True Love

In silence the heart raves. It utters words
Meaningless, that never had
A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,
Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat
In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like
Beauty. It stops your heart. It
Thickens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.
I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.
I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?
Two years later she smiled at me. She
Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her grown brothers walked with the bent-knee
Swagger of horsemen. They were slick-faced.
Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.
Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor
Of the big white farmhouse under the maples for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.
I did not know what a mortgage was.
His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing
An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.
The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought
I would cry. I lay in bed that night
And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.

But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.

Robert Penn Warren

Frank and Ella - Lady Is a Tramp

Frank Sinatra & Ella Fitzgerald - Moonlight in Vermont


Karen Carpenter and Ella Fitzgerald 1980

'Copying Beethoven' A Movie Well Worth Renting

I recently saw the movie ‘Copying Beethoven’ in which Ed Harris played Ludwig van Beethoven. It is worth seeing. But the central character of the movie is Beethoven’s music. And that makes for a very inviting and attractive movie. There is another major character. It is a girl who shows up to make copies of the score as Beethoven finishes his ninth symphony. Such a female never existed and it is indescribably unlikely that a woman would have done that job in those times. Let me just say that some unfortunate people find Gloria Steinem, Bill and Hillary and PC foolishness more important than historical accuracy and say no more about this blemish on this movie that is otherwise highly commendable.
The movie recaptures the events surrounding the completion of the ninth symphony and its first performance. The movie conveys a strong sense of the beauty and grandeur of the ninth without the whole work being executed from beginning to end at one go. Some sense of that debut is created by large chunks of the beginning and end being played in a beautiful and spacious hall. The final choral section’s ability to bring tears to the eyes of men and women because of its joyous beauty is there in all its glory.
The movie has a few scenes that show Beethoven’s relationship with his nephew. Beethoven had raised the young man but had not done a fantastic job at it. It could be summed up by saying that he loved his nephew and had been better at parenting than his own father had been. It is probably unrealistic to expect more than that from anyone. But this subplot gives us insight into the man who happened to be an artist. And Beethoven’s contacts with others were generally very limited. He was consumed by and totally devoted to his music.
Beethoven had an extremely high opinion of himself because of his great talent for music. And his great gift makes him stand out in the history of mankind. But the inordinate greatness of his gift was so prodigious that it would be more accurate to call it a rare gift from God than the an aptitude or achievement of one person. Still it is good that Beethoven saw himself as so very special. Because of this sense of self-importance he went to the lengths necessary to create his body of musical work. He was able to live through the loneliness, misunderstanding and sacrifices that necessary for the creation of his work. And the emotional tenor of his music makes it obvious that he never surrendered to anger or hate.
Throughout my life I have been emotionally drawn to different composers at different times. In my twenties I was drawn to Mahler, Brahms and Stravinsky. In more recent years I have felt more pulled toward Gabrieli, Vivaldi, Corelli and Scarlatti. But throughout varying times Bach and Beethoven have remained constants. (I sometimes think of them as the Catholic and the Protestant of music or the papist and the roundhead.)I do not know much about many of the technical aspects of music. I listen to the emotion of the music and am guided totally by my emotional reactions. And I suspect that this is also the case with the most technically talented and knowledgeable of musicians: they also end up where their emotions lead them.
Emotionally I find Beethoven’s music a rock and an inspiration. Around the edges and sometimes a little deeper the master’s music is aware of the challenges, irritations, disappointments and inescapable tragedies of life. But at the core is an heroic and steadfast and even joyful perseverance in the face of anything life sends at him. Beethoven’s music defiantly refuses surrender to any force. Plato would have welcomed this music into his Republic because there is nothing about it that encourages sentimentality, lewdness, cowardliness or excessive introspection. There is something about the master’s music that fully appreciates the dangers and difficulties of life and responds by grappling with them and enjoying any victories. Defeats are possible but are only momentary since they are never wallowed in and the hero of this epic music always has forward momentum.
But this music is not just about difficulties and obstacles. There is also the simple and soul strengthening enjoyment of natural beauty. And there is joy. The joy of just being alive and aware. The joy of creation and accomplishment. The joy that comes of feeling the radiance of a beautiful work of art or one of nature’s endless miracles. As love is the opposite of hate and fear, I think that joy is a species of love. Rather than having one object joy’s object is all of creation: the eternal and imperishable within myself and within everything in creation. I suspect joy even enjoys the perishable and finite in everything. In his Poetics Aristotle says that a beautiful object is characterized by unity, harmony and radiance and joy is the radiance within me that is able to pinpoint and enjoy the radiance in everything external to me.

