Category: Brilliant!

Well, well, well, well, WELL

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Now we know why they’re so desperately trying to get him locked up and out of sight, on whatever flimsy pretext they can conjure.


Update! Screengrab of the Poso Tweet, in case it doesn’t show up properly for ya above.

“Raising alarms among intel officials.” Yeah, I just bet it did at that, the fucking pond scum. Heartfelt apologies to any gobs of green slime afloat on small bodies of water who might take offense at the comparison.

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THAT’S how you do it!

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Effing BRILLIANT.

Good on you, sir. Via WRSA. Backstory and further details here.

Update! Ruminations on the Cassidy saga from Bayou Peter.

Speaking as a Christian and a retired pastor, I entirely approve of Mr. Cassidy’s actions. I would have contributed to his legal defense fund, except that it was shut down within three hours due to being oversubscribed. Clearly, many Americans feel the same as I do about him, which pleases me.

On Tuesday, “Gov. Kim Reynolds called the display ‘absolutely objectionable’ but said that ‘in a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech’.” I agree with him, of course. Freedom of religion is constitutional, and should remain so. Equally, Mr. Cassidy is, IMHO, correct that any of the Founding Fathers, confronted with the same display, would do as he did, or take even stronger action. The Satanic Temple can protest all it likes that it doesn’t actually worship Satan as he is described in the Christian Bible, but is rather an atheist organization using that name. Nevertheless, the generally accepted understanding of Satan in all three of the great monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – is as the root of all evil, a being from whom grace and goodness are utterly absent. They need not be surprised if people act on that understanding.

Most of all, I applaud Mr. Cassidy for his honesty. He acted, then took responsibility for his actions, and is prepared to stand trial for acting on his beliefs. Good for him! If his legal defense fund opens up again, I’ll be standing in line to contribute.

Much more at the link, all of it intriguing, thought-provoking stuff, as is BRM’s usual wont.

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The feel-good story of the week month year decade century

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GOD, how I love this. Who says there’s no good news anymore?

1930s Luxury Vehicle Going Into Production Again?
Packard Motors, an American luxury automobile company that first produced automobiles in 1899, is on the verge of manufacturing vehicles in Ohio.

One of the “Three Ps” – alongside Peerless Motor Company and Pierce-Arrow – the Packard Motor Car Company gained a reputation for building high-quality luxury automobiles pre-WWII.

“Owning a Packard was considered prestigious, and surviving examples are found in museums, car shows, and automobile collections,” Wikipedia writes.

“Packard vehicles featured innovations, including the modern steering wheel, air-conditioning in a passenger car, and one of the first production 12-cylinder engines, adapted from developing the Liberty L-12 engine used during World War I to power warplanes,” it added.

“The handmade vehicles were exported in record numbers to Europe and competed successfully with Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz,” Cleveland.com states.

“After surviving two world wars and the swings of the auto market, the last true Packard rolled off the assembly line on June 25, 1956. The company closed in 1958 after a failed strategic takeover of Studebaker Corporation,” Packard Motors writes.

Now, a 1934-style convertible could bring the company back to life.

If I could just live long enough to see one of these beautiful beasts rolling down the highway, I could die a happy man. Further details here, including several pics. This is pretty danged cool too:

Andrews collaborated with his friend, Steve Constantino, on the prospect of building new versions of 1930s Packards.

“They found a company in Nebraska that makes all the parts for those particular vehicles. Andrews researched and now owns the legal rights to the Packard brands, patents and trademarks, which was a major step in moving forward,” Cleveland.com writes.

Lastly but by no means leastly:


Of course the new Packard will be far, far out of my pitiful price range, but who cares? Such a vision of loveliness is its own reward, even when the beauty is beheld from afar.

Creepy AF update! And within mere minutes of posting the above, what should arrive in my email inbox but an ad from eBay headlined thusly: Under the hood: An ice-making Land Cruiser and Cadillac Woody, offering all kinds of car paraphernalia for sale, from the aforementioned 56 Cadillac View Master resto to chrome mags to race-driving gear to you name it. Why, if I didn’t know better I’d think I was being watched by somebody or something.

