Peace! Be Still

Twitter-esque

Took class with DESMOND RICHARDSON.  THE Desmond Richardson.   Almost as cool as Liza.  But – who am I kidding – not quite. 

Tweet out?  

Mad scientist. How cliche.

Have you heard about the latest czar horror?   You won't believe your eyes when you see the reproductive villainy condoned by President Obama's "Science Czar" John Holdren.  This man should be sharing a hamster cage and water-feed with Pinky in the Brain, not unelected-ly controlling American policies.  

Story below:

*****

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Impossible, you say? That must be an exaggeration or a hoax. No one in their right mind would say such things.

Well, I hate to break the news to you, but it is no hoax, no exaggeration. John Holdren really did say those things, and this report contains the proof. Below you will find photographs, scans, and transcriptions of pages in the book Ecoscience, co-authored in 1977 by John Holdren and his close colleagues Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich. The scans and photos are provided to supply conclusive evidence that the words attributed to Holdren are unaltered and accurately transcribed.

again, full story here.

*****

Also, Michelle Malkin  supplemented this story with a straightforward, disturbing video.  

Extermination of "undesirables?"  Ring a bell? 

Justice Ginsburg originally thought Roe v. Wade was designed to limit 'populations that we don’t want to have too many of'

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s loose cheeks just got a whole lot looser.   (Is looser even a word?  I suppose it’s not.) 

You may want to sit down for this one.

This past Tuesday Justice Ginsburg – the same woman who won the 1999 Marshall Award for her contributions to gender equality and civil rights – told the New York Times that the landmark decision Roe v. Wade hinged on the Supreme Court majority's desire to diminish populations that we don't want to have too many of."   The full interview will follow below, in just a minute.

 I should preface Ginsburg’s remarks with a little bit of background information on Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood), so that Ginsburg's egenics references do not strike you  as outlandish and absurd.  Eugenics – all of its racism and evil intentions – are, and always have been, at the heart of the pro-abortion movement.   This is not breaking news.  

Time to slap down some Sanger101:

Sanger’s original motto Planned Parenthood was “Creating a Race of Thoroughbreds.”  It reveals what no one will admit anymore: eugenics wasn’t just a side hobby for Sanger—it is the very core of her abortion propagation.  In her own words (and truly, the woman has so many blatantly revealing statements), she would use birth control to eliminate “the dead weight of human waste”. 

Sanger mourned the fact that medical technology of the day was wasted by keeping the weak and the sickly alive to procreate.  She devoted herself to preventing fertility in the physically and mentally “defective,” and wrote off anything else as weak “sentimentalism”.  To our humanitarian Sanger, the greatest achievement of her Birth Control campaign would be to stop “morons and imbeciles” (her choice of vocabulary, not mine) from having children. 

Eugenics with a vengeance was the name of her creepy little game.  “We prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feebleminded,” Sanger said. Sanger harbored a racist hatred for minority groups, and she actively encouraged African-American Ministers to preach abortion rights to black community churches with the hopes of eliminating these people she disgustingly called “socially undesirable people.”  The lady of the hour was quoted saying: "The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."   Sanger is often hailed as the “Champion of Women’s Rights.”  Puhlease.  What an insult to women.

Even though abortion activists have rewritten Margaret Sanger’s biography, her ideals remain indelibly fixed at the center of her the reproductive rights movement.  If Sanger were to come back to earth for a visit, I'm sure she’d be delighted to see our society of abortion, contraception, forced sterilization, euthanasia, racial prejudice, animosity towards God and religion, reprogenics (manipulating qualities in the baby, like sex selection, blood type, talents and physicality in order to create 'designer children'), and the sky-rocketng minority abortion rates.  

I am not being naïve.  I have many dear pro-choice friends who'd writhe at the very thought of eugenics.  But that’s the point: the founders and leaders of reproductive rights work to keep supporters unaware.  Their black-tar agenda is as thick and utterly confounding as it is dark.   And they do not authentically care about the well-being of women and minorities.

But don't take it from me.  Take it from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women? .

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me.  {The ruling she's referencing is Harris v. McRae, which forbade using medicaid to cover abortions.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. 

Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

For shame, Justice Ginsburg.  This kind of disrespect for human life knows no bounds.   

