THE TAOS TATLER.

It will fail like the last time.

Nearly 50 years ago, in April 1973, President Nixon (during an OPEC oil embargo, no less) signed a bill from Congress enacting a renewable one-year trial of permanent daylight saving time. It was much debated, with opponents in and out of Congress arguing it would lead to, among other things, children having to walk to school in the dark, putting them in danger (which turned out to be deadly true). Commuters complained, especially those in northern states, about having to go to work in the dark and construction workers complained of having to work in the dark. By the end of the trial there was little support for permanent DST and it was not renewed.

Now, our sages in Congress have passed another permanent daylight saving bill, only this time it’s not a trial so we’re stuck with it. Your Tatler cannot see how, come winter, all the problems of the first permanent DST will not recur, yet this time the vote was unanimous (not to mention it having huge popular support, even from people who should know better), which if nothing else, serves to show our Congress today is even dimmer than it was half-a-century ago.

A better solution would be eliminate daylight saving time entirely. There’s an old saw of the old Indian being told about daylight saving time and responding: “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”

Holiness, whose side are you on?

From the Catholic News Agency:

After the legislature of the Mexican state of Sinaloa voted to legalize abortion up to 13 weeks (emphasis mine),the Diocese of Culiacán announced that Catholic politicians who voted in favor of the law will not be able to receive the Eucharist or be godparents.

In  a statement, Father Miguel Ángel Soto Gaxiola, director of the Culiacán Commission for Life, Family, Youth and Laity, officially announced that Catholic lawmakers who voted in favor of abortion that the decision to deny them Communion is “the recognition of the objectively unworthy state of a person to receive the Body of Christ.”

[snip]

In the letter addressed to Catholic politicians, Father Soto Gaxiola pointed out that “today we have many people scandalized by the public betrayal of the Church’s teaching on faith and morals by those legislators who call themselves ‘Catholic’.”

From the putative Paper of Record:

ROME — President Biden told reporters on Friday that Pope Francis had called him a “good Catholic” and said he should keep receiving communion, an unexpected development that appeared to put a papal finger on the scale in a debate raging in the United States’ Roman Catholic Church over whether the president and other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should be denied the sacrament.

To reform something you must destroy it.

Comes word the President’s puppeteers have decided he should decide to again open wide our borders with Mexico. The contrived rationale is somewhat complex (if you wish to slog through it, click here), but it hardly matters; the sole purpose is bringing in thousands or millions of illegals so to bring our already overloaded immigration system to a crashing halt.

The scheme of the Democrats bringing down governmental institutions by overloading them has a long history. It was the brainchild of a husband-wife team of social activists at Columbia University, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, in 1966. Their idea was to apply their plan to New York City’s welfare system, overloading and bankrupting it so the Federal Government would be forced to bail it out and fund it. Amusingly, Cloward and Piven claimed this would end poverty. The then bizarre notion found a receptive ear in the newly elected Republican(!) mayor of New York, John Vliet Lindsay, who hailed from an old New York family and had both movie star looks and brains. He probably did more damage to the City than any other mayor, before or since, including de Blasio.

Lindsay embraced Cloward-Piven with gusto. The one possible hitch in those days was, if you can believe it, the stigma still attached to being on the dole. He ordered city social workers to go door-to-door in poor neighborhoods and urge every person they encountered to sign onto the welfare rolls, stressing that regardless what they were taught or heard preached, there was no shame anymore receiving other people’s money, for as long they wished.

The campaign was a brilliant success, if you can call it that, and the percentage of souls on relief increased astronomically and remain at those levels to this day. No coincidence was the number of single-family households headed by women also soared; it was no longer necessary to have a man in the house. Along with the attendant woes of rising crime, gangs, dropping out etc., New Yorkers still pay the price of Cloward and Piven’s “reforms.”

Why our putative president and his associates have chosen to apply Cloward-Piven strategy to our immigration system, a seemingly suicidal move in an election year where democrat prospects look disastrous, is certainly puzzling .The only explanation your Tatler can come up with approaches the tinfoil hat category, but, for better or worse, here it is. The idea could be to get these zillions of illegals, using every conceivable manner of cheating the Democrats have so ably mustered over the years, onto the electoral rolls nationwide and have them “vote” democratic. If the scheme actually proves successful, things could get extremely ugly in the United States, but Democrat leaders long ago quit caring about the consequences of their actions, as well the reactions of their opponents.

No more needs to be said.

Biden bumper stickers are mysteriously disappearing from Taos.

The Anglos of Taos, the largest ethnic group here and the last to arrive, are mostly solidly blue in their politics (which is not necessarily the case with the outnumbered Hispanos and Mestizos, who have been here for centuries). Blue Anglos are easy to pick out by the cars they drive. If not rich, it’s usually Subarus; if they’re aging hippies, battered old VWs. If rich, especially newly, it’s Audis and BMWs, and if their bills are really crisp you’ll see them tooling around in Range Rovers (but only of course when those absurdly expensive and unreliable autos are not in the shop for repairs).

Whatever blue Taos Anglos’ economic status and their cars, long after the election you still see “Biden for President” bumper stickers on them (like masks, they’re shibboleths). That is, until recently. A friend reports those stickers have all but disappeared from Taos bumpers.

Your Tatler wonders if the Sheriff ought to be notified of this petty but heinous larceny, for surely the owners of these cars couldn’t be tearing off the stickers themselves, could they? My goodness, Hillary, Bernie and even Obama stickers were seen on bumpers throughout the Trump presidency. It is indeed a puzzlement.

There is good news however for those who miss the Biden stickers. They are reappearing rapidly in a different guise and may be seen whenever you fill ‘er up .

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham today became a Republican, not actually registering as one (perish the thought!), rather by signing a bunch of Republican-like measures into law, as reported by the Associated Press.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signing a package of tax rebates, credits and rate reductions worth about $530 million in the initiative’s first year and urged congressional leaders to suspend taxes on gasoline in response to surging fuel prices.

The Governor claims these measures are to provide relief to those suffering from soaring inflation and gasoline prices, but one would have to be naive indeed not to suspect there might be another motive. When even the headline of the story from AP, whose degree of slant to the left is barely distinguishable from the perpendicular, reads “New Mexico governor slashes taxes as she pursues reelection,” one may be reasonably certain there is an overriding motive here, her political survival.

Ms. Grisham comes from an old New Mexico political dynasty, which in the past included Republicans, but now is solidly Democrat. Like most career politicians, especially those of similar background, she no doubt sees holding public office as less than privilege than rightful destiny. With polls indicating staggering losses for the Democrats in the upcoming November elections, we may expect to see more entrenched politicos like Ms Grisham, desperate to save their jobs, becoming ersatz republicans by throwing their firmly-held left-wing principles to the wolves. Should this ploy be successful, rest assured they will quickly revert to their old ways.

Leading from below.

From Town Hall.

Whether you agree with the [Russian oil import] ban or not, one thing is clear: Biden didn’t lead on this decision. His team has been cagey at best when questions have come up about why Russian oil hadn’t yet been banned amid multiple rounds of sanctions levied against Russian government officials and oligarchs. But the wheels really came off when the White House learned that the House Ways and Means Committee had been working on a bill over the weekend to ban Russian oil imports — from a press release issued Sunday night that was quietly removed some five minutes later.

There was much back and forth between the White House and Speaker Pelosi about the Russian oil import ban, but what looked to be developing into a stalemate was not to be, as Pelosi wanted it and no babbling, non-entity in the White House was going to stop her. The President, having all the backbone of, say, an old man in second childhood, assisted by his attendants finally gave in. The child that he is however didn’t want it to appear he wasn’t getting his way, so he announced this morning the oil ban would go into effect, as if it were his own decision.

Update: It was later revealed the President actually was persuaded to support the ban, with the promise of an ice cream cone, with two scoops after his nap.

People are justly worried over the fate of Taiwan and South Korea since the Ukraine debacle debacle began, with the United States showing no leadership whatsoever. Your Tatler is beginning to wonder though if those fears are misplaced, that we ought be worrying about places closer to home, ours. President Xi of China and President Kim Jong-un of North Korea must surely be taking note of the power vacuum in the White House. No doubt a fanciful notion, but what if Xi or Kim decide to have some fun seeing what they can get away with in one of our possessions, say in the South Pacific, maybe Guam or Palau?

Purcell: 24 Odes and Welcome Songs.

Of the 24 Odes and Welcome Songs composed by Henry Purcell, the only ones with which your Tatler has been well familiar, until now, are those better known: Welcome to all Pleasures, Come Ye Sons of Art, Hail! Bright Cecelia etc. The collection seen in the release above contains a good number of the lesser-known odes and they are a wonderful find, every bit as melodic and superbly crafted as the better known ones.

One ode in particular made this some-time musician sit up abruptly and take notice, Number 24, The Glory of Earth and Darling of Heaven. Particularly striking is the composer’s use of descending chromatic harmonies. For those who don’t know what in hell your Tatler means by that, a paraphrase of a famous quote by Justice Potter Stewart (which concerns a different sort of entertainment) will serve: You will know it when you hear it, and you may hear it here. https://open.qobuz.com/track/148518283

These performances of the odes by Damian Guillion and Le Banquet Céleste are excellently done, using small forces, which research indicates were used at the time, giving them a sense of intimacy. Recommended.

The bigger the better.

H/t Instapundit.