Orange is the new Black
Go Get'em Scottie!
R A I D E R L E G E N D
Friday, May 17, 2024
Monday, May 13, 2024
Giants Injury List Motivation
April 03, 2024, Starting Lineups
For tonight's game 1 of a three-game series at Oracle Park the Giants are missing four starters due to injury (Lee, Soler, Conforto, Ahmed). Starting Catcher Patrick Bailey is listed day-to-day. Last I checked on the Dodgers injury list Jason Heyward, who didn't play April 03, is still out and Ohtani is day-to-day.
Bottom line, the Giants, coming off a 2-1 series win over the Cincinnati Reds cannot let the injury bug distract them. They have the division leading Dodgers in town and it's "next man up" mentality time. Both teams are 3-2 in their last five games. Everybody knows that when these two teams meet you can throw out all the recent stats and win/loss records. It's Dodgers versus Giants once again, no time for licking wounds or making excuses. Let's Play Ball!
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Karl Haushofer - Hitler's Inexhaustable Idea Man (1939)
Life Magazine
Article - November 20, 1939
Germany’s
Brain Truster Produces Nazi War Aims
Excerpt
The root of
Haushofer’s advice is to be ready for anything, to suit the demand to the
supply in international politics, to seek the weak point and to be bound by no
principles. This advice is what the Nazi leaders have always believed in
internal politics. Haushofer tells them, out of an immense scholarship, how to
apply it to international politics. Strangely, the first complete report on
Haushofer to reach the democratic world was contained in several chapters of
the book by the renegade Nazi Hermann Rauschning, “The Revolution of
Nihilism.”
Karl Haushofer’s
ideas, according to Rauschning, are responsible not only for Germany’s alliance
with Soviet Russia but for the development of a totally unscrupulous
revolution. The Nazi elite, according to Rauschning, have come to know that the
whole Nazi program is just balderdash to feed the people. They look on the
hard-working, patriotic, march-loving Germans as the most marvelous suckers ever
handed to a small, tight group hungry for power. Their true program, says
Rauschning, is to pulverize and “Atomize” the German people into one classless
mass, suited to any purposes the High Command may decide. This is to be the
instrument for the great external aims improvised by Haushofer.
Knowing that
the elite of any revolution’s first phase are overthrown by later elites,
Hitler trains the young Nazi elite in special leader schools. In the
competitions for admission, lower-middle-class candidates are more and more
often beaten out by merciless young men from the aristocracy and upper-middle
class. The same type of young man is making his appearance in the ranks of Army
officers. Rauschning says that they listen to Hitler today with embarrassed disgust,
that they believe the revolution cannot stand still and the old Nazis must go.
Either the Army will take over Germany, according to Rauschning, or this new
elite will launch a further “pulverization” of the German people and the “eternal
war” of German dominion.
For all
these “sons of chaos” infected by Haushofer’s ideas, Rauschning has such
epithets as primitive, vulgar, ungrammatical, amoral, immoral, anti-social, déclassé,
hooligan. Like their Fuhrer, they await the turn of events to take over whatever slogans will excite and
delude the people. These slogans are continually changing. Behind the screaming
voice of Adolf Hitler, the actual words are so vague and ambiguous that they
can be used in any way he chooses. Rauschning describes a total breakdown in
Germany of everything once meant by German character, a triumph of cynicism, the death of all hope and
principle, the glorification of rapid action and crafty opportunism. The Revolution,
he says, will whirl on, either forward or backward.
Haushofer
picked Adolph Hitler and his Deputy Chief, Rudolf Hess, as pupils of his in 1920,
saying that Hess should have been a priest and Hitler an architect. He has
never let go of them and calls them by their first names.
He won his
first hold on Hitler when he and his Jewish wife brought to Hitler’s jail in
Munich in 1923 books and flowers to keep the future Fuhrer happy, while he
wrote Mein Kampf.
Personal notes:
I typed this
up after reading it because the methods Haushofer suggested to Hitler for
taking power seem very similar to what GOP Republicans grabbed hold of in Donald
Trump in 2016. “primitive, vulgar, ungrammatical, amoral, immoral,
anti-social, déclassé, hooligan”
Haushofer’s son, Albrecht, would later be executed by the Nazi’s for his work with the German Resistance. Albrecht was implicated in the July 20, 1944, attempted plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. (see Wikipedia)
Karl Haushofer and his wife on the night of March 10-11, 1946, committed suicide. Both drank arsenic, then his wife hanged herself from a tree branch.
Haushofer developed Geopolitik from widely varied sources.
World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland.
Guilt
Moabit Sonnet by Albrecht Haushofer
(found on his person at the time of his execution)
I am guilty,
But not in the way you think.
I should have earlier recognized my duty;
I should have more sharply called evil evil;
I reined in my judgement too long.
I did warn,
But not enough, and not clearly enough;
And today I know what I was guilty of.
Saturday, May 04, 2024
Comfortably Numb Music Lesson
I know, it sounds crazy, but this musical instructor, with her Mary Poppins delivery style, is awesome in teaching the harmony and balance of a song I've always enjoyed.
How does it feel, comfortably numb?
I know, it's not an electric guitar, but the harp gives a visual flow to the relationship of chords, scales, and notes. And I think it is a great talking instrument, in that it mimics speech or has "a way of articulating musically expressive intention."
I came to this video while searching for a beginner's guitar lesson. Yes, finally, after years of being a musical observer, I've jumped into the pool of creative arts, determined to discover through practice what I've admired from afar.
Why Comfortably Numb? My history with the song and group goes back to a time in the 1970's, while working in a record store. Pink Floyd was the music of young people tripping on the mysteries of life. Their music was a dream-walk through the cosmic universe, making you the captain of your journey.
The seventies were still an age of psychedelic experiment, going where no man has gone before. There were leftovers of the sixties "Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out" message which accompanied protest and a strong desire for collective change in society. It was still the "Age of Aquarius."
How does it feel, comfortably numb?
So, I find it interesting to hear this musical instructor, with a Mary Poppins flavor, breakdown the musical theme and composition of a song which once led partying, protesting young people to the promised land. And for some, led to a place of no return.
I have become, comfortably numb!
Tracing the Life of Syd Barrett
Thursday, May 02, 2024
Lawyer Cross-Examines Doctor
Q = Lawyer
A = Doctor
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
I'm not one for bashing lawyers, or doctors for that matter, but when I read the above interchange between a doctor accused of malpractice, and the prosecuting attorney, I laughed out loud. Visions of a highly educated doctor calmly and confidently answering questions directed at him in the witness box from a stalking, snake-like lawyer immediately come to mind.
As any good prosecuting lawyer would do on cross-examination of a defendant, he tries punching holes into the defendant's previous testimony with the defendant still on the witness stand.
Q: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
This is where the stalking-snake lawyer so arrogantly slithers unexpectedly into his own concocted trap. He has mistakenly slithered too far into a field of questioning (medical diagnosis) advantageous to the doctor.
A: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
Here, the doctor calmly and confidently insults the lawyer's intelligence, nudging his ego to commit a defense of his arrogance. The snake has crossed the point of no return.
Q: "But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?"
The legal snake tries desperately to wriggle his way out of the trap, only to entangle himself more completely in its grasp. The die is cast. The doctor only needs to deliver the fatal blow.
A: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law."
Yes, A brainless lawyer could still be alive AND PRACTICING LAW in this courtroom.
And there you have it, a simple scene taking place in a courtroom where a man-snake in the legal field (lawyer) tries outsmarting a doctor, not using legalese methods but instead with clever medical questions which would backfire in his face. Humorous!
Saturday, April 27, 2024
SF Giants Friday Night Walk-Off: Bailey's Comet!
Orange Friday at Oracle Park in San Francisco. A great pitching duel between two upcoming rookies (Kyle Harrison, Quinn Priester). Both throwing six innings, allowing zero runs. Relievers relieving and fielders fielding. Each team had its speedy centerfielder track down what looked like an extra bases blast off the bat. The game stayed scoreless going into the ninth inning.
