TACO Man – BONUS POST

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It might be recalled that “TACO” stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Here’s a song about that.

TACO MAN

sung to the tune of “Rocket Man” with apologies to Elton John, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

He packed the Court to fight for the Right.

Gaining power, getting old.

And his proposals will mo-o-ost, likely be put on-hold.

He repulses the earth so much, left by his wives.

He’ll go lonely to his grave, from all his li-i-fe-long fights.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

Mar-a-Lago ain’t the right place to hide secret-documents.

By the way, where’s the Wall?

Vance will be there, to raise taxes, you-know he must.

And all the academics, Trump doesn’t understand.

He relies on defamers eight days a week.

TACO man, TACO man.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time…

The Playbook

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The Book of the Week is “The Playbook, A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War” by James Shapiro, published in 2024.

In the 1930’s, American president FDR implemented programs to help the unemployed during the Great Depression. One was the Works Progress Administration, a sub-program of which, Federal Theater (hereinafter referred to as “FT”), put thousands of people to work. However, there were numerous complications every time the group wanted to put on a play, because there were a dozen unions with whom to negotiate.

FT produced thought-provoking shows that starkly portrayed the dangers and immorality of fascism, totalitarianism, slavery, racism, etc. It risked having its funding cut for its political correctness. In autumn 1936, FT was able to stage the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here because MGM had decided not to make a movie of it.

FT opened the inflammatory play in eighteen big cities across America. In Seattle the cast was inter-racial. New York City performed the play in Yiddish. The traveling version lasted 133 performances. Fortunately, audiences interpreted the play all different ways politically.

In September 1937, FDR signed affordable-housing (what activists for the downtrodden would call “gentrification”) legislation that was diluted due to fears of:

  • government competition with the private sector;
  • over-regulation;
  • budgetary excesses;
  • and Southern states’ getting short shrift because they were more rural than urban.

In response to the above, in 1938, FT staged One Third of a Nation. That theatrical production demonstrated how stakeholders treated America’s slums, which accounted for where one third of the nation’s population resided, according to FDR, as of early 1937.

The movie version was Hollywoodized– its funders were purchasers of distressed assets and profiteers. They made it a story about poor whites with a romantic subplot involving a “kindly capitalist” (the absentee landlord, or in the real world– a slumlord). A suicidal arsonist prompted the landlord to rebuild the place with trees and a playground. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Anyway, FT’s most vicious enemy turned out to be Martin Dies, a U.S. Congressman from eastern Texas, first elected in 1930. He had the KKK mentality, with xenophobia and misogyny thrown in. In 1935, he got himself on the Rules Committee, the most powerful committee in the House.

Dies also fast-tracked his power accumulation with his endless persistence. In 1938, he finally got himself appointed the head of a special committee that investigated a hot-button political issue; this, by chance, through teaming up with the exact right person who could help him– Samuel Dickstein, a Congressman from New York City who was equally driven to amass power and attention. They secretly allied with vice president John Nance Garner, who was on their side.

By spring 1938, their committee was claiming it was trying to root out subversives, Fascists and Communists, and prevent violence at Nazi rallies in America’s streets. But they had questioned a politically active Nazi who stayed right under their noses, and they failed to investigate him further!

Their real motive was to execute a smear campaign against FDR himself, in addition to his New Deal, and unions. So FT became an easy target, too. Ironically, “He [Dies] envisioned the hearings touring nationally, moving from city to city, beginning on the West coast and ending back East.”

One of Dies’ star investigators, Hazel Huffman, ignorantly equated Progressivism, racial integration, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism with Communism in her testimony. She recited verbatim lines from the FT’s scripts, out of context as evidence of Communist propaganda. Dies backed her up. They were so entertaining– newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasters presented her nasty, biased utterances about the FT, as fact. Dies realized he needed to keeping directing fresh accusations at FT and the WPA to keep the media in his back pocket.

Read the book to learn yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, in terms of demagogues who use age-old propaganda techniques to amass sufficient power to commit crimes, oppress their fellow citizens, and spread hatred far and wide with total impunity.

(Knock Harvard Out) in Massachusetts – BONUS POST

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As is well known, the president is executing an evil plot against America’s institutions, and Harvard University is a major target. Here’s what Trump is singing that explains the situation.

(KNOCK HARVARD OUT) IN MASSACHUSETTS

sung to the tune of “(The Lights Went Out) in Massachusetts” with apologies to the Bee Gees and to whomever else the rights may concern.

I am getting back, at Massachusetts.

They were always telling me Harvard’s the best school.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

I hate the Left. I have standing to be cruel.

Also on my list is San Francisco.

Gotta give my cronies law-jobs to do.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

They bring me back, to sore spots in a state-of Blue.

Sack all the life out-of Massachusetts.

Freak out all the people I’ll unseat.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

And Massachusetts shows I hate the Kennedys.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

Troublemaker

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The Book of the Week is “Troublemaker, A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties” by Bill Zimmerman, published in 2011. The author was a true activist– he sacrificed his livelihood and risked his life to work for causes he believed in. Kudos to him.

