America's Apprentice™ Episode 3: The Year in Video

The crew at Don's Basement had a hell of a time coming up with the top videos of the year. There have been so many news stories some of which did not include Donald Trump. Four of the five selected specifically involve the 2016 presidential election. The other one is about Baltimore. About race. And class. And alienation. And what I used to call "the spectacle"when I aspired to be a Situationist.

Ted Cruz and Machine Gun Bacon-

 I don't mean to be a bigot. I realize that some of my humor comes not from the "yes, and ..." world of improv but what I imagine to be the "no, but..." school of insult comics. That is to say one takes a characteristic of a person and then exaggerate to the point of ridicule. Like a Don Rickles, a Jack E. Leonard. Jackie Mason. I am usually just joking because I love all the different people.

Except maybe Ted Cruz who is a schmuck. He is a disgrace to all the Gentile-Americans because he cooks bacon after shooting a machine-gun. Jews know that not all Gentiles shoot machine-guns. Some have rifles and pistols. AR–15s, AK–47s, Hang grenades.

The best line abut Ted Cruz is from a former Bush 43 staffer who said, "why do people take an instant dislike to Ted Cruz. it saves time."

 

What are you doing in 2016?

 In April of 2015, we found out what the following Americans were planning for the year:

-White Woman growing tomatoes
 -Brownish woman moving to a new school district
-Two Spanish speaking guys are opening a restaurant
-Stay at home mom is going to work outside the home
 -Black couple is expecting a boy
-A young Asian woman is looking for a job
 -Male Gay couple getting married
- Sick kid will be in a school play
 -White woman is retiring
- White couple is remodeling their house and teaching their dog not to eat the garbage
- White guy has some company where he is pouring gravel or something inside
 -White woman announces (at 1.29 of her 2.15 video) that she is running for president.

Thus Hillary ends the suspense. She wants to be our champion.

Still tone deaf after all these years.

 
   

The Donald Descends!

To the strains of Neil Young's "Rockin in the Free World,"  on June 16, Donald Trump descends an escalator with third wife,  Melania to announce his candidacy for president. (Neil Young not happy about the music).

Trump says of his presentation, "there is no crowd like this." And it is true.  The campaign fluffed up the crowd by hiring actors for $50.00 for 3 hours work.
On the plus side this is above the $15.00 minimum wage that is being sought by progressives around the country.

Trump has been the biggest political story of 2015 with pundits on the left, right and center (including this one) repeatedly predicting his political demise. 

Time will tell.


   


It takes one to know one.

 Among all the candidates for president, only Rick Santorum understands ISIS. He understands that the ISIS is motivated by theology and that their theology requires them to hold onto territory in order to become the legitimate caliphate. Other candidates say the ISIS is a perversion of Islam, the thuggish remnants of the Iraqi army, the result of either the failed policies of Bush 43 and the neo-cons or the failed policies of Obama/Clinton.

Only Santorum seems to take them at face value. An army fighting a religious war against those who oppose the true faith. He's creepy but he is not necessarily wrong.


   

What if a game is played and there is no one to see it?

On April 29, The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 8 to 2. As it turned out, it was just one of 86 losses for the Sox in 2015 as they finished a dismal 19 games behind the eventual World Series winning Kansas City Royals.

The game on April 29 is notable because no fans were allowed to attend. In the previous days, citizens of Baltimore expressed their displeasure at the death of Freddie Gray, a 25 year old American. He had been arrested for illegal possession of a switch blade and died as a result of injuries incurred in the police van that gave him " a rough ride" to the station.

This eerie video captures the sense of unease that is part of the story of 2015. From Baltimore, Ferguson, Chicago, Paris, Syria, Israel, San Bernadino,  Somalia and everywhere betwixt and between, everyday life can sometimes ring hollow. Lives played out in empty stadiums. High fives exchanged after a home run. An organ plays "Take me out to the ball game" and it sounds like a dirge.



 


"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." Guy-Ernest Debord, "The Society of the Spectacle."

America's Apprentice™ Episode 2: What Happens in Vegas....

