I found this article on Astrolada. Here is the URL: http://www.astrolada.com/articles/predic...music.html

Under the thread titled, "America Is a Sick Society," Eric the Green has provided an excellent reference to a book about neoliberalism.  The link is repeated below for those posters who missed it the first time:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...?CMP=fb_gu

Neoliberalism is the political/economic philosophy that has held sway in America, the United Kingdom, and indeed in much of the Western world since the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Only in Latin America was any political resistance offered to neoliberalism, and that has met with only mixed--and in some cases, ephemeral--success.

As a whole, neoliberal policies--privatization, deregulation, free trade, tax cuts, austerity, to name just a few--have been in force in Western economies for over 35 years, regardless of the party in power. Ronald Reagan was a neoliberal, though he would never have referred to himself as such, as the very root word "liberal" would have been anathema to his conservative constituents.  Bush 41 and 43 were also neoliberals.  Bill Clinton, too.  And, yes, even Obama.  Hillary Clinton would also have fit the bill had she been elected president.  Sadly, the only real challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy in the US has been the insurgent presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders, both of whom fell well short of overturning neoliberalism as a guiding political and economic philosophy.  And now, Trump is assembling an administration that, from all indications, threatens to send neoliberalism into hyper-drive. 

Make no mistake, neoliberalism is the old civic order that must be scuttled if America--and much of the West--is to ever regenerate itself politically and economically.  As a governing philosophy, it almost crumbled in the wake of the financial crisis.  The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Brexit were all challenges to neoliberal orthodoxy, each in its own way.  Yet neoliberalism lives on, and may enjoy a last desperate gasp with the policies and team that Donald Trump is now putting into place.

Who are the best leaders for the Democrats, which will make a comeback to power possible?

Should they be bold progressives, or mainstream compromisers?

Should they be Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, etc?

Or should they be Labor Sec. Perez, Gov. Cuomo, Tim Ryan, Sen. Manchin, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, et al?

Will it be important for our presidential candidate to have a good horoscope score? Or, in non-astrological layman's terms, someone who knows how to appeal to the American people? What does this look like? Who is the reverse Trump, or the new Obama/Bill Clinton? And not a Hillary or a Kerry or a Dukakis/Mondale/McGovern etc.?
(see the candidate scores here http://philosopherswheel.com/presidentialelections.html under who scored what)

Is someone from show biz, like Trump, the right answer to Trump? Seth Meyers, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Moore, or Stephen Colbert? (these are the best-scoring such alternatives from this realm so far)

Michael Moore has a disadvantage of Saturn born at his Nadir, and Colbert of a Saturn Return due in 2023-24.

Does appeal to the Rust Belt and the working class conflict with appeals to disadvantaged groups or "identity politics?" Why should there be a conflict?

Are there newcomers to the realm of presidential politics or on the horizon that might appeal, like Sen. Stabenow or Gov. Cooper? Gavin Newsom or Antonio Villaraigosa?

Eric Satt shared a link to the group: Democratic Open Forum.
18 hrs · 


The Electoral College was Founded, with Roots Grounded in Slavery!

James Madison, slave owner from Virginia and the nation's 4th President, proposed that we needed this Electoral College to give southern plantation owners, an equal shot at winning the White House. His fear (and other slave owners' fear) was that there were far more free, White males who could vote in the northern states and that they would control the presidency if each man received an equal vote.

First thing the framers of the Constitution did was count each slave as 3/5 of a person (instead of not being counted at all, which is how it should have been since they had no voting rights...The Three-Fifths Compromise). There were 500,000 slaves in the South. Counting 60% of their population towards votes and creating an Electoral College system that placed an inordinate number of Electors in the South, especially in Virginia, gave the them an unfair advantage towards the presidency. In fact, during the first 32 of 36 years after our Constitution was ratified, the presidency was won by a Virginian!! 

Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise and Electoral College.

Fast forward. Slavery ended in 1865 yet the institution of the Electoral College still exists. It's a holdover from a terrible time in our nation's past. Slavery is gone so why are we keeping this outdated relic and allowing it to decide Presidents?

In the last 16 years, we have seen two USA Presidents selected, not by the people but by the Electoral College - Bush and now Trump. The former was, by most accounts, an abysmal failure. I don't expect much better from the latter.

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-colleg...y-slavery/

Let's allow Americans to make decisions for America. Kill the Electoral College.

Eric Satt shared a link to the group: Democratic Open Forum.
18 hrs · 


The Electoral College was Founded, with Roots Grounded in Slavery!

