Today's Video Link

Every so often, I feature a music video here by this award-winning barbershop quartet, Main Street, just as every so often, I embed a video from the harmony group, Voctave. The more observant among you may have noticed that one guy's in both of those teams.

The fellow with the beard is Tony De Rosa, member of Main Street and Voctave and the Dapper Dans (sometimes) at Disneyworld and he's probably one of the Rolling Stones these days. If there's a singing group, he's in it. Here, Tony and three of his colleagues favor us with one of my favorite Gershwin ditties…

iPhone iDiosyncrasy

So it used to be that I could turn the ringer off on my iPhone and a little window would pop up telling me it was OFF and when I turned the audio on, the little window said it was ON. Now, I do the same thing to turn the ringer off and a little window tells me that Silent Mode is ON and when I turn the audio on, I'm told that Silent Mode is OFF. They did this just to confuse me.

Your Daily Trump Dump

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
A former Republican governor is calling for impeachment…and sure, it's John Kasich, who's probably positioning himself to step in if Trump doesn't get the nomination. But that's certainly not good news for Trump.

Today's Bad News for Rudy Giuliani
Meanwhile, as predicted, Rudy is in more legal trouble than he was yesterday and less than he will be on Monday. The new revelation? He pressed the Trump administration to grant a visa to former Ukrainian official Viktor Shokin, who claimed he had dirt on certain Democrats. You know, I don't have a license to practice law and it's looking Rudy and I will soon have that in common.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held meetings in Ankara to work out what Trump supporters touted as a "cease-fire" between Syria and Turkey and Trump himself called it an "amazing outcome." But firing has not ceased, the deal expires in a matter of days and Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey's foreign minister, issued a statement that said, "This is not a cease-fire."

Today's Runner-Up Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump is threatening to sue CNN because their coverage of him is not fair and balanced. So if you're following his interpretations of the Constitution, Congress has no legal right to investigate or impeach him and the press has no right to report what he thinks is unfair. I'm waiting for him to get rid of that "We the People" nonsense and demand that he gets top billing.

The Lydia Housing Project

Click above and you'll see this picture larger.

As you may recall, Lydia the Feral Feline finally took up residency last Monday in a little cat house that I bought to house the many feral cats that treat my home like a B-and-B, which in this case means Buffet and Backyard. The house has been out there since 2006 and she's been out there since 2007, steadfastly refusing to set paw in the place. Even which I picked her up and put her in there, she made a break for it and I gave up all hope of her ever dwelling in that dwelling…

…until last Monday. I dunno what caused her to suddenly love it but since then, she's only exited for food and, I would imagine, disposing of that food. She couldn't be happier if I installed wall-to-wall mice. I took the above photo about twenty minutes ago.

Friday Morning

Mostly quiet on the Trump Front this morning…which is good. I'm thrilled at his slow, steady descent and at the increasing number of his supporters who have to be thinking, "Well, I love what he says he wants to do for this country but I'm increasingly uncomfy with the lawlessness and/or craziness." Still, I don't like how often I have to discuss this guy, even with myself. "Trump Fatigue" is a term we're hearing more and more, though so far not as often as any phrase about throwing someone under a bus. A full day off from any of that would be nice. I also think the Sunday News Programs should emulate Chick-Fil-A and close down on Sundays.

On Fridays, I always think Trump will do something especially outrageous if Bill Maher's show is off. I don't mean intentionally; just that Maher's luck runs bad that way. Big things happen when he isn't there to comment on them. Anyway, he's doing a show tonight so maybe not much will happen today except a lot of people on his team denying they said what they said yesterday and, of course, Rudy Giuliani saying something any competent lawyer would tell his client not to say.


Halloween — a holiday I will abolish just as soon as I'm powerful enough to do that, which I soon will be — is looming ahead. My new problem with Halloween is that as I get older, it seems to be followed by about three days of Thanksgiving prep and then everything's All-Christmas, All-the-Time until about January 15.

