The blob that’s  consuming our nation and the world.

You will not get out of me alive.

Even if Donald Trump is elected president, which sadly seems increasingly unlikely, he’ll be dealing with a pernicious force that will work tirelessly to crush him and his initiatives.  Orwell called it “IngSoc,” Newspeak for “English socialism. Bickerstaff prefers a more direct name for it, “The Blob,” which will not only smother all of Trump’s attempts to dismantle or emasculate the administrative state in the US, but similarly abroad. Nepotism will play a vital part.

Consider:

From: James Linen <linen@mac.com>
Date: August 4, 2024 at 1:14:39 AM EDT
To: Jamie Linen <linen@mac.com>
Subject: Must be a coincidence

…So Trump is the danger to democracy??

One Big Happy Family —

*YES, THE GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN USED TO WORK FOR GEORGE SOROS.*

*YES, CALIF GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM IS NANCY PELOSI’S NEPHEW

* YES, ADAM SHIFF’S SISTER IS MARRIED TO ONE OF GEORGE SOROS’ SONS.

* YES, JOHN KERRY’S DAUGHTER IS MARRIED TO A MULLAH’S SON IN IRAN.

* YES, HILLARY’S DAUGHTER CHELSEA IS MARRIED TO GEORGE SOROS’ NEPHEW.

* YES, ABC NEWS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER IAN CAMERON IS MARRIED TO SUSAN RICE, OBAMA’S FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER.

* YES, CBS PRESIDENT DAVID RHODES IS THE BROTHER OF BEN RHODES, OBAMA’S DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS.

* YES, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT CLAIRE SHIPMAN IS MARRIED TO JAY CARNEY, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY.

* YES, ABC NEWS AND UNIVISION REPORTER MATTHEW JAFFE IS MARRIED TO KATIE HOGAN, OBAMA’S FORMER DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY

* YES, ABC PRESIDENT BEN SHERWOOD IS THE BROTHER OF ELIZABETH SHERWOOD, OBAMA’S FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER.

* YES, CNN VP VIRGINIA MOSELEY IS MARRIED TO TOM NIDES, HILLARY CLINTON’S FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY.

THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL A “STACKED DECK”. IF YOU HAD A HUNCH THE NEWS MEDIA WAS SOMEWHAT RIGGED AND YOU COULDN’T PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT, THIS MIGHT HELP YOU SOLVE THE PUZZLE.

Now you know why no one is investigated. They all have their hands in the cookie jar!  You might remember James Comey who investigated the Clinton email scandal and the Clinton Foundation, and made the final decision to not recommend prosecution by the DOJ.

It turns out that the Clinton Foundation was audited by the law firm DLA Piper. One of the executives there was in charge of the Clinton Foundation audit.

Who was it? Peter Comey, James Comey’s brother. Peter Comey held an executive position with the Washington law firm that did the audit of the Clinton foundation in 2015.  Peter Comey was officially DLA Piper “Senior Director of Real Estate Operations for the Americas,” in 2015 when the Clinton Foundation scandals first broke and Hillary was preparing her Presidential campaign.  Not only was DLA Piper, the firm where Comey’s brother worked involved in the audit of the Clinton Foundation, but according to the foundation’s donor records, DLA Piper has given between $50 – 100k to the Foundation

It gets even more cozy.  DLA Piper executive Douglas Emhoff is taking an extended leave of absence from the firm. Who is Douglas Emhoff?  He is the husband of KAMALA HARRIS! Just a coincidence? You can’t make this stuff up!

And it only gets worse.  This “Family Tree” will make your head spin. THE SWAMP IS DEEP!!

Dominion (voting machine provider) serves 40% of the US market. It is in 30 states – – The state of Texas rejected the machines.

– Admiral Peter Neffenger is on Biden’s transition team.

– Neffenger was the President of the board of Smartmatic

– Smartmatic (another voting machine supplier) entered into an agreement with Dominion in 2009 UK

– Smartmatic counted votes in Venezuela

– Smartmatic is connected to Philippine voter fraud

– Smartmatic is run by Lord Mark Malloch Brown who works for George Soros (he and Brown are life-long friends)

– Brown chairs the Boards of a number of non-profit boards including the Open Society Foundation.

– Brown chairs the Centre for Global Development.

– Open society of course is owned by George Soros

– Smartmatic partnered with DLA Piper Global

– Douglas C. Emhoff works at DLA Piper Global

– Douglass C. Emhoff is Kamala Harris’s husband

– Guess who owns Dominion? – -Blum Capital Partners, L.P.

– Guess who is on the board for the company? — Richard Blum.

– Richard C. Blum is Dianne Feinstein’s husband.

– Nancy Pelosi’s husband is also a major investor

– An aide to Nancy Pelosi, Nadeam Elshami, was hired by Dominion Voting Systems

And it goes on…..

