A site dedicated to reasonable, thoughtful, and rational discussion of the major issues of our time
For those of us who played trumpet, especially big band jazz, it just doesn’t get much better!
Did we mention he also played valve trombone, flugelhorn, and baritone horn, as well as inspiring a generation of young big band musicians?
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/HNtuC0Txffk
Immigration is important to the future of America. The following excerpt from Forbes makes it abundantly clear that the brightest and most accomplished scientists of tomorrow are likely to be children of immigrant parents.
What would we lose if immigrants could no longer come to America? Surprisingly, one of the most important things America would lose is the contributions made by their children.
A new study from the National Foundation for American Policy found a remarkable 83% (33 of 40) of the finalists of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search were the children of immigrants. The competition organized each year by the Society for Science & the Public is the leading science competition for U.S. high school students. In 2017, the talent search competition was renamed the Regeneron Science Talent Search, after its new sponsor Regeneron Pharmaceuticals,and a new group of 40 finalists – America’s next generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians – are competing in Washington, D.C., from March 9 to 15, 2017.
Both family-based and employment-based immigrants were parents of finalists in 2016. In fact, 75% – 30 out of 40 – of the finalists had parents who worked in America on H-1B visas and later became green card holders and U.S. citizens. That compares to seven children who had both parents born in the United States.
To put that in perspective, even though former H-1B visa holders represent less than 1% of the U.S. population, they were four times more likely to have a child as a finalist in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search than were parents who were both born in the United States.
Parents who were international students were more likely to have a child as a finalist than native-born parents. A total of 27 of the 40 children – 68% – had a parent who came to America as an international student. That means if international students cannot remain in America after graduation (through Optional Practical Training and improved visa policies) it will also deprive America of the potentially substantial contributions of their children.
More UNDER THE FOLD.
Trump pledged to take no salary ($400,000/yr.) if he were elected president. He has received two full paychecks from the treasury, February and March. As of now the White, the Treasury, and the Office of Personnel Management have all declined to respond to inquiries.
NBC – President Donald Trump pledged to forego a presidential salary, but as his second payday approaches, the White House is declining to say if the president has donated any of his earnings yet.
During the campaign, Trump promised he would take “no salary” if elected — a pledge he reiterated after he won.
“I’m not going to the take the salary,” he told “60 Minutes” in November.
The Constitution, however, requires that the president receive a salary, and that it not be reduced during his term. Federal law mandates the president receive a $400,000 annual salary, paid out once a month.
Trump aides have previously said Trump would donate his salary to the Treasury Department or a charity.
MSNBC requested details and documentation about any salary donations from the White House, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management, which all declined to say whether Trump has donated any of his salary to date. (OPM referred questions to the White House.)
Last month, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the website Politifact that Trump “will be giving” his salary “back to Treasury or donating.” The site noted the White House “declined to answer several inquiries into whether Trump has gotten a paycheck already.”
Under the law, Trump would receive his first monthly paycheck for $33,333 in February, and another $33,333 on March 20.
We’ll wait to see if Trump simply fed the American people another line of his typical baloney or not. If you’re a better don’t bet on Trump’s integrity. You’ll likely be a loser.
When it comes to fluidity in motion, expressive interpretation, and a soft sensuality few are better at it than Iranian women. Having known and danced with Iranian women they certainly hold their own dancing with a partner!
Stay tuned for a look into contemporary Iranian music.
Former President George W. Bush is a fair and improving amateur painter. Since leaving office he has devoted time to painting and his “Portraits of Courage” , currently No. 1 on The Washington Post bestseller list.
There is another side to President Bush not often seen during his presidency. It is a more reflective side that shows empathy and sympathy. The qualities are present in his paintings and “Portraits of Courage” .
From The Washington Post:
George W. Bush is getting better as a painter. It’s been four years since a Romanian hacker named Marcel Lazar Lehel (a.k.a. Guccifer) hacked into Bush family email and exposed to the world the former president’s early paintings, including two self-portraits made in the bathroom. Guccifer is now in jail, but Bush is still at the easel and has released a volume of his recent work, portraits of military personnel and veterans who have served the country since Sept. 11, 2001.
“Portraits of Courage,” currently No. 1 on The Washington Post bestseller list, includes 66 individual portraits and a foldout reproduction of a four-panel mural. Most of the images are made from photographs, focused on the face and thickly painted with a limited but generally bright palette of colors. Highlights and shadows are strongly emphasized, and Bush lavishes particular attention on the eyes and exaggerates bone structure. A few of the paintings capture their subjects in motion — including Staff Sgt. Scott P. Lilley (who lost a part of his skull in an IED attack) holding his daughter, and Sgt. Saul Martinez (who lost both legs in Iraq) playing golf. But most of them show the head and face full size, seemingly bursting out of the frame with genuine presence and considerable expressive energy.
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Bush’s opening essay and the capsule biographies he writes about each subject are charming. He lightly ribs his mother in this account of his first experience with the paint brush: “For the first time in my sixty-six years, I picked up a paintbrush that wasn’t meant for drywall. I selected tube of white paint and another labeled Burnt Umber. While I wasn’t aware at the time that it was a color, I liked the name, which reminded me of Mother’s cooking.”
In his descriptions of the men and women he paints, he cites their struggles with grievous war wounds, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and the myriad difficulties of reintegrating into civilian life. Although there is increasing concern in the medical community about whether we are over-diagnosing PTSD and including too many disparate psychological issues under its label, there is genuine empathy in Bush’s embrace of the stories told by these soldiers.
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Cynics will see a familiar, guy’s-guy tribalism in these accounts — many key episodes in Bush’s relationship with these people happen on the mountain bike trail — but his sympathy and understanding ring true. Those who think what now seems to be the case, that the war in Iraq was the most catastrophic foreign policy mistake this country ever made, will not find these paintings sufficient absolution for the cost, the trauma (here and in Iraq) and what will probably be decades of regional destabilization wrought by the war.
But that doesn’t seem to be Bush’s intent, or the purpose of this book, the profits from which will be donated to a military and veterans’ initiative run by the George W. Bush Presidential Center. There is nothing in this volume to support the thesis that Bush is using painting to work through his demons, or any regrets he may have about the wars he initiated.
There is, however, ample evidence that the former president is more humble and curious than the Swaggering President Bush he enacted while in office. And his curiosity about art is not only genuine but relatively sophisticated.
It’s worth making some distinctions. There is the presidency, the president and the man who is or was the president. Since the rise of Donald Trump, Bush’s respect for the institution of the presidency — especially the way he has honored the unwritten rules of conduct for how a president retires and the respect he shows his successors — has been seen in sharp relief. And while many may still strongly disagree with what he did as president — as a partisan political actor — that is now being tempered by a better understanding of who he is as a man. …
Say what one may about GWB he was, and is, more presidential as well as more human than Donald J. Trump will likely ever be.