July rambling: Paleolithic emotions

Bergman, Francis, Laine, Lehrer, Mangione, Osbourne

“The real problem of humanity is as follows: we have Paleolithic emotions, Medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
– E.O.Wilson

Conspiratorialism and neoliberalism: If “there is no such thing as society,” then all evil must be the fault of evil individuals.

Gang Databases: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 

Why Nations Fail

Humans vs the alternative – Sharp Little Pencil

What will we call Iceland when all the ice is gone?

Inside the Silicon Valley push to breed super-babies

The mislabeled energy drink that could give you a DUI … or worse.

20 Best Countries For Work-Life Balance—And U.S. Isn’t On It

Investors snap up a growing share of US homes as traditional buyers struggle to afford one

Why Your Voice Sounds Different to You Than to Others

Why you shouldn’t visit Las Vegas

Ryne Sandberg, a baseball Hall of Fame player primarily for the Chicago Cubs, dies at 65

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, actor, musician, director, and producer, dies at 54

Michael Ochs, Pop Culture’s Preeminent Photo Archivist, Dies at 82

Vince Calandra, ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ Talent Booker Who Helped Bring on The Beatles, Dies at 91

Hulk Hogan, Wrestling Icon, Dies at 71

How a fake astronaut fooled the world, broke women’s hearts, and landed in jail

A toddler tells a joke.

A history of… pizza

Now I Know: The Smell of Time Passing? and The Number That’s Illegal to Share and Do Not Fry This At Home and Getting Divorced Over an Illegal Hyphen? and The Burger With a Side of Insensitivity

Two steps back

Report Details 400+ Attacks on Science in First 6 Months of 2.0

RFK Jr. Reportedly Planning to Fire All U.S. Preventive Services Task Force members and replace them with members of his choosing

Treasury Sec Admits ‘Backdoor’ Scheme to Privatize Social Security

EPA deepens environmental rollback with delays, deregulation, and industry favoritism

Delays and dysfunction: How FEMA overhaul failed Texas flood victims

FCC abandons the future

Memo allows federal workers to persuade coworkers that their religion is ‘correct’

‘Extra Cruel’: Regime Ends Job Program for Seniors as Work Requirements Loom

Mass Firings at Department of Education Are Already Harming US Students

By Refusing to Show Faces or Badges, ICE Opens Door to Vigilante Impersonators

‘We Had to Eat Like Dogs’: Report Details ‘Abusive Practices’ at Florida Immigrant Prisons

‘License to Kill’: New Report Finds Higher Homicide Rates in ‘Stand Your Ground’ States

Venezuelan Little League team denied entry into the US amid travel ban

Doctors in Elected Office Are Turning Their Backs on Science

Republicans keep voting for bad bills to suck up

The worst chief justice of all time

Make team names racist again

“Unitary Executive” is a euphemism for Tyrant

Fight back

WATCH: “How Can YOU Defend Our Democracy?” Panel discussion with Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor Lauren DesRosiers, and Corey Dukes. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) writes: “Refuse to normalize what is happening to our country — because it is not normal. We must stay in touch with our outrage and refuse to accept the idea that the deluge of unconstitutional, horrific actions is our new normal. What is happening is not normal, and we can’t accept it as such.”

ACTION: Stop Palantir’s mass surveillance dragnet targeting immigrants. FOTUS’s billionaire mega-donor, Peter Thiel, is profiting from the violence. The Thiel-founded big-tech company Palantir has a $30 million contract with ICE to surveil and track immigrants so it’s easier for the regime to raid workplaces, schools, and homes. And that’s only one of Palantir’s contracts — in all, the company has received at least $113 million of taxpayer money since January.

ACTION: Not only is extremist adviser Stephen Miller pushing an inhumane immigration policy, but he is also buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in the company the government is contracting with to carry out the very policies he advocates. He is the driving force behind some of the most harmful anti-immigrant measures in modern U.S. history. Support Rep. Robert Garcia’s call to investigate Miller’s misconduct, and demand that every member of the House Oversight Committee join him.

