America’s Cup 35, Challenger Playoff Semifinal

“All of this is for the very best end.”

Remember, Nellie Forbush is a stone cold racist who ruins the lives of everyone she touches.

I think Candide is about my favorite Opera ever.

It has all the essential elements, naive ingenue led into misbehavior by ill counsel and a rebellious nature as her life spirals from bad to dead of a horrible wasting disease that enhances her radiant beauty and in no way diminishes her Tour de Force Aria as she gasps her last breath.

Oh, did I mention it’s entirely sarcastic and cynical?

I’d summarize but if you haven’t internalized the Voltaire you’ll find yourself at a Dreyfus disadvantage to those who have, just like being unfamiliar with Aesop.

Bernstein’s most complete score from the Scottish Opera via BBC in 1988.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Allies mark VJ-Day as World War II effectively ends; Woodstock begins; France’s Napoleon Bonaparte born; India gains independence; Blast hits Omagh, N. Ireland; ‘The Wizard of Oz’ premieres in Hollywood.

Be who you are, do what you do and let us get on with discussing the real issues of this country.

Maxine Waters

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When I think about Bushcrafting I’ve devised a pyramid of need. The first two steps are mostly preliminary to the third, which is vital.

You need a knife. Endlessly useful in breaking down material they’re very difficult to construct in a primitive environment (not impossible). Your best bet is to have one, doesn’t have to be big and threatening.

You need a fire, not so hard to produce if you have patience and a knife.

You need Water.

No, you really, really need Water. You can go 30 days without Food, only 3 without Water (ok, 3 minutes without Oxygen but what kind of idiot goes Bushcrafting in the cold inky vacuum of Space? Elon Musk?). The reason you need the Fire silly is not to cheer you up or keep you warm but to process your Water so it doesn’t poison you to Death.

Now I have a handy dandy Filter that screws on the top of a Soda Bottle (Trash is everywhere unfortunately) and it’s good enough for most things (though I would still give my Water a good rolling boil) and it cost $20, weighs half an ounce, and I keep it in my purse.

Les on Fire and Water.

Unless exposed like an English Major (Historians write too) it might not occur to you that most of what you read is not at all true, demonstrably false by easy experiments in fact (Harris? Really? There are plenty of reasons to hate her, and I do, but she is more a “Natural Born” Citizen of the United States than Ted Cruz or Mitt Romney).

In Fiction, which acknowledges it’s nature, there is a divide between Omniscient/Omnipresent presentation of plot to a presentation of perception which can be self serving and fantastical. Lots of people make the NYT Best Seller List because of the ingenuity of the grand reveal. It’s called “Character Development”, people love it.

I think the nearly universal acclaim for Disloyal a bit overdone. Not much is new and it is intensely biased, but the story of it’s release is a complete self replicating Fractal of the inherent Fascism of the Republican Party from Dog Catcher to Oval Office.

Sitting in the green room on the morning of my testimony before the House Oversight Committee, I began to feel the enormous weight of what was about to happen. For some reason, after all that I’d been through, and all I’d put my family and the country through, waiting in that room was the moment when the gravity of what was about to happen truly hit home. The United States was being torn apart, its political and cultural and mental well-being threatened by a clear and present danger named Donald Trump, and I had played a central role in creating this new reality. To half of Americans, it seemed like Trump was effectively a Russian-controlled fraud who had lied and cheated his way to the White House; to the other half of Americans, to Trump’s supporters, the entire Russian scandal was a witch hunt invented by Democrats still unable to accept the fact that Hillary Clinton had lost fair and square in the most surprising upset in the history of American presidential elections.

Both sides were wrong. I knew that the reality was much more complicated and dangerous. Trump had colluded with the Russians, but not in the sophisticated ways imagined by his detractors. I also knew that the Mueller investigation was not a witch-hunt. Trump had cheated in the election, with Russian connivance, as you will discover in these pages, because doing anything—and I mean anything—to “win” has always been his business model and way of life. Trump had also continued to pursue a major real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. He attempted to insinuate himself into the world of President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of corrupt billionaire oligarchs. I know because I personally ran that deal and kept Trump and his children closely informed of all updates, even as the candidate blatantly lied to the American people saying, “there’s no Russian collusion, I have no dealings with Russia…there’s no Russia.”

