Tag: Constitution

Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Coffeemated

Another Saturday has been found. Calendarologists have identified it as August 31, 2024, the last Saturday of the month. In a weird twist, the last Saturday of August is also part of the four day Labor Day weekend in ‘Merica. It seems too soon to me, but I was not consulted.

Gonna be a hot one, I won’t lie. Thermostat is expected to shy away from 100 degrees F by one or two degrees. Then it’ll drop 30 to 40 degrees for the night again. The air is clear, though, my friends, and satisfactory for breathing.

Saw a post today where a friend shared. It said, “The U.S.A. is not a Christian nation. But it is a nation where you are free to be Christian.” Someone else commented, “Sort of. The founding fathers believed that our rights are given to us by God not government, the constitution is to protect those rights by limiting the government from infringing on those God given rights.” They then added a link.

I think the poster sharing the link misses the point. The original post states, it’s not a Christian nation, but you’re free to be a Christian. Nothing in Anthony J. Minna’s stance, who wrote the linked article, changes that point.

“The Declaration contains several other references to a higher power. The introduction states that the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle the American people to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the conclusion, Congress appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of its intentions and professes its “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” In each case, reference to a deity serves to validate the assertion of independence.

“The genius of the Declaration is the inclusive way the divine is given expression. The appellations of God are generic. Adherents of traditional theistic sects can read the words “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge,” and understand them to mean the god they worship. The claims made on numerous Christian websites attest to this. Yet opponents of dogma read those same words and see an embracive, non-sectarian concept of divinity. This is no small testimony to the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers. All Americans could support the Revolution and independence. All can regard their rights as unalienable, their liberty as inviolable.

“Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution contains no reference to God. At first, this may seem odd. Why did the men who drafted the Declaration invoke a Supreme Being several times, while the men who drafted the Constitution did not mention a higher power even once? Only six individuals signed both documents, so it could be hypothesized that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia in 1787 were a different and less religious group than the delegates to the Continental Congress, or perhaps that the delegates to the Continental Congress were savvy freethinkers cynically manipulating people’s belief in God to win support for their overthrow of British rule. Neither explanation holds water. Some of the Founders were conventional Christians and some were not, but the belief in a deity implied in the Declaration was sincere and likely universal among the delegates to both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. And a belief in the possibility of divine favor was held by even some of the least religious Founders.”

Added emphasis is mine.

Therein is one of the problems of many Christians in the United States. They read or hear of God and think of their own Christian God and the concept of creation of their Christian God. They fall to think of other creation myths which exist. There are over one hundred out there. Naturally, they don’t consider any other God, either; nor do they consider proponents or followers of other relations. That’s why, when they pass laws about religions, they’re often shocked when other religions begin using the law to further their own religion’s tenets and principles, such as mine, Pastafarianism.

Enough of that. We went to the OSF Green Show last night to see B.O.O.M. Cloudless, with the sun going down and the heat creeping down from the low nineties, it was a gorgeous night to be on the green listening to tunes. B.O.O.M’s name translates to Brothers of Other Mothers. But they’ve added a female drummer. The name is under re-consideration. They mentioned B.O.S.O.O.M.: Brothers or Sister of Other Mothers.

Whatever they called themselves, their show was fun and energetic. Highlights for me was fast paced, ripping “One Way Out” originally by the Allman Brothers Band. The penultimate song, I would have been satisfied if they ended there but they finished with a rousing rendition of Elvis Costello “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?”

I’m finishing my theme week – well, a week and one day – of songs with time in the title with Nick Waterhouse and “It’s Time” from 2016. I first heard this song on the Reacher television series. As I thought about ‘time’ theme songs early this A.M., The Neurons blew this one off and played it in the morning mental music stream (Trademark postmarked). It’s a jazz-infused pop offering to me and I like it.

