US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

^^^

That completely cut from context clip that Twitter folks were going gaga over this weekend was driving me crazy.

ouch, i didn't know that. i will take anyopportunity to learn about how linda ronstadt is a giant dumbass in the us politics thread

She was....stubborn about breaking the boycott.

RS piece from 1983:

https://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artrs83.htm

In her dressing room after the concert, Linda Ronstadt talked some more about her beau who used to work for the government, Jerry Brown, the former governor of California. The political beau had advised his rock star girlfriend not to perform in South Africa, where a minority of 4.5 million whites rules over a majority of 21 million blacks.

"I don't take his advice very much," she said. "He doesn't want me to do things that are controversial. He's political. I'm not. He tries not to say no to me because he knows it won't work. He just looks into his napkin and writhes."

The offer to sing in South Africa had come at the last minute, when another singer and a boxer had to cancel out. Boom Boom Mancini, who killed a man in the ring last year, was supposed to fight. And Frank Sinatra, whose eyes are apartheid blue, was supposed to sing and help announce the fight. It was all a cable-television package. But then Boom Boom broke his collarbone. Sun City, needing a fill-in, turned to Linda Ronstadt.

"I was getting ready to go to Italy," she remembered. "They wanted me to pinch-hit for Sinatra and boxing. I had two days to decide. I talked to everyone. I called friends of mine at Motown. Their story was: 'Black artists go, so we can't tell you not to go.' I called up John Rockwell at the New York Times and got him to send me clips on South Africa."

(Rockwell remembers that call this way: "Linda had pretty much made her decision to go. She had passed the time when she could bow out. It didn't strike me as a thrilling idea. I had personal reservations. I'm not a big fan of South Africa. I didn't seem enthusiastic, but she's a voluble person. She does what she wants to do. What can you do?")

"If I won't play a repressive government, a police state," Linda continued, "then I couldn't play the black countries or Alabama or Boston"

I asked her if she thought there was any difference between playing Bophuthatswana and playing South Africa.

"Clearly there's no difference to me, Bophuthatswana or South Africa," she said. "The policy of the homelands is wrong. This isn't in any way an endorsement of the government."

She maintained that she did not learn of the United Nations' cultural and economic boycott of South Africa until after she arrived in Sun City. The UN resolution supporting the boycott was passed in 1968, but it has evidently not been popular reading material in the capitals of American music. A number of American musicians have defied the boycott and played South Africa: the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, Cher, the Osmonds, Sha Na Na, Tina Turner, Frank Sinatra and even a group called America. Linda Ronstadt is different only in that I thought she was special.

'It's very strange performing here," she said. "I seem like a mirage to them, they to me. It's scary, like the Twilight Zone. Things seem nice. Then people get drunk and talk about their fear of a knock in the night."

Still: "I'm glad I came."

She took a bite of chicken.

"The last place for a boycott is in the arts. I don't like being told I can't go somewhere. Like when they told Jane Fonda she couldn't go to North Vietnam. Of course she should have gone to North Vietnam."

But, of course, Jane Fonda was not paid a half-million dollars to visit Hanoi.

last quarter of that quote is very yikes

jfc

When the party broke up, the band went out to prowl through the casinos and bars and discotheques in search of that most elusive game...the South African woman in heat, The rare wildewoman.

"What did she mean?" they kept asking each other. "What's wrong with our bodies?"

"I've been to black Africa," she told him. "I wanted to see what this would be like. I'll be criticized a lot when I get home. But I don't think it's fair. You can't not go to a country because there are some evil people in it. I'd love to get the chance to come back, but who knows? One of the things I'm trying to figure out while I'm down here is if I'm supposed to be here. I'm playing devil's advocate with myself."

The farm boy hoped she would come back.

"I'm trying to decide if it isn't a good idea to get a dialogue going," Linda said. "Now I have a whole other idea about what 'Desperado' means. Everybody here is a desperado. Everybody is a 'Prisoner in Disguise' because all the people feel so misunderstood by the outside world."

I'm not going to say it's always true but it's probably true in at least a majority of cases that a declaration of apoliticism basically = a declaration of amorality.

A lot of those quotes seem Kanye-esque.

Frank Sinatra, whose eyes are apartheid blue

my Crayola 64 box in 1983 didn't have this shade iirc

Alfred just beat me to re-posting that Sinatra quote. Having it framed as we speak.

It's either cherry red or Apartheid Blue

I just freeze every time you see through me

In her defense how else were oppressed South Africans able to receive the biting political commentary that is You're No Good?

Fairy tales can come true
It can happen to you
If you're Apartheid Blue

I just freeze
Everytime you see through me
And it's all over you
Apartheid blue

On my knees
Help me, baby
Tell me, what can I do?
Apartheid blue

lol crut

alfred!!!! that’s the joke!!

but you never had Icehouse sing it to you

She didn't speak to RS for a decade after the interview ran. She must've loved this:

At breakfast the next morning, Linda Ronstadt was still wrestling with herself.

"What we are trying to decide," she said over granola and fresh fruit, "is if we did right in coming down here. We're talking about morals."