I miss him. I miss him so,

Although Marco had a legitimate claim to being a Nevadan, it was Donnie who enjoyed a home town advantage. To my knowledge (or unfounded speculation), Donnie has "done" Vegas alot more than Vegas means to most Republican politicians. Many of these candidates go to see Sheldon Adelson.  In my opinion and mine alone...Despite the wild success of "The Five Books of Krinsky." I do not speak for world Jewry.

Adelson is not good for the Jews. For one thing, let's be honest, There is the money thing. Jews have all the money. And candidates pay homage to him (and to Israel) and in exchange he gives them millions of dollars.
He is also very bellicose for an old guy with a ton of money.

The candidates did not have them music which is a mistake.  It would work. Christie/Springsteen, Rubio/Adelle, Trump/CD of Trump drunken Karoke.
And yet, Donnie has never had a drop of alcohol. How can you be such an asshole without being drunk?

Lindsey impressed me with the arm waving and sighing about missing President Bush.

“The surge worked! It worked! George W. Bush made mistakes, but he did adjust. I blame Obama for ISIL, not Bush,” Graham yelled. “I’m tired of beating on Bush! I miss George W. Bush! I wish he were president right now! We wouldn’t be in this mess!”

As many of you long time readers know, I regard counter-factuals and alternative history as fiction. If the Senator from South Carolina wants to believe that, he is entitled to his beliefs. At least Lindsey knows that the United States is not and cannot be at war with the Muslims of the World. I know some of you (and you know who you are) will say that let's first sort out the bad ones from the good ones and we don't really mean we are war with all the Muslims. 

Lindsey had a desk job in the Air Force and is still very impressed by the uniform. He understands the dynamics of war is a way that the other candidates don't grasp. He understands that there will be American casualties alongside those of Arab Muslims, Kurdish Muslims, and perhaps even Iranian Muslims.

The others act like fools. Cruz said we needed a "war time" president. He thinks..who would be a better consigliere than Donald Trump. Ted is so unlikable that he's becoming likable. He's a film nerd. Very bright. Very calculating. Would Ted Cruz exist as a political candidate without talk radio?
Any of them. I suppose Jeb!, Kasich, Randy would have been candidates before  Clinton-Lewinsky


To me, it was Carly Fiorina who won my vote as the evening's winner, "I am going to solve our problems" or words to that effect. The affect on me was to swoon. It's not that I have a ton of problems and I do feel very fortunate, but all my problems. And my family's problems. That is an awesome promise.

The America's Apprentice™tip sheet. Don't count Trump in just yet. He is not immune to a slew of people who feel that Donnie is not have the man he says he is because they have seen the evidence. What celebrities forget is that the tagline "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," is advertising and not fact. Perhaps there are several indiscretions that are currently being covered up for fear of litigation.

I see Ted in Iowa by dint of organization and Donnie in New Hampshire because he is a real, genuine person just like on TV.

After that, I have no idea.

I will stay tuned.

America's Apprentice™ Episode 1

Donnie with other GOP Candidates

Donnie is feeling the heat this week or maybe it's the love. The polls indicate that Ted is showing momentum in Iowa where round 1 of America's Apprentice™ has its first vote. Donnie can tell that people are frightened. Especially people whose lives consist of watching television between 5 and 7 hours a day.

When they are not watching television, they are listening to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Marc Levin. On these shows, Donnie's fans can find out about how East and West Coast liberals are flushing America down the toilet of disease ridden and/or terrorist immigrants who don't speak English and want to establish either Sharia law or force bakeries to supply Wedding Cakes for homosexual weddings.

Donnie took advantage of an opening. And as we know, Donnie knows a thing or two about openings. If you get my drift.

It is Donnie sexual adventurism that had been putting off some of the fundamentalist Christians so he chose to choose fear of foreigners over the loathing that people feel about his personal non-God fearing ways.

Not faring so well in Dr. Ben. Dr. Ben is considered too nice to deal with the threat of Islamic terrorism. If Dr. Ben went back to getting his fingers wet, he would do more good than fighting terrorism. The odds against being killed in a terrorist attack are very large.



