I can listen to people scrape their fingernails on chalkboards (kids, ask your parents) all day long.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t sounds and words that make my teeth hurt and make me nauseous.

My example I have always hated the word “Document”, and all its uses and derivatives. Document? Documentation? Documentary? All of them. The only exception is the sentence “I just watched someone who overused the word ‘document’ get eaten by mice”.

My worst boss ever was a (I’m not making this up) near-functional illiterate QA manager to whom the company’s benighted tech writers had to report. And she once described the tech writers’ job as to “document the documentation in the documents”. It wasn’t *that* episode, or the fact that she advocated changing the job title to “Documentalist”, that made her the worst boss ever – oh, Lord, no – but it put a cherry on top of the crap sundae that was that job.

Which is one of the reasons I tune out the radio when impeachment talk comes up Part of it is because Adam Schiff justifies retroactive bullying – but largely because if I hear another smug, sanctimonious voice saying “documents documents documents documents documents…” again I’m going to kick a puppy.

…the Babylon Bee is reinforcing itself as America’s news source of record.

Because this.

Minneapolis: fighting the battles that matter.

Crime? Achievement gaps in terrible schools? Disposable bags? Gentrification and zoning causing housing to become unaffordable to the middle-class?

Nope. Minneapolis is tackling the scourge of fur.

The ban would not force any Minneapolis businesses to close. Instead, companies which currently sell animal fur will have a phase-in period, during which they can transition to selling fur-free products. There is also an explicit exemption in the ordinance which protects the rights of Native American tribes to sell fur for traditional and spiritual purposes. Secondhand stores too are exempt from the ban.
According to the Humane Society, more than 100 million animals are killed every year for the primary purpose of using their fur. It is estimated that 85% of these animals are raised in factory fur farms, while the other 15% are killed in the wild.
If the ordinance passes, Minneapolis would join Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, and West Hollywood, which have taken similar stances. New York City has also introduced an ordinance to end the sale of fur.

Why, yes – now that you mention it, it was sponsored by Alondra Cano, the intellectual standard-bearer of modern MInnesota progressivism.

Big Media and the left seem disappointed that yesterday’s gun rights rally at the Virginia state capitol in Richmond passed not only without incident, but in fact exactly as every *knowledgable* commentator on the subject predicted – utterly peacefully, nothing close to violence, and despite weeks of media gaslighting about “white supremacy”, a crowd that was probably more racially integrated than a “Protect Minnesota” or “Moms Demand Action” or “Minnesota Reformer” meeting.

I’m getting a feeling of deja vu.

This all feels like the Tea Party days, ten years ago – when the establishments on both sides of the aisle, terrified of a unregulated, organic grass roots movement, gaslit the public into thinking the most inclusive, idealistic political movement in my lifetime was either “racist” or “establishment”, depending on the targets.

The gaslighting? Oh ,yeah ,it’s back.

Virginia governor Blackface McMinstrel, presiding over the most ghastly bit of government overreach I can recall, desperately needed to paint the vast, law-abiding majority of gun owners as depraved evildoers just waiting for their moment to cut loose

But every last g****mn word of it was a lie. As predicted. A smear. Collective defamation.

If you know anything about the subject you predicted this – because nationwide, carry permittees are about 1/6 as likely to commit *any* kind of crime…

…as are the police. Who are, themselves, 1/7 as likely to commit any sort of crime as the general public.

Statistically, you are safer in a room full of carry permit holders – people who’ve passed background checks, and in Minnesota, have had to prove they know the law – than you are in a room full of cops.

White supremacy? B***s**t. It was the police that denied the Reverend King a permit to carry a gun – as they denied *every* black applicant in Birmingham in the fifties – even though he and his families lives were being threatened constantly.

It was the eeeeeeeevil NRA that stood with Dr. King – allowing his volunteer bodyguards to train at their firing range (the only desegregated one in the DC area at the time), giving them ammunition at cost.

No, the Richmond rally was peaceful. Were there “white supremacists” there? Other than Governor McMinstrel, I mean? Well, sure – in the sense that *everyone* that dissents from Big Left’s narrative is a “white supremacist” these days. Actual “white supremacy”, as in “hatred for non-whites?”

Mark my words – less than among the general public.

Look – I get it. A fair chunk of our society was raised to be terrified of guns. I grew up in a non-gun-owning, gun-control-supporting Democrat home. The TV shows I grew up with in the seventies and eighties treated gun ownership like a character flaw.

