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Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world Jonathan S. Tobin

https://nypost.com/2020/09/17/canceling-beethoven-is-the-latest-woke-madness-for-the-classical-music-world/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Think some things are so beloved and essential to Western civilization they can’t be canceled? Think again.

If there’s anything we should have learned from months of “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter street protests, statue toppling and online mobs seeking to silence anyone who dissents against leftist narratives about “racism,” it’s that no one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Beethoven’s work is not only at the core of the standard repertory of classical music; some of his most popular works have also become part of popular culture, their melodies recognizable even to those who’ve never heard an orchestral concert.

For the last 200 years, Beethoven’s compositions have also been symbols of the struggle for freedom against tyranny. The “Ode to Joy” from the conclusion to his Ninth Symphony remains the definitive anthem of universal brotherhood. It is no coincidence that the opening notes of his Fifth Symphony — whose rhythmic pattern duplicates the Morse Code notation for the letter “V” as in “V for Victory” — were used by the BBC for broadcasts to occupied Europe during the Second World War.

But to woke critics, Beethoven’s music has taken on a new, darker meaning. To musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding, stars of the “Switched on Pop” podcast produced in association with the New York Philharmonic, the Fifth Symphony is a stand-in for everything they don’t like about classical music and Western culture. As far as they’re concerned, it’s time to cancel Ludwig.

Why Is Biden So Frightened by a Drug Test? Drug screening is a routine practice among employers, including the federal government. by David Catron

https://spectator.org/biden-drug-test/

The federal government mandates that millions of Americans submit to drug screenings to qualify for certain types of positions. This includes members of the military and other employees of the Department of Defense. Yet 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — a man who wants the voters to elect him Commander in Chief — called President Trump a fool on Monday for suggesting that they both submit to just a such a test before their first debate. Biden has responded equally defensively to requests that he produce a recent cognitive acuity test. This will inevitably cause voters to wonder what he’s hiding.

At least one Times columnist quite literally opined that he would prefer a cognitively impaired President Biden to the hated President Trump. 

The Democrats and the corporate media scoff at Trump’s drug test challenge as if it isn’t to be taken seriously. They dismiss it as if the president is merely trolling Biden. In reality, however, he is asking a serious question to which the voters deserve a serious answer. In the unlikely event that Biden somehow wins in November, he will have access to the nation’s nuclear launch codes. Does anyone reading this believe this is a good idea after witnessing his incoherent maunderings and erratic behavior? The most recent medical report we have on him was released last year, and it omits any serious assessment of his mental or emotional capacity to handle the office he seeks.

The president of the United States wields a level of power equaling the wildest fantasies of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor, including a Praetorian Guard. In addition to commanding the most powerful military force on the planet, he will preside over the largest and most sophisticated state police apparatus in human history. He will have the alarming power to order drone strikes on anyone anywhere on the planet. Yet the media won’t discuss whether Biden’s age has affected his physical and mental fitness to serve. They weren’t always so reticent, as the New York Times clearly demonstrated after the 1984 Reagan–Mondale debate in Louisville, Kentucky:

The President seemed to lose his way in Louisville, got his figures mixed up, and didn’t seem to be mentally alert in dealing with Mr. Mondale’s arguments. This is being attributed by some to his advancing years.… What Louisville did was not to expose his age, which everybody knew, but to expose his mind, which the voters didn’t know. This is what has been covered up in the last four years by his amiable personality, and his superb reading of speeches from invisible mirrors, written and contrived by the best public-relations team ever to enter the White House.

Trump: Getting Things Done More Important than Being ‘Presidential’ Charles Spiering

http://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/15/trump-getting-things-done-more-important/

President Donald Trump defended his abrasive style of leadership at an ABC News town hall on Tuesday, arguing that it is more important to get things done.

“I’m fighting a lot of forces,” Trump said. Sometimes you don’t have time to be totally, as you would say, ‘presidential.’ You have to get things done.   

The president commented during an ABC News town hall on Tuesday night in Philadelphia where one voter asked whether he would act differently to inspire a more unified country if he won a second term.

“I’m fighting a battle. It’s a big battlefield, and I have a lot of forces against me,” Trump replied. “I have the media, which I call the fake news because a lot of it is fake.”

The president argued that the results of his first term spoke for themselves — passing tax cuts, improving care for veterans, rebuilding the military, creating Space Force, and appointing hundreds of federal judges as well as two Supreme Court justices.

“Honestly, we move very fast, and I have to get rid of people fast because they’re not doing their job,” Trump said, defending the number of officials who have resigned or been fired from his administration. 

The president said that he could be more presidential but pointed to the results. 

“The fact is, being presidential is easier than what I have to do, but I get things done,” Trump said.

Falling for the Biggest Hoax in History Alicia Colon

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/_falling_for_the_biggest_hoax_in_history.html

It will probably take months if not years for the truth of the Covid-19 pandemic to emerge, but when it does will any politician take responsibility for the lies and disinformation or the damage this hoax caused this great nation? I don’t think so, but what it did prove was what happens when the Democrats are in charge. They may not be in the White House but it is the House that wields the power over legislation and our money.  Couple this power with the useful idiots in the mainstream media to promote the widespread hysteria, and we then had the total capitulation of a frightened nation that accepted an unprecedented total lockdown of its existence. Shame on us.

If the fourth estate had done its job or had any integrity left, it would have reported the actual figures of the coronavirus’ impact instead of what would generate the most fear. So what is the truth? Why did hospitals and doctors count practically all deaths, even motorcycle accidents and cancer deaths, as Covid-19 deaths? Could it be because of extra government funding for these cases?

The CDC released a very controversial report that the actual death rate due to the Covid-19 alone was miniscule compared to what was reported in the mainstream news. Reuters is listing 194,147 as covid deaths as of September 14, 2020.

In an August article by Leslie Eastman in Legal Insurrection.com, a chart was posted with CDC figures:

“To begin with, it doesn’t mean that the virus killed only about 9700 Americans. The data demonstrates that unless there is another underlying health condition, most people infected have very little chance of dying. This is especially true of young people who fall prey to the pathogen.

Hey Democrats: What’s the Strategy? Christopher Chantrill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/hey_democrats_whats_the_strategy.html

One of the things I like to analyze in political events is evidence of strategy. For instance, when Nancy Pelosi says the California wildfires mean that “Mother Earth is angry,” I think that is just reactive — and primitive, because Mother Earth goddesses go way back.

But when President Trump (or Jared Kushner) comes up with almost one peace deal a week — first Israel-UAE, then Serbia-Kosovo, and now Israel-Bahrain — and lo and behold, as if on cue, Swedish politicians start nominating him for Nobel Peace Prizes — my strategy detector goes crazy. And now the Black Swan guy, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is asking what the betting odds are for an Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal by November 1.

Or whatabout 9/11 observance? Trump sent Vice-President Pence to New York City last week to stand next to Joe Biden, but the president headed for Shanksville, PA to celebrate the All-American “let’s roll” spirit of Flight 93. I wonder why?

That is the point about Trump. Everything he does, you have to ask yourself: “I wonder what he meant by that?” Because Trump is the master strategist. That is to say, he seems to be good at seeing round corners.

Plus, he has courage. Generations of U.S. presidents have mumbled about moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but they didn’t: they were afraid to. Trump did it, and lo and behold, three years later peace is breaking out all over. How did he do it?

Two things: strategy and courage.

To be a competent strategist you have to know yourself and know your enemy. You have to know the lay of the land, how your mind works, and how your enemy’s mind works.

But then you have to have the courage to act upon your knowledge.

I think that our lefty friends fail on all counts.

Leading Versus Lying – It’s hard to take Bob Woodward’s gotcha gambit seriously Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/leading-vs-lying-woodward-coronavirus/?

At his short Thursday news briefing, President Trump laid out the many successes that the United States has enjoyed in its battle against the Chinese virus compared with the record in Europe and other parts of the world.

Trump’s decision to end air travel between China United States at the end of January was roundly derided as overkill and ‘xenophobic’ by the entire Democratic establishment from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on down. But that decision is now widely credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. Under Trump’s direction, the US went into overdrive, producing masks, gowns, test kits, ventilators and other medical materiel in astonishing quantities, not to mention the instant erection of a (largely unneeded) field hospital in New York’s Javits Center and the dispatch of the 1,000-bed hospital ship Comfort to New York Harbor.

You won’t hear Govs. Newsom or Cuomo singing Trump’s praises now, but back in the spring they were both on record expressing their gratitude for the effectiveness and alacrity with which Trump responded to the crisis. (‘Promise made,’ Newsom said in April, ‘promise kept.’ Quoth Cuomo around the same time, ‘he has delivered for New York.’)

The Trump administration’s triumphs in dealing with the coronavirus do not end there. A whole host of effective therapeutics have been developed to battle the microbe while Operation Warp Speed has mobilized a vast array of medical and manufacturing talent in an effort to produce an effective vaccine by January 2021, years before anyone thought possible.

Then there has been the administration’s stunning economic initiatives, from the paycheck protection program to the many incentives deployed to put Americans back to work. As a result, the implosion of the US economy in March — the Dow lost 10,000 points in a few weeks and tens of millions were suddenly out of work. The market crashed from some 29,000 to 18,300 in the blink of an eye. Today? It is back in the neighborhood of 28,000 and unemployment has fallen from an eye-popping 16 percent to a little more than 8 percent with all indications that those trends will continue.

Ten Great Deceptions Designed to Destroy the Republic Judith Acosta

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/ten_great_deceptions_designed_to_destroy_the_republic.htm

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…I was a Madison Avenue copywriter. I was thrilled, until I realized I was a liar for hire.

I was assigned an ad for a diet aid. The account executive sent out the marketing strategy. When I read it, I felt something akin to an inner eye squint, the feeling you get when you suspect you’re being conned. I realized we were being asked to market this rather dubious product to young, anorexic women by capitalizing on their already-fragile sense of self and lying to them about what the product could be expected to do.  

So I wrote the ad that changed my life. It featured a close-up of the product with the headline “FAT CHANCE.” I was the only one who appreciated the irony.

Ah, well.   

I soon realized that in the sport of marketing (sic: lying) I’d never be a team player and that I’d have to find an honest way to make a living.

Since then, the great spin turbines in Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and D.C. have spawned a culture built on an ever-destabilizing pyramid of lies which cannot support the existence of a republic, the essence of which is self-governance.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the political arena. The other night after the live broadcast of the Republican National Convention, a friend called. She said she had been flipping back and forth from the real-time telecast to CNN and MSNBC. She was irate: “You’d never have known they were speaking about the same show. Everything they said was completely disingenuous, if not bald-faced lies.”

In the last ten years or so it has become increasingly evident that you are are either believing what the left (or the diet pill manufacturer) is saying or you are paying attention to reality.

STOP THE COUP – It’s time to unmask the Revolution.

https://americanmind.org/post/stop-the-coup/

Michael Anton’s new article “The Coming Coup?” went viral almost as soon as we posted it a week ago today. This is not simply because figures like Lara Logan, Mollie Hemingway, Newt Gingrich, Dan Bongino, and the editors of the New York Post took note. It spread because concerned citizens began sharing it throughout the nation. We could tell it was especially effective because so many in the mainstream media maintained studious radio silence.

But hyperventilating ruling-class supporters of the Biden/BLM/Antifa coalition did predictably lash out. The epitome of these reactions is an article in New York magazine’s Intelligencer, by political columnist Ed Kilgore, entitled “Trump Backers Make Case for Stealing Election, Before Biden Gets the Chance.”  

The title itself reveals the stubborn simplicity of the Democratic Party’s coup narrative. Their elites have worked themselves and their base into a frothing lather of existential fright. In article after article, liberal intellectuals and activists have been talking for months about how Trump could steal the election or refuse to leave the White House even if he loses. But if the Right dares to point out that Democrats are actually changing the rules of the electoral process and actually speaking publicly about refusing to concede even if they lose, well, this only proves that the Right is going to steal the election and refuse to concede if they lose!  

In reality, of course, Anton and others are simply trying to shine a light on what Democrats are now openly declaring in public.

 Kilgore frames Anton’s essay as part of an effort among conservatives to spread the craaaazy idea that Democrats’ obsessive focus on mail-in voting is part of a panicky effort to throw the election, not a good-faith scheme to protect people from coronavirus. Let’s leave aside the fact that no less an establishment authority than the Atlantic admits the voting booth is as safe as the grocery store. In fact, says Kilgore, echoing the new establishment narrative, so many legitimate Biden votes may come flooding in by mail after the in-person voting is through that the election will turn around all on its own.   

Biden: From No Campaign to Faux Campaign J.T. Young

https://spectator.org/biden-campaign-2020/

Biden has gone from no campaigning to faux campaigning. Over the last two weeks, America has gotten a good look at the Biden campaign’s strategy and tactics for the race’s homestretch. They intend to focus primarily on race, while minimizing direct exposure and maximizing their indirect exposure through advertising.

President Trump’s law-and-order offensive and polling rebound explain why Biden is abandoning his virtual campaign for at least a vestigial one.

On September 4, Rasmussen’s job approval daily tracking poll showed Trump with a 52 percent approval rating. This matched his 2020 high, last hit on February 27, following his Senate impeachment trial acquittal and before coronavirus lockdowns. It is also 4 percentage points better than Obama had on the same date in 2012. With Biden’s poll leads already shrinking, Rasmussen’s results showed Trump could have further upside too.

Biden’s campaign had gone on Spring Break and never returned. In an August 31 piece, the New York Times delicately explained that “the coronavirus shuttered the campaign trail in March” to describe Biden’s public absence. The reality is that as soon as Biden had secured the nomination, he ceased making public appearances to avoid the gaffes that had plagued him at rallies and with the press.

The tightening race has produced increasing Democrat anxiety. As the New York Times again reported, “Some Democrats worry that Mr. Biden has not been public enough in laying out his own views. Concerned allies have been on the phone with Mr. Biden’s team in recent days urging him to get out more.” And by “more,” they meant “some.”

So last week the Biden camp unveiled a different approach from that of the last six months. To counter President Trump’s momentum from his law-and-order attacks, Biden made speeches, attended a listening session, met the press, and unleashed his biggest ad buy.

Trump has a plan for any post-election insurrection Andrea Widburg

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/trump_has_a_plan_for_any_postelection_insurrection.html

Last week, I predicted that if Trump has a clear victory on November 3, any uprisings after the election will be of short duration because Trump will have a clear path to end them.  On Thursday, Trump confirmed that this is what he intends to do.

My post came about because I was thinking about the Democrats’ threat that, if the election result is anything but an overwhelming victory for Biden, they will take to the streets in orgies of violence.  They are also threatening to overthrow the usual processes of the Electoral College by sending Democrat party electors even if the state has broken for Trump on election day.