Wild Phlox

~~ Kristin Westlake

The woods and hedgerows are full of it. And it is glorious!!

For Phil on this Memorial Day

A map to his poem for a friend, and a hero.

RIP Heidegger

Until a couple of months ago, I had a cat. One among many, really, but she was dear, had made herself dear, by wit, and charm and persistence. She was quite beautiful: black, long hair, petite, delicate, shy, loving. And a troo demon when it came to being an inside cat.

Often during her life, I felt like she was the woman in the Thurber cartoon. Every crack, crevice, screen, window, even second story windows were hers: we had to put chicken wire over the screens in the upstairs windows to keep her from tearing them out on her way in.

Once inside, the place she most wanted to be was on your lap. Once there, she kneaded, purred, and drooled until both of us were wet.

This spring, while I was away, and a neighbor was feeding the cats, she disappeared. We just found her in the attic. She'd climbed in through the rafters, curled up on an old Santa's sled, and gone to sleep forever. I don't know why. But maybe she decided I'd been gone so long that I wouldn't be coming back for her and she just died of a broken heart?

I know I shouldn't,

but I do. Adore this flower. One can't even touch it without gloves, and it has the taproot from Hell. But it is so beautiful. And fields are beautiful when they're full of it.

Known as both Blue Devil and Viper's Bugloss. . . .

I am just a mountain girl ~~

and haven't learned to dance with fire, yet. It is very very hot here. Am looking forward to going home tomorrow: to cool, to rivers, to trees moving in the wind.

Everyone here in Greensboro is very nice though. Just not a climate I'd choose. Good thing there's no global warming. . .

As a friend of mine once said: "hotter than the hubs of Hell"

AND IT IS!

Miss you all ~~

Am having phone trubble, and phone company trubble. Blogging from a friend's. Hope to be back on-line, soon! (Please, Lord!)

Briefly ~~

Tanner's lungs are tumor-free (after round four of chemo), they are now talking liver transplant, which couldn't/wouldn't have been considered before.

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY

TRAVEL MERCIES, PLEASE

And I did go forth to eBay where I found a seller who didst exhort me to "put a little bling in my ring thing."

I may.

Lots of things to do before I leave. . . .

Got a gorgeous one tonight!

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz July 29, 1905 ~~ May 14, 2006

The Science Of The Night


I touch you in the night, whose gift was you,
My careless sprawler,
And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused,
That have become the land of your self-strangeness.
What long seduction of the bone has led you
Down the imploring roads I cannot take
Into the arms of ghosts I never knew,
Leaving my manhood on a rumpled field
To guard you where you lie so deep
In absent-mindedness,
Caught in the calcium snows of sleep?

And even should I track you to your birth
Through all the cities of your mortal trial,
As in my jealous thought I try to do,
You would escape me--from the brink of earth
Take off to where the lawless auroras run,
You with your wild and metaphysic heart.
My touch is on you, who are light-years gone.
We are not souls but systems, and we move
In clouds of our unknowing
like great nebulae.
Our very motives swirl and have their start
With father lion and with mother crab.
Dreamer, my own lost rib,
Whose planetary dust is blowing
Past archipelagoes of myth and light
What far Magellans are you mistress of
To whom you speed the pleasure of your art?
As through a glass that magnifies my loss
I see the lines of your spectrum shifting red,
The universe expanding, thinning out,
Our worlds flying, oh flying, fast apart.

From hooded powers and from abstract flight
I summon you, your person and your pride.
Fall to me now from outer space,
Still fastened desperately to my side;
Through gulfs of streaming air
Bring me the mornings of the milky ways
Down to my threshold in your drowsy eyes;
And by the virtue of your honeyed word
Restore the liquid language of the moon,
That in gold mines of secrecy you delve.
Awake!
My whirling hands stay at the noon,
Each cell within my body holds a heart
And all my hearts in unison strike twelve.


~~ Stanley Kunitz

Well, now I feel *really* safe, don't you?

