Yesterday’s activities must have really tired me out, because despite oversleeping this morning, I still needed to snag a Lona nap, even before finishing my research. Tomorrow I have a bi-annual appointment with my Pulmonologist, so please expect no more than a Personal Update.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:27 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos (classic 11/2015): The resident Republican blowhard on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough, has staked out his post as the network’s voice of rightist disinformation. He commands his three hour block of airtime like a junta leader, ordering the topics of discussion and interrupting his guests incessantly.
This morning Scarborough appeared to have a severe cognitive collapse during a segment about the Republican Party’s debate-o-phobia (video below). Like most of his ideological allies, he is suffering from the delusion that the American media, owned by a handful of megalithic, multinational corporations, is dominated by liberals. Scarborough set off on a rant about the absence of conservatives on nightly news programs, Sunday shows, and in the executive suites. He badgered his guests to come up with examples of Republicans in those roles, and insisted that they could not do it.
Barf Bag Alert!!
Morning Jerk’s central proof was absurd. We cannot name an anchor or a Sunday morning talk show host, who has voted in a Republican primary, because none announce their voting habits.
From NY Times: Last week an openly gay man, Eric Fanning, became secretary of the Army. Read that sentence again and contemplate what it reveals about how much and how quickly American society has changed. Only five years ago, openly gay people were barred from serving in its armed forces.
Under Obama, we have made some major advances toward LGBT equality, except in locations in thrall to the Republican Reich.
From Crooks and Liars: The old foes commiserate on the campaign, drink a few beers, and have a waltz together.
Kudos to SNL! There comes a time when the opposing sides need to stop fighting long enough to laugh.
Well I still have sinusitis, albeit the end stages I hope. I am at least able to, for the most part, wear my glasses and read. Tonight is my last anti-biotic but I am still without a lot of energy. I have been resting a lot and drinking a lot . . . the hard stuff . . . H2O. I had physio on Wednesday which, despite being at a reduced intensity, tuckered me out. Thursday, I took my mother for her annual eye exam and then later in the evening attended my course (next week is the completion). Friday was more physio and then teaching. I was really tired by the end of yesterday but had a good night's sleep. So this long weekend is very low key, a gift I give to myself to hopefully build up some reserves. This Canadian long weekend celebrates Queen Victoria's birthday and is unofficially the start of the summer season, although summer does not really start until about 21 June. This is often the "first" camping weekend of the season, and, in many areas of Canada, flowers and vegetable gardens are not planted until after 24/05 because it is generally considered too cold. When I lived in northern BC, the last snowfall was usually around the end of May. Here in greater Vancouver, this is not the case as we have a more temperate climate. Hope you are having a relaxing weekend.
National Law Journal— In the alternate universe of John Banzhaf ("When the Rabble-Rousing Turns Criminal, There's A Civil Solution," The National Law Journal, March 28), protesters have taken over the streets and hijacked the political process. Police step back and do nothing. They "yield the streets," sometimes because they are "afraid to make arrests," sometimes because "there is sympathy with their cause." If arrests take place, protesters end up in court and "face only a token fine."
The real world of street protest bears no relation to what Banzhaf describes. In fact, the post-9/11 trend, of which his anti-protester screed is symptomatic, is of increasing hostility to street protest. In the crackdown on peaceful protesters, police show no "sympathy with their cause" and are entirely "[un]afraid to make arrests." As a consequence of the amped-up focus on security since 9/11, the "war on terror" has also become a war on dissent.
In my last post, I brought you a piece by law professor John Banzhaf. In it, Banzhaf argues that protesters who prevent others from hearing a speaker, specifically Trump in that case, are guilty of obstructing freedom of speech and assembly for those attending a Trump rally. He goes on to say that protesters face few penalties and that police are afraid to arrest protesters etc. I think you and I would for the most part disagree with Banzhaf on his police point having witnessed police actions in Ferguson, Missouri and other locales. Author Alan Levine, himself a practising civil rights and constitutional lawyer in NY, sees the current police attitude in general, as impinging upon the freedom of assembly and the freedom of speech. Have a look.
MSN — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking from the floor of an institution that once enacted racist policies against large-scale immigration from Asia until the 1960s, apologized Wednesday for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident.
