some thoughts about music

    I don't understand anger over music. I used to go to NYC once a month. My girlfriend had a flute lesson, after we'd go to a museum. Later we'd go to a music event, usually an avant-garde jazz bar with a live band. Some times I enjoyed it, some times not. I didn't get pissed if I didn't get into it. When I can't get into a musical performance I conclude I don't know enough to grasp it or it's not very good. I keep listening and studying to see if I can understand it better.

    Trump's NAFTA 2.0 Auto Nothingburger

    Proposed changes to North American auto trade rules expected in the new NAFTA pact are unlikely to significantly increase U.S. manufacturing jobs or boost wages in Mexico, an analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. said.

    "The big upshot is there's nothing in this agreement that looks like lots of jobs are coming to the U.S.,” Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics at the auto industry think tank, said in an interview on Wednesday about the details of new U.S.-Mexico trade agreement. “On the margin, there may be some tweaks — companies moving content [production] to the higher wage region, which is the U.S. or Canada basically. There's nothing in this agreement that raises wages in Mexico," Dziczek said.   link

    Trump as Octopus.

    Just as Brett Kavanaugh is about to become Trump's "made man" on the Supreme court---protecting Trump from such nuisances as Emoluments fraud and fifty shades of tax evasion---it's probably not the best time to be watching the great Italian T.V series, The Octopus, or La Piovra,--- one man's life long fight against the Mafia. With the new revelations of tax fraud and shady dealings by Trump just revealed by the New York Times, and with a Trump boy on the Supreme Court for protection, the morphing of Republicans into the Trump Mafia Party party seems far too real. 

    Memories of my Yale blackout.

     

    Yesterday I said I'd eat my hat if Kavanaugh were not in fact confirmed and now I wouldn't bet a nickle that he will be confirmed. My comment yesterday was before Jeff Flake, in a heartfelt moment, did the right thing to slow down the confirmation process by insisting on at least a cursory FBI investigation of current credible allegations against Kavanaugh. One fact that was not clarified in the hearing was that one does in fact remember black out incidents---because of the very odd feeling when you actually wake up. I remember that I blacked out, once at Yale from drinking, and once much later in life--- two days after my son was born.

    why I'm still a virgin

    I have claimed that I had sex with my high school sweetheart when I was 17. After carefully looking at my story I've come to the conclusion that I must be lying.

    For starters, I can't remember basic details of the experience of losing my virginity. I'm not sure whose house it was in. I claim it was one of the most important days of my life but I can't remember what day it was or even the month. I'm not even certain it happened when I was 17. I might have been 16, almost 17, or just barely 18. I can't blame these memory lapses on inebriation as I was sober at the time.

    McCain's "Farewell Address" Applies Right Now

    It was a passionate tirade against not following traditional Senate rules. He was speaking to his colleagues more than anyone else and trying to warn them that the way things were going they were ruining the Senate and probably the country and they would not be proud of it at the end of their lives. That they are not the House and they have special responsibilities. Exactly against the type of thing McConnell et. al. are doing now to ram the Kavanaugh hearing and vote through. And what they were doing then trying to pass a half-assed mess of a bill without following rules and working with those across the aisle. I wonder if supposed dear friends like Jeff Flake and Lindsay Graham are going to betray him and make him roll over in his grave by going along with McConnell's ram- it-through-plan for the Kavanaugh hearing without a murmur? I wish some reporters would bring that up with them, try to nudge their consciences.

    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    What Just Happened in Northeast Massachusetts [UPDATED]

    Dozens of fires and explosions broke out in three small Massachusetts cities tonight. Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover have been evacuated, and power has been cut off to prevent more houses from blowing up. People are injured. Many have lost their homes. And at least one man is dead, because his chimney fell onto his car.

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    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    I Am Part of the Resistance Inside King Lear's Court

    King Lear is facing a test to his monarchy unlike any other faced by a fictitious British monarch. It is not just that he parceled out his kingdom and left himself nothing. Or that the country is bitterly divided between his scheming, ungrateful daughters. Or even that the kingdom may soon be overwhelmed by French invaders.
     
    The tragedy – which he does not fully grasp – is that many of his own followers are working diligently from within to frustrate his goals.
     
    I would know.
    Danny Cardwell's picture

    When Intervention Fails

    In the 1945 film "The Lost Weekend", Don Birnam (played by Ray Milland) says "Let me have one, Nat. I'm dying. Just one", to which Nat the bartender (played by Howard Da Silva) replies "One drink is too many, and a hundred is not enough". This line has become an unwritten mantra in many alcohol and drug addiction programs. It’s a perfect representation of the cycle of addiction.

    Loving an addict is hard. Watching someone you care about descended further and further into addiction is a soul crushing experience that often leaves one wondering: where did I go wrong?

