If you won’t speak its name, you can’t be serious about fighting it

/ Bassman / Leave a comment

So for some unknown reason, the Trumpster finally acknowledged the existence of anti-Semitism, and expressed the view that it “is horrible and it’s going to stop and it has to stop”.  He stopped far short of promising to do anything about it, as he has done with any number of other apocalyptic threats he sees in the US: Islamic terrorism, illegal immigration, environmental protection regulations, Meryl Streep, etc.  

Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, issued the following statement:

“The president’s sudden acknowledgement of anti-Semitism is a Band-Aid on the cancer of anti-Semitism that has infected his own administration,” Goldstein said in a statement. “His statement today is a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record.”

Anne Frank, 1943 (Source: Wikipedia)


In case you didn’t know, Anne Frank and her family were denied visas by the US, in large part because the US government significantly tightened visa requirements because they believed that German refugees might be spies or terrorists (the Franks were German, although they had fled to the Netherlands by 1941).  Sound familiar?

Ivanka Kushner posted on Facebook yesterday, perhaps about the recent spate of bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers across the country, and somehow managed to be completely opaque about what she was talking about or which group was actually being targeted: 
“America is a nation built on the principles of religious tolerance and respect for all faiths,” she wrote. “We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC”.

Do you know what she’s talking about? If you’re not Jewish would you understand the hashtag JCC?

Guitars – the early years

/ Bassman / Leave a comment

As The Bassman, one would expect that I have a bass guitar.  And indeed I do.  In fact, I have three of them, none of which are very special.  I also have 26 guitars, some of which are quite special.  This addiction collection started pretty late in life.

Gibson B-25N, c. 1965


In the beginning – that is, when I was 13 and my grandmother bought me a dime-store guitar for $20 – I was about six months later than my friends in learning to play.  This was in the 60s, and the Beatles had revolutionized everything about music.  They wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and had great hair.  Every teenage boy wanted to play guitar, except for the few that decided that banging on drums was more their style. I was no exception.  I thought it would help me make friends, especially friends who happened to be impressionable girls.  I also started wearing my hair a little longer, which created no end of strife between me and my father.

After making bad sounds on guitar for a few months, I realized that there was a surfeit of budding guitarists in the neighborhood, all of whom were more experienced than me, all of whom played better than me, and all of whom were much more likely to get hooked into a band than me.  I also realized that there was a thing called bass guitar which was (1) interesting, (2) what Paul McCartney played, and (3) not nearly as common as guitar. Showing an early eye for underserved markets, I went and got me a bass guitar and a bass guitar amplifier, and was promptly invited to join a band.  This bass guitar was of the same quality as my $20 guitar, although I probably spent $50 or $60 on it.  They were both terrible instruments.  The amplifier, through sheer happenstance, was an Ampeg SB-12 fliptop, which has now turned into a collectable classic.  Who knew?

I made some money one summer and decided to upgrade my kit.  The guitar was replaced by a Gibson B-25N, a student model that I could afford.  Not a great guitar, but a playable guitar.  The strings stayed in tune, they were close enough to the fretboard that one could actually make real chords, and the sound that came out – although thin – was unmistakably that of an acoustic guitar.  I don’t recall what happened to the dime store guitar.  Did I sell it?  Did I give it away?  The answer is lost to time.

For the bass, I really wanted a Fender.  Sadly, my funds didn’t support that, so I got a Vox Cougar bass. Vox was an English company best known for the amplifiers that the Beatles and other British Invasion bands used, and had ventured into guitars and basses by subcontracting the manufacture to a variety of providers.  This resulted in some unusual designs.  In my case, the Cougar bass was a knockoff of the Gibson EB-2 bass with some modifications.  The pickups were underpowered, it had a metal nut, and it really couldn’t be tuned properly.  But it was miles better than the piece of garbage it replaced.

Vox Cougar Bass, c. 1966


Unlike the fate of the first acoustic guitar, I remember clearly what happened to the cheap bass.  I scraped off whatever logo was on the headstock and painted “VOX” on it.  This fooled no one, of course.  I then advertised it for sale and sold it to an eager kid who was a bit younger than me.  This was the last guitar I have ever sold.
These two instruments – the Gibson acoustic guitar, and the Vox bass guitar – went through high school with me, then off to college and graduate school, and have stayed with me for about 50 years.  That may be the cheap way to buy a vintage instrument: buy it new, and then wait.

They were my only instruments for almost 25 years.  Then another gift, and a party, changed the world.

New kid in town

/ Bassman / Leave a comment

Today’s news (actually yesterday’s) is that General H.R. McMaster has been selected to become the new National Security Advisor.  The General will replace the lying fool who wasn’t clever enough to realize his own intelligence aparatus was taping every conversation the Russian amabassador had, including his.  It seems like we have a winner here: an adult who is unafraid to disagree with his surperiors, and who undoubtedly extracted a number of concessions on his independence and NSC staffing choices.

McMaster is an active duty general – the first in this job since Colin Powell held the job for Ronald Regan.  He joins a number of retired generals in the Adminstration, including Jim Mattis and John Kelly, not to mention his new deputy, Keith Kellog.  I certainly have nothing against generals, or retired generals; they are usually pretty smart guys and have experience which can be important.  But it does seem like we are getting a government which is a bit too military in nature.  I thought we generally had civilans in control in this country, but then, I’ve been wrong about so many things I thought about this country.

For now Flynn is out of the NSC.  But we’ve seen that True Trumpettes never really get fired.  They seem to go on hiatis for a while, then return in some other role or guise.  While the Republican Congress makes a show of looking at what’s going on with the Russian Connection in the administration, Flynn will be waiting patiently in the wings for his next appearence.  Omarosa and Lewandowski have probably briefed him on what to expect.

20170129-noban-nowall-march-_em10169

And while this is indeed good news – that we have a grownup in an important job – Homeland Security began issuing orders about how they are going to increase our exports of human beings.

You can’t always get what you want

/ Bassman / Leave a comment

I went down to the demonstration today.  Didn’t really get any abuse, although some pro-Trumpers did yell at me.  I’m not sure why; I wasn’t carrying any signs (or singing songs) either pro- or con-.  I was carrying a camera, and wearing a badge that I made up that identified me as “Media – Press”.  I guess they assumed any member of the media or press would be a con-.  I think they’re supporting a con (see what I did there?).

We all know that these are unusual times, regardless of which side of the 30 foot wall we find ourselves on.  Those who support the Trumpster believe they’ve finally elected someone who will take on the Washington fat cats and their big business partners, who have all been screwing the people for decades.  I have a lot of sympathy for this viewpoint.  In fact, I believe that the Washington crew has lied to pretty much everyone about what they can accomplish, and what they want to accomplish.

The Republicans have claimed that they stand for free enterprise, and for lower taxes, and for less government spending, and a smaller less intrusive government, and all that good stuff.  Of course, they’ve stood for no such things – they have massively increased the size and reach of the government and lowered taxes for the wealthy whenever they have the chance(1).  At the same time they expanded the government into limiting the choices that individuals can make about who they love and live with, who they sleep with, what they can put into or take out of their bodies, and created a surveillance state that peers into every bit of our lives.

The Democrats are barely better.  They’ve mostly failed at increasing wages for most Americans, at creating jobs that pay middle class wages, and have also participated in the two most dangerous aspects of 21st century America: our huge indebtedness, and the continued intrusion, via surveillance, into everyone’s life.  I would argue that they talk a better game when it comes to civil rights and personal liberties, but aren’t very effective.

So here we are, with a President who makes up so-called “facts” as he goes along, and savagely attacks the existence of the free press every chance he gets.  A President who is so insecure and ego-challenged that he is still whining about Hillary Clinton, that she got 3 million more votes than he did, and repeatedly arguing that she would be a worse President that he is.  Hey, Donald – you won!  You’re the President (I shake when I write that)!  You have four years to prove that you can do some good stuff, unless the Congress gets fed up and decides to kick you out.

But in the meantime, lets all make sure that we don’t let him and his band of miscreants get away with continuing the trend we’ve been on for the last umpteen years: huge deficits, huge intrusion into our personal lives, and a gradual erosion of our freedom.  We need to #Resist his bigotry, his willful ignorance, his blatant disregard for civil liberties, and his moves to enrich himself and his family because he is President.

Marchers
Know-nothing party
George Takei is great
This way to the demonstration

 

———————————————————————

(1) Full disclosure – as you might guess from reading my “About” page, I’ve benefited financially from some of these policies.

I am The Bassman

/ Bassman / 1 Comment

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it?  But I’m not really scary.  Just a guy in New Jersey who has some thoughts to share with the world.  I’ll write about this, or that, from time to time.  I might write about some place I’m visiting, or something I’m doing. I might write about politics.  I might show you some photographs I’ve taken, perhaps recently, perhaps a while ago.  You don’t have to read this.  You don’t have to look at the pictures.  But if you do, perhaps we’ll all get a little smarter.