First Draft

Saturday Odds & Sods: Six Months In A Leaky Boat

2020-09-13T03:10:44Z

Blue Painting by Wassily Kandinsky.

It’s September and it’s still hotter than hell in New Orleans. Pandemic fatigue is widespread here just like everywhere else. Unfortunately, America didn’t do the work needed to suppress COVID-19 so we’re still muddling through.

The NFL season opens this week and I find myself utterly indifferent. I’m mildly amused by wingnut fans who say that they’ll boycott the season because the NFL has gone BLM on their asses. These are the same people who claim they want sports and politics on separate plains, make that separate planets. The Saints will be playing on Sunday at an empty Superdome. It’s hard to get excited about any of this. So it goes.

This week’s theme song was written by Tim Finn in 1982 for Split Enz’s Time and Tide album. It refers to the amount of time that it took British pioneers to sail to New Zealand and is also a metaphor for the songwriter’s nervous breakdown. That’s a lot of substance for a song that still rocks like crazy.

We have three versions of Six Months In A Leaky Boat for your listening pleasure: The Split Enz original; a 2000 live version by Tim Finn, Bic Runga, and Dave Dobbyn and a 2006 performance by a reunited Enz featuring some stellar keyboard work by the great Eddie Rayner.

Kiwi singer-songwriter David Dobbyn has his own nautical classic:

Now that we’re all seasick, it’s time to don a life jacket and jump to the break.

One more nautical anthem before beginning our second act in earnest. This time from an American band you might have heard of:

Why didn’t anyone tell me that Dwight Yoakam had performed Sloop John B? I am incapable of not sharing it:

It’s time to leave the sea behind and return to dry land with a Vanity Fair cover story.

The Breonna Taylor Blues: One of our finest writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, has written a touching story about Breonna Taylor. We’re all familiar with her tragic and needless death at the hands of Louisville, Kentucky police. I knew little about her until reading Coates’ story, which co-stars Breonna’s mother, Tamika Palmer. It gives us a better-rounded picture of Ms. Taylor’s life. It makes her death even more tragic.

Let’s move from real life cops to fictional cops. We all wish they were alike, but they rarely are.

The Mod Squad, Kojak, Real Life Cops and Me is a fine piece at Vulture by Mark Harris in which he revisits his childhood. Harris had me at the headline since Maybe Cousin Telly Savalas is a Saturday Odds & Sods mainstay.

Teevee cop shows were one way that Harris bonded with his father. I identified with that part; only in my case it was sports although Lou and I shared an affection for The Rockford Files and Kojak. The latter was, of course, mandatory viewing in our house.

When my dad and I watched The Rockford Files together I found myself wishing that we could be more like Jim and Rocky, but it was not meant to be. We had the squabbling bit down pat but just couldn’t connect otherwise. Oh well, we always had Maybe Cousin Telly.

Let’s circle back to Tim Finn and Split Enz.

Walking Down The Road: Split Enz In The UK 1976 is an interview of Tim Finn by Donald Robertson that was unpublished until 2014. I stumbled into it while looking for images for this week’s closing meme. Sometimes you strike gold while down an internet rabbit hole. This was one of those times.

The last word of the segment goes to (who else?) Tim Finn with an achingly sad song:

Repeat after me: Sad songs are always the best songs.

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth Casting Edition: Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for her performance as Kate Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. It’s a controversial film among Marty cultists but I like it.

Pondering The Aviator gave me an earworm. The movie used Al Jolson’s version of Blue Skies, but I prefer this one:

The Movie List: I posted the text of my Claire Trevor top ten list from August yesterday in catblogging. In honor of the new arrival, here’s the Claire Trevor movie poster montage:

Claire Trevor was a petite woman who specialized in playing tough broads. She would have felt at home with the two wise guys below. New cat Claire Trevor would dig hanging out at the Pork Store. What feline wouldn’t?

Saturday GIF Horse: My favorite relationship in The Sopranos was the one between Tony and Christopher. This GIF captures it pretty darn well.

Weekly Vintage Video: You heard Bic Runga singing backup earlier. Here’s one of her best known songs.

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk with some more music.

Saturday Classic: 1977’s Dizrythmia is my favorite Split Enz album. It features some of their best and quirkiest songs. What’s not to love about a song called Parrot Fashion Love?