– Dominion Voting Systems is listed on the Clinton Foundation website.

– Dominion Voting is listed as a $25,000 -$50,000 donor to the Clinton Foundation in 2014 by The Washington Post

– Georgia Governor Kemp used Dominion Voting after Texas and Florida rejected them

– Dominion has a lobbyist named Jared Thomas

– Jared Thomas was Governor Brian Kemp’s chief of staff and press secretary from 2012 to 2015

You must remember the Feinstein-Kavanaugh-Soros connections to understand this next information:

– Debra Katz (Christine Ford’s lawyer) worked for George-Soros at the Open Society Foundation.

– Debra Katz (Christine Ford’s lawyer) also worked at Project on Government Oversight (POGO).

– POGO is funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

– POGO is the co-signer of the letter Diane Feinstein presented against Kavanaugh’s nomination.

– Kamala Harris did not prosecute OneWest Bank for their fraud when she had the authority – Soros owned OneWest Bank.

– Now you know why a woman who placed 7th in her own State when running for President is now VP!

God save the USA and all democracies.

Thanks to GWR.

This poem was a favorite of Bickerstaff’s father.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Clois

ter

Robert Browning

1812-1889

i.
Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
​What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims—
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

ii.
At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What’s the Latin name for “parsley”?
What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout?

iii.
Phew! We’ll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps—
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

iv.
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank,
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs
—Can’t I see his dead eye glow
​Bright as ’twere a Barbary corsair’s?
That is, if he’d let it show.

v.
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork across he lays
Never, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I, the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp;
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp!

vi.
Oh, those melons! If he’s able
We’re to have a feast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot’s table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep ’em close-nipped on the sly!

vii.
There’s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails.
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of Heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to Hell a Manichee?

viii.
Or, my scrofulous French novel,
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe.
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?

ix.
Or, the Devil!—one might venture
Pledge one’s soul yet slily leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he’d miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratiâ
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!

Better than watching paint dry . . .

But not much. Bickerstaff has been waiting a long time for someone to dig up the Vox-Turnabout masters and/or job parts of this superb recording for remastering.  Alas, his hopes have fallen on deaf ears, as it were. Meanwhile, you can get a taste of it on a YouTube video giving us the first movement only, accompanied by surface noise and distortion, with the extra bonus of watching the LP spin round and round. A shame, because the engineering of the original was top notch, as was noted by the venerable Fanfare Magazine at the time of its release.

In any event we patiently await the total remastering of this recording, which also includes Rachmaninoff’s gorgeous Vocalise.

Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, op. 45, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Donald Johanos, Vox Turnabout.

No taste, no brains no conscience.

Radical drag queens are completely wrapped up in their sexuality, which explains their utter lack of objectivity. For them it is only me, me, me, us, us, us. Thus the vandalism seen below,  taking the form of a drag diorama of Leonardo’s Last Supper.

Many people worldwide have expressed outrage over this classless and offensive act, but we may be assured those braindead drag queens will never express even the slightest remorse, most likely because they are unaware of the criticisms, inhabiting the microcosm they do.

Furthermore, even if they were made aware of the outrage they’ve caused, they will react by using their tried and true tactic, hurling the charges at their critics: racists, fascists, Hitlerians, you get the picture. These perpetual adolescents will not stop until they are stopped.

What’s my line – Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

Your Tatler’s favorite TV show is What’s My Line from the 1950s. Not only are the panelists witty and urbane, they are just plain brilliant in the way they discern what a contestant does for a living, often with only the scantiest evidence. Another segment of the show featured “Mystery Guests,” in which the panelists, wearing blindfolds, were charged with determining who that guest was.

The Mystery Guests comprised some of the most illustrious figures in the US; in the arts, business, sports, and politics. Still, it was a real surprise in one episode to see Bishop Fulton J Sheen walking onto the sound stage. His eminence acquitted himself well, but the most riotous moments belonged to panelist Arlene Francis, as you will see in this video.

One of the great ones, Arthur Rubinstein.

I was fortunate enough to hear the great man play twice, the first time at a fund raiser for the Musicians Pension Fund in Philharmonic Hall in New York, with George Szell conducting the New York Philharmonic. They played Mozart K. 466, the  Piano Concerto in D Minor, my favorite.

The second time was near the end of Rubinstein’s life, a solo concert at Symphony Hall in Boston. It was a common belief at the time Rubinstein lacked the depth and chops to play late-Beethoven (as far as I know, he never recorded them. Thus it was a bit of a surprise to see Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 111, the last, on the program. The piece is murderously difficult, but the old man (he was nearing 90) played it with such aplomb I still hear in my head a half-century later.

Here the master plays the B-Flat Minor Scherzo by his beloved Chopin. Enjoy.