Can flowers be liberal?

Lord of the Dance (to hear the music, clicky)

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he


OR


She danced on the water, and the wind was Her horn
The Lady laughed, and everything was born
And when She lit the sun and its light gave Him birth
The Lord of the Dance first appeared on the Earth

(Chorus): Dance, dance, where ever you may be
I am the Lord of the Dance, you see!
I live in you, and you live in Me
And I lead you all in the Dance, said He!

I danced in the morning when the World was begun
I danced in the Moon and the Stars and the Sun
I was called from the Darkness by the Song of the Earth
I joined in the Song, and She gave Me the Birth!

I dance in the Circle when the flames leap up high
I dance in the Fire, and I never, ever, die
I dance in the waves of the bright summer sea
For I am the Lord of the wave's mystery

I sleep in the kernel, and I dance in the rain
I dance in the wind, and thru the waving grain
And when you cut me down, I care nothing for the pain;
In the Spring I'm the Lord of the Dance once again!

Looking for a way to pray.

To ask friends and strangers alike to do so.

The pictures are all heads down, hands clasped.

Nothing in me feels that way.

I want to look up, search the face of all that is.

I want to be an empty cup, to be filled.

I want to be an ewer, filled and overflowing.

I want, only, to know. To understand.

Help me please.

http://www.cegelisforcongress.com/

Midnight Deadline To Show What We’ve Got

At midnight tonight (March 1st), the Federal Elections Commission will close the books on every penny, nickel, dime, and dollar that our campaign has raised in the past 60 days. When the politicians and media look at those numbers, they’ll judge whether they think we can win.
This campaign has never been about $ signs. It’s been about you, the people. What you and I believe. What you and I want to change. What’s within our grasp to do.
But, until we can change the mindset of the "judges" and re-establish the power of the people, those "numbers" are crucial.
In these final hours, please consider making a contribution of whatever you can afford so that someone other than you can’t try to stop us when, with your help, we’ve never been stronger.
Please vist our contribute page and do whatever you can to make sure that your voice – not the politicians’, not the lobbyists’, not the special interests’ – is the one that counts.

Laura Koch

The Case for Impeachment

The Case for Impeachment

Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush

Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006. An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.
A country is not only what it does—it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates. —Kurt Tucholsky

On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form “a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” Although buttressed two days previously by the news of the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance of the American citizenry, the request attracted little or no attention in the press—nothing on television or in the major papers, some scattered applause from the left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on the websites flying the flags of the militant right. The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind, and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess.

“To take away the excuse,” he said, “that we didn't know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.

A reason with which it was hard to argue but one that didn't account for the congressman's impatience. Why not wait for a showing of supportive public opinion, delay the motion to impeach until after next November's elections? Assuming that further investigation of the President's addiction to the uses of domestic espionage finds him nullifying the Fourth Amendment rights of a large number of his fellow Americans, the Democrats possibly could come up with enough votes, their own and a quorum of disenchanted Republicans, to send the man home to Texas.. . . .


There's much more. Click title to read.

Ash-Wednesday

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.


~~ by T S Eliot

Thanks jc ~~ ♥

The world is so full of a number of things

I'm sure we should all be as happy as Kings.

Krugman

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.




Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system - and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who - surprisingly, given his libertarian roots - has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."




Edwin, ♥s

Weather Reports

Sitting at this window on Avenue C, a tree (many actually, but there is a main, nearest, one) very like this. Changes throughout the day. Just now, in shadow, looking almost black against the pale blue and white of the sky between the red brick buildings that surround the court. Further down the walk, a break between building lets the sunshine flood the walkway, and the trees there look like white lace. So black lace laying over white lace laying over blue tinged thin clouds.

Watching this tree, this court, this walkway, change through the day is a pleasure on no inconsiderable consequence.

Last week stopped to sit a bit on the benches looking across the tennis courts, and heard a puffy trilling sound behind me. Turned to watch a pigeon courtship taking place: he ~~ all puffed up about the neck and chest, strutting and gurgling for his lady's pleasure; she ~~ ostentatiously more interested in finding a bit of food among the gravel. He was not successful.

