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- Avedon’s Sideshow
- Well I knew there was gonna' be trouble, when I heard that callin'
- She fills her drawing book with line
- Come now, gentleman, I know there's some mistake
- I can bring whole cities to ruin
- It's a wind that lingers long enough to be fed
- Peace on Earth
- I'm convinced that I'd wind up burning, too
- There'll be no sad tomorrow
- Somebody lookin' over his shoulder at me
- Look, yeah, but don't touch
The Confluence 
RD, thank you for this. Brandi Carlisle is, by far, my favorite contemporary, brilliant artist. She poignantly reminds us who, what we fight for.
I am angry and done with the horrific person who calls himself POTUS.
Calling the THING occupying the White House a “person”, is an undeserved recognition of human capabilities.
Absolutely love this song.
Agree, best of contemporary artists.
Thank you RD.
I wish I could live to see the day when this song stops being relevant. 😡
Speaking of relevance, it’s THAT anniversary again. 😦
I just saw OMD in concert. They opened with this song, still every bit as chilling as when I first heard it. They had a screen behind them, which showed images as they were playing it. None of the other songs they ever did, as far as I know, were social commentary, so this song becomes even more haunting.
I have read that the history of the Japanese Empire is somewhat whitewashed in Japan. I wonder if the Japanese citizens who have been born since the war understand just why we were so terrified of them, and enraged at them, that we worked two infernal miracles and threw them at Japan?
The Axis never stood a chance in hell, thank Madoka.
Here’s why: http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm
This article focuses mostly on Japan, but it mentions in passing that even the Germans were hopelessly outmatched in economic strength.
I have not read much war history, but I think it is true that the Germans were supposedly trying to create an atom bomb. In the movie “The Catcher Was a Spy,” about baseball player Moe Berg, whose high intelligence and facility with languages made him an appealing agent for the OSS, the fear was that Germany wanted Heisenberg to develop such a bomb. Donovan’s group was not sure whether he wanted to help the Nazis or not, or just what he was doing. They then decided that the risk was simply so great that they would send Berg to try to lure Heisenberg to Switzerland for a conference, and then, if Berg had any sense that he was getting close to making one, he should kill him. According to the movie, which I expect is fairly accurate, Berg decided that he wasn’t, so did not kill him. But had Germany somehow made this bomb first, they would have used it to terrorize the Allies and very possibly have won the war.
As to Japan, the story I have always heard was that American Intelligence thought that to actually invade Japan with conventional forces, would cost the lives of a million men, because Japan would never surrender until they were utterly defeated. That at least was the rationalization for the choice Truman made. What FDR might have done, is left to historians and people who were close to him. The rightness or wrongness of the choice is excruciating to even contemplate. I would not have done it, but I can understand why they did it.
Yes, the Germans were trying to make a nuclear bomb. They would have had a better chance if the Ratzis had not run off so many of Germany’s best scientists. 😈
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_weapons_program
A couple of potential topics. First, does anyone not think that Trump and his cronies are manipulating the stock market. Exhibit #50 or so: Trump tweets about China, and the market 300 points, then a day or so later recovers 300 points, then today recovers another 300 points. Nothing has really changed. Oh, there is always some attempt at attributing these moves to this or that (I had a graduate class with Dr. Bernard Weiner, who is credited with developing Attribution Theory; and he said that the places where you see varying attempts at attributions to causes every day are the sports pages and the stock report), but it is mostly nonsense, things do not radically change from day to day. I am sure that Trump has a system where he sells short, then tweets something to drop the market, then buys lower, and then the market goes up. Where is the SEC? Oh, yes, I know. You are seeing a complete pillaging of the economy, manipulation of the stock market on a daily basis. I don’t own any stocks, this is just watching what is going on each week on Wall Street. I probably should buy in, but of course I don’t know what Trump is going to say from day to day, like his buddies do.
Second topic, how about this for a real constitutional crisis: Democrats win the Presidency, keep control of the House, but Republicans still control the Senate, likely with McConnell in charge. Every bill that the House passes, the President wants to sign, the people are for, is just left to sit on McConnell’s desk, never brought to the floor. Who is to stop him? Oh, people might get angry, but most of those Senate seats are protected in the deep red states. How can a bill get through? It can’t, not if McConnell doesn’t want to bring it to a vote. And even if there were a very moderate bill which might get 51 Senate votes, Republicans need only 41 votes to successfully filibuster any bill.
So what can the President do? Try a lot of executive orders? Most of these areas, like combating climate change, and stopping the gun lobby, are iffy subjects for executive orders. And if there is an issue about it, the Supreme Court is already handpicked to rule against the Democrats every time. None of this was thought of by the Founders, who did not really imagine a country of political parties, much less ridiculous Senate rules, or the filibuster.
Besides people rioting in the streets, or somehow there being enough of them to vote to break the stranglehold of the Republicans in the Senate, there is at best a stalemate, which always works in the Republicans’ favor. My choice for President, all else being relatively equal, would be the person who is bold enough to try to go over the heads of Republicans, and compelling enough to rally enough of the populace to their side in what would be a climactic battle for the country and the planet. Of course, if Trump wins, none of this will matter, and we will indeed have the very thing, even worse, that the Founders were determined to never allow to happen here once we were free from British rule.
There is something called a non-germane amendment, whereby a topic can be added to another unrelated bill that has reached the floor. I think it is rare, but it bypasses the majority leader and committee, it is added to a bill that may be palatable by the majority. I don’t know if this has ever been done, though, or what the pitfalls may be (other than encouraging the minority to vote on something that might otherwise not be very attractive in order to get the non-germane amendment passed).
Lililam, that is a very interesting concept, and I will read more about that. As you note, it may never have actually been done, so there is probably some way to stop it. It is if the Republicans went to some kind of seminar which shows how to game the system which was originally meant to have an orderly and reasonably fair way to make laws. The idea was that people might disagree, but the checks and balances would smooth it out; and of course the Congress and President want to pass bills to move the country ahead. But the current Republicans are like a mutant species, they have no regard for anything but what they want.
I have said before that I think that the day that democracy died may well have been when McConnell refused to bring Garland to a vote, even to hearings. The Republican intelligentsia, such as it is, think this all is just strategic brilliance. But what it is, is shredding the concept of bipartisanship or actual legislating. Block all the other side’s nominees and bills, and then wait until you can take over. And it’s only one party doing this. If Democrats had done it under Reagan and Bushes, we would have about two Justices of the Supreme Court, and no laws passed. One side tries to do it reasonably fairly, the other side won’t play unless it is guaranteed to win.
Just to add to what I wrote above, I would want a Democratic President to enact hundreds of executive orders, divert money away from the budget to fund massive action against climate change and for gun laws, let everything go to the courts, and then ignore most of the decisions. It has gotten that bad. There is really not much to save, not as the Republicans currently exist. We can and probably will pretend that can have a return to normality, but I am afraid it is too late. Or in the words of the Talking Heads, we ain’t got time for that now.