Okay so Lucius has been educated with literacy and all that.

He also says to Jim “I know what it’s like to live in disguise. . . not all beards are actual beards. . .”

Do you think Lucius was in a similar situation as Stede, where he was a bit more of a noble’s son and meant to marry a woman? I think he was the intentional version of Stede

Like, Lucius KNEW he was gay for a long time and chose to become a pirate so he could do that in the best way possible at this point of history: turning to piracy

Conversely, Stede became a pirate because he wanted adventure and bumbled into realizing he loved a man

'The Bachelor' season premiere recap: Arie begins his race to the altar

Arie Luyendyk Jr. is racin’ to find a wife. (Photo: ABC)

Warning: This recap of the season premiere of The Bachelor contains spoilers.

Do elderly former reality stars deserve love, too? It’s a question that I fear will never be answered to our true satisfaction, rose lovers, but darn it if this season of The Bachelor isn’t going to try. Having resurrected former The Bachelorette runner up Arie Luyendyk Jr. from his death of real estate and mid-level racing obscurity, producers hope to break new ground with the first-ever grey-haired Bachelor… just not the one you were expecting.

Now that he’s had five years to heal his wounded heart, Arie is ready for “the most important race of his life”: finding a wife in nine short, heavily-produced weeks.

Man, is this previously-on recap still going on?

Photo: ABC

We get it, guys — Emily crushed Arie’s heart. But we’ve got 29 new “ladies” who want to get in his drivers’ seat, so how about we get this show on the road?

Photo: ABC

Sigh. Fine, let Sean and Catherine Lowe, the First Couple of Bachelor Nation, impart some “wisdom” to their single friend — and give their little boy Samuel something to talk about when he meets up with friends Ty (season 13), Ricki (Bachelorette, season 8), and Camila (season 18) in their weekly Bachelor Spawn-Anon meetings.

Photo: ABC

Hang in there, little buddy.

With the build-up over, Chris Harrison greets us at Casa Bachelor to introduce “some truly extraordinary women” who are ready to get wifed up. Robot roll call:

Chelsea, 29: Props to this single mom from Maine for not trotting out her little one, Sammy, for her intro package. The “real estate exec. assistant” also finds it “comforting” that her Bachelor is Arie, because he proved during Emily’s season that he’s not afraid to fake settle down with a woman and her child.

Caroline, 26: Another real estate professional! Though she’s “really good” at her job, Caroline says being a wife and mother is “at the top of my priority list.” Well, as that Rasta dude says at the end of Pretty Woman, “Some dreams come true, some don’t — but keep on dreamin’.”

Maquel, 23: This professional photographer from Utah is admittedly “jealous” of the happy couples she photographs… but not in a scary, Lifetime movie way, okay?

Nysha, 30: “The more blood, the better for me!” No, that’s not Nysha’s plan for eliminating her competition in the house — she’s a nurse, silly! One who likes patching up seriously-injured patients — and one who already took a Bachelor-approved Leap Of Faith™ by sky-diving for her 30th birthday.

Tia, 26: Living in the tiny town of Weiner, Arkansas means Tia and her friends have to “make our own fun” — like exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.

Tia’s got her gun.

Oh, look who it is!

Photo: ABC

If you thought Tia seemed a little familiar, what with her long-layered dark locks and her Southern twang, that might be because she’s modeled after/a “good friend” of Bachelor Nation favorite (and fellow small-town Arkansas girl) Raven Gates. (And if you’re playing Bachelor bingo, be sure to stamp “Bachelor in Paradise shoe-in” on your scorecard.)

Kendall, 26: What does “weird” look like on The Bachelor? It’s tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and surrounded by stuffed animals.

Photo: ABC

Yep, Kendall collects taxidermy, and her longest relationships tend to be with preserved animal carcasses, not human beings. Team Bachelor pushed things a little too far with the ukulele bit, though — now Kendall’s not only quirky, she’s annoying.

Bekah M.:  Much has been made of Bekah, both for her short haircut — how did she even get in the door??? — and for the fact that she’s so young. Though producers are playing coy with her age, you don’t need a birth certificate to see that this girl is just that — a girl. Honestly, she looks like she could be a stand-in for one of the kids on Stranger Things.

Photo: ABC

Marikh, 27: This stunningly beautiful woman co-owns an Indian restaurant with her mother and, even more impressively, she did not punch the producer who asked her to say this on camera:

Photo: ABC

Krystal, 29: Oh man, why do bad shows happen to good people? Krystal is a fitness coach who volunteers distributing food to the homeless men and women of San Diego, because her younger brother is currently living on the streets. “I try to treat people how I would want someone to treat him,” she says through tears.

Enough humanity! Send in the chattle — bathed, perfumed and bronzed for Arie’s enjoyment!

Photo: ABC

And the first “lady” out is… Caroline the realtor! She makes a cutesy joke about taking Arie “off the market,” and then beats a hasty retreat inside. Up next is Chelsea the single mom, followed by Kendall the token weirdo. Our first new face is Seinne, who works in real estate (Arie clearly has a type) and who’s also the first woman to bring Arie a gift: Elephant cufflinks. “An elephant never forgets, so don’t forget to find me inside,” Seinne says with a smile. Survey says? Just the right amount of cute.

Tia (who shall heretofore be known as Raven 2) hands Arie a small, plastic hot dog. “Please tell me you don’t already have a little wiener,” she drawls, as all the 7th grade boys who apparently produce this show crack up in the control room. Poor Arie, though, doesn’t quite seem to get the joke. “I do not have this,” he replies, holding up the trinket. “You did good.”

Next up is Bibiana, a fertility-minded executive assistant from Florida (“Oh my god, our babies would have blue eyes!”), followed by Bri, a sports reporter who greets Arie by tossing him a literal softball. Jenny the 25-year-old blonde gets the intro brush-off in favor of Brittane J., who decides to mark her territory by slapping a bumper sticker on Arie’s behind.

Photo: ABC

Jacqueline the research coordinator assures Arie all he has to do is “stand there and look pretty,” but Krystal disagrees: She commands Arie to close his eyes, take some deep breaths, and “reflect on feeling so grateful for everything leading to this moment.” (I suspect that somewhere, Peter Kraus is taking some much-needed deep breaths too.)

Nysha bucks convention by opting for a cocktail length dress rather than a gown, while Valerie the brunette waitress opts for a canary-yellow number that contrasts sharply with the purple undertones of her hair. Team Bachelor intercuts all the less showy arrivals with shots of the “ladies” in the house shifting nervously in their seats every time a new woman enters the mansion. Except for Chelsea, that is: “I’m not worried,” she sniffs. “There’s [sic] no threats.”

Bekah makes the first thematically-mandated auto entrance of the evening, driving up in a cherry red Mustang convertible. “I may be young,” she tells Arie, “but I can still appreciate something classic.” Translation:

Photo: ABC

And he LOVES it. “She is so beautiful,” he whispers as Bekah bounces inside.

Jenna, the 28-year-old social media manager, can’t stop waving her arms around during her introduction to Arie; Jessica the TV host emerges from the limo clutching something called a “gratitude rock,” which sounds like a hotel gift shop trinket — but points for effort, I guess?  Marikh the restaurant owner goes back to the spice well, joking about Arie’s “salt and pepper” hair, and then we get a brief glimpse of Olivia, a 23-year-old marketing associate from Chicago.

Becca K. (not to be confused with Bekah with a k) instructs Arie to get down on one knee and ask her if she’s “ready to do the damn thing.”

Photo: ABC

Is it me, or does long-suffering Arie seem a little annoyed? “That was a first for me,” he mutters drily to the camera, fishing Becca’s ring from his coat pocket like he can’t get it away from him fast enough. And still the limos keep coming.

Photo: ABC

A second social media manager? Perhaps that’s the new “VIP Cocktail Waitress.” Next up is Lauren J. from Louisiana, who one-ups Raven 2 and her plastic wiener by giving Arie some giant balls (in the form of Mardi Gras beads). But the Laurens aren’t done with us yet, folks.

Photo: ABC

And remarkably, they’re not all blonde.

Photo: ABC

The “Lauren Limo” tops out at four, and so it’s on to Ashley and her checkered flag; Brittany T., who attempts to say “You’re handsome” in Dutch (a language Arie speaks fluently); and Amber, who makes a memorable first impression by telling the Bachelor about one drawback of owning a spray-tan company:

Photo: ABC

But honestly, rose lovers, Amber’s ice-breaker is Emily Post-level conduct compared to Ali the personal stylist dreams up:

Photo: ABC

It’s a “pit stop”! Get it? Because he’s a racecar driver? Yeah, let’s just move on.

Photo: ABC

Okay, Annaliese, your joke about Arie’s “kissing bandit” nickname is cute, but talk to me when you’ve kept that mask on for days, like Jeff from Ashley’s season of The Bachelorette.

The deafening roar of an engine precedes our next arrival. “No she didn’t!” gasps one of the women watching from inside the mansion, as Maquel climbs out of an IndyCar. Honestly, did they really think Bekah was going to be the only contestant who showed up on wheels?  The other bachelorettes are so annoyed by Maquel’s flashy entrance, they park themselves right in the shot as she introduces herself to Arie.

Photo: ABC

Simmer down, “ladies” — your probably-not future husband is making his way inside right this very minute. Chelsea tries to offer him a drink, but Arie’s too focused on making his welcome speech sound as earnest as possible.

Awkward.

An off-camera producer mouths something like “take the damn drink, you moron” at Arie, and he pauses to accept the glass from Chelsea. “See, I’m already messing up!” moans our Bachelor with a chuckle.

Seeing that Chelsea already had the pimp spot, is it any wonder that she’s the first one to “steal” Arie for a chat? “I’m not a rude person,” she says. “But I want to get to know him quickly so I can proceed with the rest of my life, possibly with him.” As we saw from her introduction, Chelsea’s whole shtick is being “mysterious” — which mainly means talking about herself in the past perfect tense, like “there have been some sacrifices that were made.” And he LOVES it. “Chelsea’s very good at leaving me wanting a little bit more,” he says. “It’s working.”

Unfortunately for Chelsea, she barely has time to drape Arie in her shimmering veil of mystery before Maquel shows up and politely asks to cut in. Though Maquel could not have been nicer about it, Chelsea immediately begins swanning around the house complaining about “the girl that makes all the noise,” who interrupted her time with Arie. This, coupled with all the other snotty things we’ve seen Chelsea say so far tonight, makes it pretty clear that she’s getting the Villain Edit. And by “Villain Edit,” I mean that cameras have captured Chelsea being bitchy several times, and producers have opted to use that footage.

