But he voted Trump in 2016. I think that’s what @[email protected] meant by a ‘historical conservative’.

Further thoughts on this:

Criticising the Democrats as merely a type of Republican has other downsides: it effectively takes the Republicans as the standard type of politician, i.e., it turns every argument into an argument on their terms.

This also means that we don’t effectively criticise the Democrats, who are best criticised on their terms, not as merey lesser or mutated Republicans.

The “lesser” fascist is still a fascist, and fascists spend much more of their time attacking us than attacking each other, and on top of that even if they do attack each other it’s through attacking us.

But the Democrats aren’t fascists, lesser or otherwise. They’re not ‘the Republicans, but less so’; they’re a different organisation with different histories and philosophies, different people and different priorities. The Democrats, for example, are not promising to overthrow the constitution, but overthrow it a bit less than the Republicans; they’re not planning to overthrow it at all. Degrees of evil are not possible in this case, nor in many others. The Republicans are straight up wrong in a way that the Democrats just are not.

For these reasons, I don’t buy the framing of lesser evil at all. If I did buy that framing, I would still wholeheartedly vote for the lesser evil, because it would still be better than more evil, by definition. Even your definition of ‘the same amount of evil, but slower’, would be better.

Seems like a good choice from where I am (which is, granted, the other side of the ocean). Republicans want to depict Democrats as dangerous extremists, but Walz comes across as a friendly dad, so that just won’t stick. No one will care about his policy record, they’ll just sound weird talking about that stuff.

The thing is that when Americans voted for the oldest Presidential candidate ever, with Harris as the VP, they were effectively saying they were okay with her as President. So, it’s safe to have some faith in Americans on this one!

Absolutely correct. And Trump is very beatable. The Democrats have loads of candidates who could beat him (including, IMO, Biden, but that’s in the past, now).

Ah-ha as [email protected] said, this is indeed Morning Mood, by Grieg. Oddly, I also immediately thought of The Simpsons’ use of it!

Possibly the aptly named ‘Love Theme’ from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet?

I agree with your description of him, but the only thing that’s relevant here is the insurrection. It’s important not to muddy the waters with the other stuff!

Prior to the election, Donald Trump incited the Proud Boys specifically and other militant groups to insurrection with his ‘stand back and stand by’ comments. These were taken by many observers and the Proud Boys themselves as calls to seditious conspiracy. Members of the Proud Boys then planned the 6 January attack, including planting bombs around Washington DC, and were involved in the attack on the Capitol. Many have been convicted of this conspiracy, so there’s no legal question as to whether it happened. I don’t know if incitement to an insurrection counts as insurrection in and of itself. It might do, but I’m not a lawyer.

Having lost the election, Trump knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to undermine a free and fair election, which he knew he had lost, in order to keep himself in power. Some aspects of that conspiracy have gone to trial and defendants have been found guilty. So, there remain some legal questions as to the extent of the conspiracy, but it is quite clear that people involved broke the law in the pursuit of the conspiracy. The conspiracy constitutes an attempted insurrection in itself.

When his conspiracy failed, he then incited a violent attempt to overthrow the election (the ‘fiery stuff to a rally’) and allowed it to continue as people were violently attacked. This also constitutes an attempted insurrection.

I never heard that one before! Is it two people? Sounds to me like Paul saying ‘Oh!’ then John mumbling ‘bloody hell.’

On ‘Cotton Crown’ by Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon sing ‘You got your cotton crown’ multiple times at the end. Gordon accidentally sings it one too many times and trails off, like, ‘You got your cott — uh’.

In ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, on the second verse Paul McCartney laughs while singing the word ‘writing’, reportedly because John Lennon mooned him from the control booth. Another Beatles one is on ‘What Goes On’ when Ringo Starr sings ‘Tell me why’ and you can hear Lennon shout ‘We already told you why!’, presumably in reference to their earlier song ‘Tell Me Why’, which Starr also sang.

There’s a really famous one on Nirvana’s cover of ‘The Man Who Sold the World’. At the beginning of the guitar solo, Kurt Cobain misses the note then overcorrects and misses it again, but it’s a surprisingly musical-sounding error. I doubt he’d have dubbed it regardless!

Lots of cool chord voicings. The low two strings are a fifth apart, so it’s a little like a drop tuning. But then with the low G and the doubled high B, you can do loads of cool drones, while using the familiar DGB from standard to do inverted chords.

Also, it’s pretty easy to detune to from standard!

One of my faves is C G D G B B, which Thurston Moore developed.

Supposedly, he based it on a tuning Stephen Malkmus came up with, which was itself based on something Moore came up with previously. A great case of what goes around, comes around!

EDIT: Loads more of Sonic Youth’s tunings can be found here.

1:22, right when Lennon sings ‘Pride can hurt you, too’, the cymbal sound changes noticeably.

I wouldn’t say it ruins it, but the really obvious splice edit in the third verse of She Loves You is jarring for me every time.

The world is full of things more bizarre and inexplicbale than we could ever imagine, and I thank you for reminding me of that this morning.

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer on Abbey Road. One of the few songs I skip while listening to an album!

Right and… then what? Biden isn’t guilty of anything. The Senate wouldn’t convict him. Even if the Senate did convict (which they won’t), Harris, who even Trump isn’t pretending has done anything wrong, would then become President. What’s the endgame, here? We all know there isn’t one. It’s just the politics of endless grievance and whinging.

Post-rock, maybe? Whatever you call it, I love it!