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The first video of my youthful jazz drumming — I wish

(I am reposting this two-day-old piece as a political statement on populism. These fine young men, the best of the best in jazz music, musicians who could bring me to tears — along with their band leader, Rich — were out of work by the time they were 25 years of age. Why? Because they were smothered by cheap country — even younger men who blundered around musically about mama and prison and booze, "crooners" who could no more match the transcendent likes of a Sinatra or Damone than a wounded dying cat. Johnny Hodges, perhaps the finest, smoothest saxophonist ever, with Duke Ellington's orchestra, wound up having to work as a floor salesman at Sears. Because real music had been murdered by … country. I wasn't alone in my tearfulness. As the Duke wrote in his eulogy of Johnny, "Never the world's most highly animated showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the eyes—this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges." Turn on any contemporary FM music station today, and the tears will flow only because of populism's popular wretched taste — even worse than its taste in politicians.)

This motherfucker was inhumanly unmatchable. Just knowing that I could never be the greatest was, along with a near-death auto accident that permanently wrenched my left wrist at 17, caused, shall we say, my resignation from the drumming world. So I turned to politics, where I could … shine?

 

Here is God, a few years later at the Montreal Jazz Festival, leading a youthful band of the world's finest musicians, whom he could reduce to tears or send to hell if he heard even one sour note. I've heard his his after-performance "critiques" of his band's lesser efforts, and they were terrifying. As any god would be. Rich demanded perfection — period. And he got it in this performance, So strap on those headphones or plug in those ear-pod thingies and enjoy.

Ann Telnaes—the most brilliant of caricaturists/editorial cartoonists

This Harvard Law graduate is almost as slimy as Harvard Law graduate Ted Cruz.

 

Today

Sorry. I'm having some health issues which are screwing with my writing routine. I have calls coming and going today from four separate specialists from four separate specialties. I shall try to actually write something later today, rather than simply posting a couple of items, as I did this morning. At any rate, I'll be back tomorrow.

Only the young can save us. So save us. VOTE.

FiveThirtyEight's latest

Is any comment needed?

Truth, in 5 and 1/half minutes. I so miss those days of honor.

A lesson we once cherished and valued, but have since trashed under so much smothering Republican cynicism.

A reasonable case for just ignoring St. Barrett's hearings

In unintended reply to my post immediately below, WaPo's Molly Roberts asserts that Senate Democrats "showing up at all" to Her Holiness' secular ascension to the Highest Court "is itself a bit false: The act lends credence to the notion that this is a legitimate constitutional exercise, rather than a charade. More perplexing have been the lines of inquiry that suggested those doing the asking expected real answers" — to anything.

St. Barrett's halo has already been slashed to pieces; she has sold out to the First Reich powers that be. Not once has she conceded that the sale of her soul to antiAmerican fascism just might have been a wee bit of a spiritual mistake.

While I did not approve, in my below post, of Senate Democrats wasting everyone's time with asking swiftly unanswered questions about Barrett's Trump-corrupted unfitness for the Court, I did recommend that Dems show up at the hearings, if only to express the uselessness of their asking questions. But Molly Roberts has surpassed me in compelling logic by suggesting that Judiciary Committee Democrats should not be "showing up at all."

Because this is the grief to which Trump's America has done brung us: a fascistic Senate, once known as the world's greatest deliberative body; a manifestly perjurious judge about to be professionally elevated; and a responsible, political opposition that possesses no power whatsoever.

Vwhat a country! — as Ukranian-American Yakov Smirnoff says every performance. ("Why [didn't] they have baseball in Soviet Union? In Soviet Union, no one is safe." Some of us still hear you.)

Senate Democrats are blowing this Supreme Court confirmation hearing

I spent most of yesterday afternoon listening to Senate Democrats hurling logical questions at Trump's frighteningly anal-retentive, religiously demented Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett, who had no intention of honestly answering even one of them. 

Every relevant Democratic inquiry was met by balls-chilling Amy's disingenuous reply of Gee, Senator, what a magnificent question, but what a shame I can't answer it before this panel. Beecause, you know, of the dark, horrible implications of responding with clarity to "hypotheticals" — which, of course, SC confirmation hearings are all about.  

Thus I suggest that rather than wasting their time and ours with legitimate matters of constitutional import, which at any rate would be barfed right back at them in this era of Trumpian squalidness, Senate Democrats should simply open and promptly close their Q. time with this statement:

We, and you, Amy "Tartuffian" Barrett, are most aware of Trump and McConnell's staggering hypocrisy about the timing of Supreme Court confirmations, Yet because of their unbounded cynicism and weakly concealed fascism, there is no fucking way we can do a damn thing about it — there is no way to stop this anti-honor charade. So take your seat on the highest bench, Amy TB, which was once an honorable one, Just remember how you got there, if you've any conscience at all. I now surrender the remainder of my useless time.

The left vs. right civil war would be so unfair

The NY Times:

Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia was discussed as a possible target by members of an anti-government group charged last week with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, the F.B.I. said on Tuesday…. They also talked of [attacking law enforcement officers] and storm[ing] the Michigan State Capitol and start[ing] a civil war…. One of the suspects, Adam Fox, spoke about a plan to take Ms. Whitmer out on a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, and leave her stranded with the engine disabled so that someone would have to "come rescue" her….

At one point after a planning trip to case the governor’s vacation home and the surrounding area, Mr. Fox asked that all the participants be scanned with a device that is supposed to identify if anyone was wearing a transmission wire or a recording device. The effort apparently failed … with the group eventually infiltrated by four informants or undercover agents who continued to document what the group was planning.