Perhaps producers were focusing so much on Chelsea’s rude behavior because so many of the other women are actually being… nice to each other? Here they are sharing their feelings on interracial relationships:

Photo: ABC

And here they are bonding over the fact that, OMG, they’re on the freakin’ Bachelor!

Photo: ABC

Meanwhile, the get-to-know-you chats are proceeding apace. Brittany T. challenges Arie to a battery-operated car race…

Photo: ABC

…and even though her victory is totally fraudulent, she still claims her prize: The night’s first kiss. Cue the “nervous ladies start steppin’ up their game” montage! Kendall serenades Arie with an original ukulele composition about roses and fish; Caroline brings Arie some pizza (which looks like it was sitting out on the craft services table for a while, but again, points for effort); and Lauren G. shoves some fruit in Arie’s mouth and informs him that “pineapple” is her safe word.

Photo: ABC

Jenna the social media manager gives Arie a socks-off foot massage while blathering on about her “super-in-tune” senses and all the free food and “spa stuff” she gets on a regular basis. For some reason, Arie finds this whole flibbertigibbet act “intriguing” — it might have something to do with Jenna being a tall skinny blonde, but that’s just a guess.

Oh snap, look who’s here.

Photo: ABC

The first impression rose means that the clock (biological and otherwise) is ticking. Form an orderly line, “ladies” — and then watch as Chelsea cuts to the front. “I understand that I’m in a sea of beautiful women and they could possibly get mad at me,” she explains, “but I don’t care.” Arie doesn’t seem to mind, either.

Photo: ABC

“You snuck up on me there, but I liked it,” he murmurs after their face-mash time. Will Chelsea’s surprise smooch top Jenny’s graphite portrait of Arie in a sports car? Or Jessica’s reveal that her late father met Arie and rooted for him on the race track? Or Bekah’s flirtatious, short-haired joie de vivre?

Yes. Yes, it will.

Photo: ABC

Clink clink clink! Here comes Chris Harrison and his Butter Knife of Bad News. “Ladies,” please proceed to the rose ceremony… as soon as you’re done with your coffee.

Photo: ABC

Indeed, the sun is beginning its arc across the sky over Casa Bachelor when Arie finally begins handing out roses. Becca K., Marikh, Kendall, Lauren G., Krystal, Bekah M., Lauren S., Seinne, Caroline, Brittany T., Bibiana, Annaliese, Jenna, Valerie, Jacqueline, Jenny, Lauren B., Ashley, Tia, Maquel, and Chelsea are still in the running to become America’s Next Top Fiancée. Which means this is goodbye for Ali, Amber, Bri, Brittnae J., Jessica, Lauren J., Nysha and Olivia.

Emotionally drained and exhausted from the all-nighter, poor Jessica takes the rejection the hardest — but her tears are more for her father than the Bachelor. “Now my dad will never meet my husband,” she says sadly. (Remember kids: It’s never a bad time to call your parents to say “I love you.”) Amber the spray-tan proprietor is pretty crushed, too. “I’m so disappointed in myself,” she says in a wobbly voice. “I had, like, my family rooting so hard for me. I feel like they’re going to be disappointed, you know?” Focus on the positive, honey: They didn’t disown you for going on The Bachelor, so they’ll probably forgive you, someday, for getting kicked off.

Wow, have we made it to the “this season on The Bachelor” preview already? Man, those two hours just flew by. As usual, the super-tease has a stellar crying montage.

Suitable for framing. (Photos: ABC)

Oh, and how about that disembodied voice barking “I don’t want to be on the show! I want my girl!” at a producer toward the end of the preview? Any guesses on which “lady” that riled-up beau belongs to? (I’m going with Raven 2 or Krystal.)

Congrats on getting through week 1, rose lovers! Now tell me, did Arie meet your (lowered) expectations? Post your thoughts now! And be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s behind-the-scenes blog here.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/white-house-admission-on-pandemic-overshadows-trumps-lastpush-for-reelection-cnn/

White House admission on pandemic overshadows Trump's last push for reelection - CNN

“We are not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday, arguing that “proper mitigation factors” like therapies and vaccines should be the priority.

The window into the administration’s thinking came as Trump spent the weekend constructing a giant confidence trick for voters, declaring the country was “rounding the corner beautifully” in the battle against Covid-19.

The latest signs that Trump is putting his political priorities ahead of his duty of care to the American people come as the President plans a frantic week of packed rallies that flout good social distancing practice.

View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling

But the weekend of grim health data and controversy means the climax of the campaign will be overshadowed by the pandemic — a tough reality for Trump since 60% of Americans in a recent CNN Poll disapproved of his crisis management. The President has all along downplayed the threat from the virus. He mocked mask wearing, turning the practice into a culture war issue, and pressured Republican governors to open their states before the virus was under control, helping to unleash a wave of infections in the Sun Belt during the summer. As a result, his handling of the pandemic is a central campaign issue, and his behavior in recent days signals there will be no change to the White House’s approach to the pandemic if he wins the election — no matter how bad the virus gets this winter.

The final week of the campaign opens with Trump trailing Biden in national popular vote polls by 9 or 10 points and by smaller margins in many of the states that will decide the election on November 3. If the polling is accurate, Trump does have a narrow path to reelection but will need to make good on his vow to massively expand his political base with new conservative voters, and he will have to almost run the table in competitive states.

Remarkably, more than 58 million Americans have cast early ballots, surpassing all early voting in the 2016 election, meaning that it will be more difficult for either candidate to shake up the dynamics of the race at the last minute. Biden appears to have more routes to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory, but Democrats are nervous after a late surge by Trump in 2016 carried him to a shock victory over Hillary Clinton.

“I’m one of those folks, or competitors, it’s not over till the bell rings. And I feel superstitious when I predict anything other than going to be a hard fight,” Biden said in an interview aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday when asked whether Trump could still defeat him. “We feel good about where we are. But, you know, I don’t underestimate how he plays.”

Meadows sends shock waves through Washington

The extent to which the White House has all but given up fighting the pandemic — for instance, public briefings by top government scientists have disappeared — was made clear by Meadows.

The issue with his comments is that a vaccine, even if it is approved by regulators in the coming months, is unlikely to be available to all Americans by well into next year. The kind of state-of-the-art treatments that helped Trump beat his case of Covid-19 are not yet available to the general public or the tens of thousands of Americans now getting infected every day. Public health officials like Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC, have said masks are one of the most powerful weapons to fight the virus.

Biden leapt on Meadows’ comments as he tries to make a case that Trump’s denial and downplaying of the greatest public health crisis in 100 years means he should be disqualified from serving a second term.

He said the White House chief of staff had “stunningly admitted this morning that the administration has given up on even trying to control this pandemic, that they’ve given up on their basic duty to protect the American people.

“This wasn’t a slip by Meadows, it was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

The President and Pence — the head of the coronavirus task force — have consistently refused to model the social distancing and mask wearing that is the most effective way to cut infections until treatments and vaccines arrive.

On Sunday for instance, the President mixed with supporters who were unmasked and closely huddled together, offering fist bumps and signing “Make America Great Again” hats.

That is exactly the wrong message the President should be sending given a new modeling study from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that notes that in September only 49% of Americans reported that they “always” wear a mask in public. If that number was 95%, more than 100,000 lives could be saved from Covid-19 through February, according to the study.

In a new opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, warned that it might be time to consider a limited and temporary national mask mandate.

“Deaths are starting to rise again, and vaccines won’t be widely available until next year even in the best-case scenario. Everyone banding together to wear masks, for a limited time, will be the least costly way for society to weather a difficult winter,” Gottlieb wrote.

Pence an ‘essential worker’

Even as news broke of the multiple infections in the vice president’s office, the White House declared he was an “essential worker” — a designation normally reserved for first responders and front-line medical staff — and said he would go on with his campaign program.

Pence, who was wearing a mask, clapped and jogged up to his podium at an event in North Carolina Sunday, the latest attempt by Trump and his team to foster a false impression of normality as the crisis deepens every single day. He never brought up the infections among his inner circle, barely mentioning the virus at the rally.

But the virus is now rising in 35 states and is steady in 15. New infections rose past 80,000 cases on both Friday and Saturday, breaking previous single-day records. US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams cautioned Friday that hospitalizations are up in 75% of the jurisdictions across the country. Deaths will likely also soon start rising.

The utter disconnect between the fast worsening reality and the behavior of Trump and Pence prompted David Gergen, an adviser to presidents of both parties who was speaking on CNN, to condemn what he said was, “a President and a vice president putting their own peoples’ lives at risk to advance their own political good fortunes.”

Build your own road to 270 electoral votes with CNN’s interactive map

The comments by Meadows appeared to be in line with the philosophy of White House adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who has the President’s ear and has infuriated government scientists on the White House coronavirus task force. Atlas has cast doubt on mask wearing and appears to favor an approach akin to herd immunity — letting the virus circulate freely in society to build resistance among citizens. Such an approach could cost hundreds of thousands more lives, according to William Haseltine, chair and president of ACCESS Health International.

Meadows’ statement also had troubling echoes for another expert.

“I hear a lot of herd immunity in that statement and that is horrifying,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of Medicine at George Washington University, told CNN on Sunday.

“We can control the pandemic,” said Reiner, citing Washington, DC’s low incidence of the virus after earlier spikes and crediting mask wearing for the improved situation..

“What the chief of staff is saying is surrender. No, no, no, we get everyone to mask up — that is how we get the rates down.”

The responsibilities of leaders

The comments by Meadows caused awkward moments for several Republican senators, in town to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to a final floor vote on Monday.

“We all have control, and we all have responsibility as leaders to set an example that consists of doing the right thing to stop the spread,” the second-ranking Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, told reporters.

“There are certain elements of it that yes, we cannot control. It’s a virus. It’s very aggressive. It wants to infect a lot of people, but there are things about our own behavior that we can control.”

The other South Dakota senator, Mike Rounds, said the government should “definitely not” stop trying to control Covid-19. Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun advised throwing “the kitchen sink at getting the virus under control.”

The new cases of Covid-19 in the White House could not be closer to Pence.

Marc Short, his chief of staff, tested positive on Saturday, the vice president’s office announced in a statement late in the day. Sources told CNN that Marty Obst, a senior adviser to Pence who is not a government employee, and at least three staffers in Pence’s office also tested positive for the virus in recent days. Zach Bauer, a longtime aide and one of the staffers who works closest with Pence, has tested positive for coronavirus, CNN learned Sunday.