MUSIC OBITS

Alan Bergman, Oscar-winning lyricist who helped write “The Way We Were,” dies at 99

Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97. Songs and lyrics, with all copyrights permanently and irrevocably relinquished since 2007. LOC interview (2015). Full Copenhagen Performance. The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Vatican Rag and Silent E and The Element Song– Tom Lehrer

Cleo Laine, who boasted a four-octave range, has died at 97. Send In The Clowns – Cleo Laine

Connie Francis, Whose Ballads Dominated ’60s Pop Music, Dies at 87.

From 1958 to 1964, she was the most popular female singer in the United States, selling 40 million records. (Musical links within)

Chuck Mangione, Grammy-winning jazz musician and composer, dies aged 84. Celebrated flugelhorn and trumpet player released over 30 albums and sold millions of records throughout his career. Feels So Good and Land Of Make Believe – Chuck Magione

 

Ozzy Osbourne, ‘Prince of Darkness’ Turned Reality TV Star, Dies at 76

Paranoid -Black Sabbath

Coverville 1543: The Ozzy Osbourne Tribute

MORE MUSIC

The Day I Saw An Angel Fly – Sharp Little Pencil

Lachian Dances by Leoš Janáček

Coverville 1541: The Jack White Cover Story II and 1542: This Day in Covers: July 17, 2025

Jolanta and Fotographia– Peter Sprague

My Misery – Jake Wesley Rogers

Your Summer Playlist, Courtesy of the Internet Archive: Anchored by the expansive Grateful Dead collection, our Live Music Archive features nearly 300,000 items for endless, easy, summer listening. Search for your favorite artist or discover someone new.

K-Chuck Radio: The First Cut Is The Deepest

Daniel Leaves by Bill Conti from The Karate Kid Part II

Coldplay: Tiny Desk Concert (March 9, 2020)

How to fight against major label abuse of content ID systems on YouTube (Rick Beato), and Why We Won’t Back Down (Professor of Rock), and a Lawyer Reacts

 

Manic depression

backyard

gershwin.com

I’ve been experiencing what they used to call manic depression. My highs can be really high and often unexpected. But my lows might be rage-fueled tantrums.

In music, which I’ve listened to dozens of times before, I’m often struck by how emotional I will get. Familiar pieces can bring me extraordinary joy – or great contemplation. An example of the former: The Concerto in F by George Gershwin is a recently heard example. 

This tale of a memorial service brought me familiar recognition.

Here’s a wonderful bio piece about first niece Rebecca Jade for a concert she performed last week. 

I loved the clue on a recent JEOPARDY so much that I stopped the recording – I watch almost nothing in real time – to point it out to my wife. 3 CONSONANTS IN A ROW, $800. “The comical coinage aibohphobia describes the fear of this type of word.” What is palindromes? I should have gotten it because it was used before, in 1999. PALINDROMES, $1000. “The whimsical coinage ‘aibohphobia’ means this.”  What is fear of palindromes? It was a triple stumper both times.

I am bemused and more than slightly amused by how much the Jeffrey Epstein issue is the hill that MAGA people are willing to die on. Besides knowing that Epstein was dreadful, I’ve thought of nothing about him. Given all the other things happening in the country, he took no space in my brain. 

Won’t get fooled again

I got an e-mail from what purported to be the company that hosts my blog saying that the payment didn’t go through. Given my technological difficulties a few weeks ago, this was a reasonably possible situation. So I went to the login page, but it wasn’t my provider’s URL, though it looked like their page. I contacted my provider, and they asked me to resend them visuals, as I must not have properly understood.  So it was with GREAT JOY when they indicated they’d gotten enough complaints on this topic from others that I didn’t need to send them anything else—something off my plate.

Our backyard has a shed that holds our bicycles, lawn chairs, grill, etc. We could no longer lock it because some gophers or other rodents had undermined the shed’s base. This was a great concern because there’s a neighbor boy about 12 who would wander into our backyard; our next-door neighbor came to our house to express concern about the kid. We started putting cinder blocks in front of our yard gate, but that’s suboptimal.  So I was pleased when one day we came home and suddenly the shed door locked; it must have been our contractor, whom we had contacted several days earlier. It gave me a sense of real joy.

