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Helen Thomas, Lynne Stewart, a vat of anchovies and me ... indeed!
-Glenn Reynolds
TDB has been a post-free wasteland for the last week because, well, I've been preoccupied with other things. I still am but you know what, the world still needs art, so here's a painting by Pavel Filonov, an avante garde and influential Russian artist who, like so many others, starved to death during the 1941 siege of Leningrad by the Germans. Yes, it's a goat ("Goat," which was painted some time in the 1930's, now hangs in The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg):
The voting has been going on for about a week so and the leaders, so far, are pretty much who you'd expect them to be (George Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt are currently the top 5). What I find interesting are the great Americans who have not received a single vote so far. Here is the list of the great unloved (or the unloved great). The last name on the list really surprises me:
This one is in honor of the dads who serve.
As I said recently, the biggest challenge to sane members of the Democratic Party will be from their left.
I give you Exhibit A.
Actual title of the DU thread:
Don't let them take the Hitler away from us!
Yes, God forbid they should be shamed into not calling Bush Hitler and all Republicans Nazis ... why not just take all of the joy out of their lives?
The sad deterioration of the Democratic Party is continuing at an ever increasing pace. It used to be that mainstream politicians shied away from the lunatic fringes of their own parties. Sometimes, when unscrupulous or desperate politicians did seek the support of fringe groups, they did so quietly so as not to offend and drive away the sane members of their constituency. Well, all that is changing on the Left. Now prominent politicians like Al Gore, Jim McDermott, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin and Howard Dean (to say nothing of complete slimeballs like Cynthia McKinney) have not just embraced the Democratic Party's fringe element, they have become a part of it. These are the people who seek endorsements and solicit contributions from the likes of from Markos "Screw Them" Zuniga and who compare American soldiers with Nazis. These are people who link to Democratic Underground on their campaign websites and lionize anti-American lunatics like Michael Moore.
Well, this growing group has a new superstar and it is Congressman John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan's 14th District (which also happens to be among the most heavily Islamist areas in the United States). Congressman Conyers, who is one of the chief proponents of the "election fraud in Ohio" conspiracy theory, has recently recently engaged in a bit of utter stupidity by holding a "mock impeachment" based on the "Downing Street Memo," an anonymous account of someone's impressions of what people in the U.S. government were thinking and the latest straw being grasped at by delusional leftists who dream of removing President Bush from office before January, 2009. What's interesting about this latest stunt? Conyers openly acknowledges that he is in bed with the lunatic fringe, thanking Democratic Underground for its support on his personal blog. This is the same Democratic Underground where the death of Americans is cheered, where completely insane conspiracy theories are a regular feature, where Stalinist political fantasies are a staple and where Americans are openly hated. Of course, this should come as no surprise. Congressman Conyers has been working against President Bush and on behalf of Saddam Hussein and his ilk for some time now, so his alliance with the loons of DU is a perfect fit.
Whether you consider yourself liberal, conservative, or something in between, we should be able to agree that our country needs to do better than Conyers, McKinney, Gore and the other supporters of anti-American forces in our own borders. For this country to continue to prosper, it is not enough for Republicans to win. The Democratic party needs to be saved and not allowed to become a force for nothing more than obstructionism and hatred. In the struggle between the lunatic fringe and the ever more embattled sane wing of the once great Democratic Party, I urge all of you to support sane Democrats like Harold Ford, Barack Obama, Joseph Lieberman, Tom Lantos, Diane Feinstein, Hillary Clinton (yes, Hillary), Evan Bayh, Ellen Tauscher, and others like them who are, well, not entirely nuts. I'm not asking that you agree with or support their politics, since I certainly don't agree with many of their positions. I only ask that when Democrats find the courage stand up to the loons in their own party and get attacked from their left, you remember to support and encourage them because at the end of the day it is Democrats and not anyone else who will win or lose the crucial battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
Robert Frost is one of the people on the TDB list of 100 greatest Americans and, while he will not win (nor will any of the poets on the list, in all likelihood), it's good to remember why he is there. He wrote so much and his rhymes and pacing flowed so well. He really painted a beautiful picture of his time, place and toughts. Here is one poem by Frost about the importance of staying cold ... if you're an orchard, that is:
The House has passed a bill which will slash United Nations funding if the U.N. doesn't institute major reforms. Good for them!
They know the real reason behind the attacks ...
With the addition of the five "Greatest American" polls (below ... have you voted today?), I think it's time to clean up a bit. To that end, I'm taking down the rest of the polls that have been up for a while. Naturally, I want to give you guys the results, so here they are:
More silence from all of the people, both in the United States and elsewhere, who are supposed to have the interests of women and the oppressed at heart. A woman in India is being forced to leave her husband and marry her father in law because her father in law raped her. Yup. The village elders and the local Muslim clerics have decided that Islamic law dictates that this 28 year old woman must leave her husband of ten years and marry her rapist.
