Month: May 2005

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*Deep Yawn*

Spurs asks the relevant question, but he asks the wrong guy! *LOL*

“Former Deputy Director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt was ‘Deep Throat’. David, please tell me why I should care…”
(I swear, honestly: that link was there! heh)
Let me sum up why we should care that after—what? 33 years?—all this time we should be all aflutter, as so many are, over the revelation that “Deep Throat” was “a former number-two official at the FBI” named W. Mark Felt:
1.) __________
2.) __________
3.) __________
There, I think that just about sums up why it’s sooooo significant that the family of a 91-year-old man who had asked that the information be kept private thought it important to grab their 15 minutes in the national spotlight.
*yawn*
Look, Watergate was all about the coverup of an amateurish, third-rate burglary that scarcely rose to the level of, say, perjury under oath by a sitting president…
Of course, it was a Republican president who was implicated in the coverup and a Democratic president whose license to practice law was stripped as a result of perjury. Given those simple facts, of course it’s important that two month ago on March 31 (in Vanity Fair Magazine) W. Mark Felt was revealed to have been “Deep Throat.”
The Mass Media Podpeople just had to wait for a convenient time to insert it into the “news” cycle… Oh, and of course they decided to check their sources for this, unlike Newsweak and Korangate or CBS and Rathergate… or the NYT and, well, nearly anything (“Hello, Jason Blair!”).
Well, Spurs, I hope that answers your question about just why this “news” is so very important.
(Oh, but then, i picked up that you already understood all this by the fact that your post quickly moved from the pressing question of why you should care to… the field for the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship. I can see you have your priorities firmly in hand. Good on you. 🙂
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Get your own Kerry Count-Up Clock

Want your own clock counting up the days since jean Fraud sKerry says he signed an SF-180?
Go here. The instructions are pretty clear. Use at your own risk, however. And do follow the instructions carefully. You could mess up your blog template, though that’s not likely. h.t. Cao’s Blog for the link.
One thing to note in all this: Jean Fraud sKerry says he signed an SF-180 eleven days ago, but has any credible witness seen such a document filled out with his signature on it?
I didn’t think so…
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Free Kerry’s 180!

Free

free180_02 Image: Something… and Half of Something

Join the Blogburst to Set Kerry’s 180 Free!

See Cao’s Blog for more, including a new “meme”—set “Free Kerry’s 180” to some sort of verse, a poetry meme, if you will.

So…

Go Down Kerry (Let your records go)
When Kerry was in D.C. land
(Let your records go)
He said he’d give them to our hand
(Let your records go)
Go down, Kerry
Way down in D.C. land
Tell ol’ NARA**
“Let my records go”
Thus saith the folks to old Jean Fraud
Let your records go,
We know already your word is flawed,
Let your records go.
Go down, Kerry
Way down in D.C. land
Tell ol’ NARA**
“Let my records go”
No more shall they in secret hide,
Let your records go,
Let them come out into the light.
Let your records go.
Go down, Kerry
Way down in D.C. land
Tell ol’ NARA**
“Let my records go”
Tell ol’ NARA**
“Let my records go”

**NARA: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the official repository for records of military personnel who have been discharged from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard.

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The divide (A Kipling Tuesday post)

Once again, the divide between the Empiricists and the Fantasists, Kipling style…

The Sons of Martha

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary’s Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.

They say to mountains, “Be ye removed.” They say to the lesser floods, “Be dry.”
Under their rods are the rocks reproved — they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill-tops shake to the summit — then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves’ end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.

To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden — under the earthline their altars are —
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city’s drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they dam’-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s days may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat —
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed — they know the Angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet — they hear the World — they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and — the Lord He lays it on Martha’s Sons!

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“…blood of heroes never dies…”

Compare and contrast…

A Canadian response to WWI events:

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Here’s a later response by an American reader of “In Flanders Fields”…

We Shall Keep the Faith
by Moina Michael, November 1918

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.

Now, what’s the comparison, the contrast? Well, not so much between the more famous “In Flanders Fields” and the less-well-known (today, at least) “We Shall Keep the Faith” but between the two poems and… attitudes today toward those who have fallen in service to their country. Today, large numbers of Americans hold such sacrifice in disdain. Indeed, many have attended and participated in “demonstrations” that have celebrated the terrorist savages who seek to kill not only American servicemen and women but civilian non-combatans as well.

