This week's Al Franken podcast is a treat because the guest is for Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. As readers of these pages will recall, I've written about him at length because of my long-time friendship with his uncle John Kander II, who I met back in summer camp at Camp Nebagamon (where I also knew Jason's father Steve, though not very well. And where his great-uncle John Kander also went -- before going to Broadway to write the musicals Cabaret and Chicago). So, now you have a chance to him from him directly and not just read me yammering about the guy. It's a very enjoyable, interesting conversation mainly dealing with veterans conditions, but in a surprisingly entertaining and often funny way. Also in the conversation is the Bryan Meyer, Chief Executive Officer from the Veterans Community Project. This is the link here that they give for donating.
Here's what Al has to say about the podcast -- "Sometimes I like to say that The Al Franken Podcast is just like The Daily, only without the resources of The New York Times. This episode I have the jump on The Times – because of my friendship with Jason Kander, former MO Sec. of State. Kander is an Afghanistan War vet who nearly pulled off a miracle in the 2016 race for MO Senate, losing by just 3 pts. (Thanks Comey!) In a state where Hillary lost by 18%, Jason ran an inspired, almost perfect race. (Jason’s the guy who did the pro-gun-control ad, assembling an AR-15 assault weapon BLINDFOLDED)" [Side Note: I posted the video when it was initially released, but here it is for perspective, and for those who may have missed it.)
A Rising Democratic Star, Kander was widely considered a potential 2020 Democratic nominee for President. Instead he chose to run for mayor of his hometown, Kansas City. Raising a shitload (technical term) of campaign cash and lapping his opponents in the polls, he was considered a shoe-in. Then Jason shocked the political world by dropping out of the mayoral race to address the PTSD that had been dominating his life for twelve years.
Jason and I discuss this signature wound of the Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam and all) Wars and his efforts to heal himself and help other vets whose needs include housing and other services. An inspiring episode that The Daily just couldn’t handle.
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We have two more videos of the Chad Mitchell Trio upcoming, and this one today is an especially interesting and fun one related to their various incarnations. It's a reunion for a sort of a documentary-ish PBS television special in 1987. As I mentioned, Chad Mitchell left the group himself, in 1964. He was replaced by John Denver, and the group became known as the just Mitchell Trio. In the late 1960s, the other two core members -- Mike Kobluk and Joe Frazier -- departed the group, as well, over a period of a few years and also left the music industry. While they were in turn replaced, Denver eventually left too for his highly-successful solo career. And the Mitchell Trio at this point had three totally different members than they started out with. Then two decades after leaving the group to try for his own solo career, which was only moderately successful, Chad Mitchell reunited with Kobiuk and Frazier for the TV special, which is the subject of this video. They're terrific together, in great voice, even after all that distance of time, but what's especially fun is that that's not the only reunion in this reunion video -- because Chad Mitchell's replacement John Denver joins them, as well. Mitchell gives a very affectionate introduction and then graciously walks off to let the second incarnation of the trio perform together as they all those years earlier. I have to believe that he eventually returned and that all four members of the "trio" sang together at some point in the show, but this is all I've been able to track down. Still, it's a treat to see. MSNBC had a remarkable clip of a longer interview they'll run tonight between correspondent Richard Engle and former Ukraine prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko who replaced the corrupt one who Joe Biden pushed to have removed, Viktor Shokin. The short version of this clip: Lutsenko said 1) he re-opened the investigation that his predecessor (Shokin, who Biden helped get fired) had closed, 2) he then investigated then claims and found NO evidence of wrongdoing of Ukraine law by either Joe Biden or his son, and 3) he was contacted "about 10 times" by Rudy Giuliiani.
Far more important to this last point is that prosecutor Lutsenko didn't just say he had been contacted about 10 times by Giuliani -- but added that these contacts weren't all on this one issue but other politics, too. To him, the way he said it came across like he thought this would diminish Giuliani's actions, not understanding that in the United States this actually made it worse. (It wasn't that he seemed to be covering for Giuliani, but trying to put it in perspective for Americans -- but from a Ukrainian point of view, not an American one. I believe that they will be running the full interview tonight (Friday) on NBC Nightly News. I suspect it will be on their NBC News website. When they ran this clip on MSNBC this morning, Engle was on-screen along with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. And after the clip, McFaul got the first question. But before answering he said, "I just wanted to congratulate Richard on being able to track down Lutsenko" and getting him to talk. Yes, Richard Engle is wonderful. One of the best foreign correspondents I've seen. This is a remarkable item posted by CNN. I find it profoundly meaningful. Keep in mind, these are the very people who will have to vote to acquit Trump in the Senate if he is impeached -- and yet this many not only refuse to defend him, but refuse to even comment about the whistleblower complaint.
This supports what I've written in the past, and even said only last night to a friend -- while I think it highly likely that Trump would not get convicted by the Republican Senate if he's impeached, I am not remotely as convinced by most pundits, elected officials and people in general that this is a "given." What I've said is that as highly likely as it is, and the way I would bet (right now) if forced to...we don't know the evidence yet. And if the evidence is SO blatant, SO damning, SO harmful that it can't be ignored (which this Ukraine revelation is leading to) -- and could even be damaging to a senators career (especially with an election in November, 2020) by voting to acquit and seem to be protecting a criminal or even putting America at risk -- then it is not unreasonable to think that there could be enough Republican senators (and only 20 are needed out of 53) who would vote to convict. I'm not saying this is likely. It isn't. But we don't know the evidence yet, and how deep this will all lead. But what we do know is that all these Republican senators below right now are refusing to defend Trump to the extent that most are refusing to even comment. The Democratic primary race is contentious, though not bitter (at this point -- and points in the future, hopefully). At the moment there are about -- oh, I don't know, I've lost count, about 18 candidates in the race. And supporters of each tend to be ready to tell you with great passion why their candidate is best, and why the other opponents wouldn't be nearly as good.
At the top of the list, because he's at the top of the polls, is Joe Biden. No one, or few, are really especially angry at Joe Biden -- it's pretty hard to be especially angry at Joe Biden -- but they look at some of his past positions and find fault with those, and with his inability to properly explain the context of them at the time. What I've realized the last week is that for all those people supporting other candidates who are unhappy that Joe Biden is in the lead, every one of them should give thanks every day that Joe Biden is in the race. Even if he ends up getting the nomination (or not), they should be grateful. Why? The fact that Joe Biden is in the race and leading the Democratic polls is the reason why Trump has been obsessing on him and his son in Ukraine. Never mind that the issues were looked into long ago and no impropriety was found against the former Vice President, it is Trump's terror that he believes Biden is the strongest candidate against him that pushed him to his obsession of "being Trump" until his mob boss persona reared its ugly head and got him to shake down the president of Ukraine, leading to the whisteblower bringing this all to public attention and Nancy Pelosi finally allowing impeachment hearings to go forward and getting a majority of the House to support them. Certainly Trump would have tried to take down whatever Democrat is his top opponent. But no other may have been perceived by Trump as being as likely to beat him (he'd have been wrong about that...), and none would have allowed for Trump to get involved with a foreign government to create this abuse of power situation, which seems likely to bring about his impeachment. Only Joe Biden. Again, all studies have shown that Joe Biden did nothing wrong, and the timeline of what Trump is trying to suggest proves his charges to be a lie. But that's a separate matter. The point is that is Joe Biden being in the race and leading all Democrats is what ultimately has lead to Trump most probably being impeached. And whether a Democrat support's Biden's candidacy or doesn't -- even if strongly doesn't -- should still be grateful every day that Joe Biden is in the race...and leading it. Whether they hope he loses or wins the nomination at this point forward is another issue entirely. But for right now, it is Joe Biden that has caused Trump to melt down and likely get himself impeached. Continuing with our Chad Mitchell Trio Fest, I've mentioned that the group has had interesting incarnations. And without question, the most notable of those is when Chad Mitchell left the Chad Mitchell Trio. He went off to pursue a solo career, which didn't pan out all that well. But what makes this change in the group even more interesting is not only his leaving from his own group, but who replaced him. That would be a young, unknown singer named John Denver. They made a good choice. The challenge was what to call themselves. With Chad Mitchell departing, it was obviously inappropriate to stick with the same name. What they decided on was to go by simply The Mitchell Trio. And so today, we have a video of The Mitchell Trio with John Denver appearing on the Merv Griffin Show in 1966. As Merv points out, the group didn't make many appearances on TV, so this is a rarity. (He also notes that they've been banned on a few station, which I can imagine, especially when one hears this song below, to go along with the song I posted yesterday, "The John Birch Society"...) I'm not quite sure why they didn't appear on television all that much. The best I can think of is that more than most other groups, as clean-cut as they came across, when they sang satirical political songs they were extremely pointed -- witness "The John Birch Society." Though in fairness, as blunt as that song was, it wasn't going after sacred cows in American society but what was considered a nut-job right wing group considered far out of the mainstream even by conservatives. And it wasn't like all or even most of their songs were political or satirical. For the most part they were just a standard folk singing trio -- and one that had successful record sales and a long nightclub career. So...I don't know. What makes this video all the more whimsical therefore is that with it being one of their rare TV appearances, they chose to sing yet another comic political song -- and one that is even more pointed in its ridicule than "The John Birch Society," and about a group that, while not remotely in the mainstream, had a much wider reach, even through to today. Notably so. This is "Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan." What also stands out here is that, while not nearly as funny a song as "The John BIrch Society," it's still pretty amusing yet there is a very noticeable absence of laughter. That could be because of the way the audience was miked, but more probably it was because the audience wasn't a typical one for the group. It's extremely scathing, though well-deserving of the harsh ridicule. But, maybe it is the miking because the harshest joke in the song actually gets a big, very audible laugh, and they get nice applause when done. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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