23 Monday Dec 2019
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≈ Comments Off on Tis the Season Christmas Music, 2019 Edition
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Please find HERE the same old list, substantially the same since 2015.
AND, please find the following, with nearly three additional hours of slightly higher caliber tunes:
Joyeux Noel!
18 Wednesday Dec 2019
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≈ Comments Off on I’ve Already Seen “Return of the Jedi”
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Back in 1983, before Devil Mouse destroyed the franchise. Called this months ago:
“Rumor has it that they’re up to the same trick with the upcoming Star Wars flick. Evidently, to make sense of the otherwise senseless and attempting to salvage something from the last two installments, they have resurrected the Emperor. That makes perfect sense because Rise of Skywalker is a remake of Return of the Jedi. Gotta have Palpatine for that. Seriously, a remake.
Star Wars Seven (name??) was a remake of the original – kid from a desert planet blows up the Death Star, gains powers. Eight (Jedi??) was The Empire Strikes Back, but in reverse – space chase ending on an ice world. Skywalker will find our heroes back on the sand planet, with a toothy, ground-dwelling monster trying to eat people, followed by an “ultimate” confrontation with Darth Sideous. Again. No word on the Ewoks. My greatest fear is that Jar-Jar shows up.”
As the trilogy’s third act, “Rise of Skywalker” takes the general shape of “Return of the Jedi,” even resuscitating its villain: Emperor Palpatine (the very spooky Ian McDiarmid, now mostly a shadowy heap of CGI). He was last seen exploding in a Death Star air shaft, thrown to his apparent death by Darth Vader. Yet as “Star Wars,” the most forever war there is, marches into its fifth decade, the undying demands of a pop culture phenomenon and corporate revenue generator has led to some unsettling resurrections.
Much more in the news of late. More “I told ya so” ahead.
17 Tuesday Dec 2019
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At TPC, and here, in full:
A Christmas Call
A Telephone Conversation in Progress, Christmas Eve, 8:34 PM…
Maryanna still felt like a schoolgirl, shifting on her old twin bed. She answered his question with one of her own: ‘What do you think our new friend is doing tonight?’
‘Something with a purpose, I’d guess,’ he answered. ‘Whatever it is, we’d probably be better off not discussing it now. The big guy honestly still scares me. Not like, you know, other things. But. At least he meets with Father Alojzy’s approval. Did you see him before you left town?’
‘Yes. He’s so sweet. Gave me the cutest card. And a blessing for the trip. Said he had you something, but you’d already flown out. We need to see him next week.’ There was something about the way she said we.
‘I need to see you.’ He put his own emphasis on the statement. ‘Miss you already.’
‘Yeah. It feels like it’s been a year already. Listen, what we’ve been talking about, about us – you’re the present I’ve been looking for. Meeting you was the best thing that -’
‘I know what you mean, Maryanna. It’s what I’ve been thinking about. You. Well, and the other business, but the thoughts about you… You, I need you. I love you.’
‘I love you too!’ the schoolgirl was almost giddy now.
‘Well – we’ve said it!’ he laughed as he spoke.
‘Got that out of the way, huh?’ she said, positively giddy.
‘And, we’ve got something else to talk about now, something positive. I thank God for you.’
‘And I for you.’
‘Well, good! It’s getting to be family time here. I’d better let you run.’
‘Same here. I think my brother’s listening outside the door!’
‘Give Corby a hug for me.’
‘I will after I slap his little head. He really likes you. Hey! Is your cousin coming? With his daughter?’
‘I think so. In the morning maybe? Driving in from Jax. I’ll let you know. You’d like them both.’
‘Yeah, let me know. Let’s talk for a long time tomorrow. Oh! Saturday, I can definitely get you from Reagan!’
‘Great! Like Uber with a kiss?’
‘We’ll see about that…’
‘Merry Christmas, Maryanna.’
‘Merry Christmas, Roland. I love you.’
‘I love you. Talk to you tomorrow.’
A Little House at the End of a Quiet Road, Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania…
Maryanna clicked her phone off and squealed. A thump in the hall and a muffled laugh gave Corbett away. She took it easy on him when she threw open the door: ‘Go to the living room, little boy! Get! Or, I’ll personally stop Santa Clause tonight!’