Stay positive, remain strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. I’ve been nursing coffee, or it’s been nursing me. Time to giddy-up. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: bumgry (bummed out and angry; could be depgry – depressed and angry)

Julying if you say you didn’t realize June was over. Yes, that’s a feeble attempt at levity.

It’s July 1, 2024, and Monday, a day which will go do in infamy, perhaps, with the SCOTUS rulings. It’s 70 F now, sunny under a preternatural blue sky sky, and feels like 82. Today’s high will crank us into the mid 80s. But we’re sailing into the hundreds by mid week and then look at residing in the upper 90s thereafter. Little relief will come at night as temps hang around the neighborhood of high sixties to low 70s. This will be a bake off.

Over to the SCOTUS ruling on Trump’s immunity, it was as bad as Democrats fucking feared. The skewering of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights continues under MAGA Republican influence. Depressing as hell to witness this, to be part, unable to do much except vote and protest. I continue to blame Mitch McConnell for manipulating Senate procedures and blocking Democratic nominees to the Supreme Court. I hope he rots in fucking hell.

I’m just full of bellyaches today. No wonder that I have Talking Heads and “Road to Nowhere” from 1985 in my morning mental music stream (Trademark sent down).

Coffee has been consumed. Here’s the music. Enjoy the “joyful look at doom.” See you later.

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The Editorial

First, I know I’m always hard on the NYTimes. But they frequently give me cause. For example, a reporter this week wrote about how diverse Iowa is, and how well it represents America. Iowa, with its about 86% white population. (Yes, that’s just one aspect of diversity, but it’s a pretty striking one.) I know it sent progressives like me flocking to the net to check that declaration about Iowa’s diversity.

Of course, sites like MediaBiasFactCheck lists the NYTimes as left-biased. That amuses me; I think it highlights just how much to the right the United States actually leans. Compare it to Europe and what I read in newspapers based in Europe, and I see far less of a leftist bias.

That aside, the NYTimes has an editorial up this week titled, “The Responsibility of Republican Voters“.

Editorials like these are like shouting into a snowy hurricane; MAGA and the Republicans who keep supporting Trump or giving him cover aren’t interested in his failings. They simply want to stay in power, perhaps to correct wrongs they perceive after being fed a diet of lies by Trump and the GOP to validate their impressions, or to stick it to the libs — a comment I often see — without realizing that Trump is a beast beyond their control. As he’s done several times, if someone does something he doesn’t like, he turns on them and attacks. Besides all of that, he doesn’t keep any promises and is a vain, shallow person who’s thinking rarely advances past what is good for himself.

The Editorial Board points all this out and more in their editorial, highlighting Trump’s disrespect and disregard of the powers and rule of law spelled out by the Constitution and court rulings, and how this is so different from most other lawmakers.

‘When the Supreme Court delivered a sharp setback to President George W. Bush in 2008, ruling that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Bush administration accepted the ruling. Senator John McCain, then the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, said he disagreed with the court, “but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made, and now we need to move forward.”

‘By contrast, as president, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the integrity of other government officials — including members of Congress, Federal Reserve governors, public health authorities and federal judges — and disregarded their authority. When the court ruled that the Trump administration could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, for example, Mr. Trump announced that he intended to ignore the court’s ruling. After leaving the White House, Mr. Trump refused repeated demands, including a grand jury subpoena, to return classified materials to the government. As the government investigated, he called on Congress to defund the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice “until they come to their senses.”’

Nice to see the NYTimes step out of their bothsiderism cocoon. It would have helped if their reportage and commentary was sharper and more on point in the past. Instead, they worked hard to project themselves as balanced and neutral. Despite that, the modern right mocks mass media and publications like the NYTimes as fake news, left-leaning, or progressive. Trump himself escalated those attacks since he entered politics.

From the NYTimes of Feb 20, 2019:

‘Even by his standards, President Trump’s biting attacks on the press this week stand out.