In his twenties, the author made a major life-decision that made him look like a righteous prick (excuse the crudeness). He opposed the powers-that-be via participating in street demonstrations and civil disobedience. Later on, he felt he was more likely to change the world via engaging in humanitarian actions and working within the system.

Born in December 1940, Zimmerman grew up on Chicago’s West Side. In 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi, he helped African Americans register to vote. In May 1966, the author and other anti-Vietnam-War protesters occupied the administration building at the University of Chicago. He learned from an experienced activist, what to do in connection with making demands of the school officials, to get what they wanted.

President LBJ was running out of cannon fodder (who were mostly non-white, poor men) for his war in Vietnam. So he had the Selective Service System (the government’s military-draft authority) do away with students’ ability to defer their service until after graduating.

The older generation of men– WWII veterans– viewed draft dodgers as cowardly, unpatriotic and selfish. They were unaware that their tax dollars were paying for the U.S. military’s committing of atrocities; one kind involved torturing pairs of enemy soldiers (National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters) by taking them up in a helicopter, and throwing one out the door so the other would be terrorized into revealing his side’s State secrets.

The author wrote, “Flower power [a 1960’s idea pushed by antiwar activists and people in the counter-culture] meant freeing men from outdated norms of masculinity that sapped their sensitivity, their poetry, and their urge to share instead of dominate.”

It was widely known even then, that the three major ways to redistribute societal wealth, consist of: 1) reforming campaign financing practices so that election winners are those who get the most votes, not those who are wealthiest; 2) having the least unfair tax system– encouraging citizens to start entrepreneurial ventures via financial assistance while also taxing the super-rich on the back-end for having taken advantage of existing infrastructure and front-end incentives; and 3) having a social safety net for those individuals who have unluckily been born into sucky situations, and providing opportunities for everyone, as far as egalitarianism is possible.

As is well known, in the first half of the 1970’s, there were lots of behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving president Nixon’s sidekick Henry Kissinger, with his secret diplomatic missions and his role at the Paris Peace Talks, to purportedly end the Vietnam war. South Vietnam’s leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, ran a corrupt regime, and he was eventually forced into exile, compliments of American taxpayers.

That theme– the propaganda-suffused, and CIA-assisted ousting of various dictators around the world– had already become a cliche since the 1950’s. A Mad Lib could be made of it: “He then consoled himself by fleeing to ______ [a place that would accept him] with $_______ [money he had looted from his homeland that supplemented his offshore financial stashes, that also might serve as tax shelters if he had U.S. income] stolen from the aid the U.S. had given to _______ [his former territory].” In recent decades, for obvious reasons, there has been less of this Cold War nonsense.

Anyway, as is also well known, the Japanese in WWII dogmatically would have fought to the last man, guerrilla-style. It was known that America’s supposed enemies in Vietnam had the same mentality. Yet, regarding Vietnam, the unbloodied elites and chickenhawks in the U.S. government failed to take a lesson from both the WWII’s Japanese and from the French in Dien Bien Phu.

Fortunately, the vast majority of current world leaders have had enough of genocide and atrocities, and are ready to sit down at the bargaining table to negotiate the distribution of rare resources (especially those that will fulfill their energy needs) crucial to their homelands’ economic development for decades to come. Slowly but slowly, the world is making progress in the humanitarian arena.

Nevertheless, worldwide, human beings have evolved so that the super-rich now own:

  • show business;
  • professional sports teams;
  • gambling entities;
  • Silicon Valley, and
  • Wall Street.

They have become one big, incestuous network, married to politics. The situation has spawned excessive (especially in the United States):

  • pardoning of criminals;
  • lawsuits;
  • deregulation;
  • smearing;
  • lies;
  • conflicts of interest, and
  • deception via AI-generated images, and pre-recorded video clips (especially of the president!)

This calls for a funk reggae fusion rock parody.

ELITIST REVENUE

sung to the tune of “Electric Avenue” with apologies to Eddy Grant and whomever else the rights may concern.

[Ploys. Ploys.]

Now ov’r resources, there is violence.
And profi-TEER-ing to be done.
One hand washes the others.
And in charge, are fortunate sons. Oh, no

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Abortion, wars, and the border.
Can’t bear to watch a thing on TV.
In their world, it’s a challenge,
to push the envelope infinitely. Good God?

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

We’ve gone extreme in this country.
Money and revenge are job-one.
Lawyering and manipulation,
and our Constitution is done. Oh no

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Oh, Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.

Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…

Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.

AI is Fox’s playground, on the dark side all-around.

Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh yeah

Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…

$ $ $

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Zimmerman’s life and times.

Same Old Cock and Bull – BONUS POST

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Trump wanted to be Reagan, but he’s actually more like Nixon.

There will be an admission that the president is senile only after the president’s men and his propagandists have exhausted all means of profiteering and retaliation.