Then yesterday, a pair of doves in the tree. He sidling up to her, her moving, till finally he sidled her off the end of the branch. Alas also, not successful, but I have to admit all the courting behavior within my sight gives me enormous hope that spring is just around the corner, even as the temperatures are dropping into the teens nightly, and the wind whips through the canyons of brick.

Kerry Hardie

Red Houses
for Frances

There are in this country, off small roads in darkness,
certain red houses.
Not the red of blood but the red of fire:
red from the red women who live in them.

I have been in one such house.
There was nothing special, nothing to show.
The wooden gates stood open, the dogs were in,
and on the raw concrete steps a bicycle

sprawled on its side in the thick black night air
that laid its wet finger to my face. Inside
the dark-haired red woman-of-the-house
stood by the table, pulled all eyes to her, and it was not

what she said, or did, or looked like, but the place
she drew her life from (some old ferned well
whose whereabouts I did not know) which so tuned her
that she glowed the house.

Fear for the children of such women,
especially the sons. For if they miss
the moment when it might be possible
to make the thing over again

they will spend their lives searching
through people and countries
and nowhere will they find again the red house
with the red heart in the soft black rainy night.

New York at twilight is heartbreakingly beautiful

At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001

So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.

Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.

But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.

The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam - what's the difference?

Now comes the port deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

There's more: click title. . . .

Hat tip to The O C

Anonymous said...
That story is a little old. you must be slacking.

7:38 AM, February 24, 2006

You could say that. I wouldn't necessarily agree ~~


This is the SO-CALLED LIBERAL MEDIA'S take on it. . . .


Gonzales seeks to reframe NSA surveillance
Miami Herald, FL - Jan 24, 2006
... Before his appearance at Georgetown, Gonzales said in a television interview that some congressional leaders told the administration in 2004 that it would not ...

Gonzales: Surveillance of al-Qaida is essential
Arizona Daily Star, AZ - Jan 24, 2006
... Before his appearance at Georgetown, Gonzales said in a TV interview that congression-al leaders told the administration in 2004 it would not be possible to ...
Attorney general defends wiretaps

Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription), MN - Jan 24, 2006
... on a Benjamin Franklin quote, read: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." Before his appearance at Georgetown, Gonzales said in a ...

or this:

Gonzales Invokes Actions of Other Presidents in Defense of U.S. Spying

*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information.
January 25, 2006, Wednesday
By ERIC LICHTBLAU (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 19, Column 1, 1161 words
DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 1161 WORDS -Ramping up the administration's defense of its domestic eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on Tuesday invoked the lessons of George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt in justifying President Bush's broad power to wage war against terrorism. Mr. Gonzales, an architect of the surveillance program, said that the...

To read the rest of this archive article, upgrade to TimesSelect or purchase as a single article.


Fox News ( http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,182652,00.htm ) had one 40-word paragraph about the protest.

This post at HEP struck me (both parts) as poetry

Today marks the beginning of Maple season for me. I will clean the leaves and debris from the stone stacked fire hearth I built, lay dry wood in, and sit the stainless steel pan down. Soon the pan will begin to ping as the sap heats up. And that will continue as I add more and more sap. About 6 hours for today's boil, plus an hour in the kitchen finishing.



I would also like to share this.

The traditional Ojibwa people read the weather and the woods the way we read books today. They watched the animal tribes and the bird tribes and the twigs and the soil. At ishpibiboon, the time when the bald eagles returned in the spring, they knew it would soon be time to harvest ziinzibaakwadwaaboo, sap, from anininaatig, the maple, the tree of inini, the human being.



From Sugartime by Susan Carol Hauser


Shadow*TeaTimeTim | 02.24.06 - 9:47 am

Future lawyers to be proud of... and Alberto Gonzales

On January 24, 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke at Georgetown University's law school and attempted to defend the Administration's position that warrantless wiretaps authorized by President Bush do not violate the Constitution or federal law

At 10:30 a.m. Gonzales entered the room and Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff introduced him. While people were applauding and Gonzales took the podium, two women in the second row got up and turned their backs on Gonzales. Both women had the words "Tap This!" on their butts, and one had a "I (heart) the Bill of Rights" sign stuck to her back. The words could be read from the stage, so Gonzales got the message.