I’ll spare you Cohen’s histrionics about his mental health. As someone clinically diagnosed I’m sure his symptoms are very real to him.

Now, sitting alone in an upstate New York prison, wearing my green government-issued uniform, I’ve begun writing this story longhand on a yellow legal pad. I often wrote before dawn so not to be disturbed in my thoughts when my fellow inmates awoke. I had to report to the sewage treatment plant where some of us worked for a wage of $8 a month. As the months passed by and I thought about the man I knew so well, I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully. The types of scandals that have surfaced in recent months will only continue to emerge with greater and greater levels of treachery and deceit. If Trump wins another four years, these scandals will prove to only be the tip of the iceberg. I’m certain that Trump knows he will face prison time if he leaves office, the inevitable cold Karma to the notorious chants of “Lock Her Up!” But that is the Trump I know in a nutshell. He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.

Watching Trump on the evening news in the prison rec room, I almost feel sorry for him. I know him so well and I know his facial tics and tells; I see the cornered look in his eyes as he flails and rants and raves, searching for a protector and advocate, someone willing to fight dirty and destroy his enemies. I see the men who have replaced me and continue to forfeit their reputations by doing the President’s bidding, no matter how dishonest or sleazy or unlawful. Rudy Guiliani, William Barr, Jared Kushner and Mike Pompeo are Trump’s new wannabe fixers, sycophants willing to distort the truth and break the law in the service of the Boss. All this will be to no avail. Trump doesn’t want to hear this, and he will certainly deny it, but he’s lost without his original bulldog lawyer Roy Cohn, or his other former pitbull and personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

During my testimony, Republican House members repeatedly asked me to promise that I wouldn’t write a book. I refused, repeatedly. It was another way of saying I shouldn’t be permitted to tell my story, in essence giving up my First Amendment rights. It was a clear sign of desperation and fear. I have lost many things as a consequence of my decisions and mistakes, including my freedom, but I still retain the right to tell this story about the true threat to our nation and the urgent message for the country it contains.

One last thing I can say with great confidence, as you turn the page and meet the real real Donald Trump for the first time: This is a book the President of the United States does not want you to read.

Well, the evidence is certainly on the side of that statement.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Truman announces Japan’s surrender in World War II; Blackout hits Northeast U.S., Canada; FDR signs Social Security; British troops arrive in N. Ireland; A strike in Cold War Poland; Steve Martin born.

The message is not so much that the worms will inherit the Earth, but that all things play a role in nature, even the lowly worm.

Gary Larson

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Mmm. Baker’s 105. It’s “Sippin'” Whiskey, so a side of Soda or Branch only please.

At it’s peak the Bourbon Empire ranged about as far as the Hapsburgs but it was always centered around France and Spain (as opposed to Germany and Central Europe).

It is interesting to observe the final throes.

The Immoral Double Life of the Former King of Spain
By David Jiménez, The New York Times
Aug. 13, 2020

One of my first assignments as a reporter, in 1996, was to interview an alleged lover of the king of Spain, Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón. My editors at El Mundo asked me to look into whether Bárbara Rey, a Spanish film and television actress, demanded money from the state in exchange for keeping her relationship with the married king secret. In the end, I didn’t get the interview. Under pressure, Ms. Rey chose to remain silent. Thus our king’s two great weaknesses — women and money — remained the country’s worst-kept secret for another two decades.

It’s time we Spaniards acknowledge that we always knew the king had no clothes, but we chose to look the other way.

An outdated culture of allegiance, the opacity surrounding the Spanish monarchy and a Constitution that exempts our kings from any criminal responsibility sent the monarch the message that he was above the law. His immunity from prosecution, designed to give stability to the institution of the crown, was used to amass a fortune primarily through millions of dollars in presumed kickbacks from Arab dictators. He acquired such wealth that in 2012, in the middle of the Great Recession that left 25 percent of Spaniards unemployed, he transferred 65 million euros to his lover Corinna Larsen, a German businesswoman.

