The New Baseball Season Is Here. What's Your Favorite Baseball Memory?

Every week on Monday, the WoW! writers, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: The New Baseball Season Is Here. What's Your Favorite Baseball Memory?

Dave Schuler : That's easy. My favorite baseball memory is the first professional ball game I ever attended, in the first Busch Stadium, the old Sportsman's Park, on Grand Avenue in North St. Louis.

I can remember the starters and their positions. Larry Jackson was the pitcher, backed up by Lindy and Von McDaniel, brothers from Oklahoma. Hobie Landrith caught. Stan "the Man" Musial, a favorite of mine, was on first base with Don Blasingame on second and Kenny Boyer on third. Eddie Kasko played short stop.

In the outfield were Wally Moon, Curt Flood, and Del Ennis.

It was an exciting night. The most fun I've ever had at a sporting event.


Michael McDaniel: I’m afraid I have no interest in baseball, so I have no personal tale of authentic, peanuts and hot dogs, Americana to tell. However, I’ve always loved The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad.

In that brilliant comedy, Sgt. Lt. Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen, is trying to prevent the assassination of the Queen of England at a baseball game. He knocks out and impersonates a famous operatic singer--Enrico Pallazo--and ends up performing the most hilarious rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in the history of sports. Of course, he saves the Queen--in his own unintentional bungling way--and eventually launches OJ Simpson, who is in a wheelchair, down a flight of stairs and into the stratosphere. Poetic, if unintentional, justice.

Ah, baseball! It’s certainly my fondest baseball moment.

 JoshuaPundit: My favorite baseball memory is also one of my first ones, and it is clear and distinct. We had rented a small house in Santa Monica (imagine a working man trying to do that today) and I was probably between one and two years old.  It had what seemed to me then like a large kitchen, with a black and white checkered floor. That was where my father (Z'L) and I used to play a kind of catch with a pair of socks balled together as a 'baseball.'  I can clearly remember laughing as I tried to catch the ball, and toddling after it when I missed.

My dad was a real ball fan who used to watch the game at Ebbett's field growing up in Brooklyn. Even when I was a kid he'd get together with some of the neighborhood guys to play sandlot ball and bring me along to watch. He also got me my first glove and taught me how to break it in.

Being an old Brooklyn Dodgers fan, like many others he never forgave Walter O'Malley for moving the team west, but I had no such prejudices as a kid. So he'd take me to Dodger games now and then.
Dodger Stadium is still a great place to watch a game, and one oddity was that even people at the game brought their transistor radios to the park  so they could listen to Vin Sculley describe what was happening right before their eyes. He was really that good! I remember running around with the other kids after the game with a program to get autographs. Ballplayers then were far more accessible (this was the early 1960's) then than they are now. The Dodger teams then were built around great pitching (Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Johnny Padres, Ron Perronoski), defense, and speed (Maury Wills, Tommy and Willie Davis). I haven't followed sports for years, but watching those guys play was exciting.

A more recent memory concerns my daughter. She inherited the jock genes and played both baseball and AYSO soccer. I never missed a game. I also bought her that first glove. For a father to help coach his kid and later help coach  his kid's team and then see her excel was awesome. She played second base. Her baseball team, the Athletics (or as I call them,the MIGHTY Athletics) were undefeated  and won the championship for her league. Fourth graders, but they had the drive, y'know?

Fausta Rodriquez Wertz: The last time I went to a baseball game my son was in grade school (he's now in his mid-twenties). We went with other his friends and their moms to a minor league game in Trenton and everybody had a great time eating hot dogs and funnel cake.

Prior to that, the only other time I've been to baseball games was in the 1980s when I worked in New York City. The entire office loved the Yankees, and one of the gentlemen - who back then was in his fifties - had attended every Yankees opener since he was twelve years old. It was a great group of people and everybody had a great time eating hot dogs and drinking beer.

The games were nice but I don't remember much of them.

Don Surber: My baseball memories include Bat Day and Ball Day doubleheaders as a kid at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, and of course a couple of Game 7 losses in extra innings.
But my best memory came when my daughter played softball when she was 12. Like my wife, she is height challenged and was shorter than the kindergärtners even in second grade. That does not make for a good player.

Under the rule that every player plays, she became a late inning specialist. When the playoffs came, the Poca Dots drew the Buffalo gals. Now that's farm country and those Buffalo gals play a mean game of softball. In high school, they win the state championship in their class every damned year. They are like the UConn Huskies women's basketball team of West Virginia girl's basketball.

So in the 12-year-old league, drawing them in the payoffs was a one-and-done.

Their pitcher was mowing down Dots. Seventh inning comes up and Sarah goes to bat. Their pitcher could not find her eensy-beensy strike zone. Their coach called time and demanded to see her birth certificate showing she was old enough (this happened occasionally). He knew Sarah was trouble. And she was. She walked and the Buffalo pitcher lost her confidence. The Dots came back and won. You could get a good baseball movie out of this, I suppose, with a feel good ending and the moral of everyone matters. Kumbaya.

Sarah is now a lawyer working on a PhD.

But I wonder about that Buffalo gal. She would be the age where she now has a 12-year-old daughter. Maybe a 5-year-old too. I like to think that she has taught her 12-year-old daughter how to pitch to her 5-year-old. The one thing I admire about those Buffalo gals is their determination to win. Ain't no way they will lose that way again

Scott Kirwin :As a kid growing up in St. Louis I was fated to come of age in the 1970’s, just after the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team dominated the sport and before Whitey Herzog became a St. Louis legend by bringing the championship back to St. Louis. Jack Buck, one of the country’s greatest sports announcers ever, called them all – from Lou Brock’s record breaking base stealing to the Ozzie Smith’s home run in the 1985 World Series “Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!” Jack Buck, along with his sidekick Mike Shannon, was the voice of the St. Louis Cardinals, and decades later I can still hear the love of the game and excitement in Jack Buck’s voice as he called games for a pretty sad and mediocre baseball team the Cardinals had become in the 1970’s.

My father listened to each game on the radio, even when the games were broadcast on TV. When that happened we’d turn down the volume on the television and listen to Jack Buck’s play-by-play. It was the best way to watch the game. My father’s radio broadcasting Cardinals games was an indelible part of my childhood. When he passed away in 1977 we even buried his radio with him.

Laura Rambeau Lee : Growing up in the northeast, the coming of spring ushered in the new baseball season. We all rooted for the Phillies; the home team. While we enjoyed watching the games on TV, baseball was much more than a spectator sport for most of us. Baseball, or softball, was a game my father taught me and some of my fondest memories with him were playing catch or batting a ball he pitched to me. Later when I joined a girl’s little league team my father would come to practices and help with coaching. And he always made sure to be there to cheer me on during my games. Unlike football, baseball is a game fathers can share with their daughters. Participating in sports is a great way for young girls, and boys, to build confidence and self esteem.

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take it from me, you won't want to miss it.

Syria - Has Trump Fallen Into The Trap?

 

President Donald Trump ordered two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea, the USS Ross and the USS Porter, to attack a Syrian base. They fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at a single target, Shayrat Airfield in Homs province in western Syria.



President Trump ordered this in response to yet another new atrocity occurring in Syria.
It happened in Idlib province, right next to to Northeastern Lebanon at a place called
Khan Sheikhoun. Dozens of people were reported killed and many injured by what appears to be a Sarin gas attack. Followed by the usual poignant pictures and purple rhetoric.


If I seem callous and cynical about this, it's because what happened at Khan Sheikhoun appears to be following a pattern.

Al-Qaeda in Syria and its allied "moderate rebels" like al-Nusrah are undergoing some serious defeats. Their last offensive on Hama was thrown back with heavy losses. The Russian defense ministry said that more than 2,000 Jihadis had been killed. Another attack on the port city of Latakia was stopped and repulsed by massive Russian air strikes.

The old question Qui bono, who benefits puts this in an entirely different light. First off, we know that there are lots of chemical weapons in Syria, many of them shipped there by Assad's fellow Ba'athist Saddam Hussein in Iraq on the eve of our invasion. Well, not quite on the eve, but during the nineteen month delay that occurred thanks to the Left' s street theater and debates. And who knows what came in to Syria thanks to President Obama's illegal war in Libya? In any event, the shifting nature of the war has ensured that both Assad's forces and the jihadis have access to chemical weapons.

(Snap quiz for all you Obama fans reading this. Your narrative was that our brilliant president confronted Putin and Assad forcefully and made Assad give all his chemical weapons to Russia, remember? 

