Althouse

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• Sunrise — 7:36.
• Mittenrise.
• "1. No, the Taliban did not seize $85 billion of U.S. weapons.... Note: This was the most popular article in The Fact Checker’s 14-year history."
• "She was the lead voice on 'Don’t Mess With Bill' and other songs written by Smokey Robinson, who said she 'had this little voice that was sexy to me.'"
• "These were not men who would necessarily raise a Black Power fist or quote Stokely Carmichael or Angela Davis, but were activists nonetheless, who doubled down..."
• "In the past decade, millions of Pakistanis have been caught up in the religious fervor of an anti-blasphemy campaign..."

Sunrise — 7:36. Posted: 26 Dec 2021 04:10 PM PST Write about anything you want in the comments.

Mittenrise. Posted: 26 Dec 2021 11:35 AM PST

"1. No, the Taliban did not seize $85 billion of U.S. weapons.... Note: This was the most popular article in The Fact Checker’s 14-year history." Posted: 26 Dec 2021 07:01 AM PST From "The most popular fact checks of 2021" by Glenn Kessler, "The Fact Checker" in WaPo.

"She was the lead voice on 'Don’t Mess With Bill' and other songs written by Smokey Robinson, who said she 'had this little voice that was sexy to me.'" Posted: 26 Dec 2021 06:55 AM PST From the NYT obituary for Wanda Young, who has died at the age of 78. Among the other Robinson songs that featured Ms. Young's voice were "I'll Keep Holding On," a 1965 release that peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard chart; "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game," which rose to No. 13 in 1967; and "My Baby Must Be a Magician," which hit No. 17 in 1968. Here's the History of Rock Music in 500 Songs episode about The Marvellettes: After a couple of flop follow-ups to "Too Many Fish in the Sea", Smokey Robinson took over their production, and decided to start using Wanda as the lead vocalist, rather than Gladys [Horton], who had sung lead on their hits up to that point. "Don't Mess With Bill", their first single of 1966, became their first top ten pop hit since "Playboy" in early 1962.... Robinson also wrote the marvellous "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" for the group... Or, at least, he wrote it for Wanda. By this point, while the records were getting released as by "the Marvelettes", Robinson was only using Wanda for lead vocals, and having the Andantes sing all the backing vocals. The explanation for this was generally that the group were on tour all the time, and it was easier to make the records without them and then get Wanda just to sing the lead, and the other members reluctantly accepted that, but it rankled....

"These were not men who would necessarily raise a Black Power fist or quote Stokely Carmichael or Angela Davis, but were activists nonetheless, who doubled down..." Posted: 26 Dec 2021 04:57 AM PST "... on the ideas of Black respectability and Black excellence as counters to the racial stereotypes that circulated widely in American media and popular culture. Cornielius himself was hypersensitive to negative racial stereotypes; in the program's popular word-scramble segment, he wanted to make sure participants actually knew how to spell—even sharing the word beforehand—to guarantee that they wouldn't show up on national television reinforcing ideas of Black illiteracy." From "Soul Train and the Desire for Black Power/Don Cornelius's faith that Black culture would attract a mass audience—and his devout belief that Black culture should be in the hands of Black people—make the program he created a radical touchstone 50 years after its debut" (The Nation).

"In the past decade, millions of Pakistanis have been caught up in the religious fervor of an anti-blasphemy campaign..." Posted: 26 Dec 2021 04:47 AM PST "... launched after a liberal politician named Salman Taseer was assassinated by his own bodyguard for his denunciation of the harsh legal punishment of a Christian peasant woman accused of blasphemy. The anti-blasphemy group built a cult around the bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri. After he was hanged for murder in 2016, they declared him a martyr for Islam, built a shrine near the capital, Islamabad, and formed a new political party, Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan... Labbaik's leaders have repeatedly declared that they do not condone violence, yet they also preach that blasphemers deserve to die, and their crusade has inspired incidents of murder and arson. At a college campus in northwest Pakistan, a secular student was accused of blasphemy and beaten to death by classmates in 2017. A few days before the Sialkot attack, a mob burned down a police station in the northwest after officials refused to hand over a prisoner accused of blasphemy." From "The mob killing of a factory manager in Pakistan comes amid surge in anti-blasphemy violence/This religious crusade is rapidly gaining popular support and could threaten the country's stability" (WaPo). The factory manager, "preparing to repaint the walls for a visiting delegation, had taken down some religious posters that praised the prophet Muhammad and tossed them in the trash," and "several hundred workers chased him onto the factory roof and then dragged him into the yard, where they beat, stoned and kicked him to death, then set his crumpled corpse on fire."

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