Future Face of American Law Enforcement, No It's Now
 |
| Members of the Montgomery County, Texas, SWAT team stand with a
ShadowHawk drone in this September 2011 photo provided by Vanguard
Defense Industries. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS) Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, then log in by checking "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
I've Got the Mitt Thinks I'm a Moocher, a Taker Not a Maker, Blues
|
by Calvin Trillin in The
Nation October 15,2012
(Sung by three members of the 47 percent)
Well, I work two jobs, and that makes for a kinda long day.
And the boss deducts the payroll tax that I’ve gotta pay.
With sales tax too, I kinda thought I was paying my dues.
I’ve got the Mitt thinks I’m a moocher, a taker not a maker, blues.
Well, the wife and I took retirement some years ago.
And Social Security accounts for most of our dough.
Though we contributed to that so we’d have it there to use.
I’ve got the Mitt thinks I’m a moocher, a taker not a maker, blues.
Well, I went to Nam while Mitt went on his mission to France.
A buddy needed rescuin’ and I thought, “Well, I’ll take a chance.”
A wounded-vet pension’s not the salary that I would choose.
I’ve got the Mitt thinks I’m a moocher, a taker not a maker, blues.
(All, in chorus)
Yes, he thinks we’re bums, and work is something we would refuse.
Entitlements, he says, are what we just live to abuse.
With his fat-cat friends, what he says about us is J’accuse.
So some of us moochers would sure like to see him lose.
We’ve got the Mitt thinks that we’re moochers, takers and not makers, blues.
Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, then log in by checking "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
(P2) Poetical
Cave Painting At Font du Gaume
Of course, even his bones
are now dust,
his flowing mane
taken by the wind,
those sturdy hooves
and solid flesh consumed
and reborn in endless forms.
Even so, through two hundred centuries
of darkness and lamplight
he is still running free
across that vast savannah of time.
And the hand that captured,
in a few spare lines
on the limestone wall,
that wild grace,
sending it down through the years -
hand of my ancestor,
hand of our ancestor -
has long since returned
to the formless.
A day will come,
certainly,
when all this
will be gone:
you and I,
the painting,
even the wall,
carved by ages of
drip and flow,
through uplifted memories
of countless tiny beings
who spent their short lives
in that primordial sea.
And yet this beauty -
this grace -
offers itself to us
in this moment,
the only time we have.
- Larry Robinson
Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, then log in by checking "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
(P3) Philosophical
EINSTEIN AND GOD
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
~ Albert Einstein In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000.
Some have pointed to Einstein's quote that God "does not play
dice" with the universe (his rejection of the randomness of the universe)
as proof of his belief in a higher being. Others have said that the quote
does not advocate a belief in God and have referred to other letters written
by Einstein.
"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly,” he wrote in another letter in 1954. "If something
is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration
for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, then log in by checking "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."
~ Albert Einstein In January of 1954, just a year before his death, Albert Einstein wrote the following letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind after reading his book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. Apparently Einstein had only read the book due to repeated recommendation by their mutual friend Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. The letter was bought at auction in May 2008, for £170,000.
| Translated Transcript: Princeton, 3. 1. 1954
Dear Mr Gutkind,
Inspired by Brouwer’s repeated suggestion, I read a great deal in your book, and thank you very much for lending it to me ... With regard to the factual attitude to life and to the human community we have a great deal in common. Your personal ideal with its striving for freedom from ego-oriented desires, for making life beautiful and noble, with an emphasis on the purely human element ... unites us as having an “American Attitude.” Still, without Brouwer’s suggestion I would never have gotten myself to engage intensively with your book because it is written in a language inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong ... have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything “chosen” about them. In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision... Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, i.e. in our evaluation of human behavior ... I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things. With friendly thanks and best wishes, Yours, A. Einstein |
Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, then log in by checking "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.
