dreaminginthedeepsouth

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bill Evans

+

"Actually, I'm not interested in Zen that much, as a philosophy, nor in joining any movements. I don't pretend to understand it. I just find it comforting. And very similar to jazz. Like jazz, you can't explain it to anyone without losing the experience. It's got to be experienced, because it's feeling, not words". 

- Bill Evans [Bill Evans Legacy Organization]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Joan Miro :: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

* * * *

You have an inclination: In the flash of one second, you feel what needs to be done. It is not a product of your education; it is not scientific or logical; you simply pick up on the message. And then you just act: You just do it. That basic human quality of suddenly opening up is the best part of human instinct.

-Trungpa

[Alive On All Channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. They taught me I had a language in heaven and another language on earth.”

― Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Orgyan Chopel Thangkas doorofperception.com

* * *

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. "

 -- Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House. +

"In my own effort towards concentration, help is also offered through nature itself, life itself—whenever I can remain permeable to the deeply revealing impressions that it never ceases to provide. Therefore, my only concern should be to try and stay attentive to the wordless call from that which is always there, waiting for recognition."

~ Henri Tracol [Ian Sanders]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Duchamp bajando una escalera. Nueva York. 1952. Foto de Eliot Elisofon.

* * * *

“Non-verbal behaviour, language, facial expression, intonations and gestures are instrumental in establishing complex contradictory, predominantly emotional relations between people and between man and the world. How frequently a touch by the shoulder, a handshake or a look tell more than can be expressed in a long monologue. Not because our speech is not accurate enough. Just the contrary. It is precisely its accuracy and definiteness that make speech unsuited for expressing what is too complex, changeful and ambiguous.” ― Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

More accurate ....

* * * *

TRUMP OPENS FIRE ON THE MEDIA

TCinLA

Dec 17, 2024

The point is not necessarily winning. The point is fear. Now that Disney has surrendered and paid their initiation fee, Trump is ready to commit more extortion, er, I mean start more lawsuits.

In his rambling fact-challenged press conference yesterday, Trump targeted Bob Woodward, CBS, and the Pulitzer Board for awarding its 2018 Prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for their coverage of Trump’s campaign, the Steele Dossier, and the Mueller investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election. Trump also described recent visits from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and other tech barons. “In the first term, everyone was fighting me. In this term, everyone wants to be my friend.”

On Monday night, less than 48 hours after securing a $15 million settlement from ABC News, Trump filed a lawsuit in Iowa District Court accusing venerated pollster Ann Selzer and her polling company - and well as The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett - of “brazen election interference” and “consumer fraud” over her November 2 poll showing Kamala Harris winning by 3 points in Iowa.

Whether Seltzer’s polling error constitutes an “election-interfering fiction,” as the suit alleges, is now the question before a Polk County court. Iowa lacks an anti-SLAPP law, a protection that gives judges the ability to swiftly toss out frivolous attacks on free speech. Trump’s newest legal adventure leans on an extremely aggressive reading of Iowa’s consumer fraud law intended to prevent businesses from making misrepresentations to deceive purchasers.

Selzer’s spent three decades in the polling business and boasts an A+ rating from Nate Silver, Her sterling reputation was the main reason why many in Washington and the media took her startling Iowa result at least somewhat seriously. Even among veteran political operators who wrote off the Harris +3 number as an outlier, the prospect that pollsters might be significantly undercounting Democratic votes fomented a temporary media narrative that Kamala’s campaign had crucial momentum heading into the final days of the race.

Two weeks after the election, Selzer announced she would be retiring from the polling business to explore “other ventures and opportunities,”a decision she said she made last year. “Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course,” she wrote in a guest essay for The Des Moines Register. “It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite.”

Trump was still fuming over the last-minute narrative shift that the poll generated. He now appears eager to run up the score.