The risk of being killed by terrorism] compares annual risk of dying in a car accident of 1 in 19,000; drowning in a bathtub at 1 in 800,000; dying in a building fire at 1 in 99,000; or being struck by lightning at 1 in 5,500,000. In other words, in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist.

No matter, Donnie is playing the terrorism card in a way that his supporters readily understand.

“Total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.” 

What is going in is that the race to be America's Apprentice™is going to be every bit as nasty as Survivor or the Bachelor.

Stay tuned as Don's basement will breathlessly try to match the click bait and catch the ratings wave of Donnie's (Ted's, Marco's, and even Jeb's) audition to become America's Apprentice™

The archeology of The Five Books of Krinsky

The earliest artifact of the Five Books of Krinsky is depicted below.

It is very difficult to read the  proof text. This displays the name of the saved document as "10 Miketz. "The date of the event is January 13, 1996 and this what we think is a chapter from what is now the "Five Books of Krinsky." It is saved in Notepad as a CWK file (CWK).

Miketz is a portion, parashot, or chapter of the Bible. (AKA The Old Testament, The Five Books of Moses,  The Torah) Miketz begins with Joseph having been sold into slavery languishing in an Egyptian prison. Joseph continues with his dream interpretations thing and helps out two fellow inmates. These two make good on the outside and Joseph becomes the Pharaoh's main dream diviner.

There is a chapter 12 of The Five Books of Krinsky. It is called "Death on the Final Hole," and recounts the death of Dan Krinsky's father on a golf course in Los Cabos as well as exploring the question. "Where is Joseph buried? As well as printing a timeline from 1967 to 2014 of the violence by Palestinians and Israelis surrounding the burial site of their common Patriarch.

The fragment creates of few questions of its own. Why did the author stop using the Biblical chapters? Perhaps he felt they were too obscure for the general public. Or he likes making up his own titles? Where did he lose a chapter? He seems to be writing about Vayechi and has skipped Vayigash completely.

The next artifact was found in same basement as the computer image which appears to be where the author wrote most of the book.

This is a copy of The Torah, A Modern Commentary, edited by W. Gunther Plaut, (UAHC, 1981) The author makes frequent references to this book, often quoting commentaries. We believe this was the actual copy that the author used. He did not as we previously believed just looked stuff up on the internet because he thought it sounded cool.

The author claims to have permission to share Rabbi Plaut's wisdom because of a chance encounter with one of the rabbi's relatives. This person said the rabbi would have approved.

Finally our most recent find.

A Five Books of Krinsky coffee mug sitting on a laptop computer opened to an Amazon.com. When he began this book over 10 years ago, he could not have imagined the acclaim. A page on Amazon and a coffee mug.

Today, people can download the book for 2.99. This is slightly more than the national average for a cup of coffee.

Here is the link (again),

The Wilderness of Azazel: Yom Kippur Holiday Special: Free Excerpt from "The Five Books of Krinsky"

 This excerpt is from Book 3, Chapter 29 of the soon to be released "Five Books of Krinsky."

The chapter begins, a do all chapters in the book, with a passage from the Torah.
Next comes scenes from the life of Dan Krinsky, a forty something classics instructor at a small Chicago college. Then, a commentary inspired by the biblical passage, the action of the novel, or some random connectivity of both or neither.

This excerpt is from the chapter entitled, "Krinsky and Kara."
What follows is the passage and the commentary.

  Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for the Lord, which he is to offer as a sin offering; while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before the Lord, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness of Azazel.
Leviticus: 16:9-10

biblewalks.com

Commentary: Don't Blame Me

Yom Kippur defines most Jews. If we do nothing Jewish all year: obey a commandment, say a prayer, attend a service, light a candle, Jews do Yom Kippur. We might not pray. We might even eat but we won’t work. We might not even remember the day but it defines us. Even Krinsky’s father, Morris, of blessed memory who believed in God but not in Jews, didn’t work on Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is the sadder and wiser sibling of Christmas. At least in terms of universality. The most lapsed Christian will get a touch misty on December two five. The most assimilated Jew will know something is up on Yom Kippur.

Oddly the same passage which sanctifies Yom Kippur as the Day of Atonement is also the passage cited above with Azalel and his goat.
To wit...  the priests must have had a hard time coming up with a way of blending an obviously pagan observance with Yom Kippur.   