I used to have a friend who was born on December 25 — no, it was not Jesus Christ — and I felt sorry for him because his birthday kinda got lost under the Big Name Holiday. Also, of course, he had half as many opportunities for presents as someone like me who was smart enough to be born in March. Now, I feel sorry for anyone born in November or December.

And speaking of birthdays: Had he lived, tomorrow would have been my father's 109th…sort of. Like many Jewish kids of his era, my father had no birth certificate. Way back when, it was not uncommon for Jewish families to bribe someone to destroy those certificates, the better to keep the kid from getting drafted when he'd later be needed to help support the family. My father was reasonably sure he was born in October and only a tad less sure it was in 1910.

Because we needed a date on which to give him a tie and a cake with candles on it, he arbitrarily picked October 19 as his birthday. And I don't know how this worked but he got it onto his Drivers License, passport, government I.D. (for his job) and everywhere else even though it was a made-up, educated guess of a birth date.

When he died in 1991, I got access to many documents he had and had never studied all that closely. A few of them gave me enough info to do some research and I tracked down a government record that said he'd been born on October 25, 1910 — not that far off. I assume that's right but it doesn't really matter now, does it? The only reason it might is if I was the kind of person who only thought about his father on Dad's birthday and I think of him every day — with nothing but fond, positive memories…

Your Daily Trump Dump

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
White House Chief O' Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted there was a quid pro quo involved in the release of military aid allocated for Ukraine. A few hours later, he was out insisting he hadn't said what he said…but he said it. Wouldn't you have liked to have heard the phone call or meeting where he was told to do that?

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
In his never-ending quest to project his own misdeeds and failings on everyone else, Trump began slamming Nancy Pelosi. As Anna North observed…

The president's attempt to shame Pelosi likely worked among his base. But for most other Americans, it backfired. That should come as no surprise, given Trump's track record with powerful women.

As I've written before, Trump's strategy in confrontations with men is often to question their masculinity — he called Marco Rubio "Little Marco" and made fun of Jeb Bush's supposedly "low energy." It's a style he's likely developed in a long career in male-dominated spaces, from the military academy where he went to school to the heavily male real estate development business to the Hollywood sets where he bragged about being able to grab women "by the pussy."

But that strategy doesn't work on women, so Trump usually tries to invade their personal space, insult their appearance, or, as in the case of "Nervous Nancy," insinuate that they are mentally ill or unstable. Any woman who's gotten to where Pelosi is now, though, has had to put up with being called "crazy" a time or two. Except with people already primed to applaud Trump's misogyny, the strategy is doomed to fail.

I think when some non-partisan, observant author writes the history of American politics in this century, it's going to amaze many how much of it has to do with men who can't rationally deal with women in positions of power. And usually they don't call them "crazy" so much as they impugn their appearances and femininity.

Today's Video Link

It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time! Oh, yes! It's Randy Rainbow Time!

Recommended Reading

Jeffrey Toobin says "William P. Barr just gave the worst speech by an Attorney General of the United States in modern history. Speaking at the University of Notre Dame last Friday, Barr took 'religious liberty' as his subject, and he portrayed his fellow-believers as a beleaguered and oppressed minority." The inherent flaw in this, of course, is that Barr is lecturing us about morality while simultaneously defending every single thing Donald Trump has ever done.

Almost every time I come across anyone complaining about attacks on their religious liberty, what I hear is "It's unfair to me that someone isn't recognizing that my interpretation of my religion is the only truth in the world."

It's true of course that the share of adults who self-identify as Christians has declined about twelve percentage points — and that's a lot — over the last decade. That is, if you believe Pew Research and a few other pollsters. Barr thinks that's due to some organized attack on the religion. I think it's because so many people who call themselves Christians say and do things in opposition to the teachings of Christ. You know, like sanctioning torture, not helping the sick or poor, major league hating, caring more about the Money Changers than the Money Needers, etc….