    Topics: 
    Michael Wolraich's picture

    How Robert Mueller Outfoxed Donald Trump

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller faces a unique challenge in his investigation of Russian influence during the 2016 election. In addition to gathering information and prosecuting criminals, he has had to avoid getting fired by his resentful, mercurial, and unscrupulous commander-in-chief. Fifteen months into the investigation, he appears to have done a masterful job. By manipulating and distracting Donald Trump and his team of lawyers, he has not only preserved his job, he has maintained complete autonomy and seeded a cluster of spinoff investigations that will be nearly impossible for the White House to stifle. And despite Trump’s insistence that he’s “totally allowed” to intervene whenever he chooses, he won’t dare make a move this close to the midterm election, which means Mueller’s investigation will be protected for at least three more months.

    How has he done it?

    Read the article at Daily Beast

    Topics: 

    White Supremacy versus Identity Politics

    Almost in response to the criticism of identity politics by Fukuyama and Appiah, comes a NYT article by  Pankaj Mishra describing the cult of whiteness that limits progress. It is hard to separate issues like identity politics and cultural appropriation from white supremacy. Fukuyama and Appiah view marginalized group protest as a means of creating  identity politics in reactionaries. Mishra views identity politics as a demand of respect from marginalized groups. He views white supremacy is always in action and is always attempting to suppress ethnic minorities. 

    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    Some Bodies Matter More Than Others: The Judith Butler Thing

    This week I started an online petition calling for Judith Butler to resign as president-elect of the Modern Language Association. If you're a member or past member of MLA, I'd invite you to sign it and to share it as widely as you are comfortable doing. Here is a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education making a similar case.

    Michael Maiello's picture

    The Tears of a Billionaire

    Elon Musk is having a no-good, horrible, terrible year says The New York Times, which devoted a massive amount of space to an article with four bylines and an additional reporting credit at the end to the litany of Musk’s complaints.

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    Michael Wolraich's picture

    Tariffs: the Time Bomb That Could Shatter the GOP

    “Tariffs are the greatest!” President Trump crowed on Twitter on Tuesday morning. If that represents a break from contemporary Republican orthodoxy, it’s a message other GOP presidents once embraced. Trump has previously quoted William McKinley declaring that tariffs made Americans lives “sweeter and brighter and brighter and brighter.” (For the record, McKinley only said “brighter” once.) And after Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1909, William Taft declared it “the best bill that the Republican party ever passed.”

    But the voters disagreed, vehemently. In the next two elections, they obliterated the GOP’s congressional majority, crushed Taft’s reelection hopes, and sent the party into a tailspin. Tariff policy was one of the most divisive issues in American politics, because its costs and benefits were unevenly distributed. Protectionist policies offered windfalls to large corporations while burdening small businesses and farmers with higher prices. That stirred bitter resentments in less industrialized, agricultural regions, fueling North-South discord before the Civil War, and inflaming Midwestern populism in the early 20th century, splitting political parties in the process. If Trump continues his protectionist his course, it could happen again.

    Read the full story at the Atlantic

    Topics: 
    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    The International League of Dark Money

    Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are bent on destroying the peaceful international order that the United States built after World War II. They're hostile to the World Trade Organization, NATO, you name it. But Trump is not the only complicit American here. Because Trump and Putin are champions are a very different, more lawless international order, which many wealthy Americans participate in and derive benefit from: the international league of dark money.

    Peaceful Arrest of Suspect in Stabbing of Two Women at a BART Station

    A white man stabbed two black women at a BART station in SF. He was later found on another BART train and taken into custody alive. Colin Kaepernick twitter response was.

    Colin Kaepernick Retweeted
    @LeftSentThis
    The safe capturing of John Lee Cowell, after he brutally murdered #NiaWilson, is a prime example for the reason that some of see the police as protectors and Others see the police as oppressors.
    11:36 PM · Jul 23, 2018

    Danny Cardwell's picture

    Trump Has No Character

    "It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth...arrogance into humility…brutality into patriotism. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

    Joseph Heller Catch-22

     

    Truth, sometimes, is stranger than fiction. This quote, in some form or another, has been used to describe Donald Trump by a number of people. His performance in Helsinki and the subsequent press conference to clean up that mess is par for this presidency.

     

    Donald Trump had a complete meltdown less than 10 feet from Vladimir Putin. He proved once and for all that he is a Beta male using bravado to hide his insecurities. Watch the video again; his discomfort was visible. I wasn't surprised by his lying and scapegoating: he does that almost every time he's in front of cameras, but the timidity was stunning. He looked like a child with a disappointing report card.

    That explains it.

    A woman, psychologist perhaps, on MSNBC argues Trump's gravest fear is being exposed as being a financial failure.

    Someone (maybe her?) argues that at some point, on the brink of a massive bankruptcy, he was saved only by an infusion of Russian cash arranged by you know who.

    Which explains reneging on his promise to reveal his tax records. And the collu...meetings at the Trump Tower "to discuss adoptions."

    Richard Day's picture

    THE TIMES THEY ARE ACHANGEN!

    Ike shows up in Bonn.

    And the Germans (whom Ike had hit pretty badly just a few years before) all cheer Ike and America.

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