If that's true, then it can't be the Syrian army who launched this gas attack, right? If it wasn't true, then President Obama was simply the clueless buffoon, ideologue and easy mark he almost always was in anything remotely resembling foreign affairs, yes? Which one was it? Remember to show your work...)

As far as who benefits, it likely isn't Assad. With the assistance of Russia, Hezbollah and Iran, he's been doing quite well militarily lately. The last thing I'd want in his situation would be a gas attack with lots of media coverage right now, especially just two days before another international conference on Syria.

Now the jihadis, those 'moderate Syrian rebels?' Different story. Islamist killers have learned well haw easy it is to manipulate the gullible media and stage atrocities for propaganda purposes. One of those right now has already resulted in a missile attack on a key Syrian base within spitting distance of their strongholds in Idlib.

And yes, this is a pattern. Whenever the jihadis suffer a military defeat or need propaganda, we
 have seen another gas attack or other atrocity with lots of bleeders, especially children.
The exact same thing happened a while ago after the Jihadis suffered military defeats in Ghouta, near Damascus. This was a failed attempt to secure the area south of Damascus for the presumptive no fly zone the Obama Administration had been trying to arrange.

After being hurled back,  the Syrian 'moderates' announced that there had been a massive chemical attack which allegedly inflicted about 1,300 fatalities including hundreds of children. As in previous chemical attacks blamed on the Assad government, the jihadis claimed the attacks used Sarin nerve gas, and they flooded YouTube with videos, especially ones featuring children.

Except there never was any conclusive evidence about the attack or the perpetrators. Even the reports from the jihadis themselves were conflicted. First, the gas was supposedly delivered via missiles. When EU politicians and Obama started yapping about enforcing a no fly zone ala' Libya, all of a sudden the rebels were claiming the gas was delivered by an aerial bombardment - except there was no evidence of shrapnel wounds,par for the course when ot come to  both artillery or airborne attacks of this kind. Mot only that, but  when news of the attacks first went public, the UN delegation and foreign diplomats were denied access to the attack site for a week by the Syrian opposition because it 'wasn't safe' for them.

We also don't know who fired shots at the UN delegation when they were finally allowed to enter the attack site by the Assad regime. It could very well have been Assad's men...but it could also just as easily been the insurgents.

Same story with the Houla massacre that was supposed to have been perpetrated by Assad's troops and had the usual suspects screaming for us to make a 'humanitarian intervention'. It turned out that atrocity was performed by the rebels as a false flag operation.

Please, baby, don't let me be misunderstood. What's going on in Syria is horrible, but by no means uncommon in these parts. War here is war to the knife. We are not dealing with a culture anything like ours. So no matter who actually pulled off the attack on  Khan Sheikhoun, this is normal stuff to the actual  participants, regardless of how we see it. Again, war to the knife.

Which brings me to the next question. Just why did President Trump fire those missiles at Syria and was it a proper response or a huge error? Well, it depends.

If President Trump was trying to send a message to Basher Assad and Vladimir Putin  that he ain't Barack Obama and that if it was them, they had better NOT use gas attacks again, that's one thing. The Russians, by the way, said that the gas was released by an attack on an al-Nusrah jihadi arsenal, which sounds somewhat plausible. Putin's spokesperson,  Dmitry Peskov, also hurried to say that their support for Assad was 'not unconditional.'

From the Associated Press:

Peskov told The Associated Press in an interview that “unconditional support is not possible in this current world,” but added that “it is not correct to say that Moscow can convince Mr. Assad to do whatever is wanted in Moscow. This is totally wrong.”…

Peskov said Russia expects a full international investigation into the attack before the U.N. Security Council considers any resolution condemning the chemical attack that he described as “very tragic.” Doing otherwise, he said, would be “simply unfair in terms of international law.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the toxic agents were released when a Syrian airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons arsenal and munitions factory on the town’s eastern outskirts. Asked what proof Moscow has for that assessment, Peskov said that Russia is the only legitimate foreign power on the ground in Syria and therefore has “more wide information about what is going on there.”

So much for Trump being 'Putin's puppet' hmmm?

On the other hand, if President Trump is using this as an opening gambit to getting us seriously involved in Syria with the idea of regime change, he's making a huge mistake.

First, and most important, what exactly would we be  trying to accomplish in Syria by intervening and promoting regime change? A sovereign Syrian nation under democratic rule that's an ally of the west? It seems to me we've tried that before and failed miserably in every case.

Quite simply, the 'customers' aren't interested in what we're selling. Oh, they'll hold an election here and there if they're bribed by enough western aid money, but it always breaks down along tribal lines because that's what most of these people know and understand. And the inherent culture regards what we consider liberty with fear and loathing, because it diametrically opposes what Islam teaches them. Small wonder it's been such a waste of time, blood and treasure, especially given how we've gone about it.

Syria is a made up, dysfunctional failed state, a few provinces cobbled together after WWI. No one has ever been able to make much of it, Not Alexander, not the Seleucid Greeks, not the Byzantines or even the Ottomans. It produces some agricultural products, has somemanufacturing and a few nice Mediterranean ports. Damascus grew because of the trade routes, but that was literally centuries ago and that no longer exists. At this point, Syria isn't even feeding itself and wasn't when the civil war erupted, which is a huge part of why it erupted, sectarian conflicts aside. As the price of cereal grains and other food staples rose, Assad simply didn't have the money to artificially lower them with subsidies like the Saudis and others did.

There are bad actors on both sides of the sectarian civil war, and no benefit to us to intervene because the killing will go on. It's the reverse of Clausewitz's famous line. In places like Syria War is politics by other means.

If Assad is out of the picture or if we remove him, just watch as the jihadi factions start warring among themselves after they finish killing off the Alawites, Shia, Christians and Druse.

I'm hoping President Trump was just sending a message here. If we intervene in this killing ground it will be a huge mistake. Ditto with taking in 'refugees' like Europe did.

As the well known biblical quote goes, he that troubleth his own house will inherit the wind. I hope President Trump keeps that in mind. There's no gain for America falling into the trap of either importing Syria's dysfunction or investing blood and treasure to make it something it's not.







Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com and other publications.

Forum: Who Are Your Favorite Musical Artists Or Composers? Why?

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Who Are Your Favorite Musical Artists Or Composers? Why?

Bookworm Room : I adore the creative geniuses behind The Great American Songbook. Here's the shortest list possible of just a few of my favorite lyricists, along with some of their most exquisite or clever verses:

Irving Berlin: From the song Lazy:

I want to peep
Through the deep
Tangled wildwood
Counting sheep
'Til I sleep
Like a child would
With a great big valise full
Of books to read where it's peaceful
While I'm
Killing time
Being lazy

Johnny Mercer: From the song I Remember You:

I remember, too, a distant bell
And stars that fell
Like rain, out of the blue.
When my life is through
And the angels ask me to recall
The thrill of them all,
Then I shall tell them
I remember you.

Cole Porter: From the song It's De-Lovely

This verse you've started seems to me
The Tin-Pantithesis of melody,
So spare me, please, the pain
Just skin the damn thing and sing the refrain.

Frank Loesser: From the song They're Either Too Young Or Too Old, a woman's promise to her man on the front that she's being faithful:

I'm either their first breath of spring,
Or else I'm their last little fling.
I either get a fossil or an adolescent pup,
I either have to hold him off or have to hold him up.
The battle is on, but the fortress will hold,
They're either too young or too old.

I'll stop now. I don't have a million of 'em, but sometimes it seems close. The art of writing lyrics is dead and gone, but the greats left us so many that we can still enjoy. If, like me, you get a kick out of the talented Tin Pan Alley lyricists, I highly recommend Reading the Lyrics, a collection of more than a thousand popular song lyrics from 1900-1975.

Don Surber: My favorite composer is Israel Isidore Baline, born in Russia on May 11, 1888. All he remembered of Russia was the cossacks burning down their house in the middle of the night. Grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Cherry Street.

We know him as Irving Berlin. From a life of poverty, he became a singing waiter and then a songwriter. We know all the great songs.

He fell in love with a rich WASP, which caused a scandal. Her father sent her to Europe to break it up. The father feared Berlin was after her money (as well as the whole being Jewish thing) but by 30 Berlin already was richer than his eventual father-in-law. While she was gone, Berlin wrote "Always." When she came back, he assigned her the copyright. Now how do you turn down a guy like that?
So they married and lived happily ever after -- until her death 63 years later. (His first wife died of typhoid after 6 months of marriage. His only son died in infancy on December 25, 1928. So he knew hardship.) He died a year later at 101.

