Category: Brilliant!

BFYTW

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I’ve already flatly stated that the only way FederalGovCo will be getting their “vaccine” into my personal bloodstream is via physical force, and I was by no means kidding around. There are numerous reasons backing my assessment, some of which have now been rounded up in one convenient place. As I’ve also said, for me the issue boils down to trust: after the last several years’ worth of countless demonstrations of its duplicity, its treachery, its consummate immorality and corruption, do you trust the federal government with your health, likely even your very life?

I don’t, so I won’t. End of story. But there’s another reason I hadn’t thought of, and it may well be the most compelling of them all.

I’m not really avoiding the vaccine due to potential medical complications, or because of the speed with which it was produced.

Personal liberty is not the reason I’m avoiding it, either. I’m not a member of the “don’t tread on me” club. Though I don’t think mandated “vaccine passports” are a brilliant idea, my refusal to take the vaccine is not related to some perceived or real government overreach. I’m not here to take a principled stand against the federal or state governments on this issue. In fact, I’m saving my principled stands against the federal or state governments for issues that really matter, like strengthening libel laws so that lying journalists can finally be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they belong.   

My primary reason for refusing the vaccine is much simpler: I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal. That, in turn, makes me happy.

Maybe it’s petty, but the thought of the worst people on planet earth, those whom I like to call the Branch Covidians, literally shaking as I stroll into Target vaccine-free, makes me smile.

It wasn’t until the sociopathic mediocrity that is the entrenched liberal political class in Washington began bullying normal people into wearing masks, staying home, standing six feet apart from others at all times, mobilizing even less impressive liberal stormtroopers to play the role of COVID-19 prevention Gestapo, and then finally propped up the vaccine as the Holy Grail that would lead us back to “normalcy,” that I finally began to have an opinion on vaccines. And though I don’t know much about the “anti-vaxxers,” I do know that I’m displeased with the way they have been portrayed by the aforementioned GITMO-bound media, simply for harboring opinions that are considered non-mainstream.

So I have decided that because the vile political Left, which I despise in the abstract, wants me to take their coveted vaccine, I simply will not. After the horrifying displeasure of meeting several of their militant COVID-19 restriction enforcers in person over the past year, I have become even more steadfast in my stance.

My newly formed and well-developed opinion on vaccines is this: if those bastards want me to get the jab, I’m not going to do it, because it annoys them.

Perhaps you think I’m being obtuse. I do not care. 

Nor should you. From the comments so far, it looks like his plan is working. A like sentiment (via Ace) expressed in somewhat, umm, more direct terms:

PREACH it, girlfriend. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Nothing succeeds like excess

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Tonight’s musical selection is a real chestnut: Foreplay/Long Time, one of a long succession of chartbusters from Boston’s 1976 self-titled debut release, a for-reals monster hit of an album as well.



After several years of receiving the contemptuous stiffarm from just about every major label in the biz, the band finally signed with Epic, in a story full of the kind of remarkable turns of Fate, happenstance, and fortuitous timing which have become as old and familiar as Classic Rock itself.

Epic wanted the band to record in Los Angeles with a record producer, but Scholz was unwilling and wanted to record the album in his basement studio, so he hired Boylan to run interference with the label. In an elaborate ruse, Scholz tricked the label into thinking the band was recording on the West Coast, when in reality, the bulk was being tracked solely by Scholz at his Massachusetts home. The album’s contents are a complete recreation of the band’s demo tape, and contain songs written and composed many years prior. The album’s style, often referred to as the “Boston sound”, was developed through Scholz’s love of classical music, melodic hooks and guitar-heavy rock groups such as the Kinks and the Yardbirds, as well as a number of analogue electronic effects developed by Scholz in his home studio. Scholz would later found Scholz Research & Development, Inc. to market many of his inventions that he used in developing the sound on the album.

The album was released by Epic in August 1976 and sold extremely well, breaking sales records, becoming the best-selling debut LP in the US at the time, and winning the RIAA Century Award as best selling debut album. The album’s singles, most notably “More Than a Feeling” and “Long Time”, were both AM and FM hits, and nearly the entire album receives constant rotation on classic rock radio. The album has been referred to as a landmark in 1970s rock and has been included on many lists of essential albums. It has sold 17 million copies in the United States alone and 25 million worldwide.

In the late 1960s, Tom Scholz began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he first began writing music. After graduating with a master’s degree, he began working for the Polaroid Corporation in the product development division. By night, he played keyboards for bands in the Boston bar and club scene, where he collaborated with keyboardist/drummer Jim Masdea. The two—who shared a concept of the perfect rock band, one “with crystal-clear vocals and bone-crunching guitars”—viewed themselves as only part-time musicians. Despite this, the duo built a small studio near Watertown, Massachusetts to record ideas. Scholz recorded for hours on end, often re-recording, erasing and discarding tapes in an effort to create “a perfect song”. Both musicians later joined Mother’s Milk, a band featuring guitarist Barry Goudreau, that vied for recognition in the Boston music scene. Scholz quickly went from keyboardist to lead songwriter, and the band went through dozens of lead vocalists before Brad Delp auditioned. Delp, a former factory worker at a Danvers electric coil company, spent much of his weekends in cover bands. Delp drove to Revere Beach, where the three-piece were performing at a club named Jojo’s. Delp was impressed that the band had recorded a demo tape and were still recording, and earned his position in the band after auditioning the Joe Walsh song “Rocky Mountain Way”. Mother’s Milk became an early version of Boston, with Goudreau on lead guitar.

By 1973, the band had a six-song demo tape ready for mailing, and Scholz and his wife Cindy sent copies to every record company they could find. The songs on the demo were “More Than a Feeling”, “Peace of Mind”, “Rock & Roll Band”, “Something About You”, “Hitch a Ride” (under a different title) and “Don’t Be Afraid” (which would be eventually released on Don’t Look Back). The group received rejection slips from several labels—RCA, Capitol, Atlantic and Elektra among the most notable—and Epic Records rejected the tape flatly with a “very insulting letter” signed by company head Lennie Petze that opined the band “offered nothing new”. The tape that received the most attention contained embryonic renditions of future songs that would appear on Boston’s debut album. Financial reality encroached the dream for Delp, who departed shortly thereafter because “there just wasn’t any money coming in”. By 1975, Tom Scholz was finished with the club scene, concentrating exclusively on the demo tapes he recorded at home in his basement. Scholz was renting the house and spent much of his funds on recording equipment; at one point, he spent the money he had saved for a down payment on a future home on a Scully 8-track. He called Delp to provide vocals, remarking, “If you can’t really afford to join the band or if you don’t want to join the band, maybe you’d just want to come down to the studio and sing on some of these tapes for me.” Scholz had given the Mother’s Milk demo to a Polaroid co-worker whose cousin worked at ABC Records (who had signed one of Scholz’s favorite bands, the James Gang). The employee forgot to mail the tape out and it sat in his desk for months until Columbia began contacting Scholz, after which he sent the tape to ABC.

