More 20th century beauty.

More 20th century beauty. The way in which the trumpet sinuously intertwines with Frank's voice in the first half of the song (I think the trumpeter is Billy May) is the closest thing I have ever heard to a musician making love to a singer through sound.

This recording is also famous as the soundtrack for the final scene of the movie When Harry Met Sally, the great romantic comedy, set in Manhattan with Manhattan music, and one of my favorite movies of all time.

Unfortunately, the original soundtrack was never released and there is only a disappointing rendition of the songs by Harry Connick Jr. Luckily, Frank's version of "It Had To Be You" is available through many links online. I love the way, when he sings "With all your faults, I love you still" (at 2:15), you can hear a little emotional quaver in his voice.

Snowflakes experiencing Trump Anxiety Disorder

In October of 2017, I wrote about an overwrought article by Andrew Sullivan about Donald Trump:

I would love to be a fly on the wall of the offices of psychiatrists in New York, San Francisco, and Washington these days to find out exactly how many Never Trumpers, even a year later, still cannot bring themselves to accept the reality that the Donald defeated Hillary and are reporting grievous psychological distress to their Duty to Warn shrinks as a result of it. "Doc, I feel like I've fallen into an abyss."

All I can say to the author is what I said to David Remnick of The New Yorker last year right after the election: Andrew, it's probably best just to end it all right now.

Now, CBS News reports:

What's been called "Trump Anxiety Disorder" has been on the rise in the months following the election, according to mental-health professionals from across the country who report unusually high levels of politics-related stress in their practices. ... Though not an official diagnosis, the symptoms include feeling a loss of control and helplessness, and fretting about what's happening in the country and spending excessive time on social media, she said.

During Obama's autocratic reign with pen and phone, the Liberals and Progressives were blithely unconcerned. But, now that Trump is using the very tools that Obama honed for him, the world is coming to an end.

Gee, I wonder why Trump's Interior Secretary wants to drain San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

WSJ reports:

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is interested in restoring the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park to its natural state after more than 100 years of providing water to the people of San Francisco and some suburbs. ... While San Francisco officials weren’t immediately available for comment, they have steadfastly opposed the proposal in the past. City residents in 2012 voted down a measure to study the idea, with 77% voting against it.

This is the perfect issue to allow the Trump administration to illustrate the hypocrisy of Left Coast environmentalists: they are willing to inconvenience the rest of the world to save the environment, but they will fight to the death any effort to drain the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and restore the valley to it pristine state. In so doing, these so-called environmentalists defend one of the greatest environmental crimes of all time, about which John Muir himself, the patron saint of the environmental movement, wrote:

In these ravaging money-mad days monopolizing San Francisco capitalists are now doing their best to destroy the Yosemite Park, the most wonderful of all our great mountain national parks. Beginning on the Tuolumne side, they are trying with a lot of sinful ingenuity to get the Government's permission to dam and destroy the Hetch-Hetchy Valley for a reservoir, simply that comparatively private gain may be made out of universal public loss ...

The opportunity to help all those San Francisco Democrats perish of thirst, especially in the name of John Muir and environmentalism, is just too good to pass up.

New favorite adjective of the Left

Feckless.

Stare decisis and Obergefell

Countless times in the coming weeks, we are going to hear our Democratic colleagues appeal to stare decisis, the legal principle that the Supreme Court should not overturn existing precedents, but should instead "stand by its previous decisions." Trump's Supreme Court nominee must be resisted, our liberal and Democratic brothers and sisters will tell us, because s/he may violate the principle of stare decisis by joining other members of the Court in voting to overturn previous decisions like Roe v. Wade, which invented a right to abortion in the Constitution, or Obergefell v. Hodges, which invented a right to gay marriage in the Constitution. These decisions, we will be told, are "established precedent" and "settled law," fixed guideposts in our legal system that simply must not be disturbed.

If our liberal, Democratic friends had been truly devoted to the principle of abiding by established tradition and precedent, perhaps they should never have sought to overturn a societal, cultural, religious, and legal precedent that had existed for millennia across the entire face of the earth, namely, the precedent that marriage is to be defined as an institution between a man and a woman.

If such hoary and universal precedents, which have stood the test of time, persisting unquestioned for thousands of years, can be cavalierly tossed aside in a spasm of abstract moral reasoning by the Left in their endless march forward into the Brave New World, then, surely there is nothing sacred about a two-year old opinion like Obergefell and it can be overturned, too.

As Democrats become more extreme, Trump's approval ratings tick up

I'm curious:

Democrats do not want illegally immigrating children separated from their illegally immigrating parents at the border. The Flores settlement requires that illegally immigrating children be released into the United States after 20 days. Does this mean that Democrats want the illegally immigrating parents to be released along with them? If so, doesn't this effectively make the border open for any illegally immigrating adult who crosses the border with a child? Are open borders what Democrats want?

Maxine Waters has encouraged people to hound and harass any member of the Trump administration that they find in a public place. Does Ms. Waters believe that opponents of the Republican administration ought to enter baseball fields with guns and shoot Congressmen playing in charity softball games?

Of course, neither the position that America should have open borders nor the position that Congressmen should be shot would be popular with a majority of the American voting public. But, one wonders exactly where Democratic sentiment falls short of these positions.

As Democrats adopt more and more extreme positions, Trump's approval ratings simply tick up.

Separating children from law-breaking illegal aliens

Below is a copy of a letter I sent to all my senators and congressman. I encourage everyone to express their thoughts on this matter.

Dear Representative,

I agree with President Trump that adult immigrants illegally entering the United States with children should be incarcerated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that the children traveling with these law-breaking adults should be separated from them, retained in HHS custody for the 20 days mandated by the Flores decree, and then entrusted by the HHS to the care of a sponsor. Otherwise, every adult immigrant who wants to enter the United States illegally has an incentive to cross the border with a child so that they both can be released together into the United States after the 20-day Flores holding period.

Furthermore, I think that comparisons between President Trump and Nazis, such as are being made by various Democratic politicians, are completely inappropriate. The separation of a child from a parent who is a law-breaking illegal immigrant is no different from the separation of a child from any other parent breaking the law in any other way, for example, by robbing a bank, so that, in my humble opinion, President Trump, the Justice Department, and the HHS are separating children from law-breakers in precisely the manner they should. Comparisons of President Trump to Hitler, on the other hand, strike me as hateful attempts by Democratic politicians to arouse hysteria among American citizens for crass political purposes. These hateful comparisons are ginning up a level of stasis, faction, and incivility in the American political environment that may never have been seen before in the history of the United States. As your constituent, I ask that you please refrain from making these false comparisons and instead support the President in his efforts to staunch the flood of illegal immigrants into our country.