Conversely

The news in the country made me not just disappointed but furious, enraged. No recent story ticked me off  more than ICE being able to access information from CMS about 79 million Medicaid users, including home addresses and ethnicities, information being passed along so that they could “root out fraud.” It infuriated me so much that – and my wife can verify  – I was spewing invectives to no one in particular. “Don’t those F***ing SOBs know about HIPAA privacy laws? Their ethnic bigotry knows no end!”

Then I read about the US Secretary of State’s plan to burn 500 metric tons of emergency food aid that had “expired” because the State Department failed to distribute it when it took over USAID. 

The EPA says it will eliminate its scientific research arm and “begin firing hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists, and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so.”

And this, on top of the other crappy things, such as Congress codifying the cuts of previously allocated funds to PBS and NPR, and authorizing health cuts that would have prevented people from dying, really broiled me.   Oh, former criminals need more access to guns!

It is a  ‘State of Emergency’ for Civil Rights. 

Me, me, me

You may have seen David Brooks share Alistair McIntyre’s explanation of FOTUS in The Atlantic magazine:  He “doesn’t even try to speak the language of morality. When he pardons unrepentant sleazeballs, it doesn’t seem to even occur to him that he is doing something that weakens our shared moral norms. [He] speaks the languages we moderns can understand. The language of preference: I want. The language of power: I have the leverage. The languages of self, of gain, of acquisition. [FOTUS] doesn’t subsume himself in a social role. He doesn’t try to live up to the standards of excellence inherent in a social practice. He treats even the presidency itself as a piece of personal property he can use to get what he wants. As the political theorist Yuval Levin has observed, there are a lot of people, and [FOTUS] is one of them, who don’t seek to be formed by the institutions they enter. They seek instead to use those institutions as a stage to perform on, to display their wonderful selves.”

And it makes me think of less than charitable thoughts… So, some joy, some rage. The rage turns into the melancholy of One More Damn Thing.

Song

July rambling: the Sin of Condemnation

The 1934 National Firearms Act unconstitutional?

The Stones in Our Hands: Misreading John 8 and the Sin of Condemnation

‘Motherhood Should Come With a Warning Label’

CBS News’ John Dickerson Takes on Paramount Settlement: “Can You Hold Power to Account After Paying It Millions?” (especially from 36:45) Dan Rather calls it “a Sell-Out to Extortion.” Steve Kroft tells Jon Stewart that it was a “shakedown.”

“The regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons; at the very time, we need a much better understanding of it,” said one environmentalist. “This is so reckless and dangerous.”

A 2024 report published by Texas A&M University found that extreme rainfall events in the state have already increased by about 10 percent due to climate change. That number could double in the coming decades, reaching a 20 percent increase compared to a century ago.

Deep cuts erode the foundations of the US public health system, end progress, and threaten worse to come.

Kelly has links, including the sad closing of the Ontario Science Centre, which my family LOVED when we went to Toronto in 2011.

VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer released a viral video about race in America in 2020, just after George Floyd was killed. If anything, it’s more relevant now.

Meet the Moon Mammoths, the baseball mascot masterminded by John Oliver’s show

Now I Know: The Bovine Unity of Milk and Glue? and Brunch: Because We Like the Party and Why the National Animal of Scotland is… Wait, Really? and This Airport SUX

Leading to the semiquincentennial

Full interview: Ken Burns on “Face the Nation” about his new film on the American Revolution and the importance of telling the story of American history.

July 4th in the Face of Fascism: Moral resources for Americans who know we’ve been betrayed – Our Moral Moment w/ Bishop William Barber & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

“If fireworks ring hollow, you’re not alone. Light a candle instead.”

HCR: The MAGA Ideology That Brought Us to This Moment. It’s Our Job to Make Sure People Know the Truth

I am the man on Fifth Avenue.