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Short stop

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A few thoughts from Diogenes Sarcastica.

I fully intend to haunt people after I die. I have a list.

Somewhere in the world there is a tree that sprouted the very montent you were born and has grown along with you all this time. And I think that is wonderful!

When my mother was pregnant with my little bro and we were on the side of the road struggling with a flat tire, a car with three men stopped, not to help but to ask directions to a local golf course. Mom sent them 15 mile in the wrong direction. She is the Legend that shaped me.

There are 13 minerals that are essential for human life, and all of them can be found in Wine. Coincidence? I Think Not!

I do feel bad about the confrontation tonight and the lady at Costcos with her son on a leash. Lady I’m sorry I asked if he was a rescue. The profanity wasn’t really necessary, but thank you for not siccing him on me.

Plenty more rich, buttery goodness where that came from, folks.

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Urethra, I have found it!

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As Kelly Bundy used to say. Ladies and germs,  I give you what just might be the greatest Christmas tune in history.

Via the AoSHQ ONT.

Update! Another superb AoSHQ find, this one via Weasel’s Sunday Gun Thread.

As you might guess from the screen grab, Liberal Tears appears to be for real. The blurb puts it straight:

DESCRIPTION
Guns have only two enemies; Rust and Liberals. Liberal Tears Gun Oil protects against both. We have bottled Liberal Tears to create a CLP that gives you guaranteed 2nd Amendment protection.

I hope the folks behind LT make a million bazillion dollars off the idea.

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New meme

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Spent all damned evening working this one up to my satisfaction, but I think you meme-lover miscreants in the CF Lifer ranks will agree it was worth the effort.

Still haven’t figured out how to do a stroke-outline on text in that damned Gimp software, but oh well. Layer and/or object alignment is another Gimp mystery that gives me hissy fits, although tonight I DID figure out how to do straight (kinda-sorta-somewhat) lines via the “shift” key after some bootless mucking about with the “path” tool, there being no “line” or “custom shapes” tool available therein. No way to nudge objects a pixel or two at a time with the arrow keys either, or if there is I haven’t managed to find it yet.

All in all, what can I say. I feel like I’m slowly but surely getting better with the Gimp; I’m grateful the Gimp is there, mind, and the price is certainly right, but I am and likely ever shall remain a Photoshop guy in my coal-black heart. Back when I was working at the magazines we had to use Illustrator to do front covers and suchlike, with interior page-layouts assembled using InDesign, which I actually liked a lot better than Quark anyhoo. Still, for designing the ads (my main job) I sneaked back over to P-shop every time I could get by with it, rather than endure another agonizing, interminable slog through Illy. P-shop is what I cut my graphic-design teeth on many years ago: it’s what I’m used to, I understand and am entirely comfortable with it, and I’m far too old a dog to be learning much in the way of new tricks now, alas.

DISCLAIMER: Shrub’s half-assed moose-tache was not my doing; that and the odd halo were already in place when I scooped the image off Luxxle, so I refuse to shoulder any of the blame for it. I just DL’d the image, cropped/scaled it a little to fit the space, and pasted it in without further undue fuss. The other two sloppily-drawn nutdusters, on Tricky Dick and Ronnie the Great, I admit my guilt freely. No need to adorn Pedo Peter with a ’stache, since the Hellfire-and-brimstone backdrop and Too Old Jaux’s angry gesticulating make the point well enough already, I felt.

Any fellow Persons Of Blogge out there who are given to running these pitchers-with-funny-words thingamajiggers—Pete, I’m looking at you, buddy—may feel free to run the above creation to your heart’s content with my blessing and humble thanks. I credited myself at the bottom right, as you can see, so don’t feel obligated to go to any such trouble your own self.