That’s it for this week. The last word goes to Split Enz at their quirkiest. Quirky is what they did best.

I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)

2020-09-11T17:24:03Z

I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good) was composed in 1941 by Duke Ellington with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. It’s been covered many times over the years and is one of Duke’s most beloved compositions. It suits my mood on this pandemicky Friday. Is that a word? Maybe not; it sounds a bit too much like Mantle, Dolenz, or Mouse…

We begin with an instrumental version from the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. The standout is Johnny Hodges on sax.

Next up Friday Cocktail Hour regular Ella Fitzgerald backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra:

As one would expect, Sinatra’s version is epic.

I heard Dianne Reeves’ fabulous 1987 interpretation for the first time last week.

It’s time to go avant garde on your asses with some Monk; Thelonious, not Adrian:

That’s it for this week. Pour yourself a beverage and unwind after another frenetic news week. It’s what Bogie, Betty, and Frank would want. Never argue with them, y’all.

19th Nervous Breakdown

2020-09-11T16:22:19Z

The slow news day seems to have been abolished. Hence another potpourri post in lieu of a stand-alone piece. I made the featured image after the Yo, Semite incident. It was more of a malaprop than an incident but having Yosemite Sam on my side is somehow comforting. Varmints, beware.

19 Years: It’s the 19th anniversary of a terrorist attack that led a previous lousy president to go off half-cocked and start a two-front war without paying heed to the consequences. We’re still paying for the Bush-Cheney administration’s folly.

I was on jury duty when the planes hit the twin towers. We were dismissed early and were only required to come in once more. The only good thing that came of that day.

For what it’s worth, the 19th is the bronze anniversary. To me it evokes this tune:

It may be a venerable song, but it’s still relevant. Who among us isn’t having our 19th Nervous Breakdown of the pandemic?

Trump-Woodward Followup/Fallout: When I first heard of the big COVID revelation in Rage, I was enraged. I almost wrote a post titled Bob Woodward Can Go Fuck Himself.

The more I thought about it, I focused my rage on Trump instead of Woodward. An earlier revelation would not have changed policy and saved lives. The Kaiser of Chaos was determined to fuck things up as shown by his insipid defense yesterday. Woodward’s defense was much stronger: he wasn’t sure if Trump was telling the truth. Holy credibility gap, Batman.

Joe Biden said it best in these two tweets:

You deserve a president who tells you the truth.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 9, 2020

Donald Trump said he wanted to be a cheerleader for the country. We didn't need a cheerleader. We needed a president.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 11, 2020

A reminder that George W. Bush was a cheerleader at Yale. Sis-boom-bah. Boola-boola. Where the hell are the Whiffenpoofs when you need them? Perhaps one of them is a Whistleblower. You never can tell.

I missed something important in my D Is For Donald & Dumb post. One of the reasons Trump allowed Woodward to interview him so many times is that Woodward is a celebrity. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump said this during one of their sessions, “Why aren’t you as good-looking as Robert Redford?”

Timesman Peter Baker has written an excellent piece about why Trump agreed to talk to Woodward. It’s summed up by this song title:

It’s surprising that Trump hasn’t assembled his own version of the Palmer Girls. He should hire a lame choreographer and put Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany, Hope, and Kayleigh to work. Imagine a rewrite of another Robert Palmer hit: “Might as well face it, we’re addicted to Trump.”

Sometimes I get carried away. This is one of those times.

One of the stories that got lost in the news blizzard requires its own featured image meme thing:

Bill Barr For The Defense: The news that the Department of Justice would defend the Impeached Insult Comedian in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against him enraged legal eagles everywhere. The DOJ is not usually in the business of defending accused rapists in civil suits. It’s part and parcel of Barr’s degradation of the DOJ. He seems determined to prove that, unlike Tom Hagen, he *is* a wartime consigliere.

The sick Trump-Barr relationship reminds me of-you guessed it-an ancient Paul Simon song about a con man:

“Everywhere I go
I get slandered, libeled
I hear words I never heard in the Bible
And I’m one step ahead of the shoeshine
Two steps away from the county line
Just trying to keep my customers satisfied”

Just substitute client for customer and Bob’s your uncle or is that Bill’s your Attorney General? I confuse the two. Maybe one of them is actually Artie:

In Memoriam: A quick shout-out to Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, and Diana Rigg; all of whom died recently. Tom was one of the greatest pitchers of all-time. Lou was one of the greatest World Series performers ever. And Diana was my first celebrity crush when she played Emma Peel in The Avengers. They will all be missed.

I could not find a decent animated GIF of St. Louis Cardinal great Lou Brock but Tom Terrific tips his cap to him:

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel closes the door on this segment:

Finally, there’s a new Springsteen album coming out next month. That allows me to go out on a positive note in a week overloaded with scandal tornadic activity. The last word goes to Bruce and the E Street Band:

That was just what I needed. Thanks, y’all. Don’t forget to hang up the goddamn phone.

Friday Catblogging: Introducing Claire Trevor

2020-09-11T12:47:29Z

We have a new kitty. She’s a two-year-old Calico whose previous person died. His family wouldn’t take her but we did.

She was rescued by the same person who gave us Paul Drake. The omens are good. In fact, if PD were still with us, she’d be his pesky kid sister. She was destined to join our family.

We named her after Claire Trevor one of my favorite actresses of the 1930’s and ’40s. She specialized in playing tough broads and femme fatales. Her namesake is on the shy side right now but she’s going to be something.

Here’s the Claire Trevor movie list I came up with for Saturday Odds & Sods last month:

My Top Ten Favorite Claire Trevor Movies:

Stagecoach
Key Largo
Born To Kill
Murder My Sweet
Raw Deal
Two Weeks In Another Town
Crack Up
Dead End
Johnny Angel
The High and the Mighty

Without further ado, here are some pictures of the wee lassie’s floor show. First, on PD’s favorite rug:

Here’s CT giving a dirty look worthy of the late great Della Street:

D Is For Dumb & Donald

2020-09-10T15:23:42Z

News of the new Bob Woodward book, Rage, landed like a scandal tornado yesterday. I have mixed feelings about Woodward’s withholding the fact that President* Pennywise understood the threat that the virus posed and lied about it instead. I’m uncertain if an earlier release would have changed anything BUT others have differing views including First Draft/Crack Van regular, Lex Alexander, who wrote a pithy post titled, Bob Woodward Has Blood On His Hands. He has a point but I think the focus should be on Trump’s conduct, not Woodward’s ethics.

Trump’s defense is typically preposterous. He didn’t want to cause panic? That’s rich coming from the guy I call the Kaiser of Chaos. Panic is his middle name. I want to shake him like Paul Douglas did to this small-time crook in the pandemic classic, Panic In The Streets:

Panic and pandemonium are hallmarks of the Trump regime as is stupidity. The Impeached Insult Comedian has done a lot of dumb things in his life but sitting for 18 interviews with Bob Woodward takes the cake. He somehow thought he could talk the steely Woodward into giving him good publicity:

CNN reported on Wednesday night that Trump was dead set on granting interviews with Woodward, who was working on a book about Trump titled “Rage,” to boost his image, with the President reportedly relying on his experience as a salesman to present himself in a positive light.

White House aides “repeatedly” warned Trump against speaking to the dogged reporter, a source told CNN, but as usual, the President ignored their advice and acted on his own instincts instead.

Once again, Trump’s instincts were wrong. He knew Woodward was recording him, but he babbled and bragged anyway. The presidency is not a real estate deal and, whatever his flaws, Bob Woodward is not an easy mark. Lordy, there *are* Trump tapes.

The right is flummoxed by this news. They’re blaming everyone but Dumb Donald for this latest catastrophe. My favorite is Tucker Carlson blaming Lindsey Graham:

Delicious. pic.twitter.com/HnMV9RjOLC

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 10, 2020

I know who’s to blame: Donald Trump and his arrogance and stupidity. Make that tremendous stupidity. He’s too dumb to be president*. Believe me.

The last word goes to Todd Rundgren:

You Can’t Shred Digital Recordings

2020-09-10T10:49:43Z

And you can’t erase 18 and 1/2 minute gaps when someone else has copies.

But let’s not slather Bob Woodward in praise while draping him with rewards and awards…as others note, he sat on quite a significant story for months while millions were infected and hundreds of thousands died.

