JULY 29, 2018


NEWS AND VIEWS


AN INTERESTING PERSPECTIVE

“... WE ALSO HAVE THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO TOUT HIS OWN PENIS SIZE.” (I APOLOGIZE, MR. PRESIDENT. I DIDN’T WRITE THIS, BUT I JUST CAN’T HELP QUOTING IT. YOU GOTTA ADMIT IT’S FUNNY!)”

THIS ARTICLE IS FULL OF INFORMATION ABOUT SANDERS AND TRUMP; AND IN THE NEXT AFTER THIS, ON NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, WHO INTEGRATED THE JEWS INTO FRENCH SOCIETY. HE TREATED THEM NOT AS A PARIAH, BUT AS A PEOPLE AND AS CITIZENS. THAT’S EXACTLY HOW PEOPLE SHOULD BEHAVE TOWARD MINORITIES – NOT MAKING THEM SOME SORT OF PET, BUT GIVING THEM A REAL CHANCE TO SUCCEED ON THEIR OWN, WITH AID AS NEEDED. ON THE GOLF COURSE, THEY CALL THAT THE “HANDICAP.” WHITE MEN DON’T MIND THAT ON THE GOLF COURSE, SO WHY SHOULD THEY RESENT IT IN THIS CONTEXT.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/03/17/23739302/what-kind-of-men-are-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders
SLOG 2016
What Kind of Men Are These? The Straight Drag of Donald Trump, and the Jewish Masculinity of Bernie Sanders
by Jen Graves • Mar 17, 2016 at 1:05 pm


Armen Changelian
@ArmenChangelian
Thank you, Internet:

2:15 PM - Mar 14, 2016
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After telling a protester to “go home to Mommy,” Donald Trump turned his attack onto Bernie Sanders’ masculinity. He weaponized the moment when Black Lives Matters organizers interrupted Sanders at a rally in Seattle’s Westlake Park.

Emphasis mine:

“Remember when Bernie Sanders, they took the mic away from him? That’s not going to happen with us. He watched these two young girls talking to the audience… he was standing in the back as two women took the mic away… That doesn’t happen here.”

Trump has been eager to describe his own attitude toward protesters.

“Get that guy outta here,” he charges at them at rallies. “Get ’im out,” Trump says, explaining, “In the good old days, this doesn’t happen, because they used to treat them very, very rough, and once they protested once, they would not do it again so easily. They get away with murder because we become weak, we become weak… We have to get tougher.”

“They” get away with “murder.”

Murder like the Civil Rights movement? Or Stonewall or a minimum wage or anything from the infinite list where the supposedly aggressive act involves risking a beatdown or lynching from the established order?

My, my, this presidential race is not about gender in the way that I thought it would be.

Tough guy! (But what kind?) This is the cover of Sanders's memoir.

How could anyone possibly obsess over Hillary’s identity as a woman when the other two leading candidates are providing such notable performances of masculinity?

Trump and Sanders are similar kinds of men, you might believe, if all you looked at were the headlines and photographs. They are fighters, they slug it out, they duke it out, keep swinging. They rail, raise fists, and wear animated grimaces. They’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore, each promising a revolution if elected.

But their masculinities—and their fathers’, and their fathers’ fathers’—are made of such very different, and such very entangled, stuff.

Let’s go back to Europe.

Trump’s German grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, was a lawbreaking immigrant. He ran away from military service and taxes in Germany, alighting in 1891 in Seattle, where he Anglicized his name and started a series of businesses in the Northwest.

Eventually, worried he’d be busted for running a brothel, Friedrich went on the run again, back to Germany, but Germany didn’t want him (see earlier reason for leaving). He finally landed in New York, where his son, Frederick Christ Trump Jr., would found the Trump real-estate dynasty.

Sanders and Trump may both be fighters, but they descend from opposite ends of a European social order that enforced its norms through an anti-Semitism that graduated from persecution to genocide and deposited its aftereffects in the United States. (Read Sydney Brownstone's tremendous piece on Sanders's candidacy and the costs of social order on her own family.)

After World War II, when it wasn’t good PR to be German, Frederick Christ Trump Jr. would tell people, including his Jewish tenants, that his family was Swedish instead.

Donald says his father had one prevailing life lesson for him: “Attack, attack, attack.”

Many of Sanders’ relatives were attacked and killed in the Holocaust. Sanders’ father escaped Poland, and Sanders was born and raised, to Jewish parents, in an apartment in Brooklyn.