I read something of Flannery O’Connor’s once that I’ll never forget: “The truth doesn’t change according to our ability to stomach it."  Abortion and its advocates are up to no good, and the proof is all here.   Ya dig?

Eyes Up, Commander

mmmamma mia!!

This week Obama is in the Eternal City, enjoying the ancient attractions...as well as the more recent ones.

Peace! Be still.

Couldn't help myself.

A little pro-life jujitsu, and Planned Parenthood is flipped on its back.

The intrepid Lila Rose is undercover again.  You may remember her past videos exposing Planned Parenthood's willingness to take money from people spitting racist bile.  

Lila is only twenty year old, and started her organization when she was only 15.  Since then she has spent the past few years going undercover as perpetually 14 year old girl.  

Give or take a few details, Lila's undercover character is an extremely young, pregnant teen who is attempting to hide a sexual relationship with a 31 year old man.  Lila's project "Mona Lisa" goes behind enemy lines, straight into abortion clinics.  Again and again this girl is successfully exposing Planned Parenthood's eager violation of mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape in order to obtain secret abortions for young girls.  Planned Parenthood keeps their mouth shut, sending victims right back into their same abusive, illegal relationships.

All we ever hear from Planned Parenthood are self-righteous claims they're helping women.  That the organization stands as a flaming torch for women's rights.  That the service they provide is for women's physical and psychological health.  That they are an arm round the shoulders of fertile females everywhere.  Lila Rose's work exposes how Planned Parenthood isn't some sort of warm hand to rub a woman's back.  Planned Parenthood is just a snapping, grasping set of fingers, with a tight grip on every patient's checkbook.  So long as they are paid, they're good (Planned Parenthood pockets over one billion dollars each year).  Truly, for all they care a girl can go right on being abused.  

As Ingraham put it in her radio interview of Lila Rose this morning, the girl's got serious moxy.  I remember Glenn Beck prefaced one of her hidden camera exposes as something that would make "blood shoot right out of your eyes."  What a gross, perfect way to describe it.  Here's the recent footage from Birmingham Alabama.  Hope it makes you as mad as it made me.  Send this page around to spread word of these abuses.

7/5/09

Again, just laugh to keep from crying. You can click the cartoons to enlarge.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

MPower Pictures, the same company that produced the beautiful film Bella, have done it again.  Everything these filmmakers touch, turns to gold.  It is a compassionate, deeply human depiction of the suffering of an Iranian woman.  Jarringly recent (1986), the movie tells the true story of Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive man, lead to a terrible unjust end.  The movie stands as protest against the acts of brutality and injustice committed against women throughout the world. 

Please support this film.  Here is a list of theaters showing the film.

This movie could have have come out at a more tragically appropriate time.  Please continue to keep the people of Tehran who are being cut down right in their own streets  - victim/martyrs like Neda - in your constant prayers.  

real smooth

Jimmy Carter took a little trip to Gaza this week.

He whispered sweet, destructive nothings in Palestinian ears.

How hasn't he caught on? All that groveling still gets him no where.

Michelle Malkin's Obamacare poster contest - too good (and too true) to not post a few!

American healthcare is the best in the world. Our cancer survival rates put Europe and Canada's to shame.  Non-Americans in need of specialized care come HERE when they want the best.  It isn't perfect, but that doesn't detract from the fact that American medical care is envied throughout the world.  The megalithic arrogance of this man to think he can put his hands all over it!  To throw that all away for a socialist system?  It is inconceivable to me.  Does it stun and scare you too?

Daniel Hannan's got my heart all a-flutter

Have you seen this??!! -- It is a video of Daniel Hannan (European Parliament), speaking the truth with jaw-dropping audacity.  Yes, his biting sarcasm, and deadly-fixed stare is directly addressed to THE Gordon Brown (British Prime Minister).  Hannan comes on FOX pretty often as a political commentator, and he was a guest on the Laura Ingraham Show the other day, talking about the blow the Labor Party took in the most recent European election.   Apparently liberal Europe is deciding to leave socialist thought to the Americans.

