Archive for 2019
March 19, 2019
AND WHAT A WEEK IT WAS: The Week That Was.
OH, DEAR LORD: Ilhan Omar Spins Platitudes In WaPo Editorial.
VESTIGIAL SANITY IN NYC: Poll: 38 percent say Ocasio-Cortez ‘villain’ in New York losing Amazon HQ deal.
SIGH. TO BE FAIR, THE FACT THAT WE AS A CULTURE ARE HAVING WAY FEWER CHILDREN MEANS WE’RE PUTTING WAY MORE PRESSURE ON EACH OF THEM: Millennials Feel So Pressured and They Can’t Even.
NO. IS THIS A TRICK QUESTION? Is it any wonder no one trusts the media?
I HAD BEEN RELIABLY INFORMED THAT THE SCIENCE ON PLATE TECTONICS IS SETTLED: Scientists make ‘impossible’ discovery off coast of Africa.
WEIRDLY, IT’S NOT QUITTING! This simple act can make your coworkers happier and healthier. … okay, in some cases, maybe.
A POLISH BARBER? BETWEEN THIS AND SWEENEY TODD BARBERS COULD GET A BAD REPUTATION: DNA research may finally unravel Jack the Ripper mystery.
March 18, 2019
AT AMAZON, save on Small Appliances.
OUT: WORKING-CLASS HEROINE. IN: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the ‘villain’ in Amazon deal collapse: Poll.
Related: AOC: My approval-rating drop is the result of racism and sexism (and Fox News).
I still maintain that getting her, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib elected is Roger Stone’s best dirty trick yet.
NOT THE ONION: Stress Mess: 3 In 5 Millennials Say Life More Stressful Now Than Ever Before.
Related! J. Christian Adams on: They Shall Not Grow Old: Peter Jackson’s Masterpiece WWI Memorial.
Required viewing for every millennial, perhaps with the Clockwork Orange Ludivico Treatment lidlocks applied.
DICK DALE, KING OF THE SURF GUITAR: Rock legend Dick Dale has died at age 81.
The Daily Telegraph comments on Dale’s influence:
Dick Dale, who has died aged 81, was the progenitor of what become known in the 1960s as “surf music”, a sub-genre of pop whose most famous exponents were the Beach Boys; he belatedly achieved wider recognition when Quentin Tarantino used his track Misirlou as the opening theme to one of the key films of the 1990s, Pulp Fiction.
Although mainstream success did not come to him until late in his career, it could be argued that Dale did more than many better-known guitarists to shape the direction of rock music. His influence lay not so much in what he liked to play, which never gained more than local popularity in his youth, as in the style of his attack.
The style of his attack — indeed. In his tune “Third Stone from the Sun,” Jimi Hendrix said “You’ll never hear surf music again.” Thing is, that’s an inside joke. Dale’s style influenced Hendrix and Hendrix’s style of attack.
But surf music? As the BBC report says, it has Greek folk music roots and influences. Cultural appropriation scream the Social Justice Warriors!!! Hey, SJWs, there are only 12 notes in the tempered scale. Temper down — learn sumthin’.
“When I got that feeling from surfing,” he [Dale] told the writer Barney Hoskyns, “the white water coming over my head was the high notes going dikidikidiki, and then the dungundungun on the bottom was the waves, and I started double-picking faster and faster, like a locomotive, to feel the power of the waves.”
Cool. Greek and Eastern European music morphs into Southern California surf rock.
Only in America.
UPDATE: Dick Dale plays Pipeline then ad libs. Dick Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughn play Pipeline. If you’re a Baby Boomer and suffer from tinnitus, check this out. Dale, Leo Fender and James B. Lansing challenged your ears.
UPDATE UPDATE: Just discovered this. August 4, 2017.
OPEN THREAD: Hang in there, Monday’s almost over.
REMEMBERING The Jew Who Died For Ilhan Omar.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, a freshman Democrat from Minnesota, has become widely known for her attacks on supporters of Israel. Ms. Omar is a naturalized citizen whose Somali refugee family settled in the U.S. when she was a teenager. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees relocated to the U.S.—some 25,000 in the Minneapolis area—to escape the starvation, famine and civil war that turned Somalia into a lawless, failed state in the early 1990s.
Another name is worth recognition and remembrance, especially among Somali refugees: Lawrence Freedman. In 1992, the year after Ms. Omar’s family left Somalia, the U.S. sent troops there as part of a joint United Nations humanitarian effort. The U.S. intervention, Operation Restore Hope, began with the landing of U.S. troops near Mogadishu on Dec. 9.
Freedman was a U.S. Army veteran who earned two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. He was an original member of the Green Berets, reached the rank of sergeant major, and eventually became an instructor. He retired from the Army in 1990 and joined the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1992 the U.S. sent Freedman as part of an advance team to prepare the way for American troops in Somalia. On Dec. 23, two weeks after the troops had arrived, Freedman became the first American killed as part of the relief effort in Somalia.
Any American casualty is noteworthy, but Freedman’s sacrifice stands out because he was Jewish.
Thousands of Somali refugees who now live in Ms. Omar’s district had their freedom and security paid for with the blood of American soldiers—22 of them, including Freedman.
Ms. Omar’s words have caused concern in both the Somali and Jewish communities in Minneapolis, which have worked for years to build friendships and collaborate on charitable pushes against hunger, illiteracy and discrimination. These efforts to build and nurture relationships stand in sharp contrast to Ms. Omar’s anti-Semitic statements.
Despite calls for her removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thus far the only consequence for her bigotry has been an anodyne resolution against hate speech, crafted by Ms. Omar’s fellow Democrats. Unfortunately, even before her election to Congress, Ms. Omar had a record of comments that raised grave concerns about her views toward Jews, and what she has said since her election has only heightened those concerns.
As a friend observes on Facebook: “That in some ways is what’s most irksome about her, Glenn. It’s not her Jew-hatred or her dissembling about her positions to get elected and disavowing them the day after the election. She came from a failed state, one of the worst places on earth. She was taken in by America and Americans, given a chance, got to be elected to Congress…and her sheer ingratitude is really hard to take.”
It really is.
YES: “The college admissions scandal should be the populist issue of our time. Most of the talk in our politics about how ‘the system is rigged’ is incredibly abstract and symbolic. But this is infuriatingly concrete.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE DONKEY DOW: Beto bursts onto the scene, Biden bides his time, Booker’s boo reveals herself.
ANALYSIS: TRUE:
