badlatitude
Soros-backed
- 33,489
- 7,216
It doesn't really matter, Trump isn't going anywhere but prison.
Trump 2024
- Thread starter Ishmael
- Start date
veni vidi vici
Omne quod audimus est opinio, non res. Omnia videm
- 8,954
- 2,120
For what?
3to1
Super Anarchist
there you go again, bullshitter.
Cal20sailor
Super Anarchist
Specialty's would mean 'specialty is' or someone named specialty possesses it. We've covered this before. FFS, you forgot your screen name was Bravo Bravo. Keep supporting/defending/voting for moronic Republicans. You have an abundance of choices.
3to1
Super Anarchist
just for starters, how about for having the Midas Touch, but for shit?
you have terribly low standards, terribly low...
Cal20sailor
Super Anarchist
V3 must've experienced the Crying Game surprise in Vietnam. Had a few beers, hired what he thought was a female hooker, and a half hour later realized he had a cock in his mouth. Hater ever since.
badlatitude
Soros-backed
- 33,489
- 7,216
Among many others.
Trump faces up to FORTY YEARS in prison if convicted on all four criminal charges recommended by Jan. 6 committee, and could be BARRED from running for president again
Trump faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted on all four charges
Donald Trump faces up to 40 years in jail, thousands in fines, and a prohibition on ever running for office again if he's convicted on the four federal charges leveled against him by the January 6th committee.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
Huh... I didn't even know I owned a peninsula, and now I find that I not only own it but there's a good restaurant! Wow, things are really looking up today, thanks!
You owe me a beer and a keyboard 🤣
Mike G
Super Anarchist
How Trump tried to trademark and profit off the phrase ‘Rigged Election!’
What’s the difference between songwriter-satirist Tom Lehrer and narcissist ex-President Donald Trump? That’s probably not a question you’ve ever thought to ask.
But two recent stories — both about intellectual property law — have helped answer that question nevertheless.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Many people today don’t remember Tom Lehrer. He wrote songs that took on social and political issues in the 1950s and 1960s; his sardonic, black-humor parodies made fun of nuclear war, the Boy Scouts, Catholicism, bigotry, air pollution, cannibalism, masochism and math, to name just a few of his subjects.
His songs have lyrics like “So long, Mom, I’m off to drop the bomb” and titles like “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica.” The latter included the unforgettable line “I spent Shavuos in East St. Louis.”
He wrote an entire song based on the periodic table of elements, which includes this verse
“There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.”
I was always partial to “Vatican Rag,” which he said he wrote for the Roman Catholic Church to help it “sell the product.” In it, he described going to confession, saying: “There the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original.”
Lehrer released records, played the Cambridge coffee shop scene and San Francisco nightclubs and became world famous before mostly disappearing from public view and going back to being a math teacher, much of the time at UC Santa Cruz. About songwriting, he told the Washington Post: “My head just isn’t there anymore.”
But his songs remained popular and he presumably continued to make money from them.
Then, late in life, he decided he was done profiting from his work. A couple of years ago he announced that he intended to put all his music into the public domain. In late November, he posted another note on his website saying that “all copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished.”
“In short,” he wrote, “I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves and don’t send me any money.”
OK, I’ll admit I found this moving, an example of a well-known person putting the public good over the private good, at some financial cost to himself. It’s true that Lehrer is in his 90s and, as far as I can tell, has no children, although surely he’s got heirs of one sort or another. Admittedly, this is not as big a deal as if we heard that the songs of Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney were suddenly free for public use (which they aren’t). But Lehrer’s gesture is generous and selfless nevertheless, because the public domain is, in the end, the public domain.
People who want to use or perform or record or rearrange or tinker with his songs may now do so “without payment or fear of legal action,” Lehrer wrote.
Which brings us to Trump, whose attitude toward everything — including the United States of America — is quite the opposite. His mantra is: How can I control it, how can I keep it for myself, how can I prevent others from profiting from it and how can I turn a buck off it?
That became clear yet again with the recent report of the House Jan. 6 committee, which unearthed an email from Trump-era White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino showing that the then-president had sought to obtain a trademark for the phrase “rigged election.”
The email, written just days after the 2020 election and titled “POTUS requests,” was addressed to Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner. It said: “Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see — or ask.”
Below, the phrase “Rigged Election!” is highlighted in the email. Kushner forwarded the request on to various aides, saying, “Guys — Can we do ASAP please?”
Had Trump been successful, the goal presumably would’ve been to sell merchandise using the phrase, raising money for himself or his campaign or his legal defense or whatever — and barring others from using the phrase for profit. “MAGA,” step aside; here come the “Rigged Election” T-shirts, cups and baseball caps.
What’s especially galling about it is that Trump would have been profiting off an utter lie, a cynical political manipulation that threatened to undermine American democracy: the pretense that the 2020 election had been stolen from him thanks to the manipulation of the electoral system by denizens of what he liked to call “the swamp.”
In the end, Trump did not successfully trademark the phrase, or perhaps was talked out of it by his lawyers. The rest of us can continue to sell “Rigged Election” caps if we choose to.