Gonzales began speaking. As he spoke, other students stood and turned their backs. Then a group in the back row stood up with black hoods on and held the banner with "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" up to the cameras. It was beautiful.



Every few minutes more students stood and turned their backs, including some who had not known any protest would be taking place, but chose to stand in solidarity with us and to stand up against Gonzales. It was strong and beautiful resistance. Over 30 students stood and turned their backs on Gonzales as he tried to justify spying on Americans.

Several students walked out on him before the end of his speech.

During the panel discussion after the speech, Georgetown University Law Professor David Cole said, "When you're a law student, they tell you if say that if you can't argue the law, argue the facts. They also tell you if you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue either, apparently, the solution is to go on a public relations offensive and make it a political issue... to say over and over again "it's lawful", and to think that the American people will somehow come to believe this if we say it often enough. In light of this, I'm proud of the very civil civil disobedience that was shown here today."

All in all, it was a good day for dissent.

The organizers of the event are putting together a website where they're hoping to build a grassroots coalition of law students, professors, and citizens to counter the Administration's campaign of empty legal claims.




From an email. Thanks Edwin ♥s

Hat tip to Oscar

Thanks for these, jc ♥

You might, in fact, recognize this as mincemeat pie. . .

humble pie


A 17th century English dish, in which the heart, liver, kidney and other innards of a deer were combined with apples, currants, sugar and spices and baked as a pie. The servants ate this inexpensive but filling repast while the gentry dined on the VENISON. The name comes from the old-English word numble , meaning a deer's innards. "A numble pie" became "an umble pie," which eventually worked it's way to "a humble pie."

Well, gosh: now I DO feel safer. Really, really safe. . . .

Gov. Jeb Bush said he has faith in his brother's administration over its decision to allow an Arab-owned company to operate major U.S. ports, including in Miami.
Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, is expected to take over a British company that has been running six U.S. ports.

Dufus in action

Captions anyone?

Hat tip to Renee.

Bush, Cheney have 1,000 days to get administration back on track

Bush, Cheney have 1,000 days to get administration back on track


Sunday, February 19, 2006; Posted: 11:00 p.m. EST (04:00 GMT)
Editor's note: The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story.


The shooting accident brought into focus the extent to which Dick Cheney runs an independent operation.


(Time.com) -- For an entire week, the Bush administration has been tangled in the aftermath of the Cheney hunting accident. That might not seem like a long time, but Bush and Cheney have barely over 1,000 days left and things they want to get done.

To succeed, they need to resist as long as possible the forces that make administrations irrelevant. "Some people in the White House are worried that this will hasten the start of the formal lame-duck period, which they were hoping to put off until after the midterm elections," said a Republican official. "This showed a weakened president and a vice president in a bubble within a bubble."

And according to a new Time poll, Bush's approval rating is lodged at 40 percent, Cheney's at 29 percent. Bush and Cheney have little hope of driving an agenda if they are not in control of it or if they are playing defense. (Time poll: Cheney's latest stats)

What the hunting furor did, beyond occupying the airwaves for a week and stalling what momentum the president may have had, was expose in the most public way yet the extent to which Cheney runs an independent operation and raise the question of how much the White House can control him -- or wants to.


For the rest: click title

Hat tip to WTF is it now??

Work like you don't need the money.

Love like you've never been hurt.

Dance like nobody's watching.

Sing like nobody's listening.

Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

Gone, but not forgotten. . . .

How much things can change in a week. . .

Dear Mr. God,

Sometimes it's very hard to understand your plan.

It would be civil of you to give us a hint or two.

For instance, what exactly is the use of liver cancer in babies? And what good, exactly, that this family should experience it twice in one lifetime?

A few words on the subject would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Your friend