According to Gunther Plaut’s The Torah: A Modern Commentary   Yom Kippur was a “new creation of the postexilic priesthood.” Postexilic...what a word! This is a celebration after the fact (as it were.)

"Wait. I've got it. We can still send out the goat but this time it will have our sins all over it. Nah. They'll never buy that."

 
The question then becomes; Whose Hocus-Pocus is more legitimate? The Jews says they were the   first to be embraced by God. The Christians wanted to share the Love with those outside the tribe.   And the Muslims say, fine, all that stuff happened and then Allah came back to the desert and said, there is no God but Allah and it’s time for a big change.
 
What about Azazel? Where was it, who was it and why did the goat have to go there?
This sounds plausible...“apocryphal Jewish works, composed in the last few centuries before the Christian era, tell of angels who were lured by beautiful women into lust and, and ultimately into rebellion against God. In the writings, Azazel is one of the two leaders of the rebellion.” Plaut, ...

Azazel: Poster from the Rebellion

Another view comes from Babylon. The erstwhile Iraqis and perhaps Iranians  had a big new year festival which lasted for 10 days. On the fifth day, instead of a big college football bowl game, they performed “kuppuru.”
1. Behead ram
2. Rub the walls of the temple
3. Throw ram’s trunk into a river.

Lilith; looking fine and having that ancient 'je ne sais quoi'

Regarding “scapegoat.” Not the original translation, A Brit, William Tyndale coined the term in his translation. Now, it means someone who is blamed for things going wrong and mostly unfairly. In the original, the sins of the community wended their way to the bad place from whence they come. They didn't blame a goat.

Not everyone was enamored  of Tyndale. He translated the Bible from original Greek and Hebrew text into English and mass produced bibles on the newly created printing pressed. For his efforts he was pursued by Henry VIII and ultimately executed.

Now that we are civilized, on Yom Kippur we go to Temple, don’t eat, in traditional settings you don’t bathe or brush your teeth. It’s just you against God. You don’t have a chance. Even for that one day, you are dandruff on the shoulders of the world.

Witches´ Sabbath by Francis Goya (1798)

Morphoverse; an appreciation

There is a Glencoe of mountains and animals, Scotch, Harry Potter and James Bond and as it turns out very dramatic scenery.  The Glencoe of the AIR gallery may not be as dramatic as its much older cousin, it will however be the scene for some startling imagery. AIR once nestled by the Glencoe Woman's Society it is now literally overshadowed by the new Writer's Theater.
I do a fair amount of writing but I don't think writers need all that much room. Me, I have a basement. Whatever.

Glencoe, Scotland. I didn't know it was such a good looking country.

In this Glencoe, our Glencoe, at this very moment in her history could be the break through of two artists. Diverse, yet united in their insider/outsider relationship with the community. Not totally Mavericks. Hippies, maybe. Artistic souls who love to create.

The “MORPHOVERSE" opening event will take place September 12, 2015 from 4-9 pm at A.I.R. Gallery at 348 Tudor Court in Glencoe. From 5-7 pm flautist Julie Koidin will perform improvisations inspired by the artwork.

I personally love these artists and their work but they are weirdos. The 'Basement' has these exclusive interviews with the artists, Peggy Schutze Shearn and JW Lambert.

Don's Basement: What does the name of the show mean to you?

James Lambert: Morphoverse was conceived as a groovy sounding (and looking) word meant to suggest the world, as we know it, coming to an end and becoming something unrecognizable.

“Shadow Cell” 2014. J.W. Lambert Private Collection

Peggy Schutze Shearn: James came up with “Morphoverse” as a playful reference to the way we each make paintings. He starts with crowd scenes from stock images and transforms them into subtle, liquidy abstractions that seem to be just barely obscuring images from the collective unconscious – something elusive and a little unsettling glimpsed from corner of your eye. So you have the everyday visual universe morphing into something deeper and more mysterious. James is what you might call an “artists’ artist;” he’s a trained, sophisticated painter who's been creating these gorgeous large canvases in the studio, but very few people have seen them until this show.

