(from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/manafort-trial-judge-snapped-mueller-s-team-because-they-re-ncna900001)
". . . Judge Ellis (presiding in the Paul Manafort trial) is certainly demanding: He is, as I’ve heard him say, “a Caesar in [his] own Rome,” (even if, as he also likes to say, “it’s a pretty small Rome.”) He is also among the best the federal judiciary has to offer. Judge Ellis has impressive credentials, perhaps eclipsing even Mueller’s, having served as a Navy F4 Phantom pilot after graduating from Princeton and adding a degree from Oxford as a Knox Fellow to his resume after graduating from Harvard Law School. . . Over the last 30 years or so on the bench, he has shown the remarkable intellectual acumen necessary to competently preside over cases many lawyers and judges would rightly try hard to avoid. . .While he’s accused of being pro-defendant in this trial, and has certainly held the government to high standards over the course of his career, he’s also been roundly criticized for being very pro-government. . ."
". . . In some pockets of the country, a rising number of parents are delaying shots for their kids or skipping certain ones altogether, citing religious or philosophical exemptions from state laws that require kids to be vaccinated in order to attend school. As a result, there have been recent outbreaks of serious diseases that vaccines had virtually wiped out in the U.S., including measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), and haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), which was once the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in kids under 5. . . Infectious-disease specialists say these cases are due to a breakdown of what's known as "herd immunity." In order for a community to be fully protected against a disease, 80 to 90 percent of its population needs to have been vaccinated, says pediatrician Lance Rodewald, M.D., director of the Immunization Services Division of the CDC. Whenever coverage drops significantly below that level, a school, a church, or a neighborhood becomes susceptible to the disease. Babies who aren't old enough to get the shot yet are at the greatest risk of becoming sick. . ."
". . . radio as I knew it, doesn’t exist,” says Weasel (Jonathan Gilbert), the legendary DJ with a Steve Buscemi voice and marsupial-like eyes that hint at the origins of his nom de air. “Just a handful of cookie-cutter radio stations.” . . . So it is hard for him to fathom that a modern radio station would allow him to play whatever he wanted—and even send a driver for him. . . But sure enough, here Weasel, a living repository of rock ’n’ roll lore, sits in a studio in WTMD’s new digs with a stunning view of Towson Town Center’s white-on-white sign over Dulaney Valley Road. . . There’s nothing nostalgic in the studio— not even the romance of a turntable on this desktop console. “No way I’m carrying around 51 pounds of records,” Weasel says. Then the song ends and you witness what sets him apart from everyone else on the air. Unlike other DJs who sit before the mic, the way dentists sit on those stools, with stiff backs, Weasel hits the mic at side angles, hardly ever straight on. He holds up his notebook with what looks like handwritten track aggregate and discusses the 20-minute playlist with a smattering of historical details that come from a long career that sprang at the dawn of rock radio in 1970. . ."
Gazebo Cover art
Oho has been making great music since the early 70s, seemingly swerving and dodging any typical styles and genres as they avoided the classification game, instead going for whatever direction their muse took them at any point in time. The three founding members O’Connor, Heck, and O’Sullivan (Hence their name OHO) have long left the band (although Mark O’Connor is a guest one one track here), multi-instrumentalist and singer Jay Graboski who had joined by the time of the band’s first album Okinawa in 1974 is still among the members, all through the years guiding the band through their continuous evolution. And still, on their latest album Gazebo, the band still eschews any kind of classification, other than in a very general sense. In addition to Graboski, the current members include Ray Jozwiak (vocals, keyboards, and accordion) and David Reeve (drums, vocals, keyboards and more), the latter having been with the band since the beginning of the 1990s. In addition, no less than twenty guests have contributed to this track or that adding everything from trombone, french horn, saxes, bass, 12 string, pedal steel, percussion, additional vocals and more. The eighteen cuts herein are all listed as group compositions (with the exception of a couple interpretations) but one can sense that the diversity of what’s on offer here shows that ideas are are hatched and developed by individual band members and from that point developed as a group, having a lot of fun along the way. Thus, the tunes represent more of what the members’ interests are instead of trying to shoehorn their sound into any genre. One can find a little bit of everything herein, though everything on offer is played and sung impeccably by a group of experienced musicians who probably don’t care if you like it or not, it’s what they do, and being independent of any record labels, it’s all at their prerogative and pleasure.
“How Is Where We Go” is a great tune, and a catchy one as well, and pretty much exemplifies Oho’s creation process: write and arrange a great tune with thoughtful lyrics, bring it to life with whatever is needed to perfect it (some pedal steel went a long way in this case, plus additional lead guitar, percussion and vocals), and you end up with a tune that meets a number of criteria of excellence and doesn’t really sound like anything you’ve heard before. The opener “Ring in the Brightness” is a tune that is just as vital, a funky and powerful rocker with a horn section featured. The band does a tasteful cover of Randy Newman’s “Baltimore,” perhaps with a bit more of a rock punch than the original, with some great sax soloing from guest Gene Meros, following that up with “Blood Brother,” a good-timey piano tune that sounds like something from another era, with a horn section featured, and different singers taking their tunes as the song proceeds. “Denial” is another great tune with powerful arrangements and great lyrics and harmonies, built on an acousic guitar roadbed with accordion and other arrangements supporting judiciously.
With a good 65-plus minutes of great new material, the band added a couple excellent tunes “Slough of Despond” and “Limousine” that were on their two previous albums Where Words Do Not Reach and Bricolage respectively, and “Unique” which was an instrumental tune on the former, now is re-featured with lyrics. “Ocean City Ditty” which was originally an overtly commercial sounding single released a few years back by the band, is now remixed with additional female vocals and a horn section, with an overdubbed DJ intro and outro. “Out of Thin Air” is an old Oho tune from the early 90s, but a classic that got a complete re-recording here, much improved from the original that opened the Oho album in 1990. “Bleeding the Fifth” is a downright heavy tune with guest lead vocals from Barry Lee Reichart , a thunderous bass line and overdubbed layers of screaming guitars throughout. The album’s pièce de résistance comes near the end, and who would have thought that anyone could combine The Yardbirds “Over Under Sideways Down” with the famous Disney tune “It’s a Small World” and make it work, but Oho did it, and although this doesn’t sound much like either of the originals (though it tracks the Yardbirds a bit more closely), it’s a great interpretation of both tunes more or less superimposed on one another. Nothing short of brilliant. All taken, Gazebo is another great step forward from a band who’s name is synonymous with adventure and unpredictability.
Hear OHO's "Ocean City Ditty" (from OHO's GAZEBO) on Weazel's Beach Show this week on WTMD (89.7FM if you're in the Baltimore metropolitan area - or stream at https://www.wtmd.org/player/player5-index.html) Both Friday night from 7:00pm Til 10:00pm or Saturday from Noon until 3:00pm.
". . . “The SEC has never initiated any enforcement action against me,” (Cabinet member Wilbur) Ross told Forbes in a statement. “No regulatory agency has ever asserted such charges or any other charges against me, and there is no basis for any such allegations.". . . But the report noted that the SEC had fined Ross’s company $2.3 million in August 2016 for collecting some $10.4 million in fees from investors from deals completed between 2001 to 2011, which covered a portion of Ross's time at the firm. . . "
(http://projects.thestar.com/donald-trump-fact-check/)
"Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC."
in fact: There is still no evidence of this. And the surveillance Trump was complaining about on this day, of Carter Page, only began after Page left the campaign.
"Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of 'Justice' and FBI misled the courts."
in fact: The documents do not show that the Department of Justice and the FBI misled the courts in seeking a warrant to surveil a former Trump adviser, Carter Page. In fact, the newly released documents proved that a Republican memo about the documents was misleading when it accused the Department of Justice and FBI of misleading the courts. As the New York Times reported: "The Republican memo issued in February said the FBI had failed to 'disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.' But Democrats at the time contended that the court had been told that the research had politically motivated origins. The application contains a page-length explanation that does alert the court that the person who commissioned Mr. Steele's research was "likely looking for information to discredit" Mr. Trump's campaign. It goes on to explain why, notwithstanding Mr. Steele's 'reason for conducting the research,' the FBI believed it was credible. Republicans had also faulted the application for not explicitly identifying Mrs. Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee by name. But that criticism ignored the fact that law enforcement officials were following a general policy not to name Americans, even referring to Mr. Trump only as 'Candidate #1' in renewal applications despite noting that he was now the president-elect and then the president. David Kris, an expert on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act who served in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, dismissed the notion that the intelligence court judges had been misled. 'Now we can see that the footnote disclosing Steele's possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it,' he wrote on the blog Lawfare."
"The Rigged Witch Hunt, headed by the 13 Angry Democrats (and now 4 more have been added, one who worked directly for Obama W.H.), seems intent on damaging the Republican Party's chances in the November Election."
in fact: By "rigged witch hunt," Trump means special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into his campaign's relationship with Russia. The investigation is being run by a Republican, Mueller himself. Though Mueller has indeed filled his team with Democrats, it is false to say the investigation is "headed" by these Democrats.
Trump has repeated this claim 2 times
"Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer's office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal."
in fact: The government executed a search warrant at Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office in April; it did not "break in." We'll continue let this claim go as a matter of rhetorical license, but the second part of Trump's tweet is flat-out incorrect: it was not illegal for Cohen to tape phone calls with Trump. Under New York state law, only one party to the conversation must consent for the recording to be legal.
"Now, we then go to a news conference. I mean I had these -- some of these fools from the media saying, 'Why didn't you stand there, look him in the face, walk over to him, and start shouting at him?'"
in fact: Unless we're missing something -- we'll remove this item from the list if someone shows us we were indeed missing something -- Trump's critics in the media did not demand he walk over to Putin and shout in his face; some of them merely said Trump should have professionally denounced Putin from his own spot at the press conference. According to a Wall Street Journal report, it was Trump's own aides who wanted Trump to get up in Putin's "face." The Journal reported: "In preparatory meetings, Mr. Trump and his aides discussed using the indictment to forcefully make the case. The plan was for Mr. Trump to invoke the indictment both in private meetings and in the public news conference afterward, a White House official said. The idea, the official said, was to 'shove it in Putin's face and look strong doing it,' depicting it as hard evidence of Russian crimes against America's electoral process."
"With Mexico, $120 billion (trade deficit). Mexico. Who would think Mexico? Mexico's making a fortune."
in fact: The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $69 billion in 2017, $71 billion in 2017 when counting goods alone. Trump has usually claimed that the deficit with Mexico is $100 billion; this was the first time he exaggerated all the way to $120 billion.
"China: with China, $507 billion a year in deficits." And: "We're down 500. Now some people would say $375 billion. I'm not talking about million. I'm not talking about pennies. I'm talking about -- we're down $375 billion, but other estimates could say $507, it doesn't matter. So it's in between there, or it's there." And: "And it's very interesting because I actually asked them the question, 'So we're down 507 -- recently -- we're down $507 billion in trade deficits. How did it happen?' And they told me, 'Nobody ever complained. Nobody ever talked to us.'" (Trump has repeated this claim 34 times)
in fact: The U.S. has never once had a $500 billion trade deficit with China, according to U.S. government data. The deficit was $337 billion in 2017, $375 billion if you only count trade in goods. There are no estimates by which it "could say" $507 billion.
"You know last year, and for years, we have been losing $150 billion with the EU nations, with the European Union..." And: "With the EU $151 billion..." (Trump has repeated this claim 46 times)
in fact: The U.S. had a $102 billion trade deficit with the European Union in 2017. The $150 billion figure -- $151 billion, to be precise -- counts only trade in goods and excludes trade in services. Trump, as usual, did not say he was excluding services.