If their desired civil war does indeed come, we on the opposing side will be blessed with the absolute dumbest crowd to ever launch such domestic strife. Their villainously shagadelic plan to make someone "come rescue" that woman has got to be the funniest, most inept shtick plotted since Inspector Clouseau's ingenious stupidity.

Just to even the odds and help them out a bit, I would advise the revolutionary morons to discontinue attempting to master the wonders of sophisticated electronic devices. I mean, to go insider member-to-member scanning for superspook wires and then to wind up with four "informants or undercover agents" is simply unacceptable. Instead, they should handle nothing but baseball bats and monkey wrenches, since even firearms would be far too complicated instruments of civil war for the likes of these boneheads.

If the left ever pondered a "kinetic" war with the right, I'm certain it also believed it would be clashing with a worthy opponent. No such luck, or balance. What potentially lies on the horizon is merely another Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky rout.

***

ps: Replace "Chairman Mao" with "Donald Trump."

Then Mitt, excepting impeachment and removal, stop voting like a hyper-devoted partisan

Speaks for itself

215,000 dead Americans and he’s out there doing this... pic.twitter.com/uYUddJcvNN

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) October 13, 2020

His compassion for the families of the fallen and concern for the soon-to-fall are touching, don't you think?

Must we become a revolutionary nation?

The latest from the most critical battleground states:

From St. Leo University:
FLORIDA: Biden 49%, Trump 43%

From Whitman Insight Strategies:
PENNSYLVANIA: Biden 51%, Trump 46%

From New York Times/Siena:
MICHIGAN: Biden 48%, Trump 40%
WISCONSIN: Biden 51%, Trump 41%

If Trump manages to somehow steal this presidential election — after Joe Biden's weeks-long double-digit polling leads nationally; his more modest yet persistent leads in virtually all battleground states; his stunning lead among seniors (the GOP's erstwhile, most reliable bloc); his majority popularity as reflected in money-raising; his demonstrated sanity versus Donald's demonstrated lunacy; and bundles of other reasons why he could not have possibly, legitimately lost to the most corrupt, nitwitted incumbent ever — well, few Democrats, leftists, centrists, independents and disillusioned Republicans would simply yawn and let Trump's thievery pass. 

No, there can be no additional four years of this president's squalid unAmericanism and criminality. I cannot say, with any precision, how decent Americans would unremittingly reject the stolen election's outcome, though I would not rule out uncharacteristic mass violence. And Trump can't lock up more than half of the nation's population. 

In short, another of Trump's piracies would not stand. 

To all readers

​​​​​I have discontinued fall and spring donation events, but that doesn't mean I can do this without you. These posts take time and financial investment — the first of which I gladly supply in toto, the second of which I can meet only so far. You are the critical bridge, the essential lifeline, between this site's survival and my daily commentaries' shroud. So please click "Donate" and do what you can. Your support is appreciated more than you can know. Thank you. —PM

Trump's Southern judges rule that Texas can "legally" screw responsible voters

The fetid, openly fraudulent reasoning espoused by our own Trumpian judicial system of Volksgerichtshöfe — Nazi Germany's "people's courts" — has become what should be subjected to national nullification of its putrid decisions and, shall we say, rather physical courthouse protests. For historically unforgivable is any populace that would accept, peacefully, Trump's appointed and McConnell's confirmed legal maggots who proclaim this sort of judicial depravity and blatantly aggressive one-party rule:

BREAKING: In a late-night ruling, the 5th Circuit Court UPHOLDS Gov. Abbott order that limits counties to 1 mail-in ballot drop-off location.
3-judge panel, all Trump nominees, says Abbott in fact expanded access to voting by allowing drop-offs before election day.

— Chuck Lindell (@chucklindell) October 13, 2020

A rather blunt refinement of my court-packing sentiments

About three weeks ago I challenged the prevailing concept among many Dems that court-packing, under a Biden administration, would be an easily accomplishable maneuver. My post avoided the topic of court-packing as either a wise or boneheaded Democratic tactic; it simply addressed its institutional feasibility.

"Assuming Democrats manage to control the Senate by 51 seats or 50 + Harris," I wrote, "court-packing would first require the filibuster's abolition, which is a dubious tactical proposition. A revolutionary court-expansion bill would then need the support of every moderate Democratic senator, which is even more dubious."

Nevertheless, the underlying, implicit gist of my 21 Sept. post, I suppose, was that I was struggling — if not opposed — with the idea of overturning the Supreme Court standard of nine justices since 1869. Not since my college years have I been as radical as "conservative Republicans." To me, radicalism is distasteful.

Yet even though my internal struggle was at most implied, a few commenters let me know that on the subject of Democratic court-packing, my hesitation to join the pro-packing crowd was dead wrong, wrong, wrong. I have since come to agree with them. They were right and I was wrong, period.

It appears there is no ethic, no decency, no tradition that is safe from contemporary Republicans' outsized radicalism. Thus only counter-radicalism can stop these unAmerican thugs of authoritarian "values." As commenter Aaron wrote, "The politics of it only matter in so far as cementing competent, pragmatic jurisprudence for the next 10-20 years." Added Tunadaddy, "If we're fortunate enough to have the presidency, house and senate and we let … the supreme court stand in the way of saving our planet, we're pathetic idiots."

They were right. I was wrong.