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Cross posted at The Chinese Jar.

LOOK AT THE WORLD -- John Rutter

I recommend the full screen option for this. YouTube has a version of Rutter's 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' with a video montage of glorious natural beauty. Unfortunately they have disabled embedding. So here is a link to that clip.

More Tax Cheating from Democrats - More Corruption in Congress -- Will This Guy Walk???

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h/t JammieWearingFool

Exciting!!! -- Microscope Image of an Individual Molecule

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***Image of a pentacene molecule reveals its basic structure of five carbon rings. There is a beauty in the simplicity of the carbon ring. And this beautiful and minute structure is the bond that makes all life possible.
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The ‘picture’ of the molecule looks almost exactly like the sphere and rod models used in chemistry classes. Such breakthroughs in imaging technology will be of value in making it easier to design synthetic drugs. Also our computing abilities and miniaturization will be spurred by such submicro imaging.

Obama's Call for A Large Civilian Security Force: Guess Who His Enemy Is

This call for a civilian security force was one of the most troublesome things Obama said during the election. There is nothing in our traditions, history or present situation to justify such an innovation. But it is not really so much of an innovation. This kind of thing goes on in third world dictatorships where the ruler has given up all pretense of being the leader of the whole nation. It is a mechanism used to secure the despotic rule of one party, class, clan or race over an enslaved nation.
Obama has been on a roll and has just been pushing whatever he wants through Congress. If that continued he would create this private army at public expense. I have a sense that Beck realizes how valuable the present break in Obama’s momentum can be to those of us who are interested in preserving as much of our traditions and Constitution as we can. By looking over the program that Obama enunciated during the election Beck has pulled out one of the items most threatening to continued American freedom and liberty. By calling attention to this and building up public opinion against more tyranny Beck is removing some of the power the Democrats were getting from surprise and momentum. Beck has stolen a march on Obama. No wonder the Dems hate Beck: he might just out smart them and we might give them a run for their money. (Though actually a lot of it is really our money.)

CLEARING AT DAWN

The fields are chill, the sparse rain has stopped;
The colours of Spring teem on every side.
With leaping fish the blue pond is full;
With singing thrushes the green boughs droop.
The flowers of the field have dabbled their powdered cheeks;
The mountain grasses are bent level at the waist.
By the bamboo stream the last fragment of cloud
Blown by the wind slowly scatters away.
 
                Li Po
                tr. Waley

Modern Love

AND what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

John Keats

from Blonde on Blonde

Blonde on Blonde - Temporary Like Achilles


Obviously Five Believers

xu hong Scarlatti Piano Sonata in G major K.13

Why Does Congress Have No Respect for the Law and Normal Citizens?

Why does the congress have so little respect for the Constitution and the law? Because they only see laws as something they sell to the highest bidder. They don’t pass a law unless someone is going to pay them. They’re pissed that they had to defeat comprehensive immigration reform just to not lose their seats. They’re really pissed because the voters have done them out of some money that they feel they are entitled to. They see laws as their commodity. K street is their customer and they sell them laws. Their attitude toward the law is some what like the attitude of a manager in a factory that manufactures paper clips. It pays the mortgage but they could just as well make rain gutters. And he’d be pissed if some normal citizen told him he couldn’t sell paper clips to people who employ illegal aliens. I see congress and laws as flowing out of the great tradition of Hammurabi, Justinian, Magna Carta, John Locke and Tom Paine. But congress can’t see any difference between laws and paper clips and they see me as their enemy since I might sometimes ask them to pass a law just because it is what the country needs.
I first posted this Friday, December 14, 2007. I made a couple of changes but this is essentially what I wrote back in 2007.

