Friends and fans, asking for a bit of help here. While I appreciate the continuing strong interest from all of you (free) subscribers, it’s harder and harder to reach new readers, thanks to politically-inspired partial suppression of my feeds at Twitter and Facebook—the new reality for many. But you might help attract more readers here if you’d take the trouble to “share” below, or post a link on your other outlets, or recommend to a friend in a good old fashioned email. Thanks again for your support!
We’ll offer a commentary on the pathetic Trump parade in a minute, but first—a highlight for many was seeing or hearing clips of an Army band near the reviewing stand playing for the assembled cultists “Fortunate Son,” which hass been called the “number one music pick if someone was trying to troll Trump.” That is doubtful, as the clueless Trump had used the song at rallies before John Fogerty put a stop to it. Still it was a delicious moment, though one has to wonder if Trump and a few others napped through it.
Here is the blistering Fogerty/Springsteen live version a few years back. You may not know that Fogerty actually served in the Army Reserve for three years at the height of Vietnam war…
Now a few words from my friend, the great Charles P. Pierce, of Esquire:
I have never experienced such a joyless, lifeless, and sterile mass event in my entire life. Grim-faced soldiers, marching past half-empty grandstands, many of them obviously wanting to be somewhere else. Little bunting. Just piped-in rock music and MAGA hats. If this truly was meant to honor the 250 years of the United States Army, all we got was an endless procession of uniformed troops looking like they’d prefer to have been at Valley Forge.
The president, sitting on the reviewing stand in that weird, forward-leaning attitude that he has, rarely smiling, a skunk at his own garden party. Scores of people being funneled through cattle-runs of metal grates just for a chance to sit on the lawn of the Washington Monument and listen to bad music and speeches so dull and listless that they’d have made Demosthenes get out of the business and open an olive oil stand. I think there probably was more good feeling and genuine emotion when they took Jack Kennedy out to Arlington for the last time.
Latest expert estimates of the total national turnout for No Kings Day: four to six million, perhaps the largest single day for any such protest.
So let’s listen to Bob Marley vow that we are going to “Chase Those Crazy Baldheads Out of Town.”
Tucker out? First time we’ve ever quoted Tucker Carlson here but this at least suggests a split on the right on joining the war against Iran:
The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.
From Tunes to Toons
Steve Brodner with another sketch from Saturday in NYC:
Barry Blitt:
You knocked it out of the park again!
You know I'm gonna share this one!
Noë the G