It may be important to note that Sanders does not so much fight, as he fights back. (Like Amanda Hess, I do not equate Bernie with the Bernie Bros.)

Every American president but one (Obama) has been a straight, older, Christian man descended exclusively from Europeans.

It is not a coincidence that the first time a woman is a serious contender for the presidency, and the first time a Jew wins delegates in a presidential primary or caucus, we also have the first presidential candidate to tout his own penis size.

The insecurity of powerful people might be amusing if weren’t dangerous.

Watch Rachel Maddow's chilling chronological documentation of Trump's escalating aggression leading up to last Friday's shutdown in Chicago. He's been egging on followers for weeks. He jokes not to hurt protesters. But "if you do, I'll defend you in court, don't worry about it."

"We become weak, we become weak," he warns.

Trump is a common type, just noisier than most. Gendered belligerence—or as some call it, toxic masculinity or straight camp—is now a norm of American politics, and like most gendered traits, is only nominally associated with sex or biology, if at all. It doesn’t need to come from a man. Recall Sarah Palin’s comments that Trump’s candidacy means “no more pussyfooting around” and that Trump will “let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS ass!”

This kind of violent masculinity is armed anxiety. Its origins are not mysterious. The social order that sent Trump into power has been unprecedentedly disrupted in his 70 years of life, especially where it's related to gender and sexuality.

So panicked masculinity yields a form of drag that occupies both hypermasculine (warrior) and hyperfeminine (victim) positions on the old social-symbolic game board. That’s how Trump is able to present himself as both the big, rich man high up on the podium surrounded by supporters and Secret Service agents, and also the embattled victim of the protester who “gets away with murder.”

Trump’s performance reminds me of the association between revolution and gender that Abigail Solomon-Godeau tracks in Male Trouble, her book about French neoclassical painting in the last days of the 18th century.

Jacques-Louis David* and other artists found themselves among revolutionary fighters who then became the murderous dictators of the Reign of Terror. Their art came to reflect a conflicted neo-Roman masculinity that unintentionally betrayed the instability of gender norms in the face of social and political upheaval.

The female bodies so patently on display in the frothy Rococo painting of the previous period got sidelined—they were associated with that old, dissolute, effeminate monarchy—and new, fraught, revolutionary male bodies took center stage.

Jacques-Louis David's The Oath of the Horatii, 1785.

In Trumpvision, this muscle dad passing long, pointy weapons to his synchronized sons as women cower in the corner is what Sanders should have done in Seattle, rather than letting a couple of girls stand in front of him and speak.

Sanders is a complex example of what a man in leadership might act like during a social upheaval. He is proud of the fact that Gloria Steinem (who now supports Hillary) in 1996 named him an honorary woman for his feminist policy positions. He talks about playacting with his grandchild, not throwing a ball or going fishing. Yet his most common image is as an agitated tough talker from Brooklyn.

He hasn’t spoken much on the trail about being Jewish, but one wonders how much he’s been haunted through his life by the imperial European stereotype of Jewish men as weak, overly bookish, and no more fit than a woman to lead a nation.

“We, the Jewish community, are wrestling with the intersection of masculinity and whiteness no less than the rest of America,” Jonathan Paul Katz wrote recently on The Forward in a piece called “Have Jews Become Obsessed With Bro Masculinity?” (No, not any more than anyone else in this bro-dominant world, he answered.)

Jewish Masculinities: German Jews, Gender, and History is a fascinating book of essays from 2012 that describes collisions that have happened at that “intersection of masculinity and whiteness” for Jews in 19th- and 20th-century imperial Europe. The book covers dueling fraternities, a popular Jewish strongman, the gendered nature of Nazi propaganda, and the myth of Jewish male menstruation.

“The idea that Jewish men differ from non-Jewish men by being delicate, meek, or effeminate in body and character runs deep in European history,” explains the introduction to the book. “In the thirteenth century, for example, the French historian Jacques de Vitry reported that his contemporaries believed Jewish men suffered from a monthly flux of blood and had become ‘unwarlike and weak even as women.’”

As late as 1789, a scholar who accused Jews of having “scanty beards, a common mark of effeminate temperaments” at least did denounce “the notion of male Jews’ menstruation as an unfounded prejudice.”

Within the Jewish community by the 19th century, response became split. Samson Raphael Hirsch, leader of the modern Orthodox movement, declared a positive “feminine spirit” of Judaism.

