“Cant stop, won’t stop”
Settle in to this RAGING 18 minute “Strange Times” from our sold out show at Town Ballroom in Buffalo, NY on 12.31.18!
Kick your winter blues and tag a friend who needs some of this musical goodness to warm them up!
Video: MKDevo
The post Aqueous @ Town Ballroom – NYE2018 appeared first on Love Live Music | Buffalo FM.
When President Trump won his second election, MAGA celebrated as much a cultural victory as a political one.
Right-wing glee was met with left-wing despondency — this moment couldn’t be considered as a fluke, a grievous mistake only recognized later by an unwitting populace. Trump was the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004; 49.8% of the country saw what this guy was offering and wanted more.
That feeling drove both sides to overinterpret Trump’s very narrow 2024 victory. The right’s decades of sneering at and secretly envying liberal cultural dominance — Hollywood! Fashion! Every musical artist, barring third-place American Idol contestants! — were over. Liberals mourned accordingly, and tech billionaires dutifully trooped to the inauguration, bearing their gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But in the past two years, there has been no seismic shift in artistic talent to the MAGA camp. Performers cancelled their shows at the once vaunted Kennedy Center rather than be tainted by association to Trump. Prominent architects publicly shamed the firm leading the ballroom construction project. Twice as many Americans watched Bad Bunny’s halftime show as did the “All-American Halftime Show,” featuring luminaries Kid Rock and, uh, Brantley Gilbert. Popular artists frequently threaten legal action when the Trump campaign uses their music. Even podcasts, arguably the artform (I know, relax) where MAGA made the strongest inroads, have soured on the president as his popularity nosedived.
A new slate of artists recoiled this week after their participation in a series of concerts for Trump’s celebration of the country’s 250th birthday was announced. Of the nine acts listed (most at least 20 years past their peak popularity in the first place), at least six have bowed out apologetically.
“I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to be a voice for those who have felt like they didn’t have one,” Martina McBride said in a statement. “It greatly upsets me that any fan who has been moved by my music may now feel like I’m abandoning the meaning behind those songs. I assure you, that is not the case.”
Fascism — with its demands of conformity, propaganda, devotion to authority — stands in direct opposition to art. It’s obsessed with aesthetics but violently opposed to creativity and experimentation.
MAGA’s central tenets of excluding non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexual, non-male people and requiring blind loyalty to Trump inherently limit its cultural reach. That was true in the first term and remains true today.
I was in college during the Great Recession so I emerged unscathed. You cannot lose wealth you do not possess. While others were licking their wounds, I was reveling in the undeserved confidence I had that next time, not only would I not lose money, I would make money. Tons of money. If Michael Burry can do it, I can do it. I didn’t just watch The Big Short, folks, no I even read the book. I got myself a shiny internship at Bloomberg where I covered U.S. Treasuries and learned how to use a Bloomberg Terminal.
Somehow, even with all this training, I have a dilemma. I’m pretty sure the entire economy is on the verge of collapse, sort of like when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff but doesn’t fall until he actually looks down. When does America look down? And how do I make sure I’m rich as hell shortly after?
Here are some concerning facts:
It certainly seems like dark times are ahead. Economically, it feels pretty stagflationy. High inflation, low growth. If inflation keeps rising, then Trump’s new Fed Chair is going to have quite the predicament when setting interest rates. Any increase to rates to tame inflation would negatively affect investment. I’m glad I don’t have that job.
But what if we put our thinking caps on and devised a plan to get rich? One of you readers out there has to have a scheme in the works, why not share it? We can all make a buck together. TPM has always been a community. If we work together, maybe we can upgrade to a gated community? How does that sound?
Jared Polis was spotted showing off a new accessory this week. The Colorado governor has recently taken heat for his decision to grant clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk and staunch Big Lie proponent who is serving prison time for helping to compromise local election systems. Democrats in Congress and in his home state roundly criticized Polis for caving to pressure for President Trump and doing a favor for an election denier, with the Colorado Democratic Party voting to censure him. Per Colorado Sun reporter Jesse Aaron Paul, Polis responded by calling into a “private, internal party call” with black tape over his mouth.
“To call Paxton ethically challenged is to call Jeffrey Dahmer suffering from an eating disorder.” – Sen. Thom Tillis
Balls & Strikes’ Madiba K. Dennie observed that Republicans sound like they’re starting to get nervous about court expansion, holding congressional hearings on the dangers of court packing. As Dennie puts it, “Claims that Court expansion threatens the Court’s legitimacy presuppose that the Court has any legitimacy to threaten in the first place.”
1) What does Trump plan to put his likeness on despite an 1866 amendment that explicitly forbids it?
2) What reason(s) did Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate give for again declining to move forward with redistricting ahead of the midterms?
3) Which U.S. Senator was pepper-sprayed by ICE agents during a protest outside a detention facility?
Answers below
Kate joined Edwin Eisendrath, host of “It’s The Democracy, Stupid” on Lincoln Square Media, to talk about her reporting on the corrupt Supreme Court and proposals for court reform currently being floated on the left.
Josh joined Ari Melber on MS Now to talk about former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before Congress.
Trivia Answers: 1) A $250 bill 2) It’s too late in the election cycle to change the maps 3) Andy Kim of New Jersey
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers hand-picked by a board of senior admirals, removing all women and most minority candidates from the list of nominees for promotions.
The intervention left a slate of 22 one-star admiral nominees that includes no women, despite females making up roughly 21 percent of the active-duty Navy, and only two nonwhite officers, despite racial minorities accounting for approximately 38 percent of the force, reported the New York Times.
At least two of the removed officers are women, two are Black men, and three are white men.
Four current and former defense officials, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said Hegseth's actions are highly unusual and appear to breach Pentagon rules, which permit the defense secretary to remove officers from promotion lists only when new information raises specific questions about their fitness to serve — not on ideological grounds.
Internal records suggest some officers were targeted because their names appeared on a website devoted to identifying "woke" military personnel, with infractions as minor as having served as a diversity liaison officer two decades ago. One highly regarded officer — a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer and former aide to a four-star admiral — was pulled from the list shortly after her name surfaced on the site for that decades-old role.
Hegseth also pushed senior Navy officials to place Capt. William Francis Jr., a Navy SEAL who serves as Hegseth’s special assistant, on the one-star list, but his lack of command experience made him ineligible for promotion and he was not selected, according to current and former Navy officials.
Since taking office, Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior officers. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, noted in recent Senate testimony that nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Hegseth has dismissed are female or Black — a group that currently makes up fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.
Among those previously pushed out were General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman ever to lead the Navy.
Hegseth has repeatedly declined to explain individual dismissals or removals, telling lawmakers he does not discuss such matters "out of respect for those officers" while speaking broadly of correcting years of what he called "gender and demographic engineering."
The Pentagon denied that race or gender played any role in promotion decisions, and the Navy declined to comment.