James Madison, slave owner from Virginia and the nation's 4th President, proposed that we needed this Electoral College to give southern plantation owners, an equal shot at winning the White House. His fear (and other slave owners' fear) was that there were far more free, White males who could vote in the northern states and that they would control the presidency if each man received an equal vote.

First thing the framers of the Constitution did was count each slave as 3/5 of a person (instead of not being counted at all, which is how it should have been since they had no voting rights...The Three-Fifths Compromise). There were 500,000 slaves in the South. Counting 60% of their population towards votes and creating an Electoral College system that placed an inordinate number of Electors in the South, especially in Virginia, gave the them an unfair advantage towards the presidency. In fact, during the first 32 of 36 years after our Constitution was ratified, the presidency was won by a Virginian!! 

Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise and Electoral College.

Fast forward. Slavery ended in 1865 yet the institution of the Electoral College still exists. It's a holdover from a terrible time in our nation's past. Slavery is gone so why are we keeping this outdated relic and allowing it to decide Presidents?

In the last 16 years, we have seen two USA Presidents selected, not by the people but by the Electoral College - Bush and now Trump. The former was, by most accounts, an abysmal failure. I don't expect much better from the latter.

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Let's allow Americans to make decisions for America. Kill the Electoral College.

"Science is essential to addressing humanity's problems, but it cannot address the human root causes that lead to them.

We need to expose the false logic of our current systems and behaviours and create new ones; only spiritual and cultural transformations and new narratives, can deliver them."

Happy birthday, Tony Bennett. Older Silent Generation guy who keeps the spirit alive. I respect him for that, and his singing. #1 album with Lady Gaga recently.

In a time when America just elected a racist president, voting rights are taken away, unarmed blacks are shot by police, racial profiling is rampant, inequality growing, prisons full of people of color, and "social justice warriors" are put down, it's clear that we often forget our history, and are thus doomed to repeat it. Freedom is fragile in a nation that does not remember its past. Bryan Stephenson pointed out today on the Newshour that nations like German, Rwanda and South Africa have become more free by facing their past of tyranny and racial hatred. The USA has refused to do so, and still suffers these inequities.

EJI Announces Plans to Build Museum and National Lynching Memorial



http://eji.org/news/eji-announces-plans-...g-memorial

August 16, 2016


MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA - The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) plans to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration. Both the museum and memorial will be located in Montgomery, Alabama.

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration will be situated within 150 yards of one of the South's most prominent slave auction sites and the Alabama River dock and rail station where tens of thousands of enslaved black people were trafficked. The museum will contain high-tech exhibits, artifacts, recordings, and films, as well as comprehensive data and information on lynching and racial segregation. The museum will connect the history of racial inequality with contemporary issues of mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and police violence.

The Memorial to Peace and Justice will sit on six acres of land in Montgomery and become the nation's first national memorial to victims of lynching. The massive structure will contain the names of over 4000 lynching victims engraved on concrete columns representing each county in the United States where racial terror lynchings took place. Counties across the country will be invited to retrieve duplicate columns with the names of each county's lynching victims to be placed in every county.

In February 2015, EJI released Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, a ground-breaking report that documents more than 4000 lynchings of black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950. EJI identified several hundred more lynchings than had previously been recognized. For a copy of the full report, please contact EJI. A summary of the report is available here.
Racial terrorism forced millions of black people to flee the South during the first half of the 20th century and played a major role in shaping the demographic geography of America by creating large black populations in urban communities in the North and West.

The national memorial to lynching victims will be one of the nation's most ambitious projects relating to the history of racial terror lynchings. EJI has purchased six acres of land atop a rise that overlooks the City of Montgomery and out to the American South, where terror lynchings were most prevalent.


The memorial is constructed of hundreds of floating columns on which the names of lynching victims from over 800 counties across the United States will be inscribed. The classical structure will be surrounded by a park, where duplicate columns engraved with the names of lynching victims in each county will be placed until they are claimed by each county and permanently installed in the places where racial terror lynchings took place. The memorial will be dynamic, and seeks to inspire local efforts to make the history of racial terror in America more visible and tangible. The memorial is being designed in partnership with MASS Design Group, an award-winning architectural firm based in Boston.

After the release of Lynching in America, EJI initiated several cultural projects designed to deepen understanding about racial terror in America. EJI is placing markers at lynching sites across the country in an effort to change the landscape of the American South, which is saturated with iconography and memorials romanticizing the Confederacy and the effort to preserve slavery.

