R.I.P. Marty Balin, January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018

Paul Kantner and Marty Balin both gone now. I can't imagine how Grace Slick feels tonight.



I remember in Grace's autobiography that she wrote about sleeping with every member of the band except for Marty, but she made love to him every night on stage. That's so obvious in some of these duets. The Slick/Kantner mix has one kind of magic, but the Slick/Balin blend of voices was the early Airplane sound.

Our Empathetic POTUS: Who Says that Donald Trump Can't Feel the Pain of Others?

Many people say that Donald J. Trump is incapable of empathizing with anyone other than Donald J. Trump, but there is one exception, men who are accused of sexual assault or harassment. The case of Brett Kavanaugh is not the first case where he seems capable of truly feeling an accused man's pain.

The Finest White Whine: The Mission Statement of Donald J. Trump

"I am the most fabulous whiner. I do whine because I want to win, and I'm not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I'm a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win." -- Donald J. Trump on CNN, August 11, 2015 

And just in case you think that this quote is just "Fake News" from CNN, there is video of this ultimate #FineWhiteWhine from the current resident of the White House:



This video also shows how the supremely-unqualified Trump was coddled and given free airtime by CNN and the rest of the news-hungry media in the summer of 2015.

A True Blue Liberal Poll Concerning Credibility

With Bob Woodward's upcoming book, Fear: Trump in the White House, getting the current president's knickers in a twist to the point where he's attacking Woodward's credibility on Twitter, it seemed like a good time for another poll.

POLL:
Which man has established more credibility over the course of his long career, renowned #TrumpUniversity founder and prolific Twitterer @realDonaldTrump or ex-@WashingtonPost reporter and presidential biographer @realBobWoodward?
(Consider retweeting for a larger sample.)

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 5, 2018

This time the results should be obvious and overwhelmingly lopsided (at least until the poll is discovered by Russian bots).

Is attacking Carl Bernstein last week and Bob Woodward this week really the best strategy you have?

Attacking these serious journalists didn't work for Richard Nixon during the first #Watergate scandal; it probably won't be a successful #StupidWatergate defense strategy either,

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) September 4, 2018

How to keep your Trump Anxiety Disorder from becoming Trump Derangement Syndrome

Not only is Trump Anxiety Disorder (TAD) an actual diagnosis from actual therapists, but it's hard to trust anyone who isn't suffering from it; if you don't have at least a touch of TAD, you're not paying attention. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) may be more of a pejorative diagnosis from Donald Trump's supporters at Fox News and Donald Trump himself, but it's also a real danger. While recognizing the real danger of Trump and Trumpism to the nation and the world, we shouldn't let it dominate our lives. A serious case of TDS would make it hard to appreciate all the non-Trump areas of our world; I can imagine a TDS sufferer getting so bad that doctors would prescribe a radical treatment of pulling all the electronic links and asking him or her to take a retreat to a world of nature hikes and vinyl records and books that were printed before 2016. During Vietnam and Watergate, I was very politically active, going to marches and writing letters to the editor -- maybe a little obsessed at times -- but there was no 24-hour news on television (there was no 24-hour television, period), so I got a natural break from Nixon to read books or listen to records or play guitar. There was literally no news available between the time the TV networks played the national anthem and signed off at midnight until the local newspaper arrived on your doorstep the next morning.

I was recently laid off. For the first time in forty years, I don't have a workplace to go to every day. I was worried about the temptation of daytime cable news and its ability to turn my TAD into a case of incurable TDS (I've seen those people on Twitter who tweet fanatically about every "Morning Joe" guest), so I've taken a few steps. I've lived completely without television for years before, but I didn't take that drastic step this time. I was able (after too much time on the phone with Time Warner Spectrum) to reduce the number of available channels to the lowest number, basically the New York over-the-air channels (if I lived in a place where I could get TV over the air) and C-Span and some shopping channels. No Netflix. No Amazon. No Hulu. No HBO. No ESPN(s). No Fox News (not that I watched anyway). No MSNBC (sorry, Rachel). No CNN. No panels of  "experts" trying to attract eyeballs 24/7/365 with manufactured political conflict. No Corey Lewandowski or Alan Dershowitz or Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway popping up unexpectedly on my television to cause an outbreak of TDS inflammation. It's not as good as the days when there were only three stations, but I have it close to the point where there's never anything on worth watching. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I want to get to the point where I'm only tempted to watch PBS NewsHour and nothing else.

In addition to the steps I've taken with my TV, I'm also trying to cut down my time on Twitter, where  reactions to insane @realDonaldTrump tweets seem to hijack all conversations. I don't follow his account, but somehow I never miss a tweet of his as everyone on the left spreads his words. If you are following him on any social media platform, please stop; he assumes all followers (even the obviously fake accounts from Saint Petersburg troll farms) are supporters. You'll hear what he has to say anyway; you can't avoid it.

All that being said about steps to avoid TDS, let's not forget who made up the term. In an article in Salon by Chauncey DeVega two weeks before the inauguration, "You have been warned: 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' will be a cudgel used to silence his critics," the danger was explained succinctly:

The right-wing propagandists who will deploy "Trump Derangement Syndrome" against their enemies have one ultimate goal: to normalize the danger to American democracy represented by Trump and his supporters.

But still, I worry:

Is it an early warning sign of Trump Derangement Syndrome if you see the hashtag "#PumpkinSpice" trending and immediately get an image of the pumpkin-headed @realDonaldTrump as the sixth Spice Girl?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 28, 2018

POLL: Which "Witch Hunt" Will Ultimately Nab the Witch?

While Robert Mueller continues to compile Trump-Russia evidence in secret, there were public advances this week in both the Trump sex-scandal coverup and emoluments cases. In addition to proving that Donald Trump was lying (which is never news), the Michael Cohen tape aired on CNN on Tuesday night could be important evidence in proving campaign finance violations in the Playboy Model / National Enquirer case (and today we find out the feds have more than a hundred other tapes related to Trump and Cohen). In emoluments and corruption news, there was an important advance yesterday when a federal judge interpreted the anticorruption clauses of the Constitution in a way that will allow the case against Trump's conflicts of interest to proceed.

Which leads to the True Blue Liberal Poll of the Week asking the infallible collective intelligence of Twitter which "Witch Hunt" will be the one most likely to snare the leader of the coven?

POLL:
Which "Witch Hunt" is most likely to catch the lead witch @realDonaldTrump? The #TrumpRussia witch hunt, the sex scandal witch hunt(s), the #Emoluments witch hunt, or some other #WitchHunt?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 26, 2018

Happy 75th to Mick Jagger

Happy Birthday to Amelia Earhart...

...born on this date in 1897 (disappeared in July 1937).




A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia it was just a false alarm
--Joni Mitchell, 1976

Happy Birthday to Philip Seymour Hoffman

Brandt left us much too soon.

Why type "Donald Trump" when you can simply type "Idiot"?

With shades of "Santorum," savvy internet users now know that if they are looking for images of or webpages about President Donald J. Trump on Google, they can save carpal-tunnel-inducing keystrokes by simply typing i-d-i-o-t. You would think another idiot or two would show up; they do, but you have to scroll down past images of Donald Trump to find them.