Watch the video all the way through!  Not only is his entertaining, articulate, witty denouncement of the Prime Minister an inspirational thing to behold -- it is also horribly pertinent to America's government today.  Hannan points out the stark, absurd truth: you cannot spend your way out of recession, or borrow your way out of debt.  Duh?  Like Brown, Obama also seems to be pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for the epic fail his economic policies.   His laceration of our private sector (through the stimulus' unprecedented 'funding of the unproductive public sector') has rocketed unemployment rates to 9.4%.  This number is far higher than 8.8%, which is the unemployment percentage Obama swore unemployment would reach if the stimulus WASN'T passed. 

Are you grossed out yet by all the sick-obsessed shameless Obama adoration??   We're caving to a lazy yearning for some great man to come and fix our problems for us.  George Will wrote an article today that cries out to the individual to step up to our natural role as citizens.  "What the country needs today in order to shrink its problems is not presidential greatness.  Rather, it needs individuals to do what they know they ought to do, and government to stop doing what it should know causes or prolongs problems."  

So do it.  Take a page out of Daniel Hannon or George Will or actor Jon Voight's book, and speak out - even when its unpopular and intimidating to do so.  

Obama's Birth Certificate Protection Act

Welcome to a new level of insanity and injustice.

We've all taken American government classes.  We're all familiar with the fact that: No person except a natural born citizen - or a citizen of the United States - at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President. (ahem, Article 2, Section 1).  It seems a reasonable, justified request made by the American people to want to have a look at the birth certificate of a man to whom we have handed the presidency of our great nation.  Of all the basic inquiries, this is surely the most natural and obvious.  Under the laws of our Constitution, Barack Obama is not eligible to serve as our president:  

"The Obama campaign, with questions about his birth in Kenya to his Kenyan father (a British citizen), and his years in Indonesia where he was known as Barry Soetoro (taking the surname of his stepfather), was not nearly as forthcoming as the McCain campaign. What was posted in support of Mr. Obama's eligibility was not a birth certificate, but something that resembles a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB, which, even if authentic, does not prove "natural born" U.S. citizenship. In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child's birth to those who register a birth overseas or one that takes place outside of a hospital."  (Margaret Hemenway)

That COLB document was the BEST they got.  Demands to see Obama's actual certificate was not only refused, but over a million dollars in legal fees have been spent trying to side step Article 2, and make the need to produce the document go away.  If the man had nothing to hide, surely he wouldn't 1. waste such a colossal amount of money, and 2. insult the American people by asserting himself supreme over the traditional laws of our land.  

Obama's greed for power regardless of his eligibly, and his disrespect of the American people is criminal.  But this is old news.  

Recent news: Obama's Birth Certificate Protection Act

WASHINGTON – A bill approved by the House of Representatives and referred to the Senate would prohibit federal employees of the executive branch from being compelled to release any document unless a court makes a specified determination by a preponderance of evidence – legislation at least one group suspects is designed to protect Barack Obama's elusive birth certificate from release. 

"In any case, this bill puts the lie to this administration and this Congress being the most ethical and transparent in American history," Farah said. "They're very open when it comes to the secrets of previous administrations, but when it comes to their own work, it is shrouded in secrecy. Even the president's birth certificate and student records are well-guarded state secrets." from CNIN

Transparent and deceitful. Are you fuming?  Are you shaking?  THE MEDIA DOES NOT COVER THIS.  NO ONE IS HOLDING THIS MAN ACCOUNTABLE TO ANYTHING HE DOES AND DOES NOT DO.  

Why being one of UVA's undergraduate poets makes me so darn proud.

Sam Witt  write a great article on poetry at the University of Virginia (as well as poetry's transcendent societal role in general).  If you are interested (and I hope you are!) read the article linked below.  It  revolves around UVA's community of famous poets and a couple of UVA's MFA writers.  As a member of the undergraduate poetry program, these are the writers we get to learn from every day.  They are tremendous.  As usual, their reverence for poetry's particular function of human expression is such a beautiful thing to hear/be a part of.  

Who Cares About Poetry Anyway?

Seventeen Magazine

Spring Sweethearts!

Quick post today, wit some background required:

Last year I was selected to be on Seventeen Magazine's Style Council as their "Bohemian Chic" girl.  My various duties on the council  is to model for the magazine, give fashion advice via cool hunting, and also write for Seventeen's online blog.  One of the perks is that I'd hoped to eventually be able to use it as a platform to be real with the readers about encouraging a movement toward modesty.  