“Mr. Speaker, today I rise in this House to offer an apology on behalf of the government of Canada for our role in the Komagata Maru incident,” he said, triggering a standing ovation with MPs of all major parties applauding.
“More than a century ago a great injustice took place.”
Trudeau spoke in a chamber filled with MPs and Indo-Canadians from across the country, including a delegation of more than 100 from B.C. who were led by Premier Christy Clark.
Trudeau said Canada would have been richer if the 376 passengers – mostly Sikh along with a handful of Muslims and Hindus – had been allowed to disembark from that Japanese ship.
Many people, including many Canadians, are not aware of the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 in Vancouver. It is not a proud moment in Canadian history, but I am sure that it is something that Herr Drumpf in the US would endorse. This from Wikipedia:
The Komagata Maru incident involved a Japanese steamship, Komagata Maru, that sailed from Hong Kong, then a holding of the British Empire, through Shanghai, China, then on to Yokohama, Japan, and then finally to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carrying 376 passengers from Punjab, British India. Of them 24 were admitted to Canada, but the other 352 passengers were not allowed to land in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India.[1] The passengers comprised 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus, all British subjects. This was one of several incidents in the history of early 20th century involving exclusion laws in both Canada and the United States designed to keep out immigrants of only Asian origin.
In the park where I walk, there is a memorial to the people of the Komagata Maru. I'd like to think that we have come a long way since 1914, and maybe we have, but there is still a long way to go before we become a totally inclusive society.
The Economist— He was for far too long underestimated. The same must not be said of the threat his egomania and pernicious nativism represents to America and the world. …
Yet if Mr Trump’s supporters like his message, many are also motivated by disdain for the party bosses who so haplessly opposed him. Exit polls in Indiana suggested half of Republican voters felt “betrayed” by their party. This is a harvest the party sowed in two ways. First, though it is a caricature to suggest, as Mr Trump and others have, that the Republicans have long made fools of distressed working-class whites by offering them God, the flag and tax cuts to the rich, it is a caricature with some truth to it. None of Mr Trump’s 16 rivals spoke convincingly to the concerns of wage-distressed workers; none had a thoughtful answer to them.
Second, years of partisan grandstanding in Congress have discredited America’s entire political process, and the Republicans—especially those of them thrust to power by the party’s previous populist insurgency, the Tea Party—are mainly responsible. The several recent crises Republican congressmen have engineered over the passage of the federal budget, which they sought to hold hostage to their unrealistic and unconstitutional demands of Mr Obama, have earned the voters’ disdain. In that sense, the Trumpian revolt is not a continuation of the false promise raised by the anti-government Tea Party, but its successor. With Mr Trump’s nomination almost assured, its fires, too, must now rage and burn out.
Fear trumps hope! There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans are finding themselves in a pickle. But Trump, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is not backing down. In this article and another, Trump's articulated platform will lay waste to just about everything. To me, it seems that Trump is playing the "American exceptionalism" card. Has he forgotten that negotiation is not the same as dictating the terms?
Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed, has died, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday. He was 96.
The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said.
Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when Mister Ed was being readied at comedian George Burns' production company. Burns is said to have told his staff: "Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."
I am sure that many of you will remember Mr Ed, the talking horse. I used to delight in watching the programme and wondered how the horse learned and said his lines. I was young and naive . . . what can I say! Anyway, Alan Young, who played the "straightman" to the horse, passed away 19/05/2016. Bamboo Harvester, the original Mr Ed, died in 1970. Here is an episode of "Mr Ed" to take you back down memory lane.
After a while, the embarrassment of foreigners treating the US as a laughingstock over Rump Dump Trump’s rise to prominence, as he plumbs depths of TEAbuggery never before encountered, becomes painful, at best. That they are right is makes it even more embarrassing. However, now it’s my turn. Euro-TEAbuggery is alive and well.
Donald Trump’s campaign is truly testing the limits of the old saying “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Unless one operates under the assumption that a hate-filled platform fueled by bigotry, xenophobia and sexism is what the world needs right now. In which case, the Trump cloud appearing on the horizon is seen by some as an invitation to open their arms in exaltation, awaiting the inevitable Trumpian shower to follow.