Moina Michael’s now less-well-known poem was instrumental in establishing “Decoration Day” (now Memorial Day) and in
establishing the (apparently dying) tradition of wearing a poppy in honor of our fallen military. That McRae’s poem is “better” art, I’ll not dispute. But Moina Michael’s poem has a heart that’s sadly missing in all too many Americans today who cannot comprehend, let alone echo these lines:

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies

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Phony “Liberalism” at work

h.t. to “Sir George” @ The Anti-idiotarian Rottweiler

Gotta love ’em. Pseudo-liberals, that is. Easy pickings. See this article at The Telegraph. MQ is the lede:

Wristbands sold to raise money for a campaign against world poverty are made in Chinese sweatshops in “slave labour” conditions…

heh

The thing is, this is just the sort of empty-headed stuff that passes for “good ideas” among the Fantasist Class that thinks themselves “progressive” or “liberal” when in fact they are nothing of the sort.  All the Fantasist Class consists of are these sub-classes:

1.) Reactionaries who believe the failures of liberalism can be fixed if they just keep banging their heads against the wall. (Oh, and getting more money to make the wall stronger and higher… )

2.) “Reality-based” idealists whose only connection to reality is that it supports them in much the way that alchoholics are frequently supported in their addiction by co-dependants.

3.) The plantation slaves, that is, those dependant upon the handouts of goods and services stolen from Empiricists and from Fantasist dupes.

4.) The cynical manipulators of #s 1, 2 and 3.  This is the political class that derives its status, power and wealth from using the first three classes to steal wealth from those who produce it to buy influence with #s 1, 2, and 3.

It’s about time for the grownups in the Empiricist Class to just say No.  No more money.  No more buying of influence with the reactionaries, deluded idealists or plantation slaves.

Just Say No.

(And if they don’t get the message at the polls, then maybe it’s time for a Tea Party.)

 

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What’s Blogger Up To???

 OK, I’m officially stumped .  OK, “stumped” but quasi-“fixed.  See Update

It’s the same on every computer available to me. On Win98/2000/XP, ditto all of them. As of about 2:00 this afternoon, right after a short 2-line post-upload, Blogger displays third world county properly ONLY in Firefox. Internet Exploder? Nope. Opera? Nope. Only Firefox.

What the heck was different? A change in my template? Nope. (I even restored a former template to check that hypothesis: no joy.) I can see nothing corrupted in the html. All seems proper from this end, and it displays properly in Firefox! But not in other browsers.

Anyone know what’s gpoing on?

*drums fingers impatiently*

Well? Anyone?

*sigh*

OK, Update: Apparently the scripts (which had been working for weeks JUST FINE up until about 2:00 this afternoon) about Jean Fraud sKerry’s SF-180 were the problem. Apparently, I said… Although it’s still unclear why they were a problem now, after all this time, a problem, and then ONLY in Internet ExploDer and Opera, where they had NOT been a problem before… I dunno!

Weird.

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Shred Before Flushing…

…Newsweak, that is
 
Cao’s Blog has all the poop on how to dump Newsweak. Read it and rage on.
 
I’ve never been a subscriber to Newsweak. Once, nearly 40 years ago, I had a “student” subscription to Time (“The Weekly Fiction Magazine”), but that was for a class. If I did have a subscription to Newsweak, I would definitely shred it before flushing. heh
 
As it is… hmmm… I do get snailmail inviting me to “re-subscribe” to Newsweak (riiiiight–“resubscribe” when I’ve never had a subscription.  Desperate measures or just more typical disingenuity?).  I really ought to type up a form letter informing the marketers of my displeasure with Newsweak, print off copies to have on hand and send it (and nothing else) back in the subscription envelope… I’ll have to look into that.  Seems I recall something about bar-coding on such envelopes for tracking purposes.  Have to see what I can do to retaliate if they misuse that.
 
Meanwhile, go on over to Cao’s Blog and get going on the “Flush Newsweek” [sic] (heh) campaign.  Even if you’re not a subscriber, there’s a poll being taken to get feedback at one of the linkson how folks feel about Newsweak.