EJI also launched a project to collect soil at lynching sites and create an exhibit that tells the stories of lynching victims. Hundreds of people have begun to actively engage in community remembrance projects around the era of lynching.

For an Idealist, at least... High/1T (first movement), Awakening/2T (second movement), Unraveling/3T  (third movement) Crisis/4T (fourth movement). With score!





from notes on the YouTube site:


pf: Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by  Leonard Bernstein

The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem or tone poem. The work was premièred at the Vigadó Concert Hall, Budapest in 1889, but was not well received. Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for two early performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.

In its final form, the symphony has four movements:

0:02 - Langsam, schleppend (Slowly, dragging) Immer sehr gemächlich (very restrained throughout) D major

16:27 - Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (Moving strongly, but not too quickly), Recht gemächlich (restrained), a Trio—a Ländler

25:30 - Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen (Solemnly and measured, without dragging), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise (very simple, like a folk-tune), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang (once again somewhat more agitated, as at the start)—a funeral march based on the children's song "Frère Jacques" (or "Bruder Jacob")

35:55 - Stürmisch bewegt – Energisch (Stormily agitated – Energetic)

What happened to the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" paradigm (China faces Muslim irredentism in vast, mineral-rich Xinjiang) being applied so determinedly to Russia?

Chinese state tabloid warns Donald Trump: 'Pride goes before a fall'

A Communist party-controlled newspaper has launched a searing attack on Donald Trump after the president-elect threatened a realignment of his country’s policies towards China, warning the US president-elect: “Pride goes before a fall.”
The Global Times, a notoriously rambunctious state-run tabloid, was writing after Trump reignited a simmering row with Beijing by suggesting he might recognise Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province, unless Beijing agreed a new “deal” with his administration.
  
Trump’s move came less than a fortnight after the billionaire infuriated Beijing by holding a 10-minute telephone conversation with Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen.

In a tough-talking editorial published on Tuesday the newspaper, which sometimes reflects official views, claimed the “calculating businessman” might feel he had pulled off a shrewd manoeuvre by “seizing China’s fate by the throat”.
“However, the truth is this inexperienced president-elect probably has no knowledge of what he’s talking about. He has overestimated the US’ capability of dominating the world and fails to understand the limitation of US powers in the current era,” it warned, calling on the Chinese government to respond with “surprise moves”.

Trump’s comments revealed he “despises China strategically”, the newspaper added, warning: “Pride goes before a fall. Even before entering the White House, he has already put his cards over blackmailing China on the table … What reason do we have to accept a most unfair and humiliating deal from Trump?”




Speaking to the same newspaper, a Chinese scholar sought to hammer home the point. “[Trump’s] remarks have not only jeopardised world peace, but also upset the Beijing-Washington relationship ... he will pay for his mistakes,” warned Niu Xinchun from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Jessica Chen Weiss, an expert in Chinese foreign policy and politics from Cornell University, said the increasingly tough language coming out of Beijing was part of a campaign to “educate” Trump and his team before his inauguration on 20 January.

If the president-elect refused to change tack, behind-the-scenes countermeasures might be rolled out to ensure the Republican understood the dangers of challenging China.

Weiss said Beijing would now be looking for “pressure points that Trump might be responsive to”, particularly on the economic front. “You can imagine China making its harder for American businesses in China to operate; nothing official, but certain actions that might serve as a warning to the US business community that this isn’t going to end well if Trump continues,” she said.

“I don’t think we are seeing that yet – I think it is likely to wait. It may well wait until Trump takes specific actions. It’s one thing to question a policy or talk about revising it and it is another to take actions that indicate greater recognition for Taiwan as a sovereign state,” Weiss added.

Experts say Beijing has an array of weapons in its armoury with which it could respond to what it considers Trump’s “provocations”.
They include weakening China’s currency, the renminbi, in order to hurt US exporters, or seeking warming ties with North Korea and pumping economic aid into Pyongyang.

There are fears in Taiwan, an independently and democratically ruled island to which Beijing lays claim, that it could face severe economic or political retaliation from China before the US is targeted.

Possible measures against Taiwan include a diplomatic offensive which would see Beijing seek to seduce Taipei’s already meagre stock of 22 allies which include Haiti, Paraguay and São Tomé and Príncipe, one of Africa’s smallest nations.

Weiss said it remained unclear whether Trump would carry his “wild talk” on China into the White House. But the tycoon’s arrival in power had raised the prospect of a dramatic and potentially catastrophic falling-out between the world’s two largest economies.

“It could be a rupture in the US-China relationship that we haven’t seen yet,” she said. “I’m not at all optimistic”.