New fears about coronavirus at the White House will not stop Trump swearing in Barrett after her expected Senate confirmation on Monday — despite the fact that her Rose Garden announcement ceremony last month turned into what the government’s top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci called a “superspreader” event.

The event is due to take place at 9 p.m. ET, outside, a source familiar with the invitation told CNN.

Barry’s Musings “Deception Index”: Would George Floyd Dub Trump’s Response to His Death “A Great Thing?”

By J. Gerard Legagneur, Esq., June 15, 2020  

Recent events have inspired this timely installment of Barry’s Musings’ Deception Index. The “D.I.” will serve as its own version of The Washington Post’s esteemed fact-checking service, providing analyses of events that WaPo might lose in the shuffle, given the sheer volume of dubious Trump administration statements.

Washington D.C. – On Friday, June 5th, in the midst of the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, President Trump took to the Rose Garden podium to do a victory lap over better-than-expected job numbers. Rather than “meeting the moment” by offering healing, thoughtful comments regarding racial injustice, Trump elected instead to clumsily claim that he should be revered as a champion for black folks whenever the U.S. economy improves.  In a stunningly callous, tone-deaf statement, Trump went on to muse that George Floyd would be praising Trump from the Pearly Gates: 

"Hopefully George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that's happening for our country. [It's] a great day for him. It's a great day for everybody… This is a great, great day in terms of equality." So, the question then becomes, would George Floyd approve of the actions Trump has taken in the wake of his untimely murder?

THE FACTS

1. George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020 as the result of a callous, emboldened Minneapolis cop using his knee to press Floyd’s neck into the pavement for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd laid there handcuffed, unarmed, submissive and pleading to his late mother for deliverance. 

2. Trump’s past problematic relationship with racial issues has been well-documented. 

3. Fast-forwarding to the immediate aftermath of George’s Floyd’s murder, Trump made some initial, cursory comments acknowledging that he had seen the video footage and considered Floyd’s death to be a “very sad event.” Trump also had a telephone call with Floyd’s family but apparently didn’t let them get a word in edgewise. Lastly, his campaign released a “tribute” video that was subsequently blocked by Twitter due to copyright violations. The video starts off as an apparent homage to George Floyd and the protests that followed, but after the first 56 seconds it becomes readily apparent that its intent is to both shine a bright light on the handful of rioters and praise law enforcement in general.

4. On May 29th, just four days following Floyd’s murder, President Trump tweeted out a message that labeled protesters as “thugs” and included a precedented dog whistle that fantasized a violent response: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”  This remarkably blatant threat of lethal force caused Twitter to flag Trump’s offending tweet for the first time ever.

5. Three days later, on June 1st, Manbaby President Trump sought to reclaim the news cycle by notoriously posing outside St. John’s Episcopal Church while holding an upside down (and backwards) Bible. The photo op conveniently followed the clearing (and gassing) of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square who would have otherwise caused Trump to hear mean things while he  walked to the church. These unprecedented actions spurred condemnation and apologies from a slew of past and present military stalwarts, including the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley.

6. On June 5th, Trump retweeted a video of Glenn Beck and Candace Owens attacking the late George Floyd and impugning his character.  

7. That same day, Trump once again took to Twitter to criticize Drew Brees for walking back his comments about kneeling during the National Anthem: 

One should recall that kneeling during the National Anthem was a movement sparked by then-quarterback (and subsequently, summarily shunned) Colin Kaepernick to call attention to… wait for it… police brutality.

8. Two days later, Trump doubled down on his anti-kneeling rhetoric by calling out NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell via tweet:

9. As peaceful protests about black lives mattering continued outside the White House, a panicked Trump hid in an underground White House bunker. In typical Trump fashion, #DonTheCon subsequently lied about the incident by insisting he was merely “inspecting” the underground stronghold, only to be belied by his own Attorney General William Barr days later. Trump also ordered that a fence be built around the White House to protect his safety (and, no, Mexico did not pay for this one either). 

10. Ironically (and sadly) camera phones have been capturing images of police officers brutalizing citizens who are peacefully protesting against police brutality. (Yes, you read that right.) One such victim was Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old man who was pushed to the ground by the police in Buffalo, New York, resulting in a bloody head injury and hospitalization. As if living in Bizarro World, the President of the United States responded in the most unsympathetic and bonkers way possible by sharing a depraved, ludicrous conspiracy theory with his 80 million Twitter followers:

Coincidentally (or not), the hashtag #TrumpIsNotWell has been trending on Twitter for the past several days… 

11. To add insult to injury, Trump reignited his ardent defense of Confederate history, icons and symbolism via a series of tweets, one of which included an ad hominem, racist slur hurled towards Elizabeth Warren that Trump seems to relish.  

12. Amidst the protests taking place throughout the country (and the world) Trump fired off a series of tweets in which he claimed (without factual basis) that he’s “done more for Black Americans… than any President in U.S. history, with the possible exception of another Republican President, the late, great, Abraham Lincoln.” (emphasis added) Trump iterated this claim during a Fox News interview on Thursday, June 11th, but added the following bizarre caveat: “[L]et’s take a pass on Abraham Lincoln because he did good, although, it’s always questionable, you know, in other words, the end result.” 

Yes, you read that right. Still in doubt that Trump said this? You can watch the video for yourself. Trump called the “end result” of Lincoln’s actions “questionable.” Thankfully, the black Fox News interviewer, Harris Faulkner, was quick to remind Trump of what the “end result” was: “Well, we are free, Mr. President. So, [Lincoln] did pretty well.”

13. Trump bragged about how police and military forces “easily” dispatched the peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, referring to the Secret Service as (this is not a joke) the “SS.” Yes, that really happened—you can’t make this shit stuff up.  

14. As a final, double-barreled “F.U.” to the black community, President Trump decided to hold his first campaign rally (notwithstanding the subsistence of the Covid-19 pandemic) in Tulsa Oklahoma, the site of the largest massacre of African Americans in U.S. history, on June 19th, aka “Juneteenth”—the anniversary of the day when the last slaves were notified of their freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation. Clearly, either the president made his scheduling decisions purposefully or he doesn’t have a single black person around him (by design) to tell him how insanely offensive this move would be. Following backlash, Trump subsequently rescheduled his rally, but the damage had already been done in the black consciousness.

15. Lastly, we at the D.I. have it on good authority that George Floyd would rather be alive today than “looking down” and ruminating over Trump’s perceived “successes” with the black community. 

The DECEPTION INDEX

When taken altogether, the foregoing leads the D.I. to only one conclusion regarding Trump’s claim that George Floyd would look upon his response to Floyd’s death with anything but utter shock, disgust and contempt. As a result, the Barry’s Musings Deception Index awards Trump’s claim with four Arnold “Side-Eyes”. (We only wish we had more side-eyes to give…)

Gerard Legagneur is a career corporate attorney dedicated to the use of sarcasm to advance sociopolitical awareness. Legagneur graduated with Honors in Economics from Harvard University and received his J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Follow me on Twitter @JGerardInc!

The Moon Sits for Its Portrait

Century after century, the moon adamantly refused to give up its secrets. The ancient Greeks and Romans generally considered it pristine, smooth and white, but did not have a good explanation for the dirty spots on its face that were visible to human eyes. Then, around 90 A.D., Plutarch wrote that those blemishes were the shadows of mountains and valleys and that the moon must be habitable.

By no means did everyone agree, but ignorance is seldom bliss. Faced with an unanswerable question, our species generally comes up with theories, guesses, myths and fantasies. Telescopes made viewing more precise, and photography did even better, but though no living creatures showed up, the notion that they might would not die. After World War II, one of several rumors was that the Germans had established a secret facility on the moon, and some even speculated that Hitler had faked his own death and lived out his days beneath the lunar surface.

A new exhibition, “Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a journey through an uncommon history, the history of representations of the moon across four centuries. This outsize and beautifully installed revelation of persistent astronomical searches is a trailblazing marriage of science and art — 300 images and objects (a telescope, a photograph used as a fire screen, two moon globes, Hasselblad cameras used by astronauts), plus film excerpts. The images shine a bright light on astronomers’ unstoppable pursuit of knowledge as well as on technological advances, artistic responses and fantasy, and also a generous serving of unabashed cuteness. The show amounts to a testament to the human drive to know and explore, and it quietly affirms the growing influence of visual representations of the moon from the invention of the telescope through the first manned moon landing 50 years ago.

Mia Fineman, the curator in the department of photographs at the Met, organized “Apollo’s Muse” with Beth Saunders, curator and head of special collections at the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and they wrote essays for its informative catalog. (Apollo, god of the sun, never had a muse; he was leader of the nine muses. NASA, of course, wasn’t going to the sun. The moon landing project might have been named after Diana, goddess of the moon.)

After 1608, when the telescope was invented, the moon seemed approachable. In 1609, Galileo drew its first closely observed portraits: maps of a portion of the surface. The English mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot made telescopic observations a bit earlier than Galileo, but his were not published until later, and he could not explain the “strange spottedness” he saw. Galileo, expertly trained in perspective and art, realized that the “spottedness” was actually the shadows of mountains. His published drawings, two of which are included in the exhibition, represent the dawn of modern astronomy.

The 17th century brought to human vision both extremely distant and extremely tiny objects, as telescopes rapidly improved and the power of microscopes, invented at the end of the previous century, vastly increased. Accomplished artists collaborated to provide scientists and the public ever more detailed and delectable illustrations of information obtained au clair de la lune. Johannes Hevelius’s highly successful Selenography — a lunar atlas published in 1647 and named for Selene, the moon goddess in Greek mythology — is thought to be the first book entirely dedicated to the moon. Hevelius surrounded one lunar map with baroque flourishes: cherubs brandishing pronouncements, looking through telescopes or studiously drawing.

Astronomers drew what they saw; artists made the drawings better. But some images were of little use to astronomers without good scientific texts, and most were not widely seen by anyone but scientists. The French artist Claude Mellan’s 1635 engravings were not simply beautiful but also so accurate that they were not surpassed until two centuries later. In 1805, the British portraitist and amateur astronomer John Russell made a superb engraving of the moon titled “Lunar Planisphere, Flat Light,” showing the moon not as we see it but rather in flat, even light. It’s a choice that reflected Russell’s belief that an artist should “correct’’ nature in order to produce an ideal.

The idea that earth’s mysterious companion might be inhabited kept being broached by imaginative people, mistaken people and hoaxers.

The name of Sir John Herschel, a noted British astronomer, was slyly stolen in 1835 by The New York Sun for the sensational “great moon hoax,” which reported that Sir John had observed houses, roads and sophisticated cities on the lunar surface. The story was reprinted across Europe, and a wide international audience ecstatically bought both paper and hoax.

The invention of photography four years later meant that more accurate and believable imagery was about to take center stage. “Apollo’s Muse” has several of the earliest photographs of the moon, including John William Draper’s remarkable 1840 daguerreotype — exposure time: a half-hour. (Daguerreotypes required more light than the moon produced, hence the long exposure, during which the earth and moon both moved.) Draper’s photograph gives us a glimpse into a rare moment of double discovery, comparable to Galileo’s: a more precise understanding of the moon’s surface, and one obtained with an instrument able to see more accurately than the eye.

Until mid-19th century, photographs could be reproduced only with great difficulty, and photography by the light of the moon as the earth rotated was no mean feat, so for years the public saw less than visitors to the Met will.

The British astronomer James Nasmyth, despairing of photography’s power to capture the minutiae and three-dimensionality he saw through his scope, made detailed plaster casts. In 1874, his photographs of his artful stand-ins for the moon were published and lauded as the most “truthful” representations ever seen. So much for photography’s reputation for veracity.

In fact, photography did not simply run artistry out of town. As late as 1882, the French astronomer Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, working at the Harvard College Observatory, believed that photography had limitations that art did not. He published “The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual,” illustrated with stunningly drawn prints of craters on the moon and an eclipse of the sun. His scientific drawings were published in a large portfolio and collected; public interest in science was growing.

New and more accurate information does not always move minds. (Consider the Flat Earth Society.) Technological and scientific advances never produced evidence of lunar inhabitants, but the moon was too fascinating to be held back by mere science.

Literary voyages to our constant companion existed long before Jules Verne’s influential “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865). Illustrations included humanoids and fanciful animals, but more charming was the first science fiction movie, Georges Méliès’s “Le Voyage Dans la Lune” (“A Trip to the Moon”), from 1902. A group of astronomers are shot off the earth by a cannon, land smack in one of the man-in-the-moon’s eyes, and barely escape hostile natives. A colorized excerpt (as well as clips from Fritz Lang’s “Woman in the Moon,” from 1931, and Irving Pichel’s “Destination Moon,” from 1950) plays in the exhibition.

By the early 20th century, the moon had become cuddly. Portrait studios acquired sturdy, smiling crescent moons (and at least one that was implacably grumpy). Nudes, lovers, friends, families and pranksters sat on the crescent curve to be immortalized on postcards.

By the time NASA came along, the moon was a pretty serious matter again. Before the launch of Apollo 11, on July 16, 1969, cameras were surveying the moon from unmanned Lunar Orbiters, looking for a landing site. (Spy satellites had already taken photographs, and in 1966, Lunar Orbiter 1 took a picture of Earthrise two years before the astronaut William Anders took the more famous image.) Some of the photographs taken from 239,000 miles away were converted into three-dimensional moonscapes and carefully studied for a landing site, but Neil Armstrong eventually, and breathtakingly, used his eyes to find a safer landing spot than the one to which he had been directed.

The exhibition usefully supplies some Soviet propaganda photographs — the first dogs in space, the first woman in space — that were stoking popular support for their outstanding space achievements when the United States was still feverishly working to surpass them.

These proved to be forerunners to the hugely successful American public relations campaign that followed the first moon landing. Images of the Apollo 11 astronauts — Buzz Aldrin walking near the lunar module, for example, or standing by the American flag — still resonate 50 years later.

Critics initially dismissed the Apollo program as a “moondoggle.” After Apollo 11 landed, a few declared it a fake. But Americans generally saw it as an affirmation of national greatness after a decade of tragedy, upheaval and Cold War, and the whole world thrilled to this intimate encounter with the moon, which had been aloof since something like forever.

Perhaps nothing can live up to the moon landing. Less exciting is the artistic response in the last gallery of the show. In 1962, the NASA administrator James Webb and the artist James Dean founded the NASA Art Program. A NASA website suggests one reason: “An artist also could bring something that engineers and managers loathe to admit to: emotion.”

The program commissioned well-known artists including Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, all of whom made tiny drawings in 1969 for a small ceramic wafer that was attached to the Apollo 12 spacecraft and left on the moon. (It has become known as the Moon Museum.) Also left behind, in 1971, was Paul Van Hoeydonck’s small sculpture “Fallen Astronaut,” a replica of which is at the Met.

The space program’s impact on popular culture is represented by Harry Gordon’s “Rocket” dress (1968), which depicts an alarmingly phallic rocket exploding upward through the mannequin’s middle. Made of paper, the dress could be cut apart and displayed on a wall. And it makes clear how just about everything, including history, is grist for the commercial mill.

The American flag was planted on the moon in 1969, not to proclaim our satellite an American colony but to memorialize our achievement. A 1971 photograph by Stephen Shames of a message spray-painted on a brick wall in a vacant lot in Brooklyn says it all: “THE MOON BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE!!!”

The images collected here read like a love letter from all its ardent suitors.

Apollo’s Muse: The Moon in the Age of Photography

Through Sept. 22 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org.