Sure you do. . . .

Taxi was right on time ~~ traveling mercies please

All my bags are packed
Im ready to go
Im standin here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin
Its early morn
The taxis waitin
Hes blowin his horn
Already Im so lonesome
I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that youll wait for me
Hold me like youll never let me go
cause Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

* * * *


Now the time has come to leave you
One more time
Let me kiss you
Then close your eyes
Ill be on my way
Dream about the days to come
When I wont have to leave alone
About the times, I wont have to say

Oh, kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that youll wait for me
Hold me like youll never let me go
cause Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

But, Im leavin on a jet plane
Dont know when Ill be back again
Oh babe, I hate to go

Words and music by john denver

For those of you

thinking that presidents spying on Americans is okay, I want you to think how you're going to feel when Hillary has that power. . . .

1983

You're gonna LOVE it! A free govenment-paid-for TV in every living room. Sure: it's only one way: you watch, we look away. No problem. We wouldn't lie to you. Watsa matter? You don't trust us? Would we lie to you?

(idear credit: The O.C.)

Working Assets joins the blogosphere
in opposition to Big Telecom/NSA database

Working Assets is the only telephone company participating in the ACLU's lawsuit against the National Security Agency. We believe that the warrantless monitoring of phone conversations ordered by the Bush administration is illegal and unacceptable. We oppose the sale of domestic calling records to the NSA by AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon. Click here for a graphic you can put on your home page or blog.

The great divide

The surface of this space time
has futures' morn
a birthday;
we have no say
and yet were born.
Pasts yet unborn
will mingle on this side
of the great divide.
We are not yet there
we are here
on a spinning orb
of blue and green.
And those that
have left us for now
had their mourn
and are both there and here
unseen, above.
We let them join us
then fade
or come unannounced
and join this parade
with as valid a claim
as we to a past
that was made
light out of darkness
by love.

~~ Phil Specht

Newt Speaks

I don’t think the way they’ve handled this can be defended by reasonable people. It is sloppy. It is contradictory, and frankly for normal Americans, it makes no sense to listen to these three totally different explanations.

clicky for the story, then click again for video.

Thanks, cC!

Speaking of 9/11 mindsets. . .

The administration misled the public about the scope of its "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Despite disclosures in December of 2005 that the government had indeed tapped into telecommunication systems and was engaged in data-mining, the administration maintained publicly that the program was "limited" in nature.

That was a lie.

We learn now that data-collection is Phase I of the domestic spying program:


Government access to call records is related to the previously disclosed eavesdropping program, sources said, because it helps the NSA choose its targets for listening. The mathematical techniques known as "link analysis" and "pattern analysis," they said, give grounds for suspicion that can result in further investigation.
That domestic spying program, as we have discussed before, is hugely ineffective. We now know that the program begins by casting such a huge net (billions of calls) that it results in thousands of tips a month. As the New York Times reported, these "tips" were fruitless, often leading FBI agents to dead-end investigations of grandmothers and Pizza Huts.

As an expert in pattern analysis, Valdis Krebs, pointed out, "If you're looking for a needle, making the haystack bigger is counterintuitive. It just doesn't make sense."

And it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense financially to pour an unknown (but probably huge amount) of funds into a program that is so ineffective, while at the same time demanding Americans sacrifice not just their tax money but their privacy to keep that ineffective program alive.

A NATION FULL OF TERROR SUSPECTS
When the domestic spying program first broke, some Americans brushed it off, since it purportedly listened only to those suspected of terrorism. But what Americans need to understand is that this most recent disclosure means that every American is a potential terror suspect. Every. Single. One.

So the government monitors your calls. Every. Single. One. Day after day, month after month, year after year. Legal issues aside, the government's actions mark a disturbing change (regression?) in the relationship between a citizen and its government. Where government is inherently established to protect its citizens, it is now operating to protect itself from them.

(more, and live links at the original: click title)

Hat tip to mainefem!

