Lucinda Williams (Live), Car Wheels on a Gravel Road tour, 1998, Austin City Limits

Lucinda at the peak of her glorious powers, touring her Masterpiece, with a CRACKING band bringing the songs to life ... she plays nearly all of Car Wheels, and the selection of older classics she chose to mix in to the set was spot-on ... this concert is STELLAR ... absolute must see for all music fans ...

The links to 'Playlists' of Youtube vid's doesn't post right on DU (only the first song will auto-play), but if you just click This Here that'll queue up the entire set of 16 songs ... and you can thank me later. I have the actual DVD and the sound is much better than Youtube, but, this is what we got, doesn't sound BAD at all but the real disc ... sounds freaking KILLER

My decidedly Un-PC Sunday Dinner ... I'm grillin' a rack of St. Louis Style Ribs

My decidedly Un-PC Sunday Dinner ... I'm grillin' a rack of St. Louis Style Ribs

Sorry my porcine friends ... I try to eat you only 1 time a month or so ... It's the best I can do ... cause you're delicious creatures ... wish you were treated better

So today it's Ribs, along with grilled-in-the-husk corn on the cob (they'll have butter, salt and pepper), and baked potatoes (they'll have butter, sour cream, chives, salt & pepper + some cayenne).

I used indirect style on my Weber, with just one of the two charcoal bins filled (using Kingsford Briquettes, and just before grilling, threw on a few chunks 'o Hickory wood) so as to keep Temps low and slow, and to get some nice smoke going.

Threw on the rack ... temp was running at 250F for first 1:00, and at that point, threw on the corn (after a 15 min saltwater bath in the kitchen). The bbq temp dropped to about 200F as I had bottom vents almost closed, and the corn of course has lots of moisture ... then I let the ribs and corn smoke/grill indirectly for about another 1:45.

At that point, I removed Ribs from grill and put 'em in dutch oven along w/chunks of Honeycrisp Apples, with a foil seal in addition to the lid, in order to soften 'em up by some steaming action. They're presently roasting at 225F in my indoor oven for about 2:30, along with a couple of large Bakers, rubbed in butter and kosher salt. The corn has remained on the grill as it's only running at 200F still, and corn in the husk can basically cook forever at low heat like that, all the while subtly soaking up smoky/hickory flavor.

15 mins before the end of the end of 2:30 that the ribs are in the oven, I remove corn (still in husk) from grill and put it in the oven, then I fire up about 20 more fresh briquettes in the chimney starter, so I'll have something HOT to work with for the last step.

Once those are hot (about 15 mins), I dump 'em into the charcoal bin, along with any remaining ones from the first go (the ones already in the bin). I then remove the rack of ribs from the oven and brush them with some delicious smoky/sweet Barbeque Sauce (going /with Mrs. Renfro's Chipotle Barbeque Sauce today).

Then I crank heat of oven up to 325F to finish potatoes while I do the rest of my 'stuff', but remove the corn, and remove the ears from their husks, and brush them with olive oil.

At this point, I grill the exposed corn, along with the sauced ribs, indirectly (but with relatively high heat, I open all the vents on the grill) for about 15 mins ... this is to set the sauce on the ribs, and get the corn good and hot, too.

At this point, the fresh charcoal should be quite hot, so I dump it from the bin onto half of the barbie, then grill the corn over the direct heat, about 5 mins per side, with the ribs still off to the side. Then I switch their places, with the ribs for the first time 'meat side down' in order to sear on the barbeque sauce, about 4-5 mins on this piece.

Then ... after this final sear of the sauce, we're ready to eat!

Pic of the ribs shortly before going back on grill, after some time in the oven w/the apples:

Why Trump tweets in 3rd Person ... I know some of you already know, but ...

He does this because he's hoping news people will read his tweets verbatim (which they do), and thus (some) listeners will perceive what they're hearing ... as though it's 'factual' rather than just Trumps own claim.

Contrast:
"Nobody has shown that I colluded with Russia"
vs
"Nobody has shown that Donald Trump colluded with Russia"

... when read verbatim by a newsperson. The former case, it's obviously Trump saying it. The latter case comes off sounding like the opinion of a third party, and hence 'more valid' in the listeners mind.

The Case for Collusion, by Mr_Lebowski ... using known facts and simple logic ...

Look, it's not short, sorry ... but this is not a simple story, so bear with me. I think this is the 'illegal conspiracy case', in a nutshell (insofar as a nutshell ... can possibly be constructed):

After the Trump Tower meeting, involving Trumps SON, and CAMPAIGN CHAIR (i.e. the currently imprisoned Paul Manafort), 'Dirt on Hillary', was to be 'provided' by the Russians, in exchange for Sanctions Relief (of course the Russians would've never been so dumb as to simply 'hand over the dirt', it was always to be 'released')

That is, if the Trump campaign told the Russians in the meeting what they wanted to hear about Sanctions, AKA 'Adoptions', the 'Dirt' would be forthcoming.

Clearly Jr. and Manafort told them what they wanted to hear, as evidenced by NUMEROUS subsequent events.

These 'releases' were to come courtesy of the Russian Government, as part of their SUPPORT for Donald Trump (literally factually known/admitted to in an email).

The first, most obvious subsequent evidence of an advancing conspiracy was that Russian Intelligence, operating under the Guccifer 2.0 moniker, within a WEEK of the meeting, stood up the DCLeaks website, and very soon after began releasing STOLEN DOCUMENTS (a felony) from the DNC.

Within about another month, another tranche of stolen DNC documents, appeared on Wikileaks. We know for a FACT that long-time Trump promoter (and long-time Manafort partner, in an infamous 80's-era legal firm) Roger Stone, was in contact with Wikileaks, and predicted on numerous occasions ... WHAT Wikileaks was about to release.

And then we have here ... leading up to the election ... Trump just SHAMELESSLY pimping 'Wikileaks' ... And what was the main 'negative' in these leaks?

Well, to be brief, the STOLEN (by a foreign adversary, in cahoots with POTUS candidate Trump's campaign) DNC docs appeared to 'favor' Hillary (a lifelong Democrat) over Bernie Sanders (who eschewed the party his whole career, though he voted with them) ... This was a CLEAR Russian/Trump PLOT to get Bernie voters to stay home, rather than voting for Hill.

So, using MILITARY GRADE Russian Psy-Ops and Information Warfare techniques, leveraging STOLEN Demographics and other data from Facebook (stolen by an Associate Professor from the University of St. Petersburg, Russia, I might add), Bernie-voters and other Undecided's were specifically targeted and inundated on Social Media with carefully crafted Propaganda stories based VERY loosely (i.e. much exaggerated) on STOLEN information.

There's also considerable evidence the Russians stole Democratic Party STRATEGY docs fairly late in the campaign, with all the numbers in all the precincts, and which one's Hill needed to focus on to win, and handed them over to Cambridge Analytica, who then told the Trump Campaign to dramatically change strategies. Which they famously did per Brad Parscale, acting like it was just his personal brilliance that led to this shift, when in fact it was really STOLEN DNC DATA.

In the end, the election was decided by approx. 70,000 votes across the States of Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (or maybe one of those was Wisconsin, I forget offhand).

Looking at the whole situation, it's clear that there were numerous criminal (bordering on treasonous) acts by Trump and his Campaign ... and the meeting itself, along with Trumps subsequent RELENTESS pimping of Wikileaks (i.e. "the Russian's Hillary Dirt" ) .... is the proof.

He knew Russia was helping him, he knew they were releasing docs through Wikileaks, and he knew the goal was to get Bernie voters (and any 'weak' Hillary supporter) to stay home. PERIOD. THAT is the collusion. They used STOLEN DOCUMENTS, and STOLEN Facebook Demographics Data, stolen by a Foreign Adversary ... Russia ... Who in exchange wanted Sanctions (effectively costing them 10's of Billion$ in mostly ill-gotten gains) dropped by a New Trump Regime. And it's plain as f***ing DAY ... What Really Happened.

And per Trump long-time Consigliere Cohen (dating back to 2006), Trump was WELL AWARE of what was being done by foreign adversaries, on his behalf. LOCK THEM UP!!!

Thought experiment I'm posting on FB to a RW group I'm in: Imagine it was ClintonRussia instead!

