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“We often think of laughter as lighthearted and simple, but these songs reveal it can also carry a weight that’s anything but.” Laughter in music is often celebrated as a reflection of joy, but what happens when laughter takes on a darker or more complex hue? In putting together this article on the 10 most overlooked songs about laughing, we veered away from the obvious, steering clear of titles that explicitly name laughter and instead choosing songs that delve into its subtle meanings. These selections don’t just scratch the surface of laughter’s role in music; they examine its layers, from The post 10 Overlooked Songs About Laughter appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

The administrative state will not take President-elect Donald Trump’s reforms lying down, and although his actions as president can severely hamper the deep state, he will need legislative help to fully address the bureaucratic rot in the federal government. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., recently confirmed reports that the Senate would consider two tracks for two so-called reconciliation bills, which, as of Jan. 3, the Republican-majority Senate can pass with fewer than 60 votes. One bill, likely to pass more quickly, will focus on immigration and energy; the other will focus on extending the tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. I’d like to suggest that, in whichever reconciliation bill seems most appropriate to them, House and Senate Republicans consider including reforms to make the administrative state more accountable to the people’s elected president. These structural reforms to take on the deep state should make it easier to fire bureaucrats who oppose the president’s agenda, saving money and helping to streamline the federal budget. 2 Tracks of Deep State Reform The incoming second Trump administration is already effectively gearing up to fight waste and abuse in the federal government, using tools that don’t require Congress to pass any new legislation. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have done excellent work in exposing the eye-popping waste and abuse in the federal government. Their Department of Government Efficiency, a presidential advisory commission known as DOGE, is long overdue. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who leads efforts to help DOGE in the Senate, published an important report revealing how your tax dollars are wasted in maintaining federal office space while employees work from home. The Department of Education shelled out $1 billion in diversity, equity, and inclusion grants since 2021, according to a report on so-called DEI spending from Parents Defending Education. Trump should be able to reverse much of this damage through executive orders and by elevating effective managers to key positions such as heading the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management. Even as woke bureaucrats dig in by finalizing rules to “Trump-proof” the bureaucracy, the new administration can issue new rules to reverse these steps. Trump’s executive order creating a new category for federal workers, “Schedule F,” will go a long way toward making the government more accountable. Trump is preparing to make the important moves that he will have the authority to make after his inauguration Jan. 20. Unfortunately, subduing the deep state will require more than executive orders. Public Sector Unions Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., enjoy benefits that most employees do not. Why? Public sector unions such as the American Federation of Government Employees have organized federal workers and secured perks and job protections that would shock private sector workers. It is long past time to bring an end to the perverse system of federal government unions. Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the man whose “New Deal” helped establish the modern federal bureaucracy, opposed public employee unions. “The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations,” Roosevelt wrote. “The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.” FDR warned that any negotiation with a public employee union would constitute a loss of the people’s authority. Yet a shocking Government Accountability Office report found that federal workers at just one agency—the Department of Veterans Affairs—spent 1 million hours working for unions in 2015. Republicans and Democrats long agreed that public sector unions weren’t compatible with constitutional government. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which implemented many positive reforms, also codified President John F. Kennedy’s executive order enabling government workers to join unions. Congress should consider whether it’s time to amend this law. When federal workers unionize, they set up an adversarial relationship with the people’s elected representatives, who hired these employees to serve the people. These unions then advocate for workers against the people’s elected representatives, shielding the employees from the ultimate accountability that comes at the ballot box. Union protections help explain why so many bureaucrats felt comfortable openly opposing Trump’s agenda from within the executive branch during his first term. To fully address this deep state phenomenon, the second Trump administration needs systemic reforms to the civil service. Reining in the Administrative State Passage of the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act should also be on the docket for the streamlined reconciliation process. Although DOGE can and should identify waste and abuse for the new Trump administration to cut, Congress needs to reassert its authority over the administrative state. Every year, administrative agencies that Americans have barely even heard of issue far more rules and regulations than Congress passes. This system flies in the face of the vision of the Founders, who gave Congress more power than the other two branches of government because the legislative branch most represents the will of the people. The REINS Act would require any major regulation that would affect the economy to receive a vote in both houses of Congress. This would be a powerful way to rein in the federal government—and it would do so not just for the four years of the second Trump administration, but for the foreseeable future. It represents an essential step for Congress to make the goals of DOGE far more permanent. Entirely Unaccountable Agencies Congress should seriously consider reining in agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In May, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the bizarre funding scheme that aims to keep the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau independent from Congress’ power of the purse. Although many consider the opinion flawed, Congress has the authority to reverse this abuse of power by simply reforming the law. Without reforms, the CFPB can persist in perpetuity and effectively without congressional oversight. This makes the agency unaccountable to the people. As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote, this “novel statutory scheme” means that “the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may bankroll its own agenda without any congressional control or oversight.” As I lay out in my forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the federal bureaucracy’s power enables a network of far-left activists to infiltrate and advise the government, getting their preferred policies implemented without approval from Congress. Restraining this behemoth will be critical to combating woke priorities in Washington, D.C. The incoming Trump-Vance administration is already off to a good start in addressing the rot of the administrative state, but achieving lasting change will require the help of Congress. Returning power to the people’s elected representatives is just as important as reversing the Biden-Harris administration’s war on cheap energy and restoring the southern border. The post Trump Needs Legislative Help to Conquer the Deep State appeared first on The Daily Signal.