‘He has praised a libel lawsuit against The Washington Post, called for “retribution” against NBC for satirizing him on “Saturday Night Live” and, on Wednesday, issued his sharpest words yet against The New York Times, calling the newspaper “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”’

In reading the article from 2019 again, it was nice to see that they didn’t say anything about the other side doing the same.

I don’t know about you, but reading posts, comments, and articles about Trump supporters doesn’t lead me to believe they’re open-minded, critical thinking individuals. I think that those people who the editorial addresses are not likely to read it. Those few who do will most likely defend Trump and jump into the bothsiderism which plagues the NYTimes and many other mass media outlets, accusing Democrats and President Biden of being worse than Trump.

Just read the comments on the editorial and you’ll see.

Despite my criticisms of the NYTimes, I am happy to see the editorial, as it validates my impressions of Trump as lawless, and not the primary enforcer of the law which this nation needs. Though it addresses people who will disregard their advice, the rest of agree, it needed to be said.

Yes, it’s all complex, isn’t it?

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Excitgry (excited but hungry)

Light rain and gray clouds sang in Tuesday’s entrance on January 9, 2024. Snow is gone from the valley floor. Fog veils the mountains and ridges so I don’t know what the situation is up there. Gloomy is the word, the word that you heard. It speaks to the day’s general malaise, weather-wise. It is 39 F now, humming along to a 44 F high. My floofs are nestled into comfortable niches where they can sleep in warmth and safety.

Pretty much as expected, Republicans are descending into tit-for-tat politics, talking about trying to remove President Biden from the POTUS ballots in several states, reflecting their deranged approach to politics. “Because you removed Trump!” they whine. “Because look at what Biden is doing to the border,” they declare. “And his birth certificate. I mean, her emails. I mean, Hunter Biden.”

They’re descending into a new low level, setting themselves up as a punch line in history books. “Look at how they used to act,” people will say, discussing the GOP of this era. “How did they become so lost and confused about what was going on? What happened to their principles and leadership?” We in this era reply, they became consumed with desire to be in power. “Power tends to corrupt,” Lord Acton wrote in a previous century, summarizing what others had observed. Power tends to corrupt. That seems to be what we’re seeing in the GOP as they corrupt their values and principles to stay in power, no matter how they malign the ideal the founders established, no matter how far their behavior guides them from the principles they claim to uphold.

Of course, their hold on what is ‘supposed to be’ regarding our founders’ intentions are as nebulous as a kitten’s grip on their own tail. Can you imagine what the founders would be saying to Lauren Boebert after she declared that she was tired of this separation of church and state junk?

I can’t honestly say, though. I only wonder. I don’t know how they, the founders, would say to multiple arguments of this modern era. What would they say to the “Moms of Liberty” for banning ideas and books? How would they respond to Republicans like DeSantis declaring what parts of history should not be taught? And I don’t know how the founders would stand regarding the mass murders with automatic weapons that happen so routinely in the US in this ‘modern age of reason’. I like to think that the founders would be horrified and take action to stop it, but then, I thought the GOP, the ‘pro-life’ party as they call themselves without irony, would be horrified by the murders, deaths, and sorrows, and take some action. I just can’t gauge the depths of the GOP’s corruption, hypocrisy, and cynicism. Each time that I believe they’ve hit bottom, they go lower.

And of course, pundits are wondering, what will happen if Trump runs for POTUS in 2024 and loses? Will the GOP peacefully support the result, accept defeat, and continue with governing? Or will they go full-blown rebellion and insurrection? There is enough darkness glimmering in the MAGA base frothing at Trump’s whiney ‘campaigning’ that there is serious reason to believe they’ll go Jan 6 once again but escalate it to new levels of violence.

Meanwhile, a fragment of them will say the Pledge of Allegiance, loudly enunciating, “Under God”, and then talk about how they hate Democrats, and want to kill them or send them to another country. Do they have any self-awareness?