Americans Have Never Been Less Proud of Their Country

“While the lighthouse shining the way is admittedly hard to make out through the cruel fog that envelopes us, it is out there, sturdy upon the shore, and still blazing brightly. We must trust that we will rediscover its guiding power and, together, steer this ship safely home. We’ll do it together, and in our strong and welcome company, we will find the courage and conviction we need.” – Jay Kuo

Purblind bunny boiler

Heather Cox Richardson: “Within hours of [FOTUS] signing the [OBUB] into law, Gun Owners Of America and… other pro-gun organizations filed a lawsuit claiming the measure makes the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) unconstitutional. That law regulated machine guns and short-barrel guns by imposing a tax on them and making owners register their weapons. The Supreme Court upheld that law as a tax law. The budget reconciliation bill ended those taxes and thus, the plaintiffs’ claim, the constitutional justification for the law.”

10 Charts to Understand the 900-Page Budget Bill

GOP budget bill would give top 1% over $1 trillion in tax breaks, analysis finds. It will steal from the poor and give to the rich.

FOTUS/DOGE foreign aid cuts could cause 14 million deaths by 2030, study warns

The trolling is coming from inside the White House

Cold as ICE

A surge in ICE detentions of those with no criminal record, despite stated priorities. Still, “as a result of the agency’s stonewalling, the Guardian, alongside the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, last week filed a lawsuit against ICE for unlawfully withholding documents that represent a clear and overwhelming matter of public interest.” 

FOTUS ramps up deportation spectacle with new stunts and ICE funding

He only has ICE for you. And: ICE Agents Deserve No Privacy. Attempts by the public to keep tabs on ICE are provoking predictable and pathetic responses from the government.

 

MUSIC

Lou Harrison’s Pacifika Rondo

Coverville 1539: Carly Simon Cover Story and 1540: The Blondie Cover Story III

Mockingbird – Weavers Gallery

Chorale and Shaker Dance by John Zdechlik

Another Day of Sun, the opening number from La La Land.

Sit Down, John from 1776

Weird Al Medley (A CAPELLA)  White & Nerdy, Party in the CIA, Like A Surgeon, Tacky, Eat It – Jared Halley

Sussudio – Phil Collins

The Longest Time – Boyz II Men and Billy Joel

June rambling: wealth to the top

Henry Johnson

The Republican budget shifts wealth to the top, with workers paying the price. A new congressional analysis reveals massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, while working families are expected to shoulder cuts, tariffs, and rising costs under GOP economic plans. ITEP analysis.

America is a scam

Peace through… by Sharp Little Pencil

The Rot Goes Deeper Than FOTUS: Just winning the next set of elections won’t fix the underlying problems.

West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate

DOJ keeps busy suing states for not being bigoted enough

If Blanche Were Here by Sharp Little Pencil

The Court fails transgender youth.

Hard Truths About Immigration by Adam Ragusea, a podcaster/content creator to whom folks usually look for tips on the best way to cook dinner

Congresswoman Kim Schrier (D-WA) questions our Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Asked to flag ‘negative’ National Park content, visitors gave their own 2 cents instead.

World of Ideas

Bill Moyers, the longtime PBS and CBS Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker, dies at 91. “He showed a generation of journalists, scholars, and public intellectuals what it means to speak truth to power.” I have his book World of Ideas and its sequel in my office, at arm’s length.  

We Don’t Have To Give In To Smartphones. They haven’t defeated us. Yet. By Jonathan Haidt, Will Johnson, and Zach Rausch

That’s It, The F-Word Is Officially Boring

The unexpected package Mark Evanier received was probably brushing

I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial (possibly related: just this month, I filled out a survey to be on jury duty)

The Hollywood Blockbuster They Forgot To Copyright

Six Miles of Field Goals

Now I Know: The Earth’s Great Bear Coincidence and The Original Slush Fund and How to Watch Golf During a Basketball Game (Maybe) and The Girl With Twin Fathers and The Restaurant With A Rotating Grandma On The Menu

SCOTUS

The Supreme Court restricted the ability of federal judges to issue broad nationwide freezes on executive orders, a significant victory for FOTUS that opens the door for states to at least temporarily enforce his order ending birthright citizenship.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, in part. “The Government now asks this Court to grant emergency relief, insisting it will suffer irreparable harm unless it can deprive at least some children born in the United States of citizenship…

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit. Because I will not be complicit in so grave an attack on our system of law, I dissent.”

Justice Jackson adds, “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive branch to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”

RENAME

From here and elsewhere: “Henry Johnson of Albany, N.Y., was a genuine war hero — recipient of the Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor, and the first American to receive France’s highest award for valor. President Theodore Roosevelt called him one of the ‘five bravest Americans’ to serve in World War I…

“This [month], news came that Johnson’s name will be stripped from the U.S. Army fort [in Louisiana] that was named for him, part of the Trump administration’s decision to revert to names that honor military leaders of the Confederate States of America who waged war against the United States.”

Technically, “according to a press release on the Army’s website, the renaming of Fort Johnson will now pay homage to a World War II colonel and Silver Star recipient, James H. Polk, as opposed to [Confederate General] Leonidas Polk.” But this is a sham.

46th District New York Senator Pat Fahy, a Democrat, says that the news “felt like a gut punch.” “It is shameless, and it is it’s, you have to call it what it is. This is clearly trying to whitewash the history, clearly a complete dishonor…

“To help re-stake claim to that legacy, Fahy, Assembly colleagues Gabriella Romero of the 109th and John McDonald of the 108th, along with Republican Senator Jake Ashby of the 43rd district, have introduced legislation that would rename the Patroon Island Bridge after Johnson.

MUSIC

Lalo Schifrin, Acclaimed Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible,’  ‘Mannix’ Themes, Dies at 93

Lou Christie, Lightnin’ Strikes and Rhapsody In the Rain Singer, Dies at 82

In honor of Dr. Demento: The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati

Bobby Sherman, Teen Idol and ‘Here Come the Brides’ Actor, Dies at 81

Best Albums of 2025 (First Half)

Caledonia – VOCES8

Coverville 1535: A Rick Derringer Tribute and Spandau Ballet Cover Story, and 1538: Cover Stories for Air Supply and The Zombies

The Joker – Lady Gaga

MAYBE HAPPY ENDING’s Standbys Sing ‘The Rainy Day We Met’; Hannah Kevitt and Christopher James Tamayo are the standbys for Claire and Oliver

Sour Times – Portishead

Peter Sprague Plays Hurricane Country and A Felicidade featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Big Spender – Sam Phillips

God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down  – The Jubalaires –

6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps

The Longest Time by Billy Joel, Julien Neel, Dan Wright, Sam Robson, and COVID-era Zach Timson 

Defying Gravity – Brittain Ashford

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, from the Disney film Fantasia 2000

God Only Knows – the Beach Boys

Heaven – Bryan Adams

 

Lassie 1959 Opening and Closing Theme (With the Lone Ranger Snippet)

 

Remembering James Horner (1953-2015)

 

Book: Daniel de Visé’s ‘The Blues Brothers’

May rambling: To Secure These Rights

Charles Strouse

To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. HARRY S. TRUMAN, The White House, December 5, 1946.

How Civil Rights Were Made—and Remade—By Black Communities In the Jim Crow South

In HR 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed by the House of Representatives, Sec. 70302: “This section limits the ability of U.S. courts to enforce a citation for contempt for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order. Specifically, if no security was given when the injection or order was issued, the citation of contempt may not be enforced using appropriated funds. This limitation applies to injunctions or orders issued before, on, or after the date of enactment.”

The AKG Museum exhibit honoring the people killed in the shootings at Tops Market in Buffalo, 5-14-2022, including the poem Mourning Until Morning by Jillian Hanesworth

The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Uncensored Oral History of a Revolution

My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One. He was a Nazi hunter — and was killed in the Lockerbie bombing. What does it mean to seek justice for his death?