Sahred From Source link Science

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Expert: Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour. — Proverbs 19:4″ James “Mad Dog” Mattis spoke this week, at a pentagon press briefing, saying, among other things, that it was a time for all civilized nations to unite. The use of this trope ‘civilized’ echoes colonial sensibility. It is part of general shifting of meaning in the rhetoric of Empire over the last, say, 80 years. Never mind that the occasion of this speech, as seems increasingly the norm, was based on mostly propaganda. No evidence for a chemical attack was actually provided. Just as the evidence in the Skripal (attempted) murder (sic) is conspicuously lacking. This is a time when war criminals (unprosecuted, of course) can simply count on the utter amnesia of both the public and the quisling western press. So let’s go back and check a few boxes on Mattis. This is the man who oversaw the war crimes of Fallujah and then helped cover them up. One can read about it here… So how is it that Mattis can so confidently count on the silence and complicity of the corporate press? Mattis is no doubt sociopathic. He is a lizard eyed lisping sadist and yet he is fawned over and described as the ‘the most revered Marine in a generation’ by the same prostrate press. The adoration of the military in western media is at an all time high. And entertainment today is laden with the most jingoistic and nativist rhetoric imaginable. Hollywood today produces fiction that is uniform in its opinions and values. Watch this season of Designated Survivor. I know that is asking a lot, but do it anyway. Kiefer Sutherland is one of those actors who in middle age has begun to take on the tight lipped appearance of an aggrieved or constipated Quaker. The show is so stunningly reactionary that one finds some difficulty in arriving at the right words. But it is not an anomaly. Half of network prime time drama is military-based in theme. And today Hollywood staff writers can count on CIA or Pentagon “advisors” taking an active part in the creation of scripts. The blurring of fiction and Imperial fiction, as it were. There are ongoing themes in this Sutherland show about Russian interference in US democracy and most recently a story built around a tiny Asian nation with an insane dictatorial leader who wants nuclear weapons. The depictions of the Asian characters is only slightly less cartoon like than Charlie Chan. And always there are the requisite evil Muslim terrorist. But back to the disturbing figure of Jim Mattis. His call sign is “chaos”. He is reported to be worth in the neighborhood of five million dollars. This is an absurd low ball figure, but whatever. He is a graduate of Central Washington U. and something called the National Defense University. A quick iinternet search reveals this is a special educational institution on the grounds of Fort Leslie in DC and chartered by the Joint Chiefs. One does wonder what a typical class at NDU looks like. As for the “pacification” of Fallujah. Brett Wilkins wrote… According to witnesses and survivors of the assault, Marines indiscriminately killed men, women, children, the elderly and disabled alike. Civilians waving white flags of surrender were cut down by snipers, who also targeted ambulances carrying the wounded and dying to the few functioning clinics not destroyed by US bombs. “I see people carrying a white flag and yelling at us, saying, ‘We are here, just try to save us,’ but we could not save them because whenever we opened the ambulance door, the Americans would shoot at us,” Dr. Salam Ismael, head of Iraq’s young doctors association, told American investigative reporter Aaron Glantz, who covered the battle as an unembedded journalist. “We tried to carry food or water; the snipers shoot the containers of food. No civilizational norms violated there. Nope. Mattis also was the man who had all charges dropped against the soldiers that took part in the rampage at Haditha. Civilians shot point blank, often women and children, and the elderly — in their homes.  Callsign “Chaos”. Gary Kohls, MD, writing at Veterans Today…. Several of the PEOTUS’ cabinet appointees are high-ranking “lifer” military officers who have an innate disdain for democratic values (as would be expected for anybody whose career has been lived in the bubble of a hierarchical culture whose main junk values are 1) shoot first/ask questions later and 2) the use of dominative power over “enemies” via military violence. Kohls was primarily writing about Jim Mattis. But honestly, even a cursory examination of ANY four star General will yield similar biographical facts and similar personality disorders. You don’t rise through military ranks without a core ruthlessness, and an innate sadism. After the bombing of a wedding party in the Iraq desert, Mattis is quoted as saying… Ten miles from the Syrian border and 80 miles from the nearest city and a wedding party? Don’t be naïve. Plus they had 30 males of military age with them. How many people go to the middle of the desert to have a wedding party? The rank Orientalism of this comment, the arrogant indifference to the history and culture of Islam, to the Arab world in general, is also the hallmark of the successful military commander. Kill em all and let God sort it out. Of course, at the time of his nomination the NY Times published an op ed whose headline identified Mattis as a “pontential force for restraint”. That crazy old paper of record. And Mattis is routinely described as an intellectual, a ‘warrior monk’, and yet he doesn’t know anything of nomadic desert societies and culture. He didn’t even consider there might be a cultural gap here, or consider he might need to check alternative readings of the Muslim world, ones not provided for by that steller education at National Defense U. Mattis is not an intellectual, not even by the standards of that warped sub phylum of humanity that is the military. The media coverage of Syria, in the UK and US, is blatantly biased and pro intervention. The fact that FOX news reactionary Tucker Carlson is the sanest voice in mainstream media is very telling. Carlson hasn’t “woke”…. he just saw a niche demographic that might boost his ratings. Still…he was, in fact, correct. Danny Haiphong wrote… Tucker Carlson understands that he must appeal primarily to Republican voters weary of US interventions they see as products of Democratic Party-led wars even if establishment Republicans are no less hawkish than Democrats. Meanwhile, Goodman and her funders have subtly aligned with the Democrats as the new leaders of the War Party. War is the only tool at the disposal of imperialism, and there isn’t a single voice in Washington or the “liberal” media unwilling to use it. Under these conditions, infantile leftists and faux socialists in the Democratic Party camp have felt compelled to choose a side in the imperial madhouse. They claim that Democrats are “Presidential” while Putin and Assad are villains of humanity. No criticism is thrown at the Democratic Party, which sent a delegation led by Nancy Pelosi to Israel just days prior to the planned gun down of Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter how many Syrians or Palestinians are killed by the forces of imperialism when the so-called left is under the swoon of the CIA. So-called US leftists have caught anti-Putin fever at the expense of all other political questions. This includes the murder of Black people by the police in the US. Barely any attention was paid in the US to the murders of Stephon Clark and Saheed Vassell over the last few weeks. Only community members and the usual left organizations made any noise about these state-sanctioned murders. The same goes for Israel’s wonton massacre of participants in Gaza’s Great March for Return. In the absence of a mass movement, people in the US and West are becoming mere onlookers in a changing a world. This last few months has revealed as never before both the callous cruelty of the ruling class in the U.S. and UK, but also the degrading of education … for lack of a better description. At the UN, British envoy Karen Pierce, mistakenly thought Karl Marx was a Russian. In a prank phone call Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, thought there was a country called Binimo. And Trump himself noted something or other about an imaginary African country called Nambia. Boris Johnson began an extemporaneous recitation of a Kipling poem (Road to Mandalay) in a temple in Myanmar. And then was told it was inappropriate by an aid, trying to save him further embarrassment, and STILL Johnson didn’t understand. All of these examples are not mere gaffes, amusing mistakes, but rather a general indifference to the cultures of the world, in fact, an indifference to the world beyond their own small corner of it. Indifferent and hostile. Remember when George Bush, now in full rehabilitation mode by his media handlers, mocked Karla Faye Tucker, on death row, who was begging for her life. That is exactly the cruelty one sees across the board in the leaders of the West today. One wonders does Mattis or Bush or Bolton think the use of Agent Orange transgressed civilizational norms? Did Hiroshima? What strikes me most acutely, these last few months, is the extraordinary cultural chauvinism of the U.S., or rather mostly of white U.S., as well as an institutionalized orientalism. Most White Americans, as a general statement, think they are better than the rest of the world. And most Americans have scant knowledge about the rest of the world. So the belief in cultural (and moral) superiority is based on what? The answer is not simple, but as a general sort of response, this trust in “our” superiority is built on violence. On an ability to be effectively violent. Most British, too, think they are superior to those ‘wogs’ south of their emerald isle. But since the setting of the sun on Empire, ‘officially’, the British hold to both a sense of superiority and a deep panic inducing sense of inferiority — at least to their American cousins. They are still better than those fucking cheese eating frogs or the krauts or whoever, but they accept that the U.S. is the sort of heavyweight champ of the moment. Meanwhile, the tragic and criminal fire at Grenfell Towers in London elicited a public discourse that perfectly reflected the class inequality of the UK, but also reflected, again, the colonialist mentality of the ruling party and their constituency. Stephen Brenner wrote of the fire and the government response to it.. There is Sir Martin Moore-Bick,** the former High Court Judge, who has been appointed by May to head a board of inquiry. Fears of a protracted inquiry producing an anodyne report were aroused when Moore-Bick went out of his way to declare that the scope of the investigation would be severely limited to determining the immediate cause of the fire and why it spread so rapidly. Answers to both questions already are known. The Sir Inquisitor-to-be has given the game away in adding that “I do not expect everyone to be pleased by the conclusion of the inquiry” – yet to begin. Moore-Bick’s unprompted utterance shows just how pervasive is the Americanization of British political culture. Unnecessary, embarrassing ejaculations like this have become impulsive – defying the dictates of prudent restraint. No one is confused as to who the “everyone” he has in mind refers to. An impression reinforced by the denial of the residents’ right to ask questions in person as to the scope and form of the inquiry. The only open question is the exact tint that the whitewash will take (stitch-up in British dialect). The first testimony will not be heard until mid-September when panel members, as yet unnamed, get back from their holidays. Graham Peebles adds… Grenfell Tower forms part of the Lancaster Road West Estate in Notting Hill Gate. An area that, like many other parts of the capital, has been subjected to a gentrification assault accompanied by systematic social cleansing that goes back decades and has intensified over the last 10 –15 years. In addition, the Grenfell affair demonstrates that the United States is not alone in its tolerance for actions that should be a national disgrace but are slighted by a political class incapable of feeling shame. The callous, off-hand treatment given the Grenfell victims is reminiscent of how colonial administrators dealt with expendable natives. If a proper criminal process were undertaken, a reasonable verdict would be Involuntary Manslaughter. But that is exactly it. The colonial template is one etched in acid in the collective imagination of the West. At least the English speaking West. Expendable natives…which is what Jim Mattis sees everywhere that he dumps depleted Unranium and Willy Pete. It is what Madelaine Albright saw in Iraq or Hillary Clinton in Libya or Barack Obama in Sudan, Yemen, and…well… four or five other countries. It is what most U.S. police departments see in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty. As in those old Tarzan films, when the sound of drums is heard, the pith helmeted white man notes…”the natives are restless tonight”. When one discusses Syria, the most acute topic this week, remember that for Mad Dog and Boss Trump, or for the loopy John Bolton, these are just natives in need of pacification. Giving money to ISIS or Daesh, or whoever, as a cynical expression of colonial real politik, is nothing out of the ordinary. It is what the UK and US have done for a long while. It’s Ramar of Jungle handing out beads to the *natives*. Domestically, take the example of Flint, Michigan. At the drinking water. When the unelected state appointed emergency manager switched from the Detroit River to the Flint River to supply water to the residents of Flint, the result was a spike in all diseases of insanitation. Everyone knew this was going to happen. The General Motors plant had stopped using Flint River water because it was corrosive to the auto parts they were manufacturing. But poor black kids, who cares. The U.S. has a long history of such stuff, from Love Canal, New York, to the chemical dump in the Elk River in West Virginia. You will notice a theme here. It is class. You don’t find ash spills like what happened near the Emery River in Tennessee occurring in Mill Valley or Scarsdale or Bel Air. Inflicting suffering on the poor is perfectly acceptable to the ruling class. To them, privilege is a sign of superiority. And the less deserving are only there to serve. The problem with the current wave of propaganda from western sources is that very little, if any, evidence is given. The term ‘very likely’ is much in vogue, probably because it leaves such a huge ‘walk it back’ escape route. Except there is less and less effort to even bother. In one sense the solidification of class power came out of neoliberal policies in the 1970s. The top 1% (really, the top half of one percent) increased their wealth dramatically, with the same occurring in the UK. Clinton pushed these principles even further and then Bush and Blair further still. We are now living the dream of the Washington Consensus economists. And it worth noting the founding statement of Hayak’s Mt. Pelerin Society, in 1947. For Hayak was the godfather of neoliberalism and Milton Freidman his heir. The central values of civilization are in danger. Over large stretches of the earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. There is that word again. Of course, this was really only justification for the 1% to expand the reach of Western capital. To exploit labor and extract resources. And when recalcitrant countries did not submit quickly enough, the CIA was always available (ask Iran, or Chile, or Angola. The latter more of a symbolic lesson for those uppity nations even thinking about not following orders. It also marked open U.S. cooperation with apartheid South Africa. And in opposition to the troops Castro sent to assist the MPLA opposition to the ruthless US supported Jonas Savimbi). This restoration of ruling class power, though, was and is always looking over its shoulder. For the reality is that such profound inequality means life becomes unsustainable, even for the top 0.1% is repressed. And such repression takes effort. And that effort is giving birth to the madness one sees today. From Grenfell Tower to Flint Michigan, to Gaza or Libya or Syria — the principles driving the violence are the same. And it matters not if the urbane and articulate Obama is President, or if the troglodyte Trump, if it is Blair or May, for they are only reciting from a small financial Catechism of financial laws, and these laws are breaking down in the face of environmental degradation and an inequality so extreme that its almost impervious to calculation. They are only the voice of their class. This idea of civilized man has come to be an almost code-word for class hierarchy. The violence against Palestinians is simply inseparable from the violence that killed Stephon Clark. The violence that makes children sick in Michigan is the same one that causes oil spills or disasters such as the Lac-Mégantic train crash near Quebec, Canada. And, it is the same bigoted smug confidence of bourgeoise identity political thinking. The one that demands Islam rid itself of veils, or that ridicules ANY thinking or practice divergent from Western norms. You cannot expect the system to produce change if the system is based on punishing change. The status quo must be protected. For the ownership class world poverty is mostly the fault of the poor. The admission that neoliberalism has failed in terms of its announced goals has forced its proponents to a tactical retreat—defending the broad thrust of the neoliberal policy agenda under cover of “reform.” The result is an augmented Washington Consensus that blames client states and not international institutions or transnational capital for the failures of neoliberalism. It is the poor who are expected to make still further adjustments along neoliberal lines. From this point of view, what comes after neoliberalism must be more neoliberalism. — William K. Tabb, “After Neoliberalism“, Monthly Review, June 1, 2003. This idea of civilizational norms is connected to a deeply rooted assumption about the virtue of Democracy. Israel is described as Democratic but Cuba is not, for example. The reality, of course, is that the CIA and US ruling class spend most of their energy in deterring democracy (to quote Chomsky). Any real discussion of democracy needs to be extended beyond the undemocratic nature of the global economic institutions to a larger discussion of democracy, one that goes beyond whether votes are counted fairly, opposition candidates allowed to participate on an equal basis, and the voices of ordinary people heard by their elected leaders. Democracy needs finally to be discussed in relation to class rule in capitalist societies. — William T. Kabb, “After Neoliberalism“, Monthly Review, June 1, 2003. As Samir Amin pointed out, the “international community” (the G7 plus that bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia) is utterly unconcerned with the opinions of 85% of the world’s population. So, both on a political/economic level, and on a cultural level, the Imperialist U.S. sees it as an innate right to decide the policies of the global south. It is anti democratic. The ruling class sees the right to enforce inequality as something of a Natural law. The anti Russian propaganda was born when Putin refused to sign off on the Nazi putsch in Ukraine. The US/Japan/NATO alliance is one that demands both economic submission and increasingly a cultural submission as well. And any rejection of this means a military forced submission. Democracy has come to be a shorthand for submission to neo-liberal economic policy dictated by Washington. Freedom is what happens after *we* destroy your country. That Mattis or May or various other servants of Empire can talk of civilzational norms with a straight face is actually pretty remarkable. The list of crimes is so extensive that one barely knows where to begin. We could ask about Gary Webb and cocaine and the CIA. Or about the School of the Americas, or My Lai or the siege at Waco. Or….but I feel this stuff really should be well known by now. I am more concerned in a sense with the small cultural appropriations and the gestures of an Orientalist sensibility that I see almost daily in western media. And the growing anti-semitism which one finds even on the left. And the seemingly intractable racism of white America. I just stop having the ability to keep track of it all. How can the white bourgeoisie demand adherence to their values with such tenacity? Do they really see themselves as somehow representative of some ideal? Tolerance means only adherence to their worldview. To their values. It is this nattering about ecological issues while never questioning the US military machine. But these refrains seem to stick in the collective consciousness of the west…”gas your own people” is one. As if gassing someone else were less objectionable. It is a media universe of entrenched meaningless slogans. It always reminds me of the outcry about steroid abuse. Maybe ask why big Pharma manufacture so many steroids. The medical uses for which are very limited. But no, it is easier to punish this or that athlete who in their desperation is looking for an edge, a way to reach that economic pinnacle so few reach. But question Eli Lilly? Never. The ruling class has always made money, always been ruthless, but again, the 1970s marked the solidification of systematic plunder, a cohesive and seamless river of money upwards. And enforced by the CIA. One should not forget that the CIA was founded by rich white ruling class scions of banking and finance. Allan Dullus, straight out of Wall Street, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, and Bill Donovan. I mean the CIA calls itself “the Company”…bit of a tip off, that. If one struggles to grasp foreign policy decisions, always look at US business interests in the region. Remember these are ruthless people (MK ULTRA, Operation Mockingbird, etc). And the media was always part of this. The Graham family of Washington Post fame were directly linked to the CIA. William Paley, Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and hundreds other are all intimate with the CIA. And it is no different now. It was the Clinton cartel that spent inordinate energy and time infiltrating Hollywood. The result is House of Cards, Homeland, Designated Survivor, and all the countless rest. Uniformity of message. Uniformity of values. I do wonder at times the role of Evangelical Christianity as it runs smack into the Catholic stake-outs in the corridors of power. Perhaps they cooperate, I don’t know. Religion is second to money, anyway. And then there is the role of Israel, that anti democratic neo colonial apartheid state in the Middle East. The ascension of the settler fanatic mirrors the ascension of Dominionists in the current US government. Fanatical zealots. Intolerant and profoundly ignorant of most things outside of their narrow set of concerns. And again, anti democratic. Israel serves the U.S. ruling class, not the other way round. There is no global Jewish plot as I keep reading in social media. The feeding of this bit of classic antisemitism is probably sourced by Israel itself. Nothing serves their PR better than spikes in antisemitism. But Israel is, for sure, more powerful than ever before. More influential. There is, best case scenario, a new Cold War in place. Worst case scenario, well, doesn’t matter. The real danger is the generalized ignorance now on display. Ruthless and sadistic one can predict, but irrational zealotry and stupidity…that is harder to deal with. And this is for certain the Age of Stupid. As for civilization, I’m coming to think we might well do fine without it. http://clubof.info/