  If you go to an online dictionary for a definition of ‘homestead' or ‘homesteading', you will mostly find references to the Homesteading Acts, as illustrated below in this excerpt from Merriam-Webster online: home·stead noun \ˈhōm-ˌsted, -stid\ : a house and the farmland it is on :a piece of government land that a person could acquire by living on it and farming it when the western part of the U.S. was being settled The word has since come to be expanded to include the act of small-scale farming, usually along the lines of a family aiming towards greater self-sufficiency, with less reliance on grocery stores for providing food and lesser dependence on public water and electricity. In recent years, food has been the center of so much attention in the media and healthy eating circles. The garbage served at fast food restaurants and passed off as ‘burgers', has been shown to contain a very small percentage of actual meat, and instead consist mainly of the substance dubbed ‘pink slime‘, a culinary atrocity barely fit for human consumption and bound to put even the most ardent supporter of window food off their appetite. Then there's the EWGs ‘dirty dozen', a list which details the produce found at stores which contain the greatest number of pesticides. Most of the produce you buy and consume without a second thought features high levels of pesticides. Hasn't everyone grabbed an unwashed apple from the bowl and bitten in to it without a second thought? You're getting more than fruit in that bite – and don't get me started on the glue used to affix the product label.   image via ecomom.com Then there's issues with GMOs, and studies which show them to cause tumors and cancers in lab animals. Avoiding genetically modified ingredients is virtually impossible and sent me into a proverbial tailspin when I tried to get a handle on what we were really putting on our table at meal times. I wasn't sure what to avoid, how to avoid it, and whether substances that I felt may be harmful – and I'm talking long term, the products where the long term risk hasn't even yet been evaluated – might be concealed in things I was unwittingly feeding to my family. I'm a 'round the edges' shopper, meaning that I rarely, if ever, venture into the center aisles of the supermarket for processed and pre-packaged products, preferring instead to stay on the outer sides of the store for fresh food and basic ingredients. I began questioning everything. This spurred me to provide even more for my family than I do already, to truly bring us closer and closer to absolute self-sufficiency. Even milk, the supposedly most pure of substances, essential for nutrients and bone growth, the quintessential children's drink, has come under the microscope. rBST, or recombinant bovine somatotropin, is a growth hormone fed to cows, which causes a significant increase in milk production. It has been alleged that it is passed through into the cows' milk and, when consumed by a pregnant mother, can pass from her to the child she carries, causing birth defects and higher birth rate babies. The fact that it is already banned in several countries is enough to place a large question mark over it for me. Pregnant mothers are further concerned by Monsanto's RoundUp contaminations, the key ingredient of which, glyphosate, has been found in breast milk, causing mothers to lobby the EPA to have the key ingredient of RoundUp recalled. In light of these issues, which are increasingly appearing in the mainstream media, people the world over are questioning the origins of their food, and what makes its way into their systems, and that of their children, ‘under the radar'. Even the most dedicated and vigilant parent is hard-pressed to protect their families and children from the effects of chemicals, hormones and genetically modified produce and ingredients when purchasing at the store. More and more people are taking charge of their food, taking charge of the sources of their food, taking charge of providing for themselves. And that's where homesteading comes in. As if you needed further convincing, it's not just what's IN your food. It's the price of the food. Just in the last 12 months, from April 2013-2014, food prices have increased 1.9%, putting a further squeeze on families already struggling in a spiraling economy. With judicious management, investment in your own food, grown at home, need only be done once. Heirloom seeds are an absolute must-have for serious homesteaders. They're not significantly more expensive than the kind you buy at the store, which are usually hybrids, selectively designed and bred for productivity and hardiness. However, unlike the hybrids, the seeds of the resulting fruit or flowers can be harvested, saved and stored, and then used to grow the subsequent years' crops. Hybrid seeds are often designed to be sterile, or will simply not ‘breed true', for example, they are the result of crossing plant A with plant B, in order to obtain plant C. Therefore, should you retain seeds from plant C, you will actually end up