Heh. Alzhitler. I’ll say it again: I slay me. A-HENH!

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Solidarnosc

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Fake News work stoppage.

The Babylon Bee Writers Stand In Solidarity With Our Fellow Fake News Writers Going On Strike At The Washington Post
It has come to our attention that the delightfully witty satirists of The Washington Post are going on strike this week. We here at The Babylon Bee stand in solidarity with our fellow comedians and join them in demanding fair wages. The writers at WP work hard to bring us their daring and uproarious brand of comedy every day, and they deserve compensation for their work.

Where else can we find comedic gems like “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48” or “Does that Jason Aldean song go on a playlist? Or a watchlist?” Where else can we find stories on race, gender, and foreign policy so consistently hilarious that they brighten our days and keep us hungrily coming back for more again and again?

Not to mention this classic howler:

Stop it, WaPo hacks, you’re killing me over here. Making me kinda hungry, too.

Update! Thought I was joking about that last one, did ya? ’Fraid not.

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Moar Christmas tunage

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Man, can these kids sing or WHAT?!?

Although I picked this up from that Irish Christmas music channel I mentioned last week, strictly speaking the absolutely gorgeous Pie Jesu isn’t actually a Christmas song.

“Pie Jesu” (/ˈpiː.eɪ ˈjeɪ.zuː, -suː/ PEE-ay-YAY-zu; original Latin: “Pie Iesu” /ˈpi.e ˈje.su/) is a text from the final couplet of the hymn “Dies irae”, and is often included in musical settings of the Requiem Mass as a motet. The phrase means “pious Jesus” in the vocative.

The settings of the Requiem Mass by Luigi Cherubini, Antonin Dvořák, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, John Rutter, Karl Jenkins, Kim André Arnesen and Fredrik Sixten include a “Pie Jesu” as an independent movement. Decidedly, the best known is the “Pie Jesu” from Fauré’s Requiem. Camille Saint-Saëns, who died in 1921, said of Fauré’s “Pie Jesu”: “Just as Mozart’s is the only ‘Ave verum corpus’, this is the only ‘Pie Jesu’.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s setting of “Pie Jesu” in his Requiem (1985) has also become well known and has been widely recorded, including by Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, Jackie Evancho, Sissel Kyrkjebø, Ylvis, Marie Osmond, Anna Netrebko, and others. Performed by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it was a certified Silver hit in the UK in 1985.

The mood set by the above achingly-beautiful Angelis performance of Lloyd-Webber’s version is as placid and soul-soothing as Christmas morn itself, making it close enough to Christmas music to do for me. Translation from the Latin:

Pious Jesus,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Give them rest.

Lamb of God,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Give them rest,
Everlasting
Rest.

If there really are “choirs of angels” waiting to sing us to our Heavenly rest, this HAS to be exactly what they sound like.

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Product: ENDORSED

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With all my heart and soul.

Saw that this morning, and I haven’t stopped laughing since. Having broken the bank and gone without eating a cpl-three days last month to buy my musically-gifted daughter a 70s-vintage King Tempo trumpet off of eBay, to be specific:

Nickel plated, with raw-brass tuning slides and valve caps for contrast, in A-1 shape for its age—a bit of corrosion at the grab-points from skin oils and/or sweat, along with some very minor scratches and scuffs, as one must expect with anything this old. The case is in slightly worse shape, alas; as you can see from the pic, the felt has separated from the shell up by the grab handle. But no worries: my friend Greg is generously donating his like-new, barely used Benge case to make up for it.

I played a King myself during my band career and for many years after (a 601, if I remember right), and my poor horn was one hell of a lot more battered and beat-up by the time I parted with it than this fine instrument is. Hey, the great Harry James was a King man throughout his illustrious career—what better endorsement could one possibly want?

So you can bet your sweet bippy my young ‘un will be getting herself a BrassTache from dear old dad this Christmas to adorn and enliven her noble old King. She inherited the same silly, juvenile sense of humor her old man has, so I know she’s gonna love it all to pieces. And laugh herself sick over it, like papa did.

