3 Chords & the Truth: Psychedelic or psychotropic?

Who cares?

Whichever, this episode of the Big Show does seem to take the edge off.

Ain't that all that's important in the summer of our discontent?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Maaaan.

3 Chords & the Truth: Upping our meds

Political news? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better to . . . run run run run run run run away.

Or listen to this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. One or the other.

Personally, I'd recommend listening to this episode of the Big Show, which went quite smoothly, actually, after I upped my meds. Before Inauguration Day, I think we all are going to be upping

 

OUR MEDS.

Thank you! I'm fine. How are you?

Hello.

Who?

Swimmingly. Good show. Righto.

Political news? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be-be there. Aloha. 

What is the candidate's position on bodily fluids?

I could be mistaken (no, not really), but isn't nuclear annihilation a pro-life issue?

Because now it's on the table, thanks to the Republican presidential nominee.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe today -- and this followed several minutes of various iterations of "Oh, my God! Oh, my, God! Oh, my God!" in the subtle manner of the four-star Air Force general, CIA director and National Security Agency director that Michael Hayden used to be -- host (and former GOP congressman) Joe Scarborough related the following. Quote:

Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times, he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, we can’t we use them?’ That’s one of the reasons why he has, he just doesn’t have foreign policy experts around him.

Three times, in an hour briefing, ‘Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?’

End quote.

Comrade Trump

If you're not the kind of person who believes in divine judgment, or that nations can fall under divine judgment for their collective sins, maybe now would be a good time to start.

From Vox:

On Wednesday, Donald Trump did something extraordinary even for him: He called on a foreign power to launch an espionage operation against his chief political opponent, hacking into Hillary Clinton’s email server to find 30,000 emails she allegedly deleted. 

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

When Trump said it, it didn’t sound like a joke — especially in light of recent events. Over the weekend, Wikileaks released about 19,000 emails that were stolen from the DNC servers by hackers who were almost certainly linked to the Russian state. These emails included talk of a (never-realized) plot to attack Bernie Sanders on his religion, a revelation that exacerbated divisions inside the Democratic party and thus seemingly helped Trump’s political chances. 

All of this has raised one big question: What the hell is going on with Trump and Russia? 

The answer appears to be twofold. First, the Kremlin appears to be interfering in the US election in a way likely to help Trump become president. Whether or not that’s the intent of the meddling, that is the result. 

Second, Trump is deeply, weirdly pro-Russian.

I RECOMMEND reading the whole thing. Apart from saying that, I am too gobsmacked to comment.

Except for this: The only people crazier and more dangerous than Donald J. Trump are those Americans who would like to see him anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Why is that? Because when -- God willing -- Donald Trump is long gone after a resounding defeat in November, the aggrieved fools who voted for him will still be around, ripe to be exploited by the next dictator-in-waiting.

If on the other hand -- God forbid -- Trump wins, we will have no recourse but to again learn what Abraham Lincoln well knew when he gave his second inaugural address March 4, 1865:

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

THE WISDOM remains the same, only this country's sins have changed.

Cause and effect

If you say this . . . 

Expect this.

Mean, stupid and voting for Trump is no way to go through life.

It's official. GOP nominates the Donald

“I put lipstick on a pig. I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

 -- Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter,

The Art of the Deal

3 Chords & the Truth: Don't worry, get happy

It's probably the end of the world as we know it, so pour yourself a stiff drink and let's us listen to some comfort music.

If this stuff was good enough to get the "greatest generation" through the 1960s . . . and the Baby Boomers' teenage years . . . it no doubt is good enough for this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, one where we seek to self-medicate through happy, soothing sounds.

I mean, if the world's going to hell in a handbasket, find another handbasket.

TO TELL YOU the truth, I have no idea what that means. But it sounded good. Rather like this episode of the Big Show, the swingingest podcast on the Internets.

It's the Happy Beat.

It's also 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

Music to soothe the savage breast

 

It's hard not to be in a funk today.

Hell, it's hard not to have been hard in the throes of abject depression since this miserable year first showed its miserable face.

SO FORGIVE ME if I find it difficult to just suck it up week after tumultuous week to be Mr. Hail-Fellow-Well-Met on 3 Chords & the Truth.

It's been one damn thing after another, and I'm sure you're feeling just about as cheery.

In other words, not at all.

So, if you're feeling like I am, join me in a few hours as I indulge myself with some comfort music from a time long ago and a culture far away from us today.  Maybe it was listening to stuff like this that kept "the greatest generation" from completely losing its s*** during the 1960s.

Maybe it'll still work today.

What ye sow, shall ye also reap. Good luck with that.

Huffington Post

Welcome to the confluence of every damn thing that's wrong with my hometown, Baton Rouge, La.:

• Banana-republic policing,
 

• Ineffective, dysfunctional state and local government,
 

• An angry, ignored and historically severely damaged (in every way) inner-city population,
  
• A critical mass of stone-cold white racism locally, and
  

• Systemic breakdowns in education, the justice system, public health care and social services.

You tell me how this ends well. I got nothin'.



I KNEW this would go south Friday night when the protest outside police headquarters -- I've been obsessively watching The Advocate's live streams -- began to turn ugly and the local "community leaders" tried to talk to the crowd and restore order. They were all shouted down.

One state senator from inner-city Baton Rouge kept talking about legislation she was going to introduce to deal with the situation, and how she needed the protesters to get politically involved, blah blahblah blahblah blahblah.

The hotheads may have been beyond reason, but they're not stupid. Any legislation she were to introduce to "deal with the situation" would pass the Louisiana Legislature how, exactly?

The kind of breakdown of public order that the hotheads among the demonstrators would like to achieve in the streets of Baton Rouge, because outrage, is what the GOP-dominated legislature already is achieving politically, because . . . Louisiana. And "conservative" ideology.

BATON ROUGE HAS TURNED INTO SYRIA #AltonSterling #BlackLivesMatter #BatonRouge pic.twitter.com/LCwAyP1AJA

— liz (@lizzkatherine_) July 11, 2016

TELL ME how this gets better. Tell me how this gets better when officialdom is urging everyone to lower the temperature of their rhetoric, but then the comments sections of Baton Rouge media outlets -- both on their websites and on their Facebook feeds -- more or less look like so many Ku Klux Klan message boards, with some outraged black folks responding in kind here and there.

Suggest that -- in the public interest and to promote reasoned dialog -- they either shut down comments or actively moderate them and you get lectured about the First Amendment and not wanting to stifle people's "freedom of speech."

I got that line from some 20-something Channel 2 talking head. Having gotten A's in media law at the LSU journalism school a decade before this lightweight was born, I explained to him that freedom of the press belongs to the owner of the press. Which ain't the amazing number of racist trolls taking over these outlets' comments sections.

So, given all of the above, tell me . . . how is Baton Rouge not even more screwed than it usually is? How is someone, or several someones, not going to end up as dead as Alton Sterling before all this is through?