with plant D. Some stores are beginning to stock heirloom seeds, but the range was very limited. Online is the best place to get a great selection, and some of the varieties are really funky and interesting. Try Renee's seeds, Baker Creek, or Seed Saver's Exchange, as just a couple of examples. Even on smaller homesteads, such as those characterized as ‘urban homesteads' by British self- sufficiency author, John Seymour, the drive to provide doesn't have to stop at a small backyard garden, be it in-ground, in raised beds, or simply in pots or hanging baskets on a patio. Check your local ordinances, but most allow for a small number of rabbits to be kept, and these can be a great source of sustainable, all-natural meat. Breeds such as the New Zealand, Chinchilla or Californian produce a good number of kits per litter, and grow up fast to fryer weight. They will happily consume all spare vegetables from the garden, with only a small quantity of rabbit grain to supplement. As the homesteading trend has really gained momentum, many townships and cities are allowing for the keeping of backyard chickens. While you may only be allowed to keep hens, they will provide a good number of eggs for your family, whether there is a rooster present or not. In places where a rooster is permitted, encouraging a broody hen to hatch her eggs, or purchasing an incubator and hatching them yourself, will allow for a self-sustaining flock, extra roosters for the pot, and a few spare eggs and chicks to sell to cover the modest feed bill for your birds. Many people have an income from their homestead, be it in the form of selling excess produce, birds or livestock, or perhaps some form of craft or foodstuff created from the items on the farm. Eggs for eating or hatching, chicks, baby animals, yarn and raw fleeces are just a few examples. A small income is a useful thing even if you practically never need to buy anything in; feed bills and vet bills will accumulate all the same, and unless you have found a way to self-manufacture toilet paper and other mundane life essentials, you'll still need cold hard cash for that! On larger homesteads in rural areas, where there are few to no ordinances and restrictions on land use, people often opt to keep livestock to provide their families with milk and meat. These two products are often the most expensive at the store, and have the potential to be the most laden with hormones and steroids. Buying organic from farmers markets and stores such as Whole Foods is an option, but the price per pound can be staggering. Keeping a cow for milk is one option, goats are a smaller and – many believe – easier to handle animal for a family on a small farm. The larger breed does give in excess of a gallon of milk a day, which can then be enjoyed as milk, or crafted into a variety of cheeses and ice cream. There are even breeds of goat which will be dual purpose, with extra wethers (castrated males) filling the freezer nicely for meat for the family. Milking sheep is a less attractive option, as sheep can be a squirrelly species and give less milk than your average goat. But for meat and fiber they are excellent, and grow to a reasonable size for culling in a relatively short space of time. Even if you feel you don't need one of the ‘extra' products that your chosen species or breed offers, don't overlook it. There will more than likely be people in your area who do want it, and who perhaps don't have the time, space or capacity to produce it for themselves. Learn to trade and barter, the chances are they have something that can be useful to you. Be bold and ask – the worst they can say is no. In this climate of less available money, people are so much more willing to look for alternative ways to provide – even if all they have to offer you is a few hours' labor fixing something you don't have the skill to mend. Part of the joy and strength in homesteading is the ability to look beyond the box, and step back to move forward, as in times gone by. Recall times spoken of by your grandparents, how people did more things for each other, how money was less of an essential currency and more of a by-product, and you will start to understand how homesteading works. The degree of independence that you attain on your homestead is a matter of ability and preference. Anything is better than nothing, and every little step you take towards providing a tiny bit more of your own food is a step towards true independence from the issues surrounding a modern-day trip to the grocery store. Don't ever feel like a step is too small to make, because you know what they say about a journey of a thousand miles For me, a homestead is a place where there is awareness of the issues, and action is being taken. It's where a family comes together to create and provide, it's where responsibility for food and   provisions is part of everyday life. Big or small, urban or rural, there's room in virtually everyone's life for a few pots of tomatoes and cage of meat rabbits. And that right there, that's a homestead.