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On laying hose

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So you think you want to be a fireman, eh kid?

The hose that runs from the fire hydrant to the fire truck is called supply line. Most supply line is 3 inches or more in diameter, and in Central Florida, it’s usually 5 inches. (Orlando uses 4 inch, but that is because they typically have fire hydrants that are close together).

First, a bit of engineering.

The reason for this is hydrodynamics and friction loss. The average water main pressure is about 65 psi. At 1,000 gallons per minute, a 3 inch hose loses 80 pounds of pressure every 100 feet of hose length due to friction between the moving water and the hose itself, while a 4 inch diameter hose loses 20 pounds of pressure, and a 5 inch hose loses only 8 pounds. That means, if you want longer hose lays with high flow, the larger the diameter of your supply line, the better.

There is a lot of math involved in being the driver of a fire engine. You need to be able to calculate your friction losses in your head, rapidly, and remember that the lives of the guys in the burning building depend on you getting it correct. When you are flowing 2,000 gallons per minute through half a dozen different hose lines at 2 in the morning at a burning strip mall isn’t the time to realize that you are math deficient.

5 inch supply line has what is called a “sexless coupling” meaning that there is no male or female end, the couplings are interchangeable (butbutbut WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 872+ GENDERS?!?—M). This allows you to start laying from either the fire to the hydrant, called a reverse lay, or from the hydrant to the fire, called a forward lay. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but we won’t talk about that in this post.

My fire truck carried 1200 feet of 5 inch diameter supply line. That means with standard hydrant pressure, I could get a bit more than 800 gallons per minute into my engine without having to put another fire engine at the hydrant to boost pressure.

A whole bunch more fascinating stuff regarding what-all you need to know but almost certainly don’t when it comes to how fires are fought nowadays is included in this must-read post from Divemedic. Even if you never cared anything about being a fireman when you grew up—I didn’t, I admit, nor about being a cowboy, although being an astronaut did sound pretty cool—this stuff is just too good to miss out on reading, and you shouldn’t. There’s a video too, just for additional incentive to go check it out.

Back when I was working at the H-D shop, my boss Goose wanted desperately to be a fireman, but after failing the dummy-drag test three times he finally had to give it up as a lost cause. Goose practiced and strength-trained for months and months—and being a former USMC F4 mechanic, you know he wasn’t lacking in either intelligence or iron-willed determination—but in the end he’s a small, slight fella and those damned dummies are damned heavy. In fact, I think the dummy actually outweighed him by about twenty-thirty pounds.

At any rate, from hearing Goose talk about it, I probably know more than the average bear about what it takes to be a fireman, but even so DM still covers things I never heard about before.

Can’t get enough of that Donald Trump stuff

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Wayne Root submits an increasingly pertinent question.

How Did Trump Become Superman, Batman, Elvis & the Beatles Rolled into One?
Trump isn’t just winning big in America…he’s spreading!

A Trump clone (Javier Milei) was just elected as President of Argentina. A Trump clone (Geert Wilders) was just elected as the leader of Netherlands. A Trump clone (Conor McGregor) is the new nationalist hero of Ireland, defending the Irish people from foreign invasion- and he may also become the next Prime Minister.

A Trump clone was even elected Mayor of Charleston, South Carolina this week- the first Republican elected since 1877.

You’ve heard the song, “I’m turning Japanese, I really think so.” Well, the new hit single is “The whole world is turning Trump, I really think so.” Everywhere in America and all over the world, Trump is spreading.

Did you see President Trump entering the arena for UFC two weeks ago? It was one of the most amazing, exhilarating sports entrances ever. 20,000 fans went insane screaming for Trump. It was like the Beatles arriving in America in 1964.

