By PatD, a Trail Mix Contributor
Soon and late the day is coming,
Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown,
And the fruitful fields of England
Shall be trod by beasts alone
Rings shall vanish from our noses,
And the harness from our back,
Bit and spur shall rust forever,
Cruel whips no more shall crack
Bright will shine the fields of England,
Purer shall its waters be,
Sweeter yet shall blow its breezes
On the day that sets us free
[Anthem from Animal Farm by George Orwell]
farm the pigeons, boss. eggs and squab right outside your window.
bid, I agree there must be a better way. maybe humanely (now that’s an oxymoron) harvesting and eating them. perhaps loud music, noises and motion sensor lights like they have at airports to disperse the gulls.
https://youtu.be/jCay4gLz8ak?list=PLbwk6y-OwQ0kPgOrs-diwSxK3-8QoDZAR
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-911-classified-report-steve-kroft/
In 10 days, President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia at a time of deep mistrust between the two allies, and lingering doubts about the Saudi commitment to fighting violent Islamic extremism. [….]
For 13 years, the 28 pages have been locked away in a secret vault. Only a small group of people have ever seen them. Tonight, you will hear from some of the people who have read them and believe, along with the families of 9/11 victims that they should be declassified.
and pr newswire Saudi Arabia Responds to 60 Minutes Report
Apr 10, 2016, 22:32 ET from Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office
Orwell as punk rocker. Fun post, PatD
Whsky, yep the Pigeon guy who cleaned up and disinfected our back decks said the most important thing is not to let them rebuild nests, clean them out every day until they give up, takes about two weeks
Dexter, return of the night watchman, always enjoy your stories
tony & Jamie, you all might enjoy this guess who’s coming to dinner
This was no political or community institution event. It was a genuine family seder at the Fines’ home with about 15 people, all family and friends, held on Passover’s first night. Helene made her traditional brisket and tzimmes, there were no photographers present and the Clintons stayed for hours, the Fines recalled in interviews this week with JTA.
“She didn’t want publicity from it,” Bob Fine said. “She was real, she was personal, she participated in everything. She was one of the best seder guests we’ve ever had. Chelsea, too.”
[….]
The evening did have a couple of snafus. Helene Fine didn’t know Chelsea was a vegetarian, and the main course was first-cut brisket smothered in onions. Worse, Helene inadvertently made the tzimmes with prunes that had pits. She was forced to watch, with some horror, as the first lady wordlessly removed them by bringing a soup spoon to her mouth, pursing her lips to extract the pit and then neatly lining up the pits on her plate.
“There was such an aristocratic grace to it in not calling attention to it,” Helene Fine said with a chuckle. “I could see she was properly trained in table etiquette.”
from an italian news source
There is no official confirmation that Bernie Sanders , Vermont Senator candidate in the US presidential eventually take part in a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican, where it should speak on the subject Ethics and Economics, Friday, April 15 next . Senator, after the controversy, may terminate the visit and postpone all at a better time. [….]
For some analysts Sanders a visit to the Vatican, without being received by the Holy Father, may damage its image.
Jace, last thread, LOL.
Love the Orwell bent. Animal Farm was one of my first couple of “awakening ” books.
Interesting Senate races looming. Needless to say I am watching AZ closely. McCain has a primary challenger who is a real piece of work. A strictly anti Government type who just can’t wait to govern, or not. Kirkpatrick is a good candidate but it will be a heavy lift. Hopefully She can pull it off.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-races_us_5707efe8e4b0447a7dbc38f1
oooooh…. I love those farm animals….
YUM!
Sea, thank you so much for sharing your brilliant father’s oral history of his War years:
http://www.pakavideos.com/edward-cowley-private-first-class-us-army-world-war-two_39hjk7
Our Air Force paid me to drive through the areas where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. It was winter time and KumCho was with me. We both could sense the magnitude of the battles that were fought, the struggle of soldiers on both sides against the elements, and the inevitable casualties. I was able to gain some knowledge as to what our F-111s could do should Warsaw Pact forces reach this point in an early 1980s war.
Most of all, we were overwhelmed by the realization that we were traversing hallowed ground.
story of the day, and near my neighborhood: The Hamburglar
Greg Sargent does a decent job of outlining the problem Bernie has going forward.
