Tom Ball Sings His Rendition of "Creep" by Radiohead AGT has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy on that post.

My favorite bit was the extended gay fish rendition…

Honestly I'm not sure how that glass table shattered like that, also that rendition of We Will Rock You was the cherry on top of this parfait of shame.

This song, and Billie Holiday's rendition of 'Strange Fruit' should be required listening in all US elementary schools as well as for anyone applying for US citizenship.

72 million, plus or minus, supported the man who attempted the coup...mindlessly. According to polling, over 50% still support the coup outright, the other near 50% still support the man and party and want to ignore the coup or blame it on political enemies despite all evidence to the contrary.

Only a few thousand participated, millions still think it was a good thing that didn’t go far enough. In fact, indications are there are similar actions planned in all 50 states and more in DC before, during, and probably after the inauguration.

If your club decides it’s going to break the law and murder people to complete its goals and you stay in the club, continue to pay your dues, and vocally defend it with zeal but won’t kill anyone yourself, and perhaps most importantly you don’t tell police they’re planning murders, you’re complicit, part of the crime, and deserve to be lumped in with the murderers.

I haven’t heard of any right wing whistleblowers that warned police that the murderous threats were being acted on. The FBI had to find out for itself at the last minute by sifting through encrypted right wing chat rooms on the dark web and their warnings went mostly ignored. They are still finding more planning for more attacks, yet no one on the inside is telling them. That puts all 72 million square in the membership of a domestic terrorism organization.

How do they want terrorists treated? Treat them like that. Rendition, torturous interrogation, and life in gitmo is what they think should happen to anyone belonging to an organization that attacks America, and their families. They should all fear their own criteria and punishments will be applied to them.

I definitely think that’s appropriate for any law enforcement officers that participated, gitmo or firing squad, loss of all benefits, and fines in the millions that their families have to pay.

Great vocalist but terrible rendition of that song...

Lovely tune and rendition, and I don't think Puddles and Shane McGowan really share much of a vocal style.

Next up, Puddles covers 'Pretty Vacant' by the Sex Pistols.

Steve Vai is one of the best instrumentalist guitarists in the world, known for incredibly complex music which would be best defined as 'soaring'.

That this guy got in the ballpark (and actually did a reasonable rendition of the song) is amazing.

Here's a 'performance' (apparently it's guitar synced) of the song so you can hear it.

that was an interesting rendition of Threnody for the victims of hiroshima by Penderecki

The reason this seems to work for most people is because they identify the tone/pitch of the notes relative from each other, thus making this very false rendition of this song suddenly 'click' and sound alright.

So my guess is that having great difficulty hearing the melody doesn't mean you're tone deaf. I think it means you're better than the average person at discerning the notes' pitch absolutely. The pinnacle of this phenomenon is called 'Perfect Pitch', which is quite rare. But we might have something close to it.

*quality rendition

A *quality rendition indeedy

When you veer into talking about changing the Geneva Conventions I think your argument loses logic. Without getting into whether military action is actually justified in the first place, maybe it's worth admitting that there are some thing the US military simply can't do and therefore shouldn't try to?

To suggest that the US should forego international norms to achieve its goals feels like it's channeling the neo-conservative myth of the US as this omnipotent superpower that it never was, and certainly isn't now. What evidence is there that acting like the terrorists (which once you give up international norms you will eventually get to) would actually help achieve its objectives in the first place?

The Bush administration basically took that approach with torture (the "well they did it to us!" approach). When the news of secret rendition, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo broke (as it inevitably would), we know that almost certainly recruited a whole bunch of new terrorists. Meanwhile torture confessions led to a whole bunch of wild goose hunts.

Civilian resistance has been around since the dawn of armies invading foreign lands. International norms geared around state v. state warfare don't really address them, not because they didn't envisage them but because occupying and pacifying foreigners was never a good idea in the first place. Drone strikes, surgical strikes on the likes of Bin Laden should be a rare exception but once you start 'normalizing' them, and giving occupying soldiers wider latitude with civilians that's when you start getting into serious trouble.

I'm not saying this just to tear down an incredibly skilled trick, but because it's the truth - if I switch to another tab and just have the audio on, this is easily the worst rendition of this tune I've ever heard.

Where's the line?

On the shelf to the left of my screen rests a copy of Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill. Excuse the hyperbole, but every single page of that book details actions by the US military/intelligence agencies that were in violation of both international and domestic law. Individuals may refuse to obey unlawful orders, but the organisations will commit every atrocity in the book without much thought.

How many laws did the CIA break during those three years when Hayden was in charge? How many torture camps did it run? How many "black sites"? How many extrajudicial renditions took place?

Let's not even bother with all the shenanigans of the NSA under Hayden's command.