Sunday Serendipity

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Something rare today, a classical composition for the trombone

Enjoy, Jack

From Wikipedia

Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (3 February 1736 – 7 March 1809)[1] was an Austrian composer, organist, and music theorist, widely regarded as one of the leading figures in counterpoint and composition theory during the Classical period. He was a prolific composer of church music, orchestral works, and keyboard pieces, though he is best remembered for his influence as a teacher.

Albrechtsberger was a mentor to several important composers, most notably Ludwig van Beethoven, whom he instructed in counterpoint and fugue. His theoretical writings and pedagogical methods had a lasting impact on 19th-century composition, and his treatises on harmony and counterpoint remain highly regarded. He was also a friend of Haydn and Mozart.

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86 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  1. jack, thanks for introducing us to Mr. A, any friend of Joseph and Amadeus plus mentor of Ludwig can’t be sneezed at.

  2. any mention of trombone players always brings to mind Teagarden.
    wiki:

    Weldon Leo “Jack” Teagarden (August 20, 1905 – January 15, 1964) was an American jazz trombonist player and musician.[1][2] Besides leading bands under his own name, he was a sideman for Paul Whiteman’s orchestra and later played in “Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars” from 1946 to 1951.[2][1]
    Early life
    Jack Teagarden was born in Vernon, Texas, the oldest of four siblings.[3]United States His siblings also pursued musical careers; Charlie played trumpet, Norma played piano, and Clois (“Cub”) played drums.
    Teagarden’s father, Charles, worked in the oil fields and played cornet part-time, while his mother, Helen, was a semi-professional pianist.[4] His father encouraged Teagarden to play music on a baritone horn.. At age eight, Jack received his first trombone as a Christmas gift and transitioned from the tenor-valve horn to the trombone. His first public performances were duets with his mother (trombone, piano) as background to silent films in a local Vernon theater.[5] After his father’s death, the family moved to Chappell, where he and his mother continued working in a theater.[6]
    Due to short arms, Teagarden compensated by using his lips to reach all the notes on the trombone, a technique that distinguished him from other trombone players.[1]
    Teagarden became the youngest member of the Paul Goetze Band at age 11.[citation needed]
    […]
    In the late 1920s, he recorded with bandleaders and sidemen such as Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Jimmy McPartland, Mezz Mezzrow, Glenn Miller, Eddie Condon, and Fats Waller. In 1931, Teagarden’s orchestra recorded the tune “Chances Are” with Fats Waller playing piano and Jack singing and playing trombone. Miller and Teagarden collaborated to provide lyrics and a verse to Spencer Williams’ “Basin Street Blues”, which became one of Teagarden’s most frequently played numbers.
    [continues]

  4. A Trombonist and a banjo player got a New Year’s Eve gig and actually went over big time. As they’re getting paid at the end of the night the club owner says, “You guys were great—can you make it again next year?”
    The Bone Man says, “Yeah, sure…..can we leave out equipment?”

  6. David Horsey’s https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/america-needs-a-new-paul-revere/

    IN THE NEWS: It has been exactly 250 years since the battle for American independence began with Paul Revere’s fabled late-night ride to warn New England militia that British troops were coming to Lexington, the hamlet where the first battle of the Revolution would be fought the next morning.
    It is ironic and appalling that the unfolding celebrations that will mark two-and-a-half centuries of nationhood will be presided over by an American president who longs to be a king. King George III was constrained by the British Parliament, but Donald Trump has appropriated the prerogatives of a quiescent Congress and flouts the rulings of the federal courts as he sends people to a foreign prison without trial, threatens the academic freedom of universities, illegally dismantles government programs and forsakes traditional allies such as France (the country that helped the United States achieve independence) in favor of imperialist autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
    Modern-day patriots need to mount their horses and ride to spread the warning about what is coming.

    20250424edhoc-a-1

  8. The Annual Trailmix Derby Bookie Action is open for business
    (Bragging Rights only to the winner)

    1. Citizen Bull (20-1)

    2. Neoequos (30-1)

    3. Final Gambit (30-1)

    4. Rodriguez (12-1) – Sturgeone

    5. American Promise (30-1)

    6. Admire Daytona (30-1)

    7. Luxor Cafe (15-1)

    8. Journalism (3-1)

    9. Burnham Square (12-1)

    10. Grande (20-1)

    11. Flying Mohawk (30-1)

    12. East Avenue (20-1)

    13. Publisher (20-1) – Jamie

    14. Tiztastic (20-1)

    15. Render Judgment (30-1)

    16. Coal Battle (30-1)

    17. Sandman (6-1) – Renee

    18. Sovereignty (5-1)

    19. Chunk of Gold (30-1)

    20. Owen Almighty (30-1)

  14. Dodo’s race to the bottom…can’t come fast enough.

    The findings suggest that the president has overinterpreted the meaning of his victory over former vice president Kamala Harris by pursuing policies that have generated dissatisfaction from the public. In broad strokes, the judgment of his presidency so far is that a majority think Trump has exceeded his authority, a majority say the economy is worse and about half say that U.S. leadership in the world has become weaker. The economy, once a clear attribute for Trump, has become one more source of public disapproval about his presidency.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/27/trump-poll-approval-rating-100-days/

  17. Latest Maureen

    Amid an economic catastrophe President Trump personally caused, a startling new Times/Siena poll found him underwater, even on immigration, as voters recoiled at the very thing the president loves: his overreaching.

    How do most Americans see his first 100 days in office? “Chaotic” and “scary” — not the paternal reassurance he might have hoped to engender with his cartoonishly macho style, his manosphere heroics and his swaggering U.F.C. and wrestling posse.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/26/opinion/trump-gender-roles-masculinity.html?

    The best part of reading New York Times online is the comments posted by the readers.

  18. Want something depressing?
    Throughout history small wars were often testing grounds for the big powers’ new technology. ex: Germany and the Spanish civil war.
    The future of warfare? take drones in Ukraine and combine them with AI used in Gaza. A cheap way to devastate a civilian population and none of those messy things like human morality.

    My morning read
    Seems all those dead children was (using tech talk) a feature not a bug

    The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties,

  19. yeah we needed moral and responsible stewardship going into the new tech age, not criminal buffoons in charge

    thanks dumb trumpers

  20. 20 verification tools for combating misinformation. Fact-checking sites like Snopes and Google’s Fact Check Explorer, as well as reverse image search engines, identity verification sites, and AI detection tools. While this list is intended for journalists, these resources are useful for anyone who wants to evaluate what they read or find online critically.

  22. Anon
    It is not just the “dumb trumpers” This is much larger than Trump, it goes all across the political spectrum.
    Jack

  23. i’ll make a concession that Dems lacked failure of vision in regulating tech but the best and brightest don’t run for office, apparently it’s mostly just vain or naive people or lawyers that only know law

  24. i’m blaming the dumb trumpers for everything Jack because they deserve it

    we can quibble over the details in foreign torture prisons that the dumb trumpers’ elected representatives send us to

  25. i was posting warnings about the dangers of AI 10 years ago here, too bad these schmucks don’t read trailmix 🤷‍♂️

  26. Dr Who was warning about the dangers of AI in 1972!

    We had warnings

    Never met a conservative that watched Dr. Who, just saying. Not one

  36. a lid on the pan helps prevent that

    can we all at least agree the glass lid made cooking much easier? At least that??

  38. How to Cook Rice:

    put one cup of dry rice into a 1 qt pot with a pinch of salt

    add 1 and 3/4 to 2 cups of water to the same pot, cover with glass lid

    bring to boil, then reduce heat to low

    DON’T TOUCH THE LID, DON’T STIR ANYTHING, just be patient

    when the surface has holes with no bubbles coming from them, it’s done. If not sure, tip pot slightly with lid pressed down and if water doesn’t appear at the surface, it’s done

    perfect rice every time, don’t argue with me 😊

    There, that’s my recipe contribution

  42. Schumer sent a strongly worded letter with EIGHT (8) strongly worded questions to somebody in the administration about something. I hope they did not waste printing on good paper.

    I have been using Japanese rice cookers, Zojirushi, for a very long time. Just upgraded, and downsized the quantity, to a new technology and more precise cooking. Perfectly cooked rice, any rice, all the time. I also use the Zojirushi bread machines for making bread and much more. It is so easy and relatively low messy compared to making bread by hand. Ten minutes to put the ingredients in the bowl and go.

  43. I would like to get a rice cooker, but Mr. Ivy insists on making it in a pot on the stovetop. The discussion continues.

  44. Analysis by Dan Balz

    But if there are true second thoughts about overall policy inside the administration, there’s no evidence of it yet. The president and his team are on a mission to fulfill a top campaign promise, and they are playing hardball as they never did during his first term. The arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement is a clear escalation, meant to signal his willingness to intimidate opponents.
    Public support for Trump’s immigration policies has dropped. In The Post-ABC-Ipsos poll, it has gone from a net positive of two percentage points in February to a net negative of seven points today. The public narrowly disapproves of deporting immigrants suspected of being members of a criminal group to a prison in El Salvador without a court hearing.
    But administration officials still seem to be operating with the belief that their stated policy of deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records resonates better with the public than arguments about the rule of law advanced by Democrats, who struggle for a consensus position on immigration.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/27/trump-polls-policies/?

    Is Dan a short-timer?

  45. Actually, she’s right. We need to call them what they are: thieves and thugs.

    — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) suggestion that Democrats stop using the term “oligarchy,” because it doesn’t resonate with Americans, on “Meet the Press”: “I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Slotkin thinks they are.”

  46. Gov. Josh Shapiro: Finding Moral Clarity After an Arsonist’s Attack

    I woke up to yelling in the hallway.
    A few seconds later, there was a bang on the door.
    It was just after 2 a.m., and a state trooper in the hallway of our private living quarters at the governor’s residence said there was a fire in the building. We needed to evacuate immediately.
    My wife, Lori, and I ran to the bedrooms where our kids and two dogs were sleeping. We got them up quickly and followed the trooper down a back stairwell to the driveway.
    At that point, standing in the cold, damp air, knowing that all the kids were accounted for, we began to wonder what had happened.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/opinion/josh-shapiro-governor-mansion-arson.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/opinion/josh-shapiro-governor-mansion-arson.html?smid=url-share

  47. Tomorrow, Congress is back in session and Republican/MAGAts/yt supremacists will be working on a budget to disenfranchise millions of Americans. If you are not a rich, white, straight male or a white, subservient, female, they will try to shut you down, expel you from the country, or worse. The Heritage Foundation seems to have been inspired by n@zi Germany.

    Judges, Lawyers, Legal Theorists, and the Law in Nazi Germany (1933–1938); Kristallnacht; and My Parents’ Escapes from the Nazis

    Judges, Lawyers, Legal Theorists, and the Law in Nazi Germany (1933–1938); Kristallnacht; and My Parents’ Escapes from the Nazis

  50. My rice burning method.
    Water to rice, 2 to 1.

    2 cups salted water to boil
    Add 1 cup dry mahatma or watermaid rice, a chunk of butter, then back to boil for a bit…..then non-vented lid on and your heat to low simmer and timer to 20 minutes at the end of which, daas um. No lid touching.

    What I loined at the DellMar Motel in Valdosta by watching the Pakistani owners was that you can take cooked rice, spread it out to a single layer in a wide straw tray which you put out in the sun all day after which you can fry the rice in oil to get something I assumed to be a lot like rice crispies.

  51. Anon
    Thanks for correcting my link, News letters don’t share as easy as web sites, I forgot to check.

    Jack

  52. I always wondered if the out in the sun part was to get the flies to lay eggs on it, but never out loud.

  54. Sometimes I let the eggs get semi-fried and then scramble them.
    2 Fried eggs on toast: Adam and Eve on a raft.
    Scrambled eggs on toast: Wreck ‘em.

    (A tip of the Hatlo hat to; Moe, Larry, and Curley. Nyuk . Nyuk.)

    And a tip of the Hatlo hat to Jimmy Hatlo

  55. https://www.newsweek.com/vancouver-lapu-lapu-festival-multiple-killed-car-drives-crowd-2064712

    At least nine people were killed and more than 20 others injured when a man drove into a crowd at a Filipino heritage festival in Vancouver on Saturday.

    Interim Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai said that the suspect was arrested after initially being apprehended by bystanders. He added that the suspect was a “lone male” who was “known to police in certain circumstances.”

    *Maple MAGAt?

  56. Logistics experts are warning that cargo volumes at U.S. ports are undergoing a precipitous drop. This trend is most apparent in Los Angeles, home to the nation’s busiest port, and one that is first to feel any drop-off from Asian shipping. The drop in container shipping is the latest sign the White House’s trade war is having a real effect on the U.S. economy, and one sizable group of workers is poised to feel the impact first: long-haul truckers.

    https://fortune.com/article/huge-decline-at-la-port-is-a-hit-to-truckers-and-a-stark-warning-of-coming-tariff-damage/

  58. Interesting to me. I paid attention to cargo ships that sailed past us and looked many up online. You can look up any ship.

  59. I like how he just says “Gulf.” That’s all you need to say. Nobody needs to claim it like a selfish child with his toys.

    Everybody struggles with that tongue-twister word unanimity.