For me, this is just another example of how deep the rot is. We all know Trump is the lowest form of lying scum, a con artist and cult leader (aside: Gret Stet Senator/Cletis-The-Ignorant-Yokel wannabe/and cult initiate John Neely Kennedy all but squinched his eyes shut and put fingers in his ears in denying Trump said what he said, and that it’s on tape), anyway, we’ve known Trump is a fraud, but the elite media, like Woodward, spent the entire 2016 political campaign sitting on story after story, while obsessing over the nothing burger of Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Then they spent the next four years normalizing an administration that wasn’t just criminally venal but remarkably stupid and inept. It’s as if Trump managed to combine Nixon’s evilness, Reagan’s vacuousness, Bush Senior’s creepiness, and Junior’s incompetence into a single flabby, vicious, amoral orange blob.

If the coronavirus hadn’t plunged the country into a genuine crisis, I’m guessing the odds are pretty good the chattering classes would be furrowing their collective brows over Hunter Biden and Burisma…and who knows, they still might, because, you know, both sides…

And while I suppose on the one hand it’s better-late-than-never that at least some of this is finally coming to light, and hopefully in a way that ensures Trump’s first term in office is his last/only term, it’s nonetheless troubling that it’s taken this long to expose what I believe is still just the tip of the Trump iceberg of fraud and corruption…

And what will come next?

Pulp Fiction Thursday: Blood On The Mink

2020-09-10T03:26:58Z

Hang Up The Goddamn Phone

2020-09-09T19:02:48Z

I have an admission to make. It may send me to hell in a hand basket, but I’ve developed a sneaking fondness for Michael Cohen. I had a lot of fun at his expense when he was still Trump’s fixer but I quite like Mikey the Flipper as well as his book title: Disloyal.

The Maddow-Cohen interview was more fun than a barrel of monkeys for me, and more uncomfortable than a ferret down the trousers for President* Pennywise. Cohen mostly stuck to what’s in his book but there was a lot a good stuff in the interview. He talked about his and Trump’s role in planting the first story below:

Mikey the Flipper also dished on the Falwell cuckold mishigas. That’s where my new catchphrase comes from: Hang Up The Goddamn Phone. Thus spake Becki Falwell to Jerry Junior. What is it with all the Juniors in this story? It almost makes me nostalgic for this Junior:

Always put the lid on the blender, Corrado.

Mikey the Flipper was cagey and credible last night. He declined to speculate on things he lacked direct knowledge of such as money laundering. He did, however, state something that observant Trump watchers already knew: Donald has no sense of humor. That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the Impeached Insult Comedian as a nickname. Having a sense of humor requires an ability to laugh at yourself or even smile spontaneously. All Trump can do is mock others and dish out lame nicknames. He’s never come up with anything as good as the Kaiser of Chaos, after all.

One thing that pleased me inordinately about the interview was this colloquy commenced by Rachel:

“You say at the very end of the book that the president and Attorney General William Barr ousted the U.S. Attorney of New York and tried to install, effectively, the president’s golfing buddy as the new U.S. Attorney there because the president, in your view, wanted to arrange for himself to be indicted while he’s still in office because that would give him the opportunity to pardon himself after he lost the election,” she said.

“Well, my theory is that if he loses, there’s still the time between the election and the time that the next president would take office,” Cohen elaborated. “And during that time, my suspicion is that he will resign as president, he will allow Mike Pence to take over, and he will then go ahead and have Mike Pence pardon him.”

“And it’s a very, let’s just say it’s a very Nixon-type of event and it was probably discussed between Roger Stone and President Trump at some point,” he continued. “That this is certainly one way to avoid any potential prison time.”

When Dr. A heard that she said, “That’s what you’ve been saying.” And I said it here at First Draft in an August 13th post, An Alternative Post-Election Scenario. No wonder I’ve become fond of Mikey the Flipper as opposed to Mikey the Fixer who was a big-time asshole.

I mentioned the possibility that I might go to hell in a hand basket for liking the new improved Michael Cohen. The last word goes to the good old Grateful Dead with an alternate means of transportation to Lucifer’s domain:

Hang up the goddamn phone, y’all.