ELSEWHERE, 42"x48" acrylic on canvas, Peggy Schutze Shearn

I always begin with a word or a phrase drawn or written onto the canvas, and that graphic form becomes the structure of the composition. Of course the word “verse” refers to writing in a rhythmic pattern. There is a visual rhythm to my paintings that I think is obvious even in a photograph, but only in person can you really get a sense of the topography of this work and how light plays across each stroke of the paint. When I choose words to paint I try to stay away from anything too specific in meaning in order to leave space for the work and the viewer to have a conversation with each other, a conversation that flows back and forth between the verbal and the visual. It’s interesting that “morphology” refers to various fields of study dealing with form and structure, coming from the Greek meaning the "study of shape.” Okay, I’ll stop. I think my recent binge-listening of Lexicon Valley podcast is getting to me. (Wait, does that make me sound like a nerd?)

DB: Who is your favorite painter (who isn't a personal friend) and what is your favorite painting?

JL: Eugene Delacroix is my favorite painter. "Skeletons fighting over a pickled herring" by James Ensor is my favorite right now.

"Skeletons fighting over a pickled herring." James Ensor. His parents ran a souvenir shop.

PSS: That’s a terrible question. Just FYI.

DB: What is your earliest memory of painting, drawing or otherwise creating art?

JL: My teachers told my parents I was displaying an aptitude for art so they arranged private oil painting  lessons. I will never forget the smell of that small, basement studio. It is an exotic and mysterious quality that always transports me back to that first lesson. I was eight years old.

PSS: The seductive smell of Crayolas. Being unhappy with my mother when I complained of having nothing to do and she suggested painting. I was about 6 or 7. It pissed me off because I didn’t know what to paint. Yup, sensory delight and frustration, that about sums it up.

DB: If your paintings were a song, which song would it be?

JL: Is there a song that begins with a Gregorian chant, proceeds through some chamber music, an electric guitar solo, and ends with an electrocardiogram flatline? Either that or '99 Luftballons'.

PSS: John Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano is pretty perfect, but if anyone could come up with an alternative that is less irritating to listen to, and/or written in this century, I’d really appreciate hearing from them. 

DB: Anything else you would like share with my readership?

JL: "Art is for everyone but some people should just be house painters".

PSS: Come to the opening, it’s going to be a great party!

Below is what happens when Don is in the basement and James and Peggy are hanging the show.

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Why can't we all get along? Straight out of Northbrook!

Last Sunday, whilst preparing for a nap, I saw part of a 1971 film series called "Pilot District Project Washington, D.C."

One of the luminaries was a very young Marion Berry.

Marion Berry at 35

He takes a walk in Washington's Third District. In the clip below, he walks through District expressing points of view that are not uncommon to hear today. Later in the clip, residents of the District are frustrated by the failure of this pilot project to have meaningful results.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4549507/third-district

The Office of Economic Opportunity spent $200,000 in 1971 (1.2 million today) to create these short films as a model for police departments around the country. Instead they OEO chose to store these three films in a warehouse in Maryland.

Now, almost 45 years later, the debate about community policing continues. I had hoped in this post to suggest solutions to this seemingly insoluble problem.

Seriously though, I got nothing.

I did recently see the film Straight Out of Compton at a 10:45 AM show at Northbrook Court with my son and about 20 other people. The film has done betterin other venues and at other times. As of this writing, SOC has grossed 130 million and has held the top spot at the box office for the past 3 weeks.

In this film, the police are not shown in the most flattering light.

Ice Cube is played by O'Shea Jackson Jr., the son of  Ice Cube nee O'Shea Jackson. If interested in the dynamic between the two men, click here for the Irish Times. (Charming article)

The younger Ice Cube is rousted by the cops in front of his house, thrown to the ground roughly in front of a recording studio in Redondo Beach while standing with fellow NWA'ers,  Eazy-E and , Dr. Dre , and in Detroit arrested after being warned not to play their hit, Fuck The Police. They played the song and plainclothes police rushed the stage. In the film, they are arrested just outside the venue. According to other reports, they were arrested at the hotel.

