Tuesday, June 21, 2005

President Bush Hits The Wall Over The Bolton Nomination: Is POTUS A Lame Duck Already?

President Bush faces a politically thorny situation _ and stark choices _ now that Senate Democrats twice have blocked John Bolton's confirmation as U.N. ambassador.

The president could withdraw the nomination, authorize further concessions to Democrats over access to information they seek or bypass lawmakers altogether by appointing the former State Department official to the job temporarily without the Senate's OK.

But any of those options could leave the president appearing weak as he confronts sagging poll numbers and fights to stave off a lame-duck label just six months into his final term.

Click here to link to the full story in The Washington Post.
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Monday, June 20, 2005

He's Not Close Enough To Give Him The Johnson Treatment, But LBJ Appears To Be Answering A Pointed Question From Dan Rather


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Cheops, The Sphinx, and The Pizza Hut At Giza


Most of the photos of Cheops and The Sphinx we westerners see don't show any modern civilization around. This photo, shot through a Pizza Hut tm window, is therefore unexpected and a little startling. . .
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Reformation.org Says Nelson Rockefeller Changed The Constitution And Had JFK Murdered In Concert With Haig, Kissinger, LBJ, Nixon, and Rumsfeld


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I hadn't heard this particular crackpot theory before. They didn't even mention the Trilateral Commission! Click on the title to go to their web site for the rest of the story.
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Sunday, June 19, 2005

Build Your Very Own President Lyndon Johnson Articulating Doll

click image to enlarge

Want to make your own articulating LBJ doll? 1) Go here, print the gif in color and then print to the opposite side of paper in black & white mode. (2) Carefully cut along the dotted lines. (3) Assemble, LBJ, using paper fasteners** as joints. (4) Voila! Hang by head or shoulder fastener(s) with string. Or put some staples through his head, or whatever you'd like!

** You know...those brass plated fasteners they used to bind paper with punched holes together. If you remember these things you probably remember Burma Shave signs too.
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Saturday, June 18, 2005

Poem: Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch

Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch,
Living life like it couldn't last.
Each day you feel the marrrow diminish
And each week ending is a week too fast
From which there is no turning back.
So you cinch it up tight and leave no slack

To slip through those towering gates,
Relieved from duty in these United States,
Where you were born but never fit.
Now the powers that be coil and spit
As the venomed fangs are bared.
You want to abandon ship, but never dared

And paced and tried to raise the nerve,
Knowing or praying, hoping for the call
Before stumbling into that last blind curve.
It never came and now you sit and wait,
And swear this time you'll play it straight,
Hovering in circles until you stall.
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The Johnson Treatment, Part 6


Click photo to enlarge

Here you see LBJ working over The Hump and LBJ's early Senate mentor, Se. Richard Russell. All This Is That has published numerous photos and paintings of LBJ. Check out:

One of the heroes and villains paintings

LBJ In A Characteristic Pose

Running Mates: Senators Lyndon Johnson And JFK

The Johnson Treatment, Part 5: Senator Richard Russell (Dem., Georgia) Undergoes The Treatment

The Johnson Treatment, Part 4: President Johnson Gives The Treatment To Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas

The Johnson Treatment, Part 3: LBJ Gives Eartha Kitt The Treatment

The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment

The Johnson Treatment

Friday, June 17, 2005

Dylan Thomas's Prologue

Dylan Thomas wrote this as the prologue to his Collected Poems, not long before his death. He posed himself an interesting technical challenge: the first line rhymes with the last, the second with the next to last, and so on, converging on the couplet in the middle (lines 50 and 51) separating the stanzas. Great poem, great rhyme scheme...although Thomas was disappointed that no one could pick out the rhymes when he read the poem aloud. It is one of the four or five poems I know by heart.


This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill!
Look: I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms

To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods!
The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks!
Across The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
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Thursday, June 16, 2005

Senator Clinton wins S.C. straw poll

Richland County Democrats held the nation’s first straw poll for the 2008 presidential race Wednesday and the surprise winner was U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

“We’re simply delighted,” said Bob Kunst, president of Hillarynow.com, who is traveling the country promoting Clinton’s candidacy.

“This should help us in our effort. It gives us a nice boost.”

Clinton’s victory at the sparesely attended event was a mild upset. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a native South Carolinian and last year’s Democratic vice presidential candidate, had been considered the favorite.

Click the title to see the full article...
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Painting: Twins


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Wednesday, June 15, 2005

All This Is That Traffic Notes


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This chart shows the tally of today's visitors to this blog, broken out by country and domains. You can't tell what country the domains or the "IP address only" country, so you'd have to guess probably the U.S. Interesting. . .
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Deep Throat Led Probes To Find ... Deep Throat

AP file
Updated: 7:16 p.m. ET June 14, 2005

NEW YORK - Mark Felt, the former FBI official who unmasked himself as the legendary "Deep Throat" source who leaked Watergate secrets, twice led FBI probes into finding Deep Throat, The Nation magazine said Tuesday. Click on the title to link to the full story on MSNBC.COM.