Ambience & Wine was created in 2011 and release the following year. It was my sixth album and the second to feature my burgeoning digital production skills. I particularly like the cover art featuring a photo (taken my Pam) at Elk Run Vineyards (and of a bottle of Elk Run's splendid wine) during one of my first performances there. The tune "L-Street", opening this collection, was actually inspired by the music of Baltimore's talented Lafayette Gilchrist, a jazzman raised on hip-hop culture and go-go music in Washington D.C.
". . . (Robert) Mueller never uncovered the full extent of Trump’s financial ties to Moscow. “Neither Mueller nor the Southern District prosecutors sought out Trump’s financial records or obtained his tax returns,” Jeffrey Toobin reports. The mystery of Trump’s solicitousness to Putin remains unresolved. And he continues to give reasons for suspicion. . . Earlier this week, Trump announced a pullback of 12,000 troops stationed in Germany. He framed the decision as punishment for a long and amorphous list of offenses over a quarter century, including both unspecified trade deals and alleged delinquency on “bills.”. . . The “bills” do not exist. But even assuming Trump is referring to Germany’s military expenditures, how exactly is Germany supposed to meet these demands, given that he also added unspecified economic offenses to his list of provocations? . . . (when recently) asked . . . about the fact that Russia supplies weapons to the Taliban, which has obviously been fighting American troops in Afghanistan. (Trump said) “Well, we supplied weapons when they were fighting Russia, too,”. . . The distinction between how Trump processes Germany’s self-interest and Russia’s self-interest is telling. If Germany has done something Trump deems contrary to American interests — sell us too many high-tech goods, or fail to maintain a large enough army — he treats it as an offense requiring punishment. If Russia has done something against American interests — arm a radical militia we’re fighting — he simply accepts it as natural. Self-interest is an excuse for Russia, but not for Germany. . . His policy advisers haven’t been pushing for a German troop drawdown, nor have any talking heads on Fox News made this a priority. It is one of the very few Trump initiatives that seems to have sprung fully formed from his own brain . . . driving a wedge between the U.S. and Germany is a long-term Russian foreign-policy goal. And Trump could have merely framed his decision as a budget-saving move, or a desire to increase the troops’ presence elsewhere in Europe. Instead he presented his decision specifically as a punishment for America’s ally. . . If Trump wanted to demonstrate his innocence, he would follow every previous president for the last 40 years and release his financial information. He might be innocent after all. But he has never acted like an innocent person would. . . "
(from Too Much and Never Enough - How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump)
". . . Perhaps most crucially, for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside to caring for other people. David Corn wrote, "Everything is transactional for this poor broken human being. Everything." It is an epic tragedy of parental failure that my uncle does not understand that he or anybody else has intrinsic worth. . . Donald's monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he's been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father's short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump. . . "
". . . I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote op-eds and a law review article protesting what I believe was an unconstitutional investigation by Robert Mueller. I also wrote an op-ed opposing President Trump’s impeachment. . . But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate. . ."
[Steven G. Calabresi is Clayton J. and Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and founder of the Federalist Society]
(from Too Much and Never Enough - How My Family Created The World's Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump)
". . . Though Donald's fundamental nature hasn't changed, since his inauguration the amount of stress he's under has changed dramatically. It's not the stress of the job, because he isn't doing the job - unless watching TV and tweeting insults count. It's the effort to keep the rest of us distracted from the fact that he knows nothing about politics, civics, or simple human decency - that requires an enormous amount of work. For decades, he has gotten publicity, good and bad, but he's rarely been subjected to close scrutiny, and he's never had to face significant opposition. His entire sense of himself and the world is being questioned. . ."
