Home » Open thread 1/14/23

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Open thread 1/14/23 — 31 Comments

  1. https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-modern-american-blacklist-culture-is-wide-and-deep-and-will-require-a-lot-of-dredging-to-clear/

    “Democrats now overwhelming excuse violence against their political opponents, and in fact seem almost eager to make it common and frequent.”

    “Democrats in Congress however are merely a reflection of their voters.”

    “While it is increasingly clear that Democrats are tampering with election results to increase their victories, they only have to do a little tampering to get over the top. Millions of Americans support the Democratic Party whole-heartedly in this matter, especially in the big urban cities. In these places churches and synagogues are increasingly being treated like Jewish businesses and shuls in Nazi Germany, subject to frequent vandalism and attacks, merely because they are religious with conservative values. In these Democratic Party strongholds Democrats are enthusiastically hostile to conservatives, and generally see nothing wrong with violence against them.”

    Hmmm. What label should we use for people who are eager to use violence against other people for the crime of ‘wrongthink’?

  2. Well….. a thrid set of classified documents found, Dr. Wen admits Covid deaths overcounted, CDC issues warning on Pfizer bivalent “vax” for stroke hazard for those over 65. SMH..

  3. A fresh post at zero hedge.com shares a medical statement by a number of Swedish doctors, introduced thusly: “There follows [Below, in original] a public statement by a group of five senior Swedish doctors who, in collaboration with Dr. Johan Eddebo, a researcher in digitalisation and human rights, are raising the alert about the Covid vaccines, which they describe as ‘obviously dangerous’. They say there should be an ‘immediate halt’ to the mass vaccination pending ‘thorough investigations’ of the true incidence and severity of adverse effects.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/covid-vaccines-are-obviously-dangerous-and-should-be-halted-immediately-say-senior-swedish

  4. On those additional classified documents at the Biden Delaware house, his attorneys have issued a statement. They, the attorneys, do not have security clearances, so when they encounter a paper labeled classified, they do not examine it, and call the DOJ. And surely they do not look at it; we can trust the Bidens and their staff, right? No SWAT raid is called for, unlike for that slippery Trump guy.

    https://twitter.com/alx/status/1614307438093639682?s=20&t=IYGluHT5QyszuH6Xa0eeTw

  5. I see that the new variant of COVID strikes those that have been vaccinated/boosted and those that have had COVID. Man, double whammy for my Wife and I.
    We got the shots because we went along with the demands and we like to travel overseas. No shots/boosters no travel.

  6. SHIREHOME, Re double whammy.

    Yeah. Only in the last month have the cruise industry begun to cease requiring FULL VAX to travel, however defined.

    Instead, I see a good portion requiring a negative COVID-19 test, taken within 24 or 48 hours.

    It strikes me as a measure to reassure the wary cruiser that “there will be no typhoid Mary’s on board your boat!”

    I’m not even sure if current tests detect the currently circulating strains…anyone here know?

  7. “Well….. a thrid set of classified documents found“

    I don’t believe the document scandal is a ploy by Democrats to get rid of Biden. If only because they’d be left with the even worse Kamala. But why are they making a big deal out of it when they’ve steadfastly ignored or downplayed far more serious failings?

    I think it is because classified documents have an almost mystical and mythical status in DC. Everybody knows about them. Very few ever actually see them. And the general public is largely oblivious to them. Classified documents are like the “holy of holies” in the mystery religion that passes for society in DC. And what Biden has done is the equivalent of spitting on the Bible in 1200 AD.

    Of course, I suspect cavalier handling of “classified” but not really important documents is probably standard among U.S. political VIPs, which is no doubt a shocking thought to the DC faithful.

    Mike

  8. From the 0:52 mark in the video:
    “The museum bid 780,000 Euros, that’s around $109,000…”

    No it’s not. Even the screenshot from that point in the video shows a bid of 550,000 Euros equating to $617,904 U.S. dollars. 780,000 Euros is around $845,000 U.S. dollars these days.

    Not sure what the video is referencing. Canadian or Australian dollars would be even further off.

    Cool book though!

  9. MBunge,
    “But why are they making a big deal out of it when they’ve steadfastly ignored or downplayed far more serious failings?”

    It is exactly that point which leads me to think that a controlling faction within the democrat party has decided that a Biden second term is not in the party’s interest. The Biden lawyers could have quietly handed off those classified papers to a compliant archive personnel.

    As for Harris, if she takes over for Biden, her performance will guarantee that she will not be the 2024 candidate. It would also pave the way for Newsom to be installed as her VP.

    “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.”

  10. Boston removed a statue of Abraham Lincoln from Boston Common in order to replace it with a bronze piece of conceptual art honoring MLK and his wife. The piece was unveiled yesterday: A bronze sculpture honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King that was unveiled in Boston this week is already getting ripped by online critics. The piece, titled “The Embrace,” was crafted by the conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas. . . . It depicts a famous hug that the iconic civil rights leaders gave each other after King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, which was memorialized in an iconic photo . . . . Several users questioned the artist’s decision to only feature the couple’s arms and not include the couple’s heads. Others remarked that, when viewed from various angles, the piece came across as pornographic, according to one user.

    https://nypost.com/2023/01/14/boston-sculpture-honoring-mlk-coretta-scott-king-gets-mixed-reviews/

    Some of the “various angles,” including a few that are borderline NSFW, can be seen on Twitchy: https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2023/01/14/boston-unveils-its-bronze-sculpture-honoring-mlk-and-people-have-questions/

  11. Re: MLK embrace statue

    Here’s the story with the upfront photo angle which has scarred me for life:

    –“MLK & CORETTA SCOTT ‘THE EMBRACE’ STATUE UNVEILED Gets Mixed Reactions Online”
    https://www.tmz.com/2023/01/14/mlk-coretta-scott-king-the-embrace-statue-reactions-boston/

    I appreciate what Tweeter, Maggie, (black BTW) had to say further down:
    _______________________________________

    I’m not even going to say what I thought it was.
    _______________________________________

    No, seriously, professional visual artists don’t make mistakes like this.

  12. In Francoise Gilot’s memoir, “Life with Picasso” (Gilot was Picasso’s lover for a time and mother of two of his children) Picasso told her this story.

    During the glorious period when Picasso was intimately linked with Georges Braque in pioneering Cubism (their Cubist paintings then were close to indistinguishable), the two painters would meet and critique each others’ work. One such evening Picasso announced that he could see a squirrel in a new Braque painting.

    Braque stepped back and he could suddenly see the squirrel too. He spent days repainting his work until the squirrel was gone.

    Which is to say, that’s what professionals do when they realize their work might be seen in a way they do not intend.

    BTW — Francoise Gilot is still alive at 101! She became a great painter in her own right, though not a Picasso. Jonas Salk, of polio vaccine fame, married her.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7oise_Gilot

  13. OMG — I can suddenly distinguish the words in these silly 60 year-old French pop songs!
    ____________________________

    C’est le temps de l’amour,
    le temps des copains et de l’aventure.
    Quand le temps va et vient,
    on ne pense à rien malgré ses blessures.
    Car le temps de l’amour
    c’est long et c’est court,
    ça dure toujours, on s’en souvient.

    It’s time for love,
    time for friends and adventure.
    When time comes and goes,
    you don’t think of anything despite your injuries.
    Because the time of love
    it’s long and it’s short,
    it lasts forever, we remember.

    –Françoise Hardy, “Le temps de l’amour”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RTi6lg3m-o

    ____________________________

    Classic Hardy.

    I wonder how much 60s surf music owes to Hardy’s ballad. Likewise the Zombies’ “Time of the Season (for Love)”.

    BTW, I believe that’s Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) playing guitar.

  14. Neo– Apropos of the one-time Athens of America’s new public artwork– I can remember when something that suggestive as well as ugly would have been banned in Boston rather than placed on the Common. Seneca Scott, a first cousin of Coretta Scott King, has posted a short essay about what she calls a “masturbatory ‘homage’ to [her] family” in which she takes sharp aim at wokism: [emphasis in original]

    “Ten million dollars were wasted to create a masturbatory metal homage to my legendary family members—one of the all-time greatest American families. Still, the Boston debacle could be a blessing in disguise, by exposing the insidiousness of astroturfed woke movements that have come to dominate black America: How could anyone fail to see that this was a major dick move (pun intended) that brings very few, if any, tangible benefits to struggling black families? . . . . This sculpture is an especially egregious example of the woke machine’s callousness and vanity. Hopefully, it will show more black people that these progressives just aren’t in this for our benefit.”

    https://compactmag.com/article/a-masturbatory-homage-to-my-family

  15. I am so pleased to see that comment from Coretta Scott King’s cousin, PA Cat. From most angles that monstrosity is vaguely, or clearly, pornographic, and if not that, just plain weird. So much modern “art” is ugly.

    huxley, thanks! I can still read the French, and it’s been decades!

  16. Kate:

    De rien! How did you learn French?

    Learning from songs is fun. Since the vocabulary is small and the verbs are mostly present tense, they are not too hard.

    There are a surprising number of web sites devoted to learning French by song. I think more than there are for other languages. For instance:

    https://www.fluentin3months.com/french-songs/

    Plus French songs can be so emotional, romantic and crazy!
    __________________________

    Oui mais moi, je vais seule par les rues, l’âme en peine

    Yes but me, I walk the streets alone, my soul in pain

    –Francoise Hardy, “Tous les garcons et les filles — All the Boys and Girls”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPkBMqehr5k

  17. High school and college, Huxley. Languages and accents are easy for me. I was so proud, about 20 years ago, when a waiter in SE France sniffed at me about my Parisian accent. He meant it as an insult, but I was thrilled it was recognizable.

  18. The Roku channel app has a couple of French language streaming services MHz and the France channel, all French TV shows with English subtitles.

    The MHz channel has free episodes. I watched a few period shows based on Agatha Christie shows and were pretty entertaining. Watched a contemporary cop show, Cherif, which was pretty predictable, except the shows aren’t as PC as what American tv has devolved to.

    The MHz channel isn’t exclusively French as I noticed a couple that are in German.

  19. It impresses me always how spoken French can form so many words with seemingly so few distinct sounds being uttered. That must be one reason why it seems to flow so well.
    Kate, you actually got a French waiter to sniff at you because your French was too localized! That’s great. 🙂

  20. Seems as though the Irish are similarly “baffled”….
    “Ireland’s Excess Deaths Rate Rivals Worst Of Covid Pandemic”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/01/16/irelands-excess-deaths-rate-rivals-worst-of-covid-pandemic/

    Meanwhile, Canada’s Finance Minister appears to provide an explanation to that most irksome question: why euthanasia is all the rage in the once-upon-a-time “True North Strong and Free”…
    Here it is:
    “Freeland Demands $2B To Buy Shares In A Company That Doesn’t Exist”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/01/16/freeland-demands-2b-to-buy-shares-in-a-company-that-doesnt-exist/
    (IOW it’s far easier going the E-route than getting all upset at the government. Very Canadian, that… Unless of course she’s been all inspired by the latest exploits of the handsome, dashing SBF and has decided to update her Ministry accordingly…)

    + Bonus:
    Getting one’s money’s worth…
    “Covid Scientists And The Best News Money Can Buy”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/01/16/covid-scientists-and-the-best-news-money-can-buy/

    Lest, however, one get a bit overly suspicious, one can always rely on the Pravda-Rocks!! media to mislead us…hence it behooves us to draw precisely the opposite conclusions. (Same goes for the guvmint….)
    “How Disinformation Journalists Practice Disinformation”—
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/01/16/how-disinformation-journalists-practice-disinformation/

    More than a bit to chew on…

  21. PA+CAT–

    Time for me to insert my curmudgeonly comments about “Public art,” you know, those usually very expensive, often (deliberately–it’s “art” ya know) rusting conglomerations of what look like cobbled together bits of cast off ironmongery which you see in various cities; supposedly there, one gathers, to elevate and inform the public, the passersby.

    There are exceptions, but this “art”–usually “modern”–is almost uniformly ugly, and a waste of money.

    However, with this example of public art, we have reached new heights of rediculousness.

  22. Re: Controversial modern art

    Since everything circles back to French, I offer the 19th C. slogan:
    ____________________

    Épater la bourgeoisie!

    Épater la bourgeoisie or épater le (or les) bourgeois is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. It will not translate precisely into English, but is usually rendered as “to shock or scandalise the (respectable) middle classes.”

    The Aesthetes in England, such as Oscar Wilde, shared these same fascinations. This celebration of “unhealthy” and “unnatural” devotion to art and excess has been a continuing cultural theme.

    Later, Dada and Surrealism pursued the same intent.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89pater_la_bourgeoisie
    ____________________

    The French have a catchphrase for that too:.
    ____________________

    Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    ____________________

    Those French!

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