The Siege of Vienna - 2/5

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

I ran across this comment at Hot Air.com by ericdijon on August 23, 2009 at 11:48 AM. It cuts right to the quick of who Congress is and what is happening in Washington, DC.

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"The sole premise of Obamacare is for the healthy to march on and the infirmed, ill, and aged to fall off the vine so the government can have more cash to fill supportive politicians pockets and maintain an aristocracy."

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Al Jolson

h/t: Chloe Van Paris

Who Is Obama's Enemy?

Anglo-Swedish No Less

The Siege of Vienna - 1/5

Right-Wing Thinking

Kids and Pets -- Silly Stuff

Whose Turf Is Astro???

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h/t: Hot Air.com

Lena Horne ‘Stormy Weather’

h/t: Chloe Van Paris

Big Bopper ‘Chantilly Lace’

h/t: Chloe Van Paris

Ann Coulter on Kudlow on Death Panels and Whether Half of Southners Are Birthers

A little long but worth it since she demolishes a couple of standard lib arguments.

Desperation

When you have no viable defense just assert that your opponent is wrong. If you're a mentally lazy Nobel laureate you might try to sneak by with the old, 'My opponent has no intellectual leg to stand on,' make a sour face and pretend you won. Good luck with that.


h/t: Verum Serum

‘Mr. Sandman’ by the Chordettes

h/t: Love Your Place

Bobby Darin ‘Splish Splash’

h/t: Chloe Van Paris

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama's MegaProblem

This is from NRO Thursday, March 20, 2008

Obama's Mega-problem by Victor Davis Hanson

Whence Obama's problems? It is not that he believes in the venom of Rev. Wright, or that when he says something stupid like a "typical white person" he means to imply a stereotyped distasteful race. He doesn't.

The problem is instead the environment that he heretofore has navigated in — prep school, the Ivy League, the regional identity politics of Chicago, or Illinois liberalism — is hardly representative of his own country. So what he can say among sympathizers and friends will not be excused or contextualized by average others who don't know him and won't give him the latitude he is accustomed to and apparently has counted on.

He and Michelle have no doubt rebuked sympathetic elite white audiences, and by both their presence and purse have let it be known that they consider the Rev. Wright's rhetoric tolerable, but they have no idea that the vast majority of Americans that they heretofore have rarely come into contact with are a far different audience, and find the Obamas both more privileged than themselves and undeserving of any more of a pass than any others.

The irony is that like proverbial rarified whites, who have voiced racialist remarks beyond the club, and who have rightly caught hell for the perceived bias, the Obamas suffer from that same blinkered existence and narrow associations that make the extreme seem accustomed and normal.

When he praises Rev. Wright he sounds like he is from Mars — but hasn't a clue that he does. And so like a deer in the headlights Obama keeps waiting for a black precinct captain or a Columbia professor to come to the rescue and explain — ever more clueless that even if they did, it wouldn't matter a bit.

Glenn Beck & Pat Caddell Discuss Van Jones & the Czars

h/t: MsUnderestimated

Greg Gutfeld on Redeye Talking about Contessa Brewer's Lie

h/t: Olbermann Watch

dKos Calls the Pledge of Allegiance, “the nation’s unofficial loyalty oath.”and More of Their Wackadoodle Ramblings

I visited dKos to see what they might be writing about health care reform. I was diverted by this oddity. In a section that began with the words, “Oh, those zany Republicans... “ people are mocked for using the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of meetings and the pledge is called, “the nation’s unofficial loyalty oath.”
Health Care was not addressed until very far down on the front page. I take this as a sign that the krazies see this as a losing battle. Most anything they wrote about health care reform fell into a pretty standard form. Usually a little introduction dismissing right wingers as inveterate liars who do little but bend the truth. Then comes topic to be written about which will described along the lines of, “You will not believe what lies they are telling now.” The position to be attacked is laid out, to varying degrees of accuracy. This is followed with the bold attack that commonly takes the form of either “Everyone knows that is not true,” or merely, “That is not true.” Proof that something is a lie is seldom to be found. The actual words of the health care legislation are not referred to. I wonder if a casual reader capable of critical thinking ever pauses to realize that maybe the fact that no one at dKos seems to have even read the bill might indicate how embarrassed they are by that legislation.
Now I’ve thrown this unrelated video. It is some kind of attack on birtherism. Its substance is argumentum ad hilarium and the assertion that Chris Matthews once held up a piece of paper that they claim is devastating to the birthers. But, of course, this is not a serious defense but rather an attempt to extend the lack of patience many have with birthers to all of dKos’ political opponents