The siblings found mom and dad talking by the heater and drinking eggnog. Corby bounded in – as fast as one may bound with a walker – and announced the news: ‘They’re in love!’
‘Hush, son.’ Steve cautioned the boy. ‘Let’s let her make her own-’
‘So?? He is special. Anything to tell us, dear?’ Mom ushered Maryanna next to her on the sofa. Her daughter was glowing.
‘I think he’s… he’s as close to the one as I can imagine.’ Maryanna answered as she tugged and pulled on her mother’s hands, a broad smile on both their faces.
‘I knew it when he drove all the way out here,’ Steve said. ‘I’m happy for both of you. ‘Maybe you can move back here, or down to Georgia and leave all that craziness in DC where it belongs.’
‘In due time. There’s still more than a little of the madness to work through.’ Maryanna said as she gave earnest thought to the suggestion.
‘Enough of that!’ Mother countered. ‘Let’s have a toast to … the happy couple! And then, let’s open a few gifts!’
A Large, Columned House, The Hill, Augusta, Georgia…
Roland walked onto the back porch. His father was stoking a roaring fire. Looking up at his son, he spoke: ‘You just missed Charlie Roman. He said to wish you a Merry Christmas and left a book for you. It’s right there on the table. Said it’s by a friend of his.’
Roland picked up the book and studied the cover. Then, he fixated on the author’s picture on the back. ‘Oh, my. I know him too. Maryanna and I met him this fall in Washington. Doctor Thomas H. Ironsides. Wonder if he writes as well as he fights.’
‘What’s that dear?’ Mrs. Hubbard asked as she closed the door to the kitchen.
‘Oh. Nothing, mother.’ Roland answered softly.
‘Well. Tell us about Miss Maryanna. I framed that picture you sent. She’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen!’ The doting mother led her son to the settee adjacent to the fire.
‘She’s something else. The best thing I’ve found in the Capital. The best thing I’ve found, period. I’m in love with her.’
Father stood up, took a drink, and walked over. ‘Tell us all about her, son,’ he said. ‘We want to know all about her and about this project that the two of you are working on.’
‘Darling, no,’ Mother interjected. ‘We just want to know about her. About the two of you. Your happiness. Tell us a Christmas love story.’
He proceeded to do just that as a clean, light snow began to fall from eastern-Georgia to western-Pennsylvania and beyond. From his parsonage in Virginia, Father Alojzy saw it falling out of his window while he said his deep evening prayers of thanks. Tom and Carmyn walked through it, laughing as they nuzzled and cavorted. It dusted the wide shoulders of mighty Tulkas as he stood motionless, watching and waiting. The Vispoli family drove through it as they returned, once again, to New England. Far to the south, Wendell Hubbard brushed it off his daughter’s hair as they loaded their car for tomorrow’s road trip.
And, if for only a moment, the world was still. Peace on Earth.
**That, friends, was both a reminder of fiction past and a preview of sorts. May it also serve as a subtle reminder of the promise and gift of Christ and Christmas. The National Affairs return next week with the usual, or maybe something else Yuletide-ish. An early Merry Christmas!
10 Tuesday Dec 2019
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≈ Comments Off on Stronger Body, Sharper Mind
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This study isn’t at all surprising, as one health begets another.
A great deal of focus these days is placed on the possible harm many athletes may be doing to their brains due to the hard hitting nature of contact sports like football or hockey. While the serious and debilitating nature of CTE-related and concussion injuries are indisputable at this point, an interesting new study conducted at Northwestern University is playing devil’s advocate in the debate surrounding sports and brain health.
Researchers say that as long as an athlete avoids head injuries, their brain is likely healthier than a non-athlete’s. This was found to be the case across a variety of sports, including contact sports like football, soccer, and hockey.
“No one would argue against the fact that sports lead to better physically fitness, but we don’t always think of brain fitness and sports,” says senior author Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, in a release. “We’re saying that playing sports can tune the brain to better understand one’s sensory environment.”
After analyzing close to 1,000 participants, including roughly 500 (both male and female) college Division I athletes, the study found that athletes develop an enhanced ability to quiet electrical noise in their minds. This makes it easier for athletes to quickly and efficiently process external sounds on hectic playing fields, such as their coach yelling instructions from the bench.
Hit the gym. Pass the ball. Read a book. EZ.
05 Thursday Dec 2019
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≈ Comments Off on More and More Stats on Education Fraud
Dr. Williams has them as usual.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, “More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).
It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).
The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.”
We’ve come to the point where that diploma or degree (even from Harvard) is just a piece of paper.
That Book he mentioned:
04 Wednesday Dec 2019
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≈ Comments Off on Decline and Fall of Holiday Shopping – from TPC
Your New 86” TeeVee Is Spying On You
Right now, while you’re reading this. Probably putting you on some list or another. I wouldn’t trust that Elf on the Shelf either.
Happy December, Friends of the Georgia Piedmont! Yeah, we have entered the final month of 2019. I hope you’re as thrilled and shocked about it as I am. And, I was just kidding about the TV. Just because it has a camera and a microphone and a transceiver and you can’t turn any of them off and the FBI says it’s spying means nothing. Have another beer, a pill maybe.
The important thing is that you bought it. Isn’t that the true meaning and spirit of this consumerist, er this holiday season? Buying things?
Last week saw another great Black Friday, the day set aside for bloated, semi-conscious Americans to shuffle aimlessly through the malls and discount stores, munching on refried lard and dropping fiat on useless junk that they won’t remember buying just four months later. Well, at least they used to shuffle psychically in order to max out the cards. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets report that this year more and more folks can’t even get up off the couch. Friday set a record $7.something Billion in online “stuff” sales – and, that was ahead of Cyber Monday (color unknown). The brick and mortar traffic was still kicking along, only a little lower and slower than in years gone by. Click on the big site or walk into the big box. Same deal.
Again, the important thing is that money gets spent. That’s what it’s for. The Noo Yaak Fed ain’t flooding $100,000,000,000+ every single day(!) (forever?) into the perfectly healthy economy for nothing.
…
01 Sunday Dec 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns, Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on A Little Fun with the NRA Survey
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The NRA generally does good work. My experience, working with them on legal cases here and there, was positive. However, their surveys get a little old. This one popped up on the side while I read something at Taki’s Mag. I’ll go through a few, shunning the simple “yes” and “no” answer for the real truth. Answers italicized.
NATIONAL GUN OWNERS SURVEY
1. Do you agree that the Second Amendment guarantees your individual right to own a firearm?
Yes
No
No Opinion
No. It merely states that the right “shall not be infringed,” which it is anyway, thereby kind of mooting the point – much like the rest of the Parchment.
2. Do you support the confirmation of pro-Second Amendment judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts?
Yes
No
No Opinion
I support abolishing the Supreme Court and lower federal courts.
3. Do you support laws that protect your fundamental right to use a firearm to defend yourself and your loved ones from a violent criminal attacker?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Not sure which I support less: laws or violent criminals.
4. Should Congress and the states eliminate so-called “gun free zones” that leave innocent citizens defenseless against terrorists and violent criminals?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Better to abolish Congress and the states at this point, thereby eliminating the worst of the terrorists and criminals.
5. Should Congress pass a law that gives law-abiding citizens the right to carry a firearm across state lines?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Already got one! It’s called the Second Amendment. Duh.
6. Do you oppose any United Nations treaty that strips the U.S. of its sovereignty and gives U.N. bureaucrats the power to regulate every rifle, pistol, and shotgun you own?
Yes
No
No Opinion
I do not recognize the United Nations as anything other than an international criminal syndicate. Blue helmets are highly visible though.
7. Do you agree that law-abiding citizens should be forced to submit to mandatory gun registration or else forfeit their guns and their freedom?
Yes
No
No Opinion
For safety, we should register, confiscate, and destroy all government guns.
8. Should NRA direct critical resources toward stopping anti-gun billionaires like Michael Bloomberg who are spending millions of dollars to destroy your Second Amendment freedom in states around the country?
Yes
No
No Opinion
Bloomberg and his kind should be immediately and permanently deported from America.
9. Would you vote for a politician…
No. That one was easy.
10. Would you vote for a politician who…
Again, no.
There are more, but that’s all the fun I can stand today. The NRA, like all else “conservative”, is hopelessly stuck in the museum. It isn’t 1994 anymore. The Nation on which they had based the “N” in NRA is dead and gone and these cucks did nothing to conserve it as it died. They would do better to start planning for the future – after the collapse and the rebuild. My suggestion would be to use the language from the existing 2A, but add a capital felony for anyone who ever tries to circumvent it. Oh, but please send some money so they can stop Bloomberg from appointing judges who will blah, blah, blah.
Great survey though!
28 Thursday Nov 2019
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RUN!!! Or Walk: A Thanksgiving Tradition
It was a cold New England morning, maybe around 5 or 5:30 AM. I was up because I’m always up at that time. And, the time was on my mind. I knew that shortly the womenfolk and children would awake, start making noise, and then head down to Main Street a little after 7. They did. And, per my sad usual habit, I merely saw them off. Yes, I shared a parting Mimosa and gifted a gruff “get out of here!” but I had missed another one. I missed all of them. Every year.
Just today (today being Sunday, the 24th), I was reminded by the Andover Townsman that Thursday plays host to the 32nd Annual Feaster Five Road Race in Andover. The Townsman warns: “It’s that time of year, when certain Thanksgiving guests arrive with a boxed Table Talk apple pie and a hearty appetite. They’re hungry after a long run.” Yep, it’s the same race and pie scene Big Tom dodged in chapter twelve of THE SUBSTITUTE. I’m not sure about him, but I almost wish I had ventured out for just one.
The Race Home Site proclaims, honestly: “The Feaster Five Thanksgiving Day Road Race in Andover, MA has been a Merrimack Valley tradition since 1988. At 10,000 participants, it is one of the largest races in Massachusetts and one of the largest Thanksgiving day races in New England.”
…
28 Thursday Nov 2019
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Turkey. It’s what’s for leftovers for a week.
26 Tuesday Nov 2019
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≈ Comments Off on Sprites and Fairies
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Coca-Cola hasn’t been the same since they toned down the original key ingredients. Sprite ain’t much better. But, they be “woke.”
This latest creation borne out of the Cultural Marxist laboratory, which just happens to be a commercial for Sprite, a beverage produced by the Coca-Cola Company, features several adolescents preparing for their attendance at some rainbow-festooned event on the streets of a soulless urban jungle. If the ad feels more like a documentary than a promotional for carbonated sugar water that’s because no actor is ever seen quenching their thirst with the drink. Instead, the product has become a vehicle – a veritable Trojan horse – for driving home a hugely controversial issue into the living rooms of millions of Americans.
…
In the Sprite TV ad, an apparent mother [the word ‘apparent’ is necessary since the term ‘gender’ has become an entirely fluid concept defined solely by a person’s feelings, which may change at a whim] opens the action to the sound of melodramatic melodies as she applies eyeliner on her apparent biological son. Cut away to scene two. Yet another apparent mother helps her apparent daughter wrap herself into a corset to conceal the fact that ‘she’ has breasts. Heaven forbid! Whether a mastectomy is on the horizon for the ‘girl’, together with a lifetime commitment to testosterone injections, the audience is none the wiser.
Next, an apparent grandmother dotes over her apparent cross-dressing grandson as he dons a mauve wig before wiggling in uncontained excitement, together with Baba, at their reflection in the mirror. I’m struggling to imagine a grandmother that would ungrudgingly accept such a scenario, but in the fizzy pop reality world of the Coca-Cola Company anything is possible.
What’s missing in this corporate-sponsored trip to the far side of insanity? Well, for starters, common sense. After all, is it really wise to award hero status upon pubescent teens over their sexual orientation, which is oftentimes confused at best? Teenagers are already greatly influenced by the myriad messages they are bombarded with daily over social media. Do they really need a Fortune 500 company promoting a lifestyle, namely transgender, which carries with it an entire rainbow of untold risks? The liberal media rarely reports it, but there are thousands of youth right now attempting to reverse the bodily harm they have done to themselves by trying to physically become the opposite sex, which is – it needs to be clarified once and for all – absolutely impossible.
If you were looking for a dead canary in the mine, here he is.
Vox Day mentioned this commercial a week or so ago. I didn’t seek it out then, and I haven’t watched it now. There’s just no need, especially so soon after breakfast. What’s the goal here? Keep pushing the lunatic agenda at all costs? There’s no point in boycotting Coke or any of the other converged companies. Well, there is, but that’s up to you. We could easily find ourselves with no modern conveniences at all.
Now, I’m thirsty. For water.
PERRIN LOVETT 
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