The tune, a mise en scène, if you will, is one in which a policeman is on trial for crimes against various NWA players.

As Ice Cube raps:

Fuckin' with me 'cause I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin' my car, lookin' for the product
Thinkin' every nigger is sellin' narcotics

Speaking as a white guy, albeit Jewish, but mostly white, I can go along with the song's premise. These young men are trying to make a living in the music business in the late 80s. They keep getting hassled  because they are black and profiled as dangerous felons. They fight back in the only the way they can as musicians and artists. The track, Fuck the Police. is at it's core a protest song.

Fuck The Police peaked at Billboard Top LPs at 37 and 9th in the now oddly sounding, Top Soul LPs. The top LP was the Fine Young Cannibal's, The Raw and the Cooked. Many of you sociology/anthropology fans will remember Claude Levi Strauss's book of the same name.

The Top Soul LP was Tender Lover by Babyface which topped the charts for 8 consecutive weeks.

Enjoy a few moments of FTP with me….




I am guessing that Fuck The Police is not in heavy rotation in much of the United States. It is an internet meme. (I don't want to link you to the page because it seems creepy). But it's a bunch of images like sexy women dresses as cops and hamsters cavorting around, with the text, Fuck The Police.

It is said that the phrase has been heard in Ferguson and Baltimore. Although not national news, my guess is that Fuck The Police is a popular political slogan around the country.

 In my day, "Power to the People," The Personal is Political,", "Ho, Ho Ho Chi Mihn, NLF is Going to Win."were uttered by disaffected young people.

Young people.

Yeesh.

Radio Republicans and the Wicked Messenger

This chart from Talker's Magazine purports to rank the top radio programs in the country. I say purport because of the disclaimer in the fine print

A cume is the number of unique listeners that listen to these programs  "according to the opinions of Talker's editorial board, Nielson Audio and other sources....."these figures are non-scientific projections based upon a significant sample and do not represent exact Nielson Audio or any other ratings service totals."

Dave Ramsey  has a radio program, live appearances and written  opportunities to receive his "biblical insight and expert advice on handling money—budgeting, debt, investing, retirement and more." But I am putting him in the same shopping cart as Limbaugh. Hannity et. al.

The other 5 guys are what you might call Conservatives. For the record the next highest rating is 2.75 and is a tie with 5 other guys. The remainder of the list includes by my reckoning is 9 Right, 5 Left, 8 relatively non-partisan, weird like George Noory for example, but  still non-partisan. And unclassifiable Bubba the Love Sponge.

In the opinion of Don's basement editorial board, of the 31 listed talkers, it is 16 Right, 5 Left, and 10 are just saying stuff. Some of it about extra-terrestrials. 

At the don'sbasement annual meeting and costume party

As we know radio is a "hot medium., " To paraphrase Marshall McLuan and to use a wiki , "hot media is that which engages one sense completely. It demands little interaction from the user because it 'spoon-feeds' the content. Typically the content of hot media is restricted to what the source offers at that specific time. Examples of hot media include radio and film because they engage one sense of the user to an extent that although the user's attention is focused on the content, their participation is minimal."
Don't believe me, I have Marshall McLuhan right here.

There are over 13 million Americans who listen to right wing talk radio  and are spoon fed every week. This makes up a large percentage of the Republican electorate. While they listen to these programs, they fulminate about the following;

• The liberals want to take our money and give it to the non-hardworking poor people so that those people will vote for them. (While they believe that there are hard-working poor people, they are dis-incentivized to work because of government hand-outs)
• America is no longer feared around the world because Obama/Clinton have either been hoodwinked or intentionally allowed our enemies...Iran, Russia, China to thrive because we are afraid to flex our muscles militarily or economically
• You can't say anything about anyone anymore without fear of being labeled a racist, sexist etc. There is no freedom of expression because the liberal elites continue to cling to the civil rights agenda and look for opposition to it. Without opposition, there is no civil rights battles to be fought. And President Obama is an affirmative action president who only got the job because of his skin color.
• The influx of "illegals" destroys respect for the law as well as taxes our economic resources. The border must be secure and the "illegals" must be identified and punished.
• "Obamacare" is a particularly noxious brand of socialized medicine that was passed in a corrupt and over partisan manner. (I actually agree with this, as the law is poor). But the vehemence against "Obamacare" is common cause for the Radio Republicans.