Snow White wrinkled her brow and took a bite of apple.

Snow White wrinkled her brow and took a bite of apple
and she walked the length of her days under African skies

This is the story of how we begin to remember
This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein

(Ladysmith Black Mambazo does a dance)

(bouncy guitar figure)

https://www.khou.com/mobile/article/news/local/houston-police-chief-acevedo-blasts-the-nra-senators/285-4a9ec308-0ecb-4593-9249-7b30a9d2dec6

“We all know in law enforcement that one of the biggest reasons that the senate and (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell, (Texas Sens.) John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and others are not getting into a room and having a conference committee with the House and getting the Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) is because the NRA doesn’t like the fact that we want to take firearms out of the hands of boyfriends who abuse their girlfriends. And who killed sergeant? A boyfriend abusing his girlfriend.”

that video gets going at 2.39, that's a guy who can't put up with this shit anymore. the faces of the men and women surrounding him say a lot.

anyone else listening to the impeachment hearings right now? i was out for lunch so i don't know who is speaking, but both this witness and whoever is asking the questions appear to have no fucking clue what they're doing. not in the louie gohmert way, or the jim jordan way, but literally in the "...i think there was a document...what was it called? supplement? addenendum?" way, and it sounds like two people having an awkward conversation about a topic that neither really knows anything about?

I was watching a bit, the Castor guy went from barely competent prosecutor who constantly looks like he had to poop to smug asshole witness in the Corey L. mode.

i see that it's Ashley Hurt Callen, the lawyer for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, asking questions of the Castor (the republican counsel for the earlier, Schiff-driven proceedings)

it seriously sounds like a mock/practice session among 2nd year law students or something

Castor brought his materials to the chamber today in an Amazon/Whole Foods shopping bag

(that is not a joke)

A GOP superpower is to appear flummoxed and confused by anything that threatens them

Such as their repressed homosexuality

BREAKING: ABC News can confirm that the Trump “family member” referenced in the Inspector General report who had a friendship with dossier author Chris Steele, was Ivanka. She met him in 2007 at a dinner in London when he was still working for MI6. https://t.co/W64i5GPqVK

— Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) December 9, 2019

Hahahahaha

Most Americans are flummoxed and confused by anything connected to legalities or legal procedures, so the Republican base will be perfectly happy to accept any nonsense a GOP-apologist legal counsel babbles on television. I mean, they still think Giuliani is a crackerjack lawyer.

Guessing Ivanka neglected to tell daddy who her friends were

Also a blow to Trump, tho supposedly Barr will publicly disagree with the findings:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-watchdog-finds-russia-investigation-improper-missteps/story?id=67599147

barr is a real piece of shit

the url for that "blow to Trump" gives the opposite impression of what the story it links to says

"We're going to keep ordering investigations until an investigation produces the result we have predetermined that we want to see" is a curious way to run an agency whose mission is... conducting impartial investigations. But what do I know.

Yea they shoulda wrote "not improper" for the URL

Oh he already made that statement. Kinda dumb to do it simultaneously, now it gets folded into the Horowitz story rather than covered on its own.

exactly, and that's why they did it.

in other words, now the horowitz story immediately gets "bill barr disagrees" folded into it

Barr is a much worse piece of shit than Jeffery Beauregard Sessions, which is really saying something.

xp if barr delayed his response, the question would be why they didn't immediately dispute it, since barr would have the chance to review it long before it's publicly released

Trump's most ardent cronies have so inexorably lashed their own fates to that of their god-emperor that it's completely unsurprising at this point to see them do/say absolutely anything that putatively favors him, irrespective of how far outside the bounds of morality or normalcy or legality their actions may be. And to a man, they seem to have missed the news that impeachment proceedings aren't going to result in Trump being removed from office, so what the fuck is it all even for? Just to retain his personal favor?

I'm not convinced Bill Barr's disagreement will move anybody other than people who already believed there was spying to begin with.

This is much more of a nothingburger report than Mueller's, low info voters may not even notice he disagreed.

The article title mentions nothing about Barr here, nor does CNN's. In both cases you have to actually read it to find that out.

Wouldn't be surprised if later articles incorporate that into the title, but your serial cut and pasters that don't read the lede will probably not even notice.

i assume it's just so that they awarded with a larger mansion on the secret island they're all retreating to after all this is over

xp

gohmert is talking about how they already have enough evidence to impeach biden

Barr's traducing his oath of office yet again is another good reason why accosting and scolding these assholes wherever they appear in a public space seems like an idea to ponder seriously. It has both its attractions and its drawbacks.

The attractions are obvious. But one drawback that I can easily imagine would be the high likelihood that such public scolding would be breathlessly reported by FOX News as a form of shocking political violence, inspiring their audience to retaliate against the liberals 'in the same coin', except that 'same coin' would come in the form of physical violence. Because there are never any bad consequences to deliberately blurring the distinction between verbal scolding and physical assault.

--

gohmert must be referring to all that sworn testimony Giuliani gave on tv talk shows