Folks, Islamism is a cult that has gone completely off the rails. It is not an "alternative culture" or an "equally valid belief system." It is a quickly spreading global nightmare that is costing lives. It does not need to be understood or sympathized with or tolerated. It needs to be eradicated before the event described above, which has become commonplace in many places where Islamists live in large numbers, becomes commonplace in Toronto and Dearborn, Michigan and Brooklyn, New York. This is not an Islamic problem or an Indian problem. This is our problem and the day that we deal with it in our own neighborhoods, it might be too late.
Update: The polls are up at the bottom of the page. Please vote and remember that you can vote every day.
This has been a very interesting and educational project. It is, frankly, amazing how many extraordinary individuals this nation has produced in its brief history. The difficulty in picking a top 100 is not in thinking of 100 people to place on the list but, rather, figuring out which amazing individuals to leave off. You could easily go five hundred deep without naming a single individual who was not absolutely extraordinary. This just re-emphasizes what a complete farce the Discovery Channel list was. I don't know how long a list you'd need before you got to Jimmy Carter or John Edwards or Dr. Phil. Ellen DeGeneres? Look, I'm sure she's nice enough but I seriously doubt that she's one of the 1,000 greatest Americans currently living in her area code. The fact that The Discovery Channel has a list that includes Madonna and Michael Jackson but does not include the Gershwin brothers or Louis Armstrong or Irving Berlin tells you all you need to know about the quality of their effort. That's right. They included Michael Jackson. Did they actually hold the vote outside of the courthouse? Or was it at Lambeau Field? I mean, how else do you explain Brett Favre?
OK, on with the show.
That I called the Jackson verdict three weeks ago. Stand in awe of my jurisprudential prognostication!
That is all.
While we're on the subject of great Americans, here's a painting by someone that you've probably never heard of. This is "Moonlit Landscape," which was painted in 1809 by American Washington Allston. It hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:
As you might have heard, The Discovery Channel is leaving it to the American voting public to determine who is the greatest American of all time and you know what? It's a complete joke. I mean, just look at their top-100. It includes the following people:
I just wasn't feeling all that poetic yesterday but I'm all rhyme and verses today, so here's something from John Keats that I particularly like:
If you listened to sports news this week, you might have come away with the conclusion that the big fight this weekend involves Mike Tyson. Folks, if you believe that, you've let yourselves be conned by Don King and his media sycophants.
That I am really looking forward to the next Harry Potter movie? Check out the trailer (I recommend watching it in large, rather than full-screen format if you don't already have I-Tunes installed). Given all of the material that they have to work with from The Goblet of Fire, this might be the best Harry Potter yet. I've heard that the child actors who are currently starring in the movies might not be back after this film. If that's the case (and I hope it isn't), I hope that the H.P. people don't go all George Lucas on us and wait 20 years to make the next sequel and/or cast completely useless actors because they happen to look like the people that they are replacing. I'm also pretty psyched about this.
I am such a geek.
The popular German crime drama "Tatort" (German for "Crime Scene"), which airs on a German state run television station, suggests that not only is the Bush family responsible for 9-11 (presumably so that they can be even richer and more powerful) but also that the U.S. government is out killing people to silence them.
Yup. Virulent anti-Americanism in mainstream, government controlled pop culture. It's not just for Arabs any more.
A couple of days ago leftist golden boy Howard Dean practiced some oral-pedal conversion therapy. Yesterday Democratic golden boy Barak Obama (among many other Democrats) criticized Dean for being the ham-handed, politically tin-eared nitwit that he is. Today, the true believers over at Democratic Underground are busy tearing each other to shreds (Obama is a traitor! Dean is an idiot! Obama is a Republican tool! Dean is a fool!).
Republican Texas governor Rick Perry, who succeeded George W. Bush as Texas governor, recently stated that gay and lesbian veterans returning to their Texas homes from Iraq should perhaps move to another state if they don't like the law that Texas passed banning gay marriage. While he is technically correct (that is, homosexuals who want to get legally married would, in fact, be smart to look at living somewhere other than Texas), his statement makes it sound as if gay and lesbian citizens are not as welcome in Texas as other citizens. The statement was especially egregious in light of the fact that he was talking specifically about gay and lesbian veterans returning from Iraq. Shame on Rick Perry for not embracing and speaking respectfully about each and every returning Texas veteran. They risk as much as and perhaps more than any other member of the military to protect this country and its citizens, including Perry and his family. They bleed red for this country, just like their heterosexual brothers and sisters in arms. His first instinct as governor should be to thank them on behalf of himself and the people of Texas, not to suggest that they move elsewhere. This reminds me of the words of that noxious bigot, Robert Byrd, who recently said, with respect to atheists:
"I, for one, am not going to stand for this country's being ruled by a bunch of atheists. If they do not like it, let them leave."