Charles McKenzie, a New England representative for ABC Records, first overheard the tape in a co-worker’s office. He called Paul Ahern, an independent record promoter in California, with whom he held a gentleman’s agreement that if either heard anything interesting, they would inform the other. Ahern had connections with Petze at Epic and informed him—even though Petze had passed on the original Mother’s Milk demos. Epic contacted Scholz and offered a contract that first required the group to perform in a showcase for CBS representatives, as the label felt curious that the “band” was in reality a “mad genius at work in a basement”. Masdea had started to lose interest in the project by this time, and Scholz called Goudreau and two other performers who had recorded on the early demos, bass player Fran Sheehan and drummer Dave Currier, to complete the lineup. In November 1975, the group performed for the executives in a Boston warehouse that doubled as Aerosmith’s practice facility. Mother’s Milk was signed by CBS Records one month later in a contract that required 10 albums over six years. Currier quit before he knew the band passed the audition, and Scholz recruited drummer Sib Hashian in his place. Epic had signed an agreement with NABET, the union representing electrical and broadcast engineers, which specified that any recording done outside of a Columbia-owned studio but within a 250-mile radius of one of those studios required that a paid union engineer be present. As such, the label wanted the band to travel to Los Angeles and re-record their songs with a different producer. Scholz was unhappy with being unable to be in charge, and John Boylan, a friend of a friend of Ahern, came on board the project. Boylan’s duty was to “run interference for the label and keep them happy”, and he made a crucial suggestion: that the band change their name to Boston.

And thus was their future secured, and rock and roll history made.

Now, as y’all already know, I was a confirmed punk-rock devotee right from the inception of the sub-genre. So, seeing as how Boston’s music was pretty much the living embodiment of the overly slick, tamed-down, theatrical “corporate rock” that the punk movement’s founders so angrily objected to, one might think it safe to assume that my visceral response to Boston’s stuff would consist of little more than a sneer, a snarl, and a disgusted snort.

Au contraire, mon frere. When the Boston album hit the airwaves, my inner Classic Rock afficionado—although already forcibly leashed and subdued by the heat and unrestrained frenzy of the Ramones, the Damned, and the Pistols—still definitely dug it anyhow. Now granted, Boston’s output was overproduced, all the jagged edges meticulously smoothed away by a recording-studio process that might as well have been designed for the purpose of watering down the wild, rebellious angst innate to rock and roll from Sun-era Elvis on, all aggro and ferocity removed so as to appeal to more timid ears. Boston wasn’t quite what anyone would call “soft rock,” no. Then again, they weren’t quite D-Purp or Black Sabbath, either.

That said, in spite of all the studio jiggery-pokery and my own all-in embrace of the punk rock revolution, despite Boston reputation as one of the exemplars of 70s recording-studio excess and sterility, I loved ’em then, and I love ’em still. Listen carefully to the passage in the video above that begins at 6:01 and runs to 6:21—the close of the guitar solo, which builds into a somewhat elaborate resolution to the dominant, with Brad Delp’s signature yelp providing overwatch throughout. Then the turnaround, taking us back into the final verse and the end of the song.

Might as well just embed that specific section too so’s nobody misses anything, what the hey.



Wretched 70s corporate-rock excess or no, that’s some Really Big Noise there. And if it doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up, you’re almost certainly dead. Or have a tin ear, maybe. It’s as powerful a climax to a rock song as any I know of, and moreso than a lot of ’em. It might well be a fair cop to say that my fondness for Boston makes for an unflattering constrast with my equally-strong love for the stripped-down, spare, no-nonsense credo of punk. Don’t care. I repeat: loved it then, love it still. And you should too.

How it happened

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Wherein a most intriguing case is made in support of a somewhat unusual proposition: the origins of our national woes, pretty much all of them, are directly traceable to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

For over fifty years, it has been a recurring promise of conservative candidates running for election that they will stand up for our constitutional rights and support the appointment of judges and Supreme Court justices who will uphold the Constitution.

Yet time after time, the left seems to win both ideological and legal battles on monumental issues such as abortion, marriage, gun control, immigration, racial preferences for minorities, and the ever-expanding size and scope of government — no matter what the text of the Constitution actually says.

In The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, (2020; ISBN 978-1-5011-0689-7) author Christopher Caldwell advances the thesis that the Constitution of 1788 has been effectively nullified by our elites and supplanted with a “new constitution” that originated in, and reflects the values of, the “Civil Rights Era” of the 1960s. Though the civil rights movement began as a reformist movement within the old order, it evolved into a “revolution” that has nearly triumphed over the polity created in the 18th century:

The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible[.]…Much of what we have called “polarization” or “incivility” in recent years is something more grave — it is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail: the de jure constitution of 1788…with centuries of American culture behind it…or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks this traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as liberation.

Caldwell argues that the new “de facto constitution” has been used to supersede the Bill of Rights and the black-letter law of the traditional Constitution.  Forced busing and forced integration violated the First Amendment right to freedom of association, as did affirmative action for blacks and women. Racial and sex-based preferences offend the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These policies were enacted despite opposition from most Americans. Speech codes and political correctness designed to cater to the sensitivities of minorities infringe on the right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The “right” to an abortion, which existed nowhere in the traditional Constitution and was opposed by a majority of the people (with limited exceptions), was essentially created by the Supreme Court.

Lest anybody be inclined to assume that Demonrat-appointed Justices and Presidents are entirely to blame, or nearly so, that erroneous notion is handily dispensed with. After the infuriating way in which Trump’s eagerly-anticipated USSC picks have performed so far, that comes as no big shock. Caldwell even goes so far as to rip Saint Ronald of Reagan a new ‘un for his own not-insignificant contribution to the national trainwreck. Then, from there:

If Caldwell’s thesis can be criticized, it is for understating his case — things have proven to be worse than he described.

In hindsight, the Trump presidency exposed the fact that the elites and the Deep State are now completely untethered by the original Constitution of limited and enumerated powers and by the Bill of Rights. They have demonstrated that they are willing to use the FBI to surveil presidential candidate and to fabricate a false narrative for the purposes of impeaching him. They have demonstrated that they will side with illegal aliens over American citizens, and that they will freely let black BLM and communist Antifa agitators run riot in the streets while ruthlessly prosecuting and suppressing as “domestic terrorists” patriotic and nationalist groups who caused a ruckus at the Capitol. They have demonstrated that they are willing to turn a blind eye to vicious and violent attacks by blacks against whites, but drop the hammer of “hate crimes” on any “deplorable” white who has the slightest dispute with a black, or on any cop making a traffic stop of a black criminal. They have demonstrated that they will continue to expand so-called “civil rights” to include all manner of insanity and freakishness, such as “transgenderism.”

Caldwell does not propose a solution to this situation. But recognizing the problem is a necessary first step in finding one. “Civil rights” has been used as an effective battering ram against conservatism and against the Constitution of the 1780s; conservatives can no longer allow themselves to be browbeaten by “civil rights” activists. The rigged election of 2020 and the double-impeachment of Trump should have awakened conservatives to the fact that merely voting Republican and asserting your “constitutional rights” is no longer enough. But it may be too late.