Ahead of filing the lawsuit Monday evening, Trump previewed his plans in an afternoon press conference. “We have to straighten out our press,” he said. “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

Besides the ABC News suit, Trump is suing CBS News for $10 billion for the way it edited Bill Whitaker’s 60 Minutes interview with Harris - claiming the edited broadcast amounted to “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.” He is now pursuing a case against the Pulitzer Prize board for awards to journalists from The New York Times and Washington Post who investigated his ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Never before has a candidate sued a pollster for setting off a negative news cycle. Typically, if a pollster is wrong, their reputation suffers, but they are rarely blamed for damaging a campaign.

The Des Moines Register said they stand by their reporting and believe a lawsuit would be “without merit.” It will be interesting to see what Gannet does here - they are a major company in the news business without other corporate interests.

As with Trump’s other lawsuits against media organizations, the objective isn’t to win but to intimidate.

Litigation is expensive for all parties, especially in high-profile cases such as those involving a former and future president, even if the suit is ultimately found to be frivolous. There is also the burden of the discovery process, which is always invasive and frequently ugly. Already, nervousness is spreading, with media companies preparing for litigation targeting journalists, including charges like defamation or even violations of the Espionage Act. Axios recently told its staff to expect an increased number of lawsuits from the Trump administration.

The fact that Trump has filed litigation against Selzer, and 60 Minutes could undercut his argument he’s too busy as president-elect to shoulder the burdens of civil litigation.

The two dominant theories about ABC’s surrender are that either Trump has unearthed potentially damaging information or correspondence at ABC News that Disney doesn’t want revealed, or that this is CEO Bob Iger’s gesture to Trump to avoid his vengeance and the lightning-rod spectacle of a public trial against a sitting president. Iger, since he returned to Disney, has been willing to placate the right to keep the company out of its crosshairs He knows he can’t give $1 million to Trump’s inauguration without causing an internal firestorm, and he hasn’t made his own tail-between-legs pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago. But he knows this settlement is a way to buy some insurance for the next four years. The question is how much goodwill it actually buys. If Trump sees an opportunity to benefit from attacking Disney, he’ll do it, regardless of Disney’s surrender.

Michelle Goldberg wrote of these events, Collectively, all these elite decisions to bow to Trump make it feel like the air is going out of the old liberal order. In its place will be something more ruthless and Nietzschean.”

Anne Applebaum, an expert on descents into authoritarianism, said, “Many people assumed in the past that the news media in the United States was too big, too diverse, and too complex to be intimidated.”

So much for that cornerstone of democracy.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” - Edmund Burke

“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' - Winston Churchill

[TCinLA]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[from my files:: the bird girl :: Bonaventure cemetery Savannah Ga ::]

* * * *

For instance, in his wonderful early poem, “Wrestling Angels,” a crew of vandals and thieves has gone into a cemetery (presumably Rose Hill Cemetery off Riverside Drive in Macon).

*

Only the ironwork will bring us money, ornamental sofas overlooking graves, black-flowered fences planted in marble, occasionally an urn or a bronze star.

But if there is time we shatter the hourglasses, slaughter lambs asleep on children’s graves, break the blades off stone scythes, the marble strings on silent lyres. Only the angels are here to stop us, and they have grown too weak to wrestle. We break their arms and leave them wingless, leaning over graves like old men lamenting their age.

[by David Bottoms]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi-disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden Brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams.

These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter.”

- Sir Noel Coward, born December 16, 1899.

(Sherry Baker)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.”

~ Peter Brook

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Stress Response

* * * *

“The best thing for anthropocentric dread, for individual anguish, for heartbreak, for illness, is interrupting your individuality. When you cannot walk, cannot move, cannot leave your bed you do not need to find a tree or landscape or butterfly to be. You can be a mote of dust. A potato bug vaulting across the room. The ten fungal spores that scintillate in each one of your inhalations. The anarchic bacterial legacy that melted into your very molecular makeup. The yellowjacket tapping his armored body against the closed window. Sometimes the answer is not to problematize your wounding, but to slip through it like a doorway into otherness. Other minds. Other types of anguish. Other animals and insects going extinct. Birds singing out courtship songs to mates that will never arrive.”