But this ad also says something important about the remainder of the Democratic primaries, particularly the New York primary, which is set for April 19th. Many of them are closed to independent voters, meaning only registered Democrats can vote. In New York, Alex Seitz-Wald reports that Sanders supporters have worked hard to register new voters (who might be more inclined to vote for him) as Democrats, but that their efforts may have fallen short, because of the state’s overly restrictive voting rules:
Sanders supporters say they’ll be able to compensate for this problem by “super-charging turnout among young people and other key Sanders groups,” Seitz-Wald reports. And that of course could happen. But throughout these primaries, Clinton has fared far better than Sanders in closed contests, in part because she wins among Democrats while Sanders wins among independents. (Sanders won in Wyoming over the weekend, but in this closed caucus the delegates ended up getting split evenly.)
***
The Clinton camp is betting that Democratic voters in particular have a deep well of historical memories of her at war with Republicans for more than two decades, and that as a result, they will conclude that she should be entrusted with the task of defeating Trump, given how horrifying the prospects of a Trump presidency really are.
I thought Huxley’s 1984 was wonderful. I didn’t appreciate Animal Farm so much as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
alexandra petri
The John Kasich at the party never leaves until he is asked and often not even then. You cannot tell if it is because he is clueless or because he is deliberately tormenting you or because he genuinely believes that maybe, if the rules work in his favor, he can convince you that he’s the winner you’ve been looking for.
Or perhaps the thing that keeps him there on your couch is something different from hope. The Kasich at the party does not, necessarily, see a path forward. He does not think that if he can just wait you out, you will wind up with him.
But he does know that he won’t like what happens when he leaves.
Flatus, I am with you, but did enjoy Animal Farm as well. I loved 1984 and Gulliver’s Travels.
I loved Orwell’s books too. But the book that really got me thinking was Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.
It did help that it was about to be banned and one of my high school English teachers had us read it just under the bell. My thought was if it’s important enough to be banned than it’s important enough to pay close attention to it.
RR, ahhhh, to be unstuck in time.
absolutely love Vonnegut…. the whole oeuvre [hope that means works and not eggs, tho’ he is a bit scrambled now and then]. also big made-me-think book was “stranger in a strange land”
Guy I worked with at the bicycle shop – medieval musician, instrument builder and bicycle mechanic – was a huge Heinlein fan. I was partial to Arthur C. Clark – was introduced to him when I read A Fall of Moondust, which my grandfather had. I never could figure out why my grandfather had that book.
Pogo… it wasn’t the time travel. My teacher told us the government wanted to ban the book because of “pornography”… the scene where Billy Pilgrim comes across a photo of a girl having sex with a Shetland pony. He said this was BS… he really thought they didn’t want us to know about the bombing of Dresden… the fact that the US bombed a city where they knew Americans prisoners were being held during WWII. This was during the time of Vietnam and we were just beginning to learn of the atrocities committed by our government in our name. I’m sure you remember it was a volatile time.
patd… I loved Stranger in a Strange Land… read it for the first time about 5 yrs ago because Jamie kept touting it.
RR, didn’t mean to suggest I knew why your schools would ban Slaughterhouse Five. I was always struck by the concept of Billy being described as unstuck in time. So it goes. 🙂
Phil Bump, writing for the Fix explains delegate math.
“…It is not true that Sanders is having trouble catching Clinton “because of her overwhelming lead with ‘superdelegates.’ ” He is having trouble catching her because he trails her badly with pledged delegates (as on that sign at Clinton headquarters), and the states he keeps winning are smaller states with fewer delegates given out.”…
In fact, by every possible democratic measure, Clinton is winning. She’s winning in states (and territories) won, which isn’t a meaningful margin of victory anyway. She’s winning in the popular vote by 2.4 million votes — more than a third more than Sanders has in total. In part that’s because Sanders is winning lower-turnout caucuses, but it’s mostly because he’s winning smaller states. And she’s winning with both types of delegates.
jace, here’s one for you from wonkette titled “Arizona Congressjerk Will Save Grand Canyon From Barack Obama And Tyranny”
There are two things you should know about Arizona teabagger Rep. Paul Gosar: He is a dentist who somehow made it into Congress, and he’s one of the reasons we Can’t Have Nice Things. Gosar is fighting a proposal to declare a new national monument on land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park, which would protect 1.7 million acres of land from uranium mining. Not that he’d ever be so crass as to say he’s in favor of adding runoff from uranium mines to the Colorado River watershed, of course not. But just think how pretty the Canyon could be if it glowed at night!
