Goodheart
Goodheart's JournalElton John's 10 best songs
1- The Last Song: the saddest and the most uplifting thing I've ever heard. Bernie's lyrics are often overrated but on this one are pure genius. And, as always, Elton's tune is perfectly crafted around them. No bit of music has ever made me cry as much as this one.
2- Tiny Dancer: there's something a bit incongruous about a British voice singing to an L.A. Lady, but oh how it feels so real.
3- Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters: the lyrics about New York rival the pathos of Simon & Garfunkel's much better known "The Boxer" but this melody is sublime.
4- Empty Garden: I lean toward his sadder tunes.
5- Sacrifice: Keeping with my previously stated preference, I guess. This is a complex song about relationship complexities. Brilliant stuff.
6- Someone Saved My Life Tonight: Ditto.
7- Levon: Just beginning to realize I'll be leaving so many great tunes out of a Top Ten list.
8- Something About the Way You Look Tonight: takes my breath away
9- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: this one is a bit personal, about disillusionment and all that.
10- all the rest
The events that made you realize America is f'ing stupid?
Well, make that "Americans" are f'ing stupid. America as a country is a grand experiment, the greatest government concept in the history of the world. But many Americans don't deserve to live here.
I'm 70 years old... can't really recall the exact moment when I became so cynical... maybe it was inside a church, I don't recall....
But without question the two biggest AMERICANS ARE FUCKING STUPID ALMOST TO THE POINT OF EVIL events I know are:
- Sandy Hook and DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT.
- The election of a fat, ugly, moronic racist rapist to the presidency.
And it really tells you something when Uvalde can't make the top two.
Louisiana's dumbass Republican governor Jeff Landry calls for revoking scholarships
for any student athlete who misses the national anthem at sporting events.
Louisiana is at the bottom in so many categories: education, poverty, crime... and yet this jackass wants to focus on shit.
[link:
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How do we feel about Fischer v. United States?
Here's a Wikipedia summary of the matter.
[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_v._United_States|
My two cents:
Once again there was no valid reason the Supreme Court had to take up this case. The prevailing ruling at the moment is from the DC Court of Appeals, and as far as I know there are no competing rulings from other courts at the same level.
I genuinely feel that in taking this case the Supreme Court is attempting to impart some sort of legitimacy to the motives of the insurrectionists.
Also, if the guilt of a party is still an open question isn't it incumbent upon the Court to order the release of those prisoners? That really sticks in my craw.
Someone trying to sound smart, but writes like a tenth grader
Consider this sentence:
"The overall question presented depends too greatly on contested instructional questions about still-fluctuating definitions of statutory terms/phrases as charged, along with at least some disputed factual issues raised in the motion.”
I mean, who is that trying to impress? Because it sure looks fucking dumb to me.
Another point regarding Hur's assessment that Joe Biden has a bad memory
In his Special Counsel report Hur wrote about Biden’s "diminished faculties and faulty memory" and said Biden couldn’t remember when he was vice president or the year his son Beau died.
Joe Biden denied those allegations... and as it turns out, after release of the interview transcripts, rightfully so.
Within the transcripts is a mention by Hur to Biden that his memory was "photographic", and Adam Schiff blasted Hur yesterday for selectively excluding that remark from his final report. Also, the transcripts proved that Biden knew/knows the EXACT MONTH AND DAY of Beau's death, so Hur blatantly misrepresented Biden's memory of Beau.
But apart from the obvious smear for political reasons, one has to ask: why on earth was Hur asking about Beau's death in the first place? How was that fucking relevant to the matter of Biden possessing classified documents? Except that it was an intended trap... a trap that apparently failed... but then Hur lied about it, anyway.
Which leads me to a second question: why didn't Merrick Garland ask the same question I just asked? How was that relevant, Mr. Hur? Why did you go there, Mr. Hur?
Lots of anger here. At Hur. At Garland. I believe as Adam Schiff does: that Hur KNEW he was delivering a political hit job. And, sadly, I also believe Garland saw that and allowed it... UNREDACTED, at that.
(An aside about remembering dates and years... I remember months and days automatically and immediately, but not years. I remember my wedding anniversary, but have to re-compute the year I got married in my head... if such a need arises. Same for my son's birthday. Same for other events in my life. I'm very good at history, geography, match, science trivia and such, but I couldn't tell you right now automatically what year I had open heart surgery. It seems that I store permanently what can't be readily computed, and not those things that can be. I'm probably not alone in that, and I'm probably not alone in the fact that I'm far, far from demented. So, I know where Joe Biden is coming from... I suspect he's just like me in those regards. And there's an irony in all that: it's not a sign of mental decline that he pauses when asked for such and such year, but a confidence in his mental acuity to call those up as needed.)
On the role of luck in success, and why I'm a Democrat
I was born into a poor white family,. to parents who were Democrats in the Solid South of the Fifties, but who changed their party preference just as soon as LBJ flipped the switch on civil rights.
So, as a child I would go to school and see better-dressed and better-fed fellow students.... and if you've never been in that situation I'm here to tell you that it affects just about every aspect of your growing life. Your educational opportunities are fewer because you can't advance beyond public schools. Your economic opportunities are fewer because your exposure to business practices and income methods are limited. Even your relationship opportunities are affected, because children can be really petty about the clothes you wear, the car you don't have, the snacks you can't afford, the proms you can't attend. I'm ambivalent about the free lunches I received in public school because of our income level, but I was mortified on a daily basis when the teachers came around the room handing out those tokens that allowed me to eat.
Now, through all of that I never resented anybody for their fortune... never felt jealous.... only felt unlucky.
And as I grew older I became more and more convinced that society should try to take better care of people born into unfortunate circumstances, and that government should be the director of that care. And at the same time I grew more and more befuddled, and, quite frankly, disappointed in my own parents for being Republicans... for constantly voting against their own financial well-being for what I saw was a simple matter of race.... i.e. no matter how low they were on the white ladder of income, no matter how many meals their children missed, no matter that we didn't have hot running water to bathe, they felt themselves superior to black people. And, by golly, they wished to keep it that way.
So, I'm a Democrat. And that's because while I don't agree with every last policy procedure or bit of legislation, and while I see that Democratic politicians are at times just as greedy as their Republican counterparts, I also see that the Democratic Party mostly functions to mitigate the circumstances of social misfortune by providing safety nets and equalizing opportunities. The Republican Party, on the other hand, exists to magnify the causes of social and economic differences.
Well, this has gotten a bit more long winded than I planned. All of that, I confess, was my intro into a very interesting YouTube bit, that I hope you'll watch, about the role of luck vs. hard work as the reason for personal success. Republicans will have you believe that you are what you make yourself to be, and while I find myself in old age financially secure through a bit of determination, study, craftiness, I couldn't have achieved this security without educational grants. This video shows how wrong Republicans are... in a pure mathematical sense:
[link:
Saw something in Savannah today... made my day.
Driving out of town southward on Ogeechee Rd (US Hwy 17) and lo and behold was a very prominent billboard of donald trump with Jeffrey Epstein, sponsored by protecthechildren.org
haha!
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