Moving on, midterm campaigning starts soon. Here’s a song about what to do.

SAME OLD COCK AND BULL

sung to the tune of “Old Time Rock and Roll” with apologies to Bob Seger and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Vote those BLEEPing profiteers out the DOOR.
I’m sick of the criminal West Wing core.
Today’s government sold its soul.
I hate the media’s cock and bull.

Don’t try to blame their predecessors.
Blame those cowards in Congress and the courts.
In mere minutes, I’ll ignore the attention whores.
I hate the media’s cock and bull.

Still hate the media’s cock and bull.
The system’s fat cats are full.
With this greedy crew, we have no pull,
just the same old cock and bull.

Want to HEAR ’em check all the FACTS.
Don’t want to see AI political hacks.
We’ll sue, impeach or vote OUT the claques and flacks.
Ignore the media’s cock and bull.

I’m e-gali-TAR-ian, no need to be cruel.
By democracy, we should be ruled.
Today’s government sold its soul.
I hate the media’s cock and bull.

Still hate the media’s cock and bull.
The system’s fat cats are full.
With this greedy crew, we have no pull,
just the same old cock and bull.

I hate the media’s cock and bull.
The system’s fat cats are full.
With this greedy crew, we have no pull,
just the same old cock and bull.

Still hate the media’s cock and bull.
The system’s fat cats are full.
With this greedy crew, we have no pull,
just the same old cock and bull.

Still hate the media’s cock and bull.
The system’s fat cats are full.
With this greedy crew, we have no pull,
just the same old cock and bull.

Still hate the media’s cock and bull…

Yankee From Olympus

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The Book of the Week is “Yankee From Olympus, Justice Holmes and His Family” by Catherine Drinker Bowden, published in 1944. The bulk of this volume recounted the lives of the members of Supreme-Court-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ family, beginning with his grandfather.

Born in March 1841 in the Boston area, Holmes was born to the white male privilege typical of his generation. His father was a prominent medical doctor. The Protestant Work Ethic dominated the aristocracy. Due to the potato famine in their homeland, Irish families were arriving on America’s shores in droves. “Boston had developed a caste system toward them almost like the Southern feeling for the Negro.” The South End neighborhood’s Irish boys threw hard snowballs or mud at boys such as Holmes, who attended private school.

Holmes acquired life-experience in psychological and physical trauma as an officer in the American Civil War. After his military discharge, he simply went over to Harvard Law School to sign up, paid the $100 a-year tuition, and in autumn 1864, began attending lectures. There was a total of three professors at the school. He didn’t need to take any tests, or do any assignments. Yes, times have changed.

Holmes practiced debating fellow students, though, and was told to read various texts written by law students or attorneys, that expounded on contracts, jurisprudence, or jurisdiction. At that time, academic culture consisted of males who were (presumably passionate about the law) mostly self-starters, sufficiently mature and disciplined to undertake independent study. Working at a law firm after graduating, Holmes became somewhat famous for writing articles for the Harvard Law Review.

Through the 1870’s, Holmes hated the drudgery of practicing law, and basically wanted to be a one-man legal think-tank. At the dawn of the 1880’s, he presented a Harvard lecture series to lawyers and their ilk, but his new theory was heretical for his generation. He suggested that public opinion should play a role in how the law was shaped. In 1882, as a Harvard law professor, he used the Socratic method along with the newly instituted case-analysis curriculum.

In 1904, a case reached the U.S. Supreme Court that tested the Sherman (antitrust) Act. If the monster-sized Northern Securities Company of merged railroads was going to restrain trade, then it should be dissolved. President Theodore Roosevelt believed in free-market competition and therefore became known as a monopoly-buster. But he was a political hack, and aroused public opinion whichever way was expedient for himself. Holmes (by then a Supreme Court justice) believed the law should be crafted pursuant to the economic tenor of the times, without regard to conscience, morality, politics, self-dealing or art.

Holmes was a quick study. He had already formed his opinion about each case before arguments of both sides were even finished. The other justices took months to give the impression that they had spent a long time thinking about a case, so as to come to the correct decision. That’s still the situation today.

The reason some justices make everyone wait, is that they use the delay as a form of control. Or, they are putting on a show of discussing weighty issues because they have big egos– they think they’re saving the world with their decisions, though some issues are not a matter of life and death, and affect only a tiny percentage of ordinary Americans. Anyway, Holmes’ fellow justices complained that his writings were too brief, so his meanings might be misconstrued.

As is well known, in early 1932, the United State was suffering extreme economic hardships from the Great Depression, at which time Holmes humbly realized he was no longer mentally competent to do the job of Supreme Court justice. The nation shuddered at the scary prospect that President Herbert Hoover got to choose the next justice. Ordinary Americans were crying out for more regulation. The Court already had a solid conservative majority, and adding another conservative would worsen most Americans’ situations by (excuse the cliche) making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Read the book to learn much, much more about the lives of the Holmes family members.