The Fugazi Presidency*

2020-09-09T18:04:19Z

The Kaiser of Chaos treats the government as his personal plaything. He also has trouble discerning a fake from the real deal:

President Donald Trump’s November 2018 trip to France is again in the news because of his canceled trip to a cemetery for fallen Marines and allegations that he disparaged veterans. But Bloomberg reports on another aspect of the trip that raised more than a few eyebrows. After Trump’s cemetery trip was canceled, the president suddenly had a few hours to kill inside the U.S. ambassador’s historic residence in Paris and it seems that during that time he took a particular liking to a few pieces of art. The next day, he ordered a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters be loaded on Air Force One to go back to Washington with him, reports Bloomberg.

The art was reportedly worth some $750,000 and the White House may have called them “historical” but the truth is that they were fakes and replicas. The figurines that now sit in the Oval Office are from the early 20th century by an artist who was trying to claim they were from the 16th or 17 centuries. The figurines have little value and are really “20th century fakes of wannabe 17th century sculptures,” according to an art dealer. The Franklin bust and portrait were also copies of the originals. White House officials ended up borrowing the original portrait from the National Portrait Gallery and hanging it up in the Oval Office rather than the replica Trump brought back from France

The joke’s on you, Donny. You’re the fake. Ben Franklin was the real deal.

I bet the Impeached Insult Comedian doesn’t know that Franklin was the first Postmaster General. It was an important job back then, not one for flunkies and donors. It used to be DeLovely, not DeJoy:

This story is an excellent metaphor for the Trump presidency*. He’s a fake tough guy. He’s a fake billionaire. He has a fake tan and fake hair. Nothing about him is real. It’s the Fugazi presidency*.

That reminds me of a more convincing fake gangster, Al Pacino as Lefty Ruggiero in Donnie Brasco:

What? No apostrophe? Did President* Pennywise make that GIF? Punctuation isn’t his strong suit either. He might, however, warn Lefty that Donnie is an agent of the deep state.

The last word goes to Frank Zappa:

Album Cover Art Wednesday: The Gilded Palace Of Sin

2020-09-09T12:53:29Z

I’ve always thought that the Flying Burrito Brothers had one of the worst band names ever. But their 1969 debut album has one of the best titles ever: The Gilded Palace Of Sin. Not a bad short-term trade-off. I do, however, like burritos.

Gram Parsons was the Pied Piper of Country Rock. When he left the Byrds, Chris Hillman soon followed. As his subsequent career proved. Hillman was more of a country guy than a rocker. Parsons was always restless and left the Flying Burrito Brothers after only recording two albums with them. I told you he was restless. A restless guy in a Nudie suit.

The Gilded Palace Of Sin was where it all began:

Here’s the whole damn album via Spotify:

So Far, So Good: Pandemic Edition

2020-09-08T16:00:26Z

You ever hear the joke about the optimist who jumped off a building?

Every floor he fell, he said, “So far, so good.”

You ever hear something else?

“You can do this during the day or not at all.” It worked. My mom is still furious because it would NOT have worked if she had said it, because it’s almost impossible to change a dynamic in an existing relationship, and surprisingly easy to be different for a new partner.
— Nicole Cliffe (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 7, 2020

I thought of both of those when I read this:

So basically America has adapted to working, living, operating in A WHOLE PANDEMIC. I’m guilty of this also, but it just hit me, that we made living with Covid-19 our new normal instead of trying to get rid of it completely like other countries have done.. our minds are so warped
— Chan The Filmmaker (@chancsmith_) September 7, 2020

We have habits. We have things we’re used to doing. We have routines, and we WILL NOT CHANGE THEM FOR ANYONE. My fellow honkies, we are locked in to our way of doing things and we cannot move.

That’s the main issue here, beyond “partisanship” and “division” and “why is everything political,” beyond racism, beyond the internet and the lack of local news and the way we exchange information now, beyond Our Current Society which we act like just happened instead of being built. We have an existing relationship to America and we cannot change it. At all. For anything.

Wear a mask in the grocery store. Stop going out to eat for a month while your town’s on lockdown. Let the schools, disease vectors in the best of times, stay closed, stay remote. Care for one another, yes with time and words, but mostly with money. Make decisions that only seem hard until you realize there’s literally no other way to do it.

We think this stuff is obvious but it’s so, so not. Not when we’re used to stumbling out the door half-asleep and still managing to get the kids to school and ourselves to the office before that second cup of coffee. That’s what you want to preserve, more than those kids or that school or that office or that coffee.

Writ large, that’s your life. You think you’ve got your eye on the ball, you think you know what the important things are, and then you have to go to a new dentist and the whole earth caves in. Because what really matters to us, turns out, isn’t life or liberty or the pursuit of happiness, it’s familiarity. It’s comfort. It’s knowing your surroundings. It’s knowing, generally, not having to think about what you’re doing and why. You won’t give that up for, apparently, a hundred and fifty thousand dead.

Look at the rage that happens on your neighborhood Facebook group every time the fucking grocery store moves something around, it’s like the end of the world that you have to go one aisle over for beans now. When you have to change the Starbucks from one you always go to, to a different one two blocks away. We go through the motions to preserve not what we love, but what we know.

There comes a point in everybody’s life when what you think you know is at odds with the world around you and you either change things or your close your eyes HARD and you spend the rest of your life telling yourself a story about how you weren’t wrong, the world was wrong.

So many of us close our eyes.

We do it so often, it starts to feel familiar.

It’s The Money, Stupid

2020-09-08T14:03:43Z

Yeah, we have known this:

The problem is with the governance structure of the corporation. CEO pay is most immediately determined by corporate boards, who largely owe their jobs to top management. Furthermore, keeping their jobs depends almost entirely on keeping other board members happy. Board members who are nominated for re-election win well over 99 percent of the time. Since these jobs typically pay several hundred thousand dollars a year for a few hundred hours of work, board members generally want to keep their jobs.
One sure way of pissing off other board members is asking questions like, “Can we get another CEO who is just as good for half the pay?” It is a safe bet this sort of question is almost never asked in corporate board rooms, even though this is supposed to be precisely the question they should be asking all the time.

This IS the question workers are asking all the time, not that anybody listens to THOSE GUYS. Jesus, it’s not just the base pay and the perks, it’s the severances. If you told me I’d get paid twice my annual salary immediately plus a bunch of stock and my leftover vacation time of which there is 3 months’ worth and I get to keep the really nice car you gave me, do you KNOW how fast I’d get fired?

There’s something broken when our society incentivizes people not to work, we hear over and over and over in relationship to giving out cash to lower-income families so they can, you know, feed their children. Somehow we never quite zero in on the idea that if the head of the company is being paid to do work that most of their underlings and assistants do for them on the off chance they might get promoted, then that’s the same disincentive.

But somehow it only counts when it’s imaginary welfare queens.

Look. Things are bad right now and they ain’t getting no better so long as we continue to pretend there’s no money while we stiff the warehouse floor.

Fire and Rain

2020-09-07T02:04:20Z

It’s Labor Day. In the past, I’ve written about it as the traditional kick-off of the general election season. In the 21st Century, the campaigning never stops so I’m writing about holiday weekends and their effect on the pandemic instead. There were spikes two weeks after both Memorial Day and Independence Day. The bars on Bourbon Street are closed but it’s still jam packed with idiots out to party with other idiots. I see another spike coming in New Orleans, alas. Thanks, college kids.

As you can see, I have death on my mind, which is why I’m posting songs of mortality, I wish death would take a holiday but he’s extra busy right now. Before the music, a movie poster:

We’ve gone from the mustache of war to the monocle of death.

We have two songs sung by great singers for your listening pleasure today.

First, one of the most famous songs of the 1970’s. It put James Taylor on the map and he’s still there lo these many years later. Fire and Rain was written by JT after learning of the suicide of a friend:

He Stopped Loving Her Today was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Puttman in 1979. It was recorded by George Jones the following year. It was something of a comeback for Jones as it was his first number 1 hit in many years.

It tells the story of a lost love that persisted until the song’s protagonist died. Holy tears in your beer, Batman. It became a hit again after George died in 2013.

Quote Of The Day: Donny Junior On ‘Sacrifice’

2020-09-07T02:04:51Z

I usually quote smart people in this feature. I decided to branch out and quote Donald Trump Jr. He is, if anything, a bigger dumbass than dear old dad. Donny Junior has “written” a book, Triggered, in which he tells a touching tale of ‘sacrifice’ Trump-style:

“Meanwhile, it also took two months for me to realize the enormity of what my father had accomplished, and the weight of the job that he’d won. It was the day before the inauguration, and we were driving into Arlington National Cemetery, where he was to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I rarely get emotional, if ever. I guess you’d call me hyper-rational, stoic. Yet, as we drove past the rows of white grave markers, in the gravity of the moment, I had a deep sense of the importance of the presidency and a love of our country. I was never prouder of my father than when I watched as he stood before the tomb, his hand over his heart, while the Army bugler played ‘Taps.’

“In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed—voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off the office.'”

I wonder if Donny paid his ghostwriter for this shit or if he stiffed them like dear old dad?

The book was published last December, but a link to the Axios story about it popped up on my Twitter feed because of the “losers and suckers” controversy that’s raging right now. I’d like to thank everyone for the kind words about my contribution to the discussion, My Uncle Was A ‘Loser.’

Team Trump’s response to the “losers and suckers” story has been as subtle, insightful, and truthful as always. #sarcasm. Note that in every controversy the Trumpers are the only ones who ever tell the truth despite the 20,000+ documented lies told by the Impeached Insult Comedian since he took office. I wonder what Trump’s lifetime lie count is. We know what the American COVID body count is: 189,000 and counting.

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – mendacious mediocre militia morons edition

2020-09-06T16:06:01Z

A short one this week, good people – bear with me.

Militia members face gun charges, alleged to have come to Kenosha ‘to pick people off’
Fox News ^ | 9/4/2020 | Louis Casiano

Posted on 9/4/2020, 8:38:56 PM by Blood of Tyrants

A pair of Missouri residents connected to a militia group traveled to Kenosha, Wis., amid demonstrations over the police shooting of Jacob Blake “to loot and possibly ‘pick people off,'” according to a federal criminal complaint.

Michael Karmo, 40, and Cody Smith, 33, both of Hartville, Mo., were arrested Tuesday at a hotel in Kenosha County on federal charges of illegal possession of firearms. Both men are barred from possessing firearms because of past criminal convictions.

Karmo has prior convictions for vehicle theft, evading a peace officer resulting in injury or death and burglary, among other crimes. Smith has a domestic battery conviction.

According to the complaint, the Kenosha Police Department informed the FBI that a law enforcement agency in Iowa received a tip that the pair were traveling to the city with firearms. The FBI obtained messages between Karmo and the tipster, some of which showed Karmo posing with what appeared to be a rifle and drum-style magazine, the complaint said.

1 posted on 9/4/2020, 8:38:56 PM by Blood of Tyrants

Oops.

Maybe it’s fake news?

I guess not.

To: Blood of Tyrants

If this gets “legs”, someone will braid them, “white supremacists”. Count on the lie

2 posted on 9/4/2020, 8:41:07 PM by griswold3 (Democratic Socialism is Slavery by Mob Rule)

You silly person. Would a white supremacist use this hand gesture?

To: Blood of Tyrants

Sounds like Auntie-Fa to me.

3 posted on 9/4/2020, 8:41:44 PM by wastedyears (The left would kill every single one of us and our families if they knew they could get away with it)

Doesn’t it, now?

To: Blood of Tyrants

What militia do these two belong to?

11 posted on 9/4/2020, 8:53:35 PM by Not A Snowbird (I trust President Trump.)

To: Not A Snowbird

The article claims they belong to the 417 second amendment militia in Missouri.

12 posted on 9/4/2020, 8:57:32 PM by virgil (The evil that men do lives after them)

The “417 second amendment militia in Missouri” has a dark shadows secret – they’re not really a militia!
.

To: Blood of Tyrants

Nope.

Not militia.

Antifa.

53 posted on 9/4/2020, 11:04:03 PM by metmom (…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.)

“Antifa”?

You misspelled “Blue Lives Matter”.

Note the flag and the cop cosplay :

To: Blood of Tyrants

Probably undercover feds.

41 posted on 9/4/2020, 9:38:30 PM by Farcesensitive (K is coming)

.
I’m thinking not.

To: Blood of Tyrants

This story has an odor about it. The facts are wrong or manipulated. What say ye??

31 posted on 9/4/2020, 9:29:10 PM by elpadre

I’m saying: “Guilty”.

See you good people next Monday – enjoy the fruits of your Labor Day!
.