Brer Bush and the Impeachment-Baby

The RNC is pounding away with the myth that the Democrats are gung-ho for impeachment, a tactic that may backfire by turning out support for the Democrats. It will come down to a question of whether voters believe the RNC's story that Democrats really plan to stick up for the public and the Constitution, or Democrats in Congress believe the RNC's claim that impeachment is what Bush really wants and consequently assure voters that he's in no danger of it.

This calls to mind an old story that, in the version I read to my son, bears the title "Brer Bush and the Impeachment Baby."

One day Brer Democrat thought of how Brer Bush had been cutting up his capers and bouncing around until he'd come to believe that he was the boss of the whole gang. Brer Democrat thought of a way to lay some bait for that uppity Brer Bush.

He went to work and got some Impeachment and mixed it with some turpentine. He fixed up a contraption that he called an Impeachment-Baby. When he finished making her, he put a straw hat on her head and sat the little thing in the middle of the road. Brer Democrat, he lay off in the weeds to see what would happen.

Well, he didn't have to wait long either, 'cause by and by Brer Bush came pacing down the road--lippity-clippity, clippity-lippity--just as sassy as a jaybird. Brer Democrat, he lay low. Brer Bush came prancing along until he saw the Impeachment-Baby and then he sat back on his hind legs like he was astonished. The Impeachment-Baby just sat there, she did, and Brer Democrat, he lay low.

(for the rest, click title)

See the pReznit do the limbo!

Bush Approval Rating Hits the 20s for First Time

By E&P Staff

Published: May 11, 2006 11:10 PM ET
NEW YORK President Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to 29%, its lowest mark of his presidency, and down 6% in one month, according to a new Harris poll. And this was before Thursday's revelations about NSA phone surveillance.

Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and 43% in January.

Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”

Some 28% of Americans said they consider Iraq to be one of the top two most important issues the government should address, up from 23% in April. Interest has faded slightly in the immigration issue.

Good on Ford!!

Ford shareholders voted by an overwhelming 95% to suport the continuation of protections and benefits for LGBT employees. The motion was forced onto the ballot by shareholders sympathetic to the groups that are currently boycotting Ford. The primary organizer has been The American Family Association. You can read the full article regarding today’s vote here and the article on the boycott here.

From 365Gay.com:

(Dearborn, Michigan) An attempt by a Ford shareholder to force the automaker to drop protections for LGBT workers from its human resources regulations was swiftly defeated on Thursday.

Shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in Dearborn voted 95 percent to reject the proposal.

The motion called for Ford to change its policy to exclude any reference to sexual interests, activities or orientation. Ford argued to the SEC that the proposal would hurt the company’s ability to recruit and could hurt sales to gays and lesbians. The SEC rejected the argument.

Ford then issued a recommendation to shareholders to vote against the measure.

The AFA says at its Web site that “It appears that Ford is more willing to face bankruptcy than ending their support of homosexual groups and causes.”

Thanks Maha

In 1934 Congress passed the Federal Communication Act which outlawed the interception and divulgence of wire or radio communications. The law was later upheld by two companion Supreme Court rulings, Nardone v. US, in 1937 and 1939. But with the crisis of World War II mounting, in May of 1940 President Roosevelt secretly authorized the use of wiretaps in national defense cases if approved by the attorney general. Roosevelt further directed that the use of wiretaps be kept to a “minimum” and limited “insofar as possible” to foreign nationals. (Because this authorization was not justified using any congressional mandate, war declaration, or constitutional powers, resting instead on a White House interpretation of the Supreme Court’s intent not to restrict wiretaps in “grave matters involving the defense of the nation,” the Bush administration apparently chose not to cite this to bolster their NSA program.)

ThanX, Oscar!

Wonder what DHS is doing here. . . . clicky

Spanish police net ETA suspects

Computer hard drives were seized in the operation
Spanish police say they have arrested 11 members of Batasuna, the political wing of the armed separatist group ETA, in early morning raids in the Basque country.
*********************************************

Wonder if the DHS looks anything like this as they go about their work?

gasp. . . . .

