The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    REVOLVER IS 50!

    Revolver.jpg

    The Beatles meant little to me in the eighth grade. hahaha

    She Loves You Ya Ya Ya....?

    What the hell does that mean?

    But Love, Love Me Do....

    Well that was something else, to me anyway.

    Stereo Williams from The Beast reminds us of Revolver.

    hollywhitman's picture

    How Will NASA Fare Under a Trump or Clinton Presidency?

    The presidential race has narrowed to two major candidates: Trump and Clinton. We all know this by now — but did you know that neither candidate has said much about science?

    There’s already plenty to be concerned about, but a growing topic in the scientific world is the future of space travel. Will NASA receive more funding or more cuts? Unfortunately, the candidates have remained virtually silent about this.

    We've scraped together the bits and pieces of our candidate's views:

    The Donald: Forget About It!

    acanuck's picture

    what's the matter with the white-trash hillbillies of Appalachia?

    Alternate title: What's the matter with the Democrats' strategy toward the WTHOA? We're deep into the election woods right now, and Hillary (with lots of help from Donald Trump) is doing a pretty good job of locking in most demographics that make up the party's base. So I doubt any Democratic strategists are fretting about their expected failure to recapture West Virginia's once-gettable five electoral votes. It's sad that so many voters have lost all hope that they are buying what Trump is selling, but there's no way the party can promise them a turnaround. Those jobs are gone and they ain't coming back.

    Tim and Bernie's warnings

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre

    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

     Yeats ,1919

    ..............................................................................................................

    *

    Letter to the Editor

    Likeability

    Okay, as this keeps coming up, I thought I'd put together a list to help us track the seemingly all-important metric of "likeability" as it concerns our public servants and cultural heroes.

    More likeable than Hillary: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Pope Francis, Al Franken?, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Snowden, Christiane Amanpour, Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart-Samantha Bee, Joe Biden (or so they say), Elon Musk, Angelina Jolie, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Richard Holbrooke?, Tom Tomorrow, Barbara Jordan?, Kofe Annan

    Moderation vs. Violent Mood Swings

    It's been the perceived wisdom this season that Americans are outraged, and that solutions need to be drastic. But perceived wisdom, especially among self-interested media types, isn't always accurate, and doesn't always reflect what the populace expects. And change often comes when a dam bursts, not with steady trends - watching the water rise often does little to predict the outcome. (Plus my experience with earthquakes tells me that an aftershock can be worse than the original quake - effects do ripple).

    Richard Day's picture

    TRUMP MAY BE ILL

    Trump at lectern before backdrop with elements of logo "TRUMP DonaldJTrump.com"

    Years ago I wrote a blog about a female presidential candidate and folks were unsettled with regard to my hypotheses through their comments.

    Lately on shows like Lawrence O'Donnell we are presented with experts who feel that donald is a narcissacist or manic depressive or whatever.

    Hack Attacks - Quo Vadis?

    My biggest objection during the time we helped remove Qaddafi was not a condemnation of regime change, but "what's the precedent?" Unless you're the Supreme Court in 2000 writing a "one-time-use-only" clause into your work, or even if, there's the constant concern in both foreign and domestic policy that a new clever "remedy" will be copied and extended in ways we find unreasonable but ways the bastardizers think wholly fair. Thus part of the history of how Republicans have mimicked and abused Democratic strategy in the Senate or amazingly refused to take any action on a Supreme Court nominee based on a fairly meaningless comment by Biden lots of years ago.

    "The married women of Bucks County"

    A new T.V. show, "The married women of Bucks County" will begin streaming on major networks next week and is being advertised so vigorously on websites like the New York Times that you want to slam your laptop because the print won't move when you click it.

    I wanted to understand why Hillary Clinton is still being panned by the media and all I see is ads for emotionally unavailable, well-to-do ladies taking their parents to therapy while calling the bank to transfer funds into their kids' checking accounts. The dresses of these ladies do not suggest sexual availability, they aren't in a drunken stupor at a bar with their single friends, and don't finish off the night with a new tattoo or running down traffic signs on the way home. Why in hell would anyone watch a show about financially secure women who you couldn't entice out to a clandestine lunch if your life depended upon it.? In any case, I am annoyed that no one is analyzing Hillary Clinton's speech---except for brain trusts like Chuck Todd.

    A Home run

    A good mix of nuts& bolts and aspirations.

    I won't go down the path of whether it would have been better with Bernie. What should concern us is whether she wants  what we want her to want.

    And whether we think she can get it.

    Well with respect to the second, probably not.  Probably no one  could. But at least as she leaves the starting gate tonight she's heading in the right direction.

    It was more than "good enough" it was pretty darn good. If you'll pardon the intense language. 

    Just a link

    Richard Day's picture

    HISTORY IS TAKING PLACE! LIVE BLOG

    Hillary Clinton official Secretary of State portrait crop.jpg

    I wrote about the possibility that a woman would become President of the United States of America.
    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/big-deal-20755

    Richard Day's picture

    I LOVE JOE BIDEN!

    Official portrait of Vice President Joe Biden.jpg

    I am watching this guy now.

    The Vice-President of the United States of America for 7+ years.

    Marvelous.

    Folks making fun of him the last eight years or more.

    Gravitas

    Integrity

    Substance

    Empathy

    ........

    Anything else you might add Dagbloggers

    I LOVE THIS GUY

    Bernie would be doing better

    Today, Donald Trump would probably beat Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup 538's Nate Silver predicts. Ah but the election won't be held today you reply. Correctomundo.  When the election is actually conducted sayeth Silver, Clinton should squeeze out a 10-point win in the electoral college.

    jollyroger's picture

    I gotta bad feeling about this...

     

    Hillary Clinton is snakebit.

     

    Just when the Dem convention was starting to cast serious shade on Donald Trump's cred as an impressario, and just when the DNC hack story was taking the right spin for us, just now, when Sarah Silverman (Precious Blood of the Sweet Baby Jesus I could fu...umm, never mind) had put us in our place

    tis not as deep as a well

    nor as wide as a church door  but tis enough, twill do*

    Night two  twill do.

    As you think of Bill's reminiscence ,right now, you're smiling.   

    Well at least I am. So that'll have to do. Do you remember anything about last week that makes you smile? Does "lock her up" do that? Or do you feel vaguely dirty? As if you see someone being beaten up, who deserved it. But enough already.

    Day 1 was a success!

    Despite where we started from, where we ended was quite OK.I'll take it !

    Orion's picture

    America's Putin

    I am currently reading my second book about Vladimir Putin and the response to him. The first book I read was Putinism: Russia and its Future with the West, written by Walter Laqueur, a French-Jewish author who has been studying Russia for decades. I am currently reading Kicking the Kremlin: Russia's New Dissidents and the Battle to Topple Putin.

    I live in the United States. I speak with a West Coast American accent. While I am of French ancestry and my mom often is there, my social world is completely in the United States (and France and Western Europe in general are facing basically the same problem). I don't really have other options. I currently live in Berkeley, the part of the US that most liberally allows me to be myself and do what I want.

    A Plea to my Fellow Progressives

    There are a number of excellent reasons progressives should vote for Hillary Clinton for President while the arguments in favor of Jill Stein or sitting out the election do not hold water.

    1. If Clinton loses, the progressive cause will be set back for decades perhaps for the forseeable future.

    George W. Bush's win in 2000 did grievous harm to our nation. W lied us into a costly destructive war in 2003, slashed taxes on the wealthy thereby ballooning the national debt, and failed to stop the financial crisis. If popular sentiment had prevailed and Ralph Nader had stayed out of the race, it is probable that America would right now be enjoying broad-based prosperity, peace, and would be leading the world towards a sustainable energy future.

    acanuck's picture

    Democrats dodge their Ted Cruz moment

    It's official: Debbie Wasserman Schultz will not speak at the Democratic convention. She's still nominally chairwoman of the DNC, though Hillary was forced to strip her of all actual power as down payment toward winning Bernie's endorsement. The issue for the convention was not whether Debbie would be booed by Sanders delegates if she took the podium, it was whether she would be booed off the stage a la Ted Cruz. The question became pretty much moot Friday, after Wikileaks released 20,000 hacked DNC emails, some of which detailed how she and her staffers basically colluded with the Clinton campaign to sabotage Bernie's run. Then yesterday, Robert Reich called for her to be fired immediately, rather than just demoted out of the way.

    Kaine,Catholicism and grammatical tricks

    I was started down this path by the juxtaposition of two OGD links included  in  Michael's Freak Out Thread :

     Al Franken's MSNBC interview and a  Hillary ad . Franken described Kaine as a "progressive Catholic" ; the ad purported to show the children listening to Trump's tasteless insults to women who'd  outraged him by expecting  him to answer questions.

    Richard Day's picture

    HANNITY EXPLODES!

     

    Sean Hannity by Gage Skidmore.jpg

    Bill Maher was stupendous during his harangues against the fascists at the repub convention.


    Then Jon Stewart showed up and got me laughing so damn hard! He was attacking Hannity directly.


    But Hannity's response really got to me.

    CVille Dem's picture

    Donald's LGBTQ moment

    Did you hear him?  He was carefully reading out the letters. Could there be a less ingenuous point?  And then he moves onto Muslims.  He is the best leader EVER!  Well, at least according to Ivanka.

    Trump: I Won't Defend Nations's Capitol

    I would look at remaking Washington, DC. Right now, what is it doing for anybody? For real Americans?

    Congress can go on permanent vacation. Don't need them. Or those mouthy judges.

    And I don't plan on living there.

    CVille Dem's picture

    A Thought Experiment for Dagbloggers

    I am fairly confident that Hillary Clinton will be elected in November.  I am very confident that if she is our next President she will do a good job, and many people who are not staunch supporters will be pleasantly surprised at her efforts and policies for all of us.  I expect that she will improve the ACA, make prescription drugs less expensive, improve services for the neediest, and rebuff any attempts to privatize Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that help the common Good.  This will no doubt be labeled by the GOP as "free stuff to the undeserving."  We must not allow that to gain traction.

    Having seen the gauche hatred at the GOP Convention, I am also expecting the Democratic Convention to be one of hope, policy discussions, and inspiration.  But what I would really like to do here is open up a discussion about how to win over the disaffected; the Trump supporters who truly believe that only Donald Trump could “Make America Great Again.”

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