In 2014, Gov. Cuomo sneered that conservatives have no place in the state of New York. Increasingly, our elites have adopted the attitude that conservatives have no place anywhere in the country, and they are willing to act on it.

They’ll do precisely that, unless/until enough Real Americans nut up and demonstrate a willingness to act on a few things their own selves…in a way that won’t soon be forgotten, is impossible to ignore or minimize, and will leave a smarting, stinging welt.

Train kept a-rollin’

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Yep, still loving the guy over here.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Anti-Riot Bill Which Also Includes Civil Immunity For Drivers Who Hit Road-Blocking Protestors
Earlier Monday Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB1, a new bill from the Florida legislature that establishes new criminal definitions under the anti-riot law. The House and Senate worked on the legislation for a year after Governor Ron DeSantis led the initial effort.

[HB1] “defines a “riot” as a public disturbance involving three or more people “acting with the common intent to assist each other in violent and disorderly conduct” that results in injury to another person, damage to property, or danger of injury or damage.

The law grants civil immunity to people who drive into protesters who are blocking a road, prevents people accused of rioting from bailing out of jail until after their first court appearance, and increases penalties for assaulting law-enforcement officers while engaging in a “riot.” It also penalizes local governments that interfere with efforts to stop a riot and allows law-enforcement agencies that face funding reductions to file objections.” 

The anti-riot law titled “Combating Public Disorder,” creates a new crime of “mob intimidation,” enhance penalties for riot-related looting and violence and create an affirmative defense for individuals who injure or kill violent protesters. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judge spoke at the signing.

No, America’s Governor™ can’t save us anymore than Trump could. But it sure is fun watching the man work.

Is the Woke worm turning?

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I’m skeptical, but then again this is NYeffingC we’re talking about here, dumbfuck Progtardism’s Ground Zero—one of these guys is even a TEACHER, ferchrissakes—so I could be wrong.

For three days, I’ve had sitting on my virtual spindle a post that Bari Weiss, formerly of the New York Times, posted on her Substack page. It’s entitled “I Refuse to Stand by while My Students Are Indoctrinated.” The author isn’t Weiss but is, instead, Paul Rossi, a math teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan (annual tuition: $57,330). On Friday, Weiss added another open letter, this from Andrew Gutmann, a parent who had just pulled his daughter out of Brearley, another expensive private school (annual tuition: $54,000). Both are horrifying exposés of and attacks against the woke culture saturating these institutions.

Both letters are long and don’t yield easily to a brief summary. I’ll quote a few select paragraphs from each, but you must read them to get the full flavor of the Maoist madness at these institutions.

A little taste of Rossi’s toothsome missive:

I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent.

Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. (Such racially segregated sessions are now commonplace at my school.) It was a bait-and-switch “self-care” seminar that labelled “objectivity,” “individualism,” “fear of open conflict,” and even “a right to comfort” as characteristics of white supremacy. I doubted that these human attributes — many of them virtues reframed as vices — should be racialized in this way. In the Zoom chat, I also questioned whether one must define oneself in terms of a racial identity at all. My goal was to model for students that they should feel safe to question ideological assertions if they felt moved to do so.

It seemed like my questions broke the ice. Students and even a few teachers offered a broad range of questions and observations. Many students said it was a more productive and substantive discussion than they expected.

However, when my questions were shared outside this forum, violating the school norm of confidentiality, I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused “harm” to students, given that these topics were “life and death matters, about people’s flesh and blood and bone.” I was reprimanded for “acting like an independent agent of a set of principles or ideas or beliefs.” And I was told that by doing so, I failed to serve the “greater good and the higher truth.”

He further informed me that I had created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.” The school’s director of studies added that my remarks could even constitute harassment.

A few days later, the head of school ordered all high school advisors to read a public reprimand of my conduct out loud to every student in the school. It was a surreal experience, walking the halls alone and hearing the words emitting from each classroom: “Events from last week compel us to underscore some aspects of our mission and share some thoughts about our community,” the statement began. “At independent schools, with their history of predominantly white populations, racism colludes with other forms of bias (sexism, classism, ableism and so much more) to undermine our stated ideals, and we must work hard to undo this history.”

Sounds as if this school indoctrination center is re-enacting one of Chairman Mao’s infamous Struggle Sessions, don’t it? No surprise there, though: our homegrown Leftist brainwashers, their CCP antecedents, and their contemporary ideological brethren are all operating out of the self-same playbook. Rossi’s damning broadside is disturbing, to be sure. But Gutmann’s urgent letter to his fellow parents is “if anything, even more horrifying,” as the esteemed Ms Widburg says. A wee dram of it:

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child’s education is irreparable.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley’s antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley’s oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

Plenty more to both of these letters of protest, every word of which you should read. Widburg’s heartening conclusion:

A couple of years ago, ensconced in a Senate chamber in which almost half of the senators and all the national media agreed with him, and lying about violating Senate rules, Sen. Cory Booker made the ridiculous claim that he was having his “I am Spartacus moment.”

In fact, what we’re seeing from Rossi and Gutmann, in the belly of the beast that is true-blue New York, should be the start of a true Spartacus moment. We must join together to defeat the racist Critical Race Theory and other maddened toxins oozing from leftists.

Indeed we must. The sad fact remains, though, that while these letters are a good, and unexpected, first step—particularly considering that the protests were lodged from the very belly of the Progressivist beast—even the most astringent of words will never be enough to excise this deadly cancer from the body politic. If we truly hope to heal, a big dose of some much harsher medicine is the one and only cure for what ails us.

Good reads

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Pete gives us a steer to this book recommendation from DTG:

If you haven’t read James Tarr’s, “Dog Soldiers,” you would do yourself a solid in doing so. Very entertaining and instructive, especially for anyone who doesn’t have a really good idea what ‘Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain’ (MOUT) is about.

Anyway, get this and read it. You’ll be glad you did.

As it happens, I read Dog Soldiers myself not long ago as one of my Kindle Unlimited lending-library choices, and he’s right, it’s a good ‘un. In fact, after devouring DS, I then proceeded to work my way through Tarr’s entire ouvre, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Which brings me to a recommendation of my own: DJ Molles’ Lee Harden series, a five-parter set in Molles’ The Remaining Universe, which I’ll be wading into once I find out how things wind up for good ol’ Lee Harden. I’ve read a crap-ton of what they call PAW (Post Apocalypse World) fiction, and Molles is a real standout in a genre that can be somewhat of a mixed bag as far as the writing itself goes. There’s some really well-written stuff therein, and then again there’s some pretty unreadable dreck to be found also. Molles’ characters are more complex, human, and relatable than a lot of what you run across in lesser PAW fiction, where one-dimensional, ho-hum cliches and/or comic-book superhero-level juvenilia are all too common. Molles’ story arcs are clever, his dialogue fluid and credible, the combat sequences gripping, with the right balance of weapons-system geekery, tactical/strategic/political analysis, character-relationship development, and dramatic tension maintained throughout.

One aspect of PAW fiction that both baffles and exasperates me is the preponderance of sloppy editing. Even books that I otherwise loved, by skilled and well-known authors and respectable publishers, have nonetheless been marred by spelling, grammar, and/or punctuation issues to one degree or another. Of course, poor editing is one of those things that, to repurpose a Biblical phrase, ye will have with ye always, and is by no means exclusively or even predominantly a PAW thang. No matter where you run across it, though, if it’s bad enough it can suck your head right out of the story, which is but a very short hop to just dumping the book altogether for something more competently crafted. It really makes you scratch your head in mystification at how the hell some of these editors ever managed to con their way into the job, and why they bother soldiering on in the field when clearly they could be in politics, where the opportunities for much more remunerative forms of graft are so plentiful.

Alas, the scourge of bad editing rears its ugly head in both Dog Soldiers and the Harden books alike, albeit to a much lesser extent in DS if I remember right. It’s bearable in both, thankfully, amounting to nothing worse than a minor distraction, although there was a certain adjustment period with the first Harden book that I had to make it past before I could really sink my teeth into the thing and enjoy myself. This is all strictly a matter of opinion, so naturally your mileage may vary. However it all works out for ya, I heartily endorse DTG’s recommendation, with great big bells on.

Pobody’s nerfect

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A handsome mea culpa from America’s Governor™.

Exclusive: Florida Gov. DeSantis Says Lockdowns Were a ‘Huge Mistake’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order on April 1 last year, locking down the Sunshine State for 30 days amid global panic about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak. Sitting in his office exactly one year later, he told The Epoch Times that the lockdowns were a “huge mistake,” including in his own state.

“We wanted to mitigate the damage. Now, in hindsight, the 15 days to slow the spread and the 30—it didn’t work,” DeSantis said. “We shouldn’t have gone down that road.”

Florida’s lockdown order was notably less strict than some of the stay-at-home measures imposed in other states. Recreational activities like walking, biking, playing golf, and beachgoing were allowed, while what constituted an “essential business” was broadly defined.

“Our economy kept going,” DeSantis said. “It was much different than what you saw in some of those lockdown states.”

However, the governor now regrets issuing the order at all and is convinced that states that have carried on with lockdowns are perpetuating a destructive blunder.

It’s a matter of perspective, actually. If you’re one of those too-credulous naifs who still, against all evidence, thinks of this as a well-intentioned if perhaps overly-aggressive response motivated by sincere public-health concerns, then “destructive blunder” might pass muster with you. If, on the other hand, you’re the more skeptical and hard-bitten sort who—after gimlet-eyed observation of over a year’s worth of the clumsy deception, constantly-moving goalposts, and all-thumbs bureaucratic circle-jerkery which are all too typical of a bloated government that recognizes no limit on its power and reach—prefers to trust his own lyin’ eyes instead of passively swallowing whatever bullshit he’s handed, then you know full well what the true goal was here. A disaster it surely was, from any point of view; fair enough, so stipulated. But God forbid you should ever be blind enough to mislabel a high-order psy-op as successful as this one as any kind of “blunder.”

The governor’s persistence wasn’t a leap of faith. Less than two weeks after Florida’s full reopening in late September, scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford universities went public with the Great Barrington Declaration, which disavowed lockdowns as a destructive and futile mitigation measure. The declaration, which has since been signed by 13,985 medical and public health scientists, calls on public officials to adopt the focused protection approach—the exact strategy employed by DeSantis.

Despite dire predictions about the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis has been vindicated. On April 1, Florida ranked 27th among all states in deaths per capita from the CCP virus, commonly known as COVID-19.

The ranking’s significance is amplified because the Sunshine State’s population is the sixth oldest in the United States by median age. California—the lockdown state often compared to Florida due to its lower per-capita death rate—is the sixth youngest. The risk of dying from the CCP virus is highest for people over 55, with the group accounting for 93 percent of deaths nationwide.

While Florida is either performing better or relatively the same as the strict lockdown states in terms of CCP virus mortalities, the state’s economy is booming compared to the crippled economies in California and New York.

Though less quantifiable, the human suffering from the lockdown-related rise in suicides, mental health issues, postponed medical treatments, and opioid deaths is undeniably immense.

“It’s been a huge, huge mistake in terms of policy,” DeSantis said.

“All I had to do was follow the data and just be willing to go forward into the teeth of the narrative and fight the media.

“As people were beating up on me, what I said was I’d rather them beat up on me than have someone lose their job. I’d rather have them beat up on me than have kids locked out of school. I’m totally willing to take whatever heat comes our way because we’re doing the right thing.”

Kudos to you, Governor. Would that America had many more like you, because she’s in desperate need of them.

Then again update! Meanwhile, back in the states where Ron DeSantis ISN’T Governor.

The mindless mask regime might be here to stay, unless YOU resist it
The masks might be forever. We have to come to terms with the fact that a large chunk of the US population will be wearing masks in public for years, maybe even decades to come.

Even if we unquestionably achieve herd immunity, even if 100 percent of the population is vaccinated, even if COVID cases nationwide drop to zero and even if the coronavirus by some miracle learns to communicate in a human language and tells us, forthrightly, “Well, you beat me,” some Americans, especially those in blue metropolises, will continue to cover their faces — and shame you for not going along.

It’s a massively depressing thought.

For more than a year, public-health authorities have urged us to put up with temporary inconveniences, always with the soothing promise that it will be only a little while longer. But recently, NPR cheerfully reported about the growing number of people who see masks as a source of Permanent and Absolute Safety.

Flu and other respiratory illnesses are down this year owing to our ubiquitous face coverings, our state-run news agency tells us, so maybe we should just keep wearing them. Meanwhile, the rapper Will.i.am and Honeywell have introduced a super-duper smart mask that runs $300. The “Xupermask” allows the wearer to chat on the phone or listen to some dulcet music while signaling her virtue.

None of this should give anyone the slightest bit of confidence that the days of ubiquitous mask wearing will soon be behind us.

Yes, masks reduce the transmission of airborne illnesses. You know what else reduces transmission? Staying in a protective plastic bubble in your living room and never venturing into the dirty, filthy, infectious outdoors. And even if it makes sense to wear a mask in tight indoor quarters, it is utterly unscientific and, yes, moronic to wear them outside, and yet blue-state denizens insist.

Sigh. The mask fanatics — some of whom hold advanced degrees that make them no wiser as human beings — can’t be reasoned with.

Precisely so—and precisely why we shouldn’t trouble ourselves about reasoning with them, and just skip on ahead to the beating them until they quack like a duck phase of the festivities without further ado. The longer we put it off, the tougher it will be to rid ourselves of them.

Beautiful day

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I have one, and only one, complaint about this song: it’s over way too soon.



Just over a minute and a half for one of the most perfectly put-together power-pop confections I ever did hear? COME ON, MAN!

This enjoyed Most Favored Song status with my young ‘un back when she was little enough to admit to enjoying such piffle, and the kiddle-TV show Yo Gabba Gabba from whence it came just rocked her rapidly-expanding world. I haven’t checked with her lately, but at the ripe old age of not-quite-twelve now I assume this ditty is probably just too dopey and little-kiddish to be endured without at least a curl of the lip and a roll of the eyes. God forbid we even mention YGG, parts of which I could only get through myself by gritting my teeth until my jaw ached, but which DID feature some truly excellent bands on the regular, probably thanks to the show’s having been created and co-run by two guys from a decent So-Cal pop/punk-ish outfit yclept the Aquabats. Dig ye well this partial YGG list of distinguished guests:

Hosted by a character named DJ Lance Rock, the series featured a mix of live-action segments featuring all five cartoonist costumed-characters, Muno (a red cyclops), Foofa (a pink flower bubble), Brobee (a hairy little green monster), Toodee (a blue cat-dragon), and Plex (a yellow robot), and many short animated sketches and songs.

Famous musicians who have appeared on the show include Mos Def, Bootsy Collins, Ladytron, The Killers, Enon, The Clientele, Jimmy Eat World, Solange Knowles, Taking Back Sunday, Datarock, The Aquabats, Devo, Anne Heche, Joy Zipper, Of Montreal, Chromeo, My Chemical Romance, Weezer, Hot Hot Heat, The Faint, The Roots, Paul Williams, Mates of State, MGMT, Peter Bjorn and John, Trunk Boiz, The Shins, The Aggrolites, The Flaming Lips, Mya, Biz Markie, Blitzen Trapper, The Ting Tings, Money Mark, Mariachi El Bronx, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Erykah Badu. Other celebrity guests to have appeared include Jason Bateman, Jack Black, Andy Samberg, Melora Hardin, Tony Hawk, Elijah Wood, Sarah Silverman, Laila Ali, Bill Hader, and Anthony Bourdain.

Among the varied animation sequences during the show was Super Martian Robot Girl, designed by indie cartoonists Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer; the title character of that segment was voiced by Ariela Barer.

Okay, I remember SMRG being pretty cool now and then too, I admit.

Who knows, I may not be giving my own child enough credit when I say that Jimmy Eat World’s excellent throwaway number would be no more than an object of scorn and a source of blushful embarrassment for her today. I’m doing my damnedest to see to it that MJ is equipped with an ear capable of distinguishing musical wheat from chaff in all styles and genres, as well as trying to school her in identifying what it really is that makes good music good in the first place. So far, even some of the stuff she picks up from her mom which kinda leaves me cold—like, say, System Of A Down, for example—I can still see at least some merit in.

There’s a making-of vid for the Jimmy Eat World tune also, and it’s interesting enough to deserve its own spot here, I think.



Bless you, Jimmy Adkins and Co. Your music brightened my child’s early years, and put a smile on her dad’s grim old visage as well. Quite a respectable achievement for a song that clocks out at only 1:49, I’d say.

Hey, did I hear someone say The Aggrolites just now? That’s all the excuse I need to close things out with a nice little slice of old-school Bluebeat ska.



What the hell, here’s the SoaD song I find least…that is to say, it’s not all that…uhhh, it’s alright, I suppose.



From American Dream to American Nightmare

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Fundamental Transformation, no kind of accident, with plenty enough blame to go around.

For most of the ninety years since James Truslow Adams coined the term American Dream, most Americans still believed the fairy tale of the American Dream, that no matter how humble your beginnings, everyone had a fair chance to become a success in America, based upon your individual talent, intelligence, work ethic and a society that rewarded those who exceled. Sadly, that dream is no longer achievable for most Americans. Our society has devolved into an oligarchy since The Epic of America was published in 1931, where a powerful few rule over a willfully ignorant many through propaganda, mistruth, fear, and an iron fist.

The real questions are why did the American dream turn into an American nightmare and is there a pathway back to the kind of country our forefathers created? There are numerous reasons why the country has fallen far from its original conception as a proud defiant Republic to its current state as a dying empire of depravity, decay, debt, and decadence. The conspiratorial creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of a Federal income tax in 1913 marked a true destructive turning point for America.

Our world is now ruled by a tyrannical few who have used the system, created by their class, to accumulate immense wealth and power, sustained by a government they manipulate by buying politicians and having their cronies and thugs write and enforce the laws. The misinformation, propaganda, and fake news dished out by a mainstream media, owned, and controlled by the ruling oligarchy, creates a smokescreen to obscure who wields the true power in this country. The Deep State is no longer a looney conspiracy theory, but the reality of how this country is now controlled and run.

Radical Communist professors infest our universities. With 76% of K-12 teachers being female, the feminization of boys from twelve years of indoctrination has been unavoidable. They have been forced to feel and emote, rather than think, question and experience life outside prison classrooms. When boys act like boys, they are diagnosed by women as having ADHD and immediately drugged into submission. School is now a detriment to learning and irrelevant to a person attaining wisdom and understanding.

Irrelevant, hell. It’s an actual, active obstacle.

The rot within our educational system does not appear to be a mistake. It seems to be a calculated goal of those controlling the system. Our overlords want obedient, easily manipulated, non-questioning, conformist, robotic consumers of material goods who believe debt equals wealth, the family unit is irrelevant, systematic racism is real, there are 65 genders, a flu with a 99.7% survival rate is a reason to surrender their remaining freedoms and liberties, and an all-knowing benevolent government is here to help them.

The dystopian American nightmare into which we are descending is not solely the fault of the globalist cabal. Americans need to look in the mirror and honestly assess their role in this plunge into madness. The once independent, self-sufficient individualists that populated this country have become dependent, government reliant, materialistic, quivering shadows of the patriots and frontiersmen who created this country.

In the name of safety and security, the American people have allowed their government to accumulate complete control over every aspect of our lives. The American Dream has become a nightmare as we have allowed individualism, materialism, and selfish greed to override our duty to be good citizens, good fathers, good mothers, good neighbors, and going as far as our ability and hard work would take us.

Up until 1913, the American Dream, where every person had the opportunity to live a richer and fuller life, was achievable.  Up until that time, every generation born in this country had an excellent chance to live a better life than their parents. Relentless progress was the American way. Based on the actions of those controlling the direction of this country, I doubt my three sons will live a richer and fuller life than myself. The debts are too extreme, the military overreach too excessive, the looting by the financial class too great, the political corruption too extensive, suppression of truth speech too stifling, and opportunities too few.

The dream of a social order where everyone could rise to the highest level of their capabilities, regardless of their birth, has been systematically crushed by those who prefer the masses to be debt slaves doing the menial labor necessary to keep their money-making machine running. With all out assaults on the First, Second and Fourth Amendments by those who find the U.S. Constitution inconvenient to their despotic intentions, time is running out for those who still believe in and will fight for their country.

We have ignored our obligation to the past and the future. The Founding Fathers created an imperfect Republic. Ben Franklin knew its future depended upon the people administering it well. The founders did not want a national religion to be misrepresented as keeping religion out of America. The Founders were religious men. They believed religion and morality were vital to the country, being administered in a moral ethical way and guided by a code of conduct. As God, religion and morality have been disparaged by those in power we have moved further and further from the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Only a people with a strong moral backbone can be trusted to honor the Constitution.

The people have allowed the country to be corrupted by evil self-seeking men, and as a result, we are on a course towards despotism. We are descended from rebels and revolutionaries. The future of our country requires the restoration of that revolutionary spirit of dissent and opposition among a sufficient number of patriotic citizens, as there is no longer a chance to vote ourselves out of this predicament. Sadly, bloodshed will be required in any effort to regain control of our country. Time is growing short.

The author covers one hell of a lot of territory in this one, pulling together what could fairly be considered a politico-historical Theory Of Everything. It’s the deepest of deep dives, it’s lengthy, and it makes for some mighty uncomfortable reading in spots, which you should nonetheless do.

Legend you never heard of

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Another day, another effing brilliant SteynMusic outing.

This weekend marks the centenary of George David Weiss, born April 9th 1921. Who was George David Weiss? Well, he’s no household name, but, to reprise my old line on obscure songwriters, you’d be hard put to find a household that doesn’t know at least one George David Weiss song.

So who was George David Weiss? Well, even George Shearing, who wrote his one and only enduring song with Weiss, had no more to say about him in his autobiography than that he was “a man by the name of George David Weiss”. The man by the name of was born under that name in April 1921 and was all set to become a lawyer or accountant when he decided to follow his heart and go to Juilliard, where he learned composing and arranging. The latter got him employment with Stan Kenton and other bands, until he met his first songwriting partner, the talented West Indian composer Bennie Benjamin. A young Sinatra picked up their “Oh, What It Seemed to Be”, and a few years later Kay Starr had a monster hit with “Wheel of Fortune”…

Starr’s chartbuster is of course a true gem, one which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed performing onstage myself who even knows how many times. Robert Gordon did a mighty fine version as well.



Weiss had one hell of a capacious catalog, and as Steyn somewhat bemusedly notes, had everybody from Sinatra to Nat Cole to Peggy Lee to Elvis to…ummm…Whitesnake(?!?) cover his stuff over the years. That’s a variety so stylistically broad that it says a lot about the enduring appeal of the man’s work all by itself. I’ll embed another of my personal all-time Weiss faves before we all move on to what I consider the really fun part of the story.



The Tokens, in an ironic twist quite commonly found in the music biz, not only had no faith in the song but actually despised the thing, even going so far as to plead with the producers and their label not to release the very song that would end up being their one and only bona fide smash. Not the first time such lightning-strikes weirdness has occurred in the biz, and you can be sure it won’t be the last.

Now we come to the part I was most amused by, a chapter of the Weiss story all a-brim with music biz irony of its own unique flavor. This will require some heavy excerpting, but I assure one and all that the payoff is well worth the arduous wade to get there.

It started with Bob Thiele, who was a successful record producer but only a very occasional songwriter. So, for a composing partner, he turned, as so many others have done, to George David Weiss. In theory the latter could have written any or all of “What a Wonderful World”, but Thiele told me that Weiss stayed mostly down the musical end.

Which I find hard to believe, because the tune is mostly “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and, after decades in the music biz, Weiss was way beyond that.

On the other hand, Weiss told Graham Nash (of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) that he wrote it with Louis Armstrong in mind – which suggests he also had a hand in the lyric.

Why Satchmo? Well, it was a ballad of hope and optimism that transcended the times. But for that very reason it also required a singer who transcended the times.

A singer like, say, Louis Armstrong…

And, if you think that seems kind of obvious now, it certainly wasn’t in 1967. If you pick up almost any jazz critic’s biography of Satchmo, they generally follow the same basic arc: Terrific trumpeter, innovative musician – and then he sold out and did commercial pap for suburban hi-fi filler. I don’t subscribe to that crude reductio myself, but it is true that, after he’d booted the Beatles off the top and taken “Hello, Dolly!” to Number One, the calculus changed somewhat for Armstrong’s management: There’s a new Broadway show opening? Take the big song and do another “Dolly” knock-off. Hence Satchmo’s “Mame” and Satchmo’s “Cabaret”, and doubtless, had he lived, Satchmo’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” and Satchmo’s “Phantom of the Opera”.

Nevertheless, the writers met with Louis to pitch the song. As Bob Thiele recalled, “We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great: full of the love and sharing people make possible for themselves and each other every day.”

Instead, Satch peered at the sheet – unlike many singers, he was a musician who could read the music – and, when his eye got to the bottom of the page, he looked up and said:

What is this sh*t?

He was studying the music – no words, just a contemporary ballad tune that called not for Armstrong’s tight jazzy All-Stars but for a string section willing to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. I wouldn’t myself say the tune was exactly “sh*t”…But, as I said, Armstrong hadn’t seen the lyrics. And, when they passed him the words, he fell in love. Not so much because of the green trees, red roses, blue skies, white clouds, but because of the final eight bars, which ditch the “colors of the rainbow” theme:

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself
What A Wonderful World…

That quatrain reminded him of 107th Street in Queens, the tree-lined block he and his wife Lucille had lived on for a quarter-century (and whose modest red-brick home now houses the Louis Armstrong Museum):

There’s so much in ‘Wonderful World’ that brings me back to my neighborhood where I live in Corona, New York. Lucille and I, ever since we’re married, we’ve been right there in that block. And everybody keeps their little homes up like we do and it’s just like one big family. I saw three generations come up on that block. And they’re all with their children, grandchildren, they come back to see Uncle Satchmo and Aunt Lucille …and I got pictures of them when they was five, six and seven years old. So when they hand me this ‘Wonderful World,’ I didn’t look no further, that was it.

He was genuinely touched by the heartfelt optimistic simplicity of the sentiment, and its faith in the future – that a new generation would know things that he would never live to see. Like, er, Twitter. Well, let’s not get hung up on the details. He was struck by the song’s message, and so agreed to sing it.

An arrangement was made, musicians were booked, and a studio was procured – for a midnight session in Vegas, after Satch had finished up his set at the Tropicana. There was just one problem. Louis Armstrong had recently switched record labels, to ABC, and the president of the company, Larry Newton, was opposed to Satchmo doing “What a Wonderful World”. I don’t mean he was antipathetic or indifferent to it, or felt it was not a strong choice for a single but would be okay for Side 2 Track 5 of an album. I don’t even mean that he disliked it. He loathed “What a Wonderful World” with a passion: He thought he’d signed the Number One bestselling pop star of “Hello, Dolly!”, and he didn’t want his new act doing what he regarded as the polar opposite of “Dolly” – a soporific inert crawl-tempo ballad.