SPECIAL OFFER

SPECIAL OFFER. Sign up for our all new health care reform and one bridge will be thrown in at no added charge. It is a marvelous reform that will save your economy from that troublesome and embarrassing bankruptcy I see coming. Supplies are limited. You must act quickly. If you question the details of the reform or my motives you will be attacked as a racist traitor by my people masquerading as objective journalists. A small carrying charge of $10,000,000,000.00 must be paid to the union thugs of my choosing. Those who are thoroughly tired of Grandma will be especially happy with the devil I put in the details.

Silence of the Dems

from Brushfire Sparks

When Homey Met Sally

This is just another in a long list of lies perpetuated by The Man to keep a brother down.

Except the Lord Keep the City the Watchman Watches but in Vain

Marco Rubio farewell address to the Florida House of Representatives where he served as Speaker.
March 27, 2009

Rubio: “Politics Is About Choices” May 12, 2009


The Republican establishment does not seem to realize the great resource they have in this young man. This makes me wonder if the Republican Party isn’t already dead but the members in the Senate and House haven’t found out yet.

Enya - Marble Halls

h/t: Catholicmomof10militant

Sleeping Giant Awakened, Retired Marine Update

h/t: Hot Air Pundit

The Democrat’s Marie Antoinette Style of Government

Ann Coulter also discusses the nuclear option and how the Republicans might save Obama's presidency.


h/t: MsUnderestimated

Protests Outside Feinstein's Office

I'm going to keep watching the anti-Obamacare protesters until I see one with a swastika. But I'm beginning to think it will never happen.
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h/t: The Wisdom of Soloman

BBC Confronts Greenpeace With Facts (Flying Pig Alert)

I know that anyone who relies solely on the Beeb for their news will lack the ability to process such an unusual exchange. Someone stop this guy before he says something nice about George W. Bush.


h/t: Hot Air.com

Massachusetts, Land of Hypocricy

A NIGHT-PIECE

------THE sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.
1798
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Lacking A Solid Defense The Left Wants to Limit Who Is Allowed into Discussion about Health Care Reform

I offer this clip because it gathers in a short span of time the pseudo-defense that the left wing is offering for health care reform. They advance some unsupported and rather alien principles. 1. That woman cannot be part of the discussion because I am sure she was told what to say by powers and principalities I disapprove of. 2. Anyone that I claim is allied with Glenn Beck is not allowed into our discussion. 3. He is Jewish and gay. She used the word 'Nazi.' The rules explicitly state this is not acceptable and she has forfeited her right to petition for redress of grievances because I pointed this out. 4. I hereby state that this woman opposes health care reform and only people in favor of reform have any right to speak. Everyone else needs to shut up while we clean up their mess.
It is a rather dishonest way to handle the total lack of a sensible defense of your position: smear and demean everyone who disagrees with you. Personally I tend to be very distrustful of anyone who, when they are the least bit thwarted, goes for the jugular. Do we really want our society governed by people with such a glaringly antisocial personality trait? But in spite of their grandiosity Matthews and his friends have as much right as anyone else to be a part of the debate. But they would be more likely to be taken seriously if they had more than sophistry and smears to offer.



h/t: MsUnderestimated

St. Helena

h/t: Da Mihi Animas

Nate the Dog Walker and Laugh In Dream

Ed Schultz Claims the Left Is Considering Dropping Support for Obama

So are they going to run Al Franken in 2012?



h/t: NewsBusters

He Isn't Purple but He Is A Dinosaur

He's openly contemptuous of anyone who disagrees with him. That's not new. But these are his constituents. He keeps repeating that tired line, "You don't have to worry about single payer because if private plans offer better service they will survive." Barney knows that does not even begin to describe the world of Obamacare but he keeps repeating that obvious lie.

h/t: Hot Air.com

Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.

Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.

Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place--
be glad your nose is on your face!

Jack Prelutsky

New Psychiatric Diagnosis for Barack Obama

White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase

h/t: Stop the ACLU

Funny Photo from Atlas

from Atlas Shrugs

gamblers all

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you've felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it's been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.


Charles Bukowski

Meet the Press, R.I.P.

The host is trying to force every guest to attack the tone of the Republicans. That is distracting and irritating enough but why is Rachel Maddow at the table? I think Maddow’s presence is NBC’s way of unequivocally saying, “Meet the Press is no longer a serious endeavor. We have entered into a full competition with Stephenfetchitoupolos to see who can get on their knees in front of Obama faster.”


h/t: NewsBusters

ACORN Busses in Plants to Pack Town Hall

All It Takes to End Medical Innovation Is the Passage of Obamacare

Do you like medical breakthroughs? Do you think finding new cures for once incurable diseases is a good idea? Sorry to break this to you but the implementation of Obamacare would spell the end to such innovations.
Because of socialized medicine in Europe they no longer contribute to the growth of medical technology and innovation. They spend their health care Euros on patient care and on the maintenance of the swelling bureaucracy. And way too much is spent on the bureaucracy in relation to the value they deliver.
Medical research and development has virtually died out in the world outside of America. And Obamacare will kill it here. It has only survived in the U. S. because there are strong vestiges of capitalism in our medical system. These remaining relics of capitalism inspire and trigger the development of new medications and treatments. Without the lure of possible profits medicine will stagnate. If a disease is incurable today and Obamacare is added to the picture it will remain incurable. There is not a sufficient mechanism to motivate the money and expertise to create meaningful innovation without the profit motive. Just look at Europe.
What is the expected answer to my objection from Obama and congress? (I mean, of course after they add to the post partisan spirit of Washington, DC by calling me a plant from the insurance companies and a terrorist and a racist.) I imagine they would say that congress will fund all necessary research and development and so we can expect medicine to continue giving us ground breaking innovations. These are the same people when I was young and Disco was yet to arrive that had promised that the post office would soon become a rational and profitable business. They were only off by centuries and many billions of dollars. Don’t be surprised if your doctor starts handing you more junk mail on every visit. It would only take regular donations to the right committee chairman’s reelection campaign. It is one thing to allow these animals to mangle and pervert the postal service. It would be a wrong of a different order of magnitude to allow them to line their pockets on the backs of the sick. And that is what Obamacare means.

Rally Against Obamacare in San Francisco

"Your worst nightmare, Obama. Your worst nightmare, Pelosi: an informed voter."
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h/t: Michelle Malkin

NEW SITE

Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Briunt Norton


I have launched a new website called The Chinese Jar. It will be completely nonpolitical. Its goal:
“The goal of this site is to read some of the great books and write about them. I am interested in the reactions of others to these books and to what I write about them. I intend to post some lists of the great books. I also want to post links to other sites about these books.
“The great books are the books that have made major contributions to the great conversation. And that conversation is the ongoing discussion through the centuries of the major issues that have occupied mankind. Here are some of those questions. What does it mean to be human? What are good and evil? Is there a God? What is the nature of God? What is the best way to organize a government? How much can we know about the world? What is the nature of beauty? How should I behave towards my fellow men?”
I have begun with a post about ‘The Sisters’ which is the first short story in James Joyce’s collection titled ‘Dubliners.’ I will soon write and post something about ‘Picture This’ by Joseph Heller and Joyce’s story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room.’
This is new tome and I welcome input and advice on how I might be able to make the new site more user friendly.

THE HOST OF THE AIR

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O'DRISCOLL drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.
 
And he saw how the reeds grew dark
At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.
 
He heard while he sang and dreamed
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.
 
And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.
 
The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.
 
But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.
 
The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.
 
He played with the merry old men
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.
 
He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.
 
