May 2015 archive

I’m extremely happy that I’ve finally dismissed Wagner who was no more than a third rate hack with no talent except for shameless self promotion (hey, it takes one to know one), but he codified The 3 Rules of Opera in a way that led Chuck Jones to create the best cartoon of all time (I’d embed it, but it never stays up for long).

Sung by Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht, and Bugs Bunny (from Flatbush Brooklyn by most accounts though some say the Bronx or even shudder Poughkeepsie New Joisey), there are Three Acts and as I recall it goes a little something like this (Elmer in Italics, Bugs in Normal; Singing Centered, Spoken Left Justified)-

Be vewy quiet I’m hunting wabbitsWabbit tracks!!!Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbitKill the rabbit?Yo ho to oh! Yo ho to oh! Yo ho…O mighty warrior of great fighting stockMight I inquire to ask, eh, what’s up doc??I’m going to kill the wabbit!!Oh mighty hunter t’will be quite a taskHow will you do it, might I inquire to ask??I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!Your spear and magic helmet?Spear & magic helmet!Magic helmet?Magic helmet!(Dismissively) Magic helmetYes, magic helmet, and I’ll give you a sample

Stage direction: General Devastation

Bye

That was the wabbit!!!

Stage direction: Bugs Cross Dressed

Oh Brunhilda, you’re so wuvelyYes I know it I can’t help itOh Brunhilda be my wuveReturn my wuve a longing burns deep inside meReturn my love I want you always beside meWuve like ours must beMade for you and for me(Harmony) Return won’t you return my love for my love is yours

Stage direction: You tip your hat to this Teuton son and all them ears come out from underneath

I’ll kill the wabbit!Arise stormsNorth winds blow, south winds blowTyphoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, SMOG!Flash lightning strike the wabbitWhat have I done?? I’ve killed the wabbit…Poor little bunny, poor little wabbit…

Well what did you expect in an opera, a happy ending???

That HTML is more complicated than it looks.

Now you might suspect this is the introduction to some Wagnerian Opus and I’ve already said it will be a cold day in Muspelheim.  He represents everything bad and overblown about Romantic Art Music.  No, it’s simply to remind you of The 3 Rules of Opera which are-

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

Today’s subject is Lucia di Lammermoor, also Romantic but from a time when Wagner was a struggling nobody and Gaetano Donizetti was the last remaining “genius” of the Italian School after the death of Vincenzo Bellini and the retirement of Gioachino Rossini.

While the plot bears some similarity to a mashup of Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth it is in fact lifted from Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor.

Lucy Ashton’s (Lucia) family is feuding with the Ravenswoods.  She’s in love with Edgar Ravenswood (Edgardo) who is observed sneaking into the Castle by Norman (Normanno) who duly reports this to her brother Henry (Enrico) who is consumed with a deep and abiding hated of all things Ravenswood.

Lucy waits for Edgar by a fountain with her maid Lisa (Alisa) and tells her (or rather sings her because this is an Opera after all) that she has seen the ghost of a girl killed on the very same spot who was killed by a (now also dead) Ravenswood out of jealousy.  Lisa replies that this is an omen and Lucy really ought to ditch Edgar.  Edgar arrives and tells Lucy he must leave for France and that he hopes to convince Henry of his sincerity and marry before he goes.  Lucy says- ‘Are you nuts?’ and instead they exchange rings and pledge eternal love.

While Edgar is away, Henry arranges to marry Lucy off to Arthur (Arturo).  Worried she is still in love with Edgar (which is true), he shows her a forgery that ‘proves’ Edgar has forgotten her and is shacking up with someone else.  He leaves it to her old pastor Raymond (Raimondo) to make the argument that she should go through with this for the good of the family.

Arthur arrives to pick up his bride Lucy but she’s behaving, umm…, erraticly.  Edgar assures Arthur she’s just upset over the death of her Mom.  Arthur signs on the dotted line and Lucy follows reluctantly.  At that point Edgar shows up and Raymond steps in and shows Lucy’s signature on the contract.  He yells at her (well, sings, you know) and demands she return his ring and takes hers and tramples it on the floor.  At this point the bouncers show him the street.

