UPDATED (10/26/021): So Many Dumb People Are Breaking America, AND Then There is MATTHEW WHITAKER

America, Art, Human Accomplishment, Music

There are so many incredibly dumb and destructive people controlling and breaking America that it’s useful to remember the select few—not that many—extraordinarily bright and beautifully gifted people who light our country up:

MATTHEW WHITAKER.

My own preference runs to Dvorak’s Piano Quintet, not jazz, but whatever he plays—and he can do Dvorak justice—MATTHEW WHITAKER amazes and inspires. What a story!

Meet the blind piano player who’s so good, scientists are studying him“:

Matthew Whitaker has been rocking crowds with his improvisational piano playing for most of his short life. He may be blind, but a neuroscientist has found Whitaker’s visual cortex goes into overdrive when he plays.
… Every so often, someone so young does something so amazing you can’t help but wonder – how do they do that? That’s what happened the first time we heard Matthew Whitaker play piano. Matthew is a jazz pianist who is blind, and since the age of 11, he’s been performing around the world. He’s been called a prodigy and, as we noted when we first aired this story in February, his talent is so extraordinary. He’s also caught the attention of scientists who are now studying his brain and trying to understand his vision of music.
Whitaker doesn’t just play music, he plays with it. Twisting melodies, crafting complex harmonies and improvising at lightning speed. It’s acoustic acrobatics performed over 88 keys and it is not for the faint of heart. …

MORE.

UPDATE (10/26/021): Adele:

NEW COLUMN: Bring In The Feds! Protection Of Natural Rights Trumps Federalism

Constitution, COVID-19, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, Federalism, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, States' Rights

NEW COLUMN IS “Bring In The Feds! Protection Of Natural Rights Trumps Federalism.” It appeared on WND.COM and on the Unz Review. And is currently featured on American Greatness.

An excerpt:

… The police, whose first duty is to uphold the negative rights of the citizens, appear to believe they serve not the citizens but local mob bosses like Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, and her crooked police chief, Carmen Best. The latter, who seems to worry more about the weave on her head and eyelashes than about the working people of the city, commanded her compliant and cowardly police officers to desert their posts and the people they swore to protect.

Another Black Lives Matter stooge—all-round coward and oath-of-office violator—is Paul Pazen, police chief of Denver, Colorado. He stands complicit in standing down so as to enable the violent attack on author and activist Michelle Malkin.

Ms. Malkin, the scrappiest, bravest woman in America, was physically assaulted at a “Back the Blue” rally, in Denver, Colorado, on July 21. Police were present all right. They watched on as a bulldyke with a baton advanced on a little Braveheart of a lady, who screamed her lungs out in fury, not in fear.

But the boys in blue for whom Michelle stood up, stood down.

Inspired by scenes of wanton destruction openly enabled by elected authorities and their private militia—the police—Chris Cuomo of CNN minted a new phrase for the kind of “peaceful protesters,” who physically struck the diminutive Ms. Malkin and are destroying structures across the country: “Inequality riots.”

“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto”: Another morally corrupt celebrity, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat from New York, has made the Jean Valjean Argument from Bread: Rioters are hungry. Indeed, there are some “heartbreaking videos of starving New Yorkers stealing bread from … a Chanel flagship store on Fifth Avenue.”

The same scenes played out in thousands of cities across the country. Worst of all have been Portland, in Oregon, and Seattle in Washington State.

So, finally, President Trump has sent in the cavalry. The president launched “Operation Legend.” “Announcing a surge of federal law enforcement in American communities plagued by violent crime,” Trump added that he had “no choice but to get involved.”

This paleolibertarian supports the president’s belated defensive actions to launch a counter-terrorism operation with the aim of crushing a violent insurrection against law-abiding America.

It is essential to take back the streets, and to quit misnaming a repulsive specter that is neither democratic nor peaceful.

Upholding rights to life, liberty and property is a government’s primary—some would say only—duty.

Belatedly, and in furtherance of the violation of individual rights, Democrats frequently rediscover American federalism. (In fairness, to promote their political agenda, Republicans are as opportunistic about deferring to the division-of-power bequeathed by the Founders. Rather than mandate facemasks to save people from dying and killing others; Republicans have left local leaders to supervise the killing fields of COVID.)

The reason the president’s domestic counter-terrorism operation is warranted is because the people’s rights to life, liberty and property are being systematically violated.

And natural rights antedate the state apparatus. Federalism is an excellent principle, but it is not a religion. …

... READ THE REST.  NEW COLUMN IS “Bring In The Feds! Protection Of Natural Rights Trumps Federalism.” It appeared on WND.COM and on the Unz Review. And is currently featured on American Greatness.

 

UPDATED (8/8): Some Movies That Weather The Storms Of Time

Aesthetics, America, Art, Film, Technology

Movies this viewer can watch again and again every few years: “The Perfect Storm”: I keep hoping George Clooney will scale the Wave, as well as the film about the 50 Year Wave: “Point Break.” Jaws (1 & 2): great. Special effects were better then than today’s digital, computer-generated crap.

As to my kind of feelgood movies: Let us ready the great “Death Wish” series, featuring Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey the avenger. That crime-riddled reality is upon us again, in the USA.

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A true American movie classic, where values are solid, is “October Sky,” which “tells the story of four [striving] boys in a poverty-stricken corner of Appalachia.” Mining has always been the saddest story of male heroism.

Tell me about your favorites in the Comments Section below. We all agree that “Gone With the Wind” stands unbeaten—it also serves up better history than offered by court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

UPDATED (7/31):The Perfect Storm Swallows Sailors

UPDATED (8/8):