I haven’t written about Biden’s recent performance in Europe with the Pope and elsewhere, such as at the G20 meeting or the climate conference. There’s plenty of coverage of these events on almost every blog or news site you might want to read, but I don’t want to make my own site into a daily dissection of the latest example of Biden’s strange and depressing amalgam of vileness, leftism, mendacity, eccentricity, and cognitive decline.
Those people who thought that the Trump presidency diminished our standing in the world – and I’m not one of those people – ought to get a load of how Biden’s presidency is playing.
If there’s something of special interest I’ll get into it, but I just cannot bring myself to chronicle the particular personal failings of Joe Biden, a man who in a sane world would be in retirement right now. However, I certainly plan to cover his major policy decisions, or the decisions made by whatever group is writing his speeches and giving him instructions.
I’ve said many times that I don’t ascribe to the idea that Biden is completely out of it and a total automaton. I think that perhaps people who believe that are just looking at his bloopers, of which there are so many, and not noting that at times he can be relatively coherent although never energized and his old self (which was bad enough). He seems to be onboard with the leftist program, and he seems to have enough cognitive ability left to be said to be responsible for his words and his actions. Nevertheless, as I’ve said in this post and so many others, he is also being controlled and steered by others, and the media is actively engaged in playing along with the fiction that Biden is not only in control but is doing a halfway decent job of it.
It’s corruption and coverup all the way down, and I think that even a lot of Democrat voters sense this. That’s why very few people speak with any enthusiasm of Biden, although if they had it to do over again, I think a lot of them would still vote for Biden over Trump (Trump being evil incarnate).
[NOTE: If you want some links to the details of Biden’s latest objectionable behaviors, you can go here or here or really just about anywhere except the regular MSM.]
…and law of self-defense lawyer Andrew Branca will be covering it day by day at Legal Insurrection. In past trial coverage, Branca has been excellent and very thorough, and I expect the same will be true this time.
From what I know so far of Rittenhouse’s actions that fateful August evening in Kenosha in 2020, he shouldn’t even be on trial because it’s such a clear case of self-defense. However, I’m open to evidence to the contrary, which one would expect to come out in a trial.
Will this trial be a fair one? That remains to be seen, but at least the venue – Kenosha, Wisconsin – is not totally dominated by the left, even if the general political pressure to convict in order to placate said left is great.
You might want to check to see if your area is voting tomorrow for school board members. Even if you usually don’t participate in local elections, this would be a great time to start.
[NOTE: This post and a planned Part II (on dancing while singing) were sparked by a fairly lengthy discussion with Rufus T. Firefly and several others in the “walk and chew gum” thread, about the difficulty of singing and playing the drums simultaneously.]
The idea that it’s hard to sing and play drums at the same time – harder than to sing and play another instrument – isn’t something I just came up with on my own. In fact, being neither a musician nor a singer, I don’t feel personally qualified to say. I find it all rather difficult.
But it’s something I’ve read about quite a bit. There’s a lot of discussion about it among people who play music, a kind of accepted wisdom, although that “wisdom” is also often challenged (as it was in our own discussion).
So, is it really so very hard? And what exactly is meant by “at the same time”?
Obviously, one can’t play a wind instrument while singing, although someone like Louis Armstrong would alternate the two and did a great job of it. The main instruments we’re talking about would be the piano (or other keyboards), the guitar, and the drums, and it’s rock and pop music in particular that we’ve been talking about.
It’s not that it’s impossible to do any of this simultaneously. Obviously it isn’t at all impossible, because there are people who successfully sing and play said instrument or instruments. It appears to me, however, that there’s a continuum, and the continuum involves – for whatever reason – a progression, easiest to hardest, from rhythm guitar as easiest for singing, to keyboards, to lead guitar, to bass guitar, and then to drums. With drums I’ve read that there’s the extra difficulty of it often being a seemingly more aerobic activity, which can bring problems of breath control when singing is introduced. Watch that video of Queen’s Roger Taylor singing and drumming “I’m in Love With My Car” (featured on my previous post) if you doubt how especially strenuous drum playing can be.
Some people simply can’t sing as they play at all, so they stick to singing without playing (even though they might actually be able to play an instrument when not singing). Some people can do both when both activities are kept quite simple. Some can do it when at least one of the activities is at a more complex level, and some (rarer still) when both activities are moderately complicated. But I don’t think anyone plays his or her most complex instrumental music while simultaneously singing his or her most complex singing, although that certainly would be something to see if it could be done.
