Photographed today, near Lake Mendota.
Feel free to write about anything in the comments.
August 18, 2017
August's autumn.
The colors are beginning to change, I see:
Photographed today, near Lake Mendota.
Feel free to write about anything in the comments.
Photographed today, near Lake Mendota.
Feel free to write about anything in the comments.
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Anything?
When did eBay stop just simply selling "things" by ordinary people where bidding was the basis, and become just another marketplace for crap by professional sellers?
Yes. Swamp maples along the Mississippi backwaters are changing here in SE MN.
Still monsoon season in Tucson. Thunderstorms tomorrow.
From the Iceland abortion story:
"We don't look at abortion as a murder," she tells CBS. "We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication ... preventing suffering for the child and for the family."
Let's see how many words we have to change to make it sound like Tony Soprano.
"We don't look at a hit as a murder," he tells CBS. "We look at it as a thing that we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication ... preventing suffering for the ... the family."
I have questions http://kenblogic.blogspot.com/2017/08/1812.html
Fires all around Missoula, but we're beautifully clear now. Kinda feel guilty...
The glee with which the CNBC lefties breathlessly spoke of Trump not getting his way on taxes says everything I needed to know about the week.
I could use some autumn colors here in You-stin, where my kids used to get heat stroke on Halloween. I should cool down by Thanksgiving.
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
.
~ Mary Oliver
On fascism-
In many ways this has been the default standard ideology around the world since the 1900's. It existed in a practical sense long before anyone put a name to it, even in Italy. Its been so typical that to call someone a fascist is simultaneously meaningless and, usually, completely accurate. Its almost like disparaging people for having a full head of hair. There are loads of functional fascists at every turn, that for some reason have escaped the Argus-eyed media machines. Maybe its that they blend in so well.
Most third-world countries have some very sound claims to fascist systems. Totalitarian or authoritarian governments, an officially favored native culture (and officially disfavored ones), highly regulated economies, or a strong official attempt at this. Russia and China today also very easily pass all tests for fascist systems.
Fascists are naturals as leaders or guides for anti-colonial or national liberation movements, or ethnic separatists. Many of these were regularly lauded by the western press as romantic heroes on the side of light. And some are overlooked in the mass of little peoples of the world.
I bring you a little known but extremely successful proto-fascist - Sabino Arana, the founder of Basque Nationalism. Literally so, as there was no such concept until he thought it up. It was entirely his idea.
His Wiki is actually quite good -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabino_Arana
His was the initiative that led to the revival and standardization of the Basque language, he designed the Basque flag, he named the country (Euzkadi), he defined its borders, he wrote its anthem and he died in prison. Thirty years later it was an independent nation for about seven months, to be revived as an autonomous region in 1978, with Aranas official name, language, flag, anthem, and patriotism.
Arana did this all on the very fascist principle of ethnic supremacy. In his program was not only separatism and independence, but purity of blood and ethnic cleansing of all the subhuman Spaniards and those of mixed ancestry cluttering up his homeland. This part did not make it into the Euzkadi (or Basque Autonomous Region) of 1978, but they do make all those non- or semi-Basque children in their region learn Basque, which is sufficient cruelty I think.
The Basque national cause was at various times much favored by the liberal consensus, and despite its antecedents it is considered to be an innocuous development today. Much like all those peoples who fought for their independence from the various empires in the 20th century.
For more background, I can only recommend this rather eclectic work -
"The Basque History of the World" - Mark Kurlansky
So, if it is OK for all these rather fascistic "little peoples" of the world to struggle against overbearing overlords, and be seen as romantic heroes besides, why is it somehow unromantic to be one of the underdog rebels of the American hinterland?
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
Driving last weekend, we saw a lot of yellow and red. Seems crazy early.
So, here in Arlington, where a Confederate Memorial was created and dedicated around 1914 at the National Cemetery as part of an effort toward reconciliation and healing, today it was really hot and crazy humid. Ripe conditions for an afternoon storm.
The storm wasn't all that bad, but around 8 p.m., the light outside was a deep, intense eerie orange, like all the light was put through an orange filter, which made the color of everything on the ground surreal. The sky above, with a cloud cover, was completely orange -- not just near the horizon and setting sun, but everywhere. It was like being on another planet.
Meanwhile, as the left continues to prove itself unhinged and dangerous in their mouth-foaming animus and will to power, the Republican Establishment shows once again that they are just plain idiots. Accommodating, enabling, collaborating, brain-dead, gutless, conscience-slumbering idiots.
Give everything that Chuck says about him to be true -- who knew that Trump would actually end up being the smartest, wisest, most insightful guy in the room?
Autumn Leaves
Too soon?
Now we know. It's all out in the open.
You see -- the modern militant left does not really want unity and peace and reconciliation. They want victory. They want to crush and destroy and eliminate "them." Complete annihilation. No surrender, no prisoners. Even with time itself.
They want to recreate the world at Year Zero. Cultural revolution and cleansing.
Mark - I saw the same sunset from Alexandria, over a "Pond" that is really just a ditch with water that was created half a century ago. It was created when someone somewhere needed gravel, and took it out for a few weeks with the machines of the day, creating "the Pond" (technically, a "Storm overflow encatchment"). You described it (the sunset, not the pond, which is likely still there, although it has been a few hours since I last say it, but ten miles south of Arlington) correctly. Such showcases of meteorologically blessed evening clouds, backed up by orange or golden skies, are frequent in the East after thunderstorms roll through, and remind those of us fortunate enough to have previously lived in the West or the tropics of the spectacular scenery in those skies, which we so often witnessed in our youth. The "Pond" (which did not exist until the 1940s) was just about as wide across, at one point, as the typical "fords" where soldiers died by the thousands not far away (for tactical reasons, lots of fighting went on around fords). The "pond" is also just as wide across, fifty yards from the thin part where it is like a ford, fifty yards along the tree-lined banks (poplars, water-loving maples, and those little willow trees whose name I can never figure out), as the River Marne, in the famous painting by Cezanne. But who cares about Cezanne or the River Marne? I mean, besides me and you and a few other people?
Stifling heat here in NC.
The kind of heat that saps the energy
of even the most ardent iconoclast.
A Whitman Civil War poem for contemplation.
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
BY WALT WHITMAN
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital
Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,
By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,
At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)
I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,
These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.
Source: Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1959)
The Jet Stream had a blocking dip of Canadian cold air plunging into the midwest most of the summer that signaled fall early. But it also blocked a west to east flow that caused the the Pacific Northwest to sit in a heat wave. The Southeast got a few weeks of that colder dry air in July, but for the past three weeks has had southern Gulf warmth that usually heads to the Northeast just sit on us and bake.
The weather is weird because of the Global Cooling is sending the Jet Stream down so far and so early.
And still another Whitman poem. Which side had the dead soldier been on?
As Toilsome I Wander'd Virginia's Woods
AS toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods,
To the music of rustling leaves kick'd by my feet, (for 'twas
autumn,)
I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of a soldier;
Mortally wounded he and buried on the retreat, (easily all could
understand,)
The halt of a mid-day hour, when up! no time to lose-yet this sign
left,
On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree by the grave,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
Long, long I muse, then on my way go wandering,
Many a changeful season to follow, and many a scene of life,
Yet at times through changeful season and scene, abrupt, alone, or
in the crowded street,
Comes before me the unknown soldier's grave, comes the inscription
rude in Virginia's woods,
Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade.
@Lars
Really.
92 in Southport and tropical.
I lived in western NY state for a while, there was a sumac tree that would start to change color about the middle of August. So yup, time for that.
We don't really get much fall color here in Tucson. Could go up to Mt. Lemmon if I really wanted to, but honestly don't miss it that much.
As they say UP NORTH, there are two seasons, winter and August....
Still hot down here in Dixieland.
@ Tank...in the FayetteNam sauna.
I can't stand Trump or his administration, they're a bunch of buffoons who can't tell the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground. However, the current crop of Democrats is so bat-shit insane that if everything remains as it currently is in 2020 I will likely be forced to vote for the fucker.
I always wondered why people would willingly burn their cultural heritage to the ground à la the Maoists or Taliban, and now I have an answer.
These people are so fucking crazy that the NY subway authority is removing tile patterns that resemble the letter "X" because people think it looks like a Confederate flag.
Don't you get a sea breeze in Southport?
My dad's last 2nd cousin lives (or lived) there, but I've only met her late mother in Haw River.
I'm hoping that tomorrow the humidity will break enough that I can mow the ugly dallasgrass seed stalks. Almost as bad as the Japanese willow grass.
Lars, go to White Lake!
These people are so fucking crazy that the NY subway authority is removing tile patterns that resemble the letter "X" because people think it looks like a Confederate flag.
The background is and the "X" pattern is in blue outlined in white. Still, bathsit crazy doesn't begin to describe the Dumbocrats.
Beautiful weather in Central Minnesota. Some trees are starting to turn; soon the tamarack forest across the street will turn bright orange. We have beautiful falls, then slide gradually into our deep silent unforgiving winter, which can be beautiful once you accept that its here for 4 months. This week our gardens are still under assault from deer, rabbits, gophers, and voles. Bluebirds are still here; redwing blackbirds are leaving, and the young geese are practicing formation flying to prepare for their long fall journey.