Hence....Donald Trump. He has incorporated these brand messages into a package. And when confronted with his history, politically, in business, in personal morality, his unstated message, "there you go again."
He doesn't have to answer the arguments. He only has to defend himself as a speaker of truth.

The Radio Republicans will hang up and listen to Trump's answer. They will ultimately reject him because he is a bad person and most of the Radio Republicans are good people. Or at least enough of them to recognize that although they may like Trump's message, he is, in fact, a Wicked Messenger.

More Insights from Donald Trump

In an exclusive interview with donsbasement, Donald Trump agreed to share more of his observations about what's wrong with everything.

• The baseball players. Why do opposing players talk to each other on the field? Unless they are being insulting or trash talking they should shut up and do their jobs. They are paid to win and not paid to be nice guys.
• The empty ball fields. I drive by...rather I am driven by ball parks that are empty. Why aren't the kids playing ball? Because they are lazy. The kids are lazy because their parents are lazy. Their parents aren't achieving anything because their parents are the 60s generation hippies. 
• Scott Walker was actually raised by feral cows just outside of Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
• Lindsday Graham is a fegalah and why is that such a big secret.
• I don't hate poor people. I hate poor people who don't want to be rich.
• Let's quit talking about Israel's right to exist and focus on Iran's right to exist.
• People talk about my bankruptcies and bad business practices. They are ignorant and I should pity them but I don't have time for that.
• I have had more sex with more women than any white man not in the porn industry, music, or sports.
• When I'm president it will be a combination of Reagan, JFK, and the Bob Hope Christmas Show. Ratings for my press conferences will exceed any network shows excluding Sunday Night Football.
• While I am not afraid to run as an independent third party, I won't win that way. I will win as the nominee of the Republican Party. I will win because the black people are not going to vote for Hillary. They won't vote for me this time but they will when I run for reelection in 2020.
•  It is possible that I will win every state but New York, California,  Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts. Oh right, and DC,
• Here is my electoral map. 407 to 131.

Map created at 270toWin.com

The Waiting is the Hardest Part: Countdown to Publication

Don Shearn, poet, author, subterranean dweller

The 5 Books of Krinsky has now been edited yet again. Here are some details.

1. 53 Chapters. I had hoped for either 52 chapters or 54 chapters. 54 chapters is what Sharon Rosensweig cartoonist and co-author of the Comic Torah said were the correct number of portions in the Bible.

2, 65,400 words. To win in the Nanowrimo competition you need to write 50,000 words. According to
http://www.writersdigest.com/author/chuck-sambuchino here are the correct lengths for novels.


80,000 – 89,999:       Totally cool
90,000 – 99,999:       Generally safe
70,000 – 79,999:       Might be too short; probably all right
100,000 – 109,999:    Might be too long; probably all right
Below 70,000:           Too short
110,000 or above       Too long

Sambuchino's article was written way back in 2012 when we all had longer attention spans.

3. The current plan is to upload the book some time this summer and begin an extensive multi-media campaign. One that hopefully won't require me to leave the basement.

4. We have been thinking about various retails for the book. The average cup of coffee in the US is between 1.38 for brewed and a 2.45 for an espresso based concoction. Is The 5 Books of Krinsky worth more than a small latte. We emphatically say yes.

         I am particularly partial to 40 facts about Noah, Warren Spahn's pitching statistics, the exegesis on Samson and Delilah, as well as the mildly diverting events in the life of Danny Krinsky.

5. 2.49 seems right. Particularly since the primary market is people I know. Most everyone I know would buy me a cup of coffee under the right circumstance and pay under 3 bucks.

6. My goal for the book is for triple digit downloads. It is lofty to be sure as I have 118 Facebook friends and I can't count on all of them so there will need to be some sharing. Also, perhaps some advertising. Or public relations. But again, I would like to stay in the basement.

7. We are working on a cover. How do you like it? It is an homage.

Possible Cover for 5 Books of Krinsky