I have a little thought experiment for you ... Imagine Clinton had won the election. Imagine she is a rich real-estate investor and owns a 'Clinton Tower'. Imagine the RNC and Steve Bannon's emails and documents were hacked by Russian Military, and damaging information spread across the internet about Trump, in the months before the election, in order to help Clinton (whom we KNOW was the favored candidate of Putin).

Imagine she won the Electoral Vote, but lost the Popular vote to Trump by 3,000,000, but that she is now also facing an investigation into charges that her campaign officials, and possibly she herself, conspired to spread round the aforementioned stolen Trump documents and communications. Let's also imagine the investigation is being led by HIGHLY respected former 12-year FBI Director (and member of the Democratic Party, so she has no partisan excuse for rejecting his findings).

The experiment is this ... let's take a look at what is actually publicly known about the possible Clinton/Russia conspiracy, and consider just HOW MANY of us, if the shoe were on the other foot ... would honestly proclaim 'there's no evidence!'.

So, on to the known facts:

We know that Russia orchestrated a massive theft of information from the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, and used that information to help Hillary Clinton win the election.

We know that Clinton publicly asked Russia to do exactly what it did — to hack Trump’s emails — and we know that Clinton repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin, at considerable political cost, in the aftermath. We know that a prominent Clinton associate, Terry McAulliff, appeared to have advance warning of the release of the hacked emails.

We know that the willingness to cooperate with the Russians wasn’t an idiosyncratic musing of Clinton’s, but suffused the top ranks of her campaign: Clinton’s inner circle — including Podesta, Terry McAulliff, and Chelsea Clinton. — eagerly took a meeting with Russian operatives promising dirt on Trump. And we know Clinton herself dictated the statement lying about the purpose of the Clinton Tower meeting.

We know, from Clinton’s own testimony, that she fired the director of the FBI to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. We know that Clinton has wanted to fire both her attorney general and her deputy attorney general because she feels they’ve failed to protect her from the investigation. Tellingly, the Clinton administration has moved from arguing that the president did not obstruct justice to arguing that by definition, the president cannot obstruct justice.

We know in that in 2008, Chelsea Clinton said of the Clinton organization, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” We know that in 2014, Chelsea Clinton added, “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” We know that from 2003 to 2017, “buyers connected to Russia or former Soviet republics made 86 all-cash sales — totaling nearly $109 million — at 10 Clinton-branded properties in South Florida and New York City.”

We know that due to her past bankruptcies and general financial profligacy, there was only one bank willing to make loans to Hillary Clinton in recent years: Deutsche Bank. We know Deutsche made a number of very sizable (9 figure) loans to her during her time in the financial wilderness. And we also know that this bank has been fined a SIZABLE amount of money by regulators ...
We know that Deutsche was fined many, many millions of $$$ that they were found to have been laundering money ... And this was the behalf of wait for it ... yup, RUSSIANS.

We know that the time period of Deutsche Bank's offences coincides almost perfectly with when they were also handing Clinton money like it grew on trees, the only bank that would TOUCH her at the time.

We know that the recently (and quite suddenly) retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's SON ... WORKED at Deutsche, and took part in getting at least one of Clinton's large loans approved.

We know that John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager (and now-jailed for serious financial crimes, including offering a position in Clinton's administration to a banker, in exchange for a $6M loan), had ties to the Kremlin and was deeply in debt to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch closely connected to Putin. We know Podesta was in communication with Deripaska’s team during the election, and that he asked, of his powerful position in Clinton’s campaign, “How do we use [it] to get whole?”

We know that Russia’s efforts to help Clinton went far beyond hacked emails — they included social media campaigns to inflame racial divisions on her behalf, armies of bots meant to elevate news stories helping her and hurting Trump, and even efforts to compromise state voting machines.

We know that the Clinton campaign interfered in the Democratic National Committee’s drafting of its platform to soften the language on Russia and Ukraine. We know that Chelsea Clinton's husband sought a secret communications channel with Russians so the US government couldn’t hear their negotiations. We know that Clinton has personally fought both her administration and her party to stop sanctions punishing Russia for electoral interference.