The attributes of a Trump-thumper are pretty easy to identify. Mostly it’s a hatred of immigrants coated in a fine patina of pseudo-nationalist rhetoric. George Packer writing in the New Yorker recently described it as “white identity politics.” Given Packer’s diagnosis, it’s safe to say America is not alone in this category. And so, from the continent well-versed in such terminology, below is a list of eight far-right political party leaders from Europe eagerly awaiting Hurricane Trump…
…Belgium
If King Leopold’s miserable corpse were still around to tweet, he’d surely have added Belgium’s vote to the pro-Trump camp. But not to worry, instead we’ve got Filip Dewinter, proud heir to the former genocidaire and leading member of Belgian far-right party, Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang).
Here he is offering his endorsement by way of YouTube. Though, by opening with “Mr. Trump, we have this in common, we speak the truth,” Dewinter has in essence told anyone watching that whatever follows should be taken with a bucket-load of salt..
It seems the European version of Republican hate is much more subdued in presentation that it is from Rump Dump. This is just the fifth of eight European Republicans listed. Click through for the other seven.
I'm waiting for Julie to arrive. She's now almost two hours late, and since she lost her phone, I cannot contact her. I'm very worried. Phew, she made it 2 1/4 hours late. We made me a polished puddy tat, did the dreaded task, cleaned the apartment, made a 4 – 5 day supply of γέεννα chili, and talked. Now it's late and I'm pooped, but that's OK.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today;s took me 5:03 (average 7:30). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: While washing her hands in a Connecticut Walmart bathroom, a woman named Aimee Toms, 22, was harassed by another customer who said:
“You’re disgusting!”
"You don’t belong here!”
We can put her argument against Republican bigots another way. "Thou shalt not commit TEAbuggery!!"
From KP Daily Funnies: The Liberal Redneck tells conservatives how it is in language they can understand
Even Bubba Bagger could understand that!
From Daily Kos: Louisiana state Rep. Kenneth Havard from Jackson proposed an amendment to a bill yesterday, then pulled it, which would limit the age and weight of exotic dancers. The Louisiana House was discussing bill No. 468, that would raise the minimum age of exotic dancers from 18 to 21. But that wasn’t what the amendment was about.
AMENDMENT NO. 1
On page 1, line 14, after "shall be" delete the remainder of the line and insert the following:
"between twenty-one and twenty-eight years of age and shall be no more that one hundred sixty pounds in weight."
In my younger days, I knew a stripper, who went by "U.C. Moore". She weighed over 250, had a humongous chest, and was far a far better comedienne than this Republican asshole is a Representative.
Cartoon:
Given the chance, Rump Dump Trump will guarantee that more will be exploded.
Just one article this week which seems to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with it. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."
I saw on AlterNet and traced to Raw Story the report that a teacher at a private Christian Science high school in St. Louis, MO was fired after reporting that her underage daughter had been sexually abused by a school employee. Looking for more information, I found the Courthouse News Service website to have a great deal more on the story, and after checking their Terms of Use, which explicitly grant permission to other blogs to copy an individual article provided Courthouse News Service is credited, I will be quoting their coverage of this complex story. (Any emphasis – bolding – will be mine.)
A former teacher at a Christian Science boarding school claims in court that she was fired after reporting that a fellow faculty member raped her daughter.
Phoebe McVey sued The Principia Corporation in St. Louis County Court on Thursday.
The Principia operates a school and college in suburban St. Louis.
Neither the School nor the College is affiliated with the Christian Science Church, but the principles of Christian Science form the basis of community life at Principia, according to Principia's website.
McVey claims 31-year-old Zachary Retzlaff began sexually assaulting her daughter, M.M. in the lawsuit, when she was 16. Retzlaff is not named as a defendant.
McVey, who now lives in Arizona, lived on the Principia campus at the time with her husband and daughter. She says Retzlaff was Principia's director of telecommunications and related to several people at the school. He [is a] nephew-in-law of Adriane Fredrikson, the dean of admissions, and Hans Fredrikson, a former trustee, and also nephew-in-law of Bill and Cheryl Whitney, who both worked with Retzlaff in the computer information department.
None of them are parties to the lawsuit.
McVey says the sexual abuse went on from July 2014 to May 2015 and that Retzlaff spent time with M.M. at the Fredriksons' home during that time. She says she found out about the relationship while chaperoning a class trip to New Hampshire and Boston on May 21, 2015.
She reported Reztlaff to the police the next day.
A grand jury indicted Retzlaff for statutory rape in the second degree on July 22, 2015. He pleaded not guilty and is free on $35,000 bail. The criminal case is pending. Two days after she reported the rapes, McVey says, the school told her she would be terminated effective July 31, 2015.
"Just prior to her termination, plaintiff had reported to the police that one of Principia's employees had committed the criminal acts of sexual intercourse with a minor, her daughter," the complaint states. "Such criminal acts were in violation (among other statutes) of Section 566.034 RSMo. As a result of McVey's reporting of illegal conduct, Principia's employee, Retzlaff was indicted on July 22, 2015.
"Any other reason offered for Plaintiff's termination is pretextual to cover up Principia's illegal conduct."
McVey's lawsuit does not go into detail, but a separate lawsuit filed by a Jane Doe against The Principia on Oct. 16, 2015, in St. Louis County may. Though it does not name McVey as Doe's parent, it states that Jane Doe was sexually assaulted dozens of times by Retzlaff during the same time period as McVey's daughter.
That complaint says Retzlaff practiced sadomasochism with Doe.
"During several of the sexual assaults, assailant choked Ms. Doe with his hands until she lost consciousness," the complaint states. "After the child was unconscious, assailant would begin engaging in vaginal intercourse with her while she was passed out so that when she awoke, his penis would already be inside of her."
That lawsuit also accused Retzlaff of forcing Doe into group sex.
"In addition to the sadomasochism, assailant invited other minors to join him in 'group sex' with Ms. Doe, including other Principia students, both male and female," the complaint states. "On several occasions, these other minors chose to flee the group sex session because the sexual acts assailant was performing on Ms. Doe became so extreme."
That lawsuit claimed The Principia knew about Retzlaff's actions and even told him to "cut it out."
That lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in February.*
McVey seeks punitive damages for wrongful termination and breach of contract. She is represented by Brandy Barth with Newton Wright and Barth in St. Louis.
Laurel Walter, communications director at The Principia, said in an email: "We are in the process of reviewing the allegations and do not have any comment at this time."
Principia was involved a football hazing scandal involving sexual violence in August 2014. Three football players were kicked out of the school and faced criminal charges. Two were charged with four counts of first-degree sodomy and another with seven counts of third-degree assault.
In an Oct. 22, 2015 story about the first lawsuit, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Retzlaff, then 33, was accused of sexually assaulting an underage student "more than 40 times on or around the campus here, choked her as part of sex play and held group sex parties for students."
Despite the comments I have been reading on this, both on AlterNet and on Raw Story (Courthouse News Service does not appear to have comments), I trust that I don't need to remind the Erinyes, or anyone here, that any man who thinks that a sixteen year old child has the mental capacity to consent to sex is thinking with the wrong head. While Tisiphone, therefore, addresses herself to Mr. Retzlaff, I believe Alecto and Megaera are needed to deal with misconceptions which seem to be all too common in society about the nature of consent – and that sex without both parties consenting is rape.
*Incidentally the lawsuit referred to as "voluntarily dismissed in February" was specifically dismissed in such a way as not to preclude Ms. Doe from re-filing (presumably after the criminal charges have been dealt with).
I'm about to leave for PT with Courtney. Windows 10 does not seem nearly so bad as the horror stories I've heard, and much easier oi use then Windows 8, which I have hated trying to navigate on friends machines. I think I'll keep it, but I still feel angry over installing it without notifying me. In addition, the timing could have not been worse. Also, I get an upgrade to Office 365 with a terabyte of cloud storage for documents for only $35. I'm very tired, because I was up late getting it to work the way I want, so when I get home from PT, I'll have lunch, finish this, and take the rest of the day off. I'm back. Courtney was pleased with my progress, and liked the way George's new ankle is working.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today's took me 3:28 (average 4:29). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Those of us who have (or have had) hearing know what earworms are: those catchy snippets of a song or tune that loop endlessly in our heads. Well, today’s “Friday Fun” may well implant one in your brain, but at least hopefully it will be a pleasant one.
