Jeff Koons’ Rabbit has sold for $91 million dollars.  

It’s a three foot tall steel casting made from an impression of…a balloon rabbit.  

It’s the sort of thing that gets the usual people huffing and puffing the usual blandishments – but not everyone is kissing up to the artist or the buyer. This from – who else – NPR’s Neda Ulaby:

ULABY: Jed Perl, another distinguished art critic, is even more grossed out than Jerry Saltz by the sale. Perl doesn’t even like the sculpture. Here’s how he describes the most expensive piece of art by a living artist.
PERL: It’s a metal molding of a plastic blow-up toy.
ULABY: Perl finds the smooth, faceless “Rabbit” emotionally empty to the point of being dead. But plenty of other people see a sense of humor in the sculpture and in its highly polished surface, a reflection of our increasingly impersonal and overhyped world.

Well, I certainly see humor in the fact that something this trite has people this completely bonkers.

Is anyone but me working on a polished-steel casting of a tulip bulb, just out of pure ironic commentary? (Liberals – ask you economically-literate parents).

Last week, amid news of several states’ abortion laws (intended to provoke SCOTUS-ready legal challenges to Roe V. Wade), one-time “actress” Alyssa Milano declared a “sex strike”.

It fared about as well as you’d expect.

And Milano – whose movie credits include “Who’s The Boss”, [NOTE TO MITCH: TRY TO CARE ABOUT ALYSSA MILANO’S “ACTING CAREER” LONG ENOUGH TO GET A LIST IN HERE BEFORE YOU PUBLISH THIS], and, uh, “Who’s The Boss”, reacted, well, about as well as you’d expect:

With states continuing to restrict abortions despite her #SexStrike protest, Alyssa Milano became so furious that she destroyed her own property, she admitted on Twitter Wednesday.
“I just threw my phone across the room. Cracked the screen. Read this. Please,” Milano tweeted, linking to CBS News story about an 11-year-old girl who couldn’t get an abortion because of Ohio’s “heartbeat bill.”… “Heartbeat bills,” which prohibit most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, have passed in four states this year, and Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday voted to effectively outlaw the procedure entirely. Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, was expected to sign the legislation.
Although none of the laws have gone into effect amid legal challenges, pro-choice advocates fear they will push the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, a landmark 1972 ruling enshrining the right to abortion.

She’s a former child star, and not used to getting her way. But then, progs are largely the same.

…but they can’t catch everything:

Remember to not put it on your face https://t.co/KfeEtTI1Hw

— Adam Trahan (@AdamTrahan) May 16, 2019

I don’t cry much – but I love, love, love this video of a progressive pro-infanticide snowflake trying to argue that she’s above the law, that there’s a different set of rules for progressives in campus…

…and then…slowly…

I so so so love a happy ending.

The gun control measures that “have 90% support” failed in conference committee yesterday, after having to be buried in the House Public Safety omnibus finance bill because the DFL didn’t have the votes to pass them as standalone bills, even in the Metrocrat-dominated House.

And I hope, hope, hope that the DFL keeps running with that “90% support line” in the Senate elections next year.

“Infinite Elgintensity” is a comically-arrogant and usually hilarious lawyer and Youtube bodybuilding videoblogger…

…who does some of the best commentary about the Social Justice militia out there, on the side.

I say that to point out that while I thought about writing something about Burger King’s self-parody-ingly “woke” Unhappy Meal campaign, once I saw IE’s video take, I gave up and decided to punt to him. Language not safe for work, btw:

(His two cents on the Gillette fiasco were worth at least a nickel as well)

And it makes me wonder – will there come a time when Millennials get tired of people not only walking on eggshells around their seemingly paper-thin collective skin, but talking and advertising down to it?)

Last Summer, the Associated Press reported 40% of families struggled to meet at least one of their basic needs.  The story was based on a press release by the Urban Institute. And what was the biggest problem for struggling families?  Cost of medical care.  Why?  Because Obama-care destroyed health insurance. This week, CBS recycled that storywithout bothering to mention the story was six months old and based on data that’s 18 months old, and also without mentioning the latest employment numbers.  I’m all for recycling, but it’s almost as if the media aren’t really interested in the truth, only in bashing a Republican administration. 
Joe Doakes

And if you’ve ever been around reporters at a bar, you know they’re not carbon-neutral, shall we say.