O'Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;
 
But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

William Butler Yeats

Artie Shaw & Helen Forrest - 'Deep Purple' with Slide Show of Carole Lombard

The Fall of Rome

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

-- W.H. Auden

Soft Cat

It's called a chin nuggie.

Coulter and Ingraham on Racial Profiling

Chicago Politics

'Jungle' and 'Grandfather Clause' Have Been Purged As No Longer PC by Lefty Book Editors

Unbelievable. M-f is cool but God help you if you utter the word 'jungle.'

Dana Perino Says, "House Democrats Put Nail in Health Care's Coffin"

From Fox opinion piece on Aug. 11, in reference to Pelosi and Hoyer calling people who disagree with them UnAmerican, Ms. Perino wrote what I have quoted below.
Many feel that the Democrats are no longer a part of the discussion. They are merely engaging in ad hominem nastiness to avoid looking their loss squarely in the face.

"The Democrats have been so tone-deaf on this issue that they just can't believe their eyes and ears -- they can't believe that people actually don't want the reform they're pushing.
"Beyond seeming to have lost touch with the heart and soul of America, they almost seem offended that anyone would question their proposal, express indignation when asked how much it would cost, and nearly burst with frustration because don't you realize we've been fighting this battle for decades and we already answered these questions and that the moment is here and we can't just let it pass us by?!
Last month when the Democrats first started pushing back at the protesters, they insulted their intelligence and their individualism. Since that wasn't working, they took it one step further and insulted their patriotism. Advice to Democrats: stop digging.
"The leaders in the Democratic party have a responsibility to lay out clear proposals and to explain them fully. If they can't do that, that's not the fault of Americans who are worried about the consequences of just putting their trust in Washington, D.C."

Katie, Specter’s Sleeping Giant Attacked by Dishonest Agenda Driven MSNBC Talking Head

h/t: MsUnderestimated

Groucho 'Lydia the Tattooed Lady'

Another Old Post

From March 7, 2009.
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STARDUST --- Artie Shaw
I've long thought this is the most beautiful American popular song ever written. The melody is tasteful but also emotionally stirring. The lyrics have a surface charm. The meaning seems definite at first but closer inspection reveals it to be a dream-like collection of star dust. Best version with the lyrics is a toss up between Ella and Sinatra.

You Might Not Have A Grass Roots Movement If You Have to Pay People to Show Up to Back You

Corollary: If 95% of you voted for the guy with the matching skin color, you are racists.
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Favorite Old Post from 2-08

I'm reposting one of my favorites that originally appeared Feb. 24, 2008. It is about Jamal the last cat I lived with.
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I recently read a thing on the internet about a woman with chronic pain that got little relief from medications but her cat’s purring gives her some relief and contentment. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartDiseaseCenter/story?id=4325718&page=1 I was reminded of Jamal, the last cat I owned. He did not cuddle or sit on my lap. Most of the time I owned him I worked the night shift on a locked psych unit. We worked twelve hour shifts. Once in a while I would come home in the morning feeling unusually worn out and overly abused. I would get into bed and call Jamal. He would usually be in the kitchen looking out the window. But if I called him from the bed he would slowly make his way to the bed and lay in it for a while. He would lay about a foot from me as if he was afraid I’d roll over on him or we’d get too close. But I came to notice that on those days when I was feeling really down he would reach out one paw and touch my hand. It was his way of being healing. And it helped that this self-reliant cat with such good boundaries was there for me. He’s been gone since 2002 but I still miss him and I use pictures of him on my desktop sometimes.

As Part of the Pay Off to SEIU Goons Obama Renames His Health Care Plan 'Kneecap and Trade'

Love Me Tender -- Elvis

"You Can Always Tell What Liberals Are Up To By What They Accuse You Of"

Here"s Something Fishy for Early Morning

If you're going to a town hall today. you could just tell your congressman, "I'm a human being; my life has value."

SEIU and Democrats Water Their AstroTurf

This is Rep. Cathy Kastor's townhall. The clip starts over an hour before the meeting. At this point few people have been let into the room other than the Democrat and union goons that have been hired to pack the hall. The clip documents the passing out of mass produced signs and a near total lack of energy or enthusiasm on the part of the paid shills; but this is democracy to a Democrat. Go figure.

