Joe Bonamassa - Christmas Boogie

If this doesn't get your toes tapping, we can't be friends anymore.

 Interesting to see Joe B. without his trademark suit and sunglasses.

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Christmas Carol

Other than the movie theater, the only other place that the American public seems to have a taste for classical music is at Christmas.  I think that this is primarily due to popularizers like Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, and particularly composers like Aaron Copeland and Ralph Vaughan Williams who here takes the familiar and spins it in new directions.

Vince Guaraldi - Linus and Lucy

This is, of course, from the A Charlie Brown Christmas special.  The Studio Execs were nervous about the show: the explicit Christian themes, the use of child actors, the lack of a laugh track.  Of course, the show was a sensation: almost half of everyone who had the TV on that evening had it tuned to that show.  This year is the show's 55th anniversary (!).

And yes, the music is as iconic as everything else from the show.

Notes from the Gun Show

Now that I live in the Gunshine State, I went off to the Palmetto Gun Show to work the booth for my gun club.  It was interesting (and fun).  Here are some more or less stream of consciousness thoughts:

• There was a good turnout.  This was the opening day of the show but they do this every month.  Traffic was brisk from beginning until I left after lunch.  There were whole families there and every race in the rainbow was represented.
• There were a lot of guns for sale on dealer's tables.  I haven't been comparison shopping so can't say definitively about prices but in general they looked reasonably sane.
• I'm not sure about the guys bringing their own heaters around to sell by themselves.  One guy had what he said was a vintage WWII 1911 with web belt and holster and was looking for $1800.  That seemed rich to me but ask I said I haven't been pricing on the antique market.
• Ammo was at a premium.  Pricing was high and it looks like dealers were buying out other dealers before the show started (and then marked each box up).  While I'm not enormously well stocked, I'm well stocked enough not to have to spend $20 for 50 .22LR (!).  I mean, seriously?
• There was a LOT of Donald Trump stuff there, and not in a let's clear out the old inventory sense.  People were walking around in MAGA hats and there was what looked like a lot of fresh inventory being scooped up by the crowd.  However this plays out, The Donald is not fading away.  Oh, yeah - several vendors had "Biden Is Not My President" T-Shirts for sale and I saw more than one dude walking around in them.
• Didn't see any tables of Nazi memorabilia.  Might be the first gun show I've been to that didn't sport that.
• Where the heck is the jerky?  I don't think I've ever been to a gun show where you couldn't buy any.
• Finish Mosins were going for how much?  Sure if you want a Mosin you want one done by the Finns, but the days of the box of $50 Mosins are long gone.
• There was a big area where they were signing people up for Concealed Carry classes.  It was mobbed.
• Lots of people were interested in my gun club.  A bunch asked about the Appleseed sessions we offer.
• The last two are a good sign - people aren't just buying guns but in practicing and carrying them.

My takeaway is that the gun culture is very strong here in Florida.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Run, Run, Rudolph

You want kick-ass Christmas music?  Gotcha covered.

 You're welcome.

Good writeup on forensic analysis of Dominion Voting System

It is very long, but detailed and nicely broken up with quotes from the report interspersed with commentary and analysis.  If you are interested in this topic, or if you are interested in computer security, you need to spend some time reading this.  Note that this is a two part series, and you need to click through to the first installment.

My take as a 35 year veteran of computer security?  Angels and Ministers of Grace, defend us.

Ahhhhh

 

And it's nice to be near the grandkids, too

Hunt AAR

 A couple weeks ago I posted What deer rifle for an old hunter?  Many of you left comments and I'm happy to say that Tim emails saying that the hunt was a success and he got his deer.  He has a nice After Action Report posted.

I agree with him that the local deer populations seem to be pretty strong.  I used to see them regularly in Maryland and Wolfgang would chase 'em if he got a chance.  He never got close, of course, but if you're a deer in a subdivision then neighborhood dogs will be an occasional encounter.

When America's Elite actually were elite

The Queen Of The World spotted this on Facebook.  I reproduce it here without any commentary because it needs none.

Months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II.

An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots.

Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.

Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps' top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it.

Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit.

But his wartime service came at a high personal price.

In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally).

He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.

As one of Stewart's biographers put it, "Every decision he made [during the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”

In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The rest is history.

Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on film for potentially millions to see.

But despite Stewart's inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history.

When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, "This country's conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we'll have to fight.”

This holiday season, as many of us watch the classic Christmas film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it’s also a fitting time to remember the sacrifices of Jimmy Stewart and all the men who gave up so much to serve their country during wartime. We will always remember you!

Postscript:

While fighting in Europe, Stewart's Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him.

Jimmy Stewart remained in the USAF Reserve following the war, retiring as a Brigadier General in 1968. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89.

-- Ned Forney, Writer, Saluting America's Veterans

Actually, since this is Borepatch, you know that I can't just shut up and so will tell a personal anecdote about Jimmy Stewart.  On a family vacation to Los Angeles to see grandparents (this would have been probably in 1972, but may have been 1967) we went on one of those Trolly Tours to see the houses of the stars.  They would drive slowly past each of the houses while the tour guide gave a description of the roles and awards each star had.  But at Jimmy Stewart's house the trolly stopped.  The tour guide explained that if Mr. Stewart was home he would typically come to the window and wave.  He did this because everything he had in life came from his fans, and the least he could do is thank them.

I don't recall that he was home that day but the contrast between him and the rest of the Hollywood bunch stuck with me all these years. 

The end of the American Empire

Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.

― Edward Gibbon

This is a long, long post that you probably need to spend some time on (especially watching the embedded videos).  This post is in particular for the folks that think that the end of America will be a cakewalk/simple/glorious.  I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm not at all sure of what will be left when it's all done.  You know, this glorious future:

I've written before about the fall of Empire, and how fast and hard it falls:

This is Monte Testaccio in Rome.  It is a hill made entirely of broken pottery, and it dates to the first and second centuries AD.  It's over 100 feet high, around a kilometer around, and historians think that it used to be much larger but has eroded over the last two millennia.  The Roman "bread and circuses" was a huge welfare project that fed much of the city's population, and which required huge imports of not just grain but also olive oil - over a million gallons of oil each year, every year, for hundreds of years.  The oil was shipped in big clay pots, but what do you do with the pots when you've distributed the oil?  The Romans were the best engineers until at least the eighteenth century, and so they came up with an engineering solution: they made a mountain out of broken up pots.

And then it all fell, and fell so far and hard that it was forgotten.  The Roman Forum itself - the political center of the Ancient World for four centuries or more - became a cow field, the Campo Vaccino.

The Testaccio-monte is being excavated today, and is a treasure trove of ancient Roman economic knowledge that had long since fallen into a barbarian black hole.  You can skip this video if you don't care about how hard Rome fell; but if you think that the end of the American Empire will be comfortable you really should watch it all.

The Roman Empire was unique until the 1700s, in that large amounts of bulk goods were shipped all over their Empire.  Back In The Day, you could eat off of dishes made in North Africa and drink wine from Greece even if you lived in England.  But then it fell.  And it fell so hard that it took a millennium to recover.

Kenneth Clarke's outstanding series Civilization confronted this head on in a way that looks to get him canceled in today's "everybody gets a trophy" world.  Clarke really gets to the heart of the matter about what caused a great civilization to fall between about 7:30 and 10 minutes into his first episode.  I recommend you watch all of them ( all 13 episodes), all the way through which will make you better educated than 90% of anyone you will ever run into.

And in answer to the inevitable questions, yes I did watch this series when it was shown on PBS in the early 1970s.  Dad was a history professor and Mom was a librarian - of course they made me stay up and watch this.  And so if you have a problem with posts about events with historical interests - posts of Borepatchian length - I blame my parents.

Except they never played this, which circles back to those who think that it's time to hoist the Black Flag:

Man, Freddy Mercury and Queen were a talent for the ages, although I'd also love to hear the music that was composed by Nero.  Presumably he was also a talent for ages, but we will have to be satisfied with his final words: What a talent dies with me.  Probably he was no Freddy Mercury.

None of this is to say it's not worth fighting for the America that we knew and grew up with.  It's just to recognize that like Monte Testaccio, that may already be lost in the past.  But we should also realize that the fight - if fought - will be brutal beyond our imagination.  When Civilization falls, it falls hard and takes a long, long time to recover.  The 1200 year recovery is shown well here between 2:30 and 5:00 into the video, although (as with all of the videos here) I encourage you to watch them all.  Think of it as Borepatch University:

And so to the fall of Civilization: there have always been winners and losers, down through history:

Rome's Intelligentsia had been failing from the mid- Second Century, say around 140 A.D. The Dark Ages arrived by the Fourth Century. Certainly it seemed that way to the bulk of the population. Those who were not chattel slaves were bound to the soil as serfs by 330 A.D., by an act of Constantine. Sharecropping the huge latifundia estates, they neither knew nor cared who was running the show. An ever smaller elite, relying on a fabulously expensive bloated bureaucracy, held on by hiring barbarian mercenaries until the barbarians finally realized they were running the show in all but name. It was then but a short step, and sic transit gloria mundi.

Certainly the elites were horrified at the change. For them, it was the beginning of a Dark Age, as the skills they had carefully nurtured suddenly were seen to be worthless by the new Overlords. It's said that history is written by the winners; the history of the fall of Rome was written by the losers.

The current Intellectual Elite sound eerily similar to those ancient scribblers. A world view has run out of gas, and is looking like it will be replaced, and those at the top of Fortuna's Wheel fear that the wheel will keep spinning, and the only direction for them to go is down. The Progressive Agenda has had a 160 year run, but has not produced a truly first rate intellect since John Kenneth Galbraith, or possibly Pat Moynihan. The last 30 years have been a desert, where the interesting intellectual action has all been on the other side.

And so back to the original topic of the post, those who think that the end of America will be a cakewalk/simple/glorious.  I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm not at all sure of what will be left when things are done. It think it might be a lot like this (although I can't understand the language, but things get particularly spicy around the 5:00 mark). [Embedding is disabled, but I strongly encourage your to watch this]

Like I said, I don't argue with the Desired End State; I'm just not at all sure of what will be left when things are done. But I do have a feeling, like one written down in the 11th Century and put to music in the 20th.  O Fortuna:

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!

Fortuna's Wheel has winners and losers.  We shall all of us have to choose when we think we have more to win from another spin of the wheel.  Just understand that while you might win, others might lose.  Your calculus should consider who they are and whether fate should pluck their vibrating string.

Because when Civilization collapses, it falls hard.  I posted before about the Fayum Mummy Portraits from the Roman Empire and how portrait painting was a thriving (and stunningly competent) part of their civilization.  Then that civilization fell and it took a millennium to recover.

My opinion is that this was the greatest portrait (that we know of) for 1500 years, faded by 1900 years.  It dates from around the reign of Emperor Claudius, or possibly Nero.

And then it was gone, as if it had never been.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

- Horace Smith, "Ozymandias"

May God Bless this Republic.  We will need it.

The looting of the Middle Class

The Pandemic has been particularly useful to the Powers That Be:

This is what the COVID hysteria is all about. Without this, we would all be allowed to know that COVID is a mild respiratory disease that is only dangerous to the very old and the very sick. This is why we are being lied to and locked up:

Amazon: profit up 100%
Walmart: profit up 80%
Target: profit up 80%
Lowe’s: profit up 74%
Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google: stock at record high

Wealth increase in the pandemic for founder/CEOs of
Amazon: $91 billion
Walmart: $38B
Google: $37B
Microsoft: $33B
Facebook: $28B
Nike: $8B
Apple: $8B

Small businesses: collectively lost over $200 billion

We’re witnessing a record wealth transfer

https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1329277596685709315?s=19

(via)

Ten years ago I wrote that the Tea Party is a Marxian response to the looting of the Middle Class:

The deal that Progressives made in the 1930s - the economy would provide a surplus that the government would use to buy social peace - is shattered, as the government finds that it has consumed the entire surplus, and is still hungry for more. The median family is worse off now then they were ten years ago, because they pay more taxes and make about the same. Government at all levels is squeezing the majority of the population at an increasing rate, taking a higher share of National Income, with no end in sight.

Now I'm sure that I could do a better job with the numbers (say, another 15% accuracy), but the trajectory is unmistakable, and is one that Marx clearly understood:

Within the capitalist Progressive State system all methods for raising the social productivity of labour taxes are put into effect at the cost of the individual worker [...] All means for the development of production raising of tax revenue undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become a means of domination and exploitation of the producers; they distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labour by turning it into a torment, they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process [...], they transform his life into working-time, and his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital The State. [...] It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.

- Karl Marx, Das Kapital

My changes are highlighted.

The only thing to add is that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a cause.  Accelerating the immiseration of the Proletariat using Covid hysteria will lead to a very clear outcome, historically speaking.  It will come faster with the collapse of legitimacy we are seeing in the Organs of the State.

I would think that a bunch of Marxist Intellectuals would understand this, but maybe they're too busy looting their political opponents to notice.

Kenny Chesney - All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan

It still feels a little odd for the days to be sunny and in the 70s in the Christmas season.  This song captures that feeling.

And the tree in the yard is a little untraditional for Christmas lights.  But it's still fun.

The Queen Of The World wanted a "Corona Light Christmas Palm Tree".  It came out pretty good.

Canned Heat - Christmas Blues

Who knew they had a Christmas album?

 

The dog that hasn't barked

With all the discussion of free and fair elections (or lack of same), I find it odd that one particular quote has not been seen lately.  It is from Judge Alex Kozinski, in his dissent to the denial to hear Siveria v. Lockyer en banc: 

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

With credible accusations of widespread fraud - more than enough to change the outcome of an election, and with the Courts seemingly unwilling to step in to guarantee a public and transparent audit and investigation, this seems to me to be more pertinent than ever.

Michael Buble and Thalia - Feliz Navidad

This is just fun.

Color film of the Day of Infamy

TSG Harold Oberg was stationed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  He had an 8mm movie camera with color film loaded when the Japanese attacked.  He got color on-the-spot film of the day.

I must say that color film gives a completely different feel to the day. 

Me too, Bacon

 

Stolen from Chris Lynch.

Pentatonix - That’s Christmas To Me

I guess I'm officially an old fart.  Pentatonix is a very talented young group who specialize in a cappella music - in my opinion the least forgiving type of music you can perform.  With a backup band there's something playing that can ground you in tune; when it's a cappella it's just you and the audience.  Like I said, this is a seriously talented young group of singers.

And yet I don't get the fashion sense of these youngsters.  I guess that's OK - I'm certainly as old as their dads, and perhaps not too far behind some of their granddads.

Ah, well, this is very nice music, and the home Christmas videos of when they were small children is very well done indeed.

Oof

Down here in Florida we have a neighbor, Joe.  Joe (like me) is from Maine.  Unlike me, Joe is a 20+ year Marine Corps veteran.  Also unlike me, Joe is in his 80s and is getting a little fragile, although he won't ever admit it.

Well last week I was chatting with him in front of his house.  I remarked that the bottom step of his stairs was looking a little worse for wear.  He insisted it was fine, but a closer inspection showed that the stair tread was rotting.  After all, it was 20 something years old.  I told Joe that I'd fix it over the weekend.

And so yesterday I went to Big Box Hardware Store to get 2x12 and assorted stuff.  I cut it to length and painted it (didn't want to put an outdoor stair down unpainted on the underneath, even if it was out of sight.  Especially if it was out of sight ...).  Then I pulled up the old plank.

Damn if the whole thing wasn't rotten, especially the support planks.  Back to Big Box Hardware Store, and lots of cutting of 2x4.  And painting.  And clearing out the old stuff, down to (yay!) concrete.  Then building the support box, then putting the tread on.  Rock solid; yay, me!

And then painting.  And the new step looked so good - and the old steps looked so weathered) that I painted the whole thing again.  Puff, puff, puff.

But Joe's front steps look good now, and I don't worry about his (or Mrs. Joe) stepping onto a rotten board and falling down.  So mission accomplished.  And an ibuprofen cocktail was just what the Doctor ordered.

It's interesting here in Florida.  There are a lot of older folks, and people pitch in to look after each other.  We like it here rather a lot.

John Williams - Somewhere In My Memory (from Home Alone)

I often say that classical music is alive and well, it's just decamped from the symphony hall to the movie theater.  Today's composition from the soundtrack to the 1990 film Home Alone was nominated not only for The Best Original Song Oscar, but also for a Grammy.  John Williams needs no introduction - for those of you who have never heard his music, go watch Star Wars for cryin' out loud.

The Queen Of The World not only suggested doing film scores for the Sunday Classical posts, but suggested this song in particular.  She's not just a pretty face, but wicket smart as well.