13 thoughts on “Picture This”

  4. warning:  this video is not for any of you ophidiophobics and herpetophobics on the trail 

    Chicago jazz vocal legend Oscar Brown Jnr. with his self penned 1963 finger poppin’ original version of the youth club northern soul hit..,,wierd voodoo jazz from the U S of Strange !!

  5. another judge for the twit to twitter-hate today

    wapo:
    A New York state judge on Friday denied a request by attorneys for President Trump to throw out a lawsuit alleging that Trump and his family violated charity laws with the management of their personal foundation.
     
    Justice Saliann Scarpulla sided with New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood in allowing the case to continue, saying it was fair for the attorney general to argue that the president used the Donald J. Trump Foundation to advance his campaign.
     
    Attorney Alan Futerfas, who represents Trump and his three eldest children, had argued that the president was acting in his individual capacity — not on behalf of the foundation — in hosting a televised fundraiser for veterans and allowing his campaign staff to dictate what groups received donations.
     
    But the allegations, Scarpulla wrote in her decision , “show that Mr. Trump was acting in both of his capacities as campaign candidate and president of the Foundation.”
    She wrote that Underwood “adequately alleges that the political acts by Mr. Trump and the Campaign are attributable to the Foundation.”
     
    In a statement Friday, Underwood applauded the decision, saying that the “Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”
     
    In the past, Trump has called the suit politically motivated and “ridiculous,” criticizing Underwood and her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat.
     
    Futerfas and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, the president’s company, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
     
    [Judge in Trump charity lawsuit appears skeptical of president’s arguments for dismissal]
     
    New York state officials began scrutinizing the Trump Foundation in response to an investigation by The Washington Post.
    […]

    ….  In her ruling, Scarpulla wrote that the attorney general’s allegations that “Foundation checks were drawn up at Mr. Trump’s and the Campaign’s direction” were sufficient to support a claim that Trump “intentionally used foundation assets for his private interests knowing that it may not be in the Foundation’s best interest.”

    […]
    Scarpulla noted that the outcome of this suit could hinge on an unrelated case pending in New York state: a lawsuit by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos, who alleges that Trump defamed her.
     
    Trump has argued in both cases that, as a sitting president, he is immune from the claims — maintaining that the 1997 Supreme Court decision Clinton v. Jones, which said that presidents do not have immunity from civil litigation, does not apply in state courts.
    If a New York appeals court agrees with the president in the Zervos case, Scarpulla wrote, “then I must dismiss the petition against Mr. Trump” in this case. The judge added that in that situation, Underwood might be able to continue her cases against Trump’s children Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who were directors of the Trump Foundation.
     
    Underwood, who took office in May after Schneiderman resigned in the wake of allegations that he had physically abused several romantic partners, will be replaced in January by Letitia James, a Democrat who was elected to the post this month. She said during her campaign that she would continue the office’s inquiries into Trump.

  6. Oscar Brown, Jr died in 2005. He was a civil rights advocate besides being a composer, lyricist, dancer, singer, poet, choreographer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor. He also ran unsuccessfully for office in both the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Congress.

    Brown wrote numerous songs (only 125 have been published), 12 albums, and more than a dozen musical plays. He advocated for the ‘old virtues’, family, fidelity, hard work, and education, and who disapproved of booze, drugs, casual sex, gambling, and criminal behavior – behavior that Brown denominated as cheap ‘kicks’. People sometimes faulted him, saying he was unsympathetic to people who were down on their luck. Brown’s contention was that people should strive with all their might to avoid getting down on their luck. He wrote The Snake, as the lyric to Nat (Cannonball) Adderley’s enormously successful Work Song.

  7. The Snake is a great song.  It was on an album that I owned in college so a hundred million years ago

  8. capitolhillblue: Another Snake-in-the-Grass Stunt by Trump
     
    Typically, Trump knew nothing about the origins of the song when he started using it in 2016.
     
    By DOUG THOMPSON – A CHB Opinion
    -February 25, 2018
     
    Pathetic.  Donald Trump, the wannabe president with a child’s brain and the attention span of a zoned-out teenager, pulled out an old poem about a snake and a kind-hearted woman this past week to tantalize the easily amused right wing nuts of the Conservative Action Committee near Washington, DC.
     
    Trump used “The Snake” to exemplify what he claims are the threat of immigration.
     
    Somewhere, soul singer and social activist Oscar Brown Jr. is rolling in his grave.  He wrote “The Snake” and knows it had nothing to do with immigration Trump implies in his theft of the words.
     
    Those words tell the story of a woman who found a half-frozen out in the cold and took it into her house to survive. The snake, of course, “rewarded” her with a fatal bite.

    In the final verse, Brown wrote:

    “Oh, shut up, silly woman!” said the reptile with a grin. ‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

    Trump brought out a the “The Snake” during his 2016 presidential campaign and it brought cheers and chants of “U-S-A!”  At CPAC, he got a standing ovation.
    Typically, Trump knew nothing about the origins of the song when he started using it in 2016.  He told one crowd that singer Al Wilson wrote it.  Wilson’s recording of it became a hit in 1969 but the writer was Brown — a Chicago singer, songwriter, social activist and former member of the Communist Party.
    Musical critics called Brown’s work a celebration of black culture and a repudiation of racism.  He died in 2005 at age 78.  Two of his daughters — Maggie and Africa Brown — say he often used biblical and animal allegories to tell simple stories with deeper meanings.
    “In African tradition, you would say a proverb and pass that down,” Africa Brown told Eli Rosenberg of The Washington Post. “That’s the way you teach people to live.”
    Understandably, the Browns are not happy with a racist like Donald Trump using their father’s music without their permission and to misuse its intent.
    “Of course it had nothing to do with prejudice or racist thoughts that he’s twisting it into,” Maggie told the Post. “We always took it like, if you lay down with dogs, don’t expect not to wake up with fleas.”
    “It would have been nice if you credited him for his work,” Sidakarav Dasa, Brown’s grandson, wrote to Trump via social media in 2016, the Chicago Tribune reports, “but I can see how telling your crowd that you were quoting a man who resigned from the Communist Party in 1956, declaring himself ‘just too black to be red,’ might be problematic.”
    Conservative Republican political operative Steve Schmidt says what Trump is doing is disgraceful:

    Trumps snake story is vicious, disgraceful, utterly racist and profoundly Un-American. That this is how an American President speaks of immigration is a tragedy. This crowd of cheering extremists are the heirs of the Know-Nothing’s and nativists that have always plagued us.

    In other words, typical Trump:  The idiot president speaking to his equally idiotic gatherings.

     

  9. Straighten up and Fly Right ¡ Oscar Brown, Jr.
    In a New Mood
    ℗ Originally released 1962. All rights reserved by Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

  10. a whole album for you

    Oscar Brown Jr. – Sin & Soul [FULL ALBUM] (Columbia ‎CL1577) 1960

    1.WORK SONG
    2.BUT I WAS COOL
    3.BID ‘EM HIGH
    4.SIGNIFYIN’ MONKEY
    5.WATERMELON MAN
    6.SOMEBODY BY ME A DRINK
    7.RAGS AND OLD IRON
    8.DAT DERE
    9.BROWN BABY
    10.HUMDRUM BLUES
    11.SLEEPY
    12.AFRO BLUE

  12. president’s annual salary $400,000 should either be docked that $80,685,169 for golfing trips or the $80,685,169 should also be counted as income in addition to the salary for tax purposes.   at least that amount should be returned to general fund or to the secret service budget and not allowed to be flaunted as philanthropy.  

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