The one where they raise the red flag over the Reichstag (summer mix 2017)

LINK HERE

1. Jorge Ben, “Meus Filhos, Meus Tesouro”, África Brasil (1976). A pretty simple song. Jorge Ben has this knack for investing the quotidian with a kind of profundity, and I just love it. The gist of the song is an imagined conversation with his children in which he asks them what they want to be when they grow up. The most poignant, beautifully-sung line in this song translates literally to “I want to be a soccer player!”

2. Philip Cohran, “The Minstrel”, On The Beach (1967). Massive Afrofuturist groove from ex-Sun Ra sideman. According to Allmusic, some of the people playing on this went on to gigs as diverse as the Agharta band (Pete Cosey) and Earth, Wind and Fire (Don Myrick). The thumb piano that anchors the groove is a creation of Cohran’s that he calls the frankiphone.

3. Gene McDaniels, “Tower of Strength”, Tower of Strength (1961). Great performance of a classic Bacharach and Hilliard tune. That falsetto is to die for.

4. Broadcast, “Goodbye Girls”, Tender Buttons (2005). Never got into this band when they were more popular (even though I probably should have). Those goofy antique synths are so joyously raucous, just barely in time, and Trish Keenan’s vocals are as delicately celestial as they’re cracked up to be. This flows nicely from the McDaniels tune — it falls somewhere between a Northern soul stomper and Young Marble Giants.

5. Amps for Christ, “Colors”, Circuits (1999). Glorious rendition of an ancient Scottish folksong. I have a real special spot in my heart for AfC — they got a good deal of attention in the indie rock press in the mid-oughts but, fairly unique among bands that won Pitchfork’s heart, they came not ought of the basement of some Chicagoland suburb but from the late 80s/early 90s SoCal powerviolence scene, a heterogenous outgrowth of US hardcore punk that took inspiration from British grindcore, Bay Area thrash, Sabbathian sludge and injected a much needed dose of good politics into the scene at a time when hardcore’s leading lights were sporting Fred Perry and Freikorps haircuts. Main dude Henry Barnes handled circuits for Man is the Bastard, who are simply one of the greatest bands the United States has ever produced: a heady mix of prog rock, US hardcore, the burgeoning “noise scene” (which was more-or-less in its infancy), thrash metal and god knows what else. As Barnes got older, his music got mellower in some ways, more intense in others, and remained fiercely committed to a better world (with a sardonic sense of humor to boot). It’s hard to say enough good things about them.

6. The Roches, “Runs in the Family”, The Roches (1979). Turns out that that all-women, multipart-harmony-heavy, Dustbowl-folk revival thing started not with Mountain Man’s terrific Made The Harbor (2010) but about three decades earlier with the Roches. This is a weird little record, kind of a mixed bag (and produced, bizarrely, by Robert Fripp, whose unmistakable Frippertronics fit surprisingly well). But some of the tunes are just stunningly beautiful, and this is one of them. The harmonies are heartbreaking and just unconventional enough to keep from turning into saccharine mush. Also I’m a big fan of any folk song that can organically work in a line as tearjerking but nerdy as “I can’t change the law of averages”.

7. Roscoe Holcomb, “I’m a Free Little Bird”, The High Lonesome Sound (1965). Listen, I know we’ve all had enough of that “white working class” mythology so beloved of both wings of capital, Trumpers and liberal imperialists alike. Think of this not in terms of “authenticity” or as a paean halcyon days of (white) class collaboration in America but as a virtuosic and joyous celebration of life that draws its strength from the well of the multinational US working class.

8. The Vibrators, “Whips and Furs”, Pure Mania (1977). From that corner of early punk that was self-consciously retrograde, a mud-caked revival of rock’n’roll, comes this nugget. It opens by quoting a Sly and the Family Stone classic — at that point already a decade old — and hits the heights of harmony with a line about a lothario who “drives a black Cadillac [with] whips and furs in the back”. Real fun pulp mag vibe here. Those ambitious little bass runs top off an already perfect song.

9. Godley and Creme, “Sandwiches of You”, L (1978). Restless, complex, delicate, sophisti-pop from the weirder half of 10cc. I really don’t even know what to say about this: it’s so accessible, funny and bizarre but it also sounds like Gentle Giant playing the Looney Tunes soundtrack. Amazing record. This will forever remind me of driving to rural Kernersville, NC in the middle of the night for work at the massive FedEx warehouse there.  

10. Todd Rundgren, “Long Flowing Robe”, Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren (1971). For a guy who’s done some of the weirdest records in the pop music canon, his more straightforward tracks are remarkably approachable and familiar. Although even this song is, all things considered, pretty weird: it kicks off with a clavinet (more associated with Stevie Wonder than power pop), and it includes prominent bongos and cowbell, Rundgren’s infinitely-multitracked falsettos, and a strange combination of thudding proto-metal drumming and delicate fingerpicking. But it’s also simultaneously a perfect pop song about being lonely whose chorus you can memorize before you’ve heard the full song for the first time. My dad reports that this remained a huge jam at Southeast High in Wichita in the late 70s.

11. Jefferson Airplane, “Watch Her Ride”, After Bathing at Baxter’s (1967). The sound of the Summer of Love becoming heavy metal. A paranoid but tender freakout that clearly points ahead to NWBOHM-style metal while remaining somehow heavier than metal — there’s hardly any distortion on the guitars, but they’re so resonant, their jazzy chords seeming to linger in the air forever, that they end up sounding more powerful than the filthiest drop-tune. Spencer Dryden (nephew of antifascist film star Charlie Chaplin) turns in a great drum performance.

12. Squeeze, “Hard to Find”, Cool for Cats (1979). Underrated gem from Squeeze’s second record. There’s a marvelous contrast between the white-knuckle new wave of the verse and the brief intrusion of good vibes in the chorus with handclaps, lovelorn vox, Glenn Tillbrook’s throaty cry, and bluesy arpeggios that sound like nothing so much as King Crimson (!).

13. The dBs, “Love is for Lovers”, Like This (1984). Stellar, weird powerpop (from Winston-Salem!). This is from their third record, after one half of their great songwriting duo (Chris Stamey, who pops up later on the list) had left. Still, Peter Holsapple could write a mean tune on his own. His yelp in the chorus is magnificent, so full of boyish charm — even in recent live performances, he sounds exactly the same when he sings it. True story, he came into the restaurant that I used to be a cashier at (he still lives in the Triangle, if I’m not mistaken), and I immediately said “holy shit, you’re Peter Holsapple!”, and he goes “this literally never happens”. My dad has some good stories about seeing them live when he lived in Raleigh in the 80s.

14. Orange Juice, “Holiday Hymn”, The Glasgow School (compilation 2005, originally recorded live 1981). My favorite “indie-pop” group of all time. My listening diet when I was 15 was about 80 percent grindcore, 20 percent jazz and it became about 75 percent indie pop after my dad bought me this comp. on a whim. This isn’t actually a “signature OJ” song; it was unreleased for a long time (as far as I can tell), and it’s actually a cover of a Vic Godard song (member of the class of ‘77 punk group Subway Sect before he became a noted soul revivalist). But it’s a perfect song for them to cover; that needling soul bass and the angular Byrds-playing-funk guitars work so well. “Today all the girls / will see our fire begin to glow / today all the girls / will recite Jean-Jacques Rousseau” is a very pretty, if mysterious, little line.