[LANGUAGE WARNING] It was a challenging task but an esteemed panel of NewsBusters editors led by MRC President L.Brent Bozell and MRC’s Vice President for Research and Publications Brent Baker boiled down all the biased outbursts from lefty hack hosts, anchors, reporters and pundits in 2024 and on December 18 announced The Brian Stelter Award for Quote of the Year.   Of course, every year there is way too much bias for just one category. So Baker led a panel of NewsBusters editors to break down the Worst of 2024 into eight additional categories (The Craziest Analysis Award; The Trashing Trump Award; The Damn Those Conservatives Award; The Joy of Hate Award for Joy Reid Rants; The Praising and Protecting Old Joe Award; Carrying Kamala’s Water Award for Helping Harris; The Cursing the Conservative Court Award and the Celebrity Freak-Outs Award).  Today we present the WORST OF 2024: The Celebrity Freak-Out Award. Without further ado here is the winner (followed by the top runners-up):   WINNER “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to ever cast a ballot again.”— Oprah Winfrey at Kamala Harris rally, November 4.   RUNNERS-UP “Done. I’m done. I’m fucking seriously done. The Supreme Court has pissed me off so much right now. Like so much. Joe, you’re a reasonable man. You don’t want to do this. But here’s the reality: This is a fucking war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our fucking country. And these assholes are gonna take it away. They’re gonna take it away. Fuck you Clarence ‘Uncle’ Thomas! Fuck you! Joe, you now have the right to take that bitch Trump out. Take him out, Joe. If he was Hitler, and this was 1940, you’d take him out. Well, he is Hitler. And this is 1940. Take him the fuck out! Blow him up, or they’ll blow us up. Facts.”— Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black actress Lea DeLaria in July 1 Instagram post.   Actor/musician Jack Black: “Make a wish!”...Actor/musician Kyle Gass, before blowing out birthday cake candles: “Don’t miss Trump, next time.”— On stage exchange between Jack Black and Kyle Gass at their band Tenacious D’s July 14 performance in Sydney, Australia. Black apologized and canceled the tour. Gass initially apologized then deleted it.   “Do you see yourself and would you ever consider being the conduit to that third party? Because I don’t know if the Republican Party as we knew it will survive this because if he [Donald Trump] ever gets in again we’ll never have any more elections. There will be no more. He will stop it and he’s very clear about that. He wants to be dictator for life!” — Co-host Whoopi Goldberg to Liz Cheney on ABC’s The View, January 10.   “I always keep saying, democracy is great, of course, but democracy people take for granted.….The guy’s a monster….It’s almost like he wants to do the most horrible things that he can think of in order to get a rise out of us….It’s [bleep] scary. Excuse my French…. As a kid, I said ‘Hitler, it’s a nightmare. That never would happen.’ But now I see that it is possible.”— Actor Robert De Niro on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, May 2.   “Well, [bleep]. It happened….Today, I wore my ‘I am questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of humanity’ sticker....the majority has spoken, and they said that they don’t care that much about democracy.”— Host Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show, November 6.   “We had the choice between a prosecutor and a criminal, and we chose the criminal to be president of the United States. More than half of this country voted for the criminal who is planning to pardon himself for his crimes….It was a terrible night last night. It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for healthcare, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on Social Security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth and democracy and decency and it was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him, and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too. You just don’t realize it yet.”— Host Jimmy Kimmel on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, November 6.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a man plowed a pickup truck into a large crowd of partygoers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, causing terror and sending at least 30 others to the hospital with serious injuries. The attacker then reportedly exited the vehicle and began firing a weapon. New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell declared the incident a "terrorist attack" in a Wednesday morning briefing; however, the FBI disputed that characterization, saying that their agency has not yet confirmed this. The attack reportedly occurred around 3:15 am local time at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Iberville.In a Wednesday morning update to the media, New Orleans police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said, "It did involve a man driving a pickup truck down Bourbon Street at a very fast pace, and it was very intentional behavior. This man was trying to run over as many people as he possibly could... It was not a DUI situation. This was more complex and more serious based on the information we have right now."Kirkpatrick also indicated that the FBI has taken over the investigation into this incident.Police have not yet released any information regarding the attacker, including whether he is in custody, deceased, or still at large. Witnesses at the scene did tell local television station WWL-TV that they witnessed officers returning fire after the suspect exited the vehicle and began firing into the crowd. New Orleans police did confirm that two officers were injured in the attack, but it was not immediately clear if they were injured by the truck, gunfire, or both. The extent and seriousness of their injuries were also not clear. This is a developing story and will be updated as events warrant.

FBI, Mayor of New Orleans Give Conflicting Takes on If Attack was a 'Terrorist Event'

Happy New Year Morning Minute

Israeli strikes killed at least nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, officials said Wednesday, as the nearly 15-month war ground on into the new year with no end in sight. One strike hit a home in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, the most...