He was so good and so prolific we did not need all those other songwriters.
But you want 10. OK.

2. Chuck Berry. He invented rock and roll. And he played a guitar like ringing a bell.

3. Sinatra. Billboard's original top list began in 1940 with his recording of "I'll Never Smile Again" as No. 1 for eight or nine weeks. The Dorsey orchestra and the Pied Pipers make that record one of the all-time best. What a kickoff to a 50-year recording career.

Great story about that song. Young Canadian woman -- Ruth Lowe -- marries, moves to Chicago, and her husband dies a year later. Heartbroken, she returns to Toronto and lives alone in her apartment until the depression goes away. During that period she perfected her song. And in 1945, she married again and had two sons.

4. Herb Alpert. He blended jazz and pop in a fresh fun way. As a record executive, his A&M Records was the essence of pop in the 1960s and 1970s. Burt Bacharach. The Carpenters. Just great music.

5. Berry Gordy. I grew up listening to Motown, which made my childhood terrific.

6. Elvis. His music was great, but his effect on America transcended music from his controversial swivel hips to being drafted to his tragic death.

7. Fred Astaire. You know all those songs Sinatra sang in the 1950s? Astaire debuted them in the 1930s: Cole Porter's "Night and Day" in Gay Divorce (1932). Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" in Top Hat (1935). The Gershwins' "They Can't Take That Away from Me" in Shall We Dance (1937). Even Johnny Mercer's "One for My Baby" was sung by Astaire originally in a 1943 movie. It's said that his lack of a wide range made the songwriters keep it simple, which allowed singers with wider ranges to improvise and make those songs their own.

8. Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. First two songwriters whose names I bothered to know. Wrote half the hits for the Everly Brothers, and "Rocky Top." You may not think they belong here, but it's my list, isn't it?

9. Mike Love. Yes, Brian Wilson wrote the music and is a genius and all that. And fellow Beach Boy Bruce Johnston wrote "I Write the Songs" (people think it was Barry Manilow, but it was Bruce Johnston). But Mike Love wrote the best line in any rock song: "I don't know where but she sends me there." I was 13 when that song was No. 1. That was me.

10. John Philip Sousa. "Stars and Stripes Forever." For being martial music, it sure was fun.


Micheal McDaniel: My students often ask me my favorite book, movie or song. I have to explain I have no single favorites. There are some composers, movies and authors I favor, even collect, but there are so many, so much good art, art that rises far above beyond mere entertainment, it’s impossible to choose a single favorite that rises above all else.

They often ask me to which music I listen. I explain I don’t commonly listen to music, certainly not as they do, because I’m usually too busy rehearsing and performing music. I do play and sing favorite--and some new--songs for fun and for the occasional performance. I often tell them my favorite is whatever I’m rehearsing and about to perform at the moment, because one must be immersed not only in the rhythms, notes and text, but the music to produce a worthy performance.

Considering I’ve played guitar and bass for musicals, big bands, jazz ensembles, rock bands and country bands, sung for the same, and considering I’m a classically trained tenor, composer, arranger and director, my tastes tend to be eclectic. I once played the cannon--I wrote an appropriate synthesizer patch and played the keyboard/cannon--in a performance of the 1812 Overture. Boom!

So, for what it’s worth, a partial list of the music I’ve found delightful and meaningful over the years:

The Carpenters: Karen Carpenter’s voice was the finest female voice in pop music. Her musical precision, warmth and textual interpretive powers stand out among legions of loud, sloppy, overly hyped divas. Their use of tight, beautiful harmonies, clever instrument turns, the oboe, and Richard Carpenter’s keyboard playing and arranging remain unparalleled. The loss of Karen to Anorexia was a loss to humanity. Which was my favorite? This once only: Merry Christmas Darling.

Jesus Christ Superstar: A controversial work at its introduction, the rock opera endures as a work at once challenging, beautiful, and enormous fun to play. Its message is, of course, incomparable.

Tommy, by The Who: The first rock opera. It’s raw, intense, powerful, inventive, and wildly fun to play.

For the Beauty OF The Earth, by John Rutter: Rutter, who is about to retire, has been a premier choral composer of the previous, and this century. When I returned to college, and music, after many years of police work, this was among the first works I performed. Its text and affecting melody always bring tears to my eyes, and I’ve programmed it at the beginning of June, when I return to Wyoming to direct an adult choir I co-founded three decades ago, for its 30-year reunion concert. I’ve directed and performed many other Rutter works, but this is probably my actual favorite. I can direct, and sing it from memory, so deeply has it imprinted itself on my mind.

Ave Maria, by Franz Biebl: Of all of the beautiful choral works I’ve had the privilege to sing, this never fails to bring out the best in me, and to deeply touch audiences, if the chorus does its part. Hearing it via the Internet can never convey the emotion, depth and sheer beauty hearing it in a good hall, sung by a fine chorus provides. The text is timeless, and the writing, peerless.

Requiem Mass In Dm (K626), by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Mozart is arguably the greatest composer mankind has ever produced. Many of his contemporaries, among the greatest composers of all time, shared this opinion. For such a short life, his output was prodigious, and he died before he could finish the Requiem. Fortunately, his pupil, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, finished the work, which endures today, and forever.

From the powerful Dies Irae, to the pastoral Hostias, to the aptly named Lacrymosa, there is nothing like it. I’ve performed the work many times, and will again on April 18.

Messiah, by George Friderich Handel: I’ve performed the work no less than 60 times, and can nearly sing it all from memory. I’ve directed it, sung the tenor solos, and mostly, sung in the choir. Each of those roles has been no less rewarding. As with the Requiem, there is nothing like it, and it will be performed as long as humanity endures. Virtually everyone recognizes the Hallelujah chorus, but they’ve heard much, much more of the work. I also favor He Trusted In God, and the glorious, Worthy Is The Lamb, with its powerful and soaring Amen, which is often programmed as the closing chorus of performances. I sing it from two-three times each year at the Christmas season, which has become the traditional performance season, and I eagerly anticipate it every year. Unlike me, it never grows old.

Because I am also a guitarist, I appreciate the work of guitar composers, and have always played the works of Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce, James Taylor, and to a lesser degree, Paul Simon, John Denver, and a variety of other acts that rely heavily on the guitar, particularly the acoustic guitar.

As I said: eclectic.

Scott KIrwin : Music is an intensely personal thing. The music that moves one person to tears may bore another. We still really don’t understand music, what it is and why we like it so much.

Since I was a kid I’ve always liked electronic music. Growing up in the late 1970s this meant that I gravitated towards the unique sounds of New Wave bands that used synthesizers such as Devo, the Cars, and Gary Numan. In the mid-1980s I lived briefly in Chicago which was at the time undergoing a musical revolution with the creation of House Music, made popular in the local clubs and spread by radio station WBMX. After leaving Chicago I got deeply into other musical genres, and House Music went on its merry way.

The style of music eventually found its way to (of all places) Goa, India in the late 1980s where a couple of European expat DJs took the sound, mixed it with European techno, added a dose of Indian music and the result was Goa Trance music (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_trance) As its name implies trance music is music that uses repetition and melody to provide the listener with a hypnotic beat and encourage a trance-like state. In the 1990s Goa Trance evolved and mixed with other styles of electronic music: techno, house, progressive house, trance, deep trance among others.

I discovered trance music in the early 2000s. I stream it throughout the day while I work. I listen to it in the car. It has become the soundtrack of my life. At 130-140 beats per minute the music is the perfect wake-up music in the morning. But for some reason the opposite is also true. The same BPM range can easily relax me and put me to sleep if I let it. For some reason the music just works for me.

John Fleming aka “John 00 Fleming” is a DJ, musician, and producer who travels the world putting on shows and promoting trance music. His style of music is deep trance with dark overtones. His tracks have heavy bass, minimal vocals, and avoid the speeding up and slowing down of rhythm popular with techno DJs like Tiesto which I find annoying. The beat is constant and lasts for hours. He produces a monthly podcast, Global Trance Grooves, which showcases the genre.
(check it out here http://www.john00fleming.com/podcast/).


Fausta Rodríguez Wertz :Years ago I went to the Montgomery Cinema (Princeton-area’s artsy-farsty movie theater) by myself to see Tous les matins du monde, a biopic about French composer Marin Marais (1656-1728). It's a beautiful movie about a tragic love story, with Gerard Depardieu playing the old Marais and Depardieu's real-life son, Guillaume - who also met a tragic end - playing the young Marais.

I had always enjoyed Baroque music, but this scene, where Guillaume Depardieu plays the Folies d’Espagne on the viola de gamba, was a revelation.