It also depends what is meant by the words “at the same time.” Most complicated playing I’ve seen that is done by singing musicians – whether it be on guitar or drums – is done during the solo instrumental sections when no one at all is singing, or is done by someone who isn’t singing at all (or just chiming in on the chorus, perhaps) while the lead singer sings. But with a person who sings lead and plays lead guitar simultaneously (such as Mark Knopfler, for example) at a high level (although some hate his singing, I happen to love it, particularly his tone and phrasing), there are usually short phrases of singing accompanied by somewhat simpler playing, and then for a moment (probably when the singer is taking a breath or resting very briefly at the end of a phrase), there’s a little riff on the instrument. Then the singing resumes, and the two modes alternate that way.
However, I must add that Knopfler’s guitar skills are such that nothing he does on the guitar sounds simple to me, because his tone is so spectacularly beautiful and idiosyncratic, so very musical and melodic and emotional, that even a single note seems complex.
If you want to see some discussions of the phenomenon of singing while playing an instrument, see this or this. There are a ton of other sites where people discuss the difficulties involved. The commonalities between bass guitar and drums and the difficulties they each present to singers apparently include the need to keep up a rhythm that doesn’t completely parallel the melody line, so it’s much easier to do if the drumming or the bass lines are very simple. Rhythm guitar apparently doesn’t present the same issues involving singing. I’ve also heard some people say that singing really well while playing piano – although much easier than singing while playing bass or the drums – is not something everyone can do, even if the person is otherwise quite musical.
Here’s a fairly tongue-in-cheek discussion from Dave Grohl:
Some other discussions you might want to look at: this one on rhythm versus lead guitar, as well as this, this, and this.
And in this video, singing teacher Ken Tamplin features the best 10 singer-drummers. So of course they exist. He professes to be able to teach people how to do it:
Also, regarding singing and dancing: it’s rare. But that’s for Part II.
The vaccine mandates in New York for police and firefighters mean that the city stands to lose about 20% of its firefighter first responders and some unknown number of its police too:
New York City’s first responders are grappling with a potential new reality as a result of the city-issued vaccine mandate, with the fire department revealing it will need to close as much as 20% of its fire companies and will have 20% fewer ambulances to run calls.
The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) announced the potential shortages on Wednesday when the New York Police Department (NYPD) was also pushing for more employee vaccinations as the mandate deadline looms…
A spokesperson for the NYPD did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request seeking comment, but told The Associated Press: “We will be prepared for any changes in personnel due to the mandate.”
According to the New York Post, 75% of vaccinated personnel within the NYPD – the largest police force in the country – consists of 63% of police officers who work the streets of the city. An estimated 6,000 remain unvaccinated, according to the report.
It’s not as though vaccines are some absolute protection against COVID, although they help, and vaccinated people apparently can spread the disease. What’s more, New York is doing pretty well with COVID right now, so what’s this Draconian stuff all about?
This would seem like madness – and yet there’s method to it, if you think about it and are cynical enough.
If you believe that the left is employing a Cloward-Piven strategy, it’s about deliberately sowing chaos and justifying more leftist control and more leftist crackdowns on the population as a whole, the right, and those of an independent streak. And they are doing it in a fairly clandestine manner under the guise of public health.
There’s almost no other logical explanation possible.
By now you’ve probably read about the attempt at a dirty trick propaganda ploy by some entity – the Democratic Party? The NeverTrumper Lincoln Project? – allied with McAuliffe. The incident was an attempt to smear his opponent Youngkin as a racist white supremacist (what else is new?) and conjure up Charlottesville in the bargain.
Nice try, but no cigar, because the imposters were outed and now it’s McAuliffe with egg on his face – at least, to those who have heard about the incident:
Youngkin himself suggested that his Democratic opponent was behind the demonstration, telling NBC29: “I think they work for Terry McAuliffe, and I’m sure he sent them.”
“They’ll do anything to win, and he’s doing anything to win, and so he’s paying people to show up and act silly at our rallies,” Youngkin added.
As Twitter sleuths sought to identify the individuals who took part in the bizarre protest, the McAuliffe campaign disavowed the activity.
The Lincoln Project claimed the dubious credit, but many people think they’re just taking the fall for the Democratic Party and even the McAuliffe camp, because the people involved have been identified as employees of the Virginia Democratic Party.
None of this is all that surprising.
The larger question is what really is real these days as opposed to dirty tricks and/or coordinated propaganda, and how can you tell? It will only get worse, I think, as the ability to fake real-looking video increases. In this case the trick didn’t involve fake video but a real event that immediately looked fake. Not only was it a bad fake, but the people involved could be identified rather easily. Oops!
However, there are other times – for example, whoever the FBI agents were on January 6 – in which people were dressed in ways that meant they couldn’t be identified, at least not so easily. The norming of the wearing of masks is of great help in the cause of hiding.
Katie Pavlich has called on the Democrats of Virginia to ask the FBI to investigate:
Well since your campaign claims to be against white supremacy, with the exception of KKK Ralph, I’m sure you’ll be calling the FBI to help track down who these white supremacists are. They are very dangerous. Thank you for your help @AndrewWhitleyVA. https://t.co/E15TJ9TpxA
[NOTE: This post is a slightly-edited repeat of a post from 2008.]