In a recent post I talked about this, and so today, I'm asking a favor of you - rally!   If you agree, please flood the comment box with support and/ or agreement.  Seventeen Magazine's website is a heavily trafficked avenue for teen girls, and the more support voiced for clothing that doesn't tell-all, the more encouragement they may take from it.  

It's just a quick, little post, but here it is:

seventeen blog

simply because vegetarian boys are a largely unpraised demographic:

Veggie Boy

 

With apologies to the incisors’

noble effort each meal,

the way you eat that salad…

odes to your bicuspids 

 

practically compose themselves. 

Cherry tomatoes never looked so virile.

 

Somewhere on a farm nearby

grateful little piggies lounge free.

 

In candlelight your jaw muscles a French

baguette – the chickens unite, and approve.

 

Herbivore,  

you smell like onion

 

and I like it.

That breath don’t make me cry. 

 

Smile and I’m beet

red.  Speak: the bell peppers

 

begin to ring. 

Careful! Gentle – 

 

that upper lip could split

me open, ripe, sweet pecan. 

GIRL POWER

pretty filly snags the Preakness. OH SNAP.

poem

Angel Gabriel

 

Sometimes the Angel Gabriel appears in a burst

     of feathers at my door.  Carrying a bent lily

          he stops for pomegranate tea

                after a sad day on the job. 

 

I bring out my whitest china

     but sit a few feet back because his glow

           is like the equator at sunset

               and really does  a number on the eyes.

 

Sometimes the hem of his robe is singed

so he explains how gentleness is

     a pseudo-insurrectionary fight.  That love’s become

                         the cause of vigilantes

He, Michael, Rafael – guerilla rank and file.

 

Sometimes Gabriel talks about a baby

     girl he couldn’t save.  How the blade

          spun like propellers of a warplane.

 

How he can’t sleep because he sees her

     scattered like jagged pink seashells

          when he shuts his eyes.

 

Sometimes he describes heartbeats:

fragilely mighty, or mightily fragile

   depending on their owners.

       Strung together, one opal, then another. 

            Moving like the tops of trees

      in a windstorm.

 

But most of the time Gabriel can’t say

     anything at all. He cries archangel-sized tears

          and what looks like glitter

                   shakes lose from his hair.

              

So we sit.  Let the tea-steam wrap

     around his halo. 

 

     Then he picks up that broken lily

and wanders, like a heavy mist, down my street.

 

Peter Singer: Patron Saint of Clams, Scourge of the Unborn

I'm suppressing the urge to laugh, on account of the circumstances being so disgusting.  

OK Senator Tom Coburn gave this stirring speech, speaking out for about the infuriating Omnibus Appropriations Act. Finally, someone speaking out about this bill that puts "politicians first, and the people last," and how President Obama is violating his every promise to the American people. How no one is permitting amendments and changes to a bill that will affect our future and our children's and our children's children's future. Please give his words a couple minutes of your time; arm yourselves with legitimate anger at this colossal $pending; how we and our future families are being made subservient to crooked and greedy political agendas.


(I still can't embed videos, so this link will take you straight to the video:)

Click here for the speech!

excuses, excuses!

Oh dear. Forgive me, but typepad changed their format for posting, and it has had me baffled to the extreme.  I cant figure out how to embed youtube videos, or even link URLs, so I apologize for my extreme silence.  I've just been so frustrated with the format and my fruitless attempts to supply you lovelies with the scintillating bevy of articles and videos I've run across.  I realize that it's less typepad.com's fault than my own stubborn inability to grasp even the most simple of technologies.  

So my latest plan is to locate the closes kindergartner, and to ask them to please help me out.  As soon as this has been accomplished, I'll be getting the ball rolling.  In the mean time, I am sorry for such a hold up in what I had hoped to be a regular flow of Peace-Be-Still posts.  

tea party

The Going Galt phenomenon only continues to pick up the pace.  I come bearing picture a la Ms. Malkin.  Some of the pictures are straight up sassy.  (High praise!)