Henry is still pissed and challenges Edgar to a duel.  He tells Edgar she is already doing it with Arthur and likes it very much thank you.  Edgar replies- ‘I’m going to kick your ass’.

Well, Lucy is not enjoying it and has killed Arthur.  Raymond comes in and tells everyone what she has done and proclaims her ‘Mad’.  Then Lucy shows up and cops an insanity defense, singing passionately of an imagined happy life with Edgar.  Henry enters and is at first enraged and then softens as he becomes convinced his sister truly is insane.  She collapses and Raymond blames Norman for the whole tragedy.

And now, dear reader, I’ll ask you to pause.

Is Lucy dead?

Mental Illness is a bad thing and very real, leading you to suicidal and homocidal impulses and self destructive behaviors, but it doesn’t generally strike you down like a brain aneurysm unless that’s what caused it.  There’s no reason to think Lucy’s actions anything but rational (if a bit psychotic) in today’s culture.  Sure juries find people like that guilty and pack them off to the pen or execute them all the time, but they’re not stricken down by the lightning bolts of Zeus or the Hand of God.  Keep that in mind as I tell you what happens next.

Edgar has resolved to die in order to kill Henry.  He hears of Lucy’s sudden breakdown and then instead of Henry, Raymond appears and tells him Lucy is dead.  Edgar stabs himself fatally so he can be reunited with Lucy in Heaven.

Hmm…, ironic and gruesome enough for you?

“Don’t stop, belie“.

Embedding disabled by request.  Told you things don’t stay up.

My personal theory is that Henry, still hating Edgar and the Ravenswoods as much as ever and unwilling to risk a duel with a kamikaze, sends Raymond out just to provoke the reaction he got.  Does he marry Lucy off to someone else?  Does he send her to a nunnery?  Does she commit suicide herself?  Henry is evil through and through and is not above doing anything to get what he wants.

At this point I don’t care either.  It’s been two and a half hours and my butt is sore and I gotta pee.

Sure Il dolce suono is considered one of the greatest arias ever and is a staple of every famous soprano you’ve ever heard of except for Tony, but it’s Scene 2 of the Third Act!

I suppose you can linger over dessert and get that second cup of coffee without guilt.  You won’t miss anything important.  Oh, and don’t bother sticking around for the last credit to roll in Age of Ultron either.  Once Thanos says he’ll do it himself it’s Third Grips and Craft Services until they close the curtains.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

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May 16 is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 229 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1868, the U.S. Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In February 1868, the House of Representatives charged Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for vague “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (For comparison, in 1998, President Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice during an investigation into his inappropriate sexual behavior in the White House Oval Office. In 1974, Nixon faced three charges for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.) The main issue in Johnson’s trial was his staunch resistance to implementing Congress’ Civil War Reconstruction policies. The War Department was the federal agency responsible for carrying out Reconstruction programs in the war-ravaged southern states and when Johnson fired the agency’s head, Edwin Stanton, Congress retaliated with calls for his impeachment.

Of the 11 counts, several went to the core of the conflict between Johnson and Congress. The House charged Johnson with illegally removing the secretary of war from office and for violating several Reconstruction Acts. The House also accused the president of hurling slanderous “inflammatory and scandalous harangues” against Congressional members. On February 24, the House passed all 11 articles of impeachment and the process moved into a Senate trial.

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If you avoid eggs because you think they’re bad for you, you should reconsider. It was never clear that dietary cholesterol had a significant impact on heart health; saturated fat in the diet is thought to be a bigger culprit (how big is also a matter of dispute these days). The government’s new dietary guidelines acknowledge as much, advising that eating an egg every day will not affect blood cholesterol or cardiovascular health.

B. B. King, blues legend, has died at 89.

Are they under here?  No.  Are they over there?  No.

Hah!  I was hiding them behind my back all along.  Heh.  Never get tired of that one.

GOP’s alarming Iraq amnesia: Jeb Bush, WMDs & the lies neocons want us to forget

by Joan Walsh, Salon

Friday, May 15, 2015 10:46 AM EST

(Jeb) Bush had a hard time saying that the invasion was a mistake, even with what we know now – Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, and toppling the dictator would smash the country into warring pieces – because he, and his core national security advisors, may well not think it was.

