Music Friday: "Homecoming"

Here's a song from probably Josh Ritter's best album, Sermon on the Rocks. At least it's my favorite of his. 

Musing of the Moment: Harris as Presidential Candidate

The big news over the weekend was that Biden is no longer running for President. 

And the Democrats, surprisingly, put their support around Kamala Harris quickly. 

I have been surprised about the speediness of the support because historically the Democratic Party usually isn't that organized or disciplined. That's more of the modus operandi of the Republican Party that has become the brain-dead GOP. 

So in the presidential contest, we have a convicted felon who cannot even run a hot dog cart in the state of New York who is also a convicted sexual assaulter versus a former prosecutor and Attorney General. 

Who is the "Back the Blue" cohort of voters going to vote for? 

The answer probably isn't what it should be. 

As Rage Against the Machine sang, "Those of those that work forces/ are the same that burn crosses." 

Possibly not literally but figuratively...

But in some cases literally.

The race-based dog whistling has already started with Moscow Don's allies calling Harris the "DEI candidate." 

More of that shit is coming. 

Music Friday: "Who Am I to Say"

It's unfortunate that this great musical artist passed away in 2020. 

Here's a sold album from his 2008 release The Good Life. 

Fumbling Toward Culinary Talent: Blueberry Cornbread

I got this recipe from one of the episodes of either Cooks' Country or America's Test Kitchen on PBS.  

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of AP flour

1 cup of yellow corn meal

3/4 cup of sugar

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1 teaspoon of salt

12 tablespoons of melted butter (cooled)

1 cup of whole milk

2 eggs

2 cups of blueberries

Process

Set the oven to 375 degrees. Put the dry ingredients together and whisk. In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients (butter, milk, and eggs) and then combine the wet with the dry ingredients. 

You don't want to overwork the batter--just get it mixed. Add the blueberries until mixed. 

Grease a cast iron skillet with butter and sprinkle corn meal on the surface so the cornbread comes out cleanly. 

Pour the batter into the skillet. Sprinkle the top of the batter with sugar. Cook for roughly 40 minutes until a paring knife comes out clean. 

Music Friday: "Year to Be Young 1994"

I've featured a tune from this guy's album previously, but here's another fine cut off Stephen Wilson Jr.'s album from last year. 

Random Notes from a Crank

On a mainly weekday basis, I've been posting definitions from the Dictionary of American Slang, which was published in 1967, in alpha order on my FB feed. 

Today I was on the letter M in the alphabet, so I posted this definition from the dictionary:

"meatball meat ball n. 1. A dull, boring person; an obnoxious person; anyone regarded with disfavor, esp. one of flat or uninteresting character; a creep, a drip, a square, a wet blanket. 2. A tactical signal flag bearing a black dot on a yellow field; also, the Japanese national flag. #. A swelling of or on the face, cause by a blow in fighting. 4. In baseball, any pitched ball that can be hit readily by a given batter. v.t. 1. To strike someone with a fist. --ism n. 1. Anti-intellectualism; the state of willing ignorance or mediocrity. 2. A state of, or instance demonstrating, decreasing standards of integrity, ethics, intelligence, and individualism in culture, politics, education, and the like; democratic rule by an uneducated, non-thinking majority."

I'm particularly fond of the term "meatballism" because I think it properly describes the U.S. for quite some time. It's an anti-intellectual country, and it's been like that for centuries. 

The amount of willful ignorance is astounding, and the if you follow politics for any amount of time, the "decreasing standards" will make you depressed. 

I think the U.S. is currently engaged in "democratic rule by an uneducated, non-thinking majority." 

I guess there are glimmers of hope though with the Labour Party coming back into majority power in the U.K.: "How Ken Starmer Overwhelmed Britain's Conservatives."

And over in France, Macron's gamble to call an election turned out better than expected since left-leaning folks flocked to the polls and put down the right-wing idiots trying to take power: "France Electioin Results: Far Right's Rise Suffers Unexpected Blow as Left Surges." 

But what does this mean for November? 

At least if you're going by a flash poll by YouGov that I took today Trump hopefully is in trouble. At the time I'm writing this post, 36% of people polled think Moscow Don is mentally fit to be President, 5% think he was mentally fit to be president in 2020 but is no longer mentally fit to be president, and 54% believe he was not mentally fit to be president in 2020 and is not mentally fit today. 

At least on that last answer, Biden only clocks in at 31%. 

In better news, the people polled were asked about their opinion of the GOP's "Project 2025," and 53% have a very unfavorable opinion of it. 

The biggest challenge before Biden is that he has to hit the swing states hard since we still live under a system that relies on the idiocy that is the Electoral College.

Music Friday: "Sick of Myself"

We were at a baseball tournament over the Fourth of July week, so we were in a hotel, and I got out of my routine of posting this on a Friday. 

This song ran through my head a number of days this week because I heard it played on the SiriusXM Spectrum station a number of times, and then I had a couple of mornings when I had this song in my head when I woke up. 

It's pure power pop from Matthew Sweet.