It almost seems that Big Media is working hand in glove with Big Left to pass a narrative to low-information but high-emotion voters.

That’s just crazy talk.

Right?

The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” turns 50 this year.

Kyle Shaeffer has a retrospective:

Yes, Tommy is very 1960s. Pinball competitions and psychedelic acid trips are not exactly hallmarks of today’s world. But of course, what makes the album sotimeless is the music. From great singles such as “Pinball Wizard,” “I’m Free,” and “The Acid Queen” to the more intricate musical tapestry and recurring themes laid out in the five-minute overture, this is an album one can, and should, listen to front-to-back in one sitting.

While hailed as a triumph by most critics upon its release, Tommy did have its detractors. Some found the theme overly twisted and its ideas of physical and sexual abuse and subjecting children to acid trips just too distasteful. Even at the ripe old age of 23, when he began work on the project, Pete Townshend was not a simple man. It should be noted that to compose songs for the two most disturbing parts of the opera, “Cousin Kevin” and “Fiddle About,” Townshend asked bassist John Entwistle to do the honors. Having been sent by his parents to live with a clinically insane grandmother for two years as a child, they brought up too many dark memories better left to his autobiography.

I discovered The Who about the same time I discovered pop music – I was a moody adolescent, and Pete Townsend was a moody arrested adolescent, so it wasn’t a huge stretch. I think I was 15 when I first checked out Tommy from the library. I did in fact sit down and learn the whole thing on guitar – I probably could have played it from memory, almost, at one point.

And I thought – next year, Tommy will be closer to the end of World War I than to the present day. Or,, to put it another way, neither were all that long ago, really…

As I remind pouty millennials, the state of the world has never been better.

A lower percentage of the human race is beset by war or famine than at any time in history.

For the first time in history, obesity is a bigger problem than famine.

But sometimes, you get a cold, hard reminder that not everything is working out.

The recipe for all entertainment in an industry dominated by Big Left:

1. Find a great story.
2. Carefully excise any reference to faith in a higher power that may have motivated the story in the first place.

Remember during the Cold War, when the running joke was that the best way for a small, poor country to get ahead was to go to war with the US, for all the rebuilding assistance they’d get afterward?

The modern corollary may be “the best way for a business to succeed is to become the target of liberal PC virtue-signaling and boycotts”.

Chik-Fil-A is now Ameirca’s #3 fast food joint.

Chick-fil-A, which has been the target of a left-wing boycott campaign due to the problematic socially conservative views of its founder, has absolutely dominated the chicken market over the past decade. The chain’s sale have tripled, and its U.S. market share among chicken-centric restaurants has increased from 18 percent in 2009 to 33 percent, while its chief competitor, Kentucky Fried Chicken, has seen its market share fall from 29 percent to 15 percent over the same period. That’s what winning looks like. Congrats on the boycott, libs!

And by the way – has anyone checked in on Hobby Lobby lately?

Oh.

I wonder if these kids will get lionized and treated as the authorities that David Hogg has?

Survivors of a Colorado school shooting walked out of a vigil for their slain classmate Wednesday night in protest of politicians and other groups using it as a platform for gun control, a local report said.
The students from STEM High School, where two gunmen killed a student and wounded eight others Tuesday, began yelling from the stands that they “wanted to be heard” after two politicians and pro-gun control advocates addressed the crowd, according to the local NBC affiliate, KUSA.
They then stormed out of the vigil after Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet and Democratic Congressman Jason Crow addressed the crowd, the Denver Post reported.
The kids chanted “Mental health” and hurled expletives at the media, according to the report.

And I don’t know about you, but suddenly I”m feeling kind of proud:

“What has happened at STEM is awful. But it’s not a statistic. We can’t be used as a reason for gun control. We are people, not a statement,” one student said, according to video by KUSA.
Speaking of the lone fatality, 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo, another student added, “We wanted Kendrick to be mourned. We wanted all of you to join us in that mourning, but that was not allowed here. We all walked out. We were not kicked out.”

This nation needs fewer tragedies.

But if we had more of this kind of moral courage, we’d have a great start.

Rising tides, it turns out, do actually lift boats:

In April, the unemployment rate for Americans with a high school degree fell to the lowest rates since before the Great Recession. Unemployment for workers with disabilities fell from eight percent to 6.3 percent over the last 12 months, the lowest level since the measure began in 2008.
Hispanic unemployment is the lowest it has been since 1973 (also when the measure began). Black unemployment remains close to historic lows, climbing slightly since the end of 2018.
One could hardly wish for a better trend. This economy is working for every class of American.

I think if the Democrats started devoting every scrap of their energy to pushing for impeachment, taking their (what else?) collective hive mind off of policy for the next year or so, it’d be the best thing that could possibly happen to this nation’s poor.

There are some facts about the gun control debate in this country that are pretty dead-lock cut and dried.

“Gun Safety” advocates don’t care about crime – they care about control.

White liberal gun control activists only really care about crime that affects white liberals – emotionally.

You can tell Nancy Nord Bence is lying when you see her lips moving.

But the fact is, if you dig deep, there really aren’t any good guys in the debate. The gun grabbers and Democrats, of course – but even the Republicans, at least at a national level. never faill to disappoint.

I’m going to drop the beginning of a Twitter thread – this is just the first, but please read the whole thing:

This is something I might be able to shed a little light on. Buckle up, kids, for a brief thread https://t.co/XuUCPdSx51

— Son of Spengler (@spengjr) May 10, 2019

It’s the sort of thing that led me to leave the GOP 25 years ago – out of general disgust more than any actual ideological differences.

Rep. John Lesch wrote this on Facebook yesterday, in response to a post about Shoreview DFL gun-grabber rep Kelly Moller:

“Child Murder Apologists”. And he’s not referring to his own, Stepford-Eunuchs-like support of Planned Parenthood, here.

He’s talking about you, Ms. and Mr. Law-Abiding Gun Owner.

It’d be a mistake to call this another oe of the gaffes for which Rep. Lesch is famous. This is the mindset of today’s DFL – that you, the law-abiding citizen, are rooting for spree killers. Lesch only let his guard down.

Never, ever forget – they want the 2nd Amendment. And that’s just an appetizer.

Paul Krugman – who worshipped Barack Obama like a ’90s high school girl worshipped the Back Street Boys – twote:

I'm old enough to remember when Presidential Medals of Freedom were given for showing courage and making sacrifices on behalf of the nation and the world. Tiger Woods … hits golf balls for money https://t.co/dYmWPVljL9

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) May 7, 2019

Andrew Stiles notes Barack Obama’s list of PMoF’s:

• Michael Jordan
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Meryl Streep
• Steven Spielberg
• Robert Redford
• Robert De Niro
• Tom Hanks
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Bob Dylan
• Stevie Wonder
• Gloria Estefan
• Barbara Streisand
• James Taylor
• Diana Ross
• Bruce Springsteen
• Warren Buffett
• Tom Brokaw
• Lorne Michaels
• Joe Biden

To which a committed Dem might point out “Hey, no golfers!”.

And to which someone with honesty and integrity would add “And Paul Krugman is a travesty”.

I love languages. I speak three of ’em passably enough not to get made as a Yank, and can order a drink, pay a tab or find a bathroom in a bunch more. If I could learn more full-time, I would. I’m a linguistics geek.

I’m probably an outlier among Americans at large – we’re a big mostly monolingual country, so most Americans don’t need to learn another language.

But the word “hatchet job” means the same thing in an amazing number of languages. That occurred to me while reading this, well, hatchet job from the WaPo, claiming that about half of Republicans get annoyed hearing other languages. According to Pew:

47 percent of such Republicans say it would bother them “some” or “a lot” to “hear people speak a language other than English in a public place.” Eighteen percent of white Democrats said they would be similarly bothered.
Aside from politics, age and education are the major predictors of linguistic discomfort. Eighteen percent of whites younger than 30 said they would be bothered by a foreign language being spoken, compared with 43 percent in the 50-to-64 age group, and 45 percent among those 65 and older.
Among all racial groups, whites (34 percent) are most likely to be bothered hearing foreign languages, followed by blacks (25 percent), Asians (24 percent) and Hispanics (13 percent). Among Americans overall, 70 percent put their level of unease at “not much” or “not at all.”

And this article is kinda hatchet-y. 

For starters, it doesn’t say *why* “half of white Republicans” have that reaction. Oh, the WaPo knows what it *wants* people to think – that’s why they included the utterly unrelated “High profile confrontations”. Racists!

And yet of those Republicans, the vast majority reported being “bothered” only a little bit – which doesn’t seem like it’d be a byproduct of hatred. It doesn’t go into motivations. 

I’m to postulate the vast majority of that isn’t racism, but people in a largely monolingual culture reacting to being excluded. Remember the question – they’re reacting to hearing people “speak a language other than English in a public place.” Language is an excluder; it’s a private club. It’s why my grandma never spoke her native Norwegian unless she was among fellow native speakers; it’s why I don’t talk in German or Norwegian in meetings with mostly Anglo co-workers. It’s kind of rude. 

The reaction is hardly limited to Americans, much less “white Republicans”. Check out how the French react to groups of Americans talking English sometime. 

I’m gonna strongly suspect most of the result comes from social annoyance rather than bigotry or provincialism. 

Men hva vet jeg?

“Hired Gun”, on Netflix, is a movie about “sidemen” – guitar, bass, drum and keyboard players who get hired by musicians to support them on tour, sometimes for a tour or two (Jason Hook, a metal guitarist spent time touring with Mandy Moore and Hillary Duff), sometimes joining the band (Jason Newsted with Metallica), sometimes bouncing around between being session musicians, touring with other musicians and being part of their own bands (Steve Lukather, Ray Parker Jr.).

It’s a little like “20 Feet From Stardom”, only with teeth.

Takeaways:

• I’d have never thought Rudy Sarzo – who played with Ozzy Ozbourne, both editions of Quiet Riot, and Whitesnake – would come across as pretty savvy philosopher.
• If you don’t like Billy Joel, get ready to hate him. If you like Billy Joel, get ready not to like him so much. While I acknowledge his talent, I’ve never liked him much (other than “Songs in the Attic”, which had some cool songs, and “Innocent Man”, which was a great album), but the stories that Russ Javors and Liberty DiVito tell about Joel’s snide arrogance (and the role it may have played in Doug Stegmeyer’s suicide) re-centered my attitude on the little fop.
• Alice Cooper (as a friend of mine pointed out on Facebook) is the opposite of Billy Joel – a great boss.
• Kenny Aronoff – who played drums on all of John Mellencamp’s best records in the eighties, and is currently with the BoDeans – may be becoming my favorite living drummer. His story behind that little two-bar drum solo in “Jack and Diane” is a lot cooler than I’d imagined it would be.
• If all you think about when the name “Ray Parker Jr.” comes up is “Ghostbusters”, then stop what you’re doing, cuz I’m about to ruin the image of the star that you’re used to (#NailedTheReferenceTieIn!). The guy was one of the better session guitar player in R&B for a looong time. But the story of how “Ghostbusters” came about is exactly as dorky as the video Parker shot for it back in ’84.
• I will never feel adequate on guitar again.

There are happy endings, some really sad ones, and all in all if you care about music at all you should just watch it.

It’s the right wing that’s always hinting at violence.

Really!

A friend of the blog writes:

I worked briefly in a nursing home. Election judges would come around with absentee ballots and nursing home residents had the opportunity to vote. That was good, I thought. Then, I saw children “helping” their parents vote. Parents that couldn’t tell you where they are, what they had for breakfast, etc. They had no idea they were voting. Even if those children tried to vote the way they thought their parents would want, they were only guessing. Is that right?

So, I thought of that experience when I read this tweet.
There are so many responses that imply the Texas Senator does not want people to vote. To me, it sounds like he doesn’t want activists driving people to vote and influencing their vote. It sounds like you can still ask your friend, neighbor, son, brother to drive you. And if you are cognizant enough to ask someone to get you to the polls, then you probably are not going to allow someone else to make the choice for you. Seems fair enough, given the gravity of the right to vote.

Jamming uninformed, or push-informed, people to the polls is a feature, not a bug, for at least one major political party.

It’s depressing that anybody would fall for such an obvious diversion. Trump was a rich man during the entire Obama administration, whose IRS was famous for auditing people Democrats didn’t like.  The holdover liberals who make up the Deep State have no problem leaking damaging information.  If Trump had any possible secrets in his tax returns, they would have been leaked and investigated long ago.
Democrats know that, they know there’s nothing to find, they don’t care. They simply want Trump to deny the demand so they can complain that he’s obstructing justice, which diverts attention away from the Attorney General’s investigation into Hillary colluding with the Russians to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
But you know Minneapolis liberals will swallow it, hook line & sinker.  Depressing
Joe Doakes

They’re holding on to the idea that there’s “something” out there like an eight-year-old holding onto Santa.

75 years ago, thousands of Americans – teenagers or not far removed from it, mostly – waded through the surf into machine gun fire to begin liberating Europe.

This is their legacy of boldness and forthright courage:

Mr. Ford: the National Day of Prayer “stigmatizes” you in exactly the same way the Irish Fair “stigmatizes” Norwegians.

If Atheists managed to jam down a “National Day of Skepticism”, all it would do is keep them occupied (presumbly withe the vegans and crossfitters) while I go about my business.

But then, I’m not nearly that “woke”, so what do I know?

I’ve been doing this blog since 2002 – and while my traffic remains gratifyingly high even as the “glory days” of blogging have passed, I’d still do it if I had five readers a day. I just plain enjoy it, and every reader just adds a little more fun.

But every once in a while I like to pass the hat. I didn’t do it last year – but I figure why not?

So if you can throw a buck or two in the pot, it is much appreciated!

Thanks!

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who donated yesterday (I’ll send personal thank-yous later on here). I’m going to push this for one more day.

Thanks, all!

Ilhan Omar on the little matter of the barrage of rockets that’ve been raining down on Israel since the weekend:

How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends?

The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 5, 2019

Gaza is not occupied.

It’s not occupied because Ehud Barak decided to “give peace a chance”, and to give the Palestinians pretty much what they asked for. He pulled Israel – and thousands of Israelis – out of Gaza and gave it to the Palestinians. The hope was that it’d be a first step on a road to a lasting peace.

And – nobody could have possibly seen this coming, honest – Hamas and Hezbollah played it as a sign of weakness and poured weapons into Gaza, and have been using it as a staging ground for wave after wave after wave of aggression.

Ilhan Omar sits on the House Foreign Relations committee.

(That was normally the part of the post where I’d try to write something pithy or scary. And I guess “scary” qualifies).

So what we have here is:

• A bunch of shrill, upper-middle-class, white, college-miseducated “feminists”, duking it out with…
• People who actually survived, or have relatives who are trying to survive, the socialism-driven implosion of what was once a prosperous nation.

Yep, that’s what we have:

Liberal activists from the anti-war group Code Pink are refusing to leave the abandoned Venezuelan embassy in Washington, vowing to protect the building from a “hostile takeover” as the U.S. State Department labels them “trespassers” and calls on them to leave.
About 50 pro-regime activists have been living inside the building for several weeks in support of embattled socialist President Nicolas Maduro. In recent days, they’ve clashed outside the embassy with supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who has called for a military uprising in Venezuela and has the support of the Trump administration.

Can there be a better example of Urban Progressive Privilege than people like Media Benjamin progsplaining actual Venezuelans?

It’s sort of the logical extension of former MN State Senator Larry Pogemiller saying on the record that he didn’t believe people knew how to spend their money better than government does.

Tax money, freedom, survival – all pretty much the same, isn’t it?