In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the JoeBama Administration and Presidency.
“This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can’t be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won’t be done. The Founders’ Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.”
“But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.”
This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.
Whenever the possibility presents, throw sand into the machinery…
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Merry Christmas and a blessed day to one and all.
(2019:) Baby, It’s Cold Outside: Steyn’s Song of the Week :: SteynOnline:
“… As Richard Adler, Frank’s protégé, once told me, Lynn Loesser was a domineering woman. She was known around town, somewhat inevitably, as “the evil of the two Loessers”, a gag that’s stuck to her beyond the grave. You wonder sometimes whether her reputation hasn’t simply adjusted itself to a joke too good to pass up. Certainly, on her demonstration records with her husband, she’s very charming – and never more so than on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.
Through the mid-Forties, Loesser held on to the number and he and Lynn performed it as their party piece at celebrity get-togethers in New York and Hollywood. Lynn Loesser loved the song, loved singing it, and loved the fact that it was theirs alone.
But business is business. And in 1948 Frank Loesser sold the song to MGM for Neptune’s Daughter. “I felt as betrayed as if I’d caught him in bed with another woman,” huffed Mrs Loesser. “I kept saying ‘Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban?'”
Her husband figured it this way: “If I don’t let go of ‘Baby’ I’ll begin to think I can never write another song as good as I think this one is.”
It’s the highlight of the picture – Ricardo Montalban putting the moves on Esther Williams. A couple of years back, when I protested that I had nothing new to add to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, some listeners responded, “Hey, switch things around: Make Jessica the predator, and you the one trying to resist.” But that switcheroo’s as old as the song: in the movie, after Ricardo hits on Esther, it’s immediately followed by a bit of role reversal from the comedy support, with a man-eating Betty Garrett pursuing Red Skelton. It brought Loesser his fourth Oscar nomination, and this time he won – for a song that predates the movie by four years and was only included for purposes of commercial exploitation. When the film came out, Loesser found himself with a new pop hit. Two versions – one by Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark, the other by Margaret Whiting and Johnny Mercer – both got to Number Four. Frank Loesser lost a party piece and gained a standard: At the Academy Awards, it was sung by Mae West and Rock Hudson. A few years later, Ray Charles and Betty Carter nibbled the lower end of the pop chart. The only person who wasn’t happy was Lynn Loesser: “her” song was now the world’s.
Meanwhile, what happened to the brand new song that was supposed to be introduced in Neptune’s Daughter? You remember – “Slow Boat To China”. Well, you can still hear it in the film, but only instrumentally – during a swimsuit fashion show. Esther Williams apparently recorded a vocal, but the studio nixed it on the grounds that the song appeared to be encouraging an “immoral liaison”. It was left to Kay Kyser’s big hit record to establish “Slow Boat” with the public.
Speaking of immorality, MGM’s censors cut the wrong song. A few decades back, a young middle-class Egyptian spending some time in the US had the misfortune to be invited to a dance one weekend and was horrified at what he witnessed:
Where was this den of debauchery? Studio 54 in the 1970s? Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love? No, the throbbing pulsating sewer of sin was Greeley, Colorado, in 1949. As it happens, Greeley, Colorado, in 1949 was a dry town. The dance was a church social. And the feverish music was “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” as introduced by Esther Williams in “Neptune’s Daughter.” Revolted by the experience, Sayyid Qutb decided that America (and modernity in general) was an abomination, returned to Egypt, became the leading intellectual muscle in the Muslim Brotherhood, and set off a chain that led from Qutb to Zawahiri to bin Laden to the Hindu Kush to the Balkans to 9/11 to the brief Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt to the Islamic State marching across Syria and Iraq. Indeed, Qutb’s view of the West is the merest extension of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — America as the ultimate seducer, the Great Satan.
And so this last week’s controversy represents a grand convergence of Islamic imperialism and Generation Snowflake, united by their fear of a harmless playful charming trifle.
Should I make like the snowflakes and sign on with Sayyid Qutb? Well, I’m a reasonable fellow, and I’d be willing to meet the Muslim Brotherhood chaps halfway on a lot of the peripheral stuff like beheadings, stonings, clitoridectomies and whatnot. But you’ll have to pry “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” from my cold dead hands and my dancing naked legs.
A world without “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” would be very cold indeed.” …….
More: Today: Christmas Day with Mark and Friends :: SteynOnline
Jimmy Buffett with Nadirah Shakoor: Baby, It’s Cold Outside – YouTube
Rest in the Vine: “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Mark Steyn
Mark Steyn is a treasure.
Sigh…I’m in the California desert. It’s Christmas. But… Baby, it ain’t that cold outside!
Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?
https://buchanan.org/blog/putin-preeminent-statesman-times-126734
Kinda reminds you somebody on this side of the Big Pond, huh?
Yes sir! Pat approved PDJT long ago, and has been one of his staunchest supporters.
How could he NOT?
Crazy, ain’t it…Makes one want to scream and cry at the same time..
Back in the 80s my daughter did a month long European and Asia Missionary tour during one of her college summers. It was not until years later that she told me they were also in Russia passing out Bibles. THat was at a time when they all could have been jailed or worse. And yes she was right I would probably not have let her go if I had known.
Now passing out Bibles probably isn’t a crime anymore.
George, Teddy, Thomas and Abe say Merry CHRISTmas!!!
Although it was a chilly 20 without the wind factor & I had my cap really pulled down tight, I swear I heard one of them say “FJB”
To prove I was actually at the monument-You can see the amphitheatre
(Believe or not this was from my car window, about 3 miles from the entrance just in case the gates were locked)
Sundance talked about Christmas Present —This was my being in the CHRISTmas present, reminding myself that America once did have some great patriotic leaders who truly cared about America and Americans.
Great photos!
Thank You—
“I don’t like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me!” 😉
Nice pictures!
Hmmm maybe he is the one that said —- LOL..
Seriously though, it was actually refreshing being up there..It is one of my places for solace & meditation. Just something about the walk to the amphitheater with all the flags, and seeing leaders who I feel cared about America.
I love Christmas time. Here in the LA area is a radio station, KUSC, which plays Christmas music all day long for a couple of days every year. I especially love the chorus groups as they belt out all the old traditional Christmas songs. Makes me so happy!
Remember my 20 years of LA–As I called it 20 years of LA survival.
All over the city there was a different atmosphere it seemed….An shining caring atmosphere that I would always wish could stay longer or all year round—Volunteers at the Shelters for holiday dinners notice it too.
Christmas Day pro-Pal protests in NYC.
Only sign for location I can see is W.50th.
Hope they got close to a pro-Pal nut I know there>>>> who also LOVES Christmas. Could wake her up, at least a little bit, maybe enough to *start* the wheels turning.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/nypd-requests-level-3-mobilization-large-pro-hamas/
These guys kill me. Wish they did the whole song!
Rasmussen Reports
@Rasmussen_Poll
“Under our system of separated powers, the Judicial Branch cannot sit in judgment over a President’s official acts. That doctrine is not controversial. It was treated as self-evident and foundational from the dawn of the Republic …
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Cont reading thread…
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1739350639723819254.html
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny found in remote prison colony weeks after last contact
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been located in a prison colony north of the Arctic circle, his associates confirmed Monday, nearly three weeks after losing contact with him.
Navalny, the leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is current serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism
Navalny was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in the Siberian city of Tomsk in August 2020 and later evacuated to Berlin for medical care. After spending more than one week in a coma and recovering from the assassination attempt, Navalny returned to Moscow on Jan. 17, 2021, and was arrested at passport control for violating the terms of his parole.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-found-in-remote-prison-colony-weeks-after-last-contact/ar-AA1m0NQd