Wendy McMahon Resigns as Head of CBS News: “Company and I Do Not Agree on the Path Forward”

This Channel Is Biased
A business owner tested whether customers would pay more for American-made products. The results were ‘sobering.’
Revisiting Biden’s Decline
The Long, Strange Trip of the Titanic Victims Whose Remains Surfaced Hundreds of Miles Away, Weeks After the Ship Sank
And…
Baby Is Healed With the World’s First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment. The technique used on a 9½-month-old boy with a rare condition has the potential to help people with thousands of other uncommon genetic diseases.
John shares some extremely good news six years into Nerdfighteria’s effort to improve maternal and child health in Sierra Leone.
No One Knows When They Don’t Die
Legendary comic book writer Peter David dies at age 68
James McEachin, Star of ‘Tenafly’ and Perry Mason Telefilms, Dies at 94
George Wendt, the Beer-Loving Norm on ‘Cheers,’ Dies at 77
Discover® is now part of Capital One as of May 18, 2025
June Squibb on Her Nonagenarian Career High
Why Teacher Jamal Roberts is the New American Idol

Autocephality is a fancy word for self-governance. It’s mainly used in the context of Eastern Orthodox Churches that independently govern their spiritual affairs without a higher ecclesiastical authority.

Now I Know: It’s Not Easy Being Clean and Why Purple is the Royal Color and The Secret Code of Central Park’s Lamp Post and It’s Not Easy Driving Green

On and on…

Yes, this is Project 2025 (ft. Liz Dye)

The Greatness Paradox: His notion of national greatness is stuck in the Napoleonic Era, which is causing him to destroy everything that makes America great today.

Harvard Derangement Syndrome

Him & The Press: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

His CFPB kills the data broker rule

When He Was the One Taking Land From Farmers and How His Embrace of Afrikaner “Refugees” Became a Joke in South Africa

She Devoted Her Life to Serving the U.S. Then DOGE Targeted Her. A veteran who returned from Iraq injured and transformed, Joy Marver is now facing a crisis at home.

We’re Experts in Fascism. We’re Leaving the U.S.

Why Eliminating the NEA Would Be a Disaster For Our Country

The New DEI — Discrimination, Exclusion, and Inequity

All Hail Our Rococo President!

Strange Bedfellows and Long Knives, about the secret engine of sweeping political upheavals (like Trumpism) and their inherent fragility

 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (8 May 1884-26 December 1972)
Heather Cox Richardson, May 23 (in part)

After S.V. Date of HuffPost noted last week that the White House had published fewer than 20% of [his] speeches, the White House has stopped publishing a database of official transcripts of [his] announcements, appearances, and speeches altogether and has taken down those it had published. Instead, it will just post videos. And yet it is publishing just a few of the videos of the president’s term: so far, fewer than 50 videos of the first 120 days of his term, according to Brian Stelter of CNN.

A presidential administration traditionally publishes the president’s words promptly to establish a record. The White House, in contrast, says removing the transcripts will enable people to get a better sense of him by watching his videos. But it’s likely closer to the truth that his appearances since he took office have been erratic, and removing the transcripts will make it harder for people to read his nonsensical rambles.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The [FOTUS] White House is the most transparent in history,” but of course, it’s objectively not. White House officials have made it impossible to tell who is making decisions at the Department of Government Efficiency, for example, or who gave the order to render migrants to El Salvador. Now the president’s words, too, will be hidden.

MUSIC
Charles Strouse, Tony-winning composer of Annie, Applause, and Bye Bye Birdie, dies at 96. He’s known for such songs as “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “Put on a Happy Face,” and the ‘All in the Family’ theme song, “Those Were the Days.” He also wrote scores for motion pictures, including The Night They Raided Minsky’s
That’s Trump Derangement! – A Randy Rainbow Song Parody
Pamela Bondi – Marsh Family parody of The One and Only sung by Chesney Hawkes (by Nik Kershaw)

New Day Will Rise  – Yuval Raphael

Rick Derringer, a Zelig-like rocker, the guitarist, singer, and songwriter, dies at 77. Hang On Sloopy – The McCoys. Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer. Eat It – Weird Al Yankovic (Rick plays lead guitar; he produced six of Al’s albums)

Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In)-The New Edition, featuring Kenny Rogers

Somewhere Over Laredo – Lainey Wilson 

On an American Spiritual  by David R. Holsinger
Leucadia Uncompromised – Peter Sprague
The Firebird suite by Igor Stravinsky

Coverville 1534: Brothers in Arms Album Cover and Devo Cover Story

Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)‎ ‎- Taylor Swift ‎ ‎
Don’t You (Forget About Me) – Simple Minds
Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck covering Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready
Crazy For You –  Madonna
Harry Truman – Chicago