To Hirsch, writes Benjamin Maria Baader, the Jews had “perfected the virtues of a diasporic people in 2,000 years of exile, and he linked their lack of power in the political and public realms with high standards of spiritual perfection, with moral superiority, and with femininity…”

Jewish men were strong, in other words, because they persevered without power, like women. As UC Berkeley Talmudist Daniel Boyarin wrote in his 1997 book Unheroic Conduct, “the rabbis of the Talmudic era 2,000 years ago propagated a nonphallic, gentle patriarchy as a strategy of cultural resistance in opposition to prevailing gentile ideals of manliness.”

But by the start of the 20th century, a sect of Judaism separated itself from any such notions of “gentle patriarchy” and invented muscle Zionism, beginning the push that would lead to the formation of Israel.

Early Zionist men rebranded themselves as Hebrews, not Jews, warrior-athletes laboring in agriculture who were descended from Biblical men who “could compete on equal terms with Greek athletes or Nordic barbarians.” They “distanced themselves from the traditions of the Jewish galut (exile) and the alleged degeneration caused by it,” writes Etan Bloom.

Bloom’s essay, “Toward a Theory of the Modern Hebrew Handshake: The Conduct of Muscle Judaism,” describes his own experiences with an almost unpleasantly strong handshake that some young Israeli men learn at the completion of a certain all-male basic military training. The handshake is “emblematic of male Hebrew body language generally,” Bloom explains, which he describes as an overcorrective hypermasculinity created in reaction against European cultural stereotypes about Jewish effeminacy.

Bloom has a friend who asks him firmly not to mangle his hand when they shake—for historical reasons. His friend is refusing to participate in an overcompensating masculinity defined, even still in opposition, by the kind of bigotry we're hearing coming out of Trump's mouth this season. (I haven't tracked whether Trump has said anything derogatory about Jewish people during this election, but it would be entirely unsurprising—and a few days ago, his opener, a pastor, said Sanders needs to "meet Jesus" if he wants to be president).

Bloom documents one Zionist, a “new Hebrew,” who wrote to a friend, “we are not from the galut and the ghetto… Oh you Hebrew! Don’t be a Jew.”

Sanders is from the galut. To a Zionist, he may well be the dreaded "Jew." (Trump, meanwhile, a Presbyterian, has publicly done everything but declare himself a muscle Zionist and move to Tel Aviv.)

Sanders went to Israel to work on a kibbutz as a young man in the 1960s, but he is certainly not a military expansionist or a hawk.

On the question of Israel specifically, he has made mixed remarks. Last year he boycotted Netanyahu’s Congressional address. People are waiting to see whether he’ll attend the all-important American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference that all the candidates are invited to next week in DC.

One of Sanders’s most moving moments on the campaign was his response to being asked what it means to him to be Jewish. It means his father’s family wiped out, he said. It means having seen Jewish workers in department stores in New York with Nazi tattoos on their arms when he was a child. It means, in other words, the Holocaust, not Zionism.

I keep wondering about something that Berkeley scholar Boyarin wrote:

“There is something correct—although seriously misvalued—in the persistent European representation of the Jewish man as a sort of woman.”

Bernie Sanders: "a sort of woman" for president. Part of me says no way, and another part says, well, it depends on what sort.



BONAPARTE AND THE JEWS

https://forward.com/culture/319002/the-secret-jewish-history-of-napoleon-bonaparte/
The Secret Jewish History of Napoleon Bonaparte
Benjamin Ivry August 13, 2015 Wikimedia Commons

Art --- Painting Of Napoleon Bonaparte

The French historian Patrice Gueniffey, born in 1955, is director of the Raymond Aron Center for Political Research at Paris’s l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (school of advanced studies in the social sciences). His “Bonaparte: 1769-1802,” originally published by Gallimard in 2013, has recently been published in translation by Harvard University Press. Not long after the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, the Forward’s Benjamin Ivry spoke with Gueniffey about the thorny subject of Napoleon and the Jews.

Benjamin Ivry: Napoleon was complex, to put it mildly, and his political and historical context even more so. Can it be said categorically whether he was good or bad for the Jews?

Patrice Gueniffey: He was, I think, ultimately rather good [for the Jews], because his policies for the Jewish community in France and the Empire promoted their assimilation into the French nation. The French revolution liberated the Jews but did not assimilate them. Napoleon took up the case again and decided to do for the Jews what he had done for other religions. The French Jewish community became Europe’s most assimilated during the 19th century.


