And go well, honoring your father.

Two years before Ellington died, in 1972, Yale University held a gathering of leading black jazz musicians in order to raise money for a department of African-American music. Aside from Ellington, the musicians who came for three days of concerts, jam sessions, and workshops included Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, and Willie (the Lion) Smith. During a performance by a Gillespie-led sextet, someone evidently unhappy with this presence on campus called in a bomb threat. The police attempted to clear the building, but Mingus refused to leave, urging the officers to get all the others out but adamantly remaining onstage with his bass. “Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain’t strong enough to kill this music,” he was heard telling the police captain. (And very few people successfully argued with Mingus.) “If I’m going to die, I’m ready. But I’m going out playing ‘Sophisticated Lady.’ ” Once outside, Gillespie and his group set up again. But coming from inside was the sound of Mingus intently playing Ellington’s dreamy thirties hit, which, that day, became a protest song, as the performance just kept going on and on and getting hotter. In the street, Ellington stood in the waiting crowd just beyond the theatre’s open doors, smiling.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8LLfFY9pQg]

poll re-confirms that it is the stupid people who are gettin' jiggy for The Hairball.

66% of Trump's supporters believe that Obama is a Muslim to just 12% that grant he's a Christian. 61% think Obama was not born in the United States to only 21% who accept that he was.

In 1992, the stupid people supported another rude, goofy, boorish Barnum of a billionaire with a grudge against the Bush family. Believing they were thereby giving it to "the man," "the system." That year a coastal insurgent with a boy's name challenged a Clinton from the left. And Darth Cheney was rumbling around, darkly mumbling that Democrats posed an existential threat to America, and indeed all the world.

Whoever lives two or three generations, feels like the spectator who, during the fair, sees the performances of all kinds of jugglers and, if he remains seated in the booth, sees them repeated two or three times. As the tricks were meant only for one performance, they no longer make any impression after the illusion and novelty have vanished.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

I'm all out of outrage

U.S. taxpayers will have to pay at least $30 million to cover attorney fees incurred by defense contractor KBR Inc., accused of wrongly exposing U.S. and British soldiers – including dozens from Oregon – to toxic chemicals during duty in the Iraq War

KBR's contract to restore Iraq's oil fields indemnifies the company from paying legal costs to defend itself against the soldiers' lawsuits, an Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals judge ruled last month.

This leaves the costs of KBR's lawyers, and any potential court judgments, up to the Army to pay – a burden ultimately shouldered by taxpayers. The skyrocketing costs, with no end in sight, have left public officials outraged.

Three years have passed since U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to examine billable hours run up by KBR as part of its contract with the Pentagon. Wyden's staff pored through court records, finding that lawyers for the company billed up to $750 an hour, sometimes flew first class to legal proceedings and paid millions to expert witnesses. One expert, paid more than $500,000, dozed off during a deposition.

you write to wonderful of your father. You have been blessed to have such a father, and your father certainly has been blessed to have you as a daughter. And all of you have been blessed with a great love story and marriage. Bless your family. May you all find peace.

I obviously can't post this on GOS

If it were just the courts suppressing free speech, that would be one thing to worry about, but First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country.

The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

Officials at the University of Tennessee, for instance, recently introduced an Orwellian policy that would prohibit students from using gender specific pronouns and be more inclusive by using gender “neutral” pronouns such as ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr, rather than he, she, him or her.

On many college campuses, declaring that “America is the land of opportunity” or asking someone “Where were you born?” are now considered microaggressions, “small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless.” Trigger warnings are also being used to alert students to any material or ideas they might read, see or hear that might upset them.

More than 50 percent of the nation’s colleges, including Boston University, Harvard University, Columbia University and Georgetown University, subscribe to “red light” speech policies that restrict or ban so-called offensive speech, or limit speakers to designated areas on campus. The campus climate has become so hypersensitive that comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld refuse to perform stand-up routines to college crowds anymore.

What we are witnessing is an environment in which political correctness has given rise to “vindictive protectiveness,” a term coined by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and educational First Amendment activist Greg Lukianoff. It refers to a society in which “everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression or worse.”
...
On paper, we are free to speak.

In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official may allow.

Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms.

As a result, we are no longer a nation of constitutional purists for whom the Bill of Rights serves as the ultimate authority. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have litigated and legislated our way into a new governmental framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

It may seem trivial to be debating the merits of free speech at a time when unarmed citizens are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order, or just breathe.
...
Just as surveillance has been shown to “stifle and smother dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear,” government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance and makes independent thought all but impossible.

In the end, censorship and political correctness not only produce people that cannot speak for themselves but also people who cannot think for themselves. And a citizenry that can’t think for itself is a citizenry that will neither rebel against the government’s dictates nor revolt against the government’s tyranny.

What a good way to share the memories of your Dad, through the music he enjoyed. Thinking of you,