15. Captain Beefheart, “My Head is my Only House Unless It Rains”, Clear Spot (1972). It’s a little unfair that Don van Vliet could be one of the most influential, pioneering rock musicians of all time (Trout Mask Replica 100 percent deserves its reputation) and also have penned a Van Morrison-style soul ballad so deep it makes Van Morrison look like the Bee Gees. This sounds like a slightly offbeat, if dark and powerful, ballad, until about a minute in, and then suddenly the tension that the verse and the pre-chorus bridge build...just goes awry, in the prettiest way. The chorus turns out to be not only not-a-chorus — it only occurs once! — but one of the most subtle, propulsive riffs ever crafted.

16. Kim Fowley, “Mom and Dad”, Automatic (1974). This guy is such a Hollywood sleazebag that his Wikipedia page literally lists his occupation as “impresario”. And yet, this gorgeous fingerpicked Lou Reed-ripoff is one of the most straightforwardly-affecting records I’ve heard in my life. I barely knew who this guy was when Jonathan Woollen announced his death via Facebook and posted this track, and I swear I could barely hold back the tears after the second playback. As much as I hated Lou Reed, I deeply loved Lou Reed, and this is maybe the most Lou Reed thing ever written by someone other than Lou Reed.

17 Kyu Sakamoto, “Sukiyaki” (single, 1961). According to Wikipedia, one of the few “non-Indo-European language songs” to ever crack the Billboard top 100. Even if you don’t speak a word of Japanese — I don’t — its virtues are manifest — an effervescent tune that apparently takes the generic form of a lovelorn pop song but was composed as an anti-fascist protest of the post-WWII US-Japan alliance.

18. Sneakers, “Like a Cuban Crisis”, Racket (1992, originally recorded mid-70s?). It’s hard to imagine something that appeals to me more in descriptive terms than an angular, punchy power-pop group from NC featuring Chris Stamey (dB’s, whom we heard earlier) and Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, feature on previous mixes). And they really live up to the description, from the sparkling twin guitars of the opening riff to the perfect (non-)chorus, and bonus for the genuinely funny satire.

19. Witchfynde, “Leaving Nadir”, Give ‘Em Hell (1980). A jammer from that brief period of the NWOBHM during which a gorgeously-arpeggiated, powerpop-ish intro like the one this cut sports and a pounding, palm-muted verse could comfortably co-exist.

20. Linda Ronstadt, “Heart Like a Wheel”, Heart Like a Wheel (1974). A classic country-rock record — the country-rock record?! — that was once immensely popular, even winning a grammy, but which has so fallen by the wayside amongst the cognoscenti that I don’t feel bad about putting it on a mixtape. It’s a subtly-weird track. After a vertiginous piano opening reminiscent of a solo Bill Evans date, Ronstadt begins the song by detailing, then abruptly disavowing, a simile for the human heart. The song never quite coheres….there’s a beautiful chorus, but one that’s cut short by an extended instrumental break featuring heart-rending cello (?) — but that makes it all the more addictive — how can you hear that (much-delayed) chorus just twice?! Another record that inexplicably reminds me of North Carolina, even though Ronstadt was the scion of a wealthy manufacturing family from Arizona who had, far as I can tell, no special connection to NC.

21. DJ Screw, “Every Day, All Day [South Circle]”, Chapter 226: Million Dollar Hands (1995). A change-of-pace superficially, but that melancholy melody line forms a natural transition from the Ronstadt track in my mind. Absolutely classic, unrelentingly-bleak mid-90s chopping and screwing. The South Circle track is a merciless g-funk cut to begin with, but the Screw remix is a monolithic thing of beauty.

22. The Brides of Funkenstein, “Disco to Go”, Funk or Walk (1978). Hilarious yet deadly-serious, powerful yet loose P-Funk spinoff. This reminds me of swimming at the apartment pool when my parents divorced dad moved to the heart of downtown Kansas City to be near his work; this record was one of the few that we could all agree on as a family to put on the boombox during afternooon swims. This was back when downtown was inhabited by the kind of straight-up phreaks who stuffed hardcore guy-on-guy pornography into their neighbor’s mailboxes apparently just for the hell of it (finding this sort of thing in the mail among the form responses from fan mail I’d sent to Vinny Testaverde is one of my first memories). E-I-O-diss-CO-to-GO!

23. Trinity and U-Brown, “Nice Up the Yard”, (single, 1982). My favorite riff on the “Boxing” rhythm ever released. Something about this just crackles with youthful energy and energy. Almost totally-unknown — this is off a comp I pulled off the internet called DUB HOT DUBS several years back, and I can’t find a single thing about either of the artists, but still, totally classic.

24. Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Fight Dem Back”, Forces of Victory (1979). Militantly progressive Black British reggae. One of the funniest and, yet, most deadly-serious songs ever recorded. 

25. The Dils, “Sound of the Rain”, Made in Canada (1980). Marxist-Leninist powerpop — nuff said. Name a catchier tune whose chorus begins “I don’t listen to the cops / I wish they all were dead”.

26. Fairport Convention, “Cajun Woman”, Unhalfbricking (1969). One of the slighter — but catchier — tracks from a top-10 record for me. Fairport, at that point featuring two of my favorite artists of all time (Linda Thompson and her husband Richard), turned in a massive, spiritual brit-folk-revival LP that was also stuffed with oddities like this zydeco-jammer. Like many Fairport tunes, the rapturous boogie is cut with a surprising gravitas. That slightly discordant note in the chorus is perfect.

27. Magma, “Üdü Ẁüdü”, Üdü Ẁüdü (1976). There are some of those “underground canon” records that are fun to listen to, that tickle your brain, that are intellectually exciting. And then there are some that, even though they’re sung in a made-up language and performed by a French band 32 years before you first heard it, feel so familiar that it’s as if they were written by dear friends. That joyous background whoop at 1:51 is one of my favorite moments in recorded music. A pulsating, polyrhythmic, deliriously joyous mass of music that seems to prefigure “Brothersport” down to the details.

28. The Fans, “Giving Me That Look In Your Eyes”, Giving Me that Look In Your Eyes EP (1979). Feckless, extremely-active Bristol new-wave-cum-powerpop. This reminds me of Vampy Weekend a little bit, actually, just in terms of how dizzily sucrotic this is. Unfortunately they didn’t realize very much other stuff but most “throwaway bands” manage only one great lost single — the Fans had several. If you dig this, have a listen to the equally-great “You Don’t Live Here Anymore”.

29. Alice Coltrane, “Sivaya”, Transcendence (1977). How are hipsters not all over this? Immediately accessible, burning-with-soul, post-apocalyptic prayers to god from one of the most respected jazz musicians of all time. It’s really hard to express how simultaneously and simple and deep this is; there’s something especially beautiful about this ragged, loose beauty when you know exactly how complex and brutal her music could be.

30. DJ Screw, “It Was All a Dream [Shaq]”, Chapter 11: Headed 2 Da Classic (1996?). Mention of the original Shaq record is something of a snarky in-joke amongst people that know anything about basketball or music, but this cut — while manifestly unoriginal — is genuinely beautiful and the Screw mix accentuates the deep vibes. Shaq’s not a great rapper but there is some real solid production on this and the big-workin-class-dreams-come-true bit tugs at the heartstrings.

'The Bachelor' season premiere recap: Arie begins his race to the altar

Arie Luyendyk Jr. is racin’ to find a wife. (Photo: ABC)

Warning: This recap of the season premiere of The Bachelor contains spoilers.

Do elderly former reality stars deserve love, too? It’s a question that I fear will never be answered to our true satisfaction, rose lovers, but darn it if this season of The Bachelor isn’t going to try. Having resurrected former The Bachelorette runner up Arie Luyendyk Jr. from his death of real estate and mid-level racing obscurity, producers hope to break new ground with the first-ever grey-haired Bachelor… just not the one you were expecting.

Now that he’s had five years to heal his wounded heart, Arie is ready for “the most important race of his life”: finding a wife in nine short, heavily-produced weeks.

Man, is this previously-on recap still going on?

Photo: ABC

We get it, guys — Emily crushed Arie’s heart. But we’ve got 29 new “ladies” who want to get in his drivers’ seat, so how about we get this show on the road?

Photo: ABC

Sigh. Fine, let Sean and Catherine Lowe, the First Couple of Bachelor Nation, impart some “wisdom” to their single friend — and give their little boy Samuel something to talk about when he meets up with friends Ty (season 13), Ricki (Bachelorette, season 8), and Camila (season 18) in their weekly Bachelor Spawn-Anon meetings.

Photo: ABC

Hang in there, little buddy.

With the build-up over, Chris Harrison greets us at Casa Bachelor to introduce “some truly extraordinary women” who are ready to get wifed up. Robot roll call:

Chelsea, 29: Props to this single mom from Maine for not trotting out her little one, Sammy, for her intro package. The “real estate exec. assistant” also finds it “comforting” that her Bachelor is Arie, because he proved during Emily’s season that he’s not afraid to fake settle down with a woman and her child.

Caroline, 26: Another real estate professional! Though she’s “really good” at her job, Caroline says being a wife and mother is “at the top of my priority list.” Well, as that Rasta dude says at the end of Pretty Woman, “Some dreams come true, some don’t — but keep on dreamin’.”

Maquel, 23: This professional photographer from Utah is admittedly “jealous” of the happy couples she photographs… but not in a scary, Lifetime movie way, okay?

Nysha, 30: “The more blood, the better for me!” No, that’s not Nysha’s plan for eliminating her competition in the house — she’s a nurse, silly! One who likes patching up seriously-injured patients — and one who already took a Bachelor-approved Leap Of Faith™ by sky-diving for her 30th birthday.

Tia, 26: Living in the tiny town of Weiner, Arkansas means Tia and her friends have to “make our own fun” — like exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.

Tia’s got her gun.

Oh, look who it is!

Photo: ABC

If you thought Tia seemed a little familiar, what with her long-layered dark locks and her Southern twang, that might be because she’s modeled after/a “good friend” of Bachelor Nation favorite (and fellow small-town Arkansas girl) Raven Gates. (And if you’re playing Bachelor bingo, be sure to stamp “Bachelor in Paradise shoe-in” on your scorecard.)

Kendall, 26: What does “weird” look like on The Bachelor? It’s tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and surrounded by stuffed animals.

Photo: ABC

Yep, Kendall collects taxidermy, and her longest relationships tend to be with preserved animal carcasses, not human beings. Team Bachelor pushed things a little too far with the ukulele bit, though — now Kendall’s not only quirky, she’s annoying.

