Camper Van Beethoven Perform "The Poppies of Balmorhea," "All Her Favorite Fruit" & "Mao Reminisces About His Days In Southern China"

Building Trades in Rochester

In a post titled "My Pick for Rochester Race Relations" I wrote of my choice in the Unite Rochester Challenge Ballot to be in the running for a $5000 grant; turned out among the 89 "ideas to address the racial and socioeconomic divide that plagues the Rochester area" my pick was selected — Top 10 vote getters of Unite Rochester Challenge named:

Neighbors Project: This project will provide training to young men, equipping them with skills and experience to gain employment in the building trades and property management, while also improving downtrodden neighborhoods. We will recruit students from city neighborhoods and rehabilitate a city-owned property scheduled for auction.

As I wrote, "This one aims to help real people learn real skills to solve real problems; the others were mostly about fostering white ethnomasochism." Fortunately, none of the overtly ethnomaochistic entries made it to the top ten, but most were like this one:

Rochester's Kindergarten to College: Modeled after a successful initiative in San Francisco, we will work with the city of Rochester, city schools and community-minded financial institutions to provide every incoming kindergarten student with a college savings account. While the initial deposit will be publicly funded, students and families will be given financial literacy training and incentives to keep saving. In San Francisco, the program has also helped adults by helping them establish a relationship with a bank.

While the "publicly funded" part is problematic, offering "financial literacy training and incentives to keep saving," if funded by banks' own enlightened self-interest makes sense. Of course the black linguist and self-described "cranky liberal Democrat" John McWhorter pointed out, there is a fatal flaw with the basic premise of this second proposal — The curse of ‘college for all’. In fact, Prof. McWhorter would likely agree with my proposal pick, as the fourth of his four ideas on "how African-Americans can and will play the same game everyone else is, even if the rules are stacked against them," wich got a mention on Radio Derb yesterday, suggests — Black People Should Stop Expecting White America to ‘Wake Up’ to Racism. Here's the ides:

We must revise the notion that attending a four-year college is the mark of being a legitimate American, and return to truly valuing working-class jobs. Attending four years of college is a tough, expensive, and even unappealing proposition for many poor people (as well as middle-class and rich ones). Yet poor people can, with up to two years’ training at a vocational institution, make solid livings as electricians, plumbers, hospital technicians, cable television installers, and many other jobs. Across America, we must instill a sense that vocational school—not “college” in the traditional sense—is a valued option for people who want to get beyond what they grew up in.

Whither the Language of Cervantes?

While waiting to pick my daughter up from her friend's Bat Mitzvah, I turned on the radio only to find one of the most annoying programs, Latino USA, on air, and immediately turned the dial, but with nothing else to listen to I turned it back. Here's what I learned:

• If your thought languages with grammatical gender (the only real kind) would be resistant to "gender-neutralization" you were wrong — Latinx: The Ungendering of the Spanish Language. My experience in both Chile and among Nuyoricans is that transvestism is more far more common among latinos (or latinx, now) that it is among anglos.
• We are supposed to find heartwarming this story of a gay Guatemalan illegal migrant who gets "asylum" and becomes the country's only Mam language court interpreter, whom tax-payers now fly around the country to make defendents feel happy to hear their own language spoken in American courts of law — The Accidental Interpreter.
• A editor suggests that American pop songs sing about being wronged while Spanish-language pop songs sing about saying sorry — Before 'Sorry' There Was 'Perdón:' The Definitive Theory on Latino Apology Anthems. The author also suggests that latino boyfriends do not follow John Wayne counsel, "Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness," but rather are in a constant state of apology. Machismo, I've long believed, whether partcied by the Hispanics who gave us the term or attempted by Mohammedans or even East Asians, is in reality a mask for a diseased mama-boy deeply beta culture.

My relation with the Castilian is complex. I studied it in middle and high school, along with the language of my Germanic forebears. (I believe I was the only student in my school to study two languages.) I went on to major in it after testing the waters (but not drinking them) for a couple of months south-of-the-border in anticipation of a possible draft during George Bush père's war. I later studied literature much further south in Chile.

Now that my kids are of an age to choose a foreign language, I have guided them towards more culturally prestigious languages, that of neighboring Quebec for my daughter and that of Ancient Rome for my son. While Nuyoricans have contributed nothing lasting to world culture, even the brightest lights of the Hispanosphere like Miguel de Cervantes and Pedro Calderón de la Barca are mere footnotes. See this — Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment Database Goes Public.

EL VY Perform "No Time To Crank The Sun," "Careless" & "Need A Friend"

An Old Left Defense of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

"All this baloney about Putin having expansionist aims is an attempt to throw a smokescreen over the West’s own expansionist agenda in Eastern Europe with the goal of throwing a cordon sanitaire around Russia in pursuit of a cold war agenda," write CounterPunch's John Wight— The Demonization of Vladimir Putin.

Didier François & Phillipe Malfeyt Perform "I Gold Generation"

"This is a modern composition on barok [sic] instruments." Such music will not be composed in Eurabia.

White Man Shot Dead by Police

Well, there is already a fairly full-blown conspiracy theory saying - or claiming that he was shot to death while his hands were up. We've had conflicting witness reports. One person essentially told a story to that effect. Another one said that wasn't true at all, that what he did was jump out of his car and charge police after he was pulled over - or rather got stuck in the snow fleeing from them, so we don't know.

So claims a representative of the sinister Southern Poverty Law Center interviewed here — Monitoring The Anti-Government Cause In Oregon.

Does the SPLC call it a "full-blown conspiracy theory" that Michael Brown is remembered as getting shot with his hands up even if black witnesses testified that he was trying to take a cop's gun, a story that has caused much violence across the country?

LaVoy Finnucum, rest in peace.

River Whyless Performs "Life Crisis," "Sailing Away" & "Baby Brother"

A delightful band from Asheville, North Carolina, a delightful town I visited a few years ago and reported on here — The Cesspool of Sin in the Great Blue Hills of God.

Charlotte Rampling for Best Actress!

Steve Sailer reports, "After an Oscar nominationless half century career of playing Mean Girls who don’t give a damn, 69-year-old Charlotte Rampling refuses to be White Guilted over her first-ever nomination" — Oscar Whiteness Crisis: Charlotte Rampling Says Oscars ‘Boycott’ Is ‘Racist Against Whites’. "Until recently, it would have been considered a compliment to say that only Charlotte Rampling has the courage to say what other are thinking, but we’re well past all considerations of individual character."

Sóley Performs "Smashed Birds," "While I Sleep," "Scary Adventures," "The Sun Is Going Down II," "Pretty Face" & "Dreamers"

Again, why does a tiny, isolated country with a third of the population of the Rochester, New York metropolitan area produce so much good music?

Donald J. Trump for Republican Nominee!

The candidate's "remarkably coherent and consistent worldview," which "is also a worldview that makes a great leap backward in history," as described by Politico.com's Thomas Wright, in an article linked to by Lew Rockwell's Political Theatre, has earned him this blog's primary endorsement — Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy:

In sum, Trump believes that America gets a raw deal from the liberal international order it helped to create and has led since World War II. He has three key arguments that he returns to time and again over the past 30 years. He is deeply unhappy with America’s military alliances and feels the United States is overcommitted around the world. He feels that America is disadvantaged by the global economy. And he is sympathetic to authoritarian strongmen. Trump seeks nothing less than ending the U.S.-led liberal order and freeing America from its international commitments.

Wild Child Perform "This Place," "Stones" & "Wild Child"

Wild Child performs at The Haunt, Friday, January 22, at 8:00 p.m., down New York State Route 96 in Ithaca, New York:

This colorful indie-pop band from Austin, Texas lives by-way of the strong melodic and poppy voice of lead vocalist and violinist Kelsey Wilson. The band’s sound hangs somewhere in-between crunchy indie-folk and super catchy pop. Their strengths lie in the weaving in and out of these forms. Their arrangements have an old-time jamboree feel to them, yet the strong pop sense makes the band very much modern – and teetering on the brink of indie superstardom.

My Pick for Rochester Race Relations

You, too, can choose among close to 100 projects in the Unite Rochester Challenge Ballot to receive a $5000 grant; here's the one I picked:

Neighbors Project: This project will provide training to young men, equipping them with skills and experience to gain employment in the building trades and property management, while also improving downtrodden neighborhoods. We will recruit students from city neighborhoods and rehabilitate a city-owned property scheduled for auction. Submitted by Teresa Owen, NEST.

This one aims to help real people learn real skills to solve real problems; the others were mostly about fostering white ethnomasochism.

Spirit Family Reunion Perform "Climb Up The Corn," "I Am Following The Sound," "Wake Up Rounder," "Don't Be A Liar," "Green Rocky Road," "Put Your Hands Together When You Spin The Wheel," "I Want To Be Relieved," & "I'll Find A Way

One of my favorite representatives of New York values. This is not the first we've heard from this band whose music "members call 'open-door gospel' — gospel music that's not tied to any particular religious denomination" on these pages:

• Spirit Family Reunion Perform "Leave Your Troubles At The Gate," "Green Rocky Road," and "I'll Find A Way"
• Spirit Family Reunion Perform "Put Your Hands Together When You Spin the Wheel," "Climb Up The Corn," & "The Gazebo Song"
• Spirit Family Reunion Perform "Climb Up the Corn," "Fill My Heart With Love," & "Nighttime In Nevada"

Donald J. Trump, the Candidate from Somewhere

"The Candidates from Nowhere," the title of a seminal article written by my homeboy Bill Kauffman eight years ago arguing that "a president without roots will have no domestic or sentimental reminder of why foreign crusades, whose first casualties are the nearest and dearest things, should never be waged," came to mind after processing the above exchange from the Republican non-debate a few days ago between a Cuban-Canadian-Texan and a Manhattanite over "New York Values," a term which which, as an Upstater, "one of the wonderful, wonderful working men and women from New York State" Mr. Cruz referenced, I can understand and appreciate. That said, Mr. Trump's defense of his home-town was classic, and soon had Mr. Cruz eating his words.

America knoweth whence The Trumpening cometh. We hear it in his voice. Can this be said of any other candidate, save the Brooklynite from Vermont? "Trump's invisible, poor white army," as described by the beautiful South African columnist, which draws its ranks from places all over this country, is on the march!

Yet Another Reason to Disqualify Hitlery

The chaos she and her fellow Three Horsegirls of the Apocalypse engendered (pun intended) in the Levant and the Maghreb included DOS-supported ethnic cleansing — Hillary’s Africa Genocide Problem.

"Imagine how damaging it should be to Hillary," ponders Daniel McAdams, "if the mainstream media decides to pick up on probably the most explosive revelation from Hillary’s latest server dump: She knew that the Libyan rebels her State Department backed were systematically committing genocide against black Africans in Libya and she did nothing about it!"