Bounties

Trump was briefed on this in February but did nothing to stop Putin. Instead Trump has exchanged numerous friendly phone calls with Putin, has promised to remove US troops from Germany, has tried to get Putin back into the G7. Today Trump had a meeting about this with only Republican lawmakers - no Democrats allowed - because, you know, he and the Republicans who support him no matter what must coordinate all their lies.

A vote for choice

You Christian conservatives who voted for Trump, a loathsome horrible person and president, all because he would doom women's reproductive rights ... how's that deal with the devil working out for you?

Science prevails in Supreme Court ruling on abortion law that provided no medical benefit

A mask

Another ad from Republican Voters Against Trump ...



This kind of ad is necessary, because if you think we're all on the same page mask-wise, think again. Here are some examples of the insane objections to mask-wearing raised ...

Statues

- Thorvaldsen's Jesus in the Copenhagen Cathedral

Trump doesn't care about saving people from the virus, instead he's fixated on saving inanimate statues. His latest lie is that protestors want to tear down statues of Jesus.

Trump doesn't actually care about the statues, of course, but he thinks he can divide us more, inflame the racists and religious bigots of his base, so he can get re-elected.

And about those statues of Jesus, I like some of them as are, but I'm pretty sure Jesus himself would be disturbed by the idea that people have made graven images of him - most Jews were iconoclasts.

Shambala

Still digging around in the music of the past. Here is a song that makes me smile, about a mythical Tibetan Buddhist kingdom. Three Dog Night, 1975 ...

Testing

Slowing down testing. Refusing to model mask-wearing. Having thousands of his cult members gather indoors at his rallies in states that have surging virus cases. Etc, etc, etc. I think it's fair to believe Trump is actually trying to spread the virus.

The Logical Song

I hate this time of year coming up on the fourth of July. My neighborhood is riddles with jerks who set off incredibly loud illegal fireworks almost every nights for weeks before the holiday. The cats get terrified and I get full of rage.

Need some music to help me feel better. Here's Supertramp doing The Logical Song in Paris, 1979 ...



The Logical Song

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world's asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I said, watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical
Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name, we'd like to feel you're Acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
Oh, take it take it yeah

But at night, when all the world's asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man
Won't you please tell me what we've learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am
'Cause I was feeling so logical

Juneteenth

From Google today ...

More Picard

I finished the novel, Star Trek: Picard, and it was really good. I am so looking forward now to watching the tv series. For some reason, Netflix doesn't have it available yet. Here's a trailer ...



So fun to see favorite characters from the past ... Data, Riker and Troi, and Seven of Nine :)

The Court's decision & Catholicism

I am very happy to see that the Supreme Court has ruled that LGBTQ workers will be protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But the US Catholic church, where firing employees for being gay is a cottage industry, is *not* happy ...

[...] “I am deeply concerned that the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively redefined the legal meaning of ‘sex’ in our nation’s civil rights law,” the president of the Catholic bishops’ conference, Archbishop José H. Gomez, said in a statement. “This is an injustice that will have implications in many areas of life.” “Protecting our neighbors from unjust discrimination does not require redefining human nature,” he said ... - Conservative Christians See ‘Seismic Implications’ in Supreme Court Ruling

Justice Gorsuch, in writing the opinion, pointed out that there is already a ministerial exception that allows the church to assert that school teachers are actually "ministers" and thus are excepted from legal protections against discrimination, and Gorsuch pointed out too that future cases could be brought on this subject.

I'm sure the US Bishops and their lawyers are already planning to challenge this case. Depressing that the church spends so much of its time and money trying to prop up a questionable teaching. Hypocritical too, considering the church is mainly run by gay men ... The Gay Church: Thousands of priests are closeted, and the Vatican’s failure to reckon with their sexuality has created a crisis for Catholicism.

It's important to remember that while the Catholic church is against the rights of LGBTQ people, most actual Catholics are not. Here's a bit from a press release about the Court's decision from Catholics For Choice ...

[T]he Catholic hierarchy, through its political arm, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has wed itself to the Trump administration in efforts to secure federal policies that broaden the ability to discriminate against women, LGBT people and those seeking reproductive healthcare. The USCCB’s amicus briefs in both these cases claim that protecting the LGBT community “would create serious burdens on religious liberty” and “could affect the ability of health care providers to perform services in accord with their professional judgment as well as their religious and moral convictions.”

The bishops decidedly un-Catholic attempts to impose their prejudices on the entire nation runs counter to the beliefs of a strong majority of Catholics, 74% of whom disagree with the use of our religion as a means to discriminate ...

Inspiring

A song for our times ...

Sweeping

My favorite song to do housework to :) ...

Eagles from crystal watson on Vimeo.

Hope

From Cat Stevens ...

Anti-Trump

An anti-Trump (and pro-Biden) ad from Republican Voters Against Trump. I've got to say, the Never-Trump Republicans are really pretty good at political ads.

Hunting

Lest we forget, while we're thinking about police brutality and the coronavirus, Trump is continuing to spread destruction to every facet of life - there really is nothing that escapes his stain ...

Defund police

Today George Floyd's younger brother, Philonise, testified at a House of Representatives hearing on police brutality. It's worth a listen.

I hope testimony like this, plus the protests and the recorded scenes of police misconduct help to make a real difference in the way we view policing and the way police departments are run. People are talking about "defunding" and I think that's a positive isea. Police have a huge amount of power over people, with limited accountability - it's past time to re-envision the situation. It's been done before .... Camden, New Jersey is one example.

This city disbanded its police department 7 years ago. Here's what happened next

[...] The city, home to a population about 17% of Minneapolis' size, dissolved its police department in 2012 and replaced it with an entirely new one after corruption rendered the existing agency unfixable.

Before its police reforms, Camden was routinely named one of the most violent cities in the US.
Now, seven years after the old department was booted (though around 100 officers were rehired), the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago. Here's how they did it ....

What happened?

The Washington Post has created a video that goes into detail about what exactly happened when peaceful protestors were attacked and driven from Lafayette Square by "secret" federal troops on June 1, 2020 ...



For even more detail, see Wikipedia's page, Donald Trump photo op at St. John's Church.

Bruce Lee

One of ESPN's 30 for 30 documentary episodes is about Bruce Lee. Here's a review from USA Today ...

ESPN's new Bruce Lee documentary, 'Be Water,' is a 'must-watch' look at racism in Hollywood, critics say

Critics call ESPN's new Bruce Lee documentary a "must-watch" for fans and soon-to-be fans of the late actor and martial arts great.

"Be Water," which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on ESPN, is directed by Bao Nguyen and named after a saying Lee used to share: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ...

Being interested in martial arts and Asian culture since college, I was,of course, aware of Lee and I can still remember going with my sister to see him in Way of the Dragon (1972), in which karate expert Chuck Norris also appeared. There was a 'karate v king fu' scene in the movie, which takes place in the Roman Colosseum ...



As it turned out, I ended up joining a dojo later and marrying an Asian martial arts student there. Here's me back then, and you can see the ex at the far L ....

Unknown soldiers

On this day of a memorial service for George Floyd, Rachel Maddow discusses the scary phenomenon of mystery troops in DC. Because Washington DC is not a state, Trump is able to flood the area with troops of all sorts and from many states around the country ... military police, national guard, park police, state prison guards, secret service, etc. None of them are wearing insignias or name plates, so are they really US troops at all? I mean, they could be mercenaries supplied by EriK Prince for all we know.

Here's a photo from The New York Times (How Trump’s Idea for a Photo Op Led to Havoc in a Park) that identifies some of the troops that attacked peaceful protestors so Trump could get a photo op ... ...



Why is this necessary? Is DC totally overrun by terrorists, as Trump and Barr avow? No. It's rather that Trump desperately needs to erase from public knowledge the fact that when the protests began he was hiding in his bunker like a coward.

Picard

My latest check-out from the public library is Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope.

The story is based on the new tv series, Star Trek: Picard ...

an American web television series featuring the character Jean-Luc Picard .... Picard begins 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and sees a retired Picard deeply affected by the death of Data in that film as well as the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek (2009). Patrick Stewart executive produces the series and stars as Picard, reprising his role from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as other Star Trek media.

I just started the book but it's pretty good so far. I haven't yet seen the tv series but I'm signed up for it at Netflix.

Hard to believe that I began watching Star Trek on tv when it premiered in 1966. I've seen every permutation of the tv series since then, and all the movies too, and have read a ton of Star Trek novels. It just never gets old :)

The Lincoln Project

The latest from The Lincoln Project ...

:)

My sister and I giggled all the way through this song from the past, maybe because the band members seemed to be having such a good time ...

Bayonets

- M16A4 rifle with M7 bayonet affixed

Trump seems to be getting ready to deploy active duty military against protestors in D.C. (the only place he *can*). In the news ...

1,600 active-duty troops sent to Washington area after some governors turn down request for National Guard

And, from Rachel Maddow's show tonight ...



Yep, bayonets. Because, you know, nothing stops unarmed American protestors faster than having American soldiers thrust pointy metal objects through their midsections.

And Trump's enablers, his cabinet members and the Republican members of Congress, they are aiding him to do this.

Trump's speech

Did you guys ever see the 1998 movie The Siege? In the film, Denzel Washington plays an FBI agent who's trying to prevent a terrorist attack in New York City. The attack, a bombing, happens anyway, and the president flips his wig and declares martial law, sending in the army to lock everything down and search for suspects (Bruce Willis is the general). Well, as you can imagine, everything goes terribly wrong, with civil liberties taking a body blow ...



I was reminded of that movie today when I saw Trump's speech about the recent protests. He threatened to call up the military, even evoking Richard Nixon's phrase "law and order". It was creepy and despotic.

For some time now I've been waiting for Trump to manufacture an incident that will "require" him to declare martial law, postpone the upcoming election, and eventually try to make himself dictator for life (that's basically what his two buddies Putin and Xi have recently accomplished).

Now he thinks he's found the right moment, by defining Antifa as a terrorist group and accusing them of being behind the protests. More on this from former FBI agent Frank Figliuzzi, one of my favorite law enforcement commentators on MSNBC ...