Freelance Follies

A number of folks — all of them, other freelance writers I'm guessing — sent me this link today about a new California law that seems to affect us. "What does it mean?" they ask…and someone else, perhaps a good lawyer, will have to answer that, perhaps by reading all of the actual law instead of a reporter's summary.

I understood enough of it to feel pretty sure it doesn't affect me in any way and I think I get the premise behind it, which is to encourage little piecework jobs to be transformed into real, steady jobs.  It doesn't seem to me that this change will accomplish much of that but I'd need to know more to say that with any certainty.  I'll link you to anything I see that might help clarify.

It's Big Daddy Time!

My favorite local musical group Big Daddy will be performing Sunday evening, November 3 at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Tickets are right here and not very expensive when you consider how much entertainment they'll buy you.

These are the guys who take current or recent rock hits and transmogrify them so they sound like they were recorded in the fifties — you know…the last time music was any good. They're quite brilliant, quite funny and damn good musicians, to boot. Search this site for examples (here's one) and, yes, I will be there.

My Latest Tweet

  • White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says the G-7 Meet next June will be at Trump's Doral Miami resort. Asked if it doesn't violate the Emoluments Clause for the president to profit off such a meeting, Mulvaney asked, "What makes you think he'll still be president then?"

Thursday Morning

Like I said…like we've all said…you wake up in the morning and think, "Well, what's today's Trump outrage?"  This morning, we have the testimony of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Mr. Sondland admits there was a quid pro quo with the Ukraine and he's someone who in no way can be dismissed as a Liberal/Democratic operative…though it wouldn't surprise me if Trump gave that excuse a try. Hell, we may even hear soon that Rudy Giuliani is a Liberal/Democratic operative. And maybe there's something to that since he sure has done everything possible to sabotage his client.

I'm still not officially predicting Trump will not be the Republican nominee next year…but I am tracking how with every week, that seems a wee bit more possible.

Your Daily Trump Dump

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Where to start, where to start? The headline "House overwhelmingly votes bipartisan condemnation of Trump withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria" is pretty bad news, as if the news out of Syria and Turkey isn't itself bad enough. "[Trump] was shaken up by it," Nancy Pelosi said on the House's overwhelming vote. "And that's why we couldn't continue in the meeting, because he was just not relating to the reality of it." Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is, as he will be for some time, in more legal trouble than he was yesterday and less than he will be tomorrow.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
A letter that Trump wrote to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was making the rounds and every newsperson who saw it contacted the White House to verify it was legit. That's how daffy it was and you can read it here and about a thousand other places. It wasn't sane, it wasn't presidential and it clearly did more harm than good…but Trump gave himself an A+ for it because, of course, he gives himself an A+ for absolutely everything.

Today's Runner-Up Outrage by Donald Trump
On any other day with any other president, this would be one of the more shameful and wrong-headed moves ever. You all know about Anne Sacoolas, the American spouse of (maybe) a diplomat who killed 19-year-old motorcyclist on an English lane last August. Ms. Sacoolas fled the country, claiming diplomatic immunity and Dunn's grieving parents and many British agencies are trying to get her to return to the scene of the arguable crime. Trump summoned the parents to the White House and then sprang two surprises on them: He had Ms. Sacoolas in the next room and also had members of the press ready to film/photograph the parents meeting the woman who killed their son and he apparently thought some warm, huggable moment would result. The parents, horrified, refused to go along with it and…well, here. Read all about it. It was a crazy move engineered by a man to whom empathy and consideration are alien concepts and who thought a great photo-op with himself as the Great Peacemaker would result. Crazy.

And One Important Article
This could have been in the Bad News category but it was too crowded…

Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump's businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings' property tax.

This is illegal and as Paul Waldman notes, it probably demonstrates why Trump is battling so hard to keep his tax records secret. They've got to be full of this kind of thing.

Today's Video Link

John Cleese wins an award. Stick with this until the end of the clip and as they say on the Food Network, your patience will be rewarded…

My Latest Tweet

  • Mitch McConnell is claiming "Democrats are throwing fairness and precedent to the wind." And Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland agrees.