DC Tom

I may vote for him, on the basis of "The country is ***** anyway, so vote max comedy."

Did you know that John Kerry won three Purple Hearts...?

Jealous much? He probably found people to join in his gay pride parade.

Thoughts and prayers...

@Deranged Rhino Any updates on this?

Snowden was not a whistleblower, he was a government contractor who leaked massive amounts of classified information. If you grant him "whistleblower" status, you are green-lighting the leaking of classified info.

People actually miss the days we were led by eight-year-old girls?

As much fun as it is to pretend it's all interconnected within a Clinton criminal empire...this is a bitter divorce/custody situation that ended in a murder-suicide - common enough that we've had it happen to people on this board. It's particularly odious to blame this on Clinton.

But these days Chris Rock is considered a White Supremacist...

"Coincidentally?" They've been doing that for years.

Well, by extension, the #Resistance should be willing to lay down their lives to remove Trump, just as soldiers did on D-Day against Nazis. This is a not-entirely-subtle call for revolution.

You're seriously stupid. Ask a Marine about Kelly Turner; then ask a naval aviator about the Air Force, then ask an Air Force officer (check the golf course) about the US Army's establishment of the USAAC. You'll see why they don't get along. You still won't understand it, because you haven't the vaguest understanding of esprit de corps or unit cohesion. But you'll at least have access to the information. Ironically, for that lack of understanding, your blog probably sucks, too.

Just feed 'em PEDs and HGH, and they'll stay young forever like you do, you cheating bastard.

No we didn't. WWII subs were named after fish, except for a handful (Argonaut, Nautilis) named after mythical vessels. The M3 Medium tank was named after Lee. (The British renamed it the Grant - the difference was the British removed the commander's cupola, because with the cupola the damned thing was 11 feet tall and was just a great, big target in the open desert.) Tanks were - and still are - named after generals; in WWII, (including tank destroyers) usually after Civil War generals (Lee, Stuart, Jackson, Sherman, Grant.)

It's actually the example I use if people want to know what it's like being bipolar. Glib, yes...but I'm honest-to-God serious as well. Which is why I mentioned The Who earlier.

You want complex? Ives' 4th requires two conductors. When people ask me to describe it, I tell them "It's what mental illness sounds like." It's composed of a discordant blend of snippets of contemporary (1900-1920) pop tunes. I sang Ives' "Circus Band" in high school. 11 parts, simultaneously in the keys of F# and C-Minor. Ives' later compositions were "controlled chaos." Not easy listening or performing, but remarkable achievements. He was okay, until Nakatomi Plaza...

We should be more upset that there's a US cruiser named after a decisive Confederate victory.

Well, when your claims start with "Know anyone with a disease?" OF COURSE WE'RE ***** SKEPTICAL.

I'm a fan...but I understand what he writes is for mass consumption in a specific cultural era, and tied to a visual media. I mentioned Prokofiev before...I'll put Williams' Star Wars score up against Alexander Nevsky any day (both are probably my favorite scores). But they both lose something outside the context of the films, and neither compares to, say, Ives' Symphony #4.

Exactly. Williams is not a pop/rock musician. The topic is pretty constrained, and you're not discussing it. And if you wanted to expand it to include true symphonic composers, there's a few I could think of that are much better than Williams.

I think you might be subject to selection bias, because the complex compositions don't get nearly as much exposure. I was surprised I couldn't find a Vai symphony on YouTube to share, and never heard Joel's piano concerto outside of buying the CD. Neither gets radio play, or is promoted on Spotify or iTunes. If all you ever hear is mass-marketed pop/rock, you'll never hear classical-level complexity. And there's definitely some I'd put up with Beethoven's Fuer Elise (hell, I'd put Joel's "Scene's From An Italian Restaurant" in that class), or Prokofiev's score for Aleksander Nevsky.

"A victory for white supremacists! What's happening to my country? #antifa" I know that tweet is coming. Haven't seen it yet, but it's coming.

One possible exception: Steve Vai. He's composing classical/rock fusion pieces that are pretty complex. Not the finest example of this work - for two-thirds the piece, the Holland Metropole is just a backing track, but it gives you an idea. The second disc of this set, it's much more classical pops, with far less shredding. And Billy Joel composed some piano suites in the classical style. They're not Prokofiev, but they're not bad either. And the Who, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie. And maybe Hendrix. Those are about the only ones I can think of, that in 100 years might be remembered in the same way as, say, a Schumann or Mahler are today.

So the guy who was a Russian agent worked for State? But there was no domestic spying on the Trump campaign, and Trump is leaking info on State's intel asset so the Russians will kill him to protect Trump's involvement with Russia...which was actually State? That's so byzantine, even the Byzantines would have looked at Abramson and said "Dude, you have issues..."