THIS IS MAINLY AN UPDATE FROM GIULIANI. HE ALSO SAYS THAT WHILE TRUMP AND COHEN DISCUSSED PAYING AMI, THE PUBLICATION, HE DID NOT ACTUALLY DO IT.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/giuliani-says-feds-have-183-recordings-made-by-michael-cohen-trump-heard-on-1/
CBS NEWS July 29, 2018, 11:34 AM
Giuliani says feds have 183 recordings made by Michael Cohen, Trump heard on 1

President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani says that federal investigators have 183 "unique conversations" recorded by Michael Cohen, the president's former attorney and fixer. Mr. Trump is heard on one of those recordings, which has already been made public, Giuliani said on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

"We know of something like 183 unique conversations on tape. One of those is with the president of the United States. That's the three-minute one involving the McDougal payment, AMI-McDougal payment," Giuliani said, referring to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with the president. "There are 12 others, maybe 11 or 12 others out of the 183, in which the president is discussed at any length by Cohen, mostly with reporters."

Giuliani said he doesn't know the contents of the recordings that don't include or mention Mr. Trump, but said federal prosecutors would have turned them over to him if they related to the president. Cohen is under investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York over his business dealings. Federal investigators seized millions of records during a raid on his home and office in April, including recordings of conversations Cohen had made.

The recording between Cohen and Mr. Trump was aired by CNN last week. In the recording, which Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis released to the cable network, the two discuss a possible payment to AMI, the publishing company that purchased story rights from McDougal about the alleged affair. Giuliani has said Mr. Trump never made a payment to AMI.

On Sunday, Giuliani argued that the recordings about Mr. Trump "clearly corroborate" the president's position that he was not aware ahead of time about payments to McDougal or Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who received $150,000 from a company set up by Cohen in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair.

"These are tapes I want you to read, I want you to hear them. I didn't think I'd be able to get them out publicly. And somehow, he and his lawyer have this crazy idea of just throw it all out there," said Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor. "I think they also don't realize it's going to hurt them with the prosecutors. When I was a prosecutor, I didn't want some guy giving out all the evidence to the press."

Giuliani's comments come amid news that Cohen is willing to tell investigators with special counsel Robert Mueller's office that the president knew in advance of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between his son, Donald Trump Jr., top campaign officials and a Russian lawyer. Cohen, however, has no evidence to offer that corroborates this claim.

Mr. Trump has denied ever knowing about his son's meeting, suggesting in a tweet on Friday that Cohen "is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam."

Giuliani maintains that there's no evidence the president did anything wrong and that there is no "legal basis" for investigating the president for obstructing justice. He cited the president's tweets as being helpful to Mr. Trump's legal case, saying he has been able to lay out his defense for not granting an interview to Mueller's team.

"He's made it clear, he didn't know about the meeting beforehand," Giuliani said, calling Cohen "an instinctual liar."

As for the president potentially sitting down with Mueller's team, Giuliani says that the special counsel's office has been "kind of tied up" with the Paul Manafort trial, but that negotiations with the team about a possible interview with the president are ongoing.

"We have an outstanding offer to them. They haven't responded in about a week to 10 days. I don't hold that against them I think they've got a lot going on like we do."

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE HEAD OF STATE IS UNDER THE CONTROL OF A FOREIGN POWER? SEE THE VIDEO AND THE ARTICLES BELOW. THIS DOCUMENTARY VIDEO IS EXCELLENT!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHgtUNVlFJcedward i
Edward VIII the traitor king - complete documentary

PUBLISHED BY erictheangrypenguin
Published on Jul 15, 2014
Was Edward VIII a nazi sympathiser? Complete Channel 4 documentary from 1995.



OUR PARTIES ARE SO POLARIZED NOW THAT A CERTAIN PERCENTAGE OF VOTERS WILL GO WITH THEIR PARTY LEADERS NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO. READ THE ARTICLE BELOW ABOUT THE KOCH BROTHERS COMMENTS ON WHAT TRUMP HAS DONE.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-backers-stand-by-president-in-face-of-russia-criticism-cbs-poll/
CBS NEWS July 29, 2018, 10:30 AM
Trump backers stand by president in face of Russia criticism — CBS poll
Reporting by Anthony Salvanto, Jennifer De Pinto, Kabir Khanna and Fred Backus

Nearly all Americans say Russian meddling in the 2018 midterm elections would be unacceptable, even if their party was the beneficiary of any interference. But the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign remains a divisive political issue, with Republicans more likely to doubt the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies and more likely to back the president, a new CBS News poll found.

bt-poll-2018-interferes.jpg
CBS NEWS

Half of Republicans say that hearing criticisms of President Trump on the Russia issue makes them want to defend him more. Another 42 percent say they want to wait to see what the facts show.

bt-poll-probe-makes-you.jpg
Seventy percent of Republicans call the Russia investigation a "witch hunt," while Democrats call it a "critical" matter of national security (77 percent). Democrats, however, say they believe the issue speaks to the president's character (79 percent) as well as national security, but Republicans disagree, seeing it as a deliberate attempt to slow the president's agenda (81 percent) and feeling he is facing more resistance from the political establishment than other presidents have (86 percent).