  60. Years ago Mrs Jack bought a set of Air-Core pans, they are double walled construction and retain the heat so they keep cooking after you remove them from the heat. The little one is perfect for rice, bring it to a boil turn off the heat and let it finish cooking. The medium one works well for beans. The big one is somewhere in storage, I don’t need a gallon and half of anything these days.
    The only counter top electric appliances I use is my microwave, a convection oven, toaster and coffee maker. I use them daily along with my wok and 4 different size lids, and 2 cast iron skillets(one for eggs, one for meat)
    I use my stove oven as a place to store my cast iron skillets.
    I enjoy making bread by hand. I also thing it is better bread. Given that I’m diabetic and have no self control I rarely make a full loaf but have learned to scale back.
    1/2 cup flour, 1/2 teas yeast, pinch salt. Enough water to make a tacky dough. Using some spray grease to keep it from sticking spray the pan you mixed it in and a spatula, fold and knead. Divide into quarters , roll into balls, place in a small baking pan let it double in size or a bit more, put it in the convection oven and bake
    Jack

  61. I have to confess I have lately fallen victim to the steam pouches for rice that take 90 seconds in the microwave, come with a vast variety of flavoring and taste about the same. Plus they’re just the right amount for two people, so no leftovers to fuss about

  64. My grandma’s double-boiler from the late 40s or early 50s. No danger of scorching rice, but it’s probably made of aluminum. It’s more of a keepsake than kitchenware. Rice is OK. Prefer potatoes.

  65. https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/vegas-strip-hotel-giant-reportedly-cuts-concierge-20296928.php

    One of the major hospitality companies on the Las Vegas Strip is laying off concierge staff in nearly all of its hotels, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. MGM Resorts confirmed the end of the concierge desk at the MGM Grand, Park MGM, The Signature at MGM Grand, New York-New York, Mandalay Bay and Vdara, the outlet reported. The desks will close Monday.

    *****
    https://www.travelpulse.com/news/features/trump-reacts-to-reports-of-declining-us-tourism-not-a-big-deal

    A steady stream of reports has shown that international visitors are no longer as interested in visiting the United States as they once were, particularly amid reports of visitors being detained at US checkpoints.

    A recently released report from the International Trade Administration (ITA) revealed that arrivals of non-citizens to the United States by plane have declined by more than 11 percent since March 2024.

    Additionally, Canadians returning from visits to the United States by plane have plummeted 31.9 percent year-over-year as of March. Arrivals of Canadian visitors to the United States are down steeply as well, by 12.5 percent.

    This type of decline is not good news for the US economy. International travelers spent $254 billion in the US last year, according to ITA.

    “It’s not a big deal,” Trump told a reporter, per a video shared by CBS News on X. The comment from the reporter that prompted Trump’s reply was: “there are fewer people suddenly that want to travel to the United States.”

  66. i don’t love those rice mixes, something in the seasoning, and i use rice in recipes more than “eat rice” 🤷‍♂️

    i amend above recipe with veg and broth sometimes but i can’t guarantee perfect results so you’re on your own there! Same principle.

    i’m doing potatoes with the “bag method” but in 5 gallon pots from the trees i bought (and a few i had saved). Growth has reached top of pot so everything below rim has been covered, should work out 🤞

    Nice healthy plant, BiD, what variety?

  67. Insightful analysis. Now, what do we have to do to get rid of him?

    One Hundred Days of Ineptitude
    Now we know that Donald Trump’s first term, his initial attempt at authoritarian primacy, was amateur hour, a fitful rehearsal.
    By David Remnick
    April 27, 2025

    But he was not done. During his four-year interregnum at Mar-a-Lago, Trump gazed down the fairways and concluded that Joe Biden was too diminished to win again. On this, he was right and the Democratic leadership deluded. What’s more, Trump resolved to be himself, only more so: Trump Unbound. While the commentariat saw his increasingly bizarre improvisations at the lectern as no less disqualifying than Biden’s confusion during the fatal debate, Trump kept faith with his dominant source of inspiration––retribution. With a wink, he denied any knowledge of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s vision for the ­exercise of executive power, but few doubted that he would enact its plans. For would-be advisers and Cabinet officers, obedience was the sole qualification. The Administration is now stocked with the greasily obsequious. Rank incompetence also seems no impediment to employment. How else to explain Pete Hegseth’s move from the weekend desk at Fox News to the big office at the Pentagon? And in what other Administration would bulbs as dim as Howard Lutnick or Peter Navarro be called upon to craft the future of the world’s largest economy?

