Poem: The Fire Rises Up

The dragon stays below the surface
Because the time to act is not now

Water pours down from heaven
And fire rises up

From the center of the earth
Earth sucks in lightning

To electrify itself
Like Frankenstein's monster
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Painting: Schizophrenic Robot

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Pablo Fanque: Netanyahu’s Palestinian State A Sham

By Pablo Fanque,
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Don’t be taken in by Netanyahu’s Palestinian State.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state on Sunday, reversing himself in response to, and under heat from, U.S. President Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, Netanyahu heavily qualified his endorsement by attaching more than one deal breaker. "A demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state." Palestine can become a real state in the shadow of Israel. But they don’t get to have an army.

Only a week after Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said, in short, that Palestinian refugees could no longer return to Israel.

"Netanyahu's speech closed the door to permanent status negotiations," senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. “He qualified it. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, said refugees would not be negotiated and that settlements would remain."

This makes sense as long as Israel also agrees to decommission their army. Why would the Palestinians--as wacky as you might think they are--ever agree to these terms?

We even let the Germans and Japanese have an army (when they should still be in the doghouse)! It will be interesting to see how BHO responds to the Prime Minister kicking sand in his face…
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Poem: surviving

Surviving
by Jack Brummet

Salvation lies
In remaining unblinded

To the treachery
Massing around you:

The enemy without,
Calculating your fall

And the traitor within,
Beating in your chest.
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Poem: A Second Chance

[As I work through this manuscript, The King Begins To Falter, I am, naturally, reworking or tossing out the poems that don't work. Expect many more over the next couple of months. In addition to rewriting many, I also need to delete about 120 pages of poems.]


Second Chance
by Jack Brummet

We cannot really lose
What belongs to us,

Even when we throw it away.
The gathering winds

Blowing through her heart, reverberate
In the echo chamber of regret.
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Photograph: John Brummet II in the army

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I like this 'photo. I guess if you know me, you might think 'like father, like son' and guess that's my dad on the left. You wouldn't be wrong.
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YouTube Slideo: Jack Brummet and Jerry Melin discuss Self Love. And Shakespeare.

Every time over the last four and a half years, when I post audio files, the hosting service goes out of business, and the links are dead.

I am going to upload audio files via YouTube this time---making "slideos" of the audio files.

Here is the first. Jack Brummet and Jerry Melin discuss Self Love. And Shakespeare.


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Clown Wars: Pablo Fanque reports on the factionalism, disarray, depression, hopelessness, and continuing losing prospects of The Republican Party

Click the Governor to enlarge

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

[Pablo Fanque's work appears in numerous journals, blogs, books, and at times, on the sides of buses and even scrawled in bathroom stalls and phone booths. After working as a community organizer for two years in southeast King County, near Seattle, he began his college education. After his expulsion from Harvard University in 1977, Fanque continued (and even completed) college while working in the publishing business, in San Francisco, New York City, and in the Pacific Northwest. Pablo's artistic output includes hundreds of paintings and drawings, including his monumental "Heads," consisting of 150 canvases, each with 16 or 96 portraits. He has completed, and is now revising his next book, "The King Begins To Falter." Fanque met Jack Brummet in 2004 at a rock show in Austin, Texas, and they have been friends, and collaborators, ever since.]

How can we analyze or understand the dissension, disarray, division, and decimation visited upon the Republican Party in the last year or two? When Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich emerge as the charming and likable voices of moderation and reason, you know the party has come off the rails. A simple enumeration of the [unelected] voices of the party tells the sad story:

Sean Hannity
Michael Steele (who surely will be shuffled out the door sooner rather than later)
Jon Voight
Rush "Oxy" Limbaugh
Liz Cheney

There are even a few elected Republican voices:

Sarah Palin
Haley Barbour (he's been visiting New Hampshire and Iowa already)
John Boehner
Tim Pawlenty
Mitch McConnell
Bobby Jindal (but let's face it, his pathetic performance in his state of the union rebuttal pushed him back into the wings)
John McCain

And then there are one-time elected Republicans, some of who hope to leap back into the fray, or even make the leap into The Oval Office:

Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Dick Cheney
Mike Huckabee (who feels like the front runner, along with Gingrich, and Governor Palin).
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appeared at a Republican congressional fundraiser Monday night, ending a long and drawn out will-she-or-won't-she mystery that, in the end, probably overshadowed the event and left the GOP even more frustrated and in greater disarray than before.