We seem to be suffering from collective amnesia when we act like the lack of WMD was a big “surprise” that Bush and the 2016 field must now reckon with, one that means the invasion was a tragic mistake. In fact, the Bush intelligence team cooked the books to either create or exaggerate the evidence at the time, to sell us a cruel war of choice.

…

The former president has admitted to mistakes in the war’s execution, the occupation and its aftermath. He has lamented the terrible intelligence his administration shared in the lead up to the invasion. But he himself has never said: If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it.

Quite the opposite. In his memoir, he admitted to tactical mistakes, but stated forthrightly: “The region is more hopeful with a young democracy setting an example for others to follow. And the Iraqi people are better off with a government that answers to them instead of torturing and murdering them.”

He added: “There are things we got wrong in Iraq, but the cause is eternally right.”

Dick Cheney certainly agrees. Paul Wolfowitz, one of Jeb’s advisors, blasts the aftermath of Saddam’s fall, and the wholly incompetent occupation – the reign of Paul Bremer and Dan Senor and fresh-faced 20-something ideologues from the Lincoln Group trying to govern Iraq – but not the decision to wage war itself. There were lots of things the Bush team might like to do over, but the invasion isn’t one of them.

The Cheney-Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld faction saw an Iraq invasion as a brilliant stage on which to enact all of their geopolitical goals: It was a chance to replace a Middle East adversary with an ally; to ease our reliance on Saudi Arabia for defense and for oil, and to develop a strategic counterweight to Iran. It was also an opportunity to declare the U.S. would wage pre-emptive war, to showcase our military might in the aftermath of 9/11, and to shore up Cheney’s doctrine of vast, presidential power. The WMD argument was either just one of many concerns, or an outright fabrication.

So let’s be fair to Jeb Bush for a moment: he can’t get this answer “right” politically – as in, now that we know there weren’t WMDs, and the aftermath was a shit-show, the Iraq invasion was a “mistake” – because it probably isn’t what he believes. Let’s remember, he was one of 25 signatories to the founding document of the pro-invasion Project for a New American Century in 1998 – alongside Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, Elliott Abrams, Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney and other neocons. Wolfowitz is one of his foreign policy advisors. He has told us that when it comes to Israel, his brother is his top advisor.

The truth is, Bush didn’t exactly flub his first answer to Megyn Kelly; in saying he’d do it all over again, he told us some of what he really thought. Ironically, if he knew then what he knows now – that his answer was hugely unpopular – he wouldn’t have given that answer. So he said it was a mistake. Then he said it wasn’t. Then he said it was. He’s going to be writhing like this for a long time, because he can’t satisfy all the factions that are trying to unite behind him by telling the truth. Whatever it is.

If by further restricting access to abortion and birth control, the Republican Party thinks that they will win over women, they need to think again.

House Approves Revised Measure Banning Most Abortions After 20 Weeks

The House on Wednesday voted to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, approving a revised version of a bill that Republican leaders had abruptly pulled in January amid objections from some of their own members.

The measure passed in a 242-to-184 vote, with one member voting present. The bill dropped a provision in the original version that would have required women who became pregnant through rape to report their assault to law enforcement authorities to be eligible for an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Under the new bill, such women would have to receive counseling or medical treatment at least 48 hours before having an abortion. In cases involving minors, abortion providers would have to alert the authorities for the girls’ protection, it says. The bill, known as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, would also make it easier to sue a noncompliant abortion provider. [..]

Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Louise M. Slaughter of New York, Democrats who are the chairwomen of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, said the bill was another attempt by Republicans to erect barriers to medical care for women.

Prohibiting most abortions 20 weeks after fertilization would run counter to the Supreme Court’s standard of fetal viability, which is generally put at 22 to 24 weeks after fertilization.

House votes to strike down D.C. law banning reproductive discrimination

divided House of Representatives voted along party lines late Thursday to strike down a D.C. law on ideological grounds for the first time in almost 35 years.

Republican opponents of the measure, which bans discrimination over employees’ reproductive decisions, said it constituted a liberal attack on antiabortion groups in the nation’s capital.