Did you see President Trump entering the football stadium last Saturday for the South Carolina-Clemson college football game? When Trump walked into the stadium the crowd was even more hysterical than the UFC crowd. It was like they were witnessing Elvis return from the dead. 80,000 fans went wild for Trump- screaming his name and chanting “USA, USA, USA.” It was literally one of the most exciting scenes in sports history.

Keep in mind this wasn’t a political convention. These weren’t Republicans. This was a mainstream football game. And the audience was mostly college students. No politician in U.S. history has ever elicited a reaction like this.

Trump is no longer a man. He is a superhero to a vast swath of America.

Polls confirm that something special is happening. Trump is beating Biden in virtually every poll at Real Clear Politics. Trump is winning in every battleground state. Trump is winning among youth. Trump is leading among minority men. And if Trump is winning the popular vote, that means he’s winning an electoral landslide.

This is happening while Trump is under four federal and state indictments, facing 91 felony counts, and over 700 years in prison.

Trump is doing the best in polls in history. In all the years since he came down the escalator in 2015, Trump has rarely led in polls, anywhere.

Trump voters are always under-counted in polls. That’s why Trump was always trailing Hillary in 2016. Yet Trump won. Trump was always trailing Biden throughout 2019 and 2020- nationally and in most battleground states. Yet Trump added 12 million new votes. He got the most votes of any sitting president in history.

We all know Trump won the 2020 election. Democrats had to rig and cheat with fake mail-in ballots in six key battleground states to overcome huge Trump leads on Election Night that would have given Trump an electoral landslide.

But now for the first time in history, Trump is winning in every poll.

How dramatically have things changed? Trump was just endorsed by a co-Founder of BLM.

How did Trump go from supposedly “unpopular” “washed up” and “the GOP’s past” to superhero, Superman, Batman, Elvis and the Beatles rolled into one, while under nonstop criminal indictment? The answers are simple…

Follows, a rundown of those answers, which are indeed simple enough. But in the end, they all boil down to just one:

Thank you, Democrats. You built this Trump superhero.

Heh. Credit the DC Swamp malefactors and their Woke Corporate Amerika Inc criminal co-conspirators with an assist, but…pretty much, yeppers. You just know that’s gotta smart a bit, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes if you ask me.

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RAYCISS!

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Go, little black (and red) face boy, go!


I’m with the esteemed Mr Woods myself, all the way, and with Mr Majesty as well. Another perfect response:


In-fargin’-DEED. Sadly, the shitlibs can no more recognize irony than their own hypocrisy, and are as bereft of a sense of shame as they are of a sense of humor, of humility, or of decency. Remarkable, innit, how these self-proclaimed enlightened, evolved Superior Beings are in truth deficient in so very many ways.

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George Thoroughlygood

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The Delaware Destroyer rocks out on one of my personal faves, a cover of rock ‘n’ roll icon Bo Diddley’s original tune.

Back in the day, Diddley was always jokingly known in the BPs band-van as Squiggly Diggley. Hey, when you’re tired, smelly, hungover as hell, and still have another six to eight hours of driving before you make it to that night’s venue, pretty much everything begins to seem funny, aiight?

The George Thorogood backstory is an interesting one.

Thorogood began his career as a solo acoustic performer in the style of Robert Johnson and Elmore James after being inspired in 1970 by a John P. Hammond concert. In 1973, he formed a band, the Delaware Destroyers, with high school friend and drummer Jeff Simon. With additional players, the Delaware Destroyers developed its sound, a mixture of Chicago blues and rock and roll. The band’s first shows were in the Rathskeller bar at the University of Delaware and at Deer Park Tavern, both in Newark, Delaware. Eventually, the band’s name was shortened to the Destroyers. During this time, Thorogood supplemented his income by working as a roadie for Hound Dog Taylor.

Thorogood’s demo Better Than the Rest was recorded in 1974, but was not released until 1979. His major recording debut came with the album George Thorogood and the Destroyers, which was released in 1977. In 1978, Thorogood released his next album with the Destroyers titled Move It on Over, which included a remake of Hank Williams’s “Move It on Over”. He followed those recordings in 1979 with “Please Set a Date” and a reworking of the Bo Diddley song “Who Do You Love”, both released in 1979. The band’s early success contributed to the rise of folk label Rounder Records.

