…but these days when a 27 year old star dies unexpectedlyTM you can bet your bottom dollar it will say something like this:
Guardia posted about the loss and revealed Figueroa’s cause of death in an Instagram post shared Monday. “It saddens me to announce the passing of my beloved son Julián Figueroa, who has unfortunately preceded us in parting from this level,” read her post, translated to English per Billboard.
The actress said she was at the theater when her son was found unconscious at his home. “They called 911 and when the ambulance and police arrived, they found him already lifeless, with no traces of violence,” she wrote. “The medical report indicates that he died of an acute myocardial infarction and ventricular fibrillation.”
You know there was a time that if you went to twitter and clicked on the #unexpectedly tag nine out of ten tweet would be me noting something the left did “#unexpectedly of course” with the odd tweet or porn video mixed in. Over the last three years however it become dominated by pictures of young people and kids (and a few old folks 60 and up) who have suddenly dropped dead when they were the picture of health. #unexpetedly of course.\
When you think about it, I guess these are drug related deaths after all, just not the traditional ones like Coolio.
Last Friday, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison released his 44th studio album, the exuberant Moving on Skiffle.
What is skiffle? Well, the first time I heard of it was in was in an unusual place–maybe not for an American–in the movie This Is Spinal Tap. Before joining the band that would become the heavy metal act Spinal Tap, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) was a member of a skiffle group.
Wonderful observation, you might be saying, but once again, what is skiffle? In the late 1920s, it developed as an offshoot of jug music, a genre of the American South and performed mainly by African Americans. The original skiffle was a bit country, a bit folk, and a bit delta blues. Then skiffle died once the Great Depression hit.
Only it didn’t completely perish.
Like a sprout from an errant wildflower seed, skiffle surprisingly blossomed again a couple of decades later in Great Britan. The UK’s biggest skiffle star was a Scotsman, Lonnie Donegan. Another skiffle performer, Chris Barber, a British aficionado of New Orleans style jazz, often recorded with Donegan.
Growing up in 1950s Belfast, Morrsion was one of many UK youths listening to skiffle on the radio. Soon Morrison joined a skiffle band, but by the mid-1960s he was fronting Them, a blues-rock act best known for “Gloria,” before going solo in 1967. Well, you probably know the rest of his story.
Just as skiffle quickly reemerged in Britain, it all but vanished as a popular music phenomenon in the early 1960s. Only its disappearance wasn’t mysterious. The tsunami of the Beat Groups–known as the British Invasion in the United States–which included Them, was the culprit.
On what will likely be remembered as his”COVID albums,” Morrison penned all of the tracks. Moving on Skiffle is a covers collection.
Morrison, who is not a doctor or a scientist, has been proven, in my firm opinion at least, to be correct that lockdowns would not be an effective defense against COVID-19. The harm of lockdowns, such as an overall increase in mental illness and declining school test scores, is apparent.
Yes, COVID, along with pre-exisiting conditions, killed millions, despite lockdowns, masking, and vaccine mandates. But Florida, which didn’t pursue an aggressive lockdown and masking policy, didn’t see a higher COVID death rate compared to lockdown states like New York.
Moving back to Moving on Skiffle, this sparkling collection stays away from politics, except for the strongest track on the collection, “Gov Don’t Allow,” a reworking of the 1920s folk standard “Momma Don’t Allow,” with new lyrics authored by Morrison.
“Gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here,” he sings, “but I think it’s going overreach–gov don’t allow any freedom of speech in here.”
Now that I have politics out of the way, let’s discuss the rest of Moving on Skiffle.
Other highlights of this ninety-minute collection include another musical reworking, “This Little Light of Mine” becomes “This Loving Light of Mine,” where Morrison adds “Amen” verses. “Gypsy Davy” has a Celtic feel, and there are two Hank Williams songs, “Cold Cold Heart” and “I’m So Lonely I Could Cry.”
Overall, the collection has a Creedence Clearwater Revival flavor, partly because of the inclusion of Lead Belly’s “Cotton Fields,” which CCR covered on Willy and the Poor Boys. Their hit from that album, “Down on the Corner” has a classic has a jug band feel.
If you are a Van and Man enthusiast from way back, you’ll adore the final cut on Moving on Skiffle, “Green Rocky Road,” a nine-minute-long track that echoes Morrison stream-of-consciousness gems such as “And The Healing Has Begun” and “Listen to the Lion.”
Skiffle has many definitions. So if you’d prefer you can define Morrison’s latest work possibly as an Americana collection, albeit one with gospel music overtones.
Oh, I nearly forgot. As with all Van Morrison albums, the singing here, including the work of the backup vocalists, as well as the musicianship–down to the washboard–are spectacular.
Moving on Skiffle can be downloaded from iTunes or purchased at Van Morrison.com.
I wasn’t aware of the suit against Pfizer claiming they violated their contract with the Government over the COVID vaccine and thus doesn’t have immunity over their delivered vaccine. Given the ads constantly be running on radio about watching for signs of heart issues that are sponsored by them (ads we didn’t see three years ago) they might be worried but all of this depends on how the court defines “Save and effective”. If they make sure it’s defined in their favor it all doesn’t matter.
In Minnesota they’re having fun adjusting definitions of “woman” as a Transgender Powerlifter has won in court against the US Powerlifting federation. Apparently under Minnesota law, at least according to the court, to stop a man who believes himself to be a woman from competing against other woman is discriminatory and traumatic.
Hey if at least one justice on the Supreme Court can’t under oath define what a woman is how do you expect judges on the Minnesota courts to do so.
If they lose their appeals my advice is to drop all segregation by sex in powerlifting. I suspect once the prospects finishing in a medal round disappear so will these “woman” from competition.
Over at Legal Insurrection there is a piece about Germany banning protests against abortion as the “40 days for life” movement has come there and made quite a splash.
The left fear is always a good sign but there was something in the piece that jumped out at me:
Currently, abortion is illegal in Germany, but women and their doctors do not face penalties if the pregnancy poses a health risk to the woman or in cases of rape. There is also a loophole under which an abortion may be carried out within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (14 weeks since the last period) after mandatory counseling.
emphasis mine
That seems a rather flexible definition of the word “illegal” in my books, but to a person of a certain age Germans finding a loophole allowing them to kill undesirables is almost tradition.
The Twitter files keep coming out an the government’s use of the word “disinformation” to justify their actions is looking worse and worse as the New Neo reports:
Maybe GEC’s involvement was a secret, but it was no secret – to anyone paying attention – that vast numbers of Twitter accounts were being censored for fairly ordinary viewpoints, the majority of them on the right. It wasn’t limited to Twitter, either – YouTube was heavily involved.
I can vouch for the Youtube censorship but to me the real key line of the story (other than this being,surprise an Obama initiative is this:
The center has a budget of roughly $74 million and “reportedly gave to at least 39 different organizations, whose names were redacted” in an inspector general report.
I submit and suggest that this was, and still is, all about funding leftist front groups to point to their political enemies to have them censored.
Land of the free my ***
Just over two thousands years ago Jesus Christ said:
you will know the truth, and the truth will set you fre
Only the dying leftist Fake News industry canceled me (for out-of-context news of course). Social media and banking unaffected. Personal life improved. Never been more popular in my life. Zero pushback in person. Black and White conservatives solidly supporting me.
This makes this particular bit about the Scott Adams story, via Roger Kimball, particularly interesting:
Oh, the howls of outrage that comment elicited! The woke beast was awake and on the prowl. “Dilbert has been cancelled from all newspapers, websites, calendars, and books,” Adams said. Why? “Because I gave some advice everyone agreed with. (My syndication partner canceled me.)”
Once whetted, the appetite of the woke beast is insatiable. A day or two later, Adams reported, “My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist. Still no disagreement about my point of view. My book agent canceled me too.”`
It is true, by the way, that “everyone agrees” with the point that Adams made. Everyone knows it is true. But no one is supposed to admit that it is true. Adams made it all worse by observing that “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Oh, wait. I got my notes confused. That wasn’t Scott Adams. That was the professional black Jesse Jackson in 1993.
Perhaps the word “cancelled” might have to be redefined
Last week he was pilloried by Patriots greats on the air for not doing all he could to stop Las Vegas (had to stop myself from typing “Oakland”) from scoring on that last play that cost New England a game they should have won.
Now a week late he makes a desperate attempt to stop Germaine Pratt from scoring a touchdown on a recovered fumble that if not for the Dolphins falling apart might have ended their playoff hopes and he’s attacked for it and fined by the NFL.
It may or may not be fair but I think that Mac is in a no-win position. He can’t be Brady and will never be Brady.
At least the Redsox Went from the greatest hitter of all time (Williams), to an all time great HOF (Yaz) to a power hitting Hall of Famer (Rice) to a pretty good outfielder (Greenwell) over 25 years easing the blow. No such luck for spoiled Pats fans.
There was a time before Tom Brady when the Redsox ruled this town. Even in the days of Russell, Havlicek and Bird it was a baseball town. Tom Brady made the difference and while David Ortiz kept the flame alive Brady’s timeless success wrenched the city away from the bats and balls and delivered it to the pigskin.
Right now the Patriots are in the lowest point that they’ve been and if the Red Sox ownership was smart they would take this moment to invest heavily to grab back the hearts of the fans from the gridiron and back to the diamond.
The current strategy may be penny wise but it’s pound foolish. The Pats are giving the Sox a huge opening which a wise ownership should drive right through.
However I suspect they are not all that wise.
Just four years ago you didn’t have stories of people “dying suddenly” at young ages. Now it’s so common that if a week passes without such an event it’s a miracle.
The worst of it is that now we have more studies from every inhabited continent that show Ivermectin (.02 a pill) to be effective against COVID. as noted “100% of these have shown positive results.” at the same time the Twitter files have revealed a concerted effort to suppress information and/or opinions from medical experts contrary to the sanctioned positions of the Biden Administration.
These people and those who submitted to their will have a lot of bodies to answer for and they are very lucky that it is no longer considered fashionable for those who have had husbands ,wives, children and parents die from their despicable acts to take personal revenge. It it was, none of those bastards would last a week.
It has been less than twenty years since the Massachusetts Supreme Court by a 4-3 vote legalized gay marriage in the state and then governor Mitt Romney did all he could to keep it off the ballot in order to advance his presidential ambitions.
Now twenty years later we see the results as summarized in a single tweet
Our cultural elites went from "Their gay marriage doesn't affect you" to "If you don't let a drag queen wave his genitals in your kids face you're a bigot" in record time#unexpectedly of course https://t.co/WEbit35LiI
All this is by design, the next generation of Jeffrey Epstien’s and the next generation of Prince Andrews and the like who they will serve need to get their fodder from somewhere.
Incidentally I suspect there are more than a few Epsteins out there still serving the same customer base that Ms. Maxwell keeps in her head. Jeffrey just happens to be the one that was caught which makes him the exception.
Finally the single most significant story of the day is likely this one. The drone war in Ukraine and Russia:
In interviews in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, a range of intelligence, military and national security officials have described an expanding U.S. program that aims to choke off Iran’s ability to manufacture the drones, make it harder for the Russians to launch the unmanned “kamikaze” aircraft and — if all else fails — to provide the Ukrainians with the defenses necessary to shoot them out of the sky.
The shift to drones by both sides is a incredibly significant change to the war. The story continues
In fact, one of the Iranian companies named by Britain, France and Germany as a key manufacturer of one of the two types of drones being bought by the Russians, Qods Aviation, has appeared for years on the United Nations’ lists of suppliers to Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. The company, which is owned by Iran’s military, has expanded its line of drones despite waves of sanctions.
The administration’s scramble to deal with the Iranian-supplied drones comes at a significant moment in the war, just as Ukraine is using its own drones to strike deep into Russia, including an attack this week on a base housing some of the country’s strategic bombers.
The widespread use of drones in warfare and the Islamic state of Iran’s ability to produce “Kamikaze” drones should be of great worry to us as that is likely going to be the next tool of international terrorism and it goes without saying the next phase of warfare in general. After all consider the cost of maintaining a single destroyer vs the cost of a drone that can be programed to hit a specific geographical location.
If that doesn’t put a shudder in your spine nothing will.
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 