The effort, begun by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in the days before he launched his presidential campaign, sparked a fierce debate on the floor of the House late Thursday, with Democrats blasting the Republican move as an outrageous infringement on women’s reproductive rights and privacy. [..]

Citing the strong convictions of many House Republicans about the D.C. measure, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) brought the issue to a vote on the floor even though Senate action on a companion measure would not come in time to stop the D.C. bill from becoming law next week.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow discussed with Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) the recent chair of the Pro-choice Caucus in the House, talks with Rachel Maddow about the recent spate of anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation from both state and national Republicans, including in cases of rape and incest.

Fortunately, most of these bills coming from the House will go no where but many of the ones being passes in states whose legislatures are controlled by Republicans will.

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Paul Krugman: Fraternity of Failure

Jeb Bush wants to stop talking about past controversies. And you can see why. He has a lot to stop talking about. But let’s not honor his wish. You can learn a lot by studying recent history, and you can learn even more by watching how politicians respond to that history.

The big “Let’s move on” story of the past few days involved Mr. Bush’s response when asked in an interview whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He answered that yes, he would. No W.M.D.? No stability after all the lives and money expended? No problem.

Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.

Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders – especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief – is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.

The New York Times Editorial Board: An Abortion Ban’s Bogus Arguments

For the second time in two years, the House voted Wednesday to pass legislation that would ban almost all abortions 20 weeks or more after fertilization. The bill, called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, claims that “an unborn child is capable of experiencing pain at least by 20 weeks after fertilization,” though medical evidence does not support this.

Of course, the bill is not really about scientific findings of any sort. It is simply another attempt by conservative Republicans to undercut women’s constitutionally protected reproductive rights. A 20-week abortion ban would be a restriction before fetal viability that violates the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade. [..]

Making it hard to get an abortion early in a pregnancy – by restricting the use of health insurance for abortion, closing clinics and mandating waiting periods – and then banning the procedure after 20 weeks would essentially prohibit abortion for those with limited resources. This, of course, is what many Republicans in Congress want, but it would be disastrous for American women and families, especially those who cannot afford to travel long distances or pay for medical procedures out-of-pocket.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

labama Gov. George Wallace shot on presidential campaign trail; Newly-founded Israel attacked by Arab neighbors; The U.S. Supreme Court breaks up Standard Oil.; Country singer June Carter Cash dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Contrary to what people say, there’s no upper limit to stupidity.

Stephen Colbert

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

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May 15 is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 230 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1776, the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.

The Virginia Conventions were a series of five political meetings in the Colony of Virginiaduring the American Revolution. Because the House of Burgesses had been dissolved in 1774 by Royal Governor Lord Dunmore, the conventions served as a revolutionary provisional government until the establishment of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia in 1776.

The fifth convention began May 6, 1776 and met in Williamsburg. On May 15, the convention declared independence from Britain and adopted a set of three momentous resolutions: one calling for a declaration of rights for Virginia, one calling for establishment of a republican constitution, and a third calling for federal relations with whichever other colonies would have them and alliance with whichever foreign countries would have them. It also instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to declare independence. Virginia’s congressional delegation was thus the only one under unconditional positive instructions to declare independence; Virginia was already independent, and so its convention did not want their state, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, to “hang separately.” According to James Madison’s correspondence for that day, Williamsburg residents marked the occasion by taking down the Union Jack from over the colonial capitol and running up a continental union flag.

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee, one of Virginia’s delegates to Congress, carried out these instructions and proposed independence in the language the convention had commanded him to use: that “these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” This paved the way for the American Declaration of Independence, which also reflected the idea that not one nation, but thirteen free and independent states were aborning on the east coast of North America.

The convention amended, and on June 12 adopted, George Mason‘s Declaration of Rights, a precursor to the United States Bill of Rights. On June 29, the convention approved the first Constitution of Virginia, which was also the first written constitution adopted by the people’s representatives in the history of the world. The convention chose Patrick Henry as the first governor of the new Commonwealth of Virginia, and he was inaugurated on June 29, 1776. Thus, Virginia had a functioning, permanent, republican constitution before July 4, 1776 — uniquely among the thirteen American colonies.