A week ago today, Friday the 13th, Bill Backer, the real Don Draper of “Mad Men”, passed away at the age of 89. Backer was the creator of what has been called by Adweek“The world’s most famous ad”– Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop/I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing”.
And since that tune is now implanted as today’s earworm in your brains, you might as well go ahead and enjoy it in the remastered version …
For those of you who were “Mad Men” aficionados, you may recall the iconic final scene of the series-ending finale with Don Draper meditating (beginning ~ the 1:45 mark) while envisioning a utopian scene of a culturally diverse, youthful chorus singing about “apple trees and honeybees and snow white turtledoves” on an Italian hilltop while wanting “to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.”
But the background on how the ad actually came to be is quite a different story.
In January of 1971 Backer was flying to London to meet with his songwriting team when his flight was diverted to Ireland’s Shannon Airport because of a pea-soup thick fog engulfing London.
“[W]e were marooned in the Shannon Airport, which was not set up to handle big loads of offloaded passengers. So we were stuck in a tiny motel, sharing rooms, sleeping in the lobby, and we sat around with people from all over the world.”
At first, Backer and his fellow travelers found little to be happy about under these stressful circumstances. But by the next day Backer was surprised to see those same unhappy, irate passengers in the airport’s restaurants and cafes laughing and sharing stories of their adventure while enjoying snacks over bottles of Coke, bound together by their common experience of being grounded.
"In that moment [I] saw a bottle of Coke in a whole new light… [I] began to see a bottle of Coca-Cola as more than a drink that refreshed a hundred million people a day in almost every corner of the globe.
So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be — a liquid refresher — but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes."
Straight out of a movie script, he grabbed a paper napkin and scribbled: “I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.”
But when he finally reached London and shared what he had jotted down, his fellow songwriters complained: "Well, if I could do something for everybody in the world, it would NOT be to buy them a Coke. I'd buy everyone a home first and share with them in peace and love"
Backer said, "Okay, that sounds good. Let's write that.…” And so was born “the world’s most famous ad”:
I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love,
Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.
I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,
I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
[Repeat the last two lines, and in the background:]
It’s the real thing … Coke is what the world wants today.
The ad first aired on radio stations on Feb. 12, 1971. Immediately it became so popular that DJs began receiving requests to play the commercial as if it were a song. And the Hillside Singers original recording version actually peaked at number 13 on Billboard. Backer then had the New Seekers record a slightly different version of the song, titled “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”, which topped out at number 7.
The Coke ad greatly exceeded its $100,000 budget – eventually costing $250,000 to create, which made it the world’s most expensive commercial ever produced to that point. They hired five hundred people from Rome to stand on the hilltop in Manziana, Italy to lip-sync the lyrics for the aerial shot.
You may ask: “OK – I get that for many of you of a certain age it brings back pleasant memories of your youth. That’s all interesting, but what about the Koch connection?”
Well, we can now all enjoy that Coke/Koch earworm all over again – and maybe even more so with its reincarnation as the Koch parody that I saw not so long ago! It’s hard for me to choose which lyrics I like better – but I think I’ll go with the new Koch parody version:
I’d like to buy the Kochs a world – So they’d leave ours alone
Then go back to Park Avenue – And crawl beneath their stone
I’d like to teach the Kochs about – A true democracy
Where working class kicks corporate ass – From sea to shining sea
They’re the Evil Thing
I’d like to give the Kochs the bird – From my whole family
Just keep your phony culture war – And keep your f*cking tea
They’re the Evil Thing – Make them go away
EPILOGUE:
To honor Mr. Backer’s memory, let’s close by revisiting some of his and his team’s most memorable jingles and slogans:
“Things go better with Coke”
“Coke – it’s the real thing”
Miller Lite “Everything you ever wanted in a beer… and less”
Campbell’s brand “Soup is good food”
… And while “Little girls have pretty curls, but I like Oreos”
