I thought this ballet video purporting to show the ten greatest male dancers of the 20th century would be bad, but it’s kind of okay in many ways. However, one way it is annoying is that it can’t be embedded, so you’ll need to follow the link. Drat.
For starters, I thought it would leave out Fernando Bujones and I was prepared to criticize that. But there he is at #10. On the other hand, the clip used isn’t of Bujones at his best.
Peter Martins, #9, was a good dancer but I wouldn’t put him in the top 10. Whatever; he’s #9 here. Note something I’ve long noticed, which is that his head is large in proportion to his body. And yet the total effect is pleasing.
Massine, #8? I certainly don’t think so. Plus the AI voice (I think it’s AI; not certain) mispronounces “Russe” in “Ballet Russe.” Massine was better known for his choreography at the time, but even that isn’t performed all that much in more recent years. However, the film The Red Shoes is his most lasting work; he dances in the film, too, and you can see his eccentric style.
#7, Serge Lifar? No way.
#6 is another choreographer, Anthony Tudor. Why is he on a list of great dancers?
#5 Vladimir Vasiliev. Good choice; I wrote about him here, with videos that show his gifts better than the “10 greatest” clip does.
#4 Erik Bruhn, good choice but again the video clip isn’t the best.
#3 Vaslav Nijinsky. There are no films of him; the few seconds of movement in this video is AI. And the mispronunciations continue.
#2 Nureyev. Of course. Not one of my personal favorites, but he absolutely belongs high on the list.
#1 It was inevitable that Baryshnikov would be #1, and rightly so. Plus, he is one of my personal favorites.
If the video is considering choreographers too – which it certainly is – the absence of Balanchine is a glaring error.
Also, I would substitute Anthony Dowell of the Royal Ballet for Lifar. And why not Edward Villella for Peter Martins?
And the short compilation of clips at the very end shows off some of the dancers better than the main segments do.
It used to be that immigrants who came here legally had to make their own way. There were charities – often religious or ethnic-based – that helped somewhat. But immigrants had to work very very hard to make it out of the crowded tenements and sweatshops, and to learn English. If they sent money back home to relatives – and they did – it was money they earned by the sweat of their brow.
There are still plenty of immigrants who do that. But for decades there have been plenty who are on the dole, and yet they send money back, too. Now there will be some limits:
In an appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, Bessent revealed the administration will now require those on public assistance to identify their welfare status when visiting “money service businesses” with the intention of wiring money to other countries.
BESSENT: From now on, anyone who wires money out, from one of these money service businesses, has to check a box saying whether they are on public assistance. And, if you are on public assistance, we’re going to start pushing that you cannot wire money out of the country.
FinCEN also issued a geographic order increasing scrutiny on banks and money transmitters in Minnesota’s Hennepin and Ramsey counties, which will require firms to report additional information on funds transferred outside of the U.S., including FinCEN reports on transactions above $3,000.
Asked if this would have a chilling effect on legitimate remittances made by migrants to families overseas, Bessent said, “No, it shouldn’t. Anyone who can prove where the money has come from … is fine,” in an interview after touring the Minneapolis-area engineering lab of RV and boat maker Winnebago Industries. …
“You cannot send welfare money from the people of Minnesota to Somalia, right? Like, that just means you’re getting too much, or you can’t send stolen money.”
Intermittent fasting on various schedules is touted as being an effective weight loss tool, but it didn’t do a thing for me. Here’s some recent research:
The findings suggest it may be calorie reduction rather than time-restricted eating itself that boosts key indicators of health inside the body, although it’s important to bear in mind this was a relatively small-scale, short-term study.
In addition to the study’s modest reductions in body weight, researchers observed changes in participants’ body clocks. The timing of their circadian rhythms, including those that nudge the body towards sleep, was shifted based on the TRE schedule.
And yet the intermittent fasting approach is very popular for weight loss. Here’s another study, this time from 2020, that isn’t exactly a recommendation:
The currently popular diet of intermittent fasting that restricts eating to eight hours per day, separated by 16 hours of fasting, is not effective on its own as a means of either losing weight or for improving key metabolic health markers, according to a new study led by researchers at UC San Francisco.
While time-restricted feeding has been shown to prevent weight gain in mice on a high-fat diet and reduces weight and metabolic outcomes in already obese mice, most of the reported benefits of such fasting in humans has had limited scientific testing.
There are reports of more protests and greater crackdowns on the protestors. Who will win this time?:
As protests against Iran’s government swelled significantly in size on Thursday night, the regime responded in many places by opening fire. A Tehran doctor told TIME on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths, “most by live ammunition.”
The death count, if confirmed, would signal a feared crackdown presaged by the regime’s near-total shutdown of the nation’s Internet and phone connections since Thursday night. It would also constitute a direct challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier in the day warned that the regime would “pay hell” if it killed protesters who have taken to the streets in growing numbers since Dec. 28.
…
Human rights groups on Friday reported much lower death tolls than the physician, though the discrepancy might be explained by differing reporting standards. The D.C.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency, which tallies only victims who have been identified, reported at least 63 deaths since the start of the protests, including 49 civilians.
TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
And I certainly haven’t a clue.
More:
Interviewed before Thursday night’s bloodletting, analysts named several wild cards in how the protests—and the regime’s response—might evolve. One is whether even larger numbers of middle- and upper- class Iranians and minority ethnic groups continue to join the demonstrations despite the growing threat of a violent response. Many chanted support for Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the Shah, or King, deposed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought the clerics to power. Pahlavi, who lives in the United States, had called for a massive showing on both Thursday and Friday nights. He has promised to return to Iran and usher in a secular democracy.
Most of the Iranian people have been shut off from the internet, except for Starlink.
“I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots… we’re going to hit them very hard,” Trump said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.
Trump had warned last month that the regime would face consequences if the government shot protesters.
When Hewitt mentioned that dozens have already been killed in the protests, Trump said some were due to stampedes and not necessarily caused by law enforcement.
“I’m not sure I can necessarily hold somebody responsible for that, but … they’ve been told very strongly — even more strongly than I’m speaking to you right now — that if they do that, they’re going to have to pay hell,” Trump says.
How many shot is enough? And will he really do anything, and if so what?
It would be a wonderful thing if the regime of the mullahs finally fell after all these years.
NOTE: I’ve written a great deal about Iran over the years. I suggest reading this post.
So much news about Minnesota and especially Minneapolis these days. When I was younger, Minnesota wasn’t in the news all that much, and when it was it was either because of Hubert Humphrey or weather that could freeze you in ten minutes flat.
But now we have:
(1) Nick Shirley has released another video. This one is about medical transport scams:
David Hoch, co-founder of Minnesotans for Responsible Government, joined him on the ground in Minneapolis, revealing an insane truth: this fraud hits hundreds of billions nationwide. Minnesota’s slice? At least $80 billion. Layers of shell companies obscure the cash trail, including 1,200 medical transport outfits in the area that do nothing while collecting taxpayer dollars.
Hoch swears by his evidence. “I have been to many of these transportation companies, and I’ve been time-stamping my photographs for a whole year at one facility in Minneapolis, and those vans in that parking lot had not moved one inch in an entire year. They’re all still sitting there.”
What’s the population of Minnesota? About 5.8 million. Divide that by 1,200 and you get 4,833. One medical transport van company for each 4,833 people in the state, including of course all the healthy children and adults? Seems rather odd on the face of it, like so many things in Minnesota these days.
(2) And then there’s ballot harvesting, something we already know is very liberally allowed in Minnesota. From the same video:
Hoch also revealed a widespread ballot-harvesting operation tied to Somali communities in Minnesota, claiming the scale of the activity is “way beyond anybody’s imagination,” adding that “the state doesn’t even know” and “the feds don’t even know.”
Shirley asked Hoch why a judge would allegedly defer to what he described as the “head of the Somali mafia.” Hoch responded that the influence stems from raw political power. He described the Somali community as a unified voting bloc that has effectively held Minnesota Democrats hostage. “What they say is if you do something to go against our community, we’re gonna vote for, and they all vote together, and there’s ballot harvesting, I’ve seen them do it, that, “We’re gonna vote for your opponent, unless you do what we tell you to do.” …
Hoch also described how he claims the voting process works within the bloc. He alleged that a single individual collects ballots for large numbers of residents, with little oversight. “They’ll have one person go there and collect all the ballots and nobody tracks,” Hoch said. He added that apartments can claim inflated numbers of residents: “They could say they have nine people living in an apartment. They’re gonna send them nine ballots,” which are then gathered by a designated collector.
(3) The Ruthless podcast guys are on it, with perhaps the best summary of the entire situation. They don’t think it’s limited to Minnesota, and why would it be?:
The Biden administration didn’t require verification that kids were attending child care centers before sending them as much as $19 billion in federal funding, a stunning oversight the Trump administration is trying to reverse.
Trump Health and Human Services officials announced Monday it would restore “attendance-based billing” and reverse a Biden-era practice of states paying the child care centers without proper checks …
(5) And then we have the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, not far from where George Floyd met his end. There’s so much news about this it’s hard to know where to start, but I guess I’ll go with this video of the incident:
Renee can be seen behind the driver’s seat of the plum-colored Honda Pilot, while her wife, Rebecca, stands in the street next to the car. A dog is also sitting in the back seat, peering out an open window.
As Ross records the interaction, Renee says to him, “That’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you” before her spouse starts jawing at the federal officer as whistles and sirens can be heard in the background.
“It’s OK, we don’t change our [license] plates every morning, just so you know,” Rebecca said. “It’ll be the same plate when you talk to us later, that’s fine, US citizens.”
“You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead,” Rebecca sneers at Ross while filming on her own phone outside the car.
Rebecca then tries to get back into the passenger side, as an agent orders, “Get out of the f–king car” and Renee backs up.
As the car is in motion, Rebecca, who is still out of the car, can be heard shouting, “drive, baby, drive, drive” before Renee peels off and clips Ross, prompting him to open fire.
No wonder Rebecca – Good’s spouse – later blamed herself for Good’s death:
“I made her come down here; it’s my fault,” Rebecca said, her face covered in blood after having attempted to help Renee. “They just shot my wife.”
“They shot her in the head. I have a 6-year-old in school,” Rebecca said.
The couple was allegedly part of a group that had been “stalking and impeding” ICE officers throughout the day, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said.
“If you want to say this woman’s death is a tragedy, that we should pray for her soul as Christians and Americans, then I agree with you,” he said. “But the media dishonesty about this officer is an all-time moment in shameless press propaganda.”
Vance went on to cite nuanced points that the press had no interest in addressing when it came to their coverage of the shooting.
“Does this law enforcement officer have a family? Yes. Did he get seriously injured by a vehicle just six months ago? Yes. Did he have reason to fear for his life? Yes. Does he have every right to safety while he’s doing his job? Yes,” he observed. …
“I want our law enforcement officers to do their jobs and come home safely to their family. If you don’t like the immigration policy of the Trump administration, attack me. Leave our law enforcement alone,” Vance concluded. “And it’s time for the press to finally tell the truth about this story.”
It’s time for the press to finally tell the truth – period. But they don’t.
Some New Yorkers are trying to out-Minneapolis Minneapolis:
NOW: “Kristi Noem will Hang!” Huge crowd chants in Foley Square NYC, also “Save a life, kill an ICE” as they gather to protest the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Oh, and let’s stroll down memory lane – to 2007:
MUST SEE CLIP. In 2007 Biden was asked if he would allow sanctuary cities to exist. His answer was NO. He said that sanctuary cities turn into dumps and the only reason they exist is because the Federal government doesn't enforce the law.
The trade deficit—a measurement by which the cost of a country’s imports is worth more than its exports—shrank to $29.4 billion in October, the narrowest gap since June 2009 and a 39% decrease from September ($48.1 billion), the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.
The figures underscore how Mr. Trump’s volatile and sweeping tariff policies have influenced trade flows. When the president unveiled wide-ranging tariffs on imports from dozens of trading partners, U.S. businesses rushed to stock up on inventory, front-loading imports ahead of planned tariff hikes.
This has allowed many firms to avoid passing on the full cost of tariffs to consumers, keeping price hikes on goods relatively tame.
As U.S. households grapple with an affordability crisis, Mr. Trump has more recently expanded the range of goods exempt from tariffs, including key agricultural imports.
Did CBS think there was an “affordability crisis” under Biden? When I Googled “CBS affordability crisis Biden” just now, the results all seemed to be post-Trump.
This was one of the things that struck me the most about the recent US operation against Venezuela’s Maduro:
… EurAsia Times, an Indian publication that is no friend of Trump, reported, “Boasting one of the strongest militaries in Latin America, Venezuela possessed a variety of advanced radars, including the [Chinese-made] JY-27, whose capabilities have now been called into question by observers.
“These radars were integrated into Venezuela’s air defense network alongside Russian systems like the S-300VM surface-to-air missiles, forming a layered defense around key sites, including Caracas.”
America stuffed both systems.
The publication said, “Designed to detect low-observable aircraft like the US F-22 and F-35 by operating at meter-wave frequencies that, in theory, exploit resonance effects on stealth designs, the JY-27 has been marketed by Beijing as an anti-stealth or stealth hunter radar.”
The only person in their showroom now is Wile E. Coyote.
I haven’t a clue how this was done. But it seems that neither Russia nor China have a clue either, which is more important.
More:
Zona Militar said, “From a military standpoint, analysts agree that the outcome cannot be explained by the failure of a single system, but rather by the inability of a Chinese-designed command-and-control framework to operate under intense interference and multidomain attacks. The U.S. operation exposed the limitations of these architectures when confronted by forces capable of integrating intelligence, electronic warfare, combat aviation, and special operations within a single operational cycle, confirming that superiority lies not solely in hardware, but in the coherence and resilience of the system as a whole.”
In other words, a lot of things must have been operating to make this occur.
It also seems that something similar happened during the Israeli and US attacks on Iran last summer.
(1) Vance continues to serve up weak tea on the anti-Semitism among “influencers” such as Carlson:
“I think we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s antisemitism, anti-Black hatred, anti-white hatred,” he said. “And I think that’s one of the great things about the conservative coalition, is that we are, I think, fundamentally rooted in the Christian principles that founded the United States of America.”
It’s true, but that was in answer to a question that was specifically about anti-Semitism. His answer is a bit like the leftists who must cite “Islamophobia” whenever asked about anti-Semitism. I understand – or I think I understand – why Vance does that; he doesn’t want to lose Tucker’s fans, and apparently his son works for Tucker [oops, switcheroo: Tucker’s son works for Vance]. Nor do I think that Vance is a Jew-hater. But he sounds weak here.
(2) Amidst growing protests, Iran’s military head threatens the US:
Hatami … took over as commander in chief of Iran’s army, known by the Farsi word “Artesh,” after Israel killed a number of the country’s top military commanders in June’s 12-day war. He is the first regular military officer in decades to hold a position long controlled by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
“The Islamic Republic considers the intensification of such rhetoric [as Trump’s] against the Iranian nation as a threat and will not leave its continuation without a response,” Hatami said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
He added, “I can say with confidence that today the readiness of Iran’s armed forces is far greater than before the war. If the enemy commits an error, it will face a more decisive response, and we will cut off the hand of any aggressor.
Somehow those threats don’t ring as loudly at the moment as they might have before this summer. Then again, a cornered rat can bite.
Trump does not intend to “buy” GREENLAND as “buy” is used in common usage. What the administration hopes to purchase is DENMARK’s claim over GREENLAND as a matter of public international law.
Such a purchase of a public international law claim would be akin to the U.S. purchase of the LOUISIANA TERRITORY from FRANCE—as negotiated by President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison, and ALASKA TERRITORY from RUSSIA—as negotiated by President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. In each case, the U.S. did not purchase the actual land at issue from a foreign power. Rather, in each case, the U.S. payment was consideration for FRANCE’s and RUSSIA’s divesting themselves of their public international law claim over the relevant territory.
In the event of a U.S. purchase of DENMARK’s public international law claim to GREENLAND, private property in GREENLAND would continue to be owned by its current owners and undisturbed. The citizenship or dual citizenship of the inhabitants is (as with LOUISIANA and ALASKA) a matter for negotiation. The status of public property and otherwise unowned interests is also a matter for negotiation.
See also this: “Rubio to meet Danish officials on US strategic interests in Greenland.”
(4) The government’s new food pyramid has been unveiled. The main difference seems to be that meat and dairy, as well as some fats, are prioritized. For example:
Notable changes from the previous DGAs include an increased recommended daily protein intake, emphasis on the healthfulness of dairy, and sweeping advice to avoid “highly processed” foods as a category, as well as novel consideration of the gut microbiome.
At the January 7 press conference unveiling the new DGAs, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) summed up the guidelines by saying “My message is clear: Eat real food.”
Alongside the new DGAs is a reimagined, inverted food pyramid (Figure 1), at the top of which (the largest part) are “Protein, Dairy, and Healthy Fats,” placed next to “Vegetables and Fruits”—both given equal importance—which narrow down to “Whole Grains” at the bottom (the smallest part). The new pyramid was released on realfood.gov, which reads, “For decades we’ve been misled by guidance that prioritized highly processed food, and are now facing rates of unprecedented chronic disease… For the first time, we’re calling out the dangers of highly processed foods,” before introducing the new pyramid.
I never paid much attention to the old food pyramid, so I’m no expert – but I don’t think the government had been touting “highly processed foods” so very much. Were Cheeze-Its and Tasty-Cakes recommended? If so, I missed it.
The Somali-dominated Democratic political machine in Minnesota successfully silenced hundreds of government experts who tracked the huge flow of taxpayer funds through Somali-run businesses, a top Minnesota Republican told a House hearing on Wednesday.
Up to 1,000 government auditors, accountants, and program managers were silenced by Democratic threats, Minnesota House Rep. Marion Rarick told a House hearing:
“The most severe ones was that they would be fired with cause so they couldn’t have unemployment insurance, that they would be blacklisted from all state agencies… [including] Hennepin County, Ramsey County. As you know, those are Democrat-run.”
Many government experts, non-government professionals, and Republicans detected many of the frauds, but their voices were muffled by Democrats who allied with the Somalians’ political machine in the state.
Based on testimony today, I have enough evidence to believe both @GovTimWalz and @keithellison were knowingly complicit in a Somali fraud scheme in Minnesota.
Therefore I have referred them BOTH to the DOJ for criminal charges. May justice be swift. The American people are tired of being taken advantage of.
(6) In Minnesota, the left has its ICE martyr, the one it’s been agitating for. We still don’t know exactly what happened, but there’s certainly some evidence that the ICE officer was not at fault and was acting in self-defense. But that doesn’t stop the left from using this to incite further rage and protests against ICE right now. Accuse first, ask questions later or not at all.
Dramatic video purportedly shows the moment an ICE agent opened fire and killed a 37-year-old woman who attempted to barrel her SUV into the officer’s path in Minneapolis Wednesday morning — as the mayor furiously demanded the agency “get the f–k out” of the city.
In the footage being widely circulated on social media from varying angles, ICE officers approach a plum-colored Honda Pilot and order the driver out of the vehicle after she blocked the path of their truck.
As one of the agents attempts to open the door, she quickly throws the car into reverse before trying to speed forward in the direction of another agent in her path. …
President Trump said in a statement that the driver caused the incident, which he said landed the agent in the hospital.
“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” he said in a post on Truth Social. …
Video taken from another angle showing the incident from further away appears to show the SUV run into the officer who fired the deadly shots as he leaps out of the path. …
DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said the incident happened while ICE was conducting “targeted operations” when “violent rioters” began blocking the streets.
One of the violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them — an act of domestic terrorism,” she said in an X post.
And from the left:
“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly: that is bulls—t. This was an agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying,” [Mayor Frey] said, pledging a full investigation into the incident.
“To ICE: Get the f—k out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being here is to create some kind of safety and you are doing exactly the opposite.” …
Embattled Minn. Gov. Tim Walz fired back “don’t believe this propaganda machine” and promised the state will conduct “a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice.”
People are being whipped up into an anti-ICE frenzy by the left. Whether this woman was one of them remains to be seen, and I certainly don’t know at this point. But I wouldn’t trust anything Frey and Walz say.