CBS News' Elections and Survey's Director Anthony Salvanto reports that this speaks to how Trump's strongest backers feel such a personal connection with the president and want to defend him against what they perceive as being a politically motivated witch hunt.

"In principle, people are not ok with this (Russian meddling) but there's a difference between that principle they tell us, and what a lot of Republicans see as unfair criticism of the president. The president they think is facing more pushback from the establishment than other presidents have, that's how they see it," Salvanto told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

The defense comes after more than a week of walk-backs from the White House over the president's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting that sparked widespread backlash from Republicans and Democrats alike. Mr. Trump's failure to publicly denounce Putin's role in the 2016 election caused concern across the political world, leading many to question if the president had more faith in a known U.S. adversary than his own intelligence chiefs.

A previous CBS News poll conducted just after the Helsinki summit showed that only a third of Americans (32 percent) approved of the way Mr. Trump handled his summit Putin.* Sixty-eight percent of Republicans approved.

bt-poll-accurate-info.jpg
Meanwhile, Republicans are less likely than Democrats and independents to express any sort of confidence in the FBI and half as likely as Democrats to express a lot of confidence in the intelligence community. Comparatively, few Republicans (5 percent) expressed much confidence in the mainstream media -- a common talking point the president often cites as being behind the so-called "witch hunt."

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


ALMA DEUTCHER IS A LITTLE OVER 12 YEARS OLD, AND A VERY SERIOUS COMPOSER, BUT SHE’S STILL VERY MUCH A KID. THIS IS HER COMMENT TO SCOTT PELLEY:
“ALMA DEUTSCHER: WELL YES, THAT'S AN INTERESTING QUESTION BECAUSE YOU KNOW WHAT? I'M A VERY HAPPY PERSON SO I HAVE LOTS OF IMAGINARY COMPOSERS. AND ONE OF THEM IS CALLED ANTONIN YELLOWSINK.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alma-deutscher-60-minutes-the-prodigy-whose-first-language-is-mozart/
Alma Deutscher: The prodigy whose "first language" is Mozart
Alma Deutscher was playing piano and violin by the time she was 3 years old and wrote her first opera at 10. For her, making music seems as natural as breathing
Jul 15, 2018
CORRESPONDENT
Scott Pelley

We cannot explain what you're about to hear. Science just doesn't know enough about the brain to make sense of Alma. Alma Deutscher is an accomplished British composer in the classical style. She is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin. And when we aired this story last November she was 12 years old. She's different from other prodigies we have known, because at the age of 10 she wrote an opera, which demands comprehensive mastery; not just how to play the piano, but, what is the range of the oboe? What can a cellist play? We don't know how she understands it all. It seems that Alma was born that way.

alma-and-pelley.jpg
Correspondent Scott Pelley and Alma Deutscher CBS NEWS

Scott Pelley: What is your earliest musical memory?

Alma Deutscher: I remember that when I was three, and I listened to this really beautiful lullaby by Richard Strauss, and that was when I really first realized how much I loved music. And I asked my parents, "But how can music be so beautiful?"

Those notes of Richard Strauss ignited a universe. At three, Alma was playing piano and violin.

Scott Pelley: When did the composing begin?

Alma Deutscher: When I was four, I just had these melodies and ideas in my head, and I would play them down at the piano. And sometimes my parents would think that I was just remembering music that I'd already heard before. But I said, "No, no, these are my melodies, that I composed."

"For me, it's strange to walk around and not to have melodies popping into my head."

Last year, in Austria, we watched Alma prepare her violin concerto and the premiere of her piano concerto. Joji Hattori conducts the vienna chamber orchestra.

That night, the soloist was the composer herself. Remember, she wrote all the notes for all the instruments.

We could see, Alma was living a story.

A story of loss.

A story of redemption.

Scales of emotion beyond a child.

And yet her vision was almost like wisdom.

Scott Pelley: Do you have any idea where this comes from?