We know that Clinton's pick for National Security Advisor Terry McAulliff, has pled guilty to charges he lied to the FBI about his communications with Russia during the campaign, in exchange for his cooperation/testimony. A highly-placed DNC official (and long-time Clinton crony) has also pled guilty to similar charges. Also pleading out to Russia-related lying to the FBI was her campaign's top Foreign Relations advisor, Huma Abedin. Interestingly, Ms. Abedin, in April 2016, while drunk in the UK, blabbed to an Australian Intelligence officer that 'Russia Has Dirt On Donald Trump', which is what is believed to have prompted the start of a formal investigation into a possible Clinton conspiracy with Russia to influence the election.

That said, it's also possible that information about suspicious financial transactions between known-Russian entities and the Clinton campaign, reported by the Intel Services of an unknown Baltic State ally, was involved in the decision to start investigating.

We also know that Clinton Admin official Chelsea Clinton's Husband had to revise her Security Clearance forms over 10 times, in large part in order to include more and more of her contacts with Russia-related persons in the past months and years that she'd conveniently 'forgotten'.

We know that there is no single issue that has bedeviled the Clinton administration as long or as much as Clinton’s connections to Russia. We know that since the election, Clinton has bucked both her party and decades of American foreign policy to try to protect Russia from sanctions, pull American support back from both NATO and the European Union, and forge a closer personal relationship with Putin. We know Clinton insisted on the Helsinki meeting with Putin over the objections of her staff and despite the absence of any clear agenda.

There are also many more possible elements to this story but that remain murky at this time, which include, but are not limited to: Suspicious communications between a Server in Trump Tower and the shady Russian outfit Alfa Bank

Shout out to the original article that most of this compilation of facts came from:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/16/17573692/trump-putin-meeting-helsinki-mueller-russia

What do you guys think?

Pretty sure Trump has significant scoliosis ... not that it matters all that much but ...

I just realized it for the first time with all the pics from the UK recently. Big reason being, much to my chagrin, I have the exact same case, though not as severe (by the time I'm 70, if I live that long, it probably will be) ... but I have the same curvature where my left shoulder is distinctly lower than my right, so ... spine curves left.

Not only is the shoulder 'height' obvious when you look at Trump, but the way his tie always hangs shows it as well. Same happens to me.

Not a big deal, just kinda weird I just now noticed ... though my own resemblance to Trump is disconcerting ...

Sorry to show this guy, but ... just to illustrate what I mean ... his tie always hangs like that, though it's pretty pronounced in this shot ...

Came up w/the Perfect Trump Analogy dealing with NK/China/Russia ... Gene Hackman in 'Get Shorty'

A wannabe and egomaniac, in debt up to his eyeballs ... and completely out of his depth ...

And NK/China/Russia are the late, great Dennis Farina's character ... REAL MF'ING GANGSTERS ...

*** NSFW WARNING ****

Also, Hackman gets his ass kicked ... fair warning ...

Eventually Jordan will fall back to blaming 'the gays' for their 'recruitment'

and claiming he too was a victim of their aggressive 'agenda' of trying to 'corrupt our youth'. What was he to DO, after all? They were SOOOOO powerful, back in 1986.

Nevermind the fact that he denied knowing f***ing ANYTHING about it ... for DAYS after the story emerged. Until he was exposed as a liar.

With the news being where it is at this point ... other than possibly just blaming the Coach for not doing enough ... it's now become his only play.

And he knows the brain-dead knuckle-dragging Trump/Faux Cult Members will instantly forget his lies, once he starts outright pandering to their preconceived ideas about how all teh gheyz are really just sex perverts, looking to corrupt our youth ...

I won't be surprised to see this angle start TOMORROW, frankly.

Who remembers the band Sister Hazel?

You know ... the CA Bay Area's 'Liberal' History ... can be a real trip sometimes ...

Came across this just now, randomly reading articles as I'm wont to do ... and as a proud native of the iconic SF Bay Area and fierce liberal and environmentalist ... and someone who's seen about a 10,000 'Mason-McDuffie' signs in my day ... I found it pretty damn ... jarring, let's just say?

http://www.alamedamagazine.com/May-2017/The-Real-Cause-of-Gentrification/index.php