— Sophie Strand, The Birth of The Flowering Wand [astranemus]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I must take the responsibility for how, mark my word, "how" I react to the forces that impinge upon my life, forces that are not responsive to my will, my desire, my ambition, my dream my hope- forces that don’t know I’m here.

But I know I’m here.

And I decide whether I will say yes or no, and make it hold. This is indeed a free man (person), and this is anticipated in the genius of the dogma of freedom as a manifestation of the soul of America, born in what to me is one of the greatest of the great experiments in human relations.

America In Search Of A Soul (January 20, 1976) University of Redlands Redlands, California

[Howard Thurman]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.”

—Hunter S. Thompson

[Poetic Outlaws]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Trump's press conference on Monday

Trump gave a meandering press conference in which he said many stupid things because he was asked questions by the media that baited him into making stupid statements.

Trump said the following:

He would consider privatizing the US Postal Service.

Regarding the disproven link between vaccines and autism, Trump said, “There’s something wrong and we’re going to find out about it.”

Republican Senators who oppose Trump's nominees would find themselves with a Republican primary opponent.

Hamas must release all hostages before January 20, 2025, or “all hell is going to break out.”

Trump suggested the Biden knew the nature and purpose of the drones sighted on the East Coast but wasn’t sharing the information with the public.

Trump claimed that Elon Musk would be able to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget “with no impact on people.”

But among the most idiotic statements Trump made during the press conference were three threats against the press:

He threatened to sue the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll before the election that showed him losing the state to Kamala Harris. See HuffPo, 'Election Interference': Trump Threatens To Sue Des Moines Register Over Poll.

He also threatened to sue CBS 60 Minutes for editing its interview with Kamala Harris. Emboldened by ABC settlement, Trump threatens more lawsuits against the press | CNN Business

And he threatened to sue the Pulitzer Foundation for awarding the NYTimes a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump's 2016 campaign.

Trump's threats are apparently motivated by ABC’s $15 million settlement payment in his defamation suit against George Stephanopoulos. In Trump's reptilian mind, “Lawsuit = $15 million, therefore repeat.” See Harry Litman on Substack, Talking Feds, Et Tu, ABC?

ABC’s surrender taught Trump that “threats work.” That is why “obeying in advance” harms democracy—and why the collapse of the billionaire class and corporate leaders has been disheartening. We must not make the same mistake. Do not “obey in advance.” Resist. Oppose. Speak the truth. Never surrender.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

THE RESULT OF THE DISNEY SURRENDER

TCinLA

Dec 16, 2024

The thing many people miss in looking at Hitler’s takeover of Germany is how fast it happened. Within 30 days of his acceptance of the Chancellorship on January 31, 1933, the Reichtag had passed the Enabling Act in the aftermath of the Reichstag Fire, which enabled Hitler to rule by decree. Before real resistance could be organized, it had been kneecapped.

Within weeks after that, trade unions and the Christian Democrat, the Socialist and the Communist parties had all been declared illegal. Hitler had wiped out his political opposition by mid April. The first prisoners arrived at Dachau concentration camp the first week of May - they were all political prisoners; any Jew among them was there for politics.

A similar speedy move against political opponents is building within the coming Trump administration.

For years, Trump has brought defamation suits against news organizations who have demonstrated their temerity in accurately reporting his crimes. All have been unsuccessful because the organizations he sued said on being served the papers for the suit, “See you in court.” Trump always dropped the suit when it got to the point he was going to have to sit for a deposition, because every lawyer who represented him knew he couldn’t survive a deposition; on the very few occasions where he did sit for a deposition, he was caught perjuring himself.

Until this past weekend. Until Disney - a company with a market cap of $200 billion - decided that $16 million was “the cost of doing business,” chump change, and settled a suit they had every likelihood of winning, a suit Trump was likely to drop this week after a judge ordered him last Friday to sit for a deposition no later than this coming Friday.

Disney isn’t in the news business. They own ABC and a few other “news” organizations, but those entities are not major revenue centers. Disney is in the business of running parks like Disney World and Disneyland, and they are not interested in being targeted again as they were by Governor DeSantis in Florida.

So they settled. As Josh Marshall put it today, the $16 million was their initiation fee for joining TrumpWorld.

