Selasa, 27 Desember 2011

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Bill Whittle on Goat Rodeos and Three Years of Barack Obama

Posted: 26 Dec 2011 08:59 PM PST

I admit, I love a good political rant. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of them and I’ve found that those who do it best — Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, and Bill Whittle sit at the top of that short list — combine passion with reason and humor.  Most folks who step to the microphone, amateurs and professionals alike, bring truckloads of passion but all too often they forget the reason and the humor.

This edition of Bill Whittle’s Afterburner, his last of the year, is one of the very best rant pieces you will year (via the superlative Nice Deb). It is smart, passionate, and drops a few little bits of humor to keep it from devolving into a full-fledged spittle-flecked tirade (the use of “goat rodeo” to describe the Obama administration was inspired and made me laugh out loud).

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My Goodness, Harry Reid’s Unicorns Are Truly Magical!

Posted: 26 Dec 2011 08:26 PM PST

I apologize for the return of Harry Reid’s glowering mug on the front page, but someone delivered a smackdown of Reid’s egregious “unicorn” statement so thorough that it’s worth staring at Reid to get it. You may remember a couple of weeks ago when Senator Reid, who by the way is the third most powerful Democrat in the country, said that millionaires who create jobs are as rare as unicorns. I lit into Reid in this post, but Paul Roderick Gregory took up a handful of facts directly from the government itself, and beat Reid’s “argument” into a thin paste. Here is the beginning of what Gregory found right out in the open.

There are 236,883 tax filers with incomes of a million dollars or more. By Harry Reid's count, only one percent, or 2,361 of them, are business owners, and a tiny fraction of them create jobs. I do not know what Harry means when he says "a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction." If we let 5 percent represent Harry's "tiny fraction," we are left with 118 businesses owners who earn a million or more and create jobs. Yes, they are only slightly less rare than unicorns, if Harry is to be believed.

This leaves 236,765 million-dollar-plus tax payers, most of whom are "hedge fund managers and wealthy lawyers" who "don't create jobs and don't need tax breaks."

My Google search for Harry Reid's quarter million hedge fund managers and wealthy lawyers came up empty handed. I could identify at most sixteen thousand "wealthy lawyers and hedge fund managers," not Harry Reid's quarter million.

Like I said, that was only the beginning. Gregory then looked at how much those millionaire business owners declared and deduced that, for Reid to be correct, all but 118 of the 2,361 would have to run a hundred-million dollar a year business without a single employee.

Well, unicorns are said to be magical creatures, so maybe they’re capable of running businesses that large all by themselves. Perhaps the Republican Party can make a point of asking Senator Reid and his fellow Democrats whether they believe these millionaires are truly legendary creatures or not.

(via Maggie’s Notebook)

The Delivery Presents – A Poem After Christmas

Posted: 26 Dec 2011 01:10 PM PST

Twas the Day after Christmas and all on the ‘net,
Episode 126 is waiting for your downloading “get”.
The first half was raucous, with GOP scolding.
About taxes and spending and John Boehner folding.

We now sorely need a conservative revival.
Without one, we may doubt our nation’s survival.
Half the second was brighter, and full of excitement.
As your host told tales of past Christmas delightment.

I talked of meals and family tradition,
The things that make for a good Holiday Edition.
So grab the Delivery and enjoy the whole thing.
Have a great New Year’s Day, and let our good tidings ring!

The Delivery - Episode 126

One podcasting postscript that you might enjoy.
Here’s my hit on The Snark Factor with Fingers Malloy.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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Senin, 26 Desember 2011

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Share my Christmas Tradition: Handel’s Messiah on Christmas Night

Posted: 25 Dec 2011 02:38 PM PST

One of my personal Christmas traditions (and I have a few) involves a little quiet, a pair of headphones, and a superlative recording of Messiah by Georg Frederich Handel. I do not believe a greater work of exultation and worship has ever been written and Christmas would simply not be the same without it.

I can’t give you the whole work here, though if you’re interested in the version I like the most, it is this one, directed by Andrew Davis and performed by the Toronto Symphony and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Yes, I know Messiah should be performed by a small chamber group with period instruments (Hey, look! Sir Neville Mariner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with soprano Elly Ameling!), but I like my Messiah huge, with a big orchestra and choir so the grand pieces are truly grand. Davis’ version is perfect, and also includes Kathleen Battle as the Soprano soloist. If that’s the wrong way to hear this piece, I don’t want to know from right.

Okay, enough talk. Let’s hear some music. I decided to pull out a few of my favorite parts of Messiah for your listening pleasure this evening. What follows are “And the Glory of the Lord”, “His Yoke is Easy”, “Hallelujah”, and the finale “Worthy is the Lamb / Amen”. The first two are by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choir directed by the incomparable Robert Shaw and the latter come from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Plug in your headphones, close your eyes, turn it up, and enjoy. Merry Christmas!

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A Little Bach to Extend the Christmas Spirit

Posted: 25 Dec 2011 02:04 PM PST

I think this evening I’m going to post a couple videos, just to keep the Christmas spirit around for a few extra hours. There’s no need to rush into the end of the year, is there?

NRO’s Michael Potemra noted the return of several renaissance-era Christmas Masses to churches in New York City, and wrote a but about why such transcendent music is still necessary today.

But whether a Midnight Mass features the compositions of Victoria, Haydn, or Richard Shephard, the music is a potent symbol of the underlying feast itself. Just as music touches the eternal by communicating thoughts too deep for human speech, this annual celebration proclaims the faith of Christian believers that a Word deeper than our words broke in upon human reality. Bill Buckley said about J. S. Bach that his music "disturbs human complacency because one can't readily understand finiteness in its presence," and that observation is true in an eminent way of Bach, mankind's greatest composer. (In the same column, WFB quoted Carl Sagan quoting the biologist Lewis Thomas, when asked what message we should send aboard a spaceship to extraterrestrials, should any such be encountered: "I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach . . . but that would be boasting.") Still, while Bach's achievement is an outlier, even the works of much humbler musical figures point toward transcendence, toward a different order that coexists with — and irrupts into — the one we take for granted; an order beyond words.

I will add nothing to this save this performance of the opening piece of Bach’s Magnificat directed by Nicholas Harnoncourt. Though the work is not strictly a Christmas piece nowadays, he originally wrote it for Vespers and it borrows its text from the canticle of Mary, in Latin, as told in the book of Luke. So it fits nicely.

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Sabtu, 24 Desember 2011

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The 50 Dollar Instant Christmas Soundtrack

Posted: 23 Dec 2011 11:14 PM PST

I love Christmas music. I figure I have a couple dozen Christmas albums in my iTunes collection that I either ripped from CDs that I bought over the years or downloaded from iTunes or Amazon and I’m always on the lookout for good stuff to add to the collection. At this time of year, they all live happily on my iPod so I can play them at work or bring them to any Christmas party to which I’m invited.

I’m also aware there is a lot of bad Christmas music out there and it’s not always easy to put together a ready collection of, say, ten albums that you can just drop into a playlist and set to shuffle. So I figured I’d give you my own list of ten albums you can play over and over for the next couple days without wanting to drop kick an elf through your window.

As a bonus, these albums are all downloadable from Amazon and cost $5 or less, so even if you get them all, you won’t crush what’s left of your Christmas budget.

  1. Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas: Ella’s smooth, swing is perfect for Christmas and the lead track, “Jingle Bells” will set you up perfectly for the rest of the album. Great variety of sacred and secular Christmas music. I think my favorite is her version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”.
  2. Bing Crosby – White Christmas: Bing Crosby and Christmas? Come on. “White Christmas” alone is worth the price of the album, but “Christmas in Killarny” and “Silent Night” are fantastic as well. There isn’t a bad song on this album.
  3. Christmas With The Rat Pack: Again I say: Come on. Frank, Dino, and Sammy? Your highlights are Frank singing “Mistletoe and Holly”, Dean doing a medley of “Peace on Earth” and “Silent Night”, and Sammy bouncing through a rendition of “Jingle Bells”. Christmas music does not get more cool than it is in this album.
  4. Vince Guaraldi Trio – A Charlie Brown Christmas: If you have the original release of this album, pick up this expanded edition. Not only do you get the impeccably-performed jazz version of “O Christmas Tree” to lead off the album, but also a couple alternate takes that are worth hearing. And, hey, what’s wrong with another version of that great ice-skating theme?
  5. Frank Sinatra – A Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra: Okay. Okay. One more jazz-based album. How can you do Christmas without a collection from the Chairman of the Board? Seriously, Christmas and Jazz just belong together. I don’t know if Sinatra especially liked Christmas music, but the way he handles each piece with care and respect while infusing each with his own style suggests that he did.
  6. Mannheim Steamroller – Christmas: As modern Christmas albums go, this is the Granddaddy. It’s probably most famous because Rush Limbaugh plays the heck out of it every year during his show, but you should grab it even if you’re not a Limbaugh fan. Chip Davis knows how to orchestrate for electronic instruments in a way that makes you forget after a song or two that you’re even listening to a bank of synthesizers. The whole album has a very Renaissance feel to it, even when the pieces pick up the tempo and swing a little bit. It’ll fit in nicely as background gift-opening music.
  7. Mannheim Steamroller – A Fresh Aire Christmas: Yes, more Chip Davis. This album has an even stronger Renaissance feel than his first album and the pieces he selected are far less “pop” and more traditional. His versions of “In Dulco Jubilo” and “Still, Still, Still” are the jewels of this album.
  8. Chanticleer – A Chanticleer Christmas: There may be no better small choral ensemble performing today than Chanticleer, an all-male group with a couple of the best counter-tenors (the voices you will hear singing the high Soprano parts) I’ve ever heard. This album is a mix of classical Christmas pieces and a couple more contemporary works. I recommend you listen to this one on Christmas night with the lights turned down low, with a glass of wine and a heart full of contentment.
  9. The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge – O Come All Ye Faithful – Favourite Christmas Carols: King’s College, Cambridge boasts one of the finest choral programs in the world and this album shows off the considerable skill of its showcase choir. The songs are all arranged and performed in the Anglican church style, plainly and quite elegantly. This would make a great Christmas morning album, especially if you play it before you head out to a church service.
  10. Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song: If your heart is hurting this Christmas season, Nat King Cole’s singing will fix it. This may be my favorite of all the Christmas albums I own. Not only will you get his incomparable rendition of “The Christmas Song” but you’ll also get the most beautiful Christmas song I’ve ever heard, “A Cradle in Bethlehem”. His rendition of “O Tannenbaum” is alto top-notch and he sings at least one of the verses in German. You won’t hear that often.

Because I intended for this to be a list of albums you could shuffle-play, I did not include a couple of the excellent Trans Siberian Orchestra albums. Most of them are story albums, which means they’re meant to be played in sequence to tell a particular story. As such, some of the songs just won’t make sense when played in between Bing and Chanticleer. However, if you want to grab a couple of them, I highly recommend Christmas Eve And Other Stories ($7.99) and The Lost Christmas Eve ($10.99).

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