant lying. He doesn’t do it to further a social, political, or ideological agenda. He lies about the facts when the facts fail to fulfill his needs or flatter him)…

“But what is it about Obama that so injures Trump’s narcissism, compelling him to rage? The answer is not that Obama is black or a Democrat. Rather, it is that in Obama, Trump sees his antithesis–everything he is not and cannot be.

“Politics aside, a fair look at what is already publicly known about the two men will suffice to conclude quite readily that Obama has basic decency… Many of those who disagree with what he’s done as a politician would not mind being who he is as a person.

Shallow and transactional

“Trump is at his core indecent. As a man… he struggles mightily with self-control, by his own admission fears self-reflection, and is clearly incapable of a range of human emotions…

“Despite his gilded life, he’s constantly aggrieved, embittered, and at war with the world… His relations with others [are] shallow and transactional and depend on constant external affirmations, none of which can fill the bottomless pit of his need… Even among those who agree with what he’s done as a politician, few would aspire to be who he is as a person.

“What this comparison makes clear is that Obama, psychologically, is antithetical to Trump. Therefore, so long as Obama exists, Trump is threatened.” An interesting article which you should read, especially the analytical second half.


Forbes, September 2019: He Has Created 1.5 Million Fewer Jobs Than Obama

Oct. rambling: idealism, cynicism

coming to the aid

CELL PHONE FUNCTIONS

cell phone functions
XKCD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
Pew Research: In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

Obituary: Megan Angelina Webbley, 1988-2019

How corporations are addressing guns

John Oliver: National Weather Service

The Best Places to Live in a Future Troubled by Climate Change – Upstate New York state gets an honorable mention.

Vehicle recycling: AN ECO-FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVE

The Apartment Shortage Controversy

Today’s Environmental Crisis Was Created in 1919

Arkansas’ Phillips County Remembers the Racial Massacre the US Forgot

An entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama spoke at the funeral of Congressman Elijah Cummings

Why The Normalization of Stan Culture is Unhealthy

Tips you need to know to help you spot fake news

D.C.’s Newseum Is Closing Its Doors at the End of the Year

What Happens Right Before Your Best Employee Quits

The Best Home Protection: Home Security Systems

Eeyore is named onomatopoeically, after the braying call of a donkey; he’s the most depressing character in the Pooh universe

Idealism

Students at Albany Medical College are coming to the aid of sanctuary seekers in the US; victims of persecution, torture, and other abuses are three times more likely to be granted asylum if they are evaluated by medical professionals and can provide an affidavit in court

Goodbye DARE — More Schools Are Embracing Realistic Drug Education

A good reason to brush your teeth – from the American Dental Association

How Long Do Average U.S. Marriages Last?

Was Bruce Springsteen born to be a filmmaker?

Greg Burgas: Idealism and cynicism in art

Albany Library Foundation gala photos by DTrae Carter (I’m in there somewhere)

Now I Know: When Playing a Doctor on TV is Good Enough and How a Cute Cartoon Created a Catastrophe of Raccoons and The Secret Life of Supermarket Apples and The Lifesaving Powers of Being an NFL Superfan and The Bird That Set The Record Straight and Why You Can’t Perform Hamlet at the Bar and What’s So French About the F-Word?

Canned Pumpkin Isn’t Pumpkin At All

Mad as a Hatter

INDIVIDUAL 1

Do What’s Right – chockablock with links

He serves nobody except himself

Fact-checking

The un-American president: he hugs the flag every chance he gets, but the truth is very dark indeed

The Daily Show: Kurds edition; John Oliver: Syria

AIER: Presidential Harassment Is a Public Good and Five Wrong Claims about Trade

Rob Dreher in The American Conservative: Is he mentally unstable?

Doral was sited for 524 health code violations from 2013 to 2018

Nate White: Why do some British people dislike him?

