Day: July 12, 2020

Who Won The Week? 07/12/2020

Fandango18 Comments

10CC3057-4EEA-4C80-B8C1-700C0FC6C906It’s time for another Who Won the Week prompt. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

DD8F1DA0-A48A-4688-AECE-565A0E034F21As much as it pains me to do so, I’m declaring that Roger Stone won the week. Who is Roger Stone you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Stone is an American conservative political consultant, lobbyist, and convicted felon who was convicted on seven counts, including witness tampering and lying to federal investigators. On February 20, 2020, he was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison.

A political operative since the late 60s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon’s and Donald Trump’s. He’s been described as a “self-proclaimed dirty trickster,” a “renowned infighter,”a “seasoned practitioner of hard-edged politics,” a “mendacious windbag,” a “veteran Republican strategist,” and a “political fixer.”

With respect to Trump’s campaign, Stone lied to Congress about foreign interference in the 2016 election and having pressured a witness to do the same. Stone was the person who gave the Trump campaign its first heads up about Julian Assange’s and Wikileaks’ ability to upend U.S. politics by publishing its cache of damaging materials hacked by Russia, that would go on to cripple Hillary Clinton’s White House bid.

Well, this week the most corrupt president since Richard Nixon, commuted Roger Stone’s prison sentence, essentially making Stone a free man. How long will it be before Stone gets a tattoo of Donald Trump on his back to match his Richard Nixon tattoo?19355CA4-6106-4350-A826-C5A8516A9EACNow it’s your turn, folks. Who (or what) do you think won the week?

Song Lyric Sunday — Fire and Rain

Fandango26 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has given us the elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water to play with. With that in mind, I chose to play with fire as my element with James Taylor’s Classic “Fire and Rain.”

“Fire and Rain” was a folk rock song written and performed by James Taylor. It was released as a single from his second album, Sweet Baby James, in February 1970. The song reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song was about the high and low points of Taylor’s early career. He was only 20 when he wrote it in 1968, but was battling depression and drug addiction.

In one part of the song, Taylor recalls his reaction to the suicide of Suzanne Schnerr, a childhood friend. Another part focuses on Taylor’s struggle to overcome drug addiction and depression over the failure of his new band, The Flying Machine, to achieve success. The lyric “Sweet dreams and Flying Machines in pieces on the ground” was referring to the band’s failure. And finally, the song is about his coming to grips with fame and fortune.

Here are the lyrics to “Fire and Rain.”

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
To come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

FOWC with Fandango — Callous

Fandango19 Comments

FOWCWelcome to July 12, 2020 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “callous.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.