When the temperature gets cooler, the "climate" gets warmer."
background is red
Someday I'll learn how to proofread. Maybe.
proofred
No right turn on fred
Random thought: let's stop naming our new aircraft carriers after recent politicians. I would like to see the next four carriers (after the Kennedy and the Enterprise) named after Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.
And then, to make progresive heads explode, Trump should direct the Navy to name the next one after Andrew Jackson.
Consortium News has published a new article, by Robert Parry, titled "Russia-gate’s Evidentiary Void". Here are introductory paragraphs (emphasis added):
A classic example of the New York Times’ one-sided coverage was a front-page article on Thursday expressing the wistful hope that a Ukrainian hacker whose malware was linked to the release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails in 2016 could somehow “blow the whistle on Russian hacking.”
Though full of airy suspicions and often reading like a conspiracy theory, the article by Andrew E. Kramer and Andrew Higgins contained one important admission (buried deep inside the “jump” on page A8 in my print edition), a startling revelation especially for those Americans who have accepted the Russia-did-it groupthink as an established fact.
The article quoted Jeffrey Carr, the author of a book on cyber-warfare, referring to a different reality: that the Russia-gate “certainties” blaming the DNC “hack” on Russia’s GRU military intelligence service or Russia’s FSB security agency lack a solid evidentiary foundation.
“There is not now and never has been a single piece of technical evidence produced that connects the malware used in the DNC attack to the GRU, FSB or any agency of the Russian government,” Carr said.
Yet, before that remarkable admission had a chance to sink into the brains of Times’ readers whose thinking has been fattened up on a steady diet of treating the “Russian hack” as flat fact, Times’ editors quickly added that “United States intelligence agencies, however, have been unequivocal in pointing a finger at Russia.”
[The article continues at length.]
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/18/russia-gates-evidentiary-void/
Here is another excerpt from the Consortium News article titled "Russia-gate’s Evidentiary Void".
The New York Times reported that the hacker, known only as “Profexer,” is cooperating with F.B.I. agents inside Ukraine. Yet, the reliance on Ukraine to provide evidence against Russia defies any objective investigative standards. The Ukrainian government is fiercely anti-Russian and views itself as engaged in an “information war” with Putin and his government. ....
The Times unintentionally reveals how fuzzy the case against “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear” – the two alleged Russian government hacking operations – is.
The Times reports: “Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors.”
Further, under the dramatic subhead – “A Bear’s Lair” – the Times reported that no such lair may exist: “Tracking the bear to its lair … has so far proved impossible, not least because many experts believe that no such single place exists.”
The Times’ article also noted the “absence of reliable witnesses” to resolve the mystery – so to the rescue came the “reliable” regime in Kiev, or as the Times wrote: “emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group.” ....
So, we can expect that whatever “evidence” Ukraine “uncovers” will be accepted as gospel truth by the Times and much of the U.S. government – and anyone who dares ask inconvenient questions about its reliability will be deemed a “Kremlin stooge” spreading “Russian propaganda.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/18/russia-gates-evidentiary-void/
Thank you, poet sharers, entering into them is like the shock of summer lemonade,They make me see how parched I have been for verse.
July here in Tennessee featured several cold fronts that actually made it to the gulf coast rather than stalling out as stationary fronts in Missouri/Kentucky. This is extremely unusual, but has now happened in each of the last 3 Summers here. Really, since the Summer of 2012 which was blistering hot in June and July, the Summers here have been quite pleasant otherwise. Indeed, this Summer has only really arrived in full force in the last week or so, but is only reaching typical mid August here in east Tennessee.
Mike Sylvester,
As I have pointed out over and over- not a single piece of solid evidence has reach any media publication that supports the claim that the Russian government was behind the DNC e-mails- not a single one in now 10 months. This can only be case if the FBI has uncovered no such evidence, because, if they did, it is beyond inconceivable that it hasn't been leak to WaPo or The NYTimes. If you haven't seen such evidence by this time, it simply never existed to begin with.
Random thought: let's stop naming our new aircraft carriers after recent politicians. I would like to see the next four carriers (after the Kennedy and the Enterprise) named after Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.
Better yet, bring back the names from the past...Enterprise, Yorktown, Hornet, Lexington, Saratoga, Wasp....
When did eBay stop just simply selling "things" by ordinary people where bidding was the basis, and become just another marketplace for crap by professional sellers?
Right around the time they bought PayPal and started forcing sellers to accept it.
My mom was an early seller on Ebay, and they once gave her an opportunity to buy stock...she didn't know any better and didn't do so.
"Random thought: let's stop naming our new aircraft carriers after recent politicians. I would like to see the next four carriers (after the Kennedy and the Enterprise) named after Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison."
