Poem: You gather your friends

You gather your friends
Around you
Like a shock of wheat,

Like a bulwark
Or a last ditch bivouac
In the cold rain and snow.
---o0o---

Poem: Changes 17/Following

1.
Thunder in the middle of the lake!
And You and I
In the pram

(Or is it a dinghy, a dory
An umiak, or skiff,
A scow, a punt, or shallop?)

2.
Following might mean
You're an individual contributor
Playing follow the leader

Or just maybe
You're holding back
To allow the leader

To receive
The first arrows
And fusillades.

3.
Following can go either way--
It all depends on whom
You elect to follow.

To go out of the door
In the company of others
Produces deeds.
---o0o---

Reverend Fallwell calls Hillary Rodham Clinton less appealing than Lucifer

Click the photograph of Reich Marshall Falwell to enlarge...

Reverend Jerry Falwell says a White House run by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would energize his base of religious conservatives even more than if The Great Deceiver himself were the Democratic nominee.

"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell told a private prayer breakfast. "Because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton. "

"If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't," Falwell added, drawing a roomful of laughs and cheers.
---o0o---

Ding Dong, Osama's Dead?

There are rumors in the news, on the internet, and in the blog world that bin Laden has cashed his check. The Start the Revolution blog said: "Not only has he [President George Bush] been telling the world that he is still actively hunting Osama, even though the FBI and the CIA gave up long ago, but now it seems that his good friends the French have gone and spoiled that party too!"

Authorities and U.S. politicians are treating rumors the highly elusive al-Qaeda leader is dead with well-founded skepticism. The whereabouts of bin Laden took a new twist this weekend when a French 'paper published a French intelligence report suggesting he had died a month ago. The governments of France, the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia tried to play down the report, but Saudi sources have previously suggested he may be very sick.

This isn't the first time rumors have circulated about bin Laden's demise. And each time, he has charged back like the Energizer bunny, with new video and audio tapes exhorting the faithful to incinerate America and our allies.

And if Osama IS dead. . .so what? Does this really change anything at all? Does it extricate us from the tragic pickle into which we have insinuated ourselves in the Middle-east? I don't think so. Since there was no Al Qaeda-Iraq connection, it doesn't affect that "operation" much. Does it--if it turns out to be true--affect the mid-term elections? Probably not. While the Dems have beaten up POTUS and G.O.P. for failing to catch Osama, it's hard to see how either side gains much political capital from bin Laden's departure from the scene. . .
---o0o---

Calvin Coolidge: The President of Cool

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

They say he wasn't actually frosty. . .he just rarely showed emotion. In fact, when President Harding died, Coolidge was awakened after 2:00 A.M. He took the oath of office in his sitting room. He was sworn in by his father, who was a notary public. Thirteen minutes after he took the oath of office at 2:47 A.M., Calvin Coolidge went back to sleep. To sleep! His President (Warren Harding) had just died! He was The Top Banana! And he went to sleep. In that same position, I would have done something. Like:

Drink some whiskey!
Raise up a glass to the shade of Warren G. Harding.
Give orders to round up some of my enemies and have them held at The Tombs.
I would legalize something.
I would declare martial law on Detroit.
Drink more whiskey!
Declare the Roman Catholic Church a subversive organization.
Ask for the cabinet's resignations.
Order in naked dancing girls.
Throw a feast.
Make a collage.
Drive a tank through the streets of Washington.
In a radio address to the nation, quote Putney Swope: "I am not going to rock the boat; I am going to tip it over."
Watch the sunrise and the birds take to the sky on my first day as Czar  King  President.

Then maybe I'd go to bed.

Coolidge kept a poem hung on the wall in his living room, and it both illustrated how he felt and the image he wanted to project:

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard
Why can’t we be like that old bird?
---o0o---

LBJ responds to White House correspondent Dan Rather (and links to other LBJ photos)

Click image to enlarge

I haven't been able to track the provenance of this LBJ photograph. Judging from the look on LBJ's face, and the smile on Dan Rather's, I'd bet the White House correspondent had just asked a probing or embarrassing question.

Below are links to some of my favorite LBJ photos appearing in All This Is That over the last couple years...

Lyndon listening in on the war
LBJ and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King meet up
LBJ howls like a dog
Another good LBJ photo
And another. . .
One of Jack's heroes and villains paintings
LBJ In A Characteristic Pose
Running Mates: Senators Lyndon Johnson And JFK
The Johnson Treatment, Part 6: The Hump and Senator Russell get the treatment
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
Congressman Johnson meets FDR
The Johnson Treatment Part 3: LBJ meets Eartha Kitt
The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment
Someone else gets the Johnson Treatment
LBJ responds to Dan Rather
---o0o---

Poem & Painting Detail: The Good German

The Good German

You could just be
Following orders
Or looking

The "other way."

---o0o---

digital painting: the magic bus

Senator John Grindl: stand the devil side by side with The President and the Devil comes across as a class act

Seantor John Grindl (D - East Dakota)

Reacting to President Chavez of Venezuela's United Nations denunciation of President Bush as "the devil," Democratic U.S. Senator John Grindl (D - East Dakota) concurred with Chavez's assessment. "In fact," the Senator said in a press conference, "President Bush is even more heinous than The Great Deceiver himself." A reporter asked how that was so, and he replied "Let's face it, the Devil tempts people to do evil, whereas Bush actually performs evil. Senator Pelosi and Congressman Rangel have leapt to The President's defense, and it is strictly political expediency. The Devil is known to lure people into evil ways. The President actually performs evil acts under the mantle of his office. He performs them in our name. I can't even recall the last time the Devil was blamed for the state of the world. You can't say that about President Bush."

"The bottom line: stand the Devil side by side with The President and the Devil comes off as a class act."

Asked by an Associated Press correspondent why he bucked his party, the Senator responded "Pelosi and Rangel know the score. They know Bush is evil incarnate. But being party regulars, the last thing they want to do is to offend the centrists by denouncing 'POTUS.' They know Bush is a worthless piece of s***. But as loyal partisans, they are muzzled. You may hear them speak the truth after the mid-terms, but I wouldn't hold out much hope."


click to enlarge photograph of President Hugo Chavez

Following his inflammatory remarks, the Senator's conservative East Dakota constituents reacted predictably with demands for his resignation, and talk of a recall. Reached later in the day by a reporter from All This Is That, the Senator told her that "this is all predictable. There's a reason I am the Senator and my constituents are not. Have you ever been to East Dakota? It's not exactly the Berkeley of The Plains. Sure, they're pissed today, but this will blow over and I will be vindicated. Or not. Maybe they'll elect some cracker knucklehead to curtsy to the President, but that's not me. The bottom line: stand the devil side by side with The President and the Devil comes off as a class act."

Democrats reacted predictably as well, by denouncing Grindl as a rogue and a loose canon. "He no more speaks for the Democratic Party," said Senator Patty Murray (D - Washington) "than President Chavez does." Democratic insiders on The Hill told All This Is That that Senator Grindl would be immediately and brutally taken to the woodshed.

---o0o---

Painting: The first drawer of my cabinet

click painting to enlarge
---o0o---

Painting: Del Brummet

click painting to enlarge
---o0o---

Painting: Cyclopea

click painting to enlarge
---o0o---