Alma Deutscher: I don't really know, but it's really very normal to me to go around -- walk around and having melodies popping into my head. It's the most normal thing in the world. For me, it's strange to walk around and not to have melodies popping into my head. So if I was interviewing you, I would say, "Well, tell me Scott. How does it feel not having melodies popping into your head?

Scott Pelley: It's very quiet in my head. I must say.

alma-pelley-copy-01-sub-02.jpg
Alma Deutscher CBS NEWS
But, it appears, it's never quiet in hers. When she has nothing to do, the music flows from its mysterious source as fluently as breath.

Her parents, Guy and Janie, are professors. She teaches old English literature, Guy is a noted linguist. Both of them are amateur musicians.

Scott Pelley: Do you feel that there's anything about Alma's gift that you don't understand?

Guy Deutscher: We don't understand creativity. Does anyone? I mean I think that's the crux of the mystery. Where does it come from? This melody popping into your head. It really is a volcano of imagination. It's almost unstoppable.

It was Guy who taught her how to read music.

Guy Deutscher: I thought I was an amazing teacher because you know, I hardly had to--

Scott Pelley: You thought it was you!

Guy Deutscher: I thought it was me. I hardly had to say something and you know her piano teacher once said 'it's a bit difficult with Alma It's difficult to teach her because one always has the sense she'd been there before.'

Janie Deutscher: She wouldn't be able to imagine life without dreams and stories and music. That's as unimaginable to her as it is strange for other people to think about a girl with melodies in her head.

Alma Deutscher: I love getting the melodies. It's not at all difficult to me. I get them all the time. But then actually sitting down and developing the melodies and that's the really difficult part, having to tell a real story with music.

"I think I would prefer to be the first Alma than to be the second Mozart."
The story Alma tells in her opera, is Cinderella, but it's not the Cinderella you know.

It seemed demeaning to Alma that Cinderella was attractive because her feet were small so she cast Cinderella as a composer and the prince, as a poet.

Alma Deutscher: Cinderella finds a poem that was composed by the prince and she loves it and she's inspired to put music to it. And in the ball she sings it to the prince.

alma-pelley-copy-01-sub-08.jpg
Alma Deutscher CBS NEWS
Alma Deutscher: I think that it makes much more sense if he falls in love with her because she composed this amazing melody to his poem, because he thinks that she's his soul mate, because he understands her.

Scott Pelley: Well, people can fall in love with composers.

Alma Deutscher: Exactly.

Scott Pelley: I think this may be one of those times.

They fell in love with Cinderella in its first production in Vienna.

Scott Pelley: There is another composer who had an opera premiere in Vienna at the age of 11. Mozart. People compare you to Mozart. What do you think of that?

Alma Deutscher: I know that they mean it to be very nice to compare me to Mozart.

Scott Pelley: It could be worse.

Alma Deutscher: Of course, I love Mozart and I would have loved him to be my teacher. But I think I would prefer to be the first Alma than to be the second Mozart.

In Israel, Mozart joined Alma on stage, she played his piano concerto with a cadenza. In a cadenza, the orchestra stops and the soloist breaks away in music of her own making.

Alma Deutscher: It's something that I composed because you see it's a very early concerto of Mozart and the cadenza was very simple. It didn't go to any different keys.

Alma Deutscher: And I composed quite a long one going to lots and lots of different keys doing lots of things in Mozart's motifs.

Scott Pelley: So you improved the cadenza of Mozart?

Alma Deutscher: Well, yes.


Robert Gjerdingen is a professor of music at Northwestern in Chicago. He has been a consultant to Alma's education.

Robert Gjerdingen: It's kind of a comet that goes by and everybody looks up and just goes, "Wow." I sent her some assignments when she was six, seven, where I expected her to crash and burn, because they were very difficult. It came back, it was like listening to a mid-18th century composer. She was a native speaker.

Scott Pelley: A native speaker?

Robert Gjerdingen: It's her first language she speaks the Mozart-style. She speaks the style of Mendelssohn.

Scott Pelley: And the names that you just mentioned are the ones that live for centuries.

Robert Gjerdingen: Yes. She's batting in the big leagues. And if you win the pennant, there's immortality.

The route to immortality leads through California. Last December, Opera San Jose staged Cinderella in Alma's American debut. She was the belle of the ball, on the piano, organ and violin.

alma-pelley-copy-01-sub-11.jpg
Alma Deutscher CBS NEWS
Alma Deutscher: The piano music teachers say, "Well you must choose the piano." And the violin music teachers say, "Oh you must choose the violin." But anyway, that's better than the piano teacher saying, "You must choose the violin."