Taylor’s Testimony Goes Way Beyond Quid Pro Quo

William Barr’s Wild Misreading of the First Amendment

MUSIC

Guiliani – Randy Rainbow

The Fury – a suite from John Williams’s score

Coverville: 1282: Cover Stories for No Doubt and Avril Lavigne and 1283: Yes Cover Story and Yacht Rock Revue Interview

Piano Sonata No. 9 by Alexander Scriabin

Moses Supposes from Singin’ in the Rain, re-created by dancer Derek Hough and an animated Donald O’Connor

The Isle of the Dead, Sergei Rachmaninov’s epic tone poem

How’d You Like to Spoon With Me? – Angela Lansbury, from Till The Clouds Roll By (1946)

Swing You Sinners! (Fleischer Studios)

You’ve Got to Eat Your Spinach – Mae Questel

Hocus Pocus – Focus, from Disney and Pixar’s Onward, released 6 March 2020

Nippertown: IN MEMORIAM: LYRICIST ROBERT HUNTER Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performing member of the Grateful Dead

Dems lying about Trump’s racism?

“bound together in love and loyalty, friendship and affection.”

Trump.racist..Newsweek coverHey, I said you can Ask Roger Anything. Someone I know IRL sent me this link from Fox News – “Deroy Murdock: Dem presidential candidates lie when they claim Trump is a racist.” The subtitle: “Democrats love to call President Trump a ‘racist.’ It’s a lie fanned by the Old Guard media that contributes to the poison of division choking America.” I’m not connecting to it, but you can find it if you want.

“These and other Democrats deliberately ignore the 25 or more instances in which Trump condemned racism, denounced white nationalism, attacked anti-Semitism, applauded Jews, embraced blacks, praised Muslims, and preached national unity and love among Americans, from coast to coast.” These include calls against white supremacy after the El Paso shootings, and generic good wishes during Black History Month or Ramadan.

This is a lot to unpack. First off, I reject the notion that the candidates are “lying.” They are expressing opinions. I mean, “What IS racist anyway?”, which I tried to address.

Next, the notion that the MSM is “fanning” the flames suggests something that isn’t accurate. I’ve watched the evening news on two networks (CBS, NBC) at least five days a week for several years. Many people, and I am among them, had been exasperated by the media saying he said something “racially tinged.” It’s been only fairly recently when a report noted when a “racist” comment had been made.

I have said I believe he is racist. This does not reflect a few events or policies but rather a systemic pattern of behavior.

An Example

One of the positive examples Murdock, citing a National Review article, mentions is this: “All Americans, whether first-generation or tenth generation, are bound together in love and loyalty, friendship and affection.” This was at a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office on January 19, 2019.

“We are all equal. We are one team, and one people, proudly saluting one great American flag. We believe in a safe and lawful system of immigration, one that upholds our laws, our traditions, and our most cherished values.” Yet his policy on LEGAL immigration belies his rhetoric.

In other words, his words are often not to be believed. In other words – yes, I’m going to use the same L-word here, so brace yourselves – he lies. He prevaricates about issues consequential and irrelevant. He states mistruths about foreign policy and weather maps.

On Full Frontal, there is The Well-Documented Case of Trump’s Undocumented Employees. One of them called him “a hypocrite, a liar, racist.”

“My African-American”

The man he once called ‘my African American’ leaves the Republican Party, with harsh words on his way out. “My African-American,” BTW, is, at best, cringeworthy.

His “attacks on the congresswomen of color in The Squad were the breaking point for… Gregory Cheadle. [He] has not only broken with the Republican Party, he’s running for Congress as an independent.

“President Trump is a rich guy who is mired in white privilege to the extreme,” Cheadle told PBS Newshour. “Republicans are too sheepish to call him out on anything and they are afraid of losing their positions and losing any power themselves.”

“Cheadle is calling out the ‘pro-white’ agenda of Republicans, and he’s come to have second thoughts about his initial response to [Trump’s characterization] ‘I wonder to what extent he said that for political gain or for attention.’ Don’t wonder!”

Still, if you are uncomfortable with labeling him “racist,” that’s fine by me. Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile recently said that she often has trouble from people angry because she will not label [him] as a racist… She thinks it is time for citizens to have a ‘conversation’ without resorting to name-calling.

“Brazile said, as a woman of color, people, and not only Democrats, expect to hear she thinks [he] is a racist, but racism, ‘America’s original sin, slavery,’ is something that everyone has to deal with.” This is no doubt true.

Ramblin' with Roger
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial