I have a rule for myself that I’ve followed for a long time. I’m not going to be forced into a decision that I might not normally make.
For example when Salmon Rushdie was threatened by Iran with death thousands rushed out to buy his book, The Satanic Verses in a show of solidarity.
I didn’t
My thought was this. If the Iranians did nothing would I be interested in this book? The answer was no. So I decided that buying the book in response to Iranian threats was just allowing these terrorists to dictate my actions and I wasn’t about to do that.
Which brings us to the Trump indictment.
If it in fact happens it will be a reflection on the idiocy of NY voters who apparently have no issue with being victims of violent crime and allowing themselves to be victimized by criminals as long as political goals are reached.
It further reflects on Bragg who apparently has no interest in protecting the citizens of the city but in fairness
He ran on a platform of “getting” Donald Trump
He is bought and paid for by Soros
So if nothing else he is keeping his promise on this subject and giving his owner value for the dollars invested in him.
Put simply Bragg is a corrupt ass who doesn’t care about the people of NY or the future of this country as the precedent set by these actions are going to be very harmful.
All of these things are reasons to deplore the indictment of Donald Trump and the use of criminal justice system for political ends but all that being said none of these things are a credible arguments that Donald Trump is a better candidate for the GOP nomination than Ron DeSantis.
In fact the actions of Trump surrogates seem to be making the case that he is an inferior candidate to DeSantis. The blatant lies and calumnies being told about DeSantis by Christian conservatives is a reminder that Trump tends to fight like a Democrat.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a solid case to be made for Trump as the GOP nominee based mostly on his record as President which was better than any other 21st Century president to this point.
But Allen Bragg being an asshole and the Democrat run Justice department and NY criminal justice system being corrupt are not part of them. They are in fact the case for voting GOP in general not for voting Trump in particular.
Without a doubt if Donald J. Trump is the GOP nominee I will vote for him without hesitation, but if he wants my primary vote he is going to have to earn it by his arguments and actions. I’m not going to let some corrupt leftist drive my primary vote, I won’t cede him that power.
Supposedly this week the NYC DA is going to file charges against Donald Trump concerning the Stormy Daniels Business.
That this was already passed on by previous ambitions DA’s and that the charges even in liberal NY will have a very hard time sticking is not relevant. This is what Soros is paying for and if nothing else the DA’s and Secretaries of State that he has invested millions into over the last two decades have stayed bought.
It will be a fundamental change in American Jurisprudence and not in a good way.
The amount of pixels that are being generated is staggering and several theories have been advanced as to why this and why now. The two best that I’ve heard are this:
It’s no surprise the Trump ‘perp walk’ nonsense has started – three Biden’s caught receiving money from China, Hunter admitting the laptop is indeed real, the bank crash(es), train derailments, COVID info starting to leak out, #J6footage released.
NY City is rapidly approaching Snake Plissken territory as actual dangerous criminals are let free to walk so it might be a good Squirrel moment not just for Biden and the dems but for the local DA as well who is making NY safe for the criminal class again.
Many predict that this move will backfire dramatically on the Democrats.
“If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Elon Musk tweeted in response to a report about Trump’s potential pending arrest.
He’s not alone in thinking this way. “If they handcuff Trump, he is your next president,” Scott Adams predicts.
Trump Defense Lawyer Joe Tacopina agrees. “I believe this will catapult him into the White House.”
Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has another theory. “They want Trump to be the Republican nominee,” Walsh tweeted Saturday, referring to the Democrats. “That’s obviously the play here. There is no other conceivable reason to arrest and perp walk him on a bulls—t misdemeanor charge. I might be overestimating the tactical intelligence of the idiot power-hungry hacks behind this. But if there is any political strategy then that has to be it.”
I seem to recall they really wanted to run against Trump in 2016 and that didn’t work out so well for them.
I must say that I have to disagree with both Scott Adams and Elon Musk here in terms of the electoral effect.
The Trump voter is already highly motivated and this move isn’t going to make him any less motivated.
The GOP voter who doesn’t like Trump while seeing this as an injustice will not see it as a plus to vote him in after this.
And the people who don’t pay attention will shrug as they do not care.
More importantly as long as the Soros Dems are controlling the counts in Arizona, and PA, and Michigan and Wisconsin its not going to matter even if it means millions of more votes for Trump, because they’ll create millions more plus one at 1 AM as they did before.
The irony here is that the leftists who hate Trump would have been almost done with him if they didn’t bother to steal the last election. He would be in the final two years of his lame duck period which would have been quite a spectacle had they just played by the rules.
But I’m convinced that Trump is a money raiser for them even more than Pelosi & Obama were for the right. There are rich leftist, particularly in Hollywood who will practically pour out their wallets at the sound of his name.
Believe me every just like 10 years ago every Republican’s was Hitler to them every GOP candidate will be considered “Trump” or “Worse than Trump” for decades after he is dead and gone.
Remember it’s all about generating generational wealth for these guys. That’s the game.
Finally if I’m a Democrat office holder I’d be rather scared by all of this.
There are plenty of deep red states out there and plenty of very angry voters in such states. If I’m an ambitious GOP lawyer who wants to make a name for him or her self and generate giant fundraising money all I have to do is run in one of those deep red states and promise to look into high level national Democrats and do to them what is now being done to Trump.
Imagine if DeSantis decides to start opening up these kind of investigations. Pitcher Sarah Sanders doing the same in Arkansas, or Glenn Younkin’s Virginia going in that direction. Unless as a democrat you’re squeaky clean (sorry if you were drinking when reading that last sentence) this will now put a bullseye on your back that there will be plenty of office holders now and in the future to use this precedent against you.
Mitch McConnell once warned Harry Reid that his shenanigans on the filibuster would come back to haunt the left and sooner than they think. I suspect the same will come of this.
They really should have thought about that if they decide to go forward with this.
The left has a new mantra. Well, they always have a new one. And their newest mantra is, “The right doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘woke.'”
As far as I can gather, the earliest use of “woke” was by African American musician Lead Belly, who added “stay woke” in an afterword of his recording of “Scottsboro Boys,” which was about the injustices faced by nine black youths accused of raping two white women in 1931.
But words often change meanings. For instance, centuries ago “garble” meant “to sift.” In the spice trade “garbling” was the process of removing impurities from spices. Over time, “garble” evolved into meaning confusing, unclear, and yes, impure. For instance, someone might say, “I couldn’t understand the voicemail message you left for me, it was garbled.”
The definition of woke has similarly evolved. It appears woke made a reappearance in the public dialogue in 2016 after the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2016, but by 2020, conservatives had adopted and co-opted the word. People who are woke–this is my take–are rigidly beholden to far-left political beliefs and they will use mob action to enforce their viewpoints.
“Politically correct,” a term that emerged from the left, was similarly co-opted by the right, so liberals dropped it years ago.
The word woke is a much more serious problem for the left, which is why libs, in a futile effort, are trying to reclaim it, or at least neutralize its meaning. After all, woke is an unpleasant word with only four letters and just one syllable, it is better suited for our contemporary sound bite and pithy headline culture, compared to the more cumbersome “politically correct.” Over the past week leftist journalists, an intellectually incestuous lot, pushed back. An opening to them was given by Bethany Mandel, the co-author of the best seller Stolen Youth, which is about the dangers of woke culture. Last week, in an interview captured on video–one that went viral–Mandel suffered, in her words, “a momentary brain freeze,” and she wasn’t able to clearly answer a question about the definition of woke.
But shortly afterwards on Twitter, Mandel was able to clarify what woke means.
“A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination,” Mandel Tweeted last week, “and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”
A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.
Just now, as I was finishing up this entry, I watched as Jen Psaki, in the premiere airing of her MSNBC show declare, “Republicans have gone all-in on their anti-wokeness.” Psaki, a smug know-it-all, then presented a one-sided view of Mandel’s “momentary brain freeze.”
All but admitting defeat in the word war, Matthew Cooper in Washington Monthly says the word needs to be disposed. The headline of his article is, “Let’s retire the word ‘woke.'”
Too late!
The legacy media is up woke creek without a paddle.
This month two woke mobs attacked in California. The Federalist Society invited a US Appeals judge, Kyle Duncan, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump, to speak at the Stanford Law School. Only the mob, the led by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity dean, Tirien Steinbach, all but prevented the judge from speaking. Diversity to the left hasn’t meant diversity of opinion for years.
In my opinion, outside of the ten percent or so of the populace who is indeed woke, no one can argue that such boorish antics are justifiable.
As is also the case of the second California campus woke outburst, when Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk spoke at the University California, Davis. “Black-clad goons” goons is how the Daily Mail described the protesters who pepper-sprayed attendees and smashed windows at the hall where Kirk spoke.
Kirk’s UC Davis address is available in podcast form. Unlike Duncan, Charlie was permitted to speak. And in his opening remarks, Kirk vowed, “Tonight, you’re going to see that anyone who disagrees with me tonight is not just allowed–but is encouraged to go ask [me] a question.” Kirk even called for his dissenters to head to “the front of the line.”
Now, that’s what I call diversity.
Those leftist protesters–I believe it’s fair to call them rioters–were probably egged on by a woke Sacramento Bee opinion columnist, Hannah Holzer, who, in a since retracted claim, said Kirk “called for the lynching of trans people.” In his remarks that evening at UC Davis, Kirk responded, “That is a lie. I have never done that,” adding, I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
Charlie Kirk responds to Sacramento Bee for saying he has “called for the lynching of trans people.”
“That is a lie. I have never done that … I’ve always been clear about peaceful activism.”
The unpeaceful ones that night at UC Davis were the members of the woke mob.
The great majority of Americans don’t have politics on the top of their informational diet. But this truly silent majority, the ones who decide the outcome of elections, is aware of the evils of leftist violence, intimidation, misinformation and censorship. And now there is an ugly word for that and more that is now entrenched in the mainstream conversation.
“Woke” is that word.
To my conservative writers and influencers: The other side has betrayed a weakness and a fear. They hate it when we say “woke” to decry radical policies and angry leftist mobs. What is worse than “woke?” Well, those odious things that the word describes, such as the recent outrages at Stanford and UC Davis.
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.
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