Bush promotes brother Jeb to follow him in White House
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 11/05/2006)

President George W Bush yesterday tantalised his foes with the prospect of a third Bush in the White House.

Raising the possibility of the ultimate Democratic - and European - nightmare, Mr Bush said that his younger brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida, would make a fine president.

MAGICAL!

HAT TIP: MAKING LIGHT

Click title for animated version

Well, we beat Latvia anyway. . . .

(CNN) -- An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

"The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries," said the annual State of the World's Mothers report.

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

The Oppressed


In the United States the most oppressed, belittled and harmed group consists of white Christian men, most of them straight. It may be hard to believe, considering that just a few moments ago the Supreme Court Justices were mostly Christian white men, and only yesterday the Fortune 500 companies were run by mostly Christian white men and we even used to have a presidency which was passed on from one white Christian man to another. Even the Pope was only recently a white Christian man!

But so the times change, quickly and rapidly, and before you know it, the only people with real power are black lesbians. Just look at the House and the Senate! Black lesbians everywhere! Crafting laws to take even more away from the poor benighted Christian white men! Opening the borders to the brown hordes! Even Caitlin Flanagan bemoans the white Christian man whom nobody loves. The Democratic party doesn't have a single white Christian male representative and they don't want them, either, those black lesbian feminists who rule every minute of our existence.

Heart of My Heart

New Low. . . .

By Ron Edmonds, AP

By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Bush's approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.
The survey of 1,013 adults, taken Friday through Sunday, shows Bush's standing down by 3 percentage points in a single week. His disapproval rating also reached a record: 65%. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.

"It is a challenging political environment," acknowledges Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, "but we are confident that ultimately voters in November will recognize that a Democrat Congress would simply not be equipped to ensure either economic or national security for our nation."

Bush's fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups.

Moderates gave him an approval rating of 28%, liberals of 7%.

"You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. "But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support."

Only four presidents have scored lower approval ratings since the Gallup Poll began regularly measuring it in the mid-1940s: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush. When Nixon, Carter and the elder Bush sank below 35%, they never again registered above 40%.

billmon

hat tip ~~ http://norwegianity.com/

Jane Smiley

Come to me in five years, after he's been impeached and imprisoned and humiliated by history, and ask me if I will forgive him. Maybe I will. But right now, when he can still be encouraged to persist in his inhumane, cruel, and entirely idiotic policies, policies that, as I've mentioned before, have caused pointless deaths, dismemberments, blindings, woundings, orphanings, widowings, parents bereft of their children, homelessness, impoverishment, infrastructure destruction, sectarian hatred and violence, scandalous waste of money and resources, profoundly corrupt government in both Washington and Baghdad, crippling of our army? Right now? No mercy. Those who don't try to make Bush feel shame bring shame upon themselves.

A big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a clawhammer

It's a .gif and the mac won't load it. clicky

Wasn't it clever of the NYT to come up with the explanation two months before the "crime"?

March 8, 2006
Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed

By STEPHANIE SAUL
With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver.

Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug.

In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004.

And as a more people are taking the drug — 26.5 million prescriptions in this country last year — there are signs that Ambien-related driving arrests are on the rise. In Washington State, for example, officials counted 78 impaired-driving arrests in which Ambien was a factor last year, up from 56 in 2004.

Ambien's maker, Sanofi-Aventis, says the drug's record after 13 years of use in this country shows it is safe when taken as directed. But a spokeswoman, Melissa Feltmann, wrote in an e-mail message, "We are aware of reports of people driving while sleepwalking, and those reports have been provided to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as part of our ongoing postmarketing evaluation about the safety of our products."

A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said the drug's current label warnings, which say it should not be used with alcohol and in some cases could cause sleepwalking or hallucinations, were adequate. "People should be aware of that," said the spokeswoman, Susan Cruzan.

