September 4, 2022

DAVE MATHEWS AND DONALD TRUMP


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This is a little story about two stars. One is Donald Trump and the other is Dave Mathews, founder and lead singer of The Dave Mathews Band.

If you're a fan you know all of the following about Dave Mathews. If not here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia page:

He is best known as the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). Matthews was born in Johannesburg,[2][3] and moved frequently among South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States while growing up. Matthews started playing acoustic guitar at the age of nine.

From 1991 to 2003, Matthews predominantly focused on songwriting and performing with the Dave Matthews Band, which he started in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1991. He also has done various solo performances and produced other records. During the period from 2000 to 2010, his band sold more tickets and earned more money than any other act in North America.[4] The band's 2012 album Away from the Worldmade them the only group to have six consecutive studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard charts. This record was extended to seven consecutive number one albums with the 2018 release, Come Tomorrow.

In addition to music, Matthews has had multiple acting roles.[5] He has also won two Grammy Awards: one with the Dave Matthews Band in 1997 for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group ("So Much to Say") and one in 2004 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance ("Gravedigger") from his solo album.

One could argue convincingly that Trump was once literally a star since he had the lead in a television series:



I can't find a photo of his dressing room door and I tried, but I wouldn't be surprised it it had a big star on it and looked like this:


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Donald Trump has been compared to a number of animals. I likened him to a scorpion (here). I won't go into this here since it is beyond the scope of my scientific analogy.

I want to suggest that he may be like a starfish. Here, appropriately, is an orange one.




This is Asterias rubens, known as the common sea star. It is capable of extensive arm regeneration, but will perish if the central disk suffers serious damage.

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As children who pay attention in grade school science class learn starfish have the ability to regenerate lost arms. This is from Wikipedia.

Starfish, or sea stars, are radially symmetrical, star-shaped organisms of the phylum Echinodermata and the class Asteroidea. Aside from their distinguished shape, starfish are most recognized for their remarkable ability to regenerate, or regrow, arms and, in some cases, entire bodies. While most species require the central body to be intact in order to regenerate arms, a few tropical species can grow an entirely new starfish from just a portion of a severed limb. Starfish regeneration across species follows a common three-phase model and can take up to a year or longer to complete.[2] Though regeneration is used to recover limbs eaten or removed by predators, starfish are also capable of autotomizing and regenerating limbs to evade predators and reproduce.

Due to their wide range of regenerative capabilities, starfish have become model organisms for studying how the regenerative process has evolved and diversified over time. While the overall morphological processes have been well documented in many starfish, little is known regarding the underlying molecular mechanisms that mediate their regeneration. Moreover, some researchers hope starfish may one day serve as inspiration for therapeutics aiming to expand the extent to which humans can repair and replace damaged cells or tissues.

I wrote a story which I posted here and on Daily Kos titled "With three legal investigations into Trump there could be a different kind we don't yet know about."

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Trump's star is dimming and his perils have increased in other ways in addition to the legal jeopardy he is in. Primarily I see that as he becomes more and more extreme and unhinged he loses support among those who see him as too unstable to carry the banner for the GOP. Rational Republicans if reports are to be believed are looking to someone like DeSantis who is on their side in the culture war but doesn't espouse QAnon conspiracy nonsense and doesn't look like he's ready to be carted off to a psychiatric hospital in a strait jacket. These are people who see snippets of his long rambling rally rants and have don’t want anything to do with him. They see that his Pennsylvania rally was held for two candidates that have been considered likely losers, Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz. 
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They also see coverage like this (not that many of them read Salon or RawStory): 


Trump handed Democrats a "major gift" in Pennsylvania: former Republican lawmaker — "I am not so sure that the former president Trump did anyone any good with that speech," Charlie Dent says. Salon 

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 Why did Trump choose to showcase a Nazi sympathizer as Jan. 6 prisoner at Pennsylvania rally: CNN reporter asks. (RawStory)

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Do non-MAGA cult Republicans want to be associated with people that look like this?


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It is also an accidental gift to us that “rally rant” happens to be a catchy and descriptive alliteration for his speeches. Preface it with “rambling and raging” and it’s even better. 