During the late 1970s, Thorogood and his band were based in Boston. He was friends with Jimmy Thackery of the Washington, D.C.-based blues band, The Nighthawks. While touring in the 1970s, the Destroyers and the Nighthawks were playing shows in Georgetown at venues across the street from each other. The Destroyers were engaged at the Cellar Door and the Nighthawks at Desperados. At midnight, while both bands played Elmore James’s “Madison Blues” in the same key, Thorogood and Thackery left their clubs, met in the middle of M Street, exchanged guitar cords and went on to play with the opposite band in the other club. The connection with the Nighthawks was extended further when Nighthawks bass player Jan Zukowski supported Thorogood’s set with Bo Diddley and Albert Collins at the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 1985.

Thorogood gained his first mainstream exposure as a support act for the Rolling Stones during their 1981 U.S. tour. He was also the featured musical guest on Saturday Night Live (Season 8, Episode 2) on the October 2, 1982, broadcast. During this time, Thorogood and the Destroyers became known for their rigorous touring schedule, including the “50/50” tour in 1981, on which the band toured all 50 US states in 50 days. After two shows in Boulder, Colorado, Thorogood and his band flew to Hawaii for one show and then performed a show in Alaska the following night. The next day, Thorogood and his band met his roadies in Washington and continued the one-show-per-state tour. In addition, he played Washington, D.C., on the same day that he performed a show in Maryland, thereby playing 51 shows in 50 days.

With his contract with Rounder Records expiring, Thorogood signed with EMI America Records and, in 1982, released the single “Bad to the Bone” and an album of the same name that went gold. The song became the band’s most well-known song through appearances on MTV and use in films, television and commercials. Thorogood and his band went on to have two more gold studio albums in the 1980s, Maverick and Born to Be Bad. The former features Thorogood’s only Billboard Hot 100 hit, a remake of Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive”, and his concert staple “I Drink Alone”.

 Breakthrough hit or no, I’d be a-okay if I never heard “Bad to The Bone” again for the rest of my life. That said, I still like most of the rest of George’s recorded output just fine, thanks. Legend has it that the Stones, Mick or Keef one, ran across Thorogood gigging in some small gin-joint or other and were impressed enough to offer him the support-act slot on the above-mentioned 1981 tour on the spot, after which it was off and running for the toothy slide-player from the Small-Wonder State. Good for him, I say; the man has damned sure paid his dues, as the old bluesmen used to say, and gained his fame, fortune, and success the old-fashioned way: he earned it.

Update! Not Thorogood, but have yourselves a bonus tune anyway. Heard it on the car radio earlier; I’d just about forgotten how much I always liked it.

Burton Cummings, the guy who wrote this one, absolutely rips some boogie-woogie pi-anny on the original recorded version, although it seems just a mite understated here. What the hey, though, this one’s live, and it’s still damned good if you ask me.

T’was the night before Christmas

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And thru the White House
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a louse

An Alt Christmas Carol
The White House, Christmas Eve, 2023. Imagine the painfully lugubrious scene….

“Joe Biden” rattles around in the upstairs “residence” like a BB in a packing crate. Nobody is around besides a few secret service agents, so still at their posts they might as well be statuary. The Big Guy is all alone. His spouse, Dr. Jill, had enough of pretend caretaking quite a while ago, and flew off to Oprah’s place in Santa Barbara for counseling and commiseration. Hunter is Gawd-knows-where doing Gawd-knows-what.