Will this make it on to CBS news?

f/t: NewsBusters

The Democrats' War On America

I got this from The Hill via JammieWearingFool.

"House Democratic leaders have set up a healthcare “war room” to help their rank-and-file members navigate a tumultuous August in which they find themselves on the defensive on their signature issue.

"The effort is being run out of Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office, but is being manned around-the-clock by a rotation of leadership and key committee staff members, according to leadership aides.

"Although the war room or “healthcare hotline” is primarily designed to give members the ability to get immediate health policy answers and updates from leadership offices, top Democrats are also planning to use the war room to help their colleagues respond effectively to political and press attacks, if necessary.

"“The news is being monitored very closely,” a leadership aide said in describing the various functions of the healthcare hotline."

Obama Looks at Death Panels and Says, "I See Dead Republicans."

h/t: The Virginian

"Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats

Johnny Cash and June Carter - Jackson (San Quentin)

Thank God for CSPAN

The Sickness Unto Death Ticket

h/t: The Ironic Catholic

Victor Davis Hanson On Liberal Americans' Racial Denial System

A large part of the reason lefties stand strongly behind Obama is that they think he can give them a free pass on racial issues. Without the prefabricated denial system on race that Obama sells them the lefties would find themselves in the same swamp of difficulty and self-doubt about racial issues that our history has landed all thinking, feeling Americans in. Here are some quotes from a recent column at NRO by VDH:

“. . . one of weirdest paradoxes of contemporary culture has been the tendency of wealthy white liberals to adjudicate who really speaks for the so-called African-American community — based on an authenticity that is often, in ironic fashion, based on the degree of perceived hostility to whites themselves.”


“. . . the implicit pact that the soothing racial healer Barack Obama offered them. It was an unspoken understanding that might be paraphrased as something along the following lines: “Vote for me and I will offer you instant exemption from all prior racial guilt — and yet allow you to live your rather secluded lives as usual.”
“In other words, the endowed professor, the corporate attorney, the green CEO, the endowment officer, and the high-school teacher could all continue to live in safe and separate neighborhoods, ensure their children went to mostly white and Asian schools (whether elite public or private), and through taxes for entitlements and abstract support for affirmative action still feel they were doing a great deal for race relations. As they saw it, they elected one comfortable and hip Barack Obama as their president — without living among, going to school with, or working alongside the Other.”

“. . . the impression was left that Barack Obama sees America quite differently from many, if not most, of its citizens — who understand our own sins as those shared with mankind, but our singular efforts at correcting them as unmatched abroad.”


“None of us gets a pass once we evoke racial identity, not even the president of the United States, not even one of mixed racial heritage. Once we go down that road of racial self-aggrandizement, of seeing each other not by the content of our characters, but by the color of our skins, we invite nemesis — and there will be retribution. Because Barack Obama has consistently emphasized racial identity to further his own advantage, I fear others, both black and white, will be emboldened to follow his polarizing lead — in ways both novel and far more pernicious. We once trusted our uniquely qualified president to help lead us out of our racial morass, but so far he has only pushed us far deeper into it.’

Many on Senate Ethics Committee Wanted To Sanction Dodd and Conrad For Not Stealing More Faster

From Fox News: “Looks like Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad are off the hook with the Senate Ethics Committee regarding their VIP mortgages from Countrywide Financial. In letters sent to the senators this afternoon and just posted on the Ethics Committee website, the committee said it found no credible evidence that the Countrywide mortgages violated Senate ethics rules. Furthermore, the committee investigation found that the actual mortgage rates offered to Dodd and Conrad under the VIP program "were not the best deals available at Countrywide or in the marketplace at large."

