Frankie Valli is hanging on

The New Neo Posted on by

I believe he’s 86 years old here:

By the way – yes, I always liked The Four Seasons in my early youth, along with the Everlys and Roy Orbison, and some of the Motown groups. Do I especially like falsetto singing – considering that I also like the Bee Gees, as you know? Not especially. But I like those particular people and groups, and falsetto singing was and is fine with me too, if it’s done well. But harmony is my thing above all, and the Four Seasons had lots of that.

Speaking of which – this was a later song from Valli (1975). Not one of my favorites, but still sort of nice, and apropos to the topic of harmony:

Valli was still touring until recently. Here he is in 2016:

People often would say he was lip-syncing in his recent concerts such as the above clip. I thought that was highly likely, until I saw the stuff he’s done during the lockdown. Whatever he does or doesn’t do in concert, he can still sing.

[NOTE: Ha, ha! You were expecting the Bee Gees, and you get Frankie Valli. But never fear, the Bee Gees lie in wait.]

Another must-read…

The New Neo Posted on by

…from Glenn Greenwald:

House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms: Democrats’ justification for silencing their adversaries online and in media — “they are spreading fake news and inciting extremism” — is what despots everywhere say.

Can HR1 pass in the Senate?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Bauxite” writes:

Can’t see how they pass HR 1 without nuking the filibuster. There’s no way that 10 Republicans will vote for it. The pressure will be on Manchin and Sinema, though. I’m going to start worrying if there are signs of them cracking.

Ordinarily it’s true that in order to pass HR1 they would have to do away with the filibuster. But I’ve heard chatter that they may try to somehow shove the whole mess into something they call a budget bill and pass it by reconciliation, requiring only a simple majority. Exactly how this could be done I don’t know – clearly, the bill is even less related to the budget than Obamacare was – but I would never underestimate Democrats’ ability to bend the rules in order to consolidate their power, and the Court’s ability to look the other way.

The second method by which the filibuster roadblock could be gotten around might be by executive order. In fact, Biden has already issued an executive order that includes some of the most objectionable parts of HR1. It represents a backup plan, as it were. Whether it would hold up legally I don’t know (in fact, there’s even some doubt as to whether HR1 itself would be upheld by SCOTUS in a challenge). But it might.

Lastly, of course, as Bauxite notes, there’s no reason to trust Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema to keep their promises about preserving the filibuster. I actually trust Sinema more than I’d trust Manchin. The latter has a history of talking a good line until an important vote actually takes place, and then he virtually always caves. Sinema is a bit more mysterious and unknown to me, and seems to have a somewhat more rebellious spirit.

The determination of the Democrats to accomplish the destruction of American voting integrity is fierce. And voting is nearly the entire ballgame, isn’t it?

The ghost of Biden past gave a speech last night

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch the speech except for a short excerpt. It is too depressing to see how depleted he is. I never liked the guy – at best, he was a mendacious, conniving mediocrity. But now, in addition to not having lost those qualities, his decline is ghastly. The idea that someone in that state is president is something I don’t like to dwell on overly, although of course I’m sharply aware of it.

And all of this was obvious during the campaign, but plenty of people cynically ignored it because of their profound and pathological hatred of Trump and their desire to be rid of him at any cost. Well, Joe Biden and the far leftists are the costs, and we all are paying the price.

I’m not even sure that Biden’s cognitive state really matters, either, because he will do whatever he’s told to do, and they will cover for any errors he makes right up till the moment that they decide it’s time to replace him.

If you want to read some summaries of the mean-spirited, dictatorial, self-aggrandizing, mendacious speech Biden gave, please go here, here, here (that last one’s a mite kinder to Biden), and also see this comment from “Rufus T. Firefly” on a previous thread.

Or, if humor is your thing, here’s a comment I found at Althouse:

Happy days are here again! That beastly orange brute has been ousted! And soon he and many of his deplorable supporters will be jailed for the crime of being hideous louts. And now we’re blessed with the brilliant mind of Joe Biden. His eloquence and erudition is legend! He has blessed us with a flurry of executive orders, his divine proclamations to undo all the damage that has been done. Our southern border has been flung open. No longer are children being held in cages of hate, only cages of love!

