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Instapunk Wasn’t Born Yesterday

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  Yes, it became an annual Nightline Ceremony Now that the first battlefield casualties of ‘Trump’s Iran War’ have been recorded (6 as of 3/2/26), Ivan hear the bells tolling on the soundtrack of the Alphabet News networks lamenting the names of dead military personnel they don’t care about in any other respect. Soldier deaths are one more cudgel that can be used to beat the America First crowd with.  We’ve been here before. The article reproduced below is one I wrote for the original Instapunk blog almost exactly 20 years ago. The occasion was a forthcoming — and much promoted — edition of Nightline dedicated to intoning all the names, one by one, of American military personnel killed in Iraq. A not so subtle undermining of ‘Bush’s Iraq War,’ by a TV program that began as a nightly update on the American hostages taken by Iran in November 1979 after Jimmy Carter handed that nation over to the Ayatollah Khomeini. The ironies abound. Nightline was outraged by the plight of the ...
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The Sneaky Cowardice of So-Called Conservatives

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Here’s the story that’s running at the righty news outlet called National Pulse. Here’s what they think we need to know: Sufficient for us to know he’s a “Biden Judge.” What if the lead graphic of their post had looked like this instead? See, they kind of left out the most sinister background of this story, which goes far beyond a medical issue, however grave it is to those involved. National Pulse fails to see that our real concern should be the supine role played by Congressional Republicans in enabling this man to be seated on a federal bench. For once, it is truly important to read the entire Wikipedia entry about this man, which is alarming even in the prose of the far-left leaning site that published it: <<Mustafa Taher Kasubhai  (born 1970) is an American lawyer who has served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon since 2024. He previously served as a United States magistrate judge...
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The False Gold of the Meidas Touch

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I first heard of Meidas Touch shortly after I joined ‘X’ in the wake of Musk’s takeover of the poisonous lefty site called Twitter. The lefties continue to be a dominating presence there, and even when freeloader Citizen Free Press links a decent post there, the first one or two replies at least are screeds by the kind of crayon-armed haters who want all Republicans assassinated. CFP loves to indicate that outrageous lefty posts are ‘buried’ or ‘destroyed’ by MAGA derision, but this is usually an overstatement. Why I was occasionally moved to reply to the worst of them. The Meidas Touch editor Filipkowski was one of the first to tempt me to. After a quick review of the MT site, I told him it was the most egregious pile of vile libel made up completely out of whole cloth I had ever seen. (A permanent sidebar there declared that there are over 20,000 pending lawsuits against Trump for a variety of sex crimes.) I told him he was a disgusting cancer on the corpse of journalism that was sti...
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A Near-Perfect Microcosm of “The Swamp”

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Ontogeny recapitulates philogeny. There’s an intensely contemporary reason for taking a close look at Scientology. The Swamp is so huge it seems like the Borg. But what are the stripped down essentials of the Borg? Here’s a look at a laboratory example, a microcosm if you will. In the interests of full disclosure, I did encounter Scientology back in the weird year of 1968. I was in Boston, got scooped in to a “Dianetics” exercise, and got speedily thrown out for having too much “charge” to participate. The one in charge was blond, bland to the point of creepy, and I almost (but not quite) succeeded in making him lose his temper. In further interests of disclosure, I spent years on Facebook, debating Trump-haters. They did lose their tempers. But they also exhibited the exact same repetition of Talking Points the lefties (and Scientologists) employ. Exact. Same. Words. How I made the cult connection. Overview Like it says. Troublemaker. Destroy Utterly  Horror Show Squared More ... ...
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The World of One Hit Wonders & Guilty Pleasures

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  Welcome to the world of One Hit Wonders. A club I belong to because I only ever had one book published by the American book publishing industry. Written about that elsewhere, so I won’t labor the point here. It’s the easiest way to dispense with my writing and my life. I get that.  A lot of people, including MeTwo, think I’m a failure. I probably am. On the other hand, I think it’s time to look at other One Hit Wonders (OHW), who have become to my own mind Guilty Pleasures. I’d be happy to be in their company. As a note to remember, I looked for Lowry’s book at the Internet Archive site. Not there. I’m there three times at least. Maybe I didn’t die right away… First one. To my wife, who according to MeTwo and her own confirmation, no longer likes me, always returns to this OHW from the Golden Age of  MTV: Me? She may not like me, but I still like her. Told her so yesterday. The only woman I can still talk to. She spars, she punches (verbally), and I have never called he...
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Soul Music for 2024

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A soul needs exercise, especially when confronting turbulent times in life. It needs to stretch wide, dig deep, unify the mind by way of the many senses we are born with. Music is the perfect soul exercise. Here’s a collection, without explanation, in no particular order, which means you’re free to pick your own. Hang on to this link. Come back at intervals. Don’t be afraid to stretch or dig. Being afraid is the very worst state of being. Time to overcome it and breathe again. Maria Callas, Un Bel Di: Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue: Tom Waits, Hold On: Chopin, Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2: Duke Ellington, Mood Indigo: Ry Cooder, Crossroads: Rachmaninov, Sym 2, Adagio: Copland, Appalachian Spring: Nina Simone, Sinnerman:[Good lifelong Democrat. All the klansmen… Democrats. Still love her] Celtic Woman, Coast of Galicia: Mozart, Clarinet Concerto in A Major: Gorecki, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs: Rolling Stones, Heaven: Johnny Cash, Redemption Day: Maria Callas, La Bohème: Miles Davis/John Coltrane,...
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Party Time

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  No, I’m not going 100 percent Youtube on you. Truth is, the post I did the other day about the Progs  getting nutso when elections don’t go their way was an accident. I was really searching for the songs I’ll be posting here, and those political clips kept showing up in the sidebar. So I grabbed a few of them just to remind you that they really are out of their minds out there.  Right now, of course, a lot of MAGA people are also out of their minds, with very little power or insight about what’s going on behind the media tantrums. That’s why i started collecting this little musical refuge. When is it the right time to party? By which I don’t mean drug yourself into a coma but find a sound and a best that will make you dance or at least reach a philosophical state of equilibrium. It’s always time for that. Because not all party songs are happy things. Some of them are quiet reflective moods when the dancing and singing are winding down. Not a bad place to be when you thi...
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Seventh Heaven for Hamilton

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  Lewis Hamilton wins Seventh World Championship at Formula 1 Grand Prix in Turkey: A stunning drive from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in the Turkish Grand Prix gave him his 10th victory of the season – and, more crucially, saw him claim the seventh drivers’ title of his career, to equal the record of Michael Schumacher, as Racing Point’s Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel completed the podium after a thrilling race in Istanbul. Hamilton had started the race in sixth, risen to third midway through the first lap and then dropped back to sixth by the end of Lap 1 after an error at Turn 9. But a decision to change his intermediate tyres just once saw Hamilton drive a masterful race to claim victory by over 25 seconds from Perez. The win alone was enough to claim championship #7, but it was even more assured after a disastrous race for Valtteri Bottas - the only man who could have stopped Hamilton winning the title today - who spun six times en route to a P14 finish.
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Sunday Video News — 5/5/2019

Hot Videos of the Week New York Post: Why Kentucky Derby Disqualified Maximum Security in Stunner CNN:   Plane Skids off Runway into River News Busters: Medley—Blaming Trump for Terror Attack and Paving the Way for Pete and Joe           PLUS:   ABC Can Barely Speak of 50 Year Low in Unemployment Desmoines Register: Elizabeth Warren Campaign Even Disrupted by Animal Rights Protest C-Span:   Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham Reacts to Barr Hearings ABC News: House Judiciary Chair Gives Ultimatum to A.G. Barr, Could Charge with Contempt Breitbart: MSNBC Panel—‘We Can Handcuff People Who Ignore Subpoenas Media Research Center: Tutorial on Media Bias    [ bkgd ] CNN/Van Jones:  Chelsea Handler—Trump Was a Personal Trigger for Me Power Line: This Week in Pictures—Close Down the Barr Edition VIDEO ARCHIVE BONUS: New York Daily News: Inside Old Abandoned City Hall Station _______________ Ed. Not...
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