Lehrer, for his part, didn’t continue writing songs long enough to have had an opportunity to skewer Trump, which would have been delicious, I’m sure. Lehrer loved nothing more than ridiculing hypocrites.
Unfortunately, he got out of the satire business because it no longer seemed like an appropriate way to deal with the world. “Today, everything just makes me angry, it’s not funny anymore,” he said back in 2002. “Things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.”
What’s the difference between songwriter-satirist Tom Lehrer and narcissist ex-President Donald Trump? That’s probably not a question you’ve ever thought to ask.
But two recent stories — both about intellectual property law — have helped answer that question nevertheless.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Many people today don’t remember Tom Lehrer. He wrote songs that took on social and political issues in the 1950s and 1960s; his sardonic, black-humor parodies made fun of nuclear war, the Boy Scouts, Catholicism, bigotry, air pollution, cannibalism, masochism and math, to name just a few of his subjects.
His songs have lyrics like “So long, Mom, I’m off to drop the bomb” and titles like “(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica.” The latter included the unforgettable line “I spent Shavuos in East St. Louis.”
He wrote an entire song based on the periodic table of elements, which includes this verse
“There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.”
I was always partial to “Vatican Rag,” which he said he wrote for the Roman Catholic Church to help it “sell the product.” In it, he described going to confession, saying: “There the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original.”
Lehrer released records, played the Cambridge coffee shop scene and San Francisco nightclubs and became world famous before mostly disappearing from public view and going back to being a math teacher, much of the time at UC Santa Cruz. About songwriting, he told the Washington Post: “My head just isn’t there anymore.”
But his songs remained popular and he presumably continued to make money from them.
Then, late in life, he decided he was done profiting from his work. A couple of years ago he announced that he intended to put all his music into the public domain. In late November, he posted another note on his website saying that “all copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished.”
“In short,” he wrote, “I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves and don’t send me any money.”
OK, I’ll admit I found this moving, an example of a well-known person putting the public good over the private good, at some financial cost to himself. It’s true that Lehrer is in his 90s and, as far as I can tell, has no children, although surely he’s got heirs of one sort or another. Admittedly, this is not as big a deal as if we heard that the songs of Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney were suddenly free for public use (which they aren’t). But Lehrer’s gesture is generous and selfless nevertheless, because the public domain is, in the end, the public domain.
People who want to use or perform or record or rearrange or tinker with his songs may now do so “without payment or fear of legal action,” Lehrer wrote.
Which brings us to Trump, whose attitude toward everything — including the United States of America — is quite the opposite. His mantra is: How can I control it, how can I keep it for myself, how can I prevent others from profiting from it and how can I turn a buck off it?
That became clear yet again with the recent report of the House Jan. 6 committee, which unearthed an email from Trump-era White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino showing that the then-president had sought to obtain a trademark for the phrase “rigged election.”
The email, written just days after the 2020 election and titled “POTUS requests,” was addressed to Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner. It said: “Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see — or ask.”
Below, the phrase “Rigged Election!” is highlighted in the email. Kushner forwarded the request on to various aides, saying, “Guys — Can we do ASAP please?”
Had Trump been successful, the goal presumably would’ve been to sell merchandise using the phrase, raising money for himself or his campaign or his legal defense or whatever — and barring others from using the phrase for profit. “MAGA,” step aside; here come the “Rigged Election” T-shirts, cups and baseball caps.
What’s especially galling about it is that Trump would have been profiting off an utter lie, a cynical political manipulation that threatened to undermine American democracy: the pretense that the 2020 election had been stolen from him thanks to the manipulation of the electoral system by denizens of what he liked to call “the swamp.”
In the end, Trump did not successfully trademark the phrase, or perhaps was talked out of it by his lawyers. The rest of us can continue to sell “Rigged Election” caps if we choose to.
Lehrer, for his part, didn’t continue writing songs long enough to have had an opportunity to skewer Trump, which would have been delicious, I’m sure. Lehrer loved nothing more than ridiculing hypocrites.
Unfortunately, he got out of the satire business because it no longer seemed like an appropriate way to deal with the world. “Today, everything just makes me angry, it’s not funny anymore,” he said back in 2002. “Things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.”
Bus Driver
Bacon Quality Control Specialist
Had he been successful, he could sue Kari Lake for Trademark Infringement.
SloopJonB
Super Anarchist
Lehrer probably quit because it became impossible to satirize the Republicunts - their reality has become so bizarre that satire is indistinguishable from it.
I mean how do you satirize someone who wears an AR15 lapel pin instead of a flag?
I mean how do you satirize someone who wears an AR15 lapel pin instead of a flag?
MauiPunter
Will sail for food
... and the rubes will believe he has the magic war-ending words.
- Thread starter
- #1,497
It will only take him a couple of weeks to tweak the wording a bit.
pusslicker
Super Anarchist
Is that before or after the healthcare plan?
- Thread starter
- #1,499
After both infrastructure hour and the healthcare plan. He has priorities.
Cal20sailor
Super Anarchist
V3, you lied about not being Bravo Bravo in a previous life. Did you really suck a cock?