Bekah M.:  Much has been made of Bekah, both for her short haircut — how did she even get in the door??? — and for the fact that she’s so young. Though producers are playing coy with her age, you don’t need a birth certificate to see that this girl is just that — a girl. Honestly, she looks like she could be a stand-in for one of the kids on Stranger Things.

Photo: ABC

Marikh, 27: This stunningly beautiful woman co-owns an Indian restaurant with her mother and, even more impressively, she did not punch the producer who asked her to say this on camera:

Photo: ABC

Krystal, 29: Oh man, why do bad shows happen to good people? Krystal is a fitness coach who volunteers distributing food to the homeless men and women of San Diego, because her younger brother is currently living on the streets. “I try to treat people how I would want someone to treat him,” she says through tears.

Enough humanity! Send in the chattle — bathed, perfumed and bronzed for Arie’s enjoyment!

Photo: ABC

And the first “lady” out is… Caroline the realtor! She makes a cutesy joke about taking Arie “off the market,” and then beats a hasty retreat inside. Up next is Chelsea the single mom, followed by Kendall the token weirdo. Our first new face is Seinne, who works in real estate (Arie clearly has a type) and who’s also the first woman to bring Arie a gift: Elephant cufflinks. “An elephant never forgets, so don’t forget to find me inside,” Seinne says with a smile. Survey says? Just the right amount of cute.

Tia (who shall heretofore be known as Raven 2) hands Arie a small, plastic hot dog. “Please tell me you don’t already have a little wiener,” she drawls, as all the 7th grade boys who apparently produce this show crack up in the control room. Poor Arie, though, doesn’t quite seem to get the joke. “I do not have this,” he replies, holding up the trinket. “You did good.”

Next up is Bibiana, a fertility-minded executive assistant from Florida (“Oh my god, our babies would have blue eyes!”), followed by Bri, a sports reporter who greets Arie by tossing him a literal softball. Jenny the 25-year-old blonde gets the intro brush-off in favor of Brittane J., who decides to mark her territory by slapping a bumper sticker on Arie’s behind.

Photo: ABC

Jacqueline the research coordinator assures Arie all he has to do is “stand there and look pretty,” but Krystal disagrees: She commands Arie to close his eyes, take some deep breaths, and “reflect on feeling so grateful for everything leading to this moment.” (I suspect that somewhere, Peter Kraus is taking some much-needed deep breaths too.)

Nysha bucks convention by opting for a cocktail length dress rather than a gown, while Valerie the brunette waitress opts for a canary-yellow number that contrasts sharply with the purple undertones of her hair. Team Bachelor intercuts all the less showy arrivals with shots of the “ladies” in the house shifting nervously in their seats every time a new woman enters the mansion. Except for Chelsea, that is: “I’m not worried,” she sniffs. “There’s [sic] no threats.”

Bekah makes the first thematically-mandated auto entrance of the evening, driving up in a cherry red Mustang convertible. “I may be young,” she tells Arie, “but I can still appreciate something classic.” Translation:

Photo: ABC

And he LOVES it. “She is so beautiful,” he whispers as Bekah bounces inside.

Jenna, the 28-year-old social media manager, can’t stop waving her arms around during her introduction to Arie; Jessica the TV host emerges from the limo clutching something called a “gratitude rock,” which sounds like a hotel gift shop trinket — but points for effort, I guess?  Marikh the restaurant owner goes back to the spice well, joking about Arie’s “salt and pepper” hair, and then we get a brief glimpse of Olivia, a 23-year-old marketing associate from Chicago.

Becca K. (not to be confused with Bekah with a k) instructs Arie to get down on one knee and ask her if she’s “ready to do the damn thing.”

Photo: ABC

Is it me, or does long-suffering Arie seem a little annoyed? “That was a first for me,” he mutters drily to the camera, fishing Becca’s ring from his coat pocket like he can’t get it away from him fast enough. And still the limos keep coming.

Photo: ABC

A second social media manager? Perhaps that’s the new “VIP Cocktail Waitress.” Next up is Lauren J. from Louisiana, who one-ups Raven 2 and her plastic wiener by giving Arie some giant balls (in the form of Mardi Gras beads). But the Laurens aren’t done with us yet, folks.

Photo: ABC

And remarkably, they’re not all blonde.

Photo: ABC

The “Lauren Limo” tops out at four, and so it’s on to Ashley and her checkered flag; Brittany T., who attempts to say “You’re handsome” in Dutch (a language Arie speaks fluently); and Amber, who makes a memorable first impression by telling the Bachelor about one drawback of owning a spray-tan company:

Photo: ABC

But honestly, rose lovers, Amber’s ice-breaker is Emily Post-level conduct compared to Ali the personal stylist dreams up:

Photo: ABC

It’s a “pit stop”! Get it? Because he’s a racecar driver? Yeah, let’s just move on.

Photo: ABC

Okay, Annaliese, your joke about Arie’s “kissing bandit” nickname is cute, but talk to me when you’ve kept that mask on for days, like Jeff from Ashley’s season of The Bachelorette.

The deafening roar of an engine precedes our next arrival. “No she didn’t!” gasps one of the women watching from inside the mansion, as Maquel climbs out of an IndyCar. Honestly, did they really think Bekah was going to be the only contestant who showed up on wheels?  The other bachelorettes are so annoyed by Maquel’s flashy entrance, they park themselves right in the shot as she introduces herself to Arie.

Photo: ABC

Simmer down, “ladies” — your probably-not future husband is making his way inside right this very minute. Chelsea tries to offer him a drink, but Arie’s too focused on making his welcome speech sound as earnest as possible.

Awkward.

An off-camera producer mouths something like “take the damn drink, you moron” at Arie, and he pauses to accept the glass from Chelsea. “See, I’m already messing up!” moans our Bachelor with a chuckle.

Seeing that Chelsea already had the pimp spot, is it any wonder that she’s the first one to “steal” Arie for a chat? “I’m not a rude person,” she says. “But I want to get to know him quickly so I can proceed with the rest of my life, possibly with him.” As we saw from her introduction, Chelsea’s whole shtick is being “mysterious” — which mainly means talking about herself in the past perfect tense, like “there have been some sacrifices that were made.” And he LOVES it. “Chelsea’s very good at leaving me wanting a little bit more,” he says. “It’s working.”

Unfortunately for Chelsea, she barely has time to drape Arie in her shimmering veil of mystery before Maquel shows up and politely asks to cut in. Though Maquel could not have been nicer about it, Chelsea immediately begins swanning around the house complaining about “the girl that makes all the noise,” who interrupted her time with Arie. This, coupled with all the other snotty things we’ve seen Chelsea say so far tonight, makes it pretty clear that she’s getting the Villain Edit. And by “Villain Edit,” I mean that cameras have captured Chelsea being bitchy several times, and producers have opted to use that footage.

Perhaps producers were focusing so much on Chelsea’s rude behavior because so many of the other women are actually being… nice to each other? Here they are sharing their feelings on interracial relationships:

Photo: ABC

And here they are bonding over the fact that, OMG, they’re on the freakin’ Bachelor!

Photo: ABC

Meanwhile, the get-to-know-you chats are proceeding apace. Brittany T. challenges Arie to a battery-operated car race…

Photo: ABC

…and even though her victory is totally fraudulent, she still claims her prize: The night’s first kiss. Cue the “nervous ladies start steppin’ up their game” montage! Kendall serenades Arie with an original ukulele composition about roses and fish; Caroline brings Arie some pizza (which looks like it was sitting out on the craft services table for a while, but again, points for effort); and Lauren G. shoves some fruit in Arie’s mouth and informs him that “pineapple” is her safe word.

Photo: ABC

Jenna the social media manager gives Arie a socks-off foot massage while blathering on about her “super-in-tune” senses and all the free food and “spa stuff” she gets on a regular basis. For some reason, Arie finds this whole flibbertigibbet act “intriguing” — it might have something to do with Jenna being a tall skinny blonde, but that’s just a guess.

Oh snap, look who’s here.

Photo: ABC

The first impression rose means that the clock (biological and otherwise) is ticking. Form an orderly line, “ladies” — and then watch as Chelsea cuts to the front. “I understand that I’m in a sea of beautiful women and they could possibly get mad at me,” she explains, “but I don’t care.” Arie doesn’t seem to mind, either.

Photo: ABC

“You snuck up on me there, but I liked it,” he murmurs after their face-mash time. Will Chelsea’s surprise smooch top Jenny’s graphite portrait of Arie in a sports car? Or Jessica’s reveal that her late father met Arie and rooted for him on the race track? Or Bekah’s flirtatious, short-haired joie de vivre?

Yes. Yes, it will.

Photo: ABC

Clink clink clink! Here comes Chris Harrison and his Butter Knife of Bad News. “Ladies,” please proceed to the rose ceremony… as soon as you’re done with your coffee.

Photo: ABC

Indeed, the sun is beginning its arc across the sky over Casa Bachelor when Arie finally begins handing out roses. Becca K., Marikh, Kendall, Lauren G., Krystal, Bekah M., Lauren S., Seinne, Caroline, Brittany T., Bibiana, Annaliese, Jenna, Valerie, Jacqueline, Jenny, Lauren B., Ashley, Tia, Maquel, and Chelsea are still in the running to become America’s Next Top Fiancée. Which means this is goodbye for Ali, Amber, Bri, Brittnae J., Jessica, Lauren J., Nysha and Olivia.

Emotionally drained and exhausted from the all-nighter, poor Jessica takes the rejection the hardest — but her tears are more for her father than the Bachelor. “Now my dad will never meet my husband,” she says sadly. (Remember kids: It’s never a bad time to call your parents to say “I love you.”) Amber the spray-tan proprietor is pretty crushed, too. “I’m so disappointed in myself,” she says in a wobbly voice. “I had, like, my family rooting so hard for me. I feel like they’re going to be disappointed, you know?” Focus on the positive, honey: They didn’t disown you for going on The Bachelor, so they’ll probably forgive you, someday, for getting kicked off.

Wow, have we made it to the “this season on The Bachelor” preview already? Man, those two hours just flew by. As usual, the super-tease has a stellar crying montage.

Suitable for framing. (Photos: ABC)

Oh, and how about that disembodied voice barking “I don’t want to be on the show! I want my girl!” at a producer toward the end of the preview? Any guesses on which “lady” that riled-up beau belongs to? (I’m going with Raven 2 or Krystal.)

Congrats on getting through week 1, rose lovers! Now tell me, did Arie meet your (lowered) expectations? Post your thoughts now! And be sure to check out Chris Harrison’s behind-the-scenes blog here.

The Bachelor airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

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