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6 days ago | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
A tip of the cowboy hat goes to our John Mac Ghlionn for his spot-on lament of the slow but inexorable decline of country music. Country may not be dead as a going concern, but it’s on life-support. Mac Ghlionn is right that the beating heart of country is almost stilled, at least on broadcast radio.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
Marble Hall MurdersBy Anthony Horowitz(Harper, 583 pages, $31)The prolific and multi-talented Anthony Horowitz is back with a very readable third novel featuring the full-time professional editor and part-time amateur sleuth Susan Ryeland and the legendary fictional detective Atticus Pünd. As in the first two books, Horowitz uses a clever whodunit-within-a-whodunit device, whereby the fictional mystery supplies the needed clues to sorting real murders.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
    If Trivial Pursuit had been designed by economists    If would have had 100 questions and 3,000 answers.   âRonald ReaganEconomics has richly earned its label as âthe dismal science,â that is unless itâs being practiced by Professor Thomas Sowell, my nominee for the smartest guy in the republic.
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2 months ago | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
As a card carrying conservative who understands the necessity of order and restraint in a free society, of course I deplore the current fad among left-crazies of keying, burning, or otherwise damaging Tesla cars and trucks. The same characters â always with time on their hands and money for travel and signs â show up for the demonstration du jour. This lunatic and criminal behavior, carried out by bands of feral toe-rags, should be quashed and the malefactors jugged for months or years.
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2 months ago | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
Big George Foreman, a champion boxer and champion grill salesman (the man surely knew the uses of a cheeseburger), went to his reward Friday at 76. As I know God to be good, I’m sure that reward will be considerable. Foreman’s family announced his death, saying only that he died peacefully surrounded by loved ones. No cause of death was given. “I was just glad to be an American. Some people have tried to make something of it, calling me an Uncle Tom, but I’m not.”This is very sad news.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
Blossom Dearie’s song, I’ll Take Manhattan, (Great rendition here by Ella Fitzgerald, needs to be brought up to date. With apologies to the late, great Blossom, today’s Manhattan is far from “an isle of joy,” especially if one has to ride the subway. Dante would have loved the NYC subway, giving it a circle of its own. Commissioned to re-write the song, my title would be You Take Manhattan. But Bragg still gets points among Democrats for trying.
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Oct 20, 2024 | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
It all reminds me of July 1, 1987 when President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork for an opening on the Supreme Court. He had it made in the shade, said my complacent conservative friends. The result was brutal. But we do not have to look back 32 years to see how unruly the leftwing mob can be. Recall the recent fate of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Only his courage and unscotchable determinate saved him. The simple fact is that the conservatives are often slow on the draw against the American left.
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Oct 3, 2024 | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
Charlie Hustle went to that great clubhouse in the sky Monday. He died unattended in his La Vegas home. No cause of death was given, though it’s known he had cardiac procedures done. He was 83. Pete Rose’s life contained both triumph and tragedy. It was splendid on the baseball field between first pitch and the end of the game, but often a train wreck off of it.
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Sep 22, 2024 | 
spectator.org | Donna Leon |Larry Thornberry
A Refiner’s Fire: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries, 33)By Donna Leon(Atlantic Monthly Press, 288 pages, $22.00)Donna Leon’s 33rd installment of her immensely popular Commissario (detective inspector) Guido Brunetti series shows that at 82 she still has a literary fastball. And that she knows how to keep series characters fresh and alive. The plot in Refiner’s is complex, suspenseful, well-paced, and believable.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
spectator.org | Larry Thornberry
I was saddened to learn that All-Universe women’s basketball star and national sweetheart Caitlin Clark has, sort of, endorsed Kamala Harris for president. She did so by “liking” an Instagram post by pop icon Taylor Swift, whose every action, statement, and unformed thought continues to be a national obsession, much to the bewilderment of this Mustache Pete.