Scott Pelley: That would be a bad sign.

Alma Deutscher: That would be a bad sign, yes.

"I know that that life is not always beautiful. That there's also ugliness in the world. That's why I, I've learned, that I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place."
Fortunately she doesn't have to choose. This is her composition, Violin Concerto Number One.

Alma Deutscher: It's extremely jolly and very happy and jocular that movement. I want to make the people who listen to it laugh and be happy. The first movement of the violin concerto is quite the opposite. It's very dark and dramatic.

Scott Pelley: What does a girl your age know about dark and dramatic?

Alma Deutscher: Well yes, that's an interesting question because you know what? I'm a very happy person so I have lots of imaginary composers. And one of them is called Antonin Yellowsink.

Antonin Yellowsink, Alma's imaginary composing friend, is an insight into the music of her mind. Alma told us that she made up a country where imaginary composers write, each in his own style of emotion.

Scott Pelley: So how many composers do you have in your head?

Alma Deutscher: I have lots of composers. And sometimes when I'm stuck with something, when I'm composing, I go to them and ask them for advice. And quite often, they come up with very interesting things.

Even the real world is magical. The Deutscher's moved to the English countryside to be near a famous school of music. Alma is privately tutored and homeschooled alongside her sister Helen who also knows her way around the piano and the tree house.

Scott Pelley: I usually don't ask people your age this question, but, what have you learned about life?

Alma Deutscher: Well, I know that that life is not always beautiful. That there's also ugliness in the world. That's why I, I've learned, that I want to write beautiful music because I want to make the world a better place.

We cannot know how Alma Deutscher channels her music like a portal in time. But in a world, too often ugly, and too often overburdened with explanation, it's nice to take a moment and wonder.

Produced by Robert G. Anderson and Aaron Weisz

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Scott Pelley
Correspondent, "60 Minutes"


TRUMP ALLEGED CONFLICTS OF INTEREST MAKE MUELLER UNSUITABLE.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399427-trump-says-he-and-mueller-had-nasty-business-relationship
Trump lashes out at Mueller for alleged conflicts of interest
BY BRETT SAMUELS - 07/29/18 04:50 PM EDT

President Trump on Sunday renewed his accusations that special counsel Robert Mueller has "conflicts of interest" in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, citing a previous business dispute between the two men.

In a sequence of tweets attacking the special counsel's credibility, Trump noted that he and Mueller had "a very nasty & contentious business relationship."

Trump has alleged on multiple occasions via Twitter that Mueller has unspecified conflicts of interest, however, Sunday's tweet marks the first time he's elaborated beyond such accusations.

The president seemingly confirmed a New York Times report from January that said Trump attempted to fire Mueller in June 2017 over alleged conflicts of interest.

The Times reported that Trump listed three conflicts he believed should disqualify Mueller: A dispute over fees at Trump’s National Golf Club in Virginia, his interview for FBI director before being named special counsel, and Mueller’s previous employment at a law firm that represents Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Trump reportedly backed off his demand after White House counsel Don McGahn refused Trump’s order and threatened to quit.

Multiple reports indicated Trump interviewed Mueller for the vacancy, but it's unclear if Trump turned him down for the position before he was named special counsel in May 2017.

Trump's accusations about Mueller's alleged conflicts of interest came amid a string of tweets in which he claimed the special counsel's team is filled with Democrats.

Trump also falsely claimed Mueller's probe was sparked by the so-called Steele dossier, and questioned why the special counsel was not investigating Democrats.

The president has attacked Mueller's investigation with increasing regularity in recent months, frequently decrying it as a "witch hunt" and a "hoax" in an attempt to discredit Mueller and his probe.

The special counsel has thus far indicted or gotten guilty pleas from more than 20 Russians as part of his probe, as well as four former Trump associates.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is set to go on trial this week as part of the investigation.


THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING, EVEN EXCITING, STORY. WHAT WILL TRUMP AND THE IMPLICATED LEGISLATORS DO NOW? I WANT TO THANK CHARLES KOCH FOR CONDEMNING FULLY THE VICIOUS TRUMP TEAM PROGRAM OF SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS. I WONDER WHAT THEY HAD IN MIND WITH THAT. OR DID THEY HAVE ANYTHING AT ALL IN MIND?

THE KOCH NETWORK WANTS TO “INCENTIVIZE*” PRISONERS TO TRY TO REACH A PLATFORM SO THAT THEY CAN RECEIVE BENEFITS AND LIFE IMPROVEMENTS ONCE THEY ARE OUT OF PRISON, RESULTING HOPEFULLY IN THEIR NO LONGER COMMITTING CRIMES AND BEING INCARCERATED OVER AND OVER. THAT IS A CYCLE OF POVERTY, HATRED, AND MORE CRIME. THAT IS ONE OF THE WORST THINGS ABOUT PRISON LIFE TODAY – THE PRISONS ARE NOT DOING THE THINGS THAT IMPROVE AN INDIVIDUAL “FROM THE INSIDE OUT.” TOO MANY AMERICANS VIEW THAT AS “CODDLING” THE PRISONERS, AND OF THOSE MOST ARE “CONSERVATIVES.” SEE THIS WEBSITE FROM KOCH FOR FINDING JOBS AND RETRAINING: https://kochcareers.referrals.selectminds.com/.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399364-top-koch-network-officials-vent-frustration-with-white-house-gop-led
Top Koch network officials vent frustration with White House, GOP-led Congress
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 07/28/18 06:12 PM EDT

PHOTOGRAPH – KOCH -- © Getty Images

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Senior officials from the group of networks affiliated with billionaire conservative businessman Charles Koch are expressing deep frustration with President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, even as they spend heavily to elect Republicans and promote conservative causes ahead of the midterm elections.

From trade to immigration and spending, top Koch network strategists, who briefed reporters at a five-star resort in Colorado Springs for the group’s biannual seminar, outlined the areas from which they believe the Trump administration and GOP Congress have gone astray.

They’re also frustrated by what they view as the “divisiveness” of the Trump administration — something officials say is complicating lawmakers' ability to find areas of compromise.

“The divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage,” said Brian Hooks, president of The Charles Koch Foundation. “When in order to win on an issue, someone else has to lose, it makes it very difficult to unite and solve the problems of this country.”

“When we say there’s a lack of leadership … I’d include the White House and a number of politicians who are following that lead,” Hooks continued. “There’s a need for someone to step up and show people it’s possible to achieve things when you unite people together … rather than divide them.”

In a video the network is expected to unveil on Sunday, Koch will warn against “a rise in protectionism” — a swipe at the president’s tariffs and immigration policies.

On trade, Koch officials vented about what they described as “Depression-era” policies punctuated by farmer “bailouts.” The Trump administration is giving $12 billion in aid to farmers impacted by retaliatory tariffs.

“This is hurting people and doing long-term damage to the country,” Hooks said.

And Koch network officials said they’re appalled by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy*, which resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents at the southern border. The administration is rushing now to meet court-ordered deadlines to reunite those families.

“We’ve been very vocal in our opposition to that, it’s one of the main injustices we’re trying to work really hard to unite people around and ultimately to drive the administration to change their policy there,” said Koch network spokesman James Davis.

The Koch network also voiced issues with the Republicans who control both chambers of Congress.

They’d like to see Congress pass a bill providing a pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million “Dreamers,” immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.

And they’re still fuming over the $1.3 trillion spending package that was passed in March.

“The challenge here is that if we continue to do that we’ll slow the decline of the country rather than change the trajectory of the country, and our supporters and donors have said ‘no,’ we have to step up to lead here,” Davis said.

The Koch network will spend about $400 million this election cycle on politics and policy. The network is typically supportive of Republicans but they’ve also spent money to hold GOP lawmakers accountable, particularly on spending.

The Koch network's political arm has so far gone after 10 House Republicans and two GOP senators for supporting the spending package or voting against spending clawbacks.

The Highest Paying Card Has Hit The Market

Still, a sizable chunk of the political money has been pumped into races supporting Republican Senate candidates going up against Democrats seeking reelection in states Trump carried in 2016.

Prison reform is another top priority for the network.

The House earlier this year passed the First Step Act by a 360-59 margin.

There is an urgency among the network of conservative donors and activists for the Senate to take up the bill, which aims to incentivize inmates* to complete prison programs that might reduce their likelihood to commit crimes again when they are released.

This weekend’s Koch network gathering at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs is the largest seminar the group has ever held, with more than 500 donors, business leaders, lawmakers and philanthropists. Donors are expected to contribute $100,000 or more to be invited.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R), Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Doug Collins (R-Ga.) are among the elected officials on hand.


RELATED:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5682/text
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.
(a) Short Title.—This Act may be cited as the “Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act” or the “FIRST STEP Act”.