First off, go see CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. It's a movie more than worth the price of a ticket.
But ignore SLY LIVES! (AKA THE BLACK GENIUS). That's another Questlove 'documentary.'
SUMMER OF SOUL. We were all too kind about that documentary. So kind that we ignored it was all built around a lie of victimhood: The press and the people forgot this concert which was bigger than Woodstock! WIKIPEIDA offers, "the festival is much less well known in the 21st century than is Woodstock (which took place on the same weekend as one of the days of the Harlem Cultural Festival). The filmmakers investigate this, among other topics."
The 'festival' is much less known because it wasn't a festival. Woodstock was three continuous days of performances. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. People came together and stayed there all day and all night.
The 'concert' Questlove documents was only on the weekend-- a series of weekend concerts. It was not Woodstork, it was not meant to be Woodstock. It also didn't have Woodstock's crowd. You had to pretend that each weekend's concert had a new audience to pretend it had more than Woodstock Most likely the same group -- give or take a hundred turned out each week.
I loved the performances in SUMMER OF SOUL, so I overlooked Q playing fast and loose with the trtuh.
Having seen his Sly Stone film, I'm not longer in the mood to be so forgiving.
His Sly film is about something. I wrongly believed it was about Sly Stone. So I bought Sly's autobiography THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGAIN).
Hey, Questlove, you owe me some money.
Sylvester Stewart, born in Denton, Texas, wrote and produced music and led the group Sly and the Family Stone. Their hits included "Everyday People," "If You Want Me To Stay," "I Want To Take You Higher" and many more.
Sly's music is worthy of a film. Sly is not.
He wasn't a victim of his race. His race didn't make him. for example, whore women. Success has come and gone. It's the mid to late 70s. And he owes money. And he needs some heavy drugs. He doesn't have the money. He's already tricked one drug dealer with blank tapes that he claimed was his new album but no one's buying it anymore apparently. So to get some heavy drugs from Ike Turner, he tells Ike he can have any woman in the house that he wants. Oops! He wants Arlene -- Sly's gal. No, no, no. He stands up to Ike.
And gets Ike to take another woman.
This is written by Sly full of self-congratulations for himself.
Now this book didn't come out 20 or thirty years ago. It's not even two years old.
I guess drugs really did distort reality for Sly if, in 2023, he didn't realize forcing a woman to have sex with Ike so Sly could get free drugs was wrong.
The career? He can't remember it.
Michael Jackson stops by to say "hello" at the American Music Awards or somewhere and Sly has a full sentence on. Berry Gordy asks him to write some songs for Diana Ross -- two sentences and he can't remember why they didn't get recorded. (My guess? Even non-druggies like Berry and Diana didn't find the songs memorable.) Instead of stories about writing the songs that were hits or recording them, we get him writing about . . . the album covers.
He almost meets Prince. Almost. It's two paragraphs. The second is to tell you Prince said he wanted to work with Sly but then Prince never called. By this time in the book, by this time in Sly's life, you realize why Prince never called though Sly probably doesn't.
Though moments face-to-face with Michael Jackson, Diana Ross or Chaka Khan -- actual encounters -- can't get even a half-page in the book, he gives pages and pages to THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW. You probably catch on, as I did, as he went on an on about appearing on the show, page after page after page, that he streamed it to write about it.
Michael does pop back in near the end for two paragraphs. They don't meet up. Michael just sends a message that he'll give Sly the publishing rights to Sly's songs if Sly will get off drugs. Too much for Sly. So he didn't show for what would have been a face-to-face encounter with Michael.
There's an offensive section of the book that would have played in the 1980s but now just make him like a selfish deadbeat.
After a drug bust, he's really proud of a girlfriend who offered, on the stand, that if those were their drugs in the car when they were pulled over, why would they have also been on their way to a dealer to pick up drugs?
This Ben Matlock moment isn't as attractive or amusing as Sly thought it was when he dictated it to Ben Greenman -- his 'co' author.
Ben should have told him that that the two paragraphs weighing in on 9/11 and Saddam Hussein not only weren't necessary but didn't make sense. (There's no connection between 9/11 and Saddam -- does Sly not know that?)
Bob Dylan has a new album and new song -- Sly thinks he sounds "drunk." Steven Tyler shows up at a tribute and calls Sly on stage so "we" can tear it up like we used to and bitchy Sly wonders what he means by "we"? Actual Black pioneers and peers like Diana, Prince, Michael and Chaka are dismissed in mere sentences while he marvels over Telly Savalas . . . and Telly getting a hit record while starring on KOJACK.
