A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
Were you paying attention on your commute this morning? Because while you were keeping your head down, avoiding all eye contact and generally wishing you were anywhere but on the Central line you might have missed something really special.
Harry Potter star Emma Watson has been sneaking around the tube network hiding copies of Maya Angelou’s novel ‘Mom & Me & Mom’.
Source: Emma Watson has been hiding feminist books on the tube
Happy birthday to the late Bert Jansch who would have been 72 today.
The legendary acoustic guitar virtuoso born in Glasgow passed away in 2011.
A founding member of the classic English folk-rock group, Pentangle, Jansch influenced many guitarists on both sides of the Atlantic. His version of “Angie” inspired Paul Simon’s recording of the song that appeared on the album Sounds of Silence. Jansch’ admirers included Nick Drake, Neil Young, Jimmy Page (“I was absolutely obsessed with Jansch”) and Beth Orton, with whom he recorded the traditional song Katie Cruel, on Jansch’s twenty-third and last studio album, The Black Swan.
Jansch loved America’s country bluesmen, and said once that he’d “still be a gardener” if he hadn’t encountered bluesman Brownie McGhee and his music.
Well I do believe I love everyone
Perhaps more than I should
With all my heart I try to please and give
From a foolish little boy
A world of love and joy
Bless him.
Listen to Global Village Bert Jansch Special from KMUW
We now know a lot more about Trump’s taxes. It’s much worse than anyone thought.
Unlike past presidential nominees, Donald Trump has declined to release his complete tax returns, which has fostered fervid speculation about what they might contain — especially since the New York Times published a few pages from Trump’s 1995 tax documents last month.
Those documents suggested that the Republican nominee could have avoided paying taxes on as much as $916 million in income. The question was how he could do so legally. Experts had put forward a range of intricate theories, and the new documents disclosed by the Times on Monday point to one explanation for how Trump sheltered the bulk of that money.
It appears Trump gave his creditors shares of his failing businesses to avoid taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars they granted him in debt relief, a practice that has since been explicitly outlawed, the Times explained.
In short, “He made it up,” said legal scholar Edward Kleinbard of the University of Southern California.
Source: A big, dirty secret from Donald Trump’s tax returns has been exposed – The Washington Post
FBI Director James B. Comey advised against the Obama administration publicly accusing Russia of hacking political organizations on the grounds that it would make the administration appear unduly partisan too close to the Nov. 8 election, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
But he supported the administration’s formal denunciation last month as long as it did not have the FBI’s name on it, they said. Comey was sensitive not only to his agency appearing to influence the election but also to seeming biased while it was conducting an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
At the same time, the bureau works with Russian services on a variety of terrorism and criminal matters.