Quote updates 12/9

Bill Schneider:

“An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent — that’s the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush administration was a national disaster.”

http://http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/09/Obama.poll/index.html

Honorable William O. Douglas, U.S.S.C. (1898-1980):

“We must realize that today’s Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.”

http://www.oyez.org/justices/william_o_douglas/

Sandra Lee Dennis:

“We begin to resacralize sexuality by acknowledging its shadow side of destruction and death, the dark Eros whose importance we may yet grasp.”

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/Sandra-Lee-Dennis/Embrace-of-the-Daimon-The-Ecstatic-Promise/0892540567.html

Senator John McCain (R-AZ):

“Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt, many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight that I will do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face. I urge all Americans who supported me to join not only in congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and honest effort to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences.”

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/

William Jefferson Clinton:

“We just had the biggest redistribution of income upwards in the last eight years since the 1920s, and we know how the 1920s ended.”

http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/

What if food prices spiked like gas did a few months ago?

Monsanto’s trying to make it happen: advertise aggressively, collect the money and to hell with the people.

Ban Civil Marriage

Civil marriage – marriage regulated by the State – should be banned completely in the United States.  Marriage is a matter of way of life and belief, and should be left to the religious and philosophical spheres.  Including marriage as a civil structure simply brings the United States one step closer to a theocracy.

Test all children for parentage at birth (eliminate the “marriage presumption”) and eliminate all governmental monetary ties to marriage.  Have social security cover minor children of decedents, and allow people to designate one and only one adult to receive survivor’s benefits based on a decedent’s work record.

Allow adults living together at one address to either file one tax return for all residents or else to file all singly (single filing required for persons at government institutions such as prison halfway houses.)  Better still, adopt the Fair Tax instead of the Income Tax and there is no problem with filing at all, since there’s no filing.

Of course, this would put a lot of family lawyers out of work, not to mention loophole accountants…

In memoriam: June 24, 1934 – October 26, 2007 11:04 AM

Take him, earth, for cherishing
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.

Once was this a spirit’s dwelling,
By the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating,
Christ the prince of all its living.

Guard him well, the dead I give thee,
Not unmindful of his creature
Shall He ask it: He who made it
Symbol of His mystery.

– Prudentius (348 CE – 413 CE)

If the House Republicans don’t believe President Bush anymore…

… when can I expect to see the Republican House members introduce a bill for an immediate and total pullout from Iraq?

Quote Updates 9/22

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

“If an institution is too big to fail, then that institution is too big to exist.”

http://sanders.senate.gov/

Walter Kittredge (1863):

“Many are the hearts that are weary tonight, wishing for the war to cease; many are the hearts looking for the right, to see the dawn of peace.”

http://www.merrimackhistory.org/Walter%20Kittredge.htm

Anton Szandor LaVey:

“It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable.”

http://www.satanicchurch.com/content/9-sins.aspx

Brendan Cathbad Myers:

“When most pagans think of ethics, they usually think of the Wiccan Rede — a highly utilitarian idea which has nothing to do with virtue. I’d like to change that.”

http://www.wildideas.net/cathbad/

Ken Sanzel:

“Not every story has a point. Sometimes you just bend spaghetti to watch it break.”

For the Fallen

Sometimes a poet, writing of one matter – in Laurence Binyon’s case, the English Expeditionary Force in the First World War – will write words so timeless that those parts not specifically tied to place or time re-echo through the ages whenever a like event occurs.

The second, fourth, sixth, and seventh verses of For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon, for this eve of 9/11:

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

[…]

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

[…]

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Leave Georgia, pretty please, Czar Putin

My grandfather, the late Andrzhei Antonovich Dzialtvo, fled Lithuania with his family around 1902, when he was about four years of age.  It was during one of Russia’s periodic invasions of countries around it, which Russia has engaged in as a regular hobby long before Europe even noticed the Americas existed.

It’s also long-known that asking the Czar – whatever he goes by, Czar, General Secretary,  President, or Prime Minister – to stop invading gives the guy a good belly laugh.

So this is what I’ve suggested by phone to my Congressional Representative, the Hon. Christopher H. Smith (R4-NJ), and one of my Senators, the Hon. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), in a call made to each of their offices:

• The President of the United States of America should immediately recall his ambassador from Moscow and reduce relations to a chargé d’affaires level;
• The State Department of the United States of America should issue a warning to all American citizens in Russia to promptly leave Russia;
• The President of the United States of America should, by Executive Order, immediately declare a suspension of all trade with the Russian Republic.

That will get Vladimir Putin’s attention.  Calling for meetings and asking politely has not worked for dealings with Russia in over a millennium, and it obviously is not going to work now.

When I called Rep. Smith’s office, I was told that the Congress couldn’t do anything because Speaker Pelosi has declared a recess; I pointed out that the Representative was quite good at holding press conferences and could issue a public statement calling for these measures from the executive branch of the US government.  Senator Lautenberg’s office was a little more encouraging, and the staffer had a good laugh when I told him about Rep. Smith’s staffer trying to blame Speaker Pelosi for a possible inability for Rep. Smith to say anything publicly.

This is going to make it an interesting Olympic season, too…

Waning Moon

From full she darkens, failing, fading
Remembers climb and zenith, her creation
Twained moons they brighten, building, waxing
Reflected trine light, still needs but one

Still yet she dims, should she not shun
A final journey of making new
If ‘twould be ‘complished, must now she run
And claim Creatrix days, hers now so few

The matrix closes dry as the dew
To leave the Twain to grow alone
“No!” she cries, “Not only two
“‘gain I will birth the flesh, the bone!”

Fervored glories not unbecoming she who as a Goddess
Passion’d pains forthgiving: another yet to bless.

The entirety of “The Defense of Fort M’Henry”