No, you sorry bigot. You leave. And take Rick Perry with you.
In all sincerity, I feel sorry for the victims. I'm talking about formerly rational and respected Democrats who have, in the last five years or so, lost their minds. People like Al Gore, who got my vote in 2000 and who now only manages to get my contempt and pity every time he opens his mouth. Another sad case is Charlie Rangel who, though solidly on the left of the American political spectrum, had, in the past, managed to come across as a sincere, decent, rational man. No longer. Rangel, not for the first time, is showing signs of Gore-itis. The latest manifestation of this disturbing condition? An old deranged Leftist favorite ... namely, comparing every damned thing to the Holocaust (and, by extension, President Bush and members of his administration to Nazis). When discussing the Bush administration decision to go to war in Iraq, Rangel said:
It's amazing. I mean, really, the man has no brain-mouth filter whatsoever. Today Howard Dean came out with the incredible line that the Republican Party is "pretty much a white Christian party." Funny, I don't recall being a white Christian back when I was a Republican. I'm pretty sure that my parents aren't white Christians. Looks like Secretary of State Rice and Attorney General Gonzalez and Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez are in for a shock. I wonder if Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao knows that she is white Christian? Dean, speaking of Republicans, said "They all behave the same. They all look the same." Is that so? So Rudy Guiliani and Pat Buchanan are the same? John McCain and Tom Delay look and sound alike? Elizabeth Dole is essentially indistinguishable from Rick Santorum? Dean also said that Republicans don't know what it is to make ends meet. Millions of Republicans throughout this nation who have it harder than Howard Dean, who was born into money and really never personally knew what it is to have to make ends meet or worry about a utility bill.
This is, for want of a better term, political bigotry and Howard Dean, a rich, white, Northeastern Christian male from one of the whitest states in the Union, who, as governor of Vermont for over a decade, did not appoint a single black or hispanic man or woman to his cabinet (not one), is spreading this bigotry the way that his friend Robert Byrd was spreading the traditional kind back when he was still wearing his Sunday-best sheets.
Blogging will be light for the next several days since I will be away from the computer until some time next week. Hopefully, if you visit, you'll leave a comment to keep this place lively in my absence. In the meanwhile, here is a painting, titled "Sunset in the Yosemite Valley," which was painted in 1868 by American painter Albert Bierstadt. It now hangs in The Haggin Museum in Stockton, California:
It looks like I'll be on the road on Friday and tomorrow looks like it will be a busy day, so here is your poetry fix on a Wednesday night. Here is a poem about near-misses and learning to react in the face of the unexpected:
Trust me, I'd only use it for good.
According to a senior Palestinian official, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas underwent heart angioplasty in Jordan on Wednesday. No link yet.
I also have no idea whether Abbas' demise would be good or bad for the prospect of peace in the long term. My instinct is that it would be bad because as bad as Abbas is, he's probably much better than a lot of other potential Palestinian leaders, given the current Palestinian "leadership."
Update: Link.
It's amazing. Zimbabwe is one of the richest nations on earth in terms of natural resources. Its land is fertile. Its people had the highest literacy rate on the continent ... and yet, it took one megalomaniacal sociopath and his murderous cronies to turn promise into catastrophe. Is there any point at which the so-called international community actually expresses unequivocal revulsion at the actions of this psychopath and does something about it? Honestly, I don't think that there is. I do not believe that the U.N. or anyone else really gives a damn or is inclined to do anything but pass useless resolutions. If it were up to me, I would move the UN into downtown Harare. Let them live among the starving, desperate people that they have been busy ignoring for all of these years.
Question for the readers: Should the U.S. do something about what is happening in Zimbabwe? If so, what?
Update: Naturally, Robert Mugabe, one of the most evil and destructive men on the planet, has his admirers and supporters on Democratic Underground.
Sgt. Robert Stout, the heroic young soldier that I previously discussed here, has apparently been discharged from the Army ... in spite of his stated desire to continue to serve his country. Why? Because the patriotism of a man who was wounded in combat for his nation was no match for the irrational, institutionalized, homophobic bigotry that continues to infect our government and armed forces, even as we need every willing and able person to fight the long, difficult fight ahead of us.
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