    …

    “The limits of tyrants,” Frederick Douglass said, “are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” The President will persist in his assault until he feels the resistance of a people who will tolerate it no longer.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/05/a-hundred-days-of-ineptitude?

  69. it is not too late to go and get a packet of wildflower seeds and plant them in a row so you know what they are

    Best decision I made last year

    I’m lazy so I just run a “trench” with a mattock, fill it with bagged soil that’s sterile then put my seeds in that. No weeds will grow in that before the seeds you plant in it do 👍

  71. …totally had to look up mattock.

    Wiki: The word mattock is of unclear origin; one theory traces it from Proto-Germanic, from Proto-Indo-European. There are no clear cognates in other Germanic languages, and similar words in various Celtic languages are borrowings from the English (e.g. Welsh: matog, Irish: matóg, Scottish Gaelic: màdog).[10] However, there are proposed cognates in Old High German and Middle High German, and more speculatively with words in Balto-Slavic languages, including Old Church Slavonic motyga and Lithuanian matikas,[10] and even Sanskrit. It may be cognate to or derived from the unattested Vulgar Latin matteūca, meaning club or cudgel. The New English Dictionary of 1906 interpreted mattock as a diminutive, but there is no root to derive it from, and no semantic reason for the diminutive formation.[10] Forms such as mathooke, motthook and mathook were produced by folk etymology. Although used to prepare whale blubber, which the Inuit call “mattaq”, no such connection is known.

    While the noun mattock is attested from Old English onwards, the transitive verb “to mattock” or “to mattock up” first appeared in the mid-17th century.

  74. Why is Schutzstaffel Stephen running the country while Dodo drools?

    Miller, in particular, was determined to use the designation of MS-13 and other criminal groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” to supercharge deportations and bypass standard due-process protections. The White House’s evolving position fit the pattern of Trump’s second term, in which his administration has responded to mistakes by shrugging them off and refusing to take corrective action. Miller took charge of the White House’s messaging, castigating reporters who asked about the case. He also cheered on the administration’s escalating standoff with the judicial branch. After the Supreme Court directed U.S. officials on April 10 to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, Miller publicly claimed the opposite: that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the White House because the Court had acknowledged the president’s prerogative in managing foreign affairs. (Miller did not respond to a request for comment.)”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/kilmar-abrego-garcia-plan-reversal/682594/?

  76. I know he is married with three kids, but Miller comes across as an incel who had to buy a wife and hates everyone because no sane human being would have him.

  77. Anon – Had several small Russets (not sure which variety) that started to sprout, so hopefully they will make more.

    Thyme, rosemary, etc., are showing themselves; planted in an old gutter, attached to the outside of a chain link kennel, unused for decades, with giant cable ties. Just an experiment, but the last rain didn’t wash them out.

  79. he doesn’t strike you as a ladies man Jamie??

    Someone on the pod save network called him “Pee-wee German“ 😆

  80. The white supremacists are being generous. I figured they would just close it.

    I wondered, what could they be removing?
    Civil Rights, of course.

    Attorney Lindsey Halligan is reportedly consulting Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties. According to a recent Washington Post article, Halligan told Trump the Smithsonian needs “changing,” and he has since ordered her to act. Halligan stated, “I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history. We don’t need to overemphasize the negative to teach people that certain aspects of our nation’s history may have been bad.” That overemphasis, she argued, “just makes us grow further and further apart.”

    BLACKPRESSUSA UPDATE COMING SOON – The Smithsonian PURGE: Trump Team Removes Artifacts of Black Resistance

  81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Democracy_Union

    The International Democracy Union (IDU; known as the International Democrat Union until September 2023)[3] is an international alliance of centre-right to right-wing political parties.[4][5] Headquartered in Munich, Germany,[6] the IDU consists of 84 full and associate members from 65 countries.[7] It is chaired by Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada.

    ***

    https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/04/05/Democracy-Under-Siege-Globally/

    Democracy Is Under Siege Globally. Canada Is Being Tested

    How the well-honed playbook for whipping up authoritarian populism is being employed here and around the world.

    Which brings us to the International Democracy Union, or IDU, a global organization run by former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper that is dedicated to electing right-wing governments around the world. Membership extends to the extremely right-wing. Last year Harper met and fawned over Hungary’s Orbán, who pronounced Harper “a great ally.”

    If you want to see what sort of global club Canada will join if governed by a Poilievre-led Conservative party, a look at IDU’s membership — including the recently scrubbed — can be informative.