In the top of the ninth Giants closer Camilo Doval got himself out of a bases loaded, one out jam with a double-play ball. Up come the Giants, bottom of the ninth, no score. With Oracle Park growing wilder and wilder with every pitch, Michael Conforto battles out of an 0-2 count, earning a walk. Pirates closer David Bednar did himself no favors on a 1-2 count Automatic Ball Pitch Violation, making it 2-2.
Next, Giants Matt Chapman gets a single on a 1-2 count fastball. Up to this point he'd gone 0-3 on the night, while as a team the Giants had four hits to the Pirates 8, striking out eleven times.
With men on second and third, nobody out, Giants catcher Patrick Bailey comes to the plate. Oracle is rocking with 37,000 loyal fans pushing the ballpark decibel meter off the chart. Former Giant Joey Bart, traded earlier this month to the Pirates, is catching the ninth. Bailey fouls off a high fastball then takes a splitter for a ball. On a 1-1 count, with the fans ready to explode, Bailey gets the same high fastball pitch as before and blasts it over the right-field brick wall into a mosh pit of screaming, celebrating Giants fans. A walk-off homerun for Patrick Bailey, his second walk-off homer of the season. Friday Night Fireworks immediately lit up the night skies of the bay.
Patrick Bailey LEFT NO DOUBT! See the FULL half-inning for the Giants WALK-OFF! (youtube.com)
Orange Fridays are alive and well at Oracle Park!
Pirates 0
Giants 3
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Question For U.S. Supreme Court
After a day of hearing United States Supreme Court Justices question lawyers about Presidential Immunity, I have a really basic question for all of the Justices.
Where were you all during the 3 hours 11 minutes of the January 6th Attack On The U.S. Capitol?
Were you all still in your Washington D.C., Supreme Court Building chambers doing business as if the attackers were not there for you? Could you see or hear the mob, or did you tunein to live coverage of the attack? Did you all have or need additional security? Were you all escorted to a secure alternative location? Were your families worried for your safety?
I am trying to understand how you Justices could have been 1,523 feet from the Violently Attacked Capitol on January 6, 2021, a five minute walk, and not feel it your duty today to protect the U.S. Constitution from an criminally indicted former President, instrumental in planning, inciting, and supporting the attack by refusing to order any combative response to the attackers. The National Guard were on standby waiting for the order to deploy.
Do the Justices not see the fault of their not wanting today to address a Presidential coup immunity question? Why are they tiptoeing around what the entire country and world witnessed on “Live TV” when this former President’s supporters, at his direction, marched to and stormed the U.S. Capitol not 5 minutes away from them.
I want to believe the Supreme Court Justices take their duty of interpreting the meaning of law, finding relevancy in the law to a particular set of facts, or ruling on how laws should be applied, very seriously and professionally. But much of what I heard today makes me question if perhaps the Supreme Court is compromised in some say. Something to me just didn’t feel genuine and sincere in the way many of the Justices, not all, were carrying out their duties. It almost felt like a staged production of “Inherit the Wind” or “12 Angry Men.”
I, and I am sure many of my fellow U.S. citizens are left feeling as if today’s Supreme Court Justices’ questions on Presidential Immunity was a farce. Why? What is behind the decision for the highest court in the land to ignore the obvious Presidential coup of Jan. 6th, choosing instead to debate Immunity of hypothetical official and unofficial Presidential acts. And then take weeks/months to decide on a ruling or no ruling. One must ask if they are serving the country or the individual who was named Wednesday as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Michigan fake elector scheme.
Maybe it is time to seriously consider term limits for Supreme Court Justices. When the wife of a Justice is in touch with some of those indicted for trying to overturn the election, and said Justice does not recuse himself from hearing any arguments related to the case, it’s time for a change.
VOA News Jan. 01, 2024
CNN Politics April 25, 2024
Bill Hennessy
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