No, I didn’t make it up. It really isNational Candy Corn Day, the day “the nation celebrates its favorite vegetable.”
No doubt all of my readers, being unusually well-informed people, were already aware of that. But did you know it is estimated that in this country thirty-five million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year? And by the way, my original post from thirteen years ago had the number at twenty million, according to the same Wiki link, so the number has nearly doubled in the meantime.
I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.
It is part of my penance to confess here that I really love the dreadful stuff and always have, and I’m far from alone (although my impression is that candy corn is one of those things a person either loves or hates). Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and believe me I was already a grownup.
Apparently I am not the only adult who has dressed up as candy corn on Halloween. And no, I didn’t look like this—more’s the pity (although to be technical, isn’t she dressed as two pieces of candy corn, the body and the hat?):
I heard on Fox News (can’t give a link here because I was unable to find the information online) that candy corn is the Halloween treat most often stolen by parents from their kids’ Halloween stash. I believe this to be undeniably true. It is a guilty, shameful secret for most, but I am glad this is finally seeing the light of day.
There are various gourmet variations on candy corn, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. A helpful reader sent me some information about this Brach product for example, which includes:
Green Beans, Roasted Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Stuffing, Apple Pie and Coffee. (Fans of Ginger Glazed Carrots, which were part of last year’s batch, should note that flavor is gone.)
I had tried the earlier version, and it was terrible. This sounds even worse. It’s the good old Brach’s original that I continue to crave.
And here’s a burning question: do you eat your candy corn in sections? And, if so, do you consider the top to be the yellow part or the white part? I’ve always seen the little white triangle as the “foot” of the candy corn, but I learned when I designed my costume years ago that most people see it the other way. For those who might be inclined to disagree with me, I offer the following exhibit from the realm of science; the kernel grows with the tip – corresponding to the white part of the candy – down, embedded in the cob:
I’ve noticed many times that virtually all the liberals I know – even those who are having a few doubts and questions about what’s been going on under the Biden administration – are still firmly convinced that January 6th represents a terrible and dangerous insurrection and that if I don’t agree I’m some sort of QAnon-influenced conspiracy theorist. To me, this represents the remarkable and continued power of the press and the left to set a narrative that becomes firmly entrenched in people’s minds and is remarkably recalcitrant to change.
How to counter this? I’ve actually been told by a few people that if I sent them some written material on it they’ll read it, presumably with an open mind. I think that it’s easy to think one’s mind is open, but hard to execute. And one big problem for me is what to send them, because “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read) is an ever-present problem.
For a couple of weeks I’ve been amassing links from which to choose. There are close to fifty now, and obviously I have to winnow that down to just a couple. But which ones? It’s not really a topic that lends itself to summary approach, if one wants to even have a chance of reaching a person on the other side. There are so many misconceptions to break down, lies to counter, and omissions to fill in.
And then there’s the trump card (forgive the expression) of discounting the messenger: “Well, it’s just [fill in the blank] who says that, and we all know that person is a liar.” No, we don’t, but that’s what they often think is the case, and it’s hard to get past that assumption. That’s why someone like Turley or Dershowitz or Greenwald, as non-conservatives, can be so helpful, although after just a few occasions of siding with the right they are likewise discredited by many.
Fox News host and the current cable news king Tucker Carlson announced that after much research and investigation, he’s releasing a multi-part series about the January 6 riots that cuts through a lot of the media posturing and speculation and gets down to the facts.
I obviously haven’t seen it, but my guess is that it’s pretty good. That link goes on to give examples of many of the attacks that have already been mounted against it. That’s no surprise, because getting the word out in a relatively short and relatively easy-to-understand way would be one of the biggest threats the left could face right now. So of course it must be quashed even before people have a chance to see it, so they won’t think to waste their time on something that’s already been “debunked” and is issued by the evil lying Carlson.
Commenter “JimNorCal” writes, about the Biden administration’s planned payments of $450 thousand per person to illegal immigrants who were subjected to the family separation policy:
Do you hear angry responses from the Repub Party? Me neither.
My question is: did you look?
I encounter this sort of assertion time and again about Republicans being silent on various issues, so I don’t mean to single out JimNorCal; it’s a common observation. And yet very often when I check I find that plenty of Republicans have in fact issued angry responses about the topic in question, whatever it may be.
The thing is, how does the news get out? Is the MSM covering those responses? Where would we read or hear about them? Don’t expect CNN or the NY Times to mention them, except now and then in the tried-and-true “Republicans pounce” fashion if they think they can make the responses sound cruel and/or outrageous.