These pictures are from some stimulus protests and rallies -- it's no surprise the media has been ignoring these statements.  Since our news sources are keeping this stuff to their chests, care to spread around the word yourself?

a quick watch to make you think

2,688 days-- not too shabby

Here is a sobering article--- In spite of mistakes in office and all the abuse he fielded from the world, nevertheless George Bush implemented policies and institutions that kept the US safe from the constant threat of Al Quaeda--policies that while campaigning, Obama promised to do away with.  Bush left office having kept America safe from perpetual terrorist threats for 2,688 days.  The article discusses that if Obama wants to leave office with a similarly successful record, then he had best rethink his sonorous, idealistic promises to the American public, step out of liberal la-la land, and demonstrate his loyalty to the protection of the America public like he swore he would.

During the campaign, Obama described the techniques used to prevent these attacks as "torture." He promised that if elected, he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors." If he follows through, he will effectively kill a program that stopped al-Qaeda from launching another Sept. 11-style attack. It was easy for Obama the candidate to criticize the CIA program. But as president, what will he do when the next senior al-Qaeda leader -- with actionable intelligence on plots to strike our homeland -- is captured and refuses to talk? Will the president allow the CIA to question this terrorist using enhanced interrogation techniques? If Obama refuses and our country is attacked, he will bear responsibility.

Consider also the National Security Agency's program to monitor foreign terrorist communications. In the Senate, Obama voted against confirming then-NSA Director Michael Hayden to lead the CIA because, in Obama's words, Hayden was "the architect and chief defender of a program of wiretapping and collection of phone records outside of FISA oversight." In 2007, Obama voted against the Protect America Act, which temporarily authorized the NSA program. Last year, he promised to filibuster a long-term authorization but at the last minute switched his vote. He explained that he still wanted to make changes to the law, including stripping out immunity for telecommunications companies for their cooperation with the NSA -- which would effectively kill the program. And he promised that "once I'm sworn in as President . . . my Attorney General [will] conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and . . . make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties."

March For Life, 2009

Today in this freezing weather, Washington DC's Constitution Ave is PACKED with prolife Americans who've arrived from all over to attend the 2009 March for Life.  49,551,703 children have been lost to abortion's violent "right."  Please pray for the Marchers today, pray for the condemned unborn they are attempting to protect,  pray for the already brutalized 50 million, and pray that the stirring, poignant sight of the March will change hearts. 

Unlike the saturation of media coverage at the historical inaugueration just two days ago, our dependably shady media will pretend like this huge turnout never even happened.  Its injustice is disgusting, but hopefully not disheartening.  With the advent of this new administration, now is the time for us, as individuals, to sususpend our inhibitions, to clearly and bravely (but, ahem, politely)  speak out for what we know is true.  In absolutely any way we can! 

READY SET GO

Merry Belated Christmas!

It has been a rough couple months, but I'm hereby calling Peace Be Still back into frequent action. It will be buzzing like never before, I promise you that.

To kick Peace's new beginning and the newly unwrapped year off right, I'm turning things over to the absurdly talented and poignant work of Alison Townsend. This poem is like nothing I've read before, and I hope it carves its message into your heart the way it did to mine.

be seeing you,
--Peace

What I Never Told You About the Abortion

That it hurt, despite the anesthetic,
which they administered with a long needle, shot straight into the womb.

That they hit the vagus nerve the first time and I fell down when I tried to stand.
That after the second shot my legs snapped shut--

instinctively as any wild mother protecting chick, kit, cub.
That I held the hand of a young Hispanic nurse and wept

when she said, "You know, hon, you don't have to do this."
That I believed I did, though I nearly got up and left.

That the doctor was crude, saying (when he saw me conscious),
"It's always the ones who want to be awake who should be put out."

That dilation and curettage is exactly what it sounds like:
opening, scraping, digging out a scrap of tissue that clings.

That mothers both create and take life. That I crossed a picket line
to get into the clinic. That I wanted to come back another day

but knew if I left then I wouldn't return. That my mind was not,
as I let you believe made up that night at Planned Parenthood,

the positive lab slip shining in my hand like a ticket to heaven.
That this was where the deep root of sadness began to take hold.

That I stood in our bedroom a few days before the "procedure,"
my blouse open and bra undone, looking at my breasts, marveling

at the way they swelled, even at eight weeks, like fruit I'd never seen,
remembering the rise and fall of my mother's body as she nursed my sister.

That I felt inhabited then. Incarnate, the cells of my skin glowing,
bright and scared. That I wished we were married, though it seemed uncool.