I changed. “Elite” culture and politics didn’t.

And Governor McMinstrel is clearly terrified by the genie he let out of the bottle. While the law-abiding gun owner doesn’t have much political killer instinct, when he or she is threatened, they – we – can not be stopped.

If it’s about guns, and the media says it, distrust but verify – and then, almost without exception, keep right on distrusting.

And by the way – for all my gun-rights brothers in arms who are treating Virginia like the final Mexican assault on the Alamo – take a deep breath. Cam Edwards notes that your – our – voices are getting through even to some of the Democrat villains in this story.

So, for all my “progressive” friends? This is what Democracy looks like. Lots of imperfect schlubs, workadaddy hugamommy people of all races, orientations, creeds and faiths, the very backbone of this country, showing you that *we are not for turning*.

Here we stand. We’ve compromised enough. We’re done.

All due respect to my “progressive” friends – but if you bring nothing but emotion or Big Left’s chanting points to this discussion, you will not fare well. God have mercy on your argument, for I shall not.

There’s a significant part of me that thinks I said everything that needed to be said about the notion of “white privilege” with this bit here.

But just in case there’s some rubble left unbounced out there:

A proposal to make Sherburne County a “Second Amendment Sanctuary” has been floated.

If you live in SherbCo, your mission is clear.

The proposal, from State Rep. Shane Mekeland, from the “New House Republican Caucus”, would commit SherbCo and its law enforcement to defying any future oppressive gun restrictions:

The Saint Cloud Times has Mekeland elaborating:

In a phone interview Monday afternoon, Mekeland said the resolution is basically the county board saying it will not support perceived threats to Second Amendment rights should they come from the state level.

Will SherbCo go through with it? I think it’s doubtful. And I don’t think it matters.

I think the real payoff was what we saw in Richmond yesterday – the movement gives the silent majority a coherent focus for their political power.

There may not be any Second Amendment sanctuaries in MInnesota this time next year – but a lot of Real Americans will come to the polls because of the movement.

Expect much tut-tutting from the Saint Cloud Times, the Strib, MPR and Ryan WInkler.

Downtown Minneapolis mainstay Ike’s is shutting its doors.

The owner doesn’t chalk it up to any single cause. Rather, it’s the slow drip drip drip of urban decay:

According to Winstead, the negotiations were meant to “address restaurant and market conditions” impacting Ike’s bottom line, including “labor costs, operational costs, maintenance costs and taxes.”
“There are so many issues, not any one of them a restaurant killer on its own, but taken altogether it adds up,” [owner Gene] Winstead said. 

And, naturally, the elephant in the room, the bit of blight whose name Minneapolis DFLers dare not speak:

Winstead “also cited a perception of downtown Minneapolis as unsafe for evening diners. ‘There is a little truth to it, but it’s mostly perception,’ he said.”

And it is – there are a lot of suburbans, by no means all conservatives much less Trump voters, who get hysterical about downtown crime.

But it’s not all hype. Unlike Saint Paul, which has its own perception problems, violent crime in general was up sharply in Minneapolis last year, along with a hike in homicide that is lower than Saint Paul’s, but started from a 2018 figure that was already higher.

But let’s back up to economics. When you point out that establishments in MInneapolis and Saint Paul are closing, they’ll respond “There’s always attrition in the hospitality industry”.

It’s not inaccurate.

It’s just that Ike’s other locations are booming right along.

As are suburban branches of other establishments that’ve packed it in in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

An African-American sailor who received the Navy Cross for his actions during the Pearl Harbor attack is getting what may be, in recent years, the ultimate honor – getting an aircraft carrier named after him. 

Dorie Miller was a Mess Attendant Third Class – which, along with cook and wardroom steward (basically a butler for a ship’s officers) was one of very few trades open to black silors – from Waco Texas.  During the attack, he was stationed aboard the battleship West Virginia, and helped haul the mortally-wounded captain to safety, and helped injured sailors move out of danger – and entered legend by taking control of an anti-aircraft gun on which he’d never been trained.    Miller’s earned the Navy Cross for his actions.  One could say that decoration was in part due to political pressure in the States pushing against a Navy that direly needed black recruits – but there is no question that Miller deserved the honor.  

HIs example – the first black sailor to earn a Navy Cross – earned him a trip back to the states to sell war bonds and help recruit black sailors.  He was promoted to Mess Attendant First Class, and was killed in 1943 aboard the escort carrier Liscome Bay, when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.  