Questlove wanted to rescue a Black man and was even willing to lie about him -- watch that awful 'documentary' to see what I'm talking about but Sly never felt the same impulse. He never cared about a Black man -- especially the sons he fathered.
Avoid the book unless you want to read the embarrassing ravings of a f-ed up mind. I'll take some of that to the discussion of this book with Ava and C.I. including Sly's nonsense about someone being "too cute" and how that let him support another politician.
"This" concert
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). I
Going out with C.I.'s "The Snapshot:"
Friday, February 14, 2025. Chump's disapprovals increase even more as he and his minions set out to wreck the United States and fleece the public of every dime they can.
Convicted Felon Donald Chump has thus far eluded accountability, responsibility and justice. As a result, he seems to think that breaking the law is meaningless. So he did a deal with corrupt NYC Mayor Eric Adams. As a trail for him loomed for bribery, a crook got into the White House and a deal was reached. Suddenly bribery and foreign money didn't matter -- not to Chump. And Chump wants charges dropped against Adams to stop the scheduled April trial. This has created a major problem for the Dept of Justice. Rachel Maddow explained it last night on MSNBC.
Rachel was covering events last night. Yesterday afternoon, when Alisa Chang discussed the issue with Ryan Lucas NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, only three were known to have objected to the move to drop charges against Eric Adams -- since Rachel's broadcast the number has risen to eight:
LUCAS: So first off, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, has resigned. She's a veteran prosecutor with a conservative legal pedigree. She clerked, for example, for the Supreme Court Justice - the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who, of course, is a legal icon on the right. The Trump administration had tapped Sassoon to lead the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan last month on an interim basis, but then three days ago, the acting No. 2 official in the Trump Justice Department, Emil Bove, directed her in a memo to drop the corruption case against Eric Adams, a New York City mayor.
Now, Bove said in his memo that this decision wasn't based on the evidence in the case. Instead, he alleges that the case against Adams, who is a Democrat, was politically motivated, even though it was brought during the Biden administration. The memo also says the case should be dropped because it interferes with Adams' ability to help the Trump administration with immigration enforcement.
Now, it is highly unusual for department leadership to interfere like this in a case. Former prosecutors say that it's shocking. Sassoon says in a letter to the attorney general that the law doesn't support dropping the case. She cannot, in good faith, move to do so, and so she has decided to quit over it.
CHANG: Wow. OK. Has the Justice Department said anything about any of this?
LUCAS: The Justice Department, I contacted. They did not respond, but I did obtain an 8-page letter from Bove to Sassoon in which he says that he accepts her resignation. He also accuses her of losing sight of her oath by suggesting that she has the discretion to interpret the Constitution in a way that is inconsistent with the policies of the attorney general and a democratically elected president.
Now, in this letter, Bove also says that two of the prosecutors who worked the Eric Adams case are being placed on leave. He says that those two prosecutors and Sassoon will be investigated by the Office of the Attorney General and the department's internal unit that handles allegations of misconduct. Just an aside here, one of those line prosecutors is a U.S. Army veteran and a winner of two Bronze Stars.
Donald Chump and his minions want to circumvent the law. They think is they threaten and bully, they can get their way. Chump, it might have worked on your wedding night but no one following this story is in love with you and willing to endure marital rape. Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) explains:
Reacting to the explosive legal drama playing out in New York where an acting U.S. attorney resigned rather than drop corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, a former member of Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it could have a major ripple effect across the country.
Late Thursday, interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon and five other officials resigned when pressured by the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Emil Bove, to drop the case.
That set off explosive accusations of a quid pro quo deal between Donald Trump's DOJ and Adams' lawyer that has the legal community reeling.
Lawrence O'Donnell addressed the issue last night.
Convicted Felon Donald Chump does not want -- or know -- how to make America great. He only knows how to turn it into Chump land how to steal from the American people and hand the money over to his fellow grifters.
Did someone say Alien Musk?
I'm not really big on foreigners -- triple citizenship makes you a foreigner -- slamming our system and our processes. Especially when, every time they open their mouths, they demonstrate how they never bothered to learn a damn thing about the third country they decided to pretend was home. Yes, we are talking about Alien Musk. Alex Woodward (INDEPENDENT) reports:
Elon Musk wants a federal judge to be “fired” after Donald Trump’s administration was ordered to restore public health data that was removed from government websites.
The removal of public health data created a “dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, halt or hamper key health research, and deprive physicians of resources that impact clinical practice,” plaintiffs wrote.
On Tuesday, Bates — who was appointed by President George W. Bush — ordered the restoration of those websites and blocked the administration from making changes.
Washington, D.C. – Following Senate Republicans voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released the following statement:
"Putting Kennedy in charge of the nation’s public health is a huge mistake. When dangerous diseases resurface and people can’t access lifesaving vaccines, all Americans will suffer. And thanks to his serious, unresolved conflicts of interest, RFK Jr.’s family could continue getting richer from his anti-vaccine crusade while he’s in office.”
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Military families protesting the Defense Department's anti-DEI push heckled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his arrival at United States European Command headquarters in Germany on Tuesday.
The Defense Secretary signed an order restoring the name of a storied special operations forces back to a confederate general undoing the Biden administration's efforts to remove names that fought against the liberation.
Hegseth must be drinking wine before beer because things are just not going his way. As Ann noted, he was protested in Germany -- by US military families. Things did not get batter after that. MB Mack (LATIN TIMES) reports:
Middle school students on a U.S. military base in Germany walked out in protest during Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's visit, opposing the Pentagon's removal of diversity programs in military schools.
Since President Donald Trump's return to office in January 2025, his administration has swiftly moved to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the federal government, including the Department of Defense (DoD).
On Tuesday, 55 students at Patch Middle School staged a walkout and gathered in the courtyard for approximately 50 minutes to protest recent Pentagon actions targeting diversity programs in Department of Defense schools, Stripes reported.
The demonstration coincided with Hegseth's visit to Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, where he was attending meetings at U.S. Africa Command and U.S. European Command.
President Donald Trump's favorable rating among Generation Z voters has dramatically fallen since the 2024 election, according to a poll.
A survey from The Economist/YouGov released Wednesday revealed the president's net favorability rating among those aged 18-29 is minus 18 points. This is a drop from the plus 19 favorable rating he scored among this demographic in the days following November's race.
Donald Trump's press secretary warned that "nobody has the right to ask the president questions" after the White House blocked an Associated Press (AP) journalist from an event over the news agency's continued use of the "Gulf of Mexico" in its coverage.
The organisation said it was given an ultimatum over its editorial decision to refer to the oceanic basin by its original name “while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen" — the Gulf of America.
New York Times White House correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman confronted Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt over DOGE czar Elon Musk, asking if President Donald Trump has complied with a conflict of interest law.
Haberman’s reporting has been immensely influential by virtue of her deep experience reporting on Trump and a network of Trumpworld sources that give her up-to-the-minute insights. But after his election to a second term, as her NYT bio states, “Now I am covering his second, nonconsecutive term as president after his election win.”
***WATCH: Senator Murray questions Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon***
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), pressed Linda McMahon, President Trump’s nominee to serve as Education Secretary, on how she would approach the job of leading our nation’s Department of Education as President Trump calls the Department a “con job,” says he wants it closed “immediately”, hopes McMahon will “put herself out of a job,” and as Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE have already begun illegally gutting the Department.
Senator Murray began by pressing McMahon on whether she will ensure enacted funding gets out to serve students as directed and on DOGE staffers setting up camp at the Department of Education, where they have reportedly fed sensitive personal and financial data from the department into artificial intelligence software. “They’ve already been given access to highly-sensitive student data, and have already started holding back money that Congress decided, on a bipartisan basis, was needed to help our schools and students,” Murray said.
“We are also hearing, as you know, about an Executive Order coming any day that will seek to dismantle the Department of Education. These are bipartisan laws–you indicated that you understood that… if confirmed, do you commit to getting every dollar we have invested in our students and schools out to them?”
McMahon responded that the DOGE staffers were “doing an audit,” to which Murray pressed further: “I understand an audit. But when Congress appropriates money, it is the administration’s responsibility to put that out as directed by Congress, who has the power of the purse. So what will you do if the President or Elon Musk tells you not to spend money Congress has appropriated to you?”
McMahon said at first that the Department would “certainly spend” money Congress passed, before immediately following up with: “But I do think it is worthwhile to take a look at the programs before money goes out the door. It’s much easier—it is much easier to stop the money as it’s going out the door than it is to claw it back.”
Murray made clear in response: “The process by law is that you look at that, you make recommendations to Congress. …. So, I mean the question really is–who decides how much federal funding public schools get in Seattle, where it’s already been allocated… Elon Musk or Congress?”
Murray continued her questioning by asking Ms. McMahon about the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), bipartisan legislation to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act that Murray negotiated while Ranking Member of the Senate HELP Committee. The legislation gave states more flexibility in using federal education funds, eliminated one-size-fits-all mandates, and established strong federal guardrails to hold states and schools accountable. Murray argued that the Department of Education must do more to implement the law—pointing out that less than 42 percent of schools identified for comprehensive support and improvement had a plan that met all requirements of the law, and the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that our lowest-performing students continue to fall furthest behind and exacerbate pre-pandemic achievement gaps.
“What specific actions will you take to implement the ESSA law?” Murray asked. “Can you name a couple of the requirements that are in that law that you will make sure are implemented?”
When McMahon declined to name a single requirement of ESSA, Murray pressed on: “Do you know what the requirements are? Do you know about the requirements for targeted support and improvement schools, or the annual report card requirement? Can you name any of the requirements?”
When McMahon demurred, Murray asked again about any provisions she could name.
McMahon responded, “No, I want to study it further and get back to you on that.”
Next, Murray asked about reports that Elon Musk and his DOGE staff have been given access to the personal information of students and their families—including their Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, date of birth, and what college they are enrolled in. While DOGE’s access is temporarily paused due to litigation, Murray noted, “There is a real potential for that kind of information to be abused, or for students’ privacy to be placed in jeopardy if the courts end up ruling against the students. And we know that DOGE could use that highly personal information to then target students and target their families or cut off access to Pell Grants for students at a college that someone perceives opposes, maybe, President Trump’s policies.”
“So I want to ask you, do you believe that DOGE employees should have access to private student data?”
When McMahon suggested that DOGE employees are operating “under certain restraints,” Murray pressed on: “I have to tell you it is deeply concerning that we have DOGE staffers—we don’t know who they are, they’re not held accountable—getting access to students’ private information. I think that should frighten everyone.”
A senior member and former chair of the HELP Committee, Senator Murray has championed students and families at every stage of her career—fighting to help ensure every child in America can get a high-quality public education. Among other things, Senator Murray negotiated the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), landmark legislation that she got signed into law, replacing the broken No Child Left Behind Act. As a longtime appropriator, she has successfully fought to boost funding to support students and invest in our nation’s K-12 schools, and she has secured significant increases to the Pell Grant so that it goes further for students pursuing a higher education. Senator Murray also successfully negotiated the FAFSA Simplification Act, bipartisan legislation to reform the financial aid application process, simplify the FAFSA form for students and parents, and significantly expand eligibility for federal aid.
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Let's wind down by noting that Joy Reid interviewed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries yesterday on MSNBC.
The following sites updated:
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Lies, Damned Lies and Trumpflation2 hours ago
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Movies and Leslie Charleson9 hours ago
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Two losers9 hours ago
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1 comment:
Re "conspiracy theories"...
Of course by "conspiracy theories" the news outlet shills, the producers of official science, and the social media shills of the criminal establishment do NOT mean the criminal establishment's OFFICIAL conspiracy theories such as THEIR official Iraq's weapons of mass destruction conspiracy theory, or THEIR official Assad’s use of chemical weapons conspiracy theory, or THEIR official Russiagate conspiracy theory, or THEIR official JFK lone shooter assassination conspiracy theory, or THEIR official 9-1-1 inept pilots/fires brought down skyscrapers conspiracy theory, THEIR extremely deadly virus Covid conspiracy theory, and on and on with their authorized conspiracy theories they LOVE. Here's a bunch of THEIR criminally propagandized official fake "conspiracy theories" that were/are conspiracy FACTS -- https://www.winterwatch.net/2021/08/conspiracy-truthers-20-theories-now-widely-accepted-as-fact/
By that PEOPLE MANIPULATION term ("conspiracy theories") the criminal gaslighting ruling class (and their idiotic followers, willful allopaths and scientists) means those factual narratives that they do not like, that threatened THEIR official lies, that DISprove their official lies --- see www.CovidTruthBeKnown.com (or https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html)
"There are large numbers of scientists, doctors, and presstitutes who will sell out truth for money, such as those who describe people dropping dead on a daily basis as “rare” when it it happening all over the vaccinated world." --- Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., American economist & former US regime official, in 2024
The official narrative is… “trust official science” and "trust the authorities" but as with these and all other "official narratives" they want you to trust and believe …
“We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public [and global public]c believes is false.” —William Casey, a former CIA director=a leading psychopathic criminal of the genocidal US regime
"2 weeks to flatten the curve has turned into...3 shots to feed your family!" --- Unknown
"I just cannot understand why all these damn anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists don't trust a government that actively works against the public interest 100 percent of the time. I mean if you can't trust institutions that are deliberately constructed to subvert the common good for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful at every turn, who can you trust?" --- Caitlin Johnstone, Independent Journalist
"The REAL conspiracy theorists believe that the government cares about them, the media would never mislead or lie to them and the allopathic-pharmaceutical industry that takes makes billions off sickness wants to cure them." --- Unknown
“The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.” --- Kevin Barrett, Ph.D., Author
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