While alcohol and other drugs are sometimes also involved in the Ambien traffic cases, the drivers tend to stand out from other under-the-influence motorists. The behavior can include driving in the wrong direction or slamming into light poles or parked vehicles, as well as seeming oblivious to the arresting officers, according to a presentation last month at a meeting of forensic scientists.

"These cases are just extremely bizarre, with extreme impairment," said Laura J. Liddicoat, the forensic toxicology supervisor at a state-run lab in Wisconsin who made the presentation.

Her presentation, which reported on six of the cases, was made at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, where her counterparts from other parts of the country swapped similar tales.

Wasm

March 8, 2006
Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed

By STEPHANIE SAUL
With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver.

Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug.

In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004.

And as a more people are taking the drug — 26.5 million prescriptions in this country last year — there are signs that Ambien-related driving arrests are on the rise. In Washington State, for example, officials counted 78 impaired-driving arrests in which Ambien was a factor last year, up from 56 in 2004.

Ambien's maker, Sanofi-Aventis, says the drug's record after 13 years of use in this country shows it is safe when taken as directed. But a spokeswoman, Melissa Feltmann, wrote in an e-mail message, "We are aware of reports of people driving while sleepwalking, and those reports have been provided to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as part of our ongoing postmarketing evaluation about the safety of our products."

A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said the drug's current label warnings, which say it should not be used with alcohol and in some cases could cause sleepwalking or hallucinations, were adequate. "People should be aware of that," said the spokeswoman, Susan Cruzan.

While alcohol and other drugs are sometimes also involved in the Ambien traffic cases, the drivers tend to stand out from other under-the-influence motorists. The behavior can include driving in the wrong direction or slamming into light poles or parked vehicles, as well as seeming oblivious to the arresting officers, according to a presentation last month at a meeting of forensic scientists.

"These cases are just extremely bizarre, with extreme impairment," said Laura J. Liddicoat, the forensic toxicology supervisor at a state-run lab in Wisconsin who made the presentation.

Her presentation, which reported on six of the cases, was made at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, where her counterparts from other parts of the country swapped similar tales.

Porter, we hardly knew ye

Daily Scribble


Goss, a former congressman from Florida, head of the House Intelligence Committee and CIA agent, had been at the helm of the agency only since September 2004. White House counselor Dan Bartlett praised Goss' character and said, "This man has impeccable integrity."

Goss came under fire almost immediately, in part because he brought with him several top aides from Congress, who were considered highly political for the CIA.

He had particularly poor relations with segments of the agency's powerful clandestine service. In a bleak assessment, California Rep. Jane Harman, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, recently said, "The CIA is in a free fall," noting that employees with a combined 300 years of experience have left or been pushed out.

Under Goss and the sweeping intelligence overhaul Congress approved in December 2004, the CIA lost considerable clout among U.S. spy agencies. With the installation of the country's first national intelligence director, John Negroponte, Goss no longer sat atop the 16 intelligence agencies. Negroponte took that role - and many of the CIA director's responsibilities. That includes Bush's morning intelligence briefings.

Goss also had some public blunders. In March 2005, just before Negroponte took over, Goss told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that he was overwhelmed by the many duties of his job, including devoting five hours out of every day to prepare for and deliver the presidential briefings.

"The jobs I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal," Goss said. "I'm a little amazed at the workload."

Maha speaks

Finally, from the site Homeland Security Watch, we find a list of the people in U.S. custody that played a much larger role than Moussaoui in the 9/11 attacks. They are:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the plot;
Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg cell and the key facilitator of the plot;
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, a financier of the 9/11 attacks;
Ammar al-Baluchi, a travel and financial facilitator for the plot;
Walid Muhammad Salih Bin al-Attash, a key deputy to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed;
Mohammed Manea Ahmad al-Qahtani, the real “twentieth hijacker” whose entry into the United States was denied at Orlando airport.
Strangely, the Bitter Enders seem unconcerned about prosecuting these guys. It seems they’re too busy blogswarming Patrick Kennedy. Gotta keep those priorities straight.