When I look at Biden’s candidacy and now his presidency, I cannot help but think – as so many others do – of the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Most people think Andersen wrote his stories for children, and he did – but not solely for children. If you haven’t read “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as an adult, I suggest you do so. You can find the text here, and it’s really far more clever than I had remembered, and more meaningful as well.

I had recalled the story as being about the difficulty of publicly criticizing an emperor or anyone in power. But on rereading it, I realize that it’s actually about a group of crooks who pull a clever con that makes it very difficult for anyone to criticize the emperor or be truthful about what they see before their very eyes. The ending goes like this:

The emperor…thought, “This procession has got to go on.” So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn’t there at all.

More HR1

The New Neo Posted on by

Why wasn’t more attention paid during the 2020 election to the looming prospect of HR1? I was aware that this was high on the Democrats’ agenda – why wasn’t everyone made aware? It could have been used to argue against Democrats being elected to Congress. Perhaps it would even have mattered, although I don’t know. So few people seem to be aware of it even now.

Here are a few links to some articles about what’s in HR1:

From Heritage.

From J. Christian Adams.

HR1 is a threat to American democracy.

I wonder if any Democrats at all will oppose this in the Senate. I doubt it. That’s how radical the party has become, even the few so-called moderates. I would be pleasantly surprised to be wrong.

And of course, will all the Republicans in the Senate oppose it? I think that HR1 is huge enough and awful enough that they might, even Republicans like Romney and Collins. But I’m not sure.

And no, the fact that 20 GOP members voted to approve of Merrick Garland isn’t in the same category of offense. He was going to be confirmed without them (only a majority necessary), and if they hadn’t approved him his replacement would probably have been both further to the left and sharper mentally. That’s not an attempt by me to excuse those 20 votes, but I’m focusing on bigger issues.

Piers Morgan refuses to apologize

The New Neo Posted on by

No Soviet-style confessions for Piers:

On Monday, while discussing Markle’s revelation in her interview with Oprah Winfrey that she’d had suicidal thoughts but was denied help from senior members of the royal institution, Morgan said: “Who did you go to? What did they say to you? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said, Meghan Markle. I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report.”

The British broadcasting regulator Ofcom said on Tuesday that it had received 41,000 complaints about that episode of “Good Morning Britain” and had launched an investigation. Chris Ship, the royal editor at ITV, the channel that hosts the show, tweeted on Wednesday that Markle had formally filed a complaint about Morgan’s comments to the network on Monday.

As criticism mounted, network bosses at ITV asked Morgan to apologize on air, but he refused and left the show, according to reports from The Telegraph, the Mirror, and The Sun…

“When he refused to apologize, there was a stand-off. And ultimately it ended with him telling producers he would not host the show anymore,” The Sun’s source added. “His contract was coming to an end this year anyway, but he said he wouldn’t do the job unless it was on his terms.”

I like his tweet:

The specific subject matter is pretty trivial – as are so many of these brouhahas nowadays. But the overall issue – a person’s right to express an opinion and not to have to apologize because some people object – is not trivial at all. Of course, a station also has the right to fire someone with whom it disagrees. But nowadays the window for acceptable speech is only open a small crack, and closing fast. This is a danger to us all.

There was a golden opportunity for election fraud in Wisconsin in 2020…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and we’re only finding out about it now.

I’m actually surprised we’re finding out about it at all.

The more mail-in ballots you allow, the more opportunity for fraud. That seems to be a general rule, unless some very strong safeguards are baked in, and that does not ever seem to happen. One must assume that the left will take advantage of every opportunity they can, since they believe that the end justifies the means in their pursuit of power.

Here’s the story:

The Wisconsin House of Representatives on Wednesday held a hearing to review election irregularities after newly revealed documents obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight revealed that Democrat activists, funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were able to infiltrate the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin’s five largest cities.

In Green Bay, a Democrat activist was actually given keys to the room where absentee ballots were stored before the 2020 presidential election.

The city received a total of $1.6 million in grant funding from the Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, according to Wisconsin Spotlight. A Democrat operative from New York named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein became a “grant mentor.”…

The Wisconsin Spotlight’s report has prompted several Wisconsin lawmakers to call for the resignation of Green Bay’s mayor, and for an investigation into the city’s handling of the November presidential election.