Beyond all that, The Neurons have the Eagles singing the 1980 song, “I Can’t Tell You Why”, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark separated). The Neurons had caught on with my thinking — they can be sharp at times — about not being able to comprehend and explain things. I can’t tell you why Republicans let Justice Clarence Thomas remain in office as revelations of his relationship with wealthy Republican patrons generate concern about Thomas’s ethics. I can’t tell you why they let Thomas remain involved in cases regarding Trump as POTUS in the face of revelations about his wife’s role. I can’t tell you why they turn a blind eye to Trump’s bullshit. I can declare it’s politics as usual, but it’s not the kind of politics seen in this nation for several decades. I thought, and it seems I was naive, that we as a political body, no matter the party, had evolved past that. Of course, I never foresaw what social media, AI, and web bots would do to our political discourse. I never foresaw people who weren’t being treated for mental issues clinging to insane conspiracy theories, and I can’t tell you why they cling to them. All I can do is make up my own theories.

Ah, well, time to shuffle news and politics aside and rebalance myself. Coffee helps, of course. Stay pos, be strong, and keep leaning forward. Don’t let yourself get too wrapped up in the minutiae of trying to understand and explain why. Keep your eye on our own shared goals of freedom, justice, democracy, and equality, and the idea that we should all enjoy them. I once read that those are pretty good ideals to chase.

Here’s the music. Admire the Eagle’s youth seen in this video, and remember. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: impetuous

We’re here until we’re not.

Slipperday, October 28, 2023, skated into Ashlandia, where people walk carefully in the shadows, wary that their feet will find ice and take them down. Spiky clumps of green grass stand tall, sprayed white, and stiff with cold. A wind keen with an icy edge lashes the house. It’s 31 F outside but no fear; sunshine is lifting over the trees and mountains. Soon the sun will gain enough elevation to pump some heat into the moment. We’ll be sizzling in the mid-50s F by the mid afternoon.

Warmer weather is on the way. November’s early days next week will take us into the mid to upper sixties as autumn entertains a last hurrah before December flexes in. All we can do is watch and adjust, and brace for holidays.

I have “Burning Down the House” by Talking Heads ringing out in the morning mental music stream (Trademark burning). The Neurons put it in there after a convo with friends and general remarks made about GOP intentions. Some thought they were burning down the house, others posited they were burning down the government, burning down the country, burning down the world, through their calculated disinterest, continuing efforts to manufacture and stoke divisions and fears.

The song title and repeating phrase, “Burning down the house,” is a metaphor as I understand it, about the house not burning down but being torn apart. In an interview heard years ago, David Byrne, who wrote the song, said it was also about schizophrenia.

Ah
Watch out, you might get what you’re after
Cool, babies – strange but not a stranger
I’m an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

[Verse 2]
Hold tight, wait till the party’s over
Hold tight, we’re in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

[Chorus 1]
Here’s your ticket, pack your bag, it’s time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far, maybe you know where you are
Fighting fire with fire, ah!

[Verse 3]
All wet, here, you might need a raincoat
Shake-down, dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty-five degrees
Burning down the house

[Chorus 2]
It was once upon a place, sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work say, “Baby, what did you expect?”
Gonna burst into flame, ah

Burning down the house

[Verse 4]
My house is out of the ordinary
That’s right, don’t wanna hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

[Chorus 3]
No visible means of support and you have not seen nothing, yet
Everything’s stuck together
I don’t know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire, ah

So it seems apt as a theme song. We have elected officials in the form of Republicans (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Ross, Lauren Boebert) who don’t understand the Constitution or are willing to dismiss it (and people’s rights) for the expediency of their own religion, rights, and privilege. There’s the schizophrenic part – elected to serve but instead tearing the government down – as well as the tearing down the house aspect.

I think The Neurons made a superb choice, and this live video is sharp with sound and energy.

Stay pos, be strong, and keep moving forward. Freshly delivered coffee will fuel my flight today. Here’s the music. Cheers

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