I agree to a certain extent. I would prefer Medal of Honor winners.
I knew if I waited long enough, the price on those eclipse glasses would come down. I purchased a pair yesterday from a guy at a truck stop, $1.50 a pair.
(I kid)
Popped out another one yesterday, me best ever. It goes just a tiny fraction of an iota something like this a here:
And the shadows never roam,
farther than eyes can see from home.
Whispers never lie,
Who what how where when and why.
And the shadow always knows,
The flower lovelier than prose,
Deep even in the desert grows,
A delight present in the nose,
Proves it more than just a pose.
A series of assertions:
Leadership is in short supply.
The media wants us to be distracted by trifles because that makes it easier for them to sell eyeballs to advertisers.
It's in people's nature to give more importance to what is immediate.
Charlottesville is a local story.
White supremecists are inconsequential.
If the media didn't play up the street violence, there would be less street violence.
Big city mayors are incapable of taking the long view. They run from short-sighted self-serving solution to short-sighted self-serving solution, condemning their fiefdoms to unnecessary decline and dismay.
Republicans have the constituency clamboring for peace and practicality, but they lack leaders with a governing philosophy up to the task they have taken on.
The kids are alright and all of this will burn itself out without doing any major damage.
Then we will move on to the next fake crisis because the media and activists need crises to get eyeballs and we live in a time of relative peace and contentment.
Which does not draw eyeballs that can be sold to advertisers.
Radio Derb
http://www.vdare.com/radios/radio-derb-witch-hunt-bad-people-making-trouble-amy-wax-and-bourgeois-norms-etc
covers the hateful moral lapses in the week.
It turns out the reason I hadn't heard any hateful ugly speech is that they never got to the speeches because the thing was shut down.
Also paypal has stopped allowing vdare.com to use banks, which, weird site that vdare.com may be, seems like a bad sign. I only se it for radio derb which is great.
I have been thinking, people here need to realize than when I type something, let's use the word "no" for demonstration purposes, it sounds way, way better than your inner monologue is interpreting it.
So, when I say "no" you need to remember The Four Tops Sugar Pie Honeybunch and how they sing "No, I can't help myself" consider the depth of their "no" in that song and transpose it to my writing whenever you see (then hear in your brain) me write "no."
This goes for every word I write; you gotta think of a profound, artistic voice when reading what I write.
Otherwise you just ain't gonna get it, okay, I ain't gonna do it for ya, but only because of your reception skills not my lack of impeccable messages.
Leaves have begun to change color here (northshore of Boston MA) but only on the ground cover. Acorns and such have started to drop. The other day it was 50 degrees when I awoke (5am) and 85 by mid-afternoon. Autumn is a month away but the weather is no longer typical of summer.
On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will arrive mid-morning on the coast of Oregon. The moon’s shadow will be about 70 miles wide, and it will race across the country faster than the speed of sound, exiting the eastern seaboard shortly before 3pm local time.
It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.
It goes on in this vein:
In Kentucky, Tennessee, and eventually South Carolina, the eclipse will finally pass over black Americans. Even here, though, the path of totality seems to mark the legacy of slavery and the persistence of segregation more than any form of inclusion.
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2017/08/excruciatingly-woke.html
The original is in The Atlantic, entitled American Blackout
A tour of the solar eclipse’s path reveals a nation that fought to maintain a different sort of totality.
This reminds of of ESPN covering the World Series.
read more ! and really my August is very hot...
Ralph L said...
Don't you get a sea breeze in Southport?
Thank God yes.
It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.
Now wait just a fucking minute...are they actually claiming the sun and moon are racist? Seriously...what is the point of this shit?
Gahrie said...
Seriously...what is the point of this shit?
"Alice Ristroph is a professor at Brooklyn Law School."
@Gahrie, since the path of the eclipse goes through western, rural areas, the simplist solution is to randomly gather black folks from the eastern inner cities and force them to be farmers out west. That number won't include Alice Ristroph, though, because she's so white you need your eclipse glasses to look at her online picture.
Went swimming in a river yesterday. The swath of one shoulder I missed while applying sunscreen is glowingly apparent today.
I have not seen any data on whether states or federal governments owned slaves as part of assets portfolio? Anybody know?
There might have been attempted reconciliation between North and South ... The elephant in the room was negroes ... Free and former slaves left in limbo with broken promises and hasty rewrite of history ... Hastened by Democrats of course.
Do cuck Republicans really begin that early in the past century?
Narayanan Subramanian wrote: I have not seen any data on whether states or federal governments owned slaves as part of assets portfolio? Anybody know?
Lamar could set you straight on that one. It's not all distant history.
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