Trail Mix – Page 454 – User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford

Defining Cool: A Celebration of Art, Artists, Artistry

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

*************

By SJWNY, a Trail Mix Contributor

The Thomas Crown Affair was filmed in ’68

Steve McQueen & Faye Dunaway were sexy, young & great

When cool was cool they defined it to the max

Robbery’s a crime but the heist’s a game, relax

When love intrudes on lust can law win out, you see

Man flies away & leaves lover in the cemetery

Bring the money & join him -or keep the car & weep.

*************

When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind.

*************

Creativity & artwork enhance life. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) is a sexy, creative, adult film. Celebrate the good, expand your horizons.

Thank You, Norman Jewison, Hal Ashby, Michel Legrand, Alan Bergman.

Sunday Serendipity

By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor

A performance that is both fiery and effervescent at the same time. Martha Argerich and Scarlatti at their very best. Too good not to share.

Enjoy the music but most especially enjoy the day!

“President” Trump visits WV to spread more manure

By Pogo, a Trail Mix Contributor

Yes. our state was graced by the presence of SFB at an event in White Sulphur Springs (home of the Greenbrier Resort, which is coincidentally owned by our governor) on Thursday.

He was flanked by Evan Jenkins (who IMHO is a dweeby snake) and Patrick Morrisey, who is just a borderline corrupt politician.

From the Charleston Gazette coverage of the event:

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — President Donald Trump broke from a tax reform-centered message Thursday to rev up West Virginia’s already heated Republican primary for the U.S. Senate.

Speaking at the White Sulphur Springs Civic Center, Trump, flanked by two front-running candidates in the primary, alternated between taking shots at incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and forwarding a sprawling immigration and border security plan.

Although Trump’s administration billed the event as an official visit to tout the benefit of the tax cut package Trump signed into law last year, the president literally threw away his single page of prepared remarks and delved into 20 freewheeling minutes, alternating between policy points and political jabs.

“Joe, he voted against,” Trump said of the new tax law. “I thought he would be helpful because he talks … but he votes against everything, and he voted against our tax cuts.”

The president was flanked to his right by Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.Va., and to his left by state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, both of whom are seeking to take on Manchin in the November general election.

Manchin didn’t attend the event Thursday but emailed a statement later in the day.

“Instead of the political posturing back and forth, West Virginians deserve answers and the only thing that matters today is did these questions get answered in White Sulphur Springs,” Manchin wrote. “The people of West Virginia badly want to know: What will the 200,000 West Virginians do when they lose healthcare coverage? How much will Republicans cut from Medicare and Social Security? What happens when our rural hospitals go bankrupt? Why is this plan causing insurance premiums to go up? Why are the middle-class tax changes not permanent? Why is Mitch McConnell blocking coal miners’ pensions?”

There was of course the predicted blathering about Mexicans and caravans of South and Central American immigrants through Mexico headed for the US (which of course is a half truth at best), but this is what caught my eye.

“This is what the Democrats are doing to you,” Trump said after telling the account of a man who he said was dismembered by immigrants while jogging along the Hudson River, in New York. “They like it because they think they’re going to vote Democrat. Believe me, they’re doing it for that reason. They are doing it for that reason, and other reasons. But they are doing it for that reason.”

One small problem with this racist xenophobic screed – that isn’t what happened. He’s probably referring to the case of a New Jersey woman, Jennifer Londono, whose body parts were discovered floating in the Hudson. Her boyfriend, Raphael Lolos, is accused of killing her. While he has a Hispanic name, he ain’t a gang member and he ain’t an illegal immigrant by any account I can find.

But I can assure you the WV Republican rubes in White Sulphur Springs went home and started bombing the internet with reports of immigrant dismemberments in NYC.

My friends, we are in deep doo.

Mueller Wipes Away Trump’s “Red Line”

Russia probe tracking down Trump business partners, focusing on Michael Cohen

Trump once proclaimed his business background a “red line” Mueller can’t cross.

McClatchy Washington Bureau: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump’s company in recent years.

Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad.

Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee.”

Racial Segregation Must Be Seen For What It Is,

That it is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Blue Bronc, a Trail Mix Contributor

Imagine this discussion if you were children in the mid-seventeen hundred’s in Colonial Maryland near what is now Hyattsville on a farm. You hear your father talking or debating, with others from surrounding farms, that he is thinking of freeing his slaves. Lit by candle or oil lamp, the room would have been a place of flickering light, warm most of the year, an interesting place to be. The discussion going from farm house to farm house. Farmers of the land, tobacco the crop. Farms powered by slavery.

Questions about what would happen to the slaves once they became freemen, with questions about what would happen to the farm if the freemen decided to leave. How would others see the freeing of the slaves. Would others do the same or complain to the King’s agents?

You are one of many families farming the area. You are looking forward to moving somewhere with game and fresh dirt. The wild game in the area has been hunted to extinction. Your fields are producing fewer crops, especially tobacco. It is time to move. With your father, Basil Foster marrying Mary Acton, you have some favors from William Penn, governor of Pennsylvania colony and grandfather of Mary. Might as well go north to Pennsylvania.

But what about your slaves. Keep them as slaves? Release them as freemen? Pennsylvania was tending to stop the owning of slaves in the colony.

Basil Foster made freemen of his slaves. They, the clan and freemen, moved north to Pennsylvania colony and started clearing land around Bedford, Round Top. The clan just north of them was massacred, the bodies stabbed onto the stubs of where tree branches had been prior on the large trees. The Foster clan, including the new freeman, returned to the old farms around Hyattsville. After the Revolutionary War, they all moved back to Round Top.

Consider that we, as a nation, are still debating this issue.