    India joined the IDU in 2016, and there was no explanation for its removal from the organization.

    When Modi was still in good standing with the Harper-led IDU, his government cracked down on minorities and dissent. His right-wing vigilantes have attacked mosques and churches. In the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India was 161st out of 180 countries surveyed — a scant three places above Russia. The share of wealth owned by the top one per cent in India has grown to 40.5 per cent on Modi’s watch.

    Like Hindu nationalism in India, white nationalism is a rising factor in U.S. politics, accelerating the shift to the right. Hot-button racial and gender equality issues are viewed as threats to the power and status of the white Christian majority.

    There are troubling signs of the shift towards autocracy in a raft of other long-established democracies. Conor McGregor, the mixed martial arts superstar, has become a figurehead and spokesperson for the far right in Ireland. (He’s a 🍇 ist and was recently welcomed to the OO of the WH.)

    In Holland, far-right leader Geert Wilders, described as “a disruptive and divisive force on the far right for two decades,” has said he wants to end immigration from Muslim countries, ban the Qur’an, ban mosques and leave the European Union.

    Although support for the AfD dropped slightly after 10 days of Germany-wide protests in January, the party remains in second place in the polls at 21.5 per cent, eight percentage points ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.

    Millions of people protested in the city squares and streets of Germany after a report that two senior members of the AfD participated in a meeting where “plans for the mass deportation of citizens of foreign origin were discussed.” The AfD has denied this was party policy.

    Many current right-wing world leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Orbán, won power by following the so-called Finkelstein formula. Arthur Finkelstein was the American pollster who revitalized the Republican party in the United States, by perfecting a new, and toxic, approach to politics — negative campaigning.

    Finkelstein also worked in Canada for the National Citizens Coalition. The lobbying group hired him in 1982 to teach them the art of commando politics, and he helped Stephen Harper get elected as a Reform MP in 1993, as I wrote in my book Party of One.

    Finkelstein preached that you didn’t need a vision to win in politics, just good polling that revealed what people were against. Once that was established, the goal became tying the unpopular thing — immigration, carbon tax, inflation — to a flesh and blood political “enemy.”

    After that, the process was very simple, one that Finkelstein called “rejectionist voting.” The idea was to avoid talking about your own positions and policies, the better to demonize your opponent. The objective was not to sell yourself but rather to destroy your opponent.

    (Misery loves company, I guess?)

  82. Federal agents raided an underground nightclub in Colorado early Sunday morning and detained more than 100 people who they said were undocumented immigrants, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

    The raid occurred at a club in Colorado Springs, about 70 miles south of Denver. Federal officials said there were more than 200 people inside the club at the time, including 114 who were in the country illegally. More than a dozen active-duty members of the U.S. military were detained as well, they said.

    Officials said agents found weapons and illicit drugs inside the nightclub, including cocaine, methamphetamine and a mixture of powdered drugs known as pink cocaine.

    Jonathan C. Pullen, the DEA Rocky Mountain Division special agent in charge, said in a news conference that the club had been under law enforcement surveillance for months and that “drug trafficking, prostitution and crimes of violence” had been taking place inside the club.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/us/politics/immigrants-colorado-raid-dea.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DE8.5sEF.pd4_8vfeGidx&smid=url-share

    (This is NYT. I don’t know what’s up with the links, why they don’t link anymore.)

  83. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2028-election/jb-pritzker-implores-democrats-fight-trump-new-hampshire-rcna203229

    As Pritzker denounced President Donald Trump in a speech to New Hampshire Democrats, he also accused Democratic politicians of embracing a “culture of incrementalism” that has led the party to be run over by Republicans, who are implementing an agenda that is counter to the left’s value system.

    “It’s time to fight, everywhere, all at once,” Pritzker said. “

    Pritzker told the Democrats that he had never called for protests in the past but that he was now calling for “mass protests,” “mobilization” and “disruption.”

  85. “The agency said it gave multiple warnings urging people inside to come out before the raid. More than 200 people were in the club, authorities said, and arrests began around 3:45 a.m. local time.”

    “Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the club was “frequented by Tda and MS-13 terrorists.” That is likely a reference to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that has been a target of Trump administration deportations in the U.S.”

    “NPR could not immediately verify the legal status of those arrested, and whether there’s any evidence of gang membership.”

    https://www.npr.org/2025/04/27/nx-s1-5378668/the-dea-says-114-immigrants-in-the-u-s-illegally-were-arrested-at-a-colorado-nightclub

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