That I wished you'd said "A baby? Let's do it!"
instead of "It's your body. You decide."

That it was all surgical and neat, not even
any blood afterward on the Kotex that made me feel fourteen.

That I dreamed of it for weeks. That we married years later, that dream
torn between us. That I had wanted to feel the hard bowl of my belly.

That I believed it was practical--you in grad school,
no health insurance, me the one with a job.

That the table I lay on was cold. That there was a poster
of a kitten dangling from a tree limb, with the words "Hang in there, baby"

on the ceiling above me. That I turned names
over and over in my head like bright stones:

Caitlin, Phoebe, Rebecca, Siobhan.
That the nurse wept with me, like some twentieth-century

Southern Californian fate, midwife to death
in her uniform printed with flowers.

That she wrapped my hands in her navy blue sweater.
That I described the thumb-size embryo inside me in all the obvious ways --

shrimp, peanut, little bud-wanting-to-open.
But not baby, never baby.

That I saved the paperwork as proof I'd been admitted
to the college of mothers. That I told you a good story,

letting you believe I believed I might not be able to write with a child,
that this was the beginning of the end of us.

That though we are kind now, and always cordial when we meet,
a decade after our divorce, it is the one thing I cannot forgive you.

That it has taken me twenty years to find words for this story.
That no matter how many thats I write, there are not--will never be--enough.

-Alison Townsend

a little Billy Collins for our own early November

Vermont, Early November

It was in between seasons,
after the thin twitter of late autumn
but before the icy authority of winter,

and I took in the scene from a porch,
a tableau of silo and weathervane
and a crowd of ferns on the edge of the woods--

nothing worth writing about really,
but it is too late to stop now
that the ferns and silo have been mentioned.

I drank my warm coffee
and took note of the disused tractor
and the lopsided sign to the cheese factory.

Not one of those mornings
that makes you want to seize the day,
not even enough glory to make you want

to grasp every other day
yet after staring for a while
at the plowed-under fields and the sky,

I turned back to the order of the kitchen
determined to seize firmly
the second Wednesday of every month that lay ahead.

Billy Collins

WHATTT????

The other day, an Obama-supporting teacher of mine, whom I will not name, told our class gleefully that "The days of capitalism are fast ending, and you know what comes next..."

Someone in our small class snorted a skeptical, "uh, socialism."

The teacher didn't respond, but looked at them with a nod and a smile, with a kind of x-induced euphoric gleam.

Whenever conservatives bring up Obama's undeniable socialist jargon and ties to frightening figures like Saul Alinsky, they are never able to refute it, and they don't even care enough to look into it. They say we're ridiculous and out of line for making rude, insane accusations, and that we are no better than that 'damned' Mccarthy. These days, our political allegiances are so iron bound and prideful, that the possibility that our presidential candidate may just plan to "redistribute the wealth" goes unexamined. When McCain's political ad about Obama's ties to political wack-job extremist Bill Ayers was shown in a class of mine, the ad's message as a credible possibility was not even discussed. Instead, my teacher, who is close friends with Bill Ayers, kept calling him "Billy," and reminisced about how great he was.

Andrew Abela, PhD. puts it very well:

Redistribution of wealth is, plain and simple, taking from those who have more and giving to those who have less. Or, in the words of Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." The biggest problem with this approach is that once those on the receiving side become a large voting bloc, the temptation for government to keep increasing taxes on the rest to satisfy that bloc is almost irresistible, and so taxes just keep increasing. I lived in Canada for many years, so I know this first hand.

Vote against Senator Obama because he is not willing to do anything to save
the babies. And vote against him also because you'll be taking home less
money after tax in order to feed, clothe, house, and educate your own
babies.

When you meet the souls of the millions of dead babies in the next life, do
you think you will be able to face them and say to them that you did not use
your vote to try to help them, because you think that the day when abortion
will be illegal again in the US "may have passed us forever"?

a couple articles:

Obama says that he would bankrupt the coal industry if they try to open any new, clean burning energy plants.

And here is Biden's opinion.

WHAT?? Consider all the railroads, dock workers, etc., who depend directly on the coal industry. This man is the worst thing that could happen to this country. Keep storming heaven for tomorrow.

PLEASE! Pray for Tuesday, and the thousands and thousands of innocent lives at stake in this election!