And of course not all Republicans are responding to any one issue, and some don’t respond much at all. Some probably don’t care. Some do cover a lot of things, but they can’t talk about everything. They have to pick and choose because time and energy is limited, and the Biden administration (and the left in general) perpetrates so many horrors a day that it’s pretty much impossible to keep up. Playing whack-a-mole isn’t all that productive. And besides Republicans in Congress are somewhat limited to rhetoric. They don’t have the votes or the power to stop these things at the moment.
Whether they often stop them when they do have majorities is another question entirely, but in recent years even when they’ve controlled Congress they haven’t controlled it by much of a margin, and so the more conservative among them can be stopped by the “mavericks.”
Regarding the issue at hand, though – the $450 thousand dollars per person award to illegal immigrants suing because they underwent family separation during the Trump years – it only took me a moment to find Ted Cruz’s Twitter feed:
It's unthinkable to pay a burglar who broke into your home for the ‘psychological trauma’ they endured during the crime. Yet the Biden admin wants to reward migrants who illegally entered our country with up to $450,000 each for just that reason. Insanity. https://t.co/XNTFs9KkLo
Pres Biden reportedly wants to pay a billion dollars to illegal immigrants in the middle of a record-setting border crisis What in the world is he thinking???
Totally agree, @RepDanCrenshaw. Biden won’t go to the border or fix the crisis he’s created, but he sure loves handing out checks. This is outrageous. https://t.co/UMyeyYwTC9
I’ll stop there because I think I’ve made my point. I checked a few other senators (it would take me a day to check every Republican in Congress) who didn’t mention it, but for the most part those particular people don’t seem to be heavy twitter users anyway. For all I know, some of them may have something about it on their websites; I didn’t check that either.
But the larger picture – and perhaps this is what the commenter was really trying to get at – is that there’s rarely an effective response in terms of action, and that’s very very frustrating.
But what can Republicans in Congress do about this particular issue? They don’t have a Congressional majority, and this is the DOJ making the settlements, anyway, rather than Congress being involved. It doesn’t seem like a case where SCOTUS could step in, either.
Maybe you’d like them to yell LOUDER. That would be good, and possibly would affect public opinion, as well. But how would we hear them – except for the small numbers who follow them on Twitter (I certainly don’t)? Would the MSM cover their yells? Only if the press could frame their statements as “hear the mean angry Republicans who would do awful things to you and to all innocent and defenseless people if they had the chance.”
Politicians can’t force the media to cover them. That’s one of the reasons Trump’s tweets were sometimes effective; they were so anger-provoking for the MSM that they couldn’t resist covering them and that could actually work to Trump’s advantage because his point was spread throughout the land that way.
That’s probably the main reason they took him off Twitter and kept him off.
In summary, although the GOP has its flaws and then some, the media and social media gatekeepers are no small problem for Republicans. It’s not just the lies and the nasty coverage. Sometimes it’s the lack of coverage that’s just as important.
This news should be impossible to believe. But unfortunately, we know it’s very possible:
The Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.
The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said. Most of the families that crossed the border illegally from Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S. included one parent and one child, the people said. Many families would likely get smaller payouts, depending on their circumstances, the people said.
That link is to a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, an outfit not usually given to wild flights of fancy. Will this actually end up happening? Quite possibly. Will most Americans even hear about it? I doubt it – but if it does happen, I hope all Americans hear about it. There would be few things designed to make all sane Americans realize the deeply misplaced priorities (and that’s putting it kindly) of the current administration.
…[I]n a “complicated [and] complex piece of litigation,” 940 legal claims have been filed by families who say they were “forcefully broken up” after crossing into the United States from Mexico. The families filing the claims say their children were traumatized and suffered from a range of ailments — including “anxiety” and a “fear of strangers” — all apparently justifying the average claim of $3.4 million payout per family.
The Biden administration has been in talks designed to reach an agreement on the claims, although some involved are having troubling stomaching the fact that the payouts amount to more than the victims of 9/11 received.
How about the trauma the children suffered from uprooting them and subjecting them to the long trek to this country? And do you recall why the separations occurred (one reason being the possibility of child trafficking)?
Among other things, settling these suits at this level of payment – or really, any level of payment – will encourage more and more and more of them.
The US government has an enormous amount of legal resources and money to defend these suits if it wishes to do so. Clearly, it doesn’t wish to. My guess is that this is a fish the Biden administration is throwing to its extreme left flank (the administration has nothing but left flanks, but there are degrees of leftness), a group that hasn’t been too happy with the administration’s progress lately on the radical bills that are stalled in Congress.
The Biden administration doesn’t seem to care much about offending moderate Democrats – if indeed any such people remain. It certainly isn’t reluctant to offend Independents. It must have tremendous confidence either that future elections are in the bag for Democrats no matter what, or that any electoral setbacks will be temporary in the new America it is engaged in designing.