He’s not necessarily mistaken about that, as my kid’s class certainly demonstrated. So I’m not unsympathetic to Larry Newton’s concerns. The trouble was that on August 16th 1967 he’d flown in to Vegas for a photo shoot with his new star and that evening he showed up at United Studios determined to prevent the recording. He went so totally bananas that Ed Thiele, as producer, and Artie Butler, the arranger, and George Weiss and Frank Military, who were also present, hustled him through the door and locked him out of the studio. Which isn’t exactly conducive to Louis Armstrong recording a tender and sensitive ballad unlike anything he’d sung before…

It was a long session – either because of Newton’s antics or because they were interrupted by the toots of passing Union Pacific freight trains, or because the material was a little outside Pops’ comfort zone. They stayed there till 6am, and then they all went for breakfast. And the label only agreed to pay the orchestra for their extended shift on condition that Satchmo himself accept a mere $250 for the session. But it was worth it: Louis worked and worked on his interpretation until he and the writers were satisfied. I confess as a young child I always heard “the dark sacred night” as “the dark say goodnight”, but once I’d grasped Satch’s enunciation I appreciated what a fine pairing that makes with “the bright blessed day”: it adds a subtle touch of the holy and transcendental to the song; that the world is not merely “wonderful” in the way that a great cheeseburger and a vanilla shake can be, but truly wonderful because it’s the wonder of God’s creation. But, as I said, it’s discreetly done. And Armstrong’s reading of the middle-eight, in that unmistakeable beautiful gravelly rasp, is as sincere and true as anything he ever sang:

The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’
They’re really saying, ‘I love you…’

Is that really what they’re saying? Well, Pops bought into it. In the studio that night, representing all those children who’d grow to learn more than he’d ever know, was George Weiss’ kid Peggy. “So you’re George’s daughter? Pleased to meet you!” And he shook her hand, and maybe, for a small, shrunken old man not in the best of health, it really did mean “I love you.”

And, for those wondering what the hell all this hippie-dippie peace’n’love stuff had to do with Louis Armstrong, he waited to the very end to tie it back to his entire oeuvre in what, with hindsight, was the only possible wrap-up:

Ohhhhhh, yeahhhhhh.

Larry Newton wanted another “Hello, Dolly!” Well, he got the last two words.

But he wasn’t happy, and he swore to exact his revenge – by doubling down on the petty and stupid. In order to prove he was right about the song, he released the single in late 1967, but refused to promote it. He didn’t ship it to radio stations, so no disc-jockeys played it, and nobody bought it. In those days, ABC’s UK distribution was licensed to EMI, and, in the fullness of time, “What a Wonderful World” showed up at the London office, and they released it as a normal single. Actually, not that normal, because it was, I believe, the very last single EMI released on their HMV label. But, other than that, they did all the things you’re meant to do with a new release: They sent review copies to the BBC and to trade magazines, and discovered what Larry Newton, once he’d gotten over being locked out of the studio, should have realized – that people really liked it. It entered the UK charts at the beginning of February 1968 at Number 45, cracked the Top Forty in its second week, the Top Thirty in its fourth, and then climbed through March and April up to Number One.
So, just for the record, where did it get to on the Billboard Hot 100?

Er, big hit sound Number 116.

In fact, Larry Newton’s singular talent for sabotage was so effective that he wound up with a record that was a hit everywhere except his own territory: Top Thirty in Australia, Top Twenty in New Zealand and the Netherlands, Number Seven in Switzerland, Number Six in Belgium and Germany and Norway, Number Two in Ireland, Number One in Austria… What a wonderful world (America excepted). In London, EMI decided the song was so big they needed an album built around it. At which point Larry Newton decided to triple-down on the moronic. He agreed to the LP, but only if Armstrong did it for $500. Joe Glaser, Louis’ manager, wasn’t in the mood for that, and instructed Bob Thiele:

You tell that fat bastard to go f**k himself and give us $25,000 for eight more sides.

Larry Newton responded:

Tell him to go f**k himself, and why do we give a sh*t about these European companies? Screw ’em all.

They’re really saying “I love you”.

Three years later, Louis Armstrong was dead. If you’d been listening to the radio in Britain, Europe, around the planet in 1971, they marked his passing with “What a Wonderful World”. On American stations, they played everything but.

It took two decades and Good Morning, Vietnam for a great record finally to achieve the recognition on its home turf it had known for a generation everywhere else. It doesn’t matter that Satch was born in 1901; he sounds old and elegaic on the record, and that’s the point: he’s a fellow approaching the end of his life, but he’s not bitter or even bittersweet; he’s not looking back but looking forward to when those babies will grow. It’s an old man, but it’s a young song. That’s why it’s a popular father/daughter dance at weddings: It’s the past blessing the future.

And that’s also true of any great songwriter’s catalogue – which is why we salute George David Weiss on his centennial.

As for Larry Newton, well, I wasn’t sure whether he was still with us or not, so I looked him up, and read:

Newton is probably best remembered today for trying to stop Louis Armstrong from recording ‘What A Wonderful World’.

Ohhhhhh, yeahhhhhh!

Beautiful song, beautiful story, no? Tales like this provide a small window onto why it is that people get into the music business in the first place, and why a not-negligible percentage of them are perfectly willing to break themselves—financially, spiritually, morally, even physically—to stay in, on any level they can contrive. I swear, out of all the great music posts Steyn has done, and he’s done quite a few, this one may well be the beat of ’em all.

About a guy most of us have probably never even heard of.

Plugs in

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Steyn gives us one more perfect Prince Phillip quip, with a Shirley Bassey bonus thrown in.

If you’re a Royal consort, you wind up going to a lot of nights out you have not the slightest interest in, like the Royal Command Performance and the Royal Film Premiere and the like. In November 2002, arriving at the Royal Albert Hall for the world premiere of the James Bond film Die Another Day, His Royal Highness was informed by an excited person in the welcome line that Madonna would be singing the title song. He turned to the Queen, and remarked drily, “So we’ll need earplugs then.”

He was quite right. Shirley Bassey had neglected to bring hers, and so, just a few minutes later, the opening titles and the song ended, and Dame Shirl yelled from the stalls, “Rubbish!” She was quite right, too.

Hey, when you’re right, you’re right.

Enemies in common update! If they’re ag’in him, I’m for him.



I imagine Philip’s “legacy” will be just fine, thanks, whatever caviling PC nudniks may think, say, or do. In fact, I’d wager the Prince will be fondly remembered long after CNN is dead, buried, and forgotten. I’m with the WSJ’s Gerard Baker all the way:

I had the privilege some years ago to be invited to a July 4 dinner at the American ambassador’s residence in London. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were the guests of honor, there presumably to bear witness that, after a couple of centuries, the unfortunate business over the repeated injuries and usurpations inflicted by one of her ancestors had been quietly forgotten.

The ambassador rose to give the not-so-loyal toast.

