Agnes Obel Performs "It's Happening Again," "Golden Green" & "Stone"

Something to accompany this story from the singer's homeland — Denmark to pursue first blasphemy case since 1971 against man who burned Koran. Last time I checked the Church of Denmark was the country's "established, state-supported church." If you're going to have a state religion, contra the learned opinion of Søren Kierkegaard, it should at least mean something, like no support for rival religions.

Borges' "Library of Babel"

"A cast-iron alcove in the main reading room of the Old Cincinnati Library," pictured above and posted by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Library of Babel" short story — 117 Years Ago.

Useless Idiots Against Our Peace President

Noting "the grotesque anti-Russian tirades" of late and the fact that "all Trump has ever stated is an intention to improve relations with Moscow," CounterPuncher David Morgan writes, "Trump’s challenge to the warmongering neo-cons over Russia has to be brushed under the carpet by the anti-war movement as it reinvents itself as bedfellows of Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel and Tony Blair" — Trump and the Left: a Case of Mass Hysteria?

Arvo Pärt's Magnificat Sung by Nordic Voices

Saturday memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary are something we should bring back:

On Saturdays in Ordinary Time when there is no obligatory memorial, an optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary is allowed.

Saturdays stand out among those days dedicated to the Virgin Mary. These are designated as memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This memorial derives from Carolingian times (9th century), but the reasons for having chosen Saturday for its observance are unknown. While many explanations of this choice have been advanced, none is completely satisfactory from the point of view of the history of popular piety.

Whatever its historical origins may be, today the memorial rightly emphasizes certain values to which contemporary spirituality is more sensitive. It is a remembrance of the maternal example and discipleship of the Blessed Virgin Mary who, strengthened by faith and hope, on that “great Saturday” on which Our Lord lay in the tomb, was the only one of the disciples to hold vigil in expectation of the Lord’s resurrection. It is a prelude and introduction to the celebration of Sunday, the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of Christ. It is a sign that the Virgin Mary is continuously present and operative in the life of the Church.

Thus, today's posting of "Nordic Voice... do[ing] Magnificat by Arvo Pärt, [a] setting of the Latin Magnificat text... in tintinnabuli style, which was invented by Pärt in the mid-1970s."

Esmé Patterson Performs "No River," "Wantin Ain't Gettin" & "Yours And Mine"

The Heroic Dennis Kucinich

The alpha-male, über-liberal, pictured above with his adoring wife, leads the left-flank defending our constitutionally-elected leader — Leading Progressives Say that Even Americans Who Hate Trump Should Defend Him Against Attempted Coup by the “Deep State”.

Trump Country

Château Heartiste rightly calls the above video "an emotionally reverberating reminder of Trump’s big heart and why Heritage America loves him as their own" — Why Trump Has Captured The Hearts Of Heritage America. Says Roissy:

Trump has a genuine and sincere common man’s touch. He may be a billionaire playboy President, but his heart is good ol’ boy and his soul salt of the earth. He’s a man’s man and a lady’s man without the hoverhand, a Vince McMahon-schooled showman and now the true leader of a revolution we may not deserve, but need more than ever.

Inside Upstate

Three regional stories — Deep inside an Upstate NY salt mine, nothing is sweeter than a winter of icy roads; 12 facts about Upstate NY's amazing Letchworth State Park; & Day trip ideas in Upstate NY: 19 fun places to visit.

Fai Baba Performs "Can't Get Over You," "Find Me A Woman," "Straight Man" & "Fainted Lover"

Live from Rochester, New York's sister city, Rennes.

His Excellency President Donald J. Trump's Press Conference Today

Speaking truth to power, and the powers (and principalities) are arrayed against him, as Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. reports — 'He Will Die in Jail' & The Fate of Trump.

John Doe Performs "A Little More Time," "Burning House of Love," "A Little Help," "Sweet Reward," "Meanest Man In The World," "Silver Wings," "The Golden State," "Get On Board" & "See How We Are"

Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Médée, Performed by Stéphanie d'Oustrac, Francois-Nicolas Geslot, Gaëlle Méchaly, Bertrand Chuberre, Renaud Delaigue, Hanna Bayodi, Caroline Mutel, Anders J. Dahlin, Emiliano Ganzalez-Toro, Benoît Arrould, & Le Concert Spirituel, Conducted by Hervé Niquet

Adieu, France

Steve Sailer has "found a way to estimate the percentage of babies being born in France who are of non-European ancestry," providing a "how fast France, the cultural heartland of the West over the past millennium, is being demographically transformed," and the numbers are horrifying — Le Grand Remplacement. Similarly, American Renaissance trnlsates a report from "the excellent French website, fdesouch.com." on those "have decided to break with a country they no longer feel is their own" — Identitarian Emigrants.

Steve Bannon's "Generation Zero"

"Bannonism," says Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., "is libertarianism!" — Steve Bannon. Quoting Justin Raimondo:

Steve Bannon’s movie, “Generation Zero,” summarizes Trumpism, and it turns out it’s Austrian economics – the economics of how “bubbles” are created — applied to both the economy and the culture. It’s a real eye-opener, more than worth your time if you want to understand who’s in charge now and what motivates them.

Zoltán Kodály's Missa Brevis Sung by the University of Michigan Chamber Choir

Steve Bannon for Pope!

The more I learn about our president's éminence grise, the more I like him — Steve Bannon Aligns With Vatican Hard-Liners Who Oppose Pope Francis. Of course, media use of terms like "Vatican hard-liners" should be taken as seriously as "Vatican crackdown."

A "Hard Left" Appreciation of President Trump

CounterPuncher John Wight observes that the president "has revealed a propensity for dropping the odd ‘truth bomb’ here and there, much to chagrin of conservative and liberal commentators alike" — Trump’s Truth Bomb: “You Think We’re So Innocent?” An excerpt:

“Putin’s a killer.” This was the claim made by Fox News ‘journalist’ Bill O’Reilly during his recent interview with Donald Trump. Trump’s reply came in the form of a simple question. “What, you think our country’s so innocent?” It was a reply that succeeded in puncturing the bubble of exceptionalism in which Mr O’Reilly and those like him have long chosen to cocoon themselves from reality.

It was an extraordinary exchange, one that has gone viral on social media since. For liberals in the US and beyond it is being touted as yet more evidence of the fact that Donald Trump is completely unsuited to the rigors of the office of President. Meanwhile for dyed-in-the-wool neocons it suggests a leader of the so-called free world who is yet to realize the difference between ‘us’, the good guys, and ‘them’, the bad guys.

Perhaps it was my background in the "hard left" that had me take notes of the same thing two days ago — "You Think Our Country’s So Innocent?"

White Stag

Seneca white deer are in the news again — It’s time to save the depot and the white deer! This brings to mind the Hunor and Magor myth, appropriate with the current Hungarian theme.

Zoltán Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus, Performed by József Simándy and the Magyar Állami Hangversenyzenekar, Directed by János Ferencsik

Invaders Become Defenders

Hats off to the descendants of the Magyar tribes who invaded Europe eleven centuries ago — Hungary To Defend European Border By Detaining All Migrants. The vast majority of their now-fellow Europeans to the northwest are thankful — Majority of Europeans say Muslim immigration should be stopped – poll.

Mapping the Genome, Genoming the Maps

Human biodiversity enthusiasts will find these two recently-posted maps of interest. Roissy posts the first one — Lactose Tolerance: The Last Stand Of Implicit White Identity:


"Milk does a White body good," says Roissy, but I find it interesting that America was first settled by lactose-tolerant people from the British isles and their lactose-tolerant West African slaves. This coincidence (or "coinkydink," as my daughter says) leads to our next map, which Steve Sailer notes depicts "five groups [that] are basically the famous four groups in historian David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America – New England Puritans, Pennsylvanian Midlanders, Scots-Irish highlanders, and Lowland Southerners" — Albion's Gene:

Miramar Perform "Sin Ti," "Estatua," "Urgancia" & "Tus Pasos"

"When the members of Richmond, Virginia's Miramar first heard the music of Puerto Rican composer Sylvia Rexach, they were intrigued that she wasn't as well known as other popular bolero writers," writes blurbist Felix Contreras. "So they came up with an album's worth of her songs to cover, and have been wowing audiences across the country with their exquisite renditions of her songs."

Reason enough to repeat Steve Sailer's call for "Trump [to] top Obama’s freeing of the Puerto Rican independence terrorist by freeing all of Puerto Rico" — How Trump Can Top Obama Freeing the Puerto Rican Independence Terrorist. "¡Viva la independencia de Puerto Rico! ¡Viva Puerto Rico libre!"

Of course, "el país que nunca se fue [the country that never was]," as my Spanish professor lamented of his homeland, does not seem to want independence, with the island's pro-independence party only pulling around 4-6% in elections, but it would be in line with our new America First Foreign Policy to get rid of this imperialist legacy.

"You Think Our Country’s So Innocent?"

Thus spake America's first America Firster president to a Russophobic neocon bigot — Kremlin Asks Fox News to Apologize to Putin After O’Reilly Calls Him ‘a Killer’. "The president’s response, which appeared to equate Mr. Putin’s actions with those of the United States," says the Old Gray Lady, "drew outrage and dismay on social media."

It is funny that the "outrage and dismay" came from those America-haters who think ours was (and now is again) the most racist, sexist, homophobic country on the planet, but who now seem to believe that our foreign policy was once briefly somehow pristine because we had a black president. What unites the librul to the neocon is the belief that America is not a country, but some ideal.

America Firsters, in contrast, like that young, female supporter of our president I heard speak on the glorious inauguration day past, just "want them to know that we're also a country."

Brett Cobb Performs "Solving Problems," "Down In The Gulley," "Country Bound" & "Shine On Rainy Day"

Lars Gotrich's blurb:

In some parts of the South, there's an accent where every conversation sounds like a song. Brent Cobb, a native of the small town of Ellaville, Ga., doesn't quite whistle through his teeth when he speaks, but he does push more air into his S's when he sings. When he sings "Solving Problems," a song about a Sunday-afternoon bull session, at the NPR Music offices, the words shimmer like a tall glass of sweet tea in the late-morning sun when he strings together a particularly consonant phrase: "Conversation covers everything and in between, from Grandpa's health to marrying good girls."

"Solving Problems" comes from Shine On Rainy Day, his major-label debut produced by distant cousin Dave Cobb; it's nearly a decade in the making. Brent Cobb spent those years on Nashville's Music Row, writing songs for the likes of Luke Bryan, Little Big Town and Miranda Lambert. But where most songwriters write for the performer, Cobb plainly says, "If I write a song, they're always for me. If someone wants to record it, I think they should record it."

Cobb is a conversational lyricist who dispenses normal but precisely crafted phrases amid simple-yet-rich melodies. He skips from Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried" to family to making "plans to do what we ain't done yet." He takes a funny story about his uncle and bends the truth a bit for the quiet holler "Down In The Gulley." His songwriting lineage shines through in "Country Bound," written by his daddy; here, it features a bouncing solo from J Kott, whom Cobb jokingly calls "our bass player/lead guitarist."

Encouraged by the crowd to play one more song, Cobb closes with the sobering "Shine On Rainy Day." While he weaves plenty of wit into his lyrics, Cobb can devastate just as easily: "Ain't it funny how a little thunder make a man start to wonder, 'Should I swim or just go under?'" Just as we struggle to find the silver lining in Cobb's clouds, the song ends and he asks with a smile, "What do we do now?"

Jeffersonian to Replace Hamiltonian on Supreme Court

Good news that "unlike the Hamiltonian Justice Scalia, the more Jeffersonian Gorsuch seems more willing to return to constitutional first principles and to question the constitutional underpinnings of the post-New Deal administrative state" — A Jeffersonian for the Supreme Court. "Neil Gorsuch’s record suggests a willingness to transform the law and to enforce constitutional limitations on the excesses of Congress and the president."

EXECUTIVE ORDER: PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES