The image is one thing and the human being is another ... it’s very hard to live up to an image.
— Elvis Aaron Presley
Reading Time: 5 minutes 40 seconds
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Today is Monday, January 8th, 2024. It is Earth’s Rotation Day, National Bubble Bath Day, National Argyle Day, and National Winter Skin Relief Day.
On This Day
In 1790, George Washington delivered his nation’s first State of the Union Address.
In 1815, Major General Andrew Jackson led a motley force — including U.S. infantrymen and marines, militiamen from Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana (including “Major D’Aquin’s Battalion of Free Men of Color”), Choctaw Indians, and gunners from pirate Jean Lafitte’s crews — against British troops at the Battle of New Orleans. The Americans won an overwhelming victory, but the battle occurred after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war between the U.S. and Great Britain.
In 1877, Crazy Horse and his warriors fought their last battle against the U.S. Cavalry at Wolf Mountain in Montana Territory.
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his “Fourteen Points” for the aftermath of World War I. (French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau is said to have responded, “Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only ten!”)
In 1926, Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thuỵ was crowned king of Vietnam. He would be the country’s last monarch.
In 1935, Elvis Aaron Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.”
In 1982, AT&T agreed to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act.
In 2011, U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot, along with 18 others, in Tucson. Giffords survived, but six others died, including John Roll, a federal judge.
Today’s Birthdays
Former broadcaster Charles Osgood is 91. Singer Shirley Bassey is 87. Singer Cristy Lane, born Eleanor Johnston, is 84. Singer-songwriter, producer, and convicted sex offender R. Kelly is 57. Actress Gaby Hoffmann is 42.
The Links
Reflections on the Bret Weinstein Interview (Jeffrey A. Tucker)
“The Covid response was a fiasco for the ages, and it was never about public health, even if that was the rhetorical cover. It was about profits and power, a terrible truth that the public is going to be dealing with for many years to come, especially for what it says about the depth of corruption of the political system under which we live.”
No, AI Machines Can’t Think (Andy Kessler)
“There are so many flaws in a simple Turing test. You think AI hallucinates or makes stuff up? Many real-life thinking machines, (you know, the ones with skin) also sound unreal: Men can get pregnant, Bored Ape NFTs are valuable, man buns, peaceful protests.”
Twenty-Seven States File to Oppose Colorado’s Disqualification of Trump under the 14th Amendment (Jonathan Turley)
“Advocates are pushing this dangerous theory at a time of deepening divisions in our country. As I have previously said, the four Colorado justices are recklessly throwing matches at a powder keg. That is why I am hopeful that at least one of the liberal justices will follow the lead of the three democratically appointed Colorado justices, who dissent from this anti-democratic decision.”
From Insurrection to Satire: Biden’s Valley Forge Speech Fails to Cement the Trump-Dictator Narrative (American Greatness)
“But no one believes this. Why? Because the more footage we see from the events of that day, the clearer it becomes that what happened on January 6, 2021, was not an insurrection. Moreover, Donald Trump, far from egging on his supporters to violence, went out of his way to urge them to protest peacefully. ‘I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,’ he Tweeted that afternoon. ‘No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!’”
Biden approval rating on handling immigration reaches all-time low: Poll (The Hill)
“Overall, 68 percent in the new poll disapprove of how Biden is handling the border.”
The 2023 U.S. economy, in a dozen charts (CNBC)
“All three major U.S. indexes ended the year with considerable growth, with tech stocks leading the way. It was some of the best growth for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 in recent years.”
A year after opening, $35 million Millersburg intermodal center hasn’t shipped anything (Statesman Journal)
“It had taken more than three years and cost about $35 million of taxpayer money to transform the former International Paper mill site along the west side of Interstate 5 to take containers off trucks and put them on rail cars destined for ships in ports such as Seattle and Tacoma.”
We should fight for a color-blind society — not one separated by race (Andre Archie)
“Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ and ‘I Have a Dream’ speech are powerful indictments of segregation precisely because they appeal to the same Founding American documents and Western philosophical texts once used, wrongly, to promote racism.”
Claudine Gay’s tyranny of DEI (spiked)
“At Harvard, Gay was its totem. She became president two days after the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down racial preferences in higher education, euphemistically referred to as ‘affirmative action’. Harvard was a key focus of the case. Its policies were found to have discriminated against Asians to free up places for blacks and Hispanics. The policy had been exposed as an immoral failure. Not only were students — including non-white students — being discriminated against, but the most well-to-do black Americans — many of them the children of wealthy black immigrants — had long been affirmative action’s primary beneficiaries.”
New Report Highlights Green Failure in Europe and Warns America (Watts Up With That?)
“The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.”
Green Inefficiency: Up To One Third Of Power Needed To Charge Up E-Car Battery Gets Lost! (NoTricksZone)
“As a comparison, to get idea how bad the problem is, imagine spilling one third of the gasoline or diesel while filling your internal combustion engine vehicle. That’s expensive and a real waste.”
Hottest 12 Months for 125,000 Years Claim Lacks Any Scientific Evidence (The Daily Sceptic)
“One can only imagine the hysterical and feverish weather speculations of imaginative modern climate journalists if they were plying their trade back in Victorian times. Of one thing you can be certain — human sin would invariably be blamed for upsetting Mother Nature.”
UAE to build airlock for lunar Gateway (SpaceNews)
“The agreement is the latest milestone for the UAE’s growing space program. That has included the successful Hope mission that entered orbit around Mars in February 2021 and the long-duration ISS mission by UAE astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi on the Crew-6 mission last year.”
Why we have to make the Jewish Ghetto comparison (Mondoweiss)
“With this self-assigned supra-human identity, Israel’s expansionism and its slaughter of innocent Palestinians are buttressed by a sense of God-given limitless power. The death of more than 21,000 Palestinians does not sate Israel’s vindictive appetite for revenge in response to October 7. For Israel, UN resolutions belong to ‘mere’ world affairs; and so it spurns these as paltry, couching its claims in the language of divine authority. With this supercilious rhetorical posture, it scoffs at the moral judgment and criticism leveled at it by others. It repudiates international law with brazen insouciance because it knows that, with U.S. backing, it can transgress reason and law with infinite impunity. Once pitied as the collective victim of genocide, Israel is now the perpetrator, the state that, paradoxically, wields victimhood as its quintessential raison d’être.”
That Famous Quote About Wyoming Teddy Roosevelt Never Said (Cowboy State Daily)
“You want to get the facts straight. The more it’s been mentioned, the more it gets repeated. There’s just no proof of President Roosevelt, or even private citizen Theodore Roosevelt, being here.”
Your Turn
1. Did poverty win the “War on Poverty”?
2. Do you know someone who’s still all-in on Covidiocy — i.e., masking, injections, Fauci worship, etc.?
3. If “Bidenomics” is such a failure, why did the “three major U.S. indexes” end 2023 “with considerable growth”?
4. How does your skin fare in winter?
5. John Lennon said that Elvis “really died the day he joined the army,” and “the rest was a living death.” Was he right?
1. The "war on Poverty" increased poverty because it encouraged the breakdown of family.
2. Unfortunately, I do know people who have remained terrorized by the COVID scare tactics. No amount of rational discussion gets through to them.
3. I believe the three major indexes are inflated, buoyed by Tech-Government interactions.
4. I have humidifiers running all winter and have to use an abundance of skin cream in the winter.
5. No clue.
1. Did poverty win the “War on Poverty”?
Poverty is not a WAR! Poverty is the result of the inability of our education system to work properly and our American Government to properly recognize that everyone HAS to work and everyone has to be responsible for themselves and not just rely on a government handout. Governments are not here to make your life easy and comfortable. The Government's ONLY job is to protect the country from foreign invaders and to carry out the exact words of the Constitution and see to it that we are never in debt as a Country and our Constitutional rights are preserved!
2. Do you know someone who’s still all-in on Covidiocy — i.e., masking, injections, Fauci worship, etc.?
People are lemmings to a certain point and there should be some education and honesty from our media to insure people that they don't need masks, masks don't work at staving off microns of virus that is spread easily right through these porous masks and that our Democrat Government Bureaucrat Officials lied to us in order to lock us down and win an election for Biden!
3. If “Bidenomics” is such a failure, why did the “three major U.S. indexes” end 2023 “with considerable growth”?
Because the indexes are not indicative of what the Biden Economics is doing, they are based on gains that were derived from increased profits for corporations despite Biden's follies and everything else that is wrong with our Country. Our Government is funding all the Green New Deal Wind Farms, EVs and Solar Energy and pumping money into the economy to artificially support Wall Street. Eventually, this may be reversed when the Stock Market starts to see that there is no possible way out of a recession, because the metrics of a vibrant economy have simply been artificially stimulated and have no substance for economic growth. Sooner or later the combination of Inflation and economic slowdown will create a situation that will tank our markets and send us off into a huge recession for the purpose of deflating the current inflation. I can already see it in the housing market!
4. How does your skin fare in winter?
My skin fairs the same in summer and winter, because I take care of it and eat properly.
5. John Lennon said that Elvis “really died the day he joined the army,” and “the rest was a living death.” Was he right?
Certainly, a part of the Elvis image changed when he went into the Army. He came back pretty strong and probably made more money after his enlistment than before his enlistment. Americans back then LIKED the fact that Americans were willing to serve their Country. That changed in the 1960s. The English Music invasion did more to kill Elvis than his stint in the Army! It was partially John Lennon himself that may have helped to kill Elvis, because the Beatles were all treated like Saints!! Elvis went the course of many entertainers that have to keep up a facade in order to be the image that they never really were as a human being in real life. Ultimately, Elvis knew his talents and craziness could not go on forever and he basically killed himself and the Elvis superstar he had become! Happy Birthday, King! Your legend and music lives on!