Tuesday, October 08, 2019                                               9:58 PM

Calling B.S.   (2019Oct08)

It’s so ridiculous with this president. It’s like being trapped in Kindergarten.

A ‘Long-Standing Justice Department Memo’ has no more ‘standing’ in Law than if I wrote it. The Republicans love to fiddle with this whole thing, they think it’s a ‘loophole’, but it ain’t. Here it is, so even Trump (if he listened) could get it:

The Justice Department can’t indict the President because that privilege belongs to Congress, which has the power to indict him through Impeachment. He can’t be tried in Court either—once indicted by Congress’ Impeachment Vote, the Senate has the privilege of Trying and Convicting the President (with the help of a SCOTUS Judge).

There is nothing in the Constitution that says the State Department, or the FBI, or any other agency, is prohibited from helping Congress conduct an investigation.

For the president’s lawyers to argue that he can stonewall Congress, because he’s immune from prosecution, is bullshit as high art, with a Yale education—but it’s still bullshit. Innocent people don’t need legal arguments that emulate Simon Biles’ floor-routines.

My legal difficulty with Trump is that our laws are based on presumption of innocence—we give any defendant the benefit of the doubt. I can’t do that for Trump—that pus-sac has been given more benefit-of-the-doubt than any motherfucker in history—and it’s enough, already. If Trump becomes the first US President ever to be forcibly removed from office, he will have completely earned it.

Sunday, October 06, 2019                                       4:52 PM

No Respect   (2019Oct06)

As I’ve often said, our politics are just a symptom of something much more endemic. Take music, for example.

While copyrights have been in the forefront of every labels’ and publishing companies’ legal department, it wasn’t long ago that they were trying to steal artists’ intellectual property for themselves—and that continues, more subtly, while they add this ‘frenzy’ of defending their hoard from interlopers as amoral as they are.

Meanwhile, the mighty computer (which can supposedly play chess and run a factory) cannot help YouTube differentiate between my homemade videos of a Bach composition—and the same piece played by a world-famous concert artist. They send me emails, telling me I have encroached on their copyright of piano-works which have clearly aged into the Public Domain—which would only apply if it were not me at the ivories. Stupid, bad computer—try again.

As well, I watch this Music Choice channel (now the Stingray channel) which plays recordings, a la radio station—sans visuals. Except for the Titles! Each piece is identified by Name, Composer, & Performer(s)—but not always correctly.

Am I so expert? No, but I don’t have to be. When a Bach piece is credited as a famous pianist’s recording—and one clearly hears a harpsichord; or when a Debussy piece is credited as a famous pianist’s recording—and one clearly hears an Orchestra playing a famous transcription of it; it takes no scholar to understand that the database is corrupt.

Naivety might lead me to suggest that centuries of musical genius, the sonic treasure-house of Western Civilization, recorded painstakingly by talented stars who’ve devoted their lifetimes to this music—might be worthy of respect. But I don’t ask for respect.

I ask only what computers are supposed to be good at—accuracy. If computers’ precision exists only for accounting—and none of the other arts or sciences—then what the hell good are they?

Thursday, October 03, 2019                                             8:52 PM

Power of the Presidency   (2019Oct03)

I just want to point out the desperate thinness of the GOP Senators’ (and Trump’s other Goons’) excuses for him—the only reason they even resemble ‘sense’ is because they so closely echo the nonsense that we’ve been fed up until this tipping-point.

But it’s time to recognize the fatuity of their ridiculous pretenses. These kinds of things only hold up when there is a sliver of a doubt regarding legality. But that sliver disappeared when Trump broke the law on his phone call with the Ukrainian President, trading Arms for oppo-dirt on Biden—and again today, when he televised a request for China’s help in smearing Biden.

Anyone who is defending the President’s behavior today is a traitor. It’s that simple. I need hardly add that it’s also the height of stupidity.