The revelation of this royal “gift,” which Ms. Larsen attributed to “gratitude and love” — and investigators consider an attempt to hide illicit deals and large sums of money — is just the tip of the iceberg of a scandal that has forced the monarch into exile.

Juan Carlos I left the country on Aug. 4 and his whereabouts is unknown to us Spaniards. This strategy of keeping him out of the spotlight, after a secret negotiation between the Royal Household and the government, shows that we have learned nothing.

The former king, who abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe, in 2014, should be in the country he ruled for almost four decades while he is under investigation in Switzerland and Spain, including for receiving 100 million euros from Saudi Arabia in 2008. The royal bounty under suspicion, accumulated over decades, includes Ferrari cars, a yacht, luxury trips, land in Morocco and a London flat valued at more than 62 million euros, a gift from the sultan of Oman. It would be naïve to think that such generosity didn’t come at a price.

The Spanish Supreme Court is investigating whether the donation of 100 million dollars from the Saudis was a commission paid to Juan Carlos I for getting Spanish companies to build the high-speed train between Medina and Mecca at a value of 6.7 billion euros. We now know that for years the head of state led a double life as a lobbyist and that in return, his beneficiaries obtained decisive influence in Spain. How much influence? The authorities have only minimal interest in looking under that rock.

Parliament has blocked the creation of a commission that could have revealed the geopolitical implications of the former king’s behavior. The citizens thus miss the opportunity to ask the past four prime ministers of Spain what they knew about the king’s business dealings and their influence on Spanish foreign policy while his immunity from prosecution, which ended when he abdicated, protected him. Back in 1995, a well-known businessman, Javier de la Rosa, told the executive director of El Mundo at the time, Pedro J. Ramírez, that Kuwait paid $100 million as a reward for persuading the Spanish government to join to the coalition against Saddam Hussein during the first gulf war.

For decades, Spain has been a main supporter of Arab dictatorships that, thanks to our monarchy, have found a way to achieve international legitimacy. In November 2018, amid outrage over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia showcased that Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who some accused of ordering the killing, still had friends: A photograph of a friendly greeting between Juan Carlos I and the crown prince appeared in Saudi news media.

Nor did the repression of protesters calling for democracy in Bahrain prevent the king from frequently traveling to that country, another of the “sister monarchies” that padded his bank accounts. One of Juan Carlos’s wealth managers told the Swiss attorney general’s office that the former king returned from a trip to Manama, Bahrain’s capital, with a briefcase containing nearly $1.9 million.

Even as we await the decisions made by the judges in Switzerland and Spain, there is no doubt about the immorality of the behavior of the king, who for decades was the most admired man in Spain for his role in helping to lead the country from dictatorship to democracy. But the accumulation of evidence and the progression of the investigations hardly matter: The same political class, business community and courtly press that draped a mantle of impunity over the king has come to his rescue. What should be a question of decency and accountability is instead a polarized debate for and against the monarchy.

The emeritus king’s defenders proclaim that despite his faults, his legacy as the father of Spanish democracy is indelible. They consider it paramount to protect the institution at a time of great political fracture and territorial tensions, including Catalonia’s government bid for independence. The argument is legitimate, but loses its meaning when cloaked in conspiracy theories about a coordinated attack by the country’s enemies to overthrow the monarchy. No one has done more to sabotage the monarchy than the former king himself.

European monarchies are relics of the past whose role has been reduced to tasks of diplomatic representation, patriotic symbolism and, let’s face it, entertainment for the masses. The dissolute lives of the monarchs themselves (and their families) have traditionally been accepted, within certain limits. But when scandals involve a network of child abuse, such as the recently revealed connection of Prince Andrew of England to Jeffrey Epstein, or suspicions of corruption, as with Juan Carlos I, that tacit pact is broken and the question resurfaces: Do we need the monarchy?

An institution like the Spanish one cannot be saved by seeking a placid retirement for the former king. Shielding him from the consequences of his actions and maintaining the usual opacity sends the message to the current monarch, Felipe VI, that he would receive the same treatment regardless of his actions.