Instead, Gosar is framing the proposed monument as a “Government Land Grab,” and has scheduled a “listening session” Monday in Kingman, Arizona, so that he and the public can listen to “testimony from more than 20 Arizona witnesses” about the supposed perils of protecting land around the Grand Canyon. The handpicked witnesses will represent a broad range of ordinary Arizonans, including a whole lot of ordinary representatives of ordinary mining companies and ordinary anti-federal-anything groups.
[….]
The potential monument, which would be called the “Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument,” was proposed by Tucson congressman Raúl Grijalva late last year, and has the backing of leaders of the Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, and Hopi tribes, who joined Grijalva for a press event when he announced the bill. Native American tribes and environmentalists have been fighting attempts to mine uranium near the Grand Canyon for decades, and Grijalva’s bill is an attempt to permanently protect the area.
[….]
Naturally, the threat that Barack Obama might go mad with power is part of Gosar’s schtick in fighting against the Grand Canyon National Heritage Monument: It’s another of those darned federal land grabs opposed not only by mining companies, but also by welfare ranchers and militia loons, so Gosar’s announcement of Monday’s “listening session” leans heavily on the “federal overreach” rhetoric…
Big yawning question regarding The Hamburglar: Was there no alarm set before the last shift left? And the Chef de Cuisine looked pretty comfy in the kitchen, as if he had experience re: Le Fast Food. Even toasted the bun! Who was he talking to on the cell phone … taking an order to go 😉 ?
Nothing like 10 pounds of cayenne pepper and a week of destroying their nests. Haven’t seen a single pigeon on my property since 2pm. Other than killing two eggs was mostly humane.
For those with bird issues, this stuff worked wonders and totally humane.
Ray Bradbury is my first choice. Next is Jules Verne.
What is the meaning of life? Or can the Caps win the Cup? Baltimore O’s have the best start ever – 6-0. Dreams of a World Series win – in April.
I had no skin in Sanders. This last week has ensured I will be working for Hillary. The old guy has lost it.
It is rather late in life to make major changes, but I have decided to change (at least one half the time) to a cocktail onion in my martini instead of an olive. This is a huge change, one I may need to discuss with my shrink.
The pull of politics is growing. Much depends on this election to preserve the United States of America. Will the Trump and Cruz supporters leave for some other country? I doubt it, but you never know. They could choose Antarctica.
BB, I’m of the opinion that ultimately the majority of the Sanders supporters who claim that they won’t vote for Hillary under any circumstances will. If not, when they are faced with the prospect of Hillary who, let’s face it is pretty much a center-left candidate, and one of the nut cases from the Republican Party, they will ultimately come to realize that it’s not in their interest to sit it out. And I also suspect that ultimately Bernie will tell them that.
RR
My children have a standing rule. If you hear that someone wants to ban a book, read it immediately. My son didn’t object until he had to read an edition of Little Red Riding Hood that had Red carrying a bottle of wine in the basket for Grandma.
Love that Ivanka Trump is 34 years old, a New York resident, and has never registered to vote. Then she misses the deadline to vote for her own father.
Chris Hayes on MSNBC just talked about one of Trumps ventures I had forgotten about – the Tour de Trump. Didn’t succeed. Go figure.
One word would describe Hillary Clinton’s Saturday sit-down with the New York Daily News editorial board: Boring! And that’s a good thing.
The 80-minute wonkfest with the two-term former senator from the Empire State was notably different from the editorial board meeting with Sen. Bernie Sanders a week earlier. That gathering was gasp-worthy for the Vermont Independent’s seeming inability to talk beyond his stump speech. Clinton had the opposite issue. She could talk — and talk and talk — about anything in thoughtful paragraphs stuffed with details.
Tony, I’m guessing you weren’t surprised…
LOl, Pogo, nope not at all.. The piece descibes the Hillary i admire.. Someone so smart, wow a brain like a computer, her data base is immense… Ha!
You are what you eat. So, what is the mythological critter who is half fish and half turkey ?
Yes, I confess to being a mythological critter.
“a cocktail onion in my martini instead of an olive”
bb, a gibson?
are you the vodka martini type (according to wiki that used to be called a kangaroo) not gin (boodles perhaps)? and what part vermouth? wiki: According to Noël Coward, “A perfect Martini should be made by filling a glass with gin, then waving it in the general direction of Italy,” Italy being a major producer of vermouth.
oh, the delightful choices in life we make….
new thread