Which of these do not belong?

You remember your grade school exams?

You know, those that had a series of items and you were asked to tell which were not the same same as the others. Identify those which don't belong.

Such as this:

Which of these statements are sometimes true?:

a) Honor among thieves
b) Hooker with a heart of gold
c) Patriotic Democrats

Are you still a Democrat?

Yesterday and today, Democrats in the the House and then the Senate voted to micromanage the War on Terror.

Leaders of the Democrats have made numerous statements about how the war is lost and how the troops must retreat.

Democrats have just given aid and comfort to our enemies who are actively trying to kill us.

Democrats have further tried to sap the morale of our warriors who are protecting them and us from our enemies.

Democrats are scum.

Democrats are traitors.

If you're still a Democrat, you have embraced treason.

You are despicable.

Are you pleased with yourself?

Or do you tell yourself you are really a patriot who supports the troops?

And do you tell yourself other lies?

(One of my) Favorite Poems (Pt 2)

Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay (continued)

To continue from a previous post, let's skip ahead several stanzas to this:

Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.

Killer, I tell you. Well, for a barely teen with suicidal tendencies. Still holds up though.

(One of my) Favorites Songs

Another personal note.

At one time I thought being a pagan or wiccan would be pretty cool. Freaky chicks and all that. Trouble was, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face with all that earth mother, goddess, we are all part of a great oneness crap. Besides, hippy chicks were just as freaky and the music and drugs were much better.

But I liked and still like much of the pagan, wiccan, celtic music. Case in point: The Christians and the Pagans by Dar Williams.

Humorous lyrics with something of a message about getting along and how we're all pretty much the same...at Christmas/Solstice time. You know-same crap, different verse. But good music.

The final verse:

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.

Check it out.

(One of my) Favorites Poems

Renascence - Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).

This poem touched me when turned 12 or 13. In my 7th grade literature class, we were required to memorize long poems and recite them during several classes. This poem (about spiritual re-birth) was very long, which was my first criterion. But as soon as I read the first stanzas, I was hooked. Yeah, I knew it wasn't masculine to like such stuff at that age and time, but this poem knocked me out.

The opening lines:

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

(Knocked me out I tell ya'. And this was before I'd ever sampled any...erh...herbs.)

There is so much more. Check it out.

The adventures of Mr/Mrs Right

Yeah, well it's not all boring.

I've had a number of new projects that just fell into my lap. Okay, maybe they were pushed. Anyway, they've been (mostly) enjoyable, though they keep me busy...AND I'm getting further behind on the projects I still have in the hopper. (I know what a hamster on a wheel feels like. C'mon comet!!)

Last week I traveled to Tallahassee on one of the projects. Met some nice state government folks. And no, they didn't have anything to do with the Fla Dept of Corrections. Anyways, I escaped with my reputation relatively intact. There's also been days when I've met with local govt elected officials. Frankly I prefer my politicians local. There's much less of Dem vs Rep. Always nice.

I've been training a new employee and she's coming along good. I have reasonable hopes that she will allow me some breathing room.

Now for Mrs Right. She's been involved with the judicial system. As a juror, that is. She was called for jury selection again, but this time they selected her for a criminal trial. Silly bastards! They got a juror who can think. Well, the system survived and is the better for her service.

That's it for now.

Today's Supreme Court Decision on Abortion

As I've posted before, I support abortion (or a woman's right to choose or whatever 'cover' language that makes you feel better).

But I also support today's 5-4 decision.

Partial birth abortion is clearly infanticide. There is no getting around the fact that a human being, capable of surviving outside of the womb...hell, in the process of being born...is murder. It's morally, ethically, medically and in all other ways wrong. This same infant, if it slipped thru the abortionist's fingers, legally would be born alive and, if its skull was then crushed, legally would be murdered.

I know I'm becoming ever more squeamish over my support of (early term) abortion. But I can't and won't escape the knowledge that partial birth abortion is murder.

Religion of Peace, My Ass! (Part 15)

I know some think I've been a little too hard on the Religion of Peace-see my other posts-but there are more moderate views. For example, at OpinionJournal.com and Townhall.com.

I don't disagree, but I take back nothing.

Dinesh D'Souza (in Townhall) states how tolerant Islam was in the past to Christians and Jews...but not to pagans, of course. Also, he points out just how tolerant Islam was to Hindus when Muslims ruled northern India, while at the same time Christian Spain was forcefully converting or killing Jews. Okay, granted, some serious crimes were committed in the long past by Christians.

But here's the deal...that was the past. Christianity came out of its dark ages. Islam just went farther in. If Islam was something other than a dark ages religion, it wouldn't be practiced by the present day savages and terrorists.

And don't give me crap about some Christians being murderers, etc. Those people aren't mainstream Christians and most Christians are aghast at such actions and are vocal in their denouncing of them.

And at present, no sect of Christianity tolerates murdering infidels...and apologies to D'Souza, that's what Christians and Jews are considered by a growing sector of today's Muslims.

Which is supported somewhat by what Tawfik Hamid (a former member of a radical-that is, terrorist-Islamic group says in OpinionJournal.

"But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense."

Also,

"It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong."

"Gator Madness"

Well, that's the title of the Ocala Star-Banner article anyway.

It seems the Gators have done something big in basketball.

Some people are excited. Not me. But I hope the Gators win.

I work with lots of Gator supporters.

And they get real depressed whenever their team loses....anything.

UPDATE (4/02/07):

In case you're wondering, the Gators repeated as champions. Congrats!