He began with the inevitable nod to the two nations’ divergent histories, noting that some time earlier, in their great wisdom, his compatriots had decided to go it alone. “Oh yes!” cried the prince from a sedentary position, fortified, no doubt, by a couple of glasses of the embassy’s very good wine. “And how’s that working out for you?” It was a good question then, and it’s more apt than ever now given America’s current predicament. The people that once boldly threw off the tyranny of a distant monarch now seem to be meekly submitting to the diktats of a regnant class and ideology that tolerate less independence of thought and action than King George III did.

As the prince did at that dinner, he had an unerring capacity to ask awkward questions, speak inconvenient truths and challenge polite orthodoxies.

When we are obligated to toe an increasingly stultifying conventional line, the queen’s consort was the human antidote to the virus of verbal oppression that has us in a death grip. You’d search a very long time to find a less woke individual than the duke of Edinburgh.

He got all the right knickers in a twist, and he’s still doing it, which makes him a-okay in my book. The unhappier shitlib types are, the better I like it. Kruiser says it well:

Three cheers to Prince Philip for being able to annoy our worthless woke morons first from beyond an ocean and now from beyond the grave.

I don’t care how rich he was, I would have bought him a drink in a heartbeat.

Rest in peace, Phil.

Amen to that.

Raise ’em Right

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Another fine idea whose time has…well, not come, exactly. More like been crammed down our throats.

Whew, digging a 300 square-foot bunker suitable for young children is hard work. My back isn’t what it used to be. So far, we’re 50 feet down in the backyard and are about to pour 10-inch thick WiFi-proof concrete walls. The kids will have goldfish, coloring books, a Kindle that contains all of Western classical literature, Play-Doh, and a hose for drinking water. They’ll be lowered into the hole when they turn six, and we’ll let them climb out when they turn 18.

We plan to tell any nosy neighbors that we sent the kids away to a new progressive anti-racism academy.

Cruel, you say? Not if you’re trying to insulate your precious children from the all-powerful wokeness algorithm. In fact, it’s the only way to be sure.

Will I miss them? Sure, but I’m comforted knowing they’ll be among the few who survive the radioactive wokelear fallout released this year.

Oh, you don’t want to chain your kids up in the basement and seal all the doors? Rather not ship them to an ice floe off Greenland, or a yurt in outer Mongolia?

Then, friends, you’re going to need to become a master of anti-wokeness.

They—you know who I mean—wish to consume your children: skin, muscle, bits, and bone. You must therefore make your children taste awful, like the little orange tree frogs who coat their skin with poison so hungry toucans spit them out. Force society to spit your children out of their ravenous maws. Make your children undesirable. Make them unbearable to the predations of the Left. It’s your job to ensure that the only way to change your kid’s minds is under threat of death, which, if present conditions hold, we may be approaching before they reach adulthood.

No one is pumping the brakes, like, at all. It’s only getting faster. You’re going to have to leap off the train, and push your babies out ahead of you. Fingers crossed you land on a soft patch of hay in a quiet ravine with no Wi-Fi or public schools within 100 miles. But you’ve got no choice. You are their only hope! Do not fail them. If you do nothing else as a parent, you must do this: prevent wokeness from colonizing their developing brains.

I dunno, but I get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the author intends this piece to be taken as satire—it’s just so hard to tell nowadays. Be that as it may, the first recommendation seems practical enough.

ONE: Speak truth to gender, and never shut up.
I spent years pointing out decrepit junkies by the freeway on-ramp to my kids as a real-life anti-drug lesson. “See that sunburned hobo covered in open sores, Son? When he was a teenager he smoked pot once—once—and now look at him.”

When it comes to gender, beware! Lack of confidence and moral uncertainty in otherwise normal, educated parents have given the Pronoun People an easy port of entry into your child’s hungry cortex, and they are rushing into the breach.

Despite what the clowns running this circus want you to think, it actually IS possible to be 100% certain which gender your baby will identify with, as long as you commit as a parent to stopping entry of brain worms. Fake gender identities are a modern progressive social epidemic induced by the Internet, so it requires some avoidance techniques to prevent this infection.

First, you must shun gender neutrality. Dress your girls like ladies and your boys like off-duty firemen. If your little boy requests to wear a dress to school, tell him firmly that boys do not wear dresses, only girls do, and you refuse to allow him to entertain fantasy notions. If boys are allowed to wear dresses at your school, find a new school. If your children insist there are more than two genders, spend some time at the zoo and challenge them to identify these elusive other genders.

Oughta clear things up nicely, I believe. When it comes to dispelling the shitlib brain-fog, there’s no better fan than reality.

GLORIOUS!

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How it’s fucking DONE, people.


So wonderful to know that, despite everything, there are at least some places where the good old American spirit of rebellion, resistance, and defiance endures, ain’t it? Try though the rotten bastards have to extinguish it, liberty’s flame yet burns in American hearts.

(Via Ace)

SCIENCE!!!

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COME ON, MAN.

Biden Claims Commercial Planes May Soon Go 21,000 MPH — Meaning a New York to LA Trip Would Take 7 Minutes

Uhhhh HUH. God, but I love this soooo much, I really do. Rave on, Gramps.

President Joe Biden claimed Wednesday that commercial aircraft would soon be able to travel at speeds of up to 21,000 miles per hour.

“I tell the kids, the young people that work for me — I told my kids, when I go on college campuses, they’re going to see more change in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in the last 50 years,” Biden said during an address about his proposed infrastructure legislation. “We’re going to talk about commercial aircraft flying at subsonic speeds, supersonic speeds, be able to figuratively, if you may, if we decide to do it, be able to traverse the world in an hour, travel at 21,000 miles an hour.”

Which, in case you didn’t know, is actually quite a bit faster than the ISS, which plods along at a bit under 18,000 mph or thereabouts. Never you mind, Gramps, you go ‘head on.

It was not clear what Biden meant by “figuratively.” The speed he suggested is roughly equivalent to Mach 28, which would make airlines capable of traversing the 2,400 miles between New York and Los Angeles in roughly seven minutes. The fastest commercial airliners presently travel at speeds of about 600 miles per hour, a little less than Mach 1.

Several companies do have plans in the works to increase top speeds to nearly 4,000 miles per hour, or Mach 5. Boeing announced plans to that effect in 2018. Florida-based Aerion announced similar plans last month for a Mach 4+ commercial airliner, which it said would be ready “before the end of the decade.”

Shyeeeaaah, like that’s ever gonna happen. I mean, I’m sure they can build ’em, but everyone who thinks the Safety Nazis will permit any such super-speedster aircraft to fly here without protest please raise your hand. Not to even mention that the sleek, beautiful, now sadly-defunct Concorde, a real pokealong at just over Mach 2, got itself banned from overland flight in the US and several other countries due to complaints about the noise from sonic booms.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful dream you have there, Gropey, it truly is. But if it ever comes true the FUSA won’t have had any part in it, it won’t be because of anything you did, and you won’t deserve an ounce of credit for it.

Not that any of that will stop him from trying to glom it for himself anyway, natch.

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