Palin -- the party's disastrous 2008 VP nominee--was originally scheduled to headline the annual Senate-House dinner. She was shunted aside in favor of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. After that, Governor Palin left the organizers hanging in the wind...even as late as Monday afternoon. [This is not the first time Palin has thrown a public tantrum over not being allowed to speak. Remember Election Night? Palin expected to give a speech, but soon learned that no losing VP candidate gives a speech on election night, particularly when they violated the VP Hippocratic oath--Do No Harm.] Let's face it. . .the GOP slapped a muzzle on the pitbull with lipstick. Last week, when it started to look like a real event, Palin's advisers told the RNCC she would be near Washington and would like to come. Uh-oh.

Republican officials involved in the discussions (who spoke on condition of anonymity--natch, because of the sensitivity of the matter), said Palin was invited to sit at a head table but would not be given the chance to speak. The GOP was worried that she might swamp, or out-maverick, Newt Gingrich. Granted, Newt isn't exactly a dynamo on the rostrum, but if you're sweating Governor Palin overshadowing you at a Republican dinner, well, friendo, your Presidential dreams are ashes.

Palin didn't like this turn of affairs one bit, and did not make clear whether she would refuse to attend, officials say. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, made a personal appeal over the weekend for her to attend and invited her and her husband, Todd Palin, to sit at the big boys' table.

Late Monday afternoon, Palin's aides informed the organizers that she and her husband would attend, although a spokeswoman for the governor's political committee would not confirm that.

Palin has her eyes on the White House in 2012. In March, the National Republican Congressional Committee, put out a news release saying that Palin would be the keynote speaker at the dinner--one of the party's largest fundraisers. Palin's representatives then weaseled, saying the governor wanted to make sure the event did not interfere with state business. Right.

It can't have helped Palin's cause that she is being accused of plagiarizing Dick Cheney's speeches (or that she is embroiled in a very public pissing match with David Letterman.) I don't know about that one. I've just always kind of assumed, when there is any content in her speeches and edicts, it was lifted from elsewhere. She is accused of snagging a substantial portion of a speech from Newt Gingrich--the man she will eventually run against in the primaries.
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One Big Big Bird

Along with 18 pound horses and hippopotamuses (or hippopotami), this Big Big Bird, Diatryma, lived in The Pacific Northwest before us. Its prints were found along the Green River, just a couple of blocks from the house where I grew up.

It's probably just as well Diatrymas are no longer around. Can you imagine turning a corner and bumping into this fella?

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Space Needle Concept Art

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Phil Spector: Life without wigs

This is probably the last we'll hear of Phil Spector--the legend behind "the wall of sound." There is no question he made major contributions to pop music--and even changed the way it was made. I never really forgave him for what he did to The Beatles "Let It Be" album, which McCartney later re-released (as "Let it be...naked"), stripped of its strings and choral work . He made a mess of The Ramones' "End of the Century." On the other hand, he did produce the excellent megahits "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison, as well as his No. 1 triple album "Concert for Bangladesh." And John Lennon's hit album"Imagine" (clearly Harrison were fans of his work, while Macca was not). And then there is all his great mid-sixties music, from the Righteous Brothers "Unchained Melody" to "Be My Baby" to Ike and Tina Turner's great but monumental flop "River deep and mountain high."

Spector stated on more than one occasion his philosophy of making albums. All you had to do was come up with "two hits and ten pieces of s**t".


In these photos, you see some of the hair styles fabled Phil Spector wore during his protracted murder trial in Los Angeles (which, with massive breaks, ran from May 2005 to May 29, 2009. Spector was sentenced two weeks ago to 19 years to life in prison for the murder of the actress Lana Clarkson, who was shot through the mouth in the producer's home, in 2003.



This mug shot of Phil Spector released Wednesday by the California prison system unveils Phil with his wigs confiscated. The mug shot, of a bald-headed Spector with long stringy hair on the sides, was taken on June 5 as part of the prison intake system.
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What do you like most in a woman? e-Harmony lays down the law

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