Several legal commentators have recently written about the possibility that Disney settled because they were worried that if they did win with the New York Times v Sullivan defense - which they almost certainly would have - that Trump would appeal his loss to the Supreme Court, where two of “his” six judges have already expressed a willingness to return to Times v Sullivan with a view to overturning it and getting rid of the “actual malice” rule regarding public persons suing for defamation.

A return to “ordinary” defamation, where all a litigant needs to establish is that the defamatory statement made is false, with no reference to “actual malice,” would mean that news organizations would pull back from aggressive investigations of individuals like Trump. We would experience a sharp drop in press freedom to publish.

However, Disney’s surrender also creates a precedent that leaves an opening for politically-motivated defamation suits. The result of this is also that news organizations will be reluctant to aggressively pursue a story, since their corporate owners who are not in the news business and do not care about freedom of the press, may not choose to support the news organization they own in such a fight.

In other words, heads Trump wins and tails Trump wins.

The Disney surrender is almost as good as the Supreme Court overturning Times v Sullivan in intimidating news organizations.

Saturday night, Steve Bannon spoke at the Gala put on by the New York City Young Republicans. The Guardian reported what he said:

“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal. They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.

“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC, and Rachel Maddow, and all of them?

“We want all your emails, all your text messages, everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monaco and Jack Smith.”

Rachel Maddow may be “The $100 million woman” of progressive media, but she and others not as well-situated as she is have to wonder if their corporate overlords will defend them against spurious conspiracy charges, as news organizations would have in the days before the billionaires’ takeover of mainstream media. In Maddow’s case, would whatever is left of MSNBC - after the company was put in Brian Roberts’ “SpinCo” and separated from Comcast-Universal - have the resources to be able to do so? Would the Intergalactic Widgetmaker that purchases the “SpinCo” be willing to invest their resources in her defense? Would ABC risk having Trump’s FCC commissioners pull its broadcast license for defending Jake Tapper?

And after they’re finished ripping apart the major media, what happens to Meidas Network?

I am not advocating surrender. It will take awhile for them to work their way down to That’s Another Fine Mess, and in the meantime their corruption and incompetence in all else they try to do will be working against them. We of the new “alternative media” will likely survive by being the small mammals who stay out of the meadow where the big dinosaurs stomp.

I am pointing out that despite their corruption and incompetence, their inabilities to work and play well with others that will tie them in knots of their own making, there is a lot of chaos MAGA can create while they ultimately tear themselves apart.

And that chaos will only be strengthened by the willingness of billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg - who have bigger fish to fry than defending the free flow of information, and for whom a million dollar initiation fee to pay off Trump is couch change - and the corporations like Disney - to bend their knee to Trump the dictator. Their examples will encourage others to take the road of least resistance.

Trump has told us he intends to be a “dictator on day one.” He’s preparing to do exactly that right out in front of us, and the news media isn’t too likely to pay even as much attention as they have so far to what’s going to come.

[TCinLA]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Menneskene ere dog urimelige. De bruge aldrig de Friheder, de har, men fordre dem, de ikke har; de har Tænkefrihed, de fordre Ytringsfrihed.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Enten – Eller (1843)

[Robert Scott Horton]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Song of the Day - Today is the 55th birthday of the great Beach Boys tune "Do It Again"... released July 8th, 1968.

This single was rushed into release in the wake of a badly-received album, “Friends”, and was a turn back to the group’s beach/ surfer genre.

Another Brian Wilson beauty, it is pre Beach Boys classic.

If there is a better singalong song, I don’t know what it is.

Brian’s daughters Wendy and Carnie always adored it, and sang it with their dad, and in the 90’s, when they formed their own group, Wilson Phillips”, it was part of their repertoire.

Then, when Brian re-emerged from his funk, the girls would perform this with him.

As beautiful a legacy as a guy could have.

This track belongs on any Singalong Playlist.

Two clips below: first is the original track from 55 years ago today.

The second is Brian and the girls doing it together in 1995.

[Mary Elaine LeBey]