And then there’s Dave Mathews who isn’t running for anything:

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I have friends who are at a Dave Mathews concert this Labor Day weekend for their traditional  extravganza at the beautiful Gorge Ampitheatre along the Columbia River south of Seattle where fans appreciate two hour sets by the band. It doesn't matter to fans that they play a selection of their new and old songs. I would venture a guess that you won't see a single MAGA hat among the crowd who spend the long weekend there camping out, socializing, and enjoying the music of the Dave Mathews Band and other acts. By just about every measure aside (a couple of photos here) from being members of the human race, as diverse and colorful group that Dave Mathews fans are one could say they are more highly evolved than the typical MAGA cultist. They are far removed from the throngs we see in photos and videos of those at a Trump rally. 
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At his rally in Pennsylvania Trump went on for nearly two hours reprising his old crowd pleasing favorites and adding attacks at the FBI and the DOJ for searching his house at Mar-a-Lago and seizing documents. "It was not just my home that was raided… it was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I've been fighting for since the moment I came down the golden escalator in 2015, wanting to represent the people," he said to boos from the crowd. Of course there no mention of what was reported in HuffPost that  "Actors Reportedly (were) Hired To Cheer Trump's 2015 Campaign Launch" and covered elsewhere.
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My point, if you haven't figured it our by now, is that if each investigation into Trump's criminal behavior and everything he does to loose a significant number of his supporters can be said to represent an arm of Trump the Starfish. He can only lose a limited number of them before the central disc, that is, the core of the corpulent one, is damaged beyond regeneration.



If this happens he becomes a like a fish in prison.  In prison slang: in men’s facilities, this is the term used for new prisoners. A fish is new to prison politics and the reality of how facilities are managed.

Addendum:

You’ve suffered through videos of Trump ranting at his rallies. Here’s a 2009 video of a solo:

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This is quite contrast with Donald Trump. Hell, without knowing anything about his political acumen I’d say he make a better president than Trump six ways from Sunday. According to this he’s “a liberal, a Democrat and he's not afraid to say it.”

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This is an except from this 2017 Hollywood Reporter article: 

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14 Hollywood Stars Who Immigrated to the U.S. and Became Citizens — Many actors and musicians who came to America from other countries are voicing their concerns over President Trump's latest travel ban.

Dave Matthews was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. At age 2, Matthews moved with his family to Westchester County, N.Y., where his physicist father took a job at IBM. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1980. 

While the singer-songwriter has said he doesn't affiliate with one particular political party — though he called Republicans "disconnected" and "nonsensical," he supported Barack Obama during his two presidential campaigns. He initially supported Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders but later helped campaign for Hillary Clinton after she became the Democratic nominee.

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Here’s a 12 minute video of the entire band performing in New York’s Central Park in 2018:

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Could there be an unknown totally different Trump investigation?


 

Not counting the Jan. 6th Committee which can’t issue indictments but is still of major importance as an investigative body, Trump is facing three investigations which could result in legal charges being brought against him:

  • Merrick Garland’s DOJ investigation into the mishandling of top-secret government documents
  • Fani T. Willis, Fulton County, Ga. DA’s investigation into election tampering
  • New York Attorney General  Letitia James’ investigative probe into the Trump Organization

There is yet another investigation that may be underway that the public is not aware of, and that I think Trump ,if he’s not totally delusional, ought to be very, very worried about. You know what this could be from my illustration. Of course that Washington Post edition was preceded by one of the most historic Washington Post front pages ever with this article:

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Here’s how I put my thought about this in a tweet before I decided to expand on my speculation and write this diary.

Newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times have some of the best investigative reporters in the world. Some are veterans and some are eager young dogged reporters like these two were 50 years ago:

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“Watergate at 50” article

These are the first paragraphs of story above:

One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee.

The suspect, former CIA employee James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds a separate contract to provide security services to the Republican National Committee, GOP national chairman Bob Dole said yesterday.

Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, head of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, said yesterday McCord was employed to help install that committee’s own security system.

My hunch is that if journalists are investigating some yet to be revealed crime committed by Trump, or new damning evidence for which “they have the receipts”* proving crimes already in the news, there won’t be an article like this one alerting the Trump legal team that these hound dogs are on the scent and closing in on him.

I’ll go out on a limb here and add another speculation just for bragging rights if it happens. We all know that Rachel Maddow just stepped down from hosting her show five nights a week to only do a show on Mondays “to work on other projects.” She had a large staff of investigative journalists working on her show. She may still have them working for her.

What if one of the so called “other projects” involves tracking down leads that came to her about Trump that could lead to his ultimate downfall. She said she wanted to focus on podcasts and a film directed by Ben Stiller. No matter what she’s said these project are they could be a diversionary smoke screen.

If this was true I have no doubt that MSNBC would provide her with all the resources she needed. Who knows whether or not Rashida Jones, the current president of MSNBC who succeeded Phil Griffin, is playing the role the legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradleeplayed with Woodward and Bernstein.

If there is an investigation by a newspaper or a television network, I only hope that one of these is fruitful.

Maybe this is all wishful thinking on my part, As the saying goes…

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chose your ending.

Take the poll and let us know how likely you think it is that one of these days Trump will be hoist by the petard of the news he calls fake whenever it reports a truth he doesn’t like.

Stay tuned...

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I don’t recall the saying “they have the receipts” or “I” or “we” have them being used so frequently in the news, or even at all, until the Jan. 6 Committee hearings.


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