RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/12/20/classical-music-without-quotas/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

I recently left the Metropolitan Opera in New York after a performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. A friend who was with me had never seen the work before and suddenly blurted out how amazing it is that anybody could view such an art form as elitist or somehow difficult to access. True, it was past midnight, and we had started this journey through Wagner’s lightest work at around 6 p.m. In other words it was only around twice the length of the average Hollywood film these days. Yet opera has a reputation for elitism that cinema does not — which is strange, because, as my friend noticed, everything about the work we had just seen was not just egalitarian but wildly so.

The mastersingers themselves, you will recall, are all members of various trade guilds. The art of song-making is revered in the town of Nuremberg, but equally revered are the trades from which the masters come. Hans Sachs is a cobbler and is admired by all for his hard work and mastery of shoemaking as much as for his mastery of songwriting. Equally admired are the bakers, the tailors, and all other craftsmen. In Wagner’s Nuremberg, everybody who masters his trade is revered.

It was a moving thing to hear, this reflection on the simple egalitarian nature of Meistersinger. Because opera lovers today — like all lovers of classical music — are to some extent made to feel as though we’re guilty of something. In the English-speaking countries, most politicians and other public figures will actively avoid mentioning whether they like classical music. Those of us who are less shy about our love of these works have been made to feel that we are the problem. The fact that other attendees at this particular performance of Meistersinger included a pretty good cross section of age groups and other demographics could do nothing to dull this particular apprehension: the sense that we who enjoy going to concert halls and opera houses have in some way become an embarrassment to the venues that tolerate us.

It has been like this for years, with bureaucrats of the musical world and maestros increasingly bemoaning the whiteness and the elderliness of their audiences. Any reasonable person would have long ago made his peace with certain facts of artistic life. There are some art forms that you appreciate as a child, some that you learn to appreciate as you grow older. The retired have more time and disposable income than the young do, and there is nothing wrong in itself with the elderly enjoying particular pleasures or forming the backbone of particular audiences. Throw in as many access opportunities as possible (one reason some of us got into the art form), subsidize tickets, or give free tickets to the young, and you’ve done most of what you can do, other than encourage schools to actually teach music properly. But that is beyond the remit of the orchestral venues themselves.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/06/the-demonization-of-rosanne-boyland-begins/

Yet another lie animating the phony narrative about the events at the Capitol complex on January 6 is about to be exposed: the falsehood that Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter from Georgia, died of an accidental drug overdose that day.

As American Greatness has reported for months, incriminating video footage and firsthand witness accounts instead support numerous allegations that D.C. Metro and Capitol police contributed to, if they did not directly cause, Boyland’s death in the late afternoon of January 6. 

Boyland’s family reportedly has hired an attorney to investigate the circumstances of her death at the age of 34; the D.C Medical Examiner’s Office issued a report in April disclosing the cause of death of four Trump supporters who died on January 6 during what the coroner called “an unprecedented incident of civil insurrection.” It determined Boyland had succumbed to “acute amphetamine intoxication.”

But it’s increasingly obvious that the ruling is untrue. (The same D.C. Medical Examiner’s office intentionally delayed the results of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s autopsy; even after confirming Sicknick had died of a stroke caused by blood clots, the coroner nonetheless insisted the chaos at the Capitol protest “played a role in his condition.”)

With the potential release of three hours of security camera footage that recorded exactly what happened inside the lower west terrace tunnel—the location where Boyland died—on January 6, law enforcement officials could face fierce public scrutiny for their behavior that day. It’s only a slice of the 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by the Capitol Police department’s closed-circuit television system that Joe Biden’s Justice Department is hiding under protective orders, deemed “highly sensitive” government material.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/decline-and-fall-kamala-harris-daniel-greenfield/

The end of the Obama era renewed the civil war between the Democrat establishment and the Socialist insurgents. Hillary Clinton, the establishment woman whose loss to Obama had inaugurated 8 years of insurgent rule, faced down a new challenge from the Sanders nsurgency.

The next round of the fight in 2020 was a virtual draw with black voters choosing Biden and white lefties backing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The Biden administration was a compromise between both wings of the party. Its senior members are establishment while many of their juniors are Warren allies or linked to the Congressional Black Caucus.

Biden was a useful compromise candidate because his age and mental condition made him a “one-and-done” politician whose administration would take the hit by implementing radical policies and coping with the political fallout from the pandemic and runaway inflation.

Except that Biden, who keeps promising to run again, doesn’t seem to know it.

The only member of his administration who is even more clueless than Joe is Kamala. The compromise that put her in the White House was the most misguided one of them all.

Biden had promised the Congressional Black Caucus a black female veep. The CBC wanted one of its own, particularly Rep. Karen Bass, but considering her Castro sympathies and general leftist radicalism, that would have meant writing off Florida and the rest of America.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/so_much_for_the_tragedy_of_the_treadmill_delayed_in_supply_chain_crisis__fda_warns_of_100_vital_drug_shortages.html

Over at the White House, the ongoing supply chain fiasco, which has left dozens of cargo ships stranded near West Coast ports awaiting offloads, is considered something of a joke.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki came under fire on Tuesday after joking that it’s a “tragedy” some people may have to wait longer for their treadmill to arrive amid the supply-chain crisis that has disrupted global economies.

“The tragedy of the treadmill delayed,” Ms. Psaki laughed when pressed about the supply-chain crisis during her daily press briefing.

Well, now we’re learning what’s really going on here from JustTheNews:

More than 100 pharmaceutical drugs are facing supply chain shortages, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ira-gershwin-george-gershwin-great-american-songbook-porgy-and-bess-11638816267?mod=opinion_reviews_pos2

Lennon & McCartney. Rodgers & Hammerstein. Gilbert & Sullivan. Creative collaboration in songwriting comes in many shapes. None was more singular than that of composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira, his older brother. Their mutual trust, respect and love made them deeply compatible creators. Ira’s words and George’s music melded into hundreds of sparkling songs, such as “The Man I Love” and “Embraceable You.”

Ira penned clever, virtuosic lyrics for their pieces. Falling in love was one of his favorite subjects, as in this stanza combining wit, whimsy and sentiment:

In time the Rockies may crumble,

Gibraltar may tumble

(They’re only made of clay),

But—our love is here to stay.

Although one of America’s pre-eminent lyricists, Ira has been overshadowed by George’s brilliance, fame and effervescent persona. George lapped up the limelight; Ira shunned it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/07/california-needs-to-stop-its-crime-spree-before-it-goes-national/

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is apparently convinced that the shoplifting and smash-and-grab robberies in California are a myth. But they are real, perversely spectacular, and likely to spread across the country if they remain unchecked.

The retail heart of San Francisco, with its abundance of luxury shops, is usually overflowing with commerce at this time of the year. Instead, it’s become a “ghost town.”

“Widespread ‘flash mob’ looting turned Union Square – the city’s most fashionable shopping district – into an area resembling a blighted neighborhood in Detroit,” Michael Shellenberger writes in a recent New York Post op-ed. 

Much of the state “seems to have become a plunderers’ paradise,” says the Pacific Research Institute.

Thieves have moved on from shoplifting with large garbage bags at drug stores to violent smash-and-run raids on retailers, some of them during the middle of the day. Neiman-Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Louis Vuitton, and other stores from San Francisco to Walnut Creek to San Jose, Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills have been robbed by hammer- and crowbar-wielding mobs that have left a few fallen store employees in their wake.

Late last month, a security guard protecting a television news crew working on a story about an Oakland store that had been hit by thieves was shot while doing his job. Kevin Nishita, a former police officer, later died. He was gunned down when he tried to stop three men from stealing the crew’s camera. This didn’t happen under the cover of darkness but in the middle of the day.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/06/ii-tipp-poll-stunner-just-22-of-americans-want-joe-biden-to-run-for-president-again/

Just when it seemed President Joe Biden could get no lower in the public’s political esteem, a new I&I/TIPP Poll of Americans’ preference for the 2024 Democratic presidential ballot is a shocker: Just over one out of five want Joe Biden back at the top of the Democrats’ ticket in three years.

A number of recent I&I/TIPP Polls (here and here) have documented Biden’s sharp decline in favorability with the public due to a number of issues, ranging from his leadership of the military, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the recent inflation surge and supply-chain crisis, the border crisis, and a number of other vexing White House issues.

Even so, no favorite has emerged among the large field of potential challengers to run against Biden in the 2024 primaries. The I&I/TIPP Poll gave respondents the names of 16 other possible candidates, asking “Who do you want to see run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024?”

As mentioned, Biden was named by just 22% of those asked, while 12% mentioned Vice President Kamala Harris, whose abrasive style, lack of preparation and revolving-door personnel changes have drawn criticism even from formerly friendly Democrats and the left-leaning media.

None of the rest rose above low single-digits: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg garnered 4%, while New York Rep. Andrea Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy and Georgia 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams each attracted 3% of the support.

New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet all got thumbs up from 2%.