“JB” shuffles out of the residence kitchen, where he just demolished a half gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream® ice cream, against his doctor’s orders. His gall bladder writhes in revolt, sending a distress signal up the vagus nerve to the shriveled hypothalamus in his brain. A jumbled fugue of emotions — rage, fear, sexual arousal — quickens his step as he navigates by dead reckoning to the executive bedroom where he hurries to bed and falls into leaden slumber — only to be awakened by a cacophony of ringing bells. His eyelids roll open like shades in the windows of a skid row hotel room. Plangent moaning resounds as a mist emerges through the bedroom door and resolves into a mysterious figure garbed in the raiment of the Ku Klux Klan.

“Joe Biden” shrinks under the luxury Boll & Branch signature duvet— acquired when the agriculture minister of Ukraine slipped him an envelope stuffed with 100 hryvnia notes. The spirit wails something that resembles the old Confederate anthem Eatin’ Goober Peas.

“Who are you spirit?” the quaking president asks.

“Why, I am your old pard from the Senate,” the ghost of Robert Byrd declares, removing the pointed hood to reveal his leonine head of hair and scowling face. “Why have you thrown our sacred borders wide open, suh? I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels.”

“Y-y-you don’t uh-uh-understand,” “JB” says, his childhood stutter returning. “They are muh-muh-migrants from oppression and vuh-vuh-very fine people.”

“Fine people, my ass,” the former Senator from West Virginia cries and clears the dust of the sepulcher from his throat. “I will send three spirits to you this night as a review of what has been and what shall become, so beware….” And with that the spirit returns to mist and slips back out through the keyhole…

“Joe Biden” is shocked from slumber again as an attractive blond female ghost floats through the bedroom window.

“Don’t I know you?” he asks.

“Cad! That is the very line you used to pick me up on spring break in Nassau, 1966,” says “JB’s” first wife, Neilia Hunter. “Shall I show you the meretricious spectacle you made of our family after that truck driver on Limestone Road ended my life and your little daughter’s too!”

“No-o-o-o-o,” the president moans, but is magically transported to the Wilmington Hospital room where his banged-up boys, Beau and Hunter, are recovering from their injuries. A TV crew is present as “JB” emotes for the camera, a cruel victim of fate, he blubbers, who will yet conquer his grief and go on to forty years of electoral victories and the sedulous gathering of tribute from “donors” far and wide to soften the blow of his loss. The room dims…

Read on for the other spirit visitations: second being the martyred Saint George of Fentanyl, complete with Neegrow dialect deftly translated from the original ghetto-ese, representing the Ghost Of Christmas Present; Christmas Yet To Come I’ll leave unnamed so as not to spoil the surprise for ya, but take my word for it, t’is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Kunstler uncorks his by no means inconsiderable writerly chops and lets ‘em really soar in this one, and it’s a joy and a wonder to behold.

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Christmas moozik

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Borepatch tells us that A) Allison Krause is a national treasure, as is the peerless Yo Yo Ma, and B) this song is, and I quote, “magical.” He is perfectly correct, on all counts.

As it happens, I heard this one over the weekend on the classical music station as I was trying to come up with a reason to drag myself out of bed; it stopped me dead in my tracks, I was helpless to do anything but just lie there and take it in. The haunting melody of this rendition of the traditional Irish carol (VERY Irish, t’is; an orchestral version is here, if you’re interested in comparing and contrasting) may seem a bit, um, mournful for Christmas, which usually brings to mind more merry, celebratory, light-hearted music for most of us.

But no matter; this song is simply gorgeous, the performances stellar, and the arrangement is nothing short of spectacular, a piece of near-divine musical inspiration. Well done to all involved, and thanks to Borepatch for the reminder.

Update! Any overgrown kid out there like meself who just can’t get enough of that Christmas-y stuff is hereby advised to check out a fine, fine live365 stream I’ve had running pretty much continually since I came across it over the weekend: ChristmasFM Classical. After three days, there’ve been precious few duds so far—if any, even, a point which I am not entirely prepared to concede.

Ironically enough in light of the subject matter of another of tonight’s posts, it appears from ChristmasFM’s own website that the station just happens to be based guess where.

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

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Correspondence

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Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle

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