My confidential sources tell me that many members of the Senate Ethics Committee were plainly disgusted by Senator Dodd's and Conrad's and lack of boldness. One Senator was heard to remark, "If every member of the Senate is as penny ante as these clowns it won't be long before the House is stealing more than we are. We have a valued tradition to uphold and these guys settling for a measly few thousand dollars just makes us look cheap. My God! They were dealing with banks. That's where the money is! But it does leave more for the rest of us."
Another member of the committee complained that pikers like Dodd and Conrad just make things more difficult for their more serious colleagues. "If these big companies come in with the idea that a couple of thousand dollars is enough it is just going to take more time and effort to get a decent sized pay off. There was some discussion of throwing them out of the Senate just because they're such cheesy amateurs. But if we don't stand behind them now it might kill health care. And if health care goes down Obama might go down. And that would queer all kinds of lucrative deals," he added.

Nora The Piano Cat

Dramatization of Obama/DNC Tactics

**********FOUL LANGUAGE ALERT*************************
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h/t: JammieWearingFool

End Thoughtcrimes! Alert the White House at the First Sign Heterodoxy

The time for thinking for yourself has passed. To save money and improve health care Comrade Obama will think for all of us. It is your civic duty to report any signs of independent thought. If your neighbors express independent ideas get in their face and punch back. Are you a cowardly congressman afraid of bruising your knuckles when punching back? Call whitehouse..gov and we'll dispatch union goons to do your punching for you. *********************
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poster created by People's Cube

A Decision Tree Analysis Points Toward Passage Of Obamacare Bill

I think an analysis of congressional motives and their alternatives points to the Obama health care bill being passed. If they vote for the bill many congressmen will be voted out of office. But these congressmen can be somewhat accepting of the job loss since they will just go into the lobbying industry and make a fortune from their connections. Also they will escape the congressional seat that is becoming a real hassle now that citizens want them to listen and vote according to the expressed needs of the citizens.
But what encouragement do congressmen have for voting against the bill? I’m beginning to think they don’t have much motivation toward a no vote. If my congressman votes against the bill that doesn’t mean that I will vote for him in 2010. Since he continues to refuse to read legislation, I will probably vote against him just in the interest of good government. So if a Blue Dog votes against his party’s president’s pet piece of legislation he has no kind of guarantee in the present fluid situation that he can count on reelection. But if he is voted out of office things could go badly for him if had voted against the bill. He’s a Democrat and most of his contacts that he could trade on for a big salary lobbying job are Democrats. But after he has voted against the bill many of these valuable contacts might not return his calls. And he’ll be consigned to just another job in normal people world: and that’s very depressing. So if this Blue Dog is worried about reelection it might be financially better for him if he votes in favor of the bill.
So an analysis of observed motivations of congressmen and a simple decision tree point to votes more in favor of the health care bill. I am convinced that voter input is only a minor motivator to members of congress since the financial incentives are not affected by voter satisfaction with a member.

Beware the Mob

When Obama gave orders for Democrats to punch back it seems he meant to punch in a very literal fist to the face way.

Photos are from Dana Loesch

Some Insight Into Krugman’s Understanding Of The Health Care Issue

Paul Krugman wrote a column in the NYT today dismissing all opponents of health care reform as racists.
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"This Mob Is Out of Control"

Listening To the DNC and MSM on the Subject of Grass Roots Politics Is Like Taking Advice from a Rapist about True Love.

The DNC’s motto is “Democracy is only for Democrats.” The place is a fount of oxymoronisms. They tend to call anyone who disagrees with them part of a well-funded and organized effort to derail health care reform that is supported with millions of dollars a day from the demonic health insurance lobby. George Bush would have said, “These are people who see things differently than me. The great thing about America is that they have as much right to express themselves as I do.” Barack Obama says, “The great thing about America is that I can hire people to smear my opponents and lie about them. And since the media are dumb enough to be impressed by me, they’ll kneecap my scummy critics too. Great pickings here.”

What Is the Truth About Obama and Single Payer???

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h/t: MsUnderestimated

GRANDMA WILL HAVE TO GO WITHOUT A NEW HIP BECAUSE CONGRESS WANTS MORE LUXURY JETS

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Islamazation

ht: Boudica

Kennedy Family Values

h/t: Blonde Sagacity

Cavuto Lectures Obama: Counsels More Mature and Civil Behavior

Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.


by W. H. Auden

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

by W. H. Auden