The Navy has announced that the fourth Ford-class carrier will be named after Miller.  The USS Doris Miller will be laid down in three years, and should be completed in 2028.  If all goes according to schedule it’ll join the fleet at the turn of the next decade.  

It’s worth noting that Miller’s most iconic action during the attack may not have happened.  At the height of the attack, Miller came upon an unmanned .50 caliber antiaircraft gun – and, notwithstanding the fact that he’d never been trained in the weapon, blazed away at Japanese aircraft until he ran out of ammunition.   Various legends, and Michael Bay’s 2000 movie Pearl Harbor, have him shooting down as many as four Japanese planes.  None of the victories are confirmed.  

But Navy policy in 1941 was that black sailors shouldn’t be shooting guns at all – their battle station usually involved hauling ammunition and working on damage control parties.  They weren’t supposed to be at the trigger;  then as now, it was “gun safety policy”.  

Until a person has all the rights and powers, in microcosm, that their government has – including the right and power to defend themselves, their families, property, community, freedom and yes, shipmates from aggression, they’re not really citizens.  They’re subjects. 

Black Americans in 1941, especially in the armed services, were most definitely subjects.  

And while there are many things to salute about Miller’s actions during the war, that’s the one that a whole lot of black Democrat voters need to hear more about during this political year. 

Chief Justice Roberts, whom President Trump has taken no pains to avoid offending, now presides over the impeachment trial. The chickens are coming home to roost.
This is an excellent opportunity for Roberts to prove how impartial and non-partisan the court system is. I doubt it will happen. My guess is he’ll be a Rino squish, ruling in favor of the Democrats every time to show how fair he is, which will prolong the agony and give the Democrat controlled media a chance to work on Squishy Republican Senators. 
Remind me again, how many votes do they need to convict? And what’s our margin of safety?
Joe Doakes

Our margin of safety is going to be Joe Manchin.

I’m being facetious. But only a little.

On August 31 1939, a team of SS propaganda operators dressed as Polish soldiers “captured” a German radio station near the town of Gleiwitz (today the Polish town of Gliwice), close by the Polish border. They did a quick broadcast in Polish, and then fled – dumping the body of a local, loaded with sabotage paraphernalia, as well as those of a group of Dachau inmates that’d been dressed in Polish army uniforms and then shot to make it look like the Germans had repelled a Polish assault. It was one of many false-flag “attacks” along the German/Polish border that morning used by the Nazi regime as a potemkin casus belli for the invasion that started pretty much before the bodies were cold.

I couldn’t help think about that when I heard that Virginia Governor Blackface McMinstrel was banning legal civilian carry at the Virginia State Capitol during this weekend’s gun right lobbying rally, because of “threats of violence” on the part of (naturally) law-abiding gun owners.

I figured this was more or less like Ilhan Omar’s “death threats” last summer at the State Fair – a few of the usual loonies who make threats from the comfort of their mom’s basement, a steady drizzle of which accompanies most public life, but whose timing, in some cases, is just perfect for diverting attention from an inconvenient reality. In Omar’s case, I have little doubt there was a threat, somewhere, from someone. Credible? No – but enough to throw out there to divert the media’s attention from the gathering storm of allegations against her.

And in the case of Governor McMinstrel, something to cast him, his Democrat legislative majority, and the thin little film of Bloomberg-funded victim disarmament activists standing between him and defeat in the next elections, as the victims – after spending their first term trashing the rights of law-abiding Virginians.

Notwithstanding the fact that law-abiding gun owners, as an absolute rule, are better behaved, singly and collectively, than the general public.

Well, there has been arrest of some people ostensibly headed to Virginia for something. Maybe. That’s what we’re told, anyway. Which, given the electoral fury that McBlackface’s coup on liberty has stirred up (and he may not have seen anything yet), and which may have not yet crested, may may have made the three saps that got arrested the most perfectly-timed patsies since the “North Vietnamese Torpedo Boats” in Tonkin Gulf.

I just knew that this wasn’t going to end well for Steven King.

…that only does Democrat messaging make no logical or intellectual sense, but it isn’t intended for consumption by an audience that worries about moral and intellectual sensibility.

The idea – presented here – that forcing Congress to stop abrogating its responsibility to write laws and stop slothfully fobbing the job off on the Executive Branch, should be fairly uncontroversial.

Not – as the piece posits – a threat to the general order.

California’s new “gig worker” “protection” law, “AB5” – essentially requiring companies to treat anyone working for them above a certain, fairly low, threshold as a full-time employee, complete with benefits – is shredding jobs in a plethora of sectors; free-lance technical and design talent, writers…

…and the original, literal “gig workers”, musicians.

An organizer of a California Jazz festival – while allowing (as one suspects someone in California arts administration might) he supports the basic idea – testifies to the damage the new law is causing to his organization:

Under AB 5, we will be required to inform all U.S.-based musicians that they must now become employees of San Jose Jazz, or incorporate themselves before they will be allowed to perform for us. 
If band leaders choose to pursue incorporation, they will then need to take on the responsibility of payroll and HR administration for the rest of their band.
In many performing arts disciplines, such as jazz, musicians are constantly reconfiguring line ups, performing as sidemen in various bands, and as one-time special guests for specific performances. 
We will now be obliged to devote tremendous time and resources to constantly hiring, managing and tracking of musicians through this cumbersome process. 
AB 5 unnecessarily complicates other work arrangements found in community cultural programming such as small festivals, neighborhood street fairs, parades and summer music series in our local parks. 
San Jose Jazz is best known for producing our large Summer Fest which brings tens of thousands of visitors and requires hundreds of temporary roles to execute. 
The vast majority of previously contract work roles will now be required to be employees. 
For instance, we are required by the City of San Jose to hire off-duty police officers through their Secondary Employment Unit program to insure a safe and well-run festival. Under AB 5 we will be required to classify these moonlighting officers as San Jose Jazz employees with the attendant oversight and administrative requirements. 

But of course, as in all “progressive” societies, some animals – and gig workers – are more equal than others:

Typical of such legislation, AB 5 comes with a hefty list of exempted categories that are a Who’s Who of the politically connected and well-funded: lawyers, doctors, accountants, brokers, builders, and others. 

Everyone else is posting Jordan Peterson videos. Why not me?

With Saint Paul experiencing a three-digit jump in homicides, and Minneapolis tripling down on pumping up high-density, high-income housing (with token “affordable” housing sprinkled hither and yon), I think this one is well worth a thoughtful couple of minutes:

If you don’t have ten free minutes, I’ll help out:

• Poverty doesn’t cause crime. It’s not even up for rational debate.
• Income disparity causes crime – it can be measured via a “Gini Coefficient” calculated for any given area and group of people. The Coefficient is, by social sciences standards, apparently incredibly robust, and gives you a pretty solid correlation between income disparity and crime.
• The reason income disparity causes crime: when young men have no way to try to exert social dominance (i.e. make themselves more attractive to young women) because the social hierarchy is solidly established, they turn to less socially-acceptable forms of aggression – which, from a standpoint of evolutionary psychology, work. The capos of a New York mafia family may not have fit in with Upper-West-Side Manhattan society, but they were at the peak of their own societies – which led to them actually finding women who’d help them propagate their species.

Now – I’m not saying that the “New Urbanism” that afflicts urban planning authorities in places like Portland, San Francisco, and the Twin Cities’ Met Council is intended to create a social Petri dish designed to cultivate a more virulent criminal underclass.

But given what we know about evolutionary psychology, if they were trying to create a permanent criminal mindset, what would they do differently?

Democrats will frequently bristle when I say they frequently bet on “the other side”, usually whenever a Republican is in the White House.

Can’t say as I blame them.

But it’s a pattern that just keeps on going.

The DFL, 2019: “Guns are out of control! Our cities are victims of “gun culture’s” love of guns over the children! Blood is running in the streets directly onto your hands!”

The DFL, 2020 (in response to the Senate GOP’s recognition of the crime problem in the DFL-controlled Metro area): “Oh, quit being tribalist and divisive. It’s not that bad”.

No, really:

Democrats who control the House said the GOP was trying to stoke fear among Minnesotans.
“It’s unfortunate that the playbook from Donald Trump and the Washington, D.C. Republicans is demonize and divide,” House Speaker Melissa Hortman said in an interview. “I’m really disappointed to see Minnesota Republicans going down that same path.”

Thing is, the MN DFL can have it both ways – at least with our media.

I was listening to NPR’s “Fresh Air”, with Teri Gross – the most overrated interviewer in the history of radio, by the way, but I digress – talking with the authors of a book, The Fixers: The Bottom-feeders, Crooked Lawyers , Gossipmongers, and Porn Stars Who Created the 45th President.’

The interview – and, one presumes, the book – beats heavily on the “fake” media, in this case the National Enquirer (Call for Captain Obvious – you’ve been skipped directly to Lieutenant Colonel). The authors – a couple of MSMers putting out the obligatory book on “Why Trump” – riff hard on the atrocious standards, dubious ethics, and penchant for running with implausible stories and willingness to buy and bury real ones…

…at The National Enquirer.

And boy, it sure sounds like the pro-Trump media works hard to shape the narrative! And a media that runs its preferred narrative in preference to the truth is an awful thing!

But being radio, a one-way medium, I couldn’t ask the authors, or the terminally annoying Gross, about:

• the media’s treatment of Nick Sandman (who got a nice settlement from the first of his many defamation suits last week) and the rest of the Covington kids
• Jussie Smollett, and the rigged “justice” system that allowed him to walk relatively free after lying not only our idiot media (dog licks dog) but the Chicago police
• The Mueller Report, which the media breathlessly anticipated as an indictment of Trump, and in fact wiped out the left’s case.
• The ongoing #MeToo moment that is Joe Biden
• The glowing obits the media ran for Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi – the “Austere Scholar”; one might have hardly known from the first round of MSM obits that he ran a murderous theocracy
• The Jeffrey Epstein story, buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa
• The media’s embrace of the Steele Dossier, long after the DOJ IG report showed it was absolute garbage.

That was one year’s worth of media miscarriage. None of which Teri Gross, or anyone at NPR (or NPR’s pet media cheerleading show, “On The Media”) have touched.

They live in a world all their own.

Hard as this may be to believe, it appears Greta Thunberg = sixteen year old autistic Swedish child and professional climate scold – just may not be the mind behind her presence.

“All it took to exploit the bug was opening a target page and checking the edit history of a post. Facebook mistakenly displayed the account or accounts that made edits to each post, rather than just the edits themselves,” explained Wired… If you’re one of Greta’s 3 million fans, you might be disappointed to hear that she is likely not the author of all of her posts. According to screenshots shared online, posts that are supposed to be written by Greta may actually have been written by her father, Svante Thunberg, and/or Adarsh Prathap, a climate activist and delegate at the UN’s Climate Change organization—who reportedly founded the page in December 2018.

Five’ll get you ten David Hogg’s social media presence is farmed out, too.

I say this apropos what’s happening in Virginia right now.

After a chaotic morning at the state capitol in Richmond, and despite huge turnout from thousands of gun owners, Virginia Democrats approved a number of gun control bills in a key committee hearing Monday.

Ten years ago, I’d have said “this kind of overreach is going to lead them to an electoral reckoning”. Power for “progressives” is like a Blackjack table for a habitual gambler.

And it could very well still be the case in Virginia, where most of the counties have declared themselves “sanctuaries” from Governor McMinstrel’s depredations.

But I’m less sanguine about this than I used to be, at least in places like Virginia. Virginia is so dominated by Blue counties, and Blue America has gotten so very, very tribal, intellectually monolithic, entitled and, let’s be honest, stupid – and that’s not even bringing the money of Big Left into the picture.

This could very well be Minnesota next year.

I got Amazon Prime for free 2-day delivery.  Lately, it seems as if they’ve been missing a lot of deadlines.
It’s usually not a big deal, nothing I order on-line is critical.  But a Christmas gift came late, and now a book is delayed another week.  December 28th to January 14th?  Seems like a long time. I could have the book from Barnes & Noble at Har Mar today, if I had known it would take so long.  The extra five bucks would have been worth it.
When part of your sales pitch is prompt delivery, customers expect prompt delivery.  When the merchandise doesn’t arrive as promised, you first lose credibility, then sales.  This is not a good look for you, Amazon.
Joe Doakes

This is how companies that are “too big to fail”, faill

David Brooks is one of those people I simultaneously enjoy very much, and dislike myself for liking.

He’s a “conservative” in the northeastern sense of the term – and very, very much of the Northeastern media/political establishment. He’s the “conservative” that NPR will talk with.

And being of the establishment, he shares a perspective on the events of the day with the people he rubs elbows with.

Which, I theorize, led to this tweet last week:

There’s something to that, sort of. Trump isn’t just a symptom of this nation’s tribalism – he’s someone who’s profited politically by exploiting the tribalism.

But if you think the “decline in discourse” started with Trump’s election, I’ve got tickets to the Hillary Clinton inaugural ball to sell you.

Remember the Tea Party? The utterly egalitarian community of small-government activists that sprang up a little over ten years ago?

Back in those days before Orange Man was Literally Hitler (but after the Good Republican, John McCain, served as Literally Hitler for a few months), the establishment of which Brooks is a member acted like the Tea Party was Andrew Jackson’s supporters tracking mud into John Quincy Adams’s White House. Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign was only deked out of being “the most identity-obsessed campaign in history” by Hillary, who will only be eclipsed by (NOTE TO 2020 MITCH – FILL IN THE NAME OF THE DEMOCRAT NOMINEE).

Trump may well be “stupid” – but he didn’t “make” anyone that way. He masterfully exploited the by-products of the “stupidity – tribalism, anger, arrogance, partisanship – that the Democrats have been cultivating for a couple of decades, now.

“Protect“ Minnesota is planning to bring people to the senates hearings on “gun safety“ up in Hibbing next week.

But… Only the right people…

It would be so fun to get some film of The “Reverend” Nancy Norred Ben’s and her enforcers ensuring that no “gun rights advocates” – Or, for that matter, people who are disabled and can’t afford T-shirts – get on the bus.

My Fellow Americans,
I’m pleased to announce a major foreign policy accomplishment.  There will be peace in Iraq for the first time this century.  By this time next year, there will be no American troops in Iraq.
Americans went into Iraq because our intelligence agencies assured us Saddam Hussein as stockpiling nuclear material to use against us.  The invasion was a preemptive strike, but it was self-defense, fully justified by the evidence known at the time.
We stayed in Iraq to repair the damage we had done, to rebuilt roads and bridges and schools, to protect innocent Iraqis from opportunistic neighbors and militant troublemakers.  America is not an imperialist nation.  We don’t conquer territory.  We don’t occupy it longer than we must.
Iraq is now a fully functioning liberal democracy, with an elected parliament and civil liberties assured by its government.  They no longer need us to hold their hand.  The’re ready to take their place on the world stage as a proud nation.  
I’m ordering all US military forces in Iraq to submit plans to withdraw from Iraqi territory no later than December 31st.
Some may say our withdrawal is premature, there are still militants, terrorists, neighbors, troublemakers.  But there always will be.  Iraq’s troubles are not our troubles.  The territorial, religious and cultural causes of conflict go back millennia.  An American president can no more solve them than he can order the seas not to rise. The best he can do is get out of the way so the people involved in the conflict – Shia and Sunni, Kurds and Persians, Christians and Muslims – can solve their own problems.
Therefore, I declare to you: the war is over, and we won.  My strongest congratulations go out to every man and woman who served: you made the world a better place.  I’m proud of you all.
Thank you, may God always bless America, and good night.

“Metrolectual“

Neal Peart, drummer for prog-rock and high school sci-fi-nerd-rock mainstays Rush, died of brain cancer last week. He was 67.

He’s iconic for his technical prowess on the skins, of course – and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

And along with those immense technical chops came a taste for really, really big drum kits.

How big?

Big enough to serve as a cultural punchline for people from a certain generation – in this case, one of the kids in Freaks and Geeks, perhaps the only retrospective sit-com my generation is ever going to get. It sure got this right:

Over the years, when looking for drummers in bands, when I hear from people claiming to be influenced by Peart’s style, I can feel the back-ache setting in from a long, kit-heavy load-in and load-out even on the phone.

But for me, the most important thing about Peart – who replaced John Rutsey, who died even longer before his time – had little to do with drum technique.

My favorite drummers have tended to be either the human metronomes (Charlie Watts, Max Weinberg) or power-driving madmen (Keith Moon, Johnny Badanjak, Kenny Aronoff). Technical virtuosi like Peart, and Stuart Copeland of the Police, interested me less for their drum chops than for their place in the chemistry of theit various bands. Copeland took the edge off of some of Sting’s interminal pretension and self-importance…

…and in a genre where bloated pretense was the coin of the realm (Yes, Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, King Krimson), Peart was part of an ensemble that simultaneously wrote some great prog-rock (admittedly a genre I care very little about) and had a rollicking sense of humor on the subject, about the genre, and about themselves:

RIP Neal Peart