According to the report, the emails show that Green Bay’s “highly partisan” Democrat Mayor Eric Genrich and his staff usurped city Clerk Kris Teske’s authority and let the Zuckerberg-funded “grant team” take over in “a clear violation of Wisconsin election statutes.”

So, now they’re trying to close the wide open barn door – a bit late, to say the least.

(By the way, what’s up with American Greatness? It’s not just that site, either – I see the following often on conservative sites – they have ads for the left. For example, when I first went to the article I’m writing about in this post, right below the text was a large ad asking the reader to donate money to the effort to pass HR1. It featured an unattractive photo of McConnell on the left of the ad, making a pouty face, accompanied by an exhortation to make him “furious.” It’s especially ironic to have that ad for leftist “voting reform” attached to this particular article.)

More:

The Democrat mayor’s office then began to pressure and bully staffers in the Clerks Office, reducing them to tears and leading several of them to seek new jobs.

I wonder what the nature of those threats were – did the threats by any chance involve children? This would not surprise me. As I’ve said before, until recently people who signed up for such positions were probably neither mentally nor emotionally prepared for that sort of pressure, as a rule. But they had better be prepared in the future – although if HR1 does pass, there won’t be any state laws anymore to protect them or the integrity of the voting process.

The Green Bay City Clerk ended up resigning prior to the election, giving the leftist operatives pretty much free reign.

More:

The documents show a city official, after talking with someone from the National Vote at Home Institute, “brainstorming” about how the city could livestream the Central Count at city hall “so that (election observers) do not enter the building.”

While Spitzer-Rubenstein was given the keys to the room where the absentee ballots were stored, a Hyatt Regency checklist instructed staff “DO NOT UNLOCK GRAND BALLROOM UNTIL Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein IS WITH SECURITY WHEN UNLOCKING THE GRAND BALLROOM DOORS.”

According to former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, who retired from the post in early January, the contract stipulated that Spitzer-Rubenstein could have four of the five keys to the KI Center’s ballroom — “several days before the election.”

“The city of Green Bay literally gave the keys to the election to a Democratic Party operative from New York,” Wisconsin Spotlight noted.

The story focuses on Green Bay, but it also mentioned that four other cities in Wisconsin may have had vulnerabilities of a similar or related nature.

Contemplating HR1

The New Neo Posted on by

I was going to write a big long post on HR1 today, but I can’t bring myself to do it right now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll gird my loins and tackle it – tackle it again, that is, because I’ve written about it before.

But for now I’ll just say that the bill is profoundly depressing and anger-inducing, and I’ll offer a few links:

From the National Review.

Mike Lee weighs in.

There’s also this at American Thinker, and this from Christian Adams at PJ.

In addition, see this about a similar executive order from Biden. I guess the left wants to give us a few bites at this especially poisonous apple.

Heavy lies the formerly royal head that will never wear the crown

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t watched the Harry and Meghan interview, but I’ve read about it.

Apparently, Meghan and Harry see racism even in a question about the possible skin color of her baby. Perhaps the person asking was merely curious? Maybe even admiring? Are there any innocuous questions anymore? For example, I’m no lighter in color than Meghan, and where I lived when my son was an infant, people were not used to seeing brunette babies. I noticed that even people there who were brunettes themselves all seemed to have blond babies who turned brunette later in life. So my extremely brunette baby’s dark looks were remarked on constantly – and usually admiringly, I might add.

A little more annoying were the frequent queries I got in college when people met me, to the tune of : “What are you?” I had a series of flippant answers at the ready. I found the question quite rude, and I guess it was, especially when asked at the “How do you do?” stage. But I also considered the questioners to probably be motivated mostly by curiosity and their inability to “read” me, ethnically speaking.

But I am basically uninterested in Harry and Meghan, except as part of a phenomenon I recognize as not limited to them – the sometime desire of people born into royalty or marrying into royalty to escape from aspects of the responsibilities and even burdens of the station, while retaining some of the advantages. Remember Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper? I owned the classic comic, and it fascinated me:

Tom Canty, youngest son of a poor family living in Offal Court located in London, has always aspired to have a better life, encouraged by the local priest, who has taught him to read and write. Loitering around the palace gates one day, he meets Edward Tudor, the Prince of Wales. Coming too close in his intense excitement, Tom is nearly caught and beaten by the Royal Guards. However, Edward stops them and invites Tom into his palace chamber. There, the two boys get to know one another. Fascinated by each other’s life and their uncanny resemblance to each other and learning they were even born on the same day, they decide to switch places “temporarily”. The Prince hides an item, which the reader later learns is the Great Seal of England, then goes outside; however, dressed as Tom, he is not recognized by the guards, who drive him from the palace. He eventually finds his way through the streets to the Canty home. There, he is subjected to the brutality of Tom’s alcoholic and abusive father, from whom he manages to escape, and meets one Miles Hendon, a soldier and nobleman returning from war. Although Miles does not believe Edward’s claims to royalty, he humors him and becomes his protector. Meanwhile, news reaches them that King Henry VIII has died and Edward is now the king.

Tom, dressed as Edward, tries to cope with court customs and manners…

And then there was Marie Antoinette’s Hameau in Versailles:

The Hameau de la Reine, (The Queen’s Hamlet) is a rustic retreat in the park of the Château de Versailles built for Marie Antoinette in 1783 near the Petit Trianon in Yvelines, France. It served as a private meeting place for the Queen and her closest friends; a place of leisure. Designed by the Queen’s favoured architect, Richard Mique with the help of the painter Hubert Robert, it contained a meadowland with a lake and various buildings in a rustic or vernacular style, inspired by Norman or Flemish design, situated around an irregular pond fed by a stream that turned a mill wheel. The building scheme included a farmhouse, (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn that burned down during the French Revolution, a mill and a tower in the form of a lighthouse. Each building is decorated with a garden, an orchard or a flower garden. The largest and most famous of these houses is the “Queen’s House”, connected to the Billiard house by a wooden gallery, at the center of the village. A working farm was close to the idyllic, fantasy-like setting of the Queen’s Hamlet…

Courtiers at the Palace of Versailles constantly surrounded Marie Antoinette, leaving her in need of a refuge. She escaped the responsibilities and structure of court life to her private estate.

The image of Marie Antoinette dressing up as a shepherdess or peasant at the hamlet is a deeply-entrenched and inaccurate myth. There is no contemporary evidence for Marie Antoinette or her entourage pretending to be peasants, shepherdess or farmers. Marie Antoinette and her entourage would use the hamlet as a place to take private walks and host small gatherings or suppers.

Marie Antoinette also managed the estate by overseeing various works, correcting or approving plans, and talking with the head farmer and laborers. In addition to the head farmer Valy Bussard, Marie Antoinette hired a team of gardeners, a rat-catcher, a mole-catcher, two herds-men, and various servants to work on the estate.

In spite of its idyllic appearance, the hamlet was a real farm…

And then there was Edward VIII of England, who escaped with Wallis Warfield Simpson. But by all accounts they lived a rather aimless life of traveling and socializing. Of course, even life as a monarch these days is pretty much a ceremonial one, although it still has some symbolic meaning.

Decisions, decisions

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been an Amazon Associate for many years, which means I’ve gotten a small commission on every Amazon order that comes through a link on this blog.

Years ago I used to make around $6K a year from those links, which is hardly insignificant. But over the years, as people have gotten angrier at various things Amazon has done, that amount has decreased till it now totals about $1K a year. I’ve recently considered quitting the associate program.

But I wonder if it’s really a good idea. A lot of us – and this includes me – use Amazon now and then for convenience. Sometimes, for example, it’s really hard to find a certain product anywhere else. Sometimes there’s time pressure, and Amazon is very efficient that way. And so I figure that, if some of my readers are going to use Amazon anyway for these benefits, why shouldn’t they use this blog to do it and why shouldn’t I earn some money from that process?

So I’m putting up this post to ask your opinion on the matter. I do also get money through contributions, but I’m always dragging my feet on passing the hat, and the Amazon Associate program has long been a nice adjunct.