Well.

I had to find more!

It was 1991, in the olden days before Google, so I sat through the credits and wrote down the musician’s name, Jordi Savall, after which I headed to the Princeton U-Store (which back then had an excellent music department, curated by a professor from the Westminster Conservatory) and bought the movie soundtrack.

After that, I have spent thousands of hours listening to Early and Baroque music, in person, on CDs, iPod and YouTube, at every opportunity.

The effect of viola de gamba music on me is like that of catnip on a cat. Apparently I am not alone, since Savall himself, when he was a young cellist in his teens, heard an old neighbor play it, and dedicated his life to the research, interpretation and teaching of the art.

His research has defined the art. When he first started learning gamba nearly nobody played it. He essentially taught himself while taking lessons on phrasing and other aspects of interpretation from master cellists. Until he could play an authentic, original gamba, he found someone who could build him one. He still spends countless hours at the French national archives researching original folios from the court of Louis XIII to add to the repertoire.

Savall’s work first was sponsored by a fellowship from the Fundación Juan March, but he has since created a family business. His late wife Monserrat Figueras sang, both his children play in his orchestra. He owns his recording label and is an impresario. Additionally, he is a professor of viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, when he succeeded his mentor, August Menzinger - his teacher in Switzerland when he and Ms Figueras moved to following the Juan March fellowship.

Savall narrates (in Spanish) his career in this video.

I started with the video of the Folies D’Espagne from the film. Here is a concert version of the piece, with Savall on gamba, and his daughter playing the harp,

You can listen to the full piece here,

No matter how many times I’ve listened to that piece, it always knocks my socks off.


Doug Hagin :Well, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, have so many wonderful creations. Hard to choose. I love Vanessa Mae's work from a few years ago, she was talented and very attractive.

Music is a wonderful art form. At Christmas time, you can have Perry Como, Andy Williams, Bing Crosby etc. Sorry but I prefer listening to my neighbors Chevy rust. Give me Trans Siberian Orchestra. Hard rock and classical together? Awesome! Incredible talent there.


My favorite musicians? Eric Clapton, the late Gary Moore, the late Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy, and so many other great guitarists. Love the Blues, and what is now called classic rock. It does not get better than Seger or the Eagles. I also love Simon and Garfunkel, swing music, some country. My rule is if it moves me, it moves me.


Dave Schuler: That's a hard question to answer. I have pretty eclectic tastes, ranging from opera to jazz to Broadway musicals to rhythm and blues to Gabby Pahinui's slack-key guitar. In opera I like Wagner and Puccini. In jazz I like Antonio Carlos Jobim and Miles Davis. In the music from Broadway musicals it's hard to beat Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Rodgers and Hart.

However, I'll choose to answer a question that wasn't asked and highlight a few of my favorite songs.

First, R&B. I love Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come. I think it's one of the greatest songs of the 20th century. Don't watch the video it's attached to. That's awful. Just minimize it and listen to the words and music. It tears me up every time.

From the Great American Songbook two songs with a somewhat similar theme that I just love are Rodgers and Hart's Where or When from Babes in Arms, sung here by Barbara Cooke and Long Before I Knew You from Bells Are Ringing, sung by Sydney Chaplin and the wonderful Judy Holliday.

I'll wind up with Irving Berlin's charming Always, written as a wedding gift for his wife, Ellin, and sung here by Ella Fitzgerald. Nobody had the ability to express simple emotions in a simple way like Irving Berlin.

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.

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Is There A Road To Mideast Peace? Only Using Reality Versus Fiction

 

Now that the Trump Administration has shown itself to be unabashedly pro-Israel, the usual suspects in the media and elsewhere are spreading their usual logorrhea* on the subject of Mideast peace and of course, the vital necessity of a Palestinian state.

What's interesting is that most of what these people are suggesting has been tried in the past, and it hasn't worked. Their usual suggestions involve the old clunker of land for peace (by Israel of course, not by the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians'), boosting Palestine's economy, Jerusalem as a shared capitol 'for all faiths' as one of them put it, and borders on the old 1948 ceasefire lines. In exchange for which Israel obtains a guarantee from the Arabs of peace.

None of this would work, even if Israel gave in to all of 'Palestine's' demands. I'll explain why as briefly as possible, and then tell you what I think might actually achieve Mideast peace, since I live in the real world.

'Land for peace' has already been tried and it's been a total failure except for once, with Egypt and that's because Anwar Sadat actually needed peace, liked the idea of getting Sinai back and a nifty $1.5 billion every year in badly needed US aid in exchange for a few promises. It's been a dismal, blood soaked failure every other time for Israel every other time it's been tried, especially when dealing with the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians.

The Israelis have no reason to trust Hamas and Fatah since they've repeatedly violated Oslo and the Road Map, which were essentially land for peace deals. If you've actually been there, you understand giving 'Palestine' the high ground in Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank to the initiated) also involves a major strategic risk for Israel, since it puts both Israel's most populated areas and Ben-Gurion airport in easy missile range. No reason Israel should give this area up to its mortal enemies for some 'promises.'



The Jordan Valley, overwhelmingly populated by Israelis is another point worth mentioning. Putting that in 'Palestinian' hands gives Iran free access to 'Palestine' via Syria and Jordan, and allows Iran to do what they did with Hezbollah and Hamas...arm them with missiles. If you were Israel, would you do something that stupid for 'promises' by the Arabs?

Boosting 'Palestine's' economy? Well, that's been going on for quite some time. The results have done very little to achieve Mideast peace. If 'Palestine' were a normal country, I'd agree that trade helps peace. It isn't and it won't. Proof of this is that prior to the First Intifada, Israel literally built 'Palestine's' infrastructure - schools, roads, power grid, universities, hospitals, etc. and that even continued after Oslo, before Arafat showed his true hand in the Second intifada.

Palestine' under Arafat and Abbas has received more aid than any developing country in history. The only results have been fat bank accounts in Jordan, the Emirates and Europe, excessive 'security forces,' luxurious villas for the elites, a growing payroll of convicted terrorist killers and their families, and a few monopoly industries wholly controlled by the Fatah mafiosos.

'Palestine' is essentially a kleptocracy. According Mahmoud Dahlan, Abbas and Arafat's former 'security chief', Abbas personally embezzled more than $1.3 billion personally from aid money and 'taxes', and he and the other Fatah cronies take a cut of all economic activity. The IMF says that at least 50% of the donor aid money gets 'diverted' into the bank accounts I mentioned, spent on supporting jihad and incitement against Israel, and supporting the resulting jailed criminals and their families. The main reason American-born former primes minister Salem Fayyad was fired by Abbas is because he actually started exposing some of this thievery.

Aside from that, there's no upside for Israel in helping the 'Palestinians' make more money to buy missiles and bullets to shoot at them. Palestine has nothing Israel needs, except perhaps a certain amount of cheap labor. And even that has pretty much been done away with after a number of Palestinian workers turned on their fellow workers,both during the Second intifada and the more recent Knife intifada. So Israel is importing guest workers now when that becomes necessary.

The bottom line is that there's no incentive or upside for Israel to strengthen the economy of what amounts to a hostile regime. Been there, done that, just like 'Land for peace'

Jerusalem a city of shared faiths? It already is, at least since the Israelis annexed it after Jordan attacked them in 1967. Under the Arabs, it was anything but. Every Jew living there in 1948 was ethnically cleansed. 28 historic synagogues with their Torah scrolls were burnt to the ground, Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives were used as paving stones and the Kotel, the holiest site in Judaism was used as a garbage dump and latrine. The Israelis aren't giving it back. Especially after experiencing violence and hideous vandalism at other Jewish holy sites like the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's tomb that they actually attempted to share with the Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians.'

What I'm trying to point out here is that the usual demands made on Israel for peace have two things in common. They've already been tried and they haven't worked.

One argument frequently used is that because of them munificent aid we give Israel, they should be willing to negotiate some of these things. Actually, in terms of dollars and cents, the aid Israel receives is small considering what Israel gives the U.S. in goods, access and services. There's a healthy argument that from a financial standpoint, Israel might be better off giving up the aid and simply doing what most of our other allies, like Turkey do - charging the U.S. the going rate.

The going rate Israel could charge America per year just for maintaining and guarding America's Mideast Strategic Arms depot on its soil alone would probably come close to the amount of the aid we give them per year just by itself. The chief benefit for Israel isn't the aid, by US backup internationally. And as I said, the Israel-US relationship is weighted heavily towards the US and is one of our few foreign policy bargains.

The argument is that Israel should simply bend over and endanger its people for the sake of US support doesn't wash. That support can be subject to change when you have a president that hearts Islamists and does not like Israel at all. Commitments and even written treaty guarantees change suddenly change then, as we've seen,with someone like Barack Hussein Obama in charge. And Arab 'good will' when it comes to the Jews and other infidels is also rather shaky and subject to change, especially when they think they have the upper hand militarily. But land and strategic positions last a lot longer, and can only be reclaimed by blood. The Israelis have simply bent over too many times.

For that matter, we give 'Palestine' a substantial amount of aid too and get zero for it. None of the people msking these arguments ever mention what we should demand from 'Palestine' based on that. It's always Israel that has real concessions are demanded. Never 'Palestine.' Funny thow that works, no?

If you've walked with me this far, I suppose you see where I'm going. Because of their hostile and violemt behavior, 'Palestine' has nothing Israel wants, and Israel has no reason to trust them. In any event, any deal Abbas makes is not going to be accepted by Hamas, so even the idea of peace is a farce. Even assuming Fatah and Abbas cut some kind of deal and offer Israel uncontested ownership of Jerusalem, forego the so-called right of return and recognize Israel as a Jewish state or make some kind of pledge for peace, so what? Israel either has those things already, isn't going to deal on the items in question and realizes that 'peace' is likely to be a mirage anyway.

Trump's idea, I'm sure, is a sort of grand bargain involving not just the Palestinians but the whole Arab region as a way of unifying against Shi'ite Iran. Some of these countries would go along, and some of them are even trading and engaging in security cooperation with Israel under the radar, but the Palestinians remain problematic. Half the Mideast has already tossed them out of their countries as a violent, divisive element. But they have also used the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians as a propaganda point against Israel for decades. They're in a trap of their own making, with the possible exception of Egypt and al-Sissi.

So here's how to really achieve a lasting Mideast peace.

Fatah and Hamas will never make peace with Israel. Period. We have Bill Clinton to thank for insisting that a murdering, corrupt thug like Arafat be rescued from obscurity in Tunis and made the new 'Palestinian' strongman. The start of any peace process will be to realize that it isn't a peace process so much as a divorce, and likely not an amicable one.

In exchange for recognition of Palestine by Israel, Israel could make a final offer consisting of the following conditions:

• Israel would recognize a Palestinian state in Area A of Judea and Samaria, where the vast majority of the Palestinians live. Area C where the majority of Israelis live would become part of Israel. Borders in Area B would be negotiated by the parties. Once borders are negotiated, appropriate population swaps would be completed.

• An immediate end to Palestinian incitement in its mosques, media and schools.

• An immediate end to financial support for convicted terrorists in Israeli jails and their families.

• The new Palestinian state would be completely demilitarized. Jordan isn't going to attack them, and neither is Israel unless Palestine violates this new, binding agreement. There's no need for more than a small, lightly armed police force. Palestine would agree to turn over non-police weaponry like the armored cars Obama gave the two combat brigades he had General Keith Dayton train and arm for use against Israel.

• The new Palestinian state will make a complete break of all relations with Hamas unless Hamas signs the agreement and complies with all its terms. That won't happen of course, but it's worth putting in there.

• Palestine would officially declare the conflict over, agree to recognize the new borders as final and abjure all claims on Israeli territory. Israel would likewise recognize Palestine as a state.

This gives the Palestinians a state on pretty much the same terms as Oslo, which of course they violated. It separates the two sides and gives the Palestinians a chance to build a state based on something other than stealing donor aid and fomenting violence and hatred of Israel. If Abbas really wants a Palestinian state he'll take it, because the other things he wants he isn't getting anyway.


*a Ten dollar word for excessive BS

Rob Miller writes for Joshuapundit. His articles have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Examiner, American Thinker, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The San Francisco Chronicle, Real Clear Politics, The Times Of Israel, Breitbart.Com and other publications.

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Yevtushenko 1932-2017: The Courage To Challenge Evil

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Here's one instance where one man's courage and artistry affected life so strongly that even all the powers of a totalitarian government failed to suppress its brilliant light. Anti-Stalinist poet Yevgenny Yevtushenko, who passed away at the age of 84 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was a professor who split his time between the United States and Moscow.

Yevtushenko was a poet with rock star fame in his native Russia, famous for his poems attacking Stalin and the Soviet system. He was expelled from the Literary Institute for"individualism in 1957 and banned from traveling, but that simply added to his mystique and appeal.

In 1961,Yevtushenko visited a large ravine just outside the Ukrainian capitol of Kiev called Babi Yar. It was being used as a trash dump. But 20 years previously, it had a very different use.

Babi Yar then was one of the great killing grounds of the Holocaust. At the end of September in 1941, the Nazis, with the cheerful assistance of Ukrainian 'Blue' police rounded up 33,741 Jewish men, women and children who lived in Kiev, and made them strip naked. Then they forced them into the ravine and machine gunned them to death in one mass grave.

 






While the killing was going on, many of the Jews' Ukrainian neighbors looked on, enjoyed the show and applauded as their neighbors were murdered. Many of them even brought picnic lunches.

During the course of the Holocaust, the ravine became a popular spot. Over 96,000 Jews ended up being slaughtered in that bloody, pitiless killing ground.

Babi Yar was important because it was the first major action of Hitler's Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen were groups of elite SS men who were literally killing units charged with murdering every Jew they could find. In the Ukraine, their job was made much easier by the assistance of the locals.

The Soviet Union's official policy when Yevtushenko visited Babi Yar in 1961 was not to discuss the Holocaust at all, but to consider everyone who fell in what they called the Great Patriotic War a 'Soviet citizen.' Aside from the fact that the Soviets didn't have all that much use for Jews themselves, there was also the factor of the Ukraine's role in the Holocaust to consider. And they were by no means alone in the territories the Soviets then had control of.

Yevtushenko was outraged that a place where so many innocent people had been murdered was not even given a memorial, and that their graves were literally a place where trash was being thrown. He was angry at the Soviet Union's continued silence on the Holocaust and its perpetrators for the sake of the Evil Empire's unity. So he did what only a poet could to strike back. He wrote one of the most famous poems of the 20th century,"Babi Yar.".

It's a startling poem even today, wherein a non-Jew suddenly metamorphoses himself as the incarnation on the entire Jewish race:

"No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk."

When Yevtushenko finished it, he knew what a bombshell it was and was fully aware of the consequences of airing it...especially with a Premier of Ukrainian extraction, Nikita Khrushchev leader the Soviet Union at the time. His publisher at Literaturnaya Gazeta first cautioned him against publishing the poem and told him that 'If I publish it, I will likely lose my job and who knows what will happen to you.' When Yevtushenko insisted, the publisher complied...and lost his job. The poem became a huge success in Russia and in the West, where copies were smuggled out. Yevtushenko was not punished formally, since Khrushchev was still trying to promote the myth of the anti-Stalinist 'thaw,' because Yevtushenko was astute enough to moderate his original version of the poem to praise Russia at the end, and because he had become far too well-known and popular. But his original restrictions remained in place.

“The poem was a criticism of anti-Semitism worldwide, including Soviet anti-Semitism, and was against all kinds of racism,” said Yevtushenko in a 2011 interview with the BBC.

“I was not afraid because I had already been expelled from the Literary Institute; I had been expelled from all kinds of organizations,” said Yevtushenko. “And I believed there was a future of change for Russia, that was also important. The poem was one of the changes; it was one first hole in the Iron Curtain.”

Indeed it was. And it eventually affected Russian attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust, with many of Yevtushenko's fellow artists producing works on that theme. 'Babi Yar' and its response helped inspire them with the intellectual courage to speak out.

The Soviet Union refused to put a memorial on Babi Yar until 1976, when an official memorial to 'Soviet citizens' shot at Babi Yar was erected. And finally, in 1991 the Ukrainian government allowed the establishment of a separate memorial specifically identifying most of the victims as Jewish.

That came after the first president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, made a fiery speech at the site. he was the first prominent Ukrainian who actually admitted publicly that Ukrainians shared some responsibility for carrying out the massacre, something that evoked a decidedly mixed response among his countrymen.

There's an interesting postscript. In 2009, the Kiev city council decided that Babi Yar was an ideal site for a tourist hotel to service the expected trade for the 2012 European soccer championship. The original plans actually called for the place to be called the Hotel Babi Yar, believe it or not.

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to this sordid story. After the plans leaked out, widespread outrage from around the world caused the city's mayor, Leonid Chernovetsky to veto the plan. I don't doubt that took considerable courage on his part.

After all, this is a country where mass murderer and anti-Semite Bohdan Chmielicki is still regarded as a national hero, memorialized with a statue in the middle of Kiev.

Well, time passes for all things, and that is how it should be. But there are things we need to remember, simply to make sure they don't occur again.

There have been some very recent and public attempts to pave over history or deny it ever happened in the first place. Seeing that, I think that remembering is a more pressing need for human society just now than another spiffy new hotel. Not so much just to memorialize the dead, as to help save the living.

I think Yevtushenko instinctively understood that.

Requisant en pace.

Forum: Was There Illegal Surveillance Of Trump's Team? If So, Should There Be Criminal Prosecution?

Every week on Monday, the WoW! staff, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:Was There Illegal Surveillance Of Trump's Team? If So, Should There Be Criminal Prosecution?


Micheal McDaniel: Was there illegal surveillance of Donald Trump? Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears defecate in the woods? Are congressional Republicans the Stupid Party?

Before definitively answering, let’s examine some unquestionable facts. Barack Obama is the product of the Chicago political machine. He thinks like a sociopathic, narcissistic thug. Whatever he desires must be his, and ethics, law, morality, decency or consideration of damage to others does not enter into it. He spent eight years weaponizing the entire federal bureaucracy, from the Department of Justice to the FBI, IRS, EPA, every agency and department of the federal government, including every facet of the intelligence “community.” His radical leftist agents are everywhere, and they are more than willing to do his bidding; that’s why they’re there.

Embarrassing evidence of criminal acts under court order for preservation at the IRS? Ooops! Sorry your honor, it somehow got erased! It’s nobody’s fault, really… Americans murdered by terrorists due to gross Obamite incompetence? Lie about it, and lie about lying about it. Constitution get in the way of progressive whims? I’ve got a pen and a phone!

We now know Obamite agents, those out of government and those still embedded in the government, are covertly and overtly doing all they can, with the help of a corrupt and amoral media, to destroy Donald Trump and his administration, and any collateral damage, like national security, the Constitution, and American’s trust in government, is of no concern to them. They believe they’re immune from consequences, and they’ll always come out on top.

And we also know, at the least, some of Trump’s transition team were “inadvertently” caught up in surveillance of foreign agents, diplomats, etc. We also know the names of such people were released to the media by Obamite agents, including potentially high-ranking intelligence officials. We know such actions are, in fact, illegal. We also know, if we’re honest, it’s highly likely Donald Trump was right. He was being “wiretapped.”

But he wasn’t actually “wiretapped.” Probably not, but he wasn’t suggesting someone actually attached wires to telephone pairs to overhear his conversations. That’s old technology, but Trump is of an age where “wiretapping” is a generic term for all manner of electronic surveillance. In the same way, when I speak of replaying a chapter of a DVD, I invariably say “rewind,” because I’m so used to thinking of VHS technology, though I haven’t owned a VHS tape for years.

We’re not absolutely sure, as in having crystal clear video and sworn documentary evidence, that Mr. Trump was the direct subject of surveillance, or that Mr. Obama ordered it. What we can be reasonably sure of is the same Obamite agents that violated federal law to unmask innocent citizens associated with Donald Trump, would absolutely tell Mr. Obama what they found and what they were doing. Oh, they may not tell him directly, face to face, but they would tell his acolytes, who would tell him. Plausible deniability, you know.

We can also be reasonably sure that Mr. Obama did not directly tell anyone to “wiretap” Mr. Trump or anyone else. It would have been entirely unnecessary. At best, he might have said something like “will no one rid me of this troublesome Trump?” One doesn’t weaponize the entire federal bureaucracy without expecting such criminal minds to engage unbidden in whatever dirty deeds are necessary for the furtherance of the holy progressive cause. That’s why they’re there. Even if such surveillance were incidental, no one had to tell Obamite operatives to use that information to the detriment of Donald Trump.

Would Barack Obama and his minions want to have had intimate knowledge of everything Trump was up to? Would they have violated the law to gain that information? Would they have given a damn about violating the law? Does any rational person really need answers to those questions?

Something else to consider is the silence of Barack Obama and most of his toadies regarding this situation, as well as a warning from one of his former lackeys to be careful about saying no wiretapping of Trump was done. Has Obama ever been silent about such things? Has he ever hesitated to lecture, accuse, berate and lie about anything? Is it possible he might be lying low, hoping his agents remaining in government can still destroy evidence and still protect him? Or is he merely scheming, waiting for that evidence to be destroyed, only then to resurface and taunt the American people to prove him a criminal?

And what of the FBI, which is, at last report, refusing to cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee? Can the FBI be trusted anymore, or has it been coopted by Obamites?

Should violations of federal law be discovered and provable, everyone involved must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Absent that, we will have devolved to a banana republic, where some people are immune from prosecution, and able to violate the law at will. We may not be far from that already.

 Don Surber : It was legal. It was wrong.

JoshuaPundit: This involved something Barack Obama's presidency was noted for...weaponizing government agencies like the EPA,DOJ and IRS among others and using them against his 'political enemies.'

If this wasn't illegal,then neither was Watergate. It also involved a government using surveillance against political opposition in an election year. One big difference - Nixon was unaware of the Watergate mess until after it happened, while Barack Obama almost certainly was. That's why just before the end of his presidency, Obama issued an executive order allowing massive, open distribution of the transcripts of the surveillance on the Trump transition team and on the president elect himself.

Moreover, such transcripts are supposed to be redacted by law. These weren't, and in fact were passed on to a helpful media.

As I mentioned here, the BBC documented and reported on how the Obama Administration gamed FISA requirements to get a warrant after two failed attempts. They accomplished this illegal act by placing the entire case as a FISA case (probably under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from the third request for a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the court unwittingly granted.

It's a major felony under section 1809 of the FISA laws for anyone to either perform electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA or to disclose or use the information gathered from it. If these transcripts were leaked to the helpful press as they obviously were, that's another serous felony.

Misusing the FISA system when foreign intelligence is NOT involved is another felony. So is perjury or conspiracy to commit perjury when it comes to say, testimony in congress used to falsely accuse Attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Now since we've answered the illegality question, should it be prosecuted? Of course it should, but there are obstacles.

President Trump will have to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor. On of Bill Clinton's last gifts to the country was to abolish the formerly independent Special Prosecutor's office and make it part of the Department of Justice under the U.S. Attorney General's total control.

Assuming the special prosecutor finds a few John Dean style rats willing to avoid prison by testifying (Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan and a number of 'journalists' would be good places to start) the political feedback has to be calculated. And that could be troublesome.

If the trial of evidence leads back to Barack Obama, there could be other matters that come out regarding IRSGate, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the president using Mrs. Clinton's illegal server with a pseudonym and a number of other matters. What then?

Since Barack Obama is no longer president, he no longer has any legal immunity and the question of getting votes to impeach him is moot. But he was the historic first black president. So President Trump would face an unusual dilemma. He can pardon the former president. That would lead to widespread disgust from his supporters that could very well doom his re-election as it did Gerald Ford's, and lead to a national cynicism about the rule of law at a time when it's already rampant.

Or he could choose to try Obama and convict him. No matter the evidence, that choice would have the media in hysterics, calls for open rebellion and riots umm, urban unrest in many of America's cities. There's also the question of what you do with a former president convicted of numerous felonies. He obviously can't be housed in a normal prison. As president, he was simply privy to far too much sensitive information. What if he was kidnapped by a foreign power? The only solution would be a private security compound. And what would he do once his sentence was served? Barack Hussein Obama was not referred to in some quarters as the first post-American president for nothing.
Imagine his attitude after spending a few years in prison.

The third choice would be to simply expose these matters, prosecute and imprison the aiders and abettors (including those 'journalists' ) and let the American people know the truth about what happened. That's the choice I'd expect President Trump to make.

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : There is enough smoke to believe there was illegal surveillance of Trump’s team at Trump Tower. Congress should pursue exposing who was involved in this surveillance; who authorized it and who carried out those orders. Those individuals should be prosecuted and if found guilty should be sentenced to the maximum extent the law allows. Those working in our intelligence community should be held to the highest standards their positions demand. We seem to have too many political ideologues working in what are supposed to be apolitical positions.

Before President Obama left office one of his final executive actions introduced new rules that allow the NSA to share private data gathered without a warrant, court order, or congressional authorization with sixteen agencies within the intelligence community; including DHS, FBI, and DEA. This rule permits employees in these intelligence agencies to sift through raw data collected by the NSA. Prior to this the NSA would share information but only after filtering out irrelevant material and masking the names of innocent American citizens. How many innocent Americans are having their private and personal communications shared among employees in these intelligence agencies?

With these new rules President Obama lit a fuse before he left the White House. Our legislators must act in a non-political bipartisan manner to assure this private information remains private and is never publicly shared. Our intelligence community must understand the gravity of their positions and if they fail to honor their oaths of office they will be dealt with harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take from me, you won't want to miss it.

Forum: What Would Real Healthcare Reform Look Like?

Every week on Monday, the WoW! staff, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Would Real Healthcare Reform Look Like?

Don Surber: The perfect health plan would leave it to the states. Medicaid would end. I'd keep Medicare because we paid into it and it's an inviolable promise to those 65 and older (I am 63). The marketplace would make health care better and cheaper, especially if we eliminated third-party payer.

But we won't agree on the perfect plan, and so we compromise. The following need to be included in the repeal-and-replace: 1. End the mandate for employers. 2. End the mandate for individuals. 3. End subsidies by 2020 (you have to give people time to adjust). 4. Finish the legislation by July 31 to give insurers time to prepare plans for next year. The open season begin in October.
My advice to conservatives is to understand there will be compromise, not because the people who oppose you are evil, but because they see things different, know things you don't know, and don't know things that you know.

As Bob Dylan sang:

"We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point Of view
Tangled up in blue"


Rob Miller: While I would generally agree that the less government in healthcare the better, c'mon. I live in the real world and it ain't gonna happen. Too many people want the government gimmees and the lollypops. And too many of our politicians are just tickled to give it to them. If you want to know the real reason why so many of our politicos want the status quo, or something close to it, the reason is dead simple, and you can read it here and see if you don't agree.

Two dirty words no one in DC wants to mention and the additional fact that illegal migrants are bleeding the system white are exactly why our healthcare system is in such dire straits now, and why the cost of care keeps skyrocketing.

And I think we can forget about the states being involved. A number of them like Illinois and California are essentially bankrupt and inept on top of it. California's Governor Jerry Brown actually wants to spend billions putting together a kind of universal healthcare in California. This is roughly the equivalent of a couple living from paycheck to paycheck with serious debt to deal with deciding that hey, this would be a great time to buy a boat! And maybe a summer house by the beach! And do we need to mention how many of Illinois's governors have ended up in jail?

Putting healthcare in hands like these would be like putting a sex offender in charge of a girl's school. It would not end well.

If the feds are actually going to handle healthcare, ( and the Ryan Plan is nothing less than that) maybe we might as well go government mandated. There's at least one system I'm familiar with that's mandated and it's one of the top rated healthcare systems in the world. And they managed to keep the virtues of competition and free choice intact while keeping care both affordable, efficient and high quality. We could mimic that, but to get anything remotely like  their kind of results, we'd have to change a few things that would not resonate well with a number of members of the political class.

  Dick the Butcher in ''Henry VI'' may have been on to something, present company excluded.

Mike McDaniel : In “repealing and replacing” Obamacare, Republicans, once again--still--are demonstrating why they so richly deserve the title: “the stupid party.” Oh no, they say, we can’t just dump Obamacare. Why not? How did America survive before Obamacare? As I recall--it was only about seven years ago--people that wanted health insurance had it. It was much cheaper, there were more choices, and deductibles didn’t render it impossible to use. There were more doctors, and much happier doctors, and no one was dying in the streets. One thing that has not changed is that hospital emergency rooms can’t turn people away. No matter how poor you are, they have to treat you.

Somehow, Republicans seem unable to understand this, or to speak about it.

As I also recall, merely having insurance has never meant having access to health care. They’re not the same thing.

Somehow, Republicans seem unable to understand this, or to speak about it.

Obamacare can and must be dumped, entirely, every word, every bit of punctuation. Unless we do that, unless we repeal the entire 2000+ page abomination, everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. No one is going to be dying in the streets, though no one will ever know that if they’re waiting for Republicans, particularly the feckless Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell to tell them.

What would real healthcare reform look like? Basically what Donald Trump has said it should be:

*Erase state lines, allowing companies to sell policies everywhere.

*Get the federal government completely out of it. Want to drain swamps? Getting rid of Obamacare is a great place to start.

*Allow insurance to be portable. Make it possible for people changing careers or jobs the option to take it with them.

*Allow people to band together in larger groups to take advantage of lower rates.

*High risk pools are entitlements, not insurance. If government wants to take that on, don’t urinate on our heads and tell us it’s insurance. But why not? We’re already racing headlong for the fiscal cliff on the high speed rail to nowhere? What’s another trillion or two?

*Allow people to buy any kind of policy they want. No maternity care for men, no prostate surgery benefits for women. If a young, fit, healthy 20-something wants only low-cost insurance for medical catastrophes, have at it.

There are other issues that could be helpful, including rescinding regulations that drive up the cost of drugs and make it almost impossible to bring new life-saving drugs and treatments to market. Deregulating the medical profession and easing the paperwork burden would be enormously helpful too, but that’s a topic for another forum.

The less government, at every level, has its fingers in patient’s medical charts, the better off everyone will be.

 Bookworm Room : I don't have anything intelligent to offer on the subject. I believe in the free market, which has been non-existent since health insurance's inception, when employers offered insurance as a way to circumvent wage controls during WWII. In the decades since then, the health insurance market has been corrupted even further thanks to thousands of federal and state regulations. It's been further corrupted by government price controls over fees and pharmaceuticals.

There's also the market perversion inherent in the fact that the consumer is not responsible for paying the provider so the consumer has no incentive to price shop -- which is hard to do in any event when medicine can be so specialized that the consumer may lack the ability to measure the quality of goods and services versus the price. Add in the fact that the consumer's demands are often on an emergency basis and you end up with a situation that challenges the free market's flow of information and openness to negotiation.

So while I see the problems, I don't see solutions. I just know that socialized medicine never benefits the consumer and that ObamaCare didn't benefit anybody at all. My instinct would be to take all that money the government shuffles around and return it to consumers in the form of an individual "health care savings account." Consumers could than make choices about whether they want to hoard the money (making themselves their own insurers) or invest in insurance that would be offered on a nationwide, rather than statewide, basis. I suspect that would a free market, there would be a lot of affordable options.

States could keep skin in the game by having websites that insurance companies based upon whether they meet metrics each state desperately wishes it could impose on insurers. I know that I have Progressive friends who would never dream of buying insurance from Texas because it lacks the regulatory control California imposes -- never mind that those regulations traditionally trebled the cost.

The Razor: I am a borderline anarchist on the subject.
The US healthcare system is so screwed up I feel like the only solution is to (rhetorically of course) burn it to the ground.

At this point I would take almost any other system than the one we have. Canada. Singapore. Israel.
Let’s outsource the problem to the Japanese I’m sure they’d come up with something better.
Honestly I am so angry with both parties on the topic because they have no clue as to how bad the situation is.

None.

Nuke it from orbit and start over.


Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : Since Obamacare was forced on the American people we conservatives worked hard to elect Republican candidates who promised us nothing less than full repeal of Obamacare. After seven years we have secured Republican majorities in the House, Senate and now in the Executive Office. It is extremely disappointing to hear the reforms being proposed such as the “three buckets” of legislation, and the excuses of how this cannot be done all at once. They have had seven years to perfect a good plan to withdraw us off of Obamacare and return health insurance and health care into the hands of the people, doctors, insurance companies, and the free market. We have fought too long and hard to see these promises not kept by our elected and “trusted” servants.

One thing we have learned, for those who didn’t consider or realize it before; health insurance is not health care. Many middle class people have experienced premiums and deductibles so high they can never afford to see a doctor. We are being told that premiums will not go down with what is being proposed and that in fact some will see their premiums continue to rise.

Anytime government gets involved with such issues it distorts the system. The mandates for coverage and no co-pay requirements for such things as well woman visits should be eliminated. What happens is the government sets the mandates and insurance companies have to comply even though complying makes it impossible to make a profit. So the government promises the insurance companies they will be compensated for their losses and guarantee profits for a period of time through subsidies. Whether the insurance company collects revenue from the individual paying the insurance premium, or the government subsidizes the insurance company to assure they can turn a profit, it is all coming from us. Any law that harms even one person is not a just law, and Obamacare has hurt too many people. The Supreme Court was wrong in its decision when it ruled this law constitutional.

It seems like things were much better when we paid a reasonable premium for coverage we chose which met our needs and our budgets. If we wanted more coverage or lower deductibles or co-pays we paid a premium for that. If we chose to carry a catastrophic policy only and pay the rest of our medical costs out of pocket that was also an option.

Get government out of the health care business and return it to the free market. The laws should be lifted that insist on mandated coverages even when people do not need or want them. Allow insurance to be purchased across state lines. Make insurance more competitive.

Congress should put the repeal on Trumps’ desk that they put on Obama’s desk. This is what we elected them to do.

Well. there it is.

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Healthcare Reform - The Dirty Words No One Wants To Say Guarantee Failure

I've been watching with interest the back and forth over healthcare reform. My good friend Bookworm has a great article on the subject you should read.

But having taken a look at this, it does seem to me that the Republicans, as usual, are trying to win by avoiding being cast in the media as mean nasty villains robbing people of something. And after all, if you can spend other people's money and look good...

Although of course, they won't look good no matter what they do to the Democrat's trained seal media. You'd think they would have gotten a clue by now!

Far better to concentrate on real policy and do it right, no? And let the results be the judge.

Insurance is what I call a 'projection' industry, where fortune tellers known as actuaries crunch numbers and determine the rates on policies and on investments known as insurance contracts as far in advance as possible. Forced instantaneous hope n' change like ObamaCare hits insurance companies with a sucker punch and costs them a lot of money - which of course, like any other business they pass on to their customers.

What's going on in DC now is ridiculous. If the GOP puts together some kind of bogus ObamaCare lite entitlement and President Trump signs it, it will be the first campaign promise he's broken. I'm pretty sure cooler heads will prevail and there will be significant changes made to what we have now.

This is exactly why I said in an earlier article, that the first thing that needed to be done by President Trump, together with Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was to have have immediately announced the repeal of ObamaCare, especially the individual mandate penalty and named a date in the near future - say, November 10th, 2017 or whatever - when it will no longer be in effect.

Aside from assuring the American people they weren't being screwed again, it would give congress a clearly established a deadline to thrash out the new legislation and it would have allowed insurance companies some badly needed lead in time to plan for ObamaCare's demise.

And a demise, it must be. ObamaCare is so flawed, so thrown together without common sense that trying to build something viable using its parts is a fool's errand.It was garbage to begin with, a tax scam rather than anything to do with healthcare.

But what next? Where should we go with healthcare? Incredibly, there are two dirty words that nobody is mentioning. And there's a really good reason why...

Those dirty words? T O R T... R E F O R M! Say it again, with feeling.:  TO R T... R E F O R M!

Keep this in mind.. when someone is chattering away in wonkspeak about healthcare, mandates, health savings accounts and the like, unless they're mentioning those two dirty words they're simply blowing smoke up your nether regions.

Ask any health professional about what their biggest fear is. I've asked quite a few, and the answer is almost always predatory lawsuits. Have you ever gotten one of those official looking letters -actually calling them advertisements is more appropriate - asking you to sign on to a large class action suit against an HMO or hospital? Sure you have. The result of this trolling is almost always a fortune for the lawyers in fees and a pittance for the rubes who signed up as part of the 'class' if they mange to win and get a judgement. Even if they lose, their target spends big dollars in legal fees, or rather their malpractice insurance company does. After which the insurance company jacks up their premiums.

Picture yourself as a young American doctor. You're already carrying six figures in student loan debt. And on top of that, depending on whether you're a GP or a specialist and depending on where you're practicing the usual rates for malpractice insurance run from just under $30,000 per year to six figures in the pricier areas.

Aside from the ever rising cost of malpractice insurance, this fear of predatory lawyers also pads the price of healthcare by causing repetitive paperwork and staff work and many unnecessary and repetitive activities, even on routine medical procedures.

No doctor or institution should be allowed to get away with malpractice, and the medical profession actually does a fairly decent job of weeding put bad actors. But unless the current barrage of lawsuits is brought under control and some reasonable guidelines established, the cost of medical care is going to continue to increase. There are simply far too many lawyers, and far too many unnecessary lawsuits targeting the medical profession and healthcare institutions.

So why is no one mentioning this? So simple! Ask yourself this...what did most of the members of congress do for a living before they became congressmen? What do many of them do for a living when they leave? Why, they're lawyers of course. And even while they're in congress, a number of them receive an income from law firms they have a partnership interest in. As lawyers, let's just say that many of them are reluctant to cut off a steady stream of income for the profession if not for themselves. And as we all know, law firms also contribute a lot of money to legislators who see things their way. That's why a lot of what Senator Rand Paul has to say on healthcare sounds so sensible. He's a medical doctor,not a lawyer. We'll come back to this point later, but keep it in mind.

Another ongoing problem I haven't heard mentioned in this debate is illegal migrants. Their effect on the cost of healthcare is a lot more insidious. In California and some other states with large illegal migrant populations, many of them are on Medic-Aid, because no one checks too closely about insignificant details like citizenship.In fact, there are actual privacy laws in California that prohibit and cross checking, so the system is almost set up for fraud. Fake social security numbers or EIN's are also used quite a bit.

Another common occurrence is the abuse of ER facilities. If an illegal migrant working as a day laborer hurts himself on a construction site, he'll go to the nearest hospital emergency room for treatment. Since legally and humanely he needs to be treated, he is. And when it comes to payment, a quick discussion between the migrant and the hospital staff makes it very clear that this one is going to be a freebie. So the hospital eats it. King-Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles was bankrupted by this type of patient, and I doubt they're the only ones who were, or who at least suffered major losses financially.

Tort reform and dealing with our huge illegal migrant problem are essential to stopping the spiraling cost of healthcare and repairing the damage ObamaCare caused. So is actual competition across state lines. And actual freedom of choice, dammit!

Keep these simple concepts in the above paragraph in mind.

Apparently a number of Americans like the idea of keeping young adults of 26 and under on their healthcare policies if they're still lucky enough to be able to have one. And they like the idea being able to get insurance with preconditions without paying for them. It's become exactly what Rand Paul said it is, a new entitlement.

Believe it or not, there is one healthcare system I know about that is government mandated, but also embraces all the of the concepts I've mentioned for real reform. After all, if we're going to have ObamaCare Lite courtesy of Paul Ryan, why not?

Israel never really planned government run mandatory healthcare, but they were more or less forced into it by circumstances. After 1948, they had a large segment of their population who were 'graduates' of the concentration camps as well as almost a million Jewish refugees who arrived there penniless after being ethnically cleansed from the Arab world. So a nationwide healthcare system was cobbled together. And it works quite well. Why?

• Israel has a very small illegal migrant problem. And thanks to the border walls, it's even smaller now. They don't have tons of illegal migrants bankrupting the system.

• The ideas of competition and freedom of choice are maintained. While the government oversees and finances part of the system,it doesn't micromanage it itself or insist that everyone have cookie cutter insurance. There are four different carriers (essentially, HMOs), all of whom compete with each other for members and have different plusses,minuses and 'specialties,' by which I mean a reputation for excelling in particular kinds of care or having better rates for certain extras or different copays and levels of coverage. All Israeli citizens get the basic plan the government subsidizes.If you want extras in certain areas, you buy them from your insurance carrier, so you have the ability to shop. On the flip side, you're not paying for something that's of no use for you, like maternal care for an elderly couple past childbearing age. Preconditions aren't an issue because everyone has to have insurance. The National Health Insurance Law guarantees all Israeli citizens access to one of the four carriers, and the right to transfer between the carriers once per year.

• Tort reform is not a problem since not only does Israel lack the litigious climate lawyers have fostered here in America (at least, so far) but lawyers also aren't coming out of the woodwork there as they are in America. And at present, lawyers don't constitute any kind of majority in Israel's Knesset. The ratio of doctors to lawyers in Israel is about the opposite of what it is here.And the level of care, even private care is so high quality and reasonably priced compared to the EU and America that medical tourism is common. Med school is also cheaper, and Israel offers special incentives for medical professionals who want to become olim (Jewish migrants to israel under the Law of the Return).

Does it work? In a survey of 48 countries in 2013, Israel's healthcare system was ranked fourth in the world in terms of efficiency, and in 2014 it ranked seventh out of 51. In 2015, Israel was ranked sixth-healthiest country in the world by Bloomberg rankings and eighth in terms of life expectancy.

So it can be done. But major tort reform,getting rid of a substantial number of illegal migrants and fostering competition and freedom of choice for consumers